One important item to store is milk. It is important to plan for short-term emergencies and long term use of food storage when you are considering how much milk you are planning to store. If you have a child between ages one and two you will want store milk that is three percent (whole milk), because it aids in brain development. This is especially true if you are looking at long term use of the milk. If it were to just get you by in a pinch, then I wouldn’t worry about it as much. You do have several options available when it comes to milk.
The most common way to store milk for food storage is powdered milk. The powdered milk has improved in taste and consistency over the years. Powdered milk has the longest shelf life of any of the options available to you. It can also be used in baking to add protein to your foods. Powdered milk has the same fat content as skim milk. If you have young children you will want to consider additional options to add more fat to their milk. If your family balks at the taste you can mix the milk with half powdered milk and half regular milk. You can also do this to stretch your milk supply in an emergency.
Another option available is to store evaporated milk. You will need to watch the expiration dates on the cans of evaporated milk, and make sure that you rotate accordingly. The milk keeps better if you flip the cans every month. This helps to prevent the fat from settling. You can reconstitute evaporated milk by adding equal parts milk and water. The taste is slightly different from regular milk, but still acceptable. You can purchase evaporated milk in skim, two percent and three percent varieties.
You can also freeze milk for up to month past its expiration date. This would work for a short-term emergency. You can easily stock up on milk when you expect a severe storm and store it in your freezer. The milk does become slightly grainy after storage, but the taste is the same.
Sweetened condensed milk is really designed for baking and cooking. It has sugar added to it before it is boiled down to its consistency. You may want to store this if you do a lot of baking and cooking.
Another option that is available to parents of toddlers is to buy the formula that is designed with toddlers in mind. This can be a handy way to provide milk for your child in an emergency. It might be nice to include a can of the formula in your emergency kits.
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