It just occurred to me that I hadn’t posted anything new on here in well over three weeks. Quite frankly, I’ve been so busy prepping that I haven’t had time to write. But how many of you are so busy PLANNING to prep that you don’t actually get around to prepping?
In the past few weeks I’ve dehydrated about 40 lbs. of carrots, added about 10 lbs. of spices to my pantry stash and found out that blueberries can be rather tricky to dehydrate. (More on that in a future post.) I’ve also added a couple more cases of canned mackerel to my storage pantry and am about to place a large order (probably more than 50 lbs.) for dehydrated banana chips which I can order more cheaply than I can make them myself.
Are you planning to prep? Or are you actually prepping? What are you waiting for?
Tags: dehydrating food, food dehydration, food dehydrator, food shortage, food storage, prepping, shtf, shtf food, storage pantry, storing food, wtshtf
any special reason for mackeral ?
do you prefer it over tuna or just stocking a fish variety ?
Well, for one thing, mackerel doesn’t usually carry the risk of mercury content that tuna has — jack mackerel isn’t as high up the food chain, so to speak, as tuna is — since tuna eat so many smaller fish and typically grow so large, their tissues will accumulate large amounts of mercury, much more per pound of body weight than other fish, including and especially mackerel.
Beyond that, my main preference for mackerel over salmon is that canned mackerel only costs about half as much as canned salmon. According to the info on the cans I’ve got in my pantry, the shelf life of canned mackerel is at least three years, so it’s easy to store a lot of protein for a long time in a relatively small space. Take a look at this photo:
http://www.survivalprep.net/images/holy_mackerel.jpg
Each case of canned mackerel has 12 cans, and in this picture each case of mackerel on the right is stacked two deep. According to this nutrition information, each can of mackerel contains roughly 78 grams of protein, more than enough protein for the average person per day under average circumstances:
http://chickenofthesea.com/product_line_detail.aspx?did=4800009070
However, in a grid-down or other labor-intensive environment, obviously our bodies are going to need more protein as physical activity compensates for the lack of machine-assisted activity (we’ll probably be walking and lifting a lot more than we do now):
http://exercise.about.com/cs/nutrition/a/protein_2.htm
Let’s say just for the sake of argument that mackerel is my main source of protein (which it isn’t — I’m storing it as a complement to beans/rice and other cured or preserved meats). If the mackerel were my sole (pun intended) source of protein, I could store a year’s worth of dietary protein for one person in the space in the photo above. And besides being a very compact protein source, mackerel (just like salmon) is high in omega-3 fatty acids, which help lower “bad” cholesterol and promote overall heart health.
And in terms of nutritional density, fish is just about the best source of protein on the planet. There’s only about 12 cases of mackerel in the photo above (the boxes on the far left side aren’t mackerel), but assuming I want to store a year’s worth of protein in the form of mackerel, I can stack 30 cases of mackerel three wide, two deep and five high in the space you see in the photo. And now with my basic protein requirements taken care of, I can focus on the rest of my food acquisitions…which leads me to the point that I’ve had a lot of people really turn their noses up at the thought of eating canned mackerel because 1.) they don’t like fish, and 2.) it’s canned mackerel. That’s why I’ve got at least 30 quarts (you read that correctly: quarts) of spices running the gamut from cayenne to cumin to dehydrated onion to oregano to garlic to cajun seasoning and many other spices. Take a look at these photos:
http://www.survivalprep.net/images/spices.jpg
http://www.survivalprep.net/images/labels.jpg
The thing most of us learn in college is that if we put enough ketchup or Tabasco on the food, it will cover up the taste. But fish doesn’t have to taste bad! And if you add just the right spice combinations, instead of just mackerel, you can turn it into everything from fish tacos which don’t taste like fish to cajun-style stews to just plain vegetable soup with spiced-up mackerel thrown in for protein.
Americans tend to look at meat or fish or chicken or other animal protein as a main dish rather than a side dish, but we really don’t need a lot of protein under most circumstances to meet our dietary needs. So if I can get my basic protein needs from mackerel (or possibly chicken — I have a case or two of dehydrated chicken I’ve made myself) or whatever, we can have incredible-tasting dishes thanks to the spices, get our protein needs and not have to either starve or gag.
So to make a short answer long, I hope I’ve answered your question.