Dutch Oven Pizza

Switching gears from yesterday, a guy had posted not long ago to inquire about making my dutch oven pizza.  It’s featured prominently on the blog’s Facebook page and I count it as one of my highest achievements.  Cooking it is complicated.  It requires some forethought and planning.  But, if you give it a try, I swear that you won’t be disappointed.

I first got interested in trying it when I was going through my bread baking phase.  Toward the end, I had set out to make the process as primitive and as basic as possible, forsaking all modern conveniences, cooking it on a fire.  I did some research on building a cob oven, but found the project a little overwhelming.  It seemed a lot of work for something that might not turn out.  I also wasn’t sure about building something permanent in my back yard.  Seeing those drawbacks, I turned my attention to cooking it with a dutch oven.

While complicated, I swear that the results will be the best you’ve ever tasted.  My crust, made with sourdough, achieved an absolutely perfect, bubbly, crispy chewy brown.  It was akin to a fine french loaf, picked up at a decent bakery.  It’s something like you’d get at a good brick oven pizzeria, only better since it’s homemade.  I assure you, though managing the fire and the oven certainly take some doing, the results will be well worth it.

In general, the secret to a good pizza is high heat.  In my home oven, I usually cook mine at 500F.  Commercial pizza ovens are usually set to 600.  While there’s no way to accurately gauge a campfire’s exact temperature, a hand held over it for no more than three Mississippis is a good test.  You’ll want an armload of a hot, slow burning wood.  Oak works well.  You’ll also want your fire pit lined with rocks to retain heat.  Notice in the picture how my pit is surrounded with simple a ring of rocks, flat rocks forming the floor.  As a lot of heat is absorbed into the dirt walls, I plan on lining those come spring.

Using the oven itself can be tricky.  I doubt they had pizza in mind when they designed it.  You’ll first notice that the legs are only an inch or two long.  This being the case, your pizza may sit too close to the coals and be prone to scorching.  The fix for this is either to used fewer coals or to lift the oven a few more inches with a tripod.  The top is the real issue.  Filled itself with more coals, the idea is that your food will be heated as well from the top, effectively baking it.  It works great for a loaf of bread or some biscuits, but since a pizza lays flat on the oven’s floor, the heat is a little too far away to properly do its job.  The danger is that the top won’t quite be done, and I’ve admittedly never been able to brown my cheese and toppings as I’d like.  Someone with some ingenuity could rig up something so the pizza sits in the oven’s center.  I’ve never tried it.  Lodge also makes a very short and wide dutch oven, seemingly more appropriate for the task.  But, as a standard dutch oven is more versatile, I’ve just chosen to make due.  I view any imperfections as a simple quirk of the process.

Before you cook, you’ll want to properly arrange the fire and your oven.  You want it hot and even.  Rather than lapping flames, your fire should burn down to embers.  They give off a more even heat.  You’ll also want your oven hot the moment you start cooking, so let it warm right next to the fire as it becomes ready.  Once you get your coals, use a shovel to spread them in a thin later on the fire pit’s floor.  Then place more on the oven’s lid.  As that’s the weak point, you’ll want a lot.  But remember that too many will smother and go out.  Fire needs air.  The idea is that you want a certain amount of heat from the bottom, and as much heat from the top as you can get.

And remember that actually cooking the pizza is a hands on process.  It’s not something you can just put on the fire and leave.   Ballpark, your pizza will take about ten minutes to cook.  The challenge is that your coals will never burn evenly, creating some spots that are hotter than others.  To manage that, you’ll want to turn both your dutch oven and your lid a quarter turn every three minutes or so.  That way no one spot on the pizza is in one place for too long.  Even then, a few black spots are unavoidable.  I just figure it adds to the character.

And taking the pizza out definitely deserves some foresight and planning.  Being extremely hot and without a lot of room, you can’t just lift it out.  My process requires two people, some welding gloves, a spatula, and a pizza peel.  With one person slowly and gently tipping the oven, another wiggle and finesse the spatula underneath.  I always cook my pizza on parchment, making it slide just a little easier.  Achieving that, it’s just a matter of quickly lifting the pizza and tugging it onto the peel.  If someone finds an easier method, I’m happy to hear it.  From here though, you’re ready to serve.

Talking about food and cooking is so much more pleasant than arguing about what ails the world.  Considering himself an anarchist, JRR Tolkien once noted that the world would be a better place if more people valued food and song over hoarded gold.  This is a meal that you’ll want to share with others.  Have some beer available and play some Grateful Dead.  Life is too beautiful to spend arguing and bossing others around.  Good food and good people will solve all the world’s problems.

Of Cooking Show Hosts and Great Man Fallacies.

Straight up, I learned a lot of what I know about cooking from old Frugal Gourmet books.  The gumbo recipe I posted earlier was his.  It’s Backwoods Gumbo, taken from The Frugal Gourmet Cooks American.  Likewise, my Lentils and Italian Sausage is out of The Frugal Gourmet Cooks With Wine.  Of course, as will happen in any exchange, I modified and tweaked some things.  My recipes are distinct and different from his.  They’re now my own.  But, credit where it’s due, that’s where I really got started.  Without knowing much about the phenomena that was The Frugal Gourmet or how it was all to end, his work was a really big influence.

Now, if you’ll indulge me for a moment, let me talk about The Great Man Theory.  Way, way back, people used to believe that the world as we know it is the result of the actions of Great Men.   The idea was that history and society as we know it are primarily shaped and molded in a large part by certain, influential people.  Examples might be Caesar, Jesus, Genghis Khan, Mohammad, Hitler, Roosevelt, Reagan. . .  You get the idea.  Maybe it was because they had a certain charisma.  Perhaps some were powerful military figures.  It could be anything.  But, by that theory, the world is what it is now because of certain individuals doing their thing.  Great Men made it all happen.  Consequently, looking at the world through that lens, the people who lead us become really, really important.

Of course, most serious historians today don’t subscribe to this.  They’d argue that leaders reflect the society, not the other way around.  Hitler, for example, was the result of a popular political movement.  If he hadn’t come to power, someone else just like him would have instead.  Likewise,  Jesus wasn’t preaching anything much different than others of his time.  Things happened though, and he’s the guy we remember.  The point is that it’s all so much bigger than just one individual.  Great Men are a pretty small factor.

Now, I was too young to remember, but The Frugal Gourmet ended in scandal and disgrace.  Jeff Smith had at one time hosted the number one cooking show on PBS.  He rivaled Julia Child and was on the air for over twenty years.  He was the very definition of an institution.  He was quickly pulled off the air though when he was accused by over twenty men of sexually abusing them as teenagers.  Before his civil suit went to trial, he settled out of court.  Two of his books had made the New York Times Bestseller list.  Now they can be found for a dollar apiece in a thrift store.  He used to be the cooking guy.  Now it’s all gone.

If you read his stuff though, you won’t find anything that’s radical or hateful or destructive.  He talked about simple and humble food.  He advocated sharing meals and dining with your loved ones.  He was constantly delving into anthropology, talking about the origins of different foods, where it all came from, and where we all came from.  You can’t really argue with any of that.  It’s all stuff that we’d all do well to listen to and take to heart.  Still, nobody wants to hear it from him.

I’m not trying to redeem or defend him, and whether or not he actually did it is completely irrelevant.  I won’t even get into that, either way.  The point I’m trying to make is that you had a certain ideology that was deeply based on an individual.  Once that individual was compromised, so then was the message.  Anything connected to him was forever tarnished.

And that’s the issue with putting stock in a leader.  Individuals, every one of them, are all fallible.  Somewhere, we all have some kind of weakness.  Nobody’s perfect.  That being the case, any thought or notion that’s completely founded on an individual will die with that individual.  Destroy the man and you’ve destroyed the movement.  Arguments based on authority can all be discredited.

By contrast, good ideas are as strong as the logic behind them.  Ad hominem can’t hurt them.  Sound notions hold their own.  There’s no need to appeal to authority because well founded arguments are powerful by themsleves.  Trying to give weight beyond that is superfluous, detrimental even.  When truth is present, Great Men are thoroughly unnecessary.

Skipping Sin Taxes

Taxes are immoral.  They pay for evil things.  They are the very definition of extortion.  And even if they go toward something you like, perhaps you fancy your schools or fire stations, is the violence really necessary?  Do we need to point guns at people to educate kids?  Are we somehow unable to put out fires peacefully and cooperatively?  No.  Taxes are immoral, and good people try to avoid them.

And in using your vices against you, sin taxes are the worst.  My income tax, I can’t do much about.  They’ve got me.  They’ll find me eventually if I don’t pay it.  Likewise, sales tax is unavoidable to some extent.  On some level, I need stuff and I need to buy it.  The same goes for property taxes.  Really, if I want to participate in society, I’m more or less trapped on all those things.  But sin taxes, taxes on alcohol and cigarettes and the like, take advantage of your addictions.  When you see a police checkpoint, know that the beer you bought earlier funded that.  The same goes for prisons.  They’re attacking us through our weakness in character.  They’re using our flaws against us.

Right now, trying to get in shape, I haven’t been drinking.  But I see nothing inherently wrong with the mere act.  Some of the best experiences I’ve ever had happened when I was drunk.  It’s a social lubricant.  When done right, it makes gatherings merry.  Dammit, sometimes drinking is just downright fun.  Now, some abstain for a whole lot of good reasons, and I absolutely respect that.  But I submit that it is entirely possible to nonviolently enjoy a drink while minimizing your tax footprint.

To that end, I dabble in home brewing.  And it really is a fascinating hobby.  Some people like it because it cuts costs.  $100 worth of equipment will get you started, and ingredients let you make beer for about half the price of buying.  There’s also the science, every batch bringing you back to High School Biology.  I always liked the traditions and histories, learning about old monks and pouring over various recipes from different regions.  There really is something for everyone.

And at this stage of the game, I’m mostly into meads.  To me, while it can certainly be made complicated, mead has the advantage of simplicity.  Unlike beer, where you have to boil your wort for a time and stir and fuss, mead requires nothing done on a stovetop.  Just dump 15 pounds of honey into water to make 5 gallons, pitch your yeast, and just sit and wait.  And you do have to wait.  In about three years it’ll be just about right, bulk aged, racked, and then conditioned in a bottle for a while.  It requires some patience.  But when it’s done, it will be magic.  Most important to me though, Maine State Law requires no sales tax on honey.  Once finished, I can enjoy it with my conscience clear.

Once, at the height of my brewing, I even set out to make a completely nonviolent mead.  I wanted it produced with no government involvement or coercion whatsoever.  Forsaking the use of Federal Reserve Notes, I had planned on somehow bartering for the honey.  My water comes from my own well, so I had that going for me.  I even read up on recycling the yeast from one batch to the next.  Through it all, the big hitch was going to be the roads.  How would I avoid them?  I don’t have my own bees, so I would have had to travel for the honey.  Seemed a long trek, out of the way and through the woods.  The project was eventually abandoned, but it’s still worth taking up one day.  Maybe one day I’ll try it again.

But the point is to always be trying; separate yourself from the system.  You’re not a slave.  You’re not a serf.  Understanding that you are an individual and not a drone, you owe society nothing.  Evil men want to put you down.  They will rob and they will steal.  But even worse is to be cheated.  That beer in the cooler and wine on the shelf really do look good.  But they’re a trap.  Don’t be fooled.  Don’t be tricked.  Don’t be destroyed by your vices.

My Bread Baking Phase

I used to be really into bread.  It was a big part of my life.  It was something I shared with others.  By the end, my bread baking took on an almost spiritual level.  It was part of my routine and a big part of who I was.  Past that now, it’s not a thing for me anymore.  Still, it was important for a long time, and I feel my experience is worthwhile sharing.

I started baking in my mid twenties.  I vaguely remember first seeing a recipe on the side of a King Arthur flour bag and becoming inspired to follow it.  And I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but it turned out pretty decent.  It was better than anything you could buy in the store, and it came together pretty easy too.  I was hooked.  I went on from there.

It wasn’t long then before I got into sourdough.  Now, that’s real bread.  It’s a man’s bread.  It’s the bread of the frontier, what gold miners and fur trappers baked.  Requiring expertise and knowledge, and often just a little luck, it’s bread made complicated.  A skill to master, an individual who can turn out a good loaf of sourdough is an individual with grit, knowledge and determination.  I wanted to be one of those individuals.

And it does require skill.  I talked before about how a lot of cooking is in the quality of the ingredients.  That’s not quite as true with bread.  At its most basic, its just flour, salt, and water, and the cheapest bread flour at Walmart will do.  Bread is all about how you put it together, how you work it, how you time it, and how you cook it.  It’s all in the skill of the baker.  And I sought long and hard to develop that skill.

Bread quickly became my weekly meditation.  Saturday mornings consisted of Tai Chi exercises, sifting flour, and kneading dough.  Buddhist temple music played in the background.  I didn’t use a recipe.  I went completely by feel.  It was a transcendental experience.  I was the bread.

And my friends oohed and aahhed, and it was awesome.  Post pictures of particularly good loaves always got tons of likes and comments.  The fact that I needed to open a bakery was a given.  The name Liberty Bread was thrown around, acknowledging my strong political alignment.  I was the guy you’d bring baking questions to.  I was the bread guy.

My pinnacle moment in baking came the day I baked the most magnificent boule in my dutch oven over a campfire.  It’d been a dream of mine for a while, taking the process to an almost primal level.  It was as complicated and as labor intensive as I could make it.  It was bread at its most primitive and basic.

You see, a lot of bread baking is about timing and control.  You wait until the bread has risen just the right amount, and then you let it proof, and then you heat up your oven. . .  In a kitchen, a more or less stable environment, that’s fine.  You can exercise that control.  On a campfire though, the coals are ready when they’re ready and they will only be ready for so long.  No matter what stage the bread is at, when the fire’s right, get it in the pot and get it cooking.  You can’t hope to control a situation like that.  It turns the baking experience into one of surrender and letting go.  The fire is the master.  You have to trust the bread.  I did, and it turned out beautifully.  I consider it one of my highest achievements.

And then I took up Paleo.  Now, I am not one to say that diet is the absolute direct and only cause of all of life’s suffering.  You lost your job and your dog died and now you feel depressed, so just stop eating grain? No.  That attitude belittles the real challenges and real struggles that people face.  Not everything has a quick and easy fix.  I will say though that I went a month without eating any grains, potatoes, legumes, or dairy, and I felt great.  My sleep was deeper and more restful.  I was overall in a better mood.  I was more sharp and alert in my thinking.  I lost 5 pounds, which isn’t real impressive.  But it’s still a step in the right direction.  On the whole, it was a very positive thing.

Now I don’t eat bread at all.  Anticipating society’s collapse and its unleashing the worst it can offer, I’ve been pretty dedicated to getting in shape.  Lifting weights and duking it out with a punching bag, protein is what I eat.  Bread just isn’t in the equation.  If it comes up that I eat a piece, say a friend has some that I just have to try, I actually get heartburn.  Bread today is painful for me to eat.  Otherwise, I’m fine.  I feel better than I ever have.  So,  guess it’s no bread then.

So yeah, in and out of my life.  That’s the story of me and bread.  Bittersweet?  Maybe.  But so it is with all things.  Don’t let my experience discourage you.  A good loaf of bread is still a thing of beauty.  But for me, it’s come and gone.  I bid it a heartfelt farewell.

My Thoughts on Jerky

In this installment, I’m going to pass on everything I’ve learned with regards to making beef jerky.  I’m going to talk a little about my thoughts on preparation.  Then I’m going to move on to recipes for marinades and seasoning.  If you’re a hiker or backpacker, a hunter or other outdoor enthusiast, or maybe just looking for a tasty, low carb snack, you might find something here of value.  Beef jerky done well is a very special thing, indeed.

When you read most recipes for jerky, a whole lot seems to be sacrificed to food safety.  I get it.  It’s raw meat, and raw meat harbors bacteria.  With some research, you’ll see that E coli dies at 160F and salmonella dies at 150F.  That being the case, the recommendation across the board on every recipe I’ve seen is to crank the heat on whatever you’re using to at least 180F.  You might notice that that’s as high as most jerky makers and dehydrators go.  The thought is to kill the germs, all of them.  Die bugs, die.

Forgiving anyone who would err on the side of caution, to me, that advice brings up a few problem.  As it dries, high heat like that tends to cook the meat, turning it hard and brittle.  To my mind, jerky is better when it’s chewy and flexible.  Additionally, heat destroys nutrients.  Really, it’s not much different than when you’d cook normally, or even what would happen naturally as your food digests in your stomach.  But, since it’s a food that may be eaten in an extreme situation, common in backpacking trips or stored for survival situations, I’d think that any nutrients would be worth preserving.  Seeing those two drawbacks, alternate methods are at least worth looking at.

And while most recipes advocate for high heat, it’s important to remember that heat itself isn’t really necessary for the actual process of drying.  Some Tibetans dry yak meat.  All they do is cut their’s into strips and hang them out at night.  The cool, dry Himalayan air does the rest.  In my experience, it’s the circulation of air that really does the trick.  Cranking up the heat isn’t necessary for that purpose.

Which leaves the challenge of the bacteria.  The thing working in your favor here is that bacteria can’t penetrate beef past the surface.  It can’t get into the flesh.  That’s why it’s perfectly safe to eat a rare steak, the outside having been properly seared.  Knowing that, the solution when working with beef, not ground beef mind you, is to somehow sanitize the surface.  That’s all you need.  Do that, and your jerky is safe to eat.  I try to accomplish this with the marinade.

You’ll want to use something acidic, alcoholic, and or salty.  I routinely use a teriyaki lime marinade, consisting of equal amounts of tamari, lime juice, and sugar.  Fresh ginger and garlic round it out nicely.  Another hit in the household was simple kosher salt and fresh ground pepper, coriander, and apple cider vinegar.  For that, I simply wet the meat in the vinegar and then sprinkled on the spices, the undried end product coated similar to a pretzel.  Although it’s very different from jerky, some may recognize those as the same seasonings used in biltong, everything working in harmony to keep away flies and germs.  In Laos, they seem to often use fish sauce, sugar, lemongrass, garlic, and ginger.  It looks as though salt is their weapon of choice for germ killing.  Look up Laotian Dried Beef. It’s good.  I also used simple beer once, and that tasted excellent.  But, while I didn’t get sick, I’m not sure if the alcohol content was really high enough for sanitation.  Finally, memorable to my wife was the time I prepared some jerky with straight tabasco.  Go ahead and try to tell me that something may have lived through that.

A good sharp knife makes slicing the meat easy.  Usually starting with a bit of flank steak, I’ll first get rid of any visible fat.  Fat goes rancid in storage.  Then, to get some good, wide strips, I cut diagonally at perhaps a 75 or 80 degree angle.  I’m told that cutting it across the grain like that also makes it more tender.  I haven’t really noticed.  But you want your strips thin, absolutely no more than a quarter of an inch thick.  failing that, your jerky case hardens, producing a mummified outside, trapping a raw inside that will spoil.  It’s just a few simple things to keep in mind.

Having done that, you’re ready to go about drying, low and slow.  I turn my dehydrator all the way down with almost no heat.  Again, simple air circulation does the trick.  Overnight is usually long enough.  If I start it in the morning, it’ll be finished when I get home.  8 to 12 hours is adequate.  Again, you’re looking for something that’s just a little bendy, not brittle. Perhaps, picture a good, stiff shoe leather.

Your next task is storage, and many people think differently than me on this.  For some reason, glass mason jars seem to be popular.  If you’re going to be eating it and finishing it over the course of a month, that’s probably fine.  Remember though that mason jars trap air and moisture and allow in light, all of which are your enemy.  Historically, Pioneers stored their jerky in burlap bags, hung in a secure, dry places.  A simple brown paper bag would probably also work, keeping out light and allowing moisture to escape.  You want it some place dark , away from pests, where it won’t mold or rehydrate.  Anything accomplishing that is fine.

One big advantage here to all of all this is the cost.  In the store, a small bag of commercial jerky costs about six bucks.  I saw some earlier today.  Even a simple Slim Jim now costs over a dollar.  Regarding the quality of ingredients, I won’t even begin to speculate.  But the good sized flank steak I used to make the jerky shown above didn’t cost much more than seven.  I’d suspect that, using high quality grass fed beef, you’d still come out ahead.  This is one of the many cases where it really does pay to do it yourself.

And again, this is all useful.  It’s protein that doesn’t need refrigeration or cooking.  If society fails, it’s a meal you can have squirreled away.  It’s a low carb, high protein snack.  All told, it’s definitely something worth making.  Please give it a try.

 

 

Sprouting: One Way To Reject The System

Understanding that the system is evil, the next step is to distance yourself from it.  While the task is no doubt daunting, authority is incessant, every step you take away is a step away from the inherent immorality.  Knowing something is wrong, you just can’t go on willfully participating.  You need to disassociate.  One way to start that process is to become more and more independent in what you eat.  Self reliance in food is a huge thing.  Sprouting would be a small step in that direction.

There’s a ton of information on sprouting out there.  Let me make it simple.  All you have to do is soak whatever beans or seeds you’re using overnight in a jar, drain them, and then rinse them twice a day.  They’ll grow, and you’ll be ready to eat them in a few days when the leaves sprout.  I’ll get into more detail, but that’s pretty much it.  Please don’t be intimidated by this.

And your options are pretty versatile.  The dry goods section at your health food store or your local asian grocery should give you plenty of options.  Mung beans are classic and pretty basic.  Right next to them, you should find some adzuki beans, which are good too.  I also like shoots grown from dried peas, and please try them.  Lentil sprouts are fantastic.  You could also try your basic black beans or kidney beans or what have you, but those have never been appealing to me.  Again though, there are plenty of things to try.

I used to go all crazy and have a bunch of different jars going with different varieties.  These days, I tend to just throw a mix into a jar and grow them all together.  I haven’t found enough difference in taste to warrant their separation.  Why complicate things?

For growing, most people use a glass jar with a mesh top.  I use one I picked up at a health food store that I find convenient.  You’d do just as well with a canning jar and some cheesecloth secured with a rubber band.  I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of trying it in a Nalgene bottle on a backpacking or canoe trip.  I’d run across the idea reading The Complete Walker, explaining how one could possibly enjoy some fresh greens on an extended expedition.  The point is though that the required equipment is basic and easy to come by.

There are a lot of tips for growing out there that seem to make the process needlessly complicated.  Authors caution to grow them in complete and total darkness.  I just put mine in a dark corner of my kitchen and throw a towel over the jar.  They’d also have you build contraptions to keep the jar inverted for drainage.  While you definitely don’t want the sprouts sitting in water, I’ve always been fine just putting the jar lid down for ten minutes on my dish rack after rinsing.  I’ve found it to be enough.  People also go all crazy about water quality or whether or not the water’s been chlorinated.  I’d say that if you can drink it, you’re fine.  See what works for you.

I would however recommend cleaning the hulls before eating.  They’re the little green and brown skins on the beans that pop off as the sprouts grow.  It’s more my personal preference, but I find it worth the effort to remove them since they’re kind of bitter.  To do this, I put the batch in a sink full of cold water, hold them under, and shaking them.  The hulls tend to gather together and float to the top where you can easily discard them.  Some may find it to be too much work.  I find it worth the trouble.

I’d be negligent if I didn’t give a word toward safety.  Sprouts are often championed by raw food proponents.  It’s important to remember though that they grow best in a warm, moist environment.  That’s also the perfect environment for incubating e coli.  While overcooking ruins them, some cooking is essential.  I often throw mine into a stir fry for the last few minutes.  Tossing them last thing into a piping hot soup works too.

And I’ll leave definitive health claims to other people.  Sprouts have been touted by some as a super food and the key to everlasting life.  The idea is that the enzymes in the new plant are all kinds of good for you.  Others have countered that those enzymes are destroyed in the stomach and are therefore worthless. Who knows?  I’ve also seen people claim that this is a fine alternative for those avoiding legumes, seeing that the process of sprouting makes the plant more digestible.  I’ll leave the verdict on that to other people.  In any event, you at least end up here with a fresh green vegetable.  Can I get away with saying that they’re better than cheese puffs?

In any event, this is something anyone can do.  You can do it in an apartment.  You can do it in a dorm room.  People complain all the time that they know the system is evil and they’d like to get away from it.  They just don’t have the resources.  You can do this.  Small step that it is, participating less in evil is participating less in evil.  Please give it a try.

Putting A Little Aside, Just In Case

As an Anarchist, I perceive flaws in the system.  Should they manifest themselves, they’ll be catastrophic and potentially have a profound impact on your life.  It could be a natural disaster, knocking out power, transportation, and other infrastructure for longer than you’d care to endure.  It may be a bad gamble by Wall street, leaving untold numbers jobless and otherwise without means.  Maybe one day the world will just see that Treasury Bonds are a bad investment, forcing the government to either print money or introduce austerity, both options leading to riots and martial law.  Something else could happen entirely.  Understanding that all those scenarios are at least possible, I choose to put a little aside.

Now, I love shows like Doomsday Preppers, but it’s been noted that they really do people a disservice.  Seeing those guys with their underground bunkers and Bug Out Vehicles, the average person is going to see that and just give up.  Those guys have devoted their entire lives to the matter.  Some of them have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars.  It’s been suggested that the media did that intentionally to plant the seed that preppers are crazy and that you don’t want to be like them.  I won’t go there.  But I’d like to make the point that it’s entirely possible to effectively ready yourself on some level without spending a whole lot of money or going off the deep end.

Now, when I got started, I kinda screwed up and did things sorta wrong.  For food, I bought three months worth of lentils and rice for myself and my family members.  I sealed them up in mylar bags with oxygen absorbers, and then secured those in 5 gallon plastic buckets.  They’re sitting in the corner of my basement.  That’s fine.  It’s all absolutely protected from air, moisture, sunlight, and pests.  That food will last indefinitely through the absolute worst calamity and will be there when needed.  I can probably pass it on to my kid.  But, while I don’t mind lentils and rice, three months of it will get old.  And some may even mark that level of preparedness as extreme (It actually didn’t cost that much or take that much effort).  You can take a step back though and make it even simpler.

Just a basic, well stocked pantry is a step in the right direction and perfectly adequate.  My kid loves pasta and sauce.  That stuff all sits a while on a shelf and doesn’t taste half bad.  I make a really nice chili.  As most of the ingredients come in a can, I have extra in my cupboard.  And we often have bean meals.  Even in the air and light, dry beans will last a year sitting on a shelf.  The next time you go to the store, instead of buying just one, consider buying two.  It’s all so cheap, you’ll hardly notice the difference in cost.  Before you know it, you’ll have a cupboard full of food.  Anyone can do that, and it’s not crazy.  If the ATF comes crashing through your door for having food in your cupboard, we’re in trouble.

Serious preppers poo poo the idea of a freezer.  I have one.  A while back, the local supermarket was running an unheard of deal on pork for $.89 a pound.  A decent sized shoulder roast ran about $4.  I have them stacked in the freezer like cord wood.  If the world shuts down, my family can have pulled pork once a week for the next few months.  I know people are screaming right now, “But what about the power?!”  For that, I have an inverter that attaches to my car battery.  It’s a very nice one, costing over $100.  You can find much cheaper that will adequately do the same job.  Running it and idling my car for a few hours a day, I’m good for a while if the power runs out.  To that end, gasoline isn’t a horrible thing to stockpile either.  There are ways to effectively do that.  A small freezer doesn’t cost much more than $100.  It would be perfectly in line to have one, even in a small apartment.

You’ll notice that most of the timeframes I mentioned have been just a couple of months.  That’s for a reason.  You will likely not want to live in a world that hasn’t gotten its act together after three months.  If society hasn’t figured out how to get food and power and basic necessities to people after three months, it is Mad Max.  Somali style militias will be roving the countryside in Toyota trucks, heavy machine guns mounted in the back.  Zombies are walking the Earth.  Skynet has just come online.  You are now fending off cannibals.  To a lot of people, that’s exciting.  If it’s not for you, don’t worry about it.  It’s outside your locus of control.  Focus more on hurricanes, ice storms, and losing your job.  If you can keep yourself independent from the system for three months, you’ve got a good thing going.

In part, prepping is indeed a political statement.  It’s demonstrating a profound distrust in the government and its systems and making arrangements for its anticipated failure.  President Obama recognized that sentiment with his comment about people clinging to their guns and religion.  I’d like to note that my own religious views are nuanced, leaning often toward Atheism.  But regarding religion, isn’t reliance on government and the system also an act of faith?  Isn’t belief that the government will always be there to help you still just a belief?  People have been dead wrong on that in the past.  And really, what’s the harm?  If you have some food set aside for yourself and your family, that’s someone the government doesn’t have to worry about.  They can go on to the next house.  Sure, prepping serves other purposes, but that’s just another added benefit.  There’s nothing wrong with ticking off a politician.

We all know people who can’t imagine stuff going down.  Or maybe it’s that they don’t want to imagine it.  Either way, life is peachy.  If something happens, the the government will save them.  That’s their belief.  And in the day to day, they’re kinda right, at least superficially.  We do have it pretty good.  But thinking on the Rodney King Riots and Hurricane Katrina and even some other recent events, we know that things have gone very, very wrong in he past.  It doesn’t hurt to recognize that fact.

But At Least You Had Chicken

Long ago, I was watching Oprah Winfrey interview Morgan Spurlock.  Don’t hassle me.  It was always on when I got home from school.  Anyway, he was talking about people living in poverty and recalling his own experience.  He noted that his mother knew how to cook and how that helped.  She could apparently do amazing things with a chicken, preparing it in certain ways and doing all sorts of different things so that the family could eat off it for the week.  His point seemed lost though when Oprah interjected, “But at least you had chicken.”

I had to think about that for a minute.  Chicken is totally still around and it’s one of the best deals going.  On sale, a chicken around here can get down to as low as $.89 a pound.  Fill up your freezer.  A small fryer will cost five or six bucks.  A larger roasting bird will cost seven or eight.  And Spurlock was right.  My family of three can easily stretch out a bird like that for at least a few days.  It’s cheap protein.  It’s one of the best deals going.  If you’re on a budget, it’s something to consider.

Keeping it simple, I’m going to concentrate here on dealing with the smaller fryer.  The store I go to has them labeled Whole Young Chicken.  When you buy one of those pre roasted chickens, which are awesome and convenient by the way, that’s what they’re using.  It’s a small bird that can be prepared at home without a whole lot of stress.

I like to beer can mine.  Beer canning was something that came out of the barbecue world.  Steven Raichlen has a book on the matter and it’s worth reading.  You often see all kinds of complicated recipes for it, and people have turned out some really cool stuff.  But the actual technique is simple and consistently turns out something nice.

The challenge to any chicken is keeping the meat moist.  Beer canning solves the problem by having the chicken sit as it cooks on a can filled with some kind of liquid, steaming it from the inside.  A lot of people will argue about what kind of liquid should be used.  Originally, it was indeed beer.  Other people use different juices or leftover marinades and such.  As far as flavor goes, I’ve never found that it makes too much of a difference.  I often just use water.  If you have like an inch or so of some kind of fruit juice or wine or something sitting in a bottle in your fridge, feel free to use that.  Ultimately though, you just want the steam.  Any liquid will do.

Beer canning has another advantage in that roasting the chicken upright exposes the whole bird simultaneously to the heat.  It helps you get that crispy, pork rind skin that I personally love and aspire to.  On a larger bird, part of the trick is to continually turn the thing it as it cooks.  That can be intimidating to some.  Here, you don’t even need to worry about that.  The whole bird gets all the heat, all the time.

And a lot of people will go overboard on rubs and marinades and so forth.  I’ve done well just rubbing the thing with salt and pepper.  I sometimes use Old Bay seasoning.  To my mind, using something basic and neutral keeps the thing versatile.  Since the idea is that you’ll be having leftovers, you want something that can potentially go in anything.  I’m not sure how something done in a strong teriyaki marinade, as good as that might be, would go in the next day’s chicken and dumplings, for example.  And a well prepared bird is often flavorful enough.  Preparing it with lots of far out and powerful spices can potentially take away from that.  Sometimes less is more.

To cook it, just put the can in the chicken’s cavity, prop it upright on a pan, and cook it at 375F for about an hour and a half.  That’s it.  Simple.  A few minutes of prep and you’re onto something else.  I have a little wire base for the can that I picked up for a buck or two.  It’s worth having, but you can just as well make a tripod with the chicken’s legs and the can.  Check it when it’s getting near done.  The temperature on a meat thermometer should reach 180.  Let it rest for 15 or 20 minutes before you carve it up.

Like I said, our family can stretch out a bird like this for at least a couple of days.  I like a leg or a thigh.  My wife and kid usually eat some of the breast meat.  Picking the leftover meat off and saving it for later, the bones and drippings then go in the crock pot overnight with some water to make stock.  One bird is usually good for about a quart.  We have a soup or rice pilaf the next day.  For a day or two after that, I’ve got lunch.

I do not want to belittle anyone’s situation at all.  Some people are hurting.  I get that.  But when resources are limited, skills then become that much more valuable.  Learning to cook economically and frugally can make your situation just that much more comfortable.