Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Living on Survival Food

On January 1st 2008 I started living off my stored survival supplies. I needed to make sure that I could actually exist for an extended period of time eating just survival food stores. Plus, I wanted to make adjustments and expand on what foods I am stockpiling before greatly increasing the bulk volume.

This first month included primarily pinto beans, white rice and bread. I made several loafs of bread over the month to gain experience baking it but most was store bought; I just did not see a need to go through the flour stocks. The pinto beans were cooked in a crook pot to simulate cooking on a wood stove and the rice was prepared on the stove.

Daily food consumption consisted of 4 slices of bread, 1 cup dried beans and one cup rice. Prepared they yield 2.5 cups of bean and 3 cups of rice. Total caloric value is between 1700 and 1800 calories. This is plenty of calories if you are locked down someplace but if you are working, cutting firewood and what-not, increase your consumption. Increasing food intake will of course impact the longevity of your stores but this beats working at half capacity.

The up side is that this you can live quite well on this survival diet. As a matter of fact I lost 12 pounds this months, which is good for me but someone not as burley as myself will need to up the the calories. I feel great and am going to continue this nutritional regime. You also gain valuable experience preparing the food and save a ton of money over eating out or daily trips to the store.

The down side is the absolute boredom. The first week was ok but then I realized that spices and various condiments were going to be a necessity. You can live on pinto beans and white rice but it is not fun.

One of the reasons I wanted to do this was the discovery process I know a lot of this looks like common sense stuff but if I am going to stake my life on these food stores I need to be sure they will keep me alive.

Because of this exercise over the next month I will be purchasing and storing a much larger variety of beans, rice and dry pasta as well as spices, powered cheese and eggs. In a previous post I recommend an emergency store based on the three staples of pinto beans, white rice and bread this will keep you alive but it just might drive you crazy.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great blog. I really enjoy reading about your off-grid preparations.

If you have the time, could you write an article about how you prepare the beans?

-- CRJ

Ryan said...

Great post. I was interested in hearing the end of that previous post. I think stocking up on items to make staples interesting is vastly underrated. A dab of peanut butter or jelly greatly improves white bread. A bit of terriaki or soy sauce adds something to rice.

J. David Boyd said...

You've positively got to get some variety. My wife and I have pinto, kidney, garbanzo, navy, lima, and several other types stored, as well as lentils, and split peas. I don't want to go taste-bud crazy!

Anonymous said...

Good site. I have been stocking large quantites of beans, rice, wheat and dry pastas. It's not hard to come up with pretty tasty meals with these staples...just make a trip to any dollar store that stocks spices, canned meats and/or dry sauces and gravies. Try different combinations of spices and meats. Make sure you check the expiration dates, though, and I don't buy any food packed in China.