What would you do for survival if all power and water in your home were to be cut off tomorrow? How would you be able to sustain yourself for the next few days or weeks? Because a disaster can hit at any time, you should be prepared with the following items: water, first aid, lighting, communication, and emergency food.
How much emergency food should you have? As a rule of thumb, aim for a year's supply for yourself and anyone else in your household. Start with basic items: grains, powdered milk, sugar, oil, and dried beans. At the same time, though, this diet leaves no room for variety. To add fruits, vegetables, protein, and other items that would otherwise be perishable, include freeze-dried and dehydrated emergency food in your preparedness plan.
Emergency food kits by Mountain House, Wise, and other brands include dehydrated or freeze-dried items for every meal of the day. All items, be it a full entrée or an individual vegetable, are packaged in airtight #10 cans or pouches and can last five or more years; some, in fact, can be kept for a few decades before deterioration occurs. Regardless of how the emergency food is packaged, preparation for each is nearly identical. Fill a pouch or scoop out a serving, add hot water, and wait a few minutes for the item to rehydrate. After it rehydrates, it can be eaten as-is or combined with other items – grains, proteins, or other vegetables – into a meal.
While emergency food is essential in times of disaster, how it is stored is crucial to its usefulness. No matter if the freeze-dried food is packaged in cans or buckets of pouches, all items need to be kept in a cool, dry, and dark place. Closets and crawl spaces are ideal. Because food can absorb chemicals, it should not be kept in a trash bag or liner or near cleaning supplies and should not be buried underground.
Although an unopened #10 can is able to last a few decades, the food should be eaten within the next year once it's open. The freeze-dried items, though, begin to deteriorate once exposed to light and oxygen, and an efficient storage solution must be in place. The leftover food must be placed in an airtight container, and three approaches can be taken: get a commercial re-sealer to fully close the can, put all food in an airtight bag, or freeze it for later use.
What would you do for survival if all power and water in your home were to be cut off tomorrow? How would you be able to sustain yourself for the next few days or weeks? Because a disaster can hit at any time, you should be prepared with the following items: water, first aid, lighting, communication, and emergency food. 
