The Foods That Fed Our Grandparents Through Hell—And Why We’ve Forgotten Them

When The Grocery Stores Empty, What Will You Eat?

There’s a photograph in Art Rude’s collection that stops people cold. It’s grainy, black and white, taken during the Great Depression. A grandmother stands in her root cellar, surrounded by rows upon rows of preserved foods in glass jars. Meat. Vegetables. Fruits. Jellies. Enough food to feed her family for a year, maybe longer. She’s smiling—not because times were good, but because she knew something that gave her peace while the world fell apart around her.

She knew how to make food last.

Not for days. Not for weeks. For years.

Art Rude is a former math teacher from North Dakota who spent his career teaching numbers to college students. But outside the classroom, he was teaching himself something entirely different: he was learning the forgotten recipes his grandmother and great-grandmother used to survive times that would break most modern families within weeks.

“I remember watching my grandmother work,” Art recalls in interviews. “She’d take a pig and within a day, she’d have every part of it preserved in ways that would last through winter and beyond. Nothing was wasted. Nothing spoiled. And she did all of this without a refrigerator, without a freezer, without any of the technology we think we can’t live without.”

That knowledge—the kind that kept families alive through the Great Depression, two World Wars, the Dust Bowl, and countless other disasters—is disappearing. The generation that carried it is dying off. Their children learned some of it. Their grandchildren learned almost none of it. And us? We know how to open packages and scan barcodes.

Art Rude decided to do something about it before it was too late. The result is “The Lost Superfoods,” a 272-page compilation of 126+ survival foods and preservation methods that have sustained humanity through the worst crises in history.

This isn’t a cookbook about trendy organic meals or Instagram-worthy dishes. This is a manual for survival. These are the foods that kept people alive when refrigeration didn’t exist, when grocery stores were impossible luxuries, when the only thing standing between your family and starvation was your knowledge and your pantry.

The Skills Your Grandmother Had (That You Don’t)

Close your eyes and imagine this scenario: You wake up tomorrow and the power is out. Not just in your house—everywhere. The entire grid is down. Nobody knows for how long.

Within hours, the grocery stores are mobbed. Within a day, the shelves are empty. Within three days, people are getting desperate.

What do you do?

If you’re like most modern people, you’re in serious trouble. The food in your refrigerator will spoil within a day or two. The food in your freezer might last a bit longer if you’re lucky and don’t open it. But then what? How long can you and your family survive on whatever dried pasta and canned goods you happen to have in your pantry?

Now imagine your great-grandmother in that same scenario.

She wouldn’t panic. She’d walk to her root cellar or pantry and survey her stockpile: meat preserved in ways that would keep it good for years without refrigeration. Vegetables she’d canned or fermented. Dairy products she’d transformed into forms that would last through multiple seasons. Bread that wouldn’t mold for months. Soups that were dehydrated into compact forms that would reconstitute into nourishing meals.

She could feed her family for a year. Maybe longer. And she’d do it using foods that were more nutritious than most of what we buy at the store today.

The difference between you and her isn’t intelligence. It isn’t resourcefulness. It’s simply knowledge—knowledge that used to be passed down as carefully as family heirlooms but has been lost in just two or three generations.

Art Rude understood this gap viscerally. As a math teacher in North Dakota (which, by the way, is about as far from tropical paradise as you can get in America), he experienced firsthand what happens when weather gets severe and modern systems fail. Blizzards that close roads for days. Temperatures that hit forty below zero. Situations where you can’t just run to the store.

“In North Dakota, you learn real quick that self-sufficiency isn’t optional,” Art explains. “It’s survival. And the people who’ve been here longest—the farmers, the old-timers—they still remember how to do things the old way. The way that actually works when everything else fails.”

Art started collecting these recipes and techniques obsessively. He didn’t just write them down—he tested them. He made the foods himself. He stored them. He ate them months or years later. He wanted to know: do these methods really work, or are they just nostalgic stories?

They worked. Every single one of them.

The History Written in Food

What Art discovered in his research was fascinating: you can trace human history through preserved foods. Every major civilization, every culture that survived long enough to leave descendants, had developed sophisticated methods for making food last.

The Mongols, who built the largest contiguous land empire in history, did it partly because they had a superfood that could sustain warriors on horseback for months without resupply. It was lightweight, nutritious, and practically indestructible. Modern armies study their logistics and marvel at how they did it.

The Vikings explored and settled lands from North America to the Middle East. They did it on ships with no refrigeration, surviving on foods that not only lasted the entire voyage but actually got better with age, like wine.

The Amish, who still live without modern electricity, maintain food preservation traditions that allow them to thrive independently of the grocery store system. They’re not suffering—they’re eating better than most Americans, with food they made themselves that will keep for years.

Japan’s ninja warriors—the elite special forces of feudal Japan—had a concentrated superfood that could sustain them on month-long covert missions where resupply was impossible. It was so effective that recipes for it were closely guarded secrets.

Even the Cold War—that modern conflict—produced innovations. The U.S. military developed the “Doomsday Ration” during this period, a superfood designed to feed the entire population in the event of nuclear war. The government spent millions developing it. Art discovered you can make it at home for about 37 cents per day, per person. And in the right conditions, it probably never spoils.

Each of these foods tells a story. But more importantly, each represents a solution to the same problem humanity has always faced: how do you feed yourself when the easy options aren’t available?

What Was Lost (And What We’re Risking)

Let’s talk about what modern life has cost us.

A hundred years ago, the average American household could survive independently for months, even years, with what they had in their pantry and root cellar. They grew vegetables in their backyard. They raised chickens for eggs and meat. Some had a cow for milk and cheese. And critically, they knew how to preserve everything they produced.

They had to. There was no alternative.

Refrigeration was rare and unreliable. Grocery stores as we know them didn’t exist in most places. If you didn’t preserve your summer harvest properly, your family went hungry in winter. If you didn’t know how to cure meat, you wasted protein you couldn’t afford to waste. The skills weren’t optional—they were survival.

Today? The average American household has maybe a week’s worth of food, and most of it requires refrigeration or cooking with electricity. We’ve outsourced food preservation entirely to industrial systems. We trust that the grocery store will always be stocked. We assume the power will always be on. We believe the trucks will always deliver.

Until they don’t.

Hurricane Katrina. The Texas winter storm blackouts. Supply chain disruptions during COVID-19. Every few years, something happens that reminds us how fragile these systems are. And every time, we see the same pattern: grocery stores empty within hours. People panic. Families who thought they were prepared realize their supplies won’t last as long as they thought.

Art Rude, along with his co-authors Claude Davis, Fred Dwight, and Lex Rooker, spent years documenting the foods that got people through even worse crises. The Great Depression, when millions of Americans faced genuine starvation. World Wars that disrupted global food supplies. The Dust Bowl that destroyed crops across entire regions. The Siege of Leningrad, where people survived on foods that sound almost impossible today.

What they discovered was revolutionary in its simplicity: almost all of these survival superfoods share common characteristics.

First, they last without refrigeration. Some for months. Some for years. Some for decades. There’s a chapter in the book on methods that can preserve eggs for up to ten years without refrigeration. Let that sink in. Ten years.

Second, they’re nutrient-dense. These aren’t just calorie sources—they’re complete foods that provide protein, healthy fats, vitamins, and minerals. The people who survived on them stayed healthy, not just alive.

Third, they’re accessible. You don’t need expensive equipment or rare ingredients. Most can be made with what you can buy at a regular grocery store or grow in a backyard garden. The techniques require knowledge and time, but not wealth.

Fourth, they’re tested by history. These aren’t theoretical recipes someone dreamed up. They’re methods that kept entire populations alive through conditions that would horrify us today. They work because they’ve been proven under the harshest possible circumstances.

The Foods That Kept Civilization Alive

“The Lost Superfoods” documents 126 of these forgotten foods, each with its own remarkable history.

There’s the European dish that saved people during the Siege of Leningrad, one of the most brutal famines in modern history. It uses cow feet—cheap protein that most people today would throw away—transformed through an old preservation technique into something that requires no refrigeration for months or even years.

There’s the food that kept America from starving during the Great Depression. It wasn’t hardtack, though that was used too. This was something else—something so delicious that people actually enjoyed eating it, and so clever in its preservation method that it could last for two years without refrigeration while maintaining its taste and nutrition.

There’s the bread developed by the Cree Tribe of Canada when they faced starvation after buffalo were hunted nearly to extinction. Made with just four common ingredients and maybe thirty minutes of your time, it provides all the energy-boosting carbs you need and lasts far longer than any modern bread.

There’s the Turkish fermented soup called Tarhana, developed during a time when crops failed for three consecutive years. Unlike regular soup, it stays good for years on your shelf because the fermentation process kills dangerous bacteria. It’s also packed with B vitamins—essential nutrients that are often the first thing missing in crisis diets.

There’s the method the Dutch of Alkmaar invented in the 14th century for storing cheese at room temperature for more than two years. Cheese. For two years. Without refrigeration. While maintaining its texture and flavor.

There’s the “coated meat” that fueled the Ottoman Empire’s conquests for centuries. Even when enemies used scorched earth tactics—burning everything so advancing armies couldn’t find food—the Ottomans didn’t starve because they carried this preserved meat with them.

And perhaps most remarkably, there’s the “Portable Soup” that saved the Lewis and Clark expedition during their two-year journey across uncharted American territory. This weird-looking soup could sit in your coat pocket indefinitely, no matter how hot it got outside, then reconstitute into a nourishing meal when you needed it.

Each recipe in the book includes detailed, step-by-step instructions with color photographs. Art and his co-authors didn’t just collect these recipes—they tested them, refined them, and documented them so clearly that even someone with zero cooking experience can follow them successfully.

The Knowledge That Should Be In Every Home

Here’s what makes “The Lost Superfoods” different from a regular cookbook or even a typical preparedness manual.

It’s not about what to buy—it’s about what to make. Commercial emergency food supplies are expensive. A year’s supply for one person costs at least $3,000, often much more. And if you have to evacuate, you’re leaving it behind. The knowledge in this book goes with you. It weighs nothing. It costs essentially nothing once you have it. And it works with whatever ingredients you can access.

It’s organized for people who have no experience. Art Rude was a math teacher, not a professional chef or survivalist guru. He wrote this book the way he’d teach a class—clearly, logically, assuming no prior knowledge. If you’ve never canned food before, never dehydrated anything, never preserved meat, this book starts from the beginning and walks you through every step.

It provides exact nutritional values. In a crisis, you need to know not just that you have food, but that you’re getting adequate nutrition. The book lists the macros—fat, carbs, protein—for each food. You can plan your stockpile intelligently, making sure you have balanced nutrition for whatever timeframe you’re preparing for.

It includes the clever hacks that make the difference. Like the chapter on “22 Ingenious Hacks To Make Food Last Longer”—little tricks that can extend the life of your stockpile significantly. Or the section on what to do with all your refrigerated food the moment the power goes out, so you don’t lose hundreds of pounds of meat and other perishables during a blackout.

It teaches the “why” as well as the “how.” Understanding why a preservation method works helps you adapt it to your circumstances and troubleshoot when something doesn’t go as planned. Art and his co-authors explain the science behind the techniques in plain language.

The Math Teacher’s $5-A-Week Solution

One of Art’s most practical contributions comes straight from his background as a math teacher: a system for building a substantial food stockpile while spending only $5 per week.

Think about that. Most people say they can’t afford to stockpile emergency food. But $5? That’s one fancy coffee at Starbucks. That’s less than a single lunch at McDonald’s. That’s so small an amount that almost anyone can fit it into their budget if they make it a priority.

Art’s system shows you exactly which foods to buy each week to gradually build up a stockpile that would feed your family for months. It’s not about buying expensive freeze-dried meals. It’s about intelligently purchasing shelf-stable ingredients you can transform into the preserved foods documented in the book.

Over time—maybe six months, maybe a year depending on your family size—you’d have a genuine emergency food supply that cost you less than $300 total. Compare that to the $3,000+ for a commercial one-year supply, and you can see why people find this approach revolutionary.

The “Life Bar” That Packs 2,400 Calories

Art also developed what he calls his “life bar”—a compact, nutrient-dense food that provides 2,400 calories per serving. That’s enough to feed an adult for an entire day with just one serving.

He keeps a three-week stockpile in his family’s bug-out bags—enough to feed his family of four for three weeks—and it cost him about $100 total. All the ingredients are shelf-stable, so they keep for years.

This isn’t some bland survival ration that you’d only eat if you were literally starving. Art designed it to actually taste good because he understands that in a crisis, morale matters. Food that people enjoy eating contributes to mental health and family cohesion when everything else is falling apart.

What Your Great-Grandmother Knew About Real Food

There’s another dimension to this that goes beyond emergency preparedness. Our great-grandparents ate differently than we do, and in many ways, they ate better.

The foods they preserved were whole foods. Real vegetables. Real meat. Real dairy. No preservatives were needed because the preservation methods themselves prevented spoilage. No artificial flavors or colors. No processing that stripped out nutrients.

When you make these foods yourself, you know exactly what’s in them. You control the ingredients. You can avoid allergens, adjust for dietary restrictions, and ensure quality in ways that are impossible when you’re buying packaged foods from a factory.

There’s also something profound about the act of preserving food yourself. It connects you to the cycle of seasons. It makes you aware of where food comes from and what it costs in terms of resources and labor. It builds skills and confidence. It creates family traditions—imagine teaching your children or grandchildren to make these foods, passing down knowledge just as your ancestors did.

The Security That Changes Everything

Let’s talk about what it feels like to have a real food stockpile.

Not just a few extra cans in the cupboard. Not just a case of bottled water in the garage. A genuine stockpile—months or even a year’s worth of nutritious, shelf-stable food that you made yourself.

It changes how you sleep at night.

When news breaks of a hurricane heading your way, you don’t panic about getting to the store before everyone else does. When you hear about supply chain disruptions, you don’t worry. When food prices spike, you’re insulated. When unexpected job loss hits, you know at least your family will eat.

This isn’t paranoia. This is peace of mind.

Art Rude isn’t some doomsday prepper living in a bunker waiting for the apocalypse. He’s a retired math teacher, a grandfather, a guy who just wanted to make sure his family would be okay if something went wrong. And in his years of research, testing these recipes and preservation methods, he discovered something: being prepared isn’t about fear. It’s about freedom.

Freedom from anxiety about the future. Freedom from dependence on systems you can’t control. Freedom from the helpless feeling of watching disaster approach while knowing you’re not ready.

The book includes two bonus sections that extend this concept even further. One shows you how to build a year-round greenhouse for around $200 in materials—a perpetual food garden that produces two, three, or even four harvests per year depending on your climate. Hidden from sight, protected from weather, producing fresh food even when grocery stores are empty.

The other bonus is a comprehensive guide to making your house more self-sufficient overall. Our great-grandparents had backyard medicine gardens, smokehouses, root cellars, wells, charcoal for water purification, and traps for wild game. They weren’t isolated homesteaders—they were normal people who just maintained basic self-sufficiency as a matter of course. The bonus shows you how to recreate these capabilities in a modern context.

The Stories That Matter

What makes “The Lost Superfoods” more than just a recipe collection are the stories woven throughout. Each food comes with its historical context—who developed it, what crisis they were facing, how it saved lives.

When you read about the Mongol superfood that fueled Genghis Khan’s warriors, you’re not just learning a recipe. You’re understanding how logistics shaped history. How one civilization’s food preservation advantage allowed them to project power across vast distances that should have been impossible to control.

When you learn about the Viking method for preserving fish that gets better with age, you’re discovering how Norse explorers could survive months at sea, reaching North America nearly 500 years before Columbus.

When you make the same fermented foods that kept European populations alive during the Black Plague, you’re connecting with ancestors who survived one of the worst disasters in human history through simple, practical knowledge.

These aren’t abstract historical facts. These are recipes you can make in your kitchen this weekend. The same foods. The same methods. The same results.

What Happens When You Learn

So you’ve read about these forgotten superfoods. You understand why the knowledge matters. You recognize that your great-grandparents had capabilities you’ve lost. You see the value in having this security.

What now?

The simplest answer is to start learning. Not someday when you have more time. Not after the next crisis makes it urgent. Now, while learning is comfortable and you can practice without pressure.

Start with one recipe from the book. Choose something that sounds interesting or useful. Maybe the homemade spam that requires no refrigeration for months. Maybe the dehydrated chili bean soup that’s hearty and delicious. Maybe the Amish poor man’s steak. Maybe the ninja superfood—because honestly, how can you resist learning what elite Japanese warriors ate?

Follow the instructions. Make it. Store it according to the guidelines. Then wait. Check it after a month. After three months. After six months. See for yourself that yes, these methods really work. The food stays good. The nutrients remain. And most importantly, it tastes better than you’d expect.

Once you’ve successfully made one preserved food, try another. Then another. Build your skills gradually. Each new recipe adds to your knowledge base and your confidence. Each jar or package you properly preserve and store is food security sitting on your shelf.

Start Art’s $5-a-week stockpiling system. It’s painless—$5 is nothing. But over time, those small weekly purchases add up to substantial security. Six months from now, you could have enough food to weather a major disruption without worry. A year from now, you could have enough for your entire family for six months or more.

Teach your family. This is knowledge that should be passed down, not lost. If you have children, involve them in making these foods. Kids love projects, especially ones that involve cooking and creating something tangible. They’ll remember these experiences long after they’ve forgotten their schoolwork, and they’ll carry these skills into their own adult lives.

Build community. Find other people in your area who are interested in food preservation and traditional skills. Share what you learn. Learn from them. In a real crisis, community is what saves people—not just individual preparedness, but networks of people with complementary skills who help each other.

Most importantly, change your relationship with food. Stop seeing it as something that comes from stores and factories. Start seeing it as something you can create, preserve, and control. This shift in perspective is empowering in ways that go far beyond emergency preparedness.

The Generation That Has To Decide

Every generation faces choices about what to preserve from the past and what to leave behind. We’ve chosen to preserve a lot: libraries full of books, museums full of artifacts, hard drives full of digital information. We’ve built entire institutions dedicated to maintaining knowledge.

But somehow, in all that preservation effort, we let slip the most fundamental survival skill humans possessed: the ability to make food last.

Art Rude and his co-authors are trying to recover it before it’s completely gone. “The Lost Superfoods” represents years of research, testing, and documentation. It’s their attempt to capture knowledge that’s fading with every passing year as the last generation that really knew these skills dies off.

The book is 272 pages, full color, with clear photographs and step-by-step instructions. It covers 126+ survival foods—everything from the ancient to the relatively modern, from cultures around the world, tested and proven through the worst circumstances humanity has faced.

But more than that, it’s a statement: this knowledge is worth saving. These skills are worth learning. The security they provide is worth having.

Right now, this knowledge is still available. People like Art are still around to document it, test it, and teach it. The recipes still exist in old family collections and historical records. The ingredients are still available. The techniques still work.

But that window won’t stay open forever. Within another generation, if nothing changes, this knowledge could be completely lost. The last people who learned these skills from their grandparents will be gone. The recipes will be historical curiosities that no one actually uses. The techniques will be forgotten.

Or we can make a different choice. We can decide that yes, this matters. Yes, we want to know what our great-grandparents knew. Yes, we want to be able to feed our families no matter what happens with grocery stores and power grids and supply chains.

The Choice In Front Of You

Art Rude built a log cabin where he lives with his wife and children. He cooks outside on open flames. He makes his own clothes. He stockpiles homemade canned foods. He practices what he preaches because he believes in it.

“A crisis is what people 150 years ago called daily life,” Art points out. “No electricity, no computers, no internet, no supermarkets, no pharmacies. And they came out on top. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here.”

He’s right. Our ancestors survived conditions that would break most of us within weeks. They did it not because they were tougher—though they probably were—but because they had knowledge we’ve lost.

That knowledge is documented in “The Lost Superfoods.” The Doomsday Ration that costs 37 cents per day. The Viking fish that improves with age. The Mongol warrior food. The ninja superfood. The foods that saved Europe during the Dark Ages. The methods that kept Americans alive during the Great Depression. All of it, tested and proven, explained clearly enough that anyone can do it.

The question isn’t whether these foods work—they do. History proves it. Art’s testing proves it. The question is whether you’re going to learn how to make them before you need to.

Right now, while grocery stores are stocked and power is reliable, learning these skills is an interesting project. It’s satisfying. It’s rewarding. It connects you to your heritage and gives you capabilities most people don’t have.

But someday—maybe next year, maybe in ten years, maybe tomorrow—there might be a moment when these skills matter more than anything else. When the difference between your family eating well and your family going hungry is whether you have this knowledge.

Art created “The Lost Superfoods” for that moment. He documented these 126+ survival foods so that when your great-grandchildren someday ask how your generation managed during whatever crisis they’re learning about in history class, you can tell them: “We knew what to do. We learned from the generation before us. And we came through it okay.”

The foods are waiting to be learned. The techniques are ready to be practiced. The security is available to anyone willing to acquire the knowledge.

Your great-grandmother knew these things. She could feed her family for a year from her pantry and root cellar. She could turn a summer harvest into winter survival. She could take cheap cuts of meat and preserve them for years.

Can you?

That’s the question “The Lost Superfoods” asks. And it provides everything you need to answer yes.

The choice, as they say, is yours. But choose soon. The generation that holds this knowledge is fading. And when they’re gone, if we haven’t learned from them, the knowledge goes with them.

Unless we decide to save it. Unless we decide to learn it. Unless we decide that what sustained humanity through its darkest hours is worth preserving for whatever darkness may still lie ahead.

Art Rude made his choice. He documented the knowledge. He tested the recipes. He created a resource that could help thousands or millions of families survive whatever comes next.

Now it’s your turn to choose.

Discover The Lost Superfoods →

---