I felt like writing a how-to article just for this new forum. This is my first “how-to”, so cut me some slack.
There are many ways to store food long term, this is my way.
The first thing you need is some dry food products, things like dried beans and white rice work well, but you will want more than just that. Pasta, oats, salt, sugar, hard white wheat, dried milk and powdered cheese sauce will help to make things a little less dull. Those staples will last 10-20 years is stored properly (not including the milk products) If you keep a good stock of caned goods and have a stocked spice rack it makes these staples much more palatable. I.E. cook some spaghetti noodles, ad some butter and pour a small can of tomato sauce on it. Not gourmet, but stores long and is very cheap, you can always experiment with spices.
Ok so now that that is out of the way you will need to buy some Mylar bags and oxygen absorbers. You can find 1gallon bags and absorbers from the Mormon church web site. Or from here
http://www.sorbentsystems.com/mylar.htmlMylar comes in different thicknesses, 5-7mil thick bags are ideal. I use 7 mil bags (8.0" x 8.0" O.D. - PAKDRY1500 7.0mil High barrier bag, They are $37.50 for 100.) Unlike some I use the smaller bags. That way I can just pull out a small bag to fix a meal or two, instead of unsealing 3-5 gallons of food.
Next if you have a Food Saver or equivalent you are set to seal the bags. Write the contents of the bag and the seal date on with a sharpie. Fill 5-10 bags with food, place in oxygen absorbers (and desiccant packets if you wish) then place the rest of your bag of O2 absorbers in a glass jar and close the lid.
Take one Mylar pouch full of food and place it in the food saver. I seal the top of the pouch once, then flip it over and seal it again… 2 is one and 1 is none etc. Don’t be alarmed if it does not suck out the oxygen from the pouch, it is normal. After a few hours the O2 absorber you placed in the pouch will suck it down.
So now you have all these sealed Mylar bags. Good job, you will want something secure, rodent proof, and easy to carry to pack them in. Rubbermaid bins work, but they cost money and can get heavy quick. Go to your local supermarket bakery (not Wal-Mart) and ask them if they can spare any empty white buckets. They can vary 3 to 5 gallons in size. The bakery usually trashes (or recycles) the buckets anyway.
If you have Safeway in your area, their bakery’s use 3gallon buckets, and all the lids are O-Ring sealed.
The small pouches do not fill the bucket as well as a single bag, but you have the benefit of not unsealing a whole bucket of food. Get creative with the pouch arrangement you can pack more of them in there than you think. It will help if you pack them in before the O2 absorber sucks down the bag. That way the bag will be more flexible, because it does not have a full vacuum on it..
Label the bucket and you are ready to squirrel it away in a good place. They stack well in the back of a closet, and are kept cool that way.
Yeah I know, beer + Sharpie = bad spelling
Hope I was able to help you guys and galls out,
