Pasta

Dry pasta is flour and water with the water taken back out, which makes it one of the easiest calories to store and one of the fastest to cook. In the box, 2 to 3 years at full quality and fine well past that; sealed in Mylar with an oxygen absorber it joins rice and wheat as a decades food. A pound of dry pasta is about 1,600 calories, which is the number to plan with.

Plain durum wheat pasta, no egg: spaghetti, macaroni, penne, rotini, in the shapes your family eats. Egg noodles carry fat from the yolk and go rancid years sooner; keep a little and rotate it. Whole wheat pasta has the bran oil and keeps about a year. Thin shapes cook faster on less fuel; spaghetti and angel hair are the fuel-savers. Buy in the two-pound or bulk bags and repack.

Cool, dark and dry, in something airtight. The original bag or box is fine for the months you will use it in; for the years, the answer is the same as for rice: a Mylar bag with an oxygen absorber inside a food-grade bucket, which keeps out oxygen, moisture, light and every insect egg that came home from the mill. The Mylar ranking says which foods take an absorber and which do not.

Pasta is brittle: pack a bucket with the shapes that nest (macaroni, penne, rotini) and lay spaghetti in flat before sealing, or it punctures the bag. A 5 gallon bucket holds about 12 to 15 pounds of short pasta.

Pasta that is dry and smells of nothing is fine, however old. Webbing, small holes, dust at the bottom of the box or moths in the cupboard are pantry pests; the box goes and the cupboard gets cleaned. A musty smell or spots of mold mean moisture got in. Egg noodles that smell like old crayons have gone rancid. Faded color and a brittle, crumbly texture are age and cook up fine.

A pound of dry pasta feeds four as a meal and is about 1,600 calories; plan on a pound per person per week beside the rice and beans. It cooks in less water and fuel than the box says: bring a quart to a boil per half pound, add the pasta, cover, turn off the heat and let it sit 12 to 15 minutes, or soak it in cold water for an hour and finish it in two minutes of boiling. The water it cooked in is salted starch and goes into the soup. A can of tomatoes, a can of sardines or tuna and a pound of pasta is dinner with no fridge.

Pasta needs water and a few minutes of heat and nothing else. The soak-first method cuts the fuel to almost nothing, and the thermal cooker or a pot wrapped in a blanket finishes it off the flame.

Shelf-life figures are from the Survival Foods field guide; fridge, freezer and pantry times are from the USDA cold and pantry storage charts. Run the look, smell, taste check before eating anything past its date.