Fruit is an important part of your diet, remember the sailors who had scurvy when they were on the ships for long periods of time.  They found out that they needed fruit to keep them healthy.  That is an easy fix if you have grocery stores or live in California or Florida. Or if you were smart enough to have planted an orchard.  So, there are freeze dried fruit that will last the longest, but you can purchase some dried fruit from the store that will last for quite a while.  I have also dried fruit myself on an electric food dryer.  You can also make solar or air dryers that can be quite large.  If you have a garden this might solve a big problem with the ability to dry your own veggies and put them up. Sprouts also help prevent scurvy.

Beans become an important part of your protein when you don’t have meat put up and there are lots of different types of dried beans that you can get at the grocery store.  Again if your children do not like beans, start introducing them now, change up often until you find a way that they like them.  We have put soy sauce, salsa and butter on them to change up the flavor, and of course there are lots of different types of spices.

Canned meat will last for a while and then there is dehydrated or freeze dried meat, but this gets expensive. If you can cook a little bit of meat in with pasta, rice or potatoes then it will make the meat go farther.  You can can your own meat using a pressure cooker. And you can find lots of canning jars at garage and estate sales.  If you don’t already know how to use or have a canner, it would be a good thing to have because you can use it on an open fire and can meat if you get a large animal and need to put it up.  Look at what you have in the freezer right now, what would happen if the electricity went out suddenly.  If you did not have a way to put the meat up then it would probably spoil before you could eat all of it up. Pressure cookers also save energy and shorten cooking times. See post on autoclaves.

Getting chicken and beef bouillon cubes, being able to make gravies, having spices to change the flavor up are all extremely important when storing food for any type of disaster.   The difference between a disaster and an inconvenience is which side of the conversation you are on.