Category: Food Storage & Cooking

Our Experience Growing and Storing Our Own Food- Part 1, by Tennessean

A recent post commented on how it is next to impossible to grow one’s own food. It’s very hard work, has a difficult and long learning curve, but it can be done. This essay explains how to efficiently grow and store your own food. You can learn from our mistakes. Both my sets of grandparents farmed with a team of mules. We know a couple in a county north of us who farm using with a team of mules; they are able to feed themselves, the mules, and also customers at a farmer’s market. About Me I’m 73 years old …


Letter Re: Raising Meat Rabbits

HJL, This is just a note to let you know that three years ago, based on information obtained on SurvivalBlog, my daughter stopped using commercial pellets to feed her pedigreed silver fox rabbits. I gave her an article about all the things you can eat from your yard. Two hours later, she had found most of them in our yard and decided to feed her rabbits that way. Since then, she harvests clover, wild strawberry, dandelion, mulberry, sorel, wild violet, and much more from about six yards in the neighborhood that use no chemicals. She supplements in winter with bales …


Raising Meat Rabbits: Mistakes and Successes, by JEE

We currently live on one acre. So finding a protein source that is easy to house, is inexpensive, has a fairly good turn-over rate, and doesn’t require a lot of land, was hard at first. We actually stumbled upon it by accident. We were given two Rex rabbits with a cage shortly after moving into our new house. Three months later, we had babies, lots of them. However, not ever having butchered anything before and not really wanting to, as they were such small animals, we re-homed them. However, it got me thinking and researching. It turns out that there …


To Bee, or Not to Bee – Part 2, by Prepared Grammy

Getting Bees You have two options for getting bees; you can buy them or capture them. As a beginner, I would suggest buying bees or have an experienced beekeeper help you to capture a swarm. (I will not go into the process of capturing bees in this article.) If you capture a swarm, you must make sure that you capture the queen too. There are two ways to capture “wild bees”. You can capture a group of bees that are swarming. These are bees that are on the move and looking for a new home. They are relatively easy to …


Letter Re: A Year’s Supply of Food on a Budget, by J.H.

HJL, I’m writing concerning the article “A Year’s Supply of Food on a Budget, by J.H.” I would just like to share one VERY important fact. People are quick to apologize for the lack of variety of food stuffs stored and defend that with AT LEAST WE WILL BE ALIVE. Maybe and maybe not. If you are not putting an eye toward nutritional quality you may fall prey to illness. Food fatigue. It is VERY real and children and elderly fall victim to it quicker then mid-aged adults. Food fatigue is an odd thing for sure, but the bottom line …


Letter Re: A Years Supply of Food on a Budget

Mr. Hugh, Regarding “A Years Supply of Food on a Budget”. This is the plan I am using. We buy our buckets and Mylar bags. We fill the buckets with grain, add an oxygen absorber, and seal the bag with an iron and ironing board. Other buckets are filled using dimataceous earth and rice. We have found creative ways to buy our grain. We buy rice from a local rice silo for $18 for a 50-pound bag. Two bags fill three buckets. We have 2,000 pounds in storage. We have done the same with corn and wheat. We watch the …


A Year’s Supply of Food on a Budget, by J.H.

Without enough food, all other preparations you do are worthless. In a SHTF (grid-down) scenario if you are out of food, there may not be any way to obtain more. This article represents my own research on how to get a year’s supply of food on a budget. By the end of this article, you will see how I can feed a family of four for under $2,000 for an entire year. Initial Criteria and Plan First off, let me tell you why my focus is on inexpensive instead of nutrition or other criteria. The short answer is I don’t …


Letter: How People Behave with Galactic Stupidity

Dear Hugh, A local supermarket announced that it was having a re-furbishment, and to clear the shelves it would open at 6:30am on a Sunday morning and all goods will be at 50% marked price. Now, think what you would buy. Make a list and read on. One of my tenants told me this, and so my wife and I checked out the store and confirmed the situation was just as reported. We came home and rearranged the freezers to see how much space we had available; one of our neighbors was let into the situation and she had space …


Paleo Food Storage Plus Ideas for Celiac/Gluten Intolerances and Dairy-Free Diets – Part 2, by Utah Suburban Prepping Gal

Carbohydrates White rice is considered to be a less harmful grain to those eating Paleo. Therefore, I have continued to store white rice because it keeps so well, up to 30 years, and will make a nice source of carbohydrates, especially when physical activity is high. It does not disrupt my gut like wheat and beans do and therefore will not cause another source of difficulty for me in the middle of a crisis. Also, cooked white rice can be fed to my chickens, if their food supply is disrupted. Starchy tubers, like sweet potatoes, provide carbohydrates and keep well …


Paleo Food Storage With Ideas for Celiac/Gluten Intolerances and Dairy-Free Diets – Part 1, by Utah Suburban Prepping Gal

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When I first became serious about prepping, I looked to the guidelines found on the LDS (Mormon) website. This means grains, beans, sugars, and dairy, so I spent the next few years stocking up on these four. A few years later I discovered the Paleo diet, which resulted in great health benefits for me, such as increased mental focus, elevated mood, fat loss, and clearer skin. However, I faced a dilemma. Everything in the basic food storage I had accumulated was now off-limits. Basically, the Paleo diet consists of meat, vegetables, nuts, fruit, and “good” oils, like lard, tallow, butter, …


Letter Re: Egg Rationing

HJL, I am one of THOSE who do not yet have their own chickens but hopefully within a couple of months though. You may have seen this already. I haven’t experienced the rationing, but I bought eggs in April at $1.97 a dozen and went back yesterday to discover they were $2.97 a dozen at my local Walmart. Wow! – C.P. HJL Replies: We have had chickens for a number of years now and have enjoyed the fresh eggs tremendously. The price of eggs have always been a bit of a sore point with me though. I cannot produce eggs …


Don’t Forget To Prep Your Spice Chest, by T.H.

Spices may be the number one overlooked item when prepping a kitchen to survive the apocalypse. The following article, which I wrote based upon my 15 years of chef experience and a lifetime quest for a self-sustaining lifestyle, includes reasons why you should stock up on spices, information about prepackaged spices, my technique for building a stockpile, the addition of seed-stock to your stockpile of heirloom seeds, how to store home-grown herbs/spices aswell as some techniques for using them. Surviving Doesn’t Mean You Have To Suffer One of the pillars of prepping for survival is to stockpile food. This is …


Letter: Food Shortage

Dear HL and Readers of SurvivalBlog, We all know that in a TEOTWAWKI situation, people will panic. After what I saw this week, I believe it will happen sooner and to a worse degree than I previously thought. I live outside a small town in the Midwest. We have one mom-and-pop grocery store, a “milk store”, two convenience stores, Walmart, and Kroger as our choices for local grocery shopping. I noticed the shelves at Kroger were somewhat bare the last two times I shopped. I was wondering why this was the case but just thought the employees were not doing …


Letter Re: Historians Perspective At Natural Diets Link

Mr. Hugh, There are significant facts to be gleaned from the post: A Plea For Culinary Modernism. This post should be read by all. This should be read slowly to glean the correct viewpoints. For example: Those who are not “prepared” will be thrust back to the 1200’s and gathering roots and berries, which will kill them due to their lack of knowledge. We have been enjoying fresh chick weed salads from random patches of weeds from our fence rows this spring. It tastes 10 times as good as lettuce from the store. Some think that if not prepared, they …


Scot’s Product Review: The Orb and UV Paqlite

We have many needs; food, water, air, shelter, and heat come to mind. To acquire and use all those things, we have to be able to find them, and the tool used the most is our vision. Our eyes work great during the day but not so well at night, so having a way to make light is vital. We started off making light the same way we made heat and cooked, with fire, but that has drawbacks. We finally came up with electricity, and now the most common way we make light is to flip a switch on the …