A
close friend came over this past week and we made a mess in the
kitchen making our first batch of Pemmican. I learned that the jerky
I made was not dry enough, even though I left it in the dehydrator
for 14 hours. I also sliced it too thick. The meat has to be
dehydrated to a point where it breaks apart easily and does not chew.
The
cranberries and blueberries were also not dry enough. Both the meat
and fruits need to be bone dry so that a food processor turns them to
a mixture of hair like shreds/powder. Next time! Native Americans
pounded the meat and fruit into a powder.
Rendering
the fat was easy and takes awhile. All of this can be done ahead of
time. If we had done all of these individual steps correctly, the mixing/making of the Pemmican would have taken an hour, been much easier and less of a mess.
As
of this writing I have not tasted the Pemmican. I pushed the
individual packs from their paper cups this morning and if anything
turned out perfect, the size and shape of the final product did.
Research
on Pemmican leads me to believe that each of these portions are
around 400 calories, give or take.
This
is where I ask myself, is all of this is worth the effort. For the
learning and education the answer is absolutely yes. This is an
excellent method of making a food source, processing meats, fats and
fruits into a long term survival food. Several hundred years of
proven history is in the making of this product. Today we can purchase
food bars off the shelf that will accomplish the same nutrition and
energy source. But knowledge transfers and should the time ever come where having a few basic food items that can be processed into long term/safe
storage and emergency use, that knowledge will prove invaluable. The other choice is
losing food to spoilage.
This
learning process also opens other doors of interest. Salting and
preserving meats in the open air and by the sun. Preserving and
drying fruit in the same manner. More to come on this as summer progresses.
Our
Pemmican will be shared and used on bug out camping trips over the
next several months. Our next batches will be much better and we will
be able to add Pemmican making to our skill sets.
SPRUCE TEA UPDATE
Spruce trees are budding now and the new green tips are ripe for picking, drying and tea making.
