My 9 year-old stayed with my mom for the weekend, and was telling her about this wonderful product we stock for emergencies, and my mom was quizzing me about it. I realized I had never written about it here, so I think it’s about time.

At Green Earth Survival School, Hank, one of the first things that teaches is the value of “PMA”, or Positive Mental Attitude, during a crisis situation. Stressful situations have a tendency to sap our hope, leading to a downward spiral….never a good thing, even on the brightest, sunniest days. During a long-term power outage, a month without income, or a roving hoard of flesh-eating zombies, keeping hope is a very important thing.

Whenever I think of the things I would miss the most if the world ended like in Jericho, Red Dawn, or the Mad Max movies…the top three always comes down to 1. the Internet, 1. hot showers, and 3. bacon. Short of an EMP, I’ll have my Kindle as a portable, hand-held reference library. Hot showers I can rig with some solar setups…but bacon….I’m guessing bacon would become a VERY rare commodity.

Unless you have some Yoders Bacon stocked up…

Yoders Bacon is a re-release of an older product found in the 70’s “Celebrity Sliced Bacon”, a product of Hungary, and available in  K-Marts. Yoders is made here in the US, I’m lead to believe in Ohio, if my research is correct.

Each can contains…well, let me just post the “official” statement:

Each can is 9 ounces of fully cooked and drained bacon. Between 2-3/4 and 3-1/4 pounds of raw bacon go into each can. Each can is the highest quality fresh #1 bacon slices. Cured to our specifications, cooked and then hand wrapped, rolled and packed in the U.S.

We cook this bacon down for you prior to canning, so you won’t pay for all of the natural shrinkage that occurs whenever you cook bacon. Then we carefully drain all of the fat and liquid off and can it fresh so it will taste as good out of the can as it would right out of the refrigerator.

Cost seems prohibitive…as I write this, the lowest price I can find on a case of 12 cans is about $160.00. That’s over $13 per can…but is you take into consideration that is was originally 2-3/4 to 3-1/4 pounds of raw bacon, that breaks down to $4.10 to $4.84 per pound of bacon…and you don’t have to cook it.

We’ve gone through a case over the last year, and even used it Christmas morning to feed the extended family…everyone liked it, and was surprised that it came from a can. And we had no leftover bacon… If there is any problem with it, it’s that when you open a can, you have all this bacon ready to eat, so end up consuming it all in a sitting or two. And if you want more…you can always open another can… It’s like a kid living in the candy store, soooo much temptation!

What we TRY to do when we open it, is to unroll the package, separate the strips and place them between sheets of paper towels, then inside a seal-able container to let us eat it as needed.

It seldom works that way. It’s a lot like having a bowl of Hershey’s Kisses sitting on the table…every time you pass by, you grab one and eat it.

On-demand bacon tends to disappear quickly….

So as I wrap up this post, I realize that two cans of Yoders Bacon is NOT enough…I need to get more…And if push comes to shove, and we end up with a “Walking Dead” scenario, a case of Yoders Bacon may have enough trade value to set me up for years in my little corner of the world…and if the world doesn’t end due to the zombies, I’m sure I’ll get to eat BLTs (no bread, of course, not paleo) with my backyard-grown lettuce and tomatoes.

Either way, a PMA is very important in stressful times, and nothing sets the mind at ease like smoky, salty cured pork products….so in my opinion it’s good to have some long-term store-able bacon, just in case….

Peace,
db