http://www.master-shop.ch/index.html

They actually sell a full year ration of commestible rations
http://www.master-shop.ch/jahrespake...tagepaket.html

And if you want to grow your own emergency veggies...:
http://www.master-shop.ch/gemuse.html

Sign 'o the times, or have these guys been around since long?

P.

For a Swiss shop, they sure seem to have a lot of prices in euros instead of CHF.

I'm glad to see something like it exists though - am starting to get slightly annoyed with buying another little 500g bag of lentils every time I turn round.

LOL - I had my trip of 100kg sacs of lentils, dried chickpeas, rice, etc... Now I have "just" one cupboard full of italian dry pasta

P.

Yes? I'm all ears - where did you get them? I have found rice in 10kg sacks from the Asian shops but that's about it.

I've tried Googling but without much success. Usually I can translate a couple of keywords, google those and come up with something at least... but the Zurich idea of "Grosseinkauf" seems to be a Saturday grocery trip where you take the kids along and make them carry a Coop bag each.

I have in mind something a little more extensive...

Jeezus Guys do y´all really want to do this?
Buy for a year or so in January, have a few curries until march before the weevils start to make the big bags move on their own? Grain moths? Mice? Fungus? Mould of many colors?
Enjoy the 21st century and buy bags in one Kilo packs just as god intended.
Sorry about the rant, just a cold-war kid talking here.

There are some small turkish (i suppose?) shops around zurich which i find carry bigger packs of grains at better prices. Not exactly wholesale, but you can buy a kilo sized pack. Look in barkat or alima.

As I said, it was a "trip"... I actually didn't manage to carry the plan through, Mrs. GroOve didn't really like the idea of having all that stuff lying around and having to spend all that time vacuum packing it in suitable portions (and then: how do you determine what is "appropriate"? Kcals/day per person?).

Having said that, one of our friends' father used to grow rice in northern Italy, and still has contacts in the industry. I would eventually ask him to source me the rice. Here in Ticino there is the Riseria del Delta del Maggia which grows and sells rice (excellent stuff, BTW).

P.

As I said - I'd vacuum pack the food, otherwise all the above mentioned critters will have a go at it, heh...

Today's logic behind having your own supply isn't so much tied to WW3, The Nuke, etc but rather to global food shortage and price swings.
In my very humble opinion, if everybody had a one month supply always ready, there would be less panic if/when some disruptive event takes place.
Seriously: showing families queuing up to grab whatever food is available is panic-inducing. It's the last thing you need if you're trying to manage whatever kind of large-scale disruption. And with most of our food supply sadly coming from "elsewhere", personally I'd rather be able to play it safe, hence my supply of carbs in the form of pasta... (probably have 2 months' worth of it, in all its possible permutations LOL. Even in an emergency I'm still a foodie at heart).

Having said that, I stumbled on the website that I posted just because I was googling "butternut squash", looking for seeds and any info related to growing the tasty cucurbitacea - for pleasure

Ciao

Paul

For me it's not even about price swings and supply disruptions. I just like having certain staples (flour, sugar, salt, rice, dry beans...) always on hand, whether I've remembered to shop for them this week or not. A well-stocked pantry includes many things but there are some things it should never run out of.

Back home we just stored them in 5-gallon plastic pails with airtight lids - not quite as good for freshness as vacuum pack but it does keep the critters out just as effectively. But I'll worry about where to find plastic pails once I've found out where to buy bulk food.

You guys obvioulsy go through rice and lentils faster than this Asian.

I am happy with 10kg and 1kg of the above when shopping. Then again, I have them available on demand at the shops on my block.

To be honest, I wouldn't have space in my tiny kitchen to store any more than that.

I'm only posting this useless post cuz am happy to talk about rice and lentils with others.

Heh ... maybe you could stock the bomb shelter appropriately as well, just don't forget the can opener!
Never fails to amuse me to know there are all these bomb shelters under buildings full of exercise and sporting gear, winter garments and almost no food ... not really their original design ...

I wonder what the shelf life of these products are ? They look like consumer packaged relief rations. They treat the food to make it last very long, not so much the tinned stuff but the cereals and pulses etc. Nasty way to make it keep it a long time in the warehouse, and starving refugees would not complain.

His torches and solar stuff are massively expensive, even by Swiss standards, I have the same torch and radio and paid maybe 1/4 of what the site is asking.

Hah.... there goes the other foodie!

On a serious note: do you know what really irked me when there was Food Price Bubble #1 (a.d. 2008)? The thought that some of the best food would eventually become unobtainable, either because of disruptions or because of its cost. So many food staples we take fro granted are just totally out of our control, supply-wise....

P.

I've seen some basements of Swiss houses (when looking at places to buy) with enough food stored to keep a family of four going for at least a year. Of course, the shelves were arranged in rows with all products neatly stacked just like the supermarket. They had everything from staples to random condiments (like 15 tubes of mayonaise) to box after box of washing powder. I don't know whether it was preparation for the coming nuclear armageddon or just canny Swiss stocking up on stuff (a lot) when it's on sale. Whatever it was, it was bloody impressive.

Any gold down there too?

Exactly. For me it's a 40-minute trip (20 minutes' walk away, or the twice-an-hour bus.)

Me neither... but that's what we have a pantry for.

To be honestly truthful - I don't know how much I'd trust that kind of food. Nowadays it could be nothing more than properly repackaged 2nd choice goods, fabricated in God knows what conditions. Yes, "good enough" for a refugee camp, but is it healthy?

I need to whip out a spreadsheet to calculate the cost per Kcal - I too had the feeling that it is pretty expensive, even allowing for proper vacu-packing etc. I have the impression that in terms of Kcal-per-buck there are other more efficient options out there (maybe something like this http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/ma...5Plumpy-t.html)

Paul

Including ~500 jars of home-canned stuff?

You've just described the house I grew up in. (Pennsylvania Dutch roots - not Swiss but might as well be!)

They made me leave the metal detector outside.

Old school Switzerland.
When my grandfather passed away (early 80s) he had 50 kilos of sugar tucked away PLUS, canned goods, a freezer *full* of meat, and, and...
My dad and uncles filled 2 station wagons of stuff - they gave it to an old age home.

And "back then" they could actually fine you if you didn't have your "extra" supplies in order, according to my father. Not a problem when we lived in Italy... our next-door neighbor was a peasant who had is small plot of land and was growing food for half the village, LOL!

P.