A short, promotional YouTube video that doubles as a commercial.
If you are bored with the selection available in local shops but do not want to pay for specialty sodas, you can always mix juice concentrate into carbonated water. Additionally, this does not require any complicated equipment so it will work in economic crises (such as we are currently living) and more advanced SHTF circumstances.
This is an ad video to my Etsy listing for Spring Blooms, Autumn Colors Ceramic Mug, also available in my Printify store. (In both shops for US only, sorry. The regulatory complexity for international trade is too much for me to handle.)
If you are bored with the Big Corporate flavors but do not want to pay $$$ for specialty sodas, do as I do.
Buy cheap, no brand or shop brand bubble water (mineral or seltzer) and add juice concentrate to your taste. Bonus points if home made from self-grown and picked berries, but commercial juice concentrates should work just as well. The amount of extra chemicals in the ‘soda’ depend mostly on the concentrate used. As a city slicker, I buy concentrates with minimal numbers of additives, especially avoiding artificial sweeteners and azo dyes, which may make the ersatz sodas healthier than many big brand sodas.
This may or may not count as Survival September 2025 post, but IMHO survival comes in many forms, and if this helps others with their finances and health, that is preparedness, too, and more resources for other prepping.
Särä is a traditional meat dish from Karelia which has been in use since Medieval times (with modern adjustments) in Finland.
The recipe is for cooking brined sheep with salt in birch wood vessel (supposedly giving name to the dish) in wood fired oven. The meat is turned and extra fat was drained at about midway of cooking. Towards the end of the cooking, some half-boiled potatoes (in the meal photo, they appeared to be peeled, too) are added under the meat for the final hour of baking. The original Medieval recipe probably used turnips instead of potatoes, since potatoes arrived to Finland later, during 18th century.
My modern lamb in oven uses unbrined lamb shoulder chops with bone in them, sprinkled with iodized salt, and wrapped in aluminum foil (I know, very dangerous, and misuse of hat material) to be baked in oven that has been set at 350°F until the meat smells cooked. Not särä, really, but I like the ease of cooking and the taste.
Today’s survivalism tip – how to prepare meat and cabbage. People think survivalism as some sort of rugged post-apocalyptic adventure, but most of the prepping is for everyday hardships like unemployment or other forms of poverty. Ability to make food cheaply is very important for modern survival.
The potatoes in the picture are not involved.
Ingredients:
meat about 1lb or meat with bones about 2lb
medium sized cabbage (about 4lb)
water about 1qt
beef bouillon (Herb ox) 3 or 4 cubes
salt heaping teaspoon
nice to add: whole yellow or white onion(s) ground black pepper
First, buy the ingredients.
Meat: I prefer lamb’s neck bones for taste and collagen and they make a good cooking timer, but most of the time they are sold out in a nearby market, so the second choice would be lamb shoulder chops fortified with one lamb round bone chop. Beef will also work, I prefer fattier meats like chuck roast or boneless rib. London broil is a bit dry for my taste. If the cuts include bone, the weight should be increased to get approximately 1lb of meats. Lamb’s neck bones are typically cheaper than meatier parts, beef chuck is typically cheaper than lamb shoulder chops. 10$ is a good current price for meats.
Cabbage: I prefer to buy the cheapest, usually white cabbage but sometimes cauliflower is on sale. They taste about the same, but behave slightly differently while cooking (cauliflower is slower to compress). I have not tried the more exotic varieties. Cabbage typically currently varies between about $0.80 and $1.40 so this would cost somewhere around 4 or 5 dollars.
Water: I prefer bought water to avoid chloramines. The latest water was $1.49 per gallon + crv.
Beef bouillon: Herb ox is my favorite, and typically goes 1 cube per mug of water. This is cheap, a can of few dollars lasts over multiple soups. This also stores well for a Doomsday larder.
Salt: I like cheap iodized salt, but about any other salt will do. This is not some weird ritual.
Optional onion: yellow or white, whichever is on sale. One is enough, but if you like onions, go for it. Onion soups can be tasty, too.
Optional black pepper: I prefer freshly ground for the taste, others prefer whole peppers, while some prefer no peppers.
Cooking:
0. Take a really big pot with a lid and pour a quart of water in it. Add the bouillon cubes
1a. Green cabbage: Take the cabbage and peel the wilting and or dirty surface leaves and toss them to garbage, rip the remaining leaves into the pot with water and bouillon cubes, tear the soft part of the core into the pot and toss the hard stem into garbage. The pot should be mostly full of cabbage with water in the bottom.
or:
1b. Cauliflower: I prefer the ones that come in plastic bags, but event those should be rinsed for dirt and other nasties. Check the florets for possible wilting or moldy bits and toss those into garbage, toss the good florets into the pot with water and bouillon cubes, tear the soft part of the core into the pot and toss the hard stem into garbage.
(2a. If you are adding onion(s), peel them, toss the wilting and or dirty outer peels into garbage and cut the fresh parts into the pot. Not the hard stem, which goes to garbage.)
2. Rinse the meat (with or without bones) and put it into the pot. It can stay on the top of the cabbages at the beginning.
3. Sprinkle a heaping teaspoonful of salt onto the meat and cabbages.
(3b. Grind the black pepper on the meat and cabbages or drop a few peppercorns in the mix.)
4. Cover with the lid and bring the pot to boil. Remember that only the water, somewhere below the cabbages and meat, boils.
5. Let the soup simmer at low heat until cabbages compress to the water level, mix the meat with the cabbages and continue slow boil until the meat separates from bones and can be eaten with spoon. Remember to keep the lid on! If you use lamb’s necks, the soup is ready when the vertebrae separate from each other. This will usually take a couple of hours which can be spent doing something else.
6, When the bones separate, turn the heat off, allow the pot to cool and enjoy the soup. If you kept the lid on, the water did not evaporate burning the soup.
This recipe has typically given me three or four meals. Unless I forget to eat it before it went bad.
The cost estimate for a potful is about 15 – 20$ depending on the price of meat and cabbages and if the other ingredients were already at hand or needed to be obtained or replenished (the biggest initial investment is the pot with a lid, but that can be used for other recipes, as can be the water, salt, peppers and bouillon.)
Put the macaronis, water and bouillon cubes into water, and bring it to boil.
Keep them boiling for a lower heat while opening the corned beef can and carving its contents with the macaronis.
Keep on slow boil for about 10 minutes.
If you want, you can add cheese slices or beef bacon or other stuff, but the above four ingredients should be sufficient for multiple meals for an adult.
Cheese should be added last to melt on the top of the macaroni-corned beef soup (adds a little to the cooking time), whereas bacon should be boiled with the corned beef and macaroni.
Enjoy.
Nutritional content:
calories: plenty
fats: a lot
proteins: yes
carbohydrates: yes
vitamins: unlikely – I’d recommend also eating fruits, vegetables and fish (unprocessed – french fries and ketchup do not count.)
Now for the paranoid version:
An important part of survivalism is to be able to live off your preparations. The rule of the thumb is to store those foodstuffs you will actually want to eat. There is nothing more embarrassing than suffering from gastric upset and awful tasting food because you prepared unwisely. (For the many people who have stored cans of Spam, this recipe should also work with that, though I think corned beef tastes better.)
Take 12 ounces of cheap elbow macaroni (European, to avoid GMOs and more dangerous pesticides, while hoping the grain was not smuggled from Ukraine near Chernobyl or grown on industrial wasteland). Rinse the macaroni with water in case their manufacturer had insects, rat droppings or other such impurities.
Take 3 x 12 ounces of pure drinking water without chloramines – chloramines kill aquarium fish but officially are harmless to humans at the concentrations used (do you trust the government???). Chloramines are nowadays used because the municipal water companies want more durable disinfection chemical than the traditional chlorine. (Bonus points for rinsing your macaroni with clean water, though I think the modern foodstuff is so full of impurities that I use chloraminated tap water because I am cheap.)
Put the pure water and rinsed macaronis in a pot, turn the stove on while peeling 3 Herb ox bouillon cubes into the slowly warming water. You did remember to buy more Herb ox to replenish your Doomsday Cache, right?
While the water is beginning to boil, open a 10 ounce can of corned beef bought on sale from an Asian supermarket (Brazilian, made in China – wonder about the Amazon rain forest, cattle hormones and Chinese food hygiene standards, then decide to ignore the paranoia because the can was cheap) and carve the contents into the boiling liquid.
Also add the beef bacon you bought yesterday and needs to be eaten before it goes bad.
Turn the heat down to let the macaroni soup boil at low temperature while watching a dozen minute conspiracy video.
Turn the stove off, add some cheese slices into the pot and in your bowl on hot macaroni soup. Let them melt while watching another conspiracy video.
Enjoy, while checking conspiracy news updates.
Nutritional content:
calories: plenty
fats: a lot
proteins: yes
carbohydrates: yes
vitamins: unlikely – I’d recommend also eating fruits, vegetables and fish (assuming those are available after the economic collapse or natural disaster – at the very least, if this is your survival food for the unforeseen future, top it up with a selection of vitamins, omega-3 fatty acids and other supplements from your Doomsday Cache. Surely yours has them?)
PlanktonPunkt 