Eat what you store

First.  A few weeks ago I went to get some cooking oil from our storage area.  I discovered to my dismay that well over half of my oil had gone rancid.  I’m not sure if I had a tempurature fluxuation or what happened.  Bottom line:  I was almost out of oil.  Fortunately it didn’t ruin my dinner plans, but imaging discovering that your oil was bad in the middle of a crisis?  The oil was out of date, but my previous experience has lead me to believe that generally oil has more longevity than is stamped on the bottle.

Second.  I was really craving a pot of beans.  I soaked the beans over night, and gave them plenty of cooking time.  At dinner time I had a nice tasting but crunchy bowl of soup.  I was really bummed.  Not only did the beans not turn out, but now I need to replace that bucket, because the beans were too old.

These two stories are related in that I discovered old/past date food, but not in a time of crisis.  I’m eating my food storage, so I have the ability to find these kinds of things before I’m in a serious pinch.

Store what you eat

This brings me to my second point.  It is really important to store items that you will eat on a regular basis.  There are a number of reasons for this, most of which have been brought up before, but which probably are worth repeating:

1. Keeps your food storage fresh.
2. Makes sure that you don’t have dietary issues when you suddenly switch your diet in a time of emergency.
3. Gives you the skills to make and prepare your food storage items.
4. Lowers food costs.  It is sort of silly to have two complete sets of food in your house.  Make those bulk sales work for you.

I’m sure there are more reasons but this is why I use my food storage.

To finish up this post I thought I would share a funny article I came across today.  Disclaimer: I seriously doubt this would actually store well, but it proves my point of storing what you will eat.

Everyone loves pizza right?  Why not store pizza in a Jar?

Photo by 1 Fine Cookie

Photo by 1 Fine Cookie

Local Raw Honey, image from freshstepsonline.com

There have been a few articles lately in the news regarding honey, mainly in response to a Food Safety News study that was published this week. To sum it up, the report found that most honey purchased in stores had been highly processed to the point that all the pollen had been removed. Aside from no longer supplying healthy benefits by containing pollen, removing all traces of pollen also makes it impossible to track the location of origin for honey if it turns out to be contaminated or otherwise harmful.

A few of us on this blog and many of our readers have become amateur bee keepers in the past few years. It is an enjoyable hobby and we’ve had a good time researching and posting articles on honey, its health benefits and general information on bee keeping and pointing out local classes and events focused around the hobby. With this background I feel that there is an easy solution to avoiding the problems with highly processed honey. In fact, the solution is quite simple.

Buy locally produced honey. This will help to support local businesses and keep your dollars local. You’ll obtain all the wonderful benefits of raw honey and be secure in the knowledge that you are supporting locally sourced food. This article on the Life Hacker web site sums it up quite well.

If you aren’t sure how or where to get local, raw honey just ask us and we’ll point you in the right direction.

Ova-Easy Hearty Whole Eggs.  My first thought was just another freeze-dried, or worse, powdered egg.  But I had to read.  Turns out this is a newer process to long-term egg storage. Crystalized whole eggs, no preservatives.

Process

According to the Nutriom web site (the Ova-Easy manufacturer), crystalized eggs are dried in a very low heat evaporative manner so that the eggs arent’ cooked in the drying process.  This leaves a fine, sandy crystal instead of the powder you usually see with a dehydrated egg.

Using Ova-Easy Eggs

This is the part that can often be scary.  Up on a mountain with several very hungry guys, who are awaiting your breakfast.  Sometimes experiments like this dont’ turn out well, and you’d better have some backup oatmeal ready to go quick. However, this time I was lucky with my gamble.

I started out by opening the small package show above.  The package claimed it held one dozen eggs in crystallized form.  Based on the size I was a little leery, even knowing how much of an egg is water, it seemed awfully small.  I poured in the yellow sand and added the water required and watched for a second.  It really did look just like water on sand, and I had a quick fear that this was not going to mix!  The two just sat separate from each other, not even attempting a familiar clumping that you might see with most powdered mixes.  But then I began to actually stir, and it was amazing how quickly it turned into a quicksand, and then into straight up mixed eggs, just like you would see if you had cracked several for yourself.

Results

As the eggs were cooking, I tossed in the basics: Green onion, black pepper, salt, cheese, etc.  The resulting scramble mix was served on tortillas as seen.  And the hunger riots among my friends stopped. This was real egg, real good, on a backpacking trip.  As for the amount, it really was about a dozen “Large” eggs.

OvaEasy vs Powdered

No contest. The only thing powdered eggs have going for them here is that you can actually make them at home. But the taste is totally different. OvaEasy actually tastes like eggs, whereas the powdered always have a funny flavor.  Check out the OvaEasy page for some other great information regarding different molecule buildup in powdered eggs as well!

OvaEasy vs Freeze-dried

Apples to Oranges here. Freeze-dried eggs are simple, and tasty. But they are also more expensive, and you are buying a meal as-is. These are just eggs, that you can use for cooking anything. So if you’re like me and at times enjoy cooking something a bit more fancy on the trail, freeze-dried won’t work for you.  This is just a raw ingredient in packable form, instead of a processed meal.

OvaEasy vs Real

Now I’ve done plenty of camps where I’ve taken real eggs. Often I’ll just pre-crack the eggs into a small dish that I can seal, and often freeze them.  But for backpacking OvaEasy makes this much nicer, especially on a long trip.  They also have a well tested shelf life, tested at a true 7 years. Although companies may advertise a long shelf for a variety of reasons they generally never last as long as the label claims.

Should you be cooking something that needs just the whites, there is a separate “Just Whites” product.  The product being reviewed is an already mixed full egg in this package so you will need to purchase two products if you want to use both egg whites and whole eggs. Real eggs of course allow you to do this without having to buy different products.

Of course you’ll pay a premium to buy eggs processed and packaged in this manner, so of course plain old eggs will be cheaper but for quick and easy not to mention safe packability, OvaEasy is going to win most of the time.  Given these benefits, the price isn’t that bad.

Conclusion

OvaEasy is now one of my go-to products for camping. They taste ‘right’, they are lightweight and they store well.  In the case of long term food storage, it is obviously better to have some chickens around giving you fresh eggs. However, most people don’t have that, and with the powerful nutritional value of eggs, you should definitely look at adding these to your storage.

OvaEasy Powdered Whole Egg (4.5 oz Bag)

OvaEasy Powdered Whole Eggs – Case (12 x 4.5 oz Bags)

Last fall I tried some Tattler reusable canning lids. I canned jam, tomatoes, and salsa with them. The Tattler company has been making these lids since 1976. They are two pieces–a plastic lid and a rubber gasket. You’ll need the metal rings that came with your jars or you can buy some extras on the Tattler site if you’re short on rings. The lids are BPA free and made in the USA. Tattler has them available for wide mouth and regular jars. The upfront cost of $7.00-$8.00 per dozen is, of course, more than the metal lids, but with regular re-use they pay for themselves pretty quickly.

Canning with the reusable lids is similar to using regular metal lids with the exception of having to loosen the ring just a bit before canning to allow the jar to vent and then tighten it after your jars are done processing. (For a full tutorial on using them, you can check my review of the lids on my blog.)

By the time this fall had rolled around, I had a number of lids from jars we had opened, and more canning to do, so all the reusable lids got used again without any problems with seal fails. Also, all the jars from last fall that used the reusable lids that we hadn’t opened are still sealed up fine. Sweet. Needless to say, I’ve stocked up on a bunch of these lids.

Last year's tomatoes canned with Tattler Reusable Canning Lids

Now, if you’re canning something to go into your county or state fair, or if you are planning on giving your canned goods away as gifts, use regular lids. When I did the salsa this year, I used some regular lids and some reusable lids thinking I would be sharing some for Christmas. However, sweet husband has since informed me he’s not parting with his salsa, so I guess I could have used all reusable lids!

Salsa--the white lids are the reusable ones

If you do a lot of canning and want to continue in a grid down situation without stocking a crazy amount of metal lids, the Tattler reusable lids are the lids for you. If you don’t do a lot of canning, these lids could also make a great barter item or even a great Christmas gift for that canner or preparedness nut on your list. After my year of testing, I’d say these are definitely a product worth checking out.

U.S. farmers are expected to produce roughly 1.8 million tons of peanuts this year, down nearly 13 percent from last year, according to a survey released Wednesday by the Department of Agriculture. Assuming that estimate holds, it would be smallest harvest recorded since 2006.

Peanut butter producers nationwide plan to raise peanut butter prices in the coming months. According to an Associated Press report, J.M. Smucker Co., makers of Jif peanut butter, expect to raise its wholesale prices 30 percent in November. Kraft Foods Co., plans to raise its Planters peanut butter prices 40 percent at the end of this month, with more brands expected to follow suit throughout the year.

Prices for the Spanish peanut have increased more than eight times over from $142 per ton to $1,190 within the last year; while Virginia peanuts have increased from $153 per ton to $1,203, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. The Runner peanut, the most common nut used in peanut butter, has risen from $450 per ton to $1,199 from last year.

David Jordan, who studies peanut crops and teaches Agronomics at North Carolina State University, attributes the increase in price to a perfect storm of fewer crops being planted by farmers and droughts hitting the southern peanut producing states. He said peanuts are the most expensive crop to raise, causing farmers to overlook the nut in favor of more profitable crops.

Jordan said he doesn’t expect peanut prices to return to normal until fall 2012, when more peanut crops may be available.

So, dig up your peanut butter coupons and get to the nearest double coupon store near you and stock up!

What made this choice even better was the timing. I just happened to be heading up that weekend with the guys for a little man-camp time.  What a better way to test things out.

One of my favorite things about this sample was that they sent the individual portion boil-bags, perfect for backpacking.  When you are storing for your long-term food supply, you’ll likely be looking at larger amounts of food, probably #10 cans.  For hiking though, these are perfect.

On a long hike, freeze-dried food really shines.  As a kid I remember hearing about it and wishing I could have some for camping, but back then it had an even higher cost margin over basic foods than today.  Thankfully with the growth of competition from companies like Daily Bread, prices have come down overall.  Freeze drying brings food down to the lightest weight possible.  And unlike normal dehydration you can have a wider selection of cooked entrees.

Cooking the meal of course can’t be simpler.  Using my small stove pictured I boiled a small amount of water (2 cups), poured in the bag, and let sit for a few minutes.  Anybody who hasn’t actually tried a freeze-dried meal is really missing out on the joys of this process.  This bag of powder quickly reforms into real food. Actual noodles, sauce, and meat that reshape, and hold real color.

This is an important part, especially if you are feeding a family.  My kids can be the kings of picky, and yet unlike your average camp cooking you don’t fear dishing this out in daylight.  The food actually looks good, smells good, and has the correct texture.  Anybody who’s had partially rehydrated food knows why thats a big claim to make.

Specifically, this stroganoff is a winner.  I ate the two serving portion myself, of course. High altitude, extra calorie needs, please remember those when planning how much food you need! It tasted great, seasoned, lacking only a bit of pepper (which I like more of than most people).

Lightweight, less work, less water needs, less fuel needs, and real comfort food. All of these combine to make a winning product well worth bringing in as part of your long term food storage.

As for getting the food, Daily Bread’s concept is to take the work out of planning your meals by selling pre-designed meal plans. You can “subscribe” to get monthly deliveries of your food in a pay as you go plan. These deliveries give you #10 cans of foods such as this that you can then use as needed to feed your family, whatever the size.

Cured Meats (from livestrong.com)

Curing meat is an age old process.  It has been used to preserve, intensify flavors, and make unpalatable cuts of meat acceptable for consumption. Most of us don’t worry about the preservation aspect so much anymore, but if you’ve ever made a marinade then you’ve dabbled in curing (perhaps with out even knowing it).  In this post I’m going to go over some of the ingredients needed to cure meat and introduce a couple of salt mixtures that can be very useful in curing your meats.  I’ll also go over some things that could be kept in your food storage.

First of all there are a couple of items that are needed to cure meat.  You don’t have to use each of these items when you cure, but they all play an important part in the curing process.

1. Salt
2. Sugar
3. Nitrites/Nitrates
4. Smoke

Salt

Lets talk about salt first.  In terms of curing, salt’s primary purpose is to kill the microbes that inhabit the meat you are trying to cure.  Of course a very nice side benefit is that your meat tastes better in the process.  There are two primary ways to apply salt to meat: a dry cure, and a wet cure.

The dry cure is simply applying the salt along with any spices directly on the meat and putting it in a cool place to allow the curing process to take place

The wet cure (brining) uses water and salt.  The meat is submerged in the brine until done.

The length of time to cure really depends on what you want to do with the meat.  If you are trying to store the meat then you need to make certain that all harmful microbes and bacteria have been killed off.  This will take longer and of course depends on the size, weight, type of meat etc.  If you are curing for flavor and are going to be cooking the meat, then it is less important to kill the harmful bacteria.  You just need to give the meat enough time to pull in the salt and other flavorings that have been applied.

Sugar

The main reason for sugars in cures is to help compensate for the harshness of the salt.  Additionally the sugar brings flavor to the meat.  Think maple syrup when curing bacon.

Nitrites / Nitrates

“Nitrite does a few special things to meat: it changes the flavor, preserves the meat’s red color, prevents fats from developing rancid flavors, and prevents many bacteria from growing, most notably those responsible for botulism poisoning” – taken from Charcuterie pg 38.  You generally won’t store nitrites or nitrates by themselves but they are found in many commercial curing salts such as Mortons Quick Cure, InstaCure and DQ Curing Salt.  One common cut of meat that really benefits from salt curing with nitrites is a brisket.  If you let that set for a week then the brisket will cure, and will turn the nice red color that is associated with Corned Beef.

Smoke

Smoke is used in curing for two reasons.  Really the main reason any more for smoking is to apply flavor to the meat.  The smoke also helps preserve the meat.  Generally hard woods are used to help smoke the meat.  Ham, for example, is a smoke cured meat.  You can also use smoking as just a flavor enhancer.  The weekend BBQ jumps to the next level when you start smoking your meat.

What to store

1. Salt.  The salt that you plan on using for curing should not have iodine.  That will mess with the flavors of the cure.  I don’t have any direct recommendations on the amount to store, but most simple recipes can call for 2 cups of salt or more.  If you plan on doing a lot of curing then be sure to store plenty.  Plus if you have extra you can use it as a barter item.  You really should have a few different kinds of salt.  Kosher salt is great.  Keep lots of this on hand.  You can also get regular table salt (just with out the iodine).  You should also have some curing salt such as the Mortons Quick Cure or InstaCure that were mentioned earlier.  You don’t usually need as much of this since a little goes a long way.
2. Sugar.  In most wet and dry cures the sugar is about half the amount of salt used.  So store half the amount of sugar that you plan for salt.
3. Wood.  This one is hard since it is bulky.  You can get everything from wood chips, chunks and of course whole logs.  I generally keep several bags of my favorite woods (maple, mesquite, hickory).  In a pinch you can also store liquid smoke, but it doesn’t always work as well.

Like most preparedness matters you really should practice curing before you need it.  The upside is that the results are delicious!

Try making:

• corned beef
• bacon
• brining a chicken

With the help of the curing process they all taste fabulous.

Well, we didn’t have a wheat grinder and didn’t really know what to do with wheat, so that was out.  I’m not sure why we ruled out oatmeal or sugar or whatever else, but we did decide we both liked white rice so we meticulously counted up how much white rice we’d need if we ate it for every meal for an entire year.  True story.  And that is what we canned.  A whole lot of white rice.  Now I know you’re all giggling at the fact that you really can’t live on white rice alone for a year without suffering some serious nutritional issues, but we were young and didn’t think through this very well.

So let me tell you what happens when you buy that much white rice.  After a while of having it fairly often because it’s easy and we always had it on hand, sweet husband decided he didn’t like white rice anymore.  We weren’t even eating it for every meal!  He rarely eats white rice anymore.

It’s a scientific psychological condition called “appetite fatigue”.  He has a mild form because he’ll still eat rice every so often especially if it’s doctored up like in rice pudding.  But what can happen in a disaster situation if you have very limited variety in your food is that people can decide they’d rather not eat at all than eat that white rice again.  Especially children and the elderly.  Children just don’t understand that they need to eat to live and the elderly may just decide it’s not worth it.  Most of us in the middle would still eat it because we understand that is all there is, but that brings us to the nutritional issues.

Every day we eat a variety of foods.  They each add something to our diet.  We need a lot of different vitamins and minerals in our diet to be able to keep ourselves in good health and functioning properly.  Variety is good.  365 days of white rice for every meal is not.

So here are a couple of suggestions for adding variety to your food storage.

1. Don’t buy all one thing to start with.  We could have just as easily gotten a variety of goods canned that day including dry carrots, beans, oats, wheat, etc.  Then we could have made more with what we had.  Once you have a little bit of a bunch of different foods, then you can get all rice if it’s a good price or a bunch of sugar if it’s on sale somewhere and you’re just adding to your stores.

2. Get some spices and flavorings in your storage.  Even white rice can taste different than white rice if it’s spiced up a bit.

3. Learn to use what you have stored in a variety of ways.  Like wheat can be sprouted, ground into flour and baked with, boiled either cracked or whole to use as cereal, grown into wheat grass, etc.  Powdered milk can be used as a drink or made into cheeses, added to soups, etc.  Just because you have a bunch of wheat doesn’t mean you have to eat a bunch of wheat bread.  Get creative.

On a side note, we have not purchased rice to eat since 1998.  I have purchased some more to replenish the storage, but we are still eating the rice we canned in 1998.  We have at least 2 more cases to go.  There might be more hiding somewhere.  They are a reminder every time I go into the food storage room of where we started and how far we’ve come.

And don’t let the name fool you, they have more than just grains. They also have freeze dried fruits and vegetables and some really tasty hot cocoa (the French Vanilla is my favorite). And you know there’s more, so go browse around their site a bit and see if they have what you’re wanting.

Normally, their prices are a little higher than other places, but they only charge a flat $4.49 shipping anywhere in the continental US for your whole order–not per item. So, that great shipping rate plus the 10% off should make for a fair deal on some good quality food delivered to your doorstep. While you’re there, sign up for their newsletter and you’ll be notified every time they have a sale. Remember, for this sale enter coupon code: “HOPHOP11” during checkout anytime from now until this Friday 4/22/11 at 6:00 pm PST. Happy shopping!

A few weeks ago, I was called by my Bishop (pastor) to be the new emergency preparedness coordinator for our ward (congregation). In order to better serve those in the ward and help them prepare, I thought it important to begin my efforts with a survey to gauge where our ward stood. I had a fairly good idea due to previous surveys conducted over the past couple of years in our community (see here and here), but wanted a bit more detail, and with the high turnover in our ward, needed updated information.

With the Bishop’s consent, I circulated a brief, anonymous survey through the ward and got responses from over 50 families. Our ward is a fairly average ward in terms of income, being squarely “middle class,” thus the results are probably pretty indicative of the average (American) Latter-day Saint household. I don’t consider any of this statistically accurate, but it’s close enough to be reliable and representative of the average family, in my opinion.

Below are the results of this anonymous survey.

My impressions? This is about what I expected. It’s not encouraging, of course, when a few families skew the results upward with their year supply of food; far too many families responded that they only had a few days or a couple weeks worth of food in their home.

Time to roll up my sleeves.