Food Storage Granola Bars

I've been working on this post for a while now.  It takes time to search through dozens of recipes for just those that utilize more typical food storage ingredients, and then try them out to see how they taste and share our reviews of them.

Baked Granola Bars with Coconut
4 cups oatmeal
2 cups flour
1 cup shredded coconut
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup coconut oil
3/4 cup honey
1 cup raisins, dried cranberries, chocolate chips, or chopped nuts, optional

Mix first six ingredients together thoroughly.  Add in oil and honey and mix well with your fingers.  Then add in dried fruit, chocolate chips, or chopped nuts, if desired.  Press into 12x15 pan (or pan of similar dimensions).  Using a rolling pin and waxed paper will make this process a little easier.  Bake at 375 degrees for 15-20 minutes.  Do not overbake or your granola bars will become quite hard.  They should look soft and puffy when you remove them from the oven.  Cut into squares while still warm.

Reviews:  I used unsweetened shredded coconut, so these bars were not as sweet as most granola bars.  The kids did not like having less sugar.  I liked that they weren't so sweet, but maybe I ate more than I should have because of it.  I thought they had a good texture and flavor. 

Crunchy Baked Granola Bars
2 cups quick cooking oats
1 cup flour
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup raisins
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup coconut oil
1/2 cup honey
1 large egg
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Mix first seven ingredients together thoroughly.  In another bowl, blend wet ingredients well and then stir into dry ingredients.  Mix very well.  Press evenly into a well-greased 9x13 pan.  Bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes.  Cool slightly and then cut into bars.

Reviews:  These were pretty hard and crunchy.  We like softer bars here.

No-Bake Chewy Granola Bars
2 cups quick cooking rolled oats
2 cups Rice Krispies
3/4 cup chopped nuts
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup shredded coconut
3/4 cup light corn syrup
3/4 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

Line a 9x13 pan with parchment or waxed paper.  Set aside.  Mix first five ingredients well in a large bowl.  Combine remaining ingredients in a saucepan over low heat.  Pour over dry ingredients and combine very well.   Press into prepared pan.  (This will be easier if you use a sheet of waxed paper on top as well.

Reviews:  This is a really good basic recipe as well.  We realized that we just don't like granola bars with fruit in them.  We want only chocolate chips and nuts.  But fruit is fine in granola, so we just broke these up and ate them as cereal instead.

Granola Bars with Pre-made Granola
3 1/2 cups granola
1/2 cup chopped nuts
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup corn syrup
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup mini chocolate chips

Combine granola and chopped nuts in large bowl and set aside.  In a small saucepan, combine brown sugar, corn syrup, and peanut butter and stir until smooth.  Pour over granola and nuts and press into a greased 9x9" pan.  Immediately sprinkle mini chocolate chips over the top and press them in.  Cut into bars.

Review:  It seems like extra work to make granola and then make granola bars, but if you didn't like something about the granola you were starting out with, maybe this would be a solution.  It's a basic recipe, but because there is such a variety in granolas, it's impossible to give a fair evaluation of the recipe.   

For further reading: 
https://www.geniuskitchen.com/recipe/granola-bars-110421
https://www.geniuskitchen.com/recipe/no-bake-granola-bars-326900
https://www.scribd.com/doc/61862609/Wooden-Spoon-Oats-Honey-and-Sugar

Pinto Bean Fudge

I'm not a fudge person.  Faced with the choice of having fudge or having no treat at all, I'll still pass on the fudge.  I prefer my sugar and chocolate in other forms, thank you very much.  So naturally, I had never made any fudge in my 50+ years of life.

Understandably, hearing that some natural food-prepper types were advocating making fudge using pinto beans was unsettling on a number of levels for me.  There are some places that a respectable person just doesn't go.  Red light districts, casinos, McDonald's, ... you get the picture.  Pinto bean fudge was one of those places for me.

And yet, in the interest of becoming fully informed about all things food storage, I had to delve into the disturbingly dark world of pinto bean fudge.  I had a dear sister-in-law who had gone there and reported that indeed, it was a very upsetting place.

Think about it:  It looks like fudge.  It has sugar.  And it tastes like pinto beans.  How much worse can life get?

But for my children and readers and people in my classes, I had to see for myself.  This is the recipe I used:

Pinto Bean Fudge

1/2 cup cooked pinto beans, mashed and drained

2-4 tablespoons milk

4 ounces unsweetened chocolate

3 tablespoons butter

1 teaspoon vanilla

4 cups powdered sugar

Nuts, optional

Mash beans and then puree in blender with milk.  Melt chocolate and stir in butter and vanilla.  Stir these all together.  Work powdered sugar into mixture 1 cup at a time, turning mixture onto counter and kneading in final cup of sugar.  Add nuts if desired.  Pat into pan and refrigerate.

Comments:
Remember, I am not a fudge person.  

I made this fudge before one of my food storage classes on beans.  I knew pinto beans were in there, but I couldn't detect even a hint of pinto bean flavor or texture in the fudge, and I was definitely looking for it.  Of course, there is only half a cup of beans to four cups of sugar.  You could probably hide small amounts of lots of scary things in four cups of sugar.

The class members all loved it.  One of the ladies even made it two months later and brought it to another class for the ladies to try.  They all liked it as well.  

I brought the leftovers home and left them on the counter.  The girls all ate it.  

Is it gourmet fudge?  Hardly, you know, based on my extremely limited experience with fudge.  But I definitely wouldn't be embarrassed to take it to a dinner or party to share.   

Links to related posts:  
Tootsie Rolls   
Chocolate in the Prepper's Pantry 
Peanut Butter Play Dough 

For further reading:
https://www.geniuskitchen.com/recipe/pinto-bean-fudge-279612
https://www.justapinch.com/recipes/dessert/candy/pinto-bean-fudge.html
http://www.simplyscrumptiousbysarah.com/2013/04/14/dark-chocolate-pinto-bean-fudge/

Calories and Recommended Food Storage Amounts

"Store what you eat, and eat what you store" sounds good and reasonable.  Unfortunately, it's not so practical unless you never eat out and plan on the grocery store always being there to meet your needs for your baked goods, dairy products, and convenience foods.  But it sounds good on paper.
As preppers, we take self-reliance seriously, sometimes to the extent that we aren't willing even to entertain thoughts from experts in their fields.  Well, sure, you might go and buy this device because so-and-so recommended it, or learn that skill because it will always be in demand, and buy a zillion widgets so you have them for barter.  However, when it comes to food, for so many people good sense and reason fly right out the window.

For over a hundred years, leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have counseled their members to prepare for difficult times, whether personal or community- or nationwide, by having on hand at least a year's supply of food.  For those who wonder, only about 3-5% of Church members actually do this, and in my observation, I think that number is very generous.  I've posted before about the recommended amounts, but for quick review, here they are:

• Grains, 400 lbs; 
• Sugars, 60 lbs; 
• Legumes, 60 lbs; 
• Oils, 20 lbs; 
• Milk, 15 lbs; 
• Salt, 10 lbs.  

This is for one person for one year and provides a minimal number of calories.  Using this as a guideline for your storage, you will be hungry most of the time.  There is no allowance for waste if you burned dinner, or for being able to throw the flour away if you got bugs in it.  Or for throwing the milk away because you didn't store it properly and now it tastes bad.

So here you have very accomplished, well-educated individuals, many of whom are very well-versed in the amounts and kinds of food needed to sustain life.  Yes, the Church does have food for sale, so perhaps they have an agenda in wanting people to buy more.  Except that the food they sell in the Home Storage Centers costs far less than what is sold in grocery stores, so there's no profit motive for them.  They just want people to be prepared.  The storage amounts are already pretty low, and yet so many decide they know better than the experts and decide to store less.

And to be fair, while they are the experts on food storage in general, you are the expert on you.  And that needs to be considered as well.   Allergies and sensitivities to certain foods must be considered, as well as likes and dislikes.  If you've lived your life on convenience foods and garbage, the transition to whole wheat and beans may be a little rough.  Which is why the Church counsels their members to also have a three-month supply of foods they normally eat.

So even among those who claim to be prepared, there are very many who refuse to store what's needed. "We'll never eat that much (fill in the blank)." And they're right, as long as society holds together and we have grocery stores and restaurants, they never will.  If they are asked how often they buy salt or sugar or oil, they won't be able to answer because it's so infrequent.  Most families can make a salt container last a year or more.  They don't make cookies from scratch or deep fry any foods, so the sugar and oil last a long time, too.

But after TEOTWAWKI hits, it's going to be an entirely different affair.  Here's why:

• Baking and cooking from scratch.  A lot of salt is used in making bread and in cooking beans.  Bread also uses quite a bit of oil, and oil is used to saute otherwise unpalatable foods into something tasty.  Sugar will also be used a whole lot more.  Bear in mind that Americans today consume well over 100 pounds of sugar per year.  Subtracting 40 pounds per year is subtracting a lot of calories.  TEOTWAWKI is not the time to plan on losing weight.  That's going to happen regardless of what we do.
• And just what, exactly, is the big deal about these surplus calories?  Well, for one, calories are needed to maintain body temperature.  As was noted in the post on the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, the volunteers needed extra blankets, even in the summer, to keep warm.  The needs will be substantially greater in winter.
• During TEOTWAWKI, if we're just going to be lounging about all day, perhaps not so many calories will be needed.  Lounging around has a nice ring to it, but it's probably best to plan on becoming much more active.  Can you imagine asking a teenage boy to spend the day in heavy labor and then tell him he's going to have only 2,000 calories for the day?  That's not going to go over very well.
• Without adequate calories, our ability to work well with others is drastically diminished.  The Minnesota Starvation Experiment volunteers thought only about food all the time.  Even the most extroverted of them became introverts who lacked the patience to work well with others.  Some had to drop out of college because they could no longer think clearly.  And these were people who could have dropped out of the experiment at any time and ended the suffering.  I've got a wedding coming up in two months and feel the need to shed 10-15 pounds.  It should be quite doable.  And yet I am irritable with my family at a time when they and I know I can end it at any time and grab something to eat.  How significantly worse will it be when people do not know where their next meal is coming from?  That will be bad.

Now back to not listening to the experts in food storage.  Those amounts are calculated to provide for basic nutritional and health needs.  So what happens when the more enlightened individuals decide they just won't eat that much sugar?  Have they calculated how many calories are in sugar?  How many buckets of wheat and beans it will take to compensate for the calories lost in storing less sugar?  With sugar, you're really only compensating for the loss in calories.  But what about oil?  Yes, there are a lot of calories in oil, but oil also provides the fat necessary for our bodies to function properly.  Cut back too much on the fat and you're in for some serious mental and physical problems.

And as for salt, well, people had better stick with the recommended minimums for that as well.  Iodized salt prevents mental retardation in children and prevents diminished mental capacity in adults as well.  Our bodies need iodine.  Our bodies also need sodium. Without adequate levels, we are going to have problems.

Links to related posts:
Minnesota Starvation Experiment
Where Do I Begin? What Exactly Do I Store? 

Dietary Deficiencies and Consequences--Carbohydrate

Actually, a lack of carbohydrate in the diet is extremely rare, even among the impoverished. This condition should be non-existent among any who call themselves preppers, because carbohydrate sources are the least expensive foods. Grains store for twenty to thirty or more years, even without oxygen absorbers.   Fruit and vegetable carbohydrate sources grow rather easily in gardens.
Carbohydrates are the high octane fuel that the central nervous system wants for optimal performance. Carbohydrates, like protein, have four calories per gram.  However, unlike protein, carbohydrates are needed to digest fat completely. In the absence of carbohydrates, fat breakdown is incomplete, and the waste product is ketones. This causes a condition called ketosis, which can cause nausea among other things. Carbohydrates play a valuable role in sparing protein and preventing ketosis.  Furthermore, a low carbohydrate diet may make people fatigued, irritable, and lethargic.

What carbohydrate does is to protect protein so that it is available for building tissue. When carbohydrate intake is insufficient, protein gets broken down and used in its place, and nowhere near as efficiently. Why is this? Because protein can serve as a source of carbohydrate if carbohydrate intake is too low.

Carbohydrates should comprise 50% of the diet for most people. The best healthy carbohydrate sources are whole grains, fruits, and vegetables.  Whole grains (and enriched white rice) are the staff of life.  They're so cheap right now (though the prices are rising) and so easily produced by farmers, and so very difficult to grow ourselves in the quantities needed by a family to sustain themselves, that we should not skimp on storage space for these items.  Remember, 400 pounds per person per year is the minimum recommended amount for surviving.  Add another 50-100 pounds if you want to be satisfied, and not hungry.

Of course, really good sources of carbohydrate are most fruits and many vegetables.  Vegetables and berries are fairly easy to grow, but trees take time to start producing.  Less healthy sources of carbohydrate are sugars like sugar (granulated, brown, powdered), honey, molasses, corn syrup, maple syrup, Jell-O, drink mix, and hot chocolate mix.  They add variety to the diet and aren't generally too expensive.  They're simple to stockpile now, and with the exception of honey and maple syrup, a whole lot more difficult to produce later.  The minimum amount of sugar to store per person per year is sixty pounds, and again, that's for someone who will be alive, but always hungry.

Related posts:
Dietary Deficiency--Fat 
Dietary Imbalance--Fiber
Dietary Deficiency--Protein 

© 2019, PrepSchoolDaily.blogspot.com  

5 march 2023

The Medicinal Uses of Sugar

Disclaimer.  I am not a licensed health practitioner.  This is just another post on an item you might wish to have available if needed so that a physician can treat you and your family as best as possible.  No medication, including those available over the counter, should be taken without consulting a physician.  Information shared here is for educational and entertainment purposes only.  It is not medical advice nor a substitute for licensed medical care.  A qualified, licensed physician or other medical provider should be consulted before beginning any herbal or conventional treatment.

Here we are on Christmas Eve; our society still hasn't totally collapsed.  Yeah!!  With any luck, as you and your children and grandchildren go to sleep, you'll all have visions of sugar plums dancing in your heads.

However, after celebrating the birth of our Savior, when it's time to return to the daily grind and learn and prepare more, hopefully you'll remember the little tidbit of information shared here today.

Sugar, regular white granulated sugar, has a clinically researched and proven medical use.  The study came about because an African physician working in a hospital in the UK noticed several patients for whom conventional drug therapy had failed to treat acute and chronic exuding wounds.  And he wondered why the treatment he had seen his tribal doctor grandfather use in Africa was not being employed here.  Didn't everybody know about using sugar to treat such wounds?

Apparently, such knowledge had been long forgotten in a world where we have lots of money and can afford expensive drug therapies.  Unfortunately, some of those very expensive antibiotic therapies are failing the fight against MRSA.  Sugar, however, has been shown to work.

If you have a wound, such as a diabetic ulcer on the legs or feet or a burn or cut, you can apply sugar to it.  If you apply some and it immediately soaks up the fluid in the wound, apply more until you still have some dry sugar on top.  Apply a non-adherent bandage and secure in place.  Change the dressing every other day.  Do not wash away or remove the old sugar when changing the dressing; that will also remove the very delicate new tissue that is forming.  Just add more sugar on top.  Keep doing this until the wound is healed.

In the case of a large wound, you may wish to put a ring of petroleum jelly around the edges to better contain the sugar.

So why does sugar work here?  Well, there are a couple of reasons.  First, the sugar draws the fluid in the tissue out, keeping it dry and better able to heal.  Second, it creates an acidic environment, which is very hostile to bacteria.  Third, it also helps relieve pain, which contributes to greater sense of well-being in the patient and less stress in the body.  

(This research was conducted using granulated sugar in the UK.  In the United States, well over 90% of sugar beets are GMO.  You may wish to use only cane sugar.)

Our personal experience with using sugar to treat a wound is ongoing.  About a month ago, one of my daughter's French angora rabbits somehow got some fiber wrapped around his back leg and pulled tight.  By the time my daughter discovered this, he had chewed off hair and skin, we assume in an effort to relieve the pain associated with having the blood supply constricted.  Everything around his foot and up to an inch above his ankle was completely gone.  Because we couldn't ascertain the extent to which his circulation had been compromised, my husband and I gave him less than a 1% chance of survival.  Surely infection would set in.

We discussed options with our daughter, who of course was feeling horrible, it was all her fault, etc.  Coal didn't seem to be in pain, as long as we didn't touch that leg.  We could try to treat him, but we were sure he wouldn't make it.  Did she want to try?  She did.

We tried honey, once.  Honey and angora rabbits aren't a good mix anyway, and it was hard to get the honey on his foot without hurting him.  Next we tried a mixture of usnea, juniper, and yarrow.  In retrospect, I think I should have applied more than I did.  We had a hard time getting the wound powder to stay with the wound, even with bandaging.  During this entire time, the bunny was getting fresh greens from the yard, until hard freezes killed them, as well as usnea tincture in his water.  Rabbits are extremely sensitive and conventional antibiotics often do more harm than good.  Some healing was occurring, miraculously, but it also smelled bad--not gangrene bad, but still bad.

About eight days ago, we decided to try sugar.  That was the ticket.  We poured it on as best we could, trying to cover all sides.  We decided it was easier to dip his foot in a bowl of sugar.  The smell dissipated almost immediately.  We think healing has accelerated.  We're pretty sure he's going to make it.

(Update:  I write my blog posts about a month in advance.  I so wish we had taken pictures of Coal's foot and leg from the beginning, but I didn't think there was a point.  There was no way this bunny was going to survive.  However, survive he did and is doing.  I now think he had chewed off all his skin and was left with nothing but muscle and bone when we began treatment.  Today, seven or eight weeks after his injury, he has almost all his skin grown back.  And it's growing hair as well.  I'm still blown away by that.  I figured even if skin did grown back it would all be scar tissue and no hair at all.  He still has a few bandage changes in his future before he is fully healed, but man, what a difference.  I'm amazed.) 

(And another update:  That bunny lived another two years, until dying of old age.)

Below, I pasted in the link to the article as well the pertinent portions of the abstract.  I encourage you to read it.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21647066

Use of granulated sugar therapy in the management of sloughy or necrotic wounds: a pilot study.

Murandu M¹, Webber MA, Simms MH, Dealey C.

In the in vitro studies three types of granulated sugar (Demerara, granulated beet sugar and granulated cane sugar) were tested to determine their minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) against 18 Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria in a micro-titre broth dilution assay; growth inhibition of Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa in different concentrations of sugar (0.38-25%) was also tested over 12-hours in an agar diffusion assay. The pilot clinical study selected patients from a vascular surgical ward and a vascular outpatient department. All had acute or chronic exuding wounds, some of which were infected. White granulated sugar was applied to the wounds. The following parameters were assessed: surface area; wound characteristics including pain, malodour, appearance (slough/granulation); exudate level; pain level and bacterial load. Patients with diabetes had their blood sugar levels checked daily. All patients completed a short health questionnaire at the start and end of the study. Staff completed a satisfaction questionnaire at the end of the study. The study period was 21 days.

In vitro tests demonstrated that sugar inhibits bacterial growth. All three types of sugars had MICs ranging from 6-25% in the bacterial strains tested. The diffusion tests showed that strains were able to grow well in low concentrations of sugar but were completely inhibited in higher concentrations. The two granulated sugars were found to be slightly more effective than Demerara sugar, so the latter was excluded from the clinical pilot study. Twenty-two patients (20 inpatients and two outpatients) with sloughy or necrotic wounds were recruited into the clinical study. Two patients had MRSA and two had Staphylococcus colonisation at baseline. Blood sugar levels remained stable in the seven patients with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus. All wounds were clean/debrided in a mean of 11.13 days. Pain and malodour reduced markedly. Patient and staff surveys revealed overwhelming support for the sugar therapy.

The pilot study achieved its aim of developing a protocol for a RCT. Preliminary data suggest that sugar is an effective wound cleansing and is safe to use in patients with insulin-dependent diabetes. In vitro studies demonstrate that sugar inhibits bacterial growth.

© 2019, PrepSchoolDaily.blogspot.com 

20 november 2022

22 september 2019