Homemade Stock

How often do you take those little cubes you put in your "home made" chicken soup for granted? Without the flavor that bullion cubes or canned chicken stock gives your soup, it comes out flat and boring. Kinda like boiled chicken with salt and garlic. Well the beauty of this post is that not only will it teach you to make your own stock, but it will teach you to be less wasteful. It also saves a ton of money. Throwing away this source of nutrition would be a big no no when you're trying to survive. You can make stock from the bones of any animal, though chicken and beef are the most common. For this one let's start with chicken, as the process is pretty similar either way. The basic idea is to boil bones low and slow to get all that tasty marrow out. Pretty easy right?

Ingredients-

-One dead chicken 

-Whatever vegetables you have in the fridge

-All drippings left over from cooking aforementioned dead chicken

-Salt

Start with a whole roaster chicken, prepare it however you like. If you're planning on making soup, roasting the whole chicken is best, save the drippings. Put the meat in the fridge or freezer to add to the soup after the stock is done. Butchering first is fine too, just save all the bones and skin. They can be frozen as well, I like to save up two or three chicken carcasses and boil them all at once. Add all the bones to a big stockpot or crockpot and cover with water. Now add everything else. I prefer the slow cooker method as it uses less energy but on the stove is just fine too. (next project will be the solar cooker) As far as vegetables, I like to make sure I at least have a half onion per chicken and a few cloves of garlic. The more stuff you use, the better the flavor. Celery, potatoes, leeks, scallions, and apples have all worked well for me. You can add spices if you'd like, bear in mind it will limit what you can do with the stock.

If using a slow cooker, put on low and simmer for a minimum of twelve hours. For stovetop, bring to boil and turn down to simmer for twelve hours as well. The longer it goes, the better. I prefer over 24 hours. After it's boiled for as long as you like, remove from heat and strain out all the solids. The veggies are great for the dog, but for the most part the rest is garbage. To be as thorough as possible I put aside the big bones and let them cool long enough to handle them. Break the bones in half and put them in a pot on the stove and add the stock. Add salt to taste, it should be very salty, maybe double what you would put in the same amount of soup. Boil the stock uncovered for an additional hour. This removes some of the water content and gets the last little bit out of the bones. Boiling it down really just saves space for storage, if you're going to be making soup soon you can skip this step. After the hour, remove the last of the bones and pour off the stock into a tall container. For one chicken a quart size container is usually perfect.

Refrigerate overnight. The next day you will see all the fat has separated from the stock underneath, skim off and save. Pictured left is a beef stock a friend made. The stock should have the consistency of gelatin, if it's still runny, boil it down some more. Distribute the stock out to smaller containers and store in the freezer. If done properly it can be canned as well. I haven't tried this yet so I won't speculate. I prefer pouring it into ice cube trays, one cube equals roughly two servings of soup depending on how concentrated you manage to get it. For the fat there is a multitude of uses. Chicken fat can be a substitute for butter in most recipes, pork and beef fat make great candles. (See previous post) I like to add it back in when I roast my chickens, it concentrates the flavor and you don't have to add oil or butter.

The reason your mom always made you chicken soup when you were sick is for all the health benefits of stock. Being made from bone marrow it gives an immune system boost. It also helps the the healing process along, especially in the case of a broken bone or joint injury.  These home remedies have gone by the wayside in recent years, hopefully things like this will make a comeback.

Pine pitch torch.

Dandelion Mead

This is a mead that I've been wanting to brew for the better part of a year, I just never seemed to get around to it. So today while wandering around outside the shop on my lunch, I noticed how many dandelions had flowered in the last day or so. In about twenty minutes I had enough picked for a one gallon batch. This is a good one for beginners due to the small amount. From what Ive read to make dandelion flower tea (You can make a tea from the leaves, but it is quite bitter) you need about eight flowers per twelve ounces of tea. One thing I have noticed about mead is that you lose quite a bit of flavor after racking, so I tend to make my teas much stronger for brewing. I used about 60 flowers, which is about six times as much needed for the average cup of this tea. Simply bring about a gallon of water to a boil and add the flowers. Remove from heat and cover. Allow to steep for and hour or so.

Once the tea is brewed, strain out the flowers using a mesh strainer. Add about half of the tea back into the pot, add two pounds of your favorite honey. For this batch I'm using Russel farms pure wild flower honey, from Rhinebeck NY. All honey, especially local stuff, has a different sugar content. This is why we start with half of the tea, it's much easier to add more tea than remove it. Add tea in small increments until the hydrometer* reads the desired potential. For this batch I'm looking for about 11% potential, hopefully ending in about two months at 1%, giving a total of 10% abv. If you don't have a hydrometer they can be picked up at any brewing supply store, or at Amazon for under ten dollars. If you want to make this before you get one, or society has broken down an you're unable to purchase one from Amazon, two pounds of honey makes roughly 10% potential in a gallon total of wort*. That's a gallon total, not adding to a gallon of water, so add the honey to a one gallon measure, then add the water. This should get you pretty close. This particular jar of honey gave me three quarts of wort at 12% potential. Once you've reached the desired sweetness, bring the mixture up to a rolling boil. This kills any wild yeasts or bacteria in the honey or water. While warming up, sanitize your fermenters.

There are several ways to sanitize. The most readily available is heat, simply fill the containers (in this case two 1/2 gallon growlers) with boiling hot water and cap them. This is similar to pasteurization, keeping the container above 160 degrees for about 10 minutes should kill anything inside. By far the easiest way is to buy a brewing disinfectant like Starsan, which I am using for this batch. A small amount of bleach mixed with water will work well, (about a capfull per gallon) but can leave some bad flavors behind. Disinfect a small piece of tinfoil as well to loosely cover the top. You cannot just cap it, IT WILL EXPLODE. Believe me, I've had it happen. I've found that with Mead you don't need to be quite as careful as with beer. Honey has natural disinfectant and antibacterial properties and gives you a little room for error, once your yeast is established theres little chance of something else taking hold. The traditional way to make mead by the way is to not disinfect at all and ferment openly, allowing the wild yeasts to penetrate the brew. I will be doing half in the traditional way and the other half using commercial brewing yeast. Which can also be picked up at a brewing supply or online. For mead I prefer Nottingham dry ale yeast.

Once your wort has boiled, remove from heat and pour off about eight ounces for a yeast starter. After the starter has cooled to about 90 degrees, add yeast to it. Allow the larger amount to cool to about 80-100 degrees before adding starter. By this time the starter should be foamy, this is how you know its ready. If it doesn't do anything, you put it in too hot or the yeast is too old. Pour in the starter and cover with the tinfoil tightly but don't secure it in any way. Once the CO2 has built up inside the jar it will push the foil out of the way and vent. This slight pressurization keeps foreign things from getting in. You can also use a commercial bubbler, but as I said, it's a little less likely that it will get contaminated so I don't generally use them anymore. Place the fermenter in a cool, dry, dark place. Make note of the date and alcohol potential. For the open fermentation, place it on a window sill in a container with a large opening on top. Cover with a cheesecloth to keep bugs out. For mine I will be using a large mason jar. After a few days you will see the wild yeast take hold. It will begin to bubble and froth on top. At this point move the jar to a similar cool, dry, dark place.

After about a month, check on your brews. At this point they should be around 5% potential, still way too sweet, but especially when experimenting I like to keep a close eye on it. With my spruce mead a gallon batch was done in 19 days so keep that in mind. At about 2% pour off a glass and chill it in the fridge. If its too sweet, let it go a little longer, if not, start racking. If you don't have a hydrometer, taste will be all you have to go on, it will take practice

Racking consists of chilling the mead so the solids drop out. My method generally is to refrigerate my fermenter down to about 35 degrees and to carefully pour off the mead without disturbing the sediment at the bottom. Do this three times and you will have shelf stable mead, but if you plan on refrigerating it can just be done once or twice. The danger of exploding bottles makes me worry about leaving my mead unrefrigerated. I have had success in the past though, just check them every few days for the first week, if there's no sediment forming in the bottom you got all the yeast out. Serve your mead chilled, somewhere between 45 and 60 degrees. All brews will be a little different depending on ingredients and sweetness, so serving temperature will vary.

Mead has truly become one of my favorite beverages. It's all natural, full of vitamins, and there's no hangover to deal with. Local honey also has really helped with my allergies as well. Three years ago I had such bad allergies I was medicated for two months every spring. Now I only have one attack a year when the trees bloom. All of these benefits and the satisfaction of getting a nice buzz on something you made yourself.

Hydrometer- A device that when floated in a mixture shows sugar content based on bouyancy.

Wort- Beer or mead before fermentation begins, basically a sweet liquid.

Lighting

One cannot stress enough how important light is. From the ability to make a torch in a survival situation, to how annoying it is when that weird sized bulb in the fridge goes out requiring a special trip to Home Depot. Since the discovery of fire, man has been scared of the dark. That may be hyperbole, but it's not far off. We light our homes, streets and parks. When those lights go out the average person can only rely on the light from their cell phone. It amazes me how completely unprepared most are for a simple power outage, much less a long term loss of power. 

My survival mantra is that I plan on my first three solutions to any problem failing, always have multiple backups. I have made entries in previous posts touching on the importance of a good flashlight. I normally carry three when its convenient enough, and worst case scenario, I have everything needed to make a torch and light it, as long as I can find a stick that is. At home I have even more redundancies, too many to list but they include many flashlights, weapon lights and improvised lighting made from automotive D/C systems. To outline a few can give you an idea of what you really need  to survive the night long term. 

The lights I carry with me everyday are two Streamlight Stylus Pro LED penlights, and a Mini Maglite LED.  I won't get too in depth as I have mentioned them in previous posts. Suffice to say they are very cheap, effective, and efficient. The Maglite also has a SOS/Flash setting that can come in handy for signaling. Unfortunately they both use standard AAA and AA batteries, this is not very sustainable. If the world really did end, they would be useless within a couple years. Even with rechargeable batteries, only a few years of use could be expected. For daily preparedness and survival on the other hand, they could be a life saver. 

 
At home in my affectionately named "Tactical Closet", I store my favorite light, a Streamlight Stinger LED rechargeable. These lights are literally bulletproof, aircraft Aluminum body, 180 lumen max output, three brightness settings and a strobe feature. The main reason I highly recommend this series of lights is that it can be charged via the wall outlet or in the car. I currently have a jump box (charged through a solar panel) charging my light. With a two hour continuous run time per charge I only need to plug it in one night a month or so with normal use. I also have the less expensive Xenon model that uses the same charger as well. Also a very solid light, but not as bright and lower run time. They also share batteries so I have one spare that I keep topped off.

Have you ever tried to make a torch? It's a good skill to have, and it's quite fun. A torch is made with a stick, an absorbent cloth, and any oily fuel source. Anything flammable will work, but oily fuels will last much longer. Simply wrap a cloth around a stick and tie it tightly, soak it in the fuel, and light. Do some experimentation to find the best fuels, I've found the best improvised fuel to be gun oil, but regular lamp oil works great if you have it. You can also make a torch from birch bark. Split a stick about about six inches and tie it off to keep it from splitting further. Fold pieces of birch bark and wedge them into the split. Light the torch, as it burns, slowly feed the folded bark up to provide oxygen to the bark. A properly made birch torch can burn for over 10 minutes. Not really a long time, but better than nothing. Make about thirty of them and you can at least make fire wood runs at night, or fend off an attack. 

 

Improvisation is important, not only does it save you money but it prepares you for a time when you can't just pick something up at the store. So I'm constantly keeping myself busy with little projects. Being a mechanic has given me many opportunities to pull apart  various vehicle lighting systems. My new favorite for improvised lighting are those little LED halo lights around headlights. If you pull apart the headlight, they can usually be separated into a string of 12v LEDs. These make super efficient lighting that can be run off of a car battery, and charged via solar or wind power. At a 50,000 hour life, LEDs like these are the key to long term lighting. If you can get your hands on sulfuric acid and lead, you can make your own batteries. Collect enough of these LEDS, and you can light your home for a lifetime.

Knot Tying: Seamanship: Knots, Bends, and Hitches pt1-2 1973 Dept of Def...

Sterno Stove

A few moths ago I had a post about finding resources where others wouldn't think to look. My example was projector headlights for fire starting. The parabolic lens used to focus the headlight beam is also great at focusing the sun to start a fire. One other resource within that headlight is the trim ring that holds the lens in the housing. When totally broken down, this little piece of metal is the perfect size for a sterno stove. It's lightweight and durable. It almost seems like it was made for this purpose, the sizing and height are perfect. Simply place atop the sterno can, light, and cook away. Once you run out of fuel, make sure to save the can. Denatured alcohol, gasoline, or even something you distill yourself can be viable replacement fuels. 

 

Chia pets are edible!

Did you know that Chia seeds are edible? Very similar to Quinoa, they are rich in nutrients and high in protein. Chia seeds can be purchased in health food stores or in Chia pet form at random places all over. So when looting for food, don't forget to pop into the "As Seen on TV" store and grab a few of these. At least eating a Chia pet is a better alternative to eating your cat.