Making Beans and Rice More Interesting

Dried beans and rice together make a full protein so that is why it is a wonderful idea to collect as many recipes as possible. This is especially true if you are canning the beans and rise. Many survivalists pressure can for storage in case of an emergency. The cost-per-meal to get a dish so nourishing is very cheap.

Alternatively you can make differently spiced beans and rice dishes with spices, canned tomatoes and other goods that you also have stored away in your emergency pantry.

For instance to make tasty Cajun Beans and Rice all you need to add is garlic, onion, celery and Cajun seasoning. However if you have some canned sausage or dried jerky you can also add that and make a very tasty meal. A can of corn, green chiles or tomatoes can make it into quite an amazing ethnic dish. In fact when you mix tomatoes, garlic, onions, peppers, corn and chili it is called Spanish rice and beans.

A similar recipe is Creole rice and beans which is carrots, peppers and lots of dried parsley and onion added to the rice and beans along with a touch of Creole seasoning.

To Make Cuban style rice and beans cook them with onions, garlic, cumin, marjoram, and a bit of canned pork, black beans and some dried fruit. Dried mango or papaya is best. If you do not have dried fruit you can add a touch of mango chutney.

Beet Rice and Beans can be made with canned beats and canned sweet potatoes. Add a little vinegar and oil to make an amazing salad. You can also add canned spinach to this mix to make it even more nutritious. This is a sweet dish that can be a nice break from the usual fare.

Another sweeter dish is oil, rice, reconstituted Tang, rising and a bit of fresh parsley. This makes flavorful orange rice that is a bit more unusual.

You can also make an Italian style rice and bean dish by adding tomato paste, white beans, dried garlic and onion, Italian herbs and pepper to the mix. Dried jerky can also help flavor this type of dish.

You can also make the traditional Mexican black beans and rice with canned or jar peppers, dried garlic and onion, cumin, a bay leave, some red wine vinegar, sugar and olive oil.

In essence you can create new flavors with any spice seasoning mix that is on hand. All it takes is a bit of soya sauce and ginger to make rice and beans taste a little more oriental.

Survival

Tips From the Past for Preserving Food

In the times of the Old Frontier there were no freezers so people were quite clever when it comes to preserving meat. You can take cures from them for preserving meat in the event of an emergency where there is no real way of keeping things cold.

The main way the old pioneers kept meat preserved was to pickle it. They would salt the flesh to draw out the blood and then make brine in a barrel. The meat would then be filled with brine. The meat was then rinsed when it was pulled back out of the barrel.

Hams are quite easy to cure. They are put in barrels of brine for only a few days and then smoked over a fire. This type of preservation is called cold smoking. You simply need a metal container that contains the smoke from a fire and another wooden container that is airtight and can hold smoke. A pipe moves smoke from the container and flows it into the smokehouse. Smoked hams can keep a very long time. Even today at farmer’s markets you can buy a ham that is over ten years old.

If you want to store bacon then it will keep if stored in airtight containers packed with lard. The lard is thick and blocks oxygen from getting to the meat. This way the meat is not ruined.

Similarly, I found in my research there is some evidence that packing eggs in finely ground cornmeal will preserve them for some amount of time. I’m not too sure about that one.

If you want to try and preserve eggs you might try making the Asian Century Egg method. You put the egg in a brine of salt, calcium hydroxide, and sodium carbonate for 10 days followed by several weeks of aging while wrapped in plastic. The eggs turn black but they are actually a delicacy.

If you want to refrigerate meat like our Paleolithic ancestors did you would pack meat and rocks in an animal’s intestines, tie of the ends and then attach a long cord. The intestines would them be dropped into a deep lake or pond. The cold water twenty feet or so down basically acts to make the meat as cold as possible.

Of course one way to survive is to simply grow things that are very storable when dry like corns, beans, peas, quinoa and sunflower seeds.