Choate VersaPot

With growing season 'round the corner, thought I'd pass along something that might be a solution to some of your gardening woes.

Choate Machine & Tool, one of our long time sponsors, has a pretty cool, affordable take on the well proven bucket gardening concept--their VersaPot.

Bucket gardening has a bunch of benefits - the buckets are obviously moveable, usually weed-free, and, done well, you can ensure an optimal amount of water to the plant.

The fact that you can move 'em around is a big deal - you can grow stuff where you otherwise wouldn't be able to, scale up or scale down your garden as space allows. You can also control their exposure to weather - moving them into the sunlight, bringing them inside if a bad storm is brewing, etc.

The no-brainer ability to get the right amount of water to the plant is another big deal. Over/under watering is a pretty common mistake, and will kill plants or at least hamper production.

Yes, you can DIY up your own bucket planters by cutting down a bucket and drilling a bunch of holes in it, but that takes up time and gets you a DIY level end product. The VersaPot costs a little bit more than buying second bucket to cut apart ($8 a pop versus $4-$5 for a bucket), but it's ready to rock, much nicer and much less hassle. It also comes with the PVC pipe used for watering, and the plastic mesh cup used for watering. Add your own bucket and you're ready to plant.

Choate was kind enough to send me a package of these kits, which I'll be using in my gardening this year. I am a novice/lousy gardener at best, so don't expect magazine-quality results. But on the other hand, if I can have success with this setup, than you can too.

Stay tuned for more, or if you want to give 'em a try this season, hit up Choate and tell 'em T-Blog sent you.

Mylar bag cereal (or anything else) for long term food storage

The old food storage adage "store what you eat" is often thrown by the wayside in favor of stocking up on exotic, styrofoamy tasting freeze dried foods and #10 cans of pricey, no-name bulk goods. Who really eats most of that stuff in their day to day diet?

But, that doesn't have to be the case. You can package up familiar dry non-perishables foods for long term storage with minimal tools and inexpensive mylar bags.

What the heck is mylar? It's one of those wonder materials developed by NASA back in the crazy 60s. It protects the food from harmful light, and when sealed correctly, keeps the food in a dry, oxygen free environment--essentially the same conditions found inside a well sealed #10 can. Mylar has been used for food packaging for many years, and is well known amongst food storage aficionados.

Packaging up your own foods in mylar bags is a dead simple process. And, because you know exactly what's getting packaged up, there's no need to wonder about the initial quality of the food, no doubts about whether the family will like it, and no trouble to rotate it into your daily life.

And, you can save a ton of money doing it yourself. Hit up Costco or grocery store sales, buy your favorite foods cheap, package them up and stack 'em deep.

Veggie gardens

My small, scale, completely non-survivalist approved and totally not cost effective veggie garden is actually coming along pretty well.

Historically, we haven't been big gardeners. I know little/nothing about it, my wife might know less.

New place we moved into last fall has a little 4 foot by about 8 foot bed the previous owners had built up, but which had been mostly over grown with weeds.

Originally, we weren't planning on planting anything this year. Just too much going on to try to juggle...and the wife is historically bad at remembering to water plants.

But, I had to clean up the garden bed, so I figured what the heck. Bought up some plants from the hardware store, stuck 'em in the ground and have been taking care of them since. I think I spent about $30 on the plants - 3 tomato plants, jalapeno plants, a bell pepper plant or two, cilantro and a water melon because my 5 year old really wanted to grow a water melon.

Figured, worse case is that it's a learning experience.

Box Full o' Go Food

Look what the brown truck dropped off today...a fresh batch of some of the best bets for on-the-move, shelf-stable foods from Emergency Essentials. MRE Peanut Butters, MRE Tortillas, MRE Cheese w/ Jalapeno...tasty enough, ready to eat out of the package and loaded with well over 100 calories/ounce. These will be going into kits immediately, replacing some older stuff that needs to be rotated out.

And a can of Red Feather butter 'cuz I'm curious.

High Speed Frank's Hot Sauce - Life Changer?

Saw these in person at a restaurant for the first time the other day and promptly grabbed a whole handful. YES! Hot Sauce on the go!

I predict these will be the currency of choice in the post-apocalyptic world. Rat...lizard...Dinky Di dog food...a little bit o' Frank's makes everything better.

If you don't have a local source, Minimus sells them for a reasonable price. They've also got Cholula if that's your thing.

Welcome to Carolina Food Storage!

Please welcome a new sponsor aboard - Carolina Food Storage! They sell the full line of Shelf Reliance food on their web store, and also have a pretty cool blog with recipes and super secret sales, too.

I'm a fan of the vast majority of THRIVE foods that I've tried, and if you're in the market for can rotators, Shelf Reliance is the best in the business (they've got a pretty sweet deal on their smaller Cansolidators going on right now too, BTW).

If you're scratching your head with how exactly to use food storage type stuff to make tasty meals, I would really check out Carolina Food Storage's blog -- they've got a lot of pretty yummy looking recipes that you won't find anywhere else. Example: gooey tasty beefy Cheese Burger Casserole.

You guys know by now that I only refer you to quality companies and products, and I'm extra selective about who we partner with for advertising. Welcome Carolina Food Storage onboard, please give them your support and tell 'em TEOTWAWKI Blog sent ya!

Prepping on $40 a Week: Food Storage Week 2

Tactical beans.

Last week, we recommended picking up a case of white rice, and a few dollars worth of extra canned goods. This week, we're going to complete the traditional rice & beans food storage by adding some beans to our pantry.

Beans come in dried and canned variety. Dried are a lot cheaper, but the prep work is intensive - soaking and then cooking takes 45 minutes to 90 minutes. That's a lot of time, and it's a lot of fuel. If you've got say a woodstove and plenty of wood, not such a big deal. If you're cooking off of a camp stove with a limited supply of propane, it becomes a bigger deal quickly.

Canned beans are a bit pricier, but they are really convenient and18 make using up your beans much easier. Open can, add to dish. We add them to soups, chilis, serve them as a side dish and mash 'em up for refried beans.

We store black and pinto beans. I generally like varieties that come with some kind of seasoning out of the can - they're usually pretty tastey and don't require much extra work to make 'em into a good dish. I wouldn't be afraid to mix up your bean variety - throw in some baked beans, chilis, etc.

Cans cost about .69 to $1.29 or so. Look out for sales and buy cheap brands. If they do have seasoning, I'd try out a can of two before clearing the shelves.

Beans are loaded with protein and fiber, and pretty dense calorically, too. One 10-oz can of black beans, as an example, will have around 420 calories, 18 grams of fiber, 24 grams of protein.

Since we're gunning for a month worth of food for a single person, go ahead and pick up around 30 cans of the beans of your choice. So, depening on the brand and price you'll pay, you're looking at $20 to $30.

Rice and beans have zippo in the way of fats, so you'll want to add some when you cook 'em up. Olive oil is what is usually called for in recipes, and most people already have some in their pantry. If you're low on it, pick up a bottle to keep in reserve. Other oils will do in a pinch as well. Oils need to be rotated around once a year, so it doesn't make sense for most people to stock up a huge quantity.

If you've got extra money left in your $40, go ahead and spend it on some additional canned goods/shelf stable food, to help add some variety and supplement the standy-by rice n' beans. Ramen/cup-o-noodles might not be a great health choice, but they're cheap and they're food. Some bulk quick oats or bisquik can give you a change of pace for breakfasts. Cans of meat, soups, stews, peppers and tomatoes can add some variety, too. If your spice cupboard is lacking, maybe make a few additions - salt, pepper, bullion cubes, bulk spices and sugars are cheap and one can do a lot with 'em.

Our case of rice and a can of beans a day will stretch us over that month that we're looking for - it's  approximately 66,000 calories, or a healthy 33 days worth of 2000 calories a day. Add that onto whatever food you already have at home, plus the supplemental food you've bought this week and last, plus the 3 days of food in your bug out bag, and you're sitting fairly good. In the CONUS, I don't know of anyone in recent history who has been unable to access outisde food for over a month, so it is a pretty good baseline.

Next week, we'll finish off the low-budget one month food supply and move into the last portion, barter goods! Stay tuned. It's been a fun ride and we're almost done.

Prepping on $40 a Week: Food Storage week #1

The point of view of this series is getting someone who has nothing off to a solid start with a capable baseline of gear and supplies, without breaking the bank. As we've seen, it's very possible.

With that budget stretching point of view in mind, we move into food storage. Having some additional food kept at home is a wise thing--gets you out of that "3-meals-from-anarchy" demographic for starters.

You can get really fancy with food storage and spend hundreds, thousands on freeze dried stuff. But, that doesn't need to be the case--there are some really great deals out there on foundational food storage stuff (staples!) if you know where to look and who to ask.

Prepping on $40 a Week: Bug Out Food

We're nearing the end of the bug out bag packing list. This week is food, next week is some odds and ends. Then we're going to look at building a very basic, budget food supply for one person to last a month, and we'll wrap up with some barter items, and that will wrap up the $40 a week series.

Some guys don't pack much in the way of food -- if you can go for days without much to eat and not have your performance suffer dramatically, then good on you. But most of us will start to notice a fairly significant drop off in performance after a day or two, though adrenaline can mitigate some of that. We're putting together a survival kit, so it makes sense to add some food.

To get rolling, make sure you've read through last week's tip of the week on the calorie-to-weight ratio. Calorie-to-weight, shelf life and prep requirements are going to be the main requirements you look at when sorting out your food. Use a baseline of 100 calories per ounce.

Tip of the Week: Calories to Weight

A THRIVE Express meal weighing in.

When packing food in a survival kit, calories to weight should be the primary metric on your mind. Calories are what keep you going, and over the short term, a balanced nutrition is of low importance. You want to maximize what you get for a given amount of weight, so calories to weight, or specifically calories per ounce, becomes what you want to plan for.

Lightweight backpackers usually look for a cutoff of around 100 calories per ounce, and it's a good baseline to work from. With that, you can do 6000 calories - 3 days worth - in well under four pounds.

A kitchen scale is helpful here - cut the guesstimating and just chuck it on the ol' scale. They're also good for weighing out other gear and helping trim down your pack weight. We've got this one - super easy to use, accurate and worth the $25.

Get your food out and start weighing it. This website can also help in your search - type in your food and it will get you to the nutritional facts.

Long Term Survival: Food

Haven't had much time to do a ton of writing on this subject, but wanted to put something out there to get the wheels turning.

Food storage is a hugely important thing, but there's only so much food that a survivor can put back. A solid food supply of several months should be good for weathering most problems, but we're looking at something long term and truly devastating on a global scale. In an event like this, you're looking at years before the large scale commercial farms are up and running, the supply chains are rebuilt and the grocery stores are re-opened--if ever. In a situation like this, it's not likely that your food storage will last through the troubles.

Food quickly becomes one of the prime concerns for surviving long term--probably the biggest, aside from a plentiful supply of water--and water is generally easier to come by. If you've got food sorted out, that's a huge step towards surviving a bad scenario indefinitely.

Food Bin Dump

This bin made a guest appearance in the background of my initial review of the Kifaru Longhunter. I had a few questions about it, so I thought I'd let you see all of what's inside.

It's roughly three week's worth of food for the T-Blog family--a lot of THRIVE stuff, some Mountain House, a few not really visible MREs and some misc snacks. Rice is about the most complicated thing to cook here--the THRIVE stuff is mostly add to boiling water and cook, and you probably know MH and MREs.

It's kept loaded up in the Rubbermaid Action Packer (Lowe's has these last I checked...about as good of a plastic bin as I have seen), and stored inside. Otherwise, this stuff would all be sitting on a shelf--this way, it's ready to go at a moment's notice.

This is in supplement to the three day's worth of food in our bug out bags (MREs, MH and snacks)--though we could probably get away with less food in our BOBs, I'm a worst-case-scenario kind of guy.

It's heavy, but I'm not going to be hiking with it.

We have a separate Action Packer with camp kitchen gear--stove, utensils, axe, fire kit, pots and pans. Yes, a can opener too. Bug out bags again have additional redundancy.

Just picked up some multivitamins to add to the mix...and we probably need a bigger thing of syrup, too. A couple other things need restocking, but that's the general bin.

Teotwawki Wife on Homemade Tortillas

Yum! These are so good! Your tip of the week comes from my TEOTWAWKI Wife--a delicious tortilla recipe that requires only basic staples and cook up fast--a great option for survival cooking.

In the Southwest, I could pick up a huge pack of cook-up tortilla's with no preservatives, and hardly any ingredients (just real ones, not gross chemicals) from the store no problem. Now that we've moved to the other side of the country, I'm finding that certain things aren't available. I can't stand store bought flour tortillas after having been spoiled with the delicious cook-up kind. We eat a lot of Mexican food in our home, so I needed a quick solution.

I found a pretty good recipe that tastes delicious, it's easy to make, and the tortilla's are pliable (you can actually fold them and they don't split). And it only uses simple, mostly food storage friendly ingredients!

Thrive Express

A new THRIVE Express pouch & box, pictured next to an old-style #10 can Entree.

Shelf Reliance/THRIVE recently did away with their line of Entrees, replacing them with a new product line called THRIVE Express. Here's the bullet points:

• Big difference - packaging. No more #10 cans, which is a bit odd for a company known for their can rotator shelves. Now, you get four individually vacuum packed pouches inside a conventional-shelf friendly cardboard box.
• The meal selections themselves changed a bit. If you had a favorite Entree, it might be gone.
• Total cost, advertised shelf life and calorie counts remain similar.

Likes & dislikes after the jump!

Salt N' Prepper & THRIVE Recipe

Wanted to pass along a great newer blog, especially for our female readers. Salt N' Prepper is a down-to-earth food storage and prep blog, and written by a young mom-to-be, Jessica Hooley. Jessica provides a unique perspective in the survival blog-o-sphere, and she's already got some great content to explore on her blog--including DIY instructions for 100 hour candles and egg carton fire starters. Definitely worth checking out.

You may also want to forward Salt N' Prepper on to the less enthusiastic/apprehensive prepper women in your life. I'm sure they'll find it a better "fit" than the traditional macho gun/knives/camo survival/prepper blogs out there.

Jessica was kind enough to pass along one of her food recipes, for THRIVE Chicken Enchiladas. You can view the entire recipe by clicking read more below!

Delicious Waffles...THRIVE 6 Grain Pancake Mix

Quick break from the PSK contest to give a thumbs up for the 6 Grain Pancake Mix from THRIVE foods. My wife and son love pancakes, so we bought this mix for them--it's simple, add water and you're ready to go. I noticed a recipe for waffles--more my style--and yesterday was my night for cooking, so I cracked open a #10 can and made some up. I went in with low expectations--the usual "it's food storage, how good can it be?"--and was literally blown away with how good the waffles were. Crisp, great flavor...really amazing. Family gobbled 'em down, loved 'em and amazed that they came from a food storage mix. My 3-year old, incredibly picky son had 2, without syrup!

Here's what they looked like, with a bit o' homemade syrup, fresh strawberries and whipped cream. Pretty darn good.

I did have to play with the recipe a bit - added an extra 3/4 cup of the mix; the can recipe was too runny. You'll need to keep your waffle iron well oiled, too - they were a bit sticky.

Anyways, we were blown away by this stuff - really good. Next time, I think we're going to do bananas and pecans...should be delicious. We'll be adding a case or two to the pantry soon...

Check out the 6 Grain Pancake Mix from THRIVE >

THRIVE Q - Automating Food Storage

Shelf Reliance offers a unique way to purchase their THRIVE food products--the Q. While the Q may not be for every prepper, it offers an interesting alternative to conventional methods of purchasing food storage.

Here's the basics of how the Q works:

• Sign up for an account with Shelf Reliance
• Establish a monthly budget--could be $10 or $500; higher budgets get membership perks.
• As you shop on the Shelf Reliance website, you have the option of adding products to your shopping cart for immediate purchase, or adding them to your Q.
• You can add as much or as little to your Q as you want.
• As you add products to your Q, the system automatically arranges them in monthly shipments that fall within your allotted budget.
• At any time, you can go into the system and adjust shipments, edit quantities and so on. It's fairly flexible, unlike most "subscription" like services.

I've spent some time with the Q, and see it as being helpful for a several reasons:

You can "set it and forget it."
We're all busy and may not have a lot of time to shop for food storage products on a monthly basis, let alone do so using a disciplined acquisition plan. With the Q, you can figure out your good storage goals and then sit down add all the products to your Q in one sitting. Then, month by month, the food storage will start to come in. If you need help developing a plan, the Shelf Reliance site has a food storage calculator to help you figure things out.

Three more benefits and potential tradeoffs after the jump!

Freeze Dried Food Cost Comparison

Sticker shock is not uncommon when looking at freeze dried foods. #10 cans of freeze dried meats and entrees typically run $35-$45, which certainly can seem like a lot for a relatively small and lightweight can--especially if you're shopping in quantity.

I was curious about exactly how the prices might stack up to more conventional canned goods available at your local grocery mart. The results were actually pretty surprising.

For the comparison, I chose THRIVE freeze dried chopped chicken, which is on sale this month for $34.99. This is cooked and chopped chicken, only white meat and hormone free--usually stuff you pay a premium for to start with.

Based on info on the Shelf Reliance website, a #10 can contains 12 cups of freeze dried chicken. Two and a half cups of FD chicken make a pound of chicken, so there's enough FD chicken in one can to reconstitute 4.8 pounds of chicken.

That gives you a price per pound of $7.29 or $0.46 per ounce.

Compare this with a 12.5 ounce can chicken breast, like the Costco/Kirkland brand. Off the top of my head, one of these cans costs around $2.50. They contain 7 ounces of actual chicken, which gives you a price per pound of $5.71 and a price per ounce of $0.36.

So, you pay about a $.10 per ounce premium for the THRIVE freeze dried chicken. Not bad at all, and less than I would have guessed.

Things really swing in favor of the freeze dried stuff when you look at shelf life. Regular canned chicken has around a 3 year shelf life, while Shelf Reliance lists a 25 year shelf life for the freeze dried chicken. That means you'd have to rotate the canned chicken 8 times over the shelf life of the freeze dried chicken.

Sure, if you eat canned chicken as a part of your regular diet, then rotation is not a big deal. But if you don't--if you frequently find yourself getting rid of old canned food or if you just want something stored for insurance purposes--then that's certainly something to think about.

THRIVE freeze dried foods are available from our sponsor, Shelf Reliance consultant Jade Garn. Visit her website here.

THRIVE Broccoli & Cheese Soup Mix

Watch out, Pioneer Woman!

You've probably all tried some kind of  dry soup mix in the past--I know we have at least a couple sitting in the cupboard. I'm not a big fan of most soup mixes--they tend to end up tasting mildly of odd chemicals, which is not my favorite dinner time flavor. Once, I made the mistake of buying a #10 can of generic broccoli & cheese soup mix...it turned green and ended up looking/tasting a lot like vomit. Not something I'd want in my regular food rotation.

This easy-to-use soup mix from our friends at Shelf Reliance is entirely different. It blows other soup mixes that I've had out of the water. It goes way beyond being palatable--it's actually pretty darn good.

Lightweight Cook Kit

Here's my lightweight cooking kit, which consists of:

- 28 ounce Snowpeak Titanium pot and lid
- Sea to Summit Alpha Light long spoon
- Pop can alcohol stove
- Hardware cloth pot stand

Whole kit weighs less than 10 ounces and has some solid versatility. The alcohol stove will run off a variety of fuels and gets water boiling pretty quickly. The hardware cloth pot stand isn't a must have, but it's useful and enables me to cook over twigs, fuel tablets, and so on, in addition to the pop can stove.

The Snowpeak pot nests fairly well under a standard Nalgene-style bottle, with the lid riding nested under the pot. I'm not a titanium junkie, but it's a nice pot and lid, sturdy and lightweight. I would like measurement markings on the sides, though. Came in a set (the Mini Solo), which included a smaller pot and a fairly nice mesh bag. Pricey, but I got mine with an REI member discount.

Went with a spoon over a spork because I couldn't find a long handled spork--the long handle is useful for eating out of food packages, mixing, etc. Does its job.

I need to get together a windscreen, looking at some heavy duty foil for that role.