Full Disclosure: I am a customer of Valley Food Storage and they did send me a few samples to try.
Once upon a time, I considered myself more of a “prepper” than I do today. Before moving here, we had nice basements with plenty of room for storage . . room that stayed cool and dark. In MO and KY, I had better luck with my garden and had access to Amish farms and farmers’ markets. Here, I’m short on space and seem to be short on time. My garden seems to have a natural disaster every year, whether it’s grasshoppers or hail. Also, knowing that within the next few years, we’re going to move, I just don’t have the desire to accumulate quarts and pints and more quarts of canned food that may have to be moved.
I was going to say “recently” but it’s probably been several years ago, I received a few packages of freeze dried foods from Valley Food Storage. I was skeptical but upon using the freeze dried food, I was impressed. That was the point where I decided that I would continue to grow as much of our food as I could, I would buy fresh veggies, fruits and meat but for any foods I planned as part of my long term storage, I would definitely supplement my “stash” wish freeze dried foods. Knowing the weight and quality of freeze dried food, as well as the shelf life, those are what I rely on mostly for my long term storage.
Before any of you think I’m one of those doomsday type preppers, I am not. We keep food on hand for emergencies. The other night when the power went off, I never once thought about what we would eat. When there are natural disasters, or man made disasters, I don’t ever want to be in the line waiting for the FEMA truck to bring food. We’ve lived where there were hurricanes, tornadoes, snow/ice storms. Supply chains can be interrupted for minor occurrences and it would surprise many people how quickly grocery stores can run out of food. With freeze dried foo, it has a very long shelf life, most say up to 25 years, and it hardly weighs anything, and it takes up little room to store. It’s packaged nice and securely with oxygen absorbers.
Valley Food Storage Samples
The foods I received are freeze dried apple slices, freeze dried cheddar cheese cubes, freeze dried green peas and freeze dried sweet corn.
Tonight I tried the apples. They can be eaten straight out of the pouch or rehydrated. We ate a few slices without rehydrating . . great! They tasted just like freeze dried apple slices, which I happen to love as a snack.
Rehydrated Apple Slices
I followed the directions to rehydrate the apples, added a little butter, a bit of sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg. Delicious! Vince wasn’t so sure what he was going to think about these but he liked them. These would work just fine in an apple pie, fried pie, over ice cream . . any way you would use stewed apples.
The one thing I will say is that the pouch says it’s 15 servings. Not at this house. I would say half that for us. The amount shown in the bowl above would equal 2 servings because I used 1 cup of apples and the pouch says one serving size is 1/4 cup.
The ingredients in the pouch: 100% apples. Cannot beat that.
Sue in Desert Hills (Phoenix), AZ (formerly in Scottsdale, AZ) says
Judy, we have some freeze dried food, from a different company, which is also very good. But I agree with you about serving size. What they say is a serving size is about half the size my husband would eat. I like how little space it takes to store and the fact it says it will last 25 years. With what is going on in the world today, you need to be prepared.
Sherrill says
Ooo, those look yummy! Might have to get some..Judy, you really cause problems (for me anyway. HA!)
Diane in CA says
Has anyone looked into the Harvest Right freeze dryer? You could bag your own recipies in your own portions.. or is it too expensive in the long run?
JudyL says
I have looked at Harvest Right and it’s pretty expensive. A bigger problem for me is that I have absolutely no place to store it.I am so seriously “full” here. If I can’t grow everything myself, by the time I buy quality food, pay for the Harvest Right, process the food, I think price wise, I’m better off buying the already prepared food, especially since most of the freeze dried foods I buy, I do save for emergency use.
If ever we have a bigger house, and we’re in a location where I can grow more of my own fruits and veggies, the Harvest Right will definitely be on my radar. I think I would prefer freeze drying to canning.
justquiltin says
Freeze dried cheddar cheese cubes – now those have me curious being a gal from the Dairy State where we love our cheese. Didn’t know you could freeze dry it but does that mean it is meant to be used only in cooking (I’m guessing) because reconstituted cheese sounds a bit scary unless it’s melted into some dish. 🙂
Pat Peele says
What is the measurement of dried apple to equal one serving?
dezertsuz says
I use a lot of freeze dried foods in my every day cooking, because it saves me wasting. For instance, I don’t eat celery in everything and I don’t care to snack on it, so it mostly goes to waste if I buy it. However, there’s always a can of FD celery in my cabinet, along with red and green bell peppers, quinoa (which isn’t FD, of course!), green onions and a few other things. I throw a handful in everything from scrambled eggs to soup, and I rarely rehydrate anything.
I don’t think the company matters all that much, as I’ve tried several and they are all good. Except one company has much nicer quinoa than others, in my experience. And the shredded cheeses are great FD. That’s one thing I DO rehydrate before using. I wanted to get things I would use because I didn’t want to try to figure out how to cook something when I was already stressed by a disaster of some kind!