How do I plan a tasty diet using non perishable items? It also needs to be extremely budget friendly. I would ideally have a year and a half worth of food for two people.
Heres the kind of things I Usually have on hand:
>cans of salmon, tuna, chicken, sometimes spam.
>Crackers
>bag of rice
>Bag of black beans
>Campbells chunky soup
It wouldn't be very fun to subsist off of those things long term. So what do I want to stock up on to make it less miserable, more feasible long term, and still have variety in the diet? As an added catch my gf is gluten free. I want to prep for her as well. Any suggestions out there anons?
Well I have a modest proposal
Underrated
S o ylent and various knockoffs are pretty cheap per meal and easy to store for a long time. Now there's drinks, hot meals, snack bars, in a bunch of flavors.
consider adding a bit of pic related. If you've never tried it before, get a small can from your local grocery store and taste it-- the stuff is delicious and rich. I think it's better than regular whole milk from the store, but it's obviously not as good as actual fresh milk from the farm.
It winds up costing 3-4$ per gallon which is pretty on par with milk prices in a lot of the country
>Pic related
anon i
I am a moron. Pic related
>>cans of salmon, tuna, chicken, sometimes spam
>As an added catch my gf is gluten free
Add corned beef hash to your canned food empire. Fry it in a cast iron skillet until crispy. Goes with everything.
Also pouches of dry soup mix go a lot further than canned soup. Will have to supplement whatever protein is available. Dry lentils cook much faster than beans. Dry peppers store forever and make your soup taste like something when you're down to squirrel stew. Stock up on vinegar too.
Make your own pemmican.
>ITT: guys that are going to get colon cancer within a week of their "prepping"
Just because something is non-perishable doesn't mean it's good enough for prepping.
You're going to be under stress.
You're going to be under physical pressure.
You're going to be needing to perform.
You won't be able to do that on cup noodles and fricking beef jerky.
You need:
>dry beans - 40lbs
>dry lentils - 40lbs
>dry rice - 40lbs
>something to cook those on without power (ideally camp stove fired by twigs / wood, or a wood / charcoal BBQ)
>milk powder (not ideal, but will do) - 15lbs
>pasta sauce in GLASS containers - 100 - 150 containers
>dried pasta - 30lbs
>homemade hard tack - 30lbs or so
>dried oranges - 10lbs
>chocolate - 10lbs
>trail mix / dried nuts / dried berries - 10lbs
Now this shit is at least going to keep you REMOTELY healthy.
You NEED fresh shit - you need greens, like it or not.
Learn to scavenge, even fricking stinging nettle can be turned into nutritious soup, and pine needles into tea.
Redundancy / Freshness:
>chicken, ideally 3 - 5 chickens + rooster (worth their weight in fricking GOLD, 6 can fit into 40sq. ft., purest protein you can get, literal multivitamins.)
You can get all this shit for 600 - 1000 dollars, and that's being picky.
If you're talking "my budget is 50 dollars", buy as much rice, beans, and lentils as you can, and then a bag of skim milk.
You will die though if you don't immediately find some other source of food, it just isn't enough.
If you're talking 200 - 300 bucks, just get what I said, and halve the amount.
Homemade Chocolate Recipe:
1 cup of cocoa powder
1/2 cup of coconut oil / cocoa butter
8tbsp of honey
Mix honey + oil of choice over LOW flame, and allow to melt.
Dump in cocoa powder.
Mix until perfectly homogeneous, and take off the flame immediately.
Pour into molds, refrigerate, enjoy.
HOARD SALT AND SUGAR AS WELL.
SALT IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN SUGAR THOUGH.
IT WILL BE WORTH ITS WEIGHT IN GOLD, AND EVEN IF NOT, IT IS ESSENTIAL FOR A MILLION THINGS.
I FORGOT SALT. GET IT.
Why do you think salt will be so valuable? We can extract it from plants and sea water. It seems like it's everywhere.
Homemade Hardtack Recipe (Lasts 100 Years, Unironically):
4 cups of flour
2 cups water
4 teaspoons of salt
COPIED FROM A SITE:
"Slowly mix the flour and salt into the water in a large mixing bowl. The mixture will get very thick, so use a wooden spoon instead of a whisk.
Transfer the dough to a flat, lightly floured surface.
Knead the dough by hand to make sure it's thoroughly mixed.
Using a rolling pin flatten the dough to ½ inch thick.
Once flattened, cut the dough into 3" by 3" squares.
Use a skewer or toothpick to poke 3 rows of 4 holes into the top of each square.
Transfer the squares to a baking sheet and bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes. Flip the squares and bake for another 30 minutes.
Remove from the oven and let cool on a wire rack.
"
Hardtack is for dumbass larpers who fantasize about how great it would be to subject themselves to the conditions of a preindustrial sailor. If you're actually interested in improving your conditions in an extended disaster you would stock up on baking powder and crisco so that you could make food that you might actually enjoy eating. Hardtack was used to reduce the labor required in the field for soldiers, sailors, and pioneers, whereas you will have all the time in the world to cook fresh food while you're holed up in your boogaloo bunker.
Do not get anything you wouldn't eat under normal conditions.
>You NEED fresh shit - you need greens, like it or not.
You really don't. At least not for a short period like that.
>You will die though if you don't immediately find some other source of food, it just isn't enough.
Most americans are able to not eat anything for at least 3 months. If you keep a minimal diet you can easily expand that to a year.
sauce in GLASS containers - 100 - 150 containers
pasta - 30lbs
This was basically my diet as a student for months at a time. Get some other canned food as variety and you're good to go for 1.5 years. 30lbs isn't really that much though. The ratio is more like 1-2lbs per container. I would order 20lbs packs on Amazon before inflation hit for like 6 bucks so it's not really a big effort to have 200lbs laying around.
You'll need around 1lbs per person per day + sauce to not loose weight.
Chickens are only worth it if you can provide the rest of the infrastructure. Basically having a garden providing vegetables you use to cook everyday so they can have a lot of scraps. Otherwise you have to feed a lot of grain you could also eat yourself.
I wouldn't say it's going to be very valuable but it's a hassle to produce it yourself when it's basically free at the store and lasts forever.
What you should get however is things for comfort like booze, cigarettes and coffee. Even in the worst of times these things were made available to the last minute and definitely valuable for trading.
start with flour. cheapest way to get protein and build out from there.
Grain lasts longer than flour and stores better.
Don't forget your meds.
powdered dehydrated egg, very versatile for cooking.
just stock up on spices in order to make your basic staples good. oregano/basil are pretty healthy
Livestock isn't that perishable.
They make replacements too.
Gluten free just means more rice, no noodles/flour.
We have to concept of 20 bucks bags.
Each bag has stuff for 20 bucks in it.
Salt, sugar, flour, lentils, beans, rice concentrated tomatoes, peas, cooking oil, baking powder, cookies, powdered ice tea. You get the idea.