(Continued from Part 1.)
Other foods
Baking powder (how to make) once mixed, it has a shelf life. However, each ingredient separately will last for years:
- 2 tsp of cream of tartar, source Bulkfoods.com
- 1 tsp of baking soda,
- 1 tsp of corn starch
Gravy (canned or dry) for food fatigue prevention. Bouillon cubes mixed with flour and water will give you a gravy, which will make bland foods more pleasant to eat.
Flour (white) will keep for 8-10 years.
Pasta, 1,600 cal per pound, great shelf life
Dried potatoes 1,700 cal/pound, good shelf life
Oil/fats olive oil keeps for 2 years, (USA, Greek or Spanish are best, as the Mafia has adulterated a lot of the oil from Italy). Coconut oil stores for 3-5 years. Oil or fats will make the difference between surviving or not. Without fat in your diet you will not live very long. (See: rabbit starvation). You can pressure-can lard or bacon grease and it will last much longer, for 10+ years in my experience. The best oils are lard, butter, olive, coconut, and canola oil( I know it is a factory oil but it has a low ratio in one part omega 3 to two parts omega 6), focus on the oils that are higher in omega 3 and lower in omega 6 which is inflammatory –causing more clogged arteries. Omega 6 is stored in the fat cells and it takes a while to replace it with Omega 3, but it is worthwhile in the long run. Western diets are way to high in Omega 6 fats, because they are inexpensive.
Canned goods, rotate. If the can is sealed, then genera=lly the expiration date doesn’t count as far as food safety. Taste and nutritional value may suffer. However, acidic foods will eat through the can more quickly than non-acid foods and not keep as long.
Peanut butter regular keeps for about 1-6 years depending on type.
Sugar, honey, and salt will keep forever. Sugar and salt need to be kept dry.
Candy, some will melt together over time, but will help brighten the day. You can make your own too.
Whole Coffee beans will last longer than ground. Tea for those that prefer it. Green coffee beans last longer yet, you need to roast them before you grind them, darker you roast them, will get you a more of french type coffee. Instant coffee is a good keeper. Ground coffee in metal cans will keep longer.
Food for dog or cat keeps for about 6 months. If you have to eat it, I am told the chicken flavor is best. In the manufacturing of dog or cat food some companies use same sanitary measures as they would do for human food, as they know that people are eating it.
Food fatigue is a very real problem so have lots of different spices on hand! Some in quantity. See Numbers 11: 4-6; Moses’s troubles with food fatigue. Some sources of bulk spices are Penderys, Sam’s Club, Costco, and Bulkfoods.com. As time goes on they may lose some of the flavor, so just use more of it. You also can grow your own: onions, garlic, etc.
Salt: Buy 40 pounds bags of solar salt crystals $5-6.00. Keep plenty of salt on hand — several hundred pounds or more — as this will be like gold. It will be really very very important as a flavoring agent and for food preservative by itself. A mortar and pestle is very helpful to able to grind the salt crystals. Salt has many other uses. A friend who was a child in Germany during WW2 would at times eat at a neighbor’s and the food tasted funny, it wasn’t until after the war he discovered that they had no salt.
If you can get nitrates or nitrites and if you wish add them to the salt, this way you can make your own curing salts. This is safer with meats than just salt alone, you only need a very very small amount of nitrates or nitrites, having a scale is very important here, or some way of measuring, as you really don’t want to overdo it. You can find nitrate/nitrites for sale on the Internet, curing salts are there also. Salt will keep forever if kept dry.
A simpler and safer way however is to have a large amount of curing salts on hand. There are two main types of Prague powder.
Prague powder #1 is salt and sodium nitrite; Prague Powder #2 is salt, sodium nitrite and sodium nitrate ( nitrates break down into nitrites then into nitrous oxide which kills the bad bacteria, Prague powder #2 curing salt has both nitrates and nitrites in it. nitrite for immediate action and nitrates for longer preservation.) Nitrates have been given a bad rap, ie. Cancer, the bacteria in the back of your tongue do make nitrates, however food poisoning can be very life-threatenting, your choice.
(Salting /smoking- book: Great Sausage Recipes and Meat Curing, by Rytek Kutas.)
Celery juice contains a lot of natural nitrates, and can be used for curing meat with salt, again taste problems, I don’t care for it. Salting and smoking (use hardwood only) as pinewood has rosins which will give a bad taste to the food; You can smoke food by using a 55 gal. Metal barrel, this works well, you can find directions on the Internet.
You can use the intestines of the critters as a source for natural sausage casings to make sausages (using a salt brine (Brine solutions, For a 5% solution use 1 pound of (or 2 and ½ cups) of picking salt, don’t use iodized table salt in 19 pints of water will reduce the growth of most bacteria. For a 10% brine solution use 1 pound (2-½ cups) of pickling salt in 9 pints of water will prevent the growth of most bacteria. For 15% brine solution use 1 pound or 2 ½ cups of pickling salt in 4 pints of water prevents the growth of most salt-tolerant bacteria. Note that there are other brine solutions.
To make sausage casings, first separate and scrape and clean the outside of the intestine first, 3 -5 foot lengths are easlier to work with, and then turning the intestines inside out, and scraping again and flushing with plenty of water), when it is clean turn it so the outside is out again, Use them right away or keep in them refrigerated mixed with coarse salt or as cool as you can until you are able to use them. Do not freeze them, the salt needs to be washed out of them both inside and out. when you make the sausages. It wouldn’t hurt to practice this before you have no other choice to get it down right. Commercial casing packed in brine/salt, which are said to last a year with refrigeration. I have not found out the concentration of the brine solution that they use. They say that it may have a funky smell when the package is opened. The amount in the package is called a Hank which is good for 100-120 pounds of sausage. Adding a couple tbs of vinegar to the soaking solution will make them more transparent. You can add salt, spices, and nitrates or nitrite to the meat and smoke it as you wish for flavor and preservation.
A 55-gallon drum can be converted into a smoker for meats. Salting and smoking is a time-tested way of preservation of meat.
Peppercorns keep for a very long time. However, once they are ground they do have a shelf life,
vinegar for food preservation, lots of it.
White vinegar keeps indefinitely. You can make your own by fermentation, but it may be stronger than store bought, so adjust with water as needed.Lactofermation can also be used for food preservation. There is a book on this.
Sulfur for dried fruit preservation.
(To be continued, in Part 3.)