Over General Conference weekend, I tested out the food in my 72–hour kit. I wanted to see if I could really survive on the food and water I had stored in the emergency grab bag that I made in the last year. I started on Friday and intended to go through Sunday. Since I'm pregnant, if was hungry for something, I’d let myself pull it from the cupboards or refrigerator.
This is the list of food I had stored in the grab bag:
http://foodstoragemadeeasy.net/2008/06/13/how-to-make-a-72-hour-kit/
I also threw in a few MREs, fruit cups, 20 bottles of water, and several bottles of Gatorade. I knew I wouldn’t eat the beef jerky so I left that out.
The outcome? I lasted two days. I would have survived on the rest of the food if I had to, but I wouldn’t have been happy. I think the MRE I ate on Saturday evening did me in. Fortunately our three-month supply of food that we could eat from home has a lot more variety.
| Friday | Saturday | Sunday | |
| Breakfast | Gatoraid Granola bar Cookies | Oatmeal+water | Quit |
| Lunch | Water+tang Beanie Weenie Water for cleaning Raisins | Spaghetti and meatballs from a microwavable meal – heated it over stove Fruit rollup Cookie Gatorade Raisin From the fridge: Carrots and milk | Quit |
| Dinner | Water+Lipton Soup Granola bar Water to drink Cookies Fruit rollup Water to clean From the fridge: Carrots Apple sauce | Water+Turkey MRE Two lifesavers From the fridge: Cheese Gum | Quit |
Favorites items: I liked the beanie weenies, fruit rollups, fruit cups, life savers, raisins (though these were going stale). Surprisingly, I was thankful for storing the gum. I’ve stopped chewing gum, but in this situation, I was really glad to have it.
Okay items: I’d prefer to only eat only one of these over three days: Granola bar, instant oatmeal, canned pasta, Lipton noodles, MRE.
Least-favorite items: Tang. I threw it out.
Items I didn’t use: I didn’t drink the cocoa mix.
Things I really missed: Milk products and vegetables. I ended up eating carrots and cheese and drinking milk. I tried the powdered milk I had stored in our three-month kit, but it was really nasty to me.
Other things I could have stored, but didn’t and wished I had: Chocolate chip cookies. I kept eating the ones I had made earlier that week. Apple sauce. Canned vegetables.
Water usage: Over two days, I went through 10 bottles of water and 2 Gatorades. This included drinking water and boiling water. I used the water pretty liberally so in an emergency situation I could have probably survived off of less. I would have needed to store lot more water for cleaning. It would have been nice to have a portable wash bin. I used the sink and running water instead.
Other lessons learned:
I only used the wing stove I had once, to cook the Beanie Weenies. The rest I cooked on the stove because I didn’t want to use my fuel pellets. I used an entire pellet of fuel to cook the Beanie Weenies when I could have gotten away with half of one, or maybe a fourth of one.
The website I mentioned above said that I could cook the Beanie Weenies in their can directly over the wing stove. It didn’t give any other instructions. I took the lid off and started cooking the beans in the can, but then realized that I probably should have taken the off of the outside of the can. I actually I wasn’t sure that it would matter, but I was worried the paper would catch fire.
The Beanie Weenie can was soon enveloped in flames and I had to grab tongs and an oven mitt to take the can off of the fire. I couldn’t extinguish the fire by blowing on it. I would have need to throw water over it or spray it with a fire extinguisher that I had on hand.
In the wild, I wouldn’t have had tongs or an oven mitt. I decided that in the future, I’m just going to empty the contents of the can into a camping stove and cook that – which meant I needed to store my camping stove in that bag.
I had never eaten an MRE before, and the box didn’t have instructions on how to prepare it. I was glad I had access to the Internet to give me an idea of how to prepare it. I ended up boiling it. I could also order a flameless stove to cook the MRE in that would only take two tablespoons of water.
http://www.getmres.com/how-to-eat-an-MRE.html
My first MRE.
The MRE was good…. but it did a number on my stomach… and by Sunday, I decided to quit the experiment. My Cheerios and milk with banana never tasted so good.
I’ll write more later about updating my 72-hour supply kit, sans food. I learned a lot of interesting things.
No comments:
Post a Comment