Home Canned French Onion Soup

I LOVES me some French onion soup.  One of my all-time favorites.  That deep, rich onion soup topped with a big crouton, all covered with a tangy cheese.  Nothing better!

I recently found myself with a bunch of onions ready to go bad, and some very pricey meat that had gotten freezer burned.  I decided to put them together before they were wasted, and add to my food storage at the same time.

First, I had to make a stock.  I had purchased a whole beef filet, cut it into individual steaks, and threw them in the freezer.  For some reason, one of the bags with a number of fillets was NOT vacuum sealed.  I forgot about the meat, and it got freezer burn.  The meat was still eatable, but not really as a nice filet.

It would become the base of the beef stock.

I had about 2 pounds of meat, cut it into nice-sized chunks, then threw it in a large stock pot to brown.  When browning beef, you want to make sure you leave enough space in the pan for the juices to cook off.  Otherwise, you're braising the beef instead of browning it.  The browned meat adds a better flavor to the stock, IMO.

I would brown up a batch, removed it from the pot, and brown up the next.  Since I wanted to make 10 pints of soup, I added 12 pints of cold water to allow for some evaporation.  I then brought this to a boil, added some salt and pepper, a bay leaf then dropped the temperature to a simmer for 1 1/2 hours.

I now put my attention to the star of the show, the onions.  I had just over 4 lbs.  I sliced them about 1/4 inch wide, and put them into a heavy pan with some oil and medium heat.

The key is to cook them down very slowly.  The natural sugars caramelize and really bring out the unique flavor of the soup.  Also, I took all of the ends and some chunks of the onions, and tossed them into the stock pot to add more flavor to the stock.

After about an hour, I had a nice, deep brown colored pile of onions (they actually looked darker brown in real life - I swear!)-

By this time, the stock was done as well.  I skimmed off the fats and proteins than had bubbled to the surface.  I tasted the stock, and added a bit more salt and pepper -

I then took my cleaned and prepared canning jars, and added about 1/4 cup of the cooked onions to each jar.  About this time, I was really wishing I had doubled the amount of onions I had cooked down!

Next, I put the funnel and a fine mesh strainer (to keep out chunks of meat and onion) over the jars and ladled in the broth.

I filled the jars to within a half inch of the rim, put on my cleaned and prepared lids and rings, and pressure canned them at 10 pounds for 75 minutes (be sure you adjust your time and pounds depending on your elevation) -

Yeah, baby!  The pressure canning "fluffed up" the onions, but I still wish I had added more...

I made some homemade croutons out of some stale bread that I slathered with butter and Parmesan cheese, and threw in the oven for 15 minutes or so - just enough to add some color -

The final assembly is a pint of the soup, then the crouton, then a sharp, tangy cheese - Swiss or (as was my case) Gruyère.  Pop it in the oven to melt and voila!

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I must have miscounted the amount of water I added to the stock pot, as I had a good quart or so left over.  No worries.  I took the stock, the beef that was left over from the stock, and added a couple of diced potatoes (pretty finely diced 1/4 inch) and boiled that all together for a half hour and had a hell of a meal with the left overs of the left overs!

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Copyright 2014 Bison Risk Management Associates. All rights reserved. Please note that in addition to owning Bison Risk Management, Chief Instructor is also a partner in a precious metals business. You are encouraged to repost this information so long as it is credited to Bison Risk Management Associates. www.BisonRMA.com

Old School Sugar Squeezin's

I've recently had a number of questions regarding brewing.  Questions about how to convert corn into sugar to be fermented (queue banjo twang).  Corn IS occasionally used in beer brewing, so I've got some insights I thought I'd share.

I've been brewing for a long damned time.  Since 1980 - just a few short years after Nanny graciously allowed us to convert four freely available ingredients - water, malted grain, yeast and hops - into a bubblin' brew.

I've also dabbled in wines, mostly mead (honey-based wine) and ciders.

A key difference between my style of brewing, and that of most other folks is that I don't use kits.  You can find a brew store online, and get a kit with the proper amount of malted barley syrup or powder.  Add water, boil, add yeast and drink after it ferments and carbonates.

I go, 'old school'.  I buy my malted grains, grind them, make a mash (converting grain starches into sugars), sparge the grains (rinsing the sugars from the grains in the mash), THEN boiling and everything else.

But what if malted grains weren't available?  And what the hell is malting, anyways?!  And I thought this was about corn!

Hold your water, sport.
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Let's take a step back and understand the science behind brewing.  All grains are made up primarily of starch.  We want to turn that starch into fermentable sugars.

The starches are tightly bound at the molecular level.  We've got to do something to open them up so we can convert them into sugars.

We have two paths to that goal:  malting and gelatinization.

With malting, you take your grain - be it barley, corn, rice, rye, etc. - and soak it in warm water.  You throw them into a sack and place them in a warm, dark place.

The grain begins to sprout.  As it's doing this, the kernel is producing an enzyme called amylase.   Amylase enzyme is what turns the starch into sugar.

Once the grain sprouts (different lengths for different grains, but about equal to the length of the kernel), you usually halt the growth process with heat (you don't want Mother Nature to take over and consume all of the starch).  You roast the grain.  A shorter duration roast gets you a light malt for a light Pilsner beer, and a longer roast will get you a dark malt for a heavier Stout beer.

Now, I said 'usually'.  You can also just knock off the sprouts, grind up the grain, and begin your brewing.  This is what is done very often with corn, for instance.

Now that we've got our malted grain, we're now ready for the mash to allow the amylase enzyme to convert the starch to sugar (more on this later).
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The other option mentioned is gelatinization.  Gelatinization uses heat and loosens up those tight molecular bonds on the starch so that we can add amylase enzyme to convert that starch to sugars.

Let's say you don't have access to whole corn kernels.  All you have is corn meal.  Or maybe you have whole corn, but you don't want to go through the time and hassle of turning it into malt (about a week).

You take your ground, unmalted grain (say, feed corn) or corn meal, and cook it.  The temperature varies by grain.  For corn, it's right around 170f.  You add 1 pound of ground corn (like corn meal) and add 2 quarts of water.  Bring it to temperature, constantly stirring.   You'll end up with a thick corn mush (not mash).  Think grits or polenta.

When you get to the 170f, you need to keep it there for about a half hour.  You can just turn off the heat, cover it, and go get a cold adult beverage while you wait.  You now have gelatinized corn.
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Now, it's time to mash.  Again, mashing is the process of adding a starchy grain to water, and adding amylase enzyme to get the starch to convert into fermentable sugar.

If we're using the malted corn that's just been malted (meaning it's still moist), we pulverize the corn, and add approximately 1 1/2 quarts of water for every pound of dry corn we started with.  If we dried the malted corn for future use, we add 2 quarts of water per pound.

TEMPERATURE IS KEY HERE.  If we bring this corn up above 165f, we'll deactivate the amylase enzyme that's present, and not get any sugar out of it.  The sweet spot is between 145f and 160f.

A trick that beer brewers employ is to bring the water all by itself (no grain present) to slightly above your sweet spot, then turn off the heat.  Add your grains, and the thermal mass of the grains will bring you to your sweet spot.  For corn, I'd bring the water to 160f, then slowly add your pulverized corn while constantly stirring.  You'll end up with a mush.

Cover your pot, wrap it in towels, and set your timer for 30 minutes.  At that time, open the pot, give everything a nice stir, and cover it up again for another 30 minutes.  You'll notice that the mush has gotten VERY soupy.  That's the enzyme liquefying those long starch molecules into short, fermentable sugars.

If we're using gelatinized corn, we need to introduce the amylase enzyme.  Two ways to do that:  First, you can just buy the enzyme from virtually any homebrew store.  Since we're goin' Old School, we're going to add a bit of malted grain (barley) to the gelatinized corn, and let nature do its biz.

So, our corn mush, looks like this after it's been gelatinized -

Think corn mush, polenta or grits.  We need to add malted grain equal to between 25% and 30% of the original weight of the corn.  BUT we need to bring the temperature down to 160f first (remember, we had this at 170f to gelatinize it).  Take the lid off, stir every 10 minutes, and in a half hour, you should be down to 160f.

The grain you use needs to be cracked -

You can buy it just like this from a homebrew store.  Since I brew a lot, I buy it in 25lb bags, uncracked (it lasts longer this way).

In this case, I started with 3lbs of corn meal, so I added 3/4 of a pound of 2-row pale malt barley (tip:  If you only buy grain to do this, buy 6-row, as it has more amylase present, and will get you more sugar).

Cover this bad-boy up, wrap it in towels and set the time for a half hour -

After a half hour, give it a stir, then cover it up again for another half hour.  Just like with the all-malted corn mash, you'll notice the mash has gotten very soupy.  Nature!

After your hour mash, if you try and scoop up your stuff, this is what you'll get (compare this to the previous picture with the mush pre-mash) -

I'm going to use these corn squeezin's in an American Lager beer.  Light body, low hops, high alcohol content.
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Advanced, mind numbing stuff follows.  Even some math.  Proceed at your own peril.

Every grain has a given sugar potential.  It's expressed as PPG - Points per Pound per Gallon.  For instance, 1 pound of white sugar in 1 gallon of water has 46 points.  On a beer hydrometer (a tool that measures the amount of sugar in your mash results), you'd see this as 1.046

It's a linear scale.  Add two pounds of sugar to one gallon, and you'd have 92 points (46 x 2).  This is important, as you want to know how much alcohol your brew is going to produce.  The higher the points, the higher the alcohol content.

With grains, there is a little detour.  Corn, for instance, has a PPG of 39.  BUT, unlike already processed white sugar, it's virtually impossible to get every molecule of sugar out of the kernel.  On average, you can expect to get about 75% efficiency from your mash.  So, I'd expect to get only 29.25 PPG from my corn (39 x 75%).

So, in my example, I used 3 pounds of corn meal with 6 quarts (1.5 gallons) in my gelatinization.  If I take my expected PPG (29.25) and multiply that by the 3 pounds of grain used, I get 87.75 points.  Since I used 1 1/2 gallons of water, I need to divide this number by 1.5.  That gives me 58.5 points.

If I take my mash results (called a wash or wort), I should see a reading right around that on my hydrometer.  Well, well, well, lookee here!

Each of the lines below the 50 are two points each.  I ended up with 56 points instead of 58.5.  I probably should have actually had a little bit more, as the malted barley gave up some sugar as well.  My efficiency was probably around 72% or 73%.  Sue me.

If you do your mash in the low 150f range, and use 6-row malt, you could easily hit 80% or 85% efficiency.

Oh, and I heard once somewhere on the Interwebs that the grain bill for corn whiskey is 60% corn, 40% barley, or close enough to that.

One last thing:  If you're going to use rice as your fermentable grain, its gelatinization needs to be at 195f.  There are charts all over the Internet for the gelatinization temperatures of most grains.  Corn and rice are both used in lots of commercial American lagers (Bud, Miller, et al) because they're cheaper than barley, and pack quite the punch per pound.

One more one last thing:  If you're a wimp and don't want to gelatinize your own corn meal (hey, learn a skill, will ya?!), you can buy flaked maize from homebrew stores.  It's corn that's already been gelatinized, and is just waiting for the addition of the amylase enzyme.  At two bucks a pound, it's much more expensive than corn meal from the bulk section of your store, or feed corn from the feed store (make sure your feed corn is hormone- and pesticide-free).

As noted before, this corn juice is going into an American Light Lager.  I'll let you know how it turns out.... in about 4 months!  Cooler weather is lagering weather!


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Copyright 2013 Bison Risk Management Associates. All rights reserved. Please note that in addition to owning Bison Risk Management, Chief Instructor is also a partner in a precious metals business. You are encouraged to repost this information so long as it is credited to Bison Risk Management Associates. www.BisonRMA.com

Bullets And Butter

 Well, mostly butter.

I'm planning on making a dent in the California wild pig population in a couple of months.  I've got a buddy that reloads his ammo.  He got tired of hearing me bitch and moan about how I was having a difficult time securing enough .308 for one of my rifles, and offered to teach me how to make my own.  After a bit of haggling, we cut a deal.

I was over in his garage building cartridges, and he decided to use his time more efficiently than watching me while I worked one of the machines.  He went inside, grabbed a one quart mason jar, filled it a bit over half way with heavy cream, and proceeded to make butter.

I'll be damned if he didn't have a glob-o-butter in about a half hour!

So, today, I bought a couple quarts of heavy cream to attempt to repeat his act.  Success!  It's crazy-easy, and I swear, it tastes WAY better than the store-bought stuff.

I followed his lead, and filled a quart mason jar about half full - a bit less than he had done.  And then I started shaking.

And shaking.

And shaking.

The cream goes through a couple of stages on its way to becoming butter.  You first get a weak whipped cream.  Then a stiff cream.  At this point, you don't hear or feel a lot of stuff sloshing around in the jar.  After 20 minutes or so, the cream "breaks" into butter and skim milk.

You then pour off the skim milk, and shake some more.  Repeat as necessary.  Here's the view from the top -

You take the blob of butter and put it into a bowl.  There's still milk in the butter, and if you leave it there, it will make the butter go bad more quickly.

Add cold water to the bowl of butter, and start mashing the blob with your hands.  The water will go cloudy.  Pour that out, and repeat until the water stays clear.  You'll then end up here -

I then took a wooden spoon and mooshed everything around some more.  The butter will "leak" more water and milk.  I just used a paper towel to sop it up.  When done, I ended up with just under a pint of skim milk, and 13.7 ounces of butter!

I returned the butter to the stainless bowl, added 1/2 tsp of salt and mooshed it around some more.

Holy crap, what awesome stuff!

Still, I'm not sure it was worth the effort (other than knowing I can now turn cream into butter - not a bad skill to have).  Forty-five minutes, all in.  So, I went to the Internet and found a couple of sites on making homemade butter (Seriously, there were 240 MILLION entries on Google.  Am I the last person in American to make his own butter?)

One that caught my eye used a KitchenAid mixer - my second favorite appliance (right after my sausage stuffer).

I poured the cream into the bowl, attached the balloon whisk, and turned it on.  Medium speed to start - until the cream frothed up a bit - then I cranked it.  After about two minutes, I turned it off to scrape down the sides of the bowl.  Two minutes later, I did the same again.

After about 7 minutes, I had this -

If you look closely (click it to enlarge), you can see the separated skim milk at the bottom.

Boo-yah, baby!  Butter in 7 minutes!  I just followed the same steps as with the post-jar manual process (cold water, etc.), and ended up with exactly the same amount of butter....

Which posed a bit of a problem.  I now had over a pound and a half of butter.  In a household that eats about a quarter pound every two weeks (hey, I'm an olive oil kinda guy), that's a lot of butter!

So, I decided to make some of it into a compound butter.  These are just butters that have other herbs and flavors added.  I was going to make a seafood butter with some dill weed I had picked up for an upcoming pickled bean project, but decided to go more generic.  I decided to just make a parsley and garlic butter.

I took 4 cloves of garlic and smooshed them into a paste.  I added that to a half pound of the salted butter, and about half teaspoon of dry parsley.

I laid out a sheet of plastic wrap and plopped down the butter mix -

I rolled up the butter into a tube about the height of a silver dollar -

That was then wrapped up in aluminum foil, and wound up pretty tight so I'll be able to slice off nice medallions of butter.

I figure the garlic butter will work with fish, chicken, beef and pork.

Speaking of pork, here's a little bullet porn that will be used to acquire those chops-on-the-hoof - 

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Mrs. Chief Instructor just got home and went nuts over the butter.  Two thumbs up!

And yes, I AM the last person in America to make his own butter.  My wife proceeded to tell me that her 5th grade students make butter in baby food jars every year.

At least I'm ahead of most of the 4th graders...


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Copyright 2013 Bison Risk Management Associates. All rights reserved. Please note that in addition to owning Bison Risk Management, Chief Instructor is also a partner in a precious metals business. You are encouraged to repost this information so long as it is credited to Bison Risk Management Associates. www.BisonRMA.com

Lox of Love

I luvs me some lox.

Lox is preserved salmon.  For me, it's one of those great preservation techniques where you extend the life of a food, while making it into something great.  Similar to homemade jam.  As good or better than the fresh food.

Anyways, lox is brain-dead easy to make.

You start with a nice piece of salmon.  I usually buy a whole salmon and produce two big halves.  This time around, I just bought a half salmon already boned out.

This piece of salmon -about 5lbs - already had all of the small pin bones removed.  If you buy a whole salmon, you'll need to feel along the inside of the flesh until you find a bone.  Using a pair of needle nose pliers, pull out all of the bones.  There'll be a lot of them.

Next, you need to de-scale the fish.  Under a faucet, find the way the "grain" of the scales goes, and use the back of a knife to go against the grain and remove the scales.  Not difficult, but pretty messy.

When you're done, pat the fish dry and mix up your cure.  It's 1/3 salt, 1/3 brown sugar and 1/3 maple syrup.

For a whole salmon, I use a cup of each.  Since this was a half salmon, I used a half cup of each.  Put all of the seasoning in a bowl, and mix it up.  It will be a thick slurry.

I cut the pointy tail portion off for my wife to eat.  I then cut the remaining filet in half.

Next, get a dish with sides at least an inch deep.  When the salt goes into the fish, it will expel the water in it.  Take a piece of plastic wrap that is at least twice as long as the dish.  Put it - centered - in the dish.  Lay the first piece of fish -skin side down - and slather half of the salt/sugar/syrup slurry on the flesh side.

Do the same to the other piece.

Place the second piece of fish - flesh to flesh - on top of the first piece.  Bring the plastic wrap from the two ends and wrap up the fish.  Take another piece that you put underneath and wrap it side to side so the whole package is wrapped up very tightly.

Now ya wait.  I generally take an old cutting board or plank, and put a couple of heavy cans on top of the fish.  This helps to expel the water in the fish.  Put the whole contraption in the fridge, and wait 3 days.

Unwrap the fish, rinse it under cool water to get all of the slurry off of it, then pat it dry.  Here's what you get -

The flesh of the salmon will be much more dense.  Unlike fresh fish where when you push it, the flesh will bounce back, this flesh will stay indented.

Get a sharp knife and start a-slicin'.  The thinner, the better -

Me, my favorite is on a nice fat bagel with cream cheese -

From what I've read, this stuff is supposed to last a couple of weeks if kept in the fridge.  Never made it that long in my house.... ;-)

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Copyright 2012 Bison Risk Management Associates. All rights reserved. Please note that in addition to owning Bison Risk Management, Chief Instructor is also a partner in a precious metals business. You are encouraged to repost this information so long as it is credited to Bison Risk Management Associates. www.BisonRMA.com

Canning Conundrum, Show Me The Money and More JAW

Most preppers are familiar with the adage, "Store what you eat".  The idea being, don't store stuff you hate just because it's cheap or plentiful.

For instance, I know with metaphysical certainty that beets and sweet potatoes were put on this earth for no reason other than to test my gag reflex.  They are horrible, puke-inducing produce.  I'd never even consider putting some of them up in storage.

Chicken, on the other hand, is something I really like.  I've never met a chicken I didn't love.  As such, I've home canned TONS of chicken.  Mostly breast meat, with a smattering of thigh meat.

Here's the conundrum:  I love chicken breast, but after canning, it's like commercially canned tuna - flaky.  I love chicken breast, and I like it in this style, but not ONLY in this style.  No other storage format (freezing, dehydrating, etc.) is as shelf stable.

Beef is the same way, but I've found a way around it:  I grind and brown it first, THEN can it, and the texture is just like regular old ground burger.  I can it with my Italian sausage flavorings, and it absolutely rocks.

Has anyone ever ground up chicken breast, cooked it THEN canned it?  If so, how was it?  In my mind's eye, it won't keep the "bouncy" structure of a ground meat - it will just be another pint of flaky breast meat.

Looks like I've got another test ahead of me...
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Speaking of beef, I heard a story on TV about how beef prices are set to spike.  Something about how we've got fewer heads of beef than we had in the 1970's, and not enough cows to breed more.

Sounds like a marketing ploy, or poor planning, to me.

I don't eat a lot of beef - mostly pork and chicken - but I like a big ol' thick steak now and again.

I do believe I'll be picking up some beef for the freezer, and some freeze-dried cans of beef for the larder.
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I just don't get this - leaving money on the table.  And in these cases, I mean that literally.

With my gun classes, if you can't make the class and you notify me of this less than a week before the class, I provide you with a credit that can be used for any future class (if you call me a week or more before the class, you can get your money fully refunded if you want).  Right now, I have 6 students that have bought and paid for my Introductory Pistol class - at $99 a pop - that haven't reschduled.  One of these is 7 months old!

In our PM shop, we pay past customers who refer us new customers, a 5% bonus.  We look at this as advertising expense, and doesn't come out of the proceeds of their friend!  Anyways, we must be over $1000 in unpaid referral fees. 

We call them immediately to thank them and to come down and get their free cash.  We do a follow-up call a week later to touch bases again.  Nuthin'.

They must be tripping on all of those green shoots as they're running to the store...
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A screamin' JAW (Just Add Water) recipe....

This was inspired by a post I saw over at Riverwalker's Stealth Survival blog.  The topic was, Comfort Food.  As he noted, food has a way of settling you down - grounding you.  Those food favorites have a way of making a crappy day not quite so bad.  In a survival situation, they could be crucial to your mental (and physical) health.

One of my first thoughts was mashed potatoes.  Yeah, boy - I luvs me some spuds!

I keep the majority of my JAW packets in my car.  They're part of my stuck-out-in-nowhere-and-I'm-going-to-be-here-for-a-while supplies.  They take up a bit too much room to be included in my Get Home Bag, but are perfect if I've got to hunker down for a while.  Great for camping trips as well.

My idea was for a bacon, cheese and garlic mashed potatoes recipe.  I picked up a bag of bacon bits (actually, Textured Vegetable Protein - TVP), and some cheese powder from the bulk section at my market.  I already had plenty of potato buds and dehydrated garlic (not powder, but the minced bits).

The first crack at it was OK, but didn't curl my toes.  It would be good in a bad situation, but not Top Shelf.  The second try was absolutely awesome!  I increased the garlic and cheese amounts (2x and 3x, respectively).

Here goes:

2/3 C potato buds/flakes (I've got Idahoan)
1 T powdered instant milk
3 T Cheese powder
2 T TVP bacon bits
1 tsp dehydrated minced garlic
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp black pepper
1 1/4 C boiling water

Mix it all together, keeping it covered (or sealed in a Foodsaver bag) for 5 minutes, then devour.  The reason there's no picture is because I ate it all.  Seriously, this stuff rocks.

One tip - more water is better than less water.  I did the first recipe with a cup of water (which was a little over what was supposedly needed) and it was still a bit too stiff and almost sticky.  Added the extra water, and it was creamy smooth.

Enough for 2 side dishes or one meal.

The stats (total) -

Cal - 285
Fat - 3.5g
Carbs - 51g
Protein - 14g

As Campbell's says, "Mmm, mmm, good...."
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Copyright 2012 Bison Risk Management Associates. All rights reserved. Please note that in addition to owning Bison Risk Management, Chief Instructor is also a partner in a precious metals business. You are encouraged to repost this information so long as it is credited to Bison Risk Management Associates. www.BisonRMA.com

Gold, JAWs and Our Elites

From an article I found on Survivalblog.  Apparently, unlike Uncle Ben Bernanke, lots of countries think that gold is money -

Central banks also hiked their purchases from 77 metric tons in 2010 to 440 metric tons in 2011 as worries about a second global recession grew.

Holy crap!  Nearly a six-fold increase in gold purchases by the equivalent of the Federal Reserve in other countries.

I guess they didn't get Uncle Ben's memo. Hmm.
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My only concern right now with gold (and silver) is the short-term.  When Greece crashes - and potentially the euro some time thereafter - and I think it will - the dollar is going to spike, pushing down the price of PMs.  Perhaps the market has already "priced" this eventuality into gold, I don't really know.

According to this article on ZeroHedge (also poached from Survivalblog), the Greek-TEOTWAWKI (a "disorderly default") will be some time around March 20th.

Now, I'm always a bit leery when someone predicts a date for something to happen, but the prediction comes from Credit Suisse, and not some blogger like me.  So, accurate or not, it has the potential to affect the market.  I buy gold and silver every month, but I may back off a little bit coming up to mid-March to see how things shake out.

My long-term view remains unchanged:  Until the federal government states it will no longer "print" dollars and it will no longer run a deficit, I'll buy precious metals.  Neither of those is going to happen in the foreseeable future, regardless of who's in the White House.
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Quickee Just Add Water (JAW) recipe:  Prepper Rice-a-Roni.

1 cup Minute Rice
2 oz Angel Hair pasta broken into 1/2 inch pieces
2 tsp chicken bullion
1 cup boiling water

Take the broken Angel Hair pasta and put it into a pan over medium heat, sprayed with Pam or some other cooking spray.  Continually stir the pasta until it is dark brown.  Remove from the heat and place in a bowl immediately, as the pasta will continue to brown even in a pan that's off the heat.

Combine remaining ingredients, and cover for 10 minutes.  Makes a side dish for two, or a meal for one.

Eat.

If, like me, you're putting this in Foodsaver bags, make the bag bigger than normal, as it can be used to hold the food while it's re-hydrating.  Just fold over the open end and clamp/hold shut.

If you have access to butter, add a tablespoon or two, and it tastes much more like the real thing.  Be sure you're using Angel Hair or another VERY thin pasta, as thicker types like spaghetti retain their crunchiness.

Stats (total):

Calories:  610
Protein:  17g
Carbs:  131g
Fat:  1g
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Part of the reason posting has been light the past week is because of crap like this.  I see very, very disturbing "signs" and it seem no one gives a damn.  Unmanned police drones.  Police check points.  Police armored personnel carriers.   All manned by cops attired as soldiers.

I really am starting to hate this, and it worries me quite a bit:  The overview you read on the TV listing for every damned "real life" cop show on TV is full of "elite" cops.  I swear to God, I just saw one that was about an elite squad of cops that were tasked with catching..... speeders.  What's next?  "Elite" meter maids?

I was just watching a show by John Stossel called, "Illegal Everything" (find this and watch it).  One of the sections was about citizens filming cops doing their job - and getting arrested for the effort.  In each incident, the citizen was arrested for something like, "interfering with government function" or some horseshit like that.

Each was the epitome of trumped up charges, and in each incident, not a single cop was disciplined or fired.  WTF?

Why's it worry me?  Because more and more cops start believing the TV propaganda, that they are in fact, elites - and not our servants.  Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, too many citizens - their masters - are believing the propaganda as well.

Sheeple
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In the Stossel show, they also had a section on grotesque government abuses of power.  One family had their land arbitrarily designated as a wet lands.  The state hadn't cleared some drainage ditch, and the water had backed up.  The people - with the blessing of the state - cleared the ditch.  The feds came in and sued them.

The landowners won the law suit, but the feds didn't give a damn, and fined them $37,000 a day, effectively bankrupting them.

How can this happen in America?

I swear to God, I would not have lost my home and land by just rolling over.

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Copyright 2012 Bison Risk Management Associates. All rights reserved. Please note that in addition to owning Bison Risk Management, Chief Instructor is also a partner in a precious metals business. You are encouraged to repost this information so long as it is credited to Bison Risk Management Associates. www.BisonRMA.com

Gettin' Cheesy

I figured I have probably pushed the outer limits of "shelf fresh" with some of my powdered milk.

I packaged a number of vacuum sealed bags, each with about 3/4 of a pound of powdered milk.

If you look a bit more closely, you'll see that I put this stuff into storage in February of 2008.... just a bit past the "best by" date ;-)

Since I can't stand the taste of powdered milk, even when it is right from the store, I figured I would try making some cheese.  Better than just tossing the stuff into the garbage.

For the record, the milk had held up remarkably well.  It truly tasted the same as newer powdered milk.

Anyways, I found this recipe online -

Quick Soft Pressed Cheese

2 c. boiling water 1-1/2 c. dry milk powder
3 T. vegetable oil
1 c. buttermilk
3-4 T. fresh lemon juice
cheese coloring tablets (opt.)

Blend water, milk and oil, allowing foam to settle slightly. If colored cheese is desired, add ½ tablet cheese coloring (or cake decorating paste color) while blending. Pour into hot saucepan coated with a nonstick spray and heat to at least 160 degrees. Add lemon juice and continue to stir until mixture curdles. Pour into a cheesecloth lined colander. Rinse curds with warm water, then salt to taste. Place cheese in cloth between two plates or spoon into a cheese press. Apply weight and let sit for ½ hour or longer, depending on how firm you want the cheese to be. Remove from plates or cheese press, rinse, wrap in plastic and refrigerate. Use within one month or freeze. This cheese can be sliced, grated, or crumbled.

For Smoky Cheese, add
½ t. Liquid Smoke flavoring and
½-1 t. salt after rinsing curds.

Pretty interesting process.

I made up the buttermilk by making a cup of re-hydrated milk (1C cold water and 1/3 C powdered milk), adding a tablespoon of white vinegar, and letting it sit for 5 minutes.

This gave me 4 cups of cheese-makin' juice!

I then followed the directions to the letter.

Since the water had been boiled, it came up to the 160F pretty quickly.  I stirred and checked the temp all along the way (5 minutes or so).

I then added 3 Tablespoons of lemon juice, and Viola! curds and whey! (click the pic for a better look)

This is right after it "broke".  I kept stirring, and in a minute or so, it was very clearly separated between the white curds and the yellowish whey.

I dumped the whole mess into a cheese cloth covered colander -

This picture is a bit deceiving, in that the curds look like cottage cheese.  Nope.  It is very "rubbery" to the touch, and has virtually no real flavor.

I "fluffed" it up, and rinsed it with warm water. 

After draining for a bit, I added a little bit less than a 1/2 teaspoon of salt and mixed it all together.  Really, pretty good tasting!

I then squeezed as much of the remaining moisture out (probably should have done that before salting the cheese).  I wrapped it up with the cheese cloth from the strainer into a square shape, and wrapped THAT in another piece of cheese cloth -

The block o' cheese was placed between two plates, and I added an almost-full bottle of soy sauce as a weight.

I let this sit for 30 minutes.  The cheese was firmer, but still too crumbly, so I wrapped it all up and weighed it down for another 30 minutes.

I need to make a cheese press!

The extra half hour didn't make much of a difference, so I figured it was time for a taste test.

First, I weighed what I had made - just under 5 oz of cheese -

As you can see, it's quite crumbly.  The patty held together well, but breaks apart easily -

I crumbled some on a tortilla to make a quesadilla.  Now, most cheese recipes I read indicated that this kind of cheese won't melt.

They were right!

I nuked the tortilla and cheese for a minute, and while the cheese got softer, it never really melted.

The flavor was very good though.  Actually a bit of sweetness.  I had my wife try one of the wedges of the quesadilla and she liked it (not knowing it was made from powdered milk).  Her only suggestion was for more salt.

The texture is like a common Mexican cheese, queso fresco - fresh cheese.
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As this is published, I've got another batch made up where I added more salt and a 1/2 tsp of liquid smoke.  I've got a new cheese press, of sorts.  I want to give this a bit more time to firm up.

I'll share the results and some more pix in the next post.

Accept The Challenge

I was quite pleased with the results of my little experiment.  Nice, fresh cheese from that disgusting powdered milk!

I think I will next try for one of the cream-style cheeses - something I can slather on a bagel.  Mix in some spices and perhaps some diced onions and end up with a real schmear!

This worked out very well, in that I won't be throwing the powdered milk in the garbage.  The only palatable use I've found for this stuff so far is in chocolate pudding and a couple other recipes.  Being able to make a quick and easy cheese is a big bonus.

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Copyright 2011 Bison Risk Management Associates. All rights reserved. Please note that in addition to owning Bison Risk Management, Chief Instructor is also a partner in a precious metals business. You are encouraged to repost this information so long as it is credited to Bison Risk Management Associates. www.BisonRMA.com

Home Canned Burger

I could have sworn I've done a previous post here on canning meat.  I did one on another site a few years ago, but I thought I copied it over here.  Apparently not!

I mentioned a while back that I bought a pork butt or shoulder at a great price.  Here's how I turned it into home canned storage -

I started with a 21 pound portion.  I boned the piece and ended up with 14 pounds of meat and fat.

With any kind of meat canning, I firmly believe that you want to cover the meat in the jar with a fluid.  Some folks just add water and a bit of salt.  I like adding a broth or stock.

I took the bones from the pieces, and boiled them up with salt and a couple of bay leaves.

I let these bones come to a boil.  I skimmed off the fat and flotsam, and kept it at the ready.

The slabs of meat were cut into small pieces that were able to fit into my meat grinder.  I then ground up the meat to make my own burger.

When you're canning meat, you can do it hot- or cold-packed.  With cold-packed, you just add the chunked meat to your jars - about 1 pound per pint - cover with your liquid (3/4 inch head space), then pressure can the meat (I go 10 lbs pressure for 75 minutes for pints).

Hot-packed is basically the same process, but you're adding cooked meat.  When I make burger, I ALWAYS use hot-packed, as it is way too easy for the inner-most burger to not be fully cooked because of the compact nature of the meat.

I took my 14 pounds of burger and cooked it up in 3-4 pound batches.

I SLIGHTLY undercook the meat.  I'm not browning it, I'm really just rendering some of the fat off.

I then take each batch of cooked meat and put it in a collander in the sink.  I do this to let as much fat run off as is possible.  If I were in an emergency situation, I would skip this step, as I would want to retain the fat.

As you'll see later, a good amount of the fat is still retained.  After I cooked up all of the meat, my 14 pounds of meat and fat had turned into 11 pound of cooked pork.  That means my original boned meat was about an 80/20 mixture.

Before I packed the meat, I wanted to turn it into a quasi-Italian Sausage.  I went to my recipe bin and added the following ingredients.  Please note that this recipe is for 5 pound batches.  Since I started with 14 pounds - or 3 recipe's worth - I tripled the recipe, NOT doubled it for the 11 pounds of post-cooking weight.

Italian Sausage recipe for 5 pounds of raw pork -

3T fresh garlic, minced
2T salt
1T ground black pepper
3T fennel seeds, roughly ground
3T dried parsley flakes
2T red pepper flakes

This makes a nice, VERY spicy Italian sausage.  Try it with two TEASPOONS of red pepper flakes for one with just a bit of a "bite".  When I make this sausage raw and stuff it into casings, I also add 1/2 cup of grated Romano cheese, and 1 cup of water.  It's a great sausage!

Back to the canning:

I filled each pint with the ground sausage mixture - about 3/4 pound worth, cooked - and covered it with the pork stock I had made earlier.  I went to within 3/4 inches of the lip of the jar.

I lidded everything up, did the 10 lbs pressure for 75 minutes gig, and viola! - home canned ground sausage.

After the jars cooled, I still got a "cap" of fat that rose to the top of the jars.  I'm OK with that, as it adds additional flavor to this sausage.

Accept The Challenge

Don't assume your fridge and freezer will always be working.  Home canning meat is a great way to do some long-term storage while not having to worry about keeping the meat refrigerated.

Be sure to check all of the lids for a proper seal after they've cooled!  With the fat in the meat, you will sometimes get some on the rim and not get a good seal.  One of my jars failed to seal, so it went into a lasagna the next day.

I've talked in the past about the texture of home canned meats.  I'm not a big fan of the texture of chunks of beef, pork or chicken breast.  It's just like canned tuna - flaky.  Canned burger, on the other hand, has the same mouth-feel as fresh-ground burger.

BTW, you may be thinking, "Why didn't he just buy ground pork or beef instead of boning the meat himself?"  Two reasons.

First, I know EXACTLY what is in my burger because I "produced" it myself.  No snouts, ears or other parts that might find their way into commercially ground meat.

Secondly, price.  I bought the pork for $1 per pound ($21).  After boning it, I had 14 lbs remaining, so the cost-per-pound was $1.50.  The commercially ground pork at the store was $1.99/lb, so I saved seven bucks.  Not retirement money, but every little bit counts!

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Copyright 2010 Bison Risk Management Associates. All rights reserved. Please note that in addition to owning Bison Risk Management, Chief Instructor is also a partner in a precious metals business. You are encouraged to repost this information so long as it is credited to Bison Risk Management Associates. www.BisonRMA.com