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The following Dutch Oven or Stock Pot recipe is adapted from The Scout’s Cookbook, published in England in 1959. In England, a Stock Pot is commonly called a “Billycan” or “Billy”.

This roast recipe can be cooked on a stovetop, or over an open fire, if you are careful.  A large Dutch Oven or Stock Pot with a lid is required.

You’ll need about 2½ lb. of loin of veal or pork (or if you’re partial to beef about 3 lb. of topside which you must ask the butcher to roll for you).

1. Put a knob of fat into your big billy and melt it.
2. Put the meat in this for a few minutes to brown it and then pour the fat away and take out the meat.
3. Put in your desired chopped vegetables – such as potatoes, carrots, and parsnips and half cover them with water.
4. Now add the meat which will “sit” on the vegetables and cook slowly, covered with a lid, for about 2 hours. The meat should then be fully cooked.
5. Have a hot dish or plates on which to put the meat and vegetables before serving, and while you make the gravy by adding a little Bovril or Marmite to the liquid in the billy.

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Do you have a favorite recipe that would be of interest to SurvivalBlog readers? In this weekly recipe column, we place emphasis on recipes that use long term storage foods, recipes for wild game, dutch oven and slow cooker recipes, and any that use home garden produce. If you have any favorite recipes, then please send them via e-mail. Thanks!

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One of the most challenging tasks when introducing new foods to a picky child is deciding what food they’ll eat and enjoy. Some children are resistant to vegetables, and others hate meat, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get them to eat healthier foods! A quick-fix way around this issue is to find a recipe you know your kids will love and learn from.

For example, the article below lists seven recipes appropriate for any picky eater’s diet. As long as your child is happy with the result and eating their vegetables, you’re doing something right. Once you’ve learned the basics, you can switch things up to adapt to your child’s specific tastes and preferences.

Butternut Squash-Stuffed Chicken Breasts

Ingredients:

• two tablespoons of olive oil
• one large shallot, chopped (about three tablespoons)
• two cloves of garlic, minced (about one teaspoon)
• 2 cups butternut squash puree
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
• salt
• freshly ground pepper to taste.

This dinner is perfect for a cold winter’s day. It’s packed with flavor and is easy to prepare. To make this dinner more accessible, use premade squash puree or canned butternut squash. If you are short of time, you can always use a food delivery service, like Dinnerly, to make things easier for you. This delivery never failed me, and my family always enjoyed their food. They are also very flexible on their delivery schedule and will make any accommodations that you need to make.

Directions:

In a saucepan, heat the oil over medium heat. Saute the shallot until tender, about five minutes. Add garlic and cook for about five minutes. Continue cooking until heated through, about five minutes. Stir in the squash puree with salt and pepper to taste.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). In a small bowl, toss chicken with olive oil until evenly coated; sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. Fill the cavities of the chicken with the squash mixture. Place in a shallow baking dish and cover more loosely with foil coated with cooking spray. Bake for 15 minutes or until the chicken is thoroughly cooked. Uncover and leave in the oven for another 10 minutes to thicken the sauce. Serve immediately; garnish with parsley if desired.

2.  Zucchini Sandwiches

Ingredients:

•  two large eggs
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• salt and pepper to taste
•  two tablespoons of olive oil
• one large onion (sliced)
• three medium zucchini (sliced)
•  eight slices of bread.

Ingredients for cheese spread: 3 tablespoons butter, one tablespoon all-purpose flour, 2 cups milk, 2 cups shredded cheese.

Directions:

Beat the eggs, season them with salt and pepper, and stir in the flour. Heat the oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat. Dip the zucchini slices in the batter and place them in the hot oil. Cook for 3 to 4 minutes on each side until golden brown and crispy. Meanwhile, melt cheese spread over medium heat in a saucepan. Brush both sides of each slice of bread with melted butter and toast them until they are golden brown and crispy. When the zucchini slices are done, place each piece on a bread slice and top with…

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More than eight years ago now, my wife and I fled suburbia for a log home in the woods. A log home in the woods sounds very idyllic, but the reality may not be as charming as the concept. Based on our limited experience, I have some advice for people who may be considering a similar flight.

Not Necessarily a Log Home

If you own enough timber and have enough time to fell, prepare and season the timber from your own property, a log home may be a good option. But if you are buying the materials from someone else, there may be better options.

Solid log walls simply require more board feet of wood than other forms of construction. Since wood is expensive, a home built with solid log walls may be more expensive than other alternatives.

Solid log walls also have a lower R-value than insulated walls of similar thickness. This may make it more difficult to heat a log home than other alternatives.

Log homes require a great deal of maintenance. In succession, I stain one of the outside walls of my home each year, so that each of the walls is stained once every four years. That is quite a bit more labor-intensive than the maintenance required for most other types of siding.

My wife and I chose a log home for aesthetic reasons. We wanted to provide an attractive setting to host pastors and missionaries who needed a quiet place to rest. Based on our experience with solid log walls, I would choose cement faux-log siding instead if I had the option. It is virtually maintenance-free, has a longer life span, allows for a wall with a higher R-value, and is more fire-resistant than solid log walls.

Bats in the Belfry

Another drawback of log homes is the manner in which the soffits intersect with the irregularities of the log walls. These irregularities make it easier for wildlife to gain access to the structure. In our case, the most challenging wildlife to gain access was bats.

The various species of bats in the United States are protected. This means that we could not just hire an exterminator to kill the bats, nor could we go up into the attic and kill the bats ourselves. We needed to hire a “wildlife exclusion specialist”, who at the proper time of year would seal up most of the tiny openings allowing bats access to our attic, and who would then place “bat valves” at the few most trafficked openings to allow the bats to leave but not to reenter the attic.

Most wildlife exclusion specialists would not even provide us with a quote due to the fact that we live in a log home. The first wildlife exclusion specialist who attempted to exclude our bats took our money, failed, and then promptly stopped accepting our phone calls.

The second wildlife exclusion specialist who attempted to exclude our bats also took our money, partially failed, and then refused to…

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Thank you very much for the invitation. I am delighted to have the opportunity to share some thoughts with you on a topic I am very much interested in and that I believe is of the utmost importance to people around the globe—and that is “the digital future of markets and money.”

So let us dive right in!

When I was your age, dear students, there were no cell phones, no internet, no Google, no Amazon, no Facebook, no Twitter, no TikTok, no YouTube. People did not have Apple Pay, PayPal, Alipay, or WeChat Pay.

Luckily, however, we already had money. Purchases were paid for with cash—coins and bills—with writing checks and with electronic money by wiring sight deposits from one bank account to another. As online banking didn’t exist, people were pretty busy filling out many remittance slips.

Digitalization

Times have changed a lot since then. Digitization, in particular, has been drastically developed and has brought about truly revolutionary changes over the past twenty years or so.

They come with digital transformation, i.e. the gradual transition of existing economic and social systems into the digital age, and also with digital disruption: radical changes triggered by innovative technologies and business models.

Digitization has proven to be a powerful catalyst for economic and societal change. It connects people from very different places and cultural backgrounds worldwide, bringing them closer together than ever before; it fuels competition in already established markets and drives and spreads innovations globally.

What digitization will not do, however, is change the concept of the market as such; I’m pretty sure of that. Because the concept of the market is inextricably linked to human action.

Human action means, generally speaking, that we, as human beings, replace one situation we find less satisfying with a situation we consider more favorable.

And we cannot stop doing it; we cannot not act—for logical reasons. Because if you say, “Humans can choose not to act,” then you act (namely in the form of speaking), so you commit a performative contradiction, thus saying something false.

For logical reasons, we know it is apodictically true that humans act. And as long as we do engage with our fellow human beings, there will be markets of all kinds, even in the age of digitization.

And that is very good news! Because markets—I should say: free markets—are mutually beneficial for all parties involved. Let me give you an example.

You pass a fruit shop and get hungry. You go in and buy apples for one euro. Question: What value do you assign to the apples? Answer: You value the apples more highly than the one euro—otherwise, you would not make the deal.

What about the shopkeeper? Well, he values the one euro he gets more highly than the apples he surrenders. Otherwise, he would not have partaken in the transaction.

As you can see: The free market transaction is beneficial for you and the shopkeeper. You are both better off after the deal. That is the beauty of the…

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EPIC Deputy Director Caitriona Fitzgerald testified Tuesday morning on proposed bipartisan privacy legislation at a hearing of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce (video here).

Unveiled this month, the American Data Privacy and Protection Act would set data minimization obligations for companies that collect and use personal data, impose special protections for particularly sensitive data and the data of minors, establish digital civil rights safeguards, enable individuals to opt out of targeted advertising, and provide for enforcement by the Federal Trade Commission, state attorneys general, and in some cases individuals. The bill is backed by House Energy & Commerce Committee Chair Frank Pallone (D-NJ), Ranking Member Cathy McMorris Rogers (R-WA), and Senate Commerce Committee Ranking Member Roger Wicker (R-MS).

“It is long past time to establish comprehensive protections for privacy and civil rights online,” EPIC’s Fitzgerald told the committee in her written testimony. “Congress must act now to reclaim privacy as a meaningful right and to protect personal data. The American Data Privacy and Protection Act presents Congress with the best opportunity it has had in decades to stop the very real harms that are happening online every minute of every day.”

EPIC has been calling on Congress to pass a comprehensive privacy law for more than 20 years. In July 1999, EPIC founder Marc Rotenberg testified before Congress on the need for comprehensive privacy legislation, warning that “the Internet is quickly becoming a privacy-free zone, where companies can push new products past an unsuspecting public.”

Tuesday’s hearing also featured testimony from David Brody, Managing Attorney of the Digital Justice Initiative at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law; Bertram Lee, Senior Policy Counsel for Data Decision Making and Artificial Intelligence at the Future of Privacy Forum; and Jolina Cuaresma, Senior Counsel for Privacy & Technology Policy at Common Sense Media.

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“Data minimization is absolutely critical because it makes privacy the default,” Electronic Privacy Information Center Deputy Director Caitriona Fitzgerald said to Pallone’s data minimization query. “It takes the onus off individuals to protect their privacy and instead requires companies to be the one to think about collection and use of personal data. It would better align with what consumers expect.”

Read the full article here.

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Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

Water? Check.
Beans? Check.
Rice? Check.
Canned fruits and veggies? Check.

All of the above are excellent choices for a survival pantry. And you probably have a good handle on the other foods that work well for long-term storage. However, there may be a category of meal supplies you are neglecting – spices.

Article continues below.

Survival foods are calorie-dense, nutritious, and shelf-stable. Yet, by their very nature, they are bland to the tastebuds. Adding herbs and spices to your pantry shelves not only will help you prepare more palate-friendly meals but, in some cases, seasonings can help preserve a precious fresh food supply and help you maintain your health and well-being.

For optimal freshness, the general rule of thumb is three to four years for whole spices and one to two years for ground spices. Writing the date on the bottle or label will help you know when to rotate out your supply.

Can they last longer? The answer is a definite yes. When stored in airtight containers in a cool, dry environment, many spices can outlast their expiration date. They just may lose their potency. Trust your senses when it comes to seasonings. If they smell or look “off,” it’s time to toss them in the trash or into your compost pile.

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Here is a list of basic seasonings you may want to add to your survival pantry shopping list.

1. Salt. There’s good reason salt has been highly valued and traded as currency throughout history. Long-lasting and easy to store, salt adds flavor to and can help preserve meat. For more reasons to have salt in your survival pantry, check out this article.

2. Black Pepper. A sprinkle (or two) of pepper can perk up just about any food. The strength and flavor of ground pepper will diminish over time, so you may want to consider storing whole peppercorns along with a pepper mill for a fresh taste.

3. Cinnamon. Cinnamon adds a sweet flavor and aroma to foods and beverages. Consider stocking up on cinnamon sticks for more extended storage than ground cinnamon. Cinnamon has potent anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, and anti-viral properties.

4. Cayenne. This spice delivers a healthy kick to soups, stews, chilis, and other bean dishes. Cayenne helps boost the immune and circulatory systems system, and it has anti-bacterial properties.

5. Ginger. Ginger is a tasty addition to many Mediterranean and Indian dishes. It also aids in the digestive process and can help ease nausea and upset stomach.

6. Garlic Powder. You can use garlic powder to add flavor to pasts sauces, casseroles, and many tomato-based dishes. One 1/4 teaspoon…

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EPIC has joined a letter led by advocacy groups Fairplay and the Center for Digital Democracy in calling on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate video game company Electronic Arts (EA) for unfairly exploiting young users in EA’s massively popular game, FIFA: Ultimate Team. In a letter sent to the FTC, the advocates described how the use of loot boxes and virtual currency in FIFA: Ultimate Team exploits the many children who play the game, especially given their undeveloped financial literacy skills and poor understanding of the odds of receiving the most desirable loot box items.

Citing the EPIC International Champion of Freedom Norwegian Consumer Council’s recent report, Insert Coin: How the Gaming Industry Exploits Consumers Using Lootboxes, the advocates’ letter details how FIFA: Ultimate Team encourages gamers to engage in a constant stream of microtransactions as they play the game. Users are able to buy FIFA points, a virtual in-game currency, which can then be used to purchase loot boxes called FIFA packs containing mystery team kits; badges; and player cards for soccer players who can be added to a gamer’s team. 

Among the 10 questions the advocates asked the FTC to investigate was “What does it mean that FIFA packs are “dynamically generated? Does EA use data-driven techniques to manipulate game players’ odds of receiving certain player cards? Relatedly, does EA use the data it collects about young people’s favorite teams and players and spending habits to market FIFA packs to individual game players?” Just last month, EPIC urged the FTC to promulgate a data minimization rule to protect children from harmful data collection. EPIC has long advocated for students’ and children’s privacy protections and regularly calls on the FTC to curb data abuses.

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Once upon a time, there was a tomato growing in my garden. It was beautiful and the first tomato of the season. Red and round and perfect, I was so looking forward to biting into it, letting that homegrown goodness slide down my taste buds. I watched it carefully, and when the day came to harvest it, I did so.

I then turned it over to admire it from that angle, only to discover that my beautiful tomato was rotten nearly halfway up. The rot started from the blossom end and was nothing other than blossom end rot, a calcium deficiency that affects tomatoes, watermelons, and a host of others. I was so bummed! But facts are facts, and I was simply out of luck. 

Nutrient deficiencies in plants are very similar to nutrient deficiencies in humans.

If you don’t get enough of them, you end up with problems.

Remember, plants need certain nutrients in order to grow healthy and produce fruits. A lack of any of those nutrients will interrupt the process and foil our food growing plans. This is a fairly large topic, so I’ll handle it in installments. Let’s take them one by one, starting with the majors. In this article, I’ll discuss how to diagnose and deal with problems arising from NPK nutrient deficiencies. The next in the series will tackle the secondary nutrients, with the micronutrients handled in the third. 

First, let’s discuss the diagnosis.

This process is the same regardless of the issue and is the tool that will lead us to the source of the problem. Observation and note-taking are the methods used. Ask yourself the following questions and record your observations. Some gardeners keep a pocket notebook for this purpose.  

• What plant exactly? Tomatoes and strawberries, for example, have different pests.
• How do the leaves look? Are the affected leaves older or younger? Are the veins differently colored than the leaf portions between them? Do the leaves have spots or edge curling? Is there a general yellowing, aka chlorosis? 
• Are there signs of pest predation such as rabbits or insects? 
• What about the environment? Has it been wet and damp, hot and dry, something else? 

Don’t forget to check the soil pH!

Doing so will tell you if it’s within the range that the plant can take up nutrients.

Most vegetables prefer a pH in the 6.5-6.8 range. Too much higher or lower, and the plant simply can’t absorb the nutrient, similar in concept to being in a pantry filled with cans and…

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EPIC and a coalition of over 70 organizations sent a letter to Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, calling on the company to end collection and retention of customers’ location data. The coalition’s letter reinforces a similar letter sent by over 40 members of Congress to Google last week. The coalition explained that “[i]f abortion is made illegal . . . it is inevitable that prosecutors will use legal means to hunt down, prosecute and jail people for obtaining critical reproductive health care.” Since “[l]aw enforcement officials routinely obtain court orders forcing Google to turn over its customers’ location information,” the coalition urged Google not to “allow its online advertising-focused digital infrastructure to be weaponized against people seeking abortions.”

Last month, EPIC issued a statement opposing the draft Supreme Court opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and the erosion of the constitutional right to privacy.  EPIC has long advocated for health privacy, recently submitting comments to the Health and Human Services Department urging protection of patient data privacy. EPIC also recently supported a federal bill to ban surveillance advertising.  

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