what are you doing with all that extra rice and water and cereal guys ?

-- jim sullivan (seamus83@yahoo.com), January 21, 2000

Answers

It's the rum that may come in handy. See the pertinent post from .... "Old Git" on the preparation forum !!!!!

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-- Squirrel Hunter (nuts@upina.cellrelaytower), January 21, 2000.

Rotating it just like we do every year. Never stock-up on anything you wouldn't eat on a normal basis and it's no problem keeping things fresh.

-- justme (justme@myhouse.com), January 21, 2000.

Divided into two groups...60/40. The 60 part I'm keeping as my usual stash on hand. The 40 part is the excess I acquired specifically for Y2K. THAT portion will be going to local food banks or soup kitchens over the next few months.

-- Irving (irvingf@myremarq.com), January 21, 2000.

Rice, water, cereal? Great Scott, man, is that all you stockpiled? If that's all we had we would have been in sad shape. Man cannot live by bread ingredients alone! Just about everyone on this forum advised endlessly "don't buy anything you wouldn't normally eat." The only "survival" food I bought consists of complete TVP meals sealed in 6 x 5-gallo pails and is good for five years. I'm not in any hurry to get rid of it. Who knows what's up ahead? Go to the preps forum and see what people stashed and what they're doing with it now.

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a.tcl?topic=TimeBomb%202000%20%2 8Y2000%29%20Preparation%20Forum

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), January 21, 2000.

---scarfin ours down, three weeks now, no appreciable dent in stash. Still have some of the last minute "fresh" we bought last week of december, mostly carrots, apples, spuds, meat in small freezer, etc Water we haul anyway, so that gets used daily and replaced. rotating gas, but still have enough for awhile, not much of a dent in that either, but will keep topped off and full while prices stay reasonable. getting ready to put in cold weather garden stuff in hoop houses soon, start seedlings inside in a rack, then transplant.That's it. Maybe start some seeds in two weeks on new moon in february.

-- zog (zzoggy@yahoo.com), January 21, 2000.

Livin on beanie weinies, spam, soup, beans, and crackers, mmmmm mmmm good!

-- Porky (Porky@in.cellblockD), January 21, 2000.

Hanging on to mine for now, almost needed it . Told the boss last week that I quit , was trying to get more money. Told my wife "well at least we won't starve, we got all that food down stairs". Got $12K /year more to stay. I bought about 30 gallons of gas as $1.15 in dec. now its at $1.39 , will wait to see what happens befor dumping it in car. If this gas thing keeps up food will get expensive and I will use it up . I bought the food over a 1.5 year time period a little at a time as things went on sale. I can use it all . The biggest reason that I bought it was that I thought oil was going to go up and that would drive the price of every thing else up. But now that every things is ok??( it was the 1 week of cold weather and the greedy A-rabs that spiked the market) I feel so confident that I think I will get more. I like having extra food around. May get a 3 day storm or somthin. I still use my wood stove just as I have for the last 10 years, I love the dang thing. I already had a generator but I had to clean out the carb. and fuel system to get it going, finally got around to doing that and making the connection to the house wiring. The bottom line is I lost nothing .I could go on but someone will bitch about spelling or type-oopsis or lack of sentence stucture or ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ _______ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ some bull shit.

-- Info junkie (Ilike@it.here), January 21, 2000.

Addin' to it, whilst the addin' is good!

Kook

-- Y2Kook (y2kook@usa.net), January 21, 2000.

Man, there just ain't nothing like Spam-on-a-stick.

-- Greybear (greybear@home.com), January 22, 2000.

eating & drinking whaddaya think?

when i eat & drink $200 of it, i'm back to costco to buy $300 more....

i'm staying prepped from now on!

-- INever (inevercheckmy@onebox.com), January 22, 2000.

Info Junkie, ain't that the truth, that someone will pounce upon your grammer, and then some stupido most zealous, most educated, grammer geek, will pounce upon your sentence. And participle it to the left and right, and they are left, not knowing much more, than from they started.

-- Princess Flicker Spirit (seeking@answers.com), January 22, 2000.

We've been eating ours. Some of it is delicious, some of it we sort of choke down. I'm happy to have it lately...being as it's been like -10 outside all this week, and we're snowed in. It is going a lot faster than I imagined it would for y2k...I don't think we would have made two months on this stuff. HALF of our bottled water is already gone, and that's just from us drinking it. I will say the older bottled water, the ones more than six months old...taste a bit..stale. But when refrigerated, it's not too too bad.

-- kritter (kritter@adelphia.net), January 22, 2000.

rotating....baking bread, making stew, eating too much, heh.

-- Hokie (Hokie_@hotmail.com), January 22, 2000.

What am I doing with supplies? -- Keeping the freeze dried -- Saving money on groceries with the canned goods.

If you have canned goods, rotate your stock -- I stick date labels (month/year bought) on all mine, in addition to whatever may be stamped by the mfr on the cans.

-- A (A@AisA.com), January 22, 2000.

using it. as soon as i can wade through it, i will give some to food banks for things nearing best use by dates, etc. however, for the most part, i bought stuff we normally use and that will keep for a long time. i am just sick of those DAMN water jugs (the translucent)- - i have some of them and they are incredibly fragile.

watching the oil situation unfold for a few more weeks and trying to decide whether i need to start seedlings?

-- tt (cuddluppy@aol.com), January 22, 2000.

Maintaining present inventory levels, even adding a little. Using the old stuff first...a typical FIFO (first in, first out) scenario.

Granted, we have a lot of stuff, but it's nice not having to go to the store, except for fresh produce...this summer, we probably won't have to go to the store at all :-)

Also, should the increase affect food costs, we can tap into our inventory if necessary. I don't regret prepping one bit...I paid last year's prices, and it's there if I need it.

-- Tim (pixmo@pixelquest.com), January 22, 2000.

We're eating ours. It's great to be able to just go to the basement for supplies. It's kind of like having your own private grocery store right here at home.

-- Pearlie Sweetcake (storestuff@home.now), January 22, 2000.

Pearlie: LOL. We know what you mean. Everytime we run out of something upstairs and need to go to the basement to get the next unit, Mrs. Rimmer and I joke about going to "the TP store", "the bleach store", "the trash bag store", "the sugar store", "the wood store", "the detergent store", "the spice store", etc. etc. etc.

This whole preparedness thing was quite a change of lifestyle for us but has also been fairly rewarding. Since December 20th, we have been to the grocery store exactly once - for luxury perishables and to replace depleted stocks.

We will maintain our present level of preparedness for the foreseeable future.

It's been quite rewarding to reach this level of self-reliancy and, since the effects of Y2K have thus far been negligable, there has not really been a downside. Mrs. Rimmer and I are proud of what we have accompliched - that we are prepared to help both ourselves and our neighbors under some adverse circumstances.

Early last year, I thought that I might feel somewhat foolish should our preps not be needed. Today though, not only do I not feel foolish but am also delighted these preps have not been needed thus far.

-- Arnie Rimmer (Arnie_Rimmer@usa.net), January 22, 2000.

Princess, I reluctantly validate your hunch. What is everyone doing with THEIR supplies, not there. "There" is a location, not a plural possessive pronoun. Sorry, no offense intended, but since you mention it...Anyway, among other things, we're saving a lot of money on food and basically enjoying it. Not sorry about prepping a bit. We DID go overboard on the energy preps, though, with diesel generators, solar arrays, and windgennies. Ah, but then, we always did want to untie from the grid, anyway. Aside from transportation, electrical generation is the biggest single polluter in the world, so maybe we'll be doing our bit to help out in that way.

-- Ben Corson (bcorson@dmi.net), January 22, 2000.

store what you eat, eat what you store.

anyone who stored rice and grains properly can look forward to them keeping for at least 10 years.

As for the water, our 300 gallons of stored potable water will remain where it is. Next fall, we will dump it or use it and re-fill the containers.

225 gallons of other usable water just sits.

My situation sounds similar to pearlie and Arnie's.

The "grocery store" in the basement is very convenient. so is the deep freeze filled with properly vacuum-packed meats and other things we regularly eat. No MRE's, no dehydrated emergency food.

Some of this stock will get depleted, but then, I just make ONE trip to SAMS and re-fill.

I hate shopping.

preparation does not equal predication.

-- plonk! (realaddress@hotmail.com), January 22, 2000.

We have been eating ours. I have been hit by a bad colitis attack and I don't feel like going shopping right now. I am so greatful for the food I stockpiled. I can feed my family good food and have opened up some of the cases of Ensure I stored in case the *****colitis came back. As soon as I am feeling better, I will go on a "big Shop" and restock everything. No JIT shopping for this old granny.

-- Homeschooling Grandma (mlaymon@glenn-co.k12.ca.us), January 23, 2000.