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Assuming all modern technology were unavailable, what would you do or start doing to survive an extended heatwave? I havent given this one much thought as I had always prepared for Blizzards.

This is one of the ones that I expected to fail but I also expected freeze dried mushrooms to not turn into mush in sealed bags since it lasts forever if you immediately grind it into a powder so there's that. Additionally, I have what I call "Breakfast in a cup" which is biscuits, gravy, eggs, hashbrowns, cheese and it works very well - just add hot water and eat. The texture isn't amazing or anything like you might expect - it's more like a mush but it's tasty and doesn't seem to go bad.

For the new people at home: about 6 years ago I got a freeze dryer. Since then I've been experimenting with it to see what can and can't be done to preserve foods long term. The big selling point of freeze dried food is that, properly done and packaged, it can last up to 25 years on the shelf.

I know people have asked me to attach photos of the food I'm working with but this is just a biscuit. It looked like a biscuit before, during, after, and now. So, no picture.

Generally speaking, breads are problematic to freeze dry. Sure, you take ALL of the water out so mold, etc. can't grow on it but rehydrating any kind of bread is annoying at best because it's just so dry and adding any kind of water tends to make it just turn into mush.

I wanted to see if biscuits could be freeze dried because a good homemade biscuit can be a boon. It can be a comfort food, it can be combined with powdered or freeze dried homemade gravy (also a powder but whatever). It's not like hard tack which tastes like crackers but you absolutely want to moisten them up because the name "hard" is absolutely what they are and there's a real chance of breaking teeth if you bite into it. Biscuits turn into rocks.

I made sure that this pack of biscuits was one of the packs that hadn't lost its seal and still had vacuum.

The idea was: Whip out a pack of biscuits, add some hot water to a batch of gravy until it was a little thin, crumble the biscuit and pour the gravy on top and let the extra water rehydrate the biscuit. That part went without a hitch. Freeze dried gravy doesn't rehydrate with the same texture so I used fresh gravy in order to eliminate variables like that and the biscuit did indeed soften and become something close to what you'd expect.

Unfortunately, biscuits are made with oil, butter, lard, etc... some kind of fat. Smarter people here already see that there's a significant chance of the fat in it going rancid. I've had mixed results with fats in foods in the past so it's definitely not a "always fail" issue. For example, gravy is made with oil and it lasts fine.

The texture of the biscuit was fine. It's not a "fresh out of the oven" texture, for sure. But it's passable in a pinch. The taste was a little bitter as you might expect when oil starts to go rancid but it wasn't terribly strong. So I ate it up and waited.

Result: FAIL.

I had liquid shit squirting out of my ass all day.

So biscuits are not something you can reliably shelve for long term storage like that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXrcdrs_y7U

Chappie takes care of chappie...

https://u.smutty.horse/mlflmupuxhj.png
The bag is from Harvest Right. 7 mil thickness. More info here: https://harvestright.com/product/50-pack-mylar-bags/

As you can see, March 2nd, 2020 was the freeze dry and package date.

On the left, right out of the bag.

Top right is right out of the boiling water.

Bottom right is with American Cheese, home made mayo, and half a toasted everything bagel.

The sausage, like I said, didn't rehydrate hardly at all and this is not really surprising since it's loaded with grease which repels water.

Normally, when I make this, a fork is enough to cut it. This shit needs a knife.

So... I'm not dead. I didn't get sick.


Mayo recipe, for those interested: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/159507/whole-egg-mayonnaise/

Protip: Use an immersion blender. As you put the blender into the mix, it goes through and actually causes enough mixing between the oil, egg, and vinegar to work. Foolproof 100% of the time. I cannot say the same about using a regular blender.

I imagine that title might look a little odd until you realize what sub this is :)

So two years ago I freeze dried a tray of cream cheese and two trays of greek yogurt. Coming out of the freeze dryer, they seemed absolutely great. They were dry, powdered well, and took water quickly.

I vacuum sealed the yogurt in non-mylar bags and vacuum sealed the cream cheese in two jars.

While doing some fall cleaning (it's like spring cleaning but it's in the fall, duh), I pulled most of the food out of the kitchen pantry to store in the basement with the rest. Living off of stores, I don't need to worry about keeping the kitchen pantry packed as much as just keeping something up there as a kind of "live inventory" that represents some of what's in the basement stores.

So I hauled about 10 bags of groceries down to the basement, put them away, looked through one of the shelves and took stock of conditions. I pulled a jar of cream cheese and the 4 bags of yogurt. I also pulled the "shelf stable" ham pieces - you know the kind you can get in the store that's filled with preserving shit and then vacuum sealed in a bag? Yeah, that stuff.

The yogurt was... brown. The clear plastic bags (as expected) aren't a perfect air/water barrier and it seems that after two years of storage that they were not up to the task. They still were "air tight" in appearance but not a good enough barrier. As said, this was expected but now I know at least "2 years" is a bit too long to expect them to hold. Squeezing the yogurt "powder" revealed that it wasn't much powder any more, more like a really dry but barely moist clump that looked like powder. I didn't even open them; they went right in the trash.

The ham was... brownish with spots of something that grew inside of it. I bought them in 2017 and were small pieces, $1 each, purchased just for this experiment. They were still air tight but the condition tells me that when they were packaged, sanitary conditions weren't top notch. Those went in the trash as well.

As for the other items on that shelf that I prepared/preserved myself, the green onions are starting to go a little brown but are still perfectly dry. They're freeze dried and sealed in jars so I expect that this is pretty much normal being two years old.

As for the cream cheese... It's fine. I popped open a jar this morning. Smelled fine, texture fine, still dry. It takes surprisingly little water to rehydrate and does well just stirring with a fork. The end result is a cream cheese that is light and fluffy, almost as if you had taken beaters and whipped the shit out of it. A blender would have done better as there were small lumps but that is because of it being mixed with a fork. It has a very slight cardboard-ish taste, certainly not fresh but it doesn't taste off in any other way. I put some on a bagel this morning and I'll let you know if it kills me.

In any case, it seems that the clear plastic for vacuum sealing is good for less than a year or so, mylar bags 18 months to two years (tops) and jars much longer. I'll keep this in mind as I start making my "home made MREs."

So, I'm getting ready to make a bunch of compact/portable meal kits for the truck and car and just camping in general. It had been on my To Do list for a while now to review and assess the condition of the freeze dried foods that I had squirreled away just to make sure that they were usable if it ever came down to it.

I had some freeze drying failures which, looking at what failed, seems like it was a malfunction in the freeze dryer (as found by the manufacturer this past summer). I figure this is the case because certain entire batches were "mushy". I lost 3 quarts of green peppers, two quarts of tomatoes, two quarts of mushrooms. Those were in super fucking thick mylar bags and careful inspection did not reveal any failure in the bagging materials.

I did lose a single 5-pack of biscuits due to vacuum seal failure. I opened them to check and they were still dry as a bone but... yellowish. I figured it was a sign that oxidation caused oils in the biscuits to go rancid and taste-test confirmed (that was nasty, by the way, don't eat shit with rancid oils/fats).

I have concerns about pork sausage but I figured that was a possible failure when I started since sausage tends to be a high fat food anyway. I haven't opened the bag yet but the sausage patties are flexible and they should not be. It's possible that it's just that the fat is keeping it flexible and has not gone rancid since it still has a tight vacuum seal. I'll know when I open it tomorrow and taste a crumb. Unfortunately, there's not much of a way to test that otherwise and I'm still concerned about botulism (food poisoning) since it thrives without oxygen and you can't taste it. My plan it to taste a crumb and if it doesn't seem off to test a half or quarter patty and see if I have any ill effects. I'll update if I do.

But other than that, all the other foods seemed to have lasted 2+ years so far. I opened several other bags I was concerned about. Specifically refried beans and ground beef because they seemed "mushy" in the bags but they're fine. All dried and crunchy when removed so they were resealed and put back in rotation.

I did open a bag that had pizza that I freeze dried 2 years ago. The cheese has gone a little yellow but it's otherwise fine and tasty. I had wondered if I needed to rehydrate it but it's pretty damned good as is so I plan to get a few more to freeze dry for meal kits.

As for the eggs (since I had posted about that earlier), I still have around 12 dozen stockpiled. They are well oiled and I'm keeping an eye on them. So far no problems.

Once I replace the spoiled foods, I'll start making my kits.

On a further note, meat loaf freeze dries very well and is pretty damned tasty. The freeze drying process seems to intensify the flavor.

Once I have all the food bits in place, I will make full "MRE" kits ideal for long term storage and ready to use should I need them in any event.

I'll keep ya updated.

https://archive.ph/czhzN

That said, some of the comments have some great information on things you might not have already thought of or planned for. For most of the civilized world, we're still living off of last year's food stores and supplies. We haven't hit the big hump yet. I'm guessing that's gonna be shortly after or around Christmas. Maybe spring, if things hold out well. People will have adjusted from this year and are already planning gardens for next year so your garden supplies will be scarce or expensive. Get anything you need to grow shit and amend your soil now. I know I am.

Updates:

Garden:

The garden is doing well, mostly. The pH level is shite so the snow peas didn't make it. I've done some quick amending but the real fix will need to come this fall after final harvest. That will involve ashes and quicklime.

The tomatoes are being tomatoes and complaining that the soil isn't perfect as there was a serious depletion of calcium. Amendments were added and the tomatoes didn't die but they didn't thrive at first either. I also have a metric fuckton of cherry tomato plants popping up from seed from the last two years where they went insane on their own. They started to show a little yellowing at the center of their top leaves but that isn't spreading which means that the calcium amendments held (for now).

Corn was completely replanted as the first batch of seeds had only about a 19% germination rate. Second planting is closer to the 90%+ that I'm accustomed to.

The green beans are thriving (second planting as first didn't germinate as well as I would have liked), such as they can with rabbits coming by. The hawk that usually guards my garden seems to be gone this year so I have to rely on other methods (repellents, fox urine, etc.) which seems to be working. At one point, there were 5 of the little bastards just chilling in the patch and thinking the green bean plants were fucking gourmet salad. Between me, repellents and the pup having an absolute blast chasing them, they're largely gone - I'll sometimes find one little brazen fucker just hiding in the patch like we can't see them and I smack it with the dog leash and the dog chases it off - it stays away for a day or two after that.

I companion planted the corn and green beans. Eh, it seems to be working and they're climbing the corn so I don't need to worry about that but I'm not as impressed as I had hoped I would be and I don't know why.

I've already harvested 7 squash that were about 15 inches long and given all but two away. There's about 10 more ready to harvest very soon.

Eggplants are starting to flower and I already have a watermelon fruit.

I've just planted pumpkin seeds hoping to get some in time for Halloween for the neighbors.

And the cucumber plants are doing well enough and I've already harvested 5 and given 3 away.

The pepper plants are doing well enough (two of them are stunted from the calcium/pH issues).

The entire plot should be remulched and that will be between 13 and 16 cubic yards... about $400 and a fuckton of work.

Oh, and a "wild potato plant appeared" so I'm curious to see how that will turn out.

In short, the "community" garden is doing very well all things considered.

Found another "wild" (unplanned) peach tree for a total of 7 on the property. They're all loaded. Apple trees are still too young to create a lot of output but there's a couple here and there. Blackberries are creating again this year and I might have a few figs from the two trees.

All grapevines are producing this year with the youngest two only producing one bunch and the oldest producing 60+ bunches. I stopped counting at 60 because I got the point by then that I'm going to have more grapes than I will ever be able to consume on my own.

The neighbors have been grateful so far but it's not gotten to crazy levels of harvest yet and soon they're probably going to have to give food away which makes them seem more awesome to their neighbors which strengthens community cohesion even more.

There seems to be plenty of deer that come and chill in the back of the property and I do believe that a groundhog has moved in. All of this is fine as long as they leave the garden alone. Also, moles have been trying to get to the garden plot but the railroad ties bordering the edge seems to stop them somehow. Them little fuckers will burrow back and forth along the outside of the ties but can seem to figure out how to go deeper to get under them or something. In any case, they're leaving the garden plot alone so I'm fine.


Grocery Update:

I've done two grocery top-offs since December when I stopped grocery shopping regularly. There seems to be lulls in the pricing craziness where they drop for a little while, maybe a weekend here and there, and I can top things off without spending more than I feel is reasonable. The scant harvest from the garden I've taken (three tomatoes, 2 peppers, two squash) has bumped up my kitchen stores notably (meaning that's like enough to extend my stores for a week or two depending on how I cook). Shopping and timing this way, I've been able to top off at December's prices twice. Most of the time, the items that get topped off are flour and meats for the dog (she gets meat every day). And milk. I always get about four gallons, reserve one for drinking, 2/3 for general cooking, and turn the rest into yogurt (which generates a fuckton of whey used in making breads) which is then freeze dried and vacuum sealed for later use. Just add water, hit with an immersion blender, use as needed.

Coffee supplies finally got a little low (less than 10 pounds left in the stores). I consider 10 pounds a little low during potential issues but 2 pounds is generally what I keep on hand when things are otherwise fine. And honestly I'm getting tired of having such a huge stockpile although it's handy as fuck to go into the basement to get more of something instead of the store.

General updates:

The puppy is one year old today. She's still a little behind in her training (because of when I got her) but is currently wearing a cone of shame since she was fixed (and had an umbilical hernia fixed at the same time). She gets all the good foods today including steak. On that note, I can do anything I want to her but the vet has no end of trouble and she had to be sedated for them to put the cone on her. I'm not sure if I view this as a good thing or a concerning thing. If society becomes completely unstable, I don't want her trusting anyone that well but if things stay relatively stable, this might be an issue. To that end, I've trained her that she can't take a single thing (treat, steak, chicken, whatever) from my hand until I give her the command to take it. It works on impulse and focus training and I'm hoping that will reel her in a bit at least while I'm nearby.