If anyone out there isn’t convinced
that we need to store food for an emergency, then they might not have been
paying attention to the news. With the need clear, the question we each must
ask is, “What kind of food should we store?” Personally, I like a variety of
foods– fresh, dehydrated, freeze dried, grocery store cans and boxes, and
retort packed foods, which include MRE’s. I even think frozen foods are good to
have, though if the power goes out, that’s the first thing to eat.
Each type has advantages and
disadvantages, based on how easily and long they will store, how much space
they require, what they weigh, the difficulty of preparation in a possibly
awkward circumstance, and how palatable they are. Cost is also a very serious
matter to most of us.
It is important to store food that
we will actually eat for several reasons. First, it prevents waste because it
has gone out of date before anyone was willing to eat it, and second, if it
turns out we don’t want to actually eat it, it may present morale problems when
that’s all there is to eat. This can present particular problems in some
families, and mine is one of them. There are three sets of taste buds in our
home. Mine are probably the most tolerant. I truly enjoy good food, but in the
end I regard it as fuel and can subsist with a degree of acceptance on most
anything, save raw tomatoes and mushrooms. My son shares my disgust of raw
tomatoes and adds a few feared foods, like onions and carrots. He has also
begun to view vegetables in general with suspicion. He can concoct and devour a
number of things I can’t stomach, like peanut butter mixed with marshmallow
cream. My wife is the gourmet of the household, which we attribute to the
French genes that passed through Normandy to Canada and finally to the U.S. She
will eat what she has to in an emergency, but she isn’t happy with things I can
stomach pretty easily. What she wants are meals made from fresh food, and she
likes to cook them herself.
All this plays into what I can store
for an emergency. It has to be something that will help with family harmony. It
is also predicated on not wasting food, should everything stay hunky-dory. I
have, over the years, stored quite a bit of food. Some of it turned out to be
stuff no one would eat unless they were truly starving. This isn’t a good plan,
as it means when it goes out of date, you have little you can use it for.
Luckily, we have chickens, and I have also donated some of it to food banks,
but it is expensive chicken feed, and who knows what the food bank did with it.
It is better to store food you are happy to eat at any time. It prevents waste,
saves money, and will make life more pleasant, should things go north. With
this in mind, I upped the quantities of canned and boxed grocery store food we
keep on hand by quite a bit, since my wife and son generally will eat it, but
it complicates the rotation factor, since it has a relative short life
expectancy.
MRE’s last longer than the grocery
store bought stuff and can be eaten without prep, but they are pricey and
generally fail the family taste test. My son will eat about a third of them,
while my wife generally rejects most of them. I can handle two thirds and
always like at least part of every one of them. That said, when it is time to
rotate the MRE’s, we give away some expensive food.
Freeze-dried and dehydrated foods
are interesting, as they offer long storage life (up to 25 years or more,
depending on how they are stored and packaged), which solves most of the
rotation issues. I’ve also had some that were actually quite tasty; even my
wife admitted to that fact. Long storage food is where Legacy
Premium Food products come into play. They use both dehydrated and
freeze-dried food, saying they select which is the best for a particular
application. Their line features a number of prepared meals and sides in
pouches that hold four servings. They also have drinks in eight serving
pouches. I like the serving size, as it is more economical that the single
packs I often see for camping products, and it is a size that will feed my
family a meal with little leftover. The #10 cans that this stuff is often found
in can leave a lot of food that should be used more quickly than we sometimes
want to repeat a meal.
The packaging is a sturdy Mylar
pouch, and Legacy says they are nitrogen flushed to protect the food during
storage. An oxygen absorber is also included and must, of course, be removed
before preparing the food.
The pouches are well labeled with
nutritional content and note that the foods are not genetically modified. They
also indicate the date of manufacture and the plant where they were made.
Preparation instructions are also on each pouch. They use sea salt and the
meals are vegetarian with soy protein in place of meat. I’m personally not
crazy about soy protein for flavor or nutrition and would have preferred meat.
They do sell freeze-dried chicken and beef, which has been cooked before
drying, so all you need to do is soak it for a minute before serving. I did not
sample any of the meats.
Most of their items come in tough,
sealed, plastic buckets with an assortment of different foods. Only the sides
appear to be available on their own.
All of the meals I tried required
simmering and not just rehydration. I assume this is due to the dehydrated vs.
freeze-dried items. Many of the freeze-dried food I have encountered are
pre-cooked, so all they need to do is sit in some moisture for a bit to be
ready to eat. In fact, a number of freeze-dried fruits and some vegetables are
tasty without rehydration.
I purchased some of their meals, and
Legacy provided four more for the review. The samples they sent were older than
the ones I purchased, which is a good sign; it means the freshest food is going
out for sales. The purchased ones were all about one month old, and the oldest
two of the four samples were not quite a year old.
They have 19 entrees for lunch and dinner, four breakfasts,
six sides, and five drinks, including coffee and chocolate milk. They cunningly
throw a French press into the coffee bucket.
We tried six items with mixed
approval rating:
1. Loaded Baked Potato with
440 calories per serving.
I thought this was tasty, though the
texture of the potatoes was a bit chewy. I found later, with the chicken and
rice dish, that more cooking helps with the texture of some of the items in the
meal and wondered if it might have helped this one. It comes out like a creamed
soup or chowder. My wife said it was okay, and my son initially liked the way
it smelled, but by the third spoonful was losing his taste for it. I suspect he
would have to be really hungry to eat it.
2. Enchilada Beans and Rice
with 350 calories per serving:
This was my second favorite entree,
and my wife rated it her third favorite. Again, my son liked it at first and
then lost his taste for it. It also comes out with a chowder or cream soup
consistency. I think, like the chicken and rice dish, it would have been better
cooked longer, as the rice was slightly chewy. My wife added hot sauce and
cheese to it, while I was thinking about how nice it would be with some soft
tacos. The pinto beans were precooked and quite pleasant.
3. Spicy Corn Chowder with
300 calories per serving:
This was the biggest hit of everything
we sampled, though once again, the child unit protested. As with some of the
other dishes, extra simmer time helped get the vegetables to a nicer texture.
The wife pronounced it tasty and suggested serving it with a grilled cheese
sandwich. I also enjoyed it. Both of us thought it needed salt and would have
been better with less pepper flavor. While the flavor was good, it limited the
choices of how to serve it; it was too strong for either my wife or me to want
it as a main course. You could easily spice it up, but it is hard to spice
down. We thought it was good that the salt level was low, which allowed us to
season it as we desired. We will be happy to add this one to our preps.
4. Chicken a la King with 380
calories per serving:
This was the meal that failed all of
us. I can’t handle mushrooms, and this one had enough for me to be unable to
overlook them. My son rejected it, and my wife, despite her love for mushrooms,
didn’t like it either. I cooked it almost twice the recommend time when I discovered
the rice was still chewy and that made the rice quite nice. There were tasty
carrots and peas in it, but the mushroom flavor and the soy ersatz chicken put
me off.
5. Classic Chili Mix with 340
calories per serving:
My wife, after adding Tobasco sauce
and some shredded cheese, pronounced this her second favorite and said it would
do, especially if served over a baked potato. My son, predictably, was not
happy with it. I found that it has a vinegary tang to it that I don’t like, but
I could definitely make a meal of it. I mixed in saltines and had it for my
dinner.
6. Old Fashioned Pancake Mix
with 350 calories per serving:
This is a “take one part and just
add water” sort of mix. I’m the one who generally makes pancakes here, and this
is not my favorite type of mix, despite its convenience. I think real milk and
real eggs make for better pancake batter than one made with all powdered
products. This mix fit in with my preconceptions, and it isn’t as good as my
usual mix or the one I make from my scratch mix. My son was a bit disappointed
with them, though he ate them. My wife wasn’t home, so she didn’t get to try
them. I thought they were acceptable. The mix is serviceable, which means you
can have pancakes in the absence of real milk and eggs, and that’s a good
thing. Given a choice of no pancakes or these, I am sure my son would want
pancakes, particularly if there is a good supply of maple syrup. I could, of
course, probably just let him drink the syrup, but that’s not a good idea.
All of the pouches seemed to deliver
four healthy servings. I’ve had this sort of food before, where people were
left hungry, so Legacy’s good-sized servings was a big positive.
The web site does a good job of
telling you what you are getting, which I greatly appreciated.
I think all of the meals could use
more vegetables. The carrots, in particular, were tasty, and I would have been
delighted to have more of them in every meal, though my son would have objected
and eaten around them. I would have strongly preferred real meats, rather than
soy-based stuff. I think that might have been a factor in my son’s rejection of
some of the meals. He is a serious carnivore these days and can be kept happy
with lots of beef and chicken, which he didn’t find in these entrees.
Some of the sides, breakfasts, and
drinks that I didn’t try look good, and I will probably sample them at some
point. I don’t think, however, that any non-fat powdered milk will go over well
in our household for drinking, although we do use it for cooking. I did note
that they add creamer to the chocolate milk powder, which will probably help
make it more palatable to young ones.
My end opinion is based on my
family’s tastes and a keen desire to buy food I know we will eat. Some of the
items on this menu simply won’t work for us, while others will. My son is the
main problem, which surprised me a bit. He actually is willing to eat an
amazing variety of food from an assortment of cuisines, though there are things
he runs from, mainly vegetables. He would flee from a couple of these entrees
and whine about the rest. My wife was more accepting than I expected, and there
was only one she said she simply wouldn’t eat, though the only one she
completely approved of was the corn chowder.
All this reaffirms something I
already knew– it is important to sample the foods you intend to store for a
rainy day. If you don’t try it, you will have no clue as to what it is. Most of
the Legacy entrees come in assortment packs, so if I buy their food I will be
careful to avoid getting one that has too many of the items we don’t like.
From the Survival Blog
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