How To Do it yourself

Alan T. Hagan, author of the book The Prudent Pantry: Your Guide to Building a Food Insurance Program brings us this web page loaded with the answers to important questions about food storage. Seperate sections cover all the major types of storable foods including grains, legumes, dairy products, sweetners, and fats and oils. Additional sections cover food storage supplies and equipment. There is also a section of spoilage and how to avoid it, as well as lists and tables of shelf lives for all kinds of storage food.

If you've ever considered an emergency food storage program, this FAQ is where you should begin.

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Photo: Rainer Zenz
via Creative Commons Wikimedia Prepared by the College of Agriculture, Food Systems and Natural Resources of North Dakota State University, this is a good place to start when you decide to try making your own sausage. Be sure to pay special attention to the proper handling and curing of the meat as you read through this article. Before the advent of modern processing methods, the potentially fatal form of food poisoning, now known as botulism, was originally called "sausage disease" for good reason. But if the proper modern procedures are followed, homemade sausage can be perfectly safe. Like any food canning or preserving method, it's very important to do it right, and this guide will teach you how make sausage the safe and healthy way.

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We've looked at a lot of solar food dryers, from simple ones made with a couple of cardboard boxes to a huge indirect pass-through tower dryer with electronic temperature control built by the Appropriate Technology Program at Appalachian State University, but this design is the cleanest, simplest, easiest to build model we've found so far. And it's more effective than many other complex designs. Whether you are planning on drying fruit slices, making your own beef jerky, or dehydrating vegetables or herbs and spices, this nifty unit will do the job for you.

The author notes that before stumbling upon this design, "... I've tried about every solar dryer design imaginable. The only common factor in all those attempts was their very limited usefulness here in the humid upper Midwest. None of them could reliably turn food into a non-moldy finished product, unlike the many successful electric models I had built for myself and friends." But this design solved that problem. Check it out. You'll be surprised how simple it is.

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"Cheese making is theoretically a science, but we also need to appreciate that it is an art. While cheese making instructions often appear simple, there are skills and sensitivities which must be developed for successful cheese making. I strongly suggest that you master the following projects in sequence before you progress to more difficult cheeses. As an avid homesteader, I strive to keep the ingredients for these recipes relatively easily obtained from your local supermarket and to use the equipment commonly found in the kitchen."

This excellent collection of articles begins with a detailed examination of the ingredients and equipment needed to make cheese at home. Included in the equipment section is a link to a homemade cheese press you can build yourself.

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