How Have You Prepared Today? (Bug-in Location Edition)

[angelofwar]

Over this past week I've pressure canned quarts of taco meat, chicken soup, and ghee. Also got a sale price on some dehydrated fruit nuggets, long term prep item that we'd only actually use if SHTF. Made up another batch of home made laundry soap (recipe from Gunny, I've been using it since May and I've spent maybe $5, and I've still got more than half of my supplies left).

It was very good with an additional 16 ounce can of chicken broth and about a half a cup of egg noodles. The meat was a bit flaky like tuna, though. Not what I expected. Our pantry is good on almost everything except meat products, so I want to add more - I'm open to ideas.

1) You have a link to the soap? Sounds interesting! I'm all about making my own stuff!

2) Vienna Sausages. Yeah, not the best, but in the winter months you'll need fatty foods...you'll get a lot more "mileage" out of them. Or how about some dried, salted ham? Nott an issue if you have plenty of water.

[Smü]

- stashed away 3 kg of dry rice and noodles with a best before date in 2015 together with some instant gravy (not for calories but for flavour).

- nearly finished the room for our next-gen Zombiehunter, due to arrive within the next few weeks. Adding the socket for the carpet and set up the furniture and I am good.

[medic photog]

This year I bought a propane twin burner outdoor cooker so I don't have to deal with the heat in the kitchen as much. I've been doing all my canning on the unit, both boiling water baths and steam pressure, I have two American Standard pressure canners and can't say enough good about them. I kicked the tank today, well, yesterday after canning ten different times on the unit. That's twenty batches of canned food and that includes doing several batches of corn, greens and beans, wax, pole, and green, so I figure It's pretty good on fuel. Just a little tip for those canning. If you want to switch to an outdoor set up consider the Bayou double burner cooker sold by Home Depot on line as an option. It's fairly light weight, easy to assemble and tear down and seems to be fairly easy on the fuel too.

[OKMommila]

Angelofwar - There's a multi-page discussion about home made soap with lots of pictures here viewtopic.php?f=39&t=48794

One tip that shows up almost on the last page is about microwaving the bar of soap instead of grating it. This is what I do. I use Ivory because it's so much easier to find than Fels Naptha.

And I loathe Vienna sausages.. **shudder**

[OKMommila]

Currently in the (ahem) process of processing some Poor Man's Steak. http://creativecanning.blogspot.com/

If you're looking to do this, roughly 5 pounds of meat will yield you 28 patties**, which I split up to 5 per quart wide mouth jar. The gravy specifications are off - I wound up having to do a second batch of gravy (luckily I had lots of mushroom soup in my prep closet) after filling the first two jars. I've now got 5 quart and 1 pint in the pressure canner waiting to get up to vent heat.

One of the things we're looking at is getting a whole bunch of reusable canning lids. We've got a hundred store bought regular ones or so, but if SHTF that's not something that's going to be readily available. I prefer the wide mouth option (my hands are on the large side, shoving them into a regular mouth jar is a royal PITA for cleaning). We're working on getting some of those now, hoping to find something cheaper than what is on the Tattler website.

**I formed the patties using the band for a wide mouth quart jar, and pressed the meat flat.

[duodecima]

One of the things we're looking at is getting a whole bunch of reusable canning lids. We've got a hundred store bought regular ones or so, but if SHTF that's not something that's going to be readily available. I prefer the wide mouth option (my hands are on the large side, shoving them into a regular mouth jar is a royal PITA for cleaning). We're working on getting some of those now, hoping to find something cheaper than what is on the Tattler website.

I'm sure the designed-to-reuse are more reliable and longer lasting but... dirty little secret... at least 90% of standard ball/kerr lids will reseal if used again in a pressure canner. I get anywhere from 2-5 reuses, averaging 4, before I get seal failures. Which are immediately obvious when I check the jars after they've cooled 12 hours, so I either reprocess or throw in the fridge for use now. In the PAW, the time, energy, and fuel to reprocess may be too precious to risk that kind of seal failure rate. But it's an option...

Back on topic...

"Speed started" some friendship bread starter and made bread again. Today, I am practicing making lentils tasty!

[Tater Raider]

Finalized food prep budget and set a 2 year deadline on myself for making it happen.

[OKMommila]

I'm sure the designed-to-reuse are more reliable and longer lasting but... dirty little secret... at least 90% of standard ball/kerr lids will reseal if used again in a pressure canner. I get anywhere from 2-5 reuses, averaging 4, before I get seal failures. Which are immediately obvious when I check the jars after they've cooled 12 hours, so I either reprocess or throw in the fridge for use now. In the PAW, the time, energy, and fuel to reprocess may be too precious to risk that kind of seal failure rate. But it's an option...

Duodecima - I've heard that. My issue with that is, when I'm making a batch of 5 to 8 quart jars, what if I have multiple seal failures? I'm not sure I'd want to have meatballs 3 days in a row. My kids would certainly object. In a PAW situation I'll certainly try it, but why do it if I don't have to?

[OKMommila]

Made two loaves of http://allrecipes.com/recipe/amish-white-bread/

Kids and hubby love it, made with 100% prep materiels... hard white wheat berries ground to flour, yeast that's prep-worthy, oil and sugar that I had in my stash. Only thing that made it not PAW was butter, but we have ghee on hand to offset that.

[Deenie7]

Duodecima - I've heard that. My issue with that is, when I'm making a batch of 5 to 8 quart jars, what if I have multiple seal failures? I'm not sure I'd want to have meatballs 3 days in a row. My kids would certainly object. In a PAW situation I'll certainly try it, but why do it if I don't have to?

I've been fortunate in that I found a bunch of lids on clearance in a local supermarket, stuck in among the canned/packaged food clearance, so keep an eye out in places where canning stuff might not sell well. For those Tattler lids - follow them on Facebook and Twitter. Sometimes they have giveaway contests or promote other sites' contests that include their lids. Same deal with Ball, for that matter (I know they have FB, dunno about Twitter.)

[Tater Raider]

80# of dog food, 40# of cat food stockpiled.

[mr_slappy75]

Picked up 3 J&J 107 pcs. FAKs for $5.00 each at Big Lots. That is a markdown of 65% from regular retail. 1 will stay at the BOL, the other two are going to be car/office FAKs for the Mrs. and me respectively. I am popping those two open and adding a couple of items that the one staying at home won't need (since we already have them in the medicine cabinet).

Adding a few OTC items: Alka-Seltzer, Imodium, Ibuprofen, Zyrtex, Aspirin, Tums, Cortizone and a couple other things.

Lastly 2 doses of my daily Rx.

[OKMommila]

Received 500 reusable lids and rings from Tattler.

Forced the kids to try Ramen noodles (2 packages of noodles using one package of flavoring, second held for later use). Two liked it, one didn't. One of those that ate it asked if I could forego the flavoring next time, and just add butter.

Made some Betty Crocker Chocolate Cookies from a bag recipe that required 1/2 stick of butter (replaceable by ghee) and a tablespoon of water) to make the kids try it - I was actually surprised how good they tasted. This was a test item, wanted to make sure the kids would eat it before I bought a lot of them. Had to beat the kids off with a stick.

Picked up two boxes of Pedialyte Singles (8 packages each) for JIC situations.

[IceWing]

This week we:

Repaired\upgraded two 'golf clubs' (the 12 iron and the 22 iron) which had been inoperable for almost a year and took them out for some practice.

Managed to score about 70 single serve packages of all natural Hazelnut\Almond\chocolate butter from the snack area at an all hands meeting for work. (kinda regret not looking for more). Retail cost is about a buck apiece. Mrs. Ice loves them BTW.

Finished replacing all the smoke detector batteries with rechargeable 9v batteries. Need to add another half dozen rechargeable 9v to the supplies. (BTW, Harbor Freight now has low discharge rechargeable NiMH 9v batteries)

[aus.templar]

put together some shelving to store stuff on

[angelofwar]

put together some shelving to store stuff on

Once you reach a certain point, it starts being the small things that matter

[aus.templar]

put together some shelving to store stuff on

Once you reach a certain point, it starts being the small things that matter

Yep, this was the first step of turning my old bedroom into my armoury/stockroom

[OKMommila]

Bought 4 chickens from Sam's Club, cut them up, shoved them into quart jars and canned them. Picked up 4 pounds of carrots and then reread the instructions, going to need a lot more before processing. Got two more 8 packs of Pedialyte. Wound up talking to my son's former teacher about how to preserve 50 pounds of pinto beans... she brought it up.

Edit: Also looked at a piece of property, 30 acres, 3300 square foot house with bunkhouse and shed... talking to DH about financing and distance, it's further than we wanted to go.

[duodecima]

8 lb (more) canning salt (on sale @ Meijer this week...)

[Deenie7]

Canned 16 pints of crushed tomatoes on Sunday/Monday.

[duodecima]

5 more icing buckets from the bakery! Also acquired a bunch of ready-to-heat rice&indian food packs to go in the BOB's - we already eat it therefore it will be easy to rotate.

[allofthemonkeys]

Got a bit of a bonus this week, yay! So we want to put more food away and we began this weekend to inventory of what we have so we can have a balanced diet.

[flanker71]

scored 30 buckets with gasket lids' assorted sizes from 2gal to 5gal from Albertsons. Turned out one of the employees was trying to charge people for them which turned a lot of people off. After said employee got caught they practically begged me to take them.

[OKMommila]

Canned 20 pounds of potatoes. First batch of 7 quart sized done, second batch now cooking.