GO-3.0/tools/qortino-knowledge/docs/survival/food-storage-cooking.md

Food Storage and Off-Grid Cooking

Educational preparedness information.

The three-layer pantry

1. Working pantry (2-4 weeks): more of what you already eat. Rotate by first-in-first-out; write purchase dates on lids with a marker.
2. Extended storage (3-12 months): shelf-stable staples — white rice, oats, pasta, beans, lentils, canned meat and fish, canned vegetables and tomatoes, flour, salt, sugar, honey, cooking oils, coffee/tea, spices. Canned food is typically safe well past best-before dates if cans are intact, not bulging, rusted through, or leaking; quality declines before safety does. Never taste-test a suspect can — botulism is odorless.
3. Deep storage (years-decades): dry staples packed for the long haul — see below.

Packing dry goods for decades

The proven method: dry goods sealed in Mylar bags with oxygen absorbers, inside food-grade buckets with lids. Oxygen removal stops insects (including eggs already in the grain) and oxidation. White rice, wheat berries, beans, oats, pasta, sugar, and salt stored this way last 20-30 years. Rules of thumb:

• 300-500 cc of oxygen absorber per 4 L of packed dry goods; err high.
• Do not pack anything above ~10% moisture (no brown rice, nuts, or oily goods long-term — the fats go rancid regardless; brown rice lasts ~6-12 months).
• Squeeze out air, heat-seal the Mylar with a clothes iron on a straight edge, label contents and date. A properly sealed bag pulls tight and "bricks" within a day or two as the absorber works.
• Sharp dry pasta punctures thin bags and vacuum seals over time — pad the ends, double-bag, or choose short shapes. If a vacuum bag has lost its seal, the food isn't automatically spoiled, but its long-term clock restarts.
• Sugar, salt, and honey need no oxygen absorber (absorbers turn sugar into a brick). Honey keeps essentially forever; hardened honey re-liquefies in warm water.

Protein depth

Canned fish and meat, pressure-canned home stock, dry-cured and salted meat, hard cheeses in wax, powdered eggs and milk, and shelf-stable fats: ghee and tallow are outstanding preparedness fats — shelf-stable for years, high smoke point, calorie-dense (~9 kcal/g). Learn pressure canning if you want to store low-acid foods (meat, broth, vegetables) safely at home; a boiling water bath is only safe for high-acid foods (jams, pickles, tomatoes with added acid). Follow tested recipes exactly — improvised canning is the main modern source of botulism.

Cooking without the grid

Options by scenario, with fuel math:

• Butane/propane camp stove: the workhorse. A 220 g butane canister gives roughly 1.5-2 hours of moderate flame; a 9 kg propane cylinder (~18 L of liquid fuel) runs a two-burner camp stove for tens of hours. Ventilate — every flame indoors makes carbon monoxide.
• Rocket stove: burns twigs and scrap wood with high efficiency outdoors; boils 1 L on a handful of sticks. Buildable from bricks or cans.
• Wood stove / fireplace: heat + cooking if you have one; store dry, split wood under cover (softwood ~1 year seasoning, hardwood 1-2 years).
• Solar cooker: free fuel on sunny days; a reflective panel cooker reaches 120-180 °C — slow but silent and fuel-free.
• Thermal cooking: bring a pot to a boil, then seal it in a heavily insulated box or dedicated thermal cooker; residual heat finishes rice, beans, and stews with a fraction of the fuel. This single trick can halve fuel use.
• Cast iron and stainless: cookware that works over open flame; nonstick coatings fail over campfire heat.

Eating well under stress

Store what you eat, eat what you store: appetite fatigue is real, especially in children — familiar food, spices, and some comfort items (chocolate, coffee, honey) matter for morale. Aim for ~8,400 kJ (2,000 kcal) per adult per day baseline, more for heavy labor and cold. Salt is critical and nearly free — store several kilograms. A hand-crank grain mill turns stored wheat berries into flour; without one, wheat berries still cook as a porridge. Sprouting jars turn stored lentils and seeds into fresh greens with vitamin C in 3-5 days — one of the few renewable "fresh" foods in a long grid-down scenario.

Garden and foraging notes

A modest garden of calorie-dense, cold-hardy crops (potatoes, cabbage, kale, root vegetables) plus preserved harvest extends any pantry — grow what suits your climate. Foraging: never eat any wild plant or mushroom you cannot identify with 100% certainty from multiple features; learn from local experts and start with unmistakable species in your region (e.g. bilberries, crowberries, and angelica in the North Atlantic). Wild greens like dandelion and nettle (cooked) are widespread, nutritious, and hard to confuse.