So you want a year supply?

The past few weeks we have been asked several times a week for advice on how to just buy a year supply of food RIGHT NOW. When people ask you that kind of question there isn’t a one size fits all answer. Standard food storage packages or calculators don’t seem to meet most individual’s needs. Over at our other blog Food Storage Made Easy we are planning on doing an in depth answer via a webinar soon on this topic however today we’re talking about one small part of it.

For this post I’m going to talk about a year supply of varied food ingredients that you can use to make regular meals with. I’m also going to show you some alterations you can make to this package to suit your dietary needs, budget, or current supply. There are other philosophies and concepts such as bare bones wheat and beans plans or luxury just-add-water meal plans that take all the planning out of it. There are pro’s and con’s to all options depending on how you look at it.

I’m going to use a Basic 1 year supply plan from Thrive Life for today’s example. You can see the original package here on our Thrive webpage. The cost for this type of food storage supply is not as cheap as bare bones supplies, but not as pricey as just-add-water meals. I’m going to show you some options you can use to substitute and alter this plan to suite your liking.

Please note: Thrive offers “Unadvertised Specials” that are not listed on their website and can only be purchased through a consultant (that’s us!). You can order those using our special secure order form if you are interested in building your package for less money (it saves a lot versus buying in one of these standard big packages). Some of the packages are currently out of stock but if you leave a note in your order notes that you’d like to be notified when they become available again we will make sure we can get them to you as soon as possible. Lots of people are worried about building their supplies right now so stocks are limited with all food companies.

Basic 1 Year Freeze-Dried & Dehydrated Food Supply
Total Servings: 9,900
Total Calories: 465,513
Average Calories Per Day: 1,275

Package Contents

The Basic 1 Year Freeze Dried and Dehydrated Food Supply package includes #10 cans of freeze dried and dehydrated foods in the following quantities:

Grains

• 1 10 Grain Pancake Mix
• 1 9 Grain Cracked Cereal
• 1 Cornmeal
• 4 White Flour
• 2 Germade (creamy wheat cereal)
• 4 Quick Oats
• 3 White Rice
• 3 Hard White Winter Wheat

ALTERATIONS: This amounts to about 88 pounds of grains. When storing foods you can sub pound for pound with your grains. You can shop at a local health store or even some grocery store for bulk grains and cut down the cost tremendously here. You can also modify which grains you store to have more or less of things you would actually eat.

Vegetables

• 3 Broccoli – Freeze Dried
• 2 Cauliflower – Freeze Dried
• 4 Sweet Corn – Freeze Dried
• 4 Green Peas – Freeze Dried
• 2 Potato Chunks – Dehydrated
• 2 Chopped Spinach – Freeze Dried
• 3 Green Beans – Freeze Dried

ALTERATIONS: This ends up being 20 #10 cans of veggies. If you purchase 3 cases of the Unadvertised Specials Vegetable Variety Pack, you’ll get 18 #10 cans of veggies and you can choose to add a couple extra cans of vegetables you know you’re family would specifically love. Buying the Vegetable Variety Packs will save you about $90 as opposed to buying each of the 18 #10 cans individually. The 2 extra cans can be purchased directly on our consultant website or you can add them to your order on our specials form. You can also choose to store some cans of tomatoes or other vegetables you can yourself to make up the difference.

Fruits

• 1 Sliced Bananas – Freeze Dried
• 1 Blackberries – Freeze Dried
• 2 Mangos – Freeze Dried
• 2 Peach Slices – Freeze Dried
• 1 Raspberries – Freeze Dried
• 4 Strawberries – Freeze Dried

ALTERATIONS: This ends up being 11 #10 cans of fruits. If you purchase one of each of the 2Unadvertised Specials Fruit Packs (Fruit Variety and Tropical Fruit), you’ll get 12 #10 cans of fruits. The pricing on that will save you about $100.

Dairy

• 1 Chocolate Drink Mix
• 3 Powdered Milk
• 1 Instant Milk

ALTERATIONS: This ends up being about 16 pounds of milk. If you bought each of these cans separately you would spend around $115. If you buy the Unadvertised Special Milk Bucket, you would get 28 pounds (more than you need if you’re just doing a 1 person) for more than $30 cheaper. You would have only one variety of milk but it would be a great cost savings. Especially if you’re planning for more than one person and needed more than just the 16.

Meats & Beans

• 3 Whole Egg Powder
• 1 Chopped Chicken – Freeze Dried
• 2 Diced Ham – Freeze Dried
• 2 Kidney Beans
• 2 Pinto Beans
• 1 Diced Turkey – Freeze Dried
• 3 Ground Beef – Freeze Dried
• 3 Roast Beef – Freeze Dried
• 1 Sausage Crumbles – Freeze Dried

ALTERATIONS: This ends up being 11 #10 cans of meats. Freeze-dried meats are more expensive than beans and more expensive than TVP. They’re pretty much awesome to have and would really fill out your cooking options but if cost is an issue this is where you could save. You could consider buying the Unadvertised Specials Meat Package to get 6 #10 cans and replace some cans with beans or TVP. Beans are also fairly inexpensive in bulk at the same kinds of stores you can get grains in bulk. (The meat package is currently backordered if you’d like to order it fill out the form and we will notify you when it becomes available.)

Basics

• 1 Iodized Salt
• 1 Brown Sugar
• 1 Powdered Sugar
• 4 White Sugar

ALTERATIONS: Every year around Thanksgiving baking items go on sale. These are items you can pick up at your local grocery store for great prices during that time. If you like storing it in buckets you can get a bucket of white sugar for fairly inexpensive by purchasing an Unadvertised Special White Sugar Bucket.

Drinks

• 2 Orchard Apple Drink
• 1 Orange Bliss Drink

ALTERATIONS: Depending on your family’s tastes these can be purchased or substituted for other options.

Entrees (just-add-water meal mixes that are ready in 10 minutes!)

• 8 Baked Potato Cheese Soup
• 8 Broccoli Cheese Soup

These entrees in #10 cans are not available for sale outside of the packages. We actually prefer meals to come in smaller pouches so you can make one meal at a time and leave the rest sealed for longer storage. Thrive has some good options in their Thrive Express food line. You could order 3-4 variety packs or purchase boxes of your favorite items. You can also consider sampling Just Add Water Meals from other companies and stocking up on the ones your family enjoys the most or fit your nutritional and/or budgetary needs.

Hopefully that gives you a good start on figuring out how to come up with YOUR OWN personalized “year supply” plan. Make sure to tune in over at foodstoragemadeeasy.net next week for more details on the Webinar where we will discuss this concept in even more depth.

BUY ON A BUDGET
If you love the idea of getting your year supply but can’t afford to do it all at once in big packages like this, you may want to consider signing up for the Thrive Q program. It allows you to set your budget and receive all the items you want each month within your budget. You can even order the special “unadvertised specials” packages inside of your Q. If you need help getting it set up or have any questions about how the Q works please feel free to email us at [email protected]

- Jodi Weiss Schroeder
http://yourthrivelife.com