Starvin Larry

There has been much written about cooking for “preppers” – some of it is okay,a little of it is good,and a lot of it is going to make a lot of people very,very ill.

You can’t just go back to the methods people used to cook ,store,and prepare food back in the 1800’s. Sure,it worked for them,they didn’t get sick from the food but…

back then,people’s immune systems were different. They were used to being exposed to bacteria and other little microscopic critters that would make people today seek treatment in the E.R.

Today,we use so many cleaning products,that we are exposed to very few of the microorganisms that cause foodborne illnesses.

Even 50 years ago,people were exposed to levels of these organisms daily that would send any of us running for medical help today.

Today-and for the past few decades at least,new food safety guidelines have been developed,and are continually updated.

The USDA website for example has canning recipes,procedures and safety information.

There’s a ton of information about food safety and foodborne illnesses at the CDC website.

For those who work in foodservice,there are programs for training/education to insure that food served in restaurants does not spread foodborne illnesses or cause food poisoning.

Serve Safe is the biggest and most common of these programs.

County health departments-who are responsible for issuing foodservice permits,and inspecting any business that serves or processes food also have a lot of food safety information.

This is going to be an ongoing series of posts concerning food safety,nutrition,and how to safely cook for any size group of people.

Food safety/sanitation will be covered first,then I’ll go into basic methods of cooking,safe serving of meals for groups of people,basics of cooking meals from “scratch” as your supply of frozen foods,MRE’s/Mountain House and canned goods ain’t gonna last forever.

MRE’s and Mountain House are designed to be eaten for short periods of time-eating them for too long causes all kinds of problems in your body. Even drinking the extra water that the manufacturers recommend does not solve the problem. Eat these foods sparingly,not for weeks at a time.

I’ll do at least one post a week sometimes more,and start with the basics of cooking meals-first using household stoves,ovens,etc-then how to cook meals with no household appliances-no stove,no oven,no electric mixers,etc.

For a while,people will be able to use camp stoves,propane stoves and grills,etc. -until the propane/isobutane/Coleman fuel runs out.

During the first weeks of a long term crises,calories are what counts,after a month or so,getting proper nutrition becomes more important. There are a lot of health issues directly related to lack of certain vitamins and nutrients. Stocking up on good quality multivitamins is a requirement-not an option.

There are  herbs and spices that you should have with your food stores-they make a huge difference in the taste of your food-and some have medicinal value.

There are a bunch of other things that you should be storing with your food stores,I’ll cover those in the next couple posts,along with the reasons you will need each item.

In order to insure adequate nutrition,I’ll cover menu planning so that the foods you serve compliment each other as far as nutritional value.

Once I’ve got all that covered,then I’ll start with the actual cooking part,along with the various methods of food preservation.

Some of the information will be links to sites that have printable/downloadable information related to food safety and cooking under austere conditions.

I’ve been working on videos of the cooking part of this series of posts,as of now,I am undecided on putting them out for free,as I spent a lot of time and $$$ on food in the course of making the videos. So the videos may not be included in this series of posts,but a lot of very important and very useful information will be provided.

For anyone who does not know-I have over 20 years experience as executive chef,plus a couple years cooking on commercial fishing boats,along with cooking for several outfitters on backcountry elk hunts in Montana and Colorado.

If you want to learn a lot more about cooking,food safety,nutrition,feeding groups of people-and doing it all without modern conveniences like gas and electric-follow the series of posts.

It will be a long series of posts,probably end up being 100 or more posts total in order to cover everything.

The next few posts will cover sanitation,food safety,storage,food handling,serving meals,etc.

Then I’ll go into the basics of food prep, cooking,methods of cooking,stocks,soups,stews,etc. etc.

I’ll provide some recipes using the basic prepper foods-beans,rice,pasta.

Then just keep going from there so it ends up as a sort of how to reference for cooking using foods we all store.

The way I’m going to consolidate all the posts on this page is this-I will publish the post on the blog as usual,then put a link to the post,and the title of the post on this page.

This way,it will be easier to search the posts for a specific topic or post,rather than having to scroll through what will end up being over 100 posts.

If anyone has a better idea,let me know in comments,and I’ll consolidate the posts differently if anyone has a better way to do so.

Click the links below to get to any of the individual food safety/sanitation,nutrition, and cooking for groups posts…

Food Safety-Sanitation and why it is so Important

Food Safety Myths Exposed

Knives and Knife Sharpening

Important things you need to store