Skilled Urban Survivor

Archive for the ‘Frugal living’ Category

The Scouts are coming over next week to learn how to make beef jerky for their camping and hiking trips next summer. Anyone who has made the stuff knows that it isn’t a one step, one hour affair, so I’ve been preparing by making some ahead of time so that they’ll get to go home with the finished jerky.

A friend donated some old elk that had been sitting in his freezer for a while. Like giving grand kids good expensive ice cream, the Scouts aren’t going to care if their jerky is a little freezer burned or old, they’ll like anything that smells remotely like the stuff.

Actually I created kind of a reputation for my smoked jerky and myself. I showed up at a girls’ camp a few years ago with my jerky. I’ve been making it for almost 40 years and have developed some skills along the way. When their brothers found out about the treat at girl’s camp, they wanted some too. Ever since they’ve been calling me jerky man. Elk isn’t the only thing I smoke. I’ve found that smoking is an excellent way to get rid of last year’s trout. It doesn’t last long when I constantly have a bag in my brief case to share with who ever happens to be around.

So when the scouts come over on Wednesday, they’ll learn the fine art of cutting away the fat, so all that you end up with are nice long strips of good meat. The first step in making good jerky.

Marinating comes next. My marinade recipe changes from what I have on hand. It always has a soy sauce base. With onion and garlic salt, and paprika from my Hungarian forefathers. A good trick I learned is to freeze the marinade between batches of meat. I never mix meat and fish. The tastes just don’t mingle. I don’t throw it away until I’ve used it a few times, and it lowers the overall cost.

Then I lay the marinated strips on the drying racks overnight. Letting them get a good glaze from the overnight set, makes for a softer, chewier jerky.

After they’ve set at least 8 hours or so, they go into my smoker. My wife does a lot of dehydrating, and has the best there is, but the smoker adds that extra flavor you just can’t get from drying them out. I use an electric smoker, plugged into a power switch in my garage. The smell is really too strong for the house. In the summer time, when it sits out on the deck, all the neighbors are probably wondering who is barbequing at 2:00 AM. Depending on when I start the jerky, is when it gets to smoking. That’s why sometimes it’s going at that time.

Jerky, whether beef, elk or trout is a great survival food. You don’t have to have a smoker, or a dehydrator, or even an oven. An old car, sitting in the sun, makes a great place to dry food, as the inside temperature stays hot and it keeps the bugs and flies off. Pulling all the moisture out of meat makes it last without a refrigerator. When you make it yourself, you are controlling the salt and sugar in the final product, and it doesn’t have any of those nasty artificial preservatives in it. The actual drying and salting process through the marinade are the preservatives. Making your own jerky is a good and easy project that will help  you be more prepared for whatever might happen in the future.

Here’s a good marinade recipe:
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup salt
2 cups soy sauce
1 cup water
1 cup red wine (we used grape juice)
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp Tabasco sauce
Place fat trimmed and sliced meat in cool brine for 8 hours or overnight. Remove meat and allow to air dry 4-6 hours. Then place in smoker 12-16 hours.

My smoker is a Little Chief. I’ve had it forever and it still works great. Here’s a link for one just like mine, plus the chips you put in the bottom for the campground flavor. 

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Got this from my mother-in-law in an email. Too good not to share. Applys to small towns too.

Listen up City Slickers!

1. Pull your droopy pants up. You look like an idiot.

2. Turn your cap right, your head isn’t crooked.

3. Let’s get this straight; it’s called a ‘dirt road.’ I drive a pickup truck because I want to. No matter how slow you drive, you’re going to get dust on your Lexus. Drive it or get out of the way.

4. They are cattle. They’re live steaks. That’s why they smell funny to you. But they smell like money to us. Get over it. Don’t like it? I-80 goes North and South, I-84 goes East and West. Pick one.

5. So you have a $60,000 car. We’re impressed. We have $350,000 combines that are driven only 3 weeks a year.

6. So every person in rural Utah waves. It’s called being friendly. Try to understand the concept.

7. If that cell phone rings while an 8-point buck and 3 does are coming in, we WILL shoot it out of your hand. You better hope you don’t have it up to your ear at the time.

8. Yeah, we eat tater’s, gravy, beans and cornbread. You really want sushi and caviar? It’s available at Jim’s bait shop.

9. The ‘Opener’ refers to the first day of deer season. It’s religious holiday held the closest Saturday to the first of November.

10. We open doors for women. That is applied to all women, regardless of age.

11. No, there’s no ‘vegetarian special’ on the menu. Order steak. Or you can order the Chef’s Salad and pick off the 2 pounds of ham & turkey.

12. When we fill out a table, there are three main dishes: meats, vegetables, and breads. We use three seasonings – salt, pepper, and ketchup. Oh, yeah… We don’t care what you folks in California call that stuff you eat … IT AIN’ T REAL CHILI!!

13. You bring ‘coke’ into my house, it better be brown, wet and served over ice.

14. You bring ‘Mary Jane’ into my house, she better be cute, know how to shoot, drive a truck, and have long hair.

15. College and high school football are as important here as the Lakers and the Clippers… and more fun to watch.

16. Yeah, we have golf courses. But don’t hit the water hazards — it spooks the fish.

17. Colleges? We have them all. We have State Universities , Community Colleges, and Vo-tech’s. They come outta there with an education plus a love for God and country , and they still wave at everybody when they come for the holidays.

18. Turn down that blasted car stereo! That thumpity-thump crap ain’t music, anyway. We don’t want to hear it anymore than we want to see your boxers. Refer back to #1.

19. Four inches of snow isn’t a blizzard – it’s a flurry. Drive in it like you got some sense, and DON’T take all our bread, milk, and bleach from the grocery stores. This ain’t Alaska . Worst case you may have to live a whole day without croissants. The pickups with snowplows will have you out the next day.

20.By the way…. if you want to talk to God in Utah , it’s a local call.

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What I often found under the tree when I was a kid

I remember when I was a kid, my list for Santa was minimal, if it even existed. I knew my parents were poor, (though they weren’t as poor as they implied). Filling the Christmas lists of four kids would have taken a lot of money that they didn’t have. So I didn’t ask for or expect a lot. Socks, underwear, new pajamas, a bag of army men, a can of Lincoln logs and I was happy. To order a new bike or a microscope or anything that cost over ten bucks would never have happened. But kids today, wanting the latest in video games and players, or snowboards and boots, personal phones and services, would scoff at the presents I received as a kid, even for stocking stuffers. With our large family our Christmas order filling has always been pretty modest. I remember one really broke Christmas, when I had been without a job for over a year, that the older kids chipped in together to play Santa Claus for the little ones. That Christmas, despite being broke, is one that really stands in my list of memorable holidays. Like many families this year, our purse strings are a little slack. So how are we going to tackle gifts this Christmas? The kids always draw names for each other and they will probably do that again. But grandma and grandpa always buy for everybody, kids and grand kids alike. My wife has always been a smart shopper and she shines at Christmas time. We used to buy heavily at a local over runs store, but the place has gone out of business. We have been on a desperate search for other bargain spots. We know a few in our neck of the woods, but that doesn’t translate to where you live. Ross Department stores have pretty good deals. If you are over 55, Tuesday club gives you an automatic 10% off. Take some time to do some online searching, using the words, close-out stores, liquidation stores, and overstock. Whether you end up buying directly off the web, or you can find a physical store in your area, closeouts are a great way to trim your Christmas budget. Another great way to find bargains at Christmas time is to shop the ads. Traditionally Black Friday always has good deals, but I avoid shopping that day like the plague. As the season rolls on, shopping the weekly ads may help you find the same bargains that came out on Black Friday, but without the headaches and crowds. Making gifts is another way to save money and still enjoy gift exchanges. Make sure however that you don’t spend more for materials than you could buy the item ready made. Look at all the supplies you have lying around and see what you can make from them. Thrift and second hand stores have bikes and other outdoor play things that may just need a little bit of restoration to make them almost new. Look on Craigslist and other online classifieds to find slightly used items. Sometimes you can get them for free.With a little cleaning and fixing these things may be almost good as new. If you are looking for ideas for homemade Christmas gift ideas, try www.homemadeforchristmas.com. This is my wife’s site and it has lots of unique and interesting homemade gift ideas. Service is another good gift to give. Offer to baby-sit weekly for your son or daughter so they can go out and not have to pay a sitter. If your wife is anything like mine, volunteering for a month’s worth of dishes might be the best present you could ever give her. The most important thing to remember with this gift buying and giving is to make a budget and stick with it. Try to make your gifts full of thought, and short on cash. Given in the right way, nobody will really care how much you spend on a gift, except maybe your teenagers and they’ll grow out of it someday.

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