Another article about food storage for those of us who simply can't afford to purcahse 1 year's worth of food from those sweet (but expensive) internet companies.
Blame carbs for being fat or not, bread is still the staff of life.
This is the one item that you do NOT want to purchase online...at all. Looking at online prices, I noticed that grains tended to be overpriced, even without the shipping charges. Just days after I bought simple, unadulterated white bleached flour for 35 cents a pound, I looked online and saw the average price for the exact same product was over $1.50/lb. Most grocery stores will have good, basic flours. Larger grocery stores will have other flours that we Americans rarely see today...rye flour, semolina, etc.
If you prefer to have unground whole wheat, which can last for 25 years under proper storage, then I suggest going to a grain mill itself and purchasing in bulk. Some people suggest a seed and feed...however, these may not be as clean as that for human consumption. However, I highly suggest that you purchase whole wheat flour in a five pound bag first. Test it for some time. You could find that you are allergic to wheat, or that you just plain old cannot eat it.
There is a myth going around that "white" flour has only been around for a short time. In actuality, a form of it has been around for centuries. It required several people to work to put the flour through ever-decreasing screens and clean out the parts which hold the nutrition, but are less appealing, and thus was more expensive...but as it lasted much longer than other flours, it was actually less expensive for pioneers, who couldn't bring a grain mill out west, to purchase the white flour from the trader. Laura Ingals Wilder makes great mention of the difference between white and brown bread in "The Long Winter". In medieval times, the upper classes ate white bread (all of that labor took more money, so you could tell one's wealth by how light or brown their bread was). And the Romans claimed that it was their soft, white loaves of bread that attracted the barbarians, who were forced to eat hard brown bread.
You will want to have a mixture of grains. There is, of course, the allergin reason. Many people who are mildly allergic to a particular grain can stand a certain amount if they eat other grains along with it. Secondly, a mix of grains will help provide a more complete protein. On top of that, a person can get extremely bored with eating a single grain food day after day. A person bored with their food would rather not eat than consume more of it. I mention again Laura Ingalls Wilder, during "The Long Winter"...she became severely frustrated with eating brown bread (bread made with whole wheat flour ground at home). And one certainly needs to eat to keep up their strength.
One nice thing, though, is that you can mix flours together in a single recipe. This is especially helpful for those who can't stand other grains. By replacing even 1/2 a cup of plain white flour with another flour or grain within a recipe, you are that much healthier. One of our family favorites is to replace some of the white flour with oatmeal.
ALL grain food should probably take a little stint in the freezer...two to four days. This will kill anything that has managed to sneak its way into your food store. Trust me...I have even seen meal moths flying around the grocery stores. Not good at all. A single meal moth can ruin thousands of dollars of dry foods...even dried fruits such as raisins...in the time span of a few weeks.
(You might want to purchase a few boxes of "pantry pest traps" for meal moths as well. They aren't perfect, but they are the best deterrent I know of to keep the moths out of your food.)
And now, onto the basics:
White, enriched flour, bleached: The least expensive of grains to purchase in Continental North America, and the basic grain for the average North American diet. Ground flour will last a year on the shelf. I've heard varying times to keep flour, but the number heard most often was a year at room temperature, two years in the refridgerator, and much longer than that in the freezer. The five and ten pound bags of flour fit nicely on refridgerator and freezer shelves.
Okay, now that you have your flour...what do you do with it? Add some milk and eat flour paste? Blech. As I mentioned under the first of these articles, you are better off learning first how to make quick breads. Quick breads are those made with quickly-rising leavenings instead of yeast (please read the first blog in this series for my notes on baking powder). Some, such as tortillas, do not use any leavening at all. If you are unsure of your baking from scratch skills, you can purchase mixes from the baking isle of the grocery store that you only need to add one or two ingredients to and learn with those.
Rice, white: Although not nearly as nutritious as brown rice, white rice on the shelf will keep as long as enriched white flour. If extra effort is put into storing it properly, it will last indefinately. Proper storage includes putting it in the freezer for at least 48 hours, then immedietly placing it in an air-tight, food-grade container with an oxygen absorber, then keep it in a cool place.
DO NOT purchase minute rice or any of the other quick-cooking rice. It is, truthfully, only part of the rice grain, not nutritionally complete, and frankly...it tastes like wet paper. Plain old long-grain rice is the least expensive. However, rice connosieurs will note that there is greater flavor, and possibly even better nutrition, in a variety of rices. Jasmine rice happens to be one of my favorites.
Cooking real rice is not the same as cooking minute rice. You need a pot with a tight-fitting lid, one dry cup of rice, and two liquid-cups of water. (There is a difference in the volume of a dry measure and a liquid measure...you cannot use the same measuring cup). You can rinse the rice if you wish. Put water and rice into the pot and put it over high heat. Wait until it reaches a vigorous boil, then turn the heat down to the lowest possible, and let it simmer for 20 to 40 minutes. If you do not bring it to a vigorous boil, then the liquid will not be absorbed by the rice. If you let it keep boiling, then the water will all boil out and the rice will burn on the bottom. However, once it has reached that good boil and it is removed to an extremely low heat, then you don't have worry about it longer, and in around a half an hour, you will have a fluffy, mildly sticky rice.
Cornmeal: Treat the same as white flour. You probably will not need to purchase as much cornmeal as other grains unless you eat a lot of cornbread and corn tortillas.
Oatmeal: Probably the healthiest of the grains listed here. Quick oats would be easier to use than traditional oats, and cost about the same. For convenience sake, you could easily purchase the individual packets of flavored oatmeal...or you could save money by adding your own maple and brown sugar, or your own cinnamon sugar and dried apples, or other flavors. I have seen recipes for making instant, flavored oatmeal...however, I have found them wanting in taste a bit. You'll want to experiment with what suits you best.
Wheat Gluten: The variety of wheat that we make today has very little gluten in it...and it is gluten that gives yeast breads its texture and structure. I have found that it is far less expensive to purchase all-purpose flour and wheat gluten than to try to fill your freezer with bread flour.
Other grains: As stated before, you might want to replace a small amount of your all-purpose flour with others to get better health even if you can't stand other grains. Keeping on hand a few of the healthier flours keeps things both interesting and healthier. One of my newest favorite bread recipes includes adding a semolina and duram flour mix, which is generally used for making pasta, to the white flour.
Other Grain-foods:
Pasta: Pasta is another of those foods that will store indefinately with just a little bit of common-sense precaution. If just sitting on your shelf, it has a 2-year storage life. So much can be done to pasta...add cheese, and you have macaroni and cheese. Add tomato sauce, and you have spaghetti. Add a can of condensed soup, some veggies, and maybe some canned meat, and you have a casserole. Stir fry the pasta with some fresh vegetables and a tiny amount of butter or olive oil, sprinkle it with cheese and you get....well, heck, I don't know what its called. We call it "everything but the kitchen sink pasta". I saw someone make it on HGTV (he didn't give it a name either), and we have loved it.
I have also seen on the internet recipes for beefing up Ramen noodles. Don't like the flavor packets that come with Ramen noodles? You could either toss them aside for your own flavorings, or you could simply purchase "Lo Mein" noodles...its the exact same thing. Just like pasta, there are so many things that can be done with lo mein noodles. I have been into an authentic far Eastern restaurant (forgive me, I don't remember if it was Korean or Vietnamese), and they had page after page after page of differing soups all made with a lo-mein base.
Still, as inexpensive as Ramen noodles are, by themselves they are not very nutritious, often full of MSG, and can create extreme boredom in eating. Don't get me wrong...we do keep Ramen noodles in our storage, and there is a lobster-flavored one that I have gotten particularly addicted to.... But if it came to someone knocking on our door, begging for food (or demanding it at gun point), the Ramen noodles will be amongst the first donated. Ramen noodles are slated to stay good for about a year.
Popcorn: I remember hearing a story about a man who got stuck in the mountains. They had a bear they had hunted, and popcorn. He said the popcorn, cooked in the bear grease, was a life saver. And with a teenage boy with a higher-than-normal-appetite-for-a-teen...trust me, it saves my life.
Microwave popcorn will stay good for about 18 months. Plain popcorn, which you pop in an air-popper or a pan, will stay good for 3 years. Best yet, in an emergency, popcorn can be ground into corn flour.
Ready-made mixes: Twice now I have mentioned ready-made mixes for learning how to bake. There are muffin mixes, quick bread mixes, brownie mixes, cookie mixes, pancake mixes...if you are more comfortable using these (and you have the money), then go ahead and purchase these in place of flours. I personally don't like being "stuck" with whatever mix I have in the pantry, but I do keep them on hand for when I don't feel like measuring everything out.
Also included in these are pasta and rice mixes. The drawback...sometimes, they don't always taste as good as home made. Many have chemicals in it that you may be sensitive to, such as MSG.
Bisquick will stay good for about a year. Muffin mix will stay good about 9 months, cake and brownie mix for about 18 months.
Ready-made foods: Yes! You can have ready-made grain foods in your pantry. One of the most common things my mom had the pantry, but didn't use very often, was soda crackers. A soda cracker smeared with peanut butter made a tasty and healthy snack, or perhaps even a meal. There are granola bars wrapped in foil pouches (my daughter's favorite). There are cereal bars wrapped in pouches...okay, who was the brilliant idiot that decided to make rice crispy treats a convenience food? I'd like to shake his hand. Such a simple thing to make, and yet I'm sure they're making billions off it.
Crackers will last, under common sense storage, about 18 months. Open crackers will turn "stale" quickly in humid areas. Unopened pretzels will last for about 6 months before going bad. Cereals and cereal bars will remain good for about 9 months until open.
I don't suggest bread for your food storage. It goes bad far too quickly, which is why you see very few packages of bread being sold by the food storage companies. Sometimes bread will stay for a while in the freezer, but like all else, it will get freezer burned and become useless. This is why learning to make your own breads, even if it just quick breads, is so essential to food storage. Hard tack, which I have seen recipes for, will last a long, long time...but it will break your teeth. You are far better off having the flour and making biscuits than eat hard tack.
Unopened pretzels will last for about 6 months before going bad. Cereals and cereal bars will remain good for about 9 months until open. Pop tarts should last about six months.
Next time I should get into some of the other kinds of food that we need to nutritionally round out our foods supply.
No comments:
Post a Comment