Category: Food Storage & Cooking

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 …


Letter Re: Freeze Drier

Hugh – During the time that you evaluated the Harvest Right Freeze Dryer, did you happen to monitor the power consumption? As an off-grid type, voltage, amperage, power factor, and total watts per freeze dry cycle are critical to determine if my available power can support this unit. Also, the length of the full freeze dry cycle is important. Thanks – Roy G. HJL Responds: After evaluating the Harvest Right Freeze Dryer for three months, I found myself very reluctant to send it back. About the time I was mentally figuring ways to extend the evaluation, I decided it was …


Buying in Bulk, What We Have Learned – Part 2, by JSP

A couple of years ago I wrote the initial offering on this subject of buying in bulk for Survival Blog readers, without thinking there would be a second part. However, since then we have learned some new ways to leverage our buying power, I will share that below. Update on Part 1 First, I will give an update on the strategies in the original article. We continue to buy in bulk, as described in the article. Currently, we access wheat for $200 per ton and whole, clean, food grade, non GMO corn for $300 per ton. Much has been written …


Letter Re: Little Things WILL Become Big Things, and Food Will Be Everything!, by L.T.

Hugh, I just wanted to say what a great article LT wrote. I have been a long time “back to the earth” guy, and the last few years have had me going at breakneck speed to “fully prepare” and put even more things in place. I am an older parent of three young boys and have felt VERY pressed in the last few years to get our 20 acres in order and get some more resiliency in place for what I see as a very uncertain future. My rural upbringing, military service, outdoor education, and EMT background have given me …


Letter Re: Storing Canned Goods in Cat Liter

HJL, Sorry to bother you, but after reading an article that you linked on Survival Blog I just can’t get this off my mind. It was the Doomsday Prepper meals article, and it said that Wayne Martin “stores canned goods in buckets of cat litter to increase the life expectancy of the product”. Is this to keep the cans from rusting as when kept in a damp basement? I can’t find any reference to that on the Internet except where the cat litter is used as a desiccant alongside of the actual food. Any comment on this would be appreciated. …


Scot’s Product Review: MRE Depot Food Products

I recently wrote about the Yoders meats sold by MRE Depot, one of a number of vendors that sell storage foods aimed at preppers. As well as MRE’s and Yoders meats, they also carry a number of other items of interest. While MRE’s are useful and everyone should have some, the other items are, in my view, more important. A diet of MRE’s is going to get old pretty quick. This review is on some of the other food products they offer. They were kind enough to send several different items for me to review. Since I think readers deserve …


Letter Re: Canned Food Alternatives

Hugh, I started “doing this” in 1979 when I took a class taught by Ron Hood through UCLA extension. Below is the best advice on food storage I’ve seen or heard, and none are paid endorsements; they’re just my opinion: A video by Wendy De Witt entitled “Sensible Food Storage”. The first 22+ minutes are on food storage; the other 35 minutes are on equipment. I believe it is the easiest, most commonsense, and cost-effective method. Also, here is the link to her free doc. Additionally, this woman has a series of ten or more videos on dehydrating that are …


Two Letters Re: Canned Food

Hello, In response to a recent article on expired food, I just want to say that not all foods are the same. Recently I decided to take an expired case of Chef Boyardee Meat Ravioli on a extended road trip. The case expired in 2012, which was about 2.5 years past its “use by” date. I’ve eaten these plenty of times, so the food was as palatable as could be expected. However within two hours of eating one can I developed a headache. Headaches are very rare for me, so I didn’t pay any attention. The next day after eating …


Letter Re: Canned Food Alternatives

Dear Survival Blog, There’s a food storage learning curve. It’s is a long journey; my 65 years of life and 40 years of survival learning and self evaluation on products and locations has been very interesting and beneficial. Having submitted a few articles in the past on this wonderful site, I’m going to respond to food preps and storage. This is a brief account, as this is in my humble estimation is the most crucial part of all the survival categories. HJL is right on target with the canned food viewpoint in our current world situation, However the viewpoint will …


Letter: Canned Food Alternatives

Dear Survival Blog, I have been reading your blog for several years. You have a lot of great information, and I am glad that you are putting this information out on the net. However, I have a couple of questions. I want to start my stocking up, but my family does not eat canned food. Is there an alternative to canned food? I know about MRE’s; would that be a possible solution for our food storage? What do you do when there are items listed on the list of lists that you either don’t eat or don’t have access to? …


Letter Re: Food Items Past Expiration Dates

Hugh, I have been an avid reader of SB for about five years now. It amazes me that folks with what appears to be good common sense are throwing away products they have used to start or continue their prepping activities. Most of these comments say they are tired of throwing out stuff that has gone past its expiration date. With all the long-term storage info available on this site, I cannot for the life of me understand how someone would do this. With good storage rotation practices, first-in first-out, store what you eat and eat what you store habits, …


Motorizing a Country Living Grain Mill for 12-volt Battery and Solar, by I.S. – Part 2

We’re continuing the instructions for motorizing a Country Living Grain Mill that can run on battery- or solar-generated power. Part 1 dealt with the full list of material and the first step, building the base board. Here, we continue with instructions. Create and Prepare the Motor Mounting Board. This is a critical but confusing step, so pay attention! Cut a 6-1/2” x 9-1/2” piece of 3/4″ plywood. The longer sides will be the front and rear. Mark one flat side as bottom. You will mount the hinge to the bottom and the motor to the top at opposite ends. Think …