# How much canned/frozen/freeze dried/dehydrated are you storing?



## TexasMama (Dec 3, 2012)

I'm fairly new to prepping and trying to figure out some of the best ways to store up our food. Right now we've got maybe 3 months or so of storage - more on some items. I just bought a pressure canner off Ebay - and I want to find another pressure canner too so I can have two going at once.

I like some of the freeze-dried/dehydrated stuff and want to have some of our stuff be like that. Let's say maybe..20%? I don't know,.

We have mainly stocked up on cans from the grocery store - bought the big harvest shelf unit from shelf reliance and it is probably 80% full. (We used all small shelves for it).

My concern is how long the shelf-life is for home-canned items (especially meat). I watched Wendy DeWitt's video (I hope I got her name right) on food storage and where she talked about canning meats, etc. and that sold me on the idea and removed some of my fear about that.

Anyway - I guess I'm just wondering - are you planning on canning X% of your storage and using the grocery story for Y% and then something else for Z%?

I want to get a good balance and and I'm trying to figure out the most economical way to do things - cause the price of jars for canning sure seems to add up! In fact - any suggestions on where to get jars in larger quantities?

Wholesale is probably the word I'm thinking of...

Peg


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## UncleJoe (Jan 11, 2009)

I don't have any set percentages. We buy at the warehouse clubs or when we find a good deal on something. A few weeks ago I stopped at the Dollar Store. They had Del Monte veggies on sale for $0.49 a can. I bought 15 cans of each type.

As for our total stores, I would say it's about 70% home prepared and 30% commercially packaged. I can and dehydrate from the garden and from farm markets. I don't have any freeze-dried stuff. Yes, it has a longer shelf life the home dried but I just won't spend that kind of money. And since I dehydrate every year it's always reasonably fresh.

For acquiring jars we have been going to auctions and estate sales for the last 5 years. If I have to pay more than $2.00 a dozen I pass them up. I have close to 2000 jars now and 90% of them came from auctions. When we first started going it seemed like nobody wanted canning jars. There were a few times when I would get a large box of 20-30 jars for $ 0.50.

http://www.auctionzip.com/
Type in your zip code and find auctions near you.


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## PackerBacker (Dec 13, 2012)

UncleJoe said:


> I don't have any set percentages. We buy at the warehouse clubs or when we find a good deal on something. A few weeks ago I stopped at the Dollar Store. They had Del Monte veggies on sale for $0.49 a can. I bought 15 cans of each type.
> 
> As for our total stores, I would say it's about 70% home prepared and 30% commercially packaged. I can and dehydrate from the garden and from farm markets. I don't have any freeze-dried stuff. Yes, it has a longer shelf life the home dried but I just won't spend that kind of money. And since I dehydrate every year it's always reasonably fresh.
> 
> ...


I used to buy jars at auctions for next to nothing. The auctioneers said that a severral years ago they would have thrown them out before the auction. Now I can't seem to get one bought for less then what they cost new.

Seems telling.


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## PackerBacker (Dec 13, 2012)

TexasMama said:


> I'm fairly new to prepping and trying to figure out some of the best ways to store up our food. Right now we've got maybe 3 months or so of storage - more on some items. I just bought a pressure canner off Ebay - and I want to find another pressure canner too so I can have two going at once.
> 
> I like some of the freeze-dried/dehydrated stuff and want to have some of our stuff be like that. Let's say maybe..20%? I don't know,.
> 
> ...


If you are canning meat and using it regularly enough to rotate it then shelf life will be a none issue. It keeps virtually indefinetely.

Depending on how you do you accounting caning things like vegetables it may not pay if you have to buy new jars. Canning meat is the opposite. Canned meats in the store are so expensive and the quality is uncomparable to your home canned goods.

The best deals for jars right now is at Lowes.

I posted links and suggestions here.

http://www.preparedsociety.com/forum/f36/deals-canning-supplies-16096/

If you find a wholesale supply of canning jars please share.


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## siletz (Aug 23, 2011)

When it comes to prepping, everyone needs to do what makes sense to them. There's no one right way. As long as you're stocking up, it's all good. For me personally, I try to stock up the way we eat every day. I don't want to try to be cooking and eating new foods in the middle of a crisis. We garden and can/root cellar the excess. I have Tattler reusable lids. When home canning, you process enough to get you to the next harvest season. I would not worry too much about the shelf life of canned goods. If processed correctly, they may lose some color and texture, but will be safe to eat for a long time. This works for us because we plan to stay here in a crisis. If we lived in a city with our primary plan to bug out, we would not want to be lugging heavy canning jars around the woods.


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## tsrwivey (Dec 31, 2010)

We try to "store what we eat, eat what we store" as much as possible. When we started this, our family mainly ate fresh/frozen fruit, veggies, & meat. We rarely ate canned or dried food or even root veggies much. We have slowly made changes in our diet by trying new recipes using foods that store well. It's been a long road but we're definately much closer to our goal. We LOVE FD fruits & eat them as regular snacks at our home. We dehydrate & can some of our own veggies from our garden each year. We learned to cook dried beans & store a lot of them now. We're still not real big pasta, rice, or potato people but we're learning. We keep only about a week's worth of FD meals but about 50% of our storage is of meals that can be made from commercially canned stuff like soup, stew, meat, pasta, etc. 

Storing what you eat & eating what you store makes rotation automatic as well as knowing you can cook what you have & your family will like eating it. Your plan will be different from everyone else's based on your family's tastes, budget, available storage, etc.


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## OldCootHillbilly (Jul 9, 2010)

Shorter term foods we by canned goods. We rotate em out so they don't run past 3 ta 5 years. They've found canned goods still edible after decades (50 to a 100 years) though prolly not as tastety as fresh. 

We dry our own stuff an that makes up lots a our long term storage. If I can get a real good deal on canned goods, I'll by thme an dry em. Frozen same thin. Then whatever we can outa the garden an the farmers market. I keep lots a our dehydrated stuff in mason jars what we vac seal.

We can our own meats an butter to, cause they gonna be the hardest ta come by in any sorta emergency. Not hard ta do ya know what ya got. 

Thins like rice, beans, oatmeal, flour, sugar an spices I vac bag er put in mylar. Then they go inta totes fer storage.

As fer how much, that depends on yalls eatin habits an such. Always store what ya eat an eat what ya store. In the beginin the canned goods er nice cause ya don't have ta do much. But ya can also add ta yer dehydrated at the same time. Taint hardly a weekend goes by that my dehydrator ain't runnin. Most fridays I'm cannin sumtin (my day off an nobody at home!). Just ease inta it, otherwise you'll start gettin overwhelmed an tired a it.

Look at what it takes ta make a meal when yer cookin, take notes an decide ifin the thins ya need er fer the short term (be where ya wanna start first) er longer term (add to it a little each week). Then just buy a bit extra when ya get groceries. I don't buy much a anythin from the big compainies. There prices er generally high fer what ya get (in my opinion) got lots a salt an ya gotta ship em. 

Don't ferget water an drink mixes either. I vac seal quite a bit a instant coffee an non dairy creamer. I also store dry drink mixes cause it helps the taste with storage water.

One thin I've found round here, fer powdered milk, I can go ta the mexican isle in the store an get dried milk prolly a 1/3 rd less then I can in the other isle. Why? Danged ifin I know, but I'll buy it.


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## Dakine (Sep 4, 2012)

I have been trying to move especially my food preps away from freeze dried and MRE's and such into home canned and dehydrated. I need to do more on the dehydrator side of it, but I've done a lot of eggs so far, and some banana chips. Just getting my toes wet there for now while i focus on canning. 

yesterday, I got boneless skinless chicken breasts on sale, $1.97 lb, so even having to buy 3 boxes of new pint jars to hold them (I'm doing a batch of beef stew today as well) the cost at ~$1 per jar still means I saved on the cost of the chicken breasts when they are NOT on sale. Should the normal prices go up due to the drought or just regular inflation doing what it does, then I've greatly preserved the buying power of my money!

I have canned chili, chicken, roast beef, meatloaf, ground beef and ham, and I'm going to do the the beef stew in a few minutes. 

for overall goals, I'd like to do something like 100 lbs of chicken, ground beef and roast beef each as my first goal there. Since the chili and beef stew are meals ready to go right out of the jar I'd like to have 200 pints of each of that, and the meatloaf is something I was doing in quart jars, but I've found after opening and eating some of them, that is a LOT more food then I was expecting it to be, I even canned some in a pint jar and tried that and it was several meals, so I'm switching to pints on it, and I'll probably try to get 100 pints of that too.

I'll be adding new recipes to that, but if I can hit those kinds of storage marks, that means I have a LOT of food that is nice and tasty, fresh and ready to go if things get rough with another deep recession or full out depression.

Next I'm buying a food mill and I'll be making the tomato sauce with meat recipes from Ball book starting in a week or two. And it's time to start planting gardens soon so I'll have more there for drying and canning, and I'm going to try and do an Elk hunting trip to WA state this year, and if I can put away a few hundred pounds of Elk, then that is going to be great!

The jars continue to be an expensive part of the project but that's just part of the game, and like mentioned above, even with the cost of buying the jars I'm still saving money compared to buying it not on sale a couple pounds at a time only when I need it.


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## Sentry18 (Aug 5, 2012)

I started by just adding a few cans to a shelf in the man cave every week, then several cans, then more cans. I did not feel like I was gaining fast enough so I got a couple cases of MRE's from a Natl Guard friend of mine. After assessing my preps I realized that even though it seemed like I had a lot of food, I could only feed my family for about 4-5 weeks. A sense of urgency set in and I started buying boxes of 3,600 calorie Mainstay ration packs. Then even more urgency and I started buying 30 Day Buckets of freeze dried foods. Now I can feed my family for several months and I feel a little better. I am also focusing on growing my own food, canning and other means of sustainability. When that is all in place I will feel a lot better.


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## Davarm (Oct 22, 2011)

I dont have ratios that I follow.

I preserve each food in the best or most convenient way for the Item I'm putting away.


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## gypsysue (Mar 27, 2010)

Mine depends how well the garden did that year and how successful we were hunting and fishing! 

We don't freeze anything. I mostly save canning jars
for meat and dairy, and dehydrate nearly all of our fruits and vegetables. Thoroughly dried and stored properly in glass jars in a cool, dark place with a steady temperature, most things will keep for years.

But I would preserve and store them however I could in whatever situation I was in, just as long as I had put back what I could. You'll do fine, TexasMama.


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## Caribou (Aug 18, 2012)

I have eaten fish forgotten for twenty years and meat for almost half that. As long as the seal is intact the contents should be fine. Some canned goods have tested favorably after over 100 years.

I date my stores as to when it enters my pantry. This lets me tell how fast I am going through each item. I shop out of the pantry then replace and add more as I can. I have found many forgotten items this way.


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## kejmack (May 17, 2011)

My method does not depend on any specific ratio or planning. I just grow and raise as much as I can and store it away. I keep 8-12 months homegrown food on hand at all times which is supplemented by rice, flour, pasta, etc bought from the store. My feeling is that you need to be as self-sufficient as possible when it comes to food because eventually your supplies will be eaten so you need a way to replenish them.


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## kappydell (Nov 27, 2011)

I don't have a set percentage...I buy meats on sale & put in the freezer until it gets crowded, then I can up some batches to make room. I use the canned when Im in a hurry or as gifts to others with the same dietary restrictions I have. Dehydration is good for those on-sale frozen veggies (no blanching needed) so I use the dehydrator to open up freezer space as well. I just keep buying when on sale. Its nice not having to pay retail for most things. Gives me all the more money for preps. I am a believer in the old Penn-dutch saying..."two things never did a man any harm; a fat wife and a full barn." Only I use pantry instead of barn.


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