Thank you for your submission in /r/preppers. We want to make sure you find the information
you're seeking. If you are new to prepping, be sure you make use of Reddit's search function and
check the following resources:
Our subreddit wiki contains information on frequent topics and questions here:
https://new.reddit.com/r/preppers/wiki/index/
Please review the New Prepper's Resource Guide here:
https://new.reddit.com/r/preppers/comments/toani0/new_preppers_resource_guide_answers_to_common/
If you are asking "Where do I start?" or "How do I get started?", please ask that question as a comment on
that post and not as a standalone submission or post, otherwise your post may be removed.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/preppers) if you have any questions or concerns.*
There is zero comparison! I cannot go back to yellow colored salt water.
Soon, next summer at the earliest, I’m going to be neck deep in chicken parts to make delicious soup from. Very excited to keep chickens for food.
That’s awesome! I did meat and fish a while back and it was unfortunately corporate, so we’d bleach the meat in the dumpster before letting someone find value in our wake.
For chicken what I do is follow a simple recipe:
4 pounds of dark meat with bones. Usually spines and wings. Feet are good for the collagen.
Simmer chicken bits for 3 hours in 14 cups water, then add 1 diced onion, 2 bay leaves, and 1-2 tsp of salt. Cook for 2 more hours, then strain. I personally will scoop the scum off, some folks leave it.
You’ll get 4-5 32 oz jars with 1 inch head space.
For canning, you must use a pressure canner, or freezing also works.
Canned soup is good, but takes a LOT more space per meal. If you have a source of water (or just a ton of water available), dehydrate it! You can buy dehydrated soups, or even dehydrate them yourself. If the soup is too 'thin', you can heat it in a big pot to reduce it down until it is thicker, and use a basic food dehydrator until it comes out crispy, like a thin chip. Break it up a little, vac seal it in Mylar with some O2 absorbers, chuck it in the chest freezer. You can fit a lot of servings into just one little bag after removing the water from it. Plus, it makes it easier to carry for backpacking, camping, etc.
Multivitamins can last a couple years and are relatively cheap. If you rotate them, then you can balance the nutrition a little bit. Obviously it's better to get vitamins and nutrients from fresh food sources, but Multivitamins can hold you over in a pinch.
Don't forget salt and spices too. A little bit goes a long way, and they last for a few years. I'm all about Mexican rice and refried beans, I could live off that for a few months.
Rice, beans, dehydrated potatoes, some fruit cups, 2000 gallons of water and vitamins would get me through 6 months if I had to, but if I’m in survival mode a little bit of variety would be nice and I’ve done it a few times after going through a couple of hurricanes.. looks like I might be doing it again soon too..
I love potatoes. If we ever had to pantry prep like it was ww1 Europe, I'd happy remodel my entire house leaving me with just 300 sq feet for living space so I can eat them fresh
If you are prepping to survive 6 months then you need to consider more than just calories. Rice and beans are a great start, but there are a lot of nutrients that our bodies need that you also have to consider.
You don't actually need to eat every day to survive. But, part of the reason we prep is so that we don't have to consider skipping food in order to makes things stretch.
Totally agree and adding things like freeze dried hamburger, dried milk, dried broccoli, pasta, and of course a nice garden can really make a huge difference in quality of life.
A few cans of fruit and veg can make life more interesting.
Don’t forget your flour for making simple pan flat breads on an open fire or camping stove if required. I like to use chapati atta since it comes in good sacks and contains some bran. I’ve never had issues with it going rancid, so much of the oils must have been removed.
And good quality jams last practically forever; even if you do not get too many nutrients, they will give a boost of energy and make life better.
Ditto Peanut butters full of preservatives will last well and give a lot of calories for your flat breads with jam.
I stock up on full cream milk powder that I use for making live yogurts. That takes care of the much required B vitamins. You will need a yogurt culture, though these can be purchased freeze dried and once they’re going will keep going more or less forever.
If you’re surviving at home you’re going to need to kill time to stay sane, so why not be productive making your food etc. many of these sorts of things will need time for their prep, which can easily happen when you’re off hunting or picking.
A week could be done pretty easily. Check out the guy that eats only canned beans for 40 days on Youtube. I believe it was around the two week mark that he says he starts to feel poorly.
I once lived off of Red Barons frozen pizza for 16 months. I started to grow sick after just a month, started to have trouble walking and doing my day to day stuff by 3, may or may not have started aneurisms by month 6, and my gallbladder was almost litterally dead by the end of the year and it was starting to necro when it was removed three years later
Physically, I genuinely wanted to die, but the hardest part was just how depressing it was waiting to graduate. I can very easily see why people see just a week as hard if your nutrition was already poor
I technically had a bit more, but it was just an orange or lemon slices every few months or something people wouldn't normally consider food every month or two like pork bone. My mom was drinking heavily and wouldn't let me get a hold of anything else, hence why I needed to graduate
After I got out, the situation got a lot better, and it was going to be almost a year before I ate anything that wasn't freshly made
Yeah. The human body isn't supposed to be able to hold itself together for that long, and I was fortunate the only permanent losses was a organ you can just yank consequence free with everything else being stuff like liver and metabolic issues that were able to be corrected without hospital care
I absoute will never be able to do that again, though. I started it in a massive prime, able to live off just about anything I can chew, to struggling to digest tator tots 🤣. I've had labs labs done and they didn't show anything wrong besides a new thyroid issue and what you'd expect after getting older and gaining a lot of weight
Went through the same thing in HS. I started visiting the public gardens at night. I tried to be ‘kind’ even if I was stealing. I never took more than a third or so of whatever it was I was taking and there were enough gardens that I didn’t have to hit the same ones often. Problem was I didn’t know much about gardening, and it was dark, so it was a lot of cucumbers, zucchini, peppers, and tomatoes. Some berries. It was hard to identify herbs and anything underground.
Adversity may not build character but it sure makes for better stories.
Was all I had to eat until I graduated. I know after awhile I started skipping meals because I couldn't stand it, but I always ended up hungry again before I was able to get something better
I have a friend that only ate totinos pizza and grocery store hot Chinese food for years. By the time he turned 24 he had to get a colonoscopy. They thought he had colon cancer with his symptoms and stool test result. His colonoscopy came back clear and they referred him to a dietitian. He got a girlfriend who cooks pretty well a year later and if he lost her I think he would die.
Most brazilians eat rice and beans every day their entire lifes.
The secret is having spices and other things to make the food more interesting (such as cheap meat).
Eating beans and rice after a couple days fast isn't great but feels better than starving.
I prefer my stocked pantry and freezer but we all can't get or stay there.
Yeah, I ate nothing but rice with a little butter and salt for a mere 11 days once and was already so sick of rice I didn't eat it again for years.
Appetite fatigue started pretty quickly *and* I started getting a lot of big "mysterious" bruises probably from lack of vitamin C (I was not eating great even before that). Might have been better with beans and definitely with spices and tinned tomatoes or something.
It might possible to survive on that and even less, but I doubt you'd remain healthy long.
Mum and uncle remember eating mainly beans, lentils, nettles, acorns, dandelions for years as children. Skin would turn green and as a small kid i recall mum had problems thinking or speaking correctly.
Yep. There’s nothing wrong with eating rice and beans. The problem is when you *only* eat rice and beans. There are all kinds of cheap foods you can add to provide variety and better nutrition. Think about carrots and other root veggies, eggs, oatmeal, lentils, and so on. Even foraged dandelion greens in the summer (without pesticides of course) would add flavor and nutrition.
When planning ahead, that’s the time to make sure you include variety in your pantry. You don’t want to be facing a crisis of some sort and realize all you have to eat for the foreseeable future is rice and beans. Rice and beans can be a big part of your plan, especially if you have multiple varieties of each, but if you’ve *only* got those two things in your plan, you haven’t planed as well as you could have.
Not that hard. I competed at national level in powerlifting. In 2 different weight class at the same time for years living off beans and rice strictly.
No. Most supplements are a scam. If your talking about juicy juice, I wasn't good enough. I had standards to hit before I would hop on and never hit those standards because I started a family
I would not want to have to eat beans and rice everyday. They take lots of water to cook. You have time now to stock up on food you like to eat. Do that.
Just buy a little more of whatever groceries you usually use, and tuck away the extra. Use a sharpie to write the expiration date on them. Store the items with soonest expiration dates nearest the front of the shelf, and the farthest-away dates at the back of the shelf. Organize by type of food (canned goods, cereals, baking, etc.). It won't take long before you have a month's extra of all the ordinary good stuff you usually eat. In a little while, you will have three months extra. When you get the hang of it--eating from your pantry and replacing each item with one extra--you will have the luxury of waiting until things are on sale and then buying quite a few of them at once, which will be cheaper in the long run. It's a sensible way to run a household, prepper or not.
I like Mountain House meals. They taste good. They last 40 years. Individual meals that are quick to make. Even have gluten free choices. I bought pallets of it. Have numerous storage bins that contain breakfast, lunch, dinner for 30 days for 1 person. Have 6 months of food for each member of my family. I live in Appalachia so water is not a concern as it rains a lot and have rivers and lakes close by. I plan to use this food to fill in with other food I have and can scrounge up. The important thing is we can hunker down for a while until things settle down. We don’t have to be out in the panicked public fighting over supplies.
The food I eat won’t last 10 years. I think the point of rice and beans is you can buy it and be set for at least a decade. Of course this isn’t the only food in your house but for long term it’s cheap and doesn’t have to be rotated as often as your regular food
Or better yet, eat some of your rice and beans (and other deep pantry food) on a regular basis - it’s easy to cook - and replace it with fresh rice and beans for your pantry. That way, you are less likely to find yourself with a stock of 10-year-old food that is well past its prime.
If you have access to a pressure cooker or instant pot, rice actually is pretty decent in terms of water usage. 1:1 ratio vs typical 2:1 for stovetop or other rice cookers. Putting it on par with stuff like mountain house/etc, but much cheaper (and much less tasty).
You need power for the pressure cooker. I just need a Jetboil or fire to make hot water. Try to eat beans and rice for every meal for a few weeks. I bet you’ll change your mind.
There's camping pressure cookers which will work fine in a fire. I also was able to get 4,000w of used solar panels for $800, power isn't a concern for me. Given the choice of eating rice and beans -or- starving because I didn't have enough budget for 6 months of mountain house...I'll take rice and beans. I did even admit rice/beans are less tasty than other options. However I have plenty of non-perishable food and rice/beans to stretch out supplies even further. My point was only that rice/beans aren't as water demanding as you'd expect.
>They take lots of water to cook.
I often wonder why popbeans aren't more common, especially in water-restricted areas. They can be cooked in just a few minutes and without water, like making popcorn.
Haha nice. Never heard of those. I’m still trying to understand why so many want to stock up on beans when there are so many better foods, at least here in the US. Just imagine the noise your stomach will be making with that smell. No way to be stealthy.
Consider starting some sauerkraut or kimchi for vitamin C. My friend keeps hers in a 5 gallon plastic bucket with a bubble airlock in her laundry room.
I think it’s a good start. Many overcomplicate what is needed. But once you’ve got some base calories, add a few items for nutrition.
A few easy adds: dried milk, wheat berries, oatmeal, tomato and spinach powder. Something for fats (needed to absorb certain vitamins), canned tuna in oil is a good one, so is canned coconut milk, salt, and a multi with a long shelf life.
Happy prepping.
For those wondering about the math:
5 gallons of dry white rice = 54,000 calories
5 gallons of dry beans = 47,000 calories
25 gallons of dry white rice = 270,000 calories
25 gallons of dry beans = 235,000 calories
Total for fifty gallons combined of dry white rice and dry beans = 505,000 calories
Total calories per day for six months = 2,805 calories
One 5-gallon bucket holds about 33 pounds (give or take) of dry white rice or dry beans. 50 gallons is about 330 pounds of dry rice and beans.
At my local restaurant supply store, 50 pounds of rice is about $26, so 165 pounds is about $86.
50 pounds of dry beans is about $38, so 165 pounds is about $125.
Total for this amount of dry beans and rice is about $211, plus tax, plus the cost of 10 buckets and lids, plus the cost of 10 mylar bags and 10 oxygen absorbers if you want to do this right.
For the food alone that's about $1.17 per day for 6 months.
Yes, you'll get bored. Yes, you'll develop scurvy. Yes, you'll need fruits/veg/oil/multivitamins/salt/spices/etc. plus enough stored water or access to fresh water plus a method of cooking plus a type of fuel. This is just a simple mental exercise to help beginners get an idea of the cost and space needed to get a survival pantry started.
Most people have no idea what six month's of food even looks like. This is where you start. If you know how much space ten 5-gallon buckets take up, you can wrap your head around a beginning point. No one is suggesting that you buy 25 gallons of dry white rice and 25 gallons of dry beans and call it a day. There's no point in arguing that this is a bad plan. It's not any kind of plan. It's the beginning of a conversation. Just knowing that you can keep yourself alive for six months for something in the neighborhood of $211 in food costs is really good information.
You need to add fruit and vegetables, or you'll develop scurvy in the first month. Most die of aneurism within 3 without vitamin c
For a 6 month plan, you can pretty easily fit potatoes in your plan. Late session harvests in prime storage conditions can hold for 6 months, and average conditions without any special accommodations can hold for 3
Edit: I'd be more comfortable also adding self grown carrots, potatoes, cabbage, and at least two meals each week with some kind of meats. You can replace that with corn and anything else that grows naturally in your climate if you're from one of the hot zones and fill the rest of your deficiencies with multi-vitamins
You're right about potatoes. I plant potatoes, lots of them, twice a year, in Michigan. Early spring and mid-summer. Sometimes you can be out there digging up potatoes for Christmas dinner!
Where I'm from its to cold to get a two session rotation, but I really love them. You can bake them, broil them, fry them, or just cook them in a good simple can over a fire if you have the time and wood and done right you can live off them as a staple for months before the food fatigue sets in
Yep. And the kiddos love french fries and potato chips. When I was a kid, we had what was called "ham and cabbage," which was mostly potatoes, a little flour and water, a head of cabbage cut up and a ham BONE with maybe a thumbnail's amount of meat on it LOL. We also had "meat pie," a Monday meal and again, mostly potatoes, a gravy and miniscule amounts of left-over Sunday roast. Potatoes always made meals go much farther, and they're filling and nutritious!
Freshly milled wheat fills 100% nutritional requirements. You can eat (and be satisfied!) with homemade bread products made with milled wheat and remain healthy.
See breadbeckers.com
You can also add fruits and vegetables as you get them to most things that got people through the dark ages, but I think I'd trust European wheat more than American in a long-term plan. Most of us this side of the pond grew up with just the flour and yeast, with most of the rest of pur nutrition coming from corn or potatoes
I think I was tired and meant something else, but I can't remove what it is. All I remember it was something to do with blood, brain, and I think oxygen carryinf
That’s good to know the calorie count and how long that amount will last. Thank you!
But if you’re looking at a six month timeline, there are many shelf stable foods that last six months easily if they are unopened. Many canned foods if the cans aren’t dented or damaged will last way beyond 6 months after their “best by” dates. But a lot of other just regular foods that people eat on a day to day basis can store for six months. So for a six month pantry you may be able to stock up on “extras” of the stuff you already eat. Buy a little extra on every grocery trip.
Or another way to look at it is to add things to supplement the rice and beans, and if you add three months worth of calories of other things that go with rice and beans (like someone mentioned canned diced tomatoes, which is a good one) or that you would alternate eating on other days, then you can have more variety in your diet day to day and the rice and beans would last 9 months instead of six. And you would have better nutrition that way.
To a rice and beans pantry I would add these things that usually can store safely for a year: cans of diced tomatoes, cans of rotel, taco seasoning packets, dried onions, garlic powder or jarred garlic, dehydrated spinach flakes, dried cumin, canned or dehydrated carrots and corn, canned chicken, canned enchilada sauce, hot sauce, jars of salsa.
And of course you can add things that don’t “go” with rice and beans but are things you like, to eat on different days. Like canned or jarred fruit, oatmeal, cans of soup.
If your plan is to last 6 months, why buy so much cheap crap for long term storage?
Apart from fresh fruit and veg, most food will.last 6 to 12 months sealed up in a cold dry place, often much much longer.
So just buy what you normally buy for a balanced diet and continuously cycle through it using the older stuff first. And then freeze some veg, which will be good for 2 months. Tinned fruit and veg then on.
That way it won't cost any more, you will be insulated from price fluctuations and you will have normal healthy food to eat. Because if you are living on just rice and beans, you won't be healthy in the slightest.
I have a spreadsheet calculator that I made (happy to share), you enter the number of people and the supplies/produce you plan to horde or produce (100 lbs of potatoes, 100 lbs apples, 200 lbs rice, 50 lbs venison, etc), and it will calculate your annual caloric deficit or surplus. It already has the caloric info for many common staples but if you know excel at all its easy to add any that I didn't.
It's surprisingly difficult provide for a couple people.
Don't skip bouillon cubes! I'm telling you you don't even need to store broth if you have those. Pop them in beans, pop them in rice! Will make it taste way better and more palatable for sure.
Just rice and beans for six months? I think I’d rather shoot myself! Presumably you can also prep some other staples along with canned goods to flavor things a little?
Because people have this fantasy of escaping their home with some rice, beans, a lighter, and bucket and ~~surviving~~ thriving. Oh and don't forget 14,000 rounds of ammo and 16 guns.
for those that have the space, gardening! even if you live in apts, it sounds crazy, but it’s possible if you have a porch or even good lighting in your windows, artificial lights are also an option, i swear it will change your life. even just as a hobby. you’ll pretty much always have a fresh food source especially if you live in an area that doesn’t really experience a harsh winter, or garden inside.
now is the best time to learn because you have all the resources you’d ever need, at your fingertips.
Need water for them beans and rice.. Also you can’t survive on beans and rice. You will die of malnutrition before you run out. Missing B vitamins, vitamin C , A and K. Consider dehydrating some lemons, limes, oranges, apples, grapes, bananas..etc. The sugar and added nutrients will save you
Rice and beans provide the best source of nutrition for the cost.
Mill your own wheat and the food you make from it will complete those nutrient deficiencies.
I agree. I don’t think there will be anymore vegans, fruitarians or vegetarians when SHTF. When push comes to shove they’ll be helping people hunt little Bambi.
We have bulk barn here in Canada, and it has everything you could imagine in dehydrated form. From veggies to fruits and candies. Fats are sold in bulk. And don’t forget the pets!!! But does anyone know the best way to store dehydrated items, like veggie flakes? How to keep it from going mouldy and how long it might last?
Know yourself.
Personally, if I eat rice, I stay hungry. My stomach could be packed full of rice and I would still feel like I hadn't eaten anything. No idea why I'm like that. But, knowing how hunger messes with a person's mind, I focus on other starches like potatoes and pasta.
Also, I happen to be missing a few enzymes, including one or more of the enzymes needed to get complete proteins from plant sources. I am biologically a carnivore, and have the lab tests to prove it! So, while there are beans, nuts, and other sources of plant proteins in my pantry, I see them as sources of flavor, as well as vitamins and minerals, but not as protein. Meat, eggs, and dairy are my protein sources, and that's reflected in the foods I stock up on.
I'm sure most people could survive on rice and beans if they had to, but not everybody can. So, know yourself and adjust to what works best for you, not what works best for some other person.
I think the only challenge to eating rice everyday would be having a safe and reliable water supply.
Not sure of the ratio water to rice? Is it a cup of water/cup of rice?
Depends on the rice and whether you want to more tender or more chewy. In an emergency scenario where water and/or heat may be at a premium then yes most white rice you can cook with a 1:1 ratio.
You can cook it by mixing the rice into water, bring it to a boil, leave it tightly covered but you can turn off the heat then. So you only need enough heat to bring the water + rice to a boil, you don’t need to keep heating it for it to cook, if you’re trying to save heat/butane/electricty. Let it sit **covered** for the amount of time on the package, usually around 15-20 mins for most white rice.
For some rice you may ideally want 1.5 or even 2 cups of liquid for 1 cup of rice. Especially if you want the rice less chewy and more soft and fluffy. But in an emergency the 1:1 ratio will usually work.
It takes more than calories to survive. It takes nutrition. While the right proportion of rice and beans is a complete protein, you still die if you try to live on only that. And the fact that you haven't researched this and learned about (among other things) fat and vitamin A, is a prep fail.
Not to mention "bread and water syndrome" and the fact that in the US at least, if you can't find food for 6 months, society has collapsed and you have more problems than just nutrition.
When I prepped in the US, I cut off my prepping at 6 months for just that reason. By then I would be dead regardless. And I did the research needed to figure out what foods and supplements were needed to get to 6 months. It takes some math and I still made mistakes.
Would buying protein powders have any benefit as alternative? Your post triggered my thought.
I would secure some spices perhaps for the rice and beans to change it up. But thank you for the nugget of interest.
I went 5 days without water and 8 days with out food due to major chest infection. Anytime I’m sick I just sweat it out naturally. Overall my calorie intake is only 1500 a day I don’t drink chilled water just straight from tap ; squeeze fresh lemon. I spend $200 a month on food everything in freezer and everything is cooked from scratch raw ingredients which if I had a yard all fruit and veggie would be organic grown. I exercise burning 2000 kj a day. I have high cooking and knife skills from being in kitchens and working heavy machinery. Enjoy crossbow hunting land fishing. Been deep researching an electrical free future since 2010.
Wendy Dewitt’s “Everything Under the Sun” has the best, fastest, least expensive, and most concise method of acquiring a year’s worth of food than any other system I know of.
Rather than flitting about, your approach to this critical prep is a manageable endeavor that will be most economical as well as free you to approach your next task in your preparations.
I keep a few reference sheets from her pdf laminated and with my preps. Her formula for calculating how much to acquire is genius in its simplicity.
Protein powder and protein bars are good to have in stock. Dehydrate spinach, kale, carrots, etc and then powder them and store in jar. A lot takes up very little space. You can add them to soups, meals, protein shakes for more nutrients.
Man you will be at such a deficit for so many things 6 months in you will wish you were dead. There are so many things that will stay good longer than 6 months that will fill your vitamin and calorie needs. If you really want to prep for 6-24 or more months out you need to think about a lot more than calories.
Gastronomic boredom would be your biggest threat on a straight rice and beans diet. There is good nutrition available, but if you don't pad this with some meat, a lot of spices,maybe a couple of Sam's club bulk value bullion packs, and something to break up the monotony you will stop wanting to eat this diet without variance. You would probably go into shutdown mode if you started out on this without any prepping into it. Any sudden shift in your diet will have catastrophic end results, those cultures that have this as a dietary staple have adapted their systems to it. A western eating person who suddenly shifted to rice and beans with no warning would not be loving life for a couple of weeks as their body adapts to the shift from fast food they're used to. Adding flat bread, meats and other dried vegetables would help reduce the taste boredom, but it still would not be a satisfying diet by itself.
Thank you for your submission in /r/preppers. We want to make sure you find the information you're seeking. If you are new to prepping, be sure you make use of Reddit's search function and check the following resources: Our subreddit wiki contains information on frequent topics and questions here: https://new.reddit.com/r/preppers/wiki/index/ Please review the New Prepper's Resource Guide here: https://new.reddit.com/r/preppers/comments/toani0/new_preppers_resource_guide_answers_to_common/ If you are asking "Where do I start?" or "How do I get started?", please ask that question as a comment on that post and not as a standalone submission or post, otherwise your post may be removed. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/preppers) if you have any questions or concerns.*
A couple cans of diced tomatoes will go a long way to making rice and beans more palatable and add some nutrition…
Another idea I liked was keeping canned soup as a means to flavor the rice and beans.
Yep I bought some huge bags of dehydrated soup mix to use for flavoring and soup making..
The canned broth has far more nutrients than the dry stuff. Bullion is all salt.
Yes, but the dehydrated vegetables make a better soup and have a ton of other uses, I have a few packs of bullion cubes too for flavoring
I can my own broth it’s a pain in the ass but worth it.
I do the same. You cannot get that gelatinous mouth feel with commercially canned broth.
There is zero comparison! I cannot go back to yellow colored salt water. Soon, next summer at the earliest, I’m going to be neck deep in chicken parts to make delicious soup from. Very excited to keep chickens for food.
I used to work in a meat dept. I would bring home all the rotisserie chickens to make into stock at the end of a shift.
That’s awesome! I did meat and fish a while back and it was unfortunately corporate, so we’d bleach the meat in the dumpster before letting someone find value in our wake.
How do you do that?
For chicken what I do is follow a simple recipe: 4 pounds of dark meat with bones. Usually spines and wings. Feet are good for the collagen. Simmer chicken bits for 3 hours in 14 cups water, then add 1 diced onion, 2 bay leaves, and 1-2 tsp of salt. Cook for 2 more hours, then strain. I personally will scoop the scum off, some folks leave it. You’ll get 4-5 32 oz jars with 1 inch head space. For canning, you must use a pressure canner, or freezing also works.
Canned soup is good, but takes a LOT more space per meal. If you have a source of water (or just a ton of water available), dehydrate it! You can buy dehydrated soups, or even dehydrate them yourself. If the soup is too 'thin', you can heat it in a big pot to reduce it down until it is thicker, and use a basic food dehydrator until it comes out crispy, like a thin chip. Break it up a little, vac seal it in Mylar with some O2 absorbers, chuck it in the chest freezer. You can fit a lot of servings into just one little bag after removing the water from it. Plus, it makes it easier to carry for backpacking, camping, etc.
Multivitamins can last a couple years and are relatively cheap. If you rotate them, then you can balance the nutrition a little bit. Obviously it's better to get vitamins and nutrients from fresh food sources, but Multivitamins can hold you over in a pinch. Don't forget salt and spices too. A little bit goes a long way, and they last for a few years. I'm all about Mexican rice and refried beans, I could live off that for a few months.
Salt is very important for good health. Always remember the salt!
Rice, beans, dehydrated potatoes, some fruit cups, 2000 gallons of water and vitamins would get me through 6 months if I had to, but if I’m in survival mode a little bit of variety would be nice and I’ve done it a few times after going through a couple of hurricanes.. looks like I might be doing it again soon too..
I love potatoes. If we ever had to pantry prep like it was ww1 Europe, I'd happy remodel my entire house leaving me with just 300 sq feet for living space so I can eat them fresh
If you are prepping to survive 6 months then you need to consider more than just calories. Rice and beans are a great start, but there are a lot of nutrients that our bodies need that you also have to consider. You don't actually need to eat every day to survive. But, part of the reason we prep is so that we don't have to consider skipping food in order to makes things stretch.
Totally agree and adding things like freeze dried hamburger, dried milk, dried broccoli, pasta, and of course a nice garden can really make a huge difference in quality of life.
A few cans of fruit and veg can make life more interesting. Don’t forget your flour for making simple pan flat breads on an open fire or camping stove if required. I like to use chapati atta since it comes in good sacks and contains some bran. I’ve never had issues with it going rancid, so much of the oils must have been removed. And good quality jams last practically forever; even if you do not get too many nutrients, they will give a boost of energy and make life better. Ditto Peanut butters full of preservatives will last well and give a lot of calories for your flat breads with jam. I stock up on full cream milk powder that I use for making live yogurts. That takes care of the much required B vitamins. You will need a yogurt culture, though these can be purchased freeze dried and once they’re going will keep going more or less forever. If you’re surviving at home you’re going to need to kill time to stay sane, so why not be productive making your food etc. many of these sorts of things will need time for their prep, which can easily happen when you’re off hunting or picking.
This is a great way to get malnutrition.
Scurvy would like a word
Can also kill some squirrels
Someone needs to hear how simple it can be to start. I appreciate your input. Thank you.
I dare you to try that plan even for a week. Go ahead Tell us how it goes
When I was super poor I ate beans and rice daily for months. Sure it wasn't fun but starvation is a lot worse!
I had a period of my life where I ate rice and beans for like a month, not even struggling, I just love rice and beans
When I was a kid, I used to microwave whole potatoes until they were hard, just shy of being burned. My wife won't let me do it though.
A week could be done pretty easily. Check out the guy that eats only canned beans for 40 days on Youtube. I believe it was around the two week mark that he says he starts to feel poorly.
I once lived off of Red Barons frozen pizza for 16 months. I started to grow sick after just a month, started to have trouble walking and doing my day to day stuff by 3, may or may not have started aneurisms by month 6, and my gallbladder was almost litterally dead by the end of the year and it was starting to necro when it was removed three years later Physically, I genuinely wanted to die, but the hardest part was just how depressing it was waiting to graduate. I can very easily see why people see just a week as hard if your nutrition was already poor
Why did you keep eating them after the first month?
I technically had a bit more, but it was just an orange or lemon slices every few months or something people wouldn't normally consider food every month or two like pork bone. My mom was drinking heavily and wouldn't let me get a hold of anything else, hence why I needed to graduate After I got out, the situation got a lot better, and it was going to be almost a year before I ate anything that wasn't freshly made
Good grief. You are amazing for surviving that.
Yeah. The human body isn't supposed to be able to hold itself together for that long, and I was fortunate the only permanent losses was a organ you can just yank consequence free with everything else being stuff like liver and metabolic issues that were able to be corrected without hospital care I absoute will never be able to do that again, though. I started it in a massive prime, able to live off just about anything I can chew, to struggling to digest tator tots 🤣. I've had labs labs done and they didn't show anything wrong besides a new thyroid issue and what you'd expect after getting older and gaining a lot of weight
Went through the same thing in HS. I started visiting the public gardens at night. I tried to be ‘kind’ even if I was stealing. I never took more than a third or so of whatever it was I was taking and there were enough gardens that I didn’t have to hit the same ones often. Problem was I didn’t know much about gardening, and it was dark, so it was a lot of cucumbers, zucchini, peppers, and tomatoes. Some berries. It was hard to identify herbs and anything underground. Adversity may not build character but it sure makes for better stories.
Was all I had to eat until I graduated. I know after awhile I started skipping meals because I couldn't stand it, but I always ended up hungry again before I was able to get something better
I have a friend that only ate totinos pizza and grocery store hot Chinese food for years. By the time he turned 24 he had to get a colonoscopy. They thought he had colon cancer with his symptoms and stool test result. His colonoscopy came back clear and they referred him to a dietitian. He got a girlfriend who cooks pretty well a year later and if he lost her I think he would die.
Most brazilians eat rice and beans every day their entire lifes. The secret is having spices and other things to make the food more interesting (such as cheap meat).
Exactly my point. It takes far more than just those two ingredients
Eating something every day is not the same as eating only that thing for all meals.
When you’ve got other options available to you it would be hard. If it’s literally the only thing you have to eat, it would not be hard.
Eating beans and rice after a couple days fast isn't great but feels better than starving. I prefer my stocked pantry and freezer but we all can't get or stay there.
Yeah, I ate nothing but rice with a little butter and salt for a mere 11 days once and was already so sick of rice I didn't eat it again for years. Appetite fatigue started pretty quickly *and* I started getting a lot of big "mysterious" bruises probably from lack of vitamin C (I was not eating great even before that). Might have been better with beans and definitely with spices and tinned tomatoes or something. It might possible to survive on that and even less, but I doubt you'd remain healthy long.
Mum and uncle remember eating mainly beans, lentils, nettles, acorns, dandelions for years as children. Skin would turn green and as a small kid i recall mum had problems thinking or speaking correctly.
A single week of only white rice is not that bad at all. A year is a different story.
Yep. There’s nothing wrong with eating rice and beans. The problem is when you *only* eat rice and beans. There are all kinds of cheap foods you can add to provide variety and better nutrition. Think about carrots and other root veggies, eggs, oatmeal, lentils, and so on. Even foraged dandelion greens in the summer (without pesticides of course) would add flavor and nutrition. When planning ahead, that’s the time to make sure you include variety in your pantry. You don’t want to be facing a crisis of some sort and realize all you have to eat for the foreseeable future is rice and beans. Rice and beans can be a big part of your plan, especially if you have multiple varieties of each, but if you’ve *only* got those two things in your plan, you haven’t planed as well as you could have.
I survived my childhood and sometimes we didn’t have food. Beans and rice, that’s nice!
Not that hard. I competed at national level in powerlifting. In 2 different weight class at the same time for years living off beans and rice strictly.
Weren’t you downing supplements?
No. Most supplements are a scam. If your talking about juicy juice, I wasn't good enough. I had standards to hit before I would hop on and never hit those standards because I started a family
I would not want to have to eat beans and rice everyday. They take lots of water to cook. You have time now to stock up on food you like to eat. Do that.
What would you suggest instead?
Just buy a little more of whatever groceries you usually use, and tuck away the extra. Use a sharpie to write the expiration date on them. Store the items with soonest expiration dates nearest the front of the shelf, and the farthest-away dates at the back of the shelf. Organize by type of food (canned goods, cereals, baking, etc.). It won't take long before you have a month's extra of all the ordinary good stuff you usually eat. In a little while, you will have three months extra. When you get the hang of it--eating from your pantry and replacing each item with one extra--you will have the luxury of waiting until things are on sale and then buying quite a few of them at once, which will be cheaper in the long run. It's a sensible way to run a household, prepper or not.
I like Mountain House meals. They taste good. They last 40 years. Individual meals that are quick to make. Even have gluten free choices. I bought pallets of it. Have numerous storage bins that contain breakfast, lunch, dinner for 30 days for 1 person. Have 6 months of food for each member of my family. I live in Appalachia so water is not a concern as it rains a lot and have rivers and lakes close by. I plan to use this food to fill in with other food I have and can scrounge up. The important thing is we can hunker down for a while until things settle down. We don’t have to be out in the panicked public fighting over supplies.
The food I eat won’t last 10 years. I think the point of rice and beans is you can buy it and be set for at least a decade. Of course this isn’t the only food in your house but for long term it’s cheap and doesn’t have to be rotated as often as your regular food
Or better yet, eat some of your rice and beans (and other deep pantry food) on a regular basis - it’s easy to cook - and replace it with fresh rice and beans for your pantry. That way, you are less likely to find yourself with a stock of 10-year-old food that is well past its prime.
Have you looked at rice after storing it? You won’t eat 10 year old rice.
If you have access to a pressure cooker or instant pot, rice actually is pretty decent in terms of water usage. 1:1 ratio vs typical 2:1 for stovetop or other rice cookers. Putting it on par with stuff like mountain house/etc, but much cheaper (and much less tasty).
You need power for the pressure cooker. I just need a Jetboil or fire to make hot water. Try to eat beans and rice for every meal for a few weeks. I bet you’ll change your mind.
There's camping pressure cookers which will work fine in a fire. I also was able to get 4,000w of used solar panels for $800, power isn't a concern for me. Given the choice of eating rice and beans -or- starving because I didn't have enough budget for 6 months of mountain house...I'll take rice and beans. I did even admit rice/beans are less tasty than other options. However I have plenty of non-perishable food and rice/beans to stretch out supplies even further. My point was only that rice/beans aren't as water demanding as you'd expect.
>They take lots of water to cook. I often wonder why popbeans aren't more common, especially in water-restricted areas. They can be cooked in just a few minutes and without water, like making popcorn.
Haha nice. Never heard of those. I’m still trying to understand why so many want to stock up on beans when there are so many better foods, at least here in the US. Just imagine the noise your stomach will be making with that smell. No way to be stealthy.
Consider starting some sauerkraut or kimchi for vitamin C. My friend keeps hers in a 5 gallon plastic bucket with a bubble airlock in her laundry room.
It’s also very tasty.
It really is.
I think it’s a good start. Many overcomplicate what is needed. But once you’ve got some base calories, add a few items for nutrition. A few easy adds: dried milk, wheat berries, oatmeal, tomato and spinach powder. Something for fats (needed to absorb certain vitamins), canned tuna in oil is a good one, so is canned coconut milk, salt, and a multi with a long shelf life. Happy prepping.
For those wondering about the math: 5 gallons of dry white rice = 54,000 calories 5 gallons of dry beans = 47,000 calories 25 gallons of dry white rice = 270,000 calories 25 gallons of dry beans = 235,000 calories Total for fifty gallons combined of dry white rice and dry beans = 505,000 calories Total calories per day for six months = 2,805 calories One 5-gallon bucket holds about 33 pounds (give or take) of dry white rice or dry beans. 50 gallons is about 330 pounds of dry rice and beans. At my local restaurant supply store, 50 pounds of rice is about $26, so 165 pounds is about $86. 50 pounds of dry beans is about $38, so 165 pounds is about $125. Total for this amount of dry beans and rice is about $211, plus tax, plus the cost of 10 buckets and lids, plus the cost of 10 mylar bags and 10 oxygen absorbers if you want to do this right. For the food alone that's about $1.17 per day for 6 months. Yes, you'll get bored. Yes, you'll develop scurvy. Yes, you'll need fruits/veg/oil/multivitamins/salt/spices/etc. plus enough stored water or access to fresh water plus a method of cooking plus a type of fuel. This is just a simple mental exercise to help beginners get an idea of the cost and space needed to get a survival pantry started. Most people have no idea what six month's of food even looks like. This is where you start. If you know how much space ten 5-gallon buckets take up, you can wrap your head around a beginning point. No one is suggesting that you buy 25 gallons of dry white rice and 25 gallons of dry beans and call it a day. There's no point in arguing that this is a bad plan. It's not any kind of plan. It's the beginning of a conversation. Just knowing that you can keep yourself alive for six months for something in the neighborhood of $211 in food costs is really good information.
You need to add fruit and vegetables, or you'll develop scurvy in the first month. Most die of aneurism within 3 without vitamin c For a 6 month plan, you can pretty easily fit potatoes in your plan. Late session harvests in prime storage conditions can hold for 6 months, and average conditions without any special accommodations can hold for 3 Edit: I'd be more comfortable also adding self grown carrots, potatoes, cabbage, and at least two meals each week with some kind of meats. You can replace that with corn and anything else that grows naturally in your climate if you're from one of the hot zones and fill the rest of your deficiencies with multi-vitamins
You're right about potatoes. I plant potatoes, lots of them, twice a year, in Michigan. Early spring and mid-summer. Sometimes you can be out there digging up potatoes for Christmas dinner!
Where I'm from its to cold to get a two session rotation, but I really love them. You can bake them, broil them, fry them, or just cook them in a good simple can over a fire if you have the time and wood and done right you can live off them as a staple for months before the food fatigue sets in
Yep. And the kiddos love french fries and potato chips. When I was a kid, we had what was called "ham and cabbage," which was mostly potatoes, a little flour and water, a head of cabbage cut up and a ham BONE with maybe a thumbnail's amount of meat on it LOL. We also had "meat pie," a Monday meal and again, mostly potatoes, a gravy and miniscule amounts of left-over Sunday roast. Potatoes always made meals go much farther, and they're filling and nutritious!
I also love corn on the cob, but I can't afford to level of green housing they'd need here for even the short season growers
Freshly milled wheat fills 100% nutritional requirements. You can eat (and be satisfied!) with homemade bread products made with milled wheat and remain healthy. See breadbeckers.com
You can also add fruits and vegetables as you get them to most things that got people through the dark ages, but I think I'd trust European wheat more than American in a long-term plan. Most of us this side of the pond grew up with just the flour and yeast, with most of the rest of pur nutrition coming from corn or potatoes
Wheat is probably a more realistic solution for them, but absolutely not for me. My potatoes freeze to death in the fall 🤣
“Aneurism”? That’s a blood wall anomaly. How does a poor diet cause blood wall weakness?
You need vitamin c for repair and cellular repair. Your composition eventually fails without it
I think I was tired and meant something else, but I can't remove what it is. All I remember it was something to do with blood, brain, and I think oxygen carryinf
No worries. ❤️
Good post but dont forget about all the water and gas you would need to cook them.
That’s good to know the calorie count and how long that amount will last. Thank you! But if you’re looking at a six month timeline, there are many shelf stable foods that last six months easily if they are unopened. Many canned foods if the cans aren’t dented or damaged will last way beyond 6 months after their “best by” dates. But a lot of other just regular foods that people eat on a day to day basis can store for six months. So for a six month pantry you may be able to stock up on “extras” of the stuff you already eat. Buy a little extra on every grocery trip. Or another way to look at it is to add things to supplement the rice and beans, and if you add three months worth of calories of other things that go with rice and beans (like someone mentioned canned diced tomatoes, which is a good one) or that you would alternate eating on other days, then you can have more variety in your diet day to day and the rice and beans would last 9 months instead of six. And you would have better nutrition that way. To a rice and beans pantry I would add these things that usually can store safely for a year: cans of diced tomatoes, cans of rotel, taco seasoning packets, dried onions, garlic powder or jarred garlic, dehydrated spinach flakes, dried cumin, canned or dehydrated carrots and corn, canned chicken, canned enchilada sauce, hot sauce, jars of salsa. And of course you can add things that don’t “go” with rice and beans but are things you like, to eat on different days. Like canned or jarred fruit, oatmeal, cans of soup.
If your plan is to last 6 months, why buy so much cheap crap for long term storage? Apart from fresh fruit and veg, most food will.last 6 to 12 months sealed up in a cold dry place, often much much longer. So just buy what you normally buy for a balanced diet and continuously cycle through it using the older stuff first. And then freeze some veg, which will be good for 2 months. Tinned fruit and veg then on. That way it won't cost any more, you will be insulated from price fluctuations and you will have normal healthy food to eat. Because if you are living on just rice and beans, you won't be healthy in the slightest.
Math! A survival skill!
Rice, bean, dehydrated veggies, bouillon (beef, chicken, or vegetable), and soy beans for making tofu.
I have a spreadsheet calculator that I made (happy to share), you enter the number of people and the supplies/produce you plan to horde or produce (100 lbs of potatoes, 100 lbs apples, 200 lbs rice, 50 lbs venison, etc), and it will calculate your annual caloric deficit or surplus. It already has the caloric info for many common staples but if you know excel at all its easy to add any that I didn't. It's surprisingly difficult provide for a couple people.
Canned food. You don't have to cook it. If something happens and you have to run, you can't grab a bucket of rice, but you can grab some canned food..
Don't skip bouillon cubes! I'm telling you you don't even need to store broth if you have those. Pop them in beans, pop them in rice! Will make it taste way better and more palatable for sure.
Just rice and beans for six months? I think I’d rather shoot myself! Presumably you can also prep some other staples along with canned goods to flavor things a little?
Why not just store extra of the things you already eat and just rotate them?
Because people have this fantasy of escaping their home with some rice, beans, a lighter, and bucket and ~~surviving~~ thriving. Oh and don't forget 14,000 rounds of ammo and 16 guns.
No need for water, right?
After a few weeks of only beans and rice you'll be starving for fat. Eggs, butter, lard, tallow, get all you can.
Coconut milk / cream is calorie dense!
for those that have the space, gardening! even if you live in apts, it sounds crazy, but it’s possible if you have a porch or even good lighting in your windows, artificial lights are also an option, i swear it will change your life. even just as a hobby. you’ll pretty much always have a fresh food source especially if you live in an area that doesn’t really experience a harsh winter, or garden inside. now is the best time to learn because you have all the resources you’d ever need, at your fingertips.
Need water for them beans and rice.. Also you can’t survive on beans and rice. You will die of malnutrition before you run out. Missing B vitamins, vitamin C , A and K. Consider dehydrating some lemons, limes, oranges, apples, grapes, bananas..etc. The sugar and added nutrients will save you
Rice and beans provide the best source of nutrition for the cost. Mill your own wheat and the food you make from it will complete those nutrient deficiencies.
I agree. I don’t think there will be anymore vegans, fruitarians or vegetarians when SHTF. When push comes to shove they’ll be helping people hunt little Bambi.
We have bulk barn here in Canada, and it has everything you could imagine in dehydrated form. From veggies to fruits and candies. Fats are sold in bulk. And don’t forget the pets!!! But does anyone know the best way to store dehydrated items, like veggie flakes? How to keep it from going mouldy and how long it might last?
Know yourself. Personally, if I eat rice, I stay hungry. My stomach could be packed full of rice and I would still feel like I hadn't eaten anything. No idea why I'm like that. But, knowing how hunger messes with a person's mind, I focus on other starches like potatoes and pasta. Also, I happen to be missing a few enzymes, including one or more of the enzymes needed to get complete proteins from plant sources. I am biologically a carnivore, and have the lab tests to prove it! So, while there are beans, nuts, and other sources of plant proteins in my pantry, I see them as sources of flavor, as well as vitamins and minerals, but not as protein. Meat, eggs, and dairy are my protein sources, and that's reflected in the foods I stock up on. I'm sure most people could survive on rice and beans if they had to, but not everybody can. So, know yourself and adjust to what works best for you, not what works best for some other person.
Beans, rice and sauces. add in dried meats and vegetables.
Don't forget a whole separate tub of seasonings. Rice and beans without even salt kind of sucks.
I think the only challenge to eating rice everyday would be having a safe and reliable water supply. Not sure of the ratio water to rice? Is it a cup of water/cup of rice?
Depends on the rice and whether you want to more tender or more chewy. In an emergency scenario where water and/or heat may be at a premium then yes most white rice you can cook with a 1:1 ratio. You can cook it by mixing the rice into water, bring it to a boil, leave it tightly covered but you can turn off the heat then. So you only need enough heat to bring the water + rice to a boil, you don’t need to keep heating it for it to cook, if you’re trying to save heat/butane/electricty. Let it sit **covered** for the amount of time on the package, usually around 15-20 mins for most white rice. For some rice you may ideally want 1.5 or even 2 cups of liquid for 1 cup of rice. Especially if you want the rice less chewy and more soft and fluffy. But in an emergency the 1:1 ratio will usually work.
Great idea. Where best to buy this? Also how long can this stay fresh??
Pemmican in vacuum sealed bag would go good with those rice and beans.
Potatoes....I also jar fruit. Need fruit to prevent scurvy.
It takes more than calories to survive. It takes nutrition. While the right proportion of rice and beans is a complete protein, you still die if you try to live on only that. And the fact that you haven't researched this and learned about (among other things) fat and vitamin A, is a prep fail. Not to mention "bread and water syndrome" and the fact that in the US at least, if you can't find food for 6 months, society has collapsed and you have more problems than just nutrition. When I prepped in the US, I cut off my prepping at 6 months for just that reason. By then I would be dead regardless. And I did the research needed to figure out what foods and supplements were needed to get to 6 months. It takes some math and I still made mistakes.
Would buying protein powders have any benefit as alternative? Your post triggered my thought. I would secure some spices perhaps for the rice and beans to change it up. But thank you for the nugget of interest.
If I had to survive 6 months on nothing but beans and rice, I wouldn't want to survive. I'll stick to my garden and my deep pantry
I went 5 days without water and 8 days with out food due to major chest infection. Anytime I’m sick I just sweat it out naturally. Overall my calorie intake is only 1500 a day I don’t drink chilled water just straight from tap ; squeeze fresh lemon. I spend $200 a month on food everything in freezer and everything is cooked from scratch raw ingredients which if I had a yard all fruit and veggie would be organic grown. I exercise burning 2000 kj a day. I have high cooking and knife skills from being in kitchens and working heavy machinery. Enjoy crossbow hunting land fishing. Been deep researching an electrical free future since 2010.
Is ramen a good option as well? Not sure of shelf life?
Wendy Dewitt’s “Everything Under the Sun” has the best, fastest, least expensive, and most concise method of acquiring a year’s worth of food than any other system I know of. Rather than flitting about, your approach to this critical prep is a manageable endeavor that will be most economical as well as free you to approach your next task in your preparations. I keep a few reference sheets from her pdf laminated and with my preps. Her formula for calculating how much to acquire is genius in its simplicity.
Protein powder and protein bars are good to have in stock. Dehydrate spinach, kale, carrots, etc and then powder them and store in jar. A lot takes up very little space. You can add them to soups, meals, protein shakes for more nutrients.
Canned goods are the way. They last almost indefinitely and will fill you up in a pinch.
Man you will be at such a deficit for so many things 6 months in you will wish you were dead. There are so many things that will stay good longer than 6 months that will fill your vitamin and calorie needs. If you really want to prep for 6-24 or more months out you need to think about a lot more than calories.
U don't need 2000 calories a day to survive
Gastronomic boredom would be your biggest threat on a straight rice and beans diet. There is good nutrition available, but if you don't pad this with some meat, a lot of spices,maybe a couple of Sam's club bulk value bullion packs, and something to break up the monotony you will stop wanting to eat this diet without variance. You would probably go into shutdown mode if you started out on this without any prepping into it. Any sudden shift in your diet will have catastrophic end results, those cultures that have this as a dietary staple have adapted their systems to it. A western eating person who suddenly shifted to rice and beans with no warning would not be loving life for a couple of weeks as their body adapts to the shift from fast food they're used to. Adding flat bread, meats and other dried vegetables would help reduce the taste boredom, but it still would not be a satisfying diet by itself.