Food Storage for the Clueless
Food Storage for the Clueless
by: Clark L. and Kathy H. Kidd
These authors are brilliant and experienced, but like many food storage books, prone to over emphasizing their opinions. The book is a thick, discussion oriented book with no pictures relative to food storage survival, and has a disorganized placement of recipes and charts. The charts and recipes are superb and show years of time experimenting, but they are scattered randomly throughout the book.
From the beginning of the book, the trend of thought to buy a bunch of #10 cans to have as a stock pile for food storage is highly discouraged. The authors suggest storing what you’ll eat and rotate through, arguing against those who have buckets and buckets of wheat but don’t know how they’ll use it, or if they’ll develop allergy’s. The authors spend the majority of the first chapter and parts of the book arguing against this trend of thought.
There is a good discussion on canning, the definitions, the health benefits, tips, and recipes. Also, there is a long chapter for freezing and dehydrating food. The authors are advocates for having a second freezer or refrigerator, to provide more space for spare meats and vegetables. Objective information is provided on the best food storage methods, and the freezing method is given quite a bit of consideration.
There is a brief discussion on non-food emergency preparedness followed by food rotation, storing food, and disaster scenarios. The chapter on sprouting is in depth, but merges immediately with sourdough starts, recipes, and yogurt making tips and recipes.
The charts include; 1 year food storage plan, buying food storage at 5 dollars a week (one of the most ingenious charts available), altitude boiling chart, juice extraction, foods that don’t freeze well, preparing fruits and vegetables for the freezer, dipping solutions, dehydration of your fruit and vegetables, sprouting tables, shelf life table, and a bread troubleshooting guide.
One of the most valuable sections is the recipe section for basic items such as mustard, cottage cheese, mayo, powdered sugar and etc. The charts and recipes were the most useful and valuable parts of the book. For a beginner a more condensed book with similar charts and recipes might be best. However, there is a lot of information, if the reader finds a good deal on one of these books.
