Category: Food Storage & Cooking

A Top-10 Prepping List, Multi-Tool Not Included – Part 2, by St. Funogas

(Continued from Part 1.) 3. WOODSTOVE Currently, only 1.7% of American homes heat with wood with an additional 7.7% use it for their secondary source of heat. That leaves 90% of Americans without a sustainable way to heat their homes if the SHTF. Don’t be one of those 90% if you want to survive your first post-SHTF winter. Based on those numbers, for most preppers heat will be the second most difficult thing (after water) to prepare for on a long-term sustainable basis. And because it’s so difficult, it’ll be the most neglected topic among their prepping priorities. Don’t ignore …


A Top-10 Prepping List, Multi-Tool Not Included – Part 1, by St. Funogas

A while back, while reading one of my daily economics blogs, I read an article on the top 25 things to have on hand in case the SHTF tomorrow. It was quickly apparent the author was an armchair prepper at best. Many of the non-negotiable items were overlooked, some items would be good for wilderness survival but not post-SHTF survival, and others were common everyday things we already own such as warm socks. Some of the items were unnecessary gadgets. Out of curiosity I did a search for other top-10 lists. The ones I found had the same issues. The …


Loaves, Fishes, Tree Bark, Seeds, and Knowledge – Part 4, by The Chemical Engineer

(Continued from Part 3.) 2.5 – Options For Using Local Cambium Resources If we have prepared beforehand to harvest tree cambium and a Type 2 Emergency (T2E) happens, we will have three main choices to consider in my view. I encourage you to make this decision prayerfully and with your group’s best judgment. Every choice in a disaster is a set of trade-offs with no perfect solutions. If we actively try and help our neighbors early there is no doubt that this will reduce early suffering for some and could lead to ongoing beneficial cooperation. If more people are pulling …


Loaves, Fishes, Tree Bark, Seeds, and Knowledge – Part 3, by The Chemical Engineer

(Continued from Part 2.) 2.3 – Finding Edible Cambium Locally And Harvesting It If we live in an area with a sufficient number of trees, the next step would be to find out which ones have edible cambium. To accomplish this I recommend two sources. First, you would need to buy the National Audubon Society’s book titled Trees of North America or something equivalent. Here are two free sources that just have tree maps: Tree Map Link 1 and Tree Map Link 2. I am referring to the 2021 edition of Trees of North America in my following statements. This …


Loaves, Fishes, Tree Bark, Seeds, and Knowledge – Part 2, by The Chemical Engineer

(Continued from Part 1,) Fifth, I believe that people are the most valuable creation on the planet for religious and practical reasons. The more people we have, the more knowledge they generate and can apply. I believe the growth of knowledge, personal freedom, and rule of law are the significant causes of mankind rising out of historical poverty. Great books like The Ultimate Resource 2, by Julian Simon, and Superabundance, by Gale Pooley and Marian L. Tupy, hammer home the fact that increased populations have increased prosperity. This is very counter to conventional wisdom because Malthusian thinking has warped much …


Loaves, Fishes, Tree Bark, Seeds, and Knowledge – Part 1, by The Chemical Engineer

JWR’s Introductory Note:  At just over 20,000 words, this is perhaps the longest single-topic contributed article ever serialized in SurvivalBlog. I consider it an important piece to ponder.  Please read all eight parts before sending your comments. I will post most of them in the Snippets column on October 29th. — I want to start with a brief but sincere thank you to all the article writers I have learned from here at SurvivalBlog.com. Your efforts have made a difference for me and many others. I hope my contribution can have a similar benefit to others. Thank you. Let me …


Growing Kabocha Squash, by Rookie Gardener

Until my retirement in the summer of 2021, I had never grown anything but weeds, which evidently, I’m pretty good at. However, growing anything else was hit and miss, mostly miss. During my working life my wife and I spent a lot of time in Asia. One of the commonly used vegetables often sliced thin, breaded, and deep fried on tempura platters is kabocha squash, also called Japanese pumpkin. Kabocha is a winter squash with a creamy texture. It’s used in many Asian cuisines. We could not bring home seeds but here we found that we could purchase them online …


A Costly Freeze-Drying Prepper Mistake, by Mrs. T.

Doesn’t everyone want a freeze dryer? It feels like the ultimate answer to long-term food storage, your foods, your way, preserved “forever.” Perfect for a nuclear war, another COVID lockdown, or just peace of mind. My family has a lot of food allergies, making it difficult for long long-term food storage solutions. We have never been able to find freeze-dried foods that were a combination of what we eat, and not processed in facilities that process ingredients we’re allergic to. That’s why the freeze dryer seemed like the perfect solution. And honestly, it still is. But not before I learned …


A Three-Year Window or a Three-Month Window?

As an observer of contemporary politics, economics, and emerging threats, I have come to the conclusion that the last three years of Donald John Trump’s second term as President may provide a potential window of opportunity. If we were now living under a Harris-Walz Administration, we would surely be out of time to prepare. I have my doubts about Trump’s sincerity when he talks about scaling back the size and power of government. Alarmingly, the gains of the DOGE project were wiped out by the huge deficit spending included in the recent  “Big, Beautiful Bill”.  But I don’t consider DJT …


Review: Ramen Bae Topping Mix, by Mike in Alaska

DISCLAIMER: I paid out of my own pocket for this food and Ramen Bae did not sponsor this review article in any way. Some folks love Ramen, but others say if you eat it you’ll die a horrible, painful death. Well, maybe that’s a bit of a stretch; bottom line is that as food it’s not the same as say a prime rib dinner. But then it doesn’t need you to take out a second mortgage to buy, either. After all the years I’ve eaten food that some might call questionable, ramen isn’t anywhere near the top of the list …


Scrabble and Prepping – Part 2, by St. Funogas

(Continued from Part 1.) SCRABBLE IS A MATH GAME Just as Scrabble involves math, have we applied enough math to our prepping? Do we know how long a bar of soap lasts or how many calories we need per year per person in our group? Are we just guessing or have we actually marked a tube of toothpaste with a Sharpie when we begin using it and note the date when it’s finished? Have we at least looked it up somewhere to get a rough idea on how long it will last? Do we know how long it takes for …


Meat and Vegetable Broths, by Mrs. Alaska

Almost any savory dish you cook with water will be tastier if cooked with a vegetable broth or meat broth.  So throughout a week of cooking (and harvesting), I set aside less desirable parts of vegetables and bones to make broth when I have accumulated enough to make a pot or two.  I often time the cooking in advance of making rice, or beans so I can cook those carbohydrates in the broth. Making Vegetable Broth The vegetables for broths can be any and all.  For example, this week, I harvested broccoli heads.  For the broth, I cut up the …


Preparedness Primer for an Uncertain Future – Part 6, by Single Farmer

Editor’s Introductory Note: This young man is prayerfully seeking a wife. He is offering an after-marriage gift of up to $50,000 to whoever introduces him to his bride with $18,000 after their marriage and another $16,000 to the individual who provided the introduction after the first two births of healthy children born to him and his wife, for a total potential gift of $50,000. For further details, see this link to his article posted on July 13th, 2025: My Quest for a Wife: I’m Willing to Move. — (Continued from Part 5. This concludes the article.) Five Hundred Dollar Prepper …


How Do You Define an “Emergency Situation”?, by A.Y.

An emergency, as Webster’s Dictionary defines it, is: “…an unforeseen combination of circumstances or the resulting state that calls for immediate action, or an urgent need for assistance or relief.”  Throughout our lifetimes we may see many types of emergencies not just the Schumer Hits The Fan (SHTF) types of emergencies such as nuclear war or economic collapse that we should be prepared for. I have found that in my life choosing the prepper lifestyle has aided me in many such emergencies.  Once, for instance, I found when I was laid off from work that my preparedness and stringently frugal …


Preps Starter Kits for Reluctant Families – Part 2, by A.F.

(Continued from Part 1. This concludes the article.) Two is one right? In addition to the filter in each kit, a water purifier was included. The difference between the pair is that a filter is uses mechanical or physical means to restrict the passage of solids (dirt or microorganisms) to achieve safety. A purifier in contrast uses chemical or ultra-violet methods to sterilize water. The Aqua Research H2gO purifier uses brine (here it is table salt dissolved in water) electrolysis to generate a concentrated chlorine solution that is mixed into your source water to disinfect it. This is very similar …