Okay, so I did the first of my Costco runs to replenish our 90-day-for-two-people-and-two-dogs earthquake/survival stored stuff. All of the below fits in a Contico storage locker like the one in this post. (For the heavy canned stuff, I use the locker version with wheels on one end, so you can lift the other end and roll it like a wheelbarrow. I can lift this locker full, but it’s not fun to carry.) Prices below do NOT include my local sales tax. Contents of the “Meat Locker:”
36 12-oz. cans Libby’s roast beef, from Amazon, price per can shipped $2.73; total $98.41
36 12.5-oz. cans (6 six-packs) Kirkland chicken, from Costco, price per can $1.67; price per six-pack unit $9.99; total $59.94
66 7-oz. cans (7 eight-packs plus ten loose cans) Chicken-of-the-Sea tuna, from Costco, price per can $1.37; price per eight-pack unit $10.99; total $90.67
15 7-oz. cans (5 three-packs) Kirkland salmon, from Costco, price per can $3.33; price per three-pack unit $9.99; total $49.95
Total contents of the storage locker: $298.97
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OKAY, that’s expensive, yes, but you could skip the salmon (which is in there mainly for variety) and your total cost would be $249.02.
You could also do a Costco-only option and replace the Amazon beef with 6 more six-packs of the Kirkland chicken (the beef and chicken cans are exactly the same size) for a savings of $38.47. Total cost $210.55.
Charitably one could argue that it’s enough food all by itself to keep two people alive and if not well-fed, at least not hungry, for 30 days, although the diet would be a mite unbalanced in that case. If you think of it in those terms, that’s not a bad price. There are much more inexpensive options, of course, but as I mentioned before I wanted long-term storage capability in foods easily rotated and that we already ate on a regular basis.
The other nice thing is you can eat every one of these straight from the can without cooking, and they’re still quite tasty. (My grandfather used to eat a can of tuna as his lunch; I adopted the same practice while a student at UC Berkeley. It’s not bad.)
I’ve got additional canned-food lockers to fill: Soups, Stews, Green Vegetables, Other Vegetables, and Fruit.
I’ll have pix of the actual locker in a bit; the Blackberry battery decided to die this afternoon.
Checking the local food ads, I find Tuna for .50 a can. One other thing I buy for emergency food is fish packed in oil for the additional calories. Pilot bread is not expensive and has a half life, not a shelf life.
A local drug chain, Bartell’s, has specials frequentluy on tinned sardines of several brands for 69 cents a can. A few weeks ago I bought fifteen dollars wort. A nice touch was the Kipper Snacks (LOVE THOSE) for a buck, got some of those too. One more thing is double serving mashed ‘taters in envelopes. I pretty much take my change in those at a buck a packet. Two cups of boiling water, and one minute later…..’Taters! Good’ns too.
Since the folks who made MILKMAN instant dry milk went under, does anyone know of a suitable replacement? It was the only drinkable dry milk product I knew of and I miss it.
Gerry N.
The funny thing about the tuna prices was that the Kirkland (in-house Costco brand) was actually more expensive than Chicken-of-the-Sea. Also, this stuff’s water-packed; the oil-packed stuff (also available at Costco) is significantly cheaper; however, the wife won’t eat it, so there ya go.
Pilot bread sounds interesting, what is that? Is that a brand?
As for dry milk, I frankly gave up on what you can find in stores and switched to the retort-packaged rice milk or soy milk (or, I suppose, regular milk) which in the retort package lasts a helluva long time without refrigerating. (That was a couple years ago, and since then our eating habits have changed to the point we rarely have milk around the house at all.) But yeah, a tasty dry milk would be great to find. Somebody mentioned just keeping some canned condensed milk on hand to mix with it; those condensed milk cans are pretty small.
Found it. Pilot bread = hardtack. Genuine hardtack, available in the 21st Century! That’s totally cool!
Pilot bread is not hardtack. If you’ve ever had real hardtack you’d know. Bent’s Cookie Factory in Milton, Mass still makes real hardtack, indistinguishable from the stuff they supplied the US Army during the Civil War. That stuff is amazing, requiring tools to eat it. Bash it into bits with the butt of your musket or Army issue tomahawk, then dump the bits into your weevily soup. It has exactly the flaky, delicate texture and flavor of the finest Vermont Granite. At least one can bite Pilot Bread.
I like to warm Pilot Bread with exta sharp cheddar bits scattered on it over an open fire in my mid 1920’s supremo el-cheapo stamped sheet steel frying pan. Kind of a Yankee Nacho. Two of those with a cup of coffee or tea and you’re full for five hours.
Gerry N.
For dry milk, I recommend NIDO. It’s whole milk rather than the de-fatted Carnation and tastes a whole lot better. Look for it in the hispanic section of your supermarket. WalMart carries it too.
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