Preppy Prepping

Every family should do a threat assessment. This is important so you can prepare appropriately for the most probable emergencies. You can begin by reviewing historical records of your area. For instance,  our city has struggled with flooding in the past due to a river that flows through it. However, another serious flood in our area is unlikely since the known hazard has been addressed with high embankments along the river. But we still have problems with flooding in low-lying areas around the city during heavy rains because the drainage system can’t deal with large volumes. Additionally, we live near a military base and several nuclear facilities. These are all possible threats. In addition to historical data, you should consider things like tornados, hurricanes, droughts, earthquakes, and other acts of God (or nature). The top 8 natural disasters are tsunamis, droughts, floods, earthquakes, heat waves, volcanic eruptions, tornados, and hurricanes.  Volcanic eruption is rare,...

Years ago, I started dehydrating bell peppers and storing them in jars. I find that I use a lot of bell peppers but I’m not going to pay $1 for a single pepper. My father-in-law grows them every year, as do I, and I dehydrate all the excess. All year rounds, I have bell peppers without having to pay a premium. For most things, it’s unnecessary to reconstitute the diced, dried peppers. I can simply add them to soups, casseroles along with the meat, or omelette fixings and they reconstitute really well on their own. Yet, I use them so often, I still have run out of dried peppers a time or two. For every full jar I keep available to use throughout the year, I try to have another stored for long term. Several times recently, I’ve been making something, like a roast with potatoes and carrots, when I really needed celery to add another taste profile. Celery is something I almost never buy, primarily because I use it rarely and, in between uses, it just rots and has to be thrown out. But, on ...

Because we live in the South, where we are happy if we have 1 day of Winter, we do not have a fireplace. We know lots of people who do, but many more that don’t. If you’re one of the lucky families that has a fireplace, you probably have firewood stored up somehow or have a reliable source. If you have a fireplace, but it has fallen into disrepair or you just don’t use it, now is the time to call a chimney sweep. Get that thing up and running; at the very least, get it to where it CAN be used. You have a cooking source and a heating source already in your home. You’re lucky. When my mother was growing up in the frozen north of Alberta, Canada, they used coal oil lamps for light and a single wood-burning stove for heat. They had a huge old farmhouse kitchen that housed their big cast-iron cook stove. This was the only heat source in the house. After chores were finished for the day and dinner had been consumed (in the kitchen), evening life for the family all took place in the one heate...

I’d like to talk a little bit more about water issues. A human can survive for weeks without food, but only 3 days without water. Other than shelter, this is the most basic of needs and should be the absolute first task tackled when trying to prepare for the future. Start by ensuring you have at least a 3-day supply of water for all your household members and pets. From there, continue adding to your storage with the ultimate goal of having 2 months worth of water stored for your family. Keep in mind that you can get by with less than 1 gallon of water per person per day for drinking, but you also need water for cooking, sanitizing, and bodily care. That’s why the CDC recommends 1 gallon per person per day. For a family of 4, you should have stored, at an absolute minimum, 12 gallons of water. But 2 week’s worth, or 56 gallons, would be even better. If you have any warning of a potential loss of water, you can fill bathtubs. This water should last you several days. If you don’t have ba...

Our Grandmothers used them and some of our mothers, as well. However, many people today only own electric kitchen utensils. Gone are the hand-cranked mixers and hand mills for grinding grain into flour. Some families may not even own a hand crank can opener. If the power grid goes down, hand-operated utensils will be essential, so it’s time to take stock of the non-electric kitchen utensils you may need. Let’s start with the 3 mentioned above. I have 3 or 4 manual can openers. I have so many because only one really works. I need to throw out the others and make more space in my drawer. If you have a trusted manual can opener, buy one more. Can openers are difficult to sharpen and really do dull over time. How fast they become useless depends on how much they are used. In any case, have a spare! You don’t want to end up having to use a knife to cut into cans. I recently purchased a “retro” hand mixer. It has a wheel with a handle attached and two beaters that turn when the wheel is rota...

I wrote previously of the need for every family to have a supply of all medications regularly taken by family members. But you might want to consider expanding this supply a little more. Are there frequent ailments that attack your family members? For years, every March, I would develop Bronchitis. It was like clock-work, documented in my medical charts. This was primarily due to allergies, change in weather, and the amount of time I was spending outside since March, in Georgia, signals the beginning of warm weather. The best way for me to avoid bronchitis is to treat the allergies before they develop into a sinus infection and the sinus infection before it results in bronchitis. In order to protect my body from bronchitis, a much more serious and debilitating illness for me, I have to be sure to stay on top of my allergies. We keep Benadryl around the house in large volumes. We live in an area that is easily in the top five for worst allergies in the country. I’ve been told by several...

I’m constantly finding out new things from my research,  which I mostly do during the middle of the night when I can’t sleep. For instance, I printed out directions for making a home still (not QUITE as easy as my sons claim), reviewed ways to store meat by salting, which my father’s family in Canada lived off when he was growing up, but is nearly impossible in the South, and stay current on new techniques and ideas from farm blogs and some small-time preppers, like me. One of the blogs I was reading recently mentioned something I had not considered, but is worth pursuing. While at the grocery store, pick up a couple of extra cans of, and watch for good sales on, canned meals that already have meat added. For instance, pork and beans (the better brands contain hunks of ham and ham fat) and canned chili with hamburger meat. While the ratio of meat to fillers may be small, having some cans of these foods will allow you to serve your family a meal containing meat without having to bre...

If there ever IS a catastrophic emergency, fast food will be non-existent. You need to know how to cook nutritious, easy meals for your family. In addition to beans and rice, homemade pasta, and sprouts, an easy meal to make is soup. You can make tomato, vegetable, chicken, ham, mushroom, split pea, potato, squash, pumpkin, beet, lentil, cauliflower, roasted red pepper, carrot . . . and any number of other types. I’ve started making a list of meals that I can stash away so I don’t have to spend time thinking about meal options if and when the time comes. Each day of the week, we will have a different dinner meal. For instance, every Monday, we will have a bean meal. Tuesday will be a rice meal. Wednesday, pasta, etc. . . Thursdays will be soup day. In this list, I’m separating out potential non-meat meals by each of the categories listed above. My goal is to have 12 options in each category so we have 12 weeks of different meals, despite repeating categories on a weekly basis. Essentia...

Syrup - perhaps the easiest thing in the world to make from scratch. When I was growing up, I had no idea there was such a thing as syrup in a bottle. I don’t think my mother EVER bought any, yet pancakes were our weekly after-church on Sunday brunch. We ate them weekly, but never had anything other than hot, from the pot, homemade yummy syrup. Mostly, my mother made maple syrup using maple extract added to boiling sugar water. But she also made a variety of fruit syrups. One of the things I discovered while living in England was amazing, tropical fruit juices, like the ones I have been able to buy during my trips to Hawaii. Shortly after our arrival in England and our move into our leased house, an American friend working with my husband had to return home for a family emergency. When she came back to England, she brought with her a large bag of pancake mix. I hadn’t seen this product anywhere in England, even though the store where we mostly shopped was the English Walmart. Our way o...

Well, I tried my hand at homemade pasta, and learned 2 very important things. First off, you don’t HAVE to use Semolina, despite what I’ve always been told and the many articles I’ve read on this subject. When it came to actually printing out recipes, almost all of the recipes called for plain all purpose flour. The recipe I decided to use called for 2 1/2 cups of semolina. I used 1 cup of all purpose flour and 1 1/2 cups of semolina. The resulting pasta was dense and not light, like I wanted. The second issue was hand-rolling out the dough. It was way more than my poor arthritic hands could take. I rolled out a quarter of the dough and my daughter had to do the remainder for me. Without the use of a pasta roller, we just weren’t able to get the dough thin enough for a product with a medium or light bite. Although smooth, it was quite heavy and thick. I think, in the future, I’ll use less semolina to my all purpose flour, probably much less, maybe just 1/2 cup per recipe. I still have ...

Have you ever considered that, one day, you might find it necessary to evacuate your area. We live in a relatively safe area of the country where the need to evacuate from floods, hurricanes, tsunamis, or tornadoes is pretty non-existent. But we also live near several nuclear facilities. In the past, our city has hosted evacuees from coastal areas numerous times, including Hurricane Katrina. Shelters have overflowed and many evacuees simply can’t afford hotel rooms, even if any were available. It begs the question, if my family was forced to evacuate, what would we do? After Hurricane Katrina, my family discussed this very issue in detail. There are several concerns that have to be addressed if an evacuation order is issued for your area. First and foremost, how do you go about gathering your family? This was a huge question, since my husband worked at one of those nuclear facilities, a 55-minute drive from our home. We discussed in detail (and never fully resolved, unfortunately) a ra...

As I’ve previously mentioned, my husband and I moved our family to England several years ago for a short stay. His job assigned him to a project in northern England and provided a furnished home for us for about 3 months. While it was very short, it afforded my children an opportunity to live in a different country and culture without having the handicap of a foreign language (or so we thought. Turns out, English is NOT what we speak. We speak American, which is absolutely not what “they” speak.) We learned many, many things while there, but a couple of the things that changed my life forever are detailed below. First off, they don’t perk or drip their coffee. They refer to both coffee and tea as “a brew”, and both are prepared in relatively the same way - good old boiling water. Every kitchen, and even every hotel room, is equipped with an electric kettle, but not the kind I grew up around. These are cordless kettles. You plug a base into an outlet, remove the insulated kettle, fill i...

People occasionally ask me what type of an emergency I’m anticipating. I have no idea. God said, so I do. He didn’t give me any details, just a few additional directions along the way. Some people are planning for a zombie apocalypse, others think there will be an EM Pulse, still others are expecting nuclear war followed by nuclear fall-out. My only thought is that we may experience a catastrophic failure of infrastructure, which shuts off our power and leads to loss of sewage and water.  Near the first peak of COVID, so many people were sick in our neck of the woods that businesses had to shut down. They were unable to sustain operations with such a limited staff. People positive for COVID were being isolated for 2 weeks, and anyone who had been in contact with them, which usually resulted in many of their co-workers, had to be isolated, also. There were just not enough employees to maintain businesses. If things get really bad in the future from COVID or a variant, or from some o...

I think it’s time we stop and re-assess. I’ve unloaded tons of info and suggestions on you, but let’s pause for a minute and do some deep thinking. The first question you need to ponder is, just who am I prepping for? In my case, my family includes myself and my husband, our three grown children and any spouses/ family they may have (they are all currently single, but I’m hoping and praying for Godly spouses and the gift of grandchildren!), as well as my father-in-law.  Prior to the death of my parents, they were also on this list. However, I have 2 sisters who live in the vicinity and my brother’s widow who lives a 5-hour drive away. In the case of a catastrophic emergency, she would have no one to care for her, and we’d most likely have to get her and move her in with us. One sister and her husband would probably move in with one of their 3 children, all whom live away, but the other sister’s fate in an emergency is uncertain. She and her husband, daughter, son-in-law and, perhap...

 Let’s talk about keeping clean in an emergency - bodies, homes, work surfaces. The CDC recommends storing paper products and plastic ware for your family for two - four weeks for an emergency. Again, we’re having a small stash on hand so you can learn to adapt without being thrown in all at once. To your Stores, you might want to add disposable eating supplies, to include paper cups, paper plates, napkins or paper towels (using paper towels as napkins also gives you disposable towels for cleaning, thus they serve a dual purpose) and plastic utensils. The goal here is to use items initially that can be thrown out while you establish a routine of how to wash dishes with no running or hot water. Soap is a critical product in an emergency. You need it to clean your bodies, clothes, dishes, and wounds. The safest and easiest treatment for scrapes, cuts, bites, etc., is soap and hot water. Bar soap is the easiest product to purchase for cleaning wounds and bodies. Bar soap can also be u...

Years ago, for Mother’s Day, my husband bought me a food saver. It’s one of those machines that seals special bags and can vacuum-seal, as well. The bags that fit the food saver are much heavier than Ziploc bags and are NOT air-permeable, a requirement for long-term storage. The one with which he gifted me also comes with a roll holder at the top and a cutter blade that slides across to cut the heavy plastic whatever length you want. I purchase the rolls, sealed on both sides, from Costco. You can also get them on-line and purchase rolls of different widths. Some of the multi-packs include pre-formed bags, open on only one end. These work well for smaller items that you want to quickly repackage. When I use the rolls and make my own bags, I always double seal the end before I fill. Just in case one seal loosens somehow, I have that second seal for protection. The machine uses heat and pressure to melt the two sides together to form a seal in a thin line. I use my food saver a ton. If I...

My oldest son’s first job was at the local Chick-fil-A. We discovered, in anticipation of the opening, that CFA does something called, “The First 100” at every new store the night before the Grand Opening, which always happens on a Thursday. You have to report to the store by 6 am the morning before the opening and register. The First 100 people that register and several alternates spend the whole day and the night in the parking lot. CFA feeds you breakfast, lunch, and dinner and provides unlimited drinks all day plus games with give-always and lots of fun activities. Throughout the day, they require the attendees to line up and do a count to be certain the 100 don’t leave the property. Early the following morning, they rally the attendees again and the first 100 (and any alternates that have taken the place of disqualified individuals) are given a gift card pre-loaded with 52 #1 meals. Supposedly, you can’t use the card multiple times in the same day, but I’ve found the employees are...

 Regardless of how much food you store, it will never be enough. If there really IS a catastrophic emergency in your region of the country, such as inter-state commerce shutting down or the power grid going off-line, or even the failure of our economy, you will be doing extraordinarily well to have stored up enough to provide food for your family for a full year. The real goal of Stores is to provide for your loved ones for long enough to establish a food-collection system for the future. What that means for everyone is a little different. But the most important thing is to have given this whole idea some mind space and thought. This isn’t something that should send you to a mental health specialist or a cardiologist! We have held multiple family meetings to discuss these issues. We included my father-in-law, who now lives near us, and our grown children. We opened the floor to any tangents one of the attendees wanted to head off down. My father-in-law was very concerned about the ...

The neighborhood where I live was originally built in a pecan orchard. The trees are getting pretty old and are beginning to die out. I grew up five doors down from the home where my husband and I live and have raised our children. I bought this home as a single woman, desiring to raise children some day in my awesome neighborhood and just down the street from my parents. When I married, my husband agreed to live here, mainly because of the amount of equity I had accumulated already in this home.  When I first bought this house, there was a poor, sad, neglected apple tree in the backyard. It took me years, but I fertilized, pruned, watered, nurtured, talked to, and even sang to this little tree.  Within a few years, it began paying me back for my attention and producing beautiful apples. After I had children, my daughter and I would go out about every two weeks in the Fall and pick a bowl full of apples.  We’d peel them, core them, slice them, season them, and make a coup...