Why I Do What I Do

Sometimes when I get on roll, I wonder about myself.  Is it "normal" to celebrate when I find chicken for $1.50 a pound?  Who gets excited about deciding to buy pool salt (99.8% pure!) in 40 pound bags for less than $5....not for pool use but for barter if the SHTF?  Who else in my life wants to learn the skill of starting a fire using sticks and nylon string? 

Yet I DO get excited when I see bottles of canned bacon lined up on my shelf.  I AM waiting for shredded cheese to go on sale so I can try canning THAT!  I get a thrill when I stuff dehydrated fruit into used glass jars and pump the air out with this nifty little gadget I picked up at a local expo.  And the simple fact is, I've always been like this.

When I was 10, we moved to a house in Virginia Beach.  The housing development still had a lot of building going on and so a lot of empty lots surrounded our house for awhile.  I discovered wild onions and picked them....Mom dutifully cooked them up for dinner.  When Dad brought home a #10 can of dried apples, I claimed the empty can and made a stove with it.  I can still see the fried bologna I cooked on it in my mind's eye.  My first garden produced precious little but my 11 year old self tended it carefully.  My dad taught me how to fish including how to bait my own hook AND to scale and gut my catch. 

I like the feeling I get when I increase my self sufficiency.  Deep down I know that all I have and all I am comes from God.  But rather than spend my time hitting a little bitty white ball around a well groomed pasture or shopping for just the right pair of still another pair of shoes, I choose to persue another interest.  And that interest just happens to be prepping.  I'm not a doomsday person.  I truly hope none of my preparations ever become necessary to use.  Still, I sleep better knowing that I've given myself and my family a cushion.  Our food storage will give us a little time.  More importantly, I'm going to learn to forage, to snare, to trap and to hunt.  Because I AM normal....just a normal, run of the mill prepper!

Drying Apples for Delicious Yumminess

I had a period of grieving this fall.  No, no one died nor did we have to deal with serious illness in my family.  Instead, the apple crop suffered this year.  My beloved HoneyCrisps failed to grace us with their previous abundance.  Alas.  I accepted what I could not change and just grumbled a little every time I had to eat a Granny Smith with my peanut butter.

Then last week I walked in to Sam's Club looking for marked down meat and there they were.....HoneyCrisp apples in 4 pound bags, just begging to come home with me.  And they were only $1.50 a pound.  So I bought 6 bags....I had to make sure they weren't rotten.  Then I went back band bought 5 more bags.  And when I go out today, I will check again and buy whatever is left.  Because you see, I LOVE my HoneyCrisp apples.  I really like them fresh....I love them dried.  My dehydrator has been running for 5 days straight, sucking the moisture out of the slices and leaving little tart sweet morsels to savor throughout the rest of the year. 

I initially gave the peels and cores to the chickens but they didn't care for them much.  Not being one to throw pearls before swine, I wondered if I could get a cup of fresh juice from the leavings.  It would be a lot of work for the results I figured, but who knows?  What a surprise!  10 pounds of apples yielded not only 9 trays of slices but a full quart of sweet, fresh apple juice!!  And to top it off, the chickens love the ground up remains of the juicer. 

LOL....I guess all good things come to those who wait. ....and who keep a sharp eye out for whatever God puts in our path!

What Happens When You Find 22 Year Old Popcorn?

Twenty years ago, I felt the urge and call to start my food storage.  I dry packed wheat, rice, split peas, salt, sugar, hard candy, potato flakes, flour, powdered milk and popcorn.  As I've gone through my ancient stores I've discovered that some things stored well.  The split peas are still edible though there is a slight old flavor to it.  The flour and potato flakes were unusable and I dumped them into the compost pile.  The powdered milk could be used but I'd rather not.  I'll use that for calcium loving plants in my garden such as tomatoes and broccoli.  The hard candy still shakes freely.  The wheat will be good for a very long time.  And the popcorn still pops although the flavor is old and I don't choose to use it. 

Enter my Wonder Mill Junior.  Because I DO have chickens in my backyard and chickens like cracked corn, I figured I could crack that popcorn and my girls would have a treat.  Did you know that popcorn is the hardest grain you're likely to grind?  Well, I've been wanting an upper body workout.  I secured my mill, opened a single can and got to work.  My heart rate monitor says my heart got up to 135 bpm and by the time I'd finished cracking the popcorn, I'd burned 150 calories. I guess that's why our ancestors didn't need to "exercise." 

GORP.....(or more correctly, GORMP)

 

 

 

Ever since I've started my last round of prudent living, I've thought about our 72 hour kits.  Our extended family had a fun dinner the last night the Lutz's were here in October eating assorted "survival" foods.  The freeze dried entrees tasted the best but then you had to be able to boil water.  The MRE's were just ok but you could warm them up under your armpit if you had to.  I decided canned goods were good enough...until I packed them in our backpacks.  Oh no.....this was NOT going to work.

 

My husband happened to mention trail mix and the little light bulb went off!  Of course!  Good Old Raisins and Peanuts.  I have to add the M&M's though to make it really, really good.  There's a good amount of protein here from the peanuts, a couple servings of fruit with the raisins and a sugar rush from the chocolate.  By including 2 oz EACH, we have 875 calories in only 6 oz of weight.  Now that's MUCH more acceptable for 2 little ole people lugging survival gear around. 



Makin Bacon

This is my bacon canning saga. Sorry about the little bitty pictures but I haven't yet mastered the picture-on-the-phone-to-email-and-onto-the-blog sequence yet. Anyway, as you can see, the picture to the right shows frying bacon. Another way of precooking it would have been on pans in the oven but I didn't have enough pans. If you plan on refrying it to reheat, I would suggest you not fry it much....maybe just enough to render some of the fat without getting it too brown. This bacon has been cut in half to fit better in the wide mouth quart jars.

This next picture show the "jelly roll" configuration that I used to wrap the partially cooked bacon in. I just cut unbleached scrolled paper that I bought at IKEA in about 5 foot lengths and then cut THAT in half lengthwise. Place the bacon on the paper like little soldiers in a line. If you want, you can put a line of bacon horizontally as well. Be careful not to make the roll too fat or you won't be able to fit it in the jar. Though other sites suggest you fold over the paper, I found it worked fine to just start rolling.

These are the finished jars. As you can see, I processed one pint....I just ran out of bacon. And for some reason that jar didn't seal which worked out ok for me because I really wanted to test the product anyway and I have a problem opening perfectly good jars just to test it.

When I opened the pint jar, the paper roll dropped out pretty easily. Because it had been processed, it's perfectly ok to eat it cold, but the taste was much better after a few minutes in the frying pan. Yes, there is a lot of grease. In a survival situation, we'll want all the fat calories we can find!!

So, in a nutshell, here's the skinny.

You will need:

About a pound and a half of bacon per quart jar

Wide mouth quart jars (duh), fresh lids and good rings

Parchment paper or the rolled paper from IKEA

Pressure canner

A couple extra jars to catch the bacon grease

1. Cut the paper about 5 feet long and the width that will comfortably fit in your quarts. This worked to about half the width roll of the paper I used. You'll need one for each jar. I like not worrying about the paper so I think I wasted a bit. Oh well!!!

2. Wash the jars and lids. Keep the lids simmering in water to soften the rubber around the edges.

3. Cook the bacon!!! Because I chose to fry it, it took me hours to get it all done and prepared. Anyway.....after the bacon is at the desired state of "doneness," drain it a bit and don't forget to collect the grease in a jar as you'll need it later.

4. Start water heating in your canner.

5. Lay your paper out on a nice flat surface and line your bacon up. Start rolling and adding until your roll is just capable of fitting into the wide mouth jar. Stuff it in. Repeat the process until all your jars and/or bacon have been used up.

6. At this point, use a funnel to put a couple inches of bacon grease in each jar. I used a cloth lightly moistened in rubbing alcohol to cut and clean the grease from around the rims. Not enough to drip into the jars of course!!!

7. Put your lids on each jar and screw a ring on each jar.

8. Place jars in the simmering canner.

9. Process the jars for 90 minutes at 10 pounds (at sea level to 2000 feet). If you choose to process pints, you only have to process for 75 minutes.

Prepare, Prepare, Prepare

I've been doing some experimenting lately around self sufficiency.  I have to admit that the threat of the National Nanny State has made me hyper sensitive to being dependent on government assistance for rescue.  Now I know that one day I will need help; however, my goal is to go as long as possible without it.

So that being said, last night I made split pea soup from storage foods and left over frozen ham.  The peas were rather old...20 years in a #10 can...and there IS a slight "old" smell, but they cooked down fine and had an acceptable taste.  To take it one step further, I dehydrated the leftover soup to see if it would rehydrate ok.  And it did!  I added 6 tablespoons of soup powder to 1/2 cup of boiling water and it tasted just fine.  So I'll packet it up in the Food Saver bags for a quickie lunch or emergency food.

Also, I purchased a Chili pouch at Aldis yesterday to try as a possibility for my 72 hour kit.  It calls for nearly 3 cups of water but I didn't realize that it also calls for tomato paste.  Okay.  So I made it for lunch today.  I like the flavor but it's definitely more a soup than an chili and not a good addition to my "Git Kit." 

The other thing that I've been concerned about is basic health care for WTSHTF.  I've been concerned that antibiotic ointment would lose potency and infection is a real threat when sanitation is compromised.  I've been introduced to Collodial Silver as an antibacterial agent and will be testing the ointment to see how it compares to my old standby.

I had the pleasure of going to a preparedness expo a few weeks ago and found some really good ideas to expand on.  I'm adding blood clotting compresses for dangerous bleeding as well as a tourniquet.  Let's face it, if you have profuse bleeding under your ear (think coratid artery), you are unlikely to want a tourniquet around your neck!!!  My daughter Penny gave me the idea to use contact lense saline solution for a wound wash, and she and my hubby  reminded me that superglue is very effective at joining human tissue (though I understand it burns really, really bad.)

I was going to buy a  commercial medical kit but an ailing air conditioner has mandated a different course of action for now.  So much to do!!!!

So What's Wrong With This Picture.......?????

I've been having knee issues since April.  No big deal really but a nuisance to be sure....until last month when I felt a pop in my knee.  The excruciating pain dropped me on the spot.  So began my forey into the American Medical Machine.

For a number of reasons, primarily financial, I have chosen to buy a high deductible policy.  Routine doctors' visits come out of my pocket but after I reach my deductible, all other covered charges are paid by my insurance.  For me it's worked well because it's tied to an HSA and because I own my own business, both premiums and HSA contributions are tax deductible.  I quickly realized, however,  that this relatively minor surgery that my knee requires will satisfy my financial obligations and then some.  After much thought and prayer, I've decided to postpone this surgery until I can more comfortably afford my portion and notified my doctor of same.

To my surprise, I got a call from the surgical center with a counter proposal.  They told me that if I choose to self pay, I could reduce my portion from $3985 to $1650.  So.....if I don't go through my insurance company, the medical center can reduce my fees 59%???????  And this explains to me why our medical system is out of control.  Apparently it isn't the cost of MEDICAL care that has hiked the prices.  If this model is accurate, 59% of my medical dollar goes to clerical workers.

HHHMMMMM.......

This is also interesting to me because I've recently become aware of the bargain prices in Costa Rica and other medical tourist destinations.  It makes me wonder if, for cases such as mine, if I could match those bargain prices right here in the States!