How we Manage our Pantry for Food Security

To be effective over the long haul, food security has to be integrated into your day-to-day lifestyle. Sure, you can find survivalist-oriented products out there, with descriptions like "One year's supply of hermetically sealed freeze-dried food packets," that offer a sense of security without the need for any immediate behavior change. But not only are they wickedly expensive, but they're not something anybody would ever choose to eat when other food is available, which means if you don't actually encounter an emergency, the product will eventually transform itself into garbage.

Unless you're an avid backpacker, you're unlikely to have an ongoing use for freeze-dried food, so it is (IMHO) a waste of money to buy it in the first place. No matter how carefully a food is preserved, it's an organic substance, and over time it will biodegrade and lose what's left of its flavor and nutritive value, and finally spoil or go rancid or be eaten by bugs or rodents. And there's nothing worse than thinking you've got your bases covered, only to find a pile of foul-smelling cobwebby dust when you open the package.

Yes, it's true, freeze-dried food packets are more likely than (some) other foods to survive fires, floods, and/or extended power outages, and if you're forced to evacuate your home at short notice and strike out on foot, you can stuff a backpack full and still be able to lift it. It probably makes sense to have some lightweight ready-to-eat travel food in stock as part of a complete preparedness plan. But it ought to be something you're going to eat anyway (for example, dried fruit, trail mix, or jerky), so it cycles through your pantry and stays fresh.

Here are some of our goals & practices related to food storage:

• The food we store for emergencies is also food that we eat on a regular basis.
• The amount we store matches, or is less than, the amount we eat within the product's shelf life.
• For foods with a very long shelf life, we keep a year's supply.
• We track how much we use from year to year, so we know what a year's supply looks like.
• We store at least two containers of each staple food, and size them according to how much we use.
• We date containers of food, and eat the oldest first.
• We shop for bulk discounts when we can; otherwise, we replace each container as it runs out.
• We change our eating habits over time to emphasize foods that store well over foods with a shorter shelf life.
• When a storable fresh food is in season, we harvest or buy a year's supply (or as much as we will use before it goes bad) and process it for storage.
• We change our diet with the seasons to take advantage of foods that are locally available.

Some of these items are more "goal" and others are more "practice," depending on how big the gap is between theory and reality. Since we're aiming for a year's supply, a month with no shopping ought to be a breeze, if our system is working well. In theory, we shouldn't run out of anything that has a long shelf life. But it's easy to get lazy over time and let things slide. So we shall see...