Tag: Prepper

Prepper Pantry Egg Muffin Bites
Prepping · Recipes

Prepper Pantry Egg Muffin Bites

Sarah

I was thinking about go-to breakfast meals for the boys this fall that I could make in advance. Then, they could grab and heat them up. But as I thought more about it, I decided to make them with prepper pantry staples to see how they turned out before I made them with fresh ingredients. Getting ideas in before fall and winter storms come is always good (with our generator, I can do quick baking if needed when the power is out).

But it also meant I didn’t have to go to the grocery store. I am 6 weeks today out from my arm injury, and while I am healing well, I still have issues with driving our truck. So, I have relied on Kirk to drive me to the store. It’s much better if I go “shopping” in our pantry, right? It’s a relief to know I have what we need on hand and that it’s shelf-stable. All our freeze-drying has been huge for me the past 6 weeks. I haven’t had to worry about getting most “fresh” products, such as cheese and vegetables.

Harvest Right is having a sale through August 2024. The prices are Black Friday worthy on Small, medium, and large models. Now, the freeze-dryers come with a starter pack of Mylar bags and oxygen absorbers as a bonus. Freeze-dryers are not cheap; they are a real investment. But as I often tell people, Prepping isn’t about the apocalypse. It’s more about weathering issues. An injury, a job loss, or even the high cost of food due to inflation. It’s having a more resilient life.

I have included links to our published freeze-drying tutorials in the recipe below.

If you don’t have a handy freeze-dryer, you can buy #10 cans of these items on Amazon, of course! Sausage, cheddar cheese, and dried eggs (follow the can’s directions for rehydrating, as dehydrated egg is different than freeze-dried, and uses more water).

Prepper Pantry Egg Muffin Bites

Ingredients:

Directions:

In separate bowls, soak the sausage in ½ cup of warm water for 20 minutes and the potatoes in ¾ cup of warm water for 20 minutes. Add ¼ cup water to the cheese, and let sit for 20 minutes. Drain any remaining water off.

If using freeze-dried or dehydrated eggs, rehydrate as noted, using a fork or whisk to mix well; add in the cheese and let sit for 20 minutes to hydrate fully. If using fresh eggs, whisk eggs and cheese together.

Lightly oil a 12-count non-stick muffin tin, place on a rimmed baking sheet, and set aside. Preheat oven to 400°.

Sprinkle the potatoes evenly between the cups, then the sausage over it, pushing down gently.

Pour the egg mixture over.

Bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden on top.

Enjoy warm, or pop out and chill for future breakfasts. Eat cold or reheat in the microwave.

Makes 12 muffins.

Notes:

Freeze-dried sausage is handy to have in the long-term pantry. As it is a fattier meat, you must cook it fully and then drain the grease when freezing-drying it. As with ground hamburger, I suggest a quick rinse with hot water to remove more fat. Then drain on paper towels. Then proceed for freeze-drying. If you don’t remove the grease, your freeze-dryer will need a major cleanup. I learned this the hard way so that you don’t have to…

To make instant hash browns at home, dehydrate bags of frozen or fresh ones sold in the dairy aisle. They don’t need to be freeze-dried, as they quickly dehydrate in hours. Store tightly sealed in a mason jar or mylar jar.

Use a bamboo or nylon spoon to pop the muffins out to avoid scratching your pan.

You Have 3 Months
Prepping

You Have 3 Months

Sarah

Here’s my hot take:

Everyone should be a prepper, no matter what side of politics you land on. But late at night, do you worry? I don’t mock people for fearing potential civil unrest this fall. With the media pushing divide so much, there truly is a risk of it.

Add in the unstable weather the world is having—hurricanes, severe flooding, heat, cold, and so much more. What will fall bring? What about the 2-week heat wave that is ramping up right now on the left coast? Inland, 100 degrees is coming this week.

We barely felt 2020 and the upheavals/shortages in Washington State because we didn’t rely on the system 24/7. We followed nonbiased news beforehand and saw what was coming, and we doubled down at the end of 2019 to prepare. When things started happening, we stayed home, away from the crazy happenings that occurred all of 2020 in larger towns and cities. But I do slightly worry about this fall. So much is happening in our world right now.

Does the coming election this fall scare or concern you? How about the climate?

Can you feed yourself, have water, medicine, self-defense, and the ability to heat and cook? What happens when protesters block the roads, you can’t get home, you run out of gas, and your car gets rocked by an angry mob? (this happened in recent years in cities) Or do the stores get stripped once again? Or the power goes out yet again in the first fall storm? The supply chain breaks down again for the 159th time. It has been 4+ years; we still have shortages where we live due to how the supply chain works (and constantly fails). Our gov’t run ferry system keeps failing. Over and over.

It’s OK in society to deride preppers as being weird nuts (and that’s cool; I wear a tin foil hat pretty tightly and have most of my life, so if that’s a person’s go-to insult, it doesn’t even hit me), and that somehow being prepared for what life hands us isn’t a good thing. It’s weird when I meet liberal-leaning folk who take pride in relying on the government for help. We should not be beholden to anyone if we can help it. That is pretty simple – we have only ourselves to rely on.

I spent the pandemic years teaching people how to grow and preserve food. How to store rainwater. How to run irrigation. How to start fires. How to even cook. Sewing. Kirk taught alongside me. We tried our best to free people from the system in place (where people have less than three days of food on hand, no water, no extra gas, and no safety net money for emergencies). A few listened; they are good friends now. We grow on our places, and knowing I had $4 a pound of broccoli to pick this week, that felt good. Fresh food. They were eaten within hours of picking.

Most lost interest once life returned to “normal,” which is normal on all political sides. Their pandemic gardens were forgotten, and grocery stores were the first stop again.

Why Should You Care?
Prepping is for everyone. It’s not just about natural disasters or civil unrest. It’s about job losses, sickness, and buffering setbacks in life. You could become unemployed at any point, and not worrying about feeding yourself (and your family) is a huge thing. Do you have an emergency fund to pay for car repair? Or your mortgage/rent?Not having to hope you can get help from others? Not having to go out publicly to shop when sickness or unrest exists?

Priceless.

To the conservatives:
Silver and gold won’t feed you. Invest in American-made steel, such as hoes and tractors, to help you do hard labor more efficiently. Learn some life skills, no matter your age. There are other metals to invest in, you can figure that out,

To the liberals:
If the government does show up to help, you get what they give you. And you might not like it. But tough luck. Enjoy eating cornbread mix as emergency rations and stale cranberries to go on the side. The food they sent out to children during the pandemic years was so sad. I signed up to see how bad it could be. The US government buys up crops that grew too well to keep prices stable and then gives them out as charity food. So, in 2020, there were so many dried cranberries. It took me years to use them up. Everything sent to us was the bottom-of-the-barrel food.

Instead, make your own choices. It’s hard work but rewarding.

To everyone:
You have three months to get better organized in life. If nothing terrible happens in September, you are prepped for winter storms and sickness that come with people heading inside.

Every argument you might have not to prepare is invalid. The pandemic Years showed that.

So … do you think you’re willing to put in the work? Three months. It is all the time you have.

What does that mean?

Work on your garden. It’s time to plant crops for the fall.

Restock your pantry. Review what you have on hand for emergencies—this past week taught me a painful lesson. I fell hard, dislocated my elbow, and ended up in the ER. While I had a SAM splint in my first aid kit, we had no sling—something we should have had on hand. In a disaster, having supplies matters. Lesson learned.

You cannot do everything. But you can keep planning and learning. Sitting in fear won’t do anything.

~Sarah

Freeze-drying Frozen Vegetables
Freeze Drying · Preserving

Freeze-drying Frozen Vegetables

Sarah

One of the simplest things we can preserve in our Harvest Right Freeze-dryer is frozen vegetables. A couple of times a year, we run batches to preserve and tuck away. Where we live power outages are a real issue in winter months, and I don’t like keeping a lot in the freezer. I have lost too much food over the years to 3-4 day outages. Once we have freeze-dried the food and sealed it up, we have 1o to 25 years time. Which is quite a long time.

We shop at a restaurant supply store and pick up 5-pound bags of frozen vegetables: pes, petite peas, sweet corn, mixed chopped vegetables, green beans, sliced carrots, and such. The prices at restaurant supply stores are extremely affordable compared to grocery store prices. Here in Western Washington, a 16-ounce bag of frozen vegetables ranges from nearly $3 for store brand to well over $6. The store brand quality is rarely good. In the restaurant supply store, I have found the quality is far better, and the prices range from around $1 a pound to under $2. Which makes it very affordable.

Watching sales is also one way to do it. Buy when it is affordable, and stock up. Then freeze-dry when you have time.

Harvest Right freeze-dryer in use

In a large-size unit, I can put 2 to 2½ pounds on each tray. This is tightly packed, but you can always add fewer vegetables.

It’s as simple as spreading the vegetables on the trays and turning on the dryer. It is automatic now. Then pack up and seal.

Why buy frozen vegetables?

  • Frozen vegetables are blanched beforehand, meaning they are cooked. When you freeze-dry them, they are now “instant” vegetables. Just pour them into soups, rice dishes, and more; they just need to rehydrate. No cooking is needed. And best? You didn’t have to do any of the extra work of blanching (which is a pain to do in the heat of summer).
  • The vegetables are also already frozen, so just pour them on the freeze-dryer trays and pop them in to dry.

Freeze-dried peas

Peas

Freeze-dried corn

Corn

Freeze-dried mixed vegetables

Mixed vegetables. The tiny carrot dice are very sweet and great for prepper meals. See here for Pantry Staple Recipes to get a lot of ideas! During those power outages we eat really well.

Harvest Right is having its May Sale from now through May 21st, 2014. This is the equivalent of their annual Black Friday Sale, so if you have been wondering if a freeze-dryer might be for you, take a look. If you are a single person, a Small or Medium will work best. The Large is great for families, and those doing a lot of prepping work.

~Sarah

Meals In A Jar: Prepper Pancakes
Prepping · Recipes

Meals In A Jar: Prepper Pancakes

Sarah

Pancakes are an easy breakfast option, especially if you only need to grab a mason jar and add water. Make a few up, seal them, and you’ll always have a quick breakfast on hand. There’s no need to worry about milk or eggs; freeze-dried ingredients are a star here.

I paired the pancakes with shelf-stable bacon (usually sold in the meat department and is pre-cooked bacon; all it needs is to be sizzled on a grill for a minute or two, and it crisps up) and scrambled eggs for a hearty breakfast.

Prepper Pancakes

Ingredients:

Directions:

Whisk the flour, dry milk, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a mixing bowl.

Transfer to a 1-quart mason jar using a canning funnel.

Place the freeze-dried eggs in a zip-top sandwich bag and mark “Add 6 Tablespoons water”.

Place on top of the flour mixture. Cover with a lid and ring and seal for short-term storage. Use a Food Vacuum with a mason jar sealer to remove the air for long-term storage.

To Make:

Rehydrate the eggs in a bag with 6 Tbsp cool water, seal the bag, and shake until mixed. Let sit for 5 minutes to rehydrate fully.

Whisk the dry ingredients with the eggs and 2 cups water.

Cook on a lightly oiled griddle on medium-low, flipping when the pancakes have lots of bubbles on top.

I fry up the pre-cooked bacon first to get the grill oiled.

Serves 4.

~Sarah

Stealth Prepping: Building Long-Term Food Storage In Your Pantry
Prepping

Stealth Prepping: Building Long-Term Food Storage In Your Pantry

Sarah

I often read website forums and Facebook pages where women talk about how their husbands are not on board for long-term food storage. They don’t see a need for it, and often, the wives feel ridiculed for their desire to be better planned. He calls her paranoid or a conspiracy theorist, bemoaning that the grocery is well stocked and just a short distance away. (And yes, there are plenty of men who are preppers, but in this case, it is hitting home about being a female prepper with no support from her husband or partner. You can still use these ideas if you are a male prepper, of course.)

To this, I bring you the Stealth Prepper.

What is a stealth prepper?

One that puts away food quietly, building a more robust long-term food storage in their pantry. They don’t have a separate prepper area for food, so you fit it into your regular pantry. It isn’t as noticeable since you are buying what you eat already. You may not have cans of freeze-dried food, but you can have plenty of food to nourish your family. It might only be a week or two worth of extra food, but every bit helps.

Is it lying to your partner? No. Maybe it’s on the edge of omitting, but it isn’t lying. You are just….expanding what you keep on hand. Your job is to win them over to your side pleasantly. Instead of being scared about our world, work on what you can do to make your small world safer. Work on things you can do to make yourself feel protected.

4 years ago? No. This was taken last night, on March 25th, 2024. It shows how easily stores can be empty. And this was only 1 of many photos I snapped last night.

Talking Points To Win A Partner Over:

  • Family Sickness (Having sick people, from either a temporary illness or a long-term one, not having to spend money or shop takes off stress.)
  • Job Loss (Job loss is a real thing right for many people. Not having to buy food when unemployed releases so much anxiety. This point is what often wins people over.)
  • Weather (Snow storms, not having food on hand, flooding, etc.). Staying home keeps you safe and avoids situations where stores are stripped by scared people. Whenever you see a news show about stripped stores during a snowstorm or hurricane, this is the time to talk about it casually.
  • Natural Disasters (When you are ready at home, you are not waiting around in a panic for help to show up, and if FEMA or the National Gaurd shows up, it is to densely populated urban areas first.)
  • Cost Of Food/Inflation (food prices have increased by around 25% in the past four years alone; this point can win a partner over. Prices are not going down.)

Instead Of:

  • NWO Takeover (This scares people when it is your first argument.)
  • 2030 Agenda (Yes, this is real, but not a great talking point.)
  • WWIII (I feel this one, but it’s best not to scare people.)
  • Zombie Invasions (Probably pretty low on what to prep for.)
  • Decaying Cities (A real issue, but again, it scares people. It’s a great talking point to show how bad San Francisco, Seattle, and New York are, but don’t obsess.)
  • Upcoming Election in 2024 (After watching the mess 2020 brought, this isn’t a bad idea.)
  • Food Chains Falling Apart (This is very true, but it scares people.)

How To Do It:

  • Watch Sales In Stores (Let’s say you see a 75% off sale in a store, and it’s got a long shelf-life; it’s a bargain. Present it that way.) (Use your chain grocery store apps, and always “clip” coupons before you go. Some chains offer free items every month and nearly always offer money off gas fill-ups – or some chains let you turn those awards into cash off shopping trips.)
  • Learn How To Compare Pricing By Ounce. (He may say, “We don’t need 20 pounds of flour/rice/oats,” but if you can show that when you buy in 20—to 50-pound bags, the cost per ounce goes down to almost nothing, you have won. Buying staples in small bags/containers rarely saves money.) (If you have a restaurant supply store nearby, visit it. They sell the basics and can be super affordable if you are willing to buy larger quantities.)
  • Figure Out What Food Your Family Loves (If you hate canned black beans, don’t buy them!)
  • Take Them Shopping With You (Too often, men never go into a grocery store after marriage. Make him participate. His eyes will see the insane prices and low stock in person. They will then be unable to deny it. It may wake them up to reality.)
  • Brag About Your Shopping Scores (Presenting it as you won and how affordable the dinner will be. Humble bragging goes far.)
  • Organize Your Pantry (Organize your pantry so the space is well used. Everything has a place and is tidy. This way, no food is wasted, and no random bags clutter it up.)
  • Learn To Be An Ingredient Household (Cooking from scratch is more work but pays off. You will eat healthier and for much less money when you don’t buy highly processed foods or eat out. The more you save, the more you can invest in long-term items that you then incorporate into your daily meals so nothing becomes expired.)
  • Buy Items In Non-Prepper Containers (Buying #10 cans of freeze-dried ingredients is excellent for long-term prepper storage, but the look of the cans can make others uncomfortable. An example is Augason Farms cans, which are a great deal, but instead, buy Anthony’s Goods products, which come in mylar bags and look more like what you would buy at Costco. They can be resealed into mason jars and stored nicely.)
  • If You Live With A Financially Controlling Partner, work to get them to give you a set amount to spend on food in cash, and work within it to buy as affordably as possible. Present it as you are creating a budget to provide them with healthy meals and buying them in bulk to save them money.

~Sarah