Observing the news about Wuflu, I’m taking my own advice about not trying to make that panicked last minute run to the grocery store. I’m panicking early.
Today I hit the local Walmart. They’re the best place locally to buy things in bulk. I was after staples, such as dried beans, flour, sugar and so on. Mrs. Freeholder and I have always had a radical difference of opinion on how much food we should have around the house, but it seems that the news has opened her mind a bit, and I’ve gotten her acquiescence for acquiring the mylar bags, oxygen absorbers and so on that one needs to break a 25 pound bag of flour down into easily usable portions that will store for a few years. The only limitation I have is that anything I buy must be stuff we eat now.
She didn’t mention that it had to be in her preferred pre-prepared form. 🙂
Of course, there are reasons for her preference, having to do with not wanting to come home after a day’s work, then cook, then work more. Having been in that position for years, I can sympathize. But as I told her, this is stuff that we’ll eat in an emergency, or after she’s retired (16 months and counting) and she has said she’ll return to scratch cooking.
Stop rumbling, stomach.
I didn’t notice any serious holes in their shelves, and every item I was after was available in quantity. The big bags of flour were a little short, but that was about it. Everything else looked pretty normal.
There were a largish number of folks shopping, but I’m the only one who had a cart that looked like this. I did get a few odd looks along the way. While there are a few things in here for current consumption, most of that will be broken down and stored. I plan on going back for more, probably tomorrow.
Need information on how to repackage foods? Here are a few different articles to get you started. You’ll note the YouTube videos are getting a rash of new comments. That’s interesting.
I plan on taking advantage of the situation to do some testing on the use of vacuum sealers to seal bags. I’ve read that you can’t, but I’m going to try it anyway. In case that doesn’t work out, I do have an impulse sealer coming with the order of bags and oxygen absorbers that will be delivered tomorrow.
Panic early. It pays dividends.
A Food Saver works fine for vacuum sealing, and it can be used for vacuum packing in mylar – get a "jar lid adapter" and the hose attachment for it from Food Saver, and some plastic tubing to extend the hose attachment into the mylar bag; a pliers-type hair curling iron works very well for sealing the mylar bag and is much easier than an iron. But, if you're really serious about large quantities in mylar bags – I'm thinking 5 gallon bags in 5 or 6 gallon buckets here – a standalone vacuum pump will be your friend. Industrial grade vac pumps – make sure it's oilless – wil withstand the long duty cycles necessary to suck all the air out of large mylar bags. Removing as much air as possible – >25 inmg – helps the oxy absorbers do their job better. FYI, oxy asbsorbers are cheap enough to not scrimp on them – a pair of 2000cc in a vacuumed-out mylar bag isn't overkill; put one 1/3 of the way up when filling the bag, the other on top and don't dilly-dally, the sooner theair is sucked out and bag sealed the better.
For long term frozen storage, vacuumed-out mylar works better than any plastic wrap or bag because it's less gas permeable.