Preparedness for when

guineapiglet

hi, I've been lurking for a while but I'm going to try coming out for a bit. Ive found reading your comments very informative. so have been prepping slowly.

My freezer is filled, store cupboard is getting there slowly I suppose we could cook the pasta with the dog/cat food ? Got my wind up torches and the radio is on order. I've also become fascinated with multi tools

I have a question though. If the power goes off what is the best thing to have to cook the food. I'm thinking about getting something that can live in the get out bag so its ready to go but could be used at home should we be staying there.

grandma247

sb44 rodents can chew through plastic, that is why many prefer glass for dry foods. Plastic can leach chemicals into liquids after a while, I think that is why water tastes odd if it is kept too long in plastic bottles. It would be fine for other uses than drinking though.

sb44

grandma247 wrote: »

sb44 rodents can chew through plastic, that is why many prefer glass for dry foods. Plastic can leach chemicals into liquids after a while, I think that is why water tastes odd if it is kept too long in plastic bottles. It would be fine for other uses than drinking though.

I'm glad that I have been saving all of our jars then.

I have a foodsaver and canisters so I vac the jars, most are ok but some don't seal first time.

However, I found that if you heat the lid by using a hairdryer it makes a better seal.

the_cake

sb44 wrote: »

Britain's Hidden Hungry http://www.tvguide.co.uk/titlesearch.asp?title=Britain%27s%20Hidden%20Hungry may be worth recording.

It was interesting, and rather depressing, I thought. I didn't know that the Trussell Trust (food banks) is a group of evangelical Christians. I thought the young girl (Charlotte?) was really brave and resourceful, I hope she goes on to have a very happy and fulfilled life, she so deserves it. The blimmin conman: it seems that where there is kindness and generosity, there also is often someone taking advantage (and a recent example here on the forum). !!!!!!. The young couple who said they needed at least £90 a week to buy food for themselves and their two children, seen giving their little boy a Mr. K*pling cake - eek! They are (I think) horribly, horribly sweet, must have tons of sugar in them. And I didn't see anyone cooking, or looking as if they might ... if only they could run cookery courses alongside the food banks, people might have a better chance of surviving (even thriving). Oh dear. What a country we have become!

mardatha

Well somebody only has to stand up and start a movement for change... and we have

craigywv

sitting here in nerves waiting on confirmation date for oh redundancy he gets told today SOMETIME! could be friday could be christmas time, i wish they would hurry up so we could either way put our shtf plan into action or just ramble on until date comes. we pumped up for it being this week , dont get me wrong i have planned for this and have christmas , food and bills sorted just want to know either way instead of this dangling about not knowing, sorry for rant but your my friends on here and i feel you understand thank-you all xxx i will let you all know if i told before 11am as i go to mum and dads today in prep for party for all the kids tonight ,if not told till afternoon will let you know about 9 pm as my phone is a dinosaur and cant get this site on it.

vanoonoo

craigywv I know what you mean about being left hanging - today will put some focus ahead for you. By this time tomorrow you will have a plan of action for the months ahead whichever plan that may be! we'll all be here to cheer you all on xx

vanoonoo

sorry not been around much - still playing catch up from being away most of the weekend - finally watched the first part of the derren brown thing last night which I enjoyed but am undecided about the "actor" things in the press, we've seen walking dead, cockneys vs zombies, doomsday preppers, casualty and I cant remember what else we had recorded, just need to see homeland now to get fully caught up!

thinking of you all and our cousins in the americas (this include canada!), stay safe everyone, noo x

craigywv

vanoonoo wrote: »

craigywv I know what you mean about being left hanging - today will put some focus ahead for you. By this time tomorrow you will have a plan of action for the months ahead whichever plan that may be! we'll all be here to cheer you all on xx

thank-you i know you all will be!! oh just text me 2 mins ago it might be tomorrow now before they find out surely this is illegal they have him dangling now for 4 weeks and he is being upbeat well we will survive its not as if we like those poor people in usa/canada/haiti homeless and powerless and thank-you again xxx

GreyQueen

guineapiglet wrote: »

hi, I've been lurking for a while but I'm going to try coming out for a bit. Ive found reading your comments very informative. so have been prepping slowly.

My freezer is filled, store cupboard is getting there slowly I suppose we could cook the pasta with the dog/cat food ? Got my wind up torches and the radio is on order. I've also become fascinated with multi tools

I have a question though. If the power goes off what is the best thing to have to cook the food. I'm thinking about getting something that can live in the get out bag so its ready to go but could be used at home should we be staying there.

Hello and welcome out of lurkdom, guineapiglet.

There are multiple designs of portable gas stoves combined with cooking pots and if you have a camping store nearby, it may be that a few minutes' browsing in their shelves will prove instructive.

However, you cannot really use these kinds of stoves safely indoors unless you take extreme care with ventilation and other issues. If you look back down-thread, there have been several posts on this subject.

If you do go the route of stoves which are using bought-in resources like gas canisters, you will have to factor in their cost, how long they will last and their weight if you are intending to bug out with them among your other kit. You can also get things called hexamine tablets and tiny cheap stoves to burn them on.

There are other options which still retain the same caveats about using indoors but give you flexibility as to fuel source.

These are things called "volcano kettles" which are aluminum or stainless steel structures where the water is held in a tank built around a chimbney and you light a tiny fire in the bit of the kettle under the chimbney. I have seen one of these used and was astonished at how very quickly it boiled a litre of water whilst burning small amounts of cardboard and grass. The speed was comparable with an electric kettle.

Ther are two names to look for; Kelly Kettles which come with add-ons which allow you to cook as well as boil water, and Ghillie kettles (not sure if they have add-ons, never checked, expect they do). For a 1 litre size you should expect to pay £40-£45 for the kettle and more for the add-on kit. These are available online and I've seen them in army surplus stores as well (full price, a lot of army surplus places sell new camping kit).

Remember that you can cook both pasta and rice passively by plunging them into a saucepan of boiling water, putting the lid down and leaving for 10 minutes. I'm thinking it would be feasible to boil water in a volcano kettle (outside) and hastily pour it into a waiting saucepan, add the pasta, lid on then wait.

A trick I got from a pal who is in the habit of extremely-long-distance trail walking (think hundreds of miles) is that you can get pasta shapes which are very small tiny little shells and these can be chucked into soups and will cook inside there in the time you take to heat the liquid.

You may also want to look up something called a Cobb BBQ.

Remeber if the power is down, you may well not know when it will be back, and if you have any bought-in resources like gas canisters or hexamine tabs, you may be unable to replace them until the crisis is well over. I imagine that even where shops are open on the eastern seaboard of the States, they are being stripped bare of things like torches, candles, matches, cooking stoves, generators, batteries.

You can also improvise a free portable camping stove using an IKEA cutlery drainer (or similar) which is the explanation for them cropping up as avatars here, in case you were wondering.

Here's a linkie to how:http://www.mungosaysbah.com/2009/02/bushcraft-hobo-wood-stove.html

You'll want hot water for a lot of things if SHTF; tea and coffee, washing dishes, taking the chill off personal washing water, boiling water of dubious provenance for health reasons, hot water bottles.

Anyway, that's just to get you started. Plenty more advice will come along later.

Oh, and you can improvise a cookstove from a biscuit tin with holes punched it it's sides and a grill of some kind (borrowed off your cooker?) and light a campfire in the tin. Use out of doors as tested by our Fuddle and it works.