Figures assume unopened storage at 21 °C, dark and dry.
Warmer rooms halve nearly everything.
| Item | Method | Lasts | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| White rice, long-grain | Mylar, sealed with oxygen absorbers | 25 years | Brown rice will not keep; the bran oil turns rancid inside a year. |
| Pinto beans, dry | Mylar, sealed with oxygen absorbers | 25 years | Safe throughout, but they harden after year eight. Pressure-cook thereafter. |
| Honey | Glass, lid sealed, cool and dark | Indefinite | Crystallises in the cold. Stand the jar in 40 °C water to return it. |
| Nonfat dry milk | Nitrogen-packed No. 10 can | 20 years | Instant granules keep roughly half as long as the regular powder. |
| Cooking oil, olive | Dark bottle, unopened, 15 °C | 2 years | The shortest line in the cellar. Buy small, rotate often, keep it dark. |
| Tomatoes, canned | Commercial tin, on the shelf | 18 months | Acid shortens the tin's life. Discard any can with a dented seam. |
StockCellar is a reference, not a periodical. There is nothing here to keep up with. Every entry states the food, the method it was stored by, the span it holds, and the one thing most often got wrong about it. Where sources disagree, the shorter figure is printed and the disagreement noted. Where no good figure exists, the entry says so plainly rather than guessing.
A cellar is not built in a weekend and it is not a hedge against anything in particular. It is a habit: buy what you already eat, buy it twice, and write the date on the lid in pencil. The pencil matters. Ink runs when the jar sweats.
Everything else in this almanac is arithmetic performed on that habit.
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