Previously we discussed the first on our list of must-haves for your emergency food supply or stockpile, which was fruit and/or vegetable puree pouches.
Which I happened to have had three of so far today.
Today we are going to talk briefly about a second must-have for your emergency food supply, another item that has a great shelf life, is easy to prepare, is inexpensive and, in this case, can serve as the basis for many if not all of your meals.
Rice pouches.
No, I’m not biased toward foods that come in pouch form (although I’m now starting to think I should rethink my article on tuna pouches so I don’t sound like a broken record). It just so happens that the food industry has made a pivot, probably unintentional, towards packaging some of our most needed staple foods in long-lasting pouch form.
At first, these items were likely concocted due to either time constraints or outright laziness on the part of consumers.
If you are not pressed for time, for example, it is orders of magnitude cheaper to prepare your rice on the stove top the old-fashioned way rather than in a pouch in the microwave.
But in this case we are talking about emergency food. And while bulk rice is a major part of an emergency food supply plan, there may be instances where it is not practical, such as in cases where water is hard to come by.
Enter rice pouches which, like most of the items we write about here, require no advanced “prepping” knowledge and can fit right into the “non-prepper’s” current lifestyle very seamlessly.
These are very easy to heat and serve. Just tear the top off the pouch and microwave according to the directions (you can probably heat them up on a stove top as well).
You can get them in many varieties of rice as well as seasoned and specialty versions. You can also get versions with quinoa of you’re into that kind of thing.
They make for a quick and simple base for a meal. You can easily add some canned (or “pouched”) fish as well as any kind of vegetables that you like and there you have it. You have made a quick, easy, simple, balanced meal made of whole foods from your emergency stockpile without having to resort to chemical and preservative-laden MREs and you have done so in just a matter of minutes.
See? Just when you were thinking food shortages, famine, and social chaos were only bad news!
But seriously, these pouches are wonderful in a pinch, perhaps when you need to save water and don’t want to use it to cook raw rice or are just really hampered for time or energy.
And these are still easy to get at the grocery store or online so there is no reason why you cannot stock up on them now.
Perhaps those of us who have been lamenting our society’s slide away from being able to prepare even the simplest of dishes should now be grateful that the big food producers have responded by inadvertently stocking our shelves with tons of emergency food supply-appropriate items so we can live our lives as close to normally as possible, even in a food shortage or famine.
Have any favorites that work in an emergency food stockpile? Let us know in the comments below!