Category: Food Storage & Cooking

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 …


Free Food: How I Found it and What I’ve Done With it, by Ristin B.

I have discovered an ongoing source of mostly organic, quality food that requires only my commitment, labor and time as payment. Because it often arrives at my house in amounts greater than can be consumed immediately, most of it is being preserved to add to my long-term storage of foods in preparation for the days ahead when obtaining such food will be difficult. A new food shelf opened in my town a bit more than a year ago. This particular food shelf works with a major chain of well-known grocery stores. The food shelf accepts the fresh produce and flowers …


Surviving the Aftermath, Hurricane Katrina Style, by Frank G.

On the morning of August 29th, 2005 we came face to face with TEOTWAWKI in the form of Hurricane Katrina.  An estimated 92% of our community in Pascagoula, Mississippi was inundated with a storm surge of 20-30 feet and 30-55 feet sea waves.  The surge waters traveled well inland, between 6-12 miles and combined with freshwater flooding from our numerous creeks, rivers, and the runoff from the Mobile, Alabama reservoir that opened its flood gates to relieve stress on the dam.  This basically cut Jackson County in half.  Fortunately the worst of the storm hit in the morning just as …


Off Grid Cooking Solutions, Part 3, by V.W.

I have really come to enjoy researching and testing off grid cooking ideas and possibilities.  Last year I had purchased a few products that I felt were going to be the back bone of my preparedness efforts. Over this past winter, I began thinking that it was necessary to actually try out the ideas and suggestions from videos I had seen and articles I had read.  I ordered a few products to round out my supplies, and I became so enthusiastic with all the possibilities that I wrote “Off Grid Cooking Solutions, Part 1” and “Off Grid Cooking Solutions, Part …


TEOTWAWKI in a Two Bedroom Apartment at the Edge of Town, by Melanie C.

Making it through a worst case scenario in a two bedroom apartment is not my idea of a good chance of survival.  I read about others who are relocating to the American Redoubt or who have acquired sizeable land out away from town.  Those who have bunkers or cellars lined with shelves of log-term storage foods and an arsenal of weapons and ammo to protect it all; who have chickens and goats and a place to plant those seeds that come in the long-term storage can.  Then I look at myself and think, “Can’t do that, can’t afford that, maybe …


The Secret Prepper, by M.D.L.

(Why I prep, and how I do so in a family that thinks I’m crazy.) In the summer of 1977 my mother dragged me to see my older brother’s Cub Scouts meeting.  I was closing in on my sixth birthday and she informed me in no uncertain terms that I would be joining.  My mother was one of the multitudes of single mom’s in my part of Brooklyn.  A neighborhood where at the time crime was high, money was tight, and involved dads were few.   The only place for many boys to find any kind of positive male role model …


Letter Re: Some Observations on the Price of Beans

Mr. Rawles: In every decent sized town I’ve lived in there has been at least one “discount” grocery store. The stores that sell almost-expired food, dented cans or torn bags, local farmer over-production, that sort of thing. (And FWIW, only one can in a flat has to be dented for “the powers that be” to deem the entire batch unfit.) My most recent good buy has been repeated three years in a row here. It’s May, and the local store is selling one-pound bags of black-eyed peas at the discount price of 3 for $1. New Year’s Day was 5.7 …


Letter Re: Late Corn Planting in the American Midwest Does Not Bode Well

Sir: As a retired corn farmer, I find it quite interesting that the Fed’s USDA is still keeping to it’s hard-and-fast immutable “projections” of 97.3 million acres of corn being planted this year. Just like building a house, call the Fed’s number the “planned” or projected blueprint idea. But now let’s look at the “as built” story. Here, where the “rubber meets the road,” or I should say “where the planter tucks in the actual corn seed,’ the “actual” or real situation is quite another story due to very late corn plantings, if at all. The surprise is that the …


Letter Re: The Many Uses of Vacuum-Sealed Bags

Hi Jim,  The reader who contributed the food saver  storage bag post gave a lot of great ideas.  I would like to add my experience with Food Saver and how I solved some serious problems with the vacuum system itself.  Nine years ago I started a serious food storage program. Life is full of trials and errors, and lots of lessons learned from other’s trials and errors.  I made the move into dehydrating foods,  primarily beef and vegetables for long term storage. I bought Cabela’s large dehydrator after researching everything out there that I could afford.  It has performed marvelously after I …


The Many Uses of Vacuum-Sealed Bags, by L.E.

The Many Uses of Vacuum-Sealed Bags Late spring and early summer are the times to buy the Seal A Meal or Foodsaver machines. They are both made by the same parent company and can be found at any major grocery or department store in the kitchenware section-the Seal A Meal is the less expensive version that can be found for under $30 on sale, and the bags to go with it will cost you about the same again. You can make this a game or a family activity like an assembly line, just have all your items stacked in little …


Simple Portable Stoves, by Carolyn P.

The survivalist movement is growing at great rate today.  You only have to read some of the articles posted in this blog to know that.  But with all the fancy accruements available today some of the more fun and lowly survival items are overlooked.  Among them: The hobo and emergency pocket stoves. These are so much fun to make, and so easy.  I remember first seeing them in an ancient tiny camping book from the 1960’s.  The book itself was a hoot.  When I cracked the book open the faded and almost crunchy yellowed pages revealed what I thought was …


Health, Self-Improvement and Self-Mastery: Survive to Thrive, by A.P.S.

   This article intends to uncover mechanisms to assist the reader in self-help, self-mastery, and self- improvement.  The topics covered are meant to provide discovery of self- improvement ideas, identification of some techniques to improve your life, and give the reader further tools to pursue a deeper dive into the subject.  The reader will come out of this article with an awareness of the many topics to improve their thoughts, feelings, emotions, physiology, and performance.  The article pulls from sports medicine, psychology, martial arts, health and fitness, and self-help guides.  To really master some of these topics, it is highly …