This is What You DON'T Want...

...to be in an emergency situation and to open your 72-hr kit in order to eat and find a something you put together nearly 6 years ago which has been sitting in an alternating hot/cold garage for that whole time, which doesn't have enough food for all the members of your family, and that what food it does have has gone horribly, horribly bad.


This is a food kit I put together way back in 2003 as part of a Super Saturday activity we did. I dutifully packed all the food up, labeled it, placed it with my emergency bag out in the garage, and then promptly forgot about it. Six years and two kids later, things weren't looking so pretty when I opened it up last Friday night.


First of all, I had never updated the food to include the two little ones who joined our family in the ensuing years. So what was already fairly sparse for two people was going to be nowhere near enough to feed four.

Second, I had never rotated any of this food. This is all the same stuff I packed away 6 years ago. Right from the start I knew there was trouble when I opened it and found evidence of bugs inside...bad news! They had gotten into the container, but it didn't look like they had gotten into any food (that I could tell) - but still...yuck! The trail mix was horribly, horribly rancid (I did not taste it because the smell was enough to tell me what I needed to know). The fruit roll-ups were stale and hard. The beef jerky was hard as a rock and tasted nasty. Even the gum tasted sour and gross! I think the hard candy would have been okay, but it was partially melted, so I just tossed it all. The crackers were very stale, and everything was way, way beyond all expiration dates. I guess if it was the last food on earth and we had no other choice, it would have been better than nothing, but just barely.