Collecting Yeast

Kitchen DIY: Collecting Yeast

Collecting Yeast
Collecting Yeast
52 Unique Techniques for Stocking Food for Prepper
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Yeast is one essential product for food preparation, you need it to make bread rise and to make alcohol.

Even if you do not drink, you need alcohol to make vinegar)

Yeast is generally store-bought, but if you run out you will need to be able to capture your own wild yeast.

Besides the resiliency aspects of being able to start collecting yeast, there are some culinary reasons for capturing your own.

Different yeasts flavor your food differently, and if you capture your own you can control these flavorings to some extent.

To collect yeast you will need some plastic wrap and a clean non-reactive bowl (glass works best, but plastic is okay)

Ingredients:

  • Flour
  • Water

Procedure: (this is a multi-day process)

  1. Mix flour with water.
  2. Mix with a wooden spoon and add enough water until the mix is a thick batter.
  3. Keep it covered with plastic wrap and let it sit at room temperature for 3 days.
  4. Three days later check your flour and water mixture for any activity.
  5. If there is a pool of water on the top of the flour mixture, dump or some out and mix the flour and water together. You should see small bubbles and smell a sour smell. If you don’t observe these things, let your mix sit for a day or two more.
  6. Within 5 days bubbles should be formed and the mix should be smelling sweeter, (like very ripe fruit). At this point, the starter is active.

If you have observed these things your fermented mixture contains yeasts and is ready to begin being “fed” regularly (daily)

To feed it:

  1. Discard a little more than half of the mix (or separate it to give away or use) and mix in equal proportion of water and flour.
  2. The starter should begin to bubble after feeding (it may take a couple hours), this means the yeast is active and feeding.
  3. Repeat this process everyday or every other day (don’t neglect this for a long period or your yeast will die – you can cheat a little and put it in the fridge which will slow the yeast down and make it last longer between feedings)

You can use this in baking just as you would use other types of store-bought yeast

Clearing Trash From Trailer: With RZ Mask Review

 

Clearing Trash with RZ Mask
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In tearing down this old burnt up mobile home I worry about mold and rat feces.  The thought of breathing in dust that is full of those things just is not appealing.

Luckily the guys over at RZ mask contacted me about doing a review of their product.  I didn’t think it was much more than a fancy N95 mask.  I was wrong.

An RZ mask is a neoprene outer face mask with an air intake port.  Inside the mask is a removable inner filter.

You can mix and match different inner filters with different face masks to suit your needs.

Personally, I like the simple fask masks, a solid black RZ mask works for me, I don’t need a skull face or a camouflage one.

However, I do like the different inner filters.  They have filters optimized for construction dust, or smells, or filtering the air.

While this mask is designed for things like construction and outdoor motor sports, it has other uses.  I think the RZ mask would be perfect in a sick room where contageous people were kept to keep them from infecting others.  That would be a perfect prepper use.

One thing to think about, having wore regular N-95 masks are that they have a short life span.  The moisture you exhale then to mess them up over time, they also don’t last long taking them off and on.  The design of the RZ-mask specifically addresses these problems.

I find that an RZ-mask can last for weeks of use – a month or so if it is light use.  That is incomparable to a typical N-95 mask.

Trick to Help Pull the Carpets

 

I used the carpet puller shown here to help pull the carpet up as a whole to slide trash and all out of the trailer and onto a large utility trailer.

I tied the handles to rope and the rope to my truck.  This went pretty fast.  It went faster when I used heavy equipment.

Tearing this thing down isn’t hard, but distance and time have contributed to this project taking a LONG time. I finally decided to just rip the thing down with the backhoe, and tear the remaining walls down with a truck, but I still have to clean up the debris and unbolt the sub-floor from the frame.

Now that I can see some progress and I have a system it is working much better.

How to Make Egg Sunshine

 

Recipe: Eggs Sunshine
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As you can guess, my wife thinks I experiment too much in the kitchen, she may appreciate THAT I cook, but she has a hard time appreciating WHAT I cook.

However, every once in a while I will hold my mouth right and make something she rules fit to make again.

Eggs Sunshine is one of those maker again recipes.

This recipe is a very basic breakfast meal that is easy enough to allow kids to cook (with supervision), and while it is not a “food storage meal” per se, it uses ingredients that are easily made from food storage ingredients (the bread), and/or easily produced or traded for (eggs).

In this recipe your simply pan toasting a slice of bread in a skillet. The bread has the center cut out to hold a raw egg.

As the bread toasts the egg fries and it is a novel way of making breakfast.

I used to butter the bread, and always made a mess buttering the second side. Now I normally use a small amount of oil to get the same effect.

I also use a shot glass to punch out the center (after letting it fry a second) – which is both prettier and easier than my old method of cutting out a square with a knife.

We would probably fight over the toasted centers of bread, except whenever I am home early enough to make breakfast, it is Genny’s day off so she is asleep and I don’t share….

How to Improvise a Winter Water Spigot Cover

Quick Tip: Improvised Water Faucet Winterization
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With all the ice and snow lately a friend of mine sent me this idea for an improvised method to winterize a water spigot. I tried it and it works.

Unfortunately due to the weather I was working a lot of overtime and I could not get this video out until now.

Basically a outdoor winter water spigot cover works by insulating the faucet from the cold outside temperatures.

Today’s video shows a way to do this without buying a cover. I think this is easier, but my wife would probably prefer a store bought solution.

Since trapped air can make an effective insulator, My friend wondered if multiple layers of plastic grocery bags could work.

Since I keep and reuse my grocery bags I simply grabbed a handful and loosely wrapped them in layers over the spigot and then held it in place with some duct tape.

I think this is a good idea to keep in the back of your head just in case.  Especially as a way to keep your mind open to work around solutions.

Thanks for the great idea Raging Main…

I know this improvised attempt at winterize a water spigot looks pretty rigged up,.  However, we had a really cold winter, including an ice storm that was big enough to rate a Presidential disaster declaration.  Through it all my pipes didn’t freeze.  Which is not a scientific measure, but it was free, easy, and seems to work so I am happy with it.

The Warrior Ethos

The Warrior Ethos
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In The Warrior Ethos, the author talks about the nature of the warrior code and the rules by which a warrior, must follow.

I like how Pressfield uses historical examples such as the famous 300 Spartans at Thermopylae but also inner conflict such as described in the Bhagavad Gita.

Pressfield does not define a warrior as a specific martial profession, but broadens it to embrace anyone who faces a conflict they must overcome through trial and effort.

The unwritten warrior code is universally understood by various warrior cultures around the world.  This book describes the code.

Amazon says:

WARS CHANGE, WARRIORS DON’T We are all warriors. Each of us struggles every day to define and defend our sense of purpose and integrity, to justify our existence on the planet and to understand, if only within our own hearts, who we are and what we believe in.

Do we fight by a code? If so, what is it? What is the Warrior Ethos?

Where did it come from? What form does it take today? How do we (and how can we) use it and be true to it in our internal and external lives?

The Warrior Ethos is intended not only for men and women in uniform, but artists, entrepreneurs and other warriors in other walks of life. The book examines the evolution of the warrior code of honor and “mental toughness.”

It goes back to the ancient Spartans and Athenians, to Caesar’s Romans, Alexander’s Macedonians and the Persians of Cyrus the Great (not excluding the Garden of Eden and the primitive hunting band).

Sources include Herodotus, Thucydides, Plutarch, Xenophon, Vegetius, Arrian and Curtius–and on down to Gen. George Patton, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, and Israeli Minister of Defense, Moshe Dayan.