preps Archives - Page 7 of 9

January 12, 2009January 12, 2009

Dry-pack Christmas

For Christmas this year, we decided to forgo gifts and add to our dry-pack food supply. With access to a dry-pack canner through the local unit of my Church, I decided the most cost effective and efficient route this time would be to buy in bulk and do the canning myself at home. I purchased all of the food and supplies from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Home Storage Center in Sandy.

We were able to get everything we wanted except wheat which they were out of until the first of the year. I will be going back in a few weeks to finish off that part of the order. I did learn exactly how much will fit in a 4Runner, although I had more than the traditional blind-spot to worry about on the drive home. For this round, I canned rice, sugar, pinto beans, black beans, white beans, potato flakes, dry milk, dried onions, apple slices, and both quick and regular oats. Continue reading “Dry-pack Christmas”

January 12, 2009

Prepping for Prepping

Prepping – it’s an endless activity that has few rewards, and those rewards often are not close in payout to the amount of time and effort that went into them. The interim rewards in prepping include not having to run to the store constantly to keep your food stocked. When you’re a Prepper your grocery store is in your own house, going to an actual store is akin to going to a warehouse to get resupplied. The other reward is great personal satisfaction and comfort in knowing that you are ready for anything – well, almost ready – there’s ALWAYS something else that can be done. The big payoff rarely comes for a Prepper – and that is when things get bad enough that you’re able to make it through it solely because you were prepped. This lifestyle, with it’s small rewards and rare big payoff, can be tiring – even overwhelming at times.

Continue reading “Prepping for Prepping”

January 5, 2009

Fun With Food Storage

Several local ladies (each with their own great blogs on different aspects on preparedness) have gotten together and launched a site today that looks to be an excellent resource for preppers. Head on over and check out Fun With Food Storage. Looks like they’ll have some great information on how to get and use your food storage as part of your normal routine, and who wouldn’t want to accept help with that?

December 30, 2008December 30, 2008

Get Home Bag

Recently I took some time to rotate a few items in my ‘Get Home Bag’ that I keep in my car. The seasons were changing here, and they require different items to fill the bags purpose. As I was changing, I realized I should take a few pictures to post on here (and satisfy the requests of a few friends wanting to know what I have). With that in mind here’s a basic breakdown of my winter Get Home Bag.

Purpose:

I live a fair distance from my work now (oh how I long to telecommute again!). Around 25 miles one way, around a lake, across a river, through several places that have limited road options. How do I know this? Well, I would say everybody should be very familiar with every alternate route between their home and most common destinations, because you never know when you will need them. I have needed mine. Beyond a natural curiosity and desire to optimize my commute, my neighborhood often requires it because it has a population that overwhelms the local road infrastructure on a good day. Add in an accident, or bad weather and it becomes horrid. Get worse weather, and you can actually shut down access to our town. It’s happened before, it will happen again. Throw in an earthquake, and there will be *no* cars heading home. Whatever your locally preferred disaster, would you be able to get home to your wonderful food storage?

Continue reading “Get Home Bag”

December 18, 2008December 18, 2008

Winter/Snow Driving Preps, Part 3 of 3, Driving Tips

This is the final post in our 3 part series, Winter and Snow Driving Preps. The first post, Prepping your Vehicle, can be found here followed by our second post, Supplementing your Gear.

To wrap this Winter Prep series up, let’s go over a few winter driving tips. I’m not trying to teach you how to drive, but just some good techniques to use while driving in snow and ice conditions. Continue reading “Winter/Snow Driving Preps, Part 3 of 3, Driving Tips”

December 17, 2008December 18, 2008

Winter/Snow Driving Preps, Part 2 of 3, Gear Supplements

This is the second post in this series, the first – Prepping your Vehicle – can be found here.

Winter vehicle emergencies can be pretty harsh. If you breakdown, wreck or slide off the freeway that’s one thing, help should be there soon.

But, if you’re on the road less traveled and it’s late at night and something happens, you could be stuck there for a while. If for some reason you can’t start your vehicle in that situation, you have about 20 minutes before it starts getting cold in your car. You already have an emergency kit in your vehicle, right? Just in case you don’t, we’ll be covering that in a later post. But, from here we’ll assume you’ve got a basic 72 hour survival kit in your vehicle. These are some things you should add to it for the winter:

Continue reading “Winter/Snow Driving Preps, Part 2 of 3, Gear Supplements”

December 16, 2008

Mylar Bag Wrapup – Issues with Mylar Bags

This will wrap up our series on Mylar Bag Food Storage. You can catch the previous posts here: a How-To Pictorial on Storing Food in Mylar Bags and Alternative Ideas for Mylar Bags.

This post will talk about some of the experiences, techniques and tips that readers and others have provided us.

MaKettle10 provides us with this info:

In a study done with mylar bags and mice, it took the mice about 15 seconds to sense the food was there, and get into the bag to start eating it. Good idea you have to put the mylar bags into the big plastic storage bins. I’d never store them in cardboard boxes for extended, long-term storage.

Continue reading “Mylar Bag Wrapup – Issues with Mylar Bags”

December 16, 2008December 18, 2008

Winter/Snow Driving Preps, Part 1 of 3, Prepping Your Vehicle

Here in Utah, Winter is finally upon us! This generally means we get to share the road with a bunch of inexperienced snow drivers who think it’s safer, not more dangerous, to drive 15 miles an hour on the freeway. Hopefully, all those people will read this post and we’ll fix the I15 problem right here and now! Yeah right. But for you, dear reader, I offer some advice on how to prep your vehicle for winter, what to stash in your vehicle and some driving tips. Hopefully you’ll have some sage advice to add to this in the comments. This is the first of 3 posts in this series.

Continue reading “Winter/Snow Driving Preps, Part 1 of 3, Prepping Your Vehicle”

December 15, 2008December 15, 2008

Burning The Midnight Oil

No literally, I’m writing this late at night, and wondering just how many people have really given thought to how they will see at night. Whether you are preparing for a couple days of power outages due to an event such as an ice-storm, or some longer-term emergency, it’s not feasible to expect that you can run a generator 24/7 in order to still be able to flick the lights.

While our ancestors did keep better time with the sun, there was still a need for light outside of what the sun provided, and we all know you can’t store *enough* batteries for every need. In this situation, many people will immediately fall back to the use of candles as a primary source of light. While candles are useful, there is a better answer. Candles tend to release a lot of smoke which will leave soot over time, they are an open flame, which is dangerous, and are very subject to drafts. The better answer for indoor lighting of course is the lamp, which from ancient time, in many cultures has provided simple, clean, and efficient lighting to humanity. Continue reading “Burning The Midnight Oil”

December 15, 2008December 15, 2008

Making Preparedness a Family Activity

One of the best ways to prepare and to get your family on board with preparing for an emergency is to include them in your preparations. This may seem a daunting task, but as Phil801 has shown us with his eight children, it can be done. Just look at some of his How-To posts to see evidence of them helping out.

For some of us though, we may just be starting out, or we may not have our family on board with what may be for some a significant lifestyle change. Fortunately, the LDS church which has always urged preparedness from its members has had the foresight to put together a series of family friendly preparedness activities which are perfect for those families just starting out.

You can access the activity list and lesson plans here.

December 12, 2008December 12, 2008

Food Storage – Flavorings: Have you stocked up?

In a TEOTWAWKI situation very little will be available in the way of treats or delicious flavorings. Have you thought about making some preps to be able to provide a flavorful break from the bland day to day eating of rice, wheat and beans for over a year? More than just being able to provide something yummy to yourself and your family, good sweets will likely be a sought after barter item. The simplest treat to make and sell/barter would be hard tack candy. There are few ingredients to hard tack, we’ll get to those in a second. The most important ingredient in hard tack is flavoring! dscn0599

Now I want to digress for a minute and talk about Vanilla Flavor. Vanilla extract is a VERY time and labor intensive product to make. In fact, it is the second most expensive spice in the world next to saffron. The majority of the worlds vanilla comes from Madagascar – and it’s being destroyed! 80% of Madagascar’s Vanilla farms are currently being killed off by a deadly fungus! This most likely means that the already expensive flavor is going to skyrocket in price. Vanilla is one of the most common flavorings – it is used in baking all kinds of products and is also commonly added to powdered milk to enhance the flavor.

Continue reading “Food Storage – Flavorings: Have you stocked up?”