Chef's Banquet Food Storage Bucket Kit – Emergency Freeze Dried Meals – New Survival Supplies Variety Meal Pack - Camping Freeze Dried Food by Ready Project

We waited for the price to go down to $99 per bucket and purchased two. Not only is the price amazing but the ingredients are totally Vegetarian! If you are a Vegetarian like my husband and I, you know how hard it is to find long-term food storage that doesn't have meaty entrees or beef/chicken broth mixed in with the soups and potato dishes. The chicken entrees in this item use TVP, Textured Vegetable Protein, NOT meat products. The ingredients are listed (food does contain dairy/egg), the cooking instructions are included, it has a 20 year shelf life, and the 2100 calories per day can't be beat. Very pleased. We will buy more in the future. NOTE: Prices can and WILL go up/down in just a few hours, so when the price is right, don't delay on purchasing!

I have recently begun to can, and buy MREs but I wanted a little variety and some VERY shelf stable provisions. I bought this despite some of the reviews saying there were open bags inside. Mine came sealed nice and tight, no open bags. BEWARE: if you choose to open this up and pull all of the bags out, be prepared to spend some time re-packing them. I got most of them back in and had to pull some out and re-arrange them so they would all fit back in. I would recommend adding some of your own freezer bags immediately to this because the servings come in large pouches. You could make a meal, re-bag unused portions and ration out the servings

We bought two of these as I really don't want to be out there if the SHTF trying to buy food for my husband and 91 year old mom. The shelf life is long enough not to have to worry about the food spoiling any time soon. It is one of those products you can buy, store in a cool dry place for your family to alleviate having to deal with the stress of food acquisition when there are limited resources. I imagine the food tastes good enough to provide ample nutrition in a time where food supplies may be limited or rationed, so overall, peace of mind regarding this is worth the purchase.

Something you need to be prepared for is the packaging of the packs "into" the buckets. It IS a tight fit to cram all of that foot into the buckets. On two of my three buckets purchased, the lid was closed on the top packaging material, breaking the seal of one of the packages. I did receive an email from the supplier, asking if I was satisfied, which surprised me. I replied to the email showing the pictures of what had happened (obviously during production and packaging of the packages into the buckets), and asked what they thought should be done. It took a few days to hear back, but to my surprise, they refunded me a few bucks. Obviously, it's really not worth the money ship stuff back, but be patient with them and work out a deal. It appears they are very interested in maintaining good customer feedback, and to prove this, they are reaching out to their customers. If you have a torn package, don't panic and accuse the company of not hearing you, give 'em a chance to reply and make the order right. They did make it right and worth my time. So what to do about the torn package. well there are always zip-lock bags. I double zip-locked the torn bags, and I'm hoping that that will suffice. The rest of the packages were in great condition. What I'm most impressed about is the customer service. While it took a little time, they did make it right.

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.

The product seemed decent, however the portion sizes were very undesirable. You get 30 days of food, but its packaged as 30 servings of potatoes in one pouch, 30 servings of pasta in another pouch. So that means a) you have to measure it out yourself and try to not waste any and b) after the first day you now have several packages open and more difficult to store.

Just bought the one month food supply and my husband and I are very impressed. Had to try some of the products to make sure we wanted more so we had some of the potato soup for supper tonight. Absolutely delicious! All I added was salt and pepper. This is very reasonably priced and I have seen this same bucket for $169.99. I just ordered another one. We are not full fledged preppers but believe in being cautious. We may even take the open bucket on our next trip to the mountains. So compact and easy to pack. Highly recommend!

I'm almost reluctant to review this product because when I have my say there may be a run on these Chef's Banquet kits from Ark. We went through hurricane Katrina. These would have been a blessing. The food is sealed in mylar bags (great); oxy absorbers included; the variety is excellent. The bucket is sealed and let's hope it stays that way for another 20 years because I don't want to go through all that again. As varieties and prices go, these are an exceptional deal. Quick shipping. And, they are heavy ... 25 lb per bucket. Maybe they won't float! Save me a couple when y'all quit buying!