Let's Talk Wellness Now

Have you prepared your pantry for winter? Where do you start preparing natural foods, canning, freezing, dehydrating, freeze drying ect. Dr. Deb shares the top foods in her pantry that she is storing for 25+ years. 

Do not miss these highlights:

07:47 Freeze Dryer and the disadvantages.

10:46 Anything that’s dry, can go inside the Mylar bags and be sealed for many years, and in a moist situation, you really want to can.

12:41 How you want to look at your food storage.

15:49 Why Mylar bags should be put inside of plastic totes.

17:32 Stockpile what it is you need and want – Have enough food sources that are high in vitamin C.

20:34 Your supplements can be frozen. 

28:21 Store Grains – They’re easy to store and they provide a good amount of calories for you and they fill your belly. 

30:34 Store Rice because it’s very high in calories, has lots of vitamins, minerals,  and it’s easy to prepare.

31:23 Store beans and legumes – they’re literally a powerhouse of nutrients.

32:57 Potato flakes are great fast food survival Food. 

34:06 You can have dehydrated, frozen or dried vegetables and spices.

36:00 Store sugar because it’s a good preservative and store honey because of its sweetening properties and medicinal properties.

38:05 Salt is a priority in food storage because it’s something that we cannot produce on our own property. It’s a great item for bartering. It’s critical in food preservation and health.

39:14 Store baking soda for cleaning, personal hygiene and also for medicinal purposes. Also, store Vinegar for food preparation and recipes. 

41:07 Store ascorbic acid powder. It’s essentially vitamin C and is needed for health and life.

Resources Mentioned

Whether you are recovering from an illness or just looking to maintain your current overall health, schedule a consult with us at Serenity Health Care  by calling  (262)522-8640 or visit https://www.serenityhealthcarecenter.com 

Transcript of Episode 185

0:02
Welcome to Let’s Talk Wellness Now, I’m your host, Dr. Deb, this is where we talk about everything wellness, and learn to defy aging, and live our lives on our own terms. Welcome back to Let’s Talk wellness. Now, I’m your host, Dr. Deb. And today you see a very different background for me than you’re used to seeing. And that’s because I’m up in northern Wisconsin, enjoying a little r&r time with my husband, we’re on a nice little lake here. And my husband and I are going to do some hiking, and just kind of really enjoy the fall weather. And I wanted to talk today about fall preparation. So we are very close to fall. And when we think of fall, we think of harvesting fall harvest, we’re harvesting apples and peaches and all of the things that we grew during the summer months, and really getting ready for the hearty winter that’s coming. Now whether you live in a really cold state like me, or you live in a warm state either way, winter is kind of that downtime for us that preparation time, that hibernation time. And I think today, more than ever, we need to be thinking about what are we doing to prepare for the winter. Now, you’ve seen and heard me talk on this show before about healthy eating organic food, you know, buying from farmers markets buying from the local farmers, so you know how your food is prepared, how it’s grown, how they treat their animals, all of that kind of thing. But what we’ve never covered is how to store food for the winter. So all of our ancestors have had to do food storage. And you know, when we didn’t have refrigeration, we didn’t have electricity, it wasn’t as easy as walking into the basement or into the garage and throwing something into a chest freezer, or having our refrigerator where we could store food, you know, for at least a week at a time and in our freezer for months or even a year or more. But they had to plan and they had to prepare. And they had to can, that was the only way that we had options for food storage back in the day. And there are still many people today that do canning and do food storage. And if you’re not one of them, I would really encourage you to start looking at the options and the training on canning and freezing fresh food. You know, there’s been a lot of talk about food shortages coming. And a lot of people have said to me, Well, I don’t know what you’re talking about. My grocery store has plenty of food still. And I see videos all over of people who do not have food on their shelf. And a good eye opener for me was Labor Day weekend, we were up visiting some family and the local store there has never been out of food, even in a Labor Day weekend. And this Labor Day, it really wasn’t as busy as it normally is. So I was very surprised when I walked into the grocery store at the end of the weekend. And there was empty shelves not in like where the noodles and the canned items are. But where the fresh food was the food

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fruit section and the vegetable sections were completely barren compared to what they are like there was one whole section that didn’t have any watermelon or cantaloupe and strawberries. And granted this is all their cut up product. So it could have been that they didn’t have people to do it. It could be that, you know, they just didn’t have the product itself. But what I found interesting was that section was empty, and the section where the vegetables were was empty. And I’ll actually throw some pictures so you guys can see what I’m talking about in this video as well. But in all the years that I had been going there, and it’s been well over 20 some years, I’ve never seen that before in my life. I’ve never been into the grocery store where aisles are empty. And I’ve been to my local grocery store and the noodle aisle is empty and there’s no peanut butter on the shelves and and I say those things because my husband loves noodles and he loves peanut butter and and I don’t know what he would do without either of those. But I took note to that and other sections of the grocery store are fine, but some are really problematic and So I think it’s important for us to heed the warnings of the people that are out speaking about the food crisis that’s happening. I like to listen to Mike Adams quite a bit. And he is a scientist. He’s also in the food industry, he is buying raw ingredients. And we know how much of a challenge that is. For those of you who know that I used to own GF naturals, and GF naturals was a gluten free flour mix. We had to close that business at the end of last year, because of raw ingredients, we could not purchase enough raw ingredients, we didn’t have the purchasing power to purchase what they required us to do, which was a pallet full, so a pallet full of any grain is about 2500 pounds, they were leaving that purchasing power to all of the big companies. So small companies, some of your favorite boutique e-companies, you may see going out of business, simply because they can’t purchase like they used to. Because if they can’t purchase in this large bulk, they’re not going to be able to afford to purchase the raw ingredients to make their products. So we will see more and more of that. And we will see more of the larger industries being able to maintain, but our smaller businesses are not going to be able to make it if they’re having that same requirement that they required of us. So just some of these little things have made me really start thinking that we need to be preparing, we need to be really buckling down on what we have in store what we have in stock. Now in my case, I have a large family. So I have three children. They’re all married, they all have children’s have a very big family. And I love it. But when when they all come to dinner, I cook for 10 to 15 people at least. And that’s not including my brother in law’s and my sister in law’s that comment as well. So as you’re thinking harvest season, Thanksgiving is coming. How many people are you cooking for? How many people are you preparing for? I think it’s important to start thinking ahead and start planning ahead. In one of our groups that we host at Serenity healthcare center, there was a discussion on food preparation a couple of weeks ago, and one of the gals had shared with us that her kids had been Food Prepping for several years, and they have a food.

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It’s about a dehydrator, it’s a freeze dryer, sorry, freeze dryer. So they freeze dry all their food and package them in Mylar bags, and they use these little oxygen packs and put them in the Mylar bags. And the oxygen packs actually suck the air out of the bag. So it keeps the food fresh. And when you do that your food can stay fresh for 10 15 20 years, depending on what food you’re putting in there. And I think that’s an amazing idea. I think it’s an easy way to prep. However, the freeze dryer is expensive. It’s about $3,000. And I thought about this, like maybe this would be a really good thing to have. And I would encourage you, if you’re thinking about doing that, go watch some of the videos of the food that is unpacked from it, because that’s what changed my mind from it. My husband and I were looking at it and you know, they freeze dried meat and they freeze dried literally everything yogurt, ice cream, everything. But when it comes out of the package, it’s hard. And I’m gonna just talking a little hard, it’s hard. And you have to hydrate it. Now some of the commercials for the freeze dryer will show that they just, you know, pour some hot water over it. And it moistens up and it’s beautiful. But if you actually look at some of the videos of people that are doing it, it’s like leather, it’s like jerky. And if you’d like jerky, that’s great. And the one gentleman that we watched, was pouring all these sauces over his needs and letting them soak for a day or two. And my husband I had said, you know, if we’re in a position where we don’t have electricity, we don’t have good water sources were limited on food, we are not going to be able to find five jars of sauce to pour over this meat to eat it. And therefore that meat won’t get eaten at all. And now you’ve just wasted all of your meats that you had in your freezer, turning it into a freeze dried food thinking that it’s going to be good for all these years. So that was what made us choose to not do a freeze dryer. But what I did do is purchased the Mylar bags and purchase the oxygen absorbers. And I took all of my gluten free flour, and I packed it in one gallon bags, I threw my oxygen packs in there. And I used my sealing machine that I have. So I have a vacuum sealer, I didn’t use the vacuum part on it, I just use the sealer part on it because you don’t have to use the vacuum part with the oxygen packets inside there. And I sealed the bags, and I laid them flat on my kitchen table for a couple of days. And the oxygen packs sucked the air out. And all of them are nice and tight. And they’re air sealed. So I had packed flour, I had packed rice in there, I packed granola, I packed noodles, anything that’s dry, can go inside the Mylar bags and be sealed for many, many years, you don’t really want to put anything moist in there. Because if you get moldy in a moist situation you really want to can.

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So I have canned before some things I’ve been really successful with some things I have not. I’ve learned why I I’ve canned potatoes before, and was unsuccessful with them. But it was because I used a cold water bath and not a pressure bath. And so as you learn these techniques and tools, you’ll get better at them. So I’ve been canning, I’ll be canning some apples and some fruit here. Pretty soon. I’ll be canning some vegetables. And I’m also going to try to can some meat, I’m going to try to can hamburger soup and try to do some beef cooked and put those in the canner. So it’s convenient and be if something does happen to electricity, and I don’t have the power source that I need. I’m not losing all of my food. And I’m certainly not going to can, everything that I have in my freezer. But I am going to try to can a good amount of it, I’d like to have about a year’s worth of food stock in Canning, and in dry Mylar bags. So that I have that food storage there if I need it. And then my freezer space is open for other things, and I’ll rotate my foods as they come through. And as I buy new stuff, I’ll rotate things through. And I think that’s important for us to remember is that when we’re buying food for storage, we’re not buying it for storage for 25 years and forgetting about it. We’re buying food that we’re going to consume every single day. And we’re going to rotate it through as we buy new stock, we’re going to use our old stock, and we’re going to keep continuing to rotate that. That’s really how you want to look at your food storage. Do I have food storage containers that I’ve purchased that are good for 25 years? Like, like military rations? Yes, I do have some of that. I don’t have a lot, I have enough for about three months. But when my husband and I talked about it, and we said you know that that’s really good for an emergency, put it down, pack it away, don’t think about it. But are we really going to eat all that there? And what are we going to do when our whole family ends up coming to stay with us in an emergency crisis, or when my entire family can’t find things that they need, because they’re not thinking in the way that I’m thinking right now. My kids aren’t in a position that they can prepare the way I am. And so I’m preparing for my whole family’s in now some people are going to see that they’re going to comment on this. And they’re gonna think that I’m crazy and that I shouldn’t be doing that for my kids and my kids aren’t learning anything. And that’s fine. Everybody has a right to choose what and how they are going to do this. And how are they going to take care of their family. But this is what I’ve chosen to do for me. My kids have different skills, and they will bring skills to the table that I don’t have. But I love to cook and I love to bake. And so that is my skill that I’m contributing to our process that we have in survival. And so I really think everybody needs to do what’s in their best interest. I have a daughter who has celiac disease. And so for any of you who have celiac and have to do gluten free things, you know how expensive that is, and it’s expensive enough to eat, let alone expensive enough to prepare for down the road. And yes, she can live on fruits and vegetables and meat and she does a lot of that. But if I can contribute and add some gluten free things to my pack and give them to her. I will do that all day long. So some of the other things that you can put in your Mylar bags are muffins. I don’t bake them before I put them in there. So I’m actually taking my muffin mix and I’m preparing a gluten free muffin mix, I’m putting everything in there that’s dry that I need. And then all I need to do is add my wet ingredients when I want to make them. So I’m purchasing as much of that materials as I can right now. And I’m packaging those in the Mylar bags, putting the oxygen products in there and sending them down into my food storage center. I really wish when we built our house, I would have built a cellar. But I didn’t I didn’t think about that at the time. And I have a perfect place for a cellar. But I don’t have that. But my basement is really cool. And I do have a little storage room where I can put things in. And so I’ve created shelves, and racks in there. And inside the

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let me back up the the Mylar bags I put inside of plastic totes, because I don’t want any of the mice to get in there, which thank God knock on wood we don’t have right now. But I live in a farm. And so it’s easy for that to happen. And just as a means so that they get they stay protected, and they’re not getting punctured by anything. So I’m putting those in plastic totes and stacking those and that way it doesn’t take my shelf space either. Because if you get a gallon Mylar bag, you know, they’re probably about this this big already. And laying flat. You know, they’re they’re probably yay by yay, sorry, is a hard one to see. But I don’t want that to take up all of my storage space. So that’s what I’m doing with those. And all of my canned goods are then going on the rack. And they’re going in order as that I purchased them or expiration date, and then I’m just rotating them through so that my pantry is not quite as full.

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I really think that all of us could do this. I mean, it doesn’t matter where you shop. I’ve bought in things that I would not normally eat. So we’ve I bought potato flakes. In case I can’t get potatoes. For those of you who haven’t heard, there is a potato shortage, there is a tomato shortage as well. And so if you’re a big sauce person, or you like a lot of tomatoes in your recipes, you probably want to be stockpiling that right now. Same thing with potatoes. If you’re a big potato person, you want to stockpile that. Now for a lot of people, potatoes and tomatoes are no no’s, because they’re inflammatory. They cause arthritic type symptoms for people. They just create a lot of inflammation and a lot of pain. So maybe you’re on a special diet, and you can’t do those things, and you can’t stockpile them. And that’s great. And that’s fine. But you need to find your other source of things that you can stockpile, then maybe it’s going to be sweet potatoes, or maybe it’s going to be yams. Or maybe it’s going to be instead of tomatoes, you’re going to do green beans, or peas or something like that. So stockpile what it is you need and want. The other thing that’s really important for you to think about when you’re packing your pantry and stockpiling your food source is do you have enough vitamin C, one of the things that got us into trouble many many years ago was scurvy. And that happened because we did not have enough vitamin C around. And so you need to have food sources that are high in vitamin C. So you need canned fruits, you need canned vegetables, you need things like applesauce apples, if you can get canned oranges and peaches and things like that, those are all really good things to have as well. Because you’re going to need that vitamin C source. And a lot of our foods are depleted of all of their nutrients and then nutrients are added back to the food source. So over time, we may see some problems with foods and the nutrient value. We’ve already seen it I mean, our growing power is terrible for us to consume the same number of nutrients in a bowl of spinach today to equal what it was in the 50s we would have to eat 50 bowls of spinach today to get that same nutrient value from a bowl of spinach that we had in the 50s. If that makes sense. I said that a little backwards. I hope it’s not too confusing for people. But we already know that the nutrients have been depleted out of our food sources. Part of that comes from the soils being depleted and not having enough nutrient value in the soils. And part of it is our farming practices are poor and all of the chemicals that we spray on it Our soils have depleted them of the nutrients. And then of course, adding the cost of farming these days where farmers don’t have enough revenue coming back from what they’re doing to put minerals back into the soils. So there’s a lot of reasons why we don’t have that nutritional value that we’ve had in the past. So you’re going to need to supplement with some things and you’re going to need to make sure that you have supplements available.

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Now, one of the things that people are shocked about when I say this is that your supplements can be frozen. Did you know that? Yeah, anything that I wouldn’t freeze the liquid, just because it’s easy for the bottle to break. And it’s easy for problems to happen with that. But anything that’s a capsule or a tablet can be frozen. And so you can stockpile supplements, stick them in your freezer, and they will last forever in your freezer. So I do this all the time. I put different supplements in my freezer, I have different antibiotics in my freezer, I have antibiotic gels in my freezer, all kinds of prep things that I might need if somebody were to get sick. I just keep that all in my freezer, I have a little plastic box that I put them all in so they don’t fall to the bottom of my chest freezer and get lost. But I you know, that’s how I store supplements as well. And you can do the same thing. You can also make a lot of your own tinctures. So tinctures are just liquids, liquid herbs, you can make them with Everclear, which is 100% grain alcohol, you can also make them with whiskey or bourbon. And you use that alcohol base to extract the oils out of the plants that you’re using. And then once you do that, for a period of time, depending on the plant, each plant is a little bit different timing, then you simply pour out your alcohol into a colored bottle, usually it’s Amber or blue, because you don’t want the light to hit that tincture. And then you just seal it up. And now you have a tincture of maybe it’s elderberry, or maybe it’s cat’s claw, or it’s going to be feverfew or something like that. Now you have those things in case you need them, when the time comes that we may not be able to get medicines the way we should. If you haven’t heard our episode that we did on China controlling our meds, you should go back and look at that, because China now controls 80% of our medications. And if they wanted to, they could just simply choose to cut us off and not supply us with medications. For the most part, the last couple of years, there’s been a blood pressure medicine recall, because it’s been contaminated with ingredients in it that cause cancer. All of those medications that have been recalled have been manufactured in China.

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So it is very possible that with everything that’s going on politically in the world, China could choose to cut us off. And if they choose to cut us off of medications, that is going to be a big problem for a lot of people. And if you don’t know how to access or use herbs, you could be in a heck of a world of trouble. So I think it’s good if you don’t know how to do this to start learning how to do this. So that you know how to prepare and protect your family with the gifts that God has given us on this planet. These plants are everywhere. You can grow them in your backyard, you can harvest them yourselves, and you can make them into tinctures yourself. It’s not difficult to do, you can find recipes all over the internet on how to do that. But I would encourage you to do that sooner than later. Because a lot of things are being censored, a lot of things are being taken down, especially things that are really good. And we may not have access to them in the future. So if you find them, I would print them out because once they’re gone, they’re gone. And you won’t be able to find them anymore. There are several good books that you can purchase as well about learning how to make SAVs and tinctures and medications from herbs. I would have that on hand and have the ingredients on hand you can certainly dry the plants. So you can make it when you need it. But it’s always good to have a little bit made so you don’t have to wait 24 hours or two weeks to get this product to be usable. So I know this video is very different than most of you are used to us doing. But I felt like it was so important for us to talk about prepping and food preparation, food storage, food safety. And there are a lot of great food preppers on YouTube that you can learn from and watch and I would really encourage urge you to look at your extension office, if you don’t know how to can, the extension office has a lot of great resources, your local extension office, they can give you books they can teach you, they can show you how to do things. Ball canning is really great, they have a ton of information, they have a lot of really great individual books that you can get on canning different products, if you want to start canning. And even, you know, putting things in the freezer, I’ve been doing that for years. But now the concern about electricity and all of those kinds of things, I’m moving less, I’m moving away a little bit more from freezer, and a little bit more into canning again, like I did in the past. And yes, it is very time consuming. You’ve got a harvest and can write away for freshness. It’s not like you can let things sit for weeks before you can them. It’s you got to do it when it’s picked, fresh. So it takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of energy. But this is what our ancestors did. They worked to eat and stay warm and keep themselves healthy. And we’ve really gotten away from that idea. And I think it’s time that we start learning some of those skills that our ancestors had. Because I think we’re going to need them. And if we have them, that’s great. And if we don’t have them, we are behind the eight ball. And that is going to be a little bit of a challenge for people. And we don’t want people to go hungry. We don’t want people to be injured. So the more that you can do for yourself and help others if they can’t do things for themselves is going to be huge right now. So I hope this video doesn’t frighten you in any way. I hope that you guys enjoy it and find some information on it. And you know, like, share, subscribe. Let us know how you’re doing and be well and be safe during this time. God bless everyone. Have you seen 20 Plus medical doctors only to be told your symptoms are in your head or you need an antidepressant? We understand your frustrations? Are you tired of feeling sick and tired? Tired of not getting the answers you need to regain your health. Tired of not feeling listened to by your doctor at Serenity Health Care Center, we understand and we will help you find the cause of your symptoms. Together we will create a path to health. We specialize in combining the best of conventional and natural medicine to get you back to doing what you love. We have worked with

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the most complex chronic diseases such as chronic Lyme COVID, long haulers, autoimmune disease, mold toxicity, and hormonal imbalances. But if you’re not sick, that’s fantastic. We will work with you to maintain your health so that you can prevent illness. give our office a call to see how we can help you regain your health and vitality at 262-522-8640. Or check us out at our website at Serenity health care center.com. So here are the top 10 foods that you want to make sure you’re packing away in case there’s going to be a problem or there’s going to be food shortages that we need to prepare for. So grains are the first thing and I know in our holistic world, we try to stay away from grains as much as we possibly can because they’re inflammatory. However, when there’s a food shortage, you’re going to want to stockpile some foods that you normally would not eat simply because of ease simply because it’ll be easy to mix. They’re easy to store. They provide a good amount of calories for you and they fill your belly. So you want to have some grains, whether they’re gluten free grains, whether they’re whole wheat grains, for those of you who are not gluten sensitive, you can use einkorn, and einkorn is an ancient wheat. It’s been around for a very, very long time. 1000s of years it’s like the initial weeds. It’s that old fashioned wheat and wheat and spelt and einkorn can survive in a Mylar bag for easily 25 to 30 years. There’s been some people who stored and tested wheat 60 years after it was stored and it was still in really good condition. So that is part of the reason you will Want to make sure you have grains in your storage containers. You also want to store whole grain oats, rolled oats, steel cut oats, those type of oats are amazing for storage, and they fill your belly that gives you good amounts, they’re easy to mix with things. So I would take those oats and put them in my Mylar bag with the oxygen packs in there so that they stay fresh for as long as you want them to stay fresh. Rice is another one. Rice is very high in calories. It’s about 205 calories for one cup of rice. But it has lots of vitamins, lots of minerals, it’s easy to prepare, if all you had was a gas little stove, you could prepare the rice with a little bit of water and a little bit of butter. And it would be beautiful. Corn is another thing that you can store in the world of grains. You can store corn meal, so you can cook with. I would also store popcorn. Because it has a very long shelf life. It’s very fulfilling. It’s great for long term storage and you can actually even grind it up and make it into cornstarch if you need it to. The next thing you want to store is beans and legumes. Beans and legumes are a great source of protein and complex carbohydrates along with fiber. They’re literally a powerhouse of nutrients. We know people who are vegan, they typically will use the proteins from their beans and rice to get you know use their beans or use their beans as their protein source. So it’s a really great source and they’re easy to do. So you could use the dried beans you know just get them in the big bags and put them in your Mylar bags, put your oxygen packs in there and store them. So you want to have things like black beans, chickpeas, kidney beans, lentils, navy beans, peas, and pinto beans. These are all a variety of different beans that you can use in a variety of different recipes to get things done very quickly and very easily.

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You can store beans in typically in big containers, they’ll come 60 to 75 pounds. That’s a lot of beans. That’s how much they say one person should consume in a year. So you know, break that down, figure out if you want to have a year’s worth of storage. That’s how many pounds of beans you need for people. But it works really well. You guys have heard me say I already have been storing potato flakes potato flakes are a great Fast Food Survival Food. Just add some water and you’ve literally got your potatoes. One serving of potato flakes has 212 calories in them. But it also contains a high amount of vitamin C, niacin and B six magnesium, potassium, selenium. So like we were talking about needing that vitamin C, this would be a really great avenue to go in. And ideal storage for potato flakes is about 25 to 30 years of storage. You can do mashed potatoes that have oil and butter but those are going to go rancid very quickly. So you’re better off with your potato flakes, the dry potato flakes. The amount of potato flakes to store depends on how many people that you’re going to feed and if it’s going to be your main staple. You want about a pound and a half per person would be a good estimate for an annual supply unless you’re using that for your foundation of your diet. Now you also can have dehydrated and freeze dried vegetables as well as canned so if you have a food dehydrator, you can take some of these vegetables and you can dehydrate them yourself and then put them into your Mylar bags. So onions, celery, carrots, these things are great to have as dried vegetables for making soups and broths and they’re easy to do if they’re in a dried form. And you can again dry them put them in your Mylar bags, put your oxygen packs in them and you’re good. You can buy dehydrated onion flakes. For some people this is a big part of their cooking and a big part of their survival food supply. They also have great health benefits because they have vitamin C, vitamin B six potassium and manganese and you can turn them into something else with your beans and your rice and you’ve got a delicious meal, I would have probably one to 210 pound cans of dried onions for each person for a year supply. Now you can also do dried carrots, that’s a great source of vitamin A, and we’re going to need that for seeing dried carrots can be tossed into soups, they can enhance any meal. And again, you want to plan to have about two to 310 pound cans of dehydrated carrots per person annually. Dried celery is another great option to have they’re packed with vitamin K. It’s a good source of vitamin C and potassium. So it’ll help you from cramping. It’ll help you from getting scurvy. And you’re going to use this in your stews and your soups and your chilies. So this is a foundational ingredient when cooking from scratch, you want about 210 pound cans of dried salary per person per year. Number five on our list is white sugar. White sugar has absolutely no health benefits, that is true, but it’s at the top of our list because of calories. And because it’s a good preservative. During a scenario where we cannot get things, a survival depends on our own food. And white sugar is a great ingredient in home bottling of fruits. So if you have fruit trees during the lockdown, and we can’t get food, you can go out to your orchard or your fruit trees, you can pick the fruits off of there, you can bring them in and with sugar, you can can them and you can make jellies and jams and cookies and all of that kind of thing. And it can stay good for a very long time. You want about 70 pounds of white sugar per person in a survival if you’re going to be making jams and jellies and doing things to can while you’re in lockdown. Number six is Honey, honey made the list because of its sweetening properties, but also because of its medicinal properties. It can stay forever, pretty much it will crystallize over time, but it can be easily liquefied by heating it. So just because it crystallizes doesn’t mean that it’s not good. I really encourage people to store honey in glass jars or quartz and

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buy locally, that is really good too. If you can buy locally, you don’t want to store honey in plastic because the plastic degrades over time. So if you’re buying honey in plastic, bring it home, put it into a jar, you’re gonna have to clean the jar and use the glass jars for storage. But it can work really well. If you’re already purchasing honey in a glass jar, you won’t need to transfer it or do anything like that. I think it’s good to store about 12 quarts of honey per person for a year supply. Number seven is salt. Salt is a priority in food stores because it’s something that we cannot produce on our own property. It’s a great item for bartering. It’s critical in food preservation and health. You can store pure forms of salt, like a pickling salt or a sea salt, my favorites pink Himalayan salt, but it has an indefinite shelf life. I was traveling a few years ago to an island where they have a lot of salt and they produce a lot of salt but this was even five years ago they were already telling us the salt that we have available is declining. So I think it’s really good to keep salt around. You might want to have somewhere around 25 pounds of salt per year for cooking. You want about 10 pounds per person and diversify your salt so pink Himalayan salt canning pickling salt, kosher salt, sea salt, do a a wide variety of these types of salts so that you can use them for different purposes. Number eight is baking soda. Baking soda made the list because it’s a great leavening agent is wonderful for cleaning and personal hygiene and also medicinal purposes. You can use it to brush your teeth with you can use it to clean your counters with or your bathrooms with there’s all kinds of different things you can do with baking soda. You can make bath bombs with it. There’s just so many great things to do with it. So you should have about seven to 10 pounds of baking soda per person. You going to need about three pounds for food preparation and cooking about two pounds for personal hygiene a pound for medicinal and first aid and about five pounds for are cleaning and deodorizing your house a pound for miscellaneous use. So Baking soda is a great thing to have on the shelf. It has an indefinite shelf life and it’s very inexpensive you can get it from the dollar store you can get it from all the any of those places. Number nine is vinegar. Vinegar is a basic ingredient in food preparation and recipes. It’s used in pickling it acidifies ingredients when bottling such as tomatoes and salsa. Lemon juice can be used, but it has a shorter health, shelf life. Apple cider vinegar is also well known for its medicinal properties. Vinegar is important as a cleaner and a disinfectant and it will store forever in the right container. Vinegar will eat through plastic over time, so it’s best in long term storage to be transferred to glass. Now, the amount of vinegar that you want to store is about four gallons of vinegar for a household cleaning, for cooking, bottling and medicinal storage, I would store another two gallons per person for a year. And number 10 is ascorbic acid powder. It’s essentially vitamin C, it’s needed for health and life. And it’s missing from our survival food supply, because it’s sensitive to heat. And it’s available mostly from fruits and vegetables. And the best way to get Vitamin C is fresh. However, in a long term storage and long term survival. Having some Vitamin C powder can be really helpful. It’s important that once you open vitamin C, it’s going to start oxidizing right away. So it’s not going to last very long. You can use ascorbic acid and food preservation. You can dip fruit in ascorbic acid solution and rinse it to oxidize, minimize its browning and dehydration process. It’s also used in bottling to help prevent discoloration.

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You can also have vitamin C tablets and supplements, I think that’s really important to have. So the amount of vitamin C or ascorbic acid that you’ll need will depend on whether or not you’re using it to supplement your diet and or to preserve food that makes all the difference in the world, I would recommend an eight pound bucket for a family or a one pound bag for each person. Now some of these staples are things that you probably didn’t think I was going to talk about or things that you didn’t think were going to be necessary in your pantry. So I hope it it allowed you to think a little bit differently about what’s going on. I also want you to realize that think about the foods that your family eats the most. Don’t buy things that and stockpile them for years, if your family will never touch them and never eat them, that’s not going to do you any good. That’s going to make things much more difficult. And it’s just going to be a waste of your money and time. So stockpile things that your family wants to eat, don’t stockpile things that you think everybody else wants that. Again, that’s not going to do you any good. So continue to add to your list add to this list, but it’s a great place to start with the staples. If you have not started Food Prepping yet this is the list that you want to start with. And then continue to grow from there. And I would say get a little bit of each of these don’t go out and buy 50 pounds of potato flakes to start with, you know, get a little bit of each, so you have a little bit of each on the shelf. And then each week when you have extra money, add to the list, buy a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more and just keep adding and rotating and adding and rotating. If you see a sale on something, then buy a little extra that one you know, but just make sure you have a little bit of everything to start with. And then from there you can grow. So I hope this list is helpful for you. It’s always hard getting started. But once you get started, it works beautifully. So share with us what you’re stockpiling in your pantry what you’re preparing for with your family. Let us know if you’re struggling with things or you have questions. We’re happy to answer things for you. Hey, it has been really great sharing this time with you guys on the let’s talk wellness now podcast. If this episode has helped you or you feel as though this episode would help someone else we’d love for you to leave us a review. Share this podcast and if you don’t want to miss the most exciting episodes we have coming. We’d love for you to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or Google Play. Until next time, live everyday to the fullest

Transcribed by https://otter.ai