Got the last 140 cans of carrots for 50 cents each at Kroger

[Nickelless]

I went to Kroger at 5:30 this morning, basically on a whim to see if they had any empty 5-gallon buckets in the bakery. So I'm walking into the store and notice that they had canned vegetables on sale for 50 cents each. So I go over to the canned vegetable aisle, and the next thing I know I've got 140 cans of carrots in my cart.






As you guys know, I'm a little OCD when it comes to dehydrating food, but the cans have a purpose: I'm in the process of putting together a large storage closet where I'm going to have a "public" stash of canned goods, dry goods and other food items I can pull from when guests come over so that I don't have to go into any of the rooms of my bunker to pull food out of there and compromise my food storage OPSEC. I think of the up-and-coming storage closet as a sort of staging area that I'll keep filled and rotate goods into it, but I'll have enough on hand in there so that unless there's a major event of some kind and I can't get people out of my house long enough to go down into my deep larder to pull out inventory to restock, I'll have enough food publicly accessible that hopefully in a worst-case scenario (backed up by ADT and my companion Concealed Carrie) if would-be looters see the large amount of food in the storage closet, they'll think that's all I have and they won't even bother looking for the mother lode.

[Rodebaugh]

Are you trying to see through walls?

Man your eyes are going to be great!

[abe]

Man your eyes are going to be great![/quote]

For years I truly believed that carrots were great for your eyes. I can't remember it exactly, but wasn't that what the Brits started during one of the WW's when their big secret was radar. The enemy couldn't figure out how they were detected, so they said they eat alot of carrots to see better, but it was really the radar that was detecting them.
Anybody else ever hear of this and is it true?

[Devil Soundwave]

Brilliant. I thought I was mad for just buying another 60 assorted cans for my prep closet today, and here you are with 140 cans of just carrots!

Wish i could get those cans of white corn here. We only get the yellow stuff.

[Thogey]

Brilliant. I thought I was mad for just buying another 60 assorted cans for my prep closet today, and here you are with 140 cans of just carrots!

Wish i could get those cans of white corn here. We only get the yellow stuff.

We don't know how good we have it here.

A few years ago I kinda of served as a houseboat guide for some British friends.

We went to an average grocery store to pick-up some supplies. These guys walked through the place in stunned disbelief.

They about had a collective orgasm when we passed though the fresh produce section.

[Devil Soundwave]

Yeah man, agreed. US supermarkets are insane. I can see canned beets in that pic too - unheard of here!

Heck, I have to travel across London to a specific supermarket just to get cans of plain old Pinto beans - standard refried bean faire!

Walking round grocery stores is my favourite thing to do in foreign countries, especially the USA!

[Devil Soundwave]

p.s. does white corn taste much different from the yellow stuff? I expect it to be less sweet perhaps?

[Thogey]

It's a little starchy. Funny, my family does not eat a lot of canned vegetables.

We go fresh or frozen. We eat the canned stuff just to rotate stock or when we are in a big hurry.

[billo]

I try to buy cans at 40 cents (doable) or 3/$1 (more difficult).

[Nickelless]

I try to buy cans at 40 cents (doable) or 3/$1 (more difficult).

Yeah, but what size cans are they of which items and where do you buy them? What caught my eye about the carrots at Kroger was that they were cheaper than the price for canned carrots at Walmart.

[Caridad]

i did that one time with baby food. it was when we were really strapped for cash. i had just gotten my paltry paycheck. before i could allow my dh to spend it on what he wanted to i went to the market and just picked up the whole lot! i was letting mothers know about it. i even shared with one or two mothers who didn't get there on time.

[billo]

Nick: wherever and whenever they are on sale, check your weekly ads. But I admit carrots are not as cheap, you prob got a good deal on them. BTW Walmart is not cheap on canned goods in my area.

[JSutter]

I bought a couple cases of mixed veggies at 2/1.00 and am canning up several batches of turkey vegetable soup made with broth and meat from carcasses of 6 turkeys I got at .59 a lb.

[Nickelless]

I bought a couple cases of mixed veggies at 2/1.00 and am canning up several batches of turkey vegetable soup made with broth and meat from carcasses of 6 turkeys I got at .59 a lb.

Do you can soup just like you can other items? I'm doing plenty of dry-canning of dehydrated fruits, veggies and (occasionally) chicken, which is less hassle than trying to set up the cans in a wet bath and hope the seals aren't compromised. That's the one thing that would worry me if I did wet-canning, but with dry-canning there's basically no food poisoning risk unless you have a wide-open jar...then the stuff in the mason jar would just taste really old. I found spinach a while back that I'd put in a Ziploc freezer bag while I was temporarily out of mason jars, and after a year in the freezer bag the spinach tasted really old and...well, I'm not sure how exactly to describe the taste. But suffice to say it wasn't very good! For comparison right after that I cooked up a batch of dehydrated spinach from one of my (well-sealed) mason jars, and it was delicious! I'm about to do a test-run with chicken I dehydrated and put in a mason jar in October 2009. I've been so busy with other things that I haven't had a chance to get around to it yet.

[Devil Soundwave]

Nickeless,

Any chance you can post a few pictures of the food once it's been cooked? I'm interested to see what your dried spinach and dried chicken dishes turn out like...

Ross

[Nickelless]

Nickeless,

Any chance you can post a few pictures of the food once it's been cooked? I'm interested to see what your dried spinach and dried chicken dishes turn out like...

Ross

Yeah, I'll do that hopefully soon. I've been doing so much food dehydration recently that I actually haven't had time to cook any!

[Nickelless]

LMAO!! Someone just posted this on GIM:

http://goldismoney2.com/showthread.php? ... e-Carrrots!

[agmoose]

That was hilarious!

[hobo finds]

I believe that the Cuban was Ponce!

[PennyPauper]

Nickelless what kind of dehydrator do you use or recommend? Can you point me to a good primer either you have or follow. I'm beginning to realize I'm way behind in prepping and looking to get caught up.

[Nickelless]

Nickelless what kind of dehydrator do you use or recommend? Can you point me to a good primer either you have or follow. I'm beginning to realize I'm way behind in prepping and looking to get caught up.

I have 12 Nescos--yes, you read that right--although one of them looks like it has a dead motor now, a casualty of chicken grease from about a year ago when I was dehydrating chicken. Assuming everything works out as planned, I'm going to buy a 9-tray Excalibur before the end of December--they're on sale for about $219 (normally about $299) until the end of the month.

Here are some articles I've written about food dehydration that may help. PM me if you have any questions.

http://survivalprep.net/tag/dehydrating-food/

[PennyPauper]

Thank you. Just what I needed to get me going. Amazon has a 9 tray Excalibur for $185 that I just seen using a link from one of your articles.I'm going to start with one my mom isn't using and go for a nesco or two if I can get them on the cheap.

[Nickelless]

Thank you. Just what I needed to get me going. Amazon has a 9 tray Excalibur for $185 that I just seen using a link from one of your articles.I'm going to start with one my mom isn't using and go for a nesco or two if I can get them on the cheap.

What brand of dehydrator does your mom have? The thing I like about Nesco is that their dehydrators have a fan that pushes the hot air through the chamber, whereas other brands have a heating unit but not a fan and don't dry things well. Let me know more when you get a chance.

[PennyPauper]

I picked it up yesterday,its The Original Bee Beyers food dehydrator,lol, has 5 trays, nice sized heating element,no fan but rated at 96w.I remember doing some nanners and fruits on it years ago and having to pry all the dry foods off the racks.I plan on doing some fruits on it soon as I can get some and have my 3 girls get involved and reward them with some snacks.Then get down to business of prepping some veggies for the canning jars I bought awhile back.
Going to try and get a small fleet of them going and really get to work.Not like I need another side project now but I have 5 mouths to feed and have put this off long enough.

[Nickelless]

PennyPauper, if you can drop $30 or so, I'd suggest getting a Nesco just for comparison. The thing about having a dehydrator with a fan is that you get more uniform drying and stuff dries a lot quicker. I can dry 4 lbs. of thawed frozen carrots per Nesco dehydrator in about 12 hours, 1 lb. of carrots per tray:




And this one-quart jar is 8 lbs. of carrots after dehydration:



I'd be interested in knowing how long it takes your model to dry stuff. As a general rule, make pieces as small as possible before you put them on the dehydrator tray. Also, you mentioned having trouble prying bananas and other fruits off of the rack. Nesco has food-grade plastic mesh sheets to keep stuff from sticking to the trays. It's been a huge help with high-sugar foods:



However, I've resorted to buying high-sugar dehydrated items such as bananas instead of dehydrating them myself just because of the time factor. I placed an order for 42 lbs. of banana chips from BulkFoods.com back in August and have been extremely happy with the quality. For a little over $2 a pound delivered, you really can't beat the price considering they do the dehydration for you and you don't have to worry about 42 lbs. of banana chips sticking to your own dehydrator tray.