Yesterday, to beat the heat, we decided to stay inside and go through our storage food. The bulk of our prepping (pun intended) took place from 2010-2012 so most of the food is from that period. There really wasn't a reason to check the Thrive food and other sealed #10 stuff. We know it lasts for 20+ years from YouTube videos and such. Plus, once opened we'd have to eat it...duh.

I opened a can each of the Bega Cheese from Australia and the Red Feather Cannery butter from New Zealand. Both are simply the best you can get, then and now. Each were packed around 2011. The butter had separated a bit and was "fluffy" but the flavor was fine. The cheese had darkened slightly and the flavor had become a bit sharper. I didn't know cheese could age in the can, but it definitely did. I ate samples of both in the beginning for reference. Fats are one of the toughest things to store since they will go rancid unless packaged properly. While everyone is ga-ga for canned ghee, Red Feather proves you can store "regular" butter with all the milk solids for a long time as well.

We packaged a bunch of dry food in October 2012 in mylar bags, sucked the air out, and placed O2 absorbers inside. Beans, rice, noodles, flour, dry milk, etc. I opened a bag of flour and macaroni and both were totally fine. Flour especially tends to spoil in a year or two so this was encouraging.

The jugs of vegetable oil that we, for some reason, never rotated out from this period were rancid as expected. The packages of Quaker oatmeal from 2010 were not, surprisingly. Fig bars we purchased in 2017 for snacks were rancid. Lara bars (fruit and nuts) from around the same time were not.

For the next 2-3 months we'll be busy eating some older canned food and replacing it. Learned some interesting lessons on what we actually eat. We definitely don't eat a lot of canned vegetables and corn as most of it was 8-10 years old. My 8 year old daughter loves the Vienna sausages from 2010, which were fine as expected. Another great source of cheap long-term storage protein and fat.

Good info.

I have some canned bread that went past date year before last. Still fine.

The rancid fig bars, what kind were they?

Nature's Bakery. I think it's the whole wheat. Generally, the more organic/natural, the quicker it goes bad, I think we all understand how that works.

Oh those damned things go bad before pull date!

viewtopic.php?f=86&t=97946&hilit=Emergency+Survival+Food+choice

Should be merged?

Ideally one could afford to buy in bulk and be done. But realistically it has to be done in stages.

If you have a pantry. The design and idea would be to have 3 rotating pantries. One that is used everyday and the other two as storage or extra. The last being the largest.

With that idea you would start by expanding your existing pantry and building up to a second storage pantry. Once you have a backup then you develop the third larger long term one. As you go you would use the routine everyday pantry and restock from the backup. Once the backup gets low you pull from the long term and then as that gets low you buy to fill.
This method develops into a rotation where you use and restock - the restock goes into the long term and filters forward.

This method is a bit hard to understand until you actually do it. But this will prevent or reduce waste (expired shit or shit just going bad).

It’s nice to buy and forget... until you forget and need to use it to find that shit has gone bad and you end up with nothing useable.

Money and time wasted. I am a cheap ass and I don’t like wasting or eating shitty food.

You can use this rotation to just canned goods and also the freeze dried stuff. It’s really a good idea to rotate the freeze dried stuff so you get an idea how to make it edible and maximize it and get your money out of it. Doesn’t mean everyday use but for camping and hiking etc. it has great value

I put up 25 5-gallon buckets of dried food about 7-8 years ago. Mylar bags and ox absorbers Inside screw-top 5 gallon buckets.. One of the buckets literally exploded and shattered the bucket lid when the contents (pancake mix) somehow went bad and outgassed like crazy.. Maybe I didn’t seal it well. Maybe pancakes are dangerous.

We had a couple failed cans (rust) and one canning jar of fruit (seal failure). But overall pretty good. Just need to stay away from standard packaged grains and oils.

I also ate a can of sardines with a best-by date of 2008 last night, these lived in my car trunk as last-ditch food for years. Tasted fine. The house cats were very interested by the lid noise and smell, but less enthralled by the mustard flavor.

Pancake Mix has Eggs in it, If it hadn't exploded, you would have definitely gotten extremely sick. No fun..... No Eggs , No Sugar, No Fats....unless in a Can. Then the eggs can be Dried or powdered, the fats dried, the sugar will not keep longer than a year unless packed in a sealed can, with Nitrogen replacing the air.....