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Decentralist
14 years ago

Nit-picking on definitions: “Net importer of food” doesn’t necessarily mean that we import more food than we produce, it means we consume more than we produce, and import more than we export. If our national consumption is 100 arbitrary units, we could be producing 99, importing 6 and exporting 5.

But back to real concerns, if you subtract production of wheat, corn, and soy, which combined only provide a small portion of long term dietary health needs, we probably do import a significantly high percentage of our other calories.

Max
Max
14 years ago

Excited to find your podcast…hoping to be able to listen when I get to the city as my connection is too slow. Hope these are available to listen afterwards.

Max
Max
14 years ago

Fantastic! Thanks for letting me know.

Jonny
Jonny
14 years ago

What about storing multivitamins + high caloric foods instead of worrying so much about getting your vitamins from dehydrated spinach (and other stuff like that).

Brent Eamer
Brent Eamer
14 years ago

Jack:
Regarding your experiment with the dehydrator. I would say the freezer has a better chance. I took the Kill-Watt meter to my Excalibur and it was drawing 300 watts at 135F, continously. My freezer draws about 300 intermittedly (10cu foot) and it is full. The SLA battery in your inverter box probably has a 32ah battery, so I would only say one hour max with the dehydrator.

Brent Eamer
Brent Eamer
14 years ago

To follow up Jack the PowerDome Ex has an 18ah SLA. So volts x amps = watts, ergo 216 watt hours. If the dehydrator is on the lowest setting, you will be lucky if you get one hour. Since the Powerdome ex probably has a low voltage shutoff at about 11.4 Volts.

I have a few of these types of power boxes hanging around, and I’ve ripped the battery out of most of them and found a higher capacity battery that has the same form factor.

I’d still be interested in the video anyway

Dene Brock
14 years ago

I’m interested in trying my hand at preserving meat with smoking, jerky and biltong. This is just something I’ve never gotten around to working on.

This show came at a good time as I re-organize my kitchen to make better use of my space.

Great show.

Jonny
Jonny
14 years ago

I wanted to buy a steel trashcan for food storage until I discovered

“Galvanized utensils (some types of old refrigerator
shelves for outdoor grilling, galvanized trash cans for quantity cooking, etc.) should never be used for food preparation or preservation.”

Source: http://web1.msue.msu.edu/imp/mod01/01600817.html

Maybe I’m just being paranoid?

Archer
Archer
14 years ago

Hey Jack,
I had bird seed in a 5 gallon pail outside by the feeder and the squirrels were chewing on it. They chewed off about 5 inches off of the lip of the lid. Luckily they picked the easiest part for them to chew but the thickest part of the pail. With a little more time they would have gotten into the pail to the seeds.

Brent Eamer
Brent Eamer
14 years ago

I go to my local brew shop where they allow you to make win/beer on the premisis and the owner gladly gives me 5 gallon pails with lids. If they are safe for wine concentrate, heck, why not food. I have about ten thus far. I use them for food and I place them outside under the roof to collect rainwater. He gives away hundreds every year. The local mussel fisherman use then to seed mussles in the bay’s/ocean here.