Augason Farms Breakfast Pack Giveaway

Today we have a giveaway from the fabulous folks at Augason Farms.  Augason Farms is part of the Blue Chip Group companies and is the maker and producer of the Morning Moos milk alternative we taste tested a little while ago.  They've come up with a sweet product for food storage convenience and apparently it's still new enough that it's not on their site yet, but here it is, the Breakfast Pack.

Oh, excuse my dog.  Here it is without her nose in the picture:

Here's how it works.  It is 6 #10 cans of food storage friendly breakfast foods that can be mixed and matched for a variety of meals.  All packed up in one case and ready to go.  The more I thought about this the more I liked it.  It isn't perfect, but it makes meal preparation easy and figuring out what you're going to eat relatively effortless plus you can avoid some of the appetite fatigue you'd get from eating plain oatmeal for breakfast every day for a month.  Here are the 6 included cans.  Scrambled Egg Mix:

Vegetarian Meat Substitute bacon flavored bits (yeah, that's a fancy name for TVP or textured vegetable protein):

And Potato Shreds (hash browns).

Pancake mix:

Freeze dried strawberries:

And creamy wheat cereal (fancy name for germade or farina):

Each product can be used alone or mixed together to make things like omeletes, pancakes with strawberry syrup, bacon muffins, creamy wheat cereal with strawberries, and with just a couple other ingredients can open the meal possibilities up even further--breakfast burritos, scrambled eggs and toast, etc.  How slick is that?

Augason Farms has offered to send one of these complete breakfast packs to one of my readers!  And I'm resurrecting the form for this one.

So here's the instructions to sign up for this giveaway.  You are welcome to leave a comment on this post, but it won't count toward the giveaway. :)  To enter, you'll need to fill out the form.

For your first entry, put your name and email in the form.  This is required for entry in the giveaway.  If you don't want to put your real name in the name slot, I guess that's okay, put whatever you like to be called in that space.  I need your email to contact you if you win.  Your email won't go anywhere else.  Promise.

Additional entries are available for the following:

1. Become a follower of Adventures in Self Reliance (you know my posts are worth reading!)
2. Follow Adventures in Self Reliance in a feed reader (or by email feed subscription)
3. Share this giveaway via a post on your blog (make sure to link to the giveaway and leave the link to your post in the form)
4. Twitter a link to this giveaway (include @momof3angels in your tweet and put your twitter username in the form)
5. "Like" Adventures in Self Reliance on Facebook (it used to be called "become a fan")
6. Share this giveaway by some other method like facebook or email your friends

The giveaway will end on Saturday, May 8th at 11:59 pm and the winner will be contacted for their shipping information.  If the winner does not respond within 3 days, we will choose another winner.  Good luck!

The New Sun Oven

Happy day!  I finally got a Sun Oven of my very own.  I'm so excited I can hardly stand it.  It only took a week and a half or maybe two to get it out of the box.  I know, if I'm so excited about it, why wasn't it out on day one?  I've been busy.  Really.  And every day I thought about getting it out it was cloudy or the day had gotten too late to get it heated up.  So finally on Monday it was a nice sunny day and I was able to get it out of the box and set it up.

I put it on a board so the cement drive wouldn't scratch the bottom up.

A new Sun Oven comes with protective film on the reflector panels that needs peeled off.  It peels off clean, but is stuck on there pretty good--takes a bit of time to get it all off.

Then it needs to sit in the sun and cook empty for a bit to cook off the "new" before you cook your food in it, so I angled it toward the sun using the handy low-tech adjuster leg in the back and let it sit out and heat up while I went to town and did some shopping.  No, it doesn't need to sit that long, I just needed to get to the store and that was the best time to do it.

When I got back I turned it back toward the sun which had moved while I was gone and let it heat up again.  When it was good and hot I decided it was a good time to wipe it out.  Well, why I thought that was a good time I do not know--the oven was only about 350 degrees inside.  So after it hissed when I touched it with the wet rag, I thought better of it and turned it away from the sun and opened it up so it could cool off before wiping it out.  Duh.  Yep mom, just like when I was younger and always had to be reminded that food right out of the oven was hot.  Should be obvious, but alas, obvious is obviously not always at the front of my mind.  No damage though and I should remember next time.  I can learn.

If I had nothing else going on I could have had it wiped out earlier and had time to cook in it also, but the timing didn't work, so I thought I'd cook in it on Tuesday.  However, Tuesday brought wind and overcast skies, and we're having the same today so we'll have to wait for another sunny day to cook in it.  So excited!

Shameless plug:  Remember I'm a dealer for the Global Sun Oven, so when you want one, let me know.  :)

Saratoga Farms Freeze Dried Peas Review

We tried out some of Saratoga Farms' Freeze dried peas from The Ready Store last week, so here's the report.

Freeze dried is different from dehydrated.  Dehydrating uses heat and air flow to remove the moisture from a food.  Freeze dried foods are frozen, then put through a process of quickly thawing while moisture is removed resulting in a dried product looks very much like the original product in shape and size.  The texture of the final product is less dense than it's dehydrated counterpart and usually "crispy".  The peas were in a #10 can.  They will stay good stored in the can for years.  I don't know how many, but they'll last a long time.  The can says they're good up to 6 weeks after opening the can.  I'd say if it was stored in a cool dry place it would probably be good longer than that.

They were actually really tasty right out of the can.  Dry and crunchy.  My little helper had a hard time staying out of them.

We followed the instructions: Mix 1/2 cup of the dry peas with 1 cup warm water.  Let sit for 5 minutes and drain off excess water.

It didn't work.  The peas were still dry at the centers.  So I put them in a pot with some water and heated it up.  I didn't bring it to boiling, but got them hot and then they rehydrated fully.

I'll be honest with you, my family are not pea lovers.  The only way to eat peas around here is right out of the garden.  They don't like them frozen or canned or in casseroles.  Okay, hubby will eat creamed peas and potatoes or peas slathered with cream of mushroom soup, but that's about it.  So as far as eating the peas, they were not a huge hit.  There was nothing really wrong with them, they tasted fine, they were just cooked peas.  Hubby thought they tasted a little old--they certainly weren't right out of the garden.  However, they would be fantastic mixed in a soup or with a casserole.  Just don't try feeding that soup or casserole to my kids.  I'll just let them eat the peas dry.

Dry on the left, cooked on the right--you can see the color changed also as they rehydrated.  I cooked up 1 cup of freeze dried peas.  According to the can it should have made 1 cup of peas, but it was actually closer to 1 1/2 cups of cooked peas.

As required by the FTC, I received samples from The Ready Store in order to write my review.  I am an affiliate of The Ready Store (click through their ad on the sidebar). The opinions expressed in this post are mine.

Hiding the Food Storage Behind the Couch

I picked up a few cases of #10 cans at the LDS cannery the other night and really didn't have any place to put them.  So I pulled the couch away from the wall and stacked them behind.  Crazy, I know.  But you haven't seen my house.  I'm really running out of room to put food.  Maybe that's a sign we need to eat more or something. ;)

I put the taped bottoms of the boxes toward the couch to reduce the rub factor and labeled the bottoms so I knew what each box was from the side I could see when I pull the couch out.  I pushed the couch back against the boxes and only lost about 10 inches of space in the living room.  I made a map on one of the end boxes also so I knew what was back there without having to pull the couch out unless I want to get to some of it.

Anyone want to come build me an addition?

Garden's Up--Cute Baby Plant Pictures

Here's some garden fun.  Baby plants!  Almost as cute as baby animals, but not quite.  I can hear you all ooo-ing and aaaahh-ing already.

Radishes.  The section planted with Hometown Seeds' radishes are doing better than mine as far as germination rate, which I suspected would happen since I don't think my seeds matured enough, but I do have one radish up in my section so far, so my collected seeds are not a total flop.

Spinach.  Yeah, it kind of looks like grass, but it's really spinach's first leaves.

Peas.  These are the peas from the seeds I harvested from the garden last year.  I also planted some pea seeds from 2002 and they are coming up fine.  They were not stored any special way.  In a sack open to the air since 2002.  Pea seeds appear to have quite a long "shelf life".  I planted old pea seeds last year also and had no problem with them.  Most seeds do not last that long in storage.

And raspberries.  Fun stuff.  Just a couple of days ago I planted beets, lettuce, and swiss chard.  I'm not a chard fan, but the kids like it cooked up like spinach with vinegar on it, so I guess if they'll eat it I'll grow it.  If there's too much I might try my hand at dehydrating some and them powder it and put it in something like brownies when nobody is looking.  I've never tried that, but it might work and you know it would be worth a giggle watching my kids and husband eat them. :)

Kids Prep Minute: Stock Kid Stuff

If you're living with kids, you know they have special needs.  Those needs should extend to your preparedness efforts.  When you're prepping, keep the children in mind and stock stuff to take care of their needs.  Here are a few ideas to get you thinking.

Have a baby?  Diapers, wipes, baby foods, formula (yes, even if you're nursing, something may happen to you and how is Dad going to feed the baby?), extra blankets and warm clothing, baby medicines, diaper rash ointment, clothes the next size up.  I'll be honest, with the price of diapers I was never very good at having a lot on hand.  Maybe have some cloth diapers just in case.  I can't remember the disaster, but I remember news coverage of looters and some were running out of the store with DIAPERS!  Serious business--for your own safety and sanity you don't want to have to be running to the store during or after an emergency to pick up anything.  Even diapers.

Bigger kids?  Pullups for the bed wetters even if they don't usually wear them--you don't want to have to be doing all that laundry by hand if you can help it.  Size up clothes and shoes, comfort foods, kid medication.  Once the kids reach a certain age, you can start chopping a regular tylenol in half, but if you've got kids that need the chew kind, make sure you have some on hand.  A big one with kids is to stock foods they like to eat.  That means not all rice and beans and wheat.  It's nice to add a little normalcy to an emergency by stocking some spaghettio's or whatever their favorites are and being able to pull them out when things are crazy.

Teenagers?  I really don't know.  My oldest is 10.  But I'd still go with stocking clothes and shoes a size or two up for them if they're still growing.  And they eat a lot--actually sometimes more than adults, so make sure to take that into consideration when you're calculating meals and how much food to store.

We'll cover boredom busters in another post.  Any other ideas of things to have on hand for kids needs?

Rotating the Car Kit and Update on the Survival Bars

A couple of weeks ago, we took a little drive up the mountain and hiked around in the snow and mud and long story short (I know that rarely happens here) we needed to use the toilet paper from the car kit.  Now, last summer we had a roll in the console AND a roll in the car kit and wouldn't you know it, this spring neither of them are there.  Luckily sweet husband had some in his day pack, so we didn't suffer, but I decided that probably wasn't the only thing missing from my kit, so it was past time to rotate and restock.  Seriously folks, this is one reason you don't just put a kit together and forget about it.

I was only missing a couple of items from my kit when I got around to sorting through it this week, but I did do some rearranging, like putting all the first aid together instead of in two different baggies, and some rotating like fresh waters.  I also checked on the homemade survival bars that are in my kit.  They've been in existence for over a year and have been riding around in the back of my car for most of that time--through the heat of summer and the freezing of winter.  Amazingly, they looked quite the same as when we made them.  Still hard as bricks.  Really, if you read the comments on the original post there are some good ideas to make them easier to eat--I'm not so sure the brick shape is the best idea.

One was still intact and the other had broken open which is actually a fine thing so I could see how the inside was doing.  Yep, just as dry and hard as the outside.

Then I wrapped them back up in the foil and put them back in the box.  We'll check on them again maybe next year. :)

Emergency Kit in a Bottle Winner

Random.org chose the winner of the Emergency Kit in a Bottle Giveaway and it is Wendi!

Wendi said: "I have learned so much from your blog and others about preparedness that I want to get started and do some things. It will make me feel so much better when I do. It is on my list for when I get my taxes done. I need to do it for my family. Thanks for all of your inspiration, you are awesome!!!"

Now, besides getting bonus points for being so sweet, Wendi also has hit on something in her comment--really we can all learn and read and go to lectures about being prepared, but when you DO something and know you are even just a little better off than you were, it's so satisfying!  Start with one thing and give it a try.  Then do one more thing, and one more, and one more.  Pretty quick you'll have quite a few skills learned or food put away or whatever and you can look back and see how far you've come.

And of course, I forgot to mention that I'd need a way to contact the winner, so Wendi, you'll have to contact me with your shipping information.  Thanks to all for your fun comments!

Facebook Fan Page and Other Social Stuff

As if it isn't crazy enough to have "followers."  I have had a few friend requests on facebook lately from people I don't know and my only thought was that maybe they came from this here blog.  Now, I don't want to seem snooty or uppity or whatever by ignoring the friend request, but I've tried to keep my personal facebook friends to people I would share my home address with.  That's my criteria.  I post pictures of my kids and whatnot on there and really don't need just anybody I don't know being a "friend".  So, in light of that, and just for fun, I thought I'd set up a page for the blog instead, so about two weeks ago I did just that and then didn't do anything with it.  Then I saw yesterday that I had a fan for my page.  I love you guys.  I never even promoted the facebook page--heck, I'm not even a fan of it yet.  So to make a short story even longer, I think I'll actually do something with the Adventures in Self Reliance facebook fan page.  I've got some fun ideas for the page and you're welcome to become a fan here, or click the little badgey thing a little way down the right sidebar.  I can't guarantee a lot of action on it--I only have so many hours in a day, but I'm thinking of running a few things there, plus I'll let you know when the blog is updated through the fan page and whatever else I feel like posting.  Cool?  You're also welcome to follow me on twitter if you want where you'll get really interesting tidbits of information like how well I shot at archery league and that I had brownies for breakfast.  You know, important stuff like that.  Oh, and the blog and facebook updates go to my twitter feed also.  Simple enough? :)

Saturday Progress and the Ham/Bean Soup I Grew

Saturday came with some really nice weather, so we headed out to accomplish some things in the yard.  The kids and I shoveled a bunch of manure from the edge of the neighbor's horse corrals and wheelbarrowed it over to the garden beds.  If you're going this route, try to get the old stuff that's broken apart.  It kind of looks like dirt already.  It doesn't look like horse droppings anymore.  If it's too fresh, it makes more heat as it breaks down and can burn your plants.  Not good. 

The neighbors are very kind--they don't mind if we take their horse manure away.  In fact, if you know someone with horses, they might not mind you cleaning out stalls either.  We'd like to get a tractor actually in their corrals (at the back of the picture) and dump a bunch over the edge so we can work it into the rest of the garden area (to the left of the beds).  We'll see what we can do.  Nothing like free fertilizer.  I also cleaned around, weeded, and fertilized the raspberries, strawberries, and fruit trees.

Sweet husband spent most of the day cleaning out the chicken house, laying new subfloor and putting in linoleum flooring.  Now the chickens are uptown with easy clean floor in their house.  We got the vinyl as a remnant from a flooring place for about $15.00 last fall.  Bargain.

Because the chickens were pushing at the bucket in the doorway to their house trying to get in and flying up to the window that hubby had open for some ventilation as he was working, we had a crazy idea to put them in the yard.  We could have just let them out to totally free range, but the garden/shop/driveway portion of our yard is not fenced and the neighbor's dogs cannot be trusted.  So we put the chickens in the fenced part of our yard around the house.  After getting over their initial confusion, they happily pecked around the rest of the day.

They really liked the pile of snow (yes, still snow) on the north side of the house.  I'm feeling like that snow may be there until June.

Our dog was really well behaved with the chickens.  She's a crazy bird chaser, but also luckily very obedient and smart, so when she looked at one of the chickens and we told her no, she didn't pay them any more attention.  The trouble is, now there's chicken droppings all over the yard.  I like to be able to go out barefoot if it's warm enough and even if I have shoes on, I like to think my yard is fairly free from anything that will track into the house.  The kids are good about checking their shoes if they go out to the chicken coop, but not if they were just playing in the yard.  So this won't be a regular thing--we won't be yard ranging the chickens except as necessary.

Dinner was one of those magical, satisfying meals.  I used the crockpot to cook ham/bean soup so I didn't have to cook anything when we were done in the yard.  That is magical.  And what's very cool is that we used the Calypso beans we grew in last year's garden and the ham was from last fall's pig.  Yep, I grew that soup.

Here's the beans before soaking and cooking:

In case you don't know how to make ham/bean soup, here's the quick run down.  Soak the beans overnight in a big bowl of water, then drain and rinse them and put them in the slow cooker pot with ham (we used ham hocks, but usually we'll use the scrappy stuff stuck to the bone when you're about done with a ham) and enough water to cover it all by a couple of inches.  Then cook all day on low.  Or at least 4 hours on high.  Or until it's done.  I'm not sure how long it actually takes, but if I've got it going before lunch, it's always ready for dinner.  I added a little salt and garlic powder at the end, but I really like the flavor of just beans and ham.  The beans were really good--smooth and not a strong flavor.  The black faded out to a tan in the final product, but these were really tasty and a productive bean variety, so we'll be planting them again this year.  Yummy yum yum.

I'm on a Podcast!

What? You don't know what a podcast is?  That's okay mom, I didn't know either until about a year ago.  Really.  Anyway, if you've ever wanted to listen to me talk about preparedness for an hour and hardly let the host get a word in edgewise, now's your chance.  Matthias at The Prepper Podcast had the opportunity to listen to me go on and on and on and he's kind enough to share the recording of it with all of you and anyone else who wants to listen.  You don't even need a "pod" to listen to it.  You can download it or just click play on the Prepper Podcast site.  Easy.  So go here and have a listen while you're fixing dinner or folding laundry or whatever.  :)  Enjoy!

Emergency Kit in a Bottle Review and Giveaway

I got some goodies in the mail from The Ready Store last week, so I'll have some reviews coming up of some fun products as I get them tested out.  I've got their ad on the left sidebar--check them out when you get a minute.  But first, I'd like to share the love a little after a quick review of one of the items: the ReadyBottle Emergency Kit.

This kit contains basic emergency preparedness gear all neatly packaged in a 32 oz polycarbonate water bottle.  It is really a cute packaging idea and a fun gift or stocking stuffer for someone wanting to get started on an emergency kit or who could always use a few extra parts and pieces to add to what they have.  When we first saw these bottled type kits a few years ago, always practical sweet husband said, "That doesn't work.  You won't have water in the bottle when you need it if you keep all the stuff in the bottle, and what are you supposed to do with all the stuff when you put water in the bottle?"  True.  So what I'd do with a kit like this is empty the bottle out and put all the stuff in a bag, backpack, emergency kit, or car kit, then use the bottle for water.  I also would not bet my life on an emergency kit that can fit in a 32 oz bottle.  Really.  Add to what is in the bottle or use it to supplement a kit you are already putting together and you'll be better off.

Here is what is included:  32 oz water bottle with little carabiner, 5 function whistle/compass/matchbox, waterproof matches, emergency blanket, emergency poncho, random bandaids/antiseptic wipes/pain pills (first aid), light stick, mini LED light with batteries, 2 handwarmers, 12 function swiss style knife.  No, it's not a Victorinox Swiss Army knife, just a knockoff and I haven't used it, but looking at it would guess it's functional without being a really good knife.  Same for the rain poncho, flashlight, and the water bottle itself.  They will work and do the job for you, but not the highest quality.  Seriously though, the whole kit couldn't be $26.75 if it had really expensive high end components.  So still a really good deal.

Yes, all the stuff did fit back in the bottle when I was done with the picture.  Now for the giveaway.  One of my amazing readers can win this bottle of fun for themselves or to give to a loved one.  I'm going to run this one a little different than I have in the past.  I still love you forever if you share a link to this giveaway on your blog or facebook or twitter or whatever and really you know you want to read whatever fascinating bit of blog post I happen to write so following the blog or subscribing is always a good thing.  But for this giveaway, I just want a comment.  And not just any comment, but I want to know something you'd like to do or learn to be better prepared and more self reliant.  Or something you're planning on learning or doing.  Or something you planned to do but haven't gotten around to yet.  You could also tell me something you've done that you're proud of.  And maybe we'll get some fun ideas of projects to try around here as well (not that I'm really lacking in preparedness project ideas of my own, but I want to know yours).  That's it.

Oh yeah, we'll run this giveaway for a week, ending next Wednesday night, April 14th at midnight MDT, and I'll ship it anywhere USPS ships, but we'll have to check shipping restrictions if it's shipping to another country and those out of the United States may be asked to help offset the extra shipping costs depending on where you live.  Got all that?  Good luck! :)

Food Storage Sales!

Honeyville Grain is having a sale! Here's the information:

15% OFF YOUR ENTIRE ORDER* from Thursday, April 1, 2010 thru Tuesday, April 6, 2010 at 6:00PM PST.  Simply enter the coupon code NOFOOL during checkout. This month we're featuring our new expanded line of emergency food combo packs, and our new Freeze Dried Grapes.  DON'T MISS OUT!  

And if you're in the Salt Lake area, check out the fantastic sale at Blue Chip Group/Augason Farms here.



Stock up some food storage on sale!  Happy shopping!