After digging around my 100 year-old shed I found a collection of cinder blocks that were used at one point to make steps off our patio and thought to myself, "With these I think I can make a small rocket stove." After a couple minutes of different configurations I came up with one that actually allowed for a fire chamber and chimney setup and it worked pretty well. One wood match on some yard debris (which I have plethora of) in the chamber and it was off and cooking! Next up will be a much heavier duty stove that I plan and making as a fixture in our backyard and also will be a lot safer by being surrounded by stone and away from anything that could burn.
[Shoestring Cooking] When things aren't looking good outside your home I find that cooking to be almost as important as practicing your marksmanship at the range. In the past I've mentioned the importance of your cooking capability and how it can play a big role in survival for when the grocery store shelves go empty and your bugging in. Not only do the general basics of cooking have high value, but also the ability to mix and match seemingly random food items to make a meal.
A good example of this skill is the competitive cooking show Chopped. Obviously this is more for high-range restaurant quality meals, but it does offer some interesting ideas on how to mix seemingly unrelated foodstuffs into elegant and very edible entrees. I have been mixing and matching foods into small and sometime even large meals for myself for quite a few years now. With a wife with an opposite schedule I often find myself cooking for one rather than two. Preferably I am not going to spend money and gas to go out and get food alone all the time, but rather put something together for myself in the comfort of my own home. Sometimes I'll cook a full meal and leave leftovers for her for when she does get home, but other times I'll just throw something creative together. I'll pull from random leftovers in the fridge, something neglected in the freezer and maybe something in the pantry that I totally forgot about for a couple months. Your mind has to be able to see the individual parts as a completed whole and go the extra step of understanding what it will taste like altogether. Not everybody has this innate understanding, and even if you do it requires LOTS of consistent practice - much like spending time on the range.
I look at my meals in a way that I know that if I was in a situation where food wasn't readily available I could sustain myself and be relatively healthy with each meal as opposed to just consuming calories for sustenance. You may not always have a box of pasta and a can or bottle of tomato sauce to whip up dinner in a jiffy. There may only be a few things left in your house to eat or the things you have may not at first glance seem to match up into a cohesive meal idea at first. There exists literature and obviously even televised shows about this subject that are easy for just about anybody to access and learn from and it is surprisingly important skill to have. So I say... go ahead and try it! Below is one of my examples of "Hodgepodge Cooking": "Poor Man's Stir Fry"
From the Fridge: Leftover Bamboo Shoots Lettuce from salad Sweet Peppers Sriracha Sauce From the Freezer: Crab Rangoon
From the Pantry: Canned scallops Bean thread noodles
