Category: Food Storage & Cooking

Letter Re: Which Foods Have Indefinite Shelf Lives?

James Wesley, What are the chances of you posting a link to all food items and such that have an indefinite shelf life as they come from a store, I have heard that items like Crisco vegetable shortening have an indefinite shelf life. Is this true or just hearsay? Thanks in advance for any info and also thank you so much for the huge wealth of information you have made available to me through your blog! You have probably saved more lives than you can imagine. – Jeff JWR Replies: Tables of shelf life info are provided in my “Rawles …


Letter Re: An Easy Method to Determine a Year’s Supply of Any Regularly-Used Items

Dear James; Here is an easy way to determine a year’s supply of anything. You just need a calendar, a pencil, and the ability to count to two. Say you’re down to your last jug of cooking oil. Instead of buying one at the store, buy two, and write the item you purchased on the starting date on your calendar. Now, every time you replace that empty item, buy two more, instead of one, and rotate the oldest. At the end of the year, when you transfer over Birthdays, etc, to next year’s calendar, be sure to add the items …


Letter Re: MZBs: Are You Prepared?

I’d just like to comment on the forum thread you linked to, titled “MZBs: Are you prepared?”, over at doomers.us The dynamic of the petulant and angry underclass rearing a rather violent head once the social controls are gone is precisely what happened in places like Yugoslavia and Russia. On the Serbian side, these types were actively armed by the nationalists. On the Croatian and Bosnian side, they came from a pre-existing underworld and before anyone knew what was happening they had almost completely hijacked power in many areas. And they took what they wanted, took out anyone who got …


Letter Re: Some Practical Experience in Dehydrating Vegetables

Hi Jim, We have been dehydrating foods for a couple of years now and I thought you might like to hear how things went for us. Green beans are dried down south and are called leather breeches. You can do a Google for recipes. Traditionally you use a sewing needle and sew a string through the green bean and then hang them to dry. We blanched the beans prior to drying in our dehydrator. After the beans were dried we wrapped a handful of the beans in a paper towel and shrink wrapped the package. The paper towel protects the …


Letter Re: Post-Collapse Charity OPSEC

James Wesley: A buddy of mine and I were talking about giving out food in a post-collapse world and it occurred to us what we give out could have an impact on your operational security (OPSEC). Unless you come upon the refugees in the middle of your garden, then they’ll probably think (unless you tell them or give them reason to believe otherwise) that you are in much the same situation that they are in. The type of food you give charitably could be a message in and of itself. Give them store-bought food standard-form (processed food that can be …


Where Have All the Dutch Ovens Gone?, by Curtis M.

A recent post on SurvivalBlog was about baking bread and it talked about building an oven to bake bread to give out for charity. As I read the article I was wondering why there are not many articles on Dutch ovens on the blog. Anything that can be baked in a regular oven can be baked in a Dutch oven or cooked on a stove top for that matter. The way a Dutch oven works is 2/3 of the coals are on the top and 1/3 goes on the bottom. The lid has a lip that holds coals on top. …


The “Power of Ten” Planning Model, by Sandkicker

This article has nothing to do with any special properties of the number ten, but rather refers to a progressive planning method based on the size of a problem. This is a way to organize thinking and planning for chaotic situations.   “If you fail to plan, you’ve planned to fail”.   It would be irresponsible to present any particular plan as suitable for everyone, however, these are some guidelines on how and why you should develop your own plans.  Why do I have the nerve to write this piece?   I’ve been in the middle of more than one “adventure”… and in …


Preparing Your Church Congregation, by JSX in Virginia

My preparedness background started as a youth.  My father took us camping often and had an amazing gun collection; I’ve been able to teach my kids what he taught me – great memories both then and now!  In the 1970s, my mom and step-dad bought a little 2-acre farm in the middle of nowhere.  We kept a dozen or so chickens, had a few garden spots (that seemed to grow and multiply with each new season), homemade soap, homemade root beer (an acquired taste!) a “sewing room”, a small orchard, solar heating, our own 250-gallon fuel tank, and a year …


Barriers – Berries – and Bounty All Hidden in Plain Sight, by The Prudent Gardener

It seems a part of preparing for extremely hard times is acquiring knowledge and honing skills to maximize resources. SurvivalBlog has been tremendously helpful in developing exhaustive lists of needs, supplies, strategies and defenses. In addition, provision is made for faith, charity and quality of life to improve a healthy mental state. As a landscape contractor for 32 years, I am now seeing more potential for self-reliance that most property owners could develop with some planning and a better awareness of the resources they may already possess. This form of preparation could substantially improve our situation both short and long …


Coconut Oil: The Essential Survival Item You Didn’t Know You Needed, by Sarah in Indiana

The more I read, the more I plan, the more I prepare, I find myself thinking, “Boy, I do not want to be caught without my coconut oil.” While many who know me might get a good chuckle from this thought, they wouldn’t be surprised either. In fact, one of my friends jokingly refers to me as the “Coconut Oil Lady”. Not a month goes by without her talking to me about some problem or ailment to which I’ll respond, “Well, you could put some coconut oil on that,”, or, “If you just used some coconut oil…” Dr. Bruce Fife …


Letter Re: The Disaster Field Bakery

Jim: I am not sure bread is a food that is best prepared after a TEOTWAWKI situation. I consider it a luxury item. In a survival situation it all boils down to decisions. I am not saying charity should not happen but we need to get the biggest bang for our supplies. Bannock, cornbread, biscuits and tortillas take less effort and energy to produce and travel better than bread. We also need to consider OPSEC, since baking bread has to have a bigger signature than the baking of other breads. – Curtis


Three Letters Re: The Disaster Field Bakery

James, In reference to the article on SurvivalBlog.com – The Disaster Field Bakery, by JIR, here is a free downloadable PDF copy of the Manual for Army Bakers from 1917 from Google. It contains over a hundred pages of old fashioned “how to” baking wisdom in a reliable military format. It’s contains detailed instruction on bread baking, including yeast and yeast recipes, and bread ingredients and recipes. The manual also includes a description of the equipment used by a field bakery company. This would be a good manual for a church, charity, or large group who have wheat stored and …


The Disaster Field Bakery, by JIR

I can’t agree with you more on the subject of charity. Watching people starve is not in the cards for me if I can help it. In a TEOTWAWKI situation, you won’t be able to help very much, but for a lesser catastrophe, most of your readers could really help a lot of people by working with local authorities or church groups to feed people until help can arrive. Water is an even more urgent need, but I would like to describe my own preparations for setting up a field bakery and soup kitchen. Maybe I can help inspire others …


America is More Like Haiti than We’d Like to Think

The recent earthquake in the island nation of Haiti illustrates the fragility of all societies. While Haiti is unusual in its lack of infrastructure and its high dependence on foreign aid–more than half of its annual government budget comes from foreign aid–it is still similar in many ways to other nations: From the 1960s to the turn of the 21st century, as in many other nations, Haiti became an urbanized nation. Before the 1960s a substantial portion of Haitian society still lived on rural semi-self sufficient farmsteads. But as urbanization and specialization went on, fewer and fewer people lived off …


The Importance of Calories in a Survival Situation, By Keith W.

In this modern world the term “calorie” is almost a bad word. They are things to be limited, controlled and shunned whenever possible. We use terms like “empty” and “wasted” in regards to the consumption of calories. Obesity, the result of the over-consumption of calories, is one of the biggest dangers that we face as Americans. If and when TEOTWAWKI occurs, our thinking needs to change immediately. The average man doing minimal amounts of work needs about 2500 calories per day to maintain weight and full functionality. Doing moderate physical labor or survival activities can easily increase that number to …