Preppy Prepping

In my continual quest to identify meals of different types that I can add into my Stores meal list (see October 17 Post, “Soup for Every Occasion”), I’ve run across some information that I find helpful. Specifically, different meals require different types of rice. For instance, most Indian-type meals call for Basmati rice, something I have not added to my stores. I have a good supply of long-grain white rice, but no other kinds. I’ve also discovered that I should probably store up Arborio rice. This is the rice used for Risotto, and it’s smaller and plumper than long-grain. Therefore, when cooked, if done correctly, you get a creamy, light, delicious product. I’ve watched enough Gordon Ramsey shows to know that creamy Risotto is a staple in his restaurants. It can also be used for rice pudding. Storing up Arborio rice and Basmati means that I can vary our rice dishes much more. Using rice twice a week, once a week by itself and once a week combined with beans, having different types o...

Two weeks ago, I was talking with my son about the possibility of a catastrophic emergency. Recently, he told me that he believes we will have a financial collapse and a regime change in our country within the next 2 years, so this is a topic we visit periodically. He pointed out that if the worst happens, he’ll have to stop working out because I won’t be able to provide enough protein to fuel his muscles. Of course, that got me thinking. If we lose the power grid, life will require all family members working hard from sun up to sundown just to survive, like in the Pioneer Days. We will need my son’s muscle and it would be in our family’s best interest to be able to supplement his food allotment with additional protein. With that in mind, I began researching high protein sources. I believe I’ve mentioned before that my father’s family were pioneers in the part of northern Alberta where they settled. They were the only non-Indians in that area. The Tribe that peopled that area were the ...

 I haven’t posted in over a year; mainly because I had nothing more to say! People who know me well might find that very comical. But a recent conversation has spurred this Post. I have several friends who are part of a co-op from a store called Breadbecker’s. They are Atlanta-based but ship all over. They sell grains, beans, and other baking supplies. But their grains are unique in that they package the whole wheat berry in Mylar bags with the air removed and, then, in 42-lb. bucket. Before packaging, the wheat berries are treated for pests. The unique packaging, devoid of air and light, and sealed in a bucket away from bugs or rodents, and the whole berries as opposed to just the ground flour, makes these products shelf-stable for many, many years. Add in a hand-operated grinder and you have the basis for bread-making in your Stores. The advantage to the co-op is that you’re grouping orders together to discount the shipping and in order to apply volume discounts. Numerous times n...

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...

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’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...

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...

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...

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 ...

 Today, let’s talk about cooking with no power, thus no microwave, no oven, no stove.  If you have a gas stove, like me, you only need electricity to ignite your oven or range. As long as gas is still coming through my line, I just need to manually light my burners with a lighter to be able to cook. But, in a catastrophic emergency, I won’t have gas for very long. So, just how DO you cook long-term? About 10 years ago, several people in my neighborhood decided to try out functioning with no water and no power for a weekend.  It was a great dry run for us.  I went into the weekend sure it was going to be simple. I put a bucket of water from our rain barrels in each bathroom to pour into the commode to flush it.  We bungy-corded the fridge and freezer to help remind each of us that refrigerated food was off limits. I put plastic wrap over top of the sink to help me remember not to run water in the sink. We were confidently prepared! My solution for years to the qu...

 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 e...

When I first began preparing for a potential emergency, everything I read stressed the importance of ROTATING my stock. Eventually, this task became overwhelming, partly because we don’t typically eat a lot of beans and rice. The things I was stashing away could not easily be transferred to our daily food supplies. But keeping up with dates on all my cans also put me way out of control. So how do I ensure my food doesn’t spoil before my family needs it? My solution went two different directions. First off, I found articles (case studies, really) about canned goods that had been discovered more than 100 years after purchase. One occurred in Texas when a company bulldozing an area to build a parking lot for a new shopping complex discovered a root cellar that contained hundreds of canning jars full of food. The food was taken to an independent lab and tested for bacteria and nutrition. Every jar, still carefully sealed, was free of bacterial infiltrate and still held it’s original nutrit...

Today, I want to begin talking about storing food. Probably the least expensive and easiest item to store is rice. There are many different types of rice. Brown rice is a great antioxidant. Basmati rice is low in arsenic, a common by-product of rice. But plain white long-grain rice is inexpensive, easy to cook and store, and provides over 200 calories per cup. It’s a very good way to start storing up. One pound of rice equals 7 1/2 cups of cooked rice, so a 50-lb. bag, costing $25 or less, will give you a whopping 375 one-cup servings.  Rice alone, however, is an incomplete meal. But combine rice with beans, and you have a meal consisting of all 9 amino acids which, together, form a complete protein. Again, beans are very inexpensive and easy to cook and there are many different varieties. So, add multiple pounds of various beans to your stores along with your rice, and you’re well on your way to being able to provide healthy and filling food for your family in an emergency. This i...

 I consider myself to be a planner, not a Prepper. I don’t have a secret, hidden hide-out, my family doesn’t do drills, and no t.v. show is going to be interested in me. I’m just a regular person trying to make sure my family’s needs will be covered if something very serious happens. I have many friends who don’t think it’s even remotely possible that our infrastructure could fail. But I have another friend who lived through Katrina in New Orleans - he believes strongly in preparing for potential emergencies. I’m sure the people in Texas never expected to be without power for weeks.  Years ago, we suffered from an ice storm in the Deep South that knocked out power in our whole city for several days. We were lucky in comparison to flooding, fire, tornado, and hurricane damage that occurs frequently around the world.  Truthfully, though, I started learning how to prepare for an emergency about 15 years ago, when the Lord told me I should. I discussed it with my husband who ...