People want to know what to include in a well-stocked pantry. In addition, they want to know how to cook all that stuff in their pantry! Chef Keith Snow joins us on Off the Grid Radio today to discuss being prepared for eventualities, things you need to do to insure that you have supplies in place for any kind of disaster or economic meltdown, and how to use all those food stores in easy, simple recipes that will be healthy and flavorful.
[powerpress]
Off The Grid Radio
Ep 071
Released: October 14, 2011
Brian: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Off the Grid News – the radio version of offthegridnews.com. I’m Brian Brawdy, sitting in today for the entire show for Mr. Bill Heid who is on assignment. Big, big, big story he’s working on. Last couple of shows he’s been on the road – that’s right, I said big, big, big, big story that he’s working on. He’ll be back with us shortly. Today we want to get right to our next guest. The guy that I’ve had a chance to hang out with. A guy that’s had me in his home. A guy that’s a great cook, he’s an author. You’ve known him from all over. Before I introduce him, I want to say that it’d be one thing if we were introducing just a chef. If we were going to interview today, someone that was just a great cook … but in this day and age, with everything going on in the world, with the high prices of everything, with all the political turmoil, everything going in Greece and the Euro and now the Eurasian, if you believe soon-to-be President Putin [laughs] from Russia. With all the turmoil going on today, regular folks are sitting around going “what happens if the market crashes? What happens if …” – even if it isn’t a market crash – what happens if bad weather sets in? We’re coming to you from Thomson, Illinois, today as always. It’s sunny and 80 here today. But I can tell you, when it’s sunny and 80 in October, it means it’s going to be overcast and 45 below zero here by December. We never win here. Do you ever notice that Jeremy? We never win. We’re always getting it on the short end of the stick. That’s going to be the case this winter. Suppose there’s a really bad winter storm, and I know – hard to believe – they close the local Pizza Hut. Hard as that is to believe, what happens if you go to the grocery store and it’s closed? What if there’s a power outage? What if the roads are so bad that plows can’t make it through? We’ve had that happen here before – plows can’t make it through. You go “I should have gone to the grocery store Monday, but today it’s Tuesday. There’s four feet of snow outside.” What are you going to do? Our guest today not only helps us prepare what I consider to be the world’s healthiest and most storable survival food, but he does it with such a flair and such a great taste, that it’s not like you’re eating survival food. It’s a great idea in a bunch of different ways. Ladies and gentlemen, for our opening three segments today, we’re going to be hanging out with – hold on, I think he’s making his own espresso right there. Are you actually sitting, Keith, at the espresso machine or what’s going on there?
Keith: No, I’m a few feet away.
Brian: [laughs] A few feet … ladies and gentlemen, we’re with Chef Keith Snow. You’ve seen him before on our ever popular video. This is the guy whose kitchen we were in. We were doing it in his kitchen and studio. He’s that passionate about it. It’s right in his home. You’ve also been on his website harvesteating.com. He’s an author of a pretty great book – I’d say a very cool book – so much so that we can’t even get it anymore. It’s sold out. He’s arm wrestling with the publisher now to go ahead and make sure that they can get a second run but you can also check him out on amazon.com. I should have Tom see how many … can you go on amazon.com and see how many copies are available left of Keith’s book? Ladies and gentlemen, say hello to Chef Keith Snow. Keith, how are you?
Keith: I’m great, Brian. It’s good to be with you.
Brian: Thank you, my friend. We should say that it’s not you making the espresso, you’re hanging out with some friends and they’re the ones … it’s kind of breakfast time, that makes sense. That would be the drink of choice in your neck of the woods.
Keith: Yeah, it’s 11:05.
Brian: Is that espresso time?
Keith: Triple espresso, 11:05.
Brian: Very nice. Let’s talk about “Great Recipes are Always in Season.” That’s true. We get a lot of compliments about the video that you and I did in your home using Soup Bean Survival and some of the really crafty and creative ways that you came up with preparing it. I’d like to hear a little bit from you. As I said in the intro, you’re a great chef but you’re also a survival chef, so you know what to do if things are going good and you know what to do if things are … not going so good.
Keith: One of the things you said – you started to describe what happens if you go to the grocery store and there’s nothing there or Pizza Hut’s closed. What amazes me is how so many people have such a shallow pantry. What’s scary is a lot of these folks are parents with children. You go into their house and there’s a half a jar of peanut butter, some bread, a half a gallon of milk and a couple of cans of pork and beans, half a dozen of eggs and they think that they’re good to go. I always talk to those folks and try to say “what happens if you get snowed in? What happens if there’s … the grid goes down or there’s some type of a disaster?” Just about anything – a snowstorm. They look at you either like they’d never thought of that before in their lives or that you’re kind of crazy. I’ve really been pushing my members and my fans and viewers at harvesteating.com and through our podcast and in interviews I do to start giving some careful consideration to your level of preparedness or the lack thereof. I think a lot of people are a little more receptive to the idea. I think after the debt downgrade that the US had, a lot of folks started paying attention – ones that weren’t before. This is something that’s a positive sign, in my opinion, that people are actually thinking “wow – what’s the deal with my pantry? How much stuff do I need to have in there?” I’m seeing a lot of questions come into the website and by email and over at Facebook. I think this is the time where everybody, family or not, needs to start investing in their own pantry and adding a level of sustainability and self-sufficiency that just isn’t there.
Brian: You know, Keith? I bet you would say as well that as great as it is to reach out and get information from professionals such as yourself and the like, a lot of folks that I start to talk to now are busy telling other people that they’re stocking their pantry. They’re busy telling other people that they’re buying ammunition. They’re busy telling other people that they’re buying gold. One of the things that I think is as important is your message that … I was in Belize a couple weeks back and I met a former Navy Seal – Seal Team 6 guy. I won’t say his name but somebody came up and asked him a question about razor wire and he goes “ah, razor wire, that’s too much bling. Just give me a hundred yards of good barbed wire and I’ll be all set.” So I talk to people now and go “great, you have these great ideas. You go onto harvesteating.com, you get all these cool things but stop telling people about it.” Because if I get in trouble, I’m coming to your place because I know what a great cook you are and where you store all your food. But you may not want everyone coming to your place if it tips. You might have just enough food for you and your family. Is that something you ever fear?
Keith: Definitely. And that’s why I live out in the country. We live in, as you know, the Asheville, North Carolina vicinity and there’s a lot of great areas that are very suburban-like. I happen to be in one of them right now as I film this – or record this interview. This would be a tremendous place to live. It’s very convenient, you could walk and come to Barnes & Noble and there’s restaurants and shopping. It’s very suburban/urban, very nice and you can enjoy your Starbucks yuppie lifestyle, I like to call it. I could easily live in a place like this with my family but I purposely live out in the country. I had a choice because we recently moved to the farmhouse that you visited back in November of 2010. We could have moved to an urban setting just as easy, but I knew – looking at the state of the economy and the global situation that we’re in – I knew that I do not want to be where there’s a lot of people that are in the position that I talked about earlier with a very shallow pantry and little planning. And I don’t say “if,” when there’s going to be a disruption, because I feel it’s coming, 100 percent, you do not want to be … dealing with that is going to be enough, but you don’t want to be dealing with people that are hungry and desperate. That’s what’s going to happen to a lot of folks in the cities. Recently I was listening to Ron Paul speak and he was saying how the folks in Iowa are way better off than the folks in New York City. This is true no matter what the size of the city or the rural area. If you’re out on some land and you’ve got a little space, you’re going to be better off. That’s very specifically why I live where I live. I take steps almost every day to increase our security and I’m happy to announce that just about 10 days ago we purchased two jersey cows. So we’re going to have some dairy cattle coming to our farm probably in the next week or so. I need to do a little fence work and we’ve got two jersey heifers. I’m constantly taking steps like that. That’s a big step, getting a dairy cow. They won’t be giving me any milk until 2013 but I wanted to get them on the property and start raising them right and getting them settled in before they – they’ll be bred in the spring. These are things that are important and having some land – you can’t really have a dairy cow in suburbia.
Brian: That’s true. I think – when you said it about Dr. Paul – we were in Clinton, Iowa when he gave that speech and he had visited New York City the day before and he had done “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart and he had done Judge Napolitano show. Then he came on for the presentation in our interview and he was like “look, I don’t want to be in New York City when it hits. People out here in Iowa, people out in the country, you’re going to be able to sustain yourself a good bit longer until the people in the cities move to the outlying areas.” But you’re absolutely right. Almost verbatim, that’s exactly what Doctor Paul said. I think what you’re saying is that … then again, Keith, we don’t want to go ahead and throw the people that live in the city under the bus and say “there’s nothing you can do.” That’s why I … I’m pretty fired up to have a chance to talk to you today because if you’ve ever looked into buying a supply of emergency food, you know that there really is a stark reality. With emergency food there’s a tradeoff – you sacrifice the rich taste, the great flavor, nutrient density of whole foods for the practicality of a more long-term, shelf stable foods, what you would say, Keith, would be in your pantry. What I dig about harvesteating.com and your books and having the chance to work with you is that you can take some of these foods, if people are doing those types of things, and you can help to really pizzazz them up – really jazz them up, really make them something – not just soup being survival, which you and I had first worked on – one of the perfect emergency food storage items and nature’s ultimate high-protein food. But you’re the guy, and your information is the one that takes those beans and even if it’s a survival food it doesn’t taste like a survival food. Can’t you help folks that are going “I might not be able to get a couple of cows. I might live here in the city. I have just enough space in my hall closet for a Soup Bean Survival kit or a sprout kit or maybe one bucket of food.” You can still help them make it tasty and something that they’re going to enjoy.
Keith: Yeah, absolutely. I don’t mean to throw those folks under the bus but definitely they need to have a really deep pantry. I’ve got one of your Soup Bean Survival kits. I also have one of your seed banks. I think – people, pay attention – if you don’t have one of these seed banks, go and get one, because you want to be able to grow food no matter if you’re in the city or not. If you’re in the city, there’s a roof on top of your building, there’s window sills. You want to have seeds because not only could you grow things, they’re going to be great to trade someday if things go haywire. Getting that bean kit in there, those things pretty much last forever. Having things like that, commodity items, like rice and beans and steel-cut oats – there’s lots of things that you can get that are relatively inexpensive that store really well. Then you turn on you – what I call culinary inventory – and then you take those things from bland commodity foods and then you make them into great stuff. I’ll give you a quick little example. There’s stuff called masa – masa harina. You’ve traveled in Latin America before, it’s a simple Latin or Mexican ingredient. It’s a corn flour, essentially. This stuff if you take it and you can freeze it, you can vacuum pack it, whatever you do it lasts a long time. Then you can make tamales. The other day we took some frozen chicken breasts, again make sure your freezer is stocked, we had a little bit of jack cheese and some tamale mix. I went to the local farmers’ market – and every city, as long as things are still operational – there’s going to be a farmers’ market. There’s a great one in New York called the Green Market. You go and get yourself some local corn. What I did is I roasted right in the pan some local corn and a little bit of butter. I took a chicken breast and a little olive oil, some of our Harvest Eating spices and I pan roasted it on a piece of cast iron so it got some nice brown crust on it. I made up a little batch of this masa dough. I shredded some cheese and – look what I’m doing – I’m reaching into the pantry and reaching into the freezer. I’m getting something locally that’s in season like the corn. Then I’m making what would be considered a peasant food dish in Latin America. This is simple food. It’s something that in Mexico they have often on Sundays or at weddings or little parties. But it’s peasant food. It’s very inexpensive. If you look at – I actually just did a video on it and if you check out harvesteating.com I think the video’s right there on the homepage but it’s also on my YouTube page. You can see how easy it is to take things that you store in your pantry, combined with a little local and seasonal food and you can make tremendous meals that way. If you’re in a situation you do not want to be eating dehydrated junk. You want to be eating good healthy, and like you said, nutrient dense. This is why vegetarians are always hassled “you’re not going to get enough protein. You need to eat beef.” if you eat beans, these things are loaded with protein and lots of minerals and fiber. This is definitely a food. If you don’t have your pantry stocked with beans, you’re really missing out on a critical piece of survival.
Brian: And you know, Keith, I think the people that log on to soupbeingsurvival.com to get a run of what we do at our parent company, Solutions from Science – I think they would agree with you. Another point that I want to belabor, if you know me, I want to kick it around a little longer is when you say peasant food, one of the things I dig about the work that you do – and folks can watch you at harvesteating.com, they can find you on their iPad, their iPhone – you and Glenn Beck are hanging out now over on Roku. Of course Keith has a Facebook page and the like. But when you said the term “peasant food,” what it made me think of is that in a survival situation, you want to mitigate the stress of the people around you. If your survival plan is macaroni and cheese for six months, “oh yeah, I’ve got a basement full of rice, Brian. We’ll be able to survive on rice.” The stress that it would create from taking someone that’s used to a full menu and knocking it down to a peasant level type of menu where there’s just a little bit to eat – that makes it an emergency situation in and of itself. What I love about what you do is in that situation the food isn’t going to be something that reminds people that there’s a lot to be worried about. It really is comfort food, Keith.
Keith: That’s a great point. About a month-and-a-half ago – I’ve got a nine-year-old daughter, Olivia, who you met – we went camping down at the beach. We’ve got the river that you and I took a nice swim in on a hot summer day. About 2,000 yards down from the swimming hole we’ve got a big wide open beach and Olivia and I went camping. I reached into some of my storage and I took out one of the major brands of dehydrated foods. I grabbed two of their meals. One of them was a beef stroganoff and the other one was spaghetti or something. We went down to the beach, we set up the tent and I had my five-year-old daughter with me too, Ava. We set up our little camp stove and the kids were all excited. We had our mugs and we cooked – boiled some water, poured it in the pouches – and we ate that stuff. I’ve got to tell you, this stuff was – saying it was pathetic, ugh, it was a step up from pathetic. It was really, really bad. The kids – they liked the whole part that they could cook it and the hot water in the bag for two minutes and then you pour it out. They were excited about the camping, being at the beach part of it, but then when they started getting a few bites of the food … my kids – they do eat a lot of good food, we cook a lot at home. But just because I’m a chef, I’m not making Chateaubriand every night. We eat a lot of comfort foods and healthy dishes. The kids couldn’t eat the stuff. I ate four or five – maybe half of the bag. It was horrible. It was just not good. What you say is really true, and you know a lot more about survival than I do, but kids and families – routines are super important. When you break somebody’s routine, that’s a huge stress in and of itself. Then all of a sudden, if they’re diet is made up of terrible tasting, dehydrated foods, that’s going to be a real stress. Learning how to cook is important. The beans that you guys have – the other thing that I like about those is obviously I’ve had a chance to cook with them and eat them. They’ve got a lot of character. You can certainly eat just kidney beans and northern beans and white beans and things like that from the supermarket, nothing wrong with that. I’d rather have that than nothing, but the beans that you guys have – they’re not in the store. I don’t know where the heck you guys found those but nobody else has them. I’ve looked, honestly I’ve looked around, I’ve done searches. They’re just not out there. You must have some pretty savvy buyers. Those things, again, they’re different, they’re unique and they taste really great. I’ve been cooking with some of the – I forget the name of them – the big white beans. The other day I made a pork chili. Again, this was something that I’ve been thinking a lot about the whole survival thing. I took a pressure cooker and I threw in the beans, some water and a bay leaf and in about 19 minutes they went from being dry to tender and then I poured that out and I had some ground pork and sautéed some ground pork. Went back into the pantry, I had canned tomatillos which are another Latin ingredient. I through those in a roasting dish, roasted them up. A little cilantro, garlic – things out of the pantry – and put it all together. We had a pork green chili and I used your beans in two ways. I used them as a thickener because I ran them through the food processor and make a paste out of them. I put that into the chili. Then I put whole beans in as well. Again, this is pennies on the dollar to make this stuff. I made a giant batch of it. We ate it for – six of us ate it for dinner and then there was two or three lunches thereafter. It was very inexpensive but it wasn’t boring. I mixed a few cultures and a few cuisines. I had some fresh herbs, some dry herbs. I had some stuff from the pantry, some canned food, some dried beans. There you have it. It takes a little creativity and a little guidance. This is why I’ve got so many people that follow what I do on Harvest Eating because it’s a great source of ideas and it’s not to chef-fy. People have trouble following some of these incredible chefs, the work they do is so exacting and complicated that it doesn’t really fly too well with the average person. But that’s why I try to keep it simple on Harvest Eating. Again, just about everything I do can be done in the survival situation if you’re prepared.
Brian: That’s why I think we’re going to a quick commercial break, let people think about that preparedness for just a minute. When we come back, we’re going to spend the next segment with Chef Keith Snow. Don’t forget, you can check him out at harvesteating.com, you can find him on Roku, you can find him on Facebook, on Twitter. You can find him anywhere. And if you happen to be where he just said, you can find him in the – where was it, Barnes & Noble or Starbucks?
Keith: Barnes & Noble.
Brian: Barnes & Noble. We’ll be back after this commercial break.
[0:21:56 – 0:26:11 break]Brian: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back, once again Off the Grid Radio – the audio version of offthegridnews.com. I’m Brian Brawdy, sitting in today for Mr. Bill Heid who is on assignment. We’re here with Chef Keith Snow. Everything you need to know, or at least a lot of the cool things you need to know about Keith, you can find at harvesteating.com. We’re talking about Soup Bean Survival, one of the things that I’m passionate about as well. Even if you live in the city or if you live out in the country and you don’t have a lot of extra storage, cool thing about Soup Bean Survival and the package that we have is you can hide them almost anywhere. Then when you need that kind of food, you have it, in an emergency situation. Just got a new one today, Jeremy, I picked up one, because we’ve been using it. As Keith says, you can cook with it. I think he was referencing the canneli – I’ll have to ask him if that’s the right name – or canola beans. Oh, cannolis – no, that’s a dessert, never mind. Now my mind’s going. Pass me one of those chocolate covered pretzels again. My mind’s off to dessert. OK, Keith, here’s something I want to talk to you about. You said in the break about hanging out with your family. You’re talking about one of your daughters, you were down on the water – and it made me think that you do a great … it’s a great service and a great idea to involve your kids and practice some of these survival things in an advance mindset so that, heaven forbid, when one of those situations confronts us, the kids are like “ah, we practiced hanging out from tornadoes every Friday night … my dad and I make some kind of scratch from the pantry with some beans every Wednesday night.” It’s a cool idea to involve your children early on so that when it hits they’re like “no big deal. Been there, done that.”
Keith: I agree with that. I don’t think enough people do that. Just speaking to that, when I went and looked at and purchased those jersey cows, I took my daughter with me, Olivia. I said “this is going to be very important for you to see these cows and to get to know them. We’re going to have over a year before we have any milk from them.” She was very excited about the fact that she had a decision and could take part in it. She knew why we were getting them. We’re not getting them just because we want another animal to eat the grass. We’re getting them as a food security measure. She’s very aware of that and she knows, as much as she can understand about the economy, that it’s not doing too good. So getting your kids involved is definitely important. My son, Garrett, he’s about two-and-a-half now, he’s the first one to grab that stool – and he’s a pest with it, because he’s always got the stool and he’s pushing it around the kitchen wanting to climb up. The other day he was cutting apples. Of course we have a special knife for the kids that is supposed to be really dull but he wound up giving himself a little nick on his finger, which he’s very proud of. Getting your kids involved in the kitchen’s important. Just the other night we made – and here you go again – our neighbor grew a bunch of bell peppers and then she had to run out of town. So I come home and there’s a whole bag of bell peppers, two or three kinds of bell peppers, some banana peppers, some poblano peppers on the counter. They were just on the other side of being ripe so they were ready to be cooked, they had to be eaten. Right away, without having to go to the store, and hopefully people are getting this point as I beat it into their heads, but I went right into the pantry and I took out some flour and another great, great survival ingredient is lard. If you can get lard from a local processor even better, or local butcher, or heck, even make it yourself. But the worst case scenario, you can certainly buy lard. Lard lasts forever. That’s because it’s 100 percent saturated fat. I went in, got some lard and some flour and some salt, and I had my daughter Ava up on the counter and she was mixing those ingredients together. We put a little hot water in it. We made a simple dough. I’ve got a cast iron skillet and started to make homemade flour tortillas which I can promise you – there’s a video for that on the website too – but I can promise you these are nothing like the ones that you get at the burrito shops or at the store. I don’t know what they do to those but they come out and they are gummy and they’re dry. If you make them from scratch and you use real lard, they are incredible. They get those little brown and black spots from the cast iron. They get an amazing texture. We did that and then we took those peppers that were grown about 100 yards from the house. We sliced them up, grilled them on the same cast iron skillet and we had some fajitas – I’m trying to remember what I used. I went into the pantry and I had some – there’s a grass-fed beef place about 15 miles from here and I buy some of their stew beef. I took some of their stew beef and sliced it up really fine so it would be tender. I seared it on a skillet with some spices out of the pantry. Again, I didn’t have to go to the store and buy anything, I had it all in there. We were enjoying beautiful beef and pepper and onion – onions that I grew in the garden – fajitas. The kids were involved. They got to get their hands filled with flour and of course the floor and the table and their hair, but they learned right then and there what goes in. It’s three simple ingredients and you’ve got fresh flour tortillas. Those are the type of things I definitely like to do. We try – yesterday we were up in the garden getting it ready for the fall greens. We’re planting fall greens and then Olivia’s going to be planting a batch of lettuce and spinach in our greenhouse which is attached to the house. Getting them involved in all this is important because you want people to be awake. I think a lot of other people are on to that fact too.
Brian: That has to speak to the popularity of your book. We’re saying that it’s already out at the publishers. You’re not able to get it but people can still get it on amazon.com. I’ve got to tell you, Keith, your website harvesteating.com is a great resource for all kinds of stuff. All your videos are syndicated up there. There’s an article index. There’s the blog, there’s the farm market news. You’ve done a great job of bringing all kinds of information into one place so that folks that are into learning this kind of thing – I don’t want to say one-stop shopping because that sounds like a pun – but it really is. You’ve done a great job of getting your site to such a point where you literally could spend a few hours on the site and catch up amazingly with folks that have been planting a good bit longer than most.
Keith: Yeah, I was actually looking at it the other day. When you’re involved in publishing something like this you look at it and if you don’t take a second to realize – wow – how much time was spent. We’re on like six years of tweaking and working on this. The amount – you produce content – just content creation takes forever. I’ve been doing this a lot of years. We’ve got 53 episodes of the podcast live. There really is a lot of information here. That’s why we’ve got – if you go to the Facebook page or the YouTube page, there’s so many people that have found the content and really enjoy it. Like I said, it’s engaging content because it’s not – I don’t wear a white chef’s coat, as you know. It doesn’t offend – or it doesn’t intimidate was the word – people are not intimidated by it. They can see what the message is right away – seasonal cooking – if you look at my logo there’s a tractor, there’s a barn, there’s a spoon. Those are all … that’s messaging that’s important to people. As this local food movement continues to grow, and the timing couldn’t be better, because you certainly wouldn’t want folks moving towards a low-carb movement at the same time potentially moving towards and economic collapse. This is a much better situation that people are learning to shop locally and to find out what’s in their area. Then they’re finding resources like Harvest Eating to get ideas. We also have a thing called a video room and people go and hang out in that video room and they watch lots and lots of video content. It gives them ideas. The other thing is my style of cooking is different than other people. Most chefs are great chefs and they all have their own style. I just happen to be the one that’s styled my food to be used with seasonal and local but also not to be offensive and not to be intimidating and to allow the average person to take part.
Brian: And not a lot of bling. You’re not going to dye your hair blonde. You’re not going to put in earrings. You’re not going to get all kinds of ink like my friends, right? [laughs]
Keith: No, no, no.
Brian: We’ll leave that for Guy … but it’s a different type of crowd, different type of audience. Keith, we’re going to go ahead and let you go. We’re going to run to a quick commercial break here in a bit but before we do, I want to thank you for your time. Remind people about harvesteating.com. You can also check him out same place you find Glenn Beck now, at Roku and he also has a Facebook and a Twitter account as well. I say from time to time that an hour across the table from a wise man is worth a year’s study in books, and Keith every time we get to hang out with you I definitely feel that way. I learn more and more than I knew the time before. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to run to a quick commercial break. Come on back, right after these words.
[0:36:07 – 0:40:24 break]Brian: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Off the Grid Radio. I’m Brian Brawdy, here today sitting in for Mr. Bill Heid who is on assignment. It was great to have Keith on the show because he is really a knowledgeable guy, although he decided to call in from Barnes & Noble so we apologize in advance for the audio. But if you’re still here listening to my voice, you’re like “what was that racket in the background?” apparently, that’s the espresso machine. There is also a guy called a barista, I guess. I thought that was a legal guy in England. But in any event, there’s some kind of barista … I guess that person left the spoon in the Crockpot and it blew up. That was the audio that you heard right there at the end if you were wondering. Great sound effect, we can’t take any credit for it. That’s coming to you live from the Barnes & Noble coffee shop right there, wherever Keith was. We apologize. But, hey, before we go this hour, I would like to talk to you about one of the coolest things that I think our parent company, Solutions from Science, has and why I think it’s so cool. For me, let’s put it this way – if you’re like me, you may think “Bri, I don’t think it’s going to be so bad that I need a year’s worth of food.” There may be some of you listening that think it will be that bad. So then you think of the safety net and you buy enough to supply your family for a year. Then there’s those folks that are a step down that go “it may not even be bad for a year, but it could be bad for six months,” so they go ahead and get a six month supply of food. Then there are those that are like “well, I think if we can get through 90 days – I think 90 days will be a good way of covering it. If we can get through that, we can see the light at the end of the tunnel.” For me, and perhaps you, I’m a little more into the idea of having a little more personalized, a little smaller, a little more compartmentalized food survival kit. For me, I’ll take one of our – whether our 84s or 120s, as Jeremy knows – of the freeze dried food that we have and I put it in combination with our Soup Bean Survival kit. Because when you stop and think of everything that Keith Snow said today in our earlier part of this interview, you can take these beans and make amazing things out of them. He made … when I was in his home, he made some dishes that just blew me away. All with a pan, a little bit of lard, some beans – some really good beans, our beans, they’re all heirloom beans at Soup Bean Survival. So it really is a small little package. You can get some great stuff. But I wanted to go over a couple of things about Soup Bean Survival. For example, did you know that the US Department of Agriculture and the US Department of Health and Human Services recommend that each of us have at least three cups of beans per week? Is that kind of weird? I don’t know what else they recommend. There’s a daily recommended allowance … but they’re talking about three cups of beans a week. Here’s why – no other single food on earth has the same powerful combination of protein and fiber. Did you know that, Jeremy? Protein and fiber. You get everything that you want in terms of those two categories from eating beans. They’re a great source of many of the bioavialable minerals. So when you hear people say “you’ve got to have some minerals in your diet,” these beans are a great source of that. Most of us simply don’t get enough. They’re an excellent source of copper, of phosphorus, great source of manganese and magnesium and they’re a rich source of iron as well. So when you think about all the nutrients, the minerals, when you think of the protein and the fiber, what a great fallback plan to have. If you have freeze dried food, you could add some of these things. As Keith was saying, freeze dried food – they’ve got a lot of carbohydrates – but what are you going to do for some of these other minerals? Beans are packed, absolutely packed to the hilt, with essential B vitamins. They’re an excellent source of the essential B vitamin, thiamine, and of folic acid. And a good source of riboflavin and of B6. They’re naturally free from cholesterol. They are an absolute power house of a whole host of other antioxidants. When you think about the Soup Bean Survival you go “great, Brian, I’m going to run over to the store and I’m going to buy some beans.” Well the difference being is when we went ahead and put together the Soup Bean Survival kit, we did it with all heirloom beans. They have tremendously high germination rates. They’re tasty and, as Keith said, “I’ve got so many different recipes for some of those beans that I got from the Soup Bean Survival.” And you’re not paying the $250. There’s some restaurants that you can go into now and go “hey, I’d like a bowl of beans.” They’ll go “great. I’d like an American Express Black card. It’s going to be $250 for that meal, please.” But these beans, you get these heirloom beans – as a part of the promotion you’re also going to get that special bonus cookbook, “Cooking with Dried Beans,” for those of you that remember back to that interview. We had a chance to speak with the author of that book. You’re going to get that as well. You’re going to get an audio bonus of the bean interview, the actual interview that we did. But more importantly than all of that, you’re going to get – we have nine different types of beans that come in your Soup Bean Survival pack. What I dig about it the most, whether it’s the Christmas Lima Bean, whether it’s Jacobs Cattle, what’s another great one? The Snow Cap, Eye of the Goat – that was another great one. The Black Valentine, the Cannellini I think is the way Keith pronounced it, but the cannellini – that was one of the ones. You get five pounds of those. These are heirloom beans. They’re going to taste great. As I said before, great in terms of their protein, in terms of their nutrients and everything else. But for me, the back of my mind, Jeremy, it’s always that piece of mind of knowing “I don’t have room to store an entire year’s worth of food for four people.” I’m not really sure I’m prepared to admit that yet. A lot of folks are going “Bri, it’s not going to be as bad as you think.” What if I’m wrong? What if it really is going to be as bad as some people believe? Then at least with a couple of my Soup Bean Survival kits, a couple of boxes of 120 servings of food, it’ll at least for the opening month, six weeks, two months, allow me to do what I need to do to be able to survive. I can tell you, as a former police officer – and you’re going to go “Bri, have you ever been able to hold down a job in your life?” – as a former police officer and a former reporter for CBS who was sent to cover the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, two things you can count on, whether it’s a tornado or a terrorist attack, whether It’s manmade or Mother Nature. When you’re faced by a disaster, you’re going to be responsible for your security and you’re going to be responsible for feeding and watering your family. The beans that we have in soupbeansurvival.com is a great way to do just that. You don’t want to buy the entire farm, you don’t got room for two cows, a handful of chickens, you don’t want to breed rabbits, you don’t want to do all these other things – here’s an opportunity for you to do something, to take a proactive step. If your wife or your husband or your kids look at you and go “as a part of our food plan, what have we got? “ Maybe you want to start practicing with some of the recipes that you can get from the video or reading the book or logging on to soupbeansurvival.com which is another wealth of information. Maybe you want to be able to turn to your loved ones and go “nah, we’ve got a little bit of a plan going. I wouldn’t worry.” As Keith said, maybe you could augment Soup Bean Survival and the package that you’ll get. Maybe you can augment that with some freeze dried food. Maybe you have some other staples that you like. I’m thinking to myself, Jeremy, if you have kids that are really into peanut butter, you buy a case of peanut butter. Buy those kind of things that in an emergency situation – if all hell breaks loose, in an emergency situation, you can’t give your kids crackers and water. It’s not like you can have a garage full of saltines and the ability to get water because that’s going to be stressful to them. Now you have to deal with their stress, not to mention the macro stress, the outside stress, everything else that’s going on. Find those foods that you know your kid dig and that have a long shelf life. Maybe next time you go to the grocery store, put one or two of those in, then you know you’ve got some of their comfort foods. But as far as the beans go, people go “bean? Bri, you mean baked beans?” There are so many cool beans. When you look at the recipes out there, Jeremy, you remember what it was like, he was making – what’s the one thing, the bean dip that he made with the garlic and everything else. You hear about it all the time. Like a hummus – it made that bean hummus. It was fantastic, absolutely fantastic. I’m not a rocket scientist, I don’t play with sharp knives because I’m like Keith’s son, would have been one of the guys that nicked myself with the knife, dull or otherwise. Even for a guy like me, I was able to see how you could take a frying pan, you could mix this up, 10 minutes we were ready to go. So when you think about having at least the bare minimum of an emergency food plan, you may want to look at soupbeansurvival.com. Check out the cool heirloom beans that we have there and all the varieties. Then think to yourself, “if I’ve got handful …” – how many kids do you have? What’s the special food for each child? Then the next time you go to the grocery store, make sure it has a shelf life of a year or more. If they like fluffernutter, I think that’s what it’s called, right Jeremy? The white stuff that looks like spackle? Whatever it is, you put it on with peanut butter – fluffernutter peanut butter … in any event, find those foods that your kids like and that helps to mitigate the outside stress. As will a trip to soupbeansurvival.com. Alright, ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to run. Thank you so very much for giving us an hour. On behalf of Mr. Bill Heid, who’s on assignment, and also the rest of the team from Solutions from Science, our parent company, and here at Off the Grid Radio, I want to thank you for giving that hour to us.
[0:49:59]