FOOD - Be sure you like what you store, or it will add to stress. Taste before you buy, especially if considering MRE9s. - Rotate your stored items. Date containers and use the oldest items each time you buy new. - Bulk foods 35 cents a serving, dehydrated 75 cents, canned and packaged $1.50, freeze- dried $2.20, MREs $4. - Bulk foods the best nutrition. If new to you, become familiar with them now. Make one new recipe a week. - Buy bulk items locally at Outpost Natural Foods, 101 E. Capital Drive. Right out of the bulk bins, or place a special order at Customer Service. (The store is concerned about people wanting to return unused foods, so be sure you will eat what you buy.) If you live elsewhere, check out the nearest natural foods co-op. - Outpost also has natural foods cookbooks, as do neighborhood natural food stores, book stores. - From a health point of view natural whole foods far superior. Still contain life force energy! - Processed foods do not. Canned, frozen, pasteurized, microwaved, ground up previous to time of use, etc. Dead foods cause degenerative diseases. Can keep you alive for quite a while, but not healthy. - Freshly cooked is fine. Leftovers not. And during outages, no way to keep leftovers safely. - From health point of view, grains, vegetables, seeds, legumes, fruit the best. Dairy and meat are big contributors to degenerative disease of all kinds, and contain no nutrients not found elsewhere in a better form. All life energy on our planet comes from the Sun. Through plants. They stand in the sunlight and convert it into a physical form that all other life forms depend on. This is the power released by burning wood or coal or petrochemical fuels. The strongest animals on the planet, our beasts of burden, eat plant matter. Elephants, water buffalo, oxen, horses and mules... Vegetarian gorillas are pretty strong, too. As cultures take up the habit of eating like ours, large amounts of meat and dairy and processed foods, they begin to get our same diseases. Allergies, arthritis, rheumatism, colitis, diverticulitis, phlebitis, heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis... During WWII when countries in Europe had to give up eating meat and dairy and refined foods, the death rate decreased. You can read more about this in FIT FOR LIFE II or DIET FOR A NEW AMERICA, listed on the handout. Points you will find discussed include: -Why too much protein is damaging to health. Americans eat way too much protein, up to 40% of total calories. You really need only 3-6% of calories as protein! Easy to get with whole natural foods. -Dairy products actually make osteoporosis worse. ( Meat and other acidifying foods, also.) They create high acid levels that the body is forced to neutralize by leaching calcium from your bones. - If you store canned goods, be sure to have a non-electric can opener. Canned goods and foods in glass must be kept from freezing! Think ahead where to store them. - Store all foods away from fuels or products that may give off vapors. Plastic buckets may be permeable to some strong vapors. - Plastic containers may be chewed through by squirrels, mice or rats. - Store food in cool, dark place. Light and heat destroy. Humidity 60 percent or less. - Grains need to be kept dry. Check for bugs every week if you have not used something to remove oxygen, or diatomaceous earth. Eggs come in many grains, then hatch in storage. - Diatomaceous earth is ground skeletons of tiny diatoms. Cuts open bugs and dries them up. Use 1 oz. per 18 lbs. of grain. - Don9t use oxygen removers and dessicants together. Not chemically compatible. - Oxygen removers come in packets that must not be opened till you are ready to toss them into your airtight bucket and seal it up. - The best buckets the resealable ones with gamma lids. Sources on handout. - Dried ice may create moisture through condensation causing mold. - Most whole grains and beans will keep a long time without special additives if kept dry, cool, and in the dark. FDA says 5 yrs. at 80 degrees, 10 yrs. at 70 degrees, 20 years at 60 degrees. Close off part of basement and keep it cool. Buy small, inexpensive combination temperature/humidity meter. - Brown rice does not store as long as white rice because of oils in the outer layer. Will keep six months to a year. If kept cool, lasts much longer. Watch for bugs. - Converted rice is not grains of rice. - Storing a lot of wheat not good idea. Many people are allergic to wheat and will have a bigger problem if that is all they get. - Allergy Elimination Therapy works. I can recommend practitioners. - Use food-grade storage containers only. No plastic trash cans or garbage bags, which contain toxic chemicals to restrain bacteria. Food-grade buckets printed HDPE on bottom. - Get containers at recycling center. Empty popcorn tins, 2-liter softdrink bottles, juice concentrate jugs, all glass containers, even HDPE cat-litter jugs. Fill these with water and let stand, repeat a few times. Milk jugs made to biodegrade. - Remember to store foods for your pets. - If you have a cool basement you can store apples, potatoes (Keep these two apart.), onions, squash, and beets/carrots in damp (not wet) sand. Fresh food! - Can also store vegetables outside in a straw-filled barrel half-buried and then mounded with dirt, with a small venting for gases. Watch for freezing. Thermometer inside. - If you live in a city, you can keep some foods refrigerated by juggling a cooler back and forth from your house to your car. Or just outside the back door in a secure area. Or buy extra blue ice now and rotate blue ice for a cooler in the coolest space in your home, chilling the blue ice by hanging it out a window in a plastic or net bag. - Sprouts an excellent Y2K food. Can store seeds for years for sprouting. Highly nutritious. Possibly best food in the world. Easily digested. The proteins transformed to amino acids, the carbohydrates to simple sugars. Saving you digestive effort. Digestion takes a lot of energy. Also, sprouted seeds contain much more nutrition. Vitamin and mineral contents increase dramatically, two to ten times as much. Enzymes in sprouts. Chlorophyll in grasses, leafy sprouts. Very impt. for health. Read SPROUT FOR THE LOVE OF EVERY BODY, Victoras Kulvinskas. - Mung beans are probably the most nutritious bean to sprout, and the easiest of all sprouts to grow. Sprouted mung beans rejuvenated decrepit animals in tests. - Sprouted beans cook in just a few minutes! Save fuel. No gas, either. (maybe garbanzos) - To grow sprouts, soak the seeds 8 hrs. in pure water (not tap water). Use that water for plants. Keep seeds moist, in jar in dark cupboard about 70 degrees. Won9t grow if too cold. Rinse daily, twice a day in hot weather. Sprouts you want to develop chlorophyll will need sun after they have leaves or a grass stem. Alfalfa and clover in jar in sun. Don9t get too hot, let have a bit of ventilation. Sunflower and grasses on cookie sheets with bit of dirt or nonchemical paper towels. - A few mung beans in your batch will not sprout. Nature9s plan to perpetuate the species during drought/rainy years. Pick these out, as they are hard and could damage weak teeth. - Buy mung and other beans and seeds to sprout at Outpost, mostly in the bulk section. - Don9t buy dull, cracked or shriveled beans. - Different foods have different energy qualities. People are of three basic energy constitutional types, and do best with foods most suited to their type. Ayurveda. Read Amadea Morningstar9s books with type questionnaire and food charts for the 3 types: AYURVEDIC COOKING, AYURVEDIC COOKING FOR WESTERNERS. Mung good for all. - Back to Basics grain grinder. $70-$90. Wheat must be ground to be digested well! - You can make flat breads (chapati, tortilla) in frying pan. Use fresh ground wheat, rice, oats, rye, etc. or combinations. 1/3 cup flour, few shakes of salt, pinch of aluminum-free baking powder, dab of butter if you have it, and water to make pourable batter. Turn when edges beginning to turn up. (Breaks if turned too soon.) - Limit tea and coffee. Diuretic, dehydrating. - Store herbs to give great flavor to basic dishes. Different seasoning, same basic dish seems like a new one to your taste buds. Thyme, basil, sage, marjoram, dill, cumin, coriander, celery seed, cinnamon, cardamom.... - Store herbs away from light and heat. In airtight bottles. - Grind your own herb seeds for best taste. Powdered herbs lose essential oils. - Onion powder and flakes add a lot of flavor! Sauteed onion. - Will be very helpful for both health and your mental state to eat at least two hot meals a day. - Dutch oven excellent for Y2K cooking. On any stove. Or heap charcoal over and under, outside. - Many food storage ideas available on internet. And more good food info. in HOW TO SURVIVE Y2K CHAOS, on handout. - This is the perfect year to start a garden. - Save non-hybrid seeds for next year9s garden. (Hybrid seeds do grow, but what they grow will not be like what they came from. Very unpredictable.) Learn how to save true seed. Read SEED TO SEED, Suzanne Ashworth. Resources: - Perma-Guard phone: (505)873-3061 50 lbs. diatomaceous earth $25. - mega-information on food storage, other preps www.waltonfeed.com/grain/faqs (But this company so far back ordered, don9t try to order from them.)

-- Shivani Arjuna (S Arjuna@aol.com), July 07, 1999

Answers

Shivani,

HDPE means "High Density Polyethylene." It has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not the buckets are food grade. Just because it's made out of HDPE, doesn't mean that the manufacturing process is such that the bucket is safe.

Contact the bucket manufacturer. Most are ok, some are NOT!

-- de (delewis@Xinetone.net), July 08, 1999.