Food Storage Friday - A 72-hour Kit

If a sheriff came to your door right now and said there is a disaster in your neighborhood and you have to leave in 10 minutes, what would you do (besides panic, that is)?  You'd grab the kids and any pets and stuff them in the car. OK...now what? Do you know where your insurance policies, marriage license, social security card and all the rest of your important papers are?  What about clothes for the kids and pet food? Does anyone take prescription medicines? You'll need those, too.

You could be in a community shelter for a few days. Wouldn't it be nice to have a toothbrush, some soap and a comb? You might find those things in a shelter, but maybe not. Wouldn't it be nice to have some things to entertain the kids for a few days? Extra batteries for those portable electronics they are obsessed with could save a lot of grief!

Your phone charger! Don't forget the phone charger!

In a panic situation will you even have the presence of mind to think of all of this?

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) recommends building a 72-hour disaster kit just in case the worst ever happens to you.  Here is the list of things they recommend you have on hand in the event of an emergency.

FEMA 72-hour Kit List

Family Supply List

Ready Kids & The Federal Emergency Management Agency present:
Family Supply List

Emergency Supplies:

Water, food, and clean air are important things to have if an emergency happens. Each family or individual's kit should be customized to meet specific needs, such as medications and infant formula.

It should also be customized to include important family documents.

Recommended Supplies to Include in a Basic Kit:
- Water, one gallon of water per person per day, for drinking and sanitation
- Food, at least a three-day supply of non-perishable food
- Battery-powered radio and a NOAA Weather Radio with tone alert, and extra batteries for both
- Flashlight and extra batteries
- First Aid kit
- Whistle to signal for help
- Infant formula and diapers, if you have an infant
- Moist towelettes, garbage bags and plastic ties for personal sanitation
- Dust mask or cotton t-shirt, to help filter the air
- Plastic sheeting and duct tape to shelter-in-place
- Wrench or pliers to turn off utilities
- Can opener for food (if kit contains canned food)

Clothing and Bedding:

If you live in a cold weather climate, you must think about warmth. It is possible that the power will be out and you will not have heat. Rethink your clothing and bedding supplies to account for growing children and other family changes.

One complete change of warm clothing and shoes per person, including:
- A jacket or coat
- Long pants
- A long sleeve shirt
- Sturdy shoes
- A hat and gloves
- A sleeping bag or warm blanket for each person

Family Supply List

Below are some other items for your family to consider adding to its supply kit. Some of these items, especially those marked with a * can be dangerous, so please have an adult collect these supplies.

- Emergency reference materials such as a first aid book or a print out of the information on www.ready.gov
- Rain gear
- Mess kits, paper cups, plates and plastic utensils
- Cash or traveler's checks, change
- Paper towels
- Fire Extinguisher
- Tent
- Compass
- Matches in a waterproof container*
- Signal flare*
- Paper, pencil
- Personal hygiene items including feminine supplies
- Disinfectant*
- Household chlorine bleach* - You can use bleach as a disinfectant (diluted nine parts water to one part bleach), or in an emergency you can also use it to treat water. Use 16 drops of regular household liquid bleach per gallon of water. Do not use scented, color safe or bleaches with added cleaners.
- Medicine dropper
- Important Family Documents such as copies of insurance policies, identification and bank account records in a waterproof, portable container

G.W. and I each have a kit prepared. We use large backpacks to carry everything and we keep them in the basement in a place that's easy to get to. We refer to them as Go Bags or Bug Out Bags. They have just about everything on this list in them, plus a few things unique to our situation and personalities. 

We also have a bag with supplies for our cats. Our three horses will need to be evacualted as well. Their travel papers are in a binder in the horse trailer. I just pray that I will be able to get the trailer hooked up and the horses loaded with no problems!  I should probably practice those things now just in case. I know that my horse Kipp can be a handful getting into a trailer on a good day. I can't even imagine how he'd be if there was a wildfire roaring down the side of the mountain! Yikes!

It doesn't take a lot of time or money to put together a 72-hour kit for the people in your family. You may have a lot of the items on hand already.  A 72-hour kit with the basics would make a very practical gift, too!

Having a kit like this doesn't make you a preparedness freak who expects the zombie apocalypse to begin at any moment. It makes you a smart person who realizes that disasters can happen to any of us no matter where we live. Better to be prepared for it and never need it than need it and not be prepared!







 

The Best Roasted Chicken Recipe

Any cook worth their salt has a foolproof, knock-your-socks-off recipe for a roasted chicken. Until yesterday, I did not have such a recipe. I've roasted chickens that turned out dry and tasteless. I've also roasted some that actually stewed in the cooking process and came out soggy and tasting like boiled meat. Which is exactly what it was.

This recipe is going to make you want to stop at the store today and get what you need to make a Garlic Roast Chicken!

I cannot take credit for the recipe. It's Ina Garten's. Here's the link for it:

Garlic Roast Chicken by Ina Garten

You'll need a five or six pound roasting chicken. You also need a lemon, two heads of garlic, half of a big Spanish onion, four carrots, two Yukon Gold potatoes and four tablespoons of butter. I deviated a little from these ingredients, though.

When you get the chicken home from the store, unwrap that bad boy, rinse it off, and salt him down with kosher salt. Inside and out. Then wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate for a day (up to two days, even!)

 

This is my bird after it refrigerated overnight. Notice all the liquid that came out of it.  I think the salt drew it out. A lot of the roasting chickens in store have been injected with a bunch of salt water (I think the manufacturer refers to it as "broth"). Supposedly it's to make it juicer. Don't insult my intelligence....it's to bump up the weight of the bird. We're paying for as much as 10% of the weight in salt water!

 

 

I dumped all that liquid out and rinsed the bird again.

 

Here's the rest of the ingredients:

 

 

I used baby yellow potatoes, a yellow onion and only two carrots. It's a matter of personal preference and what I had on hand.

 

Cut the lemon and garlic heads in half. Just leave the papery skin on the garlic.

 

 

 

 

Salt and pepper the inside of the chicken. Use kosher salt and fresh ground pepper if you have it. If not, table salt  and regular ground pepper will do.  Then stuff the lemon and all the garlic into the chicken.

 



 

Cut up the onion, carrots and potatoes and toss them in the pan around the chicken. I prefer the baby potatoes for roasting. I think they are visually appealing and they are so tender, too. But like I said, it's a matter of personal choice.

 

 

Melt the four tablespoons of butter then brush it all over the skin of the chicken. Once I got in there with the butter, I thought that four tablespoons was a little too much. I used about half that amount.

 

 

 

Salt and pepper the outside of the bird and the veggies in the pan, then pop it into a 400 degree oven for an hour and a half (or so). 

 

 

See that little plastic pop-up thingie in the chicken breast? I left it in there on purpose, even though I'm not relying on it to tell me when my bird is done.  Per this recipe, I'll test for doneness by sticking a knife in between the leg and thigh. When the juices run clear, the bird is done. I want to see if that pop-up timer is popped up when the juices run clear. It's a test!

 

 

Those little plastic pop-up timers are nothing more than a tiny spring compressed in a tube with a blob of soft metal. That blob of metal is designed to melt at 185 degrees, which is supposed to be the temperature of the bird when it's done. When the metal melts, it releases the spring which pops up inside the tube and lifts the plastic top. An ingenious and cheap thermometer!

 

Any-who, I was curious about how accurate that thermometer would be for indicating a cooked bird.  Turns out, it's not.  After an hour and a half in the oven, the juices ran clear when I pierced the bird at the thick part of the leg and thigh. But the pop up timer wasn't popped up.

 

 

 The chicken was golden brown and cooked all the way through. Oh and it smelled like heaven!  When G.W. got home from work he said he could smell it all the way out in the driveway and knew something good was happening in the kitchen.

 

This is hands-down the best roasted chicken we've ever had. There was a garlic flavor to it, but not overwhelming. It didn't need any additional salt or pepper at the table. The vegetables were tender and carmelized in spots. Yum! You have to make this recipe!

 

Oh, back to that pop-up timer.  I suspect it might be the reason why I've made some dried-out roasted chickens before.  I don't know how much longer it would have taken in the oven before it popped up, but I'm guessing about long enough to dry out my chicken!

 

From now on, I'm pulling that timer out and trusting the "juices run clear" method!

 

After dinner, I pulled the rest of the meat off the chicken bones to save for another meal. I also saved the carcass to make broth. I'll show that to you in the next kitchen post!

 

Now go out and buy what you need to make this recipe!

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 



Square Foot Gardening - no dirt allowed!

Square Foot Gardening (SFG)doesn't use dirt for growing. That's right...no dirt. It's a soiless mix of 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 vermiculite and 1/3 compost. 

Here's the link again to the "official" square foot gardening website. It's a great site full of information on how to go about it.

Square Foot Gardening

Over the last few years while living in New Mexico, I had a very small SFG.  I had carefully blended a beautiful mix of home made compost and a variety of animal poop. I had chicken, horse, goat, cow and llama poop...it was a potpourri of pooh! If you're a gardener, you will understand when I say it was beautiful!

When we got the word that we were moving, I was not leaving that beautiful mix behind. I braved the jokes and eye-rolling from my husband G.W. and loaded it all up in some clean trash cans and tubs, then drove it 400 miles north to our new home. Yes, I moved "dirt" and I am proud of it!

Here is my "dirt"

 

Laugh if you want to!

 

 

OK...back to the topic at hand...creating the soiless mix:

Peat moss and compost are easy to find at any big box store.  If you can, start your own compost pile, since that's the hands-down best quality compost.  Store-bought compost, like store-bought anything, isn't nearly as good as homemade. It's not pure compost. It's mixed with peat moss to stretch it out. 

Because peat moss is another component of the soiless mix, you have to make some adjustments in the quantity of peat moss if you are using store-bought compost.  I'll detail that in the next garden post.

In order to get a good balance of nutrients from store-bought compost, buy five or six different kinds.

Here's my six kinds of compost and the big bales of peat moss. It's only a small portion of what I'll eventually need to fill all of the raised beds, though.

 

The vermiculite will be the hardest ingredient to find. Most garden centers sell it in small 8-quart bags. A 4' x 10' raised bed like mine requires 13 cubic feet of each ingredient, so those tiny little garden center bags just weren't going to cut it. I had to get creative to find vermiculite in huge quantities.

 

A quick Google search showed me that vermiculite is also used as insulation around fireplaces and in attics. The same search also taught me that since the early 1990's, vermiculite is certified asbestos free. If you've heard any scary stories about asbestos in vermiculte, rest assured that is no longer the case.

 

If you're wondering what the heck vermiculite is, you aren't alone. It's a volcanic mineral. It's extremely light and can hold/retain water. Those qualities make it ideal for gardening!

 

Here's a link to a site with some information about vermiculite:

Vermiculite.com

So..... meanwhile, back at the ranch, I got the idea to check with the Lowe's and Home Depot insulation departments about BIG bags of vermiculite. Home Depot could order it for me...but it was going to cost over $50 for a 3-cubic-foot bag. I ran the numbers (I'm an accountant by trade, so 'running the numbers' is as natural as breathing for me!) and was sickened to discover that it would cost about $250 to get enough vermiculite to fill just one of the 4' x 10' beds. I have two of those size beds, plus two 2' x 10' beds and nine 3' x 3' beds! I'd have to resort to selling my blood plasma to fund the purchase of that much!

Luckily, I found a one-time source for vermiculite on Craigs List. A contractor had a lot of extra bags of vermiculite left over from a fireplace installation. He sold me 3-cubic-foot bags for just $18/each. That's a huge savings over what Home Depot wanted!

 

Here's my vermiculite:



 

 

That stuff's light as air. A 3 cubic foot bag only weighs fifteen pounds.  I'll end up needing some more of it, but this is a darned good start!  I'll just keep an eye out on Craigs List and maybe I'll get lucky again!

 

All that's left is to dump everything into the beds, mix it up and get planting!

 

 

 



 



Square foot garden - preparing a bed

The best thing about the square foot gardening method is that you don't have to dig up the ground, rip up sod and rototill every year. You just put the raised bed on top of whatever soil you've got. I'm not a bit lazy, but if there's a way to garden without a lot of sweat and hard manual labor, count me in!

I ran a string from the exterior wall of the house down through where the garden will be. This way, I can square up the raised beds with the house. The perennial garden isn't parallel or perpendicular to the house. It doesn't look bad, but I would prefer that the vegetable garden lines up with the walls of the house.

 

I'd gone back and forth on whether or not to put chicken wire down under the beds to keep critters from digging up into the beds and eating the plants from the bottom up.  I decided that I wouldn't regret taking the extra precaution.  Jasper's a good barn cat, but I don't want him to feel guilty for not catching some mole that ate my asparagus!

 

Chicken wire is easy to work with, but please wear gloves and be careful!  The ends of the wire are very sharp! It's easier to manage if you fold the sharp cut ends under.

 

I rolled it out next to the bed, then used wire cutters to snip it to the length I needed. I didn't measure....just eye-balled it.

 

 

 

 

I laid out the wire in the bed and used landscape staples to temporarily anchor it down. My original plan was to mow the grass here before putting all this in. However, my lawn tractor isn't here yet. It should have been here five days ago, but it's not so I forged ahead anyway. The chicken wire flattened all that tall grass nicely.

 

 

The next step was to put down a layer of heavy-duty landscape fabric. Again, I didn't measure it...just unrolled it and eye-balled the right length.

 







I used the landscape staples to hold it all down. The ground was so rock-hard that I had to pound the staples in with a hammer. I sure am glad I didn't have to dig into that stuff for a garden! I'd have given up after 10 minutes!

These are the staples I used.

 

It's a little hard to see in the photo below, but there are staples along the inside top edge.

 

 

While the landscape fabric is enough to keep the grass from growing through the bed, I happen to have about 20 tons of packing paper and cardboard boxes laying around. I put some of each down on top of the landscape fabric. In the short term, it'll help kill the grass under the beds. Over time, it'll decompose and add some nitrogen to the soil.

 

I put the paper down....

 

 

...then the cardboard.

 

 

The two 4' x 10' beds are ready for the filler. 

 



 

 

Today, I put in about an hour of work on this. It's not a lot of time, but remember once the beds are set up and filled, you don't need to do it ever again. It's a one-time chore. And a whole lot easier than digging!

 

In the next post, I'll go into detail about the special soilless mix that's used in Square Foot Gardening. And tell you the story of why I moved a bunch of the soilless mix from New Mexico to Colorado. Yes, I moved dirt 400 miles. 

 



 



 

 

 







 

 

 



 

 

Making Cooked Strawberry Jam

It's very easy to make homemade jams. Today, I'll show you how to make fresh strawberry jam and then use a water bath to can it.

Water bath canning is the safe method for canning high acid foods such as most fruits, jams and jellies and tomatoes.  If you want to can anything else (vegetables or meat for example) you MUST use the pressure canning method. Some people may try to tell you there are other safe methods for canning vegetables and meat. Don't listen to them. You risk very serious food poisoning if you do. Please take a little time to learn about safe canning methods before you dive into it.

All of that being said, making jam and then canning it for shelf-safe storage is very simple. If you've never canned anything before, this is a very nice place to start.

You'll need the following ingredients:

A box of powdered pectin
2 quarts of fruit
7 cups of white sugar

The pectin...I had Sure-jell on hand, but any other brand is fine. My box is a little bashed up from being thrown into a moving box.

 

What is pectin? It's a naturally occuring substance found in fruits. When heated with sugar, it created a thickening agent. It's what makes jelly and jam thick. As far as I know, it does not contain any animal products so it's suitable for vegetarians/vegans.

 

I have 3 pounds of fresh strawberries.

 

 

 

Seven cups of white sugar

 

 

For this recipe, do not use a sugar substitute or reduce the sugar amount. You need exactly seven cups of white sugar.

 

There are speciality recipes for low sugar jam or jam using sugar substitutes. You need a specific type of pectin for those recipes.

 

You also need eight half pint size canning jars and matching lids and bands. Unfortunately, most of my canning supplies are still in moving boxes. I only had seven half pint jars available.

 

Here are the lids and bands. The bands are reusable. The lids are not. If you try to reuse the flat lids, it's very likely that your jars will  not seal. The flat lids are one-time-use only.

 

 

 

Wash your jars, even if brand new, in hot soapy water and rinse them well. You can run them through the sanitizer cycle of a dishwasher.  I take the additional step of boiling the jars in water for a few minutes after I've washed them.

 

The water bath canner is perfect for this. Fill your canner with enough water to cover the jars by about two inches. Place a canning rack in the bottom of the canner. Do not place jars directly on the bottom of a canning pot. Most canners will come with a rack.

 

Stand your empty jars up in the canner and let them fill up with the water.

 

 

Put the canner lid on loosely and fire up the heat.  Once it comes to a full boil, I let the jars sanitize in the boiling water for about 3 minutes. Remove the hot jars, drain out the water back into the canning pot, then place the jars upright on a towel. If you place the jars directly on a counter top, they may crack. 

 

Heat a few cups of water to boiling on the stove or in your microwave. Place the flat canning lids in a heatproof pot or bowl. Dump the boiling water over them and let them sit in the water until you're ready to use them.

 

Wash and hull the strawberries. You need to smash them up a bit, too. A potato masher works well. So does a food processor. I use a submersible blender.  Don't puree the strawberries, though. You want nice bits of fruit in your jam.

 

 

Measure five cups of the smashed berries into a large (6- or 8-quart) saucepot.  Stir the pectin into the fruit.

 

While stirring constantly, bring this mixture to a full, rolling boil over high heat. A rolling boil is one that does not stop bubbling when you stir it.

 

 

 

Quickly, stir in the seven cups of sugar. While continuing to stir, return the mixture to a full rolling boil again and boil EXACTLY one minute.

 

Remove from heat. Then skim off the foam that is floating on the top. I happened to forget to skim off the foam. It doesn't hurt the taste of the jam to leave the foam, but in the finished jars, there's an obvious layer of light colored foam on top. It affects the visual appearance only. You won't win a ribbon at the fair with foamy jam!

 

Working quickly, ladle the jam into the waiting jars. You'll find that a canning funnel makes this step a lot easier.  In this photo, you can see the lighter layer of foam on the top. That's the stuff I should have skimmed off before filling the jars.

 

If you have more jam than what fits into your jars, just ladle the excess into a plastic container and put it in the refrigerator. It'll store there for several weeks, although it's so yummy I doubt it will last that long.

 

 

 

Use a damp cloth or paper towel to wipe the jar rims and threads clean.  If there is jam dripped on the rim or threads, the jar may not seal in the canning process.

 

Place a flat lid on top of each filled jar. Then screw the bands on tightly. Place the filled jars back in the water bath canner. Be sure there is enough water in the canning pot to cover the jars by about two inches.  Add more hot water if necessary.

 

Put the lid on the canner then bring to a gentle boil. The amount of time you leave the jars in the boiling water to process depends on the altitude where you live.

 

0 - 1,000 ft. above sea level, process for ten minutes.

 

1, 001 - 3,000 ft. above sea level - fifteen minutes

 

3,001 - 6,000 ft. above sea level - twenty minutes

 

6,001 - 8,000 ft. above sea level - twenty-five minutes

 

8,001 - 10,000 ft. above sea level - thirty minutes

  

I live at about 6,800 feet above sea level, so I processed my jars for twenty-five minutes.

 

When they are finsihed processing, carefully remove the hot jars.  A jar lifter is a handy tool to have for this.

 

 

Jar lifters and canning funnels are usually sold together in a package of canning tools. You can find them online or in some larger grocery or department stores.

 

Place the hot jars upright on a towel to cool. Once the jars are out of the canner, you'll hear them ping or pop as the flat lids seal tightly.

 

 

Once the jars are completely cooled, test to see if they all have sealed properly. Gently press down on the center of each flat lid, if the lid springs back, it's not sealed and you must refrigerate that jar.

 

Let the jars stand at room temperature for twenty-four hours in order for the jam to completely thicken and set up.  After that, you can store the jars in your pantry for as long as a year. Once opened, use it within three weeks.

 

I will tell you that I have jars of jam in the pantry that are more than a year old and they are still safe to eat. They have not lost their taste either.

 

My strawberry jam turned out to be the perfect mix of sweet and tart. I've been stirring it into my plain Greek yogurt for breakfast every morning. 

 

Homemade jams and jellies make wonderful gifts. I love giving jars to my family and friends at Christmas. I get very creative with flavors and have done Black Forest, Tropical Sunrise, and Peach Almond, just to name a few. VERY IMPORTANT - If you add something other than fruit to your jam (such as nuts) you will need to use the pressure canning processing method.

 

Here are a few links to online sites with jam and jelly recipes just to get you started. The local library is also a good source for excellent cookbooks with recipes. Have fun and enjoy!

 

All Recipes list of jam and jelly recipes

 

Website with over 100 recipes for jam, jelly and preserves

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 





 

 



 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 







Food Storage Friday - FoodSaver

This is a FoodSaver vacuum sealer. You need one of these!

I hope this post doesn't sound like some bad TV infomercial!

I bought the FoodSaver when I decided to get serious about storing up some extra food in case of an emergency.  Since the machine vacuums all the air out of the bag, the food doesn't get freezer burn.  Everything lasts about twice as long in the freezer than when I was using ziplock bags.

When I find a sale on meat, I can buy extra and stockpile it.

I also save money by buying meat that the supermarket has marked down because it's near the "use by" date.

This is what I picked up at the store yesterday. All of the "use by" dates were for either the next day or the day after that. Nothing was expired. The discount was about 30% off full price.

I cut that huge pork loin into 3 3-lb roasts, then packaged it all up in the FoodSaver bags.

 

 FoodSaver has all sorts of neat canisters and bags for their system. I got some FreshSteam bags that I'm going to try out next time I freeze some vegetables. The bags can go right into the microwave to steam your veggies.

 

Although I've not tried it, you can use the FoodSaver bags to seal up non-food items, too. It'll keep things like matches and toilet paper dry for your next camping trip.

 

 

 

 

 

 





Barn Cat

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the previous homeowners put out corn and sunflower seeds to attract wildlife.  They also encouraged a family of ground squirrels to build an underground complex right under the dining room window.

In this photo, you can see not only the family of deer hanging out where the feeders used to be, but in the lower right you can see one of the mounds of dirt from a ground squirrel burrow.



I tried to be nice about it and use "humane" methods to encourage the squirrels to move away.  I bought a couple of rubber snakes and also scattered used kitty litter from my indoor cats. 

 

It didn't phase the critters one bit. They just keep on digging and expanding their burrow. Do you think they're smart enough to know that cobras aren't a local species?

 

 

 

I don't want to poison them, since there's the risk of a neighborhood dog eating a poison-laden rodent.

 

Enter Jasper, barn cat extraordinaire (at least I hope he's extraordinary!)



 

I got Jasper from the Humane Society of the Pikes Peak Region. He was in their Barn Cat program. They developed that program as a way to find homes for cats who are, for various reasons, not suitable as pets. Before this program came about, these cats would have been euthanized since they were considered "not adoptable".

Jasper was in the Barn Cat program because his former owner hadn't neutered him. He surrendered Jasper to the Humane Society because the cat was spraying all over the house. Gosh...an intact male cat was spraying...go figure! Jasper was neutered at the Humane Society, but he will always have the habit of spraying.

When I brought Jasper home, he was very shy and immediately found a spot in the barn to hide in. Now that he's been here for two weeks, he's come out of his shell.  Happily, he's very friendly and lovable considering he was a "tom" cat until a month ago.

 

 

I've kept Jasper confined in the barn these past two weeks so that he learns to identify this as his new territory. The squirrels used to run wild through the barn. Not any more! I haven't seen evidence that Jasper has actually killed one, so apparently his presence alone is enough to convince the squirrels to go elsewhere.

 

Jasper's been protected against fleas and ticks as well as worms. No telling what he'll be exposed to in his duties as exterminator.  He can escape any coyotes through a small cat door in the hay room of the barn. And he has food, water and a "den" in the barn, too.

How do you control the rodent population around your place? Do you use cats or dogs? Traps? Poisons? Why did you choose a particular method?