The Most Neglected Part of Prepping

As I was pondering our present circumstances, (personal SHTFsituation), and looking ahead to the foreseeable future, I realized something that I had forgotten from our last SHTF fiasco. It is very easy to get so entrenched in the high adrenalin, fight or flight mode, that when things begin to settle down, it is hard to get out of that mode. It becomes almost addictive. It begins to feel like things aren't right, if something isn't going wrong...

We are still in a total mess, nothing is in its proper place, there is sawdust coating every surface, even though most surfaces were tarped or covered with plastic, saw dust is insidious, it found its way under or through the coverings. We have to cook and eat our meals outside. But thank God we are able to sleep in the house now that the weather is cooling off. I realized yesterday that even though we are living in a "disaster area", we are on our way up, the bottom has been found and we are making progress... so why do I feel so depressed and exhausted? Adrenaline fatigue...

 We have been working on the house non stop, day and night for more than a month, as well as living outside for most of that, without a break or an end in sight. I am tired, out of sorts and I have lost perspective.

Cabinets in this part of the kitchen are taped and ready for sanding. The floor has been replaced, and the stove is in place but won't be hooked up until the kitchen cabinets are done since gas stove and construction don't mix.

Everything is covered and inaccessible until we are finished sanding and painting.

So last night I decided to make a margarita, (made by flashlight in our outdoor kitchen :D ), and began to work on the art for our newly sanded kitchen cabinets. I got lost in the project and worked really late, but I felt like a new person this morning.

What does all this have to do with prepping??? A lot. As Preppers, we spend a large portion of our financial resources, time and effort on making sure we have the essentials, which is appropriate, but it is important to think about our mental health as well. Unfortunately, this area of prepping is seldom considered, or planned for. Whatever scenario you find yourself in, there will come a time when things need to normalize, and "life" to go on. The whole point in surviving is to make it through to a point where LIFE can begin again. But if "the plan" does not consider how to begin to have a life again, and to provide for it, then eventually everyone will burn out.

In all but the most dire of situations, there should be some down time factored in for each person, some time to recharge the mental and physical batteries. What preps have been done for that? Are there any unread books, paper, pens, crayons, paints, non electric wood working tools, or whatever supplies you need to feed the inner child? Have the needs of the adults been considered as well as for the children? And what about those surly teens, who only get more surly when under stress, what preps have been made for them to blow off steam?

You have extra batteries for necessary equipment, but how about for the hand held game devise everyone will be missing? Are there decks of cards and travel size games in your preps, what about a frisbee or a ball? Do you have an artistic person in your group? Have good drawing pencils and notebooks of blank paper, a tin of water paints and some brushes for them. A book worm in your midst? Have some good unread books for them and have them read out loud to provide everyone with some entertainment, A putterer, builder, mechanic? Have non electric tools, wood and other supplies at you long term locale, and a few magazines stowed away for a rainy day or bug out. Crayons and colored pencils, and some children's and adult type coloring books can be a real pick me up for everyone. Yarn, crochet hooks and knitting needles can make socks, and other needed apparel, but will also have some de-stressing value. It is very easy to put all these things in on 5 gallon bucket and store it away until needed. These should be updated and rotated as time passes and ages and interests change.

A compact digital camera and extra chips to document the experience for posterity, will prove invaluable. You may not be able to view them immediately, but some day there will probably be access to modern devices again. Do you really want to miss the opportunity to document your life and challenges for the future? What if not everyone makes it through... having a camera and taking photos may give you one last look at a loved on or friend. Morose I know but give it some thought.
A camera is definitely part of my long term storage plan.

Although I have many interests and a lot of them I would need to put into practice in a practical way during SHTF, like non-electric cooking and baking, gardening, sewing, herbal medicine, etc., but I try to keep the supplies in stock and rotated for some of my less practical interests, strictly for escapism/ mental health time. For me, if I have a clean dry surface and some paints, I can escape into a world all my own. And just for fun, here are a few pics of what I did during my margarita/ mental health time.

Top section of one of the pantry cabinet doors. I am going with a botanical theme for the paintings on my cabinet doors. This one is dill. There will also be mint, oregano, and lavender on the three other doors. Then a smaller less elaborate motif on each of the other 14 cabinet doors.

Close up of part of the bottom of the same door.

Detail of the butterfly on the bottom section of the same door.

What makes your heart sing and what plans have you made for your mental health time in your prepping? Please feel free to leave a comment and tell me about you de-stressing plans.

Things I Have Learned While Living in My Garden

For those of you who don't know the whole story go to this post on my other blog to get up to speed. In short we were driven out of our house into life in our garden by mold caused by undetected water damage in our kitchen. We are now in our 4th week outside and I have learned many things. Having been through this kind or situation in the past, (Hurricane Hugo 1989 was a 6 year ordeal for us), we have made prepping a part of our every day life. It is a very good thing we are accustomed to roughing it, and even as prepared as we are, there are some things I see we need to address more thoroughly.

Plan A

 When we started this whole adventure I implemented Plan A: quickly set up an outdoor kitchen. I had to prepare food for our Sabbath and for a friend who had lost a family member. The outdoor kitchen was set up in no time so I could take care of the food requirements for a couple of days. Fortunately I had set up our kitchen fly over the outdoor kitchen, so when a pop up thunderstorm and torrential rains blew through I was under cover. Well kind of... water ran over my feet while I was cooking. Since the spot I chose was level at the 4 corners but had a slight depression in the ground in the middle, so it was a perfect place for rain run off to go. Also the wind blew the rain in through the screened Kitchen fly and threatened to dilute my soup.

When my husband came home that evening we went on to Plan B. We moved everything to the

Plan B

deck way above the ground which gave us good drainage and some shelter from wind driven rain. We also set up our tent on my yoga platform so it would be up off the ground and hopefully dry. So life went on as usual, there was no more rain for the better part of a week. The sun was shining and the northern exposure of our deck gave us shade from the heat of the day. I enjoyed preparing meals and doing some food preservation while watching the butterflies flit from flower to flower just beyond the deck rail. Our Corinthian Bells caught the breeze and called out resonantly from the vegetable garden. Ah... life was good.


We had company come to visit and help us celebrate Yom Teruah, It was a lovely evening. I had prepared a number of tasty things to eat and we watched for the new moon and then ate on the veranda in the warm evening air. It was such pleasant evening, Da and I both settled into the tent on our inflatable mattress feeling very satisfied with our well executed contingencies. The "honeymoon" phase lasted for almost another week and by then we felt like we had a pretty good handle on things, and would be fine for the duration. Ha! Just when you think you have it all figured out...

It started raining, which was no real biggie at first. We were up off the ground and I pulled the tables in some so that the mist from the screened kitchen fly didn't affect my work. I was running the smoker in the yard smoking first, marinated portabello mushrooms, and then a couple of batches of habanero, seranno, and jalapeno chiles. The back yard smelled wonderful and my pot of habanero peach salsa was smelling pretty good too. But as the day progressed, the rains got harder and the wind picked up, all of my food prep area was soaked and the wind kept blowing out the flame on my propane camp stove. I had to stop working and put everything under cover until the rain passed, which took 3 days... I refrigerated the salsa to be canned up another day, and just did the bare minimum necessary to put something hot on the table. That night we went to bed dry and snug, but sometime during the night the bottom of the tent started to take on water. In the morning we were surrounded by a moat. The goose down comforter and sheets were wet and had to be dried out by draping them over furniture in the house. The canopy over the outdoor kitchen on the deck had given way to water and everything inside was soaked. It was of course still raining.

Plan C

So-o... on to Plan C, move everything from the outdoor kitchen on the deck, (including emptying and moving our fridge and having to get it down off the deck in the pouring rain), and relocating it to the covered veranda, where we had been taking our meals and hanging out until bedtime. Then we moved into our 1957 camper, which is great and I love being in it, but we haven't renovated it yet so it has a few quirks... actually more than a few, but it is under a cover and dry so it will serve.

Now we are into our 4th week outside. It looks like we may have the mold issues under control soon, I hope... But for now, Hurricane Joaquin is threatening to dump upwards of 11 inches of rain on this area and the weather has turned cold. Fortunately, I have lots of food made up so my time outside cooking will be in short stints, just to warm things up. But we will be pretty much trapped at the little table in our 13 foot camper, until the storms pass on Monday. Hopefully we will not have to resort to Plan D, which involves packing up and moving to a hotel until it stops raining. I despise hotels and we have a kitten that is really not self sufficient enough to stay on her own that long. So it would be much better to stay here where we can keep an eye on our property and critters. We shall see... Last night the winds brought down a large limb which struck the corner of the pergola cover where we keep our camper and scared the ba-geezes out of me... it sounded like the whole tree came down on top of us. No damage done, but I did get a wake up call to move my car to the other drive where there are no trees!

Here are some things I have learned from this adventure:

1) I really do like living outside, I may place our plan for a covered outdoor kitchen further up on the priority list.

2) Rain changes everything. What is tolerable, maybe even fun when dry, becomes far more difficult and depressing when everything you own is soggy and there is little escape from all the wet. Rain makes even simple tasks difficult. It ruins things. My towels all mildewed, the totes containing my staples and seasonings somehow took on water, the labels came off, things in jars caked up due to the saturated conditions, the staples turned to mush. My feet have been soggy for so long I am staring to worry about jungle rot, (not literally, but foot care is very important when living outside in the wet). Cooking in the wet sucks, sleeping wet sucks more.

3) Outside is dirty. I am constantly wiping down surfaces and having to wash dishes, pots and pans before and after use. Which is no picnic when you don't have a sink and are standing outside with a pan of water, in the pouring rain, with mud squishing under foot, trying to get the dishes clean enough to be safe to eat from. Clothes get dirty quickly, hands and nails get really dirty. No amount of foot wiping will keep you from dragging leaves and dirt into bed with you.

4) Insects are a pain, both literally and figuratively. My biggest fear in living outdoors is my bee allergy. I had hornets buzzing my head because they were trapped in the kitchen fly and couldn't find a way out. Trying to help them out was, literally, taking my life in my hands... Swatting hornets just makes them mad, they are not forgiving and like elephants, they never forget... if you offend one they will wait for you and come after you when you least expect it. Yellow jackets wanted my fruit and to drown themselves in my beverages or disappear down my straws, (swallowing a yellow jacket that was in your drink is not recommended, I didn't actually do that but have witnessed what happens when one does...), ants invaded everything that wasn't sealed in a jar or tote. I spent at least 1/2 hour of every day getting butterflies out of my kitchen tent... I know... you're going to complain about butterflies in your kitchen?? Well after awhile them beating themselves against the screened walls and flapping in you face and on your head does begin to wear on one's temperament. I have been bitten by ants, threatened by hornets and flogged by winged creature enough in the last 4 weeks to last a lifetime.

5) Personal hygiene requires a lot more work, teeth brushing, potty breaks, bathing, keeping clothes clean enough to wear. Fortunately we have a bathroom that is a short distance from the back deck. It is isolated from the mold in the rest of the house. We have power and hot water, so we can still bathe inside and use the bathroom indoors, but now we are living in the camper instead of the back yard so it is a trek all the way around the house to the back door if I need to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, in the pouring rain. Then I track mud and wet back to the camper and try not to get it in the bedding.

6) If you have a personal SHTF situation instead of a community SHTF, or Global SHTF, then the rest of the world goes happily along while you are trying to figure out where the hell you left the flashlight so you can find your way to relieve yourself, have to be work clean when you're living outside dirty, having to be on time when everything takes at least twice as long to do, and eventually when you have been at it long enough you just start to disconnect from the rest of the world. Surrounded by your reality, the rest of reality becomes decidedly unreal. People start to shake their heads at you and you have little patience for their condescension. You start becoming isolated, lose track of time, don't differentiate one day from the next, stop going out. You begin to think that this is life now and hunker down for the long haul.

7) My biggest discovery during this adventure has been that we actually have a lot of the big things under control. Equipment, supplies, skills, are all pretty much as good as we would hope for. Most of the new issues that we are running into are different than those we discovered during Hugo, (which went much later in the year so we were dealing with cold weather, had no power, no water, and had to rebuild our home while trying to survive with small children in the mix,). Most things have been of less consequence, and have to do with smaller details like bugs and everything being dirty all the time. But it is good to know how much those things can affect your ability to cope. I am glad that we have had this opportunity to test what we know and live out our plans in a time where, if all else fails, we could just go stay in a hotel. It is much better to work out the kinks now, instead of finding things out when there are so many big issues to consider and get a handle on, as would definitely be the case in a real crisis.

So, in closing, I will state that being prepped with food, water, defense and medical supplies is important, but you won't know what your most important issues and preps are without practice and experience. Turn off the power for a week. Live in the back yard, camp, cook, do laundry and practice your practical skills, while making note of things that need work, supplies you wish you had, issues that came up, and then fill in the holes and try it again, until you are certain that you have the basics of living under control. You won't be sorry you did.

Stocking an Emergency Pantry, Part 2 in a Series on Keeping a Prepper's Pantry

When talking to people about stocking an emergency pantry, people often say they don't know where to start or how to calculate what they will need for their family. That can be a daunting process if you look at it as the big picture.; What I suggest is to break things out into smaller, more easily-handled tasks. I think that the best place to start is to look at what you cook at home right now and write it down in a notebook that you have designated for this project. Mark down what you and your family eat, breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks, remember to note condiments that you used and what beverages you had.. Also make note of how often you eat out and what you eat when you do go out for a meal. Save your shopping lists and your cash register receipts, put them in an envelope that you have taped to the back inside cover of your notebook. Keep diligent notes for a month. This information will be used to help you make a plan for beginning your emergency pantry. For the present you will be focusing on building up your every day food supplies, we will call this your "Three Month Pantry". The goal for this pantry is to provide your family with foods that can be used daily, rotated and restocked frequently. But that will ultimately have a three month stockpile of foods available in the event of a short term emergency situation.

During the month that you are collecting data about what you eat, you can begin to look around for an area that you can designate to hold you pantry supplies. I know that this may actually be the hardest part of the process... Many people live in apartments with little storage, or in homes, but are up to the gills in stuff and have no where to put anything. This might be a good time to take stock of what you have and what you need, to de-clutter and pass along things you don't use or that are just taking up space. If you are an apartment dweller, does the apartment complex give you a storage locker or outdoor shed that you can store some of your possessions in to make room for your food stockpile inside the where it is climate controlled? Can you spare 6 inches of floor space and pull your couch out from the wall, so that you can store some supplies behind it? My son did this in his apartment. He made room behind the couch by pulling it out several inches,(6-8"), then used the area he made to hold some of his storage goods. He kept the end tables up against the wall to hide the gap,; I never even noticed that he had done so until he pointed it out. Consider under-used spaces like the top shelves in closets, how about that dead space at the back of a kitchen base cabinet that you have to be a contortionist to get into? Can you put your bed on risers and use the space under the beds? Do you have a closet you can retask by de-cluttering? How about a garage? Do you have a designated junk/storage room that you can organize and use part of ? At one point in our lives, we used some of our storage as furniture... instead of an end table we had a crate of stockpiled good that we topped with a piece of plywood and covered with a pretty table cloth and a lamp. No one ever noticed that it wasn't a table. The same thing could be done for a coffee table. We did away with our bed frame and used our 2 gallon long term storage buckets, covered by a dust ruffle to hold up our box spring and mattress... it worked fine and we never had to clean under the bed! How much space you can carve out will determine how much of a stockpile you can realistically put aside as a reserve.

I have already written a blog post on this subject, but I feel like more detail would be helpful, so I will elaborate and hope to not repeat myself. To read the first blog post on this subject, go here. For simplicity of illustration, lets suppose that you found adequate space for your emergency pantry goods, inside your living space, with easy access. Now it is time to take all the notes you have been compiling on your eating and shopping habits and turn them into a comprehensive list of your most often used food items. From the list of meals that you prepared during the month, write down the ingredients that you used for each of the recipes. Once you have done this for all the recipes, you should start to see some patterns emerge. Are there ingredients that were used in the majority of the recipes you prepared? Make a list of these items on a separate Item page, one food item per line. Each time an item appears in the recipe notes, make a mark next to it on the Item list. This Item List will tell you which foods you use the most. Look at your cash register receipts to see if there are repeat items on them, if there is a repeat item on the receipts that is not on your Item List, add it to the list. What you want to end up with is a list of items that you can use as a shopping list to begin your emergency pantry.

At this point you will be able to see what foods your family most commonly eats. These foods, coupled with some staple items like sweeteners, salt, oil or shortening, flour and seasonings, will be the base that you will build your pantry stock on. Now you are ready to start adding these items to your regular shopping list. Start with the foods on the Item List that are used the most. If there is an item on your regular shopping list that is also on your item list, then put a star next to it on your shopping list and purchase two of those items instead of one. In the case of fresh meats or produce, purchase your fresh items for immediate use and a shelf stable version of the same item for you stockpile. For example, if you have meat on your menu frequently, then buy whatever meat you will use for your meals this week and then add at least on can of some kind of shelf stable meat, poultry or fish to your stockpile. It may not be fiscally possible, every time you shop, to get doubles of all the things that match on your grocery shopping list and the Item List. So on each trip try to add at least a few things to your pantry stock, starting with the things that are used the most and moving down the list from there. This is a great time to plan your weekly menus by watching for sales, and clipping coupons for items that you regularly buy, to keep the costs of stocking up to a minimum.

In order to make sure that you are covering all the important bases, here is a list of items that would be important to have in an emergency. Shelf stable milk, either aseptic boxes, evaporated canned milk, or dried milk powder, shelf stable fats, like coconut oil , ghee, canned shortening, and to a lesser degree olive oil or vegetable oil. These fats need to be rotated out of stockpile and into the kitchen regularly, since they can go rancid. When you use your kitchen supply of oil up, then shop from your pantry stockpile to replace kitchen stock and replace the emergency supply on your regular grocery trip. Shelf stable meats, poultry and fish, need to be in your pantry stock, to take the place of fresh meats, etc. if there is no way to get to a store. Sweeteners, flour, grains, canned vegetables, canned soups and stocks, pasta, rice, and spices and seasonings, can help to round out a menu should you have to depend on your emergency pantry to put meals on the table. I don't stock any beverages except bottled water in my emergency pantry. Since water is very important to health, especially in stressful situations I don't want to have less healthful choices available. Also fruit juices and bottled drinks don't have a long shelf life so I don't spend money on them.

These are the beginning steps to establishing an emergency pantry. There is still much left to do, but if you start by buying shelf stable versions of the foods that you eat the most, then you will be well on your way to having a stockpile of food that you can depend on in an emergency.

In future posts on stocking an emergency pantry, I will discuss Beginning a long Term Pantry. Until next time!

Variety is the Spice of Prepping

The other day I went to one of my Prepper haunts in Charlotte, no not a gun shop, or even REI, but the Indian market across highway 51 from Carolina Place. It is called Patell Brothers. It is a great place to find a much broader variety of dried beans, lentils and grains, as well as having organic whole spices for long term storage, and premade, mylar packaged Indian meals. These are healthy,tasty, and the bag can be thrown in a pot of hot water to heat then you can eat right out of the bag, (my husband uses these on backpacking trips and swears by them). Their prices are quite good too so the prepping dollar goes farther.

Patell's is only one of many ethnic grocers I depend on for my long term food storage supplies. As a whole, ethnic grocers have an interesting variety of foods not commonly found at the grocery store, their prices are usually better than mainstream grocers and it gives you an opportunity to think out of the box. I also visit a Greek restaurant supply store for bulk dried garbanzos, cans of the best olive oil I have ever had, grape leaves, capers and oil cured calamata olives, an Asian market where I can get a variety seaweeds. nori, spring roll wrappers, pho noodles, rice wine vinegar, canned coconut milk, a variety of condiments and spices for my 3 month pantry, and their fresh vegetable section rivals the best main stream grocer in variety, quality and price, with the added plus of 10 different types of fresh, yes, fresh mushrooms! Then there is the Lebanese market that is home to my favorite Mediterranean spice blend, Zaatar. A blend of roasted thyme, sumac and sesame seeds that is to die for on top of hummus or sprinkled on olive oil brushed pita bread and broiled...yum... as well as Garam Masala, and other spices I use for variety when depending on basic staples. The Korean shop has a particular red pepper flake that I use when making Oi Sabagi, a fermented food I eat practically every day. The list could go on for awhile but I think you get my drift...

When depending on a few basic staples for an extended period of time it is advisable to have a way to add some variety. For us, these foods are incorporated into our daily diet, in part because I love ethnic foods and partly because we are vegan and these foods help to add interest to our table, but more importantly so that we are familiar with how to use them if we need to depend on them. Even if you are normally a meat and potatoes person, it is a good idea to have something in your bag of tricks to use when there is no meat in sight and rice and beans is getting old.

Here is what I bought this trip and how I plan to use them: Masoor Malka, is a kind of split red lentil. it cooks very quickly so it can be soup, salad or side dish protein in short order. Moong beans, better known as mung beans, can be sprouted for a nutritional punch when added to garden grown or foraged greens, or soaked and cooked up to make a dish similar to split pea soup. I usually sprout them since they are a veritable nutrient factory in sprouted form. Masoor Malki, the whole form of Mosoor Malka, make very tasty sprouts that don't taste as starchy as the larger lentils do when sprouted and eaten raw. Whole Urad, otherwise known as Black Gram, make good sprouts. The split version known as Urad Dal, along with cooked rice, are used to make a fermented batter for griddle cakes and dosas, a gluten free, absolutely delicious alternative to pancakes. griddle cakes also make a great vehicle for any type of foods you want to scoop up with your fingers, dips, thick soups and stews, or filled with seasoned veggies and potatoes and rolled up burrito style. They are delicious hot or cold. Toor Dal, or small dried pigeon peas, make a delicious soup. The recipe for this soup is on my other blog www.aviewfromthecottage.blogspot.com. Here is the link directly to the blog post. Just scroll down until you see Sambar soup. By the way this post has a really good recipe for soup stock that is great canned or frozen.

On this trip I also purchased candy coated fennel, which is great for that full feeling after eating a big meal, or for indigestion or upset tummy. It is more effective than Tums and doesn't have all the chemicals, (although it does have sugar...). I will put a bag of this in each variety bucket I make up and one in each medical supply bucket I put together.

I purchased whole organic spices, (Patell's price on organic spices is the best I have found anywhere), for long term storage. I will put each spice in a small mylar bag with an o2 absorber and seal it up. These will go in the variety buckets with the Indian foods, so that the spices required for the foods that I make will be with the staples used to make them. I also enclose a few of my tried and true recipes, in case something happens to me, (or my memory :) so that my family will still know how to prepare the dishes. And just as an FYI, you can buy pure sunflower seed oil from the Indian market, for about 1/3 of the cost of the grocery store price, (normally only found at high end gourmet markets and whole food stores not on the main stream grocery store shelves.)

I also bought a copper bottomed, stainless steel wok, with handles and a chapati rolling pin that makes perfectly formed chapati or tortillas. These will go in our emergency/camping cooking equipment. The wok was very affordable, $14.00 and will work as a pot for every occasion, that can be placed on a cook stove or on a rack over coals. The copper bottom will ensure even heat distribution to help control scorching on unpredictable heat sources.

In the future I will be posting more on how to add variety to your basic food storage. I will also post some of my favorite recipes for you to try out. The only thing I ask is that you credit me and my blogs if you pin or repost my recipes.

So for today I hope that you will think outside the box on what foods and seasonings to store in your emergency pantry. If you have any thoughts you would like to share on the subject, please, leave a comment. I would love to hear your ideas!

Lunch from a Prepper's Pantry

  It occurred to me today as I was making lunch for my husband and I that our lunch was a good base for a blog post. It is my way of thinking that being "prepared" is not just for an event that may or may not happen in the future, but to be prepared to put food on the table and live out my chosen style of life every day.
  Here at Heart's Ease Cottage, we spend a large portion of our time and energy making our life as self sufficient, and safe from outside influences as possible. That of course starts with an eye to what a body must have to survive: water, food, protection from the elements, are a few in a long list of things we work to provide for ourselves. Today though I am going to talk about one of my husbands favorite subjects, lunch!
  Today our lunch consisted of a sandwich and some sauerkraut and 16 oz. of good well water.. So? What is so blog worthy about that? Well, the sandwich was made with bread that was baked from Bronze Chief wheat berries, raw sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, and millet from our long term storage supplies. The wheat was ground in a Whisper Mills grain mill, (but we have a Country Living hand cranked grain mill attached to our counter that can be used if there is no power), and is baked in our gas oven, or in a non electric scenario, in a Dutch oven outdoors. The ingredients of the sandwich were hummus, home made from garbanzo beans that I can from our long term storage supplies, and keep on hand in the 3 month pantry for daily use. There was also yummy fresh tomatoes, Swiss chard, bell peppers, pesto basil, home made bread and butter pickles that I put up last year, romaine lettuce and red onion slices. Everything but the romaine and the red onions came from the garden this morning. The sauerkraut was made from cabbages that I harvested from our garden late in the spring and made into a naturally fermented, raw sauerkraut. Since this is a raw kraut, it is kept in the fridge instead of being canned, but will keep for months on end in the fridge, (if we don't eat it all first...), or in the event of no electricity will last a week or so out on the counter. Raw fermented foods are vital to digestive tract health, providing your body much needed enzymes and good bacteria to keep your digestive system working properly. It is an important food that is often neglected in the American diet, as is evidenced by all the gastric/intestinal problems and overall ill health that Americans suffer with. So especially for crisis mode food preps, it is a key element to staying well and at our physical best.
 Today's lunch is just a simple example of the way we use our prepping efforts not only for the future, but for today.
  What are you doing today to be prepared? Leave a comment and let me know what you are up to! Have a great weekend!

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Dried Bean Challenge, Part 2

I posted a canning tutorial on A View from The Cottage a few months ago, so for step by step direction on how to can beans go to the above link. I thought I would go into a little more detail here at Prepper's Pantry and add some other ideas for how you can use your long term storage bean in the 3 month pantry and for non electric situations.

In Part One of this Dried Bean challenge post, I was using a bucket of beans from my long term storage, and replacing what I used with a new bag of beans to put in LTS mylar and the bucket I just emptied. So I will pick up from that point.

I carefully cut the mylar bag open, (but if you are just starting out then open your purchased bag of beans), and pour the beans into large dish pans, pick through, and rinse the beans and then cover them with water to soak overnight. I then could wipe the inside of the mylar bag with a dry cloth, peel the label off the outside of the bucket and store both for reuse at another time, I can usually get 2 sometimes 3 uses out of a mylar bag, and an infinite number of uses out of the buckets since I treat them carefully when opening and store out of the light and heat), or in this case I will reuse the bucket, use an new mylar bag and save the opened bag for a smaller quantity of food another time.

Having soaked the beans over night, the next morning I get my equipment together: the pressure canner, (beans are a low acid food and must be canned under pressure to make sure they are safe to eat), canning tools, like funnels, lifting tongs, chop stick, ladle, spoon, clean cloth. The canning jars I will put the beans in and the bands, I consider start up costs for pantry keeping and are reusable, so I don't add them to the cost of the beans, but I do factor the flat part of the lids into the cost of the beans, since they can't be used for canning again once they have sealed. The first time or two that you can using a pressure canner, it may feel like a lot of work and a little scary, but that is just because it is new to you. Being able to can at home can save you lots of money and allows you to preserve your garden produce and make your own canned goods of your favorite recipes. I recommend that you get a Ball Blue Book to refer to for canning times and to get some ideas for recipes. If you follow the directions and use good sanitation, you can stock your pantry with all kinds of safe to eat, delicious foods that you made yourself.

I will interrupt myself for a minute and address a few things about pressure canning... ***Practically everyone has a horror story told by their grandma about the pressure canner blowing its lid on the stove. Well, I was witness to one case of that myself as a child, the lid left its impression in the ceiling for as long as I can remember... but it was a pressure cooker, not a canner, as most of the stories were probably about. With a pressure cooker, it is possible to clog the pressure release with foods that boiled up too high in the pot, or that was left with the heat too high, and in the old pressure cookers there was no emergency release plug. But today in both canners and cookers, there is a hard rubber plug that will blow out if the pressure builds too high. and there is a locking mechanism that comes into play when the pressure inside the pot reaches a certain level, at that point until the pot cools down, there is no way to unlock the pot. The lid is not going to blow off. But if you were gifted your great grandma's cooker or canner and it was made before the safety measures were put into place, I would use it as a flower pot or salvage it for its aluminum value and buy an new model. 

Now where was I...The black beans will go into large kettles on the stove and boil them on medium high for 30 minutes. I will use pint size jars, (the size of the jar will vary with the type of item I am canning). While the beans are cooking, I put all the jars through a sterilization cycle on the dishwasher, or put them on a tray in a 250 degree oven for 15 minutes to sterilize the jars. I put the flat part of the two part lids in a small pan of water simmer it until needed.When the beans have boiled for 30 minutes, I move them off the stove and put the pressure canner on the stove. I place the rack that will keep the jars off the bottom of the pan in the canner and fill with 1 1/2 to 2 inches of water and turn the heat on high to heat the water. This water is what will make the steam that processes the jars under pressure. Next, I line the jars on the counter, (put a towel down on the counter first if the jars aren't on a tray, so that the cold counter won't shatter a hot jar), put a wide mouth funnel in a jar and fill with beans , draining most of the liquid off before ladling the beans in the jars. I fill the jars to the bottom of the neck of a regular mouth jar and to the last ring thread on a wide mouth jar, which will leave about 1 inch of head space in the top of the jar. Then I add 1/2 teaspoon of sea salt to each jar and ladle cooking liquid in to just cover the beans. Wiping each jar rim thoroughly with a clean damp cloth, will assure that the lids will adhere properly and seal tight after canning, so wipe the rims, place the flat part of the lid on the jar and then place the band on. The band should just be just finger tight, if you crank the lid down too tight it could cause the jars to burst under pressure, and if it is too lose it might not seal, so twist the band on and when you begin to feel resistance, go a little tighter then stop. To check to see if it is tightened properly, unscrew one of the jars, if it is hard to turn the lid off then it is too tight.

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***This is important*** If during the canning process, the pressure drops below 10 psi, you must start the processing over again. The beans must be processed at 10 psi for 1hour and 15 minutes for pints and 1 hour and 30 minutes for quarts. If the pressure drops below the recommended psi, it creates an environment for botulism to grow. When the time is up, turn off the heat, and leave the weight on the pressure spout; if you remove it  under pressure, you can be seriously burned and ruin a whole pot of food. It is important to allow the canner to naturally, completely cool. Do not try to speed up the process by running the canner under water or using wet towel to cool it, a sudden change in temperature will draw all the liquid out of your jars into the canner and them probably won't seal. Really, just go do something else while the canner cools... 

Once the metal stopper has dropped and the pressure gauge is not showing any pressure, you can carefully remove the weight from the pressure spout and then take the lid off the canner. Use the tongs to take the jars out of the canner. Lift them straight up, don't tip to one side to drain the water off the lids, the lids are not sealed yet and the contents are will still be boiling for awhile, place the jars on a towel on the counter and leave to cool. As the jars cool, you will hear them seal. It is quite a lovely sound... sh-h-tink! I used to lay in bed after an evening of canning  jelly and go to sleep to the sound of sealing lids... It is really best to stay with the jars if the foods are low acid, since they will need to be refrigerated immediately if they don't seal, but for things like jelly, if it doesn't seal, it won't go bad overnight, so I worry less about it. Once the jars are all cooled and sealed, remove the bands, clean the body and neck of the jars with soapy water to assure there is no food residue on them, (if there was any food siphoned out of the jars during processing... it happens...), and label and date the jars. Do not return the bands to the jars, they stack better without them and can be reused to keep costs down, they are just needed for holding the flat lid on during processing. I do keep a few bands around so that once the jars is opened I can hold the lid on in the fridge if I don't use it all. At this point you have jars of home made food that you can use at a moments notice, no having to soak dried beans and cook them before you can prepare a meal. This way you have a stock of beans in your long term storage, and a working supply in your three month pantry that is ready to use. So with a couple bags of beans you have created a long term supply and months of ready to use for your 3 month pantry..

Now for some bonus pointers...

 In the initial distribution of 2-10 lb. bag of beans, 7 lbs. went into long term storage in mylar and a bucket, and 3 pounds remained for another use, I added the 3 left over pounds from the first bag of beans to the other 10 lb. bag of beans and soaked all of them over night and then cooked them for 30 minutes so that I could can 20 pints of beans. After completing the 20 pints of canned beans, I cooked the remaining beans until they were completely done. I reserved half of the cooked beans to make Caribbean Black Bean Soup, drained the rest of the beans and added the liquid to the pot of soup I would be making. Then I put the drained beans on dehydrator trays and dehydrated them until they were completely dry and turned to powder when when I crushed between my fingers. On this rainy day they took about 18 hours to dry, on dry days it would take less time. These beans are ready to seal up with a Food Saver, or can be stored in small, serving size mylar bags with an oxygen absorber.

Cooked, dehydrated beans vacuum sealed with Food Sever wide mouth attachment

The dehydrated beans, vacuum sealed and stored in Mason jars have a several year shelf life if stored in a cool dark place. When stored in mylar, just boil water, cut open the bag and soak the beans for 15 minutes then heat the them in the soaking water on a camp stove until they have absorbed the water, which usually takes 5 minutes or less if the beans are soaked first. This gives you a light weight, packable protein that cooks in very little time.

But I didn't stop there! I also made dried soup mix from some of the dehydrated beans. I put the seasoning for the Caribbean Black Bean Soup in the Vitamix with some of the dehydrated beans, and processed them all into a fine powder. I then sealed them with a Food Saver Vacuum sealer and labeled them with cooking directions. But wait! I am not finished yet!  Remember the pot of Caribbean Black Bean Soup I made? Well, I cooked it down to a very thick soup,reserved enough of the soup for my husband and I to have a bowl each for dinner, then I cooled the rest and put it in the Vitamix and blended it until I had a thick smooth slightly loose paste. I used my dehydrator's solid silicone sheets, and spread the cooled thick bean soup paste on the dryer sheets and dried it until the soup was completely dry. I broke a corner off the dried soup and crushed to powder with my fingers as a test to make sure it was completely dry. If it is not powdery when crushed return to the dehydrator and continue drying until it is. I then checked my Vitamix carafe to make sure it was bone dry and added my dehydrated soup and blended it into a fine powder. I also used the Food Saver to seal the soup up in individual servings, and labeled with cooking instructions and the date. This soup is ready to eat, just add hot water, stir and leave for a minute or two while the ingredients absorb the water. To make a thick paste for use as a burrito filling or to make to make a dip for chips, add water a little at a time until desired consistency is achieved or for soup slowly add hot water until the consistency is... what can I say.. uh,soupy...

Thick bean soup, ready for the dehydrator

Two serving bags of dehydrated uncooked Black Bean Soup

Now, lets figure out how many ways I was able to use 20 pounds of dried beans... 7 lbs. of raw dried beans in mylar and a bucket for long term storage, (shelf life 20 years), 20 pints of canned black beans, ready to eat, (shelf life of several years), 1 half gallon jar of cooked, dehydrated and vacuum sealed beans that will be cooked in 15 minutes, (shelf life several years unopened), 6 vacuum sealed bags of dehydrated bean soup that will cook in 15 minutes or so, (shelf life 1-2 years in plastic vacuum sealed bags, indefinitely when stored in mylar with an O2 absorber), 6 vacuum sealed bags of Ready to Eat, Caribbean Black Bean Soup, (shelf life 1-2 year in plastic, indefinitely in mylar with O2 absorber), and dinner!

Wow... It is just amazing how much can be done with a couple of bags of dried beans!

Frugal Pantry Keeping, A Dried Bean Challenge Part 1

I love finding ways to make my budget go as far as possible. Since I did not work outside the home, but chose to be home with our kids and to home school, I had to make the most of our single income. One thing that I learned early on was the best way to make the most of what we had was to spend as little as possible.  I calculated my "earnings" and contribution to the household, by writing down all the ways I saved the family money. I often saved us far more than I could have earned, and there is no tax on not making or not spending money!

When we started planning our emergency pantry, I used the skills I developed while running a home, and raising two active, hungry boys, on one income. I spent a lot of time researching ways to cut food costs, but still have quality foods for our emergency provisions. One way I did this was to break out the costs of each of the foods we normally had in the pantry, and see how low I could go for each item. For example: Which was cheaper, the canned black beans on sale at Harris Teeter, or bulk bag of dried beans from Sam's Club, that we can ourselves? Sometimes combining grocery store sales and coupons was the best way to go, other times I could get the best deals buying bulk from Sam's or from my co-op. Of course, I also preserved as much as I could from our own land, but there is no way to grow everything we need... Which ever way I went , the objective was to provide the best quality food for storage, at the best price I could get. The farther I stretched our prep budget the more I could put in our pantry.

So today just for fun, I will show you how I challenge myself to see how low I can go and how far I can stretch our food budget. Harris Teeter had black beans on sale for $1 a 15 oz. can,, Sam's Club black beans come in a 10 lb. bag for $8.43. That would make the sale cans a little less than $1 a pound and the bag of beans 84 cents a lb. As a rule of thumb, a pound of dried beans, after they are cooked is equal to 3/ 15 oz. cans of beans. So, even on sale the canned beans are more expensive than the bag of dried beans. But I will work through the rest of the process and see what it costs after going through the canning process. I purchased 2/10 lb. bags of beans, (16.86 plus tax). I want to have some put away for long term storage, some to can for ready to use and some to make into food that is backpack ready. The first step is to package for long term what isn't going to be used for canning. Then I need to have a supply of beans on hand ready to use, for the 3 month pantry. Of the 20 pounds of dried beans, I will store 7 lb. of the beans in mylar with oxygen absorbers and put the mylar bag in a 2 gallon bucket with a gasket lid. The 13 pounds that are left of the 20, will be divided between canning, cooking and dehydrating and a pot of soup.

I will be canning 20 pints of beans, the cost per pint of beans at this point is 28 cents a pint. The dome part of the canning lids run about $1.50 a dozen and we will need 20, at $3 for 24, the cost of the lid is 13 cents per jar. The fuel expenditure for running the stove is negligible, so I am not adding that to the cost of the beans. There is the matter of time expended to do the canning, but I am not factoring it in either since this is how I earn my keep... For someone else the calculations might shake out differently. Not everyone has the time or desire to go through the whole canning operation and the beans on sale suit their needs. But for me quality, safety from too much salt, BPA and other additives, and a cost of 2.5 cents an oz., (in comparison to the 6 cents an oz. for the sale beans), are motivation enough for me. I also have the satisfaction of seeing those lovely jars of food lined up in the pantry, knowing that they came from my efforts.

The rest of the beans were cooked and dehydrated, and used to create some other forms of storable food. There will be more on that subject in part two of this post. So for today, how low can I go? Forty one cents a pint is pretty low!