Where’s Your Beef? | Real Women Store Grub

Mine is in cans. Mostly because we moove a lot. (Sorry, brace yourself for bad cow humor!)

Growing up we had freezers full of beef, and since we lived in a cool climate, there was never much worry that the power would go out, and we’d lose our meat supply. Living in the South has changed that for me. The first hurricane I weathered (!), we lost everything in our freezer in about 2 days. Yikes! To further complicate the situation, our family moves what feels like constantly, and we don’t always have enough advance notice to eat through a freezer full of meat.

To meet these challenges in my food storage plan (no pun intended), I’ve “cultured” a taste for canned meats. I’ve found that many of our favorites adapt easily to canned beef. You won’t catch me serving canned beef to our guests at Sunday dinner, but for a quick weeknight meal, I think it’s a great addition to my pantry!

I buy my canned beef from Costco. For some reason they don’t seem to carry it at Sam’s Club. You can also buy freeze-dried beef from various locations like Emergency Essentials or Honeyville Grains. Today it’s about $48 for a #10 can. I’d recommend trying out some meals using the canned or freeze-dried beef to see how your family likes them before stocking your pantry. Also, give some thought to your food storage requirements. Are you trying to build a storage plan that doesn’t require a refrigerator or freezer? Do you move often? Do you want to use pre-cooked foods so they require less fuel? How much money are you able/willing to spend on your food storage?

There aren’t any wrong answers to these questions, but identifying what will work best for your family will allow you to filter out information, ideas or recipes that don’t fit with your lifestyle. Remember, the only wrong way to build your food storage plan is not to do it! What fits the requirements of my life, may be totally impractical for what you deal with on a daily basis. Just because your meat is in your freezer or on the cow in the back pasture, doesn’t mean you aren’t food storaging — it just means that your requirements are different than mine. The HOA here would have a cow if I tried to store beef in my backyard!