Today we are highlighting our Books We Love board. This board is full of books we love and like to keep on hand in case of emergency. While the internet is great, you can’t always count on it being there in case of emergency!

To see the whole board, click here.

• PIN 1: We’ve pinned our ebook to our Books We Love board, since it’s been such a great resource for helping people plan, buy, and use their food storage.
• PIN 2: The book that changed Julie’s outlook on using beans in her everyday cooking. It has so many easy, and healthy recipes.
• PIN 3: This is one of Jodi’s favorite food storage cook books. It’s so fun, and cute, and it has EASY to use recipes.
• PIN 4: A great book to help you learn how to make your own food storage meals in jars. This is a great guide and can help get you started on making your own per-made food storage dinners.

Make sure you check out the rest of the items on the Books We Love board. We’ll keep adding to that board as we find great stuff, and we’ll see you tomorrow to highlight another one of our boards!

Don’t forget you can Follow us on Pinterest so you don’t miss any of the great stuff we will be pinning in the future.

Yes, You Can! And Freeze and Dry It, Too by Daniel Gasteiger

Background: The “Yes, You Can!” book is like a Ball Canning Guide meets “The Pioneer Woman” meets “Our Best Bites“. Thus it equals total heaven for me. Up to date recommendations on modern processing times and proper procedures like the Ball guides include, beautiful picture tutorials like I love from The Pioneer Woman, and helpful tips along the way like Our Best Bites provides with so many of their recipes. Whether you are an expert at canning and other home preservation techniques, or a beginner who is a little intimidated to get started on all of this … this book will have something for you!

What I Liked: Yes, You Can! really makes you feel like your mom or grandma is right beside you in the kitchen showing you step-by-step how to do everything and giving you little tidbits of useful info along the way. I LOVE how the book is laid out. There are sections on all kinds of preservation techniques so you can get ambitious and try more than just canning. Each section includes helpful information on the tools you will need for that particular preservation method, then a general step-by-step guide on how to do it, followed by specific and very detailed info on particular foods including great recipes to use.

My Favorite Part: I absolutely love how Daniel Gasteiger gives helpful and detailed information from someone who has actually DONE all of these things. I always wonder how many pounds or cups of fruit are needed to make a certain amount of quarts. He includes that. He also gives recommendations on how much to grow in your garden based on how much you want to preserve. I love this type of information as it saves me from so much trial and error and experimentation. Plus I always forget to write things like that down for the future. There are sooo many tips and tricks included, I feel like whenever I am working on a project he will be right there to make sure I do every little thing right.

Feedback: The tagline of Yes, You Can! is “The Modern Step-by-Step Guide to Preserving Food” and I think that is a great description. The only thing that was missing was information on preserving foods besides product. I think meats fit in with canning, freezing, dehydrating, etc. and it would be a wonderful addition (or sequel) to the book to add information about those process in the same format. I would LOVE it!

Summary: This book has become my new go-to book whenever I am doing any home preservation. If you want to get a really good feel for the book go check out the preview on Amazon.com. If you click the “Look Inside” button you can see a ton of the book. Flip through to chapter 3 and you will see all of the things I mention in the “What I Like” paragraph above. You definitely want to have Yes, You Can! on your bookshelf if you are into self reliance!

Country Beans New ideas for “User Friendly Beans” in a hurry by Rita Bingham

Background: Learning how to use and cook dry beans was a major journey of mine last year. I was always skeptical you could do anything with dry beans before embarking on my “learn how to use beans” journey. If you’ve followed us for awhile, you probably were there when I made the “Magical Fruit” discovery on how to use dry beans to make cream of chicken replacements, and when I finally learned how to actually COOK dry beans. Most of my bean discoveries and learnings have come from the fabulous book “Country Beans”.

What I Liked: What I liked most about this book is how all-inclusive, and simple it is. Rita doesn’t assume that you’re an expert chef and gives you a lot of background information. Most of the time, when I get cookbooks I think to myself “Oh that recipe looks good, but I’ll have to go grocery shopping for half those mystery items”. When I opened the book and started looking at the recipes, I had a ton of them immediately tagged as recipes I could make right away. Rita also includes hundreds of GLUTEN-FREE recipes in this book. Using bean flours is a great way to replace gluten in a lot of recipes.

Sections: This book has more than recipes. It is full of information about using, storing, and cooking beans as well. Here are the sections the book contains. There are so many sections I’m going to do a screen shot of them because typing them out would take forever! Notice all the fabulous sections at the end! When I got this book I really needed education, not just recipes so it was great!

Feedback: The only drawback of this book is that there aren’t pictures for the recipes. Some people will only get books with pictures, but I felt like I didn’t really need the pictures with this book.

Summary: Quit being afraid of using your beans and get this book! “Country Beans”

Jan’s Fabulous Food Storage Recipes Converting Stored Foods Into Useable Meals by Jan LeBaron

Background: This book is written by Jan LeBaron, a woman who has life experience I personally can learn from. She was raised in a family of 9, and had 4 kids of her own. She’s always loved learning from her mom how to cook, and she knows so much about the basics and beyond. You can tell just by flipping through her book, she loves cooking REAL food for REAL people. Sometimes recipe books can get a little too fancy for my real life situation – but this one feels normal. On the cover of the book, it says “Converting Stored Foods Into Useable Meals”. I feel that is just what this book does, tells you how to use your stored foods in recipes you will come to love. She also has some great information about beans, grains, and other common food storage items.

What I Liked:

• Lots of sections including- Beverages, Bread, Beans and Bean Flours, Breakfasts, Casseroles, Cheese, Condiments, Cookies, Deserts, Meat, Cooking with TVP, Main Dishes, Mexican Dishes, Whole Grains, Perfect Pasta, Storing, Soups and Stews, Vegetables and Potatoes, Emergency Tips
• Brief education before each section about the types of foods you will be using
• Really gives you ideas for common food storage items
• Recipes for many basics- yogurt, sauces, cheeses, cream soups, condiments
• Helpful tips to make cooking your meals faster (prepare ahead type ideas)
• A TON of recipes – really so many

Favorite Part: I think my favorite part of this book is how many recipes there are for basic necessities you may not ever think of making from scratch. Things like tortillas, pasta noodles, yogurt, cheeses, pasta sauces, condensed soups, mayonnaise and more. In a situation where these items may not be available, I’d definitely pull out this book for a handy guide and resource. In fact, since making them from your own ingredients can be so much healthier (and cheaper), I can see myself learning to use these recipes in everyday life. I also like how regular a lot of the recipes are. I’m not ALL that fancy of a cooker – I get overwhelmed when I see recipes that call for things I have never heard of!

Feedback: Just in case you’re a picture kind of person, I do have to let you know the recipes don’t have pictures- although I really don’t feel like it’s that much of a drawback. The information is so valuable and practical I would recommend this book for sure for those who don’t know what to do with the Food they have stored.

Summary: Jan’s Fabulous Food Storage Recipes is a great book full or recipes and helpful cooking tools. If you already have your food storage, and just don’t know what to do with it – this is a great book for you!

Cooking with Food Storage – Made Easy Hundreds of tasty, money-saving recipes your family will love by Debbie G. Harman

Background: Obviously the name of this book is what initially caught my attention when I stumbled upon it at Wal-Mart (yes they really do have food storage books at Wal-Mart in Utah). Since our whole philosophy is to try to make food storage “EASY” I was hoping that this book would be right up my ally. When I flipped it open I fell in love. There is only ONE other cookbook that I have ever sat and just READ through the entire thing straight through and that is Pioneer Woman’s cookbook (which I get to have signed by her next week, yay!). This book totally reminds of Mary Engelbreit’s style which I have always really liked. It’s very appealing to look at, and when you get into the content it is great too.

What I Liked:

• Full of cute illustrations that make it so enjoyable to read
• Large font sizes that make for easy reading and following recipes from a distance in the kitchen
• Inspirational quotes and scriptures scattered throughout the book
• Helpful tips added in to many of the recipe pages
• SIMPLE recipes that don’t call for tons of ingredients or weird things you wouldn’t have on hand
• More than just recipes! Sections on emergency prep, preserving meat and fish, growing and preserving, spices, and basic storage principles

Favorite Part: I have had a great time over the past year or so teaching myself how to do different types of home canning projects. I tend to follow my manuals and my Ball canning guide, but sometimes you just wish you could get tips or recipes from a REAL PERSON. Well this book fulfills my needs in that department. There is a great preservation section that includes tried and true recipes and instructions. I’m excited to try some of the variations!

Feedback: There are really very few things I could say that I would improve on in this book. The only area I felt could have been expanded on more is the actual proper way to store long term storage foods. This is an concept I am wanting to learn more about so I was hoping for a more robust section on that topic.

Summary: Cooking with Food Storage – Made Easy is a great overview book for a beginner, that won’t get you feeling too overwhelmed. But it is also a handy guide for people more experienced with food storage as it includes so many recipes. The recipes are just regular meals (and desserts) your family would love to eat but made with mainly shelf stable and food storage ingredients. I really think everyone should get a copy of this book!

SUMMARY

One Second After: by William R. Forstchen
Every modern electrical device is dead, destroyed by an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack on the United States by unknown attackers. The United States has, in an instant, been thrown back into the 19th century; but the narration in the book points out that 21st century people do not have the knowledge or tools to live under 19th century conditions. The story shifts quickly to how the community reacts, and depicts some horrifying realities we may face in such a scenario.

In case you didn’t have a chance to read the book, here is a link to the wikipedia page on the book. You can get a quick summary and still join us. We do however recommend reading the book. It was incredibly eye-opening for us, and taught us a lot about different areas of weaknesses we may have.

Before we get started on the discussion we are kindly putting forth this

DISCLAIMER!

We encourage everyone who participates to do so in a very respectful manner. As we read the novel, we soon became very aware that the discussions around this book could become very political, and personal. Such topics have a tendency to bring out strong opinions. Please share your opinions in a kind, and mature way. We reserve the right to, and will delete any comments that may be considered offensive or encourage illegal or unethical activities.

Ok now that THAT’S over…

LET’S START

Later today, and for the next few days we’re going to be adding topics as posts to discuss. As we add the posts, the topics found below will be linked and open for discussion. We will announce on facebook when a new discussion has opened. Please only use the comment sections for each post to discuss so people joining in later can be sure to find all the information and we wont have it scattered across multiple areas.

TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION:

• FAMILY PLAN/COMMUNICATION
• ACTIONS TO TAKE IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING AN ATTACK
• TRANSPORTATION
• FOOD PREPARATION
• HEATING AND COOLING
• PROTECTING FAMILY AND FOOD
• STORING NON-FOOD ITEMS AND MEDICATIONS
• REBUILDING SOCIETY

 
We’ll be posting the first few discussions sometime today, so check back and we can’t wait to hear what everyone thinks. We hope we can all learn from each other and think about things as to be better prepared for any type of situation that could arise.

In the story, the community had a lot of tough questions to ask when it came to morals and rebuilding some form of a society. Some of the major leaders died, and new order and structure was needed. Decisions had to be made on who to give extra food rations to, and who to let become part of their society based on their knowledge and skills. After the battle with the looters, medics had to prioritize who to give medical attention to and who to just “let die”. There were some very emotional and thought-provoking moments throughout the book.

QUESTIONS TO PONDER

• Do you share your supplies with others?
• Do you help the sick, what if they are contagious?
• How would you balance the desire to feed and protect your family with the need to help an entire community?
• How do you keep law and order when there is chaos all around?
• What type of punishments are acceptable and who doles them out?
• How do you start to organize a structure of government or community?
• Would you know how to replenish food supplies on an ongoing basis? (crops and animals)
• What do you think will be the new currency?
• Who would be responsible for re-establishing the nation? The transit systems? Communications? Electric? Would we be left on our own to re-invent the wheel? Or do you think outside help would come and get things moving again?

DISCUSS

We encourage everyone who participates to do so in a very respectful manner. As we read the novel, we soon became very aware that the discussions around this book could become very political, and personal. Such topics have a tendency to bring out strong opinions. Please share your opinions in a kind, and mature way. We reserve the right to, and will delete any comments that may be considered offensive or encourage illegal or unethical activities.

Click the links below to “subscribe by email” or “subscribe by rss” to help you easily follow the conversation and discussion after you make your posts.

In the story, one of the most tragic situations was the main character’s daughter had Type 1 diabetes and required insulin. The supply was short and they ran out before more could be located or shipped in. While some health issues simply could not be treated, others could have been managed much better were there proper supplies on hand. Some other thoughts mentioned in the book are the logistics of feminine hygiene products, personal hygiene in general, and the health risks associated with the lack of hygiene.

QUESTIONS TO PONDER

• What medical conditions do you have that would be affected by no new medicine?
• How can you store extra medicine?
• What type of natural remedies could be learned to replace modern medicines that will not be available once supplies run out?
• What can you do TODAY to be healthier thus avoiding the need for medical intervention?
• What other non-food items will you need?
• Do you have items that can help you stay clean, and help kill germs that could cause illness?
• What plans do you have in place for proper sanitation?
• Do you have necessary tools, instructions, and items needed for building and living more primitively?

DISCUSS

We encourage everyone who participates to do so in a very respectful manner. As we read the novel, we soon became very aware that the discussions around this book could become very political, and personal. Such topics have a tendency to bring out strong opinions. Please share your opinions in a kind, and mature way. We reserve the right to, and will delete any comments that may be considered offensive or encourage illegal or unethical activities.

Click the links below to “subscribe by email” or “subscribe by rss” to help you easily follow the conversation and discussion after you make your posts.

In the story, panic set in within a day or two of the EMP occurring. People started looting stores and just taking what they wanted. Later people’s personal homes were broken into in attempts to find food. There was also an incident with a large gang of people crossing the landscape and terrorizing small towns along the way. The main characters in the book were able to work together and put up a strong defense that protected their town.

QUESTIONS TO PONDER

• What do you do when people come knocking on your door for food?
• How do you sleep at night when the threat of intruders is real?
• Who do you join up with to form a group of protection?
• What sorts of weapons would be best in this scenario?
• Would you try to hide your food and/or family?
• How would it be for a woman and children alone in a house?
• Think about where you live? What type of problems may occur in your area?

DISCUSS

We encourage everyone who participates to do so in a very respectful manner. As we read the novel, we soon became very aware that the discussions around this book could become very political, and personal. Such topics have a tendency to bring out strong opinions. Please share your opinions in a kind, and mature way. We reserve the right to, and will delete any comments that may be considered offensive or encourage illegal or unethical activities.

Click the links below to “subscribe by email” or “subscribe by rss” to help you easily follow the conversation and discussion after you make your posts.

In the story, heating and cooling did not appear to be too much of a concern for the characters as they lived in a moderate temperature area. However, it is mentioned that in other areas people were suffering severely from heat due to living in areas and homes not meant for no central air conditioner. The story skipped over the winter months but did mention that many more townspeople died during those months.

QUESTIONS TO PONDER

• What times of year and temperatures would be a concern for you?
• What modifications could you make to your home to improve heating/cooling?
• What would you use to provide enough warmth to last through a cold winter?
• If planning to use a fireplace or wood burning stove, what sources nearby do you have for more wood? Do you have the proper tools to chop it?
• If you live in an extremely hot area, how will you protect your family from heat stroke, discomfort, etc.?
• What sort of long term solutions could be developed?
• Do you have medication/treatments on hand for heat stroke or hypothermia?
• How could you utilize your cooking methods to help minimize heat or utilize the heat for warmth?

DISCUSS

We encourage everyone who participates to do so in a very respectful manner. As we read the novel, we soon became very aware that the discussions around this book could become very political, and personal. Such topics have a tendency to bring out strong opinions. Please share your opinions in a kind, and mature way. We reserve the right to, and will delete any comments that may be considered offensive or encourage illegal or unethical activities.

Click the links below to “subscribe by email” or “subscribe by rss” to help you easily follow the conversation and discussion after you make your posts.