Chef’s Banquet ARK 390 – An excellent option for beginning preppers

Originally posted 2017-04-07 15:36:41.

When people start to take an interest in storing food and being prepared for an emergency, knowing what to store, how much to store, and all the little details can get overwhelming pretty fast.  I know that when I began thinking about having some food insurance, as I like to call it, I didn’t really know where to start.  That’s why solutions like the Chef’s Banquet ARK 390 30 day emergency food kit are a great option to give yourself a little peace of mind when you are starting out.

I stumbled upon this big bucket of food while I was in Costco one day.  The bright red lid caught my eye, so I wandered over to investigate it.  As you might guess, it ended up going home with me.  And for the price of the bucket, why not?  When you compare the price of one of these to the price of your average trip to the grocery store, it’s really a pretty good deal.

Chef’s Banquet ARK 390 consists of a 7 gallon bucket with a screw on top, and inside there are 33 lbs of tightly sealed just add water meals.  The packages neatly sealed in Mylar and are bulk sized, but also resealable so you don’t necessarily have to eat one of the packages all in one go.  The labeling asserts that this will provide a 2,000 calorie per day diet for 1 adult for 30 days.  Not bad at all!

Meals are separated into breakfast dishes and lunch / dinner dishes.  These include:

Breakfast

• Cheddar cheese grits with green chilies
• Brown sugar and cinnamon oatmeal
• Creamy cinnamon and rice

Lunch / Dinner

• Corn and potato chowder
• Macaroni and cheese
• Savory black beans and rice
• Rice and chicken orzo pilaf
• Chicken flavored vegetable stew
• Red beans and Rice
• Spanish Rice
• Creamy mashed potatoes
• Cheddar potato soup

Not a bad spread at all!  That’s a total of 12 different meals you can fix up by just using some hot water.   You should take note here, however, that none of the meals include actual meat.   There is some protein content thanks to the meals containing beans, but I would suggest someone supplement the Chef’s Banquet ARK 390 with an adequate supply of canned meat or fish to bolster the protein content (it would probably also make a lot of these meals a little tastier and hardier.)

Other notable features of this food bucket are that the food is stipulated to last 20 years, which is an excellent shelf life.  I haven’t owned the thing for 20 years as of yet, so I guess I’ll  have to make a follow up post to see if the claims are true!  🙂   Also, the bucket that contains the food is BPA free and can be utilized as a good sturdy bucket for other applications outside of storing the food itself.  Overall, I am very happy that I’ve added this great starter kit to my food supply, and I will utilize the food in due time whether there’s a crisis or I am just hungry.  Until next time, happy camping folks!