Food Prepping and News.

Hey guys, I know it has been a long time again since I have posted anything on here. A lot of personal problems have been getting in the way, but I am still prepping. Mostly I am sticking to food right now. I keep watching videos on food storage as much as I can. But, for all the different food items that people stock, I notice that there is one food that is not talked about. Seafood. I know that it is not as popular as storing up chicken, beef, canned goods or veggies... But outside of the occasional mention of buying canned tuna, not much is talked about. Why is that? Too expensive?

Around by me I look for deals on seafood items when I can. So far I have stocked up on stuff like salmon (frozen, canned), Tilapia (frozen), Shrimp (frozen, canned), crab meat (canned), tuna of course, and kippers (canned). Most would say "how in the world can you prep those!?! Those are LUXURY foods!" Well, ALL of what you see listed that I have, I found on sale. Tilapia and Shrimp were the most expensive. I found bags of shrimp 2 for $5 a while back at Wal-mart (yeah I know...) But still it was cheap. And with Tilapia, I found a good deal at Whole Foods once, though it was still a bit expensive. I cant remember how much I paid for it though. That being said, most of the other items you can get for $3 and under if you keep your eyes peeled for deals. Just today I got 2 cans of kippers for $2 a piece at Big Lots. Not a bad price.

Why get all of this? Well for one, we need omega-3 fatty acids in our diet, and fish is a good way to get it along with brown rice and capsules. Second, it adds variety to my food storage. Third, I just like seafood. But I just find it funny that this category does not get much of a mention in the prepping circles.

Anyways, I have some news for you guys... It will probably be another month before I can post anything, due to the fact that I am going to have surgery on one of my paws... I mean hands. I cut one of my fingers pretty badly a few weeks ago, and though the cut healed, I need surgery to fix the nerve damage. I will try to knock out a few articles during my recovery time, but I can't promise anything. I will try to keep yall updated though. This is the type of stuff we prep for though. I might share some of my experiences with you!

Thanks for reading!

Wolf Den Pantry Breakfast

Try this... Tasty oatmeal with dried blueberries, raspberries, black berries (that I bought on sale and dehydrated at my cave), and a little bit of honey. Add to that a nice glass of hot chocolate milk with dried milk and dried chocolate milk powder. All of this cooked and reconstituted with water.

Simple, cheap, filling and easy to make.

Yep, just as the title says, everything is from the Wolf Den Pantry.

Achievement Unlocked: Sealing Life!

Yep, for the first time since I have bought it, I have used my vac sealer. The one that I got is a Rival that I got about a month ago. It was just under $50 and so far on it's first test run, it works like a charm! I have had some experience with vacuum sealers a while back and they work well for frozen and dried food stuffs. If you are planning to stay at home or if you have a place that you plan to stay at long term during a crisis and can store dried goods, this might be a good route to go. This one is fairly cheap and does the job so far for me, though some more tests are in order, but I am impressed by just sealing that rice! I know I will be doing more of this in the future. So far, I love it!!

Right now I am also dehydrating some frozen store bought fruit. How do you do it you might ask? Take your fruit out of the bag, break it up into small chunks and put it in the dehydrator. No blanching needed. It is simple, and heaven knows, simple for someone like me is a good thing. I never realized that the sound of a humming dehydrator can be so comforting.

Survival Food: Cookbooks

You know it is kind of tough having to live off food storage and deciding what to make. There are probably many folks out there that do not know where to start, or are afraid to start thinking it would be too costly. Or it could be too boring to make the same or similar meals night after night. Looking around the survival sites about food prep they sure tell you to start stocking up, and most will cover a lot of the bases, but I noticed that many do not get too much into being creative with your storage. Food storage is not just about having food, it is also tailoring it to your family's tastes, and this is especially important if you have kids. Taste fatigue can be a bit of a concern if all you stock up on is oatmeal, peanut butter, meat, dried beans, dried veggies and water. For meal prepping it would be a good idea to have a cookbook or two. Well here in this article I will be talking about some cookbooks that I think would help those who are in need of inexpensive food recipes or just really want to spice up their food storage ingredient ideas.

My List of Cookbooks:

The Complete Book of Home Preserving: This book is all about canning and preserving information provided by the Ball Company. It is a very comprehensive book that covers the how to in the majority of preserves, pickling, and canning. That is only one little part of this book. It also have a huge amount of creative recipes to do all of that. This one I have not tried yet, because I just got it. However, reading through a lot of it looks... tasty! If I do any of this, I will show my work.

Clara's Kitchen: This cookbook was written by Clara Cannucciari, a 94 year old great grandmother who became a youtube star with her cooking videos. She does these how-to videos with her great grandson showing how to make her mothers recipes that they used to make during the Great Depression. All of her recipes in the cookbook are Italian in nature, I think, but they are very inexpensive to make. She even includes a bit of family history and personal stories along with each recipe. It is a really wonderful little cookbook. I personally have made one of her more famous recipes Pasta With Peas. It was TASTY! Check out her book and her channel.

Better Homes and Gardens Good Food on a Budget: This cookbook is really good for those who are on a very tight budget. Though this was printed in 1973 the general financial food savings information is still pretty viable to this day. It covers everything from breakfasts and entrees to showing you how to purchase meat on the cheap. It even shows you how to cut up a whole chicken and choice cuts of beef for storage. I have found that the info is still good to know and useable to this day and all the recipes cover the basic ingredients.

A Treasury of Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur: Who says food storage has to be BORING? How about having a cookbook where you can make all of your favorite brand name junk foods, fast food restraunt favorites AT HOME? Is KFC out of your budget? Want some Snapple? Hankering for some Twinkies but don't want to go to the store? There are cloned recipes of all those foods right in this book. It is all there, from Nestle's Crunch to Hard Rock Cafe's Famous Baby Rock Watermelon Ribs and tons more from almost any famous item or restaraunt you can think of! It has items from Olive Garden, Hooters, Bennigans, Pizza Hut, Planet Hollywood, Ben and Jerry's, IHOP, Outback Steakhouse, Applebees, Cracker Barrel, Denny's, Perkins, T.G.I. Fridays, and tons of others. From this book I made my own McDonald's Big Mac and it tasted the same as the store's. Plus if you are creative, you can modify these recipes to make them a bit more healthy. If economic times get really tough, do you think this cookbook will be worth gold?

The Family Cookbook: And what better way to get the family to enjoy food storage than centering it around the old family favorites? Maybe it would be a good project to create your own family's cookbook? You know the favorite tasty treats that tends to show up at every family get together or shin-dig that everyone seems to like? Or how about that tasty cassarole that grandma makes, or that homemade bean dip that was passed down the family line? Also if you create a book like this, it could be passed down as a family heirloom too. I need to probably start doing this too, for so far I have my Momma's Shrimp Dip, Dill Dip, Spanish Hamburger, Green Bean Cassarole and Tuna Fish Hot Dish recipes. Those are some of the recipes that my pack... errr... family loves.

Remember when you are doing your food storage, keep it within your budget, build it up over time, and tailor it to your family's health needs and tastes. That is what I feel good food storage is about.

Any other suggestions?

Survival Food Storage: Re-useable containers!

Ok, yeah I know that I had promised you that I would have Episode 3 of Adventures in Dehydrating up, but things got a little busy here at my den the past few days. Been dealing with some personal things. Hopefully I will have something up in the next couple of days if not by tuesday of next week if I dont have things up by friday. So that is the plan.

Right now though I thought I would post something up that was a little different. As this site is about living off a survival budget and being a survivalist means being able to re-use things when needed. I again thought I would start basic. There are a lot of things that I use and re-use around here. I know that "being green" is popular, but for me it saves cash. One of the most basic things that I do re-use is containers. Both glass and plastic ware, preferably containers that once held food. I mean, you spend anywhere from $3 to $9 dollars, and most of that is for the packaging. Why not get some extra use out of them? It will save you money from buying extra storage containers. When I can I try to buy lots of food that is stored in glass. I use tomato sauce jars, jelly jars, mayo jars and salsa jars. It is fairly safe, and easy to clean. I store a lot of dry goods stuff in glass and keeps out bugs pretty well. Just make sure that it is very dried out if you wash it. Also an extra note, do not put sugar in a glass jar that has held tomato sauce, your sugar will taste and smell like tomatoes (If anyone knows how to get that out, please let me know)! That was my personal mistake. Other than that use them for what you will.

With plastic though, I try to keep the food grade plastic with numbers 1 and 2 (from what I understand they are the best, but let me know if I am wrong). I know there is some debate as to weather if some "food grade plastics" are truly safe or not, but I try to keep to the safe numbers that I can remember. I like re-using Cool Whip bowls, Ice Cream containers and butter containers. They come in handy. Mostly I use them for storing frozen foods, soups and chili. Reason being is it is easier to get the food out when brought out of the freezer.

Personally, out of the two storage containers, I perfer glass. Though it is easily breakable.

I know that Jeff Foxworthy made the joke "you might be a redneck if all your salad bowls say Cool Whip on the side." I wonder would that be the same for frozen chili?

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