storing grains
 

I'd like to stock up on grains, but from past experience I feel that a lot of time when I buy grains there is already larva or something in them, so no matter how you store it 3 years from now most of it will be no good. Does anybody know if keeping grains in the freezer for a few days would solve this problem?

Re: storing grains
 

Founds this graph -

http://www.ag.ndsu.nodak.edu/abeng/i...grainchart.jpg

But that's for insects. Not sure about eggs?

Re: storing grains
 

I have heard you can use dry ice and it releases carbon dioxide and that kills them all. I never tried it before but it makes sense.

Re: storing grains
 

Putting grains in the freezer a few days is common procedure. For beans and other easy to clean grains add diatomatios earth. Oxygen absorbers in mylar bags make it even more difficult for them to survive.

There is lots of info on the Waltons Feed site.

http://waltonfeed.com/sitemap.html

also:

http://www.survival-center.com/foodfaq/ff17-co2.htm#N2

My advice is worth the cost. I've never done it, just read about it!

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Mylar bags and O2 absorbers. Bugs cannot live without oxygen...

If you freeze for a few days, be careful for condensation in the grains, as it can cause mold.

Re: storing grains
 

I've been surfing around the Waltons site and found the page I was thinking about:


http://waltonfeed.com/self/upack/bugs.html


Bugs in grain. Good article.

Re: storing grains
 

I vacuum seal our beans and grains. Our vacuum sealer has been very useful. Weevils do not mature in a vacuum, and things like sugar and salt, which are shelf stable as to getting rancid or anything, do not absorb moisture from the air and turn into solid rock over time if sealed. :haha:

Rodents, however, can chew their way into plastic, so you need to pack the sealed grain up in metal containers.

From an online supplier named 'Honeyville' you can order oatmeal already in #10 cans with oxygen excluded at a surprisingly good price. About twice the per pound cost of 50 lb bags. (Which they sell too) It was worth it to me to have it in cases of cans. We like oatmeal of the steel cut kind. If you sweat over them 30 minutes it is too much hassle to cook that kind, but they cook in an unattended crock pot great in 4 hours with some dried fruit, and the fruit makes them need no other sweetening.

That place only charges 4.49 shipping on any weight order too. I ordered corn meal and corn grits from them too. Corn balances the protein in beans. I wish that company had more things because their prices and shipping are great. They shipped the next day, and the oats we have sampled already and they are great. (My only association with them is as a customer.)

They have a lot of grains, in a lot of forms from whole to flour, a few beans, and a few freeze dried fruits and vegetables.

From our local co-op we also got 50 lbs of plain yellow corn. We will sometimes just toss some in with a pot of beans to balance out the protein in a very low work way.

We are not much into grinding wheat and baking bread, so we try to think of things that will not only store well, and provide balanced nutrition, but be easy to prepare. Sure, she will make cornbread sometimes, but not every time we might make beans if we were living wholly on stored food. I don't want her to be spending 6 hours a day cooking. That would get old fast.

We also got a bulk bag of millet, which tastes a bit like grits, but nuttier and is not acid forming like most grain.

For our rice, because delish brown rice goes rancid so easily, we got Uncle Ben's in big bags and vacuum sealed about 1 pound packages. I like to mix about 1/4 triticale in rice. It is a cross of wheat and rye and very high protein. I like it in the rice as much as wild rice in regular rice.

Grain mania! :haha: But it is a lot of calories at a low price if you can, as you point out, store it so it stays nice.

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Thanks. Got a link?

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If you have a rodent problem, get a cat. I am sure rats could gnaw into a plastic 5 gal bucket, but don't know how the rodents would know what's inside a sealed bucket?

A #10 can of food is a very expensive solution, searching for a problem.

We have been storing organic whole grains; wheat, rice, oats, beans etc in 5 gal Sherwin Williams buckets bought new and sanitized, since 1995. Finished off a bucket of Brown Rice from `95 recently. It was fine. People caution against Brown Rice and Rancidity, but we had no problems and the rice was tasty.

In 91, I bought some #10 packed food from Arrowhead Mills. Sure, the stuff is stable and the cans are nice, but not worth the trouble of having to pay a freight line for delivery and sure not worth the expense.


I used to buy 6-8 50lb sacks of organics and then buy the buckets and a 5lb brick of dry ice. I would wipe out the buckets with vinegar just to clean any dust out, fill with grain, intersperse some Bay Leaves while filling the bucket, and then top off with about 4 ounces of dry ice. I would break up the dry ice with a hammer and put chips on top of the grain in the bucket.

The dry ice is heavier than air, so it permeated the bucket, which I covered loosely with its lid, after the co2 was disolved, I would tap the lid in place to seal the gasket. Solid lids and those with the paint adding holes have all proved to work just fine.

I stored our stuff in a root cellar for a few years. Some of the cans rusted, the 5 gal pails showed no wear. I am sure none of the grain was bad in the cans because I opened a few. Threw some away.

It is lots easier to handle and store grains in 5 gal buckets than #10 cans.
3 buckets are enough for 100 lbs of grain. Maybe 4 if you are storing oats.

Buckets stack well, are sturdy, have many uses when empty, are cheap enough to buy new, are easy to carry, and only one type is not recommended for food storage. I think that is the #2 marked bucket, but have never seen one for sale.

I have never gone to the expense of mylar liners, oxygen inhibiters or other things many of the Y2K guys did.

I really doubt you have much to worry about in the way of Long Term storage. Better to buy your stuff now and learn to use it in your daily living.

We store Grits, Arrowhead Bear Mush, Cous Cous, Sea Salt, Honey, and Sugar.

When we grind wheat, we do a full bucket of flour at a time. Likely this cuts down on some of the food value, for no doubt that fresh ground is better; but grinding is a hassle. If you will be cooking for a family, on a regular basis, you will want an electric grinder and to only do the job once a month or so. Takes about 30 minutes to grind 20 lbs of grain into flour with a good electric mill. I made a bucket lid cut-out to fit our mill. We just place it on top of an empty bucket and feed it grain. 25 mins later, we're done.

I am willing to bet that for what you might spend on #10 packed grains, you could have 5 times as much Organic Grain if you bought it at your healthfood store and then packed it yourself. Took me about an hour to do the packing. Depending on how far you have to drive to get grain, this might be an afternoon project for you. This is not rocket science. Give it a try!

Re: storing grains
 

AM,

Read your post. Wheat gets to be a real option if you use a bread machine to mix your dough. For about $10 you can likely find one at a thrift shop that is like new. Try one out, and get a pizza stone for your oven. Don't bake the bread in the bread machine, make your own loafs. We spritz our bread in the oven and get that nice crust. You can make better pizza at home than you can buy, anywhere.

Who cooks 6 hours a day? Yet, having a great food storage and a lot of cookbooks means never having to eat a dull meal! If you guys are into beans, you have won the battle.

Check into Macrobiotic cookbooks. Maybe your library has a few books on the subject. Lots of good bean recipes there.

I became a connoiseur of beans when we ate Macrobiotically. Anasazi beans are super, Adzuki beans, Black beans, even Black Soybeans. Garbanzos, Navies, Pintos, Lentils; we used them all.

We had a great serving of fresh dandelion greens last week. Nothing better for your health, (unless they've been sprayed with some shitty weedkiller etc).

Wife roasted a turkey the other night. I made soup out of the carcass right after I cut all the meat off it. Turkey Noodle soup is great even in Summer!


Nothing boring about cooking. The more you can do for yourself, the more self-sufficient you are.

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Money, it's clear you mean well but you seem to be assuming we do not know how to cook or store staple foods, compare simple numbers, or know our own environment and preferences.

That brown rice rancidity thing might be climate related because though is it generally listed in food storage books and articles, and has happened to us, it seems brown rice has done fine for several posters, and that's fortunate for you. It is much better rice. We like several types of brown rice.

We are both quite able to cook. I suppose there are some people who aren't, but it is hard to imagine. I'm an adequate cook and she's I think a born cook, good at coming up with wonderful recipes with whatever is on hand, but it isn't how either of us prefers to spend much time on a daily basis. We enjoy it as a more occasional thing and prefer most meals to require little prep time. Because I know this from our years together, I particularly do not want to plan to rely on labor intensive storage food. It is one thing consumed part time, and quite another if we need to use it for every meal. She would not complain, but that is all the more reason to think of her preferences now.

If water was limited too, and other ordinary chores like assorted washing from clothes to ourselves less convenient, well, I just want to plan for things not being unnecessarily hard.

I bet that pizza stone makes some nice bread. Though we think of bread as something of a junk food nutritionally, that first bite when it is fresh and warm and crusty you don't mind the time you spent. Your spray and stone sound like you make really good bread. When we do bake bread we sometimes use a bread machine, though neither of us has learned to use it to make bread equal to hand kneaded. We did not try it many times though, and I suspect the recipe for dough hook kneading may need to be a little different. But I bet not baking it in there would make it 90% better.

If your cat takes out 30 pound raccoons, more power to you. A raccoon family decided to move in this year. Every spring some creature tries to pry a way in and den up here to have young. Some years possums or field mice, some years raccoons. I suspect having made a permaculture sort of yard attracts them, and I feel sorry for them with their habitat laid waste, but they can't move in. I got the coon family out without having to kill them. Mama was a large and pretty animal, and had 3 little ones. About one year in 3 something makes an entrance and gets in before I realize. So I won't be switching to plastic buckets for food, though I use them for other things. But it sounds like they work great for you.

My guess is that critters may smell what's inside. One year I never figured out what had gotten in and later moved on, but we had some bulk food in a plastic barrel and it gnawed a hole in the lower side. It did not bother more than a couple of vacuum packages on the bottom, whatever it was, but the container was ruined and I want no repeats.

I do get many things from our local coop, and in this case the #10 cans of steel cut oats were less than twice the price per pound of bulk through the coop. (Which is why I was impressed with their prices. Most canned storage food is as expensive as your guess. Plus the total shipping is $4.49 per order, which is a heck of a deal for cases and cases and several 50 lb bags. They ship UPS.) The local health food store price comparison goes the other way in this case -- the cans from Honeyville cost less per pound. From the price and packaging I would say steel cut oats are marketed as a gourmet food there.

A great thing from this thread is how many methods of storing grains posters have had good results with. I hope that gives extra information to members who have not stored food. Different things work better in different houses, and many easy ways can be used.

I save all the plastic buckets we get our detergent in because they do stack well, as you say, and can be used for so many things.

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AM,

If it comes down to "sheltering in place" for avoidance of the Bird Flu pandemic, there will be lots of time for cooking.

I have about 6 cases of #10 canned food, including 4 cans of garden seeds. About all I know about racoons is that they like to kill chickens, and will even gnaw their way into attics. Seems like you could use 5gal buckets and then place them into a metal garbage can, and still have a better solution to food storage.

There are many excellent bread recipes that promote nutrition. Ezekiel bread is one, those made with rye, oats, and even sourdough whole wheat, or nut breads work well. You can grind beans and use them with flour too.

I am not the food police. Maybe you live round the corner from a French bakery and restaurant? I could eat chicken caesar salad for lunch and gyros salad for supper every day, often did; when in town on business. Yet, not knowing what ingredients those "good" restaurants were using made me more likely to go for the Miso soup and whatever macro-meal I could get at a healthfood restaurant.

I am more and more convicted, as this Bird Flu thing seems to be escalating, that we (my family) needs to return to the strict Macro diet we once followed, just to be sure that our eating is building our health and immune systems at every opportunity.

Please don't think I am aiming my remarks at you personally. I make my remarks for All Readers to consider. Maybe they help someone else. I hope they at least give another viewpoint.

I replied on another forum that I thought a 2 month food storage "program" for $1200 was a heckuva lot of money for just 60 days worth of basic food packed in #10 cans.

You can buy Institutional packaged cans of all sorts of items very cheaply at many grocers or Costco. We also usually cook with the idea of freezing 2/3's of what we prepare so we don't have to cook every meal from scratch. It is just as easy to make spaghetti sauce in a 3 gal kettle as a 3 qt saucepan. We go through a lot of 1 gal freezer bags. We store (and use) a lot of 28oz
canned organic tomatoes.

It occurs to me, AM, that you could use Mason Jars to "can" your grains. You don't need to pressure seal the lids or anything, just mainly keep out the critters, right? You can buy 1 gal glass jars from Ball or the other major jar maker. We have some, paid $10 for a box of 6. Put a Bay Leaf or two in each jar, or maybe do the co2 bit, and you would at least have an empty jar to use/reuse for garden produce you could put up.

I remain pretty convicted from experience, that buying food storage in #10 cans is a waste of money because most of your food dollar goes for the can and packaging costs; IE, you don't get much food.

Mason jars might be a real alternative for some people, at least when you're done with the contents, you don't have much to throw away.

Re: storing grains
 

#2 bucket is made from HDPE which is best for food storage

Re: storing grains
 

Money, we do use metal trash cans, then 1 to 5lb vacuum sealed bags in them. That fills the can's interior space fully much better than plastic buckets inside the cans would, plus we open an amount we are about to eat soon.

So we are entirely satisfied that we are using the system best for us in our climate, house, and circumstances. Though I think being helpful is what you mean to be doing, you don't help me out thinking up various 'better' ways for me.

and then tell me, which I am glad to hear, that you are not the food police. (kidding)

Because it does, as you say, contribute to the whole board to have lots of methods discussed. Different methods work better for different situations.

Most of our storage food is done the buy bulk and exclude air and seal way. Beans, grains, salt, sugar mostly for making jam later or trade. Those oats were the first time I had found a bargain in #10 cans. In general you are right on target that the #10 can route is very expensive and not necessary.

For shelf life milk and egg products professionally packed are probably better, and I even have a tad of the incredibly expensive and not very good tasting Mountain House to fill the food slot of actual junk food, like fast food, quick, nutritionally hideous, yet satisfies something.

If we cannot leave the building we will likely use that when we might have had some restaurant food.

And I have some freeze dried fruits in cans and a very few freeze dried vegetables.

The funniest part of our discussion is that we probably have similar amounts of inexpensively purchased bulk food, stored just a little differently in that we both exclude oxygen and seal it in plastic (just not exactly the same way), and a smaller selection in generally overpriced cans.

I'm so picky about my garden varieties that I selected each type and sealed them up myself, and gave them a section of the fridge for cool storage.

We cook big in canning season. We did not plant this year, but in general when the tomatoes come in we can them, and spaghetti sauce etc, in quantity. Cooking big then freezing we may start now we bought a freezer.

That type of 'bread' made from soaked grain just about to sprout then never heated much is the only one I would classify as as healthy as whole grain. But bread is certainly healthier than M House. :wink:

I thought it was great you ate dandelion greens. I could never learn to like them, but I bet they are healthy eating. We will use sprouts to provide enzymes, etc, if we are eating stored food.

Great point about improving immune response with a good diet.