Handy Tip #5

This tip is about buying ground beef in bulk.  It's usually cheaper per pound when you buy larger packs.  The problem is, it can ruin before it is all cooked up.  Right?  Here's my solution.

This is a 3 pound pack.

I cook the entire pack all at once.  Usually I will go ahead and add my chopped onions and bell peppers.  This time I didn't because I am using most of it for tacos, and I prefer my onions uncooked.

How do you like my iron skillet?  I couldn't live without it.

As you can see, it makes a lot of grease and it's only half way through.  I go ahead and drain this out, and then do a final drain once thoroughly cooked.

At this point, I will turn the meat every so often to help it dry out and cool down faster.

While I'm waiting on the meat to cool, I label my ziplocs.  These are just regular quart bags that I put 1 pound of meat in per bag. Normally, for this 3 pounds, I would have 3 labelled bags.  Right now though, I'm going to be using 2 pounds for Tacos tonight, so 1 bag is sufficient.

I put one-third of the meat (1 pound) into my bag.  Before sealing, I push all the air out.  It helps to fold the top half over and seal most of the way. Then kinda lean onto it to help push the last of the air out.

This is about one inch thick.

Nice and flat for stacking.  Although I wouldn't stack them on top of each other until they are frozen.  That's for safety reasons.








Now my next meal already has the meat cooked.  This is so easy to pull out at the last minute and add ingredients to for a quick meal.  Very handy when you haven't taken anything out to thaw ahead of time.

And one more thing...doing it this way means that there is no more grease to mess with later.  This comes out very lean.  Win-win.

Handy Dandy Survival Equipment

I am into the survivalist thing.  I think everyone should be, at least at a bare minimum. That is where I am at the moment...at a bare minimum.  Every grocery shopping, I buy a couple of extra cans and put them in the "stash" closet.  The only problem is that I dig them out before the month is up.  Not all, but enough to have to replenish along with the "unstashed" cans.  But I'm slowly getting there.

I wanted to show you the treasure I found yesterday.

A can of grapes.  Whoever thunk it!!!  You can bet this will be stashed. 

I found this on the dollar isle at my local convenience/general store.  Can you believe it, one dollar? 




And that's not all!

It has a pop top underneath that plastic lid.  I love the convenience of pop tops. 






But wait.....there's more!





What is this inside the plastic lid?

A spoon!  More convenience.  Gotta love it.





I know these grapes aren't gonna last very long in the stash.  I love grapes too much.  But I got to thinking.  This spoon lid (my new name for it) would be very handy if it were on other canned goods.  Instead of throwing it away after finishing off my grapes, what if I washed it and stored it on other stashed cans.  I found out that it fits other sizes too.


Soup



Tomato Sauce



Even if you don't stash, this would be good for convenience times, like lunches or picnics.  I'm sure you can think of other uses. 

Now admit it, you're excited too, aren't you?  What have you done lately for your survival?  Leave a comment.  I would love to hear about it.


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