Real Food In An Emergency Situation

I had hoped to blog more but I have been rather distracted.  My county is in a state of emergency due to incredible amounts of rain over the weekend.  Roads are crumbling, bridges are collapsing and being washed away, homes are flooded to the point of being like little islands in an ocean, people are being evacuated and it is getting worse by the day with more rain on the horizon.  This picture is an aerial shot of a close by community to show how extensive the damage is.  Photo Credit: (November 8, 2010 Aerial Photo by Peggy D'Entremont).   Fortunately, I live in town on a hill so we are not in a danger flooding zone unless the ocean rises a few meters.

With disaster, my thoughts often turn to having emergency food on hand.  My church places great emphasis on being self sufficient and prepared for times of emergency.  My family should have 72 hour kits but we currently don't.  The premise is you have a backpack for each person with clothes, food, medication and comfort items that would last for 72 hours, which is the average length of an emergency.  Water is a good idea too, especially with flooding situations where bacteria counts in water systems may be compromised.

This brings to mind, what real food can one put in a 72 hour kit?  It needs to be something that stores well, doesn't take up a lot of room, something that is easy to eat without heat, nourishing and filling.  This is my dilemma.

Since I haven't given it a lot of thought and I'm still kind of new to real foods, here are some ideas off the top of my head:

-peanut butter or other nut or seed butters (commercially bought as home prepared do not have a long shelf life)
-soaked and dehydrated nuts/seeds
-canned tuna or wild caught salmon or other meats (maybe less than ideal but still life sustaining)
-homemade jerky
-home dried fruits and vegetables
-soaked flour hardtack (sounds good in theory, would it work?)
-coconut oil
-vitamins, cod liver oil

See, I kind of struggle with ideas.  Most real food isn't meant to be stuffed in a backpack for long periods of time to be grabbed in case of emergency.  It is meant to sustain life during a time of emergency, not be a long term way of eating.  These items could be rotated out ever 6 months (more or less depending on the shelf life of the food item).

So, do you have any ideas of food items that could easily be stored for long term use?  Please share your thoughts in the comment section.

Big Mac Salad

This is a throwback to my low carb days where on a message board I participated in, we would come up with all kinds of concoctions to help us over come our craving for the foods we were giving up. Fortunately, this is a winner that is easily adaptable to real food. It is tasty and fills the tastes that one may crave if they don't have fast food out of their system.

This is a pretty loose recipe. You may love onions or hate them. You may want lots of pickles or not. Play with it and adjust to your taste. All ingredients are somewhat local, organic and the beef is pastured .  It is better than the "real" thing because this is the real thing!

Big Mac Salad

• lettuce or other salad greens (darker are healthier)
• sliced white or red onions
• slices of tomato and pickle if desired
• "special sauce" (check out this thousand island dressing at Kelly The Kitchen Kop's site, it is what I used)
• a slice of real cheddar cheese or grated (I used extra old Cows Creamery cheese)
• 2 hamburger patties or desired amount of crumbled ground beef 
• a sprinkle of sesame seeds (optional; I didn't have any on hand)

Layer the ingredients in your bowl or on your plate in the order listed.  It is a very yummy salad that is flexible to your tastes.  So very very good and it satisfies the need for a fast food fix.  I made mine from leftovers so it went together in no time.  I like chopping it all up and eating it all mixed up.  Yum!! I'll have to make it again soon :)


Part of gnowfglins Tuesday Twister, Kelly The Kitchen Kop's Real Food Wednesday, and The Healthy Home Economist's Monday Mania!

Michael Pollan on Organic Food, Very Good!

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Want to Change

I really want to change what we eat. I want to change how we eat. I think about it a lot. Then there is the issue of the food that we store and the amount of money we have to spend.

Catch 22.

With the kids going to school in the fall, I will have more time on my hands to cook and prepare foods. My question is, will I want to? I love reading real food and nourishing food blogs. They make it sound so easy. I could do it for me but I also want to do it for my family. Mark is the hardest sell. The kids are the pickiest. I would hate to spend a lot of money on nourishing food only to fall back on junk again. I have been restraining myself from buying but it can be just so cheap, easy and I hate to say it...good!

So I am still working out in my mind what I want to do about food in our family. I will still share recipes here that may not be so nourishing or even healthy but I hope the trend will swing towards what my core food beliefs are.

I asked the people in charge of the farmer's market is there was any talk of a WAP chapter in Yarmouth. I haven't heard back but I would volunteer help. I couldn't afford a $50 membership right now but maybe in a few months or after Christmas. I hate that money is what holds us back in so many things.

As of right now, I'm planning on getting a half share in the CSA, a quarter beef (not sure from whom yet) and half a pig, pastured if I can sell DH on it. I am trying to find egg sources but they get snapped up so fast. Raw milk is illegal, although I know some places who sell organic raw milk cheese and yogurt (2 hours away though). I can't find shares.

I am running through it in my mind but money is especially tight right now because we just bought the car, we took a big vacation and Mark got a speeding ticket. Tomorrow we are going on our 10th anniversary overnight temple trip and I plan on making a lot of farm market stops :).

I am sure it will all come together.

Loving this time of the year

I feel bad that I have no pictures to post. I am really loving this time of the year. Lots of cheap local food and lots of free veggies from the gardens of our families. I have bags of string beans in the freezer, along with all our blueberries. I have a pile of cukes that I plan to make into pickles.

I found some very yummy grass fed beef at the farmer's market that is only $2.50 a pound! It was so lean, it had no fat at all on it. I made it into hamburger and gravy and 1 pound was enough for two and a half meals (half because I made a sandwich for a snack; the kids don't like hamburger and gravy but Mark and I ate enough for two). I had to add lots of water to be able to make gravy and it was delish!! On Saturday I am going to ask if they sell beef by the side or quarter.

They are starting CSA's in our town! Community Supported Agriculture is something I have been wanting to support, unfortunately right now, it will still have to be a dream as it's kind of expensive. I may look into a half share though. From the news article :"One full share (vegetables only) will provide a family of four and cost $680 for 17 weeks. Meats and eggs can be selected in their premium full shares packages at a cost of $1,400 for 17 weeks. Half shares are also available for both."

Tonight for supper, we had a beef roast cooked all day in the slow cooker with some montreal steak seasoning on top and onions (Red and White claims their beef is local but I'm not 100% sure). It was served with garden fresh green beans and the driest squash I've had in ages. I love squash! If someone in my family says it's "Good and dry" you know it's the best! Fred Kingsbury usually has the best squash so it was a welcome treat, especially slathered with butter.

I am going back on a lower carb diet but I am not going to hold back on fresh fruits and veggies. They are just too good when they are so fresh. It would be a shame not to enjoy them while they are at their peak of goodness since through the winter veggies can be a bit boring and I am trying to be more seasonal in my eating. I hope to preserve a lot this summer/fall through alternative methods. I definitely could use a bigger freezer (although I don't regret giving our other one away).

Aw, Honey, Honey

I was up early and thought I would write. We are in Dartmouth right now and I've been up for a while. We had an interesting day yesterday on our way up. It was raining buckets and often dark. We made a few stops. I got a couple of big bags of apples (one red delicious and the other crispin) and parsnips from Noggin's Corner. We got lost looking for honey. Mmmmm, yummy raw honey. I wanted to get our bucket filled since it was cheaper but the man there seemed kind of rushed to get lunch so we just bought a bucket off the table at Foote Family Farm. I guess the kids explored a little bit outside and saw the hives and other farm stuff but I didn't (otherwise I would of got some pictures). Since we felt like we were intruding, we kind of hurried along. The kids were so fascinated with the honey they wanted to play with it. Not the honey, but the bucket to pretend they had a honey store. While I was out, Ethan managed to accidentally pour out about 1.5 or so cups of honey. I wasn't too impressed by that.

In the city, we stopped at the Real Canadian Wholesalers on Connaught Street in Halifax. Wow, I can see why metro saints can build their storage on the cheap! There was so much stuff but we contained ourselves, lol! Dad's car has a much smaller trunk than ours. I could not believe milk was only $5.29! That's about $2+ cheaper than the price at Sobeys home (I never pay that price though). If we had a portable cooler with us, we would of been stocking up on a lot of stuff but it's probably a good thing we didn't. We did buy a 20kg bag of whole wheat flour and managed to only pay $7.50! (there was a tiny hole in the bag so half off). I also stocked up on coconut milk and some other things. I wanted to get more flour but the 20kg bags of regular Robin Hood weren't much cheaper than what we have home and as I mentioned, we have limited trunk space.

Last night Mark took the kids out for supper while I was at the temple. When I was done, I was starving and was craving veggies. I went to Sobeys and man the salads and fresh to go foods were awfully expensive. I went looking at the frozen foods and it took about three passes through the frozen dinners to find any that had even a minute amount of veggies. I ended up getting a General Tao Chicken entree and a small sweet potato to cook in the microwave. I really wanted asparagus but I didn't have anything to put it on to heat up (although I after thought I could of used the empty food tray).

Today, among other things, we are planning to go to the Halifax Farmer's Market. I have heard that is an awesome experience and can't wait. I know there is local spinach growing and I am regretting not getting some in the valley. I am craving greens! Must be spring, lol!

How Much We'd Need For A Year

I deleted the original post because it wasn't formatting correctly. Visit http://lds.about.com/library/bl/faq/blcalculator.htm to find out how much food storage you would need to sustain life for a year (we are a family of 4, entered all as 7+ years old). It is rather eye opening thinking of so much food at once. I know it would be bad for us. Since we can't can our dry goods at a cannery, most of that would go bad before it got used. Trust me, I'm in a situation where I got too much of what we never used simply to have storage and now I will be giving most of it away.

I love how the church emphesizes store what you eat and eat what you store. They focus more on just having storage and not so much wheat, wheat, wheat now. Everyone is at a different place with their storage. 1200lbs of grains, yeesh! What are we, cattle? lol! It is hard building storage when most of what you eat is fresh (or try to). That is why gardening and preserving skills are very important to home and food storage. I hope to sharpen my skills a little more this summer :)

Day One

Today is day one of the big 28 day Real Food Challenge. It didn't start out well, lol! I was up early and hungry and for some odd reason, I was craving a hot dog. So I had an angus beef weiner (PC brand) and all was well. Except I remembered after I ate it what day it was. Ooops! I don't think processed weiners are acceptable in the real food realm. Oh well, learn from mistakes.

I boiled a bunch of eggs and am trying to think of what to have for the rest of the day. My stomach is feeling kind of dodgy now. I hope I'm not getting the stomach flu like everyone else seemed to had and is still making rounds. Still, I think I will make this bacon egg and avocado salad and if we don't eat it today, it will keep until tomorrow :).

I did clean out the fridge a bit. I got rid of some old stuff, artificially sweetened stuff and some things that I wasn't quite sure what of what they were. It made a lot more room. I have a big can of ketchup in there I need to put in smaller jars (I know, not nourishing food, but the kids don't want to give up their ketchup and I don't get the kind that has glucose/fructose).

I'll probably update more soon, frequently, lol! I haven't gotten the challenge of the day yet and I plan to write a lot. Part of the challenge is writing about it and I plan to do lots!