This Seems Totally Normal to Me

When I asked my new wife Rhodah what her favorite food was, all she said was, “meat.” It was nice to hear that in these times of self-righteous, controlling vegetarian women.

When we got together in Egypt, I took homemade beef jerky and dried apples to keep me alive on flights. Naturally, she took a big share of the jerky. Now she wants me to bring more, as well as a good supply of dried apples and Colgate toothpaste with Scope. I had a nearly-fresh tube with me on the trip, and she confiscated it. Now she’s hooked.

Recently, a mouse invaded my house. Before I managed to trap it and stamp on it, it found my jerky stash. I had a lot of inviting foods within mouse reach, but it only broke into the jerky and a bag of emergency rice. It nibbled on some containers holding bird food, but it gave up before it got in.

Jerky was clearly the mouse’s favorite item, and that makes sense, because making each bag required about two pounds of fresh beef. Jerky is expensive, and pests always destroy the expensive stuff. Now beef prices are going insane, just when I have to replace my contaminated jerky and also make more for Rhodah.

Yesterday, I got a blessing. A local store was selling London broil, which makes very nice jerky, for $4 per pound. I bought about 5 pounds. I may go back today and buy 5 more. Maybe I should buy 10 more and load up the freezer. I don’t want to spend the whole week making jerky. If I freeze it, I can dry it later. I doubt freezing has any serious effect on the texture and flavor of jerky.

I have around 2.5 pounds of marinated beef in the dehydrator right now, and I have over a pound marinating. I decided to use the same marinade twice. What kind of bacteria can grow in cold soy sauce and Worcestershire with added hot pepper sauce? Reusing the marinade will save me a couple of bucks.

I have discovered that the dehydrator will hold about 9 pounds. I need to get about that much meat together before turning the machine on again. These small batches increase the work.

Here’s a useful tip: you can finish jerky in the fridge. Your refrigerator IS a dehydrator, as you have surely already noticed. I want my jerky heated to reduce germs and add flavor, but once it has been heated, it can go in the fridge if it comes out too wet.

Will jerky and other emergency foods save us if society gets crazier and food gets scarce? I doubt it. Even if I store enough food for 6 months, which is pretty optimistic at my character level, a real food disaster would last longer than that, and we would still starve. I’m not sure why I bother. I guess doing something feels better than doing nothing.

Maybe we could manage to grow our own food, given 6 months to try. That’s something to think about. The soil here is useless, the weeds and pests are overwhelming, and it’s impossible to grow food by conventional means, but we might be able to build raised beds and fence them in.

I have read that potatoes do well in sand, which is the kind of soil I have. That would be helpful. Potatoes are high in calories and vitamin C. Sweet potatoes might grow here, too.

Protein is the big challenge. I think I could reliably kill three squirrels a week without running out, but that would change if desperate neighbors started poaching. You can eat any mammal, so coons and other pests could make our menu, and crows, which we have in abundance, are supposedly delicious. There was a time when people who ate them called them “black partridges.” Maybe things wouldn’t be so bad.

Crows are very smart, though. I could probably kill 10 today if I tried, but would they be as cooperative tomorrow?

One big advantage to eating crows is that most people would be slow to start. I doubt anyone here would try them until they ran out of other ideas.

In any case, I look forward to having jerky again. The store stuff can’t compare to homemade.

I hope Rhodah will let me keep some.