About Me

Richard Stooker

I started out camping with the Boy Scouts when I was a young boy. It was a lot of fun, but to tell the truth most of the food we are has to be prepared from scratch. We didn't have any freeze dried foods that I remember.

Most of the time we went camping in places that really were not far out of the way. Our local Boy Scout camp was close to the suburbs where most of us lived. It had its own mess hall, but my scoutmaster chose to bring and cook our own food.

So everybody had to take turns helping out. That was a trial to me because I didn't know much about cooking food at all, even in a kitchen, let alone on camping equipment. I don't recall how we cooked and ate when we went to Shiloh National Park in Shiloh Tennessee, but I guess there were some kind of camping groups.

I recall one weekend when we were not in a standard camping area, just out in the woods. but I guess we brought some canned foods. We were just there for a weekend anyway.

Now it's relatively easy to carry lightweight, healthy and delicious foods in your backpacks wherever you're going, even deep into the woods. If you know how to pick edible foods or hunt them, then so much the better, but most of us lack those skills.

Plus, freeze dried food can be stored at your home, in your car and even at work to be eaten in case of an emergency. You don't know when disaster might strike.

We're threatened by forest fires, earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, terrorism (Excuse me, I forgot we aren't supposed to say the "T" word any longer. I meant man-made catastrophes), tornados, hurricaines, electrical blackouts, influenza viruses and other natural organisms, chemical and biological warfare, nuclear explosions and maybe something I left out.

In my day job we not only sometimes had to practice fire drills, we had to practice piling into the bathrooms and taping a large sheet of clear plastic over the doors to guard against chemical and biological agents and nuclear fallout until some hazmat team rescued us. We had some bottles of water in there, but obviously that wouldn't last long if we did experience a real threat. We'd soon grow hungry and need some food too.

Therefore, I want everybody to protect themselves and their families by having a ready supply of freeze dried foods to get them through any disaster or emergency.