I work near a Sam’s Club and sometime head over for a lunchtime visit. It is hard to beat a Polish Dog and soda at $1.50 for lunchtime frugality. While I am there I often browse through the store to see what seasonal items are on display. Over the last couple months I’ve noticed a few preparedness items at local Sam’s Clubs.
June Mountain House Sale
We love it when local stores have good deals for preppers, even better when it’s the stuff we want the most. Emergency Essentials let us know that this month they are featuring a 20-25% discount on Mountain House cans and we wanted to make sure to pass the word along. Most people involved in preparedness or camping will have some familiarity with the Mountain House products. They are the original commercial freeze-dry products, and have an incredible choice of entrees available.
The big #10 cans of freeze dried food are something we don’t say you should solely base your food storage on, by any means. But they are an amazing part of your overall plan. The large cans allow you to get more food, in a longer-life container. Just remember two key factors when using freeze-dried food from a can. First, contents have settled, so some of the flavor is on the bottom, you’ll want to mix it up. Second, once that can is open, there is no more long-term storage. So entrees you like you need to use within a few days. In a real emergency, that’s not a problem as long as you are aware.
If you do any scouting, or larger group events. Can’s make it so it is a more economical choice vs other options. So if you need to augment your storage, looking to expand the menu, or are even just starting it’s worth checking out their sale.
Searching for the Cure (Bacon)
My brother passed along a video today that fits right in here on the blog. As many people know, I have a long love of cured foods. Bacon, of course, ranks at the top of my list. Bacon, and country hams were an important staple for survival to people in the Appalachians for hundreds of years before refrigeration was introduced. While I don’t have a setup for curing my own bacon (yet), this video sure encourages me to get that setup sooner than later. This 10 minute documentary is about a man who run’s a business curing bacon and ham the old fashioned way.
As I told a friend, the subjects Appalachian accent is like a Barry White with the sequences of frying bacon and country ham.
Once you’ve watched, you’ll probably want to go buy bacon or ham from their site and then once you’ve tasted the difference, try to cure bacon on your own.
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:
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Store what you eat / Eat what you store
This is yet another “Eat what you store / Store what you eat” post. I had a few experiences in the last week or so that has worked me up to this article.
Eat what you store
First. A few weeks ago I went to get some cooking oil from our storage area. I discovered to my dismay that well over half of my oil had gone rancid. I’m not sure if I had a tempurature fluxuation or what happened. Bottom line: I was almost out of oil. Fortunately it didn’t ruin my dinner plans, but imaging discovering that your oil was bad in the middle of a crisis? The oil was out of date, but my previous experience has lead me to believe that generally oil has more longevity than is stamped on the bottle. Continue reading “Store what you eat / Eat what you store”
When to buy: Grocery Sale Cycles
Part of being a good prepper is not just buying extra food, but the art of learning how to buy right. Purchasing foods especially can be an art form for knowing when to get the best prices, and best quality. For instance, it’s usually a bad idea to buy a vegetable who’s harvest is about to happen, as you know that means you are getting what’s left from last year. Your food won’t taste as good, and it won’t store as long as it’s already got a year down. Grocery stores know this, so many frugal shoppers have studied the common grocery sale cycles to understand how the manufacturers and stores are working together to move their product most efficiently. Continue reading “When to buy: Grocery Sale Cycles”
Review – Saratoga Jacks Thermal Cooker
A few weeks ago, several of our authors met up on a Saturday to test out some stoves we were given to review. Jayce will be posting some information and pictures on those soon. The subject of this post was an unexpected surprise to me. At our meet up were the owners of Saratoga Jacks, a local company that imports and sells high quality thermal cookers.
After the break you’ll find a complete unboxing and review of the 7 liter Saratoga Jacks Thermal Cooker as well as an introduction to thermal cookers and why they matter to preppers.
Continue reading “Review – Saratoga Jacks Thermal Cooker”
OvaEasy Eggs
Heading out on a hike recently, I needed to find a good item for breakfast.
Having already converted my friends to the awesomeness that is freeze-dried eggs, I wanted to try something new. I’ve long been anti- dehydrated/powdered eggs after having far too many bad experiences with them. To me they still always taste odd, and it leaves me not wanting eggs for a while afterwards. However, I do have a love for eggs and really wanted to have some on our hike. So as I was browsing along a local sporting good store, I happened upon a new item. Continue reading “OvaEasy Eggs”
Review: Daily Bread Beef Stroganoff With Noodles
The way to a man’s heart is his stomach. When that man is a prepper, and a blogger, nothing could be more true. With that said, I was overjoyed recently when I was contacted by one of our local freeze-dried companies. They were wondering if I would be interested in sampling a couple of their entrees, and writing my opinion on them. Not exactly a difficult decision there.
What made this choice even better was the timing. I just happened to be heading up that weekend with the guys for a little man-camp time. What a better way to test things out. Continue reading “Review: Daily Bread Beef Stroganoff With Noodles”
Backyard Chickens
Over the past year, I have noticed an increased interest in raising chickens arising all over the nation. Locally, KSL has published several articles recently about this phenomenon (see below) as has the Wall Street Journal (also below) and most prepper blogs. My family started keeping backyard chickens about four years ago and have had some good success. In this article we’ll summarize some of the benefits to raising chickens, what you’ll need to get started and some links to resources to help you out once you’ve got your flock.
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”
Food Production Systems DVD Giveaway Winner Announcement
We recently posted a review of the Food Production Systems For a Backyard or Small Farm DVD (see it here. As part of the review we were proud to offer a free DVD to one of our readers who commented on the review. Friday night I used Random.org to randomly select a winner from the 40 eligible (Sorry Jayce and Connor) entries.
The winner as determined by the random number generator is…
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