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Old 03-22-2013, 06:38 AM
The Rifleman The Rifleman is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2012
Location: Vt
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The poster above me made some good points about meat, however sustaining animals for a long time means being able to grow or feed them. If you are working on a 60 day supply of food, then you probably aren't ready for that.

I agree completely with his suggestions on having a water supply and canning. You need to have water or you're all done and you need to be able to save the food you grow.

Here is an easy way to build up a cheap food supply:

Go to walmart and buy a pressure canner and BALL company quart mason jars. Google recepies on the ball company site. For me, I found that I like the chili, beef stew, and chicken noodle soup the best. Go to your farmers market and load up on cheap veggies. You can also sometimes find mason jars in the classifieds used for cheap. Boil them in a large pot (I toss in a couple of McCormick's season packets as they greatly improve taste). Then poor them into the mason jars and load into the pressure canner. One and a half hours later, boom, 7 quarts of meals, ready to eat.

I am a lousy cook, but by watching some youtube videos and doing some reading, I was able to produce some fantastic home made meals just by boiling and canning. I even got into canning milk and butter. I now buy only things on sale at the store and it saves me a bundle. It takes me about 3 hours to prepare and can 7 quarts (plus a make a little extra for dinner for the night). I can get 2 meals out of a quart. So if you are prepping for 1 person, then you can have a whole weeks worth of food ready in just 3 hours. These cans are good for at least 2-3 years, but I rotate (eat) my stock faster then that.

With canning, if you are doing meat you MUST have a pressure canner, not a water bath canner, and meat must be proccessed for at least 1 and a half hours at ten lbs of pressure. Don't just trust me, read the recipies and do some youtube watching too. If you want some of my recipies I'd be happy to share.

If you want to add to your food supply even faster, my grocery store sells 20lb bags of rice for 15.99, For one person, thats the base for 20 meals for less then $1 each. Can't beat that. Then, with your mason jars meals, you can add a little rice and strech it out even cheaper.
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