Monthly Archives: September 2010

I don’t even have to turn on the news any more to know that there are a lot of people that have lost friends, family, houses and more because of all of the different fires that periodically rage through our state.  People have had to leave their homes and in some cases leave everything they own behind.  They will come back to a lot of smoke damage and in some cases, loss of property.

Our Ready or Not #67: Fire and Destruction talks about this situation and encourages you to get prepared!

My friend read article #184 about NOT making laundry soap and she called and said, “Dawn what is wrong with you? You tell us about this nifty little washing device and then you don’t tell us where to get one? What is wrong with you?”

Sorry, my fault. It would have been helpful if I had given you the name of the washer (it makes it much easier to Google that way).

The hand operated clothes washer that I highlighted, the plastic blue one, is called “Mobile Washer”. I checked it out on-line and there are a BUNCH of distributors and the prices are as varied as the vendors. I would suggest that you check them out and then make a decision as to the best option for you.

The friend who called wants to give one of these to each of her kids for Christmas. What a wonderful idea! She’s a thinker!

You can watch a demonstration of the Mobile Washer at work at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t11WC1lG_Po

And, here’s a link to our original article Ready or Not #184: Making Laundry Soap – Not!

For all of you out there who put, *1. Build family food storage* on your list of New Year’s resolutions this year, we are here to help you, literally – and in person! Connie McVey and Dawn Van Nosdol will be teaching adult education classes on food storage and preparedness in Springville, Utah for two weeks starting September 22 and we will be in Salem, Utah for two weeks starting October 20. It is food storage on a whole new level!

Stop changing your family’s diet to conform to somebody else’s idea of what you should have in your food storage! Instead, come learn how to build your food storage around what your family likes to eat.

Learn more about the classes and sign up at http://www.nebo.edu/community-school. If you have additional questions about the class or how to sign up, call Gwen at (801) 354-7418.

I’ve been getting e-mails and reading blogs that give the recipes for laundry soap and dishwasher soap. Hmmm. I’m thinking why do I want to make my own laundry soap? (Unless of course it is for medical reasons) Or even dishwasher soap? The senders of these e-mails and the blog writers suggest that you do this so that you can be prepared in an emergency. But in order to make these items you still have to store the ingredients – and then take the time to make them. Why? Why are we trying so hard to make being prepared so hard and so scary? And so labor intensive?

So, if you want an excellent, easy solution read our Ready or Not #184: Making Laundry Soap – Not! And don’t feel guilty if you aren’t slaving away over a hot stove making laundry and hand soap!

I’m going to talk about water.  I know I sound like a broken record, but I think that right now, with the extreme heat that we are experiencing, that it should bring home the importance of water.  We are all feeling pretty comfortable in our lives, well at least I am.  I have refrigeration, cold running water, ceiling fans and air conditioning.  I can get along without the refrigeration, the ceiling fans and the air conditioning.  I don’t want to, but I will not die if I don’t have them.  However, if I don’t have drinkable water, I will die.

A short time ago my mom got sick and she kept throwing up.  For days she was afraid to drink water, or any liquid, because she was so afraid of throwing up and she was so miserable.  About the third day she and my dad got worried and so she finally went to the doctors.  The doctor rushed her over to the hospital and hooked her up to an IV.  She was in the hospital for several days while the doctors tried to re-hydrate her.  They told her that she had just been hours away from kidney failure and death.  My mom was just hours away from death because she had not been drinking water.  The kidneys aren’t like the heart; once they shut down they can’t be restarted.  Fortunately her community wasn’t in an emergency situation and she could get proper medical attention.  During an emergency it won’t be so easy to get proper help and you might not be so lucky.  Get your water stored!

You should store 2 gallons of water per day, per person, for a two-week period and you should store them in different containers so that you can still use the water if you need to leave your dwelling.  Fill a 50-gallon drum, some five-gallon containers and a bunch of two liter bottles.  Please, if you do nothing else this week – please get your water stored!  I BEG YOU.

Now, I said that I could do without refrigeration, ceiling fans and air conditioning, but I don’t want to.  I would have made a lousy pioneer.  Do you have a generator?  If nothing else, it would be a good idea to have a portable generator, with back-up fuel, that can at least keep your refrigerator and freezer going.  Another thing that you might want to consider is installing a permanent generator that is directly wired into your house.

I was watching a show on TV about a family and their everyday life and one of the challenges they had to face was having their power go out on a regular basis.  One time they had the power out for two weeks and were forced to move to a motel.  They weren’t very happy about it.  The first thing that they did when they got back home was to go out and buy a couple of generators.  They had used them several times since then because they were in an area that the power goes out quite often, especially in the winter.

These days they make generators that can be directly wired into your house and will sense when the power goes out and automatically turn on.  This is especially good when you are not home and your fridge and freezer might be at risk.  I especially like the generators that run off of propane because you can store a lot of fuel on site and you don’t have to worry about getting enough gas to run it when the power is out.  Remember that the gas pumps won’t work if they are also affected by the power outage.  Go figure.

I had a friend e-mail me the other day asking about how to make quick easy meals.  Actually most all of my recipes are quick and easy and unless you want to eat out every night or get to know the pizza delivery man by his first name, you are going to have to put some energy into refueling your body on a daily basis.

There are several ways that this can be accomplished.  One that I really like is what my mom and dad did when I was younger.  My grandmother was living by herself and she just wasn’t paying attention to what she was eating and she wasn’t eating nearly enough to keep herself healthy.  My parent’s solution was to make homemade TV dinners.  This was in the pre-microwave era and so my parents went to a local restaurant supply store and bought a bunch of tin TV dinner style trays.  My mom would fix up a week’s worth of lunches and dinners and take it to my grandma’s house and put them in her freezer.  Each night before going to bed my grandma would take out two meals of whatever she felt like eating the next day for lunch and dinner (everything was labeled on the tinfoil covering the meals) and put them in the fridge to thaw out.  The next day she would put them in the oven at the appropriate time and have a delicious, nutritious, home cooked meal.  At the end of the week mom and dad would retrieve the trays and trade them for the next week’s worth of meals.  Grandma stayed healthy and my parents didn’t worry about whether or not she was eating well.

If there is only one or two of you at home, this is a really easy way to keep quick and easy meals on hand and also save money.  I know that you can buy TV dinners, but if you make them from scratch, using your food storage, you will know exactly what is in it and it will be cheaper and healthier.  Also, we now have the microwave and reusable plastic containers, some with separated compartments.  Life just gets better and better.

If your family is larger, then it gets even easier.  You can make casserole type dinners, such as lasagna, and freeze them in one large container.  Think about what you like eating and then just adapt it.  One good idea is to pre-cook and pre-season hamburger.  Cook a pound of hamburger and season it with taco seasoning and then freeze it.  Make a dozen tortilla shells (use the recipe I gave you), cook them up and then freeze them.  Then, the night before, take the meat and tortillas out of the freezer and put them in the fridge to thaw.  When every body comes home for dinner, all you have to do is dice up a tomato, throw the meat into the microwave and set the table with your favorite condiments and presto!  Dinner is ready!  And it tastes good.  Think about what your family likes and see what can be prepared ahead of time.  Soups and chili freeze well too.

There are two ways to go about getting meals prepared ahead of time.  One way is to make double or triple the amount of whatever you are making for dinner at the time and just freeze the other portions for another day when you really, really don’t want to cook.  The other way is to take a Saturday afternoon, and a list of what you want to eat all week long, and then just get cookin’.  There are actually a lot of people who do this and if you think about it, it is just plain smart.  You can either cook for only three to four hours on a Saturday versus a half an hour or an hour EVERY night.  You also only have to clean up one cooking mess on Saturday OR you will end up cleaning a cooking mess every night.  And if you think about it, you use a lot of the same pans and utensils and cook a lot of the same stuff for every meal.  For an example, if you are going to have sloppy joes one night, tacos the next and spaghetti after that, then you can cook three pounds of hamburger ALL AT ONCE.  One pan, one clean up, same amount of time and it is quick and easy.

One last thought.  I know that you have seen those pre-made diet meals that you can receive in the mail for a week, or month, at a time.  The diet program works because you don’t have to cook (snack), they are controlled portions and you don’t have to worry about cleaning up (eating the leftovers).  If you want to lose weight, it is certainly cheaper to make your own pre-prepared meals than to spend $300.00 a month for each per person.  Just a thought.

The last time that I bought popcorn I bought 50 lbs. of it for only $9.88. And so you say “Big deal, why in the world would you want to eat 50lbs. of popcorn?” Well, it’s because I like popcorn – that and I can grind it and have fresh ground cornmeal and popcorn stores for a very long time in your food storage. When grinding popcorn it is important that you use an electric grinder and preferably a cooler one. I tried to grind the popcorn by hand once, but it got too hot and started to pop.

One of my favorite corn bread recipes uses fresh ground popcorn kernels.

Mom’s Cornbread
1 ½ cups flour ¾ teaspoon salt
1 ½ cups cornmeal 3 eggs
2 Tablespoons baking powder ¾ cup oil
¾ cup sugar 1 ½ cups milk

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees. Mix all ingredients just until well moistened. Pour into a greased 9×13 pan and bake for 20 minutes. I actually prefer to pour my batter into a greased or sprayed muffin tin. This is a very moist cornbread and it tastes really good, but cornbread is inherently crumbly and somewhat difficult for kids, and me, to handle. I have found that by serving it up muffin style it is easier to pop off the top and butter it while still maintaining its shape better than the traditional cut square style. Muffin style also makes it easier to eat on the run or as a snack.

Another really quick, yummy, easy recipe is Tamale Pie. This is especially good for camping out or for scouts that want to cook up something quick, easy and delicious in the Dutch Oven.

Tamale Pie
6 cups Chili – homemade or your favorite brand
2 cups cornmeal
5 cups water
1 teaspoon salt

Place water, cornmeal and salt in a double boiler and cook covered for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally until quite stiff. Line the bottom of a greased deep casserole dish with ½ of the prepared cornmeal. Pour in the chili and then spread the top with the remaining cornmeal. Bake for about 30 minutes at 350 degrees.

This is so very easy, why wait to try it. And really, look at how many ingredients there are – four. If you have your water stored then you will be able to make this in an emergency (two gallons, per person, per day for a two-week period).

And what would our food storage be if we couldn’t use it to make dessert? Useless. Not really, but certainly not as delicious and remember we want to make our food storage nutritious, easy and good tasting!

Caramel Corn
12 to 14 cups popped popcorn ¾ cup packed brown sugar
½ cup butter or margarine ¼ cup light corn syrup
½ teaspoon salt ½ teaspoon baking soda

Divide popcorn between two un-greased 9×13 pans. Cook brown sugar, butter, corn syrup and salt over medium heat, stirring occasionally until bubbly around the edges. Continue cooking 5 more minutes and the remove from heat. Stir in baking soda until it goes all foamy (FYI –use one of your larger saucepans or you’ll have a mess on your hands – this is from experience). Pour over popcorn and stir until coated. For crunchier corn, bake uncovered in a 200-degree oven for 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes. I have never had the patience to do that and so we have just always eaten it sticky and gooey and yummy! Happy food storage eating!

Is it just too hot to bake yummy treats? We all know the remedy for that. No, I do not mean just run down to the local bakery. Yes, that can be an option, but only if you run out of a few essential food storage items. My suggestion would be to make Chocolate No-bake cookies. Those are three beautiful words – “Chocolate”, “no-bake” and “cookies.” There are a lot of different items that you can add to this basic recipe like coconut, crushed peanuts, Rice Crispies or anything else that sounds good, but sometimes the simplest is the best.

Chocolate No-bake cookies
1 cube margarine Dash of salt
¼ cup cocoa ½ cup peanut butter – smooth or crunchy
2 cups sugar 2-tsp. vanilla
½ cup milk 3 cups oatmeal

Bring butter, cocoa, sugar, milk and salt to a boil for one minute. Take off heat. Add the peanut butter, the vanilla and oatmeal. Spoon onto wax paper and let set for about 10 minutes. After it sets up, just sit back and eat in a nice cool kitchen. In a pinch you could even make this over a fire or emergency stove –does it get any better?

If you look at the above items you would be surprised at how many things that can be made from just these simple items. You can make baked oatmeal cookies, peanut butter bars, oatmeal mush and peanut butter sandwiches. You can even use the oatmeal to extend your hamburger or meatloaf. And don’t forget the ever-popular oatmeal facial scrubs. There are Chinese dishes that use peanut butter to flavor their sauces. Also, oatmeal and peanut butter are very healthy to eat and they taste good. I love to eat oatmeal raw in a bowl with milk poured over it with a touch of sugar or just pour a soft yogurt over raw oatmeal and eat it like they do in Europe.

That is how we need to look at our food storage – as versatile. Don’t just stop at the most obvious use for an item; explore all of the different ways that you can use an item. Take baking soda for example. You can use it to soothe stomachaches, brush your teeth, use as a poultice, clean your house and freshen up your fridge. Cornstarch is another multi-use item. The most obvious use is that of thickening gravies, but you can also use it like a talcum powder. If you have a large makeup brush, a light dusting of cornstarch makes a really good base for your face after you put your makeup concealer base on, but before you put on your eye makeup. I have done that for years. It will also help you to freshen up when you want to touch your makeup up a bit.

Remember, food storage should taste good, be useful and be available – and don’t forget your water (two gallons of water, per person, per day for a two week period.)