The weather has been changing, getting worse (hotter/colder) each year. One person has stepped up and is predicting a long, bad winter. I looked into that prediction and it seems to be the consensus. Here's what one person said:Trent wrote a little post that helps to show how to cook many of our food storage items ahead of time, so that we will use more of them--if the cook is tired or has run out of time by evening, this is healthier and cheaper than eating out.
"As I’ve discussed many times before, eating at home is a huge money saver. Even if you use expensive ingredients all the time (like saffron or morel mushrooms), it’s still cheaper to cook at home than it is to consistently eat out (assuming you’re eating better than the McDonalds Dollar Menu). Similarly, it’s cheaper to make a meal out of basic ingredients than it is to use prepared and processed ingredients - the closer to the raw ingredients you are, the cheaper the meal is (usually).
Along the same lines, I’ve come to realize that I tend to snack on and eat whatever’s convenient. For lunch, I’ll usually eat leftovers because it’s easy - it’s sitting in the fridge and usually only requires a bit of pepper and a trip to the microwave. At snack time, I’ll look at the fruit bowl and flip open the refrigerator door and grab whatever’s quick and at hand.
So why not combine the two and really crunch your food budget?
I was inspired to try some of these things by Mark Bittman’s interesting book, Food Matters. He suggests a similar phenomenon, that if you make good, healthy food as convenient as possible, you won’t be as tempted to eat processed, unhealthy foods.
By a lucky coincidence, many of the healthiest foods are also quite cheap in their raw form.
So what I decided to do is start cooking some healthy and very inexpensive staple foods once a week in bulk, store them in containers in the fridge, and utilize them all throughout the week in various dishes.
Here’s the game plan.
First, cook a big batch of beans/wild rice/whole grains once a week. You can get these ingredients at the store incredibly cheaply and they’re very easy to cook up in bulk. Just cook a whole bag of beans, a small bag of wild or brown rice, and some amount of a whole grain that you like.
When you’re done, just put the material you cooked into a large container in the fridge. A large Rubbermaid container or Gladware works really well because you can see what’s inside at a glance.
Throughout the week, just eat simple stuff that uses these for ingredients. Here are five examples.
Burritos Put some beans and some rice on a tortilla, heat it up, pour some salsa on it, enjoy.
Omelets Stir up two eggs, toss ‘em in a pan with some beans, spice with lots of pepper, enjoy.
Stir fry Toss whatever vegetables and meats you have on hand in a pan with a bit of vegetable oil over medium heat until cooked, put them on the rice, enjoy.
Swiss breakfast Mix the cooked whole grains with some milk and whatever fruit you have on hand, enjoy.
Bean burgers If you have black beans, this works great. Just mash ‘em together, add a bit of flour, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, pepper, and Worcestershire sauce to the beans, make some patties, and cook them with some oil, enjoy.
With the huge amount of variations in these recipes - and the many, many more simple things you can toss together - it’s easy to make tons of very simple snacks and meals from these cooked staples in your fridge.
You can take this idea even further by doing the same thing with whatever fruits and vegetables are on sale at the store. Just pick up that vegetable, chop it up, and cook it in some appropriate fashion (or just leave it raw). Just get it to the point where it’s really convenient for you to just grab it and eat it or add it to a simple dish.
The benefits here are tremendous. Suddenly, your snacks and many of your meals become really simple to prepare, really cheap, and pretty healthy, too (regardless of what you add, if most of the meal consists of beans and wild rice and vegetables, it’ll be good for you on the whole). Plus, since you can add whatever you want to those ingredients that are already on hand, it’s versatile and will be quite tasty to pretty much any palate.
Give it a shot and see how it works for you!"
[From: The Simple Dollar]
Cleaning Rusty ToolsSome of you may have found that your steel tools have started to rust a bit. This can happen if your tools are in a garage and exposed to the elements a lot or you happen to live near the ocean. That salty air will rust anything.
The best way to clean up rusty tools is Vinegar. Good old vinegar from the supermarket and soak the tools in it.The picture above shows the tools soaking in the vinegar overnight. After they come out of the vinegar give them a good rinse with water and scrubbing brush to remove the rust and vinegar.
At this point the rust will be gone but the tools may appear dull in colour. You can give them a polish with some metal polish and a soft cloth, you can buff them up on a buffing wheel.
IF its important that it has a high shine on them such a ball pein hammer or a hammering block you can sand it with some sandpaper starting at about 1200 and work finer. This will get a nice mirror finish on them.
After doing all this work to clean them up you will want to keep them looking new. You can coat them in machine oil. I use singer sewing machine oil purchased from the supermarket and lightly coat the tools and them cover them with glad wrap. This is for tools that do not get used all the time. The other thing you can coat them in is Vaseline, again this is readily available from your supermarket and this provides a coating over your tools stopping the air from getting them.
For tools such as files which tend to get used on a daily basis, I don;t use anything on them. I just keep them away from water and liquids and keep them in my drawer when I am not using them.
[From: Wendy Hearn]
Have you ever had Magic Shell ice cream topping? My husband loves it! Here is a food storage recipe that is very similar to the real stuff (recipe not for canning).1 Cup (6 ounces) Semisweet Chocolate Chips
1/4 Cup Butter, cubed
3 Tbs. Evaporated Milk (1 Tbs. Dry Powdered Milk + 3 Tbs. Water)
Vanilla Ice Cream
1/2 Cup Sliced Almonds (opt.)
In a heavy saucepan, combine chocolate chips, butter and milk. Cook and stir over low heat until chips are melted and mixture is smooth. Serve warm over ice Cream (Sauce will harden.) Sprinkle with almonds. Refrigerate any leftovers. Sauce can be reheated in the microwave. Yield: about 1 Cup.
[From: Everyday Food Storage]
Are you having a difficult time stocking up on your year's supply of food, first aid, and other important items for being prepared--because of procrastination? Then you might be motivated by Trent, who wrote a post on overcoming procrastination. His main focus is financial, but his simple method can apply to anything being procrastinated. He says . . .How do you get around it? How can you make yourself do all of the “important but not urgent” things you need to get done in your life, when it’s so easy to put them off and just kick back?
Here are the tactics I personally use to make it happen . . ."
To read more, go here.
Over at the Frugal Canning blog, they have been testing different ways of heating up canners for outdoor canning. They said, "We have hit the mother load of heating solutions for canning! Finally a heater that boils water in the canner in 8 minutes and reduces the amount of fuel used." They have different kinds of heating units and tell how well each one works.
To make canning fun, you have got to have a well-thought-out plan. Sow bean seed so that all the beans are ripe in the same two weeks, and you'll find canning and freezing the beans a great big chore. Plant the garden so the beans ripen over the eight or twelve weeks of summer, and you'll eat fresh beans as often as you like. And on the days when you don't want to serve beans, you can freeze that day's bean harvest while you cook dinner. It's that simple. If you want to can in 8-quart lots, you don't necessarily have to have 8 quarts of beans ripe at the same time. Each vegetable has a specific processing time. Beans in quart jars are processed in 25 minutes, but so are beets in pint jars. Beets are root crops that can be dug at any point over many weeks, unlike beans, which must be harvested as soon as they are 6 to 8 inches long and still young to get the best flavor and to keep the bushes producing. [You can apply this principle to winter vegetables, too].
Are you looking at a mountain of pears, dreading peeling them before you can get on your way to canning them? I have a solution! Several months ago I was surfing the internet, looking for canning recipes. I came across a neat trick for removing the pear skins--dunking them into boiling water, then into cold/cool water, and then the skin practically falls off! Last night there were five of us canning pears together. Before I got there, they were peeling pears like you would peel potatoes; it was a long, slow process. Then they heated up some water, I dunked the pears in for 25 seconds (these pears were pretty ripe, greener pears might need a few seconds more), dumped them into cold water, and then smoshed the pears around with my hands (using "rubber" dish washing gloves help, too, if you want). It really helps to have a bowl of water to work in. This method reduced the pear-peeling time to mear seconds for each pear, and really improved production time. Lest you think we were doing a few jars of pears, we had 10 cases (at 36 pounds each!) of pears. There were about 240 quarts of pears canned that night!
utter.
This is what I was doing yesterday! It was very unplanned, but when nature gives you abundance, you take it! Yesterday morning when I went out to water, I saw that there were three ripe tomatoes. I started picking them, and then noticed there were more. There were so many covered completely with green foliage, and by the time I was finished picking tomatoes, I had nearly 40 pounds! With my freezers full, I had to can them somehow--so I made salsa. I used the Super Salsa recipe, but substituted lemon juice for the vinegar. It won't be sweet this time, and I hope the flavor is good. I spent 8 hours working on it (lots of time preparing the tomatoes) and ended up with 17 pints of salsa. We don't eat that much salsa, so my son and his family will get some. The leftover tomatoes are in the refrigerator hoping to make it into the freezer!
If an earthquake strikes, do your loved ones know what to do if you cannot make it home from work for a few days?
Do you keep a small bike or extra walking shoes in your trunk or at work in case your car won't start after an EMP attack? Are you REALLY physica
lly and mentally ready to walk home from work?
Do you have batteries for the kids flashlights? Do they work? Do you have extra?
Do you know what foods your family will eat or not eat during an emergency situation?
Does you family know how to turn off the gas to the house? Do you have water, a hose, a water pump, and nozzle if you need to put out a fire in or around your house?
Do you have a pair of boots or shoes next to the bed (and a flashlight) if there is another earthquake at night? (You don't want to be stepping on broken glass and mirrors with your bare feet) Have you run an earthquake drill recently to see how well your family can take care of themselves until you get home?
Do your loved ones have access to pepper spray or a weapon to defend themselves if they have to? Do they know how to use it?
The next time you get low on food in your fridge, (on the weekend) test yourself to see how well you can live by turning off the gas and electric to the house... and take notes. You will be surprised at the results, and afterwards you can go shopping and pick up stuff you REALLY need.
What else do you need to do to help take of your family while you are waiting for FEMA to show up?
I was thinking about the salsas I made and that the recipe was in the canning binder. I realized last night that not everyone has that binder, so I am including the recipes here. In the picture the salsa on the left is the Mexican, and the salsa on the right is the Super. They actually look the same, it just looks different in the picture.
Bill has been at it again! He canned 12 quarts and 4 pints of Kosher Dill Pickles, and 18 pints of Bread and Butter Pickles, AFTER THE SEMINAR!!! He must have an iron will, or maybe it's iron legs, to be able to stand all day at the seminar, and then into the night canning pickles! My question is--where is he going to stash all of the canned goodies and how long will it take for him and his wife to eat it all?!?! Actu
ally, he gives away a lot of what he makes, so really he has to keep restocking his shelves!
Gather the seeds (from plants YOU grow to make sure they don't have pesticides) while they are green and let them stand in the sun for a few days to dry. Soak/steep for a day or so in cold vinegar. Drain. Add to fresh boiling vinegar and boil for 10 minutes. Pour seeds and vinegar into sterilized canning jars and cover tightly. Store in a cool place for 5-6 months. This makes them like pickled seeds.
Add to salads!
NOTE: I've also seen where people take the seeds, dry them and grind them to use as pepper. Store in a tightly sealed bottle in a cool place. I'd wait to grind until just ready to use. This was a common substitute for pepper from World War II. Good to know if you can't grow black peppercorns where you are.
From: Survival Cooking
Pressure canning demonstration by Sister Hatch
Kellene Bishop, the Preparedness Pro, has issued a challenge, one that I will take up starting this Sunday--no shopping for food or household supplies for two weeks! That means no restaurants, farmer's markets, or borrowing from neighbors, although bartering with neighbors is acceptable (similar to a real emergency situation). This is to test your emergency preparedness, to show where the holes are in your storage. An added bonus is that she has 10 emergency preparedness prizes to give away. Interested? See her post here for more information!
Bill has been working hard as you can see! Over two Saturdays (all the while his back was out and his finger injured) he canned the following:
Take 3 minutes--right now--and picture yourself in this situation, and make it as real as your imagination can possibly make it:
To start your fall planting this month, be sure to plant basil, beans, dill, and squash soon, so that they will be harvested before frost (our average first frost is November 7).
Yesterday was National Mustard Day! I never knew there were so many different kinds of mustard. This is something to add to our food storage, to add a little spice to some of the more bland foods. It is easily made from scratch, as long as you have the powdered mustard.
Here's a quick little recipe to get you in the mood for growing a fall vegetable garden!
Kellene, the Preparedness Pro, has posted a short article about how the government has provided a way for the dairy farmers to stay in business by upping the prices of milk, cheese, butter and other dairy products. She urges everyone to stock up on butter (can it), cheese (wax it--more to come on this in a couple of days), etc. She also has links to coupons for dairy products. Go here for more information.
