Practice, Prepare, Persevere, and Prevail!

Practice, Prepare, Persevere, and Prevail!

In 1997, I started seeing the wisdom of having food storage, many of the recipes in this blog (and eventually the cookbook) will circle around that theme or can be easily modified to be prepared using food storage. Food is definitely in the top 3 items of survival (water, food and shelter). The types of food we eat are passed down from mother and father to children and then on to their children, and their children's children.

One of the overlooked items in survival is food. Sure everyone stores it and will eat it. But will it be something slapped together just for survival? Or will that food be something made with hands that still look at the tradition of the food and how it brings us together as a people: a race of beings with a rich heritage and background?

Survivalism, preparedness, prepping, whatever you call it, it's all about how we live our life, and the lifestyle we choose to project into the future.

By being ready to practice our knowledge we will be preparing ourselves to move into the future and meet any challenge that comes our way. And so long as we persevere in our chosen path we will prevail in our pursuit.

This is true for EVERY endeavor we have, be it cooking, our chosen field of work, our marriages, our hobbies, or our life.

I have a long running love of food. As a small child one of the great things in my family was that we would all sit down to a meal together. This was enforced by my grandmother who always made sure that we were happily seated at the table eating at meal time. It didn't matter how humble the meal, a staple at her house was beans or gravy over bread, it was a time we could laugh, talk and bonded as a family. At home my own mother also had this tradition when I was small, of course as a teen that tradition was no longer there, but I miss it even now as an adult.

Food is a bonding ritual that we all have in common. While as humans we don't all have the same job, or live in the same country with the same customs, we all have to eat. At the very core, eating brings family and people closer together, as well as helps us survive (skip a meal or 3 and you'll know what I mean).

There is no greater joy for me than cooking a meal for a large group of friends and/or relatives and then the companionship and love we have being shared while that meal is consumed.

This brings me to our tagline. Practice, Prepare, Persevere, and Prevail! No matter what you do in life, cooking, handcrafts, our job, our family, driving a car, or just living in general, if we follow this line of thought, then we will definitely Prevail.

Practice: it's through practicing that we will achieve the knowledge and the muscle memory to get the job done. Think of a gymnast who has to do a cartwheel 500 times until s/he gets it perfect.

Prepare: once we get the training down, then we have to prepare to take it to the next step. This is true in our prep/survival choices as well. If you don't prepare for a disaster then you aren't going to make it through the disaster.

Persevere: we aren't going to get it right the first time... or even the 500th time possibly. By persevering we will eventually succeed.

Prevail: if we are steadfast in our endeavors we will prevail!! We'll win and be able to have comfort and a little bit of self-satisfaction in doing so.