Tag Archives: food

Electric Lunchbox – M18 Jobsite Lunch Warmer

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I know very little about power tools but I have a surprising number of Milwaukee tools sitting here. The reason I have so many of the Milwaukee tools is that they make some stuff that dovetails nicely into my needs, and I get a discount at work on them. Because I have so many of their tools, I have a pretty big stack of batteries for them…and, of course, this tends to keep me in the Milwaukee ecosystem because I don’t want to add a new battery into my logistics.

The guy at work who orders Milwaukee tools for us brought this new product to my attention:

Yes, its a self-warming lunchbox. Apparently these things have been around for a while and there’s no shortage of them on Amazon. However, this one runs on the Milwaukee batteries I already have, and it mates with the Packout locking system of the Milwaukee cases/boxes/containers.

Seemed like something that might be worth dropping some coin on. The biggest use I see for this, other than jobsite stuff, is for hunting and ice fishing. No need to haul around a propane stove, or limit yourself to whatever a Jetboil can reconstitute. Take yesterdays pot roast, drop it in, set it and forget it.

I have a propane cookstove up at the Beta Site but, honestly, its just more convenient to break out lunch from something like this…for now.

It arrived the other day and, of course, I had to try it. I have quite the assortment of Milwaukee batts and they recommended the 6.0 battery. I loaded the food container with some leftovers right out of the cold fridge, popped them in the warmer, set the termp for highest of its three settings and let it go for two hours. The way this thing works is that you tell it what time you want to eat and it starts warming the food two hours before that. A countdown timer and progress bar show how close you are to lunchtime. So, if youre a lunch-at-noon kinda guy (as Iam) this things automatically turns on at 10a and starts warming.

At highest setting the food was very thoroughly heated through and hot. More importantly, it didnt generate heat high enough to scorch the contents to the container. When i cracked open the containment vessel the food was hot, not dried out, and otherwise exactly I wanted.

I will be the first to say that this is, for most people, an unnecessary luxury. And a lot of people will say they’d rather save the moeny and just eat some instant oatmeal made with water heated over an Esbit stove. No argument from me. However, for me, this thing is an ideal tool for giving me a hot meal aftert a long day of banging around the Beta Site hauling rocks, climbing hills, and cutting logs.

Bargain beef – its whats for dinner

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I have to remind myself every so often that not everyone cares or is interested in what’s going on with the Beta Site. Sure, there’s a lot of folks here who are kinda living vicariously a bit…and I’m happy to feed that. But there’s also a contingent that are probably tired of hearing about it, so I need to remember to post about stuff other than the Beta Site.

Todays noteworthy event was scoring more ground beef at 50% off.

My job requires me to do bank deposits daily. When I’m out running that errand I usually make a fast pass through ALbertson’s to check for remaindered meat. It’s paid off pretty well over the last several months.

Prices rarely go down on ..well..anything. And ground cow is still one of the most versatile animal proteins I can buy. Meatloaf, hamburgers, spaghetti sauce, tacos, etc, etc. Plus..who doesn’t like beef?

As it turns out, my other favorite animal protein – chicken – can be had by the case at WinCo for something like a buck and a half a pound if I dont mind getting a plastic sack full of 40# of boneless/skinless chicken breast. True it is probably the least flavorful part of the chicken, but I almost always just wind up turning it into stir fry or chicken tenders anyway.

I’ve never regretted having a freezer full of food. In my entire life I have only had one freezer failure and that was about twenty years ago. I’ve been much more careful about those sorts of things.

And, of course, you never know when, for whatever reason, trotting down to the supermarket for some 85/15 may not be in the cards. At that point youre living offa whats in your freezer and fridge and hopefully you’ve loaded up. Since Im a cautious sort, and never know when the next EOTWAWKI (personal or national) is coming, I always stock up when I can find these sorts of bargains.

Here’s a truth that you can absolutely bank on: before the big EOTWAWKI happens you will face many smaller, personal ones. You may be in one right now. What do they look like? Job loss, divorce, medical emergency, foreclosure, busted transmissions, leaky water heaters, tennis-ball-swallowing dogs, vulnerable loved ones, home invasions, unexpected expenses, 2am phone calls, and a thousand other crises that mean nothing to everyone else but are paramount to you because they are happening to you.

And when that personal EOTWAWKI, with its accompanying financial spiral, hits your life, it’ll be nice to not have to worry about things like groceries while your frantically trying to keep whatr you have left as you scramle to get your life back on the rails.

Food storage…literally II

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A couple of posts back I asked for opinions on food that was suitable for long-term storage but would be impervious (or at least highly resistant) to any issues from a freeze/thaw cycle. The premise was that you make it to your remote hideout which has been left unmanned and unheated for the last several months into the winter. What food you have stored there must be long-term, obviously, but it has to be of a kind that is not going to have a problem with being frozen and thawed and couple times over, and has to be packaged in a manner that is also conducive to surviving that sort of situation. The things people came up with in comments was interesting, and while technically they might have been correct they didn’t really grasp the nature of what I was asking. The two most suggested food items were pemmican and peanut butter. Thats great and all, but imagine the scenario that would unfold: you make it to your hideyhole after hours of driving, ditching your vehicle, hiking in the snow for another hour and arriving soaking wet and cold….but alive. You change clothes from the bin of stored clothing you kept on  hand for just such an occasion, fire up the small woodstove to keep you warm, and break into your stored food supply for the next few days. You scarf down some pemmican and peanut butter, feel the energy return to your tired frame, and after making sure your gear is secured, you hit the rack for a some sleep. Next day. Whats for breakfast? Pemmican and peanut  butter. Whats for lunch? Pemmican and peanut butter. Whats for dinner? Pemmican and peanut butter.

You’re absolutely right, I asked for foods that were long-term and could be stored through freeze/thaw cycles without unacceptable damage. What I should have said, it seems, is “what sort of menu could you put together with foods that were long-term and could be stored through freeze/thaw cycles without unacceptable damage”. Let me give an example:

Breakfast: Instant oatmeal, dehydrated eggs, dehydrated hash browns, instant coffee, orange drink, pancakes from mix, etc.

Thats really more along the lines of what I was thinking when I asked that question.

Food storage…literally

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Ok, here’s the scenario to imagine: its the dead of winter and, for whatever reason, you’ve been forced to head to your fallback location. Really, all you could take with you was whats on your back and not much else. Being the harshest part of winter, its a bit of a slog but you make it to your destination. You let yourself into your cabin (or whatever) and you’re wet, cold, and hungry after the stress-filled challenge of getting there. You grab a propane bottle off the shelf and get your buddy heater going so you can sit in front of it and get some immediate warmth while you wait for the fire in the woodstove to start warming the place up. You drag a plastic bin out from under the bunk and change your wet pants and socks for dry. So far so good. But..still hungry. This little haven has been empty for the last three months, so there’s been no heat. Whatever food you have in place is going to have to be something that can withstand freeze/thaw cycles without becoming inedible or simply exploding its packaging. So with that in mind, here’s my question for the collective hive-mind: If you were going to store foods in a location that was going to be subject to freeze/thaw cycles, what foods would be best choices? Obviously anything that is liquid is probably not gonna fly since jars will freeze and burst. Also, some foods simply do not handle being repeatedly frozen and thawed. To my way of thinking this means that youre restricted to things that are dry and have no liquid or semi-liquids to worry about….soup mixes, instant potatoes, freeze dried foods, rice, beans, etc, etc. Canned goods are probably off the list since they run the risk of the cans bursting from the cold, and the wet contents may not remain palatable through the freeze/thaw cycles.

No doubt someone will opine that the end-run around this is to have some sort of heat system in place that will run while the cabin’s owner is absent. A large propane tank and a thermostat, or some such setup. Thats not in the cards…while mechanically it is do-able, thats kind of putting a lot of eggs into a basket that may, at the worst time, simply fail.

And, also, keep in mind I am not asking about the quantity of food. Thats not really relevant here, Im asking what actual foods would be indifferent to storage in an environment where there is nothing standing between them and freezing.

Thus far, I’ve come up with dried pasta, rice, beans, hash browns, drink mixes (iced tea, Gatorade, Tang, etc.), egg mix, pancake mix, salt, sugar, most spices, hard candy, oatmeal, cornmeal,canned bread,  mac-n-cheese, and a few others. MRE’s and freeze drieds are certainly an option and are part of the overall answer, but what else?

Age come on apace

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Liberace, back in the day, sued a tabloid for implying that he was gay. (And, of course, he was but back then it was a secret. A poorly kept one..I mean, look at the man…but a secret nonetheless.) So Liberace sued and won a judgment against the tabloid. When asked if the stress and spotlight of the scandalous trial was upsetting to him, Liberace famously said “I cried all the way to the bank.”

Fast forward to the other day when I was hitting the bargain meat bin at Albertsons…which I do every day on my lunch hour since they are nearby. So I found a half dozen pork tenderloins marked down 50%. Ok, protein is protein..lets head to the check out. The guy working the till asks me how old I am. I ask him why he needs to know. Turns out, the first Thursday of every month is ‘Senior Citizen Day’ with a 5% discount. Apparently their threshold for senior citizen is a rather low bar and I qualified. So, on one h and, I’m pretty jazzed about getting 55% off on bargain meat, but on the other hand I’m pretty annoyed that I look old enough that someone would ask me if I’m a senior citizen.

I cried all the way to the deep freeze.

When you don’t miss the .gov during a shurtdown

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Its been, what?, a month of government shutdown and…I haven’t even noticed. But, according to the news that may change when the barbarous hordes that rely on government aid to eat discover that the free money isn’t flowing into their EBT card as usual.

The internet, a bastion of truth and fact, has all sorts of warnings that people buying groceries will be attacked by the EBT crowd for their groceries. And that there will be mass shoplifting. And looting. And….well, you fill in the rest.

Will this sort of thing happen? Probably in some cases as people get fueled by these same articles. But by and large I don’t think so. If youre too lazy to work for food youre probably too lazy to steal it. But, I’ve been wrong before.

What amuses me terribly is that there are organizations and food banks that are rushing to cater (literally) to the poor souls of federal employees who may be going hungry as this nasty and evil ‘shutdown’ goes on. The depth of my absolute indifference for the plight of federal employees simply cannot be measured. How can you work at a government job, with government benefits, at government wages, and government schedules, and somehow not be able to put away enough money in the bank to buy yourself groceries for a month? How does that happen?

If you’re folding shirts for $12 and hour for twenty hours a week at Cabelas….yeah, youre living on a tight budget if you have a budget at all. But working as a GS whatever for Uncle Sam seems to give enough that you should be able to tuck a couple grand into a mason jar in the backyard for emergencies.

But…you know what? I don’t care. It’s not a nice thing to say out loud, but I have virtually no concern for anyone on “food stamps”. I absolutely recognize that there are plenty of people who genuinely are unable to feed themselves for very legitimate reasons. And it’s a shame that those people have to share the moral outrage that is directed at the able-bodied and ambition-challenged parasites that most people think of when food stamps are mentioned.

Do you know what happens if someone I care about winds up in a situation where they can’t afford to feed themselves and they need to run to .gov? I feed them. And I help them get back on their feet. And I look out for them as they get their act back together. It is not a financial hardship for me to feed someone I care about. I’ve been hungry before and as a result I’m always sensitive about food. In fact, I generally refuse to eat in front of other people unless theyre eating as well because I can’t shake the feeling that if I’m eating and the other person isnt, then somethings wrong and I need to get them some food.

But for now, this ‘government shutdown’ only affects me in one way: it makes me more careful and observant around food distribution places like Winco, Costco, Albertsons, and any stop-n-rob I happen to be in. ‘Flash mobs’ seeking ‘food justice’ by looting the shelves at Kroegers isn’t likely to be a thing here in flyover country but you never can tell what’s going to happen.

And we have, as survivalists, heard for years that ‘society is three days of food away from collapse’ and ‘hungry people are dangerous people’. Any violence that occurs now isn’t going to really be out of hunger because short of an absolute societal collapse, it seems, to  me, to be pretty difficult to starve in this country. Heck, we’re the only country in the world with fat poor people.

So, as far as Im concerned, the shutdown can go on for as long as it likes.

 

Dinner ca. 2017

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Beef. Its whats for dinner. Eight years ago, anyway.

Todays dinner staple comes from Trumps first term, when I was still in college, and had somewhat less grey hair than now. What a difference eight years makes, hm?

Since I’m upright and typing, rather than in a hospital somewhere getting my stomach pumped, it is evident that eating eight year old ground beef didnt hurt me. Why would it? If you store this stuff properly…which means freezing it and keeping it at around zero degrees…it will last indefinitely. The record around here for fossilized freezer findings has been 11 years on some short ribs. And they were yummy.

Most household freezers that are part of  your refrigerator do not keep things as cold as a dedicated freezer. Go to CostCo, pick up a chest freezer for a couple hundred bucks, stick it in your garage or basement, and start buying in bulk.

Inevitably some budding genius in the comments will go off about how this is a bad idea because power outages occur and blah, blah, blah. And, you know what?….power outages do occur. Which is why we prepare for them (hence the term preparedness). In my case, that looks like a generator and enough fuel to get me through most non-EOTWAWKI power failures in my region. And if it comes to the point where all the fuel is exhausted and the power still hasnt come back? Well, its time for a big barbecue and a whole bunch of pressure canning. And until that happens…..have a deep freeze.

Seven years in the deep freeze

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Time for another round of “Will It DIgest”.

Todays contestant is a couple pork tenderloins that went Shackleton back in 2018. Stuffed in the deep freeze for the last seven years, its time to being it back to life and see how it went.

Is anyone terribly surprised that the results are savagely anti-climactic? No weird smells, no weird textures, no alarming gastric consequences. And this isn’t surprising. Packaged properly, which means wrapped tightly in plastic to exclude as much air as possible, and kept around 0-degrees, frozen meat will keep pretty indefinitely. I think the record around here is 11 years.

The really fascinating thing about these archaeological digs is noting how the prices of meat have changed over the years. I remember when I sometimes got 85/15 ground beef for a buck and ahalf a pound when it was on sale. Nowadays its around $5-6 a pound. Thus, when you see a sale….jump on it. Also, this is why a freezer and a vacuum sealer are must-have items.

Guns? Sure. But food…ah, thats another story

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Re-organizing my stuff, especially the long-term food, has me musing about the classic have vs. have-not conflict that we will see when the wheels fly off society…and that, to some degree, we are seeing now.

The apocalypse is going to come in several different flavors…civil war/disturbance, economic depression, huge natural disaster, pandemic, stray nukes…and it will, no doubt, at some point require that you be ready to maintain the safety and security of your loved ones and your home. But you know what happens far more often than the need to point a gun at someone? The need to eat.

I’m an old-school survivalist – being armed is right up there at the top of the list of things to be ready for. But I also have dang near thirtyfive years of being that old school survivalist behind me. In all that time, I have needed to eat far more times than I’ve needed to point a gun at someone. Not saying it wont happen…simply saying that, statistically, youll be more likely to be patting yourself on the back over your food stash than your gun and ammo stash.

In addition to keeping you from, y’know, dying, food has an excellent moral and motivational (Motivatory? Motivary?) effect – as the graphic on the MRE entree says: food is a force multiplier. Well-fed people are going to perform better than starving people. And starving people are desperate people who do desperate things..and doing desperate things is a great way to become someone who doesn’t need food at all…forever. So dont be a starving person who takes crazy risks out of desperation, and don’t be around starving people who are unpredictable and dangerous.

Having that resource of food also makes you a target. Truly desperate people…people who are cold, who are hungry, who are hopeless, who are watching their loved ones miss meals…are dangerous and unpredictable. Don’t be one of them and don’t let them know you’re there.

Right now we live in a world where people will literally kill you because they want your sneakers, think you cut them off in traffic, or simply want your cellphone. And thats in a world with 911, electricity, cops, and a somewhat-functioning society. Now imagine what it’ll be like when the only mechanism to keep the foot on the brake pedal of social chaos is whatever you’ve got in your holster or slung over your shoulder.

In a situation like that the person who can sit at home, safe and secure, and not have to venture out into the chaos looking for food and supplies has a tremendous advantage. Exponentially so if he’s there with his equally well-fed and well-armed family and friends.

It used to be that people first getting into preparedness/survivalism started off with a wild binge of gun and ammo buying, and everything that came after was done with far less rigor and enthusiasm. I have encountered quite a few people who had guns and ammo aplenty but put virtually no thought into food. A bunch of 2-liter pop bottles filled with rice and beans is better than starving…I guess. But you really should aspire for better than that.

And for the love of Crom, stock up on ‘regular’ food….the canned fruits, the jarred sauces and soups, the bags of pasta and rice, etc, etc. Expensive freeze drieds are awesome but when I suffer a small-scale EOTWAWKI like a job loss or 48-hour power failure, I’m going to be really reluctant to break into the $30 can of Mountain House Chicken and Rice and more likely to grab a $2 jar of spaghetti sauce and a $3 bag of pasta off the shelf.

Guns and radios and fuel and all the other sexy stuff is important, no doubt, but water and food are always going to get more use and demand than pretty much anything else you can store. It’s absolutely worth thinking about what youre stocking up on, how much of it you’re putting away, and how youre going to use it. Certainly thats where my mind is these days.

Shelf-stable at CostCo

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Was up at CostCo the other day and saw this:

This is simply tetra-packed UHT milk. And…you can find UHT milk in the cooler at pretty much any supermarket. So, really, this isn’t necessarily a real find.

I have a love-hate relationship with milk – I hate it and love drinking anything else. Also, there are some questions I have about drinking cow milk. First off, I’m a human, not a cow. Would it not make more sense for me to drink the milk of my own species, which is by its nature, specifically designed for my particular organic makeup? And even then, once humans get past a certain age, milk doesnt provide the same benefits than what it provides when the human is newly minted and still developing. In short, I’m not a cow…how is drinking cow milk a good idea?

However….nothing is better on a bowl of cornflakes. Problem is, if I open a quart of milk there is no way I wind up using it all up before it goes bad. So, for me, the small bottles of UHT milk that last about six months in the fridge, unopened, make more sense.

Anyway, if you hate running out of milk, this is a possible way around that…buy a case, stick it in the fridge (or on a shelf) and youre covered. But…you could also just stroll down to WinCo, find the smaller bottles of UHT milk, stuff ’em in the back of your fridge, and have the same result as this stuff at CostCo.

But, still, its nice to see at CostCo.