This hardy New England Gal never blinked at Y2k. Now as the nation faces a DEPRESSION, she's googling every miso soup mix online.--Instant soups, things you can stir into water, which get STORED EASILY & which are nutritional.
It strikes her as necessary to maintain her vegan-no milk-no-dairy lifestyle, with proteins & to find store-able stuff to eat just in case bombs drop, terrorists strike, citizens are living in the streets after quakes for weeks on end, breaking into markets at night, with recession-caused rioting and food trucks are hijacked at city's edge or there are curfews and nobody can wait in a market with 200 people at each register. My immediate family members and I have gone through all the above and if you include gramps, that entailed being strafed by Nazis from bombers overhead as my grandparents walked country roads with knapsacks on their backs. (They leapt into the ditches). So genetically I can explain my interest in survivalism.
My sensitivity to the issues has made me investigate what 'storeable foods are. The good ones have a tsp. of the most delicious item, powdered bonito fish. All Japanese soup mixes depend on this yummy component. The problem is that each envelope costs a buck or two! What will you do with multiple mouths to feed? Think about that. Depressions last for years. Who wants to pay two bucks for a cup of hot soup?
The better solution would be that old axiom, give
the man a fishing rod! 
Give
him lessons in surf fishing, pier fishing (where bonito are,) and get a
huge freezer and fill it with frozen fresh bonito, and every other kind
of fish. Then, teach family fly fishing in fresh water. Shore fishing is
for salt water species. All kinds of FISHING would be a survival tool that
trumps all the pantry hoarding that anyone could do, and it's an incredible
adventure. SEE FISHING
HOLE.
Cautious
planning and study, buying the tools (in this case rods, line, hooks,)
and starting to practice the art of providing food for the table would
make Apocalypse or Depression a lead pipe cinch. You can argue all you
want that what really makes survival easy is a l00 lb bag of silver quarters,
I still want a freezer full of fish. If you have quarters, you can pay
someone else to fish for you Maybe you would rather have silver money than
fish, but I wouldn't. I'd clean houses to get taken along to the shore
and I probably will have to as I don't drive any more.
But I'll certainly be seeking these solutions
rather than spend 44$ for 20 tiny envelopes of cuppa soup mix! I'd
spent my 44$ on fishing tackle and gasoline to get to nearby lakes and
shores. So if I had a bag of silver quarters, I'd use it for Colombian
coffee, sugar, salt, toilet paper, the only things I really ever need to
buy.
But if you want to LEARN to make your own soup mixes in case WWIII gets here a little before you expect and get pantry full of soup mix jars, click on that URL. Next, on a regular basis, fill your freezer with your garden produce. In tomato/basil summer, create the jars of tomato sauce that will make your pulse, beans, lentils tasty.
In the pantry, create a barrel of wheatberries to make your own bread but in your scramble to get stuff you recognize as edible, don't forget fishing tackle! A garage sale 5$ pole would be a starter kit, spools of filament line. Keep fresh line at all times. Every few yrs, sell the old and get new spool of line. Start reading up on FISHING. TITLES OF BOOKS ON THIS SUBJECT. Now, with those titles in hand, ( print out the list) go find the books at abebooks for a buck! (Click on URL as it's about a cheap method to get books from dealers.)
NEXT, study those FREE, online FISHING tutorials. This is a great one on FRESH WATER fishing, lakes, streams. http://www.rei.com/online/store/LearnShareDetailArticlesList?categoryId=Fishing&url=rei/learn/fish/clstreamersf.jsp
There are illustrated, free ONLINE manuals everywhere. Google terms like "freshwater + salt water fishing"
FRESH
WATER fishing is done off river or lake banks. SALT WATER FISHING
can be done by wading out into the surf in summer and casting into seaweed
outside of surf line. Standing on rocks isn't always safe. I've done it
but the 7th wave can nail you. I've heard of pro rock fishermen killed.
Haven't seen it, but read about it in my local newspapers. Rocks are great
at low tide for MUSSELS, which folks say are delicious if you observe the
rule not to eat them in months with no R in them. May to August, watch
it. And if you watch the low tide charts in daily newspaper, go clamming.
Send the kiddies into a very low tide beach sand area and they can use
hands, making lazy circles or use a shovel to extract clams. Google 'clamming.'
TAKE ME TO THE ARTICLE ON CLAMMING!
WOW, I ENJOYED THAT! Honey warm
up the Buick, we're going to the BEACH!
Kids, grab the rake!
LAST
and most exciting, go to a scuba shop and get each of your boys a HAWAIIAN
SLING. It's a wide rubber band bracelet type sling the boy wears on the
wrist and he fits the tail of a short spear into it which has a pointed
tip. Pull the spear back and the 'arrow' shoots out straight and fast and
goes right through the fish. Get out of the water with the fish fast. My
boys did very well with these things but then California has CORBINA in
the surf right in the breaking waves. This fish eats the sand bugs
dislodged by the surf.
man she has our number!
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