Category: Food Storage & Cooking

The Science: Reusing Canning Jar Lids – Part 2, by St. Funogas

(Continued from Part 1. This concludes the article.) #4. “Tempered less than Mason jars.” Nearly every book, website, and blog discussing this subject insists that Mason jars are tempered. They’re definitely, absolutely, NOT tempered. Glass has three basic hardening options: tempering, heat strengthening, and annealing. All commercial and home-canning jars are annealed, not tempered. Annealing is a process where jars are cooled down very slowly after production to make them more consistent and to minimize stresses. Whenever glass breaks into the sharp jagged pieces seen when we break a jar or window it’s merely annealed, not tempered or heat strengthened. …


The Science: Reusing Canning Jar Lids – Part 1, by St. Funogas

I’ve been on an incredible journey since submitting my last article Reusing Canning Jar Lids to SurvivalBlog. That article was based on my personal experience reusing 1,000+ canning jar lids. Many other home canners bear similar testimony about successfully reusing lids. My article specifically mentioned ignoring all the blogs, the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning, and even my own experience mentioned in the article. Since the best teacher is personal experience, I then challenged the reader to do a simple test themselves by canning some water with used canning jar lids. In this follow-up article, I have researched and …


Starve-The-Beast Recommendations, by Bear

Here are some recommendations sent to us by SurvivalBlog reader “Bear” on some smaller businesses to patronize, to help Starve The Amazon Beast.  They include: The Darn Tough brand socks are great. Pricey but made in the USA by a family-owned company and come with a literal lifetime guarantee. I have a scientist relative who purchased a couple of pairs a decade-plus ago for field work, and only recently has she had to return them for an exchange. I live in mine (these and my Carhartts), and I recently purchased another 30 pair for my children to wear now and to …


To Freeze-Dry or Not Freeze-Dry, by J.A.

Our family began our self-sufficiency journey approximately 15 to 20 years ago at an LDS Home Storage Center location and we did not have a focused plan (Yes JW,R I should have thoroughly reviewed the list of lists, my bad!). In hindsight, we would not have gone as heavy as we did in wheat berries, beans and rice. However, that is water under the bridge at this point as we slowly work our way through the original purchases (wheat berry meatloaf anyone?). Since that time, our food storage has greatly diversified and if you have priced out certain freeze-dried items …


Small Batch Meat Canning Tips, by Tractorguy

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Introductory Proviso: This article assumes that the user is already familiar with safe practices to pressure-can meat. This article is NOT a comprehensive discussion of all the caveats and procedures necessary for safe canning. It is ONLY supplementary information for specific items and situations listed below. The correct procedures (times and pressures) for safely pressure-canning low-pH items like meats are available from the manufacturer of your pressure canner or from the USDA. My wife and I enjoy pressure canning, and believe it to be the best procedure for storing small quantities of meat and other perishables for easy transportation and …


Constructing My Culvert Cooker – Part 2, by J.P.

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(Continued from Part 1. This concludes the article.) Start Cooking! Stage III. Build the deck (Two Days) Since adding a deck to your outdoor kitchen is optional I offer no plan or directives for you to follow. Again there are expert builders – even average builders – who are capable of producing a fine deck for these purposes. Likewise big box stores and most book dealers are a source of good plans for your deck. Here a few things for you to consider: * Craigslist and other on-line postings are likely to turn up trex and other similar used materials …


Constructing My Culvert Cooker – Part 1, by J.P.

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Introductory Note: Since posting the article on Wood Fired Coffee Roasting (Dec 8-9) a number of you have asked for some directives on building the counter height cooker. Because I love using my cooker, and I can’t think of a more practical piece of outdoor equipment, here goes with my best attempt to guide you through the construction process. I highly recommend putting together the entire outdoor kitchen, but if you are interested in just the culvert cooker then you’ll find that below – Stage II, Culvert Cooker. First, read through the entire article. — If Wikipedia knew about the …


Wood-Fired Coffee Roasting – Part 2, by J.P.

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Preparation for Roasting Besides gathering all your equipment together, two skills need to be developed: 1.) Maintaining just the right amount of fire and 2.) “Nurturing” the beans with masterful strokes of the paddles. First, the fire. If you are blessed to be a master of the wood fire then this part will come easy. Most effective wood cooking fires are long on a good bed of coals and short on actual flame. Flame delivers short-lived heat and then it dies. You don’t want to be rebuilding your fire in the middle of a roast. Now let’s talk about what …


The Art of Meal Stretching – Part 2, by Nurse Michele

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(Continued from Part 1. This concludes the article.) I learned a long time ago that when the budget was particularly tight around our house if I stressed over it, I would see that stress reflected in my children. I tried, of course, to take the opportunity to display faith and trust in the Lord. There were times, I confess, that I stood firmer on my faith than at others. I remember one night in particular our car had broken down. There, in the freezing cold, on the side of a major highway in New Jersey, my kids and I stood …


The Art of Meal Stretching – Part 1, by Nurse Michele

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Meal stretching is the learned art of taking simple, low-cost ingredients and turning them into not just one appealing meal for your family, but with some careful planning and a few adjustments, several meals to meet your family’s needs. This is a subject I expect that most of us, at least SurvivalBlog readers, have already acquired a fair bit of knowledge. Sometimes it’s easy to assume then, that the ability to make one meal become three is all but ubiquitous. But recently something happened, making me re-think my assumption that folks at large are familiar with ways to help keep …


How to Make Wooden Mason Jar Crates – Part 2, by St. Funogas

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(Continued from Part 1. This concludes the article.) Second Jig – Drill-Press Jig  If you have a pneumatic stapler, which greatly speeds up many nailing tasks, you can skip this section. Once you have the first slats cut, you’ll need to drill guide holes for the 4d nails using a 3/16” drill bit. If you try to nail without a pilot hole, not only will many of the slats split, but it’ll slow down your nailing time considerably. This is where jig number two comes in. As seen in Photos 10A  and 10B (inset), this jig positions stacks of five …


How to Make Wooden Mason Jar Crates – Part 1, by St. Funogas

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If you’re an average prepper, you no doubt have enough mason jars to sink a small yacht if they were all filled with pickles and tomato sauce and snuck aboard. And if you’ve done a lot of canning, you’ve probably thought there has to be a better way to manage all the jars than those cardboard boxes they come in. I’ve found that homemade wooden crates work great for me and may work for you as well. What I really like about these crates is that you can store empties in them as well as full jars, then stack the …


Low-Tech Off-Grid Living, by Ani

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I’m writing this article early in the morning during a power failure. I’ve only lived in this house for six months but this is not the first power failure I’ve experienced here. Previously I house-sat in this town and experienced a long duration power failure complete with four days or so of no cell service either. I got on my phone and looked up the outage map and realized that my town and a couple of adjacent towns have a significant outage, definitely due to the high winds of last night. The electric utility will begin mobilizing the line crews …


Testing 20-Year-Old Mountain House Lasagna, by S.H. in Texas

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This article describes my experience with some Mountain House brand freeze-dried lasagna that I taste-tested 13 years beyond it’s “Best By” date. Since I have become a bit of a “prepper”, I have noticed that the years seem to fly by much faster than before! Perhaps it’s just the usual momentum of age, but it seems every time I check on something from my “deep storage”, I find that it has been at least 10 years since it was purchased! Very disturbing. So…the question that plagues us is this: “would this be better-‘n-nothing when the SHTF, or should I just …


Living to 100: The Blue Zone Diet for Survival, by M.E.

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“Living well is the best revenge.” – George Herbert. When I was in high school in the late 1960s, we were pretty sure someone was going to drop a bomb on us. We had graduated from duck and cover to emergency preparedness, bomb shelters and all. One day in the auditorium we watched some training on first aid and handling trauma. The films were pretty vivid and some kids left in a hurry to throw up. One thing from this that has stuck with me is: if you are sick or injured, you can’t help anyone else. Anyone who has …