500 Million Eggs Recalled! Really?

Well, at least we all have heard about this recall. There are thousands of food products recalled every year and many of them don't gain media attention. I guess this one was just too big to hide.

Originally, the eggs contaminated with salmonella apparently came from one company in Ohio that owns three farms. Now they have found another farm with contaminated eggs. Good grief! How many chickens does that represent?

These factory farms keep their animals in appalling conditions. We have no way of knowing what they are being fed or what the cleanliness standards are. In the movie "Food Inc." factory farms and the horrible practices behind them were exposed. It would be worthwhile to rent the movie if you haven't seen it.

This is another good reason for buying organic food from local farmers that you are familiar with. The chance is less likely that you will be getting poor quality food that has to be recalled.

As for food storage purposes, organic dry powdered eggs have not been available yet. Now would be a perfect time to contact your favorite distributor and ask them to get organic dry eggs in #10 cans. We need to be confident that our food storage is the highest quality it can be.

Odd-sized HDPE Buckets

I was packing some 25# bags of pinto beans and spring wheat the other day and found that the 5 gallon buckets were too large, so I went to our food storage outlet and found some smaller ones. To my surprise, they had some odd sizes available which they recommended I try.

The size of bucket you will need depends on the density of the product you are packing. (Most of the time a 5 gallon bucket will hold 35 pounds of hard red wheat, but other grains can vary.)

The spring wheat I was packing had much smaller kernals than the winter wheat I had stored previously, but I was able to pack 25 pounds into a 4 1/4 gallon bucket with about 1 3/4 inches of headspace.

The 25# bag of pinto beans fit into a 3 1/2 gallon bucket with about 2 inches of headspace. I have several other bags of these foods to pack so it will help me know what size buckets to purchase.

There is an advantage to having smaller buckets because they can fit into smaller spaces and you don't have to dig into your larger buckets when you want to use some of the food. A better option might be to use two /2 gallon buckets for short term use. You want to use and rotate your food storage as much as possible, so this would be an efficient way to do it.

If you have a bunch of 5 gallon buckets stacked somewhere on top of each other, chances are you aren't going to dig them out and use them as often and you miss out on the opportunity to utilize these foods in your everyday diet.