Meal Tins Revisited

One of the first articles I wrote for this blog concerned the packaging of emergency/quick meals in the metal tins that cookies and crackers are sometimes sold in.  (Mine happened to be a 75^th anniversary promotional for Nestle chocolate chips.)  I put those meals into one of the cabinets in our travel trailer, the place we were planning to live if we had to evacuate due to wildfire. 

And the meals just sat there.

We soon found out my husband’s company was being sold to a Canadian firm and he would be out of a job at some point. 

Fortunately, there hadn’t been any wildfires in our vicinity, so we had no need to evacuate, but with no job or prospects in the immediate future, there was no camping to be done, either. 

The meals kept sitting there. 

Eventually, Aaron got a good position with one of the mines, and we moved to Northeastern Nevada almost two years ago.  During the move (the week between the closing of the house we sold and the one we were buying), we experienced the thrill of camping in beautiful Lamoille Canyon with two cats and four very large dogs.  Amazingly, all were very well behaved.  We ate a few of the meals in tins that I had prepared almost two years earlier.

And once we moved into our new home, which really is in paradise, I forgot all about the remaining meals in the trailer.  First, it was because we were busy moving in and unpacking.  And then I didn’t really want to think about them.  They were getting a little old, I figured.

And now, we apparently arrived at a new stage in life where the kids start planning the annual family camping trips.  We were going camping in the trailer again.  And there were all those meals in tins still in the trailer where we had to put the new food for the upcoming trip.  I had to open the tins and face those meals and other dry goods we stored in there.

I thought people might be interested in hearing how the various items fared.  You might be able to apply some of the knowledge I gained to your own situations.

First off, it’s important to understand the storage conditions we have here.  Both locations (the previous house and the current house) are very similar.  Actually, in terms of climate they’re basically identical, so they’ll be lumped together.  We live in the high desert on the side of a mountain with very little humidity.  Daytime highs in the summer never reach the triple digits, but they get close.  Nighttime summer temperatures are in the 50s and 60s.  Winter runs from November to mid-May with freezing temperatures most every day. 

The meals and other food items were all placed in thin food storage bags closed with twist ties in the tins.  The bags provide an extra layer of protection against insects and kept me from having to wash out the tins and thus reduce the risk of rust.  Here’s a table of the meals and other foods we had out there:

Food	2 years	4 years	Tin contents, comments, etc.
Spaghetti	--	Just tasty	Pasta, tomato sauce & tomato paste (BB dates of Sept. 2021), dehydrated onions, herbs
Shepherd’s pie	All good	--	Canned veggies, canned hamburger, instant potato flakes
Hamburger bun mix	All good	--	Hamburger bun recipe (link below), minus the oil and water
Bread dough mix	--	Tasted just like regular homemade white bread	White sandwich bread mix (link below, minus the oil and water
Chicken and biscuits	All good	--	Canned chicken, canned veggies, biscuit mix (link below)
Pizza	All good	--
Instant oatmeal	All good	Not good	Store-bought stuff
Oats	All good	Not good
Instant rice	All good	Not good
Flour	Good	Good
Sugar	Good	Good
Salt	Good	Good
Baking soda	Good	Good (tested with vinegar)
Coconut oil	Good	Some good, some beginning to turn rancid
Olive oil	Good	Rancid	I suspect it was not pure olive oil, after having done some research on the topic.
Baking powder	Good	--
Pancake mix	Good	--
Honey	Good	good
Maple syrup	Good	--
Herbs	Good	--
Tomato sauce	Good	Still good	I was surprised the tomato sauce hadn’t eaten through the cans.
Bear creek chicken soup mix	Good	Fine, but not to our liking
Popcorn	Good	Sub-par popping
Clif mojo granola bars	I forgot the tin held Clif granola bars, so I didn’t open the can	All good-finished those off in quick order
Annie’s gummy bunnies	Can wasn’t labeled so we forgot about them	Kids chowed them down
Chocolate chip cookie mix	Excellent	Excellent	Basic family recipe, minus the butter (we used coconut oil—shelf stable) and water to reconstitute the eggs
Tortilla mix	--	Excellent	Tortilla mix (link below), minus the bacon grease and water.  Don’t know if the bacon grease was good because I dropped the jar it was in and it shattered.  It didn’t smell rancid.
Powdered milk	Good	good
Pecans	Good	Surprisingly good
Pistachios	Good	Still good but tasted a little old
Peanuts	Good	Still good
Hot chocolate mix	Good	Still good	Nestle and Swiss Miss individual serving packets.  We enjoyed them most every day of the camping trip.

 

I absolutely love these little tins.  They are the perfect size for putting meals together and protecting food from rodents.  While the whole grains don’t have a long shelf life and therefore aren’t advised, white flour and plain white rice hold up to the heat quite well.  The ability to store quick meals to be quickly prepared in an emergency provides some peace of mind and a bit of direction in a time of stress, when making even simple decisions can be overwhelming. 

Links to related posts:

Hamburger Buns 

Tortillas 

White Sandwich Bread  

Meal Tins