Thursday 28/05/15
Welcome back to part three of Food Prepping. I hope you have done the homework I've assigned you, because those minor tasks will help you with your planning.
The food you will build up in your emergency supplies will come under two categories:
- Ready to eat. This is self-explanatory; it is any food that requires no preparation and can be eaten "as is". This includes almost any food in a can. Most canned food probably requires heating prior to eating; but in an emergency, you can eat it straight from the tin.
- Other ingredients. This covers all other food in your emergency supply, such as rice, pasta, and flour. This is food that you need to prepare (like pasta), or something you use as an ingredient to make food with (such as flour). Because you need to do something to make these ingredients edible, I strongly advise memorising a few basic recipes that you can use while camping or if you have to rough-it during an emergency situation.
Knowing a few basic recipes will dictate what sort of food you purchase for your emergency food supplies. There's no point buying ingredients you have no idea how to use. A relatively simple Australian camping favourite is damper. Trust me, having access to fresh bread during difficult times will help bolster the morale of your group.
Damper
(Before you start mixing ingredients, your first step will be to build a fire, then let it burn down until you have coals – lots of coals. You will be cooking in these, not the flames)
Ingredients:
3 cups Self-raising flour
1 pinch Salt
1 Tablespoon Milk powder
2 teaspoons Sugar
½ cup Water
Method:
- Put all the dry ingredients into a bowl and mix them together.
- Mix the water through the dry ingredients.
- Sprinkle a handful of flour onto a clean work surface. Cover your hands in flour too.
- Tip the dough onto your floured surface. Kneed by hand until you make a soft ball of dough. If the mixture is sticky add a little more flour, the dough should hold together well without breaking up.
- If you have cooking spray, spray the inside of your camp oven.
- Liberally dust the inside of your camp oven with flour.
- Put dough in your camp oven and cut a cross across the surface of your dough.
- Using a shovel, put your camp oven in the coals, and cover the top with coals for approximately 30 minutes.
- Using your shovel, retrieve your camp oven from the coals after.
- Tip damper onto your clean work surface.
- When the damper is cooked, tap the top of the loaf with your knife handle. It should sound hollow. Serve with jam or honey (or with stew).
This is only one example of something you can make with the dry ingredients from your emergency food supplies. Once again, I will pause this topic until next Thursday. Your homework this week is to look for a simple recipe that you can cook under primitive conditions, with a minimum of fuss and a minimum of ingredients.