PDA

View Full Version : What Did You Use/Rotate Today?



JustAPrepper
12-04-2011, 05:50 PM
I'm in a little cooking challenge right now on one of the boards I participate in. It's a challenge to see what kind of odds and ends you can use from your freezer or pantry. While they know I stockpile, they have no idea I'm a prepper or to what extent I stockpile. It literally just dawned on me that this would translate really well here since it forces us to move some food. Some things I bought as a newbie prepper and didn't understand the golden rule of store what you eat and eat what you store. Other things I cook fresh and things just don't get rotated as often as they should. Like the gravy with tonights dinner. I was going to make fresh when I remembered the dry packets on the shelf...so...

Yesterday I made a Jell-O dessert using an expired package of Jell-O (01/11 - I also don't tell them I'm using food out of expiration dates - they would be horrified!! :p)

Tonight we are having a jar of Home Canned Beef, two packets of brown gravy mix (also expired 01/11), a box of Velveeta Shells and Cheese (06/10) and some turnip greens from last years garden that have been in the freezer.

What can you rotate today?

mollypup
12-04-2011, 08:38 PM
I haven't used hardly anything from my preps lately. I got kind of scared (still am) about this financial storm going on in Europe, plus the Iranian mess and have actually tried NOT to use anything lest I need it in the very near future. However, I did take a couple 2-liter bottles of water I had stored about a year ago over to my mom's house to drink while we raked her yard. I will replace them tonight or tomorrow.

JustAPrepper
12-04-2011, 09:38 PM
Rotating your water is a good thing!

bacpacker
12-04-2011, 11:42 PM
We picked up some of the large containers of gravy and spices over a period of time. We found our taco seasoning was 5 months out of date. We had taco salad for supper tonight. It still tasted very good.

realist
12-05-2011, 01:39 AM
Filled up the cars and truck with my gas cans and then it is off to the gas station to spend a bunch of money.

Sniper-T
12-05-2011, 11:50 AM
I'm just about through a rotation of gas. I have two jugs left that are 15 months old. The one I used at 14 months was fine, and I don't expect these to be any different.

I don't like to keep it around that long and do a 6 month rotation on most of my gas, but wanted to push the limit and see what happened.

This is regular unleaded gas, stored in Black containers in my garage, seasoned with a splash of seafoam.

ravensgrove
12-05-2011, 03:05 PM
What with our own Great Depression out here at the farm I am kind of on the opposite end of this discussion...what haven't I rotated lately? Pretty much nothing. I am actually finding it a great exercise in reality vs. calculations. At the rate we are consuming, I think I rpobably have way more food than I realize I had...meat alone I think it could quite possibly go bad before we ever consumed all the beef in the freezers.....this has led me to more canning/dehydrating of meat with Justa's tutorial. I tried both chicken and beef since that first experiment. I don't like it as well personally, the texture bothers me, but it would certainly beat starving.

JustAPrepper
12-05-2011, 08:08 PM
Raven, I definitely understand about the beef. I'm not much on "roasts" and that's exactly what the beef tastes like to me. That's one reason I'm making a concious effort to start rotating it faster. If I don't, it will just sit there taking up space. I'd rather have the jars and space for more chicken, which I'm sorry to hear you don't care for. It's our favorite!

Today I rotated a can of Refried Beans and half a can of Enchilada Sauce (froze the other half).

JustAPrepper
12-06-2011, 10:47 PM
Two more packets of gravy mix - a white kind that I mixed with sausage to go over biscuits.

izzyscout21
12-08-2011, 02:10 AM
2 cans of chicken stock, 1 bag of noodles, 1 can of peas, 2 cans of chicken.........can you guess where this is going?

ladyhk13
12-08-2011, 04:16 AM
I made chicken fajitas from breast that I canned a couple of months ago. Threw in some mushrooms, bacon bits and taco seasonings and simmered. Yummy. I am with you guys on the beef...I noticed that it was very stringy, dry and just wasn't "right" until I found if I simmered over a long period of time it became very tender. That was the trick! Maybe that is the problem you guys are finding?

realist
12-08-2011, 01:22 PM
Frozen corn from the garden.

Hay a note I store my gas out away from my house in the pump house. When I went to rotate my gas earlier I noticed that the 5 gallon cans had some rust on the bottoms. So I used a wire brush to remove the rust, then painted on some Hurculiner on the bottom. Today I'll put on a second coat, it should keep them from sliding around and protect them from further rust. You might want to check yours next time you rotate.

Sniper-T
12-08-2011, 01:25 PM
good tip... but all mine is in plastic, so I'm good!

Sniper-T
12-13-2011, 02:55 PM
a couple of months ago, I dehydrated 25 pounds of mushrooms. pulled a couple packs out last night, and got a batch of mushroom soup in the works for tonight

realist
12-13-2011, 07:05 PM
See that is the difference between you and me. I rotated 40 pounds of dog food, you rotated your mushrooms. I would say that your mushrooms tasted much better than my dog food. Do you pick them or buy them?

Sniper-T
12-13-2011, 07:09 PM
I also bought 80 pounds of dog food yesterday too.

These are just the white button ones, I buy them at the local farm. I've got a couple setups for growing my own morels and oysters and chantrels

realist
12-13-2011, 07:15 PM
If I were to buy that many mushrooms I would cost me around $60, hope you get them cheaper. They grow wild where I am however I am leery of picking them since I don't know what I am doing so I go to the store.

ladyhk13
12-13-2011, 07:21 PM
I just bought Comstock fruits to use for my cheese cakes at Christmas so I'll put them back and pull out the ones I bought last year.

Sniper-T
12-13-2011, 07:25 PM
25# cost me about $30.00. In the stores they're more than twice that. The only catch is you have to buy them from the farm in 5# boxes minimum. which fortunately, works for me rather nicely.

realist
12-14-2011, 01:47 AM
I could live on mushrooms however not suppose to eat them, gout. I do it anyway. I am going to have to check around for a source.

Ladyhk13 okay I give up what is Comstock fruit???

Sniper-T
12-14-2011, 12:16 PM
I rotated out the balance of my meat in both my chest freezers.

I load all the new meat into milk crate, empty out the freezer, and then put everything back in. This also lets me do a quick inventory. As I eat my way down into the freezers, I'll flip the milk crate over, and then pile the rest on top. That way all the food is within reach from the top.

ETA:

crate: http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i133/Don_r_2006/Misc/mini-milk-crate-lg.png

JustAPrepper
12-14-2011, 11:10 PM
I rotated out the balance of my meat in both my chest freezers.

I load all the new meat into milk crate, empty out the freezer, and then put everything back in. This also lets me do a quick inventory. As I eat my way down into the freezers, I'll flip the milk crate over, and then pile the rest on top. That way all the food is within reach from the top.

ETA:

crate: http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i133/Don_r_2006/Misc/mini-milk-crate-lg.png

I'm vertically challenged so I have to practically stand on my head to get down in the bottom of our deep freeze. I keep all our meats by category, pork, chicken, beef, in those reusable bags with handles from the grocery store. I can reach in, grab a handle and pull out an entire bag, remove the upper contents, put the new stuff in the bottom then top off with the older stuff and drop the bag back in the freezer.

I've continued to rotate stuff all this week. Jell-O, Pudding, some garden veggies from the freezer, some canned goods, some boxed Mac and Cheese, boxed Stuffing, Home Canned Meats and had a fish fry that used up almost an entire bottle of oil in the fryer that needed to be rotated out.

bacpacker
12-14-2011, 11:27 PM
We cleaned out our chest freezer Saturday. Found some vacumm sealed steaks we had put back. Started using them, still taste good. They've been in there for 3 years. We also found 30lbs of various types of flour the wife had bought and put in the freezer to kill off the bugs and we had put more stuff on top of them over time. The whole wheat we opened was still good as well.
Sniper I like the milk crate idea, keeps things organized, and easy to pull out a little and everything won't fall into the opening. I gotta find some of them.

Sniper-T
01-27-2012, 03:10 PM
I didn't feel like cooking last night, So I grabbed a bag of my dehydrated chili

http://i605.photobucket.com/albums/tt140/Sniper-T/0126121752a.jpg

added it to some water and simmered it for about 35 minutes.

http://i605.photobucket.com/albums/tt140/Sniper-T/0126121837a.jpg

The wife whipped up some bisquits to go with, and we had a quick hearty meal!

:)

izzyscout21
01-27-2012, 03:20 PM
^^ nice.