Food Storage: Beyond Rice and Beans

[Music] hello friends Heidi here from rain country god is good all the time and today I'm going to be talking about food storage items that you may want to consider especially if you're new to food storage as far as putting up for a month two months a year or two years whatever it is or you don't currently have a garden or ways to provide some of these foods or maybe you do but there's certain things you can't grow in your area or simply don't produce enough of so I'm gonna be talking about some of the things that I store up just to give you some ideas because I think it's really important that people get into this no matter where you are no matter what your beliefs are these are some things I think everybody should start stocking up on or something similar to it according to your dietary needs and and your tastes of course and your family's tastes you don't want to stock up on things that you or your family are not going to eat it all and as you can see my counter is pretty filled up with stuff just representing a fraction of the kind of things that I store up on I kept bringing more and more things in there because I didn't want to forget to mention certain types of foods that I think people might not think of but again this is there's only a part of what we store up so let's start with dairy so if you don't have cows or goats or sheep that produce milk for you then you're gonna want to consider stocking up on dairy products so what I'm doing here is going far beyond just the basic rice and beans we're talking about all the other things that are either going to help prevent food fatigue or add nutritionally to your diet because when you're in a grid down situation you don't want to just survive you want to be able to thrive so that's what we're talking about here so as far as theory goes some things that you can you can store up um I forgot to mention in my last video I forgot a lot of things but one of the things I forgot to bring up was stocking up and freezing butter it freezes excellent I have been freezing butter for years I'll buy it in bulk whenever we go to Costco and just get a whole bunch of it and then put it up in the freezer and then pull out a box at a time as I need it now if you're concerned about not having freezer space unlike us you don't have a backup gas generator or solar power then you can can butter - and I know a few different channels out there like one over at Deep South homestead house one and there's a few others I don't remember who all they are but yes that's another way that you can store butter for a long term period of time okay now as far as storing fresh milk if you if you do have goats and cows and you're wanting to store up your excess milk now because instead of turning it into cheese or some other things are giving it away or selling it you may want to consider storing it it does freeze really well if you follow the safety procedures and storing in glass jars I've done this many many times we had a friend that was giving us for almost two years I think it was was given us on a weekly basis about a gallon - two gallons of goat milk and I would take any of the excess that we had and I would just store it in the quart jars in the freezer and I do have a video on how to do this I will link to in the description box down below because there are a few things that you want to follow making sure that it's the the jar itself is protected and so on and so forth but if if you're now like us I don't we don't have access to that anymore so I stock up on fresh milk the organic milk from Costco so I'll we'll buy several boxes each box has three half gallons in it and then we just freeze it this is frozen solid right now so we have to stick it back in the freezer to keep it that way and it will keep pretty much indefinitely in your freezer now in the case of if something happened and we were and our freezers went out we didn't have our solar power or gas generator then I would do what I could to ferment all the milk so that I wouldn't have to worry about it going bad whether it be in the form of making yogurt cheese or kefir now some even longer term milk storage ideas would be the canned powdered whole goat milk you can get this on Amazon least I think you still can we bought a bunch I I can't remember I think it was a we bought a few boxes of a dozen cans and so this is one really good option so you're getting all that goodness of the goat milk and making sure that whatever milk you stock up on get home milk don't go with 2% or skim you know you're going to need all that fat and all that fat of a good organic milk is healthy for you anyway now I don't think this particular one is necessarily organic but it is goat milk and the Goslar milk is definitely not organic but at least it's whole when you're buying it like this though it is going to be ultra pasteurized it has to be when storing in a box like this I've heard people can find it at a dollar stores for well a dollar apiece we get ours at our local local store I've never seen the Goslar milk at any dollar store anywhere around us even when we go into town I've looked so I buy ours at the our local grocery store said to last up to a year I believe I know it will last easily up to two years but what I do is I cycle through I always like to keep some in storage but I also cycle through it so I'll use this a lot for making white gravies and things like that so we can conserve our more fresh milk for eating on cereals or you know whatever anything where you want your milk to have more that fresh taste to it now I personally don't mind the taste of the Box milk it tastes more like canned milk does it's that same because of the high heat process in doing that now yes of course you're going to be looking at losing some of your nutrients and out but at least it's still some form of milk that's going to prevent food fatigue and then another one I like to store up on though this is a bovine milk so our cow's milk and this one is whole milk it's organic non-gmo hormone free and all that this is the best price I've seen on a powdered milk and I get it through subscribe and save and I can save even more so I will link to this down below I just keep it stored in this nice foil pouch because it's going to last for a very long time as is once I open it up though I put it in a canning jar and keep it handy and use it that way now let's move on to the sweeteners I like to stock up on one of those is going to be the organic cane sugar so evaporated cane sugar yeah the other is going to be coconut sugar this one I get on subscribe and save on Amazon so I'll link to it down below one thing is great about coconut sugar or any of your sugars honey's maple syrups they're gonna have a very long shelf life you don't have to worry about them going bad with the granulated sugar of course you want to make sure you keep them in a dry place but the coconut sugar in particular is very high in minerals so beans that it's a sweetener and it's mineral rich that's gonna give it that added bonus over just your regular cane sugar and then of course maple syrup I've been getting mine from Costco for the best price or the organic maple syrup I do wish they'd stored it in glass instead of the plastic but it's still some form of sweetener it's going to also have calories these the all these kind of things it's important you know if you're looking at a great down situation some major thing that's going on it's important to have things that are high calorie on handed so that's why all these sugars even if you're a sugar-free kind of person you're gonna probably want to change that in a serious situation because those calories are going to be very important and then of course raw honey of any variety my favorite is the glory be raw Pacific Northwest blackberry honey I get this one on Costco online and I'm not sure if all all around the United States if people can do that but I do know it's also available on Amazon it's a little more on Amazon but I will link to that below I buy the box a box of it at a time I used to buy it in the buckets but it's harder to find it that way now and also these little jars are our great jars with the lids and I reuse these all the time for various you know you can can in these if you want to and because this is a regular mouth canning jar size right here and so that led to will also go with any of your regular mouth canning jars and then another one I've been starting to stock up on but not necessarily for a grid down situation but let's say you are diabetic and you absolutely can't have sugar then this is one I'm I've been experimenting more and more with it and so far I'm pretty happy with it I've looked at monk fruit sugar for sweetener for a long time but it took me a while I I'm not gonna buy the one with that artificial ingredient the erythritol or whatever that is even though it's touted as being generally known as safe I personally try to avoid that and so this one is 100% pure monk fruit extract now it is obviously going to be it more expensive than the cheaper one with the blend and it's also gonna be more expensive per pound or per ounce than your regular sugar however because you need such a teensy-weensy little bit of it I did the math on this and found that this ends up being the same cost per pound as the as the organic cane sugar so I'm not spending any more money on it so that I recommend now let's talk a little bit about I want to mention beans just because of the fact that if you're thinking of putting in a garden this year most people can grow beans really well and these are my own homegrown beans these are both the same bean when I pick them young then I use them as a green bean and can them up and then I and then the rest I let mature and I use as a dry bean and these work great in chilies or beans and cornbread or anything like that soups and so on and I love these and these are the runner beans I talk about these a lot I think I have a video just on these that I'll go ahead and link to down below and some other things I do if we're gonna go back to talking about garden a lot of people I know if you're really dry climate you probably can't but a lot of people can grow zucchini pretty easily at least around here zucchini grows like crazy we always end up with way more zucchini than we need off of just a couple of plants so I cut it up and dehydrate it and put it in jars like this I vacuum seal it but this is a jar I'm working through and then I can add this to soups and just about anything I can powder it up and it adds more nutrition to whatever it is I'm I'm making now if you're wanting to get into buying freeze-dried that is going to be the more expensive way to go if you're having to buy it you don't have a freeze dryer but I like to even though we grow potatoes quite well here I still will buy the motherís products potatoes and vacuum-sealing like I bought a huge bag of them and vacuum sealed it up why because potatoes are one of those high carb things that are really good to have on hand that have so many uses and go well in anything and can help prevent food fatigue so when I'm talking the dehydrated ones these are the ones I'm going to usually throw into soups and stews and that kind of stuff where I reserve my own homegrown potatoes which at this time we still have a bunch left we're still working through them for doing something where I want a more fresh potato or I want to match you know fried potatoes or anything like that that's why I still do that even though we grow that well then other things you may want to consider if you're getting into buying some pre dehydrated and freeze-dried foods are things that you don't grow like for us that one of those things will be pineapple and mango and so I I buy a lot of this on mother earth products and carrots that's another one because we still haven't found a really good carrot that just real produces really well for us here we're still working on it but carrots are easy you can go to Costco and buy a massive bag of organic carrots cut them up and can them I plan on doing that real soon but I also like to buy the dehydrated carrots from Mother Earth products oh and if you're interested in that in the freeze dried and dehydrated mothers products I do have a link down below that if you go through that link you can save 10% on your order but I know that's not gonna be the best choice for everyone either so but if you're looking at something like your you're wanting to hurry and get some food stocked up now it's a really great thing to look at because and I like and I'll put the video down below why I like mother earth products over other brands and so you can understand and you'll you can just look into if you like buying the number 10 cans you're gonna want to go with another brand me I like buying in bags and packaging myself it saves money because you're not having to pay them too package it for you and then I can package it in smaller amounts I just prefer it so that's just one thing but you can check out that video I'll link down below for more information on that now another thing I'm starting to stock up on and I'm going to be putting some in some jars today are the organic sun-dried fix now we do have a couple of fig plants I have no idea how long it's going to take though before they actually start producing fruits and I'm kind of addicted to these I I love them they just make such a great candy replacement and so I've been getting these from Costco and stocking up on them and I'm going to start vacuum-sealing them into jars anything like that that you just think it's going to be both healthy but also a great way to break things up to a nice healthy snack stock up on it and put it away so if you're new to my channel and if you haven't and you haven't seen how I vacuum seal into jars I'm gonna be doing that today so consider things that you really like and your family really likes and start putting that up with that in mind another thing that I stock up on a lot of is organic cacao and organic cacao butter and that way I can make my own healthy homemade chocolates whenever I want and sometimes I'll incorporate the freeze-dried fruits that I buy from mothers products and without adding sugar and sometimes I'll add my own homemade powdered sugar I have all kinds of homemade chocolate videos that you can make what I'll do is put a link to the whole playlist in this description box down below so you can check out my peppermint pattie my peanut butter cups and all the other the orange cream chocolate all the other ones that I have down there I have a lot and I have several different ways that you can make it I've been stocking up on this kind of stuff for a long time but I've really been getting more into it again lately is stocking up on a lot of nuts so as you can see here I have sliced almonds I have hazelnuts obviously the jar I'm working on I bought a big huge bag of it I can't remember how like 20 pound 10 pound whatever it was and then I put him in and vacuum-sealed them into a bunch of jars this is a jar I'm currently working hazelnuts these are organic pecans a whole almonds these are the organic ones I've been getting from Cosmo and coconut I'm gonna I want to talk about why why these are good things to stock up on so if you're somebody who can't either you're vegan or you just can't have dairy for any reason stocking up on a variety of nuts is going to be very important because there's so much you can do with this I have been making a lot of nut milk lately using the various different blends of nuts and I have so many videos on how to make your own nut milk I will link to one of my most recent ones below that includes I also have one just on how to make coconut milk and so you can make any kind of milk using any of these the process is the same no matter which one or which blend you use now what I do with the Pope is gonna change depending on what blend I'm using one of the things I do is I make my own homemade nut flour out of the pulp and I've been experimenting with that I even just recently made you might have seen it in my community post some pancakes using only the nut flour so those who can't have grains or can't have gluten that's an option right there and it worked and they were so tasty I loved him they I liked them better than the regular wheat wheat flour pancakes and then the other thing I do at the pulp is I make my own vegan cheese so so many things you can do with those nuts and so as you can I recommend stocking up some of these things I get from Costco some of them away also stock up on Brazil nuts - I try not to stock up on those too much so they don't seem to have as long as the shelf-life as all the rest but everything else I have never had an issue with them going to rancid in the vacuum sealed jars but if you're concerned about it like with the Brazil nuts for instance you may want to just freeze them if you have the ability to do that so nuts and coconut in fact I just ordered a whole bunch more coconut because it is such a great thing to have on hand so many things you can do with coconut that will help prevent food fatigue that doesn't just involve making a dairy-free milk another thing you might might want to consider even though we do a lot of homemade breakfast around here we do you know leftover rice will be used as a cold cereal the next day with a little bit of milk and cinnamon sugar I make group my own homemade granola so stocking up on oats is important but that should be one of your staples that you're considering anyway and of course eggs and some kind of homemade sausage or beef bacon or whatever and uh and fried potatoes those are some other things I make for breakfast pancakes and so on and so forth but for those days when things are just tough you don't have time to make breakfast or you just want to mix it up find favorite cereals we only buy organic cereals and so Cascadian farms is one of my favorites as well as nature's path and so I get them even though I'm not a I'm not big on Walmart I have found I can find the cheapest price on these ordering them online on Walmart at Walmart for these brands and then just have them delivered especially most of them if you buy them in packs of two they're still going to be a lot more expensive than your your you know the other cereals that you can find in the store but again something that will help prevent food fatigue and what you can do if you're concerned about keeping it stored in the boxes you can do the same idea I've vacuum sealed them in the half gallon jars before done that many times and they will last for a very very long time I can't give you exact years because I usually try to cycle through all my stuff but all my stuff that I've I've had stuff sit for years before I got to as long as I didn't lose my seal it was still just as fresh as the day it went into the jar so that is an option there so again I'll be showing this method here in a minute if you're new to that and then of course you don't want to forget your herbs and spices so we're talking both medicinal herbs elderberries I grow my own lavender a couple other medicinal ones I have here our marshmallow but this is also good the greens are also a great vegetable and catnip so I have tons more I'm just bringing in a few just to give you ideas these are the things we grow ourself but if you need to purchase your herbs and spices they I recommend my two favorite brands that I get from Amazon and most of them are available to subscribe and save so you can save even more are the frontier brand and the star West brand as you can see here and as long as I haven't opened them I keep them in their bags yeah because they're in mylar bag and they're sealed well they're gonna last for a very long time in the bags and so I don't worry about it and this makes them easy to store I have a special storage system just for that so right here I have some organic ground cloves organic Ceylon cinnamon organic tumeric I just grabbed a few bags just to show you is buy in bulk cuz that's gonna be your best price and then once I've opened it then I'll usually store it in a jar like this now this was actually this paprika was actually from a five-pound bag that I had purchased I believe from glory be and so I have several jars of these same thing with the ginger we think a lot about grains you know oats and all that kind of stuff but don't forget to stock up on noodles because noodles even if left in their package like this I've had some in packages like this for years that were still good I swear they never go bad however if you live in a place that has high humidity and you're concerned about it then you may still want to consider vacuum-sealing your noodles into some mason jars so that's what I'm gonna do today show you how this works with these these ones right here all of these noodles I just showed you the organic ones I get from Costco I actually buy a lot of them online I just order online because we don't get into town that often to shop at Costco so I've been pretty much every week doing an order from Costco of all the things that I'm trying to stock up on a lot of the stuff like that the syrup the nuts the pasta the oils these are the kind of things that I can get I can stock up on from Costco and have it delivered here and just keep putting it up now before I get onto the noodles I almost forgot to mention oils don't forget to stock up on your favorite oil avocado oil this is a new one I've been getting from Costco I do really like chosen foods this one's just a little bit less and I can also get this from Costco online and then this coconut oil if you're wanting an a refined one that has no flavor to it this is the most heat stable as far as a coconut oil and getting the refined and you can get this one from subscribe and save on Amazon so I will link to it below so I have many many buckets of just this alone I used this for soap making as well as anything where I'm going to fry fry like potatoes or the almond chicken or the orange chicken some of these videos I have recipes on out there but avocado oil is also a great choice because it is also very heat stable and anything that's going to be very heat stable is also going to last a long time in your food store it's longer than like your olive oils and stuff which I love olive oil and I do still recommend doing that just make sure that when you purchase olive oil you store it in a very cool place that's gonna make it last a lot longer alright let's go ahead and open up this bag of noodles here and we'll get that vacuum sealed into my jar you can use like this size right here there we go so one a 16 ounces 16 ounce it should be this is actually seventeen point six I love Costco usually things like that are going to be 16 ounces but at Costco it's always a little bit bigger really good price and they're organic and non-gmo so then all you do is you put your it can be a used County and lid a previously used canning wood which actually I find work better for vacuum sealing than brand new ones but you can use the brand new ones too and then you want to make sure you have your food saver tops like this and I will have links to all this stuff below you can use your regular food saver electrics food saver but my way of doing it because I pretty much quit I've given up on food saver and I just like this method better is I use a brake bleeder again linked it'll be linked below just insert the tip and hold it in place it doesn't snap in place like the FoodSaver tip does but it's not hard to hold it in place and then you just pump this up until it gets to at least 15 psi I usually go up to 17 or 18 so I'll do that right now also make sure that when you know and I didn't I I forgot to do this check your lids to make sure that they're not bent up and that there's nothing on the rims or no cracks on the rim of your jar otherwise you're not gonna get a good seal but if it doesn't seal then you just check okay well I need to get something different okay take the thing off and now the jar is sealed and that's gonna last for many years in the jar like that I'm talking many years and then if it's like this I don't like to scrub my my permanent marker off because it puts a micro scratches in the lid and makes it harder for it to clean off later so if you constantly are reusing their lids like I am I prefer to use just a little bit of isopropyl alcohol that I keep in a bottle you just need a tiny little spray rub it in with your finger and then wipe it off with a dry cloth and there now I'm ready to labeled out by date and what's in there though it's kind of obvious what's in there but I then I will still follow it up just to be certain just think you say it loses its seal having the lid on it for any air dried goods is usually going to be sufficient anyway for most of your very dry goods especially things like noodles cuz they're as dry as dry can be I've had many things like herbs that I've had vacuum sealed in jars where maybe it lost that seal and they were still great they were still good in the same jar soon they're for a year two years and no problems another thing I didn't think to show you that you might not have thought about is storing up on salt I recommend two varieties in particular that's your Himalayan pink salt and your Redmond real salt I like them both for different reasons and I stock up on both the Redmond real saw I like to buy in the big 10 pound bucket and then the Himalayan salt I buy in a twenty pound bag well sometimes they'll send it to me in four five-pound bags but I'm still getting the 20 pound price difference you know the better price by buying it in bulk so I'll link to both of those down below if you'd like to check in on those salt is going to be very important not just for flavoring but also for the sake of preserving foods whether it be in the form of fermenting or even salt drying some of your foods now I personally have never done that but I may want to do that someday with some meat and so that's another way that you can preserve your your goods so I didn't even talk about meats here so that's another one - I have a video just on meats and how to use canned meat so I have a whole bunch of meat canned up I have meat in the freezer of various kinds that if for some reason we lost you know we didn't have any backup power and we lost public power or our freezers died I can pull all that meat out and just start canning it up and putting it up because I have lots and lots of jars that I can that I can use for that too or will dehydrates I almost always have something dehydrating next to my wood stove during the winter time and then in the months where we're getting lots of solar power then that's when I'm usually using my electric dehydrators but as long as I have a fire going I'm going to use that instead so I'm not putting wear and tear on my electric but dehydrators but I have lots of videos on dehydrating herbs and all kinds of stuff like that you can check any of these out just do a search on my channel or just do a search on YouTube and make sure you put rain country after whatever your search criteria is to see if I have any videos on that but I'll link to as much as I can down below and whatever I whatever I can think of that might help you get on this track to food storage or just to give you some more ideas ok well I hope you enjoyed this video and I hope it really gets you seriously thinking about the importance of having food storage now because this video is already really long I want to bring up one more video because I'm not going to talk about it here and that is I we did a video on five ways that food storage saves this is going to help you think about why having storage is really important and not just for major catastrophes though with everything going on I recommend it but don't forget you can have your own personal grid down situation we're having some food storage on hand is going to save you so much in so many ways so check out that video on five ways that food storage saves I'll link to it down below okay well I hope you enjoyed this video and that maybe you learn something new from it and encourages you to get started or continue doing what you're already doing or add to what you've already got thanks for watching take care and God bless

Channel: Rain Country

Views: 140,141

Rating: 4.9420996 out of 5

Keywords: traditional, old-ways, Health, Garden, Frugal, Homesteading, Self-Sustainability, Cooking, DIY, Homemade, natural-living, herbs

Id: WWLX9pWQ_Dg

Length: 29min 23sec (1763 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 10 2020