Emergency Preparedness Archives

Prepper’s Dehydrator Handbook – Book Review

I’ve just finished reading the Prepper’s Dehydrator Handbook, written by Shelle Wells. I was hoping to pick up some tips AND find some great recipes and mixes.

And I DID. If you need a book geared towards dehydrating for beginners, this book works!

And if you have experience drying foods but want some great recipes, this book works for that too.

Dehydrating for Beginners:

Drying your own food is a great way to build your pantry supplies for several reasons:

Dehydrating is EASY to learn to do.

Dehydrated foods take up less pantry room than canned foods – great for those living in smaller homes.

You never have to worry about power failure.

Everything you need to know about getting started dehydrating and building up your food supply is in this book.

Solar drying, oven drying, dehydrator drying and microwave drying are all covered.

Herbs are one of the easiest foods to dry – pick them right before they flower and you will get the optimum flavour.

After they are dry, store them in pretty mason jars and tuck them away to use all winter long.

But you can dry far more than herbs! Dry your own fruits, vegetables and even meat by making jerky.

Not every vegetable needs to be blanched before drying – did you know that?

Want a list of which veggies need to be blanched and which ones don’t? It’s included in the book, along with instructions on setting up a blanching station.

So, start dehydrating your own peas, beans, carrots, potatoes and any other vegetable your family loves to eat.

Then start filling up your pantry, knowing that if an emergency hits (environmental, medical, financial) you have food on hand to feed your family.

Home canning, freezing and dehydrating each have processes that need to be followed to prepare and preserve food.

The Prepper’s Dehydrator Handbook outlines each step and focuses on safely drying your food.

The Prepper’s Dehydrator Handbook

Here’s just a partial list of the different chapters in the book. You will see there is lots of great info about:

Food Storage

Fruit and Vegetable Leathers

Make your own Meat Jerky

Make your own Soups and Powders

Dry and Store your own Herbs

plus

Specific instructions for Dehydrating 50 common Fruits and Vegetables – this is a very detailed section of the book.

Each food is listed as to how to clean and prepare it for drying, suggested thicknesses of slices, drying time, temperature, consistency you are looking for (to tell when it is dry), blanching requirements, oxidizing (if needed), rehydration methods and the yield.

All GREAT information you need when dehydrating food.

and then, there are the Recipes!

Snacks, sides, entrees, desserts and drinks – over 50 recipes including:

Homemade Roasted Peanut Butter (now that sounds fantastic!)
Ginger and Lemon Infused Honey
Blueberry Basil Syrup
Hash Brown Mix in a Jar
Slow Cooker Stuffed Cabbage Rolls
Candied Ginger
and a lot more….

Find out more about living off grid and setting up your own energy supply.

Want to learn about how to water bath can and pressure can enough food to fill your pantry?

Find out how you can grow a huge amount of food (in 15 minutes a day!) to feed your family all year long.

Here’s the one thing you NEED to have if you heat your home with wood.

Here’s our go-to resource book when it comes to butchering farm animals.

Prepper’s Total Grid Failure Handbook – Book Review

By Annie

Wondering what it’s like to live totally off grid? What if there was ever a total grid failure? I just finished reading the Prepper’s Total Grid Failure Handbook .

It offers information on several different energy options, rather than being tied to the grid. If you are interested in possibly living off-grid, you may want to pick up this book.

Ironic that as I read this book, we were having what would turn out to be a 36 hour power failure here.

I wouldn’t really normally care that much about the power going down. It happens here – we live in the bush.

The electric lines run alongside tall spruce, fir, birch and aspen trees. So we are quite used to power failures. No big deal.

We just don’t open the freezers at all. If we are cold or hungry we heat a fire in the wood stove.

Our stove is a flat top so we can easily put on some food to heat. Then we just get on with our day…

But this time, I had baby chicks here, no mama to keep them warm and too cold at the barn.

I moved them from the much cooler basement (where there was NO heat) to a guest room upstairs, the warmest place in the house. Some extra blankets for padding and they were ok.

Friends who live just down the road live off grid. They, of course, don’t even know if the power is off, unless they see lines down on the road.

And they don’t care and they don’t have to; they aren’t tied into the electrical grid at all.

And they love their life and have been living off grid for more than twenty years. And no doubt they love not having to ever pay an electric bill!

They are also more prepared than most of us for these kinds of emergencies, right?

Have you ever wondered what would happen if the whole grid went down? This is where the Prepper’s Total Grid Failure handbook comes in.

Prepper’s Total Grid Failure Handbook

Prepper’s Total Grid Failure Handbook covers micro-hydro generators, wind turbines, solar power, generators.

It explains the science behind creating power and safety issues being off grid. It also demonstrates what could happen should the bigger electrical grids fail.

If you are interested in finding out how to create your own power and how to safely store it, keep an eye out for this book or order it from Amazon:

Some of what’s covered:

How to take care of your batteries and how big they really need to be.
Different kinds of solar panels and what to look for when buying.
Setting up solar arrays.
How to put your power to use, for lighting, fans, water pumps, electronics and more.
How to actually SELL power back to the power company, putting money in your pocket!

Off-grid living is really growing in popularity; not only because it can be so much cheaper than being tied to the grid, but it is another way (a great way!) that we can build towards self sufficiency.

I don’t know if there would ever be an actual total grid failure but a lot of people think it could happen.

There are already many cities that have brown outs and blackouts have happened before, so perhaps total grid failure is a real possibility.

Other Book Reviews

Read my review of Amy Stross Suburban Micro-Farm – how to have bountiful gardens right in town – in 15 minutes a day!

You’ll find lots of fantastic canning recipes and how to build your pantry in this book – Prepper’s Canning Guide

Find lots of great information in this book review on Dehydrating Recipes.

Here’s the BEST butchering book we have ever read!

Preparing for an Emergency

By Annie

Winter is coming and it is important for us to prepare for such things as huge snowstorms, ice storms, loss of power and all kinds of natural weather problems. Are you ready? Here are a few things that should be at the very top of your list – this list could (and should) be a lot longer but these are the absolute essentials you need to put in place.

There is no reason for you to join those long lines of people emptying supermarket shelves – these are the folks who have FAILED TO PLAN. Don’t be that person!

Preparing for an Emergency

Light

Candles are one of the simplest but most crucial supplies you can have. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy on the East Coast, power was lost in an astonishing 8.1 million homes as the storm ripped down power lines, flooded electrical networks, and even caused an explosion at a substation. Power outages are common to all disasters and, after being plunged into darkness, the glow of a candle is one of the first things you need to get other emergency measures put into place.

Of course, you will also need a supply of matches, or a lighter. You don’t want to be hunting for these in the dark, so keep them with the candles, somewhere easily accessible. Have a pack of 50 small tealight candles which you can place at different points around the house, as well as longer ones, for which you will also need candlestick holders.

Make sure your candle bases are wide and heavy enough that they don’t tip over. And of course, be sure to never place the candles near curtains or any flammable material.

Have you bought a windup lantern? These are great to have on hand, they are inexpensive and if you have kids, they never seem to mind cranking the handle to keep the lantern bright!

Water

Your next concern may well be your water supply. Contamination of water supplies is common in serious disaster events, and shops may be inaccessible. To be safe, you should always have a supply of bottled water – 20 to 30 two-liter bottles is not too much to have on hand. Remember, if there is no water coming from the faucets, you may also be reliant on boiling water to cook with.

Power

Given that electricity will be down, a small propane stove is an essential item to have. These can be picked up inexpensively from camping or outdoor stores, but you should make sure you have the correct size of propane cylinders to fit. If you are unable to boil the kettle or heat water on the cooker, you will quickly realize how important a hot drink such as tea or coffee is to calm the nerves during the stress of an emergency situation.

Food

Are you a mother with children at home. Your first instinct will be to ensure your children don’t go hungry. For that reason, it’s always best to keep a stock of non-perishable foods, such as pasta, rice and tins of soup. If your pantry is full with home canned food you can easily provide meals (and know you are all eating healthily, too!)

Frozen pizzas may be easy and popular with kids, but remember you can’t cook them on a stove.

Fuel

It’s always a good idea to keep your car topped up with fuel. In winter, it is even more important. For one thing, if there is a natural disaster, you KNOW there are going to be huge lineups at the gas stations.

For us, here is another very real reason to keep our vehicles full. We live twenty minutes from the gas station on gravel roads. Much of this twenty minute drive is isolated, meaning there are no or very few homes along the route. Since we get a lot of snow and ice, there is a real possibility that we could slide off the road, either over a bank or more likely, crash into the mounds of snow piled along the road.

A full tank means that as long as the vehicle is still running, we can stay in the car where we can stay warm. Note: If this should happen to you, be SURE that your exhaust pipe is not buried in snow. Use that folding shovel that you need to keep in your car, to dig out around the exhaust pipe!

First aid

Finally, always have a basic first aid kit in your house. In the immediate panic of a natural disaster situation, injuries such as cuts and bruises are common, and may need to be treated.

Prepare like this, and you should be far less likely to panic yourself if the worst happens. There is a great deal of satisfaction and peace of mind when you know you are already prepared for emergencies.

A Prepper’s Handbook

By Annie

If you are new to the idea of Preparedness, there can be a lot to learn. There are all kinds of levels of Preparedness, from the small (having 3 days of emergency water on hand) to the medium (having a well stocked Pantry with a few months worth of food) to the large (having a few years of food on hand) to the extreme (building a panic room fully equipped with gas masks, weapons and enough ammunition to wipe out any Zombie).

Have you ever watched “Doomsday Preppers”? I watched it for the first time last week, when I found it while channel surfing. To me, those folks are extreme in their thinking. That being said, when a huge crisis hits, they’ll be sitting back with plenty of food and weapons on hand. They’ll be eating their MREs with one hand while picking off zombies with the gun in their other hand. Now that I think about it, do you need special bullets to kill Zombies? I am not sure.

Prepping has got a bad rap amongst a lot of people and it’s not helped when tv shows like DP are on. Of course, they choose the extremest folks they can find, in an effort to boost ratings. Prepping has its place and frankly I wish a lot more people did some prepping! Why people look only to their government to help them in times of crisis is so shortsighted in my opinion. Stop looking to others to help you out of your emergency and be proactive and look out for yourself!

If you agree with the idea of Peak Oil, surely you must agree with the general principles of Preparedness. Even if you disavow Peak Oil, how can anyone go wrong with being somewhat prepared for emergencies?

Ever had a power outtage that lasted a week? Has your community ever gone through a “Boil Water Advisory”? These are just two examples of events that can, and do, happen. The farther you live from the city or even a town, the higher your chances of having extended power outtages. Well, I guess that is true only if you live in an area where there are lots of trees to take down the power lines.

Way out here in the Cariboo bush, we have had power outtages lasting over a week. Having a generator certainly helps, not that we run it all the time. Having a full pantry and Cold Room helps a lot as well. If you have full freezers and the power goes out, what is the best thing you can do to keep your food from thawing out? DON’T open the freezers AT ALL. Not even once. Throw a thick blanket or comforter over the freezer and leave it alone! Only if the outtage lasts for more than 3 days, will you need to fire up the generator a couple times a day for an hour each time.

Perhaps the most beneficial thing to us in keeping food on hand is that we simply don’t have to go to town. To go to town is a 40 minute drive each way for us – we make the trip once a week, basically so I can get the weekly newspaper, pick up our mail, and go out for lunch. When we’re in town, we pick up anything we may need for the following week. If we get home and realize we forgot something, too bad. It goes on the list for the next week’s trip.

There is nothing we love more than being at home. We have plenty to do around here and that keeps our days full and active. When we start to run out of things to do, we go fishing and usually end up planning the next project while we’re out on the water. Being prepared for us means that we have more freedom than most people. We can do what we want, usually when we want. Well, except for golfing, it’s pretty hard to do that in the Cariboo winters.

We don’t worry about having to go to the grocery store or convenience stores to pick up processed crap that really we shouldn’t be eating anyway. Hungry? Open a jar of home canned Lamb Stew or make a pizza with home canned sauce.

So, there are lots of reasons why people can really benefit from being a Prepper on some level. Now if you do believe in Zombies, you probably need more detailed information that I can provide. There are lots of websites out there, just do a Google search.

This book, the Prepper’s Long Term Survival Guide is a fantastic resource you will use over and over again. Keep a hard copy of this book!

Bare minimum storage requirements
Principles of preparedness
Common Mistakes in Food Storage

and so much more.

When an Emergency strikes, be prepared! You can slowly start building an inventory of food, medicines, lighting and all of that. Just start thinking about it and every month, add something to your Preparedness supplies. Emergencies do, and will, happen and the more prepared you are, the better you and your family will be.

So, how prepared are you? A little, a lot or not at all?

Prepper’s Dehydrator Handbook – Book Review

Dehydrating for Beginners:

The Prepper’s Dehydrator Handbook

and then, there are the Recipes!

Prepper’s Total Grid Failure Handbook – Book Review

Prepper’s Total Grid Failure Handbook

Some of what’s covered:

Other Book Reviews

Preparing for an Emergency

Preparing for an Emergency

A Prepper’s Handbook

How to Preserve Garlic in Oil – and Other Ways to Store Garlic

Easy Pickled Brussels Sprouts Recipe (Water Bath Canning)

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