Tag Archives: food

Rice and networking

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There are a lot of reasons to zip your lip about your secret life as a survivalist. I won’t enumerate them all because if you’re reading this you’ve already figured most of them out. However, there are some advantages to having a few trusted fellow survivalists know about your interest – case in point:  I got a text message early in the morning from someone I know advising me that the local restaurant supply store had 50# sacks of long grain rice in stock.

I’d have missed that opportunity if someone I knew hadn’t kept an eye open on my behalf. So, there is some merit to having a few people (preferably fellow survivalists) know what you’re up to.

As an aside, I did wind up picking up a couple sacks of rice. Thing is, as it turned out, I was out of food grade 5-gallon buckets. Pro Tip: Keep extra buckets and lids on hand so that if there are any ‘last minute’ additions to your stockpile you can have the needed containers. The internet is full of expert advice on what is or is not considered a food grade bucket. And…none of it agrees. Just because your bucket has a ‘2’ stamped in the little recycling triangle doesn’t make it so. So, I headed off to Home Depot to look for a thick (.090 mil or better) HDPE food grade bucket. Turns out, they make it pretty easy to tell if the bucket is food grade:

Well, THAT was easy.

Conveniently, the bucket was, literally, marked as food grade. Cool. How many you got? I’ll take them all.

After that it was a quick washdown with 50/50 bleach/water, and then leave them to thoroughly dry. If the interior of the bucket doesn’t smell like a swimming pool after you wash it, wash it again and use more bleach.Then hammer on a couple Gamma Seal lids, fill with rice, slap a date label on there, and good to go.

This is actually one of myriads of ‘failures’ or oversights I am discovering that I have made. In this case, I should have had a stash of extra food-grade buckets around for last minute acquisitions-of-opportunity and that sort of thing.

I already had a couple hundred pounds of rice on hand but rice keeps forever, transports easily, and…I like it. So, why not grab another 150#?

While we are on the subject, here’s a collection of rice recipes. Me, I’m genetically predisposed towards towards arroz con pollo and, sure enough, that’s probably where tonights dinner is heading.

So, for those keeping track, here’s a Lesson Learned From The 2020 Flu: have extra storage containers on hand and in quantity for last-minute purchases or relocation/redistribution of supplies.

McGuyver meets Alton Brown

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Well, if I can’t go out to eat then I guess I gotta do my own thing.

A few months back I decided to experiment with chicken enchiladas (hmm..I would have thought there would be two ‘L’s in that). The tedious part is, of course, shredding the chicken. I’m a problem solver…I’m not gonna stand around with a couple forks compulsively shredding a piece of chicken. There’s gotta be an easier way. So, I put my outside-the-box way of thinking to work and… found what I have been told is a brilliant method: I put the chunks of chicken in my Cuisinart with the dull plastic ‘dough blade’ and turned it loose. The dull plastic blade did not cut up the chicken, but it shredded it like you wouldn’t believe. Perfect for my use.

So this week, I’ve had a hankering for a cheesesteak-style sandwich. Basically strips of paper thin beef cooked up with peppers and onions, slathered over a hoagie bun and melt some cheese over the whole thing. So…how to get that beef sliced up nice and thin. Well, I could cook a roast and then try to slice it really, really thin. Or I could freeze some beef and then try slicing it as thin as possible with a sharp knife. Not consistent enough. No… I had to think for a bit. As it turns out, typing ‘how to shave meat’ into Google brings you up a lot of results that have nothing to do with cooking. But…then an idea struck me. I took a simple cheap sirloin steak, threw it in the freezer, and let it solidify. Then, I reached into the kitchen drawer and pulled out one of these.

Worked perfectly.

I grabbed the frozen steak with a gloved hand and with the other hand I started going at the edge of it with the vegetable peeler like I was peeling a carrot. Long strips of paper-thin frozen meat started to pile up. When I had a couple handfuls I tossed em in the frying pan with some onions, green peppers, a shot of Tabasco, and waited for the rolls to get toasted int he toaster oven. Put it all together, melted some provolone on top and it was a thing of beauty.

I have some pork loin and chicken breast in the freezer now to try this on later. I think I may be on to something.

Signs of the times

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I don’t really need anything but, like the idiots that head to the beach after an earthquake to see the tsunami, I decided to go look and see what was available.

Two and a half years ago I posted about this place opening up and I took a picture of their rice and bean aisle:

And here is what it looks like today:

Whats interesting is that there’s even a bit of a run on…canning supplies. I stopped by WalMart to snag a dozen half-pint for making relish and……:

I already have hundreds of jars and lids, but I was curious to see how far the panic buying had gone. Answer: pretty far.

Shelf-stable Parmalat whole and 2% milk bricks? Yeah…gone.

I returned back to my abode and, to calm my nerves, took a walk through my stockpiles of LDS canned rice, oats, and macaroni…my 5-gallon buckets of rice, corn, sugar, and salt….my plastic bins of pasta….and my wall of Mountain House…..my 15-gallon drums of rice..and I am calm once more.

 

Convenience stores

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Like every smart survivalist, I try to keep a fairly good amount (and selection) of short- to mid-term foods on hand. Mostly stuff that I normally use and therefore can rotate through within a period of time of less than a year or so. Things like salsa, spaghetti sauce, pasta, canned meats, canned vegetables, etc, etc. I was doing an inventory and thought that I needed to round off a few things and beef up the amount of others. Since it was going to be a goodly amount of stuff, I figured I’d really nerd out and price compare my usual local grocery suppliers on their websites. As it turns out, unsurprisingly, Walmart wound up being the most economic supplier for about 85% of the things I was looking for. Okay, fine..now I know where to shop. And as I was on Walmarts doing this, I noticed that I had the option to simply order the stuff up, pay online, and simply roll up to the store the next day and have everything all boxed up and ready to go. Hmm. Okay, let’s try that.

And..it worked out quite well. I simply dumped the email confirmation that Walmart sent into Excel, took thirty seconds to clean it up, and then had a nice record of quantities and price-per-ounce breakdowns for comparison shopping later. And, when I went to pick up the stuff, it really was all of about four minutes to pick it up and stuff it in the back of the vehicle.

Say what you will about Wallyworld, they do take a bunch of the friction out of stocking up.

I’d been a bit remiss in updating the food stash lately…being able to just flop into a chair and add a case of crushed tomatoes, a dozen jars of salsa, a half dozen bottles of Tabasco, etc, into one list, pay for it, and then schedule a pickup the next day….thats some living in future right there, boyo.

 

Read into it what you will

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Im a cheap bastard..I have to be. Today, I’m going through my grocery list and comparing prices at Albertson’s, CostCo, and WalMart. (Yeah, I’m a math nerd when it comes to money.) On my list? Canned tomatoes. Didn’t see them on the CostCo website and on the Walmart website all the ‘store brand’ canned tomatoes (and a surprising amount of other vegetables) are out of stock.

Hmmmmm……….

 

Article – What to Eat After the Apocalypse

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In 1841, an invasive water mold began to infect the world’s potatoes. Starting from Mexico, the infectious agent of blight traveled up through North America, then crossed the Atlantic. Eventually it reached Ireland, where, as the journalist Charles Mann described it, “four out of ten Irish ate no solid food except potatoes, and … the rest were heavily dependent on them.”

The Great Famine, as it came to be known, could have been avoided in any number of ways, not least by ceasing the export of food from Ireland to Britain. But the British government failed to take effective action. The question of avoiding starvation becomes harder still if some apocalyptic event causes the whole world to starve. How might a government prepare for a worst-case scenario?

As a survivalist, I’m all about caring where my next meal is coming from. I am less about caring where the rest of the worlds next meal is coming from.

Assuming some sort of “The Road”-esque disaster that reduces the global supply of food, I would imagine that the global supply of people will also suffer in very short order. Or, put another way, when the freeze dried porkchops and barrels of rice are exhausted in a year or so there are going to be a lot less people out there needing food.

Honestly, the notion of some sort of global famine ranks pretty low down there on  my probability list. Localized famine, maybe. But it’s interesting to see that there are people thinking about the subject.

Interestingly, the article seems to take itself seriously about ‘feeding the world’ after some sort of global disaster but even now, in a time of relative calm, we still can’t feed the entire world. Additionally, I’m not sure we have an obligation to do so but thats another argument.

Article – The first map of America’s food supply chain is mind-boggling

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Our map is a comprehensive snapshot of all food flows between counties in the U.S.—grains, fruits and vegetables, animal feed, and processed food items.

As you might expect, the midwest produces a lot of grain which gets fed to a lot of animals which get fed to a lot of people. What’s interesting is what the map suggests – crippling or disabling a few key points can have a disproportionately large effect on a region. Remember the Boston marathon bombing a few years back? Two guys managed to shut down an entire citys worth of airports, ports, tunnels, and major transportation hubs…and thats just two guys with DIY training from the internet. Get a group of dedicated, focused individuals with some more serious training, and perhaps some real backing from some source, and you’ve got the potential to cause some major mayhem.

Note that the article mentions the regions/localities that export the most food, but also the ones that import the most food as well. Its fascinating to note that some of the biggest exporters of food are also the largest importers.

Although it may not necessarily have been the intended point, I think this article demonstrates quite nicely some vulnerabilities that exist should someone get their act together enough to have the muscle and materiels to try and create a little manufactured crisis.

Interestingly, the article suggests that should something….dramatic…happen to southern California the repercussions through the national food supply would be rather pronounced.

The moral here, I suppose, is to keep in mind that relying on a ‘long tail’ for your food exposes you to a significant risk and that the smart individual might be prudent to develop closer-to-home sources for foodstuffs.

Costco Powdered Eggs review

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I’ve never heard of anyone in the military who had to eat powdered eggs and had anything positive to say about them. Perhaps the military gets a lower grade of product…or perhaps military food preparation is abysmal.. or all of the above. My experience with powdered eggs has been okay. Theyre not “Ohmigod these are awesome!” but they aren’t “What the hell is this crap?” either. On a few occasions I have fed them to people without telling them what they were and no one said anything. I find them to be acceptable, and certainly a better alternative to no eggs. Anyway….All powdered eggs seem to be extremely distasteful before cooking. You get this orange-colored thing that looks like pancake batter and smells like burnt cheese from a toaster oven. It isnt until you start cooking them that some sort of transformative process begins and they become more appealing. These eggs, branded as “WildRoots” and picked up at CostCo, were exactly like every other powdered egg product I’ve tried. Not bad, not great, but definitely a worthy addition to the food storage. As mentioned a couple posts back, my local CostCo had them on closeout, marked down from $6.97 to $2.97 which is a stupidly good deal.

For those of us who, at the moment, don’t have a backyard full of chickens but want to maintain a semblance of ‘normalcy’ when it comes to breakfast, and have some protein on hand, these would be an excellent choice. Canned bacon, dehydrated eggs, hash browns, biscuit/muffin mix, powdered milk, Tang, canned fruit, pancake mix, honey, and you’ve got a pretty decent breakfast with a shelf life of several years. After a long night of manning the barricades, chasing looters, and guarding the house, a breakfast like that would be rather welcome, I should imagine. In a slightly more realistic vein, these are an excellent choice for hunting cabins and other non-grid locations where store-bought eggs aren’t an option and you’re not around often enough to keep chickens.

They are packaged in a foil-ish paper pouch but I would vacuum seal this stuff up to be extra sure it is protected for long term. If you can’t find these at your local CostCo, here’s the nutritional and company info:

Don’t get annoyed if you can’t find them at your local CostCo. It seems that powdered eggs are powdered eggs are powdered eggs… there doesn’t seem to be much difference between ones I’ve tried. Augason Farms sells #10 cans of powdered eggs and I’d bet they are identical to this stuff. Only major difference is packaging and CostCo’s remarkable discount.

At $2.97, it’s worth buying a box just for the experimental value.

 

A couple CostCo finds

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CostCo, once in a while, winds up selling something worthy of catching the interest of those of us who share our rarefied interest. Notably, their canned pork and canned beef, which are surprisingly good. Todays discovery was that the Idahoan potatoes, which, according to the blog, I came to love about 16 years ago(!) are now being sold by CostCo in ten-packs.

And, much more interestingly, we have powdered eggs now.

Six 6-oz. packages per box, $6.97/box

That was a real eye-opener. You don’t normally see large-ish quantities of this sort of thing for sale pretty much anywhere except maybe restaurant supply stores. The Deb-El show up in supermarkets, but its a small quantity for a large price. My original experience with powdered eggs was way back in 2004. Interesting to note that fifteen years later the CostCo product is actually cheaper than the 2004 product. However, to be fair, the 2004 product was purchased at REI… a place not known for being a bargain hunters paradise.

I already have several cases of #10 cans of powdered eggs from Mountain House and Augason Farms. And, in fact, I still have a 5-gallon bucket of vacuum sealed powdered eggs from that initial 2004 encounter. (I should crack one of those open and see how it held up.)

Powdered eggs are 13g of protein per ounce. For comparison meat, like, say, canned beef, is about 5g per ounce. A nice option over shooting your dog and eating it. But, of course, if protein is all youre after you could probably just store some protein powder from the gym-shop…but it wouldnt make scrambled eggs, omelets, french toast, or any of the other foody things that you can do with eggs.

Anyway, for those who are interested, you may wanna hit your local CostCo and see if they’re carrying these. I’ll be trying them out over the next few days so I’ll let you know how they cook up but based on my previous experiences I expect nothing but positive results.

It’s not just for breakfast anymore

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I was going to say that deep down, I’m really just a big kid. But, if you knew me, you’d say that its really not that deep down since my immaturity and ‘boyish charm’ are quite readily apparent on the surface. I mention this because when I saw that breakfast cereal was on sale, I went deep. What breakfast cereal, you may ask? Why none other than the palate-shredding extruded waist-expander that is….Cap’n Crunch (Although to be fair, I knew him when he was Lieutenant Crunch back in Basrah).

I love a bargain, and I love food. Mix the two together and you get a happy Zero. So, when they had cereal marked down to $0.99/box I figured “Ok, lets get our crunch on.”

Normally $103, paid $27, saved…a bunch.

I actually don’t usually eat this as breakfast cereal. Neither, I suspect, does anyone else. Its more of a eat-it-out-of-the-box-while-playing-on-the-computer thing. But, no matter how you do it, I  apparently have at least a years worth of the stuff on hand. And, yes, it’ll keep for a year.

In case anyone is curious, what is my favorite breakfast cereal to actually eat as breakfast cereal? Surprisingly, on of the most boring things you can imagine – plain Kellog’s Corn Flakes. (But it’s best not to delve too deeply into the rather…NSFW?….origin of corn flakes.)

So, there’s a couple of cases of kid’s cereal sitting on the shelves in the basement. I suspect they’ll last until about this time next year. Unfortunately, milk does not. And, yes, I’ve tried the shelf-stable milk and it just doesn’t taste very good to me. So..if I want to actually eat breakfast cereal qua breakfast cereal, I’m gonna have to run to the store once in a while for a half gallon of moo juice.

But..hey..bargain!