How to use 'em, keep 'em well-maintained, etc. while you’re rewilding.
Also how to cook without an oven, stovetop, electricity, etc.
I really want to learn to slow cook in a stone lined grass & sedge sealed earth covered pit!
The Buckeyes are placed in the conventional stone lined baking pit which has first been made hot with a fire; they are then covered over with earth and allowed to steam for several hours,until the nuts have acquired the consistency of boiled potatoes. They may then either be sliced placed in a basket and soaked in running water for from two to five days ( depending on the thinness of the slices), or mashed and rubbed up with water into a paste (the thin skin being incidentally separated by this process) and afterwards soaked from one two ten hours in a sand filter, the water as it drains away conveying with it the noxious principle. It was customary to eat the resultant mass cold and without salt."The use of the phrase “conventional stone lined baking pit” reminds me most primitives knew how to use this and cooked the vast majority of there meat that way plus other hard to digest items like nuts and camas.
You could cook a lot of things this way (even things that you don’t need to cook but which taste good that way, like roasted veggies).
Big bags of beans and rice. Forget about almost all of the exotic (expensive)natural food store stuff. People all over the world who live on next to nothing, eat beans and rice, and strength and endurance wise could kick the ass of most any N. American.
As far as untensiles, get a pressure cooker for your beans and they won’t take forever to cook.
Yeah, I’ve got a lifetime supply of beans and rice, beans take so long to cook tho -_- (don’t have a pressure cooker)
For cooking, you want 2 things for sure: a cast iron skillet and a cast iron dutch oven. Not the aluminum ones they sell in the stores now, it needs to be cast iron. First of all, those things are solid hunks of metal that would probably deflect bullets. Once seasoned over a fire, they’re practically indestructable: real heirloom material. In Korea and Veitnam they’re still using the thousands that were left behind by American troops 50 years ago. We’re using some in my family that are older than any of us. Keep them washed and they won’t rust.
Cast Iron also heats pretty evenly and holds the heat longer, though it takes longer to heat up (this is comparing to aluminum). Overall that means it cooks better. And it does add small amounts of iron to the food, which is actually good for you.
Anything you might need an oven for, a dutch oven will serve, though it does restrict your bread to biscuit shapes. Spare the lid and you can also use it as a regular pot for stews or washing. The cast iron skillet serves for all other cooking.
The drawback on both is weight. These are not backpacking gear, and so they need to be left at base camp. (this is why so many were left by GIs in Asia.) Though miniature “one person” versions exist, good luck finding them.
So where do you get these? Well, you can usually find the real ones at army surplus stores (remember, accept no aluminium substitutes). But you can get them used at garage sales and thrift stores, and not only is it cheaper, it saves you from having to season them yourself.
All shapes and sizes of cast iron are not hard to find around here (SC). We just bought a new round griddle. They take a while to season properly. The oil has to soak in deeply so use good lard or suet or palm or some other high temperature oil like black walnut oil or hickory nut oil.
Our big heirlooms are enamel coated cast iron. We rarely use them but will when the “coming simpler times” finally arrive. In other words we will take only the toughest most useful stuff with us when our house is foerclosed and we are forced to “live like a refugee”. I’ve been daydreaming of something like that for decades. You might call it “constructive fantasy” or “rewilding the mind”.
have anvil will travel
On cooking beans. Soak them overnight, Change the water, cook at low heat try not to get above a simmer and stir very little this keeps the beans intact. When there done take them out and dry them on a screen or in a dehydrator. Instant beans. This is how Native Americans made them for travel food.
How do you know when they are done?
Beans are done when they are soft. If they have any crunch in them at all they will be harder to digest and make you fart.
Is this good for all beans?
I’ve only tried it with Pintos, Black, and Beans. It should work with similar beans. I don’t know if it would work well with Lima or Fava beans. Let me know if you experiment how it turns out. Also I like to salt the water when I cook for storage.
I have cooked chickpeas and lentils before; that’s about it. Other kinds of beans (black, kidney, fava, etc.) I buy canned (generally to save time), though I suppose there are situations where I’d want dried beans, like camping or bulk storage.
Chickpeas (garbanzo beans) definitely abide by your instructions. 
Soak them about 12 hours, then simmer for 2.5 hours (or otherwise until they are “done”).
Lentils are very different. You don’t have to soak them, but you do have to rinse them very well. They are boiled for anywhere between 25-45 minutes (depending on the type of lentil). But maybe lentils don’t really count as a bean, being a legume.
From the Repurposing Dead Cars thread (with jhereg’s compliments):
solar oven: lay a tire flat on the ground, put a dish w/ food in the center, lay glass on top. do it in the morning when clear weather is expected.
Revivification, inspired by this post:
[quote=“BlueHeron, post:14, topic:543”]From the Repurposing Dead Cars thread (with jhereg’s compliments):
solar oven: lay a tire flat on the ground, put a dish w/ food in the center, lay glass on top. do it in the morning when clear weather is expected.[/quote]
This idea got me thinking…mainly about never wanting to taste tire (again). But also how to build a natural/earth/cob/whatever solar oven. Sort of a synthesis between a wood-fired traditional oven and a solar box cooker. Basically, you’d mound up some sort of clay mixture as you might an oven, but instead of enclosing it just make it so a piece of glass caps it. You could make it as insulated – on the sides anyway – as you wanted, perhaps mix some carbon black to darken the mixture for better heat absorption.
I wonder if it would get hot enough to cook without extra solar collectors. Probably not, but it might be fun to experiment with this summer.
So, about cast iron… yesterday I bought a used c-i skillet at a thrift store. It had been cleaned, probably with soap, there was no grease/oil anywhere on it.
It looks like there are some small patches where it’s oxidizing; I don’t know if that was the result of the cleaning, or if the previous owner just didn’t take care of it at all, or what. I figured it was still good, that I could sand/scrape those patches off with steel wool and then season it properly.
But I am not at all sure – I know next to nothing about cast iron. I just know that you never clean it with soap and water; only wipe it out. Any tips on how to re-season the thing?
It’s been a long time since I had an iron pan that needed seasoning.
For a brand new one you need to get the oil that it’s shipped with off of it. So wash it in a good degreasing dish detergent maybe scour with an SOS pad or something and dry.
If I remember correctly you want to heat up the pan till warm then oil it all over. I’d probably use whatever kind of oil I usually cook with :-.
Now put the pan in the oven at about 250 and leave it there till the oil seems to have soaked in or dried off some. Do that a couple of times then start cooking with it. It will get better the more you use it.
Wash in plain warm water (no soap) and dry.
Same directions for a good steel wok, which by the way is another great multi purpose cooking vessel. Forget the stainless or teflon woks, crap.
They are the best kind of pan to use. All our frying pans are cast iron. We have a cast iron pot that we use for popcorn that is great! It heats slowly and evenly and cools the same way. Popcorn popped in bear fat will knock your socks off. mmm mmm mm.
Wow, I never would have thought to “cook” it in the oven. OK. Thanks.
The popcorn sounds delicious. Where do you get your bear fat? I don’t think there’s any way to get it in Seattle unless I knew someone who hunts for bears.
I work for a meat cutter during hunting season and I can get bear fat there. Either from trimmings off the meat or from fleshing it off of hides that are getting tossed.
Some people actually hunt bears for the meat and don’t want the rug.
Hmm, there are not too many other people in this world who can claim that as a job perk.