When All Hell Breaks Loose (52 page)

For thousands of years, the ancient Romans, Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks, and Chinese used honey to treat a variety of wounds and ailments. A combination of low-moisture content, low pH, and the presence of hydrogen peroxide—a by-product produced from the conversion of glucose into gluconic acid—gives honey its resistance to spoiling, as well as its antibacterial and antifungal properties.

Many studies have shown that wounds treated with honey not only heal faster but also scar less. Honey has also been reported as a superior treatment for topical burns and is used as a component in many skin and hair conditioning products. It has also been used to treat stomach ulcers, diarrhea, irritable bowel syndrome, eye injuries, liver problems, coughs, colds, and flu. Although raw foods, including honey, can contain microbes, the potential microbes in honey have never been found to complicate any medical studies, whether adults used it internally or externally.

Honey and Infants

Honey, or any raw foods, should
not
be given to infants, as it takes twelve months for the immune system in a human to fully develop. Although honey won't grow microbes, which are present in many raw foods, a botulism spore can lie dormant within honey. While an adult immune system can easily deal with the microbe levels occurring in raw foods, infants cannot. Gamma-irradiated honey, however, is free from all potential microbes.

Storing Honey

Honey is mostly fructose and glucose. Over time, the sugars separate (mostly the glucose) and cause the honey to granulate. Spun, creamed, or whipped honey has been pregranulated but with particles that are very small. The type of honey as well as how it's stored will dictate when it starts to crystallize. The perfect temperature for honey to granulate is between 55 and 57 degrees F (12.8 to 13.9 degrees C). Although granulated honey doesn't pose any problem other than it being less convenient to spread, it can easily be brought back to its normal state of semitransparency.

Granulated honey can be liquefied by putting the container in hot water. The water should be from 110 to 160 degrees F (43.4 to 71.2 degrees C). If it gets any hotter you risk compromising the flavor and the antibacterial properties that make honey such a good keeper. I have degranulated honey by placing the glass jar in the summer sun for a day. Many types of store-bought honeys are prefiltered and rarely crystallize, as the process requires a particle upon which the crystallization begins and then expands. As with other foods, the cooler it's stored the better, and it should be kept in the dark, away from direct solar radiation. Honey can also be frozen and, according to many beekeepers, doing so for a few weeks will prevent it from crystallizing for up to two years or more. The flavor and some of the medicinal properties in honey do start to disappear over time. Even though honey will technically last your lifetime, it doesn't mean that fresher, rotated honey won't be a superior product.

Sacred Salt

The history of salt is as old as humanity itself. Native Americans in my neck of the woods made a northward, several-hundred-mile journey on foot to visit the Great Salt Lake area of Utah to bring back that oh-so-precious commodity. One of the simple wonders of life is the sodium-potassium balance that continuously navigates back and forth through the lipid membrane of the human cell. Without sodium in the diet, we die. Two of the hardest items to come by in ancient ages for most people were salt and fat. The typical American diet is riddled with both, so much so that low sodium and fat diets appear as far as the eye can see. Maybe it is some memory deep within us that remembers how precious these two things were: is that why we indulge like a kid in a cookie jar for both? What hardy people used to walk for days to mine by hand, we can now buy for nearly nothing at virtually every grocery store in the world. We even throw a form of it called
halite
onto the streets in the wintertime.

Aside from melting snow, salt can be used to preserve animal hides and many types of food, including meats. Russ Miller, the illustrator for this book, has done experiments with salt and raw rabbit meat. He put freshly butchered rabbit layered with salt in an unsealed plastic container, unrefrigerated, for over a year. The meat was not only still good, but it was pliable as well.

Not all salt is created equal and very little of it is made for human consumption. Table salt is by far the most common variety of salt for human consumption and it comes in two varieties, iodized and noniodized. Table salt usually has an additive that prevents it from absorbing moisture and caking up. People that plan to use their salt for pickling and canning might be better off buying other forms of pure salt such as kosher or canning salt without this additive, although both will work in a pinch. There are also a variety of "gourmet" sea salts available at many health food shops. These contain other minerals as well as sodium and should not be used for food preservation if you have a choice in the matter. Rock salts commonly used in homemade ice cream churns are not recommended by the manufacturers for human consumption, but in a pinch, who knows.

As sodium is so important in the human diet, I feel that having it trumps many of the so-called nonedibility of certain salts. On hard-core outdoor survival courses deep in the wilderness, we have commonly broken off a piece of a salt lick put out for cattle. I have personally seen this undoubtedly not-fit-for-human-consumption salt bring students back to life after they have sweated out much of their sodium in the desert heat. Take note that people living in hot climates or doing heavy exercise will lose much of their sodium in the form of sweat, thus will require and crave more salt in their diet. Even though you can get away with using sketchy varieties of salt, table salt and other types that are specifically made for human consumption are so cheap and readily available, why wouldn't you have some on hand for the health of your family?

Storing Salt

As long as you keep it clean and free from dirt or debris, salt stores indefinitely. Salt should be stored in moisture-proof containers, like everything else, in a cool, dark place, although there is latitude in how it's stored. If you're short on cool, dry, dark places for food storage, salt can be put somewhere else as it's fairly forgiving. Although it may yellow over time, it can still be used. One of the reasons salt is such a good preservative is that it draws moisture, even from the air itself, and when it does, it will start to clump up. These clumps can be dried in the sun, a solar oven, or on a woodstove and broken up again for use.

Other Goodies to Store from the Store

Groovy Grains

There are many, many varieties of grains to choose from. If you don't want to eat wheat 24/7, research what other choices you have to tickle your taste buds. Some grains are familiar to the average American and others are going to be found only by the hardcore hippy, deep within the bowels of the neighborhood health food store's bulk bin section. Rice (in its many forms), corn, amaranth, barley, oats (in its many forms), buckwheat, quinoa, millet, rye, teff, and sorghum are some of the more common choices.

While the above grains all have their pros and cons, nutritionally, taste-wise, and in preparation, the long-term storage rules of thumb detailed in this chapter are solid for all of them. Decide which grains your family will eat and if you have the right long-term storage conditions for them in your home.

Luscious Legumes

Legumes are great as most are high in protein (up to 35 percent!) and carbohydrates. That said, any self-respecting vegan or vegetarian knows to combine legumes with other grains to create a complete protein, as grains and legumes alone only contain a partial amino acid profile. As the legume family is one of the largest plant kingdoms on Earth, there are many choices to pick from and most store decently under proper conditions. Some of the more common varieties from the legume family are pinto beans, black beans, fava beans, kidney beans, mung beans, lima beans, soybeans, lentils, peanuts, black-eyed peas, chickpeas, and green and yellow peas (split or whole).

Fats and Oils

Fats contain more than twice the calories of proteins or carbohydrates, making them powerful additions of concentrated energy for any survival diet—although they do require more oxygen in the body to break down and oxidize into usable nutrition. Fats also greatly affect the palatability of foods, and, much like salt, ingested fats are required for life to continue in a human body. This truth has been largely forgotten because fat is so easy to find in the average diet. As everyone knows, low-fat diets abound in America and other affluent parts of the world.

Stories are common of mountain men in the 1800s who ate all the rabbits they could kill and died with full stomachs because the wild rabbits did not contain the fat required to allow the men's bodies to metabolize the meat and absorb fat-soluble vitamins such as A, D, E, and K. The rabbit meat was simply too lean. In another example, some early European Arctic explorers crash-landed their boat upon an ice flow. Many of the men were rescued by traditional Inuit people and given food caught by the natives. When another ship arrived months later, they found that many of the earlier explorers had died. The newcomers at first thought that the marooned sailors had been murdered by the Inuits. It turns out that the Europeans simply died from a lack of fat and nutrition in their diets. The friendly Inuits had fed the Europeans what they ate, but the Inuits ate the entire carcass: fats, internal organs, and all, not just the lean meat. The finicky European sailors had survived the crash in Arctic waters to be killed only by their own refusal to eat the entire animal like the "savage" Inuit natives. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

Storing Fats and Oils

The problem with fats and oils is they don't store well for long periods of time. They go rancid quickly. Excess oxygen, the main culprit, is eight times more soluble in fat than in water, thus the "oxidation" or spoilage rate is much higher. The less saturated a fat is, the quicker it can go bad. Although it is much more apparent when animal fats become rancid because of the bad smell, vegetable oils still become rancid. Heat and light are also enemies to storing oils and fats. Pay special attention to the laws of food storage with all fats and oils; buy them in the smallest containers as practical and rotate your stock as often as possible. Remember that oxygen is the main factor in fats and oils going bad so larger containers will be repeatedly exposed to excess oxygen as the lid comes on and off. Rancid fats are not healthy to consume in quantity so don't mess around with them if they have gone bad.

Depending on storage conditions, most unopened cooking oils have a shelf life of a year to a year and a half. If you can, keep oils and fats as cold as possible, especially after they have been opened. If the substance freezes, the amount needed can be taken out of the mother container and heated or left out at room temperature. Typically, paler light-colored cooking oils will keep longer than darker-colored oils. Clogged arteries and taste notwithstanding, the best stuff to buy for maximum storage life is canned hydrogenated shortening. Some even contain antioxidant preservatives that will increase the shelf life. If you store an unopened can of this in the right long-term storage location, it may last six to eight years or more. I realize that this type of fat is the bane of all health food nuts, and is being outlawed by some states for commercial restaurant use, but consider what your intention is for having its concentrated, long-lasting calories as a part of your emergency food storage program.

Sweet Tooth [Sugars]

Life without something sweet is a drag. Although honey is multiuse and a great sweetener, it will take some getting used to when used for baking purposes in your solar oven. White table sugar (sucrose), while somewhat white trash, will last indefinitely if kept dry and clean, as sugar inhibits most microbial growth. Brown sugar and powdered sugar are close behind in longevity. Buy a familiar brand from the store and keep it moisture free, in airtight, insect-proof containers. If it does absorb moisture, it will cake up like salt and can simply be broken up and used. Dry sweeteners are more stable than liquid sweeteners over the long haul with the exception of honey.

I like to have a stash of hard candies around for a portable sugar fix on the go. Although they will, like everything else, deteriorate with time, simple hard candies such as peppermints will keep a long, long time and can be bought very cheaply at the end of every Christmas season. The sweetness in hard candies and sweet stuff in general, when used in moderation, can be very soothing on the nerves during stressful situations. It also works great to bribe or shut up kids when nothing else seems to work. Avoid storing candies with nuts or too many ingredients in them as they will spoil rapidly in comparison to straight sugar.