Food Storage Friendly Friday -Meal Idea and Tip of the Week

This week’s tip is just a head-up on availability of food storage items. I received a message yesterday from Mountain House which supplies #10 cans as well as pouches of freeze dried foods. In January they were contacted by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) about their suppliers and distributors for their freeze dried foods. Apparently, FEMA has contacted many of those (if not all) distributors and are buying up everything they can.

At this time, there are no #10 cans of freeze dried foods available from Mountain House. Some of the pouches are available still, however. When asked if and when the #10 cans would again become available, they simply stated not in the near future and it is “totally unpredictable when we will again have them available.”

Here is their statement of the reason for this buying: “The purpose of this Request for Information is to identify sources of supply for meals in support of disaster relief efforts based on a catastrophic disaster event within the New Madrid Fault System for a survivor population of 7M to be utilized for the sustainment of life during a 10-day period of operations.”

I don’t know about you, but this is a scary thing to me. One can only speculate why FEMA is buying up everything they can get their hands on but even scarier is the lack of availability to the rest of us.

I am not sure what other distributors have available as I have not contacted them or heard anything from them. If you still need to get some #10 cans of freeze dried foods for your storage, you may want to check around now to see what is available from different suppliers. I suspect that the situation may get worse before it gets better.

I certainly do not want to create any kind of panic or rash buying, just letting you know that if you are interested you may want to check it out. As far as I know, this “shortage” only affects freeze dried foods in #10 cans. If I receive any more information I will certainly pass it on.

The meal idea this week is one that was suggested by one of our readers. The actual recipe - itself is from the Make A Mix Cookbook ladies (two of my favorite cookbooks ever- I know I have mentioned them several times) Karine Eliason and Nevada Harward.

This isn’t necessarily a food storage recipe but could be made into one using canned tomatoes or salsa, canned chili and homemade tortilla chips. I think this would be a fun recipe (especially for kids) for anytime. It would make a fun picnic food with prepared taco meat or chili in a thermos (or from Wendy’s) and small size bags of chips. If you have not had these before, they are called walking tacos because you open the bag of chips, add the other ingredients and eat it right out of the bag – no dirty dishes to wash. Thanks Jeri for calling this one to my attention.


Walking Tacos - Karine Eliason and Nevada Harward.
Start with a 1 - 1¾ oz. bag of corn chips (Doritos, Sun Chips, Fritos, etc.)
Cut the bag open at the top of the bag. (I prefer to cut off the side of the bag…it makes a bigger opening to work with.) Squeeze the bag to crush the chips.
Cook up some hamburger with a package of taco seasoning mix. (I do this ahead and freeze it in 1 lb. (2 cup) packages…one package will make 4-6 Walking Tacos.)
Then add the warm hamburger mixture to the bag of crushed chips; hold bag closed and shake to mix meat with chips.
Add traditional taco toppings to the bag…cheese, shredded lettuce, sliced olives, diced avocados, salsa, sour cream, etc. Shake or stir with plastic fork.
After you have eaten it, just toss the package into the garbage…no dishes!
Variation: Use Fritos in the bag and top with chili and cheese. (I used a small container of Wendy’s chili…it made two.)