The Gourmet Prepper Edition
On living your best life during stressful times
Chris Papasadero is professional dilettante, former Green Beret, and co-author of one of WITI’s most popular article, The Go Bag Edition.
Chris here. Just because you’re prepping for the apocalypse, doesn’t mean you can’t exercise a little taste. Given that there’s a strong risk you might still die within the first week of a major catastrophe, you may as well enjoy it. To help, I’ve prepared this companion list to my original Go Bag — TP and bottled water not included.
Once you’ve converted your parking strip into a micro wheat field, you’ll need some way to process it into flour. Behold, the manual grain mill. If you have a generator, consider an attachment for your stand mixer.
Outdoor wood ovens are great, but why not take some inspiration from Francis Mallmann and learn to cook on an open fire? You can construct a Calder-style wire mobile like him, buy an adjustable-height grill, or just use chicken wire and proper fire-zone management.
You’ll drink or trade your booze away within the first 72 hours, so you’ll want to replenish with a home brewing kit. (Mead is even easier.) Here are some important books on home brewing. Note: I never bought a full kit, just built one out of stuff from Webstraunt Store and Home Depot.
Get a Nanopresso or Flair manual espresso maker and burr grinder – assuming you’ve still got a guy who’s smuggling arabica up from Brazil.
A wine cave is good for protecting your magnums and your magnums. Also good for dry curing at home. Build one while you can, or at least get yourself a nice locking storage rack. Worst case, you can always get on your ‘Root Cellaring’ and dig a hole.
Plant a victory garden, or at least a herb garden. Don’t forget something to keep away the rabbits and raiders.
Buy a bunch of meat, store it, and dry it. (I’m still looking for a halfway decent recipe for pemmican, if anyone has any pointers).
Learn to hunt and fish by asking your local groundskeeper or yeoman to teach you. After you’ve felled your first stag, learn to butcher it.
Speaking of learning, there’s a whole host of prepper books out there, and most of them are useless. I don’t have any recommendations other than Where There Is No Doctor and the entire Foxfire series. While you’re at it, get a copy of the Iliad in Greek and the Liddel and Scott Lexicon and work your way through the translation on your own. Also, consider downloading Kiwix and keeping the whole of Wikipedia on a local drive — just be sure to store it in a waterproof, fireproof, EMP-proof faraday bag. Other resources for restoring a civilized post-collapse civilization include forums like r/datahoarder and the offline version of Project Gutenberg.
Get a printed map of your area, ideally a Rand McNally Road Atlas. Mark all the best places for foraging truffles and trading ammo for cheese.
Speaking of cheese, this is the best, most scientific book on making it. Befriend your local dairy farmer.
Thanks for reading,
Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN)
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I subsisted mainly on pemmican during a winter camping trip in Montana years ago, I don't know if that qualifies me for anything, but I'll weigh in. Get some buffalo meat, cut into strips, dry in a dehydrator or slow oven. Pound or otherwise powder it along with dried fruit of your choice, like blueberries or cranberries. Maybe two parts dry meat to one part fruit, something like that. Add a bit of salt here, too, and spices if you want them. Maybe a little juniper or spicebush berry if you want to keep it native. Then the key bit, adding fat. Something like bear fat would probably be ideal, but tallow or lard will do in a pinch. Something good and saturated. Melt whatever grease you've chosen and mix in enough to bind everything. I think I used muffin tin to form the pemmican into disks. Not exactly haute cuisine, but they sure hit the spot out in the winter woods, on their own or cooked into breakfast porridge, etc.