Store It Foods

Do you ever find yourself throwing away those little balls of cotton that occasionally come with pill or vitamin purchases?  Well, you’re not alone.  Most people do that.  After all, other than providing packing for pills and vitamins, what use are they?

Truth be told, though, they can be useful.  Insert them along with a few wooden matches into a waterproof container of some kind, and you have a compact fire starting kit for inclusion in your emergency survival kit.  The cotton makes great tinder.

Make sure, however, that those matches are not safety matches.  A regular match can be lit by striking against almost any rough surface.  A safety match cannot.

Does your dog really care how brightly colored its food might happen to be? When you take into consideration the fact that dogs are, for the most part, colorblind*, then it probably doesn’t really matter to your canine friend just what food colorings the manufactuer uses.  Does it matter if your pet’s kibble is in the shape of little bones, tiny doughnuts, or other odd shapes.  To be honest, the animal probably doesn’t even give that a thought as it gobbles it all down.

These things might, however, be deciding factors when the animal’s human is making the initial purchase.  At least that is what the manufacturer is counting upon.

In these tough economic times, though, it is probably worth giving a thought or two to the value of paying extra for those things when they don’t really matter.  Now, if that kibble is also especially tasty and more nutritionally sound, then those are the features that might warrant the spending of a little more.

Don’t limit such thinking only to our pets’ needs. 

Baby carrots look awfully good, but in most cases they aren’t really “babies”.  They’re full sized carrots whittled down into the pleasing, carrot shape of babies.  So if they cost more than the nearby package of full sized carrots, are they really worth the extra cost?

They are easier to snack upon, and if you plan on a pot of freshly cooked carrots for dinner, then there is not much slicing involved, thus making them a labor saver.  Perhaps those features warrant spending just a little more.

The list of examples could go on and on.  The point being made is simply that we shouldn’t be misled by size, shape or attractive packaging.  The best value is to be found in those things that really do best serve our needs, and sometimes a little investigating is in order.

Remember, too, that even where there is definitely value to be had,  it needs to be value that is of worth to you.  Changing the topic from food to a food related product, consider a wheat grass juicer.  A well designed, rugged, and dependable wheat grass juicer, no matter how good it is, nor how good the price might be, would probably not be a very good choice for someone who does not like wheat grass juice.

• Dogs do see some colors, but they certainly don’t see them nearly as well as their human masters.  Bight blues, and bright reds, for instance, would mean very little to them.

When planning your emergency preparedness survival kit, be sure to remember the need to preserve precious family photos and documents.  You may not be able to physically preserve them through packing bulky albums, folders, or storage boxes into the back pack containing your 72 hour kit, but a solution is at hand.

The popular flash drive can be used.  Fill it with scanned copies of your documents.  Digitize those photos if they are not already in a digital format, and using a simple “copy and paste” place them on your awaiting flash drive.

A flash drive is light and small and easily incorporated into that survival kit.

If you find your freezer full of food that is unrecognizable, they probably have suffered from freezer burn.  You can avoid this problem by buying a vacuum packaging machine.  This is perfect for storing foods in the freezer.  You can buy food in bulk and just pack them for individual uses. 

And this vacuum packaging machine isn’t just for freezer foods.  You can pack lunches, snacks and entire meals.  All the opened potato chip bags can be vacuum-sealed again.  It is perfect for packing camping food as well.  The aroma of your food will not attract wild animals when you leave camp for a hike.  You can also use them to protect old photos and important documents.  And it is perfect for wrapping up your cosmetics and toiletries when traveling.

One of the major advantages of preparing your own jams and jellies, as is the case with many foods prepared at home either for immediate use or for preserving, is the control available over the ingredients to be used.   Chemical additives may be the first thing that comes to mind, but that is not the only thing that could be considered.

Take a look at the labels on commercially prepared jellies and jams.  Often water content is high.  Obtain an even fruitier taste to your own homemade product by using a more concentrated product.

Do you find store bought jams too sweet?  Perhaps you could experiment by using less sugar. 

Try various recipes. You will soon find that you are not the only canner in the world, and that there are many other who are willing to share ideas and secrets through on-line blogs.  There are hundreds of recipe sites on the web.  Recipe books line the shelves of bookstores. 

If you are doing it yourself, there are all sorts of possibilities in the world of home canning.

What’s the difference between saftey matches and strike anywhere matches?

A safety match requires the striker portion of its package to light — thus, the added safety in using this type of match.  The Strike Anywhere Match, can be lit using any rough surface, making them more dangerous when allowed into the hands of children, but also making them more versatile in emergency situations.

Should you, for instance, wish to place a few matches into a waterproof container for placement into your emergency survival kit, safety matches by themselves would NOT be a wise choice.

When you come home at the end of the day, you want to be able to enjoy a great meal.  But sometimes, you don’t have the time to prepare anything and will just pop a frozen meal in the microwave.  But you can enjoy real meals in just a few minutes with pressure cookers.It is very easy and convenient to use a pressure cooker.  And you can preserve the flavors and nutrients in pressure cooking.  You can also save on your electricity bills since they cook the food very quickly.  There are different sizes of pressure cookers so you can get the right one for your family size.  Coming home for dinner will now be an easy task.

The historian, Tim Cook, has described life in the trenches during the First World War, and he does not paint a pretty picture.  Conditions were often absolutely miserable, almost indescribably so.  The danger and misery was not helped by the food in the ever dangerous front lines. In his book, At the Sharp End, he permits the soldiers themselves to describe their diet.

“We live mostly on bully beef and hardtack,” recounted Lieutenant Louis Keene.  “The first is corned beef and the second is a kind of dog biscuit.  We always wondered why they were so particular about a man’s teeth in the army.  Now I know.  It’s on account of these biscuits.  The chief ingredient is, I think, cement and they taste that way too…. We have fried, baked, mashed, boiled, toasted, roasted, poached, hashed, deveileme them alone and together with bully beef, and we have still to find a way of making them into interesting food.”  Sergeant Ernest Black recounted that some of the hardtack was edible, but that eating a common variety, Number 4, was “like gnawing a very old bone.”  Bully beef was eaten for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but the meat was so full of fat and gristle that only the foolhardy ate it in the dark. (pg. 245)

Food much improved in the safer areas to the rear, but in those front trenches those more palatable choices were generally not to be had.  Yet, soldiers ate and survived on the hardtack and bully beef that was provided them.  They had to do so.  That’s all that there was.

Well, there are no more front line trenches (fortunately) and our soldiers no longer have to live on hard tack and bully beef (fortunately).  Times have changed.

World War I took place almost a century ago.  Yet, there is a lesson for us in these stories of food in the front trenches. If we are establishing food storage programs in our homes in anticipation of some unknown emergency, we need to consider what foods we are storing.  It’s not likely going to be hardtack and corned beef, but are we including foods that will be tasty and nutritious?  Will they be eaten only because there will be no other choices?  Will your family actually find these foods palatable?

Pardon the pun, but this is “food for thought”

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