Welcome!
Welcome to week #3 in the “72 Hour Kit Ideas: A week by week approach” series.
This series is all about making it simple and do-able to get a 72 hour kit put together for you and your family.
Creating such a kit can be overwhelming and financially difficult to do all at once. But through this series, I’ve broken it down for you into 26 small steps! You can see all the steps here. Just take one small baby step each week and in 6 months you will have a well stocked, personalized kit!
You can even go through the series a few times over a year or two adding just the most basic supplies the first six months and then a few more “extra” supplies each time you cycle through it again.
Want even more help?
This series is also available as an e-book. Purchasing the e-book gives you a few additional benefits over just reading the free series:
- Additional details and tips
- The ability to print the entire book!
- Pictures of my own kit showing just how I pack each week.
Download “Your Own 72 Hour Kit Plan” E-Book Now!
Last Week:
I hope all of you were able to add something to help you purify water to your kit last week. Water is absolutely essential to life. You will not survive 3 days without water.
| Photo Credit: o5com |
Week #4: Food
You could survive without food for 3 days, but it wouldn’t be smart or comfortable! You will have headaches, and experience serious fatigue and dizziness as your blood sugar levels are depleted. You will likely be irritable and mentally fatigued. That is not the condition you want to be in following some sort of disaster. You will need all the physical and mental resources you can muster. Plan to have plenty of food (calories) in your 72 hour kit.
In addition to high in calories, you will want your food to be lightweight, nutritious, appetizing, familiar, and easy to prepare.
This week, plan what food you will put in your family’s 72 hour kit. Don’t worry about buying it yet, you will do that next week! Just decide what you will include and where you will buy it; that is a big enough project for one week! Amazon is a good option as is Costco, especially if you will be going in with another family or two!
Ideas / Options:
Consider the following as you decide which will work best for your family. I will mention a few things to avoid as well as give some suggestions of what you might want to include.
What to Avoid:
- Pop-top cans (soups etc.): They can pop open rather easily and create quite a mess in your bag.
- Jolly Ranchers: They melt! Once they’ve melted they are difficult to eat.
- Mint Gum: If kept with your other food, it makes everything taste like mint (You could keep it elsewhere if this is a good comfort food for you).
- Nuts: Because of the high fat content, they go rancid rather quickly. If you are really good at rotating them every 6 months, they should be fine, but if you know you tend to rotate less often, you may want to avoid them.
- Crackers: These are great options unless they are in a position where they are easily crushed/ smashed. Then, they become difficult to eat. If you do use them, put them inside an older Pringles tube (or similar).
- Fruit / Applesauce cups: They don’t stay sealed very well, which can result in a big mess all over your kit. Pouches are a better option.
- Canned Goods: This is just personal preference, but they are heavy and bulky. They don’t taste great cold. If you do choose to include them, you will also need a can opener.
- MRE’s: Prone to exploding and very unfamiliar….they just don’t taste great!
Suggestions / Ideas:
- Dehydrated / freeze dried fruit (VERY lightweight. Freeze dried = same nutrition as fresh).
- Fruit leather / fruit roll ups.
- Canned fruit (include a can opener).
- Squeezable fruit Pouches.
- Squeezable applesauce.
- Instant oatmeal packets (you will need water and a heat source to eat these).
- Instant milk (Milk is a HUGE comfort food for my kids and this tastes just like fresh).
- Dry cereal (like cheerios) in a vacuum sealed bag.
- Fruit drink mixes (These are vitamin fortified and will provide needed electrolytes).
- Hot cocoa.
- Shelf stable almond or rice milk.
- Cans of juice (single serving).
- Crackers with a small jar (non glass) of jelly or honey. Put crackers inside an old Pringles tube (or similar) with a knife all ready to spread peanut butter!
- Trail Mix (Be careful of the shelf life on the nuts…make sure you rotate them regularly or vacuum pack them).
- Rice cakes.
- Granola.
- Granola bars / Nutri-grain Bars.
- Quaker breakfast bars, cookies etc.
- Annies Bunnies.
- Raisins / Craisins.
- Yogurt raisins.
- Jif Peanut Butter To-Go.
- Animal crackers.
- Slim Jims.
- Beef jerky.
- Fig Newtons.
- Goldfish.
- Starkist Lunch To-Go (Tuna with crackers).
- Nuts (Be careful of the shelf life on the nuts…make sure you rotate them regularly or vacuum pack them).
- Thrive Express! (Just add water meals that taste great! You will need to make sure you have water and a heat source to eat them).
- Laughing Cow cheese wedges (no refrigeration required).
- Canned ravioli / Spaghettios.
- Canned beans / chili / stew.
- Canned chicken / tuna + mayo / relish packets.
- Dried soup mixes (You will need to make sure you have water and a heat source to eat them. These can be purchased in a larger size and then re-packed with a vacuum seal into smaller more manageable sizes).
- Raman Noodles / Cup of Noodles.
- MRE’s (Usually come with their own heater and require no separate water / heat source. Relatively long (5 yr) shelf life. Are prone to explode. Don’t taste great).
- Shelf stable sausage sticks (like Hickory Farms. MUST rotate).
- Hormel Completes (or similar).
What we have done in our family
My Goals
- I really wanted food that was high in calories.
- I did not want food that required cooking or using any dishes. I figure if I’m using my kit, I won’t need the extra stress of cooking with a mini stove and doing dishes. I also didn’t want the extra weight of carrying a stove, pots, pans, plates, utensils.
- I wanted the food to be lightweight and,
- Full of things my kids enjoy eating.
I included instant milk because it is a HUGE comfort food for my kids. I also included peach drink mix because it is PACKED with vitamins and I wanted as much nutrition as possible.
I spent about $1.90 per meal and got over 2250 calories per person per day.
We rotate through this food every 6 months. It is a fun tradition. Every 6 months, the leaders of our religion speak to church membership worldwide via satellite. We snack on this food while we listen to them!
You can find more details about our food kits, including where I bought everything here: An Ideal 72 Hour Food Kit
How about you?
Leave me a comment and tell me how you’ve decided to add food to your kit. What are you adding? Why? What will you be doing this week?
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| Week #2: Making Water Safe | Week #4: Purchase & Organize Food | Week #1: Water to Carry | Series Into: 72 Hour Kit Series, A Week by week approach |
Becky is a wildlife enthusiast and pet and livestock care expert with a diploma in canine nutrition. With over a decade of experience in animal welfare, Becky lends her expertise to Simple Family Preparedness through insightful info about pets, livestock, bee keeping, and the practicalities of homesteading.
These are some great ideas, especially the shelf reliance food, it is really light and delicious. I also enjoy the other ideas for using things we may already have in our pantry to help with the overall cost of getting everything together. I use a foodsaver and shrink each meal for each person so it will stay fresh longer, and not be affected by humidity as much. Thanks again for your great ideas. There are also some great tips on making homemade mre’s on youtube if anyone is interested.
Great ideas Kelly! Thanks!
What a great site! I just found this through pinterest and had just started buying some emergency foods this weekend. I had planned to get some MREs as I have used them while hiking in the past but had never heard that they are prone to exploding! I love your tips about what kinds of food to keep and what to avoid! I hope to have a well rounded supply soon!
Welcome Jennifer!
I love the idea of the freeze dried fruit. That stuff is good just the way it is, and it’s light weight. I will be adding some of those to my kits eventually. We just purchased stuff for the next year (checked the dates). So by next year when we need to rotate the food, that is my choice.
Sounds great Melinda!
We are just getting our kit together. So far, we have some of the freeze dried fruits and some mountain house meals and oatmeal bas well as a jarvof chocolate soy butter. One of my kids has some extreme food allergies which makes it a bit more challenging to select foods she can eat.
Many of Shelf Reliance’s THRIVE products work well for those with allergies. You can see their entire allergens report here: https://www.shelfreliance.com/c/sites/default/files/ThriveAllergensReport.pdf
(-:
Wow, Misty! I found your page thru Interest. Thank you! I’ve been looking into getting our kit going, but always found it a bit overwhelming. Reading the past few weeks, I’ve caught up and making this possible. I’ll be adding most of your suggestions to my weekly shopping list using coupons of course! And checking expiration dates too. My husband always pulls from the front . I’m retraining him! Hahahaha
Glad you’ve found it helpful Natasha! And thrilled you use coupons!
We don’t have one so far just getting started so I am definately going to take these suggestions and utilize them.
Good luck Kathy!
I just found your website and I love it. I love the idea of the squeezable fruit.
Welcome Kelli!
This is very new to me, we don’t have a food kit yet! I think I’ll start off easy with fruit pouches and crackers/peanut. Utter from Costco.
Sounds great Ashley!
Just found your blog last week, and I’m loving the weekly plan! Coincidentally, we just updated our water storage last week, so I’m on track there, and have just going though our kits and updating those as well. So many great ideas! We had basically MRE”s and a food brick that has a use by date of… well it’s gotta be REALLY hard by now. 🙂 Can’t wait to try the Thrive Express! How many servings does a pouch make? Maybe I missed it, but I couldn’t find that anywhere!
Each pouch has 3-4 servings. The servings with the entrees are about 1 cup each. Serving size for the sides are about 1/2 cup.
I went a bit overboard at the store and ended up with enough for both this week and next. I have several types of dried fruit, Jif-to-go cups, granola bars, dry milk, crackers, two pouches of tuna with mayo and mustard packets, a pouch of chicken, two cups of ready-to-serve brown rice, and packets of taco sauce. The only thing that HAS to be heated is the rice, and not for very long.
I need a lightweight way to add vegetables to this.
Freeze dried veggies are light wieght! (-:
I didn’t realize until after I made that post that the freeze-dried veggies are also available in pouches! I had only seen the cans and didn’t want to carry that much. Thanks!
This is one area ive kinda started working on, i have some random things that could be prepared (soup) and then some other things that require no prep (crackers, PB, cookie/cracker packs, freeze dried fruit packs). I would like to eventually get some long life meals (with easy prep or none at all), but the budget is tight so i can only do so much! (am planning on getting a few thnings every month to slowly build my food supplies)
I get the tight budget! Just do what you can as you can!
Aw man – I’m behind already! I never got my water purification tablets last week 🙁 I plan on taking your list to the grocery store this weekend and getting some food for us (but hoping I win the drawing and don’t have to ;)) I love the idea of the squeezable fruit and the tuna pouches.
Good luck! I’d love to have you win! I really, really, like giving these away each week!
Thanks for the great ideas! We bought MRE snacks and my kids love the squeezable peanut butter. I just purchased squeezable applesauce as a comfort food…plus the type I bought has over 500% Vit. C. We tried the emergency food bars. They taste okay but wouldn’t want to eat them unless I need to.
I agree about the emergency food bars. They serve a purpose but are a far cry from a good meal!
I’m going to add some freeze dried fruit. Really good ideas about thinking about the weight. I hadn’t considered that before.
Most don’t…until they have to carry it! (-:
Wow! I have been wanting to create our family’s emergency kits but could never figure out the best way. Thanks for breaking it down! I am excited to have our kit finished by the end of this year.
Thanks Jennifer and welcome!
Right now we just have snacks/junk food like pop tarts. I love the idea of freeze dried fruit and tuna kits to add some nutrition!
That is what I started out with years ago too Manda! And it is much better than nothing! Adding more nutrition when you are able is great though!
i plan on adding or starting with squeese apple sauce, fruit leathers, and gronola bars for breakfast… and tuna pouches, jerkey, and roman noodles…with a few others thrown in im sure…then on the next go round i plan on adding in thrive meals
Sounds great Callie!
I’m just now starting, actually. So today I made sure we had a beginning supply of water. I have two weeks covered…so beginning food. Your site is so helpful in providing me a method to prepare my family. Thank u!
YOu are welcome Katie!
Great ideas, I already buy quite a bit of dried fruit and nuts to make my own trail mix. The tuna/chicken ideas are something I had not thought of. The pringles can is a good idea to repurpose. When I go to the grocery store this week I will be buying some extra food for my kits. There is just my husband and myself to buy for but I will be encouraging my sons and daughter-in-laws to start getting organized for their families.
We experienced tornado damage in 1993 and in 2010 our home burned down, very little was salvageable. We have a whole new perspective of looking at things and how we live. We lived in a tent for two weeks (in our front yard) because people were breaking into our home and stealing what little was left. We are planning to build a storm shelter too.
Thanks for sharing a real-life story Brenda! That is always helpful to put things into perspective!
Right now I have canned goods in my kit, but I’m working on getting more dried foods–usually that I’ve dried myself–into the kit as well. I’m hoping this week to dry some veggies to add as well. 🙂
Good for you Katie!
The only thing we have in our 72 hour kits are those high calorie bars that will last you the whole 72 hours. While I think those would be great in a super emergency situation, I really would like to get some of the “normal” foods that you spoke about in this post. I worry that my kids being scared from being in an emergency situation, plus the fact that everything is different, including the food they are eating, would put them over the edge. I like the idea of putting normal foods that they are comfortable eating in our packs. Definitely going to start working on that this week.
I completely agree Lindsay!
I just love your suggestions! Right now, our 72 hr kits have tuna pouches, protein bars, instant oatmeal, beef jerky, crackers with peanut butter, and a few other small things. I would like to purchase some Thrive Express meals to add, and I LOVED Tiffany’s suggestion about putting crackers and a knife in an old Pringles can. What a great idea! In addition, I think I will also add dried fruit. Do you have any suggestions to add for an infant/nursing mother? We are expecting our first this summer and I am not sure what to include for this time as I am new to both preparing and motherhood! Thanks!
Lacey, Congrats! Yay!
I was nursing / had infants for a LONG time…had 4 kids in three years. I always had a bottle and formula in case something happened to me. A binkey if they take one. LOTS of diapers and a few changes of clothing. And I did a whole post on Emergency Prep and pregnancy if you are interested. There are lots of helpful comments too!
https://simplefamilypreparedness.com/emergency-prep-and-pregnancy/
Currently we are using protein bars, some MREs and freeze dried fruit. This entry has given me what looks to be some much more appetizing ideas though! Thanks for the info, I will be looking to update my bug-out bag now!
I’m glad it was helpful Amanda!
I just found this blog today. My husband and I have been dabbling in stock piling and getting prepared for the what if’s. This series will really help us get on track and focus our efforts. I have a little catch up to do, but our prior stocking has yielded lots of instant oatmeal, pb, canned soup, pasta, and tomato sauce. Your post is helpful in identifying the holes and gives great suggestions for what else we need. Thanks!
No problem Valerie! I’m glad it has been helpful. Welcome!
We have kits so I’ll go through ours and check the food as it’s been a while. I love your lighter weight food ideas that I will begin incorporating while pulling out the heavier (you’re right!) cans and pop top foods. I recently found some Jif Peanut Butter To-Go which seems just the right size and weight for our bags.
I might have to search out that Peanut Butter to go! Found just in the PPJ isle?
I never did find it at my regular grocery store. I found it at Walgreen’s drug store in their little food aisle.
Thanks! I’ll take a look. (-:
several brands of PB come in squeeze pouches as well. Costco is amazing for it’s selection of easy to pack foods, but they don’ t have all the same stuff in every store.