FOOD FATIGUE
Before we start today's useless blather, thanks to everyone for the support and general rally against the trolls. I try to keep a thick skin but sometimes they really get to me. I would have posted more pictures but once I put them online I found they really took in a panoramic view. So much that it would be a little too easy to find the place. It is one thing to tell you I'm a few miles out of town, quite another to give you exact landmarks. I trust all of you except the one troll on Ritalin with NSA controllers who will one day go postal on my ass just before they institute semi auto gun control again.
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Wheat should be the backbone of your food storage. You get enough to provide everyone with a bare survival diet for whatever period of time you decide prudent. I think one year isn't too long, those of you with five kids might only be able to afford three months. One pound per person per day plus a little extra for sprouts for your veggie needs. 100 pounds each three months. $30 per person per quarter ( plus storage containers, of course ). Do half wheat and half corn for $25 a hundred ( I went back again last weekend to my feed store and they charged me less this time-$11-I think one of the little punks is messing with me ). Not only will this save you a little money, it will provide you with some insurance against food fatigue.
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A wheat only diet is not the greatest idea. You need to train yourself to eat whole wheat. And you lack protein and fat. And you will go mad eating nothing else. Urging you to buy all this wheat is just to make sure you don't starve to death. As in, hurry up and buy your wheat, if something bad happens tomorrow you are at least covered with the minimum. After you have your wheat, then you buy your other grains and your beans and your fat. Some of you simply won't buy wheat. Fine, just buy enough for sprouts. If rice is your thing, okay. With rice, however, you need to buy white only. Brown simply doesn't last long enough before going rancid. But by only getting a hulled grain, an empty carb, you must make sure you have supplemental food to compensate for what was thrown away with the outer shell. In other words, rice is a great filler but not a complete grain. Wheat kernels are a complete grain and much healthier.
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After your grain, get your beans. Together the bean and grain will provide a complete protein such as meat has. Then, your fat. Don't worry too much about hydrogenated oil. You are in survival mode, you will need fats and better to have enough. If you only store olive oil because it is healthy you won't have enough because of the cost. Now you can worry about combating food fatigue. If you only have one grain, get another. Preferably two. I hate rice, it usually tastes like wet cardboard ( whole wheat tastes like dry cardboard- much better ). But once I've eaten enough wheat it will start tasting much better. I like corn but it seems to have a limited range of recipes. But again, a good change of pace from wheat. So now you've got three grains, beans and fat. Throw in the occasional rabbit or dog and you should be able to just tolerate your boring diet.
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I understand this is old hat to my loyal minions. But we are getting a lot of new, perplexed and confused people. Better to keep going back to the basics. People are not stupid ( okay, most people are stupid but the smart ones are waking up and realizing they need to prepare ), just uneducated. Just keep your priorities straight. The bare minimum diet first, then branch out. If you are doing the rice and beans from Wal-Mart deal, no need to get all your grain first. The rice and beans cost the same so you might as well go half and half from the first ( this helps counteract the limitation on white rice also ). If things fall apart tomorrow ( Yellowstone erupting or Russia launching nukes move a lot quicker than the financial meltdown ) you must have the bare bones food supply to keep you going. After that, with more time to prepare, then you can get fancy. Getting back to the better-than-nothing philosophy. Wheat alone sucks keeping you alive, but it is better than nothing.
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24 comments:
If you can find a copy of Howard Ruffs book from the 1980's ( and maybe in his new book) There is a really good target system and detailed explanation of what to get in what order. Also if you go Providentliving.com they have a good amounts calculator based om number of adults and children ( no trolls)
No Name
I liked the pics, thanks for sharing. Also, what are the building codes around Elko.
The only ones who find trolls amusing are other trolls.
Jim, what's the significance of Yellowstone erupting? I'm not being fecetious, but I've seen it mentioned a number of times, both here and elsewhere. Would an eruption there be any more cataclysmic than, say, Mt St Helens which may have been spectacular nearby, but did nothing to impact life on the east coast. Just a question.
Oops, meant facetious, not fecetious....that sounds like someone playing with their poop and is just plain weird.
G3, The Yellowstone Caldera is a much much bigger situation. It is an old collapsed valcano of many orders of magnatude of Mt St Helens. It seems erupt about ever 640,000 year and we approaching that soon. Will it erupt? who the heck knows. Mt St helens is part of the pacific ring of fire and probably erupts more often. It is a roll of the dice about Yellowstone. If is goes full blast nothing for hundreds of miles will survive and going east on the jet stream will be even worse. It would be a civilization ending event.
How do you determine how many years to store? 3 months for a family? 1 year for a loner? 2 years (1 for each person) for a couple? What would be the criteria? Why not 10 years?
I'm just throwing out for discussion as I want to clarify my own guide lines. I realize that a lot depends on means to purchase and storage space. But ideally, how much would be enough?
Watch this series of youtube videos for info on Yellowstone scenario.
Here is a link to the first clip and there are six total clips. I think this is pretty close to how it might play out in real life.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF-RKzqNtz0
or just enter in the youtube search box
super volcano part 1 1/6
super volcano part 2 2/6
etc
Jim, buddy, you know I love ya.
I've GOT wheat, lots and lots and LOTS of wheat. Then, I go and get myself tested for all these weird symptoms - fatique, memory loss, bowel problems, etc....
WHEAT ALLERGY!!!
I am not kidding, man. Also my spouse, who gets awful rashes from it.
Now, we're not giving up our stash, because it won't KILL us -- just make us feel bad. I'd rather "feel bad" than "starve".
So, we started loading up on corn and oats, as well. Got plenty of beans and rice, too.
One writer asks, "how much?" or basically, "how long do you think we'll have to plan for?" My answer is this: how long did the Great Depression (#1) last?
10 years +/-.
Store as much food as you possibly can, and figure out how to grow more. Grow food while you still have stored stuff, in case your crops fail.
I am curious. How are you handling the oils and fats that the human body requires? I ask this question because I have really started looking at the shelf life, and oils are really very short spanned, even when refrigerated.
And what's up with these trolls? Do you have a secret groupie or something? I hate the idea of censorship, but Why TF put up with them?
For the person who has wheat allergies, there are alternatives. Maybe not as cheap (?) but there are a number of web sites devoted to cooking for this allergy. More and more children are being born wheat intolerant, so moms have done a pretty good job of finding alternatives. My two cents worth.
warrior
Another good post. Don't mind the trolls, at least you don't use them as an excuse for censorship like some of the Libertarian prep blogs. Their hypocrisy knows no bounds.
G3Ken;
A Yellowstone eruption at just half its' power would be life ending for half the U.S. and life altering for the rest of the world. It is a bad, bad boy.
Anon., 2:12
Start planning for six months food storage first. Remember that six months of 3 meals a day for "ONE PERSON" is 550 meals.....
It is a big task for two or more people and takes a lot of planning.
Anon., 1:23
Personally I find the trolls amusing mostly because I have never met anyone this stupid except for a politician. Think of it this way "They're Democrats"!!!!
my ten cents (hey inflation) worth.
Besides the allergy issue one of the problems of wheat berries is that they are ACID, whereas corn and rice are ALKALINE. Of course, there are spelt and barley; unusual these days, but these were the staple grains before industrial agriculture...
Roman Bread: wheat, rice, corn and barley. very nice mixture of acid and alkaline.
then Hebrew bread from the siege of Jerusalem: wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet and spelt...
i actually like whole wheat, and actually grind my own flour sometimes and make a variety of porridges, pancakes, gems and breads. nobody else here will eat the stuff...i imagine if you get hungry enuf, anything will taste good (within reason)...
suppose i should point this out: if you look at a lot of cookbooks, and compare the recipes to say an old copy of FANNIE FARMER or even THE JOY OF COOKING, you'll notice 90% has been cribbed word for word from elsewhere. actually, this is also true of Kurt Saxon, and virtually all the survival preppers: store a bunch of wheat and put them in buckets, etc......over and over, regardles of practicality. get a good mix.
wheat sprouts ? uck...gas and the runs. spring for some alfalfa or clover seeds. or the old standby: sprouted lentils.
why canned beans: dried beans require a lot of water and a lot of cooking...not good in a tight spot. Store some canned black beans, almost everybody will eat them with rice.
stock up lots of the basics. and things you eat and can afford.
things are never going to be "normal" again. thank god. but, perhaps lets try and think in 2 years term, because that's 2 harvests. if we see high prices, spot shortages,and rationing, one might consider using their food stash to compliment and extend what they can get from the store or the local farm stands...
but, no i've never lived thru an extended calamity so it's just my opinion.... light and love.
DNH
Trolls suck. They are just cowards too scared to start their own blogs and take a stand for what they believe in. Far too easy to criticize someone braver.
Corn is my next food purchase. I've found a place that sells food-grade for $.50/lb. Then it's on to white rice. And I need to figure out what sprouts the kids will eat. Dakin, thanks for the continued focus on the basics!
If you figure December of 2012 to be the end of the world (somehow, not implausible inspite of some of the manufactured Central American Myth), well, a little less than 4 years worth of food per person would be all you need.
G3Ken,
Yellowstone is one of many super volcanoes. The last super volcano to erupt was one in Lake Toba, Sumatra, Indonesia about 75,000 years ago. Scientist believe that the Earth's human population fell into the thousands because the eruption plunged the Earth into a volcanic winter that lasted for several years. Yellowstone has been very regular and has erupted approximately every 640,000 years, with the last eruption about 640,000 years ago. Scientists have mapped a huge ball of magma below the surface of Yellowstone, the land is currently rising, and there are often hundreds of earthquakes a day. It could blow tomorrow, or not for another 20,000 years. But if it does blow, you had better have at least 2-3 years of food stored because of the volcanic winter. The heavy ash deposits will also wipe out everything and everybody within 200-500 miles depending on how the wind blows. Yellowstone is one of the main reasons I don't believe that the Rockies or the High Plains would make a good retreat area.
Yep, Ignorance and Stupidity are different worlds. One can be cured via knowledge.
One is deadly.
Storage Life Of Cooking oils:
"Different cooking oils stay fresh for different amounts of time, but you must treat them all well. They should be tightly covered and stored in the dark away from the heat (especially not in that handy cupboard over the stove). The less access they have to the air, the fresher they will stay. Refrigeration benefits most oils.
If unopened, peanut oil and corn oil and other vegetable oils will keep for at least a year. Once opened, they’re good for four to six months. But peanut oil, like olive oil, which is high in monounsaturates, benefits more from storage in the refrigerator. Olive oil will keep for about 6 months in the cool, dark pantry, but up to a year in the refrigerator. It may become cloudy and thicken up in the cold, in which case, letting it warm to room temperature will restore its pouring capacity. Walnut oil and sesame oil are delicate and inclined toward turning rancid. Kept in the refrigerator, they will stay fresh for two to four months."
http://www.ochef.com/64.htm
Do a web search. Many different answers from the different manufacturers.
You are cooking your rice wrong if you think it tastes like wet cardboard. Try this at home, it's fast and easy as hell. 1- cup of rice, a few tablespoons of oil and two cans of rotel.
Heat up your oil, (I prefer sesame seed oil but any oil will pretty much do) Once it is pretty hot, throw in a cup or two of just regular white rice. Fry it till it starts to brown up, constantly moving the rice around. This will take about three minutes.
Throw in your two cans of rotel and fill one of the cans up with water and throw it in there. Cover it with a lid, and wait about twenty minutes. That's it.
From there you can go crazy, throw in some fresh onions, bean sprouts, some meat, whatever. I have five kids and I can cook up a meal of something great the kids will eat in about thirty minutes.
Also, after you fry this concoction up, you can throw the whole thing in a pot of beans, or chili or whatever to make it go further. You should have a whole bunch of rice cause it's a quick, easy carb-ful meal, and you will NEED carbs!
Wheat is great to, but it is pretty limited in my opinion. Rice, beans, then wheat and other grains. Fifty pounds of rice will go a long, long way even for a family as large as mine, and there are a billion ways to cook it.
Well, I was with you right up to where you call your readers "minions"- words like that are a red flag. For a minute there I thought I'd found a blog I like, but sure enough, a look through several more entries confirms it: you're just another internet asshole, nothing special here.
How many societies use unprocessed wheat as there main food supply? Rice on the other hand is utilized by many peoples as an every meal of the day type of food. Now I would agree that wheat is a much higher protein food but will probably be more difficult to use as your main food supply.
I saw the movie Into the Wild about the guy who eventually headed up to Alaska with rice and not much else. Sorry to ruin the movie for those that haven't watched it but he didn't make it out. I wonder if things would have turned out any different had he taken wheat instead of rice.
wtf is rotel?
6:49 am -- the guy went into the wilderness in ALASKA for the WINTER with only 10 pounds of rice. Suicide mission, pretty much.
Spelt and kamut are older forms of wheat, and have a bit different texture. A tasty alternative is rye. I have a variety of grains stored to avoid food fatigue.
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