Category: Food Storage & Cooking

Bone Broth, a.k.a. Stone Soup, by H.A.

Bone broth is slow-simmered broth, made with bones.  Vegetables and/or vegetable scraps are also sometimes used, as is a shot of vinegar to help leach the minerals from the bones.  Bone broth is healthful and frugal. Why make bone broth?  For starters, prepping can be expensive!  Being frugal makes prepping easier.  Bone broth can be “almost” free to make, from items that you don’t even realize that you have, hence the “Stone Soup” title.   Also, bone broth is chock-full of minerals and nutrients, which is always a good thing, but especially so if/when the “balloon goes up”, when staying healthy …


Letter Re: Storing Foods to Eat for Pleasure

Dear JWR: You’ve probably heard of the “Mormon Four,” a starting place for beginning preppers wanting to attain a one-year food supply. The Mormon Four prescribes amounts of red hard winter wheat, powdered milk, sugar or honey, and salt to sustain life for one year. That’s a lot of bread making, preserving, and sprouting over and over! Yes, these foods are nutritious, have a long shelf life, and can keep you alive. However, my opinion is that the boredom factor in this diet is huge, even if you love bread. Here’s an idea: Everyone, and I mean everyone, from around …


Tips From an Amateur on Getting Through a Disaster, by F.M.H.

Back in 1979 I found myself in facing a hurricane by the name of Frederic. It had Mobile, Alabama in its cross-hairs. The category three hurricane made landfall on September 12. I did not take the warnings seriously and unfortunately there was little to no preparation made on my part. I barely had a quarter of a tank of gas in my car. I did not have a battery operated radio or a flashlight. There was some non perishable food in my pantry and a small amount of food in the fridge. I was basically like most folks, ill prepared …


On Safe Cooking, by Mrs. Icebear

Disclaimer: Please use common sense in applying anything you read here! In the (European) country where I live in we have a lot of cooking shows on television, and I never cease to be both shocked and amazed at seeing (some – thank God not all) professional chefs taste their exquisite creation with a spoon  and then put that spoon straight back into the pot. So, if anyone feels offended by my stating the obvious below, please don´t take it personally. For preppers/ survivalists/ people who want to be self sufficient there are of course a host of reasons to …


Survival Is Not Fun, by Wild EMT

Bug-Out! A friend and I recently discussed some of the possible physical difficulties that might be associated with a rapid exfiltration from a devastated area during a major grid-down scenario.  We thought it would be interesting to explore the personal effects of increased stress, combined with decreased caloric intake, which might be encountered while “bugging-out.”  We wanted to move away from academic knowledge to personal experience, so we created a seven day bug-out “challenge” for ourselves.   Background note: my survivalist friend was a U.S. Marine who served in Vietnam and then spent his career working on computers.  I’m a 46-year-old …


Teaching Opportunities, by J.L. in Pennsylvania

My story begins as another closet prepper.  As many of you, I did not have the support of my spouse for my new found drive to prepare for the unknown. Often I would attempt to sneak items that I planned to lay up long-term into the grocery bill without her noticing. I would even have online purchases delivered to a neighbor claiming to him that it was for her birthday or our anniversary. Needless to say, I usually (always) got caught, which would lead to long discussions about me “wasting money.”  As fate and the good lord would have it, …


How Horrific Will It Be For The Non-Prepper?, by Be Informed

Editor’s Note: You have no doubt had your own set of issues dealing with friends and family members that simply don’t see the writing on the wall. The following article may serve to assist you in convincing those who simply don’t know, don’t want to know, don’t care, or have never even thought to contemplate. Some of the scenarios outlined below may be frightening, as they should be, because when it hits the fan millions of people will be thrown into desperation with no hope of a solution. Be Informed provides a variety of point-by-point details that may (and hopefully …


Mark Levin: Government Is Simulating the Collapse of Our Financial System, the Collapse of Our Society and the Potential for Widespread Violence

Along with Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, leading conservative radio host Mark Levin reaches tens of millions of listeners weekly, and what he talked about recently on his nationally syndicated show has sent shivers down the spines of many of them. A few years ago this was fringe theory, restricted only to the sphere of alternative (conspiracy) news. Warnings of a massive economic collapse, government stockpiling of weaponry, and the idea that Americans could be broadly classified as terrorists and then detained indefinitely or killed often fell upon deaf ears. Today, as more information ‘leaks’ into the mainstream, it is …


850 Miles in 27 Weeks: Experience With Long Distance Walking, by Erik M.

Do you plan to walk to your retreat?  Then read this first. For those who like me, are nearing or over 50 years old and out of shape after years of working a desk and who think that walking or biking to a retreat is an option for them, let me tell you about the last 27 weeks and the 850 miles I’ve covered by walking and biking. In doing so I’m hoping that I can convince you to start now rather then waiting for a situation that forces you to do so. After all, if my retreat were 260 …


Prepping For Seniors, by Retired Rev.

I became aware of the need for prepping too late to have the advantages associated with youth.  Seniors are already dealing with issues of declining physical prowess, declining health and a growing sense of mortality.  To add prepping to the list of concerns seemed more than a bit overwhelming but given the realities of our day, prepping slowly became an unavoidable necessity as I began to understand that the economic path on which our nation is traveling is clearly becoming unsustainable and is getting worse, not better. There was also the additional concern – shared by preppers of any age …


Letter Re: Healthy Eating and Food Storage Rotation

Dear Mr. Rawles, I started my weight-loss/lifestyle change journey four months ago.  I found myself unable to sprint a flight of stairs without feeling lightheaded at the top.  My older, but thinner lunchtime walking partners didn’t appear to have this issue.  I have been reading about the need to get into shape should a SHTF scenario happen in the near future.  This convinced me that I need to make a healthy lifestyle change including weight-loss and more physical activity. As I started this endeavor, I wondered if the food preparations I stored would work with my new eating habits.  You’ve …


Letter Re: Chicken and Beef Bouillon Without MSG

Hello, I would like to point out to everyone that even though the Better Than Bouillon labels say “NO ADDED MSG” it does still contain some MSG. Those of us who are made very ill by MSG have learned to triple check all listed ingredients. Here is a quote from Food Renegade that explains this better than I can: “Hydrolyzed soy protein is an ingredient that always contains MSG! (source) Because the manufacturer didn’t add an ingredient called “mono-sodium glutamate,” they can “truthfully” claim “No MSG added” on their label. Yet, nothing is stopping them from adding ingredients that contain MSG. In …


Letter Re: Chicken and Beef Bouillon Without MSG

  Hi Jim,  I was in Costco yesterday and noticed that they now stock chicken and beef bouillon that has no MSG. Some people try to avoid MSG because it gives them headaches. I like to avoid it for health reasons, since it’s been shown that MSG is an excitotoxin–a nasty chemical that may cause humans to develop brain diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. No thanks! The Bouillon in question is sold under the “Better Than Bouillon” brand, and I think bullion will store very well for at least five years, making it a great addition to our food storage …


Letter Re: Free Food: How I Found it and What I’ve Done With it

Jim, The writer of the “Free Food” article wrote that she had not found a good way to preserve avocados and in the next paragraph wrote that she had not had success dehydrating citrus fruit. If that citrus fruit is lemon or lime, it is part of the answer as to what to do with those avocados! I ordered a box of avocados prior to having a large gathering of friends and family for a long weekend. A personal tragedy prompted several of my guacamole eating guests to depart days early, so I had to think fast as to what …


Community Building is Critical, by W.H.

A couple friends and I recently talked about the state of ‘things’, and how ‘things’ seem to be getting worse, and how ‘things’ are so bad that ‘things’ simply cannot get better. You’ve had those conversations, right? My friend David is well aware of the sorry state of our political system, and we’ve discussed those ‘things’ several times in the past. However, he was not thinking in terms of societal collapse. David started thinking along those lines pretty quickly, once I pointed out some weaknesses of our system, like the fact that our power utilities are not adding capacity, but …