Prepped Living Blog

The Prepped Living Gift Guide is finally here! Each year we focus on long-lasting, useful gifts for those you love. These are gifts that give year after year, contributing to your preparedness plan, your good health, or both. Gifts for Everyone Pendleton Wool Blanket for the Bed Wool is unique in its ability to provide warmth even when wet. For this reason, we recommend that each person in your family have a wool blanket in their emergency supplies. We keep our wool blanket on our bed year-round because wool is also known for its temperature regulation capabilities. It keeps us just the right temperature whether it is summer or winter. Pendleton blankets are an investment, but they have a quality you can depend on for durability and longevity. We bought our camp blanket fifteen years ago, and it still looks as fresh as the day we bought it. It has definitely been a worthwhile investment. Personal Wool Throw This throw blanket is the perfect size for camping, outdoor fires, and emergenc...

We have  previously   posted about canning bone broth and have mentioned the usefulness of having prepared meals. Today we want to talk about canning meat or meals containing meat. First, let me say that meat, as with any low-acid food, requires pressure canning to be safe to eat.  This post contains affiliate links. As an affiliate, we may earn from qualifying purchases. Each purchase helps to keep this blog running. Thank you for your support! Why should you can meat? Quick Meals Canned meats provide a great base for a quick, easy meal. If you have a busy day and forgot to take out meat for dinner, just pull a jar off the shelf to make a quick meal. Healthy Meals Have you ever read the ingredients on the cans of store-bought meat? Some brands have a lot of preservatives. Canning your own meat provides you with a flavorful, preservative-free protein. Preparedness Having a shelf-stable protein is a great idea for preparedness. If the electricity goes out or your freeze...

Disclaimer - This blog post contains affiliate links for your convenience. As an affiliate, I may earn from qualifying purchases. Purchasing through these links is optional, but each purchase helps to keep our blog going. Thank you for your support! Backstory Our family really enjoys coffee. We have a small selection of methods to make coffee - both electric and non-electric. We have an electric coffee maker, a French press, an AeroPress, and a camp stove percolator. We enjoy grinding our beans for the freshest coffee, so we have a couple of options for that as well. Our electric grinder is a quality hand-me-down from a favorite cousin. Our hand grinder was a gift from me to Husband one year. I did a lot of research to find a nice, durable grinder with metal parts that could be taken apart and cleaned ( this 1Zpresso grinder  is the updated version of the one we have). We are satisfied that our coffee-making options are pretty well covered. Our only challenge is that coffee beans d...

As most of you know, both Husband and I grew up in households with very modest incomes. Our grandparents were either farmers or ranchers. They grew and preserved a lot of their food. Our parents continued this by canning, hunting, and gardening through much of our childhood. We carry on the tradition of growing and preserving food for many reasons: We know our food is healthy, it helps keep our grocery budget affordable, and it allows us to build up a pantry for lean times.  Tomatoes and jalapenos for hot sauce; calendula, comfrey, and parsley to dry Health issues have pushed us to branch out and learn to do even more projects ourselves in an effort to further reduce the toxins in our food and environment. Some of these projects can be enjoyed right away, like canned sauces, fruits, vegetables, and meats. We had been canning off and on throughout the summer and now have a nice variety of items in the pantry to enjoy in the months to come.  Canned hot sauce and tomatoes for the...

This past week we canned organic apple-pear juice. A friend of ours invited us over to pick apples and pears from their fruit trees a couple of weeks ago. We filled two five-gallon buckets with fruit and returned home to let the pears finish ripening. When everything was ripe and we had the time, we washed the fruit, sliced it, cut out the blemishes, then put it in the canner/juicer.  A bucket of pears and apples It took four batches, but we ended up with seven quarts of apple-pear juice. Ten gallons made seven quarts! 🫣 Juice from two different batches of apples and pears   Note: This newsletter contains affiliate links. Purchasing through these links helps support our website and blog at no cost to you. Thank you for your support. We are fortunate to have a steamer/canner/juicer that my mom handed down to us. It uses steam to release the juice from the fruit. If you have everything sterilized, all you need to do is fill the jars once the juice is ready, attach the lids and...

We finally did it! We made homemade soap! I had been really nervous about it due to the causticity of the lye, but youngest daughter came over one afternoon and we braved the experiment together. Overall, it was a good experience, though I did have a big mishap. I didn't get the lid to the lye container screwed on tight enough, and when I picked it up (by the lid, of course 🙄), it fell, tipped over, and spilled half its contents. This became a learning opportunity on how to best neutralize lye pellets. I am slowly making my way through neutralizing half a container of now-dirty lye pellets (I was mixing the lye-water solution outside to better vent the fumes and had to sweep them up, dirt and all). 😂  For our first experiment, we followed the recipe and directions from  The Soapmaker's Companion , a book we had sitting on the shelf waiting for the moment when I would finally try soap making. We used the recipe for the Soap Essentials Bar II (p. 18 in my copy) and added lemon...