[Kartographer]

So good stuff from people who were preppers before prepping was cool. ;-)

[Kartographer]

Please consider this our Weekly Preppers’Thread to post progress, good buys, DIY ...

To start things off I picked up this neat little 12V Rechargeable flashlight at Home Depot for $4.95 120 minutes on a full charge. Bright 12 lumens LED bulb.

[NTHockey]

BJs has 2 fire extinguishers for $24.99. I found a Brothers LS2250PRW manual sewing machine with treadle (10 lbs.)on Amazon for $99. Amazon also has manual washing machines (plunger type) for $22.95. Also, TigerDirect.com has 2-way radio for $19.99.

Any comments on these items? Christmas is almost here and I expect one (or all) of these under the tree.

Wonder what the wife will think if I buy her the sewing machine.

[Former Proud Canadian]

Good website.

[patriot08]

That woman is superwoman!

[Marcella]

Comfort food - sweet: I'm going to post some recipes I would use in an emergency situation for sweet food to combat food fatigue. I'm posting one here to see if it is printed right on the thread (not all run together like a paragraph).

Cherokee bread served hot with honey or syrup
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. baking powder
3/4 cup milk
Mix ingredients adding more flour if necessary to make a stiff dough. Roll out the dough on a floured board till very thin. Cut into strips 2 X 3 inches and drop in hot cooking oil. Brown on both sides. Serve hot with honey or syrup.

[Marcella]

OK, that recipe posted correctly. Here are some other sweet foods to combat food fatigue - all are made on top of stove. These use food storage ingredients. If it says “egg”, use powdered egg or egg replacer powder. Use instant milk or powdered milk, for butter use butter flavored Crisco.

Easy Fry Bread
4 cups white flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
Combine all ingredients. Add about 1 1/2 cups lukewarm water and knead until dough is soft but not sticky. Shape dough into balls the size of a small peach. Shape into patties by hand; dough should be about l/2 inch thick. Make a small hole in the center of the round.
Fry in about l inch of hot lard or shortening in a heavy pan. Brown on both sides. Drain on paper towels and serve hot with honey or jam.

Funnel Cake
1 egg
2/3 cup milk
2 tbsp. sugar
1 1/4 cup flour
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking powder
Directions:
1. In a deep skillet, heat about two cups of oil over medium-high heat until hot. Test the temperature by dropping a pinch of flour into the hot oil. If it sizzles right away without smoking, it's perfect.
2. Beat egg and milk. Mix all other ingredients in a separate bowl and slowly add to the egg mixture, beating until smooth.
3. Using a funnel, drop into hot oil working from center outwards in a web pattern. (You can use a gallon sized freezer bag instead of a funnel by pouring the batter into the bag, snipping off a small corner of it, and squeezing the batter into the oil.)
4. Cook for about 2-3 minutes, remove from the oil when golden brown and crispy.
5. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve.

Skillet Cobbler
Biscuit mix (if don’t have biscuit mix such as Bisquick, use any recipe to make up as much biscuit dough as you want and add as much sugar as you want)
Sugar
Canned pie filling
Oil or Crisco
Cream if available
Prepare biscuit mix per directions on box. Add enough sugar to sweeten as desired. Fry spoonfuls of dough in skillet. Heat pie filling in pot. Serve over warm, fried biscuits and drizzle cream on top, if have.

Quick Rice and Raisin Pudding
1 cup uncooked instant rice
1 cup milk or water
1/4 cup raisins
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon or nutmeg
Mix all ingredients in 2-quart saucepan. Heat to boiling, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Cover and let stand 5 minutes.

This is from Quaker Oats Company:
3-Minute No-Bake Cookies
2 cups granulated sugar
8 tablespoons (1 stick) margarine or butter (or butter flavor Crisco)
1/2 cup low-fat milk
1/3 cup baking cocoa
3 cups Quaker® Oats (quick or old fashioned, uncooked)
In large saucepan, combine sugar, margarine, milk and cocoa. Bring to boil over medium heat, stirring frequently. Continue boiling 3 minutes, stirring frequently.
Remove from heat. Stir in oats. Drop by tablespoonfuls onto waxed paper. Let stand until firm. Store tightly covered. If using old fashioned oats, cool mixture in saucepan 5 minutes before dropping onto waxed paper.

Toppings for any canned fruit pie filling
Heat pie filling. Distribute to dishes. Toppings:
Crushed or larger pieces graham crackers
Any granola cereal (I’d use mainly oats based) or crushed up granola bars
Crumbled gingersnaps from box

If have none of the above toppings, here’s a crisp topping to make. Double recipe for more:
Crisp Topping
3 Tbl. Butter or butter flavor Crisco
½ cup nut pieces
1/3 cup rolled oats
¼ cup brown sugar
Melt butter in a medium nonstick sauté pan over medium high heat. Stir in the nuts, oats and sugar. Cook while stirring constantly for 3-4 minutes. Pour the mixture onto a sheet of parchment paper. Spread evenly to create a single layer and set aside to cool.

[bgill]

When I snag ground beef at a killer price of only 88 cents a pound, I bring it home, can it, and put it on my shelf. Then, when I take it off of my shelf 2 years later, it’s STILL only 88 cents a pound—a phenomenon that is not likely to happen with your food costs any other way

No, it isn't. There is the cost of canning and storing it. Fine, you had canning jars on the shelf but those had to be bought at some point and you have to clean them and replace those broken. Then there are the lids. Your storage area had to be built. You have to maintain the temperature. You have to pay taxes on on a larger house and out buildings you've built to put your preps. While the costs might spread out over the years, the meat is not 88 cents. You might consider your time free but it isn't. I'm all on board with home canning but don't tell me it doesn't add to the cost. And forget that optimal temperature of 70. She obviously hasn't lived through Texas summers with over 100 days of over 100 degrees and 100 days of not a drop of rain. I don't care how many dehumidifiers she has going. Ok, so this week's preps. Picked up a few clearance foods from the store. And ya know, it doesn't matter that I got the sweet and tangy flavor of bbq rather than the original flavor because if you're hungry, you'll eat it. This kitchen doesn't put up with the author's picky 4 or 44 year olds. Also, the freeze came through so the garden had to be picked clean. Dried beans went into the pantry. Greens, peppers and tomatoes went into the freezer. The hot peppers will be strung and dried. No, I didn't home can the tomatoes because they were mainly little cheeries so wasn't about to waste my time peeling them. Just sliced 'em in half and into freezer bags for soups later. Of course, seeds saved for next season which begins Christmas when tomatoes and peppers need to be started inside. I'm excited to try the new heirloom varieties I got a few days ago.

[ansel12]

A very good article.

One thing that I believe though, for serious preppers, is to have the deep, apocalyptic, put away and forgotten, reserves of bare Mad Max survival.

To some degree, depending on income and storage, it is nice that underneath all of the rotating and massive food stocks and balanced diets and food fatigue worries, is something like a locked away gold vault of nitrogen packed hard wheat and beans, and white rice and white flour and salt and sugar.

It would be nice to have something left to survive on if all else gets used up, or plans go awry. I say put them away and don’t bother rotating them because one, they are expensive when packed for permanence, and two, who wants to adopt a permanent lifestyle of using many years old wheat and beans by rotating them?
Just buy some #10 cans, or nitrogen packed five gallon buckets, and put them away for good, let the kids have them when you die, they will be a deep, deep, reserve of last ditch desperation ‘survival’ food, and they are always available for trade or even negotiations, if that came up.

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4eUorrfsYM

The worlds smallest rocket stove

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNgc98odLrc&playnext=1&list=PLA232706B7302A769&feature=results_main

rocket stove mass heater UK.

Because warmth is and means survival and sterility plus cauterization ....

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

http://sustainablog.org/2011/09/how-to-build-a-rocket-stove/

How to Build a Rocket Stove: 6 Plans

[TEXOKIE]

That is an excellent article, Kart! thanks! I went to the link on cheese wax, and was glad to learn about what she had to say about that!

My focus has been to try to obtain as much knowledge as I can possibly can about a lot of different things. I’ve been doing some research over past several months on edible wild plants in our area. Some are actually not wild, but are surprising (at least to me) in being edible.

Here are only some of the links I’ve found and might be a place to start if one is interested in learning this type of information.

This area of interest ties in with my other area of interest which is herbal medicine. (Note: I do not at all claim to be an expert on plants! Be sure to do your own research and BE SURE YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING BEFORE YOU EAT SOMETHING WITH WHICH YOU ARE UNFAMILIAR!)

FOODS:
Chicory
http://www.outsidepride.com/seed/flower-seed/chicory-wildflower-seed.html

Crabgrass
http://www.eattheweeds.com/crabgrass-digitaria-sanguinalis-2/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digitaria_sanguinalis

Daylilies
http://honest-food.net/2010/06/29/dining-on-daylilies/

Elm
http://www.eattheweeds.com/chinese-elm-a-tree-that-doesnt-go-dutch-2/

Hackberries
http://www.survivaliq.com/survival/edible-and-medicinal-plants-hackberry.htm
http://wildedibletexas.wordpress.com/2010/09/22/hackberry-jam/

Jerusalem Artichokes
http://homecooking.about.com/od/soups/r/blss36.htm

http://www.motherearthnews.com/print-article.aspx?id=2147490463

In the comment section following the article at this link there is a discussion on Jersusalem Artichokes:
http://www.shtfplan.com/charlie-mcgrath/mcgrath-there-is-a-disaster-coming-get-ready-for-it_11132012

Maple (seeds!)
http://folkwaysnotebook.blogspot.com/2012/04/eating-maple-tree-seeds.html
http://www.eattheweeds.com/maples-how-sweet-it-is-2/

WEB SITES of Interest to this topic (in no particular order):
A good place to start: http://www.superfoods-for-superhealth.com/wild-edible-greens.html

http://artofmanliness.com/2010/10/06/surviving-in-the-wild-19-common-edible-plants/

http://www.ediblewildfood.com/list-edible-plants-1.aspx

http://landscape-america.com/problems/weeds/edible.html

http://thecozynest.com/index/jan.htm

http://www.okwildcrafting.com/

http://edibleyards.com/

http://www.foragingtexas.com/2007/07/hackberry.html

http://www.uwyo.edu/ces/wyoweed/wyoweed.htm

http://crabappleherbs.com/blog/2008/04/11/eat-your-lawn-wild-greens-salad/

http://www.ehow.com/list_6113449_native-edible-plants-oklahoma.html
BOOKS:
http://www.futurnamics.com/garden.php (Daxton Brown’s book on survival gardening)

Victory Garden Cookbook by Marian Morash (Alfred A. Knopf)
http://erclk.about.com/?zi=7/3dp

Wholesome Harvest by Carol Gelles (Little Brown & Co)
http://erclk.about.com

The Wild Vegetarian Cookbook by “Wildman” Steve Brill (Harvard Common Press)
http://erclk.about.com

[Ellendra]

How to make your own chocolate bar:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvGXslu2dxE

You can also use lard or even beeswax for the shortening. Beeswax works well for molded candies. I’d recommend against using butter, the moisture in it would mess up the chocolate.

For a while I was experimenting with cocoa substitutes that could be grown up here, but I’m afraid that project has been relegated to the “maybe, someday” list. I think the nutlets from the linden tree showed promise, if anyone wants to pick up where I left off. Some trees bear only tiny ones, while others have big enough ones to be worth picking.

After I get my greenhouse I might try growing a cocao tree, just for fun.

[sickoflibs]

I have been using the VAC seal bag machine to suck all the air out of the bag and heat seal it before I freeze it, for about 10 years now..

It keeps the food from freezer burning.

[sauropod]

mark

[TADSLOS]

Very informative post.

[greeneyes]

As I was reserching today, I ran across this discussion of alternative methods of refrigeration. In addition to the ceramic pots that Marcella discussed on one of the other threads, it talks about 2 others.

Interestingly the solar cooker can be used at night to cool stuff. It can also under certain conditions make ice (not in the heat of summer, but cooler like spring and fall I think).

Any how, I thought it was interesting reading and thought I’d share.

http://www.provident-living-today.com/Alternative-Refrigeration.html