Stored food AAR

[The Stig]

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.

[LUNCHBOX]

I'm with you on the padding of dates, however.....I opened a box of peanut butter cookies from Girl Scouts. The box was dated 2/2010 with a marker by myself as I do all my stores to show when I put them up. I was surprised to find the pb was stale to taste and the cookie was soft, almost thick powder. That really sucked.

It's good to see someone commenting of food use. Nice Stig.

[bobthe]

you want to be careful storing food in warm environments
see:
MREInfo.com - MRE Shelf Life
i wouldnt NOT want to have any of that 100 degree applesauce!

that said, if all you care about is nutritional value, it really doesnt matter how long your store food for. canned food has been recovered from shipwrecks 200 years old and it's still nutritious.

[Fatty]

Just make sure you have some seasoning salt on hand

[The Stig]

So far we've only found one can in the pantry that we *think* came from the food kit. When it opened it a bunch of air whooshed out and the beans looked funny. We chunked the can flat out.

Other than that, we've eaten a fair number of items from what was once stored in the garage and we're not dead yet.

[izzyscout21]

So far we've only found one can in the pantry that we *think* came from the food kit. When it opened it a bunch of air whooshed out and the beans looked funny. We chunked the can flat out.

Other than that, we've eaten a fair number of items from what was once stored in the garage and we're not dead yet.

define "funny". How did they look different from "regular?" beans?

[bobthe]

So far we've only found one can in the pantry that we *think* came from the food kit. When it opened it a bunch of air whooshed out and the beans looked funny. We chunked the can flat out.

Other than that, we've eaten a fair number of items from what was once stored in the garage and we're not dead yet.

as far as i know, so long as the items were sterile when packaged, no matter how much heat damage occurs it wont *kill* you. It just wont be a tasty meal.

[The Stig]

define "funny". How did they look different from "regular?" beans?

There were bubbles on top of the goo in the can. Also, the color was odd. Hard to describe but it was "off" with lots of funky streaks.

Between the bubbles and the escaping gas we decided caution was the order of the day.

[izzyscout21]

Yeah, that was probably a smart move.