Jun 242013
Chef’s Banquet ARK 1 Month Food Storage Supply (330 Servings) 13.0×13.0×13.0 – rp_0014
- Each ARK contains the following:330 Total Servings 2,100 calories/day for 30 days Oatmeal – 60 Servings Hearty Potato Soup – 60 Servings
- Chicken Vegetable Stew – 30 Servings Mixed Vegetables – 30 Servings Instant Potatoes – 60 Servings Macaroni & Cheese – 30 Servings
- Beef Flavored Vegetable Stew – 30 Servings Cheddar Broccoli Rice – 30 Servings
When it comes to Food Storage, Chef’s Banquet has set a new standard for quality and taste. You won’t believe food storage can taste this good. All of the meals have been developed with the finest quality ingredients possible. The ARK (All-purpose Readiness Kit) is great for long term storage or for daily meals. With a full 2100 calories per day for one adult for 30 days, the ARK can be your stand alone food storage solution. Each of the meals takes less than 20 minutes to prepare (just add wate
List Price: $ 98.45
Price: $ 98.45
Very nice product,
I just ordered my second bucket. I decided to live off of the first one for a month to ensure that if I had to survive off of it for a while the taste would not make an already stressful ordeal even worse. The mac and cheese and beef flavored stew (no actual meat in any of it) were edible and the rest was quite good. I discovered that you have to adjust the water amount and cooking time on several of the items in the bucket as the instructions underestimate the boiling time on most of the foods and the amount of water needed for the broccoli and rice. As with any product of this nature, always check to make sure that all pouches are properly sealed. The price here fluctuates wildly here, so if you are going to be ordering multiple times to build up your supplies slowly, keep an eye on cost and try to buy when it is around $100. In the past month I have seen it as low as $95 and as high as around $200 then back down again. Even if you are not in an emergency situation and just need to cut back on your spending I can recommend this product. I nearly cut my grocery bill in half by living off of this for the trial month.
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|Mostly carbs & no nutrition,
Have you folks checked the nutritional breakdown of these?
Unlike MREs & many canned goods, this is mostly cheap carbs, & very little vitamins & minerals. If you eat 3 of these a day, you’ll get less than 20% of the minimum adult requirements for vitamins A, C, D, & minerals. Not much else in there other than calories. If it’s just calories you’re after, you’d be cheaper off just storing a bag of sugar, or some cases of Top Ramen (cheaper in bulk or by the case at $13-$20 per hundred servings).
If you’re looking to survive more than a couple days almost exclusively on these, it won’t work, but it will help. You’ll have to add something nutritious.
Don’t get me wrong, this is a great deal per meal for dry storable food compared to anyone else. But if you try to survive exclusively on this you will get sick & die of nutritional deficiencies. So plan on keeping stuff around to add to these meals or supplement them, or at least store a big bottle of good multivitamins with minerals in them.
Getting their bucket of their dried fruit (tastes pretty good), & bucket of their dried breakfast food will help a bit. It adds some nutrition that these meals seriously lack. You might might try storing some oil or fat to add to these too. Without at least a tablespoon of oil or fat a day, you will die. Even a large bottle of cheap corn oil will do. It will store a long time unopened if kept in a cool dark cabinet, closet, or basement.
Also add more protein sources if you want to keep your strength up. A large case of canned meat from Werling and Sons isn’t that bad in price per pound with shipping. They have a website & ship almost anywhere. It’s all pre-cooked so can be eaten cold, warmed up right in the open can, or added to these dishes.
By the way… people talk about long cooking times for many of the portions of these dry foods. Cooking & heating fuel may run low on in a survival situation. Soak these in cool water all day or overnight (works with rice, & dried beans or peas too) to soften them up for less cooking times. It will make them edible enough to eat cold if one day you don’t have a cooking option anymore too.
Make sure to store lots of water too. If the electricity goes out for long, your tap water won’t run either. Ordinary tap water that is usually chlorinated will keep for months in any clean container that can seal air-tight. Most juice, soda or liquor bottles (with the plastic caps), & jars (like spaghetti sauce jars), will be fine if washed & rinsed in hot water. You can get plenty of old 1/2 gallon jugs from your local restaurants & bars in a pinch. Plastic is OK as long as it can be sealed tight (like bottled water containers too). With plastic though, I prefer dumping the water every 3 months & refilling them after a rinse out in hot water. In glass containers, change it out at least once a year.
Do not use containers not used for food, like bleach or soap jugs, or old fuel containers.
MREs & canned goods require no water, & can be eaten cold. If you haven’t eaten half the day it even starts to taste good cold. It’s already cooked, so you’ll save fuel. Warming it up takes less fuel than cooking it. Most MREs come with their own food warmers too. For back-packing or bug-outs, with the dry food, you’ll either have to carry lots of water (heavy) with you, or know for certain that there’s clean water accessible where you’re going.
By the way folks, you are NOT qualified to give food a 4 or 5 star review for food, if you didn’t taste & eat it. That’s like giving a good review for a light bulb without screwing it in to see if it lights, just because it didn’t arrive shattered in a nice box.
If you didn’t taste & eat the food, do not review the food, just because it arrived, was undamaged, or the price was fair.
Update:
120 of these servings are just potato product. Both stews (60 servings) are mostly potato product too (taste like potato, flour & salt). So that’s 180 servings of mostly potato, & only a trace of other stuff.
For instance: There is no chicken in the chicken stew. In a 1.5 cup serving (1.5 cup container, 0.5 cup of the product, & filled the rest with water). There were no noodles (they say they’re in there but I didn’t see them). About 1 1/2 dozen peas, only 2 small bits of a celery leaf, just a few tiny green bits of something that might have been bits of celery, one 1/4 inch cube of a carrot, & dozens of 1/4 inch cubes of potato. I could smell a hint of celery in the bag, but couldn’t taste or smell any in the cooked product. The stew, was pure white, not stew or soup color. Not yellow, brown, or green.
Brought to a boil in about 3 minutes, simmered for 12 minutes to get it thick enough, stirring occasionally. It also tasted mostly like salty potato with some flour. They also said there was onion in there but I didn’t see,…
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|Checks pouches for leakage,
I ordered my bucket online at Costco but they have since ran out. I just tried the Hearty Potato Soup as the Mylar pouch had a few(uniform)holes towards the top so I opened it and the soup was very tasty. I ordered another bucket for my brother and now he has caught the “preppers” bug
I highly recommend this product for your food storage program
Just as a note, I replaced the lids with Gamma Seal lids
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