Keeping the Essential Foods going

[MaryN]

I've decided to give myself a bit of a challenge. After reading a few articles recommending that preppers keep so much food stocks in hand to cover the period post SHTF, I started thinking. What happens when those food essentials run out? Now that might seem an obvious question with a simple answer - just get some more in, but what happens if there are no more supplies immediately available? The hungry hoardes have raided the supermarkets and your stocks of basic foods are down to the crumbline. Could you replace them from your own survival experience; sideways thinking or versatility?

I decided to look closely at a number of what I call basic food necessities. These were flour, sugar, salt & seasonings and dairy. I figured obtaining fruit and vegetables would probably be slightly easier, and meat, again, could be provided by basic smallholder tactics (poultry, rabbits, etc). Game would be available for a while, but what happens when you run out of bullets? Anyone got a spare ferret?

So, let's assume that nice sack of grain you had set aside has come to an end. What next? No flour means no bread, pastry, thickenings, no carbs in fact. Now, I know that some of the Forum members are quite able to plan and execute a grain harvest, but let's push this a bit further. You need grain to sow it to get grain. Did anyone keep a supply of grain back for seed? It's February and the wheat is already in the ground for autumn harvest - could you organise that; find somewhere to grow it; till, harrow and sow (assuming you had seed to start with), and then protect your crop from others? Harvesting, say wheat, without machinery would be very hard and much labour would be needed to get it in - at the right time of year -, thresh it, store it, grind it..... In all honesty, I think this would be more than most people could actually manage alone - you would need community help. Oh and by the way, you need to watch the weather. On my own, could I replace my stocks? Probably not - that's flour off the menu.

Now, sugar, that sweet hit. I suppose you could use honey for a lot of things, but obviously you do need bees. I'll leave the logistics with you. I plan to get a hive or two and will be picking T-Oddity's brains in due course. But, back to sugar. In this country much of the sugar we use comes from cane, and this does not grow in this country (to my knowledge anyway). In East Anglia where I live one of the large crops is sugar beet. You see piles of the beet at harvest time and it is carted off for processing. All well and good. Again, this is going to require land to sow the stuff (assuming you can get seed), and the usual follow up to harvest. I have no idea how to process sugar beet, and even if I could get enough quantity to make sugar, I have no experience of dealing with it. Note to me: filch a couple of the beets next time I see a convenient pile and see what I can do with it. Sugar, may or may not be on the menu - jury's out on that one.

O.k., salt next. I've seen salt made in the salt pans in France. It looks suspiciously easy. It is, after all, basically just a process of evaporation. Do we have salt mines in this country? I'm not sure I could live without salt; it's so important in cooking. I may try to collect a bit of seawater and see if I can produce even a haze of salt. Seasonings next. I guess most spices would be off the menu as they are imported anyway. I would hate to be without pepper, cinnamon, ginger etc., but I would at least have reliable herbs in the garden. Not too bad on this - I could make do.

Dairy..... well, living without milk, cheese and butter would be a hardship. I could obtain a cow or a goat to provide the necessary, but there is a bit of a problem there.... you need the services of a bull or billy to keep your cow/goat producing decent quality milk. I am always surprised that people do not understand how milk is actually produced. They seem to think that the poor old cow just keeps going, and of course she needs to be regularly put into calf to keep the milk flowing. Same goes for the nannygoat. If you are just going to keep one cow for your dairy needs, you might find it difficult to track down a bull. Even if the idiots hadn't killed off everything in sight, it could still be problematic. There is no way I would recommend anyone without experience in cattle to try keeping a bull. They can be very dangerous indeed, and you do need to know what you are doing. Perhaps sticking to goats would be easier. Smaller, grazing needs met by scrubland to a certain extent and you can contain them. So, dairy has possibilities.

So, reading back through that lot, I can see that, without community aid, my diet would be reduced to a very basic one. It would be very weather-dependent as far as the fruit/veg goes, and I would need to be able to maintain some form of pasture for livestock.

To be honest, it would be easy to fail, and I think that many people without any experience is providing the basics for themselves, and without a supermarket to trawl through, would sink without trace.

[Steve]

They key is to start growing and saving seed now, not "after".

Your point about salt made me think. I have a fair stock, but eventually it would need replacing. I know seawater contains quite a lot of salt, and as I live 2 miles from the sea a short trip in the van or by tractor would enable me to bring back a few thousand litres in IBC containers. I could evaporate it at my leisure, for use storing meat, and supplement my intake by cooking with it or drinking it with fresh water.

A quick google indicates that there could be 75lbs of salt in one IBC container of seawater, which is a lot more than I expected, and could be very useful for preserving. I need to double check that figure - seems a lot.

[Mortblanc]

Look at what you have there Mary and really examine it historically. What you did not have before the world markets developed you can live without during times of hardship.

You can eliminate sugar as a necessity immediately. Refined sugar was unknown in GB historically for thousands of years. It was not common in working class homes until the 19th century when slave labor in the colonies made it a dirt cheap way of feeding the poor with empty calories.

Historically, sweetness was obtained from fruits and honey.

Dairy was not in the past what it is now. Milk was not commonly consumed raw. It was a great transmitter of tuberculosis and was dangerous to consume as a drink before Pasteur came up with his germ killing process, which is now usually required by law for sale.

Most milk was skimmed of cream and turned into various cheeses and butter. Salting and flavoring the cheese and butter helped kill some of the bacteria and provided preserved calories for long term use. Many of the long term preserved cheeses are boiled as processed and last for years.

That brings you to seasonings.

There are some traditional British herbs that are still used but the real spices were always imported from elsewhere. The is what drove the exploration of the 15th and 16th centuries, made fortunes and required colonies abroad.

Many cooks keep their own private herb gardens and they were a feature of most of the kitchen gardens of the past. Foods tasted much different with more of the savory in the mix rather than the spicy-hot, sweet, and artificially sour. My wife was a great herb gardener and kept a 20x50 patch of herbs under cultivation.

That leaves us with wheat, which in the old days was both stewed as porridge and ground to flour for bread. But that bread was not what we know it today. It was heavy and coarse with a good bit of barley and rye four mixed with the wheat, and it was not ground too well or bleached white. Barley and Rye are easier to grow and tougher toward the climate than wheat so the villains of the preindustrial era planted a mix, just in case the wheat failed.

Besides, the Lord of the manor took his cut of the duties out of the wheat crop so there was often little left anyway. Even today there is a class of loaf we refer too as "peasant breads". During the days past one took a slab of that heavy coarse loaf on their wooden trencher and tore out the center, then ladled the stew that was constantly over the fire into the cavity. The bread was dense enough to contain the stew and keep it from seeping over the trencher sides. Any that did escape you soaked up with the big chunk you tore out of the center.

Salt, yep it is a requirement, not specifically for seasoning but for preservation of the food. You can evaporate it or speed up the process of evaporation through boiling. You place the bit 50 gallon kettle on the fire and fill it with sea water. As it boils down you add more sea water and more sea water until the contents of the kettle simply refuses to dissolve any more salt, then you boil it until the contents are a thick soup and take it off the fire. As the contents precipitate into a sludgy powder you spread it out to dry, bag it and take it home.

Of all the things you have cited the salt is the most important. There was good reason the Romans paid their soldiers with salt. Their salary. Salt was always in high demand and held a good price anywhere in the Roman world.

Without around 20 pounds of salt per pig, for preservation, you will have no pork for the winter. Addressing that fact, one did not usually worry about salting their food at the table. The cook usually could not get enough salt out of the preserved foods to give you the desire for adding more.

Now, as for our preps of one year duration ??

Yes the intent there is to allow for one full cycle of the growing season so crops can be planted, harvested and preserved.

Some will not have the space,, equipment, seed, or knowledge to do that.

Yes, they will die.

[MaryN]

You know, MB, I never gave salting food to preserve it a thought. That makes salt even more important to my plan. Brining and pickling could also be classed as important. Actually, I will add the manufacture of vinegar as an important skill (yes, I have found out how to do that).

[Devonian]

Great thread Mary.

Another great food preservation technique is smoking ie: smoked Herring which was once very popular and a mainstay for many families in this area.

Similarly in Alaska, Salmon is smoked to preserve it and to keep it available through out the winters.

Plus the smoking process is relatively simple and it has the benefit of not needing huge quantities of salt.

But these are all preservation skills that I really need to sharpen up on.

[Mortblanc]

Many of these "skills" for survival have come down to us in disguise.

Do you like "Corned beef" ? The name came from the course kernelled salt that was used in the process. You brine it and let is sit for up to a week in a cool spot, like a spring house, then cook it.

Just dumping fresh meat in a barrel of brine insured it would keep for months. It was the same with fish, which were more a part of the diet in the past then now. Fish would keep forever in a barrel of brine and could be salted and sun dried and kept for years.

That makes a big difference in how one views the food supply on the hoof. While many will say "no need to waste a calf/deer/hog, it will only last 24-36 hours and all the meat will be wasted", a savvy individual will look at the same animal and think "Veal fillets tonight, steaks tomorrow, stew for next 4 days, corned beef in a week and jerky for the next month!"

One must also consider that in the past they butchered animals differently than we do today. In the past they wanted more joints and stew pieces, today we go for steaks, roasts and prime cuts.

That was because in the past there was ALWAYS a kettle of stew on the hearth and it was seldom emptied. The cook simply added what was on hand to what was already there. Kept hot, there was little problem with bacteria growth.

Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot 9 had old.

Now does that change the cookware one would want in a crisis situation?? (That two liter titanium backpacking pot or the aluminum cookware out of the kitchen might not be what you need. Probably ought to check into getting a good 3-5 gallon stock pot.)

Besides, they did not know what bacteria was. Washing the dishes was not a consideration. You ate off a wooden trencher that was scraped clean, not washed, and you used the cleanest spoon you could find, or ate with your knife. Everyone carried an "eating knife" and often the blade was wide enough to use as a spatula to transfer the stew from trencher to mouth.

Forks were not common in the general population until well into the 19th century. You did not need them, most foods were served as a stew and only the spoon was required.

Spoilage was also viewed differently due to their lack of "germ knowledge". They would add spices to slightly turned meat, which was why spices were in such demand, especially pepper, which covered a multitude of "off tastes".

Maggots would be scraped from the surface of what they were on, any particularly nasty bits removed and the food consumed. Mold on cheese or meat was simply trimmed off and the food used normally. That is still a common action today. You eat blue cheese don't you, and mushrooms are little more than a sophisticated fungus.

Often meat was hung for several days before it was consumed. since one was often eating only the oldest and what was about to die anyway, or what dropped dead during the night, the meat offered peasants was mostly too tough to chew with their few teeth anyway. The beginnings of decomposition tenderized the meat so it could be chewed, and was another reason why the foods were boiled to sludge.

Birds were often hung by their tail feathers and not considered good for consumption until they had fallen from the string.

Today, we refer too it a aging the meat.

Now, while smoking is an effective process for preservation of foods it does require a good deal of salt or spices if not accompanied by other processes. Just hanging meat in a Smokey room for an hour or two will do nothing to preserve it. The smoking process usually is added to some amount of heat, usually around 160 degrees f, rendered from the cold smoking process or the sun, or to heavy slating or spicing.

And a true smoking process lasts for quite a long time. From two days to two weeks of intense heavy smoke in a confined space. For preservation one needs far more than the "hint of smoke" we get in processed and gourmet foods today. The smoke has to permeate the meat, which was why fruit wood and wood with nicely flavored aromas were chosen.

Even when one makes jerky today it is a process which requires mild heat and lasts over night. It also varies by what spices are added to the jerky and how much salt is rubbed into the strips of meat. You remove the water and add spices to inhibit bacteria growth.

And yes, I am speaking from experience in all these matters. I have done each of the processes at one time or another.

Except for the maggot scraping and eating decomposed birds. I skipped that part of the historic experience.

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I do live to get in on these common sense threads that can be used for life today as well as emergencies.

I think I will brave the snow, go to the store and buy the fixings for a good sauerbraten. I have not made one in several years.

Thanks for starting this one up Mary.

[Devonian]

MB, in my ignorance where does salt the come into the smoking process?

My understand was you needed to fillet the fish (or meat) into fine strips and then you would hang the strips in a smoking shed/cabinet from where the heat would dry out the fish/meat without actually cooking it and smoke would then work to seal and preserve the fish.

As you stated this would takes hours/days and you should be using hardwoods rather than sappy pine to avoid depositing tars onto the produce.

This really is something I should know about, but don't, its a process my grandfather and his family were actively involved in with the Herring industry for his entire working life!

[Mortblanc]

I am sure there are different processes for different species fish, which I have no knowledge of. I know nothing of "oily fish" which are smoked and dried differently than what I have done.

The traditional method of drying, which I have used, was extremely simple. Split the fish from head to tail leaving the two sections connected at the tail. Hang the fish on the drying rack, dry in the sun with smoke wafting around the fish for minimum of 48 hours, or "fire smoke/cold smoke" in a closed shed where the temp is brought up to 160f for 48 hours. For drying and smoking no salt was required but that was a process of both drying and smoking, not one or the other.

I have also processed dried fish in the common house hold dehydrator with success.

Brining is far easier to accomplish and insures preservation beyond doubt. The recipe is about the same for any product.

First, you fill a barrel 1/4 full of water.

Second you fill another big pot with water and put in on to boil. Add salt to the boiling water until no more will dissolve. Move that to the big barrel of water. Continue doing this until the solution in the barrel will float a raw egg. Allow the brine water to cool.

Third, add fish, or beef, or pork, preferably not all at once. Separate barrels are usually desired.

Alternately, one can pour a layer of dry salt in the barrel, then a layer of meat. Rub salt thoroughly into the surface of the meat beforehand. No two pieces of meat should touch each other directly. Add another thick layer of salt and more meat. Continue the layering until the barrel is full or you run out of meat.

The British Navy lived on this salt beef or salt pork for several hundred years before refrigeration became standard on sailing vessels.

We used to kill as many as 25 hogs at a time when I was younger. By younger I mean in my 20s and 30s, not childhood. We waited for a crisp fall day and worked the slaughter, butchered the meat and laid it out to cool in the crisp air overnight. That night we cleaned intestines for sausage casings, ground scrap meat and fat, mixed pepper and spices into the ground mix and filled sausage casings. It was usually an all night job but we had to do it that way because we had no means of refrigerating up to 3 tons of meat!

Next morning we had a huge breakfast of fresh tinderloin, eggs, hash browns, hominy grits and biscuits (you would refer to them as scones). After breakfast we salted the meat and placed it in the "salt box" just like I described in the above reference to the barrel. When all the meat was covered with a good layer of salt we got to take a nap, finally.

After the nap you started rendering the lard, which was just as important as the meat.

Now this was not a project for an individual, or a couple. (well maybe a couple could do one hog if they were both big and burley) It often took a half dozen people just for manhandling the hogs around before they were blocked out. They had to be killed, then scalded to remove the hair, then the hair scraped off. Then they were hoisted and the innards removed and the offal searched for organ meats while two more men split the carcass with axes and saws. Just the killing and butchering would be an all day job for a half dozen grown men.

All this had to be done n a 24 hour period on a cool day to insure the meat did not spoil. A bad weather prediction, with a freezing night, a warm night, or even a brief rain, would mean all the meat was suspect. Environmental conditions had to be perfect. There was no "do over".

On the American family farm the ratio was usually predicted as one pig per person per year. Salt for preservation was figured at 20 pounds salt per pig.

10 pigs=200 pounds of salt needed. You are not going to get by with just that extra box in the pantry.

And yes, I have a 100 pound bag of salt in my preps. I also live within 10 miles of one of the most famous salt springs in eastern North America, where rendering salt was a business before Europeans ever set foot in the new world. Even the stone age savages used salt to preserve their foods.

All of this is knowledge which we have mostly lost in the past two generations.

Always remember, brining works almost all the time, salting, smoking and drying, or a combination of thiose operations, work only under the right conditions.

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As an after thought I must add that if one is drying or "jerking" it should be done only with meat from the Ruminant family; cattle, bison, deer, moose, elk, goat.

Never attempt to make jerky from pork, mutton or any of the animals with "soft fat" after rendering. The fat in the meat will go rancid.

One should also refrain from attempting to make jerky from "small game". Too many parasites which the drying process will not eliminate.

[Grumpy Grandpa]

I like this thread Mary. I have little in the way of experience to add to it, save some despair at what I don't know! But I like it, just the same.

Such occasional reminders go a long way...

[Mortblanc]

Thing is that salt is so important as a prep, so ignored and so cheap!

http://www.tractorsupply.com/en/store/am...salt-50-lb

Plain old stock salt from the farm supply will work fine for most applications, and can be had anywhere in these type sealed bags. It has unlimited shelf life.

100 pounds of salt for $13 US or about 8 pounds British currency. It is one of the most important and cheapest long term preps one can buy.

It is also a "gray item", considered harmless by one and all. It the farm center asks about its use tell them the truth, it is for meat preservation. If someone sees it that you do not wish to know you are "prepping" just say it is for melting ice on the walkway in winter.