Got out there early today and it was hot by 8:30.  I worked on the tow truck all day. I worked all day but it doesn’t seem like I got a whole lot done. That’s because I spent 4-5 hours with a chipping hammer just knocking off rust flakes on the bed floor. I also pulled the moldy bucket seats out that don’t belong in there. I’ll be putting the bench seat from the GMC in and it will bolt right in since it’s from a 73-87 GM truck. I also scraped a lot of rust from under the seat and knocked any loose rust off the outside body. Tonight I’ll go get some rusty metal primer to cover the bed floor and cab floor boards. Once I do that it will look like I got tons of work done.  I pulled out the 5th wheel hitch and set it in place. I swapped the insurance over from the GMC to the tow truck today. The GMC needs a little work. I blew a head gasket coming back from Grandma’s place when I did some work there plus it needs some other things. I worked my butt off for a week cleaning up her property that she recently bought to retire on. The only thing I asked was for her to throw me some gas money. I had $150 in gas costs and she gave me 20 bucks. She’s basically a progressive. Thinks she knows better and everyone else is wrong/dumb and therefor she must tell them what to do and/or control them as much as possible. She even went to an obama rally. I wanted to be family for the sake of the kids. We’ll keep in touch and be friendly but Grandma and Grandpa were the last reason for staying here and I had been working towards closer relations but there’s just no common ground. I’m done with her. The wife ought to be home by 6:00 and then I can run out to get some primer. The GMC won’t hardly go a mile anymore. Guess I’ll charge up the cordless batteries and see about getting the 5th wheel hitch ready to bolt in while I’m waiting. I want to move the 5th wheel into the shade asap so I can work on getting the roof sealed up.

Well it’s Sunday which is the wife’s only day off these days so not a whole lot done. We went out and looked at a few potential rentals for when we move out of here in a couple of months.  We found a couple of options. One was a 2 bdrm old single wide MH in the national forest. The dirt roads are not maintained at all and it’s real soft sand so in some places you do not want to stop because you will not get going again. We have been out there before but the place we were looking for (never found) was on a real bad road. This one wasn’t so bad. Decent little trailer for what it is and had central a/c even.  Enough room to to do what I need to and the neighbors won’t care.

I did get the tow truck running off a gas tank as opposed to a gas can strapped against the grill. I also set up outlook to give me a reminder every morning to get of this computer by 8:30 am and get to work.

Not much done today. Mostly evaluating. Deciding what to do first. I tend to get analysis paralysis. I also spent too much time on the internet this morning. I’m going to make a scrolled text screensaver to take care of that now. I decided to get a more permanent gas tank hooked up on the tow truck. The original was full of nasty gas and showed signs of leaking by the marks underneath. I’ve been using a two gallon can with an elec. fuel pump to move it around since I got it running. I have the old tank from the 64 GMC that sat inside the cab behind the seat sitting on the back of the tow truck and am hooking that up. That way I’ll be able to drive it more than 20 miles or so. I also canned 8 pints of chicken breast. Doesn’t help with the move but they were on sale and that’s as much as I could afford. Nothing like having meat that can be stored for two years without refrigeration. A lot cheaper than store bought too.

I’ve been wanting to move back to Missouri for a couple of years now. We lived there for two years once and liked it but came back for family reasons and to give Florida one more shot. We’re getting nowhere. When we came back we lived in a travel trailer for two years while we arranged our job situation and figured out what area we were going to live in. We finally got out of the trailer and rented a house. Since then it’s been one step forward, two steps back, two steps forward, one step back. Stagnant.

I’ve been hinting to the wife for a while now about going back and sometimes border-lining nagging. We’ve been watching the news and I get a lot of that from the internet and relay it to her. She finally confirmed the other day that she’s ready. She’s sick of us working our buts off and not getting anywhere. She also has come to the same realization as me, that with the things that the current regime is doing it’s only going to get worse for us here.

Property here is 10k and up per acre and we want 3-5 acres or more. There’s lots of extra costs involved in owning property here. Taxes, impact fees, permits etc. We know of some counties in MO. that have zero restrictions and taxes as low as a dollar an acre. Land out there can be had as cheap as $1500 an acre. I’ve recently seen two different properties with mobile homes on them for 25k on 5-7 acres. I’ve always been interested in being self sufficient and my wife kind of likes the idea. She confirmed she was ready but I noticed she didn’t seem too sure until a couple of days later when Glenn Beck said, very seriously, “you must become self sufficient”. Now the deal is sealed. Thanks, Glenn.

As per the name of the site, we’re JustPlainPoor. On these pages, I will chronicle our preperations for the move, the move and getting set up on our little homestead in MO in the hopes that it will hope some other people looking to do the same thing but also lack means. I will be posting once a day in order to keep myself in focused. If you decide to do this and don’t have a site, you can keep a paper journal.

We have zero savings but we have managed to acquire quite a few items in the last 5-6 years. We plan on leaving in the Spring a week or two after getting our tax return. The lease where we currently live is up at the end of Sept, just over two months from now. We plan on moving to the cheapest possible living situation here to be able to save some money and/or put money into our vehicles and 5th wheel. Below I’ll give an overview of what we’re starting with.

• 1973 Cobra 5th wheel travel trailer (multiple roof leaks, interior ruined, floor solid, outside intact aside from roof, tires fair)
• 1974 Tow Truck (Lots of body rust, winches non functional, engine and transmission seem solid, all else unknown, been sitting 9 years)
• 1987 Ford E350 14 foot box truck (lots of rust, needs carb, been sitting a few years)
• 1964 GMC pickup (my personal vehicle and daily driver, mechanically sound, body 50% restored)
• 1997 Chevy Blazer (wife’s daily driver, mostly solid, transmission questionable, needs one steering part)
• 1987 Subaru GL10 (4wd wagon, turbo 4cyl, bought to fix, has oil pressure drop out, replaced oil pump, no fix, 81,000 original miles and in real nice shape)
• 16 foot car trailer
• Lots of tools
• Two vintage garden tractors (both run but need minor engine rebuild, both have mower decks, both have plows, one rear grader blade, disc harrow-single tine plow-rake harrow-seed planter available for $400)
• Lawn and Garden hand tools
• 4 bdrm house worth of furniture
• Thousands of pages of how to information
• Thousands of garden seeds

I’ll be adding pages for all the larger projects above like the vehicles and 5th wheel. I paid very little for all of these because I have the ability to fix them up myself which saves me money in the end. In fact our (my wife’s) desktop computer cost more than any one item at $750.00

As you can see we’ve got too many vehicles to make the move in one trip. I’m still working on figuring that out.

From Wendy DeWitt’s Blog. PDF link at bottom.

What’s for dinner? An age old question. But in times of crisis, that question becomes even more significant. Experience has shown that when disasters hit, having a supply of food and water can be life saving. But it doesn’t take a natural disaster to need food storage. Personal economic disasters happen every day and the choice to pay the mortgage or buy food becomes a reality. It is essential for every family to have food storage in order to survive whatever crisis may be ahead.

There are many questions and concerns about food storage. What should you buy? What will it cost? Where do you store it? How do you cook it? What about rotation? The following information answers all of these questions and more. It will give you the knowledge you need to put the foods you love into your food storage.

THE SYSTEM
This system is based on a worst case scenario, meaning there would be no running water or electricity. This scenario also assumes that families will be on their own and will not be banding together at churches or schools. There are many circumstances that would require isolation from other people, not banding together. Don’t put your family at risk by assuming that you will be eating someone else’s food.

Organization: How much food do you need? This system answers that question down to the last teaspoon of salt. Take 14 note cards and write down 7 breakfasts and 7 dinners that you would like to have once a week for one year. There are 52 weeks in the year, so you will be having these meals 52 times. Write on the left side of the card everything it takes to make the meal and on the right side everything multiplied by 52. Don’t forget to add the water you will need for cooking. My food storage has 14 dinners (x 26 weeks) 7 breakfasts (x 52 weeks) a daily loaf of bread (x 365 days) and a variety of desserts. This is a very simple system that saves time and money because you only store what you need and will eat. It can easily be adapted from a years’ supply to a 2 weeks’ supply or a 3 months’ supply. The individuality of this system is also helpful for people with food allergies.

Organize all of the information from your cards into a notebook. Make a chart or table that alphabetically lists all the foods from your recipe cards. My table has 5 columns. The first column lists the food item. The next lists all the meals that food item is in. The third column lists how many cups, cans or jars are needed. The fourth lists how much of that item I have and the fifth, how much I need to buy.

The equivalency section at the end of the book gives you the information you will need to create your table. The equivalency page is an alphabetical listing of common foods and how their amounts translate into pounds, quarts, containers or #10 cans.

Cost: The cost of using this system depends upon your menus. It can cost about one dollar per day per person if you shop wisely and bottle your own meats. This would include 2 cups of breakfast, 2 cups of dinner and a loaf of bread every day.

Storage: One person’s year supply will usually fit under a twin size bed. Remember that heat and moisture can destroy your food so keep it inside your home.

Rotation: Food storage rotation is a once a year event with this system. Your food storage notebook shows how much food is stored, where it is stored and when it was purchased. Once a year, check your notebook to see if anything is expiring that year. (Because long shelf life is important, the shortest shelf life in my food storage is 3 years.) For vacuum sealed foods, visually check each jar to be sure it is sealed. Open one jar of each vacuum sealed item to check for freshness and then reseal it. If anything on your list is close to expiration, take it out, put it in your kitchen pantry for daily use and replenish your storage with fresh food. A food storage slush fund of even $10 a month will give you $360 after 3 years. Keep in mind, the food storage that goes from your storage into your pantry is going to cut your grocery bill.

Meat Rotation: If you are storing one pint (or quart) of meat per day, you will bottle 365 jars of meat. While this sounds like a lot, I once used 3 pressure canners to bottle 150 pints of meat in 12 hours. To rotate, place 50 jars of bottled meat in your kitchen pantry and place the rest in your food storage. If you use 3 jars per week, those 50 jars will be gone in about 4 months. You will then bottle 50 more jars, place them in your food storage and take out another 50 jars for your pantry. Your entire stock will be rotated in about 2 years. If you use 2 jars per week, it will take about 3 years to rotate your supply.

BOTTLING MEATS
(Caution: If you have a glass-top stove, you may want to use a propane camp stove outdoors to bottle meats. I have a glass top stove and have had no problems, but I still need to caution you.)

Bottling your own meats is extremely easy and it’s what makes this food storage system so unique. It’s real chicken in your sweet and sour and real beef stew. The meat is tender, juicy, ready to eat and needs no freezing or refrigeration…just like your tuna fish from the store. The shelf life is at least 3 years, but the process is so easy, you may want to rotate your meats more often to be sure the nutritional quality is high. You can bottle any kind of meat; chicken, turkey, beef, hamburger, fish, ham…I’ve even had moose.

Pressure Canners: You must use a pressure canner to bottle meats. Pressure cookers will not safely can meats. Canners come in quart sizes, meaning they hold a certain amount of liquid quarts, but don’t purchase anything smaller than a 15 quart canner, which will usually hold 7 quart jars.

For used canners, check the internet. If you buy a used canner, be sure to have the gauge tested at your County Extension Center or buy a new gauge. This will ensure that you are cooking at the right pressure and your food will be safe. Try to avoid canners with the rubber gasket in the lid because the gasket will eventually leak. A good canner will have a metal to metal lid, a pressure gauge, a pressure release valve, wing nuts to hold the lid down and an inside tray. A canner is a great investment even if you’re not doing food storage because canning meat will save time (no more defrosting chickens) money (shopping the sales) and a good canner will last forever. I have one that is over 70 years old and it still works.

Canning Meats: A pint bottle will hold 1 pound of meat, a quart will hold 2 pounds. Jars from thrift stores or yard sales are fine for vacuum sealing dry foods, but not for bottling meats. Old jars might crack under the pressure. Invest in some new jars when you first start canning and reuse them over and over.

Many books will tell you to cook the meat before you bottle it. With the exception of ground meats, I prefer the raw pack. Put your raw meat and ¼ to ½ tsp of salt into a clean jar. Jars do not need to be sterilized. Fill jars to ½” from the rim. No other spices should be added. With the exception of ground meats, no water is added to the meat. In a small pan, boil the lids for about 2 minutes to soften the rubber seal. Make sure the rim of the jar is completely clean before you put the heated lid and ring on. Tighten the ring down finger tight. Pour about three inches of water into your canner and place the tray inside. Place your jars in the canner on the tray, screw down the canner lid, making sure the top is even, and turn your stove on high. Don’t put the weight on the pressure valve until steam has spouted out of the valve for about 10 minutes. This expresses the air out of the jars and the canner. After expressing the air, put the weight onto the pressure valve. In desert altitudes, can meats at the 10 pound mark. For other altitudes, check your manual. If you have an older canner, there may not be a weight but there will be some kind of pressure release mechanism. Keep this mechanism open to express the canner then close it to begin your pressure. When the gauge gets to the correct pressure, (according to your altitude) begin timing…75 minutes for pints and 90 minutes for quarts (Fish is 15 min longer). This is the formula for all meats. You will need to immediately start turning down the heat to keep the pressure stable and continue turning it down over the allotted time. Keep the gauge at the correct pressure. When the pressure drops or increases, a vacuum effect causes the juices in the jar to be pulled out. Do not leave your canner. At the end of the 75 or 90 minutes your heat should be at a very low level and you will then turn the heat completely off. Don’t move the canner; just let the pressure go down on its own. When it’s back to zero, release the pressure valve (or remove the weight) take off the lid, put the jars on the counter away from cool drafts and wait for them to seal. You’ll hear a “plink” when the lids seal correctly. If a jar doesn’t seal, you can either refrigerate it for later use or re-bottle it using a new lid. When they are cool, wipe the bottles clean, remove the ring and put them back in the box for storage. Ground meats have a better texture if you brown them first, pack loosely in the jars, cover with water and process. When canning cooked meats like leftover turkey, add a soup broth before canning. Ham makes very little juice, so don’t worry if the juice doesn’t cover all the meat. Don’t bottle spiral cut hams, use a shank cut and don’t add salt. Don’t bottle turkey hams or other processed meats like bologna or hot dogs.

SOLAR OVEN COOKING
It is not uncommon in emergency situations for the power to be out. With a solar oven, if the sun is shining, you can cook. Have backup sources of fuel, such as wood or propane, but in sunny climates your solar oven will be your main source of cooking. Solar cooking is clean, it keeps the heat out of your kitchen, it’s delicious and, best of all, it uses a free source of energy. You don’t want to waste precious food when times are bad, so you should practice cooking with your solar oven to know what you’re doing. The recipes have been included in this booklet to show the variety of foods that can be stored and how to cook them. Every recipe in this booklet was made in a solar oven.

With solar cooking, you can’t start dinner at 5:00, so you may want to do what our ancestors did; have breakfast in the morning, a big meal in the afternoon and a light snack before bed. If possible, have two solar ovens so you can be cooking dinner in one and baking breads or desserts in the other. Cooking times and temperatures are always approximate and will depend upon how your oven is placed, the time of day and cloud cover. A general rule is that foods will cook in about twice the usual amount of time. Don’t try to cook too much at one time. Larger amounts of food will cook faster if you divide it up and put it into smaller pots or cut foods into smaller pieces. Grains and beans need about ¼ less liquid because very little moisture escapes in solar cooking. There are other uses for your solar oven such as pasteurizing water, killing infestations in grains or dried foods, sanitizing dishes, drying firewood, sprouting foods, and decrystallizing honey or jams.

Some good safety rules are: germs can’t grow at 120 degrees, water is pasteurized at 150 degrees, foods will cook at 180 and water boils at 212 . Remember, no matter how you do your cooking, there is a danger zone for foods. Some foods left at temperatures between 50 and 120 for 3 or 4 hours can grow harmful bacteria and carry a risk of food poisoning.

Cookware: Measure the inside of your oven before buying any pots or pans. Using dark pots with tight fitting lids will absorb the heat and your cooking will go faster. In addition, your foods won’t have to be stirred as often. This is important because opening your oven drops the temperature by 50 to 100 in just seconds. Smoked glass cookware is good because you can see your food without opening the oven. Cast iron is great on partially cloudy days because it holds the heat. Cloudy days are good times to cook foods that just need a gentle simmer. The intermittent sun will provide enough heat to simmer soups and stews. Don’t use stainless steel or shiny aluminum pans which reflect the heat instead of holding it in. If all you have is aluminum, you can cover it with a dark cloth. Mason jars painted black work well. Put a strip of masking tape from the top of the jar down to the bottom and up the other side. Paint the jar and remove the tape. This allows you to see inside the jar while cooking. Using sunglasses will help you avoid the glare from the reflectors and always use pot holders.

FOOD STORAGE TIPS

Baking powder, baking soda, sugar, salt, cocoa: These are some of the items you don’t need to can or vacuum seal. Keep them in their original containers or you can place them in buckets with lids. Baking powder test: 1 tsp in 1/3 c hot water = water fizzes.

Brown sugar: 2 Tb Molasses, 1 cup white sugar. Mix with pastry blender until blended. You can also vacuum seal brown sugar in mason jars to keep it fresh for years.

Butter (almost) 1 pound shortening (butter flavored works) ½ tsp salt, 1 2/3 c condensed milk
Whip the shortening and the salt until light. Add the condensed milk a little at a time and blend.

Butter canned: Check the internet for best prices. 12 oz can, 24 Tb or 3 sticks of butter.

Cheese canned: Check the internet for best prices. A Velveeta tasting hard cheese that can be shredded or sliced, comes in an 8 oz can. Minimum 5 year shelf life.

Corn syrup: 1 c sugar + 2 c water. Cook in canning jar in solar oven about an hour or until thick.

“Eggs” from unflavored gelatin (Knox): Buy in bulk at bulkfoods.com. In all the recipes in this book I have substituted unflavored gelatin for the eggs. The gelatin is less expensive than powdered eggs (as little as 3 cents per tsp) and has an indefinite shelf life.
1tsp gelatin =1 egg, 1 oz gelatin = 12 tsp, 1 pound gelatin = 192 eggs.
Making one egg: Combine 1 tsp of unflavored gelatin with 3 Tb of cold water and stir until dissolved. Then add 2 Tb of hot water and stir. When using your own recipes, decrease the liquid called for in your recipe by about ¼ cup to compensate for the added water from the “egg”. I have already done this for the recipes in this book.

Eggs: Storing fresh eggs for up to 1 year. Rub warmed mineral oil on your hands and coat the entire surface of the fresh egg with the oil. Replace egg in carton with the point down. In cold climates they can be stored in a cool, dark place. In warmer climates, place in the refrigerator. Rotate once a year.

Jar cakes & breads: This method of baking has been done for years, but there has been some discussion as to its safety. Because the eggs were exchanged with unflavored gelatin in all of these recipes, it is unlikely that the ingredients used could support bacteria if prepared and cooked properly. If you feel at all uncomfortable with this method, don’t use it.

Jar cakes are great for food storage and the solar oven, but you must be sure to sanitize all your jars and lids to be sure they are free from bacteria. Foods such as breads, cakes, muffins, cornbread, brownies, cookies and cinnamon rolls are cooked and sealed in mason jars and can be kept on the shelf for several weeks. Using a pastry brush, grease the inside of your jar with shortening (no Pam or Baker’s Secret) and fill it ½ to 2/3 full with batter or dough and bake. No lid is used at this time. Let your breads rise in the jars and then bake. If it bakes too high, cut the top of your bread or cake off before sealing the jar. Just be sure your jar edge is clean and your lids are hot. Immediately after the food is cooked, place a heated lid on the hot jar and tighten with the ring (Use hot pads). Within a few minutes, the lid will “plink” and the food will be sealed. The food will slip out of the jars easily if you use the straight sided “jelly jars” but any kind of mason jar will work. With this method, you can do your baking on your bright sunny days and have fully cooked baked goods waiting on your shelves for that rainy day.

Milk: Powdered milk: If you have electricity, powdered milk is best if you use warm water, mix with a blender and chill overnight.

Buttermilk: 1 c water, 1/3 c dry milk, 1 Tb vinegar or lemon juice. Let it sit 5 min.

Condensed milk: ½ c hot water, 1 c sugar, ¼ c dry milk, 1 c water. Place in canning jar with lid and shake until thoroughly blended.

Eagle Brand: 1 c hot water, 1/3 c corn syrup,1 2/3 c sugar, ¼ tsp vanilla, pinch of salt, ½ c butter, 2c dry milk. Place all ingredients except butter in canning jar with lid and shake until well blended. Gradually add the butter and shake each time until well blended.

Evaporated: 1 c water, 2/3 c dry milk. Whole 1 c water + 1/3 c dry. Skim: 1c water + ¼ c dry milk.

Milk on the shelf: Technology has given us real milk that sits on the shelf and has at least a 1 year shelf life. It comes in quart containers, available in whole, 2%, vanilla soy, almond and rice milk.

Peanut butter: 2 c peanuts and 4 Tb honey OR 2 ½ c peanuts and 2 Tb butter – salt to taste. Blend until smooth. This really needs an electric blender but it can still be done without one.

Rice: If your rice goes rancid, set it out for 2 or 3 days and rinse with water.

Shortening: I have substituted shortening for the oil in all my recipes because of the longer shelf life. Oil has about a 2 year shelf life, unopened shortening has 10+ years. If you can still find the hard lid shortening (not foil lids) they have an indefinite shelf life. Store shortening in a cool, dark place. Opened shortening has a less than one year shelf life. After opening shortening, melt it in the microwave or solar oven, pour it into mason jars and vacuum seal it for a longer shelf life.

Tomato powder: ½ cup powder mixed with 1 cup water =1 c tomato sauce. Less water makes tomato paste and more water makes tomato juice. Shelf life is 10+ years.

Vacuum sealing foods: Many foods with high oil or high sugar contents cannot be stored in #10 cans because of the interaction with the metal (Chocolate chips, nuts and raisins for example). You can significantly increase the shelf life of your foods by placing them in mason jars and using a Food Saver and a Jar Sealer attachment to vacuum the air out of the jars. Put your ingredients in a mason jar, put a lid on the jar, place the jar sealer attachment over the lid and start the machine. If a jar won’t seal, try placing one lid down and one facing up or heating the lid in boiling water. The jar can be opened and resealed over and over. If you take the lids off carefully, they can be reused indefinitely. You can seal nuts, raisins, chocolate chips, brown rice, cornmeal, candy bars, egg noodles, poppy seeds, dried apricots, malt-o-meal, cookies, granola bars…just about anything in the pantry. Shelf life should be 3 years or more if you keep the foods cool. Remember, the warmer the temperature, the shorter the shelf life.
You cannot vacuum seal foods that need refrigeration…only foods that sit on your pantry shelves.
Don’t vacuum fine powders….they gum up the works of your machine. If you want to seal powders, put a plastic or zip lock bag in your jar, fill the bag, express the air, zip lock it then vacuum seal.
A new Food Saver can be expensive. Used ones are easy to find online and are very inexpensive. Just be sure it has the port hole on top of the machine where the jar sealer attaches. Jar Sealer attachments come in regular and wide mouth.

Water: I store water in the 55 gallon plastic barrels. You can add 1 tsp of household bleach for every 5 gallons of water, but most city water supplies already add sufficient chlorine. 2 – 3 of these barrels per person will fill most water needs for cooking. Store in the garage or on the north side of the house.

Yeast: Yeast has an indefinite shelf life in your freezer or one year on the shelf. ALWAYS test your yeast before adding it to your dry ingredients. Add the yeast to warm (not hot) water and wait a few minutes. The mixture will start to bubble and smell good. Add this to your dry ingredients.

BREADS

The question most often asked about solar cooked bread is, “Does it brown?” The answer is yes. It bakes and browns beautifully. As with all other foods, breads take almost twice as long to cook in a solar oven. They will bake in a cooler oven (200 ) but hotter ovens are best. Cooking times and temperatures will always depend on how hot your solar oven is. Pint references are connected to cooking in pint jars.

Cinnamon and Raisin Bread makes 1 loaf or 3-4 pints.
1 recipe wheat bread (use white wheat if possible) 1/8 c butter, 2 tsp cinnamon, 2 Tb sugar, ¼ c raisins.
Make the bread recipe and before you roll it into a loaf, spread the butter on the dough, sprinkle on raisins and a mixture of sugar and cinnamon. Roll it up, place in loaf pan or jars and bake until browned.

Cornbread makes one 8×8 pan or 3-4 pints.
1 2/3 c flour, 1 2/3 c yellow cornmeal, 2/3 c sugar, 2 “eggs”, 5 tsp baking powder, ¼ c dry milk,
1 tsp salt, 1/3 c melted shortening, 1 ¼ c water.
Make your “eggs”. Melt 1/3 c shortening. Mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and dry milk in a large bowl. Stir in the cornmeal until well blended. Add “eggs” and water and stir until the batter is smooth. Gently stir in the melted shortening just until blended. Do not over-stir. Pour into your greased pan or jars and bake for 60 to 80 minutes or until browned.

Oatmeal Raisin Muffins makes 12 muffins.
1 ”egg”, 3 tsp baking powder, ½ c milk (1/8 c dry + ½ c water), ½ tsp salt, ½ c raisins, ¼ tsp ground nutmeg, ½ c melted shortening, ½ tsp cinnamon, 1/3 c sugar, 1 c white or wheat flour, 1 c rolled oats.
Melt the shortening. Make your “egg”. Mix “egg”, milk, raisins and shortening. Stir in remaining ingredients and stir just until moistened. Fill muffin cups ¾ full or mason jars just over half full. Bake until browned.

Wheat Muffins makes 12 muffins.
2 c wheat flour, ½ c melted shortening, 1 c sugar (or brown sugar), 1 “egg”, ¼ tsp salt,1 tsp vanilla, 1 tsp baking soda, 3/4 c water, 1/3 c dry milk, ¼ c raisins.
Melt shortening. Make your “egg”. Mix dry ingredients in a bowl. Mix liquid ingredients, raisins and “egg” and pour over the dry mixture. Stir just until moistened. Spoon into greased muffin tins or fill mason jars to just over half full. Bake until browned.

Whole Wheat Bread makes one loaf or 3-4 pints.
2 tsp yeast, 1 c water, 3 c wheat flour, 1 ½ tsp salt, 2 Tb applesauce or shortening, ¼ c sugar or honey.
Solar oven: Warm ¼ c of the water, stir in the yeast and let it dissolve. Add to yeast mixture: 2 c of the flour, the melted shortening, sugar, salt and the rest of the water in a large bowl. A little at a time, add enough of the rest of the flour, kneading until smooth and elastic. Cover the bread and let it rise until doubled in size. Punch down the dough, shape it into a loaf, place into a greased pan or jars, cover and let it rise again until doubled. Bake for 45-60 minutes or until browned. For a regular oven, bake at 350 for 25-30 min.

365 Loaves of Bread Whole Wheat Bread – 1 loaf per day – Total for One Year

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2 c wheat (3 c flour) x 365=730 c (12 c / #10 can)

61 #10 cans white wheat

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1 c water x 365 = 365 c (16 c / gal)

23 gal of water

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1 ½ tsp salt x 365=547 tsp (117 tsp/container)

4 2/3 containers of salt

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2 Tb melted shortening x 365=730 Tb (17 Tb/c, 2 ¼ c/#)

19 # shortening

¼ c sugar x 365=91 c (2 c=1#)

46# of sugar

Or
1/4 c honey=91 c (13 oz=1c=74# honey)

74 # honey

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1 Tb yeast x 365=365 Tb = (48 Tb/#)

8# of yeast

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Follow instructions for whole wheat bread.

CEREALS
You will need to add the separate serving of ½ c water + 1/8 c dry milk and 1 Tb sugar to your totals.

Granola makes 5 cups or 3 pint jars.
3 c oats, 1/3 c honey, 1 c sliced almonds, 1 tsp cinnamon, ¼ c shortening, ½ tsp salt, ½ c raisins.
Melt the shortening. Place all the ingredients (except raisins) in a large bowl and mix well. Spread onto a shallow pan (or put into 3 uncovered pint jars) and bake until browned (60 minutes or longer). It shouldn’t have to be stirred but you can turn the jars half way through. Watch it closely so it doesn’t burn. For jars, add the raisins and place a lid and ring on the jar as soon as you remove it from the oven. The jar will seal and keep the granola fresh for weeks. For pans, let it cool, add the raisins and store in airtight containers.

Grape Nuts makes 4 cups.
6 c whole wheat flour (4 c wheat), 1 c brown sugar, 2 c buttermilk (2 c water + 2/3 c powdered milk + 2 Tb vinegar or lemon juice.) 1 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp salt
Mix everything in a bowl, press onto 2 cookie sheets and bake until dry (1-2 hours) Grind with a meat grinder to the size of grape nuts and bake again until golden brown. Cool and store in airtight container.

Oatmeal makes 1 cup.
½ c rolled oats (or quick), 1 c water, pinch of salt.
Place salted water and oats in separate canning jars or covered pots and heat. When heated, add warmed oats to hot water and cook to desired consistency. Serve with milk and sugar. Add raisins or dried apples.

Rice Cereal or Rice Pudding makes 4 cups.
1 ½ c rice, 4 c water, 1 tsp salt, 3 Tb sugar. Pudding: 2 “eggs” ½ c raisins, ¼ tsp nutmeg, ¼ tsp vanilla.

Place salted water and rice in canning jars or covered pots and place in solar oven. When water is hot, add warmed rice and cook for 40 to 50 minutes or until rice is done. Add milk and sugar. For rice pudding, add 2 or more “eggs”, sugar, raisins and nutmeg to the hot rice. Stir well and return to the oven, repeating the process until rice is thick like pudding. Add vanilla and stir. Add ½ c milk if desired.

Wheat Cereal makes 1 ¼ cups.
½ c wheat + 1 c water.

Soak overnight. (1 or 2 more c of water will be needed to cook). Place water, soaked wheat and pinch of salt in a jar or pot with tight fitting lid. Cook 2 hours. Add water as needed.

MAIN DISHES

Beef and Beans makes 8 cups. Start early….beans take a long time.
1 pound washed pinto beans (2 ½ c) 7 c water, 1 pint bottled beef (undrained), 2 tsp salt, 2-3 Tb dried onion, ½ tsp thyme, ¼ tsp garlic powder, ¼ tsp basil, 1 tsp parsley, ¼ tsp pepper, 1 bay leaf.
Place water in covered pot and heat to as close to boiling as possible. Add beans. Cover and soak out of the oven for 1 hour. Do not drain. Add all other ingredients and simmer 4 -5 hours or until done.

Beef Soup makes 12 cups.
1 pint bottled beef (undrained) 8 c water, 4-8 tsp (according to taste) beef soup base, 1 c dehydrated diced potatoes, 1 c dried carrots, ½ c dried celery, 2 – 3 Tb dried onion, 1-2 tsp salt, 1 tsp pepper, 1 bay leaf, ½ – 1 tsp thyme.
Mix all ingredients in large covered pot and simmer for several hours.

Beef Stew makes 8 cups Creamy or Tomato style. 1 pint bottled beef, 1 recipe cream of mushroom soup (using beef soup base instead of chicken soup base) (Tomato style: 1 c tomato powder + 2 c water=2 c tomato sauce) 1 c dried carrots, 2 Tb dried onion, ½ tsp salt, ¼ tsp pepper, 1 bay leaf, 1 tsp thyme, 1 c diced potatoes.

Use the beef juices and water to make the cream of mushroom soup. (Or make the tomato sauce). Place all ingredients in large covered dish and simmer several hours.

Chicken Alfredo makes 10 cups.
1 recipe Alfredo sauce, 1 pint bottled chicken (drained) 1 pound spaghetti noodles, 8 c water, 1 – 2 Tb parsley, ½ – 1 tsp garlic powder, 1 tsp salt, ½ tsp salt, 1/8 tsp pepper.
Make the Alfredo sauce. Heat salted water and spaghetti in separate large covered pots (or canning jars w lids). Add warmed spaghetti to hot water, cook 15 – 20 min. and drain. Stir noodles, sauce, parsley, garlic, salt, pepper and chicken together gently and return to oven for 20 min. or until hot.

Chicken Creole makes 10 cups.
1 ½ c rice + 3 c water + ½ tsp salt (5 c cooked rice) 1 pint bottled chicken (drained) ¼ c dried celery,
¼ c dried carrots, 1 bay leaf, 1 c tomato powder + 2 c water, 2 Tb dried onion, ½ tsp sugar, ½ tsp seasoning salt, ¼ tsp pepper, 4 tsp Worcestershire sauce, 3 Tb cornstarch, 1 c water, ¼ c dried parsley optional: ½ c dried mushrooms.

Split the 3 c water, ½ tsp salt and 1 ½ c rice between 2 canning jars, cover and cook about 40 min. Hydrate vegetables. In a large covered pot, put vegetables, tomato sauce, bay leaf, sugar, salt, pepper, and Worcestershire. Cook 30 – 45 min. Put the 1 c water or broth and cornstarch in another jar and shake until smooth. Add chicken and cornstarch mixture to vegetable mixture and cook uncovered until thickened. Serve over the rice.

Chicken Delight makes 9 cups.
1 ½ c rice, 2 Tb beef soup base, 3 Tb dried onion, ½ recipe cream mushroom soup, ½ tsp salt, ¼ tsp pepper,
2 c water, 1 pint bottled chicken. Optional: ½ c dehydrated mushrooms.
(May use broth and water to equal the 2 cups liquid.) Mix all ingredients in a large covered pot. Cook in solar oven for 4 hours or until rice is cooked. Remove lid and cook another ½ hour or until browned.

Chicken Fricassee makes 6 cups of broth and 8 cups of potatoes.
4 tsp chicken soup base + 4 cups water, 4 tsp dry onion, 1 tsp salt, ½ tsp pepper, ½ c white flour and water as needed, 1 pint bottled chicken (undrained) 6 c instant potatoes + 4-6 c water.
Combine the 4 cups of water, soup base, undrained chicken, onion, salt and pepper in a large covered pot. Place the 5 ½ c of water in another covered pot (or jars) and heat both pots in solar oven until hot. Take out the broth and slowly add flour and water mixture. Return to the oven to thicken. Take out the pot of hot water and stir in instant potatoes. (Make sure they’re nice and thick) Place the potatoes on a plate, scoop the center to the sides, making a “bowl” and spoon the chicken and broth mixture into the “bowl”.

Chicken and Rice makes about 12 cups.
1 recipe cream of mushroom soup, 1 Tb lemon juice, ½ tsp salt, 2 c rice, 4 c water +1 tsp salt (Don’t add salt if broth is used) 2 Tb dried onion, 1 pint undrained bottled chicken, ¼ tsp pepper, 1/3 tsp paprika
Optional: 1/3 c dried celery and ½ c sliced toasted almonds.
Add broth and water to make 4 cups. Add the rice to the liquid and cook in solar oven about 40 minutes or until done. In a large covered dish, mix the cream of mushroom soup, lemon juice, onion, paprika, pepper, salt, chicken and cooked rice. (And optional celery and almonds) Cover and bake until done.

Chicken Soup makes 12-14 cups.
8 tsp chicken soup base + 8 c water, 4 tsp dried onion, 1 c dried carrots, ½ tsp salt, ¼ tsp pepper
1 pint bottled chicken (undrained) ½ c dried celery, ½ c dry rice. Mix all ingredients and simmer.

Chili makes 12 cups.
1 pound (or 2 ½ c) washed pinto beans , 7 c water, 1-2 tsp salt, ¼ c dried onion, ½ -1 tsp garlic powder, 3-4 Tb chili powder, 3 tsp cumin, ¼ tsp cayenne pepper, 1 Tb sugar, 1 pint ground beef, 2 c tomato powder + 5 c water.
Place water in a large covered pot and heat to as close to boiling as possible. Add beans. Cover and soak beans out of the oven for 1 hour. (Use soaking water to cook beans) Cook beans in covered dish 4-5 hours. Add remaining ingredients and simmer until done.

Chili-Mac Makes 10 cups (add more water or broth if it’s too dry)
2 c macaroni, 2 Tb dried onion, ¼ tsp garlic powder, 2 Tb chili powder, 1 ½ c tomato powder + 3 c water (3 c tomato sauce) ½ tsp salt, ¼ tsp pepper, 1 pint bottled ground beef.
Add beef broth and water to equal 3 cups of liquid. Add water and tomato powder to make tomato sauce. Add liquid, tomato sauce, macaroni, garlic, chili powder, salt, pepper and ground beef. Cook until macaroni is done.

Goulash makes 14 cups.
3 c macaroni, 6 c water, 2 c tomato powder + 6 c water (6 c tomato juice) 2 tsp dried onion, ¼ tsp garlic powder, 1 tsp salt, ½ tsp pepper, 1 pint ground beef (undrained) 1 can of corn (undrained.)
Heat the 2 c water and salt in solar oven until very hot. Cook the macaroni in the water about 20 min or until done. Do not rinse. Add rest of the ingredients to the macaroni, return to oven and cook until done.

Macaroni and Cheese makes 10 cups.
4 c macaroni, 8 c water, 10 Tb mac + cheese powder, 1 tsp salt, 1/3 c dry milk + 1 ½ c water, 2 Tb butter, ½ tsp salt, 1/8 tsp pepper.
Heat the 8 c of salted water and the macaroni in separate containers. When the water is hot, add the macaroni and cook for 15 – 20 min or until done. Drain. Add butter, cheese powder, salt, pepper and milk.

Rice-a-Roni makes 8 cups.
2 c rice, 1/4 – 1/3 pound spaghetti (1 cup of 1″ broken pieces) 1 Tb. dried onion, 2 tsp dry parsley, ½ tsp dry ginger, ½ tsp garlic powder, 1 tsp salt, ¼ tsp pepper, 4 Tb shortening, 4 tsp chicken soup base + 4 c water, optional:
1 pint jar chicken, ½ c sliced toasted almonds and ½ c each dried carrots and celery.
In the solar oven, heat the shortening in a large pot. Dutch ovens are great but this can also be done in several canning jars with lids. Break the spaghetti into 1″ pieces. When the shortening is hot, stir in the rice and broken spaghetti and cook until browned. (Jars can cook on their sides for this) Add the rest of the ingredients, cover and cook for 40 – 50 min. or until done.

Shepherd’s Pie makes 12 cups.
1 can corn (drained) 1 can green beans (drained) ½ recipe tomato soup, 2 Tb dried onion, 1 tsp salt,
¼ tsp pepper, 1 pint bottled ground beef (drained), 3 c instant potatoes + 3 c water (4 c potatoes)
Make the tomato soup. Heat 4 c water in jars or covered pot until very hot. Mix the ground beef, corn, green beans, tomato soup, onions, salt and pepper into a covered pot. Take the water out of the oven and wrap it in a dark cloth to keep it hot. Place the meat mixture in the oven and bake 45 min. or until hot. When it’s done, mix the instant potatoes and the hot water and spread on top of the meat mixture.

Spaghetti makes 10 cups.
1 pound spaghetti noodles, 1 recipe marinara sauce, 1 pint bottled ground beef or sausage (drained) 4 c water, 1 tsp salt.
Make marinara sauce and add drained meat . Heat salted water and spaghetti in separate covered pots (or use caning jars) add spaghetti to hot water and cook 15 – 20 min. Mix sauce and noodles.

Sweet and Sour Chicken makes 7 – 8 cups.
1 pint chicken, 1 1/3 c rice, 2 2/3 c water, 1 can pineapple, 2/3 c vinegar, 1 1/3 c sugar, 4 Tb cornstarch,
4 Tb soy sauce, 1 tsp Molasses, 1 Tb. dried onion. (opt. ½ c sliced almonds, ¼ c dehyd. celery.)
Heat the rice and water in separate jars. When hot, combine and cook until done. (Heat bottled chicken at the same time.) Put the pineapple juice, vinegar, sugar, cornstarch, soy and molasses into a qt jar. Shake well and cook in solar oven. Cook and shake this sauce repeatedly until thickened. On the bed of cooked rice place the heated chicken, almonds, pineapple, and hydrated celery. Pour sauce over the top.

Taco Soup makes 12 cups.
1 pint bottled ground beef or sausage, 1 can corn, 1 can kidney beans, 1 29 oz. can stewed tomatoes, 2 c water (OR 1 c water and 1 c tomato sauce) 2 – 3 Tb taco seasoning, 2 Tb onion, ¼ tsp garlic.
Place all ingredients in covered dish and let simmer.

Tamale Pie makes 10 cups.
1 pint bottled beef or ground beef (drained) 1 c tomato powder + 2 c water = 2 c tomato sauce
½ pound (1 ¼ c) washed pinto beans + 3 c water + 1 tsp salt (3 c cooked beans) 2 Tb dried onion, ½ tsp salt, 1 tsp garlic powder, 1 tsp oregano, 2 Tb chili powder, ¼ tsp pepper.
Topping: 1 2/3 c cornmeal, 1 2/3 c white flour, 2/3 c sugar, 2 “eggs”, 5 tsp baking powder, ½ c dry milk + 1 c water, 1/3 c melted shortening, 1 tsp salt.
In large covered pot, heat 3 c water as close to boiling as possible. Add beans. Cover and soak out of oven 1 hour Add 1 tsp salt to beans and cook in oven 4 -5 hours or until done. Melt the 1/3 c shortening and set aside in the sun. Put the beef, tomato sauce, cooked beans, onion, garlic, oregano and chili powder in a covered baking dish and bake 20 – 30 min. While it’s cooking, make the topping by stirring together the flour, sugar baking powder and salt. Stir in the cornmeal until well blended. Add “eggs” and milk and stir to a smooth batter. Fold in the melted shortening just until blended. When meat mixture is done, remove from oven, spoon topping over meat and bake again about 30 – 40 min. or until cornbread is done.

Tomato Soup (Condensed) makes 2 cups.
1 c tomato powder + 2 c water = 2 c tomato sauce, 2 Tb dried onion, 3 Tb melted shortening, 6 Tb white flour, ¼ tsp pepper, milk if needed, ½ tsp seasoned salt, ½ tsp soda, 2 tsp sugar.
Melt 3 Tb shortening in a canning jar in the solar oven. Place the flour, milk, salt and pepper together in another jar, shake to mix well (no lumps!) and heat. Add heated flour mixture to the melted shortening and stir or shake well. Heat another 10 -15 min. Continue to shake and cook until thickened. Add the onion, soda and sugar to the tomato sauce and slowly blend the two sauces together. Add milk if needed to attain consistency of condensed tomato soup. Return to solar oven and gently heat. Do not boil. (For soup, add 3-4 cups of milk then stir and heat.)

COOKING PASTAS
To keep pasta from getting pasty, use 2 pots with lids or jars with lids. Heat the dry pasta with a little oil or shortening in one; heat the salted water in another. When the water is hot, combine the two.

Macaroni makes 5 c cooked.
2 c macaroni, 2 – 3 c water ½ tsp salt.
Heat water and salt until very hot. Add heated macaroni to the water and cook for 15 to 20 minutes.

Spaghetti makes 4 c cooked.
½ pound spaghetti (break noodles to fit cookware) + 1-2 tsp shortening, 3-4 c water, ½ tsp salt.
Heat water and salt until very hot. Add heated spaghetti and cook 15 to 20 minutes.

SAUCES

Alfredo Sauce…almost. makes 2 ½ cups.
½ c water + 1/3 c dry milk = ½ c evaporated milk, 3/4 c Parmesan cheese, 1/8 tsp white or black pepper,
pinch of nutmeg, ½ c dry milk + 2 c water (2 c skim milk.)
Place 2 cups of milk in a canning jar and cook until hot (20 min). Place the ½ c evaporated milk, pepper, Parmesan, and nutmeg in another canning jar and shake to mix. Slowly add a little of the evaporated milk mixture to the hot milk and shake. Repeat until it’s all mixed together. Return the jar to oven for 15 to 20 min. to thicken. (You may have to add 1 Tb cornstarch and 1 Tb of water if it doesn’t thicken.)

Cream of Mushroom Soup (without the mushrooms) makes 4 cups.
½ c dry milk + 2 c water, 1 c white flour, 3 Tb shortening, 3/4 tsp seasoning salt, 1/8 tsp pepper, ¼ tsp onion powder, ½ tsp thyme, ¼ tsp garlic powder, 2 tsp chicken soup base + 1 ½ c water.
Melt the shortening in a canning jar, add the milk and heat. Heat flour and seasonings in a second jar. Combine the two and shake well. Put soup base in a jar and place both jars in the solar oven. After 10 min. take the milk jar out and shake it well. Return to the oven for another 10 minutes. Repeat until thickened. Remove both jars from the oven and slowly begin to add the hot broth to the thickened milk mixture, stirring or shaking until you have the consistency that you desire…either condensed or as soup.

Marinara Sauce makes 4 cups.
2 c tomato paste + 4 c water (4 c tomato sauce) 1 tsp garlic powder, 1-2 Tb dried onion, 1 ½ tsp dried basil,
½ tsp oregano, ¼ tsp salt, ¼ tsp crushed red pepper,1 tsp sugar. Or use 2 – 3 tsp Italian seasoning in place of other spices. Mix all ingredients in 1 or 2 canning jars and let it simmer.

SNACKS AND DESSERTS

Apple Crisp makes (1) 9×12 pan.
2 c dry apples , 3 c water, 2 Tb + 1 tsp cornstarch, 3/4 c sugar, 1/3 tsp salt, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/3 tsp nutmeg,
2 Tb lemon juice.
Topping: 1 c rolled oats, 1 c brown sugar, 1 c flour, ¼ tsp salt, 1/3 tsp baking powder, ½ c shortening.
Mix dry ingredients for apple crisp in large covered pot, add water and lemon juice; mix well. Bake in covered dish 1 – 2 hours or until done. Mix the topping with pastry blender or fork, spread over cooked apples and return to oven for 30 – 40 min (uncovered) until browned.

Brownies makes 1 8×8 pan or 4 pint jars.
1 c shortening, 2 c sugar, 2 c white flour, 1 tsp vanilla, 4 “eggs”, 2/3 c baking cocoa,
½ tsp baking powder, ½ tsp salt. Optional: 1 c chopped walnuts.
Make your “eggs”. Mix shortening, sugar, and vanilla. Add eggs and mix. Add flour, cocoa, baking powder, salt and vanilla and mix. Bake in 8×8 pan (or jars) about 45 min or until done.
Frosting:
6 Tb shortening, 6 Tb cocoa, 2 Tb corn syrup, 1 tsp vanilla, 2 c powdered sugar, 2-4 Tb milk.

Chocolate Cake makes (1) 9×12 pan or 6 pints.
3 ¼ c white flour, 2 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp salt, 1 ½ c sugar, ½ c cocoa, ½ tsp baking powder, 2 c water,
2Tb vinegar, 2/3 c melted shortening, 5 tsp vanilla. ½ c chocolate chips, ½ cup walnuts.
Melt shortening. Combine dry ingredients in large bowl. Mix together melted shortening, water, vinegar and vanilla and stir into the dry mixture until smooth. Pour into 9×12 greased and floured pan (or greased jars) and bake for 30 – 40 min or until done.

Chocolate Chip Cookies makes 3 dozen.
1 c shortening, 3/4 c sugar, 3/4 c brown sugar, 1 tsp vanilla, 2 “eggs”, 2 ½ c white flour,
½ tsp water, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp baking soda, 1 c chocolate chips. 1 c nuts.
Mix shortening, sugars, vanilla, water, soda and salt until creamy. Add “eggs”, flour, nuts and chips.
Bake in oven on cookie sheets or in jars until done.

Chocolate Pudding or Pie makes 7 cups.
3 c pudding mix, 5 1/3 c water (1/4 to 1/3 ratio)
In a container with a tight lid, combine mix and water and shake until blended. Let sit for 5 – 10 min until set. Use as a pudding or make a graham cracker crust and have pie.
To make a pie crust, crumble enough crackers to equal 1 cup of crumbs. Add 1/3 c brown sugar and 1/4 cup melted butter and press into a pie pan. Use as is or you can bake the crust in the oven until browned.

Graham Crackers
1 ½ c white flour, 3/4 c wheat flour, ½ tsp salt, 1/3 c brown sugar, 1/3 c shortening, 1/3 c honey, 3 Tb water, 2 tsp cinnamon, 2 tsp sugar.
Combine all dry ingredients except cinnamon and sugar. Cut in shortening to consistency of cornmeal. Stir the honey and water into dry ingredients. Divide in half and roll each half out onto ungreased cookie sheet to ¼” thickness. Cut into squares and prick with a fork. Sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar and bake 15 – 25 min. Store in airtight container.

Spice Cake makes (1) 9×12 pan or 6 pint jars.
3 cups white flour, 2 c sugar, 1 tsp salt, 2 tsp baking soda, 1 ½ tsp ground cloves, 2 ½ tsp cinnamon,
2 ½ tsp nutmeg, 2/3 c melted shortening, 2 Tb vinegar, 1 ½ c water, 2 “eggs”, 2 Tb vanilla.
(grease pan with 1 tsp shortening + 1 tsp flour) optional: ½ c raisins and ½ c walnuts.
Melt the shortening in solar oven. Mix dry ingredients in a bowl. In another bowl, mix the melted shortening, water, vinegar, “eggs” and vanilla and stir into the dry mixture until smooth. Pour into a greased and floured 9×12 pan or greased jars and bake about 1 ½ hours or until done.

Tapioca Pudding makes 9 cups.
1 c sugar, 9 Tb minute tapioca, 2 ¼ c dry milk + 7 ½ c water, 3 “eggs”, 1 Tb vanilla.
Put all ingredients except vanilla into your painted canning jar. Cook in solar oven for about 30 min. Remove, shake well and return to oven. Continue cooking and shaking jar every 15 – 20 min until tapioca swells up (total time: 60 -75 min). Add vanilla, shake and pour into dishes. Pudding thickens as it cools.

Wheat Thins
½ c wheat flour, ½ c white flour, ½ tsp salt, ¼ c shortening, 1 Tb dry milk + ¼ c water, 1 tsp molasses.
Melt shortening. Mix dry ingredients in large bowl. Combine milk and molasses and stir into dry mixture. Place a ball of dough the size of a tennis ball in the middle of a greased cookie sheet and cover with a sheet of waxed paper. Roll out thinly, covering sheet. Peel off the waxed paper and cut with pizza cutter into desired shapes. Bake 30 – 40 min or until browned. Salt while hot.

USER FRIENDLY FOODS AND MEAL IDEAS
Some of these recipes may need electricity and will not be suitable for the solar oven.

Breakfasts
Remember to add the milk, sugar and dash of salt to your breakfasts if needed. Try cold cereal, Pop Tarts, granola bars, flavored instant oatmeal. They have a decent shelf life and kids love them.

Malt-o-meal (1 cup, once a week) 1/4 c M/M = 1 c cooked.

28 oz box =4 ½ c dry or 18 c cooked.
1/4 c x 52=13 c = 3 boxes Malt-o-meal
1 c water per 1/4 c malt-o-meal=52 c = 3 1/4 gal water

Oatmeal (two cups, once a week) 1 c oats=2 c cooked

1 #10 can=24 c cooked
1 c oats x 52= 52 c = 4 1/3 #10 cans oats
2 c water x 52=104 c= 6 ½ gal water

Pancakes (5-6 pancakes, once a week) 1 c Krusteaz=5-6 pancakes.

A 10 lb bag Krusteaz = 40 c.
1 c Krusteaz x 52=52 c= 1 1/3 bags Krusteaz
3/4 c water x 52=39 c= 2 ½ gal water
½ c syrup x 52=26 c=208 oz = 9 – 24oz bottles syrup

Scrambled eggs and sausage (or ham) (4 eggs, twice a month)
4 fresh eggs x 26=104 eggs (add salt + pepper)………… 8 – 9 doz eggs
1 pint sausage (or ham) x 26=……………………………….. 26 pints sausage

Dinners

Chicken and rice (makes 6 cups, once a week)
1 pint chicken x 52=……………………………………………. 52 pints chicken
1 can cream of chicken or mushroom soup x 52=…….. 52 cans soup
1 1/2 c rice (makes 4 ½ c cooked) x 52=78 c=…………. 6 ½ #10 cans rice
3 c water x 52=156 c=………………………………………….. 9 3/4 gal. water
1 Tb onion x 52=52 Tb=……………………………………….. 3 ½ c dry onion
Cook the rice in the water. Add the rice, chicken, soup, onion and bake. Opt. top with cheese.

Chile and fry bread (6 fry breads with chile, once a week)

or Chile and cornbread.
1 – 15oz can chile x 52=………………………………………. 52 cans chile
1 ½ c flour x 52=78 c=………………………………………. 6 ½ #10 cans flour
½ tsp salt x 52=26 tsp=……………………………………… 26 tsp salt
1 Tb shortening x 52 + 4 Tb for frying x 52=260 Tb…. 7 # shortening
½ Tb baking powder x 52=26 Tb=…………………… 3/4 # baking powder
3/4 c (+ or -) water x 52=39 c=…………………………….. 2 ½ gal water
Mix the flour, salt, 1 Tb shortening, baking powder and most of the water together and knead. (Add more water as necessary.) Let this dough sit for 30 min. Pull off pieces of dough, flatten into disks and fry in melted shortening on your stove. Cover with the heated beans and optional cheese.

Hamburger pie (makes 5-6 cups, once a week)
1 pint bottled beef or hamburger x 52=……………….. 52 pints beef
1 can corn x 52 =……………………………………………… 52 cans corn
1 can green beans x 52=……………………………………. 52 cans green beans
1 can tomato soup x 52=…………………………………… 52 cans tomato soup
2 Tb dried onions x 52=104 Tb=………………………….7 cups dry onion
1 1/2 c potato flakes x 52=78 c=……………….. 6 ½ #10 cans potato flakes
3 c water x 52 = 156 c=……………………………………… 9 3/4 gal. water
Place everything except the water and potato pearls in a casserole dish and heat in the solar oven. Heat the water at the same time. When the mixture is hot and the water is hot, add the potato pearls to the hot water and top the mixture with the potatoes. (Top with cheese?)

Parmesan chicken (makes 7-8 cups, once a week)
1 pint chicken x 52=……………………………………….. 52 pints chicken
½ pound spaghetti(4 c cooked) x 52=26 pounds=.. 6 #10 cans spaghetti 1 jar spaghetti sauce x 52=………………………………….52 jars sauce
½ c Parmesan cheese x 52=26 c=…………………….. 5 # Parmesan cheese
3 c water x 52=156 c=………………………………………9 3/4 gal water
Cook the spaghetti in the water. Layer spaghetti, chicken, Ragu, bread crumbs, cheese and bake.

Salmon and rice (makes 6-7 cups, once a week)
1 pint salmon x 52=…………………………………………… 52 pints salmon
1 ½ c rice (makes 4 ½ c) x 52=…………………………… 6 ½ #10 cans rice
1 Tb lemon pepper x 52=52 Tb=…………………………. 13 oz lemon pepper
1 can corn or other vegetable x 52=………………………. 52 cans corn
Cook rice in the water and serve salmon over the rice. Corn is a side dish.

Sweet and Sour Chicken (Makes 7 – 8 cups)
1 pint chicken x 52=………………………………………….. 52 pints chicken
1 ½ c rice x 52=78 c=……………………………………….. 6 ½ #10 cans rice
3 c water x 52=156 c=……………………………………….. 9 3/4 gal. water
1 can pineapple x 52=……………………………………….. 52 cans pineapple
2/3 c vinegar x 52 =35 c =280 oz=………………………. 2 gal. vinegar
1 1/3 c sugar x 52 =70 c=…………………………………… 35 # sugar
4 Tb cornstarch x 52 =208 Tb=………………………….. 4 ½ # cornstarch
4 Tb soy sauce x 52=208 Tb=……………………………… 1 gal. soy sauce
1 tsp Molasses x 52=………………………………………….. 12 oz molasses
1 Tb dried onion x 52=52 Tb=……………………………… 4 c dried onion
(opt ½ c sliced almonds, ¼ c dehyd. celery)
Cook the rice in the water in a qt jar or covered pot. (Heat the chicken in its jar at the same time). Put the pineapple juice, vinegar, sugar, cornstarch, soy and molasses into a qt jar. Shake well and cook in solar oven. Shake occasionally and cook until thickened. On the bed of cooked rice place the chicken, almonds, pineapple, and hydrated celery. Pour sauce over the top.

Taco soup (makes 9-10 cups, once a week)
1 pint ground beef or sausage x 52=……………. 52 pints meat
1 can kidney beans x 52=………………………….. 52 cans kidney beans

1 can corn x 52=……………………………………… 52 cans corn
1 29 oz can stewed or reg. tomatoes x 52=……. 52 cans tomato
2 c water x 52=104 c=………………………………. 6 ½ gal. water
3 Tb taco seasoning x 52=156 Tb=9 3/4 c=….. 2 ½ # taco seasoning

Easy meal ideas:
Bottled meat and barbeque sauce over rice, potatoes or bread.
Bottled meat with green chili, onions and Mexican spices on fry bread or tortillas.
Chicken, tuna, beef or peanut butter sandwiches on homemade bread(Use mayo and pickle packets). Chicken or tuna mixed with cooked noodles and cream of chicken soup.
Hamburger Helpers….add a pint meat.
Boxed macaroni and cheese.
Ragu or Prego and bottled sausage over spaghetti or on a homemade pizza crust….top with cheese. Tomato soup and oyster crackers with a toasted cheese sandwich. Ramen soup, Cup-a-soup, Campbell’s soups, dry packaged soups.

Freeze Dried Foods:
The advantages of freeze dried foods are numerous: They take little space, are easily prepared with hot water, the taste is very good, there is a wide variety from which to choose, the cooking time is just 10 minutes and they have a 30 year shelf life. The disadvantages are the high cost and the fact that the industry considers a serving to be one cup of prepared food.

SOURCE LIST
Shop around for your best prices. Use the internet…Ebay, amazon.com Google etc.

Blendtec.com 1-800-253-6383 (The LDS Church rarely endorses a product, but because 90% of those who have food storage don’t have a wheat grinder, they have chosen to endorse the Blendtec electric and hand wheat grinders.)

Bulkfoods.com: Buy unflavored gelatin, powdered molasses, dried fruits and vegetables, etc.

Cost Co/Sams Club: Good prices on chocolate chips, flour, sugar, nuts, Parmesan cheese and yeast.

Food Saver and Jar Sealer: Most stores carry these but the internet is the best place for inexpensive ones. The Jar sealer attachments can also be found here.

Internet-grocer.com Canned cheddar cheese ($2.75 / 8 oz can) or butter ($4.50 / 12 oz can)

Spices: Sahuaro Spice Co. Phoenix 602-272-8557. Fresh spices sold by the pound. Price list can be faxed. Store spices in mason jars to preserve freshness, but don’t vacuum seal fine powders…it can clog the works.

Solar ovens: Do some research on the internet or at the library. Global Sun Oven sells for about $200 at survivalunlimited.com/solar aimdiscount.com/SOven or kansaswindpower.net/solarcookers.

Walton Feed Lots of bulk food items (dehydrated celery, sweet peas, sour cream, etc) 1-800-847-0465.

EQUIVALENCY INFORMATION

APPLESAUCE…………… 16 Tb / c 4 c / qt
APPLE SLICES… 10 c in a #10 can =1 ¼ # 1 c dry + ½ c water=2 c fresh
BAKING POWDER …………… 32 Tb=1#
BAKING SODA …………………. 32 Tb=1#
BEANS …………………………. 1 #=2 ½ c dry = 6 c cooked 12 c in a #10 can

BUTTER (canned) …………… 12 oz can=24 Tb or 3 sticks of butter
CARROTS………. 12 c in a #10 can=2 ½ #. ½ c dry=1 c hydrated carrots
CELERY …………. 2 oz=1 c. 12 c in #10 can. ½ c dry=1 c hydrated celery
CHEESE (canned) ……………. 8 oz per can
CHEESE POWDER … 4 c in 1 # of powder. 96 Tb=1#. 1 Tb per 1 c cooked

COCOA………………90 Tb =1# Store in jars. Don’t vacuum pack
CORNMEAL………………………. 4 c=1 #
CORNSTARCH………………….. 45 Tb=1#
EGGS (powdered)……………….. 32 eggs=1#. 2 eggs=1 oz
FLOUR……………………………… 19 c=5# 12 c in a #10 can
GELATIN (Knox ……………. 1 oz unflavored gelatin=12 tsp of gelatin=12 “eggs”. 1# gelatin=192 “eggs” (egg substitute) 1 tsp gelatin + 3 Tb cold water + 2 Tb hot water=1 “egg”
HONEY…………………………….. 20 Tb=1 c 13 oz=1 c 6 c=5#
HOT CHOCOLATE ……………. 12 c in a #10 can #10 can=56 liquid c
MACARONI…………………. 12 c in a #10 can 4 c = 1 # 2 c dry=5 c cooked
MALT-O-MEAL……………..¼ c dry=1 c cooked. (1) 28 oz box=4 ½ c dry
MEATS……………………. 1 pint bottle holds 1# of meat 1 qt bottle holds 2#

MILK….. 1/4 c dry milk + 1 c water=1 c milk. 12‑13 c powder in #10 can
about 1/3 # dry = 1 c dry a #10 can=58 liquid c
MUSHROOMS……………………. 4 c dehydrated=3 oz 20 c=1 #
NOODLES…………………………. 4 c=8 oz 2 c dry=2 c cooked
REGULAR OATS……………….. 12‑13 c in a #10 can 1 c=4 oz
ONION……..½ onion=2 – 3 Tb dry. 16 Tb dry=1 c. 12 c=#10 can=192 Tb PARSLEY………………………….. 30 Tb=1 oz
PEPPER……………………………… 4 Tb=1 oz 1 c = 4 oz
PIZZA SPICE……………………… 42 Tb=1#
POPCORN……………………….. 12 c in a #10 can 1 c popcorn=16 c popped
POTATO flakes ………… 12 c in a # 10 can. 3 c flakes + 3 c water + 1 c milk= 4 1/2 c potatoes
PUDDING MIX………………….. 12 ‑13 c mix in a #10 can
RAISINS……………………………. 4 c=1#
RICE………………………….12 c in a #10 can 2 1/3 c=1# 1 c raw=3 c cooked

SALT………………………… 1 ½ Tb=1 oz 1 container=26 oz = 39 Tb=117 tsp

SHORTENING …………… 227 Tb=6# can 17 Tb =1 c 2 1/4 c=1# 1 c shortening + 6 tsp water=1c butter
SOUP BASE……………………….. 1/8 – ¼ c dry makes 6 c broth
SPAGHETTI………………………. 4 ‑ 5 # in a #10 can 8 oz=4 c cooked
SPICES………………………………. 1 c = 4 oz = 16 Tb 64 Tb=approx. 1#
SUGAR (white)…………….. 12 c in a # 10 can. 2 c=1#. 1#= 32 Tb = 96 tsp
SUGAR (brown)…………………. 1 1/3 c=1#
TAPIOCA………………………….. 40 Tb=1# 1 Tb=1 c cooked
TOMATO POWDER …………… 1 c powder + 2 c water=2 c tomato sauce
WHEAT……………………… # 10 can=5.8 # =12 c=18 c flour when ground
1 c wheat = 1 ½ c flour, 1#=2 ¼ c wheat=3.37 c flour
YEAST………………………………. 1# compressed= 32 Tbs

Shelf life: indefinite in freezer..1 year out of freezer

Index

Alfredo Sauce (almost)……….. 10 Granola…………………………….. 7
Apple Crisp………………………. 11
Beef and Beans…………………. 7 Grape Nuts……………………….. 7
Beef Soup…………………………. 7 Jar Cakes and Breads………….. 4
Beef Stew…………………………. 7 Macaroni and Cheese…………. 9
Bottling Meats……………………. 2-3 Marinara Sauce …………………. 11
Bread Whole Wheat………….. 6 Milk Variations………………….. 5
Brownies………………………….. 11 Muffins Oatmeal……………….. 6
Butter……………………………….. 4 Muffins Whole Wheat………… 6
Cheese (canned cheese)………. 4 Mushroom Soup………………… 11
Chicken Alfredo………………… 8 Oatmeal……………………………. 7
Chicken Creole………………….. 8 Parmesan Chicken …………….. 14
Chicken Delight…………………. 8 Pressure Canners ………………. 2
Chicken Fricassee………………. 8 Rice-A-Roni……………………… 9
Chicken and Rice………………. 8 Rice Cereal……………………….. 7
Chicken Soup……………………. 8 Shepherd’s Pie…………………… 9
Chili…………………………………. 8 Solar Oven Cooking ………….. 3
Chili-Mac………………………….. 9 Source List………………………… 15
Chocolate Cake…………………. 11 Spaghetti…………………………… 9
Chocolate Chip Cookies……… 11 Spice Cake………………………… 12
Chocolate Pudding/Pie………… 11 Sweet & Sour Chicken………… 9
Cinnamon Bread………………… 6 Taco Soup………………………… 10
Cooking Pasta……………………. 10 Tamale Pie………………………… 10
Cornbread…………………………. 6 Tapioca…………………………….. 12
Cream of Mushroom Soup….. 11 Tomato Soup…………………….. 10
Eggs (knox & fresh)…………… 4 User Friendly Foods…………… 13-14
Equivalency page………………. 16 Vacuum Sealing Foods……….. 5
Freeze Dried Foods…………….. 15 Water Storage……………………. 5
Goulash……………………………. 9 Wheat Cereal…………………….. 7 Graham Crackers 12 Wheat Thins……………………….12

everything_under_the_sun.pdf

6 Months later I finally have a link to the xls here. It’s at the bottom. For some reason I was unable to upload it when I made the post and I was going to try again the next day but it slipped my mind.

FoodPlan. Something I made up a while back.  The items in white are entered by you and the shaded gray are automatically calculated. This xls saves a whole lot of math as all you’re really doing is entering price paid, info from the label and estimating servings per day for each person. If you don’t have excel you can get OpenOffice which is open source and free. It will work with any MS Office files like Excel, Word, etc. BTW, do not remove the zeros. You’ll confuse excel. Hey, it’s an MS program so it’s easily confused.

Right now it’s mostly filled with data but you can simply overwrite that stuff. I’m going to some more work on it. I’m thinking of adding Cal from Fat and maybe cost per calorie for each item.
The best parts of it are the fact that it gives you cal/day for each person, you adjust the quantity to get you the desired 365 days, (it’s based on 365 but changing a formula or two will change that) total cost for one years worth is also divided by 365 and given as daily cost just below the years cost.

I don’t actually have everything on this list and I have some items not on the list. My items have changed but for kicks I adjusted all the quantities to get close to 365 days worth. You’ll notice that only meat on it is DAK ham. I have other meat. When I did this thing I was just using stuff that I consider cheap and long lasting (poorboy style) with the exception of easy mac. (Kraft mac & cheese packaged in single servings) There convenient. Especially for the BOBs. It works out to $8.90 per day cost or $3247.75 for my family of 4 for a year. This is based on or works out to be 2400 cal/day for the adults and 2100 for the kids. 6 and 8 yrs old so probably more than they need. Some stuff is LTS and some is canned goods.

If someone needs it mildly reconfigured, like for more than 4 people let me know and I’ll do one up for you. It may seem a bit overkill but I wanted to know the calorie count for each person hence the servings per day column for each. Here’s an image of it. I tried to save it as an interactive html file from excel but the blog didn’t like it and just showed the code.

And here’s the XLS file foodplan.xls

Don’t you just hate sensational phrases in bold type meant to freak you out? It’s hard enough trying to get started into preparedness without that sort of thing. Then there’s pressure when you find out that you should have a year or two worth of food and it doesn’t stop there. After all you need water, toiletries, meds, fuel, alternative energy to cook the food and the list goes on until you’re pretty much paralyzed by the feeling of doom thinking “there’s no way I’ll be able to get it done”. That and the uncomfortable feeling that you may be slightly nuts for even doing it in the first place. After all it’s not the norm.

Once again, take a deep breath and relax. Don’t worry so much about how fast you can do it. That’ll only slow you down. As far as whether or not you can afford it, yes you can afford it. You just might not be able to run out tomorrow and spend $5000 and be done with it.

First things first. How much food do you have in the house now? How long would it last if the stores ran out or were closed indefinitely tomorrow? Scary ha?

Start with a Pantry. You do have a pantry don’t you? I got lucky when I rented this house as it had a breakfast nook with a closet in it. Only took a few months to pretty much fill that closet with enough food to last a few months. Under any situation, besides a complete teotwawki situation, that should be plenty. How did this poorboy do it? I did a little extra work every week that made that little extra money and that money was set aside just for stocking up. I also became a thrifty shopper. That gets easier when you have a decent amount of food. Once you have a few weeks extra then you can wait to buy stuff until it’s on sale. B1G1 sales are a great way to stock up. Simply wait for those and and when you would normally buy 5 of something buy 10 and set back the free ones. Couponing. Start using coupons. Don’t be embarrassed. I’m a guy and I do it. Along with the B1G1, use coupons and now you’re getting your groceries for 40% of the normal cost if not less. For coupons you can search the web for some thrifty gal or guy in your region that has a couponing blog. There’s a pretty good one for me called southernsavers.com. She has all the weekly ad contents right on her site along with links to get coupons for the items in the ad that are on sale. Once you get started and have some extra food, you’re no longer buying what you need for that week. You’re buying the things you use when they’re on sale. Check the FAQs on these couponing blogs for tips and tricks. smartsource.com and coupons.com are the two most popular sites for printable coupons. Normally they’ll allow you to print two of each but they both tend to have a lot of duplicates which gives you four. If you have use of another computer then you’ll be up to eight. When looking through your local grocery ad and find something you use on sale, go to one of the coupon sites/blogs and search for that name of the product. Also you can go to the manufacturers website and possibly find coupons. You’ll probably have to sign up but that’s OK. They’ll email you coupons and recipes and some will send them in the mail. A lot of people buy the Sunday paper just to get the coupons out of it. Once you get started it gets real easy and doesn’t cost a thing. I started by just going shopping one time when we didn’t need to. Yes that was a couple of hundred bucks I really couldn’t afford but we managed. Just like you manage when your car breaks and it suddenly costs you 200 or any other unexpected expense. You manage.

LTS or Long Term Storage. This ones pretty easy to get going with the basics because the basics are cheap. Rice, Beans, Sugar, Salt, Flour (and then wheat). They are all dirt cheap and people all over the world survive on these basics. Especially rice. Can’t live without meat? Wanna bet. Rice, Beans and a grain makes a complete protein replacement for meat. A little soy actually makes a more complete protein but I haven’t found anything soy based that I could stomach so I have canned meat. I know, canned meat is nothing like a good ole ribeye but it will do. The canned ham like DAK is not all that bad when fried up or chunked and added to beans and it lasts years. 5-6 if I remember correctly. (btw I find the dollar general Bristol Brand to be the exact same as DAK only cheaper, get a can of each and compare them, personally I think they come from the same factory) There’s also canned Tuna, Chicken, Beef, salmon etc. Then there’s good ole Spam and Vienna Sausage. I like the Spam Lite because it’s not so salty and the only Vienna Sausage I can stand it the smoked but if starving, you will eat most anything as history has proven. Canned fruit and veggies last up to two years or more. Flour will not last very long. 5-6 months at best. That’s where wheat kernels come in. Oh, and a good grinding mill which ain’t cheap. You can get a cheap unit made in china but you get what you pay for and then later you’ll pay for what you got.  As for wheat, there’s a few different types and here’s the easy explanation so you won’t have to be belittled when asking on some forum and someone acts like you’re stupid for not knowing. Some of the old pros can be that way.

Hard Red Wheat = Whole Wheat Bread/Flour
Hard White Wheat = WhiteWheat Bread/UnBleached Flour
Soft White Wheat =  Pastries

Soft white wheat doesn’t store as well as hard varieties which store indefinitely when stored properly.  Storage techniques will be another post and I will link to it from here when it’s written.

Here’s something that will help with your food storage. I created an excel spreadsheet for myself but am more than happy to share it. After all your one less person looking for food. There’s instructions that go with it so I’m making a separate post for it.

If you’re new to all this you may be freaking a bit. Especially if you’ve recently run across sites or articles that make every effort to freak you out about things that when presented in a certain way can scare the crap out of you. Take a deep breath, now let it out slowly and let your mind relax.  Some of these people do this to make a buck and some do it just for the perverted fun ot it. Just think about Hardin, Montana. It was some kind of weirdness certainly but someone made a post or sent an email out saying the town had been closed off and that there were foreign forces policing the town, going door to door etc and that this was how Obama was going to take over the U.S., one town at a time. The plan is in place and there is nothing we can do now yackity shmackity blah blah blah. I think it started out with “Dear Intergressors”. Haa? Yet people believed it. Turned out to be a conman trying to make a buck. Not a very smart one at that. Pull into town with leased mercedes sporting Hardin Police stickers featuring the Serbian Coat of Arms. Of course hardin hadn’t had City Police in years. Talk about slick. (don’t know the keyboard shortcut for roll eyes)

For those of us paying attention there’s lots to be scared about. Especially the fact that not many seem to be paying attention or are getting the wool pulled over their eyes buy the over actors and actresses that call themselves newcasters these days. Our Nation has turned into a Nation of actors, actresses and performers. That can be seen by the TV ratings. American Idols in the flesh aka the freak show. Brought to you live from DC and from our youth. Effectiveness? They know not. So relax, live your everyday lives but just do it with the knowledge that things cannot continue on the current path without finally collapsing. (and this may include the way you currently live your life) With a worldwide economy based on credit and run as a ponzy scheme, someone’s got to pay the piper eventually and it’s not going to be the ones that run it as far as they’re concerned. That leaves the rest of us screwed unless we can overcome, outlast, persevere and clean up after them. It means self sufficiency and self sustainability. Something a lot of .org types and activists spout on a regular basis but most don’t practice in Real Life. There’s two types of them. There’s the flower child types that just want to live on communes, grow organic and sing koombya and then there’s the Al Gore types that stand to make a major profit (and already has) off of new .gov regulations like cap and trade and false scare tactics like scaring our children into thinking the world is going to end soon and telling them it’s their parents/previous generations faults. They seem to like “empowering children” these days too all in the name of anti bullying and confidence building. Children are much easier to control than thinking adults after all. Roll out .gov healthcare especially for the young because “we care”. And hey while we’re at it, let’s ratify that U.N. Treaty that gives children more rights than the parents. After all we know better than the parents.

Bottom line. Preparedness is whatever you need to make of it based on your own deep thoughts on the world, your beliefs, your abilities and how much you’re willing to put into the future. Not just the immediate future but for generations to come.  I bought a fifth wheel trailer recently that had some high school text books left in it. One was called “The chronicles of America”. On the back cover was a quote from William Jefferson Clinton. Why does a Florida High School Text Book about America have a quote from a President that got a BJ on the job? Because he was cool? He played the Sax on late night TV wearing sunglasses after all. The Bilderberg group must have seen a couple that they could make use of for their agenda. Whatever that is. Keep the population dumb and entertained? Yup. But I also buy foil at a club store because it comes in extra wide, extra thick rolls. Hey, it lasts for over a year and costs just a little more than one puny roll from the local grocery store. Save money, packaging, Fuel for me and the eighteen wheelers  etc. Does that make me crazy or reality based “green” as opposed to the redistributive or taxation based green?

The choice is yours. If you choose the red pill please try and relax. This may feel a little wierd. If you take the blue pill then Idol is coming up soon and there’s lots of other TV shows that will show you how OK it is to be “different” because we’re all special people and all deserve special rights. ??? Go ahead, Click a Pill.

I’ve been so busy with everyday life I haven’t had time to post here. I also had to take a break from all the “learning” I had been doing. It was getting to me. I did start watching a little FoxNews again. I also get 20 or so emails a day from various Tea Party Patriots. I read a few but a lot of them are the same subject just from different people as the news spreads. Opened one yesterday and learned that Obama revised one of Reagan’s executive orders pertaining to how Interpol (yes Interpol from WWII, think Nazi’s) can operate in this country. Basically Reagan allowed interpol to operate here with some exceptions that we had to know exactly what they were doing and they had to follow our rules. Obama removed those exceptions. Now interpol can operate on U.S. soil in any manner they want with no oversight. It almost seems like we have an America hater as prez. Screw America, bring in the NWO? Global governance? Global Police and Military? I believe it will happen and I don’t think it’s being done with everyone’s best interest in mind. (although a lot of foolish people believe so) It’s all about power and control. Not some Star Trek fantasy where everyone is happy, healthy, and working for the common good of mankind and no one has to worry about money, food, water, clothing. Humans are no where ready for that. Trying to force it on the planet is not going to work. I don’t, however, believe it’s going to be as spectacular of an event as people like Alex Jones make it out to be but who knows. It could be worse than anything we can imagine.

Anyways, back to everyday life. It wasn’t too bad of a year. Haven’t done a whole lot of prepping but I did get a few important things done. Got my truck on the road and reliable. Still got lots to do on it. New tires this spring will double the value of the truck. 200+ a piece for round hunks of rubber and steel just doesn’t make sense to me. I also got the family outfitted in new cold weather clothing. We’d been lacking in that area for the last few years and in FL, it’s pretty easy to get by without that stuff but I went camping with the kids in Nov. and it ended up being in the 40s and windy. We were all constantly shivering due to our cotton clothes.  FL cold is a nasty moist kind of cold that goes right through you. I’m from up North originally and also spent a couple of years in the midwest. 40 degrees in FL is like 25 degrees in other places. I was looking at carhartt but the local tractor supply doesn’t carry my size and everything online would have cost me 100 bucks just for Bib Overalls in my size. They don’t make the cheap ones for me. I have to get the deluxe/special/fancy style. That’s 100 bucks just for the bottom half of me. Add in the Wife and kids and we’re talking over 500 bucks for clothes that are only useful for a couple of months here. Plus the kids won’t fit in a year or two. I started looking at other brands like Key, Watts, Berne and found Berne to be the best value all things considered including color choice and style. Still not cheap and I refuse to buy no name stuff so I became a Berne retailer. I also started an online store to sell the stuff but I can’t afford to buy stock as that would be five digits to get a good selection and now’s not the time to be doing anything on credit. Since I don’t have a brick and mortar retail store to support, I can still sell at a competitive price, especially if more than one item is purchased but I can’t get items to people in a few days. I have to get it shipped to me and then reship. Berne’s not real big on dropshipping and I prefer to actually see the product myself to make sure the order is right and the quality is there. So think of it like the old days. “Please allow 10-14 days for delivery” Well without further ado, here’s the store. Craggy Ridge Still needs an “official logo” but I’ll have to wait for that to “come to me”. In other words, like most commercial artists, I’ll have to find a design I like to “borrow an idea from”. I was in the sign business for 20+ years and saw a lot of highly paid designers with commercial art degrees spend a lot of time thumbing through the sign design contest issues of magazines for the sign business.

I’m working on finding other outlets for high quality yet affordable items needed for the world as we know it and beyond. I could go out and buy a ton of Military surplus but some of it is very heavy and none of it is stylish enough for most people to use on a regular basis. Camping gear, knives, tools etc. Things I know about. I’m not going to sell seeds or LTS food but will have links on my sites for the best values, along with reviews. I’ll probably make a lousy retailer as profit is not my main concern. I found a site recently that has a slew of items and at decent prices but they also carry a “full line” of cheap china crap camping supplies and a lot of brands I’ve never heard of that are probably the same.  They also have some decent prices on some decent names but who wants to sift through all that junk. I could care less about having 5000 items if 3800 of them are junk.

I’ll be hitting the flea markets to sell things too. Yes, I’m going to be one of those flea market people. It’ll give me and the kids something to do on Saturdays when the Wife is working. Better than Sat. cartoons. Teach them business. Maybe when they get older they can go to a middle eastern country and start a beverage store. Ya.

Well, it seems Mr non talker is rambling again. Take Care.

This post is a sticky to the front page of the site. 09.12.09

These “posts” are general thoughts by me and in no particular order. The tabs at the top are the real info. These posts are overviews and opinions and also occasional ranting. I’ll try to keep most of them short. No promises. I don’t talk much so this is my outlet.

I posted a thread with this title (To Poor to Survive?) on a preparedness forum once and they just didn’t get the point.  They took it as me wanting all the fancy gadgets because I mentioned the cost of what they consider to be a minimally adequate knife being out of my reach. They came back with suggestions of real cheap knives that only cost 70-80 bucks and to get over it. OK, I can afford a purchase like that every 2-3 weeks. But that’s just one little item. According to all the survivalist guru’s lists of must have items it would take me 100 years to purchase everything I need for my family of four to survive a few years of hardship, teotwawki, shtf scenario. So I’ve had to come up with my own plan. I went through a time of near depression due to the way these people made me feel. They just couldn’t imagine someone could be poor and not be a bad person.  It’s not a good feeling thinking you’ve condemned your Wife and kids due to not excelling in life. I’m over it. There’s a lot of people out there that think if your poor you must have some kind of problem. A lack of drive, bad decisions etc and you have no chance nor do you deserve it. Bull. While I may be poor I’m not unintelligent. I think there’s a lot of us out there that may not have excelled in life but have good values. I’d love to have a Country Living Grain Mill but that’s not an option. I’d love to have a Big Berkey water filter but that’s about the same price. I’m currently driving a truck that I spent less on than those two items.  I’d like to have a 40 acre retreat with a fallout shelter, a fruit tree orchard, animals for meat, 5 acres of garden, an armory, an emp proof vehicle with 500 gallons of bio diesel and the ability to make more, a solar system,  propane appliances with 500 gal tank, 1000 lbs of grain, 3000 lbs of other LTS food, 500 rolls of TP and a million other things in stock for a few years worth. Anyone got 200K I can borrow? Oh yeah I forgot the stockpile of silver and gold.

So what’s a poor boy to do? Improvise.  That and a whole lot of other things. I’ve always managed to make do. Maybe it’s luck, maybe it’s faith although I couldn’t quote you any scriptures I have read them and I did get the drift and agree. I’ve traveled across the country in a $200 van. This was a decade ago and I knew nothing about carrying a BOB or a GHB but I did carry plenty of tools and had to use them quite a bit. Fill up the oil and check the gas. My Wife, who was my Girlfriend at the time, says I have NAPA radar. We made it from Florida to Utah to work for a couple of months and made it back. I’ve always been the self sufficient type and that’s how I happened upon survivalist sites. I was actually looking for something half way between a riding lawnmower and a tractor. I’d love to have a tractor but can’t afford one. My Mother-in-law needed something about the same for her property she bought to retire on. I found a site where a guy was using a vintage 70s lawn tractor to actually plow his garden. He had a link to a home blacksmith buddies website. I did 20 years of metal fab so this interested me. On that site there was a link to a book in pdf version online which was written by members of a preparedness site. It’s actually a survivalist site but when people hear that word they think white supremacist, militia, single guy with 20,000 rounds of ammo, fully automatic weapons wanting to bomb a government building. Not so. There may be a few phsycos but there are some of those in every walk of life. It’s about not having to go to the Superdome or some other facility due to some natural or man-made event. I’m not going to get into all the conspiracy theory stuff here. Suffice to say all kinds of things can happen that might leave you dependent on others and that takes away your ability to be in control of you own life. It’s not completely unavoidable but you can reduce the chances. Even if you’re not a person of means.

I’ve run across tons of information and have gone through the whole information overload thing. I will be organizing this information and placing it here as I go. I’m not looking for you to “join my club” or be a “part of my click” or be “completely like minded” whatever that really means. I have spent 100′s if not 1000′s of hours collecting and disseminating information and learning. If you like what you find on this site feel free to donate. The information here will save you money, time and may just save your butt. Donating is not a requirement nor will it “get you into the good parts of the site”. I have had thoughts of starting a forum and will if I get enough interest in this site. There seems to be a missing link in the survival forums. That happy medium between the hard line exclusive club and the anything goes sites. The more I watch the current events, the more I see us going the way of a 3rd world country. We are splitting and there’s no more promised lands to sail to.  I’ve got well over 500 PDF files and hundreds of other pages of techniques and ideas. I will be condensing them as suited to the needs of most of us. Basically it will end up being a modern day survival manual “for the rest of us”.  It’s not going to be all about any one particular subject. It’s not going to be the typical survival subjects either. (beans, bullets and bandages) It will start with everyday stuff like shopping and cooking and other things only doing it cheaper while also working in a well stocked pantry of items that will store well. That will give you some money to stock up more. I will also cover the other end of the spectrum of living in and off of the wild. Food is  just one subject but I will get into many more. My plan is to put together the information that will allow you to get a jump into frugality, self sufficiency, preparedness, survivalism without having to spend hundreds of hours gathering information from thousands of people that are not in full agreement and to save you from having to kiss peoples butts and be demeaned trying to get information only to watch an argument of experts unfold. I know how frustrating and time consuming it can be to find all the answers. BTDT. It almost seems that some will have animosity towards you if you post that you bought a printer for 100 bucks to print out information from their site but didn’t send them any money to become a premium member or buy something from their store. Well that $100 printer has already paid for itself and the largest print job was from one forum post that was someones personal collection of information from across the web but while it was somewhat categorized it had repetition galore. 1000 pages that could have been 500. I do appreciate the info though. I’m not real knowledgeable on the subjects of tactics and weapons but I do have some freely distributable documents on those subjects that I will post.

Well there you have it. My mission statement so to speak. Take Care, John Patriot Czar

Don’t forget, the meek shall inherit the earth.

BTW, if you’d like to sign up to be able to post a comment use the contact page. I do this because of the spambots. If your post is non related or seems related but is actually an advertisement I’ll delete it and ban your IP adress.  If your comment corrects me it will stay. If it’s just a different opinion I will acknowledge but I’m not into arguing so the next rebuttal may be deleted. If  it’s a question, I’ll answer it as best as I can or do my best to direct you to someone who can.