Day 18 - Storing Bulk Foods and Grains

***This is a continuation of my 31 Days of Preparing Properly series***

When I was just a young, newly-married bride with stars in my eyes, I went on a grocery shopping trip, which included buying a 5 pound bag of flour.  After coming home to put my groceries away, I noticed some teeny tine little bugs around the flap of the bag.  I carefully opened the bag up to find the flour inside was infested with the little buggers.  Yuck!  I learned my lesson; every time I pick up a bag of flour, sugar, cornmeal, etc.  I check the whole bag for signs of bugs.  Especially since i buy these things in bulk most of the time.

Unfortunately, bugs or larva or eggs in our grains that we store is a fact of life.  Now that I'm an adult I can accept that fact much easier than when I was a kid!  The thought of anything that might be living in my food would have grossed me out!

But how do we store our grains without giving these critters the perfect environment to hatch and eat their little hearts out?

In my research on the best ways to keep critters out of the pantry and food storage, I've found several different techniques.

Bulk food at our local Winco grocery store.

The first and easiest way to protect your food from bugs is to put it in your freezer for a minimum of 3 days.   Make sure it is in a spot that it won't get exposed to excess ice or moisture; you don't want wet grains.  3 days is long enough to kill any larva that may already be in your flour, rain, or cornmeal.  And gross as it sounds, there is more than likely larva already in the bags.  

Gamma lids make it easier to get into your buckets
if you are rotating your food storage.

I use these 5 gallon buckets to hold my longer term bulk food storage.

After the 3 days you can transfer it to your canisters, plastic containers, or 5 gallon buckets. It can be left there longer if you have the extra space for it.  We have an extra freezer that I keep space for a 25 pound bag of flour or oatmeal until I need it or package it for long term storage.   

I store my everyday dry foods in these Tupperware containers.

Another way to keep grains pest free is to use oxygen absorbers for long term storage.  This can be done in addition to freezing the dry foods.  The only problem with oxygen absorbers is that you have to use what you have right away.  They don't keep since they start absorbing oxygen as soon as the package is opened.  Oxygen absorbers work best in non-porous containers like mylar bags or plastic food-grade buckets, or even large canning jars.  I've also seen them used in large PETE recyclable containers. 

Rice that I buy at for less than 50 cents per pound.

These next two options are for whole grain and 

Diatomaceous earth is can be used to protect whole grains (but not milled grains!), and is what my parents used when storing wheat berries for long term in 5 gallon buckets.  There is a good breakdown of food storage tips here that includes diatomaceous earth.  This is not an ideal way to protect foods, though, because the fine silica dust can be inhaled and damage lungs.

A small amount of dry ice can be used to kill insects before storing whole grain.   Dry ice is frozen CO₂. Treatment with dry ice may improve storage life of the grain, but it is not the most effective fumigant for controlling pests in stored grain.  Basically, it will kill anything that is living in there already, except for eggs.  A single treatment with dry ice will be fine, you will not have to treat it again unless you notice little buggers in it down the road.

I hope this makes sense!  If you have any questions or anything to add, please leave a comment!

And if you'd like to read more about buying in bulk you can read my posts here and here.

And start reading from day one here!

This post may contain affiliate links.

Meal plan for January 2013, Week 1

A new year means new goals, which of course include getting organized.  Organization with meals is something I'm always working toward, especially since everyone wants to eat!  Every day!  

Since I've resigned myself to the fact that I'll have to cook dinner every night, I've got the first couple weeks of menus made up, and even did some cooking for the freezer.  I also found this month's worth of menu and tips  on Smithlive.blogspot.com that has some recipes I may try later in the month.  

Crock Pot Northern Beans and Ham

A cheap and tasty meal to warm the tummies on these cold winter nights.

Cilantro Lime Chicken Tacos
A new recipe I found on pinterest! 

Homemade Tamales with Beans and Rice
My kids, niece and I made homemade tamales the Saturday before Christmas and I took some to a Christmas party.  They were our first try, and they were really good!  They took some prep time and some tips from an authentic tamale maker, and I used this recipe for the masa.  We cooked a pork roast in the oven, diced it finely, and added a sauce I made with some of the chilies from our garden.  I made up another batch of the meat filling so we can eat these on New Year's Eve and freeze the rest for another meal.

Homemade Pizza

Scroll down that post to the recipe on Friday's menu for pizza dough.

Beans, Cilantro Lime Rice, Homemade Tortillas and Salad

These really are the best tortillas.  Easy to make; I use my electric griddle and cook two at a time.

Mexican Tortilla Roll-ups, Chips and Salsa
Another pinterest find!  I'm going to use

Buffalo Chicken in the Crock Pot

Sounds so good!  

Simple Turkey One Pot

Serving this with rice or potatoes.

Ooey Gooey Rocky Road Cookies
The name says it all!  A good way to use up one of the several open bags of marshmallows.


I'm linking up here:

Menu Plan Monday at OrgJunki.com

Menu Planning Monday at SusieQTPies

Mealtime Monday at Couping and Cooking

Brown Rice and Barley Pilaf

I'm always experimenting with my cooking, trying new recipes, and especially trying to make meals inexpensive and healthy at the same time.  I also like to make things that use our food storage.  That way, when we need/have to use these shelf-stable foods I know how to use them, and the family will be more likely to eat them without complaining.

Roasted chicken was on our menu this week, and I wanted to make rice to go with it.  I buy brown rice in a 25 pound bag and work my through it, usually having rice once a week for dinner and breakfast.  This time I wanted to make a pilaf, and I wanted more than just the rice texture, so I decided to add some pearl barley to it to mix it up a bit.  We were happy with the mixture, and as you can see it made a large batch of pilaf, probably 10-12 servings, so to the leftovers I added a can of diced tomatoes, some corn sauteed with chili powder, green chilis and some salsa to make Spanish rice that we ate with the chicken enchiladas.  That was good, too!  And still "shelf-stable" since I added canned ingredients.  ;)

Food storage cooking:

Brown Rice and Barley Pilaf

6 cups water or chicken stock
2 cups brown rice
3/4 cup pearl barley
2 T. dried carrots
1 T. dried celery
1 T. dried parsley
1 tsp. dried onions
1/2 tsp. dried garlic
1/2 tsp. sea salt
Cracked pepper to taste
1/2 T. dried chives

Bring the water/stock (or mixture of the two) to a boil in a large saucepan.  Add the other ingredients except for the cracked pepper and dried chives.  Bring back up to a boil, turn to a low simmer, cover and simmer for 50-60 minutes.  Fluff with a for and garnish with the pepper and dried chives

Note:  I didn't add any fat in the form of oil or butter because I wanted this to be made from just the dried ingredients and it turned out just fine.  I also used plain water and added a teaspoon of dried, no-msg chicken soup base.  You can also "brown" the dry rice in some butter or olive in a pan before adding the liquid and other ingredients, but I kept it simple and skipped that step.

I love the Thrive dehydrated veggies from Shelf Reliance.  A little goes a long way!  I linked to my sister's website here, but I am NOT compensated for it at all, I just really love the products.

I'm Linking Here:  Tasty Tuesday at Balancing Beauty and Bedlam