Preserving Everything, Every Way

A few months ago a compilation of all three of our food preserving books were

combined into one large volume.

 

They are still available individually as well.

 

If you've already bought one or two of the volumes this wouldn't save you money,

but if you're just starting out, it's cheaper to buy the compiled book with

all three volumes in it.



 

Preserving Everything, Every Way

Our summer of drought and wildfire, and what that meant to us as preppers.

Marston complex fire



 

As preppers we take into consideration what sort of natural or man-made disasters could be a risk in the area where we live, especially when we approach the possibility of buying a house or property. In the area where we live the main risk is wildfire, with extreme cold as another possibility. We have had one mild earthquake, merely a tremor. that we could actually feel (in 2006), but we don't get tornadoes or hurricanes and we don't live near a volcano or power plant, though some people could consider Yellowstone's caldera 400 miles SE of us to be a risk.

We've had weather as cold as 35 (F) degrees below zero, but the forested mountains have protected us from winds that could have given that a deadly wind chill. It's still weather to take seriously, but for the most part we stayed in the cabin with a fire in the woodstove and only went outside to check on the animals.

For our first twelve years on this property we didn't experience any big wildfires close enough to worry about. The few small lightning strike-started fires in our valley were put out while they were still only a few acres. There were a couple of dry summers that had us nervous but we fared well. Then came this year. This was the summer of drought and extreme fire danger.

Our 'rainy season' is usually from mid-May until the end of June. Some years it rained every day and we planted the garden in ankle-deep mud. Some years the cold weather persisted and we had frost and snow flurries clear into the middle of June. But all of those years, including the 'dry' ones, had plenty of rain in May and June. Not this year.

There were a few rains in the first half of May, and then a light shower on May 23^rd. That was the last rain we had until a light shower on July 5^th. There was not a single drop of rain in June. Everything dried up and on the bright side, we didn't have to mow again for weeks, and then only because it looked scraggly. June, normally our cool month of rain, turned into an inferno of heat and dryness. The last week of June and the first week of July brought us temperatures well over 100 degrees, some days as high as 105 and 106. This, at a time of year when we think it's too hot if it hits 80.

We joked about escaping to the coolness of the forest and mountains.... and laughed because we live up in the 'coolness' of the forest and mountains where most people go to escape the heat. And there was no escape. We don't know anyone with air conditioning out here because most years it's not necessary. We usually do hit close to 100 degrees a few times a summer but it's brief and goes away before it drains the life out of you. Not this year. We sweltered day after day.

But still, there were no wildfires in our valley, and nothing big anywhere in our county. We watched sadly as Glacier National Park, to our east, suffered two big wildfires in late July and early August. We saw terrible wildfires on the news in places like California, Washington, and Idaho. But here in NW Montana, we were pretty quiet on the wildfire scene.... until mid-August, when it seemed like the whole west end of the state went up in flames.

On the night of August 11^th a lightning strike high on the shoulder of Mt. Marston was captured on a security camera at a nearby golf course. Their cameras are not just for security, they also capture wildlife such as deer, elk, bears, and the occasional mountain lion. They cover the mountainsides above and behind the golf course. They've caught beautiful lightning strikes, cloud formations, and other interesting phenomena. This night they captures the lightning strike that changed our valley.

Smoke high on the shoulder of Mt. Marston



By morning a column of smoke was rising from the location of the strike. Dispatch started receiving calls of smoke and flames, spotted from a lake below the fire. The forest service sent their first crews up to check it out. The wind picked up, causing the fire to race uphill. At the top of the mountain is a fire look-out building, one of the few “manned” lookouts still being used. The forest service evacuated the woman who was this summer's look-out person.

The smoke filled our valley.

Smoke on the flank of Mt. Marston.

 

As the fire raced uphill, the forest service raced to protect the historical look-out building. They wrapped it in a fire-retardant material and covered that with sprayed-on fire resistant foam. Then they left, hoping the building would survive as the fire raced toward it. They had hoped to stop the fire at the top, since fire tends to burn upward, but this fire spread out to both sides and burned slowly down the mountain too. Initially the fire died down at the top and didn't start over over and down the other side. The forest service checked the building and it had survived. 

 

The look-out building on Mt. Marston,

taken a few years ago.

Later when the fire to the sides send the flames around the back side of the mountain it once again roared up to the top and this time it scorched the look-out tower but the building survived. For days, we didn't know it's fate. The thick smoke veiled the mountains and we waited. It took more than a week for the smoke to clear enough to see the look-out building on top of the mountain, a local landmark visible for miles.

The pre-fire view from the look-out tower.

This building is manned from July to September with a smoke-spotter.

The fire spread out over five mountains along the east side of our valley, staying mainly on the National Forest. Fire breaks were made above the houses closest to the fire, and the local fire department was on standby for days, to defend the homes and buildings if necessary. No evacuations were ordered but a few people left anyway.

Crown fire with flames shooting dozens of feet into the air.

Our house is a few miles west of the location of the fire, and there are a lot of houses and structures between us and the fire. We were never really at risk of it burning all the way to our home, even if the wind changed direction and the fire jumped the highway and headed toward us.. The only personal impact the fire had on us was the thick smoke. It burned our eyes, noses, and throats. We couldn't see the far side of the yard through the fog-like smoke. The sun couldn't pierce the smoke to charge our solar electric power system.

A Chinook helicopter dips water out of a pond at the golf course

The National Guard was called in to help the weary fire-fighters, who's numbers were spread thin over the 103 wildfires burning in western Montana in late August. Chinook helicopters dipped water out of the nearby lakes and ponds with large canvas buckets hanging from a cable underneath; a 'cup' of water around 1,500 gallons at a time. Watching from across the valley it seemed hopeless each time the water trailed out of the bucket onto the fire. Like a drop of water sprinkled on a campfire. But slowly the fire lines stopped advancing as the helicopters circled back and forth between fire and water, hour after hour after hour.

A helicopter drops water on the fire.

 

From the Stonehenge Air Museum at the golf course:

 

"Day 12. 8-23-15
They have been steady again today. There are 3 helicopters going now. Wind has picked up again and so has fire. They are making a round trip every 4:00 minutes. With all three copters running that means 4500 gallons times 15 = 67,500 gallons an hour when they are in the air.
Warmer weather predicted this week so looks like they will be going hard.
Sure glad the Governor called on our National Guard"



A Chinook helicopter hovering over a lake.

The helicopter on the left has just left with water, and the one on the right is

coming in for water.

Full of water, ready to go drop it on the fire.

It's very well coordinated where they are to take each load of water.

The potential for fire at our property became more real when a timber company started logging just off our western boundary during the fire east of us. There are strict rules for loggers during fire danger. They have to stop work at 1 pm (because humidity levels drop in the afternoon and increase fire danger), they have to have fire-fighting equipment on site, and they had to leave someone to watch for fire or smoke for at least two hours after they quit for the day. We were still concerned. We moved valuables to one of our kids' homes 70 miles away in Kalispell.

The valuables we moved were pictures/photos, journals, financial and tax papers, memory cards and flash drives, and laptop computers. Here at home we put hunting rifles, chainsaw, tools, and similar items in our camper. If we had to evacuate, we'd drive that out. Those things are valuable to us, but they are replaceable. We moved our rototiller, garden tools, and wheel barrow to the center of the garden, farthest from potential flames. My canners went to the root cellar. Now we could only wait, and cough and choke on the smoke, which seeped into the cabin despite our efforts to keep it closed up.

 

An airplane drops fire-retardant slurry in a backdrop of smoke.

A black & white photo from the golf course cameras.



After two weeks of fire and smoke, the temperature dropped and the rains came. And came and came, in the wild, crazy way of unexplainable excesses of dry and wet, heat and cold. After a couple of days of rain the fires were reduced to a few wispy columns of smoke from hot spots that continued to smolder. For the last week, it has rained nearly every day, sometimes all day. The grass has the first green it's had in about two months. Our valley has heaved a huge sigh of relief and sits, exhausted, recovering.

7,200 acres of forested mountains along the east side of our valley are charred. In my life time it will never look like it did, but the forest is a renewable resource, and my children will see it in it's green beauty again.  The cost to fight just this one fire:  $6,200,000.

In accordance with the recommendations for properties in wildfire-prone areas, over the last dozen years we cut out the pines and other extremely-flammable vegetation within 30' of our house. We thinned those beyond that, out to 50' to 75' from the house. We pruned branches up until they were 10' to 12' above the ground. The reason for this is that a ground fire rolling through won't 'climb' a tree like a ladder if there are no low branches for them to catch. A ground fire can have flames 6' to 8' high. The forest is littered with pine needles and flammable plants like Kinnikinnick and Juniper bushes.

In a roll-over the safest place is to be in our house. Our cabin is built with Larch logs, which take longer to ignite than the surrounding dry grass. After the fire rolls through we would have time to escape from our house if it begins. Second-best place to go would be the center of our garden. We could scoop out a depression in the dirt and lay our faces in there for better and cooler air. Hopefully we would be far enough from the heat of the flames. 

Smoke is one of the deadliest aspects of a fire, but super-heated air can fry your lungs and kill you. Flames are less likely to be what kills. Obviously if we had a chance to safely evacuate that would be the best plan. However we'd want to make SURE the route ahead of us was safe before we started out. We have three miles of a one-lane dirt road winding down through forest before it hits a small paved county road. The possibility of fire blocking the road is a danger, and if we tried to return to our home the fire might have blocked the road behind us as well. If we're not sure we can make it to safety, we'd hole up here.

I've been told that our root cellar would be more dangerous in a wildfire roll-over than staying in our house or going to the middle of our garden. Something about the duff on the ground and roots burning underneath causing smoke or heat that could kill us in the root cellar. Yet that was the first place I thought of as a safe place in a fire.

Crown fires burn the tree tops. We watched the fire burn trees on the steep mountain slope. Like candles, one right after another would flare up and send flames 20' or more into the air, and the next one above it would go up, then the next. Wildfires can create their own wind and send embers and burning twigs ahead of them to start new fires. Ash and burned twigs landed all over the golf course at the foot of the fire.

Our biggest danger at home is a crown fire that would throw burning debris onto the roof of our cabin. Even with the evergreens cut back so far from the house the flying embers can travel quite a ways and land on our roof. We have aspens and willows in the yard, but they are much less flammable. If a fire approached and we had time, we'd grab the chainsaw and cut them out as well.

Our gardening efforts suffered this year. Since we don't have a well we rely heavily on the rainwater that usually fills all of our tanks and barrels in early summer. We were not able to haul enough water to keep the garden in good shape in 100+ degree heat and extreme aridity. We weren't able to pick huckleberries up on the mountainside since the road up to the berry patches was closed because of the fire. We normally pick 6 to 9 gallons a year. We don't know yet whether the berry bushes escaped the fire. Hundreds of acres of berry plants graced the side of the mountain below where the fire started.

Huckleberries (like a wild blueberry) that we picked last year.

Fortunately most years we have an abundance of foods to preserve from our garden, foraging, fishing, and hunting, and some things have accumulated over the years. This will give us a good chance to clear out and eat those foods, and hopefully next year will be a normal year and we'll have lots of delicious food to preserve again.

And that's the concept behind prepping (preparedness) and food storage. It's there when a person has lean years... for any reason. A lot of people focus on world-wide and political or economic conditions regarding preparedness, and here we had a situation right here at home between the drought and the wildfires, which affected our ability to provide food for ourselves. This winter we'll eat from the extra we preserved over the last few years, along with the buckets of flour, grains, sugar, etc. that we stored. And over the next couple of years we'll replenish what we need to use this year. 

We in this area are emerging from the drought and wildfires to begin living again, and to get back to the normal activities of this time of year, such as firewood cutting, bow hunting, and getting the garden ready for the winter. We were very lucky compared to other places. In Washington, California, and Idaho they had dreadful fires. Homes and lives were lost. We lost none of either here.

Billowing smoke behind the golf course

 

Photos courtesy of and used with permission from

Stonehenge Air Museum at Crystal Lakes Golf course

Fortine, Montana



A similar write-up on my blog at Mother Earth News can be read here

Please leave comments or questions below, or email them to povertyprepping@blogspot.com





Using freeze-dried food storage

(If you just want to look at the pictures and read about the foods, you can scroll down past the text)

 

For the past few winters we've left NW Montana once winter has been well under-way long enough that we get tired of looking at snow and having below-zero weather.  Up on the mountain where our cabin is located it starts to snow any time after mid-October.  Most years it starts sticking on the ground by early November and we don't see bare ground again until late April.  Some years it's been into the first week of May before the last of it melts.

 

To break up the monotony of long Montana winters we started going to southern Nevada and "boondock camping" for a few months.  We decided to tie the practice of survival preparedness skills into these trips, since like all things in our life, things are only possible if we don't have to spend money.  Money is a scarce commodity.  So the first year we challenged ourselves to leave Montana with pretty much all the food we would need for those 3 months.  I had about thirty 2-gallon buckets full of things like flour, sugar, beans, rice, corn, oatmeal, and other dry foods.  We took a lot of can goods, mostly home-canned, and all the spices and such that we use in cooking and baking. 

 

We also challenged ourselves to learn about foraging and using edible food from the desert.  The Mojave is abundantly blessed with edible plants and animals.  The only "animals" we were able to harvest legally was jackrabbits.  No license is required for either residents or non-residents in Nevada for jackrabbits or coyotes, but we weren't hungry enough to try coyote-burgers!  The jackrabbits are lean and tough, but they make a tasty stew (with fresh warm homemade biscuits) or potpie.

 

Edible plants were mainly cactus this time of year.  Later in the year there would be fruit from the cactus flowers and yuccas, mesquite beans, pine nuts from the Pinyon pines at higher elevations.  We did a lot of reading about how the Paiute Indians and their predecessors, the Anasazi, lived from the land in this area.  I'm happy to say that we spent almost nothing on groceries the whole time we were down here.  The only "expense" of the trip was the gas to get down here and back.  We probably saved money in the long run because our phone company let us put the phone/internet on "vacation" since we'd be gone longer than a month, and there was no expense for heat during those few months.

 

The next time we came south we brought a bunch of home-canned and home-dried food.  I spent weeks back home cooking up beans and rice and potatoes on the woodstove, since we had to heat the house anyway.  Then I dried those foods on racks placed on shelves behind the woodstove.  I dried fruits and vegetables and dairy products (sour cream, cottage cheese, yogurt).  I also canned meat, cheese, and butter.  Again, we brought the buckets of dry food.  Also again, we spent almost nothing on food.  I have to admit to the occasional pizza from the grocery store, and something they call "sticky chicken", which is like boneless sweet-and-sour wings, from the grocery store deli.

 

This year we came similarly stocked, but the local grocery store here has started carrying freeze-dried food in #10 cans, which are those cans that are about a gallon in size.  We bought a few cans of things that would make our life without refrigeration more comfortable, like the scrambled eggs and cheese powder, but mostly we just eyed the cans when we were in the store,

shying away from the cost. 

 

Then they had this wonderful thing called a "Stock-up and Caselot sale" and included were all the cans of freeze-dried foods!  Most were about $5 off the regular price, and we bought quite a few of them.  The veggies were the cheapest, usually under $10 a can.  The fruits were mostly in the $15 to $17 range.  We blew pretty much our whole winter's food budget on those cans, but we have plenty of dry foods and canned goods, so even if we don't get to spend another dime on food down here, we'll still eat well.

 

I'm not promoting this company in particular.  It just happens to be the one the store carries.  I have used other freeze dried foods from companies like Pioneer Foods and Mountain House and find them all to be comparable in quality.  However, Augason Farms is the company these foods in this post are from.  Here's a link to their products on Amazon in case you want to look at or try any of these things yourself: 

Augason Farms - Search

I did notice while browsing that the prices were higher than at our local grocery store, and especially higher than the sale cost was.  You might want to check your local grocery store or even Wal-Mart.  The Wal-Mart on the east side of Flagstaff, Arizona carries the largest supply of Augason freeze-dried foods that I've seen anywhere on a store shelf.  They even have cool stuff like freeze-dried Turkey tetrazzini and Chicken Alfredo, with real meat!  They also have cans of real dried chicken and beef.  I've seen the TVP versions of "beef" and "chicken" in many grocery stores in freeze-dried and other forms, but this Wal-Mart carries the real freeze-dried meat.

 

We stared at our cans for a few days, wondering if we should use them or just keep them in case the SHTF while we're down here and we needed food for a longer period of time.  Finally we started opening and using them.  Some cans haven't been opened yet, but some have and we've been using them.  Here is a rundown on our experiences.

 

These are freeze-dried raspberries.  Sorry the pictures don't look very clear.  They did when I took them, but I uploaded them in town at the library since our mobile wifi doesn't have enough data to do it out here in the boondocks.  I didn't notice at the library that they were fuzzy, and we're back out in the middle of nowhere now. 

The freeze-dried raspberries are delicious right out of the can.  They're dry and have a texture similar to stryofoam, or Cheetos, but have a strong raspberry flavor.  They've even more delicious after re-hydrating.  These and all of the freeze-dried food we've been using are best if you use almost-boiling water and just cover them.  They don't swell up as much as dehydrated food sometimes does.

After about ten or fifteen minutes you have a product that is very similar to thawed frozen berries.  We've used these in oatmeal, pancakes, muffins, and once on vanilla ice cream.

These are freeze-dried blueberries.  They're practically tasteless out of the can, and only somewhat more tasty after soaking in hot water.  There is a good but subdued blueberry flavor.  They're good in oatmeal, pancakes, and muffins.

Our favorite!  Freeze-dried strawberry slices.  If you like strawberries at all, you'll have a hard time not eating the whole can just as strawberry chips!  They, too, have a texture like Cheetos right out of the can but with a strong and delicious strawberry flavor.  They're similar to thawed frozen strawberries after soaking in hot water.  We've used them in oatmeal and pancakes, and also stirred into vanilla ice cream, on a different occasion than the tie we used raspberries.

Freeze dried strawberries without my hand in the picture!

That packet is an oxygen absorber, which comes in every can.

Freeze-dried raspberries without my hand in the picture.

Freeze-dried blueberries.

This is that the cans look like.  Again, I apologize for the grainy picture.

Blueberries on top.

Strawberries on bottom left, raspberries on right.

This is freeze-dried Cheesy-Broccoli soup.  It's delicious.

To make it you mix the soup powder with hot water and then heat it for a few minutes

in a pan on the stove.

Freeze-dried vegetable stew.  It has carrots, celery, cabbage, potatoes, onion, and peppers in it.  I thought it would be bland but it's very flavorful.  I add rice to it and cook it all at once, and the stew rehydrates as the rice cooks.

Vegetable stew on top.

Cheesy Broccoli soup on bottom left, Creamy potato soup on bottom right.

We haven't opened the potato soup yet.  I have fresh potatoes left from our garden

in Montana that we are finishing up first.

The vegetables!

Freeze-dried carrots on top left, Broccoli florets on top right.

Corn on bottom left, peas on bottom right.

None of these are open yet.  We're using up home-dehydrated and canned

vegetables first.

 

Breakfast anyone?  On top we have freeze-dried butter, which could be used on homemade bread or toast.  We haven't opened the butter yet because we brought home-canned butter.

Omelet, anyone?

Freeze-dried whole eggs on top left, Freeze-dried bacon bits on top right.

Feeze-dried onion bottom left, freeze-dried red and green peppers bottom right.

The bottom four cans are all open and half gone, except the bacon bits which seem like

 they'll last forever!

This is what the freeze-dried bacon bits look like.  They're actually imitation made with soy tvp stuff, but they're flavored nicely.  Almost a smoky barbeque flavor reminiscent of bacon but not quite.  They did pretty good with it though.  We soak them right in the hot water with the onions and peppers when we're using them in omelets.  They're good on salads right out of the can.

This is the freeze-dried whole egg powder.  They also make a freeze-dried scrambled egg mix that we like even better than the whole eggs.  Both work great in baking and help cakes and other foods rise wonderfully.  For scrambled eggs or omelets we whisk the egg powder (either kind) in hot water and let it sit on the counter for about five minutes.  Once it's in the pan and cooking, we add the bacon bits and veggies.  Before the cheese powder ran out we would mix and pour some of that on the eggs when they were almost done.

If I'm baking with the egg powder I put the measure of dry powder in with the dry ingredients,

and just add the measure of water it would call for, to the wet ingredients.

Freeze-dried red and green peppers.  We use them in just about all of our dinners and in eggs when we have them for breakfast.  They are nearly like fresh chopped peppers when soaked about ten minutes in hot water.  I drain and air-dry them, fluffing them apart with my fingers every few minutes.

Freeze-dried onions.  These have a strong onion-y smell, more so than the ones I dehydrate at home.  But they add a terrific flavor to everything I cook.  Normally I give them the ten-minute soak in hot water, but I have just tossed them in while I was making casseroles and they rehydrated while the casserole cooked.

 

Not pictured here, and I don't know how I missed it, is a can of potato cubes.  The can isn't open yet but I plan to use it with some of the vegetables above and some home-canned meat  to make pot pies and stews.

Freeze-dried apple slices.  I soaked some in hot water for about fifteen minutes and made a pie out of them.  The apple slices were just slightly rubbery, so maybe I could have soaked them longer but the flavor was great.  Sometimes we use these along with a bit of cinnamon in oatmeal.  I just cook the dry slices right in the water with the oatmeal, then cover and let sit about five or ten minutes,

 then we eat it.  It's delicious.

The can of apple slices.

Hmm..this one says dehydrated.  I thought the were all freeze-dried?  I just looked and most of the

other cans say freeze-dried.

Banana slices.  These are hard and crispy and they don't "reconstitute".

They're a delicious snack though.

Here's the can of banana slices.

 

The freeze-dried chili mix on the left is Augason farms.  It has everything in it: beans, meat, tomatoes, the works.  It's not open yet so I can't tell you more about it yet.  I'll have to either update this or make a new post about this and the others as we open them.

The Mountain House beef stew is not open either.  We got it from a neighbor.  It was part of a Y2K stash.  We have used other mountain house dried foods and they were exceptional in quality, for ease of use, taste, and texture.

 

This "Morning Moo's" milk alternative tastes a lot like the product "YooHoo", a chocolate drink that you can buy at most grocery stores in small cans or in boxes with straws.  It says "milk alternative" on it but it contains whey and powdered milk.  If you have a true milk allergy, this isn't for you.  If you want a product that is tastier than mixing nesquick with  powdered milk, this is definitely tastier.  I forgot to take a picture of the contents but it looks like any cocoa powder.

This raw diced beef was also part of that Y2K stash that our neighbor gave us. 

Here's a picture of the beef pieces.  They have a texture like Cheetos or Styrofoam, but a strong beefy smell.  We soak them in hot water and then make them into gravies, stews, and casseroles.  We fried them in a bit of olive oil once and while they tasted good the texture was kind of chewy.  That chewiness goes away while they simmer in gravies and stews and casseroles.

A delicious meal is homemade egg noodles with some of these beef chunks, some dehydrated mushrooms, dehydrated onions, dehydrated celery, and dehydrated sour cream.  Sour cream dehydrates wonderfully.  Use a fruit leather tray and spread it thin.  Dry it until it's brittle.

This picture is to show a #10 can next to a standard 15-oz. can of peas, in case there are readers who aren't sure what a number-ten can is.

 

It's been a fun adventure trying out these products.  I look forward to using the ones we haven't tried yet and I'll keep you posted when we do.  We're only a few weeks away from returning to our cabin in the north and getting the garden started, so we may not open any more of these cans before then. 

 

For the most part we plan to continue growing and preserving our own food.  This has been an interesting experiment and it's been fun seeing what it's like to buy and use commercial food storage products.  These foods aren't organic, so possibly it's not any more healthy than the rest of the food in the grocery store.  For the best health and long-term food storage plan, learning how to grow your own food, using heirloom seed and saving seed for the next year, and preserving your own food using any of the food preservation methods, is the best way to insure a healthy meal on your table and long-term survival of you and your loved-ones

 

Please leave comments below or email them to:

povertyprepping@yahoo.com

 

I'm way behind on answering emails and I apologize to those of you who are waiting.  I've been getting a huge amount of emails from people with questions and sharing their experiences, and I enjoy getting them, but I'm having a hard time tracking down some answers and I've gotten behind on reading and answering letters, along with all the other tasks of the day!

 

Thank you!

 

Susan

Preserving Fruits, Nuts, and Seeds

http://amzn.to/14EYWoQ



 



Dave and I are happy to announce that the new book, "Food Storage: Preserving Fruits, Nuts, and Seeds" is published now and available at amazon.com in both kindle format and print.  This is the sequel to "Preserving Meat, Dairy, and Eggs".  We've spent the last several months working on this one, and now we're starting on "Preserving Vegetables, Grains, and Legumes", which we hope to have out by the end of the year. 

We both have a lot of real-life chores in our gardens and kitchens, as well as all the other normal work and goings on, plus families that include kids and grandkids.  But we have a lot of fun working on these books in between everything else. 

Dave is amazing in his tireless experimentation with food preserving in his "lab-oh-rah-tory" (kitchen) and I appreciate his contributions.  I have tons of emails I need to dig through and post of the "Dave's Kitchen" series we were featuring earlier on in this blog.  When we thought we were done with this book, he thought of a bunch more stuff...


"Lemons can be candied just like oranges.  The rind tends to be a little tougher but they go great in some recipes that call for lemon zest, like cakes, fruitcakes, bread or rice puddings and even for "Lemon Chicken"."

"Cranberries can make good sweet or savory pickles. The savory type of cranberry pickles are OK but the sweet are very good."

"Walnuts in honey. My daughter has, on several occasions, lightly roasted walnuts, put them in jars and poured (very) hot honey over them and they are really good after they've sat for a while to let the honey soak into the nuts. We have 1 jar that"s been on the shelf for a couple years and they appear to still be good (still sealed). Out of the jars she's done only one failed (started to ferment) but I suspect she didn't heat the honey hot enough or didn't get the jar cleaned well before adding the nuts and honey."

"Nut butters. I have made nut butter(mostly Sunflower) by running seeds through my grain mill(hand cranked).  I have a set of steel burrs so it doesn't make a mess that cant be cleaned up."

"Canning Bananas, If you add enough lemon juice to the banana "mush" it can be water-bathed. It isn't really just canned bananas done that way but it is pretty good. The ones I've done that way didn't sit on the shelf very long, "I" ate 'em all! lol."

"I don't remember if I ever mentioned it but "sulfuring" dried fruit will keep the pests away if it is stored in containers that aren't sealed (ie.. oatmeal boxes) or aren't bug proof."

 

Out of all those months of notes from Dave, plus my own experience and research, we put this book together, and we hope you enjoy it!  We welcome comments, questions, and suggestions about the book or anything related to prepping, food preserving, or this blog.

 

povertyprepping@yahoo.com





(NOTE: It looks like the Print version won't be available for another day or so.  It's done with the publishing process and just taking longer for Amazon to post the Print book information. Sorry for the inconvenience.  Meanwhile, the kindle version is available now.)

 

 

Guest Post - "Redneck Emergency Kit"

by Tristan Miske

 

My parents and my parents-in-law do crazy things like rafting or kayaking wild rivers, and backpacking and camping and things like that.  They've been trying to find a truly waterproof way to pack a few emergency supplies, so I decided to experiment.

 

I've heard of using small containers like Altoid mint tins or vitamin bottles, and probably a few others I can't think of right now.  But after watching guys at work, and other places where I hang out, throwing away chewing tobacco cans I decided to give them a try.  For the record (mother, are you listening?) I don't chew tobacco, I swear they're someone else's cans. 

 

 

I started off by laying a book of matches in the bottom of the can.  Then I dug some dryer lint out of the trash can in our laundry room.  I know I could have soaked the dryer lint in Vaseline or something else to make it kind of like a fire starter but I thought it might get the matches gooey and make it hard to light them.

 

Before I stuffed the dryer lint in the can I took some of it outside and lit it to see how well it caught fire and how good it burned.  It passed the test, so here it is, nestled in the can with the matches underneath it.

 

The top part of these cans have a separate storage space.  It's supposed to be a place to discard 'used' chew, if you need a place to put it.  I put four ibuprofen tablet in there, but you can put other pain relievers such as aspirin or Tylenol in there, or small hard candies for emergency energy.  If you're diabetic the candies might be a good sugar fix if your blood sugar drops.  That might happen if you are unexpectedly in the wilderness longer than you planned.  I'm not real familiar with diabetes, so I'm just talking from vague things I've picked up along the way.  I'm barely an adult, so don't be too hard on me. I do take preparedness seriously though.

 

Now time for the submersion test.  Into the sink and then I filled the sink with water.  But...it floated.  Well, that's actually a good thing, because if, for example, you're on a wild river and you dump into the water and your little kit gets away, it floats.

 

But I wanted to see if it was really watertight, so I forced it under the water.  After a few minutes of staring vacantly at it I weighted it down with something and left it for a while.  When I came back I opened it up and the contents were still dry.  I made up two more and submerged them as well, to make sure it wasn't just the first can that was water tight.  All three cans emerged from the water with dry contents.

 

Knowing how invisible something like this little can could be on a river or lake, I tied some of this marker tape around the can.  First one direction, then the other, and tied them together.  That gives the can visibility.  If you're staying on dry land you might not want to use the bright tape around it, but remember, it's possible to fall into water when you're not expecting to.  I have...um, family members, who have fallen into streams while crossing on downed trees.  If they needed to make a fire to dry out clothes and warm up, they would have this handy little kit to start a fire with.  If they got bruised up in the fall, they could make use of the ibuprofen.  If the can fell out of a pocket, they could find it and retrieve it, and hopefully not fall in again getting the can out of the water. 

 

I'm thinking of other things that could be put in these little cans.  A small compass maybe, and a map printed as small as legible and folded to fit in the can.  No one plans to get lost, but it can happen.  I'm on Search & Rescue, and we hear that a lot.  Another thing that could go in the can is a fish hook and about a 10' length of fishing line coiled up and tied.  Fishing line takes up almost no space.  If you get strong enough fishing line you could use it for snares for small animals, doubling it if you need too.  But then we're talking about survivial food for the seriously lost folks.

 

If I come up with more cool combinations for the kit, I'll send in updates to be added to this post.  Thank you.

 

 

Thank you, Mr. Miske, for this information.  It's always nice to see the younger generation taking preparedness seriously and doing things like this.  Keep up the good work, and please do send in more as you experiment.

 

Please leave comments or questions below, or email them to:

 

povertyprepping@yahoo.com

 

Susan and the Poverty Prepping team