Meats, Just the Meats

 We’ve talked about water, rice, beans, a little about bread, seasonings, veggies, and fruit. Now, I’d like to tackle meat. With the protein you’ll be getting from the combination of rice and beans, meat is not essential. But it sure is nice to have. As I previously mentioned, our meals from Stores (I’ll try from now on to use a capital “s” when talking about the food I’ve put aside, and a lower case “s” when referring to grocery stores) will look fairly different from our typical meals now. For one thing, we probably won’t eat 3 meals a day. My family consists of all adults and a couple of my children don’t eat breakfast. However, the bigger issue is preparing food without the use of a microwave, stove, or oven. I’ll talk more about cooking in a later post, but I bring this up here just to point out that cooking will be a lengthy process and I just don’t see how I’ll be able to cook more than twice daily. I will need to cook outside and will need light, which means having dinner early. While there IS the possibility of cold lunches, sandwiches, for instance, my overall plan is for 2 meals per day.  

Meat, at least to flavor our food, will be reserved for a single night each week, most likely Saturday night or Sunday. I doubt we’ll be eating meat and vegetables.  Most likely, we’ll take a hint from African cooking styles and prepare a meat dish smothered in gravy. The meat will flavor the gravy and provide some protein, but we will certainly not have an individual serving per person. Instead, I want to prepare meals like stroganoff, tuna casserole, or spaghetti sauce flavored with meat. To this end, my plan is to use a single can of meat for each weekly meat meal. These cans vary in size, but typically run about 12 ounces each. Divide this amongst my six family members, and it’s just not enough to really do anything but flavor our meals.

I have planned a single exception to this. For holidays, like Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and maybe even some birthdays, I have purchased small canned hams. There’s a lot of controversy surrounding canned hams, and many different brands. Some people find them only slightly better than Spam. But I like the Dak or Goya brand and think a 1-lb canned ham, cooked with pineapple and a brown sugar glaze, would be a nice meal for a holiday when real hams are unavailable. You can find these hams at many grocery stores, Amazon, and Aldi, and they cost anywhere between $3 and $8.  

For the sake of variety, I have several canned hams, canned chicken, tuna, roast beef, pulled pork, and Spam in my meat section of my Stores.  Once, I even found a large plastic jar, tightly sealed, at an Oriental food store of freeze-dried pork. I snatched it up! Don’t know how I’ll use it when the time comes, but freeze-dried meat is a real luxury and certainly something very different. Additionally, I have invested a small amount in commercially-dried and sealed (with extended shelf-life) ground beef and bacon. These items are pretty expensive from on-line Preparedness stores, but I purchased small quantities as I could afford.

So there you have it - THE MEATS! You can add lots of other options, too, liked oysters, kippers, or sardines. I don’t buy these because my husband is allergic to seafood, but that shouldn’t keep you from stocking up on luscious Omega-3 fatty acids!