Survival Food: "Using your Stored Food to Cook Dinner"

Hey people!

Whatever food you stock up for a rainy day should meet a certain criteria.

1)Good nutritional value

2)Long shelf life

3)Require no refrigeration.

These are obvious enough but lets not forget something else that is too often overlooked:

1)How much water it needs to be edible.

2)How much cooking (fuel!) it needs.

A bucket full or white rice is great, but if you have no fuel, no water, you’re sick or you've been shot, crippled with limited movement, that presents a different challenge. Anything you can eat right out of the container is a big plus in those circumstances, so be smart about having both long term staples and food you can eat without processing.

During a disaster you may lose power, there may be little wood around to cook, and water will be precious too. You might think fuel is plentiful now, you've got lots of trees and such, but that can change VERY fast. During the Sarajevo Siege people chopped down all trees, all park benches, burned all furniture they could get their hands on. They even dug up coffins to burn from the cemetery. They needed fuel not only to cook but to stay alive in winter.

Whatever you stock up on, it’s a good idea to focus on products you actually use on everyday basis. This means both that you'll be able to rotate and keep your supplies fresh, you’ll actually know how to cook with them and it also means your family is already used to eating it and its not some nasty food kids or yourself may have a problem with.

Here I prepare a Shepard’s Pie. I used fresh minced meat instead of the canned meat, but its pretty much the same principle.

FerFAL