My canned stuff is mininal here. I detest canned gegetables, and much prefer frozen. I have a full 20 cu ft freezer, as well as using the very old, and somewhat erratic freezer my dad bought some 30+ years ago. Seems like you may have to re-train him... FS bags will also work in boiling water, ro in the microwave to quickly thaw the contents. I make egg 'mcmuffins' using fresh english muffins I toast, add some Egg Beaters as well as some powdered egg, and home made sausage patties. Each sandwich also gets a slice of cheese. A single serving is put in a FS 6 inch bag, sealed and frozen. To thaw and heat, I just toss in the microwave and let the bag swell up some, while I flip it over once or twice during the heating. Its usually hot once the bag bursts (no real mess either, just a 'pop').

I wouldn't recommend rye flour, but rice flour is OK as a filler as is wheat flour. The soy flour is quite cheap usually. The more they are baked and dried out the longer they will last without any special care. Even an egg or two can be mixed in as it too gets baked, so they will not spoil quickly. Bake them at about 300 degrees or a little less. The dogs love crunchy stuff, good for their teeth. You can keep them in the fridge if you are really concerned. I have TWO freezers here and both are quite full. Rarely do I shop at the sup[ermarkets unless something is on sale really cheap. This week, boneless rib eye steaks (resturant quality) for $3.99 a pound. Boneless/skinless chicken breasts $1.69 a pound, but I have plenty of them already. Gotta start using some of my frozen broccoli, and yellow waxed beans from this last summer. Ive got about 5 or so gallon bags of each.

My parents had popsicles (the kind on a stick wrapped in paper, not the ones in plastic "tubes") in their upright freezer. All melted, even right after running generator. I think the pork chops on the top shelf were frozen solid, don't know how warm they might have gotten in between "shots" of electricity, but I really think I should throw out the 5 lbs of hot dogs I brought home to put in my chest freezer - they were cold, but thawed, and who knows how warm they might have gotten at some point. Same with the big bag of Chicken Voila in Alfredo sauce - bag had some frozen chunks in it, but overall was pretty squishy. What's a few more things given that on Sunday we threw out all my mom's Jenny Craig meals she's just bought a few days before, and on Thursday threw out a good 40-50 lbs of veggies, chicken pot pies, chicken cordon bleu, stuffed peppers etc. that my mom had bought for my dad to eat while she was on a business trip, plus about 10 lbs of tilapia and shrimp? My dad also had a sandwich-sized bag with 3 hard hot-dog-shaped things I think might have been venison sausage - not frozen solid, I'm sure, maybe smoked? Insisted I take that to put in my freezer. I have no idea what it is, so don't know if anyone can tell me if they're safe. I have to tell him to watch his blueberries for mold, too, though I think he uses them frozen on his cereal, now they've refrozen into a solid chunk. I'd just as soon make jam out of them like I plan to do with my blackberries and strawberries. DH is looking at whole-house generators too. I'm thinking of seeing whether we can add our well pump to the 100A subpanel our HVAC, water heater and basement freezer are already on. I don't know if inspector will let us permanently change the fridge to go on the subpanel as well as the well pump, unless we put our resistive Aux Heat for the heat pump on the main panel (even in the dead of winter I think we can survive with geothermal and sweaters). Gotta think how to swap things around to balance the load and get all the necessities on that 100A panel. Then maybe an $800 generator will do.

When the fridge in the garage went out four or five years ago we moved the side by side out there. I never liked the SbyS. It just seemed both compartments were too small. I have a fridge with a bottom freezer in the house and I like it better because my refrigerated items are at eye level. In the bottom freezer is the ice-maker, all my frozen herbs, nuts I have already toasted, white bread, wheat bread, containers of lemon juice and lime juice and some odds and ends. I had a 15 foot freezer in the garage which had to be defrosted. It stayed so packed that I could never find what I was looking for so we just sold it and bought a new self defrosting 21 CF freezer. It holds a lot more and I have vowed not to get it junked up with bits and pieces of items. It has one pull out tray the width of the freezer. It isn't deep and I keep things like frozen BBQ, the small amount of beef I buy, and various sausages in it. There is a bin in the bottom with a drop down closure where I keep boxed items for the grandkids such as corn dogs and other misc items. ONe shelf is devoted to frozen veggies. Large bags of nuts and ice cream go in the door. I bought 3 plastic bins from Wal-Mart. In one bin I placed packs of chicken parts, one has packs of all of my boneless, skinless chicken breasts in it and one contains pork chops and pork tenderloins. The top shelf contains a country ham which I had sliced and I used the Food Saver to put each slice in a separate bag. The Food Saver is great because anything frozen in those bags last a long time and doesn't get freezer burn.