5 Must Do’s Before the National Nipple Runs Dry

by Todd Walker

I hate labels. I’ve spent the better part of my adult life dodging bumper sticker nomenclature.

Prepping, survivalism, back to basics, resilience, self-reliance, sustainable, self-sufficient, homesteading, simple living, etc. all have a common philosophy: Taking responsibility for you own life. I wrote about chasing the simple life here. Sherpa Simple is…

Living in a way that is economical, sustainable, individualized, self-sufficient, comfortable, practical, resilient, and in harmony with nature and neighbors. It’s all about helping each other as we chase the simple life.

Weaning ourselves off the National Nipple requires time, energy, self-education, and force in some cases. And here’s the thing – the more we drink, the more we believe that the State udder will never stop flowing. We become addicted. Suckling becomes a basic right.

This is what the National Nipple will do for you

“Once the government becomes the supplier of people’s needs, there is no limit to the needs that will be claimed as a basic right.”

– Lawrence Auster

Even if you’re thumping your chest with pride for never wrapping your proverbial lips around the golden udder, we’re all affected by the overwhelming dependency bred into our culture. The State is the great equalizer dispensing fairness for the collective good. This arrangement is not voluntary. It’s sustained by force. “Legitimate” force.

If you knew the day our National Nipple would run dry, wouldn’t you live differently. It’s not a matter of if, but when. And ‘when’ happens, there will be more than a bit of bawling and screaming. Everyone will fill the pain – your elderly parents on medicare and fixed incomes, your neighbor working in the public sector, all the public school teachers (and there are a lot of us), owners of stocks and bonds, retired veterans, everyone. I’m not even counting those totally dependent government for food, houses, and cell phones. The reset will happen.

How could it not. The truth behind the recovery propaganda should cause some of us to begin self-weaning. The feral Federal Reserve will continue the train wreck by printing more fiat paper. The productive class will continue to shrink. It’s becoming more and more difficult for middle class families to provide basic necessities, much less save for that rainy day.

Retirement looks further away by the minute. The elites keep sending their handlers back to the kitchen to cook more numbers to keep the herd happy. Does this make me vigilant and awake or a conspiracy theorist?

You decide. Search economic collapse for yourself. Here’s a small sampling to get you started:

•             Personal Incomes & The Decline Of The American Saver

•             Comparing the past to predict the future

•             A chart proving that the MSM is lying about unemployment

The picture painted is scary. As people come up for air while nursing on the National Nipple, there may be some that begin to wean themselves. For those of you already standing back from the feeding frenzy, you need to get into high gear with your preparedness plan.

You may think I’m hardnosed or uncaring by my next statement. I prefer a sudden reset over a long, drawn out collapse. I never liked tip-toeing into our cold lake. I found jumping in head-first to best for me. My body adapted to the shock of cold water better with total immersing. Let me clarify. I’d prefer no collapse at all. But that ain’t happening.

You only have power over people so long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything, he’s no longer in your power – he’s free again.  — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The list of nations spiraling towards collapse is growing. What steps should Joe and Jane Average take now to build a hedge against financial Armageddon? This is not a step-by-step plan. It requires thought, creativity, and determination – no matter what your financial status. To answer the previous question, do what we know is the right thing to do. Simplify. Less is more. ‘Less’ dependence on the fragile systems of mono-crop corporate farming, fractional reserve banking, and our ‘sick’ care medical establishment.

Building resilience in these areas one step at a time will only increase your chances of survival. And may actually help you thrive.

While this list is not exhaustive, it points us in the right direction.

Food

Grow your own or buy from local farmers. Doing this will accomplish several things:

• Strengthen your local food system. These producers live where you live. Small family owned and operated farms will contribute to your overall health and resilience in return.
• Reconnect with your food and community. Build relationship with food producers that don’t live 2,000 miles from your house. Better to meet them now than after the balloon goes up.
• Save resources. The amount of packaging material and fuel is drastically reduced by purchasing/bartering for groceries you can’t produce for yourself. Find farmers that practice sustainable growing practices.
• Education. Many local farmers/producers are happy to help you learn how to grow your own. Plus, you’ll begin to know where your food comes from.
• Food storage you’ll actually eat. When you preserve the harvest from you garden or local farmer’s market, you’re putting away food that you’ll actually enjoy eating and not some pre-packaged, processed items or MRE resembling food. Dehydrating, canning, and proper storage techniques will go a long way in supplying your family with stores of food for the long run.

Health Vigilante – physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

• 90% of what we eat is the cause of our chronic health conditions.
• Be your own health vigilante. Take your health into your own hands. This past year taught DRG and me that modern medicine is run by pharmaceutical companies. There’s a chemical soup in pill form for everything.
• Explore holistic health practices.
• Eat nutrient dense foods. Avoid processed junk foods. I recommend the Primal Lifestyle. Your mileage may vary.
• Regular exercise without being married to the gym. Develop a mindset of functional fitness. Lift heavy things, move slowly every day, and sprint (max capacity) once every 7 to 10 days.

Invest in assets and skills

• By assets, I mean tangible items that hold value. Look up Alpha Strategy. That case of ammo you bought last year was a good investment after all. 
• Focus on your strengths. You’ve got one or two skills that you’re very good at. Develop those even more. But don’t forget to add more resilience-adding skills to your toolbox.
• Barter is becoming more important these days. It may one day be a crucial skill for acquiring basic necessities.
• Learn permaculture. Hiding food in plain sight.

 Build Community

• Most of us don’t live in a rural homestead self-sufficiently. We live mostly in urban and suburban neighborhoods. Your neighbors will play a huge part in your families ability to survive and thrive in coming days. I’ve written some thoughts on the importance of neighboring here. 
• With proper planning and the existence of basic resources, your neighborhood is very defensible and livable in SHTF scenarios. More on this in a later post.

Housing – Living big in small places

• Learning to live big in small places (locally) means re-educating ourselves on what resilience really means.
• Simplifying your life gets rid of all the clutter. If you’re like me, that’s a hard thing to do. Letting go of things I’m going to do something with one day. It forces me to really evaluate what’s important. Prioritizing my stuff allows me more free time to focus on what’s really important.
• Consider downsizing your home. We’ve downsized twice since the housing bubble popped. Talk about freeing up time!

I’m aware there are many more must do’s before the National Nipple runs dry. This is intended to spark a discussion on adding to our list. Please feel free to comment on the list and add your valuable insight. Or email me your thoughts via the contact tab at the top of my blog.

Follow me on Twitter for the latest on our journey to self-reliance, preparedness, and resilient living: @SurvivalSherpa

Related articles

• Time To Plan For The Worst Rather Than Hope For The Best (personalliberty.com)

Canned Bacon: One of the Seven Wonders of the World?

The Best Canned Bacon: Plain, Maple, Tabasco

Source: Rural Spin

27 Feb

Tabasco bacon, right out of the can and ready to eat: truly one of the seven wonders of the world.

Let me just start out by saying that I spent hours pouring over other peoples’ videos and recipes to learn how to can bacon. I tried them all out and found them sorely lacking. I then proceeded to can about 20 pounds of bacon on my own to come up with the perfect canned bacon, which in my opinion just didn’t exist…until now.

And canning bacon is worth the effort. It’s a great way to make your own customized flavored bacon with ease, and it’s just handy to have pre-cooked bacon on-hand for recipes and snacks. It’s great while traveling or car-camping, and it’s nice to have canned bacon when the electricity goes out, or the weather makes it impossible to make it to the store.

All the recipes and methods I found for canning bacon involved taking strips of raw bacon, slapping them down on parchment paper, rolling them up tight, jamming the role into a quart-sized jar, and canning for 90 minutes. I tried this method and it missed the mark for several reasons:

• While the bacon was cooked through it didn’t look cooked and it didn’t act cooked. It looked close to being raw, with the color of the meat and fat resembling what it did before it was put into the jar. It also remained limp. So while it was technically edible, it wasn’t appetizing.

• To get it remotely close to being appetizing, after prying the canned bacon from the jar you had to fry it in a pan to crisp it up. But I found that taking the bacon straight from the jar to the frying pan caused a lot of popping and general grease rebellion. The moisture build up in the jar caused by the canning process just didn’t mix well with frying bacon, and the bacon didn’t fry up the same as raw bacon, either.

• The jar was full of bacon grease but it also had moisture mixed in with the grease, which just made the grease more of an annoyance than a useful ingredient with which to cook other dishes. You really had to scrape the grease off the bacon, or wait to fry all the bacon up at once to gain access to the grease. It just didn’t work well. Trust me on this.

• After the canned bacon was removed from the jar, I found that it fell apart readily in the frying pan while trying to crisp it. So I was left with parts of bacon strips instead of strips.

• In short, it was a pain in the ass.

I wanted my canned bacon to meet certain criteria so I could eat it with the most enjoyment and least amount of hassle, and use it in recipes to the best possible advantage:

• I wanted it to look and taste awesome straight from the jar.

• I wanted it to retain the crisp and caramelized goodness that comes from fresh-fried bacon.

• I wanted to be able to use it immediately in recipes and as snacks without having to cook it again.

The secret to meeting these criteria is to fry the bacon before canning. This solves all of the above issues, plus it allows room to include enhancements with the canned bacon, including making bacon bits ready for recipes and making flavored bacon. Here’s what I did for each:

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(Note: Make sure you follow the pressure canning guidelines found at the National Center for Home Food Preservation called  ”Selecting, Preparing and Canning Meat: Strips, Cubes or Chunks of Meat” found here. You cannot safely can meat without a pressure canner.)

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CANNED BACON STRIPS

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Here are step-by-step instructions for the process:

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One pound of thick-cut bacon fits perfectly into a pint-sized, wide-mouthed jar (this will likely hold true for regular bacon, too). Weigh the bacon raw. Before cooking you will need to cut the bacon strips in half so they fit in the jar, but I find this to be a benefit after opening the bacon instead of dealing with full strips. The half-strips are easier to manage for recipes and they are easy to throw in a frying pan for a quick heat-up. Also, opening a pound of bacon at one time is sufficient; if you used a quart-sized jar you’d likely have to deal with two pounds of cooked bacon at once, which seems like a lot to handle at one time.

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Weigh about 1 pound of bacon for a pint-sized, wide-mouthed jar.

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Fry the bacon in a skillet on medium heat until almost cooked through. It will continue to cook after you remove it from the pan and you don’t want it to be over-done. Remember that you’ll be pressure canning this bacon for well over an hour and while that cooking won’t contribute to the browning of the bacon, it will cook it a bit more.

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Fry the bacon until almost cooked through.

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After your bacon is cooked, lay it on a plate with some paper towels to soak up the extra grease. While it is draining, cut a 24″ piece of brown parchment paper and lay it on your counter. Lay your bacon strips out on the paper as shown below. Notice that there are several inches of paper left at the end — this will ensure that your bacon is nicely tucked in while you roll your bacon package. If you use thin-cut bacon you will have more slices of bacon to put on the parchment paper. It’s ok to overlap them on the paper. You just want to make sure that you still leave about 3″ of paper at the end.

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Lay your bacon on 24″ of brown parchment paper.

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Now it’s time to add any desired flavoring to the bacon. Two of my favorites are Tabasco sauce and 100% pure maple syrup. For the Tabasco sauce, just take a bottle of Tabasco and sprinkle it liberally over the bacon. Have a really heavy hand with this — if you want Tabasco bacon why go half way? For the maple syrup, it’s important to only use 100% pure maple syrup; synthetic syrups just don’t stand up under the rigors of pressure canning. I use Grade B syrup and it works great and is easier on the budget. Make sure you brush plenty on to the bacon here, too.

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You can consider other flavorings for your bacon besides just maple syrup and Tabasco sauce, including brown sugar, chili powder, cayenne pepper, dried thyme, dried basil, cinnamon, or a mixture. For dried herbs and spices, just sprinkle them liberally over your bacon before rolling.

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Now you can add flavors to your bacon. Here I’m giving the bacon a 100% pure maple syrup wash.

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Now it’s time to start packaging your bacon for the jar! You’ll notice that the width of the parchment paper allows you to fold it in thirds around the bacon. Just take both sides of the paper and fold them around your bacon. Use your hands to press the paper lightly around the bacon to ensure that the sides are creased in preparation for rolling the bacon.

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Fold the parchment paper in thirds over your bacon.

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When you roll up your bacon, start at the end that has the bacon closest to the edge of your parchment paper. When you start rolling, make sure your first few turns are nice and tight. The bacon almost rolls itself, but you do need to guide the parchment paper, ensuring that the folds remain in tact. You want your roll to be firm, but don’t smash the bacon. There’s no need for that and why do you want to punish perfectly good bacon in that way? You’ll notice that when you get to the end of your roll that the extra paper left when you laid your bacon strips on the parchment paper secures your bundle.

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Roll your bacon up nice and tight, without smashing your strips to smithereens. You should love your food, not torture it.

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Your roll of bacon will look adorable, and it will fit neatly into a wide-mouthed, pint-sized canning jar, which you have already sterilized and prepared for canning (follow standard protocol for pressure canning meats, which can be found at the National Center for Home Food Preservation). You might need to nudge the roll in the jar a bit, but you should not have to jam it into the jar; if you do your parchment paper will tear and your bacon will be crying out in agony. This is the reason it’s so important to use a wide-mouthed jar; a narrow-mouthed jar will obviously cause problems when you try to insert your roll. If you find it is too hard to push the bacon into the jar, unroll it and remove a few pieces of your bacon, re-roll your bundle and try again until it fits snugly but is still easy to insert into the jar.

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A completed roll of bacon, ready for the jar.

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Place a lid on your jar and it’s ready for pressure canning (see below.)

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The roll fits neatly into a pint-sized, wide-mouthed jar.

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CANNED BACON BITS

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To make a jar of bacon bits, take your raw bacon and cut it (kitchen scissors are easiest) into large pieces about 1″ square. Cook through and place into your jars; it’s not necessary to use parchment paper when canning bacon bits. Before placing them into the jar you can add flavorings like pure maple syrup, Tabasco sauce, brown sugar, pepper, or herbs like thyme or basil. Screw the lid on and pressure can (see below).

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PRESSURE CANNING

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Now it’s time to pressure can your bacon. You’ll need to process your meat following the times and pressure guidelines presented in “Selecting, Preparing, and Canning Meat” found here.

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Make sure you label your cans of bacon with a sharpie before putting them in the pressure canner.

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Follow standard protocol for pressure canning meat.

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Maple syrup bacon, pressure canned and pulled from the jar the next day.

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USING YOUR BACON

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Now is the fun part. After you open the jars of pressure-canned bacon there are different things you can do:

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• Eat it right out of the jar. It will actually be difficult to prevent yourself from doing this. Bacon will disappear before your eyes, I guarantee it. Be ready to take on a strict running regimen to keep up.

• Use the bacon bits in all manner of dishes, straight from the jar. From salads to casseroles to soups, and even as an ingredient in breads and corn muffins, the bacon bits can’t be beat when it comes to cooking versatility.

• The bacon strips can be used in a similar way, but are great for sandwiches and to enhance other dishes, such as laying strips between pieces of fish, or as a tasty ingredient in tacos. The possibilities are endless!

• Reheat it for breakfast. This is a no-brainer…it’s bacon.

• Take your canned bacon camping with you. The jar might weigh too much for backpacking, but for car camping it’s a dream!

• Stockpile canned bacon in case of emergencies such as electrical outages or heavy storms when you can’t make it to the store.

• Accept the inevitable accolades from friends and family.

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Yoders Canned Bacon from Camping Survival if you can’t can your own.

Add Sour Cherry Spirits to Your Food Preservation Arsenal

Source: Rural Spin http://bit.ly/PdWiMZ

Add Sour Cherry Spirits to Your Food Preservation Arsenal

Sour cherries, sugar, and your alcohol of choice are all that’s needed to preserve this seasonal fruit. The final product can be used in cocktails, recipes or as gifts for the holidays.

When I bought my house a year ago, I scored a sour cherry tree in the front yard. It has never been pruned, is really too tall to harvest effectively, and leans over the roof of the house a fair amount. The birds love it, and the squirrels love it more. The aphids love it so much that I purchase lady bugs once a year to take care of the problem (it works great). Last year the birds and squirrels beat me to the ripe fruit. Not this year. Oh, no.

I harvested a pound of fruit off the tree this afternoon, which isn’t bad considering I’m not even 5′ tall and am terrified of heights. The ladder helped, but with the awkward hang over the roof and sheer height of the never-before-pruned tree, a pound was what I could manage. But what does one do with a pound of fruit? There really wasn’t enough for a batch of jam or sour cherry pie filling. But, it was the perfect quantity with which to make some tasty infused spirits.

INGREDIENTS

For 2 quarts of spirits

1 pound of sour cherries, cleaned and pitted
4 tablespoons of sugar (or more to taste)
1 bottle (750 ml) spirits. I used bourbon but vodka or brandy would also work great!
A container with a lid large enough to hold it all

Pitting the cherries isn’t necessary, but it makes it much easier to make use of the fruit after it’s done its job infusing the liquor.

Pitting the cherries is optional, but at the very least they must all be pricked to allow the juice to infuse into the liquor. I like to pit the cherries myself–in a few months I can reuse the fruit to make ice cream or to include with other fruit in desserts, a BBQ sauce, or some other topping over a cooked meat or fish. Doing the work of pitting now saves me serious hassle later.

I used two quart-sized mason jars as my infusing containers, but you can use whatever you’d like. In each of the jars I placed half of the fruit and 2 tablespoons of sugar total, sprinkling it over layers of fruit in teaspoon increments. I then took a bottle of bourbon and poured half of the bottle in each of the jars. Giving each of the jars a good shake, I then placed them in a dark cabinet.

Over the next two months I’ll shake those jars frequently. For the first week I’ll shake them once a day to make sure the sugar is dissolved. After that, I’ll shake the jars once a week, or as often as I remember. In a month or two, the resulting goodness will be a thing to behold!

Layer sugar to taste in with your fruit. I used two tablespoons of sugar in each quart-sized jar.

The uses for the infused bourbon are many:

A tasty addition to cocktails
Drinking it straight in a cordial glass
A liquid addition to batters for cakes, cupcakes, scones, cookies, and more as a flavoring.
An ingredient in sauces for meats such as BBQ sauce, steak sauce, and more
Addition to stews and other thick soups as a flavoring
An ingredient in casseroles or hearty meat dishes
A wonderful holiday or hostess gift when poured into a decorative bottle
An item with which to barter with friends and neighbors
The fruit will have done most of its job infusing the liquor, but it can also be used as an ingredient in ice cream, alcoholic smoothies, various batters, or an ingredient in sweet sauces. But if I know myself (and I do), I’ll mostly be using both the infused alcohol and the fruit as an ingredient in one of my favorite libations, The Manhattan.

Get to Canning & Gardening With These Hi-Tech Tools!

JUN192012
Source: SurvivialMom.com

Get to Canning & Gardening With These Hi-Tech Tools!

Canning and gardening have become so popular that the phone app business has taken notice. If you have a smart phone, some great apps are just a click away. These apps can give you canning tips, your altitude (important to know when you’re canning), planning and maintaining a productive garden, and there’s even an app for beekeepers!

Here are just a few apps that I came across that I thought look

image by thebittenword.com

ed like winners.

Android apps
Get Altitude

Altitude Free

How to Can (Mother Earth News)

Garden Guide (Mother Earth News)

Landscape & Garden Calculators

Harvest Landscape Calculator

Beekeeper Hub (I know it’s not about canning but I thought it was pretty cool info!)

iPhone apps
The Gardening Guide (Mother Earth News)

Gardening Tool Kit

Garden Plan Pro

Landscaper’s Companion

Harvest Landscape Calculator

How to Can (Mother’s Earth News)

My Altitude

…and here’s a list of 10 other gardening apps for the iPhone, and here’s 10 more!

Increase the productivity of your garden
Better Homes & Garden Plan-a-Garden

Plangarden

© 2012, thesurvivalmom. All rights reserved.

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