Prudent Prepping: A Milestone In My Preps

The dust has settled and the First 72 Hours have passed. Follow along as I build a long term plan via Prudent 
Prepping.

With some discipline in my budget (not my strongest suit) I've been able to buy my first bucket of freeze-dried, long-term storage food!

This has been a struggle, right from the start of my posts at Blue Collar Prepping. I'm pretty sure I've written about food and how to store it more than any other topic, and I'm positive whatever is in second place is way behind.

Even with saving more, I still have to be extremely careful with how I look to spend money. What did I buy? I'm glad you asked!

Mountain House "Just In Case" Classic Meal Assortment
 

https://amzn.to/2qAmATG

I'm going with what I know to be a good brand and with a good assortment of food I know and like.

From the Mountain House website:

Mountain House Just in Case... Classic Bucket is the perfect solution for those who want a reliable emergency food supply that doesn't take up a ton of space. With 29 servings of some of our most delicious options, Mountain House Classic Assortment Bucket is compact and easy to store just about anywhere – even in your car for that next camping adventure.

Mountain House Classic Assortment Bucket contains two pouches of each delicious meal:

• Beef Stroganoff with Noodles
• Chicken Teriyaki with Rice
• Beef Stew
• Lasagna with Meat Sauce
• Noodles & Chicken
• Granola with Milk & Blueberries

This is just a start in the change-out of regular grocery items in my pantry and the Buckets of Holding that I've been using to store my disaster prepping food. I'll still be using the original buckets for quite a while, since the Classic Assortment is not enough to fill all five buckets at one time; in fact, I'll be leaving the Mountain House pail as-is for the foreseeable future, since it has a good start on meals and there isn't any reason to try to squeeze a water filter in there. I have too many standard food items and other supplies (like a filter, can opener and bulky foods) that are perfectly fine right now, and I see no need to rush into swapping them out, even if I could afford it (which I can't). The Master Chief is still going to buy his own stores and I will buy mine, but both of us are looking to complement each other and duplicate as little as possible.

Food For The Holidays
It's almost time for me to go through my stored goods and weed out the short 'Sell By' dated foods. It's also the time where I add one or two extra things to my regular grocery list and put them into the Food Bank collection barrels I see in the local stores. The short dated things I drop off myself and, depending on where the donation station is, I may buy a Turkey Voucher instead of a frozen one to drop off. The economy is improving here, but the need for food is still the same as last year.

The Takeaway

• Have a plan and be honest with it and yourself. 
• I do know how to save, I'm just not very good at it. 
• Finding what is important, really important, made the difference for me.

The Recap

• One Mountain House Classic Meal Assortment: $75.71 with Prime from Amazon.

Just a reminder: if you plan on buying anything through Amazon, please consider using our referral link. When you do, a portion of the sale comes back here to help keep this site running!

If you have comments, suggestions or corrections, please post them so we all can learn. And remember, Some Is Always Better Than None!

NOTE: All items tested were purchased by me. No products have been loaned in exchange for a favorable review. Any items sent to me for T&E will be listed as such. Suck it Feds.