Homemade MREs. For quite a while now, I've wanted to make up my own "MREs" for my Get Home Bag (GHB). I was recently out scouting some properties, and realized that my GHB only had some packs of tuna and some candy in them. I had broken my own Cardinal Rule - If you use it, replace it immediately. So, I went about making up some MRE packages. Now, these are not true MREs, in that their shelf life is less than half of the 5 years of a commercial MRE, but I figured they were WAY less expensive (remember this later on in the post...). I assembled my "ingredients" based on "Best By" date, calories and protein content.
The idea was to put long-life food together and vacuum seal it in a FoodSaver bag. For my first MRE, here's what I included - Since the peanuts were loose, I wanted to separate them in the pouch. I then filled that with the peanuts and sealed it. I then filled the bag with the rest of the goodies, and vacuum sealed the whole thing - Here are the stats - Here's the result - Times have changed! Survival Hardtack. Backpacking Food for the Soul. Make Your Own Ready-to-Eat Rations (aka MREs) on the Cheap. Bacon in Every Survival Kit. Let me explain... Before you run away laughing at the title and opening of this article, let me go into a bit more detail so that you can see just where I'm coming from. The idea came to me while we were discussing various fuels that you can find or make to use for fires when you're in a survival situation.
One of those fuels that can be very useful for it's flammability, storage and portability was - Cooking Grease & Fats. Ordinary cooking grease and oils that we would normally just chuck aside, could easily be saved and stored in case you ever needed to use them for starting a well needed fire in a survival situation. It can be stored just about forever in a sterile glass jar. It's fairly light weight and a little can go a long way, meaning that you can through even just a cat-food-can full of it in your survival kit, and in worst case scenario's, you can even eat the grease for necessary calories. That got me to thinking... Why bacon? Well, it's simple really... Be prepared.