I have not had some of theirs though I have been meaning to try some.

I have had some stuff from My Patriot Supply and it is pretty good.
My father in law got a little silly and got a 2 year supply for 4 adults, seed vaults, coffee, and life straws awhile back.
They deal a bit on price when buying in bulk

quote:

Originally posted by comet24:Nothing to clean up but my spook.

No love for dirty ghosts?

I like Mountain House and keep it on hand for camping, emergencies and travel. The sodium is high but it is not really a sole source food and if served with other non-MH fare should be OK.

It has its purpose. It's expensive, and not a good stock up item for doomsday. Case in point, local grocer is selling 20 lb bags of rice for $7. That's $35 for 100 lbs. That will last 1000 times longer than $35 worth of Mountain house.

quote:

That will last 1000 times longer than $35 worth of Mountain house.

...and have no nutrition or flavor, and still need water to make.

The point is, you can't have just one thing.... mixing a MH main dish WITH rice to srech it and still provide the protein, flavor and nutrients lacking in staples like rice and pinto beans is the way to go.

Obviously eating 100 pounds of rice sounds unappetizing. Know what sounds worse? Foraging for berries and edible plants, then fighting for your life when your hungry neighbor sees you out and trys to rob you.

Rice can be doctored up with veggies,tomatoes, meat, etc. A good base to start is bulk bags of rice, and bulk bags of beans.

Get these two staples first, then worry about adding further taste, flavoring, and variety.

Mountain House is probably the best, IMO, of the commercially made stuff, but homemade is even better.

I picked up a Harvest Right freeze dryer and have been doing a ton of my own stuff. I can make things just the way I like/want them without any sketchy ingredients and it tastes a whole lot better. Somewhat spendy up front, but worth it in the long run if you use eat a lot of freeze-dried stuff or are at all interested in prepping.

Mountain House is good stuff. Tons of sodium, which is probably why it tastes good.

I've been using Mountain House for light weight backpacking food for probably 25 years now, long before survival prepping became popular. The food is really quite good, considering that it's freeze dried--comparable to anything you would buy in a can.

Costco has the best prices for boxes of individual packets--comes out to less than $5 per large 2.5 serving bags. However, they only carry it seasonally here (summers).

Woot has the best deals on the bulk cans.

If you buy 10 packs at REI, they'll knock off another 10 or 15% in addition to the 5% you get back on your credit card.

This is my go-to website. www.thereadystore.com

Just get on their mailing list. They have very frequent sales. When they do, click on their sale page and sort by "biggest savings" (only site offhand I've seen where you can sort like that.) I typically just buy freeze dried #10 cans at 50% off retail.

Lower cost dehydrated food is a good low cost option for bulk staples as Bubbatime mentioned. I add freeze dried to that for nice to have stuff. Have a couple cases of MREs, but they are getting pretty old now. I didn't buy them, (well technically I did, the Army charges officers for them), they are ones I didn't eat during training.

My short term emergency food for up to 2 weeks is just refrigerator/freezer and canned goods in the pantry that get rotated. A little beyond that, some freeze dried, then longer term (a few months) mix of freeze dried and dehydrated. Really long-term needs land I don't have for a bigger garden, chickens, fish, maybe a goat.

It use to be that the pouches had a shorter shelf life than #10 tins. 7 years was average. As noted up upthread, they have changed the process and now claim a solid 30 years for both pouches and #10 tins now. If you are buying older stock, you might not get that of course.

From https://www.mountainhouse.com/m/faqs.html the FAQ page:

quote:

Q: What is the shelf life for your foods?
A: Our meals in pouches, kits and cans all have a freeze dried, emergency food industry-leading guaranteed shelf life and Taste Guarantee of 30 years.

Q: What happens after the shelf life has passed?
A: The food will likely still be good! You may notice a slight change in flavor or texture, but we've eaten food from both pouches and cans that were over 30 years old and it was still tasty.

They use to say something like that's the min they claim if held at like 68 degrees. For long term storage, put it in a cool dark place. The cooler it is the longer it will last. That doesn't even seem to be a thing now as I couldn't find it. NOTE: "*Ice Cream products & Cheesecake Bites have a 2-year shelf life. MCWs (previously known as LRPs) have a 3-year shelf life."

quote:

Originally posted by bubbatime:
It has its purpose. It's expensive, and not a good stock up item for doomsday. Case in point, local grocer is selling 20 lb bags of rice for $7. That's $35 for 100 lbs. That will last 1000 times longer than $35 worth of Mountain house.

It all depends on what your planning for. The true end of world zombie type stuff and you make a good point.

Being unable to get food from a local store because of natural disaster is more likely. In such a case a weeks supply is likely more than enough.

^^ Agreed. Not a bad idea to also have a 5 gallon food storage bucket of rice and also a bucket of beans. But the shelf life, especially if you are opening it often to utilize it, will be much shorter. The beans and rice won't cost but about what 2 mocha lattes will run ya, and it's cheap insurance for the next EMP North Korea sends over. But that's not what the OP asked. He asked: "What kind of experience has the forum membership had with this line of freeze dried foods? Quality, flavor, ease of use, etc. Thanks."

Good ones for me. Good for backpacking, good for long term storage in case the SHTF.

Thanks everyone.This is exactly what I was hoping the responses would be. Thinking in terms of 2-4 weeks worth plus BOB. time to watch for sales,now.

Don't rule out Amazon, they have great prices on #10 cans.