Survival Food

Soups have long been the mainstay of any cook who is trying to stretch the larder to feed more people, or the budget to save money.

Soup is the basic survival food. This is part of a series of Survival Soup recipes that you can make from commonly stored foods, your garden in season, foraging wild edibles, or what is seasonally plentiful on the homestead.

Do without further adieu, I give you Garbage Soup. Money-saving, ecologically-sound and delicious.

You Will Need:

• Frozen (or fresh) veggie-scraps
• Frozen meat (or dried, canned or fresh), skin and bone scraps

I will admit, NOT the most appetizing name, but it can save you a lot of cash over a year’s time. What do you do with the skins of the onions you use? The carrot and potato peels? Root ends of celery? Chicken bones and skins? Shrimp shells?

They go in the trash, or down the disposal, or (hurray!) in the compost pile, right? Try putting all of the veggie scraps into a big zip bag (yes, even the papery skins from the onions – great color). Put the meat scraps into another, squeeze air out of both and just stick them in your freezer.

Directions:

1. When the veggie bag is full, dump it into a stockpot, add garlic (I always add garlic) and some black peppercorns
2. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer about an hour or so.
3. Strain and press any remaining liquid out of the veg.

You now have some very tasty, and FREE vegetable stock. The stuff in the strainer will break down in your compost pile MUCH faster.

If you want a chicken/meat/seafood stock, sear the bones/fat/skin etc in a skillet and simmer in the veggie stock another hour or so, Strain again and skim off excess fat. DO NOT compost the meat scraps, or you will get bad smells and rats.

You just cannot beat free food :)

White rice is a basic survival storage food, and Koshari is an everyday working-person’s meal in most of Egypt. It tastes infinitely better than it sounds.

This is part of a series of Survival Recipes that you can make from commonly stored foods, your garden in season, foraging wild edibles, or what is seasonally plentiful on the homestead.

You Will Need:

• Caramelized onions (see Best Pizza recipe for details)
• white rice, uncooked
• lentils (I like orange dal, because they cook quickly)
• plain spaghetti pasta
• yellow onions, diced
• your favorite tomato sauce (even packaged sauce will work)
• ground cumin
• olive oil

Directions:

1. Add 2 parts white rice 1 part lentils to a pan, and cover with water (1 ‘knuckle’ depth above surface).
2. Bring to boil, reduce to simmer.
3. While rice and lentils cook, break up the spaghetti pasta, and lightly brown it in olive oil.
4. After about 10 minutes, add the browned pasta to the rice/lentil mix and continue simmering, covered, about another 10 minutes. (Do not expect ‘fluffy’ rice – thick and sticky is what you want.)
5. Saute diced onions in oil, add tomato sauce and a healthy shot of ground cumin. simmer.
6. When rice/lentils/pasta mix is cooked, place serving in a bowl, cover with caramelized onions and top with the cumin/tomato sauce.

Really delicious, filling and easy. Makes a great, simple camping meal as well. (Thanks to Anthony Bourdain “No Reservations” Cairo episode for the inspiration)

When you are sick, chicken soup really does help. The herbs help too (where do you think they get thymol for cough drops). This is really magical when you’re sick!

You Will Need:

• whole roaster chicken, remove and keep all bones and skin
• 3 yellow onions, quartered
• 2 rough chopped carrots (keep skin on)
• 2 rough chopped stalks of celery, diced
• large bunch fresh thyme
• lots of minced garlic
• 2 fresh sage leaves
• olive oil
• slice of fresh ginger
• about quarter-sized egg noodles, boiled, very al dente
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Start by skinning and boning the whole chicken.
2. Toss all the skin and bones into a stock pot and brown everything.
3. Cover well with water, adding rough cut veggies and herbs.
4. Bring to a rolling boil, reduce to a simmer, cover and go away for a couple hours (well, watch it and add more water, if needed).
5. After a few hours, strain out all the veggies and herbs and discard.
6. Let stock cool and skim off excess fat.
7. Saute the diced veggies and add to the stock.
8. Heat thoroughly. You may want to add more garlic and thyme :)

Now, here’s the secret: Do not add the noodles until you are ready to serve.

Put them in the bowl, cover them with hot soup. Store leftover soup and noodles separately, and combine at meal time – the noodles won’t soak up all the stock and turn into ‘pudding’ that needs to be thinned out again.

As many of you know, I’m a “recovering New Yorker”.  One of the first really ‘alien’ things I found when I first moved to Virginia, 40-some years ago,  was that if I saw friends on New Year’s Day, their first question was usually “Did you have your black-eyed peas yet?”. If  I said “no”, I was usually dragged bodily into the kitchen and handed a bowl and spoon and told “It’s good luck”.  (Some were pretty bad, some were delicious.)

I had to do some research to find out why.  It turns out that, before the Civil War, black-eyed peas (beans) were grown, but considered a low-grade animal fodder crop in the South. Both armies involved in the conflict tended to commandeer much of the “people food”.

Animals, green vegetables, fruits, wheat, hay and field corn went to keep the armies fed. Civilians, black and white, rich and poor, were all very short of food. The bottom-line was that it was ‘survival food’, but if you had those dried beans, and maybe some smoked pork hocks to cook on New Year’s Day, you were already starting off the year lucky.

I don’t really believe that things are good or bad luck (except for the really obvious – it’s always bad luck to purposely whack yourself in the hand with a sledgehammer), but, a really tasty century+ – old tradition needs to be remembered and spread beyond its source. Here’s a modern version:

Hoppin’ John, the lazy way (not just for New Year any more…)

You Will Need:

• 1 lb dry Black-eyed Peas
• 1 “country style” smoked ham hock
• 1 yellow onion, quartered
• about 2 qt chicken stock
• 1 yellow onion, diced
• 1 bunch fresh thyme
• 1 large green pepper, diced
• boiling water
• chopped garlic
• 1/2 lb bacon, diced.
• stone-ground coarse mustard (optional)

Directions:

1. Add dry beans to a crockpot, cover by about an inch with boiling water.
2. Set slow cooker on “Warm” and let is sit overnight to hydrate beans. Add more water if needed.
3. In morning, drain off water, re-cover beans with chicken broth, add the ham hock, quartered onion, a ‘pinch’ of garlic and cook until tender on “Low” setting.
4. When beans are tender, remove ham hock, shred and return to slow cooker, saute bacon over medium heat to render fat, until ‘somewhat crispy’ (my personal choice- I don’t like it if it breaks when you bend it).
5. Remove bacon and excess grease, saute diced onions, peppers and garlic until onions translucent, then add to your beans.
6. Stir, add fresh thyme bundle, add a little more broth if needed, and cook on “Low” about another half hour. A little mustard doesn’t hurt, but not traditional. Add broth or water as needed, you want some good ‘bean juice’ :)

Serve by itself, over rice, or with cornbread, or both. YUMMMM.

It’s “good luck” to start the year with something delicious. It would be very cool to know that we’re all sharing a meal, even though we’re all geographically separated.