Bulk food buyers and storers

[black_son_of_gray]

Our bulk purchase routines have changed slightly over the last few years.

We keep bulk quantities of water, rice, oats, peanut butter, tomatoes, and beans (usually black, kidney, garbanzo).

Initially, I bought a few buckets and lids, and that was where we kept (mostly) oats that I bought in 50lb bags from restaurant supply stores. Managing the bucket turnover wasn't too big a deal, but we found that shipping cost from most places online was enough to shift "great prices" back into the territory of "decent prices".

As a result, we've moved away from buying online to bulk purchases from Costco*. We have one only a few miles away, and we go about 3 times per year. Last time we went, oats in 10lb bags were at ~$0.70-0.80/lb. My upper and lower bounds on oats are ~10lbs (need to buy more) and 50lbs (buy until hitting this amount). That means I usually buy 30-40 lbs at a time. Keeping them in the original manufacturers bag means only 10lbs are unsealed/air-exposed at a time.

Similarly with peanut butter, we buy the 28oz containers and usually keep 10-20lbs. Ditto the flats of canned tomatoes and beans.

All of this costs slightly more than buying and storing bulk dry goods, but the advantage (that I think is worth paying for) of buying the canned beans/tomatoes is that we basically live on top of a major fault line, with 'the Big One' being a constant background thought. In such an event, I'm not expecting the taps or electric or gas to be flowing for at least a week--that's what I'm planning for, at least--and it's peace of mind to know I can just open a can/jar or let oats just sit in water for a while (or eat dry). That said, I do hate paying for water. Seems like the workarounds (things like filters/tanks) also have a mandatory minimum cost...

*We initially paid for the Costco membership because we were moving and needed to make big new-home purchases (e.g. mattress,etc.), but quickly found out that the savings to be had through annual optical purchases (contacts) and filling up the tank at their gas station when making a shopping trip, pretty much nulled out the price of membership.

I'm blessed with being able to get my hands on cheap produce within walking distance, and that is most of what we eat (though I do oats/PB pretty much daily), so my maintaining of bulk food supplies is mostly about contingency planning, not cost savings. I'd certainly be interested in hearing what other people's upper and lower bounding bands are for their food supply management, and how they came to those numbers? Is it mostly a cost thing, or is it a contingency thing (disaster? multi bread-basket failure?) Both?

[jacob]

why do you freeze them first? Remove moisture?

It kills any potential insects or their eggs.

[jacob]

I'm blessed with being able to get my hands on cheap produce within walking distance, and that is most of what we eat (though I do oats/PB pretty much daily), so my maintaining of bulk food supplies is mostly about contingency planning, not cost savings. I'd certainly be interested in hearing what other people's upper and lower bounding bands are for their food supply management, and how they came to those numbers? Is it mostly a cost thing, or is it a contingency thing (disaster? multi bread-basket failure?) Both?

The system is mostly about self-reliance, cost, and convenience. It's just a lot easier to "shop" in the buckets or pick something out of the backyard than it is to constantly have to go to the supermarket. Point being, the most important thing about the system is that it is integrated in daily use. I'm not sure I would want to have one of those "1000 freeze dried meals" packages sitting uneaten under the bed just in case. But yeah, during the COVID lockdowns, the system definitely came in handy.

The size of the system (how many buckets) is mostly about space and access. We technically have enough room to store much more, but it's easier to keep rotation periods under a year with a smaller inventory. That way we avoid mylar bags, deoxigenation (or whatever it's called), ... As it is, the buckets fit single-level on a few shelves and some furniture that I built to fit. It would be annoying if I had to physically dig out a bucket because there are other buckets stacked on top.

[chris580]

Asian grocery stores are a great place to find a wide variety of high quality, highly nutritious Asian rice sold in bulk. The brown Korean rice I’ve bean eat twice a week for years almost tastes like nuts, much better than the highly processed, industrialized varieties found at the typical grocery store. Indian grocery stores have the same for basmati rice as well a huge selection of dried legumes and spices at very reasonable prices. Wish I could find a place for bulk organic oats, been eating oats for breakfast every day for about a decade, and love them!

[slsdly]

I vacuum seal into mason jars, ask me anything.

I love it. Been doing it for years now. The main drawbacks are the upfront investment in the jars (I have hundreds of 1L wide mouth mason jars) and their weight (the collective empty jars are over 1 kg per dozen). I generally achieve a density of about 650-750g per 1L jar for grain/legumes, so ~3 dozen jars for 25 kg bulk bags. The seal has only failed a handful of times for me, typically when the lid was already warped and I didn't notice. Food tastes as fresh as the day I bought it.

I bought this attachment for my vacuum sealer. FWIW, I found the regular mouth jar attachment barely works, but the wide mouth jar attachment is perfect. Might have been a manufacturing defect. I didn't care as I standardized on wide mouth, if only because it was easier for filling and cleaning:
https://www.amazon.ca/FoodSaver-FCARWJA ... B016OL1AB6

I was unable to buy the amber mason jars in any great quantities, so I use mostly clear. If I could get amber, I would, even for a higher price, just for the light filtering. You can always just put them in a big box though.

Make sure you leave at least 2cm of headroom, otherwise your contents might come flying out when you break the seal.

[thef0x]

This thread was what brought me to the forum so I thought I'd chime in a year later.

We're very happy with our gamma-seal buckets and huge quantity of dried goods from Azure Standard. My family gave me a lot of guff about our food bunker but our grocery savings paid for a bunch of our trip to France (which they did not take) so who's eating fancy cheese in Europe now?!

Family favorites: all the beans, flour (we're still buying this at costco), quinoa, chia seeds, and raisins. Oats have been moving slowly out of the house but I'm thinking oat milk is going to be the primary way to hasten said pace; I can only force myself to eat so many oats, it seems.

We have a huge supply in our cool, dark, low-ish humidity basement. No issues with storage so far.

Lots of chili (black&pinto+tomato base or creamy white bean+green chili), hummus, split pea soup with ham hock, minestrone, brown lentil + tomato soup, and sweet cold soaked oats (blended oats, raisin, chia, frozen berries). Raisins = candy for my two year old, chia = sprinkles in his morning yogurt (explosion).

We have yet to exhaust any of our 50lb bags except the flour. We spend $593 on our first purchase with a 15% discount and we got 300lbs of food, including seconds-pears and dried mango (which did not last, so good). This might not sound like a good price ($2/lb) but across all the items we purchased, we saved money per pound off non-organic staples while upgrading to high quality, better tasting, and organic foods.

I cannot recommend these changes enough. Thanks to all of the comments here, they began a chain reaction in my life that has been bountiful!

[Ego]

A friend of mine bought a storage unit full of these bulk (aprox. 20 liter) food-grade containers with spin on lids. They were from a French pharmaceutical company and originally contained dextrose. He sold them to me for $5 each. I had kept some of the bulk food in our storage locker inside of one of the Zarges cases and it came out a year later in perfectly edible condition. I will be ordering oats, flax seeds and maybe a few other things from Azure Standard soon. Still cannot beat their prices.