All prep and no play makes Dave a dull boy, this is not a prep article really, but every once in a while I like a neat new recipe – because if I ever have to live off of my stored food without the ability to augment with a whopper or stuffed crust pizza I am going to want several extra options of cooking beans, rice, and potatoes so I don’t get “food boredom”
This recipe for Bacon wrapped twice baked potatoes is normally made for company, its really easy, pretty cheap, and tastes awesome. Unfortunately, I normally make an entire tray full at a time because at my house we don’t leave the range with a half shot box of ammo, nor do we only cook a half package of bacon. Since it tastes so good, and I make so much of it when I do make it, I reserve it for times when I have a lot of folks to eat it.
Ingredients:
Potatoes
Bacon
Cheese
Anything else you put in mashed taters – sour cream, mayo, salt whatever…
Round toothpicks soaked in water for at least and hour
Procedure
Preheat oven to 375
Wash and peel half as many medium to large potatoes as you have bacon slices.
Cut a slice off of the top and bottom of each potato so that it can stand up. Reserve ends for mashed potatoes.
Cut each potato in half.
Wrap each potato half in bacon – use wet toothpicks to hold bacon to potato. (Using 4 toothpicks per potato holds the bacon really well).
Lightly oil cookie sheet and place small end of potato down (this makes it easier to scoop later).
Bake 30-45 minutes or until tender.
While baking wrapped potatoes, boil potato ends until soft.
Open oven and remove tray.
Gently scoop potato centers out to make a bowl.
Mix baked centers with boiled potato ends and make mashed potatoes. I like to add some cheese to the mix, but however you make mashed potatoes is fine.
Scoop (or pipe if you’re a gourmand) mix into potato bowl.
Top with shredded cheese.
Place back in oven and bake 10-15 minutes or until cheese is melted to desired doneness.
As I said in the video, this is not a “prepper” recipe per se, but I imagine if you ever had to live off your food storage you would want to change up every now and then. I found this idea in an email and it took me a lot of trial and error to get it to work, but in the end it was a nice change of pace.
The idea is to take cookie dough and place it on an upside down muffin tin so that as the dough spreads it will cover the tin and harden to make Cookie Bowls. This is great for stuffing with fruit ice cream or pudding. Sounds simple right?
In reality, it took me several tries. Do not put dough on every spot as the dough on the ends will slide off (which if you don’t have a cookie sheet underneath will catch your oven on fire). Keep the cookie dough separated by at least one muffin “hole” or it will spread out and mix into one large bumpy cookie.
Smaller is better, and you need to grease the tin as well as flatten the cookie dough on the tin to start the drooping process in a more controlled manner.
In the end, the few that turned out “right” looked really good, and tasted great with a little ice cream and chocolate sauce, but this is a project I probably will never attempt again because (to me) it was not worth the effort for the result.
At the best of times, survival situations are highly daunting and require a level of mental and physical alertness that is destroyed by alcohol. But what if your situation is not so dire? Your supplies are well stocked for months and you are not going to be in any danger for the foreseeable future, then it might be time for a bit of a drink.
If the local stores have ran out of stock, you are just going to have to rely on yourself to make your own alcoholic beverages. A good supply of alcohol is not just good for personal consumption. You could also be used to barter for items that you don’t have.
Did you know that you can make wine out of almost any plant? It requires no special ingredients and the only thing that you might need is some sugar, yeast, acid and whatever you are going to make your wine out of.
The most common garden item that most wine makers choose to use, is the humble dandelion. You could make your brew out of any thing else that you have lying around like tomatoes or other vegetables. However, dandelions are abundant and don’t really have any other great uses. Except for the leaves which are edible.
All the equipment that you need, is a sealed container to ferment your wine , an airlock to let air out of the sealed container but not let air in, and some bottles or jars to store and age the finished product in.
Making wine is an easy process and anyone can do it if they have the slightest bit of knowledge on the subject.
How to make dandelion wine
Ingredients:
Quart of yellow dandelion flowers. Rinse them thoroughly
8 cups of sugar
Gallon of boiling water
Lemon slice
Orange, sliced
Packet of yeast. If you do not have yeast, then you are not going to want to completely seal the container that the wine is fermenting in so airborne yeast can get in.
Procedure:
You are going to want to place your well rinsed dandelion flowers into boiling water and boil them for 5 minutes. Then remove the blossoms, discard them and let the water cool to about 90 degrees F.
Make sure that your sealed container is sterile before you add any thing to it. You can easily sterilize your fermenting container with boiling water but make sure that you are thorough about it because any bacteria left in there is going to destroy your wine.
Put the dandelion juice that you have created into your seal-able fermenting container. Then add the rest of the ingredients and stir them in thoroughly.
Attach the air lock, which can be made out of tubes and pill cases, similar to a water bong. Then let your wine ferment for about 13 days. The best way to tell when fermentation has stopped is when bubbles stop forming inside the airlock.
Siphon your dandelion wine off of the sediment in the fermentation container and seal it in preserving jars and let it age for about a week.
Wait a week and enjoy your dandelion survival wine.
That is how easy it is to make your own wine out of whatever you can find lying about. If your wine does not taste right or tastes like vinegar it is probably because there was too much bacteria in the wine which killed the yeast, ate the sugars and excreted acetic acid. This is easily solved but not everyone has packets of yeast in their bug out bag.
Acorns are not something most of us think about as food, however, Acorns were a staple of many Indian tribes and were used as a primary foodstuff from one coast to another. According to Jackie Clay (of Backwoods Home fame)
Acorns have been tested and found to be possibly the best food for effectively controlling blood sugar levels. They have a low sugar content, but leave a sweetish aftertaste, making them very good in stews, as well as in breads of all types.
Instead of Asking Can You Eat Acorns, We Show You How to Eat Acorns
Problems with Eating Acorns
The only two problems I have with eating acorns are I am too lazy to pick them up quick enough to prevent worms from ruining them, and the bitter taste the tannins give them. Luckily there are solutions to both problems, and this article and accompanying video will show How to Eat Acorns.
This year I decided to harvest acorns from the oak trees in my front yard. Being lazy, I spread out a large tarp and weighted it down with rocks. Every afternoon (or so) from September to early November I would take a quick look and scoop up any acorns I saw on the tarp. (I went the even lazier route and used by bullet roller since it was originally designed for picking up nuts). If the acorns were soft feeling, or looked like they were compromised I tossed them down the hill, the good ones went in my solar oven to collect in a place where they would not be subject to rot or worms.
How to Process Acorns to Remove Tannins
Once I got enough acorns to make the process worthwhile I took them inside to process them to remove the tannins. Tannic acid makes the acorns bitter, but different oak trees have differing amounts of tannins in the acorns. Depending on the oak tree and your taste buds, it may be possible to eat the acorns without any processing. However these oaks are rare, and normally in the west coast, generally eating an acorn without removing the tannins will make your mouth feel like cotton, can cause constipation, and with large amounts even kidney damage. Luckily to process your acorns all you really need is water.
Indians basically threw their acorns in baskets and left them in swiftly running streams until the tannins were leached out. For us modern folks, there are faster ways.
Dry and Peel the Acorns Before Trying to Eat Them
First thing to do is dry them out so that they don’t mold. You can lay them out on a sheet or tarp single layer deep and let the sun cook them. Personally, I would rather throw them in the dehydrator for a couple hours, or put them on a cookie sheet in the oven at its lowest temperature for an hour (about 175).
Next peel the acorn, its simple to crack the shell with a nutcracker or slip joint pliers, peel off the thin skin, and throw the good acorns in a bucket. If the acorn has a black hole its evidence of worm infestation – throw those out.
Grind the Acorns into Meal
Next get your food grinder and make a course meal. Put the meal in a pot and cover with boiling water. After an hour the water should be brown to black. You can throw this out, however, I have heard of using the tannin containing water to TAN animal hides. Since I don’t have both at the same time, I just dump it out. Taste the meal, if it taste sweet it’s done, if it’s like eating a green persimmon repeat the boiling water soak. Do this as many times as necessary.
Once you are happy with the meal, lay it out to dry. A good way to start this process is to dump the wet meal in a sheet or doubled sheet of cheesecloth, gather the ends like a jelly bag and press the water out. Next put in in the oven at its lowest setting or a dehydrator. Be careful with this process as if you let the meal sit around wet it will mold.
In an airtight jar the course ground chucks will last a while in the freezer, grind it to flour as you need it, because the acorn oil will go rancid about as fast a whole grains will. Either way course of fine, it will start go rancid in a couple weeks if stored at room temperature.
Eat Acorn Meal the Same Way as Wheat Flour
You can use acorn meal in many of the same ways as wheat flour. I have seen recipes online for acorn pasta, pancakes, and various breads. Today we are going to make a kind version of bannock bread that is a cross between a pancake and an unleavened bread loaf. Historically this is the closest to the common use of acorn meal I can find. Let’s see if an 11 year old will eat it, which in itself is a test of usefulness as a foodstuff.
Today we are going to take staghorn sumac and make a refreshing drink often called “sumac-aide” Thats hard to say so I just call it Sumac Lemonaide.
Sumacs grow throughout the world with Staghorn Sumac (Rhus Hirta- Rhus Glabra) is the most common.
While we don’t use it as a spice here in North America, sumac “stags” are used as a traditional spice in many cultures in the middle east. If you dry and grind staghorn sumac you will find it has a tangy flavor that is often used with grilled meats and fish.
I imagine you could proabably even use this as a wine base, if it works for dandelions, I bet it would be awesome with sumac.
While one should eat wild food without first consulting a pictorial guide and/or an expert, it is very easy to distinguish staghorn sumac from poison sumac. The color of the leaves is the biggest distinguishing characteristic.
Poison sumac has large white berries and only grows in wet areas – it is pretty rare.
Staghorn sumac has small red berries and is found all along country (and not so country) roads.
Besides being a very cheap drink that tastes a lot like pink lemonade at a FRACTION of the cost it has some health benefits. It is a good source of Vitamin C. So preppers can use it to prevent scurvy. It also has Malic acid, calcium malate, Dihydrofisetin, Fisetin, Iodine, Gallic Acid, Tannic acid, Selenium, and Tartaric acid.
It has long been used as a folk medicine and has been the subject of research in modern medicine.
As far as a recipe – Its pretty much all to taste and pretty simple.
How to Make Sumac Lemonade
Ingredients:
Sumac Berries
Water
Sugar (to taste)
Preparation
Don’t pick the Sumac cones after rain since the flavor comes from the sap on the outside of the berries.
Remove as much leaves and twigs as possible. The more stems the more tannic acid you will get.
Place the Sumac berries in a container filled with fresh cold water. You’d want about 1 cup of water for each cone.Warm water will make your drink bitter.
Crush the berries with your hands.Let rest for about 30-60 minutes depending on how strong of a flavor you want.
Strain using a cheesecloth
Sweeten to your liking. Serve cold with ice. Personally while I have to have sugar in my tea I don’t feel that sumac-aide needs sweeteners.
I like Sumac Lemonade, I think it tastes good. Additionally, it is easy to make. During a disaster, it is a good source of vitamin C to prevent scurvy and other diseases.
