Category: Food Storage & Cooking

The Price of Beef, by Patrice Lewis

Editor’s Introductory Note:  This guest article was written by our friend and fellow blogger, Patrice Lewis. Her entertaining and informative Rural Revolution blog has been published several times a week since 2009. We highly recommend bookmarking it. – JWR — The price of beef has been on everyone’s mind lately. According to the USDA, the average price of beef jumped from $8.40 per pound in March to $10.10 by December 2025. A number of recent articles reflect these concerns: Food inflation in America RFK Jr. Urges U.S. Ranchers to Ramp Up Beef Production The cost of this grocery staple is …


How to Source “Real Food” if You Can’t Grow it Yourself, by SaraSue

I’m sure most everyone is familiar now with the seemingly sudden change in the Food Pyramid.  The Food Pyramid has essentially been flipped on its head.  Whereas, grains were considered a “foundational” food, meats (proteins), vegetables, and dairy are now considered to be foundational.  I am very pleased to see this change at the federal government level because it’s going to impact all federal programs for the better, in my opinion, such as feeding children, the less fortunate, healthcare, and nutrition guidelines. Have you ever (unkindly) thought “they could afford to lose some weight” when witnessing someone purchasing groceries with …


Processing Spaghetti Squash, by Patrice Lewis

JWR’s Introductory Note:  This photo-intensive article was written by our long-time friend Patrice Lewis. It was posted at her excellent Rural Revolution blog.  We highly recommend bookmarking it. Last fall, if you remember, we had a bumper crop of spaghetti squash. With this much abundance, we were tasked with how best to store the sheer volume.       In the end, we divvied up the ripe squash from the unripe, then stored the ripe squash in the well house.         The unripe squash was stacked in crates in the library, where it slowly ripened over a …


Home Pressure Canning, by Mrs. Alaska

The following describes my approach at pressure canning meat and dairy products, with some comments on fruit, vegetables, and other preservation methods Pressure canning cookbooks, like Ball’s Blue Book, include recipes for making and canning meat broths, but, in my experience, most do not for meat itself. Similarly, they lack recipes for canning most dairy items. However, families have canned both for generations. Below, I share my positive experience of canning meats, cheese, and butter, for shelf-stable pantry items, based on the advice of friends whose families have done so for decades, and from my own experiences over many years …


Some Extreme Cold Weather Advice, by Hollyberry

We have all seen the media drama these past few weeks regarding the weather. Until about 10 years ago, I never even heard the term “polar vortex”, it was just winter. Living in Maine for the past 20 + years and making through the harsh winters has been a humbling and rewarding experience. Every spring you can hear people sigh in relief. I feel sorry for the lower portion of the country that has been experiencing the extreme cold, ice and snow. It’s something that takes getting used to and it helps to have the proper clothing and gear to …


Preparedness Lessons From Communist Mongolia – Part 2, by G.K.

(Continued from Part 1.  This concludes the article.) During winter, even the U.S. Embassy monitored the grid closely. The possibility of a complete system failure was taken seriously enough that commercial flights were placed on twenty-four-hour standby for potential evacuation of official personnel. We were nongovernmental residents. Those plans did not include us. Our planning had to be personal. Cold changed how time felt. Days stretched and compressed unpredictably. Waiting became a skill. Movement slowed, not from laziness, but from necessity. Mistakes in cold were costly. Dropping something, misjudging exposure, forgetting a step could mean numb fingers, wasted effort, or …


Preparedness Lessons From Communist Mongolia – Part 1, by G.K.

We lived in Mongolia in the early 1990s, for a few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, during a time when the system had officially ended but its habits had not yet loosened their grip on daily life. I was in my early thirties, married, with two young daughters, trying to build a life far from anything familiar. We were not passing through, and we were not insulated expatriates. We were attempting to function inside the local economy, under local conditions, with consequences that were immediate and personal. At the time, I did not think of what we …


Introducing Your Community to Emergency Preparedness – Part 3, by A.F.

(Continued from Part 2. This concludes the article.) The final aspect of emergency cooking stoves that I cover are biomass units, in particular the Kelly Kettle. I appreciate the ability to configure these units to either “cook” on or quickly boil water with. The small feed openings at the bottom or the chimney opening on top of the kettle do restrict the size of materials used to feed the flames when compared to other small biomass cookers. None the less, the kettle’s speed and efficiency for boiling water as well as its lower weight and ruggedness impress me. The final …


Introducing Your Community to Emergency Preparedness – Part 2, by A.F.

(Continued from Part 1.) The next topic is water. I begin with the low hanging fruit of having water stored at all times. It hurts my soul to thoughtlessly parrot the “one gallon per person per day minimum” tripe we have all heard so many times. My recommendation is to store no less than three gallons per person per day or ten gallons each. I follow this up by encouraging each family set a goal of having a five-gallon water jug set aside for last minute filling for each person. For those who lament storage space, I recommend the collapsible …


Introducing Your Community to Emergency Preparedness – Part 1, by A.F.

Back in 2016, the organizer for a local church’s senior citizen ministry approached me regarding a program she wanted someone to present on family emergency preparedness. In the two previous years our area experienced a “thousand-year flood” and the wind effects from a passing hurricane. Several of the seniors had requested a speaker who could help them think through steps that could be taken to minimize the impacts of another storm or similar short-term disaster. This article is a summary of what that presentation has become after multiple iterations over the past ten years. My hope in sharing is that …


Minuteman Titan Rocket Stove, by Thomas Christianson

The Minuteman Titan Rocket Stove has a shell around the body of the stove that is filled with ceramic fiber insulation. This ensures that a large portion of the heat produced by the stove goes up the chimney to cook whatever is on the grate instead of being randomly dissipated in all directions. Once the stove is hot, this feature greatly accelerates its cooking speed in comparison with a similar uninsulated stove. With a weight of 35 pounds, the Titan is best suited for use at a fixed location or in conjunction with wheeled transport. The Titan is fairly expensive. …


Practical Preparedness Suggestions – Part 2, by R.J.

(Continued from Part 1. This concludes the article.) 5. Self Defense This segment references reading, training and situational awareness that will be difficult for some people. Use what you can. Learn how to profile people and your surroundings. It happens in many forms, constantly. There are predators who don’t care about how nice you are. (Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”) They will take advantage of the graces and courtesies that we usually employ to soften or de-escalate a problem. Learn what and how those predators think. Trust me, you …


Practical Preparedness Suggestions – Part 1, by R.J.

This article is a compilation of practical preparedness tips, insights, and lessons learned. It starts with what I call inner resources, or mindset and moves toward the hard, practical items. I offer a rather broad field of experience, including military/industrial electrical work, Christian hospitality in organized retreat settings, hospice/end of life care, and some alternative power experience. I’ll close the article with a Christian exhortation as we head into this Christmas season. Mindset You can break the preparedness mindset down into: homesteading, military, social, domestic categories, etc; or synthesize it into one grand holistic prepster/survivalist perspective. Just don’t flunk the …


Update: Honey–Storage Life, Crystallization, Storage Quantities, and Medicinal Uses

JWR’s Introductory Note: This is an update to an article that I wrote for SurvivalBlog in March, 2007. It is part of a series of SurvivalBlog 20th Anniversary update re-posts, in recognition of the fact that the majority of readers did not join us until recent years. — A series of letters and posts on honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) in 2007 prompted several readers to send comments and questions about storing and using honey, which are summarized below. For some of my responses, I relied heavily on these references: The Golden Blossom Honey FAQ A Mayo Clinic web page …


Experience with a Mouse-Proof Cellar, by Pescadores

This article is about my experience using a shipping container as a mouse-proof cellar. A couple of important notes up front – shipping containers are not designed to have a load-bearing roof. I discovered that quickly while attempting to put a dirt cover over the top of the container. With a small load of dirt on top, the roof of the metal container began to bow. I shoveled the dirt back off of there, and revised my plan as explained below. So don’t do that. Also, it is essential that the container be installed above the groundwater table to prevent …