The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Preppers Food Storage Truths

Episode Date: April 30, 2026

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Boy, did I take many, many different paths to get to you today, PBM family. Oh, my good. It's 11 o'clock in the morning. I started this journey at 10, I think. Cameras wouldn't work. Microphones wouldn't work. Computers wouldn't work. Cameras and microphones wouldn't work together.

Yesterday I didn't get a show. I don't know. It was one of those put-off things yesterday for surviving America. It was like, all right, I won't do it at 10. I'll do it at noon. All right, I won't do it at noon. I'll do it at two. All right, I'll do it in the car ride. All right, I won't do it in the car ride.

I'll do it in the evening. And I almost did, too. I was real close. I was really close to jumping on and literally doing a complete and total surviving America Warhammer paint session with you where you wouldn't even have seen my face. You would have just seen me, you know, working. And we would have talked the radical similarities between the grim darkness of the far future. And modern times.

So whatever, you know, is what it is. Let's talk about what we want to talk about today, which is food storage truths. Preper's food storage truths at a time where more and more people are looking at food storage as a solution. But what exactly are they looking at when they're looking at food storage, right? When I say the word food storage to you, it brings up what? What comes to mind? What comes to mind? A cornucopia of methods and means is what comes to mind when I say food storage, but when I first got into prepping, it certainly wasn't that way.

Right. We're coming up on the anniversary, the year anniversary of rationer ruin, which was a deciding factor in how I handled food storage in my life going forward. Big changes. Big changes, man. know i posted a uh a post up on reddit preppers and it went absolutely insane and it was all about the fact that i'm not buying um freeze dried pre-made freeze dried meals anymore from any company you know that those days are over for me and i mentioned that after rash and ruin i really

had a lot of problems with that stuff i just wasn't happy with it i wasn't happy with what i was most unhappy with was how it how it felt even when I was hungry. You know what I mean? Because I'm not a very picky guy. So it says a lot. You know what I mean when you're in that situation? But so food storage truths today's show is going to be all about some truths that you need to contemplate. You need to consider as you build out your own food storage or maybe as you revise what food storage means to you, right? If you have a stockpile and it looks a certain way and it's got a long shelf life, you're in the good no matter what I'm about to say, right?

So don't worry about that. Remember, like if it turns out you hate all the freeze-dried meals that you have or something like that, then pretty easy to just, pretty easy to just, you know, go with it, go with something else. trick pretty easy to trade up right pretty easy to use that stuff as giveaway barter if you don't want to eat it or if you decide it ain't worth it you know whatever whatever it is you decide probably the biggest food store truth of all is the fact that uh you need to figure out what your goal is first and foremost that's number one number one is what is the goal here so what are what are we doing with food

storage. Most people give the short answer, right? Oh my God, there's going to be a family. We're going to run out of food. What are we going to do? We need more food. And in that flurry and in that fear, in that fever, you look to prepers, you look to people online to give you an answer. And you pretty quickly realized like, oh, well, they're telling me I should have May Day ration bars in long-term food storage made by four paper. And look, I've been in that boat. And again, it's better than nothing. But what do you really want to do?

What is your goal? Is your goal to eat well for two weeks? Is your goal to eat well for three months? I really do believe that if you can sustain yourself for three months with any manner of preps, then you're prepared for most everything. you're prepared for most everything except for a situation that changes the face of the world that we live in on the whole. Right. But you can look back over the last what?

Really probably almost 100 years. Nearly 100 years you can look back and say three months of preps, food, water, goods, tools, so on. you can know you put 99.9% prepared for the things that happen and have happened in the last 80 years, right? Rationing, whatever it is, right? You'd be prepared. So what does food storage look like in your mind as a goal? And I think that to me is probably where people should start even though they don't start. But that's the truth of where you should start in food stories.

If you pop in and go, here's the most dangerous thing you can do. I want a year's worth of food, so I'm going to buy a year's worth of food for $4,000 bucks online. And then you buy a year's worth of food. You've never tasted. You don't know if your body's going to like it. Your family's going to like it. Your mouth is going to like it.

Your stomach, your digestive tract, whatever the situation is. ideal food storage is the type that allows you to to eat well, to be healthy, to eat foods that you like to eat, right? Here's the food storage truth. Number two that people don't want to hear. If you can't cook, food storage is really hard. It's really hard. Yeah.

If you can't cook, food storage gets significantly hard. because the way to rule in long-term food storage, and it probably is preppers most, it's probably one of preppers most effective, if not greatest contributions to modern society, is the mylar bag, five-gallon bucket staple good. Right?

A staple good that can be packed at home like flour with 2,000-cc oxygen absorbers, seven millimeter mylar bags into five gallon buckets and last for i mean i've eaten 10 year old flour okay i've done it i've eaten 10 year old flour stored in this way i can tell you in its raw state it does taste it's got like a little bit of a metallic taste um but when you bake bread with it you can't tell you can't even remotely come close to tell it rose with the yeast it did everything you were supposed to do, 10-year-old flour. But in order to take advantage of that style of food storage, which I think is the most efficient, right, when you talk about how do you put up

three months worth of food? Well, you do it in massive calorie dumps in staples like rice and flour and sugar, right, pasta. These are massive calorie dumps. They are, you know, a 50-pound bag of rice is white, long-grain white rice is basically 80. thousand calories okay at a cost of about 22 bucks right now so you know you can you can very quickly see how your calories per month for your family can be met those needs can be met easily and effectively if you uh if you use this method right but the hard truth is flour sugar pasta rice, beans. Ain't going to do you a whole lot of good.

If you don't know, if you've never cooked rice, if you never made a pot of beans, cooked to be nice and tender and flavorful, right? If you don't know how to bake, so you can't really do anything with the flour, except make, like, you know, gruel or something like that. You know what I'm saying?

The better you can become at preparing foods from scratch, a variety of rice dish. of a variety of bean dishes, a variety of rice and bean dishes, a variety of, right? A variety of things that you can prepare with sugar, flour, and maybe some other ingredients, right? Yeast, most importantly, but not necessarily needed, right? Could be baking soda baking powder, become a master of the quick bread. You don't eat a lot of sweets, probably, but in a situation where you're in that three-month window of preparedness, like zucchini breads and banana breads and carrot cakes,

and whatever else, they're going to be a godsend. So these things are essential. I mean, as wonderful as it is to stockpile calories in this way, you have to be able to cook. And you want to get better at cooking. You don't want to stop it. I know the two to one ratio necessary to cook rice, and I've cooked white rice a handful of time, so I'm ready.

You want to build a repertoire of recipes, you know what I mean? So that you can prepare these foods. It goes a long way. I'll tell you right now, you check this out. This is what you want. You want to check out the ShtF Chef at TVNFamily. It's been a while since we've done it. We're not going to do it a particular segment today.

But suffice it to say, though, one of my simplest and most favorite rice dishes is the browning of beef or the browning of brown turkey in a pan, remove it, drain it. add peppers and onions dehydrated if you have them freeze dried if you have them whatever you can rehydrate and use those or pull them from the garden sweat them down right sweat them down until they're softened add your add your meat back add uh say you did a pound of beef right add your meat back add a normal sized coffee cup half coffee cup of rice let all that stir together add things like, now you could season it up however you want, the seasonings don't matter, but I like to add things like smoke paprika, Chipotle chili powder, or ancho chili powder, cumin, turmeric, all right?

Stir that in with your rice and let it get kind of fragrant, right? The spices will come to life as you add heat to it. Come to life. then add a full coffee cup of some kind of broth or plain water depending on what you got right bring that to a simmer cover the whole thing until the rice is soft and you have just an dead easy nutritious healthy meal that could be made with oh and if you if you don't have foods uh if you don't have raw ground beef or turkey then you can use you know freeze dried ground beef you don't have to brown it, just add it in to the, I would, I would rehydrate it and then I would toss it with

the onion and the pepper once it's softened and then add the spices and go from there. It is a dish I make probably once a week. It's like a lunch meal once a week. Super easy, simple, you know, packed with flavor, build on this, you know, because to that dish can, all kinds of things can come. You know what I mean? All kinds of things. can build out of that base dish. You can change the meats out. You can change the ground beef for a sausage. You can add shrimp.

You can create a paellae. That was one of the inspirations for that. Was a base paellae. I used to do it with chicken and turkey sausage. And like I said, you can add beans to it. You can add bacon and black beans to it. You can do amazing stuff with that dish. You learn the base.

You add to it. You develop your repertoire. hard truth. Number two about food storage is you got to be able to cook. You should just be able to cook. Like it's, you've got to eat three times a day. You want to leave it up to somebody else?

Why? Why leave that up to somebody else? It doesn't make any sense. So that's number, number two. Number three, this is not necessarily a hard truth, but it is a truth. Like, try not to listen in terms of preference. to too many people. The hard truth is no one has your preference.

Sitting next to me is a case of MREs, 12 MREs from MREs world that my son and I are going to go make a video about a video review in the woods. We're each going to have a meal and eat it and see what we think about it and all that kind of stuff. And do a little video review. You'll see it. I'll put it up. I'll do like a an extended version and put it up for you guys. You never really get to see my son very often. Because I've grown to be a very cool kid, of course. But I got a case of these MREs.

You know, MREs are kind of like a fun treat. That's what they are. They're kind of like a fun treat that we play with. You know, they're not a meal. They're not a dinner. They're not a lunch. They're not a thing we rely on in disaster. But I have MREs.

And, you know, most of the time, it's like a fun thing. Like, let's pop open an MRE and watch a movie. You know what I mean? Or let's pop up in an MRE and just play with it and see what's good and what's not good. I've never really taken them camping. I typically do like a what's it called for camping because I like those, like a mountain house or bring our own food.

And in case you're confused, the difference is between a mountain house meal and a freeze-dry, meal out of a bag that has to be simmered for 20 minutes is the fact that it has to be simmered for 20 minutes. And the fact that most of the time it's not nearly as good as the one that just sits in boiling water in a package for 15 minutes. And again, I don't have the budget for three months worth of mountain house meals. They're very expensive. Even if I had the budget, though, I still wouldn't depend on three months of mountain house meals to get me through a crisis. But these foods are as much novelty as they are food prep for me.

Key in that sentence is for me. You know, what about for you? You may love MREs. And if you love MREs, dude, you are living. Pack them. Because MREs are exceptional. They're exceptional for a number of reasons when it comes to emergency preparedness. When it comes to prepping, they offer something far beyond

simple food storage, right? You get a bucket of meals. You're going to be eating the very cheaply produced food, but worse than that is you're going to be, you're going to have very, very little choice and very little difference. What I like about an MRE is that, you know, while the entree changes and some of the snacks change and that kind of stuff like, there's a variety of things in each MRE and there's something about that that is just way better than like you know how's your chicken flavored rice tonight huh from the morale standpoint right there's something really cool about tearing a package open tearing another package open preparing the food yourself at the MRE food heating water heater type thing for the water activated heater right I mean I don't know

There's just something cool about all of that that adds, adds something to an MRE that makes it exceptionally, it makes it way better than standard, dry, freeze-dried food storage, in my opinion. Okay. Whatever your preference is, though, go with that. I know a lot of guys that would eat bark. You know what I mean?

To survive. Like having chicken flavored rice, if it was enough calories and close to enough protein, to survive and be healthy, they wouldn't care. You know what I mean? We'd eat it every day. Same thing. Talk to Phil Rabilet about beans and rice, you know what I mean?

Or red beans and rice. So that's another hard truth, right? There's a lot of people out there telling you what to buy, where to buy. I'm doing it right now to some degree. I'm not telling you what to buy. I buy what you want, but there's a lot of advice out there. And preference rules when it comes to food storage. You know, preference is king.

There's no getting around it. Let's take a break from the hard truths. I want to talk to you about government fasting because I think it's time. I have taken larger and larger chunks of time off of government news. Donald Trump speaking, gigantic situations where, you know, people are being in, this one's being indicted and that one's being indicted. This level of corruption, that ice is breaking into Minneapolis and, you know, all this stuff has happened. like media and government fasting is essential right now if you want to live a good life you know the level of corruption the level of violence the level of hatred in the air is too much and your brain's not designed to absorb at all it shouldn't absorb at all there's no need for it to be absorbed right so rather than deal with that i think You know, what's the most pertinent headlines if you must?

If you must, look at the most pertinent headlines and move on. You know, really go into a bout of media and government fasting. And you're going to see real results in how you look at the world and the people around you. You're going to see real results about how you feel every single day. I've been given to coming out in the mornings early before the sun gets up, sitting in the peace and quiet and going like, oh, this is my life. This is my life. My life is not what's up on the Drudge report, what's up on the Epic Times website, what's up on the in the PBM chat rooms, what's in the PGBN host chat room. Like that's not my life. It's not your life either. Frankly, it's next to no one's life. I sum it up pretty succinctly the other day by talking about you see a lot of violence in the world, on the internet. But in the real world, how much violence do you actually see? In other words, you develop this idea that like, oh, we live in a country that is racked with violence.

Because every time you go on X, see a bunch of violence. But the reality is you look around and you go, you know, I don't really see a lot of violence. It's the last time I've seen a violent act with my own two eyes. Right? It's just an example. Food storage truths, PBM family. Food storage truths. We've talked about preference.

talked about cooking ability. We've talked about the hard truth about ready-made meals, you know what I mean, and that kind of stuff. Those really are the top three in my book, you know. I guess another real, here's a hard truth for food storage if you're not into the self-reliance aspect or into the growing aspect of stuff. like really, really understand how little, like, how minuscule subsidizing and supplementing real food into your stored food can change the game. This was another observation through rationer ruin, right?

This was a rationer ruin observation where it was like, everybody's eating. See, I had one big benefit on my side against the other guys in Ration of Ruin. It was that I was allowed to use foods that I had grown. Right. I was allowed to use foods that I had grown. And it gave me the ability to put eggs on top of the horrible freeze-dried meals. So I could have chicken flavored rice. And I put eggs on top of it and I put some kind of a leaf.

But I don't remember what it was. It wasn't kale. but it was something that would have been growing here in May. It could have been like a Swiss chard. I can't remember exactly what it was. It could have been a turnip green, actually. Yeah, the turnips are looking good here at Liberty Farm. Turnips are looking good.

The peas are climbing. I'm actually set here in the raspberry field that has left the building. The raspberries have left the building. They have gone out into the world to make their own way. And it's phenomenal. I'm delighted, to be honest. So P v. and family, this is the situation. Oh, my God. Brilliant. Sorry. I just realized something so important. Anyway. So that's the situation. You know what I mean? You can turn crap. powdered potatoes into something magnificent if you have onions and garlic growing, rosemary that can be minced and stirred in. What I'm telling you, the takeaway is, if you think that growing a little food in some pots, growing little herbs in some pots,

having a few chickens isn't going to make a difference for you. Well, you're wrong, and it will. It will make a difference for you in a very big way. You don't have to have a massive garden. If you add foraging to the picture, now you have all kinds of options. So you've got to look at this thing that way and understand that even a small garden that puts out a little bit of tomatoes and a little bit of peppers, a little bit of leafy greens, maybe a little bit of fruit here and there.

This can radically change your food storage, right? I store pails of oatmeal, right? And you're fine. Oatmeal's good, but oatmeal with raspberries is way better. Oatmeal with mulberries is way better, right? I can't say I've ever had oatmeal with gooseberries, but the gooseberries are coming in. Oatmeal with apples, should I ever have apples? That would be nice.

My backyard is not the place to grow fruits. I can tell you that much. It's quite the struggle to get, getting. them going. But whatever. Speaking of mulberries is actually a new mulberry tree that just started producing fruit right to my right, literally in arm's length. I forgot about it last year. Last year, the only reason I noticed it is because I was so hungry. I'm not quite there yet, but I'm going to nurse that baby. That baby's going to grow big and strong and produce lots of mulberries every year for us. So yeah, understand.

stand the power of supplementation, man. Fresh, fresh foods, right? That's what it was. It was dandelion leaf. Yeah, that's what it was. I was putting eggs, like poached or fried eggs and dandelion leaf because the dandelions would come in and they were still pretty young into my chicken-flavored rice and into my other entrees that were kind of, you know, void of anything. So, so, so, Even small supplementation of homegrown or forage foods can take boring freeze dried or even boring food storage like rice and beans and turn it into something special, right? You make a big pot of beans. You've got a big pot of black beans. You're making rice every night.

You're about ready to go insane over eating black beans and rice. You add some scrambled eggs. You add some wild greens or maybe even some root, right? like some dock, some of those kinds of rindlyan root, that kind of stuff, not too much. It's a diuretic. So if you're low on water, it could be an issue. But you add those kinds of things and all of a sudden herbs, I mean, herbs are incredible, right? Fresh herbs are incredible.

Oregano. You get the ones that count, right? Time, oregano, rosemary, basil, things that really knock it out of the park, grow really well. You know, I've tried to grow cilantro so many times. It's so delicate. It gets mashed and ruined and destroyed. It's just a waste of time. I like a big, like a big woody time, right, with a nice woody stock, a powerful, big rosemary bush.

Mint, mint goes a long way. It's almost unstoppable. Comes back year over year, right? Rosemary, same thing. And then, you know, basil from seed. Basel doesn't come back year over year, but it's so good and so. powerful. It's amazing. We've got to have it. It's one of those secrets, right? You keep a Parmesan cheese in the refrigerator and basil? Like, man, how long do you think Parmesan

cheese will last? You could probably eat Parmesan cheese from the, from one AD. You know what I mean? It's fine. It's just salted to death and dried to death. but delicious. So tell me about your food storage truths, folks. I'd love to hear about them. I'd love to hear about your food storage truth. DM me, message me, email me, whatever. There are hard truths that have to do with food storage in the prepping world, and we preppers have gone through a lot of them, right? We preppers have gone through a lot of them. Oh, here's another great one. You will lose money if you stock your pantry just to stock your pantry. In other words, if you panic in the early days and you say, buy a bunch of chicken noodle soup, buy a bunch of chef boy R.D.

Buy a bunch of canned meals that I never eat. But buy a bunch of them. You'll throw them away and you'll lose money. Ask me how I know. Ask me how I know about spam. I ate spam for a week years ago just to test my might and my body couldn't take it. you literally couldn't take it. It was too much salt, I think.

Too much salt, too much chemicals, something along those lines. It didn't work. I tried it. You know, I tried to do like a spam two meals out of the day or something like that. I ate it with eggs. I ate it with lunch. I was physically ill before the week was out, right? Chef Boyardee, I don't eat it.

We stored a bunch of it for years because it was cheap and it was like just put calories in the pantry. Oh, I went in the trash. Right? So be very careful about that, man. Stocking a pantry to stock a pantry will cost you money twice. It'll cost you money to stock it and it'll cost you money when you realize, oh, I didn't eat that stuff because I don't eat that stuff. So don't get stabbed twice in the wallet.

Last but not least, PBN family, the relentless routine is over. 430, 20, 26. Tomorrow kicks off the month of firsts. The month of first routine, inspired by Dave Jones, the NBC guys, too many firsts prepping adage. Look forward to it. Can't wait. You're going to love it. And look, do the routines, folks.

You know, I give you 30 days. Do 10. Do 10. You don't have to do 30. I don't do them. I don't do every single day. Right? But it's there.

It's there. You say, oh, I got some free time. What's going on? on the relentless routine today? What haven't I done? Maybe I should do something. Download it, put it on your desktop, pop it open every day and look at it, or just have it on your desktop so when it pops into your head and you can go, oh, the routine, I forgot. If you do five days of the routine, it's better than none, right? Think about it, PBM family. I'll talk to you folks soon, man. Thanks for everything. And I may be on camera tomorrow. I may

not. I may shun the camera all together this week. We'll see. Talk to you soon.