Learning + Tutorials

Having long to medium-term food reserves can be a tricky subject for those of us who grew up relying on a refrigerator and mom going grocery shopping every week, or Dominos *cough* Pizza.

There is a simple and easy way to store months worth of food at home without purchasing freeze-dried foods (although we have those too, most with a 25 year shelf life!)

All it takes is a brake bleeder vacuum pump, some jars, a Foodsaver and Tattler lids.

So many of us have become accustomed to having a cheap and nearly unlimited supply of electrical power available to us 24-7 that when a power outage happens, it becomes a disruptive event.

Short term outages of only a few hours or so are usually easy enough to handle, but what if the power doesn't come back for days, or weeks?

There are plenty of things you can do ahead of time to ensure that you can cope with an extended power outage without a majorly detrimental impact on your way of life.

For most of us, having access to electrical power has become so second nature that we hardly give it a thought. It's so abundant to be almost free, and there are lots of places all around to plug in your cell phone when it runs out of juice.

But if the grid goes down for a long period of time, or you need to charge your devices on the move, then you need to consider sources of portable power if you are serious about prepping.