Preparedness/Survival related podcasts

Here are a few links to different podcasts I subscribe to. They contain a wealth of good information.

http://www.prepperpodcast.com/

http://www.thesurvivalpodcast.com/

http://www.todayssurvival.com/?tag=podcast

http://thepreparednesspodcast.com/podcasts/podcast.xml

If you have iTunes, you can subscribe to these. Some of the older shows don't show up in iTunes but I download mine from the site to a file and listen to them with my SMPlayer which beats Microsucks Windows Media Player all to pieces. SMPlayer is free shareware and can be found here:

http://smplayer.sourceforge.net/downloads.php?tr_lang=en

Enjoy!

Acorns part 3

This is the photo section of the acorn posts. The first photo shows a bowl of ground acorn meal. I set my Corona on a fairly coarse grind and this is the result. The amount of acorns used to make this bowl of meal is the small handful shown in the third photo.

This next photo shows the leached meal. Its still very wet and when dry has a lighter color. I did notice a small problem. The meal is a very sticky and bunches up into a porridge consistency. This makes it a bit of a chore to leach as you need to break up the lumps with a spoon between leaching sessions. Perhaps I should try to make the grains a lot bigger, maybe 1/8" or so? I have a feeling they would still stick together since there is a high starch content to acorns. There is no bitterness whatsoever in this final meal.

This is the handful of acorns I used to make this batch of meal. Its all halves and it still has ice crystals on it from the freezer.

Here's a shot of the acorns fresh out of the freezer.

This photo shows the first run of water through the meal. It looks like weak coffee and the taste is very astringent. I wonder if there is enough tannin to use for a hide? It would make a great wash for poison ivy!

The next three pictures show my Corona grain mill. Its a heavy brute, solid cast iron electroplated with tin for rust prevention, and is made in Columbia. These are sold throughout central and south America for grinding corn. Some folks say they are no good for flour but I like to use whole wheat flour and this grinds it to the perfect consistency in my opinion. The last photo shows the unit broke down for cleaning. I bought mine from Wisemen Trading several years ago for around $25. I see they are going for nearly $40 these days. Still, its a great mill that will last a lifetime. Here's a link: http://www.wisementrading.com/grainmills.htm






Thanks for your patience everyone! Now that I have a better camera the photos will improve and I may do a few short videos.

Acorns finished

I have finally finished the last of the acorns. These were dried and put in the deep freeze before processing. I dried them for about 6 hours in the oven at 120 degrees. They turned a dark chocolate brown and most were hard and a few kind of rubbery. I used my Corona grain mill to grind them up and instead of using the juice can leaching I used an electric drip coffee pot. I put the ground acorns into a coffee filter in the machines basket and ran about 4 full pots of water through to leach out the tannins. It worked great. I'll post photos of the process tomorrow. The computer and all cameras are back up and running.