Another option for cooking/heating/water purification would be what we called "buddy burners" in the boy scouts; take a clean, empty can, and cut a cardboard strip(ideally, one, but sometimes others must be used to fill up the space available until you have a better idea of the exact length that is most suitable) such that it can be inserted into the can in a spiral strip equal to the depth of the can(or slightly higher), holes up(and down).

Obtain what once was a common item---sealing wax, aka parrafin---and put a few of the slabs in the top part of a double-boiler.(in the event of no double-boiler, one can place a smaller pan inside a larger pan about half-full of water).  Heat the water below, and the transfer will melt the parrafin; pour the parrafin over the center of your cans until filled, then wait a few minutes and add more.

i intend to do this with many cat-food cans, as in the event of a large-scale power-shutdown, say after an earthquake, gas supplies won't be available either; one can simply remove the burner gas deflector from under the grill-plates, put down a buddy-burner, and cook your food/sterilize your water, etc. (They are also practical/thoughtful gifts for those living under bridges or on the street, too.)

Since these are, in essence, simply large candles, they stink like crazy when you put them out; i recommend using a can of slightly-larger diameter than your buddy burner so as to snuff it out when done, then wait about half-an-hour before taking the now-cooled cans outside to allow the disagreeable odor to dissipate.

While clay pots of sufficient size are expensive, so is food---and having a choice between making an evaporative refrigerator and letting food spoil is really a no-brainer, for me...especially during a wide-spread power outage, when no icemakers anywhere within a reasonable distance will be working, hence the near-uselessness of coolers after approx 36 hours or less, if not kept in a cool or shady place.  The clay pots, however, seem to work better in direct sunlight, as the faster that evaporation takes place, the more cool things become inside.

About 4-5' underground, temps stay a fairly-constant 55 F, but even that would not be cold enough to store anything other than root veg for very long, and it takes a good while to dig any ground out deep and wide enough to make a root cellar, unless one has prepared in advance.

Those who take zero measures in advance of a natural(or man-made) disaster are those caught with their pants down, kicking themselves for not having prepared for anything, and thinking about preying on those who HAVE prepared.

i just viewed a video last evening for a device that utilizes Keely's resonant harmonic frequency theories to heat 100 F water---1.7gal---to 184 F in 2 minutes, using naught but a 9v battery.  Try that on your cookstove, and time it, for comparison purposes.

If any express an interest, i can share the link.

As for canned goods, try googling "Bisphenol A", and beware normal canned foods; better to do as suggested earlier, and bring what you'd like to can to a Mormon facility, and/or learn to use Ball/Mason jars to can yer own.

With goodwill to all the People-

Hatman

A camping or backpacking stove is a good idea to have, too.

I was very grateful indeed for my two-burner Coleman stove and fuel some years ago when a major natural gas line near my home was ruptured and gas shut off for some time. I ate quite well for a little over a day using ordinary canned goods and a few things from my camping stash.

Backpacking stoves are amazingly efficient and very easy to store although sometimes a challenge to use. Been a number of years since I saw one demonstrated and never have used one myself, so perhaps their design has been refined somewhat since then.

True, Wgal, and Mormon sources sell sizable PETE barrels for storing water.   Of course, not all families store dehydrated foods such as I mentioned although the #10 cans of dehydrated food would likely be most economical for a large family. The catalog we got offered all the typical veggies as well as other combinations such as anyone who's used dehydrated backpacking foods is familiar with. Wouldn't be a bad idea actually for a single person or couple to keep a sizable supply of backpacker's foods. They're highly compressed so wouldn't take up much room where that's a concern and actually not that bad tasting. I've had some quite adequate meals of things like dehydrated goulash or stroganoff. These are pretty expensive, however, but might make up for that in ease of storage for one or two people. 

From what I recall, many Mormon families simply buy big bags of dried beans, flour, sugar, etc. that they can use on a regular basis, too, as well as other basic grocery items that most of us probably stock. It just depends on how much a family wants to get into this self-sufficiency aspect of their faith.

Also, you can take your own homegrown foods to a Mormon cannery if you don't have the resources to do your own canning or a place to store homecanned foods which do have to be kept fairly cool to prevent spoilage unlike grocery canned foods. 

And I was mistaken, I just learned. Mormons are commanded to store only a three-month supply. The ideal is a full year. This brief explanation of the basics may be of interest:  jozhaus.wordpress.com/food-storage/

Sep 13, 2011 -- 1:53AM, Paravani wrote:

Sep 13, 2011 -- 1:36AM, Wanderingal wrote:

Not that I'm into the idea of long term food storage for the coming conflagration or end times oranything resembling it but--

I have a question--

What's wrong with canned items and dried items like jerky? I have friends who make jerky because they like the taste--wouldn't that last a long time?

And what about cans of tuna etc?

Lots of protein in a small space.

Almsot everything comes in canned food form.

Not picking on anyone--butI 'll bet traditional Mormons would know the answers to a lot of these qeusrions...

Hi, All!  Hi, Wgal!

You're thinking, you're definitely thinking...  but you're not thinking longterm enough.

Imagine that we've been thrown back to the 18th or 19th century, when electrical power simply wasn't available.  Don't laugh -- I'm a power engineer, and I can see several scenarios in which we would have to live without electricity for a decade or more.  So, if that were the case, how would you preserve food to last you through the winter?

The coolest environment you'd have would be a "root cellar"  -- okay for potatoes, but forget about ice cream.

I'd use salt to preserve meat strips, and metabisulfite to preserve dried fruit.

Lots of vegetables can be dried.  Carrot strips can be dried without any great loss of nutrients; so can beets and spinach and mushrooms.

I'll bet you can think of more things to preserve, and how.  Please contribute recipes to this thread?

But you don't need electrivity to operate a can opener.

And canned items will certainly last a lot longer than anything that's dried.

I've got canned fruit and veggies and potatoes and meat and....well you get the idea.

 And we can't GROW food because....?

You know--that is what people in the 18th and 19th centuries did--grow their own food.

Why--millions of people do it even to this day.

Much esoterica...........................

We're not talking about the end times here, I think. Just chatting about fridges and freezers in a short stess time. Not al lof us are weenies : we can pop down to the local convenience store and buy some ice. What if we did loose all in our freezers and fridges? That would not be some ultra anomaly. Life is filled with challenges. This was rather minor, but I know from my younger daughter the traffic mess caused more pain : three and a half hours in gridlock.

Let's fix our antiquated infrasructure  on many levels and put people to work.