Dehydrating Meat Sources for Your Food Pantry

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Protein sources in an emergency situation are essential in maintaining a balanced diet. Because meat sources are perishable, many preparedness minded folks are taking the time to preserve their meats to use during a time when the grid is down.

Dried meats can be pre-cooked or dehydrated raw. Many prefer to cut their meats into small slices or, in the ground variety. The thinner the cuts of meat, the faster it will take to dry.

Tips for Preparing Meat for Dehydration

Partially freeze meat to make slicing easier. The thickness of the meat strips will make a difference in the safety of the methods recommended in this book. Slice meat into ¼-inch strips. For tougher jerky, slice the meat with the grain; for tender jerky, slice across the grain. Trim off any excess fat to prevent the meat from going rancid.

A Word About Poultry

Although the USDA recommends that poultry be cooked until it has heated to an internal temperature of 165°F before it is dehydrated, many people dehydrate raw poultry just like they would dehydrate raw beef. If you feel more comfortable cooking the poultry before dehydrating it, follow this procedure:
Cut poultry into thin slices ¼ inch thick and place on dehydrator trays or, if you are using the oven method to dehydrate, place sliced poultry on a cookie sheet. Maintain a constant dehydrator temperature of 130°F to 140°F during drying

The following recipes can be found in The Prepper’s Cookbook: 300 Recipes to Turn Your Emergency Food into Nutritious, Delicious, Life-Saving Meals and will help you preserve your meat sources into shelf stable goods for a time when you need it the most.

Ground Beef Crumbles

(Makes 4 cups dried meat crumbles)

Taking the extra step of cooking ground meats before dehydrating them helps give them a “crumbled” look.

• 1 pound lean ground meat (beef, turkey, or chicken)


• ¾ cup dry breadcrumbs


• salt and pepper

1. In a bowl, combine the ground meat and breadcrumbs.

2. In a skillet over medium heat, cook the meat mixture thoroughly, breaking it up with a spoon; season with salt and pepper to taste. Drain off the excess grease and allow the meat to cool for a few minutes.

3. Transfer to dehydrating trays and set the dehydrator to 145°F. Dehydrate for 2 or more hours, until the meat is completely dried. Dried meat crumbles can be safely stored in an airtight container in a cool, dark, low-moisture environment for up to 1 month, or in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 1 month or in the refrigerator for up to 6 months to a year.

Ham

Use a lean cut, well cured ham that is trimmed of fat. Cut a fully-cooked smoked ham into ¼-inch cubes or very thin slices. Spread a single layer of the cubes or slices on each dehydrator tray.

Dry at 145°F for about 4 hours, stirring occasionally. Reduce the temperature to 130°F and continue drying and occasionally stirring until the meat is hard and thoroughly dried, about 2 more hours. Store dried ham pieces in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 1 month. To rehydrate, combine 1 cup of dried ham and 1 cup of boiling water in a saucepan. Cover and cook on low heat for about 1 hour.

For more recipes on drying meats and making jerky, purchase The Prepper’s Cookbook: 300 Recipes to Turn Your Emergency Food into Nutritious, Delicious, Life-Saving Meals today.

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Contributed by Tess Pennington of Ready Nutrition.

Tess Pennington is the author of The Prepper’s Cookbook: 300 Recipes to Turn Your Emergency Food into Nutritious, Delicious, Life-Saving Meals. When a catastrophic collapse cripples society, grocery store shelves will empty within days. But if you follow this book’s plan for stocking, organizing and maintaining a proper emergency food supply, your family will have plenty to eat for weeks, months or even years.

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Dehydrating Meat Sources for Your Food Pantry

Nestlé Recall and Mafia Connections: 5 Things You Should Know As Horse Meat Scandal Grows

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By now you’ve likely heard about the horse meat scandal that is rocking Europe. As far as food scandals go, this one is intriguing. Of course, this is not the first time we’ve learned that the meat we buy may not be everything we thought it was. Remember “pink slime”? The only good news here is that, so far, it doesn’t seem to be an imminent health threat, although it does raise some very alarming questions. 

As food politics expert Marion Nestle wrote, “The unfolding drama around Europe’s horsemeat scandal is a case study in food politics and the politics of cultural identity. Cultural identity? They (other people) eat horsemeat. We don’t.”

As Nestle explains, “Most Americans say they won’t eat horsemeat, are appalled by the very idea, and oppose raising horses for food, selling their meat, and slaughtering horses for any reason.” Horse meat, however, is eaten in numerous countries around the world like China, Japan and Indonesia, as well as countries in Europe, including France and Switzerland. 

It’s one thing to knowingly eat horse meat; it’s quite another to have it slipped into your food. This opens a pandora’s box of questions about the food we"re buying. For starters: What else is in there (donkey and pig, and the list may grow)? What does it reveal about food safety and our complex food chain? Who is responsible for duping consumers, and how did they get away with it?

It turns out there is a lot we can learn from Europe’s surplus of horse burgers.

1. The Mighty Fall

The most recent news surfacing today is that Nestlé, one of the largest food companies in the world, has now been entangled in the scandal. The New York Timesreports that Nestlé is pulling two products sold in Italy and Spain: Buitoni Beef Ravioli and Beef Tortellini, as well as Lasagnes à la Bolognaise Gourmandes sold to catering companies in France.  

Nestlé is just the latest in the list of Europe’s top food companies involved. The story first broke in the UK and Ireland when major supermarket chains Tesco and Aldi were found to be selling beef products that contained horse meat. It spun from there. AdAge reports, “Burger King binned thousands of Whoppers and Angus Burgers, which were sourced from the same Irish beef supplier, Silvercrest, and Findus ‘beef’ lasagna was found to contain 100% horse meat.” 

Silvercrest has been fingered, as well as Liffey Meats in Ireland and Dalepak in Yorkshire, accordingto Felicity Lawrence of the Guardian:

Silvercrest and Dalepak are both subsidiaries of ABP Food Group, one of the largest beef processors in Europe.”

… Huge blocks of frozen meat at a cold store in Northern Ireland, Freeza Foods, which had been quarantined by officials suspicious of its labelling and state of packaging, were found to contain 80% horse. 

Other top food companies were implicated when the scandal hit France (more on that soon), but the presence of large food companies at the heart of the issue is troubling. While bigger companies are often able to offer products cheaper than small and local stores, some may be questioning if the savings are really worth it if consumers are getting duped. A look at the complex supply chain raises even more fears.

Lawrence writes:

Supermarket buyers and big brands have been driving down prices, seeking special offers on meat products as consumers cut back on their spending in the face of recession. The squeeze on prices has come at a time when manufacturers" costs have been soaring. Beef prices have been at record highs as has the price of grain needed to feed cattle. The cost of energy, heavily used in industrial processing and to fuel centralised distribution chains, has also soared. There has been a mistmatch between the cost of real beef and what companies are prepared to pay.

So, are we really shocked?

2. A Tangled Web

Horse meat has ended up in so-called beef products to varying degrees — some have been found to contain traces of horse DNA, which may have been the result of processing plants not properly cleaning equipment. And some products have been found to contain upward of 80 to 100 percent horse meat, which signals a much larger problem. 

Getting to the bottom of how this came about has involved a lot of finger pointing. In Ireland, the ABP Food Group blamed supplies in Netherlands and Spain, and later Poland. “Five weeks into the scandal and the links in the Irish chain have still not been fully established,” writes the Guardian"s Lawrence.” But this gets even more interesting in France, as she explains:  

Comigel had subcontracted its ready meal production to a factory in Luxembourg, Tavola. It was supplied with meat by a company called Spanghero. Spanghero had bought meat from a Dutch fraudster already convicted of passing horse off as beef, Jan Fasen.

The Dutch trader ran a company called Draap, which spelled backwards is paard or Dutch for horse. It was registered in Cyprus in 2008, with an offshore vehicle in the British Virgin Islands. It emerged during Fasen"s trial in Holland that he had supplied French companies with horsemeat imported from South America and Mexico fraudulently labelled as Dutch and German “beef” going back to 2007.

The horsemeat found in the recent tests on ready meals exported from France was said to have been sourced by Draap from Romania. The Romanian government has said its meat was legally exported correctly labeled as horse. The French government said Spanghero was the first agent to stamp the horse as beef; Spanghero has denied doing so deliberately. Fasen says Spanghero and French manufacturers were in on the deception from the beginning.

It turns out there may be a whole lot more criminal to this case.

3. Trouble in Romania

It just so happens that Romania may have an excess of dead horses on its hands. John Lichfield of the Independent reports that a change in traffic rules is to blame:

Horse-drawn carts were a common form of transport for centuries in Romania, but hundreds of thousands of the animals are feared to have been sent to the abattoir after the change in road rules.

The law, which was passed six years ago but only enforced recently, also banned carts drawn by donkeys, leading to speculation among food-industry officials in France that some of the “horse meat” which has turned up on supermarket shelves in Britain, France and Sweden may, in fact, turn out to be donkey meat. “Horses have been banned from Romanian roads and millions of animals have been sent to the slaughterhouse,” said Jose Bove, a veteran campaigner for small farmers who is now vice-president of the European Parliament agriculture committee.

While the explanation of where some of the horse meat could have come from is straightforward, how it got to dinner plates is not. As Lichfield explains, “It came from abattoirs in Romania through a dealer in Cyprus working through another dealer in Holland to a meat plant in the south of France which sold it to a French-owned factory in Luxembourg which made it into frozen meals sold in supermarkets in 16 countries.”

4. Blame the Mafia

From here, the story just gets weirder. Jamie Doward reports for the Observer that organized international gangs are suspected of involvement in the scandal. Doward writes:

Experts within the horse slaughter industry have told the Observer there is evidence that both Polish and Italian mafia gangs are running multimillion-pound scams to substitute horsemeat for beef during food production. There are claims that vets and other officials working within abattoirs and food production plants are intimidated into signing off meat as beef when it is in fact cheaper alternatives such as pork or horse. …

“I"m concerned that this is an international criminal conspiracy here and we"ve really got to get to the bottom of it,” [Britain’s environment secretary Owen Paterson] said.

5. Rethinking Our Food

So, we found out that beef products may contain horse, and also pig, and possibly donkey, as well. What to do with that information? For some people, it means buying less meat or from different sources. Reuters reported that 60 percent of people it surveyed in the UK said they were turning to local butchers for their meat and 25 percent said they would buy different cuts instead of processed meat. 

AdAge reported that sales of frozen burgers dropped 40 percent in the beginning of February, while the meat-substitute Quorn saw a spike in sales of 10 percent. Emma Hall writes that, “More than two-thirds of British adults said they would be less likely to buy frozen meat products in the future.”  

The biggest effect so far has been a drop in public trust. But after countless food safety scandals over the years, some of them deadly, why do we trust a system that’s needlessly complex?

“The food and retail industries have become highly concentrated and globalized in recent decades,” Lawrence writes for the Guardian:

“A handful of key players dominate the beef processing and supermarket sectors across Europe. They have developed very long supply chains, particularly for their economy lines, which enable them to buy the ingredients for processed foods from wherever they are cheapest at any point, depending on exchange rates and prices on the global commodity markets. Networks of brokers, cold stores operators and subcontracted meat cutting plants have emerged to supply rapidly fluctuating orders ‘just in time.’ Management consultants KPMG estimate there are around 450 points at which the integrity of the chain can break down.”

That’s worth repeating — there are 450 places where something could go wrong before your food gets into your hands.

If there was ever a reason to eat more locally produced food and to know where your food comes from and who grows and processes it, this would be a damn good one because this extends far beyond just meat products, and far beyond Europe.

Tue, 02/19/2013 – 12:20  
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Nestlé Recall and Mafia Connections: 5 Things You Should Know As Horse Meat Scandal Grows

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Obama delivers "Democrat Classic," Symbolism of SOTU guests, Shootout nearly upstages Obama, Rubio on GMA: "I needed water," Rand serves up red meat, Hagel advances, Lew on Hill at 10 a.m.

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(swong@politico.com or @scottwongDC)

STATE OF THE UNION: OBAMA DELIVERS A ‘DEMOCRAT CLASSIC’ – Glenn Thrush writes for the hometown paper: “Four years after his first State of the Union, Obama rolled out a series of vintage proposals from his party’s amply stocked policy cupboard — a $ 1.75-an-hour hike in the federal minimum wage, an ambitious plan to expand public preschool education to all kids, reintroduction of a $ 50 billion infrastructure plan, and resurrection of climate change legislation. Taken as a whole, it marked the latest step in a clear effort by Obama to nudge the nation’s politics to the center-left, a shift from the center-right politics of Ronald Reagan that have dominated American political life for more than three decades. …

– “‘It is our unfinished task to restore the basic bargain that built this country — the idea that if you work hard and meet your responsibilities, you can get ahead, no matter where you come from, what you look like, or who you love,’ he said as he began a speech that lived up to its billing as a bookend to his progressive inaugural address three weeks ago. ‘It is our unfinished task to make sure that this government works on behalf of the many, and not just the few; that it encourages free enterprise, rewards individual initiative, and opens the doors of opportunity to every child across this great nation of ours.’ …

– “Over and again in the hourlong speech, Obama cast himself as champion of the working classes and portrayed Republicans as protectors of the wealthy and powerful … Obama’s more immediate aim was to back Republicans into a corner on the upcoming fight over $ 1.2 trillion in budget cuts triggered on March 1 by the sequester by harnessing public opinion for his own approach — through fewer budget cuts than Republicans want, a more modest approach to reforming runway entitlement programs and a greater emphasis on raising new tax revenues from corporations and the wealthy.” http://politi.co/Vfs5SB

WaPo, A1, “State of the symbolism: Speech guests help put human faces on rhetoric,” By Ed O’Keefe, Emily Heil and David A. Fahrenthold: “There was a teacher who’d survived three gunshot wounds. A congresswoman who’d lived through an assassination attempt. The grieving parents of slain teenagers. And, a few feet away, a fierce pro-gun rock-and-roller who said he’d wind up ‘dead or in jail’ if the president was re­elected. During many State of the Union speeches, the House’s viewing gallery is filled mostly with congressional spouses, lucky staffers and visiting donors. But Tuesday was different. The normally staid gallery was filled, instead, with ordinary Americans whose unordinary lives made them political symbols. In many cases, what they symbolized was the toll of American gun violence. There were 35 people who had been touched by tragedy, whom Democrats had brought to represent the real stakes of the gun-control debate playing out on the floor below.”  http://wapo.st/VUgUfl

SHOOTOUT NEARLY UPSTAGES OBAMA – Howard Kurtz writes for The Daily Beast: “President Obama used his State of the Union to pivot back to the economy, saying he wants to protect ‘senior citizens’ and ‘working families’ from bearing the brunt of budget-cutting, but the Washington ritual was nearly overshadowed by a California crime drama. By the time Obama called for generating enough jobs for ‘a thriving middle class’ on Tuesday night, he found himself sharing the television stage as the cable news networks blanketed a shootout at Big Bear with accused cop-killer Christopher Dorner that left one police officer dead and another wounded. It was a split-screen moment reminiscent of Bill Clinton delivering his 1997 State of the Union during the verdict in O.J. Simpson’s civil trial—and all the more surreal since Obama talked about gun violence after the Big Bear cabin in which Dorner was hiding went up in flames.” http://thebea.st/X7HamF

RUBIO REBUTTAL: NO FORTUNATE SON – Jonathan Martin writes for POLITICO: “His desperate need for a drink of water created the immediate headline, but Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-Fla.) much-anticipated speech Tuesday night had a very serious intent: It was as much an exercise in erasing Mitt Romney’s legacy on the Republican Party as it was a traditional response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address. The selection of Rubio to speak for his party marked the latest, and perhaps most overt, step in the GOP’s rehabilitation project since Election Day, an effort to repackage its identity without altering its policies. And at four separate moments in his remarks, Rubio went to great lengths to get the message across: The GOP isn’t the party of rich white guys.

–“Right from the start, the 41-year-old Cuban-American stated bluntly that he was no senator’s (or governor’s) son. ‘I didn’t inherit any money from them,’ Rubio said of his parents. ‘But I inherited something far better — the real opportunity to accomplish my dreams. … Mr. President, I still live in the same working-class neighborhood I grew up in … My neighbors aren’t millionaires. They’re retirees who depend on Social Security and Medicare. They’re workers who have to get up early tomorrow morning and go to work to pay the bills. They’re immigrants, who came here because they were stuck in poverty in countries where the government dominated the economy.’” http://politi.co/YcMNBf

RUBIO’S WATER BREAK: THE GULP HEARD ‘ROUND THE WORLD – Joel Siegel writes for the New York Daily News: “Thirsty for attention? Or just thirsty? … It was supposed to be the moment that propelled Rubio into the top tier of potential presidential candidates. Instead, social media exploded with jokes after Rubio awkwardly paused, reached for a bottle of Poland Spring water and took a swig to douse a case of dry mouth. ,,, The Florida senator seemed to have a sense of humor about the viral moment. Late Tuesday night he tweeted a photo of the attention-grabbing bottle.” http://nydn.us/XzOlTL

LET ME EXPLAIN – “I needed water, what am I going to do?” Rubio told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Wednesday. “God has a funny way of reminding us we’re human.” http://politi.co/XKomeg

GIFs were online within minutes of Rubio’s aqua lunge – http://bit.ly/XKhCx1

TWITTER TRAFFIC – @PaulBegala: Marco Rubio: the man you want to have a desperate gulp of water with.

@AntDeRosa: Stay thirsty, Americans – Marco Rubio

@samsteinhp: Jesus walked on water. Rubio drank it #saviors (ok, done)

@darth: OK RT @jakebeckman: Someone photoshop Rubio on the poster for The Water Boy cc @darth thx pic.twitter.com/XG18YRGT

In an attempt to poke fun at himself, Rubio tweeted out a pic of his water bottle — @marcorubio: #GOPResponse #SOTU #gop #tcot pic.twitter.com/3hxtgdbP

And one of his advisers scored the prized possession: @dtoddharris: I am now the proud owner of the most famous bottle of water in American politics. pic.twitter.com/wkzaLSlX

RUBIO ROLLS OUT SCHOOL VOUCHER BILL – Marc Caputo writes on A1 of the Miami Herald: “U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio immediately followed his rebuttal to the president’s State of the Union address Tuesday night by releasing a ‘school-choice’ bill to allow taxpayers to subsidize private-school education for poor kids. By putting legislation where his mouth is, Rubio wanted to reinforce the theme of his speech — that conservative policy is good for the poor and working class.” http://hrld.us/XzKCFW

THE RAP ON RUBIO – New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wasn’t impressed by Rubio’s performance – or his fluency in rap music: “Gangsta rap used to be a reliable issue for politicians, but they were denouncing it. Now Senator Marco Rubio of Florida is praising it — and right at the moment when Republicans are pushing the argument that guns don’t kill people; it’s a culture glorifying guns and violence that kills people.  The ubiquitous 41-year-old — who’s on the cover of Time as ‘The Republican Savior’ — looked as if he needed some saving himself Tuesday night as he delivered the party’s response to the State of the Union address in English (and Spanish).

– “He seemed parched, shaky and sweaty, rubbing his face and at one point lunging off-camera to grab a bottle of water. He needed some of the swagger reflected on the Spotify playlist he recently released, featuring Tupac’s ‘Changes,’ as well as Flo Rida, Pitbull, The Sugar Hill Gang, Kanye, Big Sean, devoted Obama supporters Jay-Z and Will.I.Am, and a Foster the People song about ‘a cowboy kid’ who finds a gun in his dad’s closet and goes after ‘all the other kids with the pumped up kicks.’” http://nyti.ms/XzKp5r

RAND’S RESPONSE FULL OF RED MEAT – James Hohmann reports for POLITICO: “Rand Paul tackled gun control, drone strikes, immigration and — first and foremost — spending cuts in a blistering ‘tea party’ response to the President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address. ‘We will not let the liberals tread on the Second Amendment,’ the Kentucky senator declared Tuesday night after Florida Sen. Marco Rubio finished delivering the official GOP response. The libertarian-leaning Republican then alluded to the controversy over the drone strike Obama ordered against Anwar al-Awlaki. ‘We cannot and will not allow any president to act as if he were a king,’ Paul said. ‘We will not tolerate secret lists of American citizens who can be killed without trial.’ Rubio and Paul are both likely to run for president in 2016, but they played to very different bases Tuesday. Paul delivered a wide-ranging speech aimed at activists, chock full of criticism for both parties.” http://politi.co/15bSkx6

GOOD WEDNESDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 13, 2013, and welcome to The Huddle, your play-by-play preview of the day’s congressional news. Send tips, suggestions, comments, complaints and corrections to swong@politico.com. If you don’t already, please follow me on Twitter @scottwongDC.

My new followers include but are not limited to @KimberlyRailey and @RepJerryNadler.

TODAY IN CONGRESS – The Senate meets at 10 a.m. and could consider the nomination of former Sen. Chuck Hagel to be secretary of Defense. The Senate Finance Committee holds a hearing to consider the nomination of Jack Lew to be Treasury secretary, 10 a.m. in Dirksen 215.

The House is also in at 10 a.m. with first and last votes expected between 1 and 2 p.m. on the Federal Disaster Assistance Nonprofit Fairness Act and Hydropower Regulatory Efficiency Act.

AROUND THE HILL – House Democratic Caucus Chairman Xavier Becerra, Vice Chairman Joseph Crowley, and Rep. Mike Thompson hold a post-caucus media availability at 10 a.m. in the  HVC-210 alcove. Also at 10 a.m., Speaker John Boehner and other GOP leaders hold a post-conference meeting availability in the RNC lobby.

Sens. Barbara Mikulski, Ben Cardin, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand speak about the Harret Tubman Historic Park legislation at 10:30 a.m. in SVC 208. Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Whip Steny Hoyer speak on the Violence Against Women Act at 1 p.m. in HVC Studio A. Sens. Jon Tester and Rep. Chellie Pingree speak on legislation to help survivors of military sexual trauma at 1 p.m. in S-115. Sen. Jack Reed speaks on consumer protection at 2:30 p.m. in the Senate Studio.

Both Democratic and Republican leaders said they will dedicate a statue of civil rights icon Rosa Parks in Statuary Hall on Feb. 27.

BOEHNER’S SENATE FIRST STRATEGY – Jake Sherman and Manu Raju write for POLITICO: “The same House Republican majority that spent the entire past two years haranguing Senate Democrats for ignoring piles of legislation has a new strategy. Let the Senate act first — on nearly everything. Whether it’s an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws, renewing the Violence Against Women Act or retooling gun regulations after mass shootings across the nation, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is perfectly fine with sitting on his hands. The House GOP’s days of incessantly repealing President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul are gone, as are their bills to eliminate obscure regulations.

– “This ‘Senate first’ strategy allows a divided House to sit back and watch Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) struggle to wrangle votes in a chamber filled with vulnerable Democrats up for reelection in 2014. But it also carries substantial risks. If Senate Republicans join with Democrats and push through major elements of Obama’s agenda, House Republicans could become isolated if they seek to dilute or block the legislative push.” http://politi.co/12LlDam

The NYT’s Jeremy Peters reports: HAGEL NOM CLEARS COMMITTEE, BUT THINGS GET PERSONAL – “After a combative two-hour debate that tested the bounds of Senate collegiality, the Armed Services Committee on Tuesday approved the nomination of former Senator Chuck Hagel as defense secretary on a sharply partisan vote. The 14-to-11 vote to send the nomination to the Senate floor with a favorable recommendation was the latest step in a process that has deepened festering hostilities between Congressional Republicans and the White House and has exposed stark disagreements over wartime foreign policy. After the vote, Republicans threatened to try to filibuster the nomination of Mr. Hagel … while Democrats were promising to force a vote of the full Senate as early as Wednesday night.

– “At times, the meeting slipped into an unusually accusatory and bitter back-and-forth, with Republicans like Ted Cruz, a freshman senator from Texas, going as far as to suggest that Mr. Hagel had accepted money from nations that oppose American interests. … Senator Bill Nelson of Florida and other Democrats countered by saying that Republicans had unfairly questioned the integrity of both Mr. Hagel, a two-time Purple Heart recipient, and had undermined the work of the normally bipartisan committee itself. ‘Senator Cruz has gone over the line,’ Mr. Nelson said. ‘He basically has impugned the patriotism of the nominee.’ Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who is opposing his former colleague, also bristled at the attacks on Mr. Hagel, saying that ‘no one on this committee should at any time impugn his character or his integrity.’” http://nyti.ms/XKsjjg

MENENDEZ’S BUSINESS AS USUAL APPROACH – John Bresnahan and Manu Raju report for POLITICO: “Embattled Sen. Robert Menendez is throwing himself into his new job as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as he struggles to deflect attention from his own personal problems. Menendez briefed fellow Democrats in a closed-door session on Tuesday about North Korea’s surprise nuclear test, an issue that has rattled the U.S. and foreign governments. He also met with Shehrbano Rehman, the Pakistani ambassador to the United States, to talk about American policy in Afghanistan. On Wednesday, Menendez will have coffee with United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Over the weekend, Menendez is leading a congressional delegation to Afghanistan and Pakistan. …

–“At the same time, Menendez has been quietly meeting with some of his Democratic colleagues and party leaders to assure them that the scandal he’s embroiled in — which centers on his ties to Florida eye surgeon Salomon Melgen, a close friend and big Democratic donor — won’t interfere with his ability to do his new job. … Yet both Democrats and Republicans — mainly in private — are wondering whether the New Jersey Democrat can succeed with his ‘business-as-usual’ approach to the scandal, which has threatened to derail his once-promising political career.” http://politi.co/WlzcYP

– Fox News reports that Menendez took an undisclosed trip on Salomon’s plane back in 2008 to attend a charity golf tournament. http://fxn.ws/YcPxyo

NUGENT: I HAVE MORE SUPPORT THAN OBAMA – Kate Nocera reports for POLITICO: “Never one to shy away from speaking his mind, rocker Ted Nugent arrived on Capitol Hill for the State of the Union speech and promised to keep quiet. And he kept his promise, sitting silently in a corner of the visitors’ gallery above the House floor. Nugent — a gun advocate and guest of Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) — was so quiet, in fact, he didn’t even applaud once during the entire speech. … Nugent said the people who sat with him during the speech were those who ‘lived by the same logic as the Nugent family.’ ‘People of the military, people of law enforcement, small business owners — everyone was in agreement with Uncle Ted,’ he said. As he left the gallery, Nugent was swarmed by fans wanting photos — and even one woman who yelled ‘Run for president, Ted!’ ‘You hear that?’ he said to a reporter. ‘I have more support than the President at his own speech.’” http://politi.co/14S5vCn

TUESDAY’S TRIVIA WINNER – Aaron Merkin was first to correctly answer that “Yesterdays,” composed in 1933, is the popular song standard that includes the lyric: “Days I knew as happy sweet sequestered days.”

TODAY’S TRIVIA – Which former U.S. senator formed a foundation that raised funds to complete the stalled “Mountains and Clouds” sculpture that hangs in the Hart Senate Building? First to correctly answer gets a mention in the next day’s Huddle. Email me at swong@politico.com.

GET HUDDLE emailed to your Blackberry, iPhone or other mobile device each morning. Just enter your email address where it says “Sign Up.” http://www.politico.com/huddle/

POLITICO – Top 10 – Huddle

Obama delivers "Democrat Classic," Symbolism of SOTU guests, Shootout nearly upstages Obama, Rubio on GMA: "I needed water," Rand serves up red meat, Hagel advances, Lew on Hill at 10 a.m.