Category: Food Storage & Cooking

A Work in Progress, by Defiance

As a family, we have been practicing – and experimenting – for years.  It started with a small garden, which took the place of the kids’ swimming pool when they got older and lost interest.  Our soil is a heavy clay, so after a couple of years of wrestling with the rototiller (it always won the battle), we decided to move up.  Of course, by that I mean raised beds.  So we bought some boards, and nailed them together.  Then we ordered a truckload of top soil, and wheeled it out back one wheelbarrow load at a time.  And since …


Letter Re: Staple Food Storage by the Numbers

Mr. Rawles, The recent article, “Staple Food Storage by the Numbers by Paul B.,” offers good insight into how to calculate for food storage and what foods offer more versus others.  Following his idea, I went to Self magazine’s mentioned web site nutritiondata.self.com to see about other foods I had been planning on storing.  When I looked into the kidney beans information provided by Paul, I noticed that the nutrition data provided in his article was based upon raw red kidney beans.  The problem with uncooked beans is not only the difficulty in eating them, but they are potentially toxic when consumed if …


Burning Coal in a Cookstove, by S.G. in New Hampshire

While remodeling our kitchen several years ago we purchased an antique coal/wood kitchen stove.  This stove was a replacement for a wood-only cook stove that had seen better days. With the economy crumbling and living in New Hampshire where winters can be long and harsh we thought it would be a good idea to have an alternative to our all-electric kitchen.  Power outages are relatively common here as well. Several years ago we lost our power for 8 days due to an ice storm. We have lived in our current home for 33 years. It is a log home several …


Staple Foods Storage By The Numbers, by Paul B.

Staple Foods Storage By The Numbers, by Paul B. The most basic survival task that every person can do is to begin an emergency food pantry or stockpile or whatever term one wishes to use.  The problem I have always had is in not knowing the quantities of staple foods to store.  I know there are food storage calculators on-line that will give total amounts for various items but they don’t explain how to use those items on a day-to-day basis.  Part of the reason why this is all so problematic for me is that I never really knew that …


Surviving TEOTWAWKI With Style, By Susan H.

If I am to survive TEOTWAWKI, then I intend to live in a style to which I’ve become accustomed.  That is, I intend to continue enjoying music, sweets, wine, cups of hot tea in the winter, stories, plays, and humor.  I plan to keep my pets around.  I hope to do so with the full participation of my family, however it evolves over time. I began working on maintaining this style almost 20 years ago, when we moved to a hobby farm in one of those “fly-over” states that has good soil and low population.  The farm is capable of …


Ultimate OSPEC in Your Underground Shelter–Or Just Do Your Best, by Charles D.

I needed a road trip to clear my mind and consider my G.O.O.D. route while on a road trip.  My Saturday journey was west on I-70 from Denver on a sunny fall day.  Around 60 miles up the hill from Denver is the gateway into the Colorado Rockies which is the Eisenhower / Johnson Tunnels that cross under the Continental Divide into the Summit County. These tunnels help avoid the winding but beautiful Loveland Pass that is often closed due to snow and poor conditions in the winter. They send the Hazardous Material trucks over the pass when the road …


Letter Re: Uses of Thermoses and Hot Water Bottles

Hi Jim, I have been a long time user of the Nissan & Stanley line of stainless steel thermoses, water bottles and coffee mugs and have a couple of things to add to BigSky’s article.  One pertains to TSA’s interest in them and the other is about over-the-fire uses.   I have carried the Nissan stainless steel coffee mug (16 oz.) everywhere for years, including airports.  Last Christmas there was a “threat alert” pertaining to bomb making material being carried in stainless steel thermoses.  Ever since then I have been pulled out of line for further inspection by the TSA because …


Uses of Thermoses and Hot Water Bottles, by BigSky

I have long believed that quality hot water bottles and steel vacuum thermos bottles and are very valuable survival tools. They are a wonderful intersection of high and low tech that can serve in a number of helpful roles. THERMOSES Fireless Cooking (retained-heat cooking) – I have cooked in WIDE-mouth thermoses many hundreds of times since the 1970s. There are a couple of other articles on this sight covering that fuel-saving application. I would amend the recommendation given re: Aladdin Stanley vacuum bottles, and I will cover that below. Using WIDE-mouth thermoses for “fireless cooking” is one very useful role …


Thinking Outside the Box, by Karen I.

My father was an engineer at Boeing, and Boeing builds in (or at least they used to) triple redundancy.  Kind of hard to find a hardware store or plane mechanic mid-air over the Atlantic, so you can see why what appears to be over-building really isn’t in the case of an airplane.  You might think that to effect this on the ground you’d need three or more of everything, but that’s not actually the case.  What you need for food, for example, is obviously more than one year’s supply.  You aren’t going to quit eating if you can help it, …


Letter Re: One Strategy for Bugout Bag Foods

Sir: I would like to follow up on my recent article, Some Thoughts of How to Live in Times of Hunger, with a few actionable implications that might make a difference to my fellow preppers. As always, I eagerly look forward to the contributions of the worldwide prepper community to add to or correct my conclusions.             If I ever have to bug-out on foot it will be under dangerous circumstances, and I will need to move quickly and cover at least several miles. This on-foot bugout is my truly worst-case scenario: minimum supplies, emergency escape. If I can plan …


Letter Re: Lessons Learned by Beginning Preppers

Hello Jim, We too are beginning preppers.  I wanted to add a few gotchas I encountered when storing food.  The first, which is minor, occurred when we bought snacks in bulk.  We are not big snackers, but we enjoy some dry-roasted peanuts while watching television, and some chips on the side with a sandwich.  When there were suddenly 9 lbs of peanuts or 6 bags of chips in the pantry, family members started eating snack foods excessively. But before I had to ration them, the behavior self-corrected.  Our diet has actually gotten better as we stock up, as most long-term …


Help For Those Who Have Recently Awakened, by Mike H.

Many SurvivalBlog readers have been prepping for awhile and are comfortable with their plans.  However, the process can be overwhelming for people who have recently “woke up” or who are trying to convince loved ones who aren’t sold on the need or desirability of prepping. This shouldn’t be minimized or downplayed.  It can be very disturbing when you first realize you aren’t   self-sufficient.  It is easy to become overwhelmed with the scope, cost, and time necessary to prepare.  The concept of TEOTWAWKI can be troubling and concerning even to completely self-sufficient preppers.  Even the possibility of angry mobs trying to …


Letter Re: Some Thoughts on How to Live in Times of Hunger

Jim: I recently completed my third 10 water only fast.  The previous one I did was 13 years ago.  Here are some observations. 1) While the first two times I did a 10 day water fast the hunger disappeared in 3 days, this time, it took 8 days for the hunger pangs to stop. 2) I was much more sensitive to cold temperatures.  Bear that in mind and take appropriate measures. 3) Adding a little salt to the water I was drinking helped significantly with the lightheadedness and tendency to get faint when rising. 4)  A colonic cleansing on day …


Lessons Learned by Beginning Preppers, by Theresa L.

I don’t know exactly when my husband and I first discussed preparing for emergency situations and stockpiling, but we began keeping a small notebook in 2009 to inventory items we purchased to stock pile in case TSHTF or in the event of TEOTWAWKI. Our main concern was economic collapse, followed by civil unrest and the resulting lack of availability of food, water, and other necessities and the possibility of being unable to move about freely. We read some books, including Patriots by James Wesley, Rawles, One Second After by William Forstchen and The Road by Cormac McCarthy. This fueled our …


Letter Re: Some Thoughts on How to Live in Times of Hunger

I have experienced two different times in my life of going hungry. The first time I went with very little food for three months. I went from 145 lbs to 115 lbs. I am 5’8 and my weight should be around 140-160 according to the Body Mass Index (BMI). The second time wasn’t as bad because I knew what to expect. I went from 175 lbs to about 135 lbs. I now weigh a comfortable 190 lbs. I purposely gained weight above the recommended 160 but I try to keep my weight maintained just under the obese level. I do …