Month: August 2016

Pat Cascio’s Product Review: Cold Steel Swift I & II

I’m one of these people who doesn’t sleep much at night. On a good night, I might get three or four hours of sleep. So, I spend a lot of time thinking. I sometimes come up with my best ideas in the middle of the night. I’ve often “written” my articles while in bed and put them down on paper later on. I’ve “designed” many knives while lying in bed wide awake, and then put the idea down on paper, and more often than not I can bring my idea to fruition. My long-time friend Lynn Thompson, who owns Cold …


Recipe of the Week: Old World Sauerbraten, by G.M.

Ingredients: 3½ to 4 lbs beef rump or sirloin tip 1 cup water 1 cup vinegar 1 large onion, sliced 1 lemon, sliced (unpeeled) 10 whole cloves 4 bay leaves 6 whole peppercorns 2 Tbsp salt 2 Tbsp sugar 12 gingersnaps, crumbled Directions: Place the meat in a deep ceramic or glass bowl. Combine water, vinegar, onion, lemon, cloves, bay leaves, pepper, salt, and sugar; then pour it over the meat. Cover and refrigerate for 24 to 36 hours, turning the meat several times during marinating. Place beef in a slow-cooking pot. Pour 1 cup of marinade over the meat. …


Letter Re: Dehydrating Tray Solution

Hugh, I’ve noticed a couple of letters from people writing in and asking about the problem of smaller veggies falling through the trays with the tier-style hydrators. I wrestled with the same issue in the beginning and started out by using aluminum foil stretched across the racks. That proved to be impractical for long-term usage because each time you moved the rack in or out of the dryer the edges of the foil would catch on the sides and tear, not to mention the trick of getting them into the dryer without everything falling all over the floor. Additionally the …


Economics and Investing:

The Royal Bank of Scotland becomes the first bank to set negative interest rates. – G.G. o o o “I’ve Never Seen Anything Like This Before” – The Housing Markets In The Hamptons, Aspen And Miami Are All Crashing o o o Items from Mr. Econocobas: Global Central Bankers, Stuck at Zero, Unite in Plea for Help from Governments – You have to read between some lines here, but what I read is Helicopter drops of money in some form will be needed and we have to make sure people understand what they have been doing to us is giving …


Odds ‘n Sods:

Grotesquely Incompetent Judge Won’t Suspend Mandatory Vaccination – DSV o o o The American Redoubt makes the Washington Post: A fortress Against Fear – M.S. o o o American Electorate Loses As Partisan Media Coverage Of Candidate Health Turns Outright Bizarre o o o Gun ownership rises to 44% of all home – GJM o o o Restoring Your Soil: Advice by an Old School Soil to Health Expert – DSV



Notes for Sunday – August 28, 2016

Readers of SurvivalBlog who use our RSS feed to stay up-to-date will notice that the entire article is no longer available via RSS. You must now click on the “Read More…” or the article title to actually read the entire article. We know this an inconvenience but we have had a series of copy-cat blogs who are posting the entire articles on their own sites using the RSS feed function. Most of these sites are little more than click-bait trying to get you to purchase products from their Amazon store or in their site. After dealing with a couple of sites that absolutely refused to adhere to our copyright and reposting rules on our provisos page, we have had to take the step of truncating the feeds. We’ve even had one site claim in our DCMA complaint against them that they are the originator and we are the poorly behaved competition. Perhaps we will loosen the feed restrictions again in a few months after these fly-by-night sites have collapsed and are gone.


My Tomato Process- Part 3, by Sarah Latimer

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Freeze Drying Tomato Sauce I am absolutely thrilled with the results from our Harvest Right Freeze Dryer! I can not only dry fruits, vegetables, meats, and herbs, but I can freeze dry meals. With that accomplished, I began to think about sauces. Sometimes a recipe will call for just a tablespoon of tomato paste. Who wants to open a whole home-canned jar or even a store-bought can of tomato paste just to extract one tablespoon? Then, you have to figure out what to do with the rest before it spoils and (I almost can’t tolerate thinking of it) it has …


Letter Re: Low Tech Cooking

Hugh, One of your readers was asking about low tech cooking methods. He should search for Haybox Cooker. Articles will be found at Mother Earth News, Instructables, and elsewhere. It’s a very old method of first bringing food to a boil, then setting in an insulated box, and using fine hay to surround the cooking vessel. I’ve used blankets and towels, and it works wonderfully for soup, stew, making your own yogurt, and even for beans. Also, a sun oven is invaluable for low tech inexpensive cooking. Yes, you can and we did buy an expensive one, but our son …


Economics and Investing:

The sinister side of cash. Here comes the propaganda machine to attempt to take us to a cashless society. Why be concerned? Imagine a system where everything is cashless. You cannot do anything if the system is down for any reason. Moreover, who is to say that they cannot arbitrarily decide to restate the value of the number of “units” in your account(s)? – P.S. o o o Jim Rickards: “There Will Be A War On Gold” o o o GOLD & DEBT: The 1929 Great Depression vs The Next Great Collapse – It is truly amazing the amount of …


Odds ‘n Sods:

Wranglerstar: DJI Phantom 4 Drone vs Angry Cow! One of our favorite Vloggers uses a drone to herd cows. – T.J. o o o Won 6 Olympic metals but shunned by media – W.C. o o o SurvivalBlog reader K.C sent in this link to Nat Geo Maps. Are you looking for a standard quad 7.5 minute map? Here is your chance. They are already formatted to print out on US Letter. o o o Off grid living in Central Oregon!The latest ad on our sister site SurvivalRealty.com o o o Louisiana Officials Demand That Self-reliant Locals Stop Surviving The …



Notes for Saturday – August 27, 2016

On August 27, 1883, the most powerful volcanic eruption in recorded history occured on Krakatau, a small, uninhabited volcanic islan located west of Sumatra in Indonesia. Hear 3000 miles away, the explosions threw five cubic miles of earth 50 miles into the air, created 120 foot tsunamis and killed 36,000 people. o o o Ready Made Resources is now an authorized re-seller of the Harvest Right Freeze Drier Machine. It’s on sale right now and the price includes shipping. If you are looking to pick one up, this may be the time. SurvivalBlog has been using this new machine for …


Justifying Citizen Possession of Firearms, by S.G. in Florida

Most persons recognize the value of the firearm as a hunting and food gathering tool for the rural American. Often, gun control advocates will latch onto this justification for the Second Amendment when proposing various gun restrictions. The firearm tool can find utilitarian employment by an individual in many situations, and this article seeks to list the possible contemplated individual uses for firearms. Note that I am in no way suggesting that these situations exist now, nor am I advocating the employment of firearms in any of these ways. However, thinking ahead and outside of the box will allow us …


Letter Re: I’m Not In The Position To Right Now

Hi Hugh, My wife and I were discussing the most excellent post by D.D. She asked me did I write this. I told her, “No.” The reason she asked is that we have sat during “rest breaks” and discussed these very same items and scenarios in great detail. We have dropped many hints, some very “blunt”, to the people who may come to “our farm”. We raise cows, chickens, geese, ducks, turkeys, and have reserved a small herd of goats that we need to pick up. We grow sweet corn, field corn, field peas, butter beans, squash, potatoes, et cetera. …