Here are some inspiring garden ideas with pop bottles!
Best Survival Gear and Supplies
Here are some inspiring garden ideas with pop bottles!
A while ago I began to wonder…. What does it really cost to feed me?
When we buy in bulk or buy the sales in bulk or try out new long term storage cans it becomes difficult, at least for me, to know what it really costs to feed me for a day or a week.
I decided to keep track of my food intake for a few days and see what it cost. I was shocked at how expensive it is. As I have been maintaining a well stocked pantry for many many years I lost track of the cost of “replacement food.” I actually took the 2.99 gallon of milk divided by 16 servings and came up with serving cost, same with bread, eggs etc. I even figured in the coffee per half pot I brew. I added a minimal few pennies for the garden veggies and fruit. Growing your own food has a cost at some level.
I think cooking in bulk and freezing in portion size also added to my blur of the rising cost of food. I know it has risen but I needed a reality check.
I began to research a bit to see if there were meal plans for $3 a day, $4 a day with a healthy diet. There is not much out there for sample menus and what there is is quite a few years old so not applicable for pricing.
What was my cost? $4 the first day. The second day was on the way to around $4 until I ran errands and had Dairy Queen ice cream for lunch and ran up the food costs. These were low cost meals with what I had in the fridge meals as I was busy and I expect it would be higher cost at other times like when I buy my favorite, salmon.
I found this large recipe file with low cost easy items. Not sure of the year it was put together but each recipe has a total cost and per serving cost.
Also, remember that variety and spice are keys to success in frugal meal planning.
Food is my major concern when looking at my preps. I feel like I could just never have enough. At this point I have a large variety of types of food including common grocery store items as well as dehydrated, Mountain House meals and freeze dried. The best survival food is always up for debate.
I stopped by a local Sunbeam Bread Outlet store and saw a display of different bread mixes. What caught my eye was these were “Just add water“.
I picked up a few for $1.29 each and just tried the Country Biscuit Mix Sunday morning. Super simple to make. Like I said – “just add water” and then cook.
For the prepper this is a simple food prep that can be put back inexpensively requiring few supplies to prepare. The expiration date listed on the package was March of 2013. Like most things – the true date which the product could not be eaten is likely well beyond that date.
Anyways – the biscuits turned out great. My wife cut the dough a little thin but they tasted very good.
There are many simple and cheap preps out there that can make a world of difference when the time comes.
Rourke
A lot of gardeners have told me that they’d like to try indoor hydroponics, but don’t have the hundreds or thousands of dollars required for they initial setup. If you’d just like to ‘get your feet wet’ (pun intended) you can probably get started with less than a $20 investment (especially if you have abandoned aquarium equipment laying around)
If you don’t have access to an old aquarium tank, don’t worry. A small plastic bucket or small office-type trashcan will probably work even better. I like to check the air flow, but the less light that hits the fertilized water, the fewer problems you will have with unwanted algae in the water. Pick a container that you can easily stick your onion bag inside. Pick something about 9-10 inch diameter and around a foot tall.
If you so choose, thread some of the poly cord through the net bag as reinforcement. This is mostly a hangover from earlier attempts to use pea gravel as a growing medium, but backup never hurts.
Place your airstone into empty tank, finagle and tape down the air tubing to keep it ‘right-side up’ (this can bite you later if you don’t)
Place your onion bag into tank, with a couple inches overlap on the outside of the tank. Tape around it to hold the bag in place (Note: I removed outer tape wrap layer so pic would be more self-explanatory). Leave an inch or 2 free space above the airstone to let bubbles spread.
Set the tank someplace warm with good light. (I use a shelf with a clamp-lamp and a daylight CFL bulb) Pour in your bag of wiffle golf balls – this is your growing medium. Very light weight, full of holes to allow air flow. Plug in the air pump, fill “most of the way” with water and your choice of fertilizer.
Let it run without plants a day or 2, just to drive off and chlorine, etc. as needed, where you are. If you can’t find wiffle practice golfballs, check your closest Dollar Store for the funny-looking hard pink plastic hair curlers. I used these once in a koi-pond as biofilter-medium instead of $30/lb “BioBalls” and they ought to work here too. All they do is support the roots and stems.
Being lazy, as I said, I plant sweet basil, because I can get it pre-started in hydroponic medium from a local organic hydroponic farm at my favorite supermarket. (rich yuppies DO have their uses..) To use other plants, start with a “2-inch pot size” plant, with good root systems, and gently wash off ALL the soil from the roots. PLEASE do this outside, not in your kitchen sink, or I promise, you will regret it while snaking and plunging the drainpipes. Shove the roots down inside the golfballs by hand. If the plant tends to be too floppy or too ‘floaty” just stick in a lava rock or 2 to brace up the structure.
p.s. if you haven’t heard of it, you should check out “aquaponics“, which incorporates fish into a hydroponic system.
There are multiple ways to build food storage. There is the long term, store it in a closet for years, for the “what if” scenario. There are emergency meals that store long term which are “just add water”, but expensive per calorie.
Then there is the “pantry building” way which is simply buying 2 or 3 of everything you get when you go to the supermarket. If you normally buy a package of spaghetti noodles and a jar of Ragu, buy several of each, keep them in the cupboard. By buying 5 of everything you normally buy (excluding perishables like lettuce) you have a month’s worth of food in a week.
Every time you buy something you already have, put the new stuff in the back and use the older stuff first. Keep adding a little all the time – like a piggy bank.
Things like canned soup, vegetables and fruit, ketchup, mustard and BBQ sauce, pickles, olives and sauerkraut last a lot longer than the “best by date” and it’s easy to catch sales. Cream of chicken or mushroom soup makes a nice sauce for white beans and rice. BBQ sauce adds zest to red beans. A jar of salsa adds zing to pinto beans and rice, together or separate.
Get a couple dozen packets of dry gravy, sloppy joe, spaghetti, taco mixes. Tomato soup can be used with dry spaghetti, sloppy joe and taco mix as a substitute for tomato sauce. Bacon bits, granulated garlic and dry minced onions make nice additions to a variety of dishes.
Peanut butter is a great source of protein and keeps quite a while. Canned stew and chili should have a place on the shelf. I, personally, find Spam disgusting, but it lasts decades because of the nitrates. There’s canned chicken, tuna and salmon. Jerky lasts longer in the freezer than on the shelf, heads up, rehydrated it is nasty.
Some other cheap and easy items are oatmeal, cream of wheat, rice, dry beans, barley or split peas for soup in 1 or 2 pound bags, mac & cheese, ramen noodles, rice-a-roni, instant potatoes, pasta noodles, bisquick and stove top stuffing. Other than the stuffing, these things last well beyond the “best by” date. If space is an issue, keep them in a Rubbermaid tote.
A box of instant milk stores well for several years in a recyclable plastic bottle once opened.
Saltines last longer than bread, but not much past the “best by” date. Tortillas can substitute for bread and take little space in the freezer.
Save the freezer for things that can’t be kept for an extended period any other way. Grated cheese in a re-closable bag lasts months in the freezer. Buy meat in the family size or party pack and freeze it in smaller bags. ALWAYS keep the freezer full, any space should be filled with a bottle of water. It doesn’t have to work as hard when it’s full, so it costs less to run and if the power goes out it will stay cold longer.
Have you ever tried sprouting? That’s a great way to put fresh “greens” in your diet without going to the grocery store or having a garden.
Get some ‘feel good’ things, too, like jello and hard candy. Pudding doesn’t turn out very well with instant milk, but works ok with canned milk. If you want to get things like cake, muffin or brownie mixes, a can of dehydrated whole eggs is a wise move. You can store eggs for over a year in the freezer: beat a dozen eggs, pour them in an ice tray, when they are frozen put them in a ziplock freezer bag. Just take out what you need, let it thaw covered in the refrigerator, fry it for scrambled eggs or use it in a recipe.
Christmas time popcorn tins work really well for 25 pounds of sugar or flour and are rodent proof if that is an issue for you.
Coffee, tea, Tang, kool-aid, Country Time Lemonade: I always keep Country Time on hand because I never know when my sister-in-law is going to show up with a bottle of vodka. Gotta love that girl!
Baking soda for cooking, but can also be used for brushing teeth, an antacid, cleaning the bathroom and a hundred other things. Baking powder, yeast, brown sugar and shortening are also some things you might want to have on hand if you like to bake some things from scratch.
Salt, do yourself a favor and buy it in the big bag, it’ll last a decade without any fancy packaging as long as you keep it dry. With pre-made and fast food, we really don’t realize how much salt we eat and need. It’s cheap and the most basic seasoning in the world.
Add extra cooking oil while you’re at it. In a pinch, it can be used as a substitute for butter or margarine in mac & cheese, etc. Whatever you do, don’t forget to have jugs of water stashed in case your services are down.
Variety is important, but if you find your “pantry” has some things you don’t normally eat, commit yourself to eating one of those less favorite items once a week until it’s gone. OR every couple of months you can have an “eat from the pantry” week where you avoid the grocery store completely and eat only what you have on hand.
NOT going to the store for a week or two will really let you see what you need to stock up on or what you will potentially be doing without–Make a list during this week. This method works well for soap, toothpaste and toilet paper, too. Once the pantry is stocked, you can replace what you use as it goes on sale, whenever you shop for fresh vegetables and meat. Eating for a year from the pantry is easily doable if you have a solid survival food list to work from. If you prefer to buy prepackaged prepper food for long term storage for use years down the road, there are definitely some positives to that route as well.
I went to a food storage class a while back and someone there had packed routine shelf stable food – enough for one week – into a bucket. I thought it was such a great idea. A 7-day emergency food cache, with ready-made daily menus of “regular” grocery food.
I am imagining: Immediately after the bad thing happens and I’m all out of sorts, I can grab the convenient bucket and execute easy to prepare meals without using any brain cells. After we eat, the bucket may come in handy for …well … the other things that happen after you eat…
And, although it would be too heavy to carry in a bug-out situation, it would be a great grab-n-throw-in-the-car bucket. Anyway, I don’t know the person or how to contact them, so I am attempting to re-create her idea using my food items.
My goals – feed 2 people for 7 days. 2,000 calories per day with some basic nutrition and variety. Everything must fit into a 6 ½ gallon plastic bucket with a gamma lid. (I’m not planning to pack in a Mylar bag.)
Here’s what I have so far, but I’m nowhere near my 2,000 calories.
For the sake of this project, I assume that I have the ability to supply water, cooking and cleaning requirements separately. And oh by the way, if you decide to do something similar, I found that I can stuff the underside of the gamma lid with small items. (tea, coffee, crystal light, P38 can opener, etc.)
p.s. if you are looking for more ideas, check out our complete survival food list.
Breakfast | Total Calories |
Water Required? |
Oatmeal, Quaker, individual packets (12 total) |
1560 |
yes |
Pancake mix, 5.5 oz. |
660 |
yes |
Syrup, Aunt Jemima, 8 oz. |
400 |
|
Beef Jerky sticks (2 each) |
100 |
|
Snacks | ||
4 Trail Mix Bar, Nature’s Valley |
720 |
|
4 Peanuts, Salted Planters, 2 oz. |
680 |
|
4 Oats & Honey Bars, Nature’s Valley |
720 |
|
4 Snack Bars, Misc. Flavors, Nature’s Valley |
720 |
|
Starlight Peppermints – handful |
100 |
|
Tootsie-Pops chocolate candy – handful |
200 |
|
Drinks | ||
14 Coffee, Folgers, Instant Individual, Packets |
0 |
yes |
8 Lemonade Drink Mix, Crystal Light |
0 |
yes |
8 Raspberry Drink Mix, Crystal Light |
0 |
yes |
8 Wild Strawberry Drink Mix, Crystal Light |
0 |
yes |
8 Cherry Pomegranate Mix, Crystal Light |
0 |
yes |
Lunch |
|
|
Double Stuffed Ravioli, Chef Boyardee (2) |
800 |
|
Raisins, Sun Maid (2 each) |
50 |
|
Tuna, 5 oz can (2) |
200 |
|
Tuna Helper, Box 7.5 oz. |
700 |
yes |
Powdered Milk Packet | ||
Mac & Cheese, Kraft box 7.25 oz |
780 |
|
Powdered Milk Packet | ||
Beef Stew, Dinty Moore Cans 15 oz. (2) |
800 |
|
Protein Bars, Nature Valley (2) |
360 |
|
Peanut Butter, Jiff, crunchy, 18 oz. |
510 |
|
Saltine crackers, 2 columns |
200 |
|
Chicken, SAM’S Member’s Mark, 13 oz |
350 |
|
Manwich Can 15.5 oz. |
210 |
|
Baked Beans, Bush’s Can 16.5 oz. |
490 |
|
Chicken Noodle Soup Can + Lipton Envelope |
300 |
|
Protein Bars, Nature Valley (2) |
360 |
|
Dinner |
|
|
Beef with Gravy, Hormel Cans, 12 oz. (2) |
520 |
|
Baked Beans, Bush’s Can 16.5 oz. |
490 |
|
Green Beans, Can 14.5 oz |
70 |
|
Chicken Chow Mien Dinner, LA Choy, 28 oz |
540 |
|
Spam, Can 12 oz. |
840 |
|
Sweet Potato Casserole, Glory 15 oz. |
250 |
|
Cooked Ham, DAK, 16 oz. Can |
800 |
|
Instant Mashed Potatoes, Idahoan 4 oz. |
240 |
yes |
Green Beans, Can 14.5 oz |
70 |
|
Spaghetti Dinner, Kraft Box 8 oz. |
800 |
yes |
Tomato Paste, Hunts Can 6 oz. |
150 |
|
Chicken, SAM’S Member’s Mark 13 oz. |
350 |
|
Rice Package, Knorr 5.7 oz. |
600 |
yes |
Corn, Can 12 oz. |
245 |
|
Corned Beef, Hormel Can 12 oz. |
720 |
|
Instant Mashed Potatoes, Idahoan, 2 oz. |
440 |
yes |
Carrots, 12.5 oz. |
158 |
|
Total Calories in Bucket |
19,253 |
|
Total Calories per day for 2 people |
1,375 |