SMenu For Michael Janich
other resources you’ll need to prepare the food you’ve got. Let’s take a look at the logic of this process.
URVIVAL
should share a lot of common qualities, there is no true “one-size-fits-all” approach that will work for everyone, everywhere. And one area where this fact is very obvious is survival food storage.
A REALISTIC APPROACH S
Food is obviously a necessary com-
ponent of every survival plan. But when it comes to guaranteeing a food supply for survival or disaster situa- tions, opinions and approaches can vary tremendously. For example, the followers of one well-known religious group strongly believe every family should stockpile an entire year’s worth of food to ensure they are prepared in the event of a disaster. In fact, a quick Internet search will guide you to web- sites that include on-line calculators that provide specific recommenda- tions as to what you should buy and how much. Simply enter the number of adults and children in your family, hit enter, and you’ll get a shopping list of exactly how many pounds of wheat, flour, oats, rice, beans, sugar
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and other supplies you would need to feed your family for a year. Although those calculators are im-
pressive and potentially very handy, their usefulness — and the useful- ness of the staple foods they recom- mend — is contingent upon you shar- ing the same philosophy, lifestyle and skill sets with the folks who developed them. If instead you live in a studio apartment in Manhattan and consid- er frozen burritos a core food group, stockpiling a year’s worth of grain isn’t your best strategy. If you’re serious about having a
survival food plan, I believe you’re better off actually doing something practical and achievable instead of knowing about a plan you’ll never implement. You also need to plan the
urvival preparedness is something that means very different things to different people — just as it should. While all sound survival plans
Learn To Cook The first step in really ensuring you
have food, is to know how to cook. That doesn’t mean you need to be a gourmet chef, but if your skill set tops out at microwaving a hot dog, you’ve got some work to do. Sure, there are plenty of foods that
don’t require any significant prepara- tion. But, the more skills you have, the more things you can eat. In a sur- vival situation, those skills maximize your ability to make use of everything you have stored and everything you can find. More importantly, basic cooking skills enable you to make the most of bulk foods that are inexpen- sive, easy to store and go a long way toward keeping you fed in a crisis. At a minimum, you should develop
the ability to cook things like rice, beans and flatbreads using basic re- sources and tools.
Eat What Spoils First When most people think of sur-
vival food storage, their minds im- mediately drift to things like military MREs (Meals Ready to Eat), dehy- drated camping food and similar items. While these types of rations can definitely be useful in a critical situation, they shouldn’t be your first choice. In fact, they should be close to your last choice. Why? Because the best things to eat in a survive- in-place situation are the things you already eat. To understand this concept, let’s
imagine your community has suffered a short-term disaster — specifically a power outage lasting a few days to a week. This is something everyone can relate to and, unlike hurricanes, earthquakes and more “location-spe- cific” disasters, something that could literally affect anyone, anywhere. No power means your traditional
methods of cooking — like a micro- wave or perhaps an electric stove — won’t work, so you’ll be cooking on your grill, on a camp stove, or pos- sibly in your fireplace. It also means your refrigerator doesn’t work, so whatever is in it should be first on your survival menu. Foods most like- ly to spoil first should be eaten first, so start with foods in the fridge and follow with the stuff in the freezer as it thaws. Note this strategy again assumes you know how to cook and cook on a regular basis.
What You Eat If you cook for yourself and your
family on a regular basis, over time REALITY CHECK • 2011 SPECIAL EDITION
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