# Yet another question



## midwestmom (Jun 24, 2014)

I research and research and get so many different store sites promoting their stuff I get overwhelmed. So asking for insights

I know the general consensus is that in an emergency, people will eat if they're hungry no matter what it is. Well,that doesn't necessarily hold true when uou have a special needs kiddo with texture aversions. So.. I have to plan around that. I need to try to get as close what he normally will eat as I can. Some things are easy. Peanut butter. Crackers. He'll drink powdered milk (well, most of the time). Some things I don't know about . Mac and cheese. I see a lot of versions, but they all come in some huge package. I cant afford that much for things that may not work for us. If I repackage normal cheese powder and pasta into air tight packs will that work?


----------



## DrPrepper (Apr 17, 2016)

midwestmom said:


> I research and research and get so many different store sites promoting their stuff I get overwhelmed. So asking for insights
> 
> I know the general consensus is that in an emergency, people will eat if they're hungry no matter what it is. Well,that doesn't necessarily hold true when uou have a special needs kiddo with texture aversions. So.. I have to plan around that. I need to try to get as close what he normally will eat as I can. Some things are easy. Peanut butter. Crackers. He'll drink powdered milk (well, most of the time). Some things I don't know about . Mac and cheese. I see a lot of versions, but they all come in some huge package. I cant afford that much for things that may not work for us. If I repackage normal cheese powder and pasta into air tight packs will that work?


Midwestmom,
I bought a bunch of packages of Kraft mac and cheese on sale. I measured out how much pasta is in one box, and then dumped all of the boxes into one mylar bag in a food-safe bucket. Then, I took all of the little cheese packages, and stuck them in the bucket (outside the mylar). Now, when we want mac and cheese, I grab a little packet of cheese and scoop out the required amount of macaroni, and I'm good to go. I used the smaller 2 gallon buckets so that I could seal the contents with an O2 absorber and only had to open a small amount at a time. I also have to admit that I supplemented the pasta in the mylar bag with plain elbow macaroni - the cheese sauce goes a lot farther than the pasta in the box, so I usually add an extra cup or so of pasta. I also wrote the directions from the box on the bucket lid with a sharpie so I wouldn't forget!


----------



## midwestmom (Jun 24, 2014)

Awesome! And thanks for the tip about adding extra pasta


----------



## Tweto (Nov 26, 2011)

I have been storing food for 40 years. I have made my share of mistakes.

Here's what I have learned and what I do now.

I only buy food that the wife and I eat now. I buy small containers, (cans, bags, jars. Buying the smaller packages protects you from spoiled food, instead of having 10 pounds that needs to be thrown out I only have to throw out 1 pound. I don't buy survivalist food in large containers.

I store no perishable items.

Here's where I do things a little different from most. I purchased 50 translucent heavy plastic sealable containers that are about 20 inches by 32 inches and 8 inches deep. I put a combination of all of the food in each container (meat, vegetables, rice etc.). So this makes each container a self contained food supply that can last maybe 5 days. Each container has a cheap can opener, salt and pepper, and paper plates. What this allows me is a fast way to transfer food to a vehicle for the purposes of bugging out. So if I only have 5 mins, I can get maybe 20 containers into the car and leave the rest.

We eat the stored food and replace it quarterly to keep the stocks fresh, even though I have eaten food that had been stored for 7 years and I'm still here to talk about it.

The other advantage of putting all the food into plastic containers, if a service man needs to get in to that area (it hasn't happened in 12 years) all he will see is the plastic containers and not the food.

OPSEC is a major concern of mine, so buying a skid load of food from a survivalist house is a big red flag to the neighbors, UPS guy, and the paper trail leaves no mystery to what I'm doing. So all my food is purchased as a normal shopping trip to the grocery store. I will plan to only buy small quantities and make multiple trips so that the other people do not look at me with suspicious eyes.

Obviously, I'm paranoid!


----------



## weedygarden (Apr 27, 2011)

I have purchased cheese powder in bulk. It was so long ago (maybe 8 years ago) that I cannot tell you where I got it from. I divided it up into quart canning jars. It might be largely chemical, because it has not diminished in taste!

The LDS used to sell macaroni in a 25 pound box and I have purchased those. My thought is that would make a great alternative to buying the boxes of Mac and Cheese, using cheese powder and macaroni, and making it following the directions on the packages.

Except! One year at Halloween, there was a special kind of mac and cheese and evidently it did not sell well. I was able to buy maybe 50 boxes of it for a fraction of the typical price of boxed mac and cheese.

All of that said, a few decades ago, when I was younger and could eat anything and still be very thin, I could eat mac and cheese with no problem. I have eaten some in the past year, but it is not something I can eat very often. 

Eat what you store and store what you eat is not always so easy when you try to eat lots of fresh foods like I do. Today, I had a cup of coffee with half and half, a banana (typically what I have for breakfast), a salad made with a cucumber, tomato, avocado, red onion, cilantro and an olive oil dressing I make up, a small porkchop, and some yogurt. That is kind of the limit of what I can eat without gaining weight. It is really not easy to store the salad fixings, except by gardening. And when it is winter? 

Relative to your child eating peanut butter and crackers: have you ever made crackers? I have, but they are not easy and they are a lot of work. I made mine with whole wheat flour I had just ground. The texture of whole wheat may bother your son, but you could substitute ww flour with many other kinds of flour, including rice flour, bean flour, and more.


----------



## Caribou (Aug 18, 2012)

I did a StartPage search for cheese powder, this is the first oneI clicked on.

http://www.amazon.com/Cheddar-Cheese-Powder-1-lb/dp/B00016LZT8?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

Pasta keeps for at least 30 years and the cheese powder can be found in #10 cans.


----------



## Genevieve (Sep 21, 2009)

you can always make a basic white sauce from storage and then add whatever type/flavor of cheese you want. that way you can make different kinds of mac and cheese. a white sauce is the base for many things and its easy to make

store the ingredients and make what you like


----------



## weedygarden (Apr 27, 2011)

This is the most recent price list from the LDS site. Please note that it is a pdf for those of you that are concerned about clicking on links.

https://providentliving.lds.org/bc/...eStorageCenterOrderForm-US-short.pdf?lang=eng

I see that they are no longer selling macaroni in 25 pound boxes, but I am not surprised. They are selling macaroni in 3 pound packages.


----------

