The Stig
08-13-2011, 10:29 PM
Two or maybe three years ago I assembled an emergency food kit. I used a simple WalMart plastic tub and packed it full of as much food as it would hold.
I don't have the exact inventory but it had obvious things like bags of beans & rice, mac & cheese, canned veggies, drink mixes, canned/foil bagged meats, pastas, peanut-butter, gravy mixes, etc. The kit also included utensils, seasonings, honey, can openers and the obligatory hot sauce.
Anyway, I packed all neatly into the tub, labeled the tub so I'd remember to check it and put it on the emergency shelf.
In Ohio, the shelf was in the basement so it was dry, cool and consistent temperatures.
For the past five months the tub was in our garage where temps hovered in the 90's during the day and 70's at night. There were countless days at/above 100F in there and it was always, always humid.
So today I took the tub out to see what, if anything, was going on in there.
According to the Mrs, who unpacked it, there wasn't anything wrong with the food at all (at least from outward appearances). No mold, no exploded cans, no hard items that were supposed to be soft (i.e. sugar didn't solidify, rice wasn't a big block).
Since we don't have anyway temp controlled to store the kit we decided to rotate the food into our pantry and use it as needed.
The average "best by" date was mid 2010. I now they really pad those numbers, and that "best by" and "expires on" are two different things.
I was just glad to see the food had not spoiled.
I don't have the exact inventory but it had obvious things like bags of beans & rice, mac & cheese, canned veggies, drink mixes, canned/foil bagged meats, pastas, peanut-butter, gravy mixes, etc. The kit also included utensils, seasonings, honey, can openers and the obligatory hot sauce.
Anyway, I packed all neatly into the tub, labeled the tub so I'd remember to check it and put it on the emergency shelf.
In Ohio, the shelf was in the basement so it was dry, cool and consistent temperatures.
For the past five months the tub was in our garage where temps hovered in the 90's during the day and 70's at night. There were countless days at/above 100F in there and it was always, always humid.
So today I took the tub out to see what, if anything, was going on in there.
According to the Mrs, who unpacked it, there wasn't anything wrong with the food at all (at least from outward appearances). No mold, no exploded cans, no hard items that were supposed to be soft (i.e. sugar didn't solidify, rice wasn't a big block).
Since we don't have anyway temp controlled to store the kit we decided to rotate the food into our pantry and use it as needed.
The average "best by" date was mid 2010. I now they really pad those numbers, and that "best by" and "expires on" are two different things.
I was just glad to see the food had not spoiled.