If you enjoy listening to preparedness podcasts, be sure to check out the brand new Survival Mom Radio Network. This network features a dozen women hosts covering a variety of topics including family preparedness, essential oils, homesteading, and canning. And I’m one of the hosts! You can listen right on your computer or download the shows to any mp3 player. The shows are available by browsing the Survival Mom Radio site or on iTunes. Go check it out–there is a ton of great information being shared!
Honey and Onion Natural Cough Remedy
Here’s an easy homemade cough remedy that you probably already have the ingredients for. It’s a honey onion syrup–before you get grossed out, it doesn’t taste like onions when it’s done. Really. We’ve been having some coughing and sore throats among the little people lately, and my husband remembered his dad making this for him so we thought we’d give it a try.
What you’ll need:
Raw honey (regular honey would work okay, but the raw honey has enzymes in it that have been cooked out of the processed honey you get at the store)
Onion
Garlic (optional)
Ginger root (optional)
Making Elk Hamburger With Added Beef Fat
Elk is very lean meat. If you grind it straight into burger it tends to be very chewy and needs water added when you cook it since there is so little fat in it. In order to make it cook and taste better, we like to add some beef fat to our elk burger. There are a couple of different ways you can get fat added to your elk. The first is to add straight beef fat, and the second is to add fatty ground beef. We’ll cover both methods and the math involved with them in this post.
What’s that you say? Math? Yep. You know in algebra class when your teacher said you’d use this someday in your real life? Well, here’s your chance! (I know some of you are secretly rejoicing.)
Method #1: Elk burger with added beef fat.
You will need: Elk meat, meat grinder, and chunks of beef fat. We get ours from the local grocery meat department. We just asked the guy if he could save us some beef fat and we got it for no cost. You might have to pay a little something, but it shouldn’t be too much. Continue reading “Making Elk Hamburger With Added Beef Fat”
4 Questions to Ask When Prioritizing Emergency Preparedness Goals
Originally posted on my blog last January.
A new year is starting and that means the traditional time of making new goals for yourself. Hopefully you’ll add a few goals to be better prepared this year.
I keep an ongoing list of things I want to learn, do, and purchase for preparedness. I call it the “Big List” and keep it in a notebook in my purse. It keeps me working toward a goal and learning and preparing. But sometimes looking at the “Big List” is daunting. There is a lot on there! And it seems like every time I cross something off the list, I add two more things. How will I ever accomplish it all? And for sure how will I ever purchase it all on our little income?
This could be a cause of great anxiety and even bring on “preparedness panic shut-down” where you decide that rather than tackle that huge list, you’ll just put your rose colored happy glasses back on and do nothing. Because really, there’s no way you can get it all done and it’s causing stress just thinking about it.
Know anybody like that? Yeah, it happens.
So here are 4 questions to ask yourself to make prioritizing your goals easier when your preparedness to-do list seems a bit overwhelming. Continue reading “4 Questions to Ask When Prioritizing Emergency Preparedness Goals”
Put Your Excess Halloween Candy in Your Food Storage
I don’t know about the rest of you, but my kids certainly came home with plenty of candy from last night’s trick-or-treating. Maybe you, like us, also have some left over that you intended to hand out. If you have too much candy around your house today, here are some great ways to put some of the excess in your emergency supplies.
Hard candy, suckers, smarties, and other candies that are primarily sugar have an extremely long shelf life (as if any candy isn’t primarily sugar, but you know what I mean). These are great for adding to your bug out bags or emergency kits just as they are. They even do well in a vehicle kit where temperatures fluctuate. Continue reading “Put Your Excess Halloween Candy in Your Food Storage”
Six Reasons I’m Not a Fan of Pre-Mixed Food Storage Meals and Why I Still Have Some
Pre-packaged food storage meals are super convenient and easy to store and cook. Ranging from MRE’s to dehydrated mixes to freeze dried entrees, these meals have all the meal ingredients in them and are either heat-and-eat or add water and cook. It’s tough to find a food storage company that doesn’t offer at least a handful of pre-mixed meal choices. They sound like a good deal–I mean, who wouldn’t want to be served lasagna or chicken a la king without having to actually make it? Well, here are 6 reasons I don’t like pre-made food storage meals and a couple reasons why I still have some in my preps.
1. Amazingly picky eaters. Especially the kids. No, especially the husband. Well, maybe the kids have him beat sometimes. They haven’t met a pre-made meal they really love and few that they even like enough to eat. A couple of Mountain House varieties have been deemed okay for camping if we don’t have anything else (but only Turkey Tetrazzini and Chicken a la King) as well as a couple of varieties of the Thrive pouch meals (Baked Potato Cheese Soup and Pasta Carbonara). I can’t say that I have tried every variety from every manufacturer–there may be a couple more that my family would accept but I don’t hold out high hopes. Maybe this all stems from reason number two.
Testing Seed Germination Rates
If you have seed saved from prior years, it is a good idea to test the germination rate before planting your whole garden with it. Depending on the rate of germination, you can decide if you want to plant normally, plant more thickly, plant single sprouts, or just toss the seed out and start with fresh seed.
Testing seed germination also just happens to be a requirement for the Boy Scouts’ Gardening merit badge, so my son got to do this project for us this year while I took pictures. Here’s how we do it.
1. Gather the seed you want to test. Just for fun, I gave him some cucumber seed I had left from the survival seed can packed for planting in 2000. That’s 12 year old cucumber seed.
Continue reading “Testing Seed Germination Rates”
New Products Announced at Shelf Reliance Convention
As a consultant for Shelf Reliance, I had the opportunity to attend their annual convention in Salt Lake this past weekend. It was exciting, educational, and exhausting (especially with my 10 month old in tow). There were quite a few new product announcements that I’d like to let you know about, so before they even get the new products launched on the site, I’m letting you in on them right here.
NEW THRIVE PRODUCTS:
Continue reading “New Products Announced at Shelf Reliance Convention”
Reusable Canning Lids
How many canning lids do you have in your storage? Canning in a long term emergency situation means having the supplies to do it. You’ll need your canner, jars, rings, and of course those pesky lids. Lots of them. Those lids that you can only use once and then you need a new lid. And once you’ve used your stash of lids, then what? Or is there a better way? What about canning lids that can be used over and over?
Last fall I tried some Tattler reusable canning lids. I canned jam, tomatoes, and salsa with them. The Tattler company has been making these lids since 1976. They are two pieces–a plastic lid and a rubber gasket. You’ll need the metal rings that came with your jars or you can buy some extras on the Tattler site if you’re short on rings. The lids are BPA free and made in the USA. Tattler has them available for wide mouth and regular jars. The upfront cost of $7.00-$8.00 per dozen is, of course, more than the metal lids, but with regular re-use they pay for themselves pretty quickly.
Variety in Your Food Storage is a Good Thing
Way back in 1998 sweet husband and I were just getting serious about our food storage. That’s shortly before we had any kids. We had the opportunity to do some canning at the LDS dry pack cannery and so we sat down to figure out what to can.
Well, we didn’t have a wheat grinder and didn’t really know what to do with wheat, so that was out. I’m not sure why we ruled out oatmeal or sugar or whatever else, but we did decide we both liked white rice so we meticulously counted up how much white rice we’d need if we ate it for every meal for an entire year. True story. And that is what we canned. A whole lot of white rice. Now I know you’re all giggling at the fact that you really can’t live on white rice alone for a year without suffering some serious nutritional issues, but we were young and didn’t think through this very well.
So let me tell you what happens when you buy that much white rice. Continue reading “Variety in Your Food Storage is a Good Thing”
Honeyville Grain is Having a Sale!
Just when you thought food prices were going up everywhere, Honeyville Grain is having a 10% off sale today through Friday at 6 pm PST. That’s only 3 days, but if you’ve been in the market for some food storage, now’s a great time to get some. Honeyville is one of my favorite places to shop–that’s where I get my 6 Grain Cereal and Gluten Flour. To get the 10% off, simply enter coupon code: “HOPHOP11” during checkout.
And don’t let the name fool you, they have more than just grains. They also have freeze dried fruits and vegetables and some really tasty hot cocoa (the French Vanilla is my favorite). And you know there’s more, so go browse around their site a bit and see if they have what you’re wanting.
Normally, their prices are a little higher than other places, but they only charge a flat $4.49 shipping anywhere in the continental US for your whole order–not per item. So, that great shipping rate plus the 10% off should make for a fair deal on some good quality food delivered to your doorstep. While you’re there, sign up for their newsletter and you’ll be notified every time they have a sale. Remember, for this sale enter coupon code: “HOPHOP11” during checkout anytime from now until this Friday 4/22/11 at 6:00 pm PST. Happy shopping!
New address for Adventures in Self Reliance
Hey all, it’s Angela here, interrupting the heat and light series to let you all know that my Adventures in Self Reliance blog has moved to a new location at Food Storage and Survival. And I’ve got some great giveaways going until Feb 14th, so make sure you check out the giveaway post while you’re there. Thanks! That is all. Back to your regularly scheduled posts. :)