Sometimes it’s not the collapse itself that breaks you — it’s realizing you’ll never have ice cream again. In this episode, I dive into the “unpreppable” things we love, why they matter more than we admit, and how to recreate a little bit of normal when the grid’s gone dark.

Let’s start with the big one — ice cream. My wife’s an ice cream fiend, and she’d probably trade ammo for a pint of mint chip after month three of the apocalypse. The thing is, cold and creamy doesn’t store well.

But there are ways to fake it:

Off-grid freezing: If you’ve got solar or generator backup, you can keep a small freezer running. Even better, stash some freeze-dried milk and make your own mix when power’s available.

Winter ice cream: When it’s cold out, mix ice and rock salt to churn a batch the old-fashioned way.

Chemical cooling: Old shows like Jericho weren’t wrong — certain fertilizer mixes can rapidly chill liquids. It’s worth researching if you’re really desperate for that frozen fix.

The next craving on the list: hamburgers. You can stock all the black bean patties you want — they’ll never hit the same. Most “meat” in survival cans turns out to be soy TVP, not beef.

Here’s how to make do:

Canning burgers: You can pressure-can cooked hamburger patties. They’ll be well-done, not medium rare, but they’ll last.

Dehydrated beef: Lean ground beef can be cooked, dehydrated, and sealed in jars. Soak in hot water to bring it back — not great, but edible.

Fresh game grind: Get a hand-crank grinder and “hamburgerize” deer, rabbit, or whatever you’ve hunted. Add your home-baked buns and garden tomatoes, and it’ll taste close enough to normal.

If you’ve got kids, this one’s real. My daughter loves nuggets — and there’s just no long-term nugget storage solution. You can freeze-dry almost anything, but batter doesn’t come back crispy.

So you improvise:

Can the chicken: Store the meat itself, not the meal.

Rebuild from scratch: Mix canned chicken with potato or corn starch, egg, and seasoning. Form clumps, fry them up, and boom — homemade survival nuggets.
It’s not Chick-fil-A, but it keeps morale up and bellies full.

It’s easy to focus on bullets and beans, but morale food matters too. Comforts — ice cream, burgers, nuggets — tie you to the world you lost. Learning to recreate them, even badly, is part of survival.

You’re not just prepping for calories. You’re prepping for sanity.

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The post The Unpreppables: Comforts You’ll Miss (and Clever Workarounds) | Episode 526 appeared first on Survivalpunk.