Episode-77- Get More Food Now With Your Own Food Preps

dinner from preps

The topic of this episode is a good follow up to the last one which was titled Get more water with catch store and use systems. Next to water food is thing that we humans consume most. I have an important link in the show notes at todolisthome to the institute for the future. The article linked is a study on four possible food futures for the year 2021. It’s imperative that you begin to realize your responsibility have as little interference between where your food comes from and your dining table.
This is a follow up to episode 14 in which I describe a trip to the Shenandoah mountains in August and our experience with some of the emergency food taste testing we did. In short we learned that most of the food we had purchased for long term storage was delicious. The stews and especially the Blueberries with granola and milk from mountain house were great. The things I noted in episode 14 were that we needed to continue our food storage and rotation practices. In short that means we had to be more vigilant about getting more food more often and storing it properly then learning how to rotate into our regular diet. I am working to having at least 90 days food for my entire family and I would like to stretch that out to one year. We have a mix of short term and long term storage food to do the job.
The world is full of examples of how important a role food plays in everyday life. When there is not enough the is hell to pay. Eating is something most people do or want to do at least three times a day.
you just ate not long ago or maybe you’re eating something now or you will be eating something again soon. You’re not going to stop nourishing yourself nor should you ever contemplate how you would do that. If the news has taught one thing is that food is important when disaster strikes. Not having any hand in an emergency lead to chaos and fear. So it’s not important for me to go into the bad things that occur when there is not enough food. In times of crisis whether personal or larger Food security is more important than 401k’s, bank accounts and material assets. A good bank of food can help you through job loss, depression, lack of enough money or time or both. Building a food bank is your responsibility not the government’s not the charities but yours. When you give up that responsibility to others you relinquish your freedom to nourish yourself as you see fit.
When you consider buying extra food to store and use in the future it’s very important to keep in a mind a simple principle that I credit Jack Spirko of the survival podcast for developing. That is Eat what you store and store what you eat. This concept should also be expanded to those who garden or who plan to garden. You should grow what you enjoy eating and eat what you grow. I remember starting out I wanted to grow so much in the limited space I have and I really tried to grow a lot but when it got down to it I realized after a season that I don’t eat as much cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower as I thought I would. Plus those were the hardest plants for me to grow from seed and they also took the longest to reach maturity. Now I concentrate what I like most which is still a large variety but more focused on the goodies such as cherry and stupice tomatoes, habanero peppers, okra, yellow squash, cucumbers, edamame, beans, radish, blackberries, strawberries, raspberries, elderberry and blueberry and lots of herbs like oregano, thyme, chamomile, parsley, chives, basil and mint.
What are the hard and soft emergencies that could bring on the need for stored food?
hard emergencies are those that have greater reach than your own household like a neighborhood or larger disaster caused by forces of nature or man beyond our control. These could be natural occurrences like earthquakes, tornados, volcanic eruptions etc. Or manmade like – financial crisis that lead to – inflation of food prices. Softer emergencies are those that occur just to you or your family such as job loss, not having enough money for all your food needs, illness which prevents you from getting you food needs met. etc.
Food is also at the mercy of energy prices and as we continue a high is fuel costs we will have to deal with more expensive food. Everything involved in our way of getting food as it stands today involves large scale and complex use of energy to get it from point A to point Z which is usually what it takes unless you grow your own.
Stored food that you have on hand can be used as a great back up in the emergencies described. But rather than wait until disaster strikes to experiment with stored food it’s a good idea to start cooking with stored now. Who knows you may find you like what you are storing or that you hate it. Make it a fun family oriented activity.
Food that you would typically store for emergencies is a great resource for adding to camping supplies. Rather than turn a camping trip into a trip to the supermarket just go to your food stores and pack up enough for an overnighter or two and see how well you do. Even if it’s just a tent in the backyard having this experience is really rewarding. If you do wish to go camping and want to take along some stored food I really recommend using the outing as a chance to try out mountain houses’ 72 hour emergency food pack.
Some food that you can purchase for long term storage can turn out to be regular staples to your diet. In our family we eat the Honeyville grain dehydrated diced potatoes on a weekly basis. That make awesome Sunday morning home fried potatoes and they great baked too. The honeyvill grain hot cocoa is another popular item for us. The kids love it in winter time and I enjoy a scoop in my morning coffee. More recently we have been enjoying Mountain houses blueberries with granola and milk. I can’t get enough of it. Some of these items are found in links in today’s show notes at todolisthome.com.
There are many ways to get more food, big box stores like Costco and Wal-Mart cannot be beat for deals you find on canned meats, dried foods, water and a host of other supplies. The canned chicken pictured in today’s show notes is from Costco. The corn was dehydrated from frozen, the carrots were dehydrated as were the chives, both from my gardens.
Online there is a plethora of providers and it can be confusing. I link to my favorites which I have found to be the most cost effective as well. Amazon for the free shipping and no tax mountain house 72 hour emergency meal kit. I use ReadyMade resources for all other mountain house food. free shipping is awesome when you buy 6 large cans or more. I also throw another mention to honeyville grain. As a survival podcast member support brigade member I get an additional 10% off on all purchases. Be careful because it’s easy to get confused buying food you in a new way. So start small and learn what you like then make more orders as you progress.
Ways to store food can vary almost as much as your space and creativity.
I recommend doing the bug out bags first. One for everyone and each one with 72 hours of food and water per person next is to store some long term goods in 5 gallon buckets but I am not suggesting 5 gallons of beans and rice. Do 5 gallon buckets with a variety of things that can make complete meals. For example in one bucket you can put a weeks’ worth of pasta, sauce, canned meat and bread mix.
Fruits and vegetables can be dehydrated and we do quite a bit of that with home grown food as well as store bought foods. I link to a great lady named Tammy whose website is Dehydrate2Store and I also link to her education YouTube videos. Meat can also be processed at home for long term storage and we have made some biltong according to Jack Spirko’s recipes and links to these are also in the show notes. Dehydrated food can be stored in jars with oxygen absorbers and biltong can be stored in zip lock bags in the freezer.
Having a pantry is important for any food storage system. A well-organized pantry can help with storage as well as meal planning based on how items are placed on the shelves.
Be creative. a suitcase under the bed can hold a lot of food and it can be easy to transport. Be smart and creative in how you go about storing food in your home . One important thing to note is that the food system you employ should be diverse and not all located in the same area. a disaster in area of a home may not be experienced by others. food in multiple locations helps to ensure security.
The ways in which stored food can be eaten vary greatly but you should be prepared for everything from no heat to oven and all things in between. Variety is important and preparation is easy if you know how to find the right recipes. These days I have been using allrecipes.com and it has really helped to expand my culinary skills. The picture in the show notes is one of the ingredients and resulting chicken, carrot, corn and potato chowder made from all long term storage foods. That’s it for today now go and do something useful

Song of The Day – The Golden Cockerel / Suite (Le coq d’or) – Arr. by A. Glazunov (1865-1936) and M. Shteynberg (1883-1946) – 4. The Wedding and Lamentable End of Dodon  –  VIDEO 

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