SHTF! Food Prepping 101

good morning everyone I'm coming to you from my puzzle board this is my puzzle board and since we are in the pandemic I thought I would do how to start prepping video for everybody who didn't prep and are now finding that the value of prepping or putting back food for an emergency has become more important so let me begin right off I'm not going to try not to go on a squirrel hunt here the first step with prepping is having the proper tools this is a food grade bucket and you must have the lid this can store at least 25 to 40 pounds of food depending what it is it could be beans it could be rice now with beans you can fill the bucket up throw in oh where did I put them hold on guys so beans with bay leaves seal your bucket put on the bucket what's in it start an inventory book and make a note how many pounds of beans did you put back okay and you always date your bucket okay let's talk about beans we've got our pinto beans I store a lot in glass jars but I also have buckets and buckets full of pinto beans we also have black beans we also have red beans these you can make chilies with we have lentils you can make soups with lentils split pea of course you can make split pea soup with some ham and great northern beans and then there's also navy beans there's kidney beans there's so many dry beans you can store and you can storm just like this in these serving size bags you can literally have every variety of being in that bucket just by setting these bags in and layering them up the bucket then don't forget to also add your bay leaves beans are very versatile if they're done with rice it forms a complete protein which is super healthy now when you're storing beans you're going to need to store salt pepper and some seasonings that are gonna make these go from boring to Wow so some of the things we store is Wiley's beans and peas seasonings and I get these at Walmart usually in the fresh produce areas where I find these so we do stock those and I try and grab them when they're on sale the other thing you can store is a chili seasoning and these don't take up any room at all you can also store things like Greek seasonings this is a Cajun seasoning you can use for beans rice just about anything soups one of my new favorites is everglades seasonings and all this seasonings I get at Walmart guys so there's a never Glade seasoning and all these you can use with your beans and that's why I'm showing you a variety variety variety don't just stop beans you have to stock something to flavor your beans and don't plan on just eating beans every day because you will not be able to I know you got diehards out there who say oh yes we can but guys I'm gonna tell you real fast they're gonna get boring you're gonna get tired of beans you're gonna get tired of the flavor you need variety and we're gonna talk about that okay while we're talking about seasoning I would bring you some of the barebone basics guys now we are in a very humid climate so storing regular salt has proven very difficult but we've now switched the Himalayan pink salt and look at this see how it flows that has the we've had this at least six months guys and the salt has not clumped it on us on us at all and this is a healthier salt it's not processed it's full of minerals and vitamins so Stefan's definitely part of a balanced diet we also stopped pepper got a have your garlic guys and you stopped the spices you use the most but this is a big container look how big that container is if you pick up one or two of these every time you go to the grocery store and you say you have one you're using you pick up a second one even before you're ready for it and that gives you a stockpile you always want to stock multiples cinnamon is a great item for an add to any kind of drinks like coffee hot chocolate breakfast oatmeal you can add this to a lot of breakfast items and then you've got your red pepper flakes yes you hear the so on the background Jim is working on a project we also have hot crush red pepper flakes and these are good with beans as well just to add some hey I see the dust I tried to dust things off my house gets very dusty cuz we live in on dirt road so this is another great prep and if you don't like super hot food you just add a couple pieces just a couple of these little flakes and you'll add a depth of flavor without adding the heat and to me I can't do the hot spicy food anymore so I have to be very very careful I love spicy food but I just can't do it anymore so we still use this but in a smaller quantity and let's take the next step forward here okay still talking about spices this are these are three key ingredients when you're working with beans cumin for sure you can add this to every single bean recipe cardamon that can you see that I've got a lot of glare but that's another one that you can add to every bean dish and then you got your chili powder so if you're doing anything that you want a little chili flavoring this is definitely a go-to and as you can see these are my actual spices so you can see I've been using them and these guys I can't tell you I make stuff very often with these spices and you can see I've had this bottle for years it just takes a lot of cooking to use up these ingredients so if you would stop two of these they would last you through pretty much any situation that comes our way to include this pandemic which is carried on we're in month three now and I have not run out of any spices it's about stocking and stocking multiples now we're gonna shift gears and we're gonna come out of the spices so I think everybody knows how to cook your basic stuff if you don't know how to cook from scratch it is time to learn you cannot survive on boxed meals when they run out and all you have is your basic ingredients you absolutely have to know how to put those ingredients together there's so much information sorry the shaking is my hands and a lot of swelling in my fingers today so my fist is very very tight so with that being said let's move on okay guys let's talk about breakfast and your choices one of the things we stock is quick oats and it is a you can get Walmart brand it doesn't matter what brand but you can see it doesn't take long to cook so if you had to cook this over a campfire or a grill or any kind of other cooking device other than your stove this is something that be easy and all you do is add water and probably a pinch of salt the other thing peanut butter if you can bake some home bake bread biscuits anything like that with peanut butter and jam you have a breakfast staple now now one of the other things we stock and don't mind the jar that's an old jar I know if you can see that it says quick grits on it this has been put up since 2015 guys and this is still good and basically what grits are they're a ground corn and it's designed to be cooked kind of similar to oatmeal so these will cook quickly there are two varieties the regular variety which we'll have to boil water and cook until it's done and then the quick grits cooking a fraction of that time we chose to put up the quick quick grits because we're not we don't cook these very often and I haven't really mastered cooking the other type of grits I probably should but these store really well so that's why we have those now we also have chickens so we have a ready supply of eggs so we do breakfast most warnings is going to be eggs and then in the summer what we do with this we will soak this in goat's milk because we have goats and we have fresh raw goat's milk every single day here so we would soak this in the refrigerator overnight and then the next morning you can you can soak things like raisins cranberries dehydrated cherries you can have you can add a lot of stuff you can add nuts to it we usually add cinnamon honey nutmeg is one of our things that we would add to our oatmeal but weep we actually prefer oatmeal cold so we do things a little differently I know and if you have children then stocking box cereals is a great option but keep in mind unless your stocking dry powdered milk that cereal is not going to do you much good unless they're going to eat it straight out of the box dry and I don't know too many kids who are interested in eating cornflakes out of the box dry but that's one of your options for breakfast choices and bread of course is for toast you've got to learn how to make bread guys it's one of my hurdles and I'm working on it so we have made several things of bread during this pandemic shutdown now let's talk about rice you see I just recently bought that bag that's a huge bag of rice let's see how many pounds twenty-five pounds of rice you see it sitting next to this bucket it would take probably this whole bag and half of another to fill this bucket now rice has to be handled different and I don't put back jasmine rice this is just the rice that I like to cook with every single day so this goes in my rotation for every single day cooking what I stock long term is long grain parboiled enriched rice white rice only do not and I stress do not put back brown rice because brown rice is not processed as much and it will go rancid fast step number one with rice freeze it put it in the freezer for three days this is a half two and here's why no matter how clean your household is no matter how clean you think the rice is that you bought there are bugs in rice whether it's the egg of the bug there is something in the rice and it will hatch and sprout and grow and it will eat your rice so to prevent that you bring it home you put it in the freezer for three days and you get it out let it defrost then you move it into your bucket once it's in your bucket you're gonna add your bay leaves I think I already put my bay leaves away but you're gonna add your bay leaves now your rice is ready for long-term storage we do one step further but I'm just telling you what options you have as a new prepper we actually buy miler bags five mil are thicker mylar bags with oxygen absorbers so when we put our rice back it's in a vacuum sealed Meyler bag which ensures that nothing can live in it and it will take us to 25 possibly 35 years shelf life and we've had rice put back oh good lord it's gotta be eight years now so it's been roughly eight years since we started prepping so rice is definitely one of your absolutely must stocks if you want to put food back rice is a great filler and will its nutrient dense as well so this is something if you can't get your kids to eat anything but rice don't worry about it feed them rice if you can put in rice milk cook your rice put some milk on it and cinnamon that's another breakfast item and then you can do things if you have eggs you can do fried rice there's so many things you can do now I make homemade salsa so I do a salsa rice which I call Spanish rice so I'll cook my rice the normal way and then I add a jar of salsa and then I have all those vegetables that are in salsa are now part of my rice so so many things you can do with rice personally you know how I like it butter salt and pepper but guess what we may not have access to butter in a grid down shtf situation so pick some varieties even something as simple as this could be added to a rice obviously you cook your rice first then you put your pesto mix in there's all kinds of seasonings you can add to rice some of the seasons I had out here earlier in this video would work wonderful occasion seasoning Greek seasoning the Everglades seasoning would go really good in rice so there's so much you can do with it guys all right now since I showed you the pesto let me show you your other starch oh there you go now pasta stores beautifully guys absolutely beautifully but again I would not store it in the original packaging I would take this out of here put in a vacuum sealed bag and then layer it in a bucket here's the bucket and always always date whatever package you move this into dated these can also get bugs it just takes a lot longer to get bugs and usually those bugs are coming from outside the box rather than inside the box so that's something to be aware of now to keep these long term you have to package them just like you would the rice you don't have to freeze them but you have to put them in something vacuum seal it if you have a vacuum sealer you can use that if you have the access to mylar bags and oxygen absorbers you can do that and then you date it and you if the package is not see-through you have to write on what is in that package so you know date it right on what it is and then put it back like in layer them in a bucket so there's that bay leaf you can also add a bay leaf to every package you put back so that bay leaves are very versatile guys very very versatile and of course with this you want to have packages like this you can even get a spaghetti sauce packet so that any pasta you make you would have that to add here's your pesto there's so many things again you could do with pasta I'm shifting my chair guys I'm sitting down cuz I had a very bad day yesterday with my back so I'm babying it today alright we've covered the rice pasta and the other thing I don't have anything to show you right now is instant potatoes guys nothing eats it but us I swear I've had instant potatoes and I've never ever seen a bug in instant potatoes but again you would process that just like you would the pasta REE bag it label it date it and then stack it in a bucket and always make a list of what's in your buckets if you're putting rice pasta oatmeal in one bucket make sure you have a list somewhere that you can know what's in that bucket you don't have to tear out 30 buckets to find something you need to know what's in every single bucket and you have to come up with a system now let's talk about well might well this is right here let's talk about that this kind of stuff lasts a long long time on your shelves guys fill a bucket with the goodies the muffin mixes the brownie mixes the cookie mixes there is nothing wrong with storing a bucket full of yes junk food I don't know about you but during this pandemic we're not going out for snacks for dinners out having the ability to make some brownies some breads some snacks I mean I've made a raspberry bread recently and I have a video up on that we've made peanut butter cookies which is another great thing for your peanut butter and it was only a three ingredient recipe so that was good but don't forget the yummy stuff the treats especially if you have children you need to have something a little different and extra being in this pandemic has been eye-opening for everybody I think and we saw that result in the grocery stores when you could even go in a store and get a roll of toilet paper you couldn't go into the store and get a pack of miik it got ridiculous guys Jim and I were not in the stores when that was happening we didn't need to be in because we had already prepped so and I'm just giving you examples you put in your pantry what you guys are going to eat some of the stuff can be short-term that you rotate through like what I'm going to show you here my canned meats we rotate through canned meats so nothing sits in the pantry too long okay now meat what happens if you can't get it in the refrigerator freezer section of your grocery store if you've already stocked your canned meats it won't matter it really will not matter everybody let me give you an example I have not been to the grocery store in three months now I still have meat in my freezer I still have a ton of canned meats on my shelves and that's because we stock these items we sock them when we can get them we stock multiples at a time like when I buy let's talk about the spam when I buy spam I buy a case of spam so probably six months ago I bought two cases of spam we just open those cases so we're having some spam with our breakfast in the morning Jim makes a to die for spam sandwich so that's one of your staples if you can eat it or you like it not everybody does we do so we stock it all your chicken recipes guess what there's your chicken breast meat there's enough meat in here to make chicken salad to make you can throw this in a regular salad just as an add-on to add the protein of the meat to your salads you can put this in any kind of casserole soup anything so we stock like 20 cans of these at a time guys not everybody's gonna like these but guess what we do so we stock canned sardines and yes we stock like 20 cans of these now this is a harder product to get when we were before we moved and before Jim got his Social Security disability we were food banking cuz we had no money coming in so we got a bunch of this canned pork ok Lakeside foods canned pork and guess what guys it is delicious so just to give you an example tonight I'm making a box of macaroni and cheese why cuz we stock the macaroni and cheese and we have this I will heat this up drain the excess juice off and put barbecue sauce on it that will be our meat for tonight I can't even tell ya this is absolutely delicious so that's canned pork I probably have about thirty cans of this and these cans are not new this is oh let's see this looks like it's good too oh my god is that right I don't know it doesn't really have an expiration date or sell-by date I don't know if you're gonna be able to see that but actually says I don't know I'm not sure what it's saying there is no date on so maybe it has an indefinite shelf life I don't know but let me tell you it's delicious it's a great ad if you can find the lakeside pork and pork I will recommend stocking it most people wouldn't think of this as a meat but guess what guys it's full of meat and it's meat and chili sauce it's not hot it's not spicy all you'd have to do here is actually add your canned beans but you know what else this is good with you can put it over pasta you can put it with your rice you can put this on hot dogs which is why we stock it if we like it on our hotdogs but there's so much again you can do with this you get creative by a couple cans see if you like it and then start reinventing the recipes to work with your food stores I have no problem putting this with rice none at all no I mean elbow macaroni in this oh my gosh would be it'd be chili mac guys there you go all right we're getting down to the bare bones here the other canned meat would be tuna fish everybody knows about tuna fish guys and there's several things again you can make casseroles I make a tuna fish casserole which is why we stock it plus we absolutely love tuna salad sandwiches and personally I could sit and eat tuna out of a can if I have to because I love tuna I love seafood so seafood for me is like a no brain in my stocks here now most people wouldn't think of this guess what guys ham is ham is ham this is another great stock if you want to do green beans and ham here's your ham you can fry slice and fry this make ham sandwiches oh that solves driving me nuts there's so much you can do with canned meats and I'm showing you this as a choice of canned meats there's so much you can buy canned beef you can also buy canned baking guys who can't stock bacon I mean come on you cook some bacon or even this ham with some of your being is like a white bean soup with some of the Sam I think it would be just amazing yeah for you guys with children or you don't want to stock all these ingredients this is not a healthy choice but guess what it's a fast easy meal on the days you just don't have it in you to sit down and and go to all the trouble of cooking rice and pasta and all that stuff this is a quick fix guys do not cook in the cans these cans are no longer safe to be cooked in years ago I cooked in the can but these cans have changed so now this is enough for two people right here it's a one of the large cans um this says 1 cup serving guess what guys it's barely that it's a 2 pound 8 ounce can 40 ounces if you had to make this stretch here's what I would do cook some rice and serve this with rice cook some instant mashed potatoes and serve this with the mashed potatoes add a side veggie and there's many ways of having veggies on hand I'm going to talk to you about at least three ways that I can talk about I try not to talk about things I don't know about guys cuz that's deceiving to you and it's just not fair here's your other one now this is obese to a very basic but very delicious beef stew it's got big chunks of beef and it really does big chunks of potatoes and carrots it's two pounds six ounces if you had to you could probably feed three people on this but I'm gonna tell you to make this stretch again you can put it over rice add some biscuits make some biscuits to go with it have some nice crusty bread with it this will stretch your meals instead of opening two cans to get by you open one and you add stuff to make this go further it's got a very nice rich gravy broth which I think biscuits would be a great add to this this is not again I stress not your healthiest choices I get dinged a lot on my videos because of the food I stock guys we don't eat this way every day this is a backup so that when someone's sick or just exhausted or in a lot of pain which we do deal with here is a lot of pain this is a quick fix we don't live near a restaurant we don't live near McDonald's or a Burger King there is no fast food here none we have to drive for 30 minutes to get to fast food and in a pandemic grid down shtf situation those places may not be available so you have to have options in your home if you have a kid who's just having an off day and you open a can of ravioli I guarantee that kid's gonna feel better immediately know he shouldn't eat it every day guys but it's an option everything is an option here you stock what works for your family your kids might like SpaghettiOs guess what I'm gonna be sixty years old here in a few months and I love SpaghettiOs so I will stock but I won't stock 20 cans of it Zach maybe two or three because I again this is not your everyday food this is your backup plan to your everyday foods now one of my other things we're going to talk about vegetables and other choices okay guys we just talked about all those meats but there's one more actually there's two more level of meats to talk about one is the freeze dried meats we get thrive life because there's no added preservatives no chemicals when you look at the ingredients you see that it is cooked seasoned ground beef patties crumbles and your seasonings are on the back here as well so there are and you see how short that ingredient list is so that's your thrive life ground beef and then you have this grilled seasoned chicken again 90 percent chicken very little seasonings are added to this and then they also have the ones that have nothing added it's just plain meat those are healthy choices if you're gonna be cooking from scratch and say your power goes out you could lose a freezer full of meat which is so sad you if that happens you have to be able to can those meats up right away guys if you lose your meats and you don't have canned meats or freeze dried meats on hand you're gonna be losing a vital part of your everyday diet I can honestly tell you oh that's all I can honestly tell you that we're cooking with this now and we love it if I make a Bear Creek soup which is prepackaged soup but it has no meat in it I add some of this chicken and it is wonderful last night I made a ground beef potato casserole and I use this ground beef so and that's that's wonderful as well we make chili with it there's so many recipes we make with it we make our tortilla soup which is one of the best soups I've ever had bar none anywhere is a thriving Fortius soup recipe that I have and it uses this chicken and a few other ingredients from thrive life so that's one of your options to meat and then of course there's your freezing your meats that you can freeze now these have a shelf life of 25 years so if you just put back like three years worth of this food for an emergency and you don't touch it you have 25 years to use it up now as soon as you open this can like this can here you can see it's been opened and used now once you open this can you must use it within the year but you still have a whole year to use this ground beef same way with this chicken once it's open you have a year to use up this can so that wouldn't be a problem you plan your meals around this once these containers are open but if you just wanted to have the security of having meat long term this is the only option I found for storing meat long term canned goods you probably get a good 10 years out of a can of one of these like a can of meat you can probably trust it for 10 years but not 25 years I'm really really enjoying having these on hand now one of the other things thrive life is really good for know if you can see that there's celery these are bananas oops banana slices the only ingredient in this is bananas guys that's it bananas no preservatives nothing it's been freeze-dried the only ingredient in here is celery that's it freeze-dried celery I like the onions we buy the onions and the mushrooms will we try and get a little bit of everything here's green beans the only thing in it is green beans even your canned green beans you're not gonna have just green beans you're gonna have salt and God knows what all the preservatives they put in this stuff anymore peas this just came in yesterday I'm dying to open this up and try it it prize gonna taste like fresh peas out of the garden that's the joy of this stuff once it's rehydrated it tastes fresh it even in your mouth it is just like you're eating something fresh out of the garden so and I have texture issues if it wasn't right I would not be able to eat it guys I can't tell you how many times I've made something had to walk away because I have texture issues if it doesn't sit right it'll make me throw up so yeah since we're on vegetables stocking vegetables has got to be one of the most important tears to a prepping pantry you have choices these again these pop top lids I don't care for and we're seeing more and more manufacturers do this these are not secure enough for long-term storage I would tell you these need to be used up within a year for safety reasons okay so now you can get these diced tomatoes in thrive life with 25 years shelf life here's corn another great add to any meal and you you know if you're making your own recipes you get creative with your stocks here's my green beans I like the French style but guess what guys these are just as good they're just cut different and these will store for 25 years these if we're lucky 5 to 10 years and this is definitely something you're gonna have to rotate in your pantry I would never recommend not rotating these type of canned foods even your meats must be rotated if they've been manufactured in cans like this we've got carrots I mean there's so many things you've got to stock what you're going to eat and you got to stock a healthy balanced diet guys now we talked about pasta and rice storing a lot of sec here they're storing tomato paste ensures that you can make things like spaghetti sauces chiles and then I also stock jarred sauce but one of my things is I stock everything spice wise and ingredient wise to make homemade spaghetti sauce this year every tomato plant in my garden is a paste tomato so I can make my own homemade sauces but again even your home's own homemade sauces are only going to be good for a few years if you want to store long term you find the ingredients in this product and then you have a 25 year shelf life yes they they have a spaghetti sauce tomato powder they call it they have all kinds of stuff they have gravy mixes bread flour they got yeast not everything is 25 years the yeast I think is 5 years and the bread dough is 5 years so that's something to be aware of but your main Porton foods are 25 years and they sell premade foods like a rice pilaf they have a pasta primavera so they do have the premade foods like other companies the difference here they focus on health rather than sodium so that makes a big difference for us folks are getting up in age and can't have all that sodium I also stock tomatoes canned potatoes but again look at that lid not good guys like it cannot be stored long term and you can't put a lot of weight on this either where you might be able to store cam like this 3 to 10 high you wouldn't want to do that to this kind of pop in that lid now one of the things that some people talk about some people don't do you want to drink water for months on end and only water guys I don't I'm a big coffee person we stock these fire bricks yeah fire bricks oh my gosh these coffee bricks they are in a miler bag and as you can see how tight that is that is vacuum-sealed this is securing that this coffee is gonna be good for a very long time and I've had some of this stored for five years now so this is this is the way to store coffee just like this look at that and yes when we see these coffee bricks we buy at least I think six at a time we buy and we just put them back there they're getting harder and harder to find because we like to stick with the brands and there are off brands we just don't know that we're gonna like them and before you stock something you better like it guys it's hard as heck to swallow something you don't like even when things get bad if you got kids stockpile some kool-aid some chocolate milk mixes this is a hot chocolate mix if you're working outdoors you need to think about rehydration and remineralizing your body so that's something that we have to deal with here with mr. Jim he's a big sweater so we and you see this was put back see that 8th of 2019 so that's when this was purchased and guess what this is my last can I've been so bad so I have to go out and probably buy six of these at one time and they're not cheap but because we use them we want to have them on hand at all times now let's talk about the skies every prepper is gonna tell you to stock oils and I totally agree but do not stock the unhealthy oils get away from those vegetable oils guys one they don't store long-term they will go rancid on you usually within six months to a year they are no good some of the things you can store our olive oil avocado oil I've never had avocados oil go bad on me or olive oil and the other thing hold on let me go grab it oh the winds are kicking up I've got to watch the storms today hi natural you're frying organic coconut oil that's another good thing that stocks and stores long lard refrigeration not required refrigeration sorry about that my video cut off but refrigeration not required that's huge yes i stock several these are four pound Tubbs I have at least I think four maybe six of these put back and this is a big tub of lard anything used oil for you can use lard and lard used to be really deemed as unhealthy but guess what guys that's all changed remember when they pushed vegetable oil canola oil all those oils have proven to cause major health issues go back to your basics lard coconut oil olive oil and of course this is not this here is not old oil avocado oil is a new oil but it's full of healthy healthy fats and look at this Fivey 500 degree smoke point I don't know too many people who heat their pans to 500 degrees this is great for a salad oil it's a very very light oil I cook I make salad dressings with it I cook my eggs in it so many things baking I bake with this oil you can't bake with olive oil guys it tastes like olive oil you could bake with your coconut oil you can make biscuits with both of these lard would be my choice for making biscuits but this here for everything else so I think that's it guys I've rambled a long time on this but there are so many people now wanting to get into prepping you need to know one what to stop - where to start it starts with your average everyday foods if you're already buying spaghetti sauce instead of buying one jar by six how many times a month you eat spaghetti if it's only once by buying six jars you now are prepared and six jars with six packs of spaghetti noodles you are now prepared for six months of making spaghetti say you do your pesto pasta having six of these on hand and six of the pasta you want to go with it on hand that's another six meals to take you down six months of one meal a month and that's how you do this that is absolutely how you do this all right guys hope you liked the video I hope it in overwhelm you feel free to ask questions and don't criticize me for the unhealthy choices because we do not eat that every day it's like I explained it's a back up day for those days that are hard so take care and God bless and I look forward to hearing any comments or things that you like to stock that you found you can stock long-term take care god bless bye-bye

Channel: Hollands Pine Haven

Views: 42,802

Keywords: Prepping, SHTF, Homesteading, off grid

Id: HWC3ntf9JwE

Length: 47min 27sec (2847 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 28 2020