The time frame of your raising, and how it makes you who you are

I wrote this on a preparedness/survival message board in response to a question about how the time frame of one's raising might affect one's interest in preparedness. And now in rereading my answer, I see that I didn't do a very good job of answering the question. but I thought I'd share it here anyway.

I was born in 1962 to a schoolteacher mother who grew up on a small Kansas farm, and a physicist father who was helping design weapons guidance systems to fight the Cold War. Both were kids in the Great Depression and had a lot of thrifty habits that came out of that.

They went through a back-to-the-land thing when I was young, like through my mid teen years. They wanted to try organic gardening, buying milk from a farmer, buying organically raised beef on the hoof and having it butchered to order, and keeping us eating as few refined foods as possible. We rebelled and sabotaged their efforts at every turn, but some of it did soak in; I bake my own bread because my father baked the bread for the family for a couple of years, and I garden because they did, and I can sew because she could, and I am thrifty because they knew how to be. They also taught me important lessons such as a personal faith, being a member of a church, making giving a habit just like paying the mortgage, paying my debts, and sobriety. I owe all I am to their raising; however, I will not let anybody blame them for my faults.

Homemade Ginger Ale

Over the past couple days I tried making homemade ginger ale using this recipe. It turned out really good! The two changes I made were to use half the yeast it called for, and also to start with a cup of sugar and a couple of cups of hot tap water, shaken together hard in the bottle to mix thoroughly and dissolve the sugar, then I added cold water and the rest of the ingredients.

I also vented the pop bottle several times over the 36 hours I let it sit at room temperature.

The ginger ale is refreshing and clean flavored. Even the kids like it.

Subscribe and Save on Amazon

Are y'all aware of Amazon.com's Subscribe and Save program? - They give you 15% off and free shipping if you sign up to have something delivered every so often (up to every 6 months). Example: Traverse Bay dried cherries or dried cranberries, a 4-pound box, is under $18, less than $5 a pound, through Subscribe and Save. You can sign up and then cancel the subscription tomorrow, if you like; or you can just let it ride, as they email you a few days before the next shipment goes out, to give you a chance to cancel it then if you are not yet ready for more.

Link to the Traverse Bay deals here:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_no...t+traverse+bay

Because I happened to be thinking about it right now: Oil lamps and lanterns

You probably know that oil lamps burn better when the oil level is higher rather than lower. I don't know why, but my guess is because the oil does not have to be pulled up so far to burn.

Yet it can take a lot of kerosene to completely fill the reservoir of a lantern, and if you have a bunch of them throughout the house like I do, that's a lot of kerosene!

Years and years ago, my father in law shared a trick that I'll pass along. This only works once the wick is thoroughly saturated with oil. You don't want to try it if the wick is dry. What you do is, put some oil in the reservoir, then add water to bring the level up to where you want it. The water will stay at the bottom, while the oil will be at the top, where the wick can get at it. As the oil burns down, add more.

An unsaturated wick will grab any liquid it can find, so make sure it's saturated with oil first before it gets the chance to grab some water. You don't want it to grab any water.

Canning jars

Work has been slow this morning, which leaves me time to get into trouble.

I got to thinking about canning jars, and how I want more of them. :) I posted an appeal on Facebook for them and immediately got some offers. I picked up a dozen here in town and washed them up. Then I started wondering how many I actually have for the season and if I have enough Tattler reusable canning lids. Which led to over an hour spent gathering and counting and reboxing and re-storing canning jars.

Current tally of empties: **

17 large mouth quarts, 73 standard quarts
10 large mouth pints, 54 small mouth pints
5 miscellaneous (half pint or weird sized)
Totals: 26 large mouth jars, 131 standard

Now to count Tattler lids. I know I will need more standard at least.

By the way, I had always stored my rings separately, in a bag. It finally dawned on me that I never would use a jar without a ring, so I might as well put rings on all of them now, to save time when I need to use them. Duh.

No rings for the jars that have food in them, otherwise you might not notice if the seal failed. Just for the empties.

** edited because I found another box of jars

That Crazy Recycling Lady in the Neighborhood

What a weirdo. Oh wait, she's me.

I confess, I raid people's recyling bins.

In particular, I have a neighbor who puts interesting and useful things in her recycling and puts it out a day ahead of time, too, to give me a fighting chance of salvaging stuff. For example, she puts a nice sturdy empty gallon jug that once contained cranberry juice in her recycling about every second week or so. Rinsed out. And with the lid. I do our emergency water storage in gallon jugs, mostly, in the basement, so I can certainly make use of that. Then sometimes it's a stack of the plastic trays and covers from TV dinners, the kind with 3 sections for the different parts of the meal. Those are great for packing up leftovers to eat for lunch another day. And today she had a cranberry juice jug AND a big plastic bucket that once contained kitty litter. The big square kind of bucket with the hinged flip-top lid and wire bale handle. Very sturdy. The plastic itself is food safe, but since it has held perfumed cat litter, I would not put food directly in it without a barrier, but in Mylar packaging? In good quality manufacturer packaging? Vacuum packed? You betcha. Very handy and great for stacking on a shelf.

Now I'm looking for a suggestion: We get our cat litter from ALDI. It comes in a heavy white plastic container with a self handle.  It's a lot of plastic. The lids are not airtight. These jugs would be great for storing liquids or maybe grains if they were airtight, and of course if they were perfectly clean and had no hint of kitty litter perfume left. But the non airtightness is the deal breaker. And so I'm recycling a lot of heavy white plastic. I hate doing that. I'd much rather find a reuse for them. Does anyone have any ideas?

Stay out of the vanilla extract!

We ran out of vanilla extract again, and while I bought another bottle to get us through, I also decided to start our own here to be used when that runs out. A bottle of cheap vodka, a couple of packs of extract-grade vanilla beans and we're good to go.

It's only been working or soaking or whatever you'd call it for a few days, but it already smells like vanilla extract and it's hard to keep from opening the bottle and sniffing! Or worse.

The Obi110 and my quest for the perfect phone service

I'm looking into this with Google Voice. Anyone want to talk about it? (Don't worry about the price. When Amazon itself has it in stock, it's about $50.)

Specifically, I want a very simple, transparent setup, where I pick up my wireless handset and dial a number and a person picks up and talks to me. I don't want to mess with a "circle of trust" or calling special numbers or codes or whatever. I want it simple. Will I get that?

Hurry on in! Sam Walton's Making Craaaaazy Deals [UPDATED]

When apple cider is four bucks a gallon or under, I buy it. We love apple cider all year long. Good stuff.

The other day I was filling a Click and Pull shopping cart at Samsclub.com. Now Click and Pull is a great idea. You fill a shopping cart, place the order, and then the next day you pull your car up to the front door of the warehouse and they have it all waiting for you, ready to load, thus saving you shopping time time and helping you avoid impulse buys. They had Indian Summer apple cider, packs of 4 gallons, for $14.66. A good price. But then I realized it was not for pickup, it was for delivery. And delivery was included.


I didn't figure that could be right, but it was. I placed the order, and a few days later FedEx delivered a very heavy (38 pounds shipping weight) box containing 4 gallons of apple cider. I actually paid $15.69 for it (for some reason they charged sales tax, which I don't think was right). I imagine shipping that 38-pound box took at least $15 of that. I don't know how they did this, and I bet it won't last long, but what a deal it was. I think I may order more.

By the way, a couple of months ago Wal-Mart had what looked like gallon jugs of apple cider (or maybe it was apple juice) for under $4 - probably $3.67 or something like that. I was happy about that until I realized that it may have looked like a gallon jug, but it wasn't, it was a 3 quart jug. Sneaky. But these from Sam's are definitely full gallons.

Also Indian Summer's juices are all made from fruit grown in the USA. The Wal-Mart stuff, we noticed when we returned home, came from China. Hmmm. Maybe it's fine, but it raises my hackles none the less.

LATER:

I really wondered about the sales tax (especially since I went back and ordered more and it added up to a bigger expense). I wrote to Sam's Club and asked about it and the response was, "Please be advised that all online orders that are being delivered are taxed."


That did NOT sound right. So I wrote to the tax offices at Iowa.gov. And I received the fastest response EVER in the history of government email service. Seriously. In fact I got two responses, one a very quick one with a link to a PDF to use to request a refund of the tax paid (!), and then a second a few minutes later with a little more discussion and the link again. I'm completely amazed. Astounded. Yet another reason to love Iowa.


So anyway, if you live in Iowa, and you are charged sales tax on something you shouldn't be, all you have to do is fill out this form and send it in with your receipts and you get the tax refunded. Is that cool, or is that cool? They ask that you save them up and send them in once a quarter. I can do that.

Turkey Revenge

I was amazed at my friend Cathy's feats of thrift with a turkey that she made 10 meals/uses of (read about it here), and when I received a Braised Balsamic Chicken Breast recipe as my daily recipe from AllRecipes.com, I decided today was the day to thaw a turkey and see what I could do. Mine was just a 12-pounder (or so). And it was frozen solid, and when I pulled it out of the deep freeze, the bag it was in broke and dropped it down onto my bare foot. Duh. That's what I get for walking around barefoot in February. Anyway it didn't even hurt for about 15 minutes and then WOW.

I thawed Mister Turkey in a stock pot filled with warm salt water. I don't know if that's an approved method but it works well and I like the combining of steps, a quick thaw and a brine soak. I just finished boning out the turkey and put the bones in a stock pot with more water, carrots, onions and celery, plus a bay leaf and salt and pepper, and it's cooking away there. Tonight I plan to use one of the breast halves to make the Balsamic Chicken Breast recipe (turkey breast makes a great chicken breast substitute, just slice it up in chicken-breast-sized pieces), and tomorrow I'll make Cathy's Sticky Chicken Wings recipe, only I'll use the boned leg meat, and the other chicken breast I'll season and bake to make sandwich meat. The stuff on the stove now will be soup for another meal. I won't get anywhere near 10 meals out of this bird, but should get at least 4 or 5, counting leftovers (chicken fried rice is a great way to use up a little bit of leftover chicken or turkey meat).

• Braised Balsamic Turkey Breast
• Sticky Turkey
• Turkey sandwiches (2 meals' worth at least)
• Turkey salad
• Turkey Fried Rice
• Turkey Soup

******

Later:

Balsamic Braised Whatever is delicious! Of course I realized I was short on many key ingredients so mine's different. Here is my version:

4 roma tomatoes, chopped

Basil, oregano and marjoram to taste

1/2 c. rice vinegar

1/4 c. sugar

4 turkey breast cutlets

1 onion, sliced thinly

olive oil

salt

pepper

garlic powder

Toss the chopped tomato with the basil, oregano and marjoram. Add the vinegar and sugar; stir. Set aside.

Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a heavy frying pan. Add the onion slices and sautee for a minute or two. Meanwhile, sprinkle the turkey cutlets with salt, pepper and garlic powder. Lay each one on top of the onions in the frying pan. Brown the turkey cutlets on both sides. Then spoon all the tomato mixture on top of them, turn the heat down to low and let the mixture simmer till the turkey meat is no longer pink in the middle.

Serve with rice and orzo, with green beans on the side. Makes 4 servings.

An update on my experience with netTALK

We switched to netTALK several months ago and our results have been mixed. We cannot afford a monthly fee so we're sticking with it, but we are not 100% thrilled. Maybe 75%. The sound quality is iffy; depends on the call. Sometimes calls do not complete and we have to call people back. Caller ID does not work as it is supposed to, and the voice mail is just awful. I do have a workaround for voice mail using our Google Voice account: I have the netTALK number set to ring our house phone first, and if nobody picks up, rather than going to voice mail, it rings our Google Voice number, which is currently set to go straight to voice mail. so effectively you get 4-5 rings, then voice mail, which is as it should be, in my opinion. netTALK's voice mail is not customizable. You get the default greeting no matter what you program in. It is improved from when we first signed up; it used to say something like "the number you called is unavailable." Now it says "The netTALK subscriber you have dialed is unavailable," or something. So at least it doesn't sound like a dead number. Google Voice voice mail is fully customizable.

We did have to tweak the router settings some so that the port that the netTALK is on bypasses the firewall. That improved the voice quality by quite a bit. Sometimes it's excellent. More often than not, though, it's frustrating.

The short version: A lot of downsides, but we're willing to put up with them because it's so cheap. Were we in a different financial situation, we might not be.

Doing everything in a big way (because bigger is always better, of course)

It's been years since I made and used "homemade" laundry soap, which is basically a concoction of dilute basic soap with laundry boosters. I was thrilled with the cost, but less thrilled with the fact that, over time, my whites got dingey. Besides, I really love Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day laundry detergent in the lavender scent.  At $11.50 a bottle, it should come out to about 18 cents load, as a bottle is supposed to do 64 loads. But my family does not understand the meaning of "concentrate," and just won't use the capful per load that is suggested (and I don't want to complain, because I LIKE that the family helps with the laundry), so the price goes up to 40 or 50 cents a load really quickly.

Anyway, I was in Waukon today and stopped by Fareway Foods, which is a great little chain of groceries. Great service, good prices, an awesome meat department. And they had all the ingredients to make homemade laundry soap. So I decided to give it another try.

I had to do it my own way, of course. I grated up 4 bars of Fels Naphtha soap (99 cents each, plus tax, equals $4.24), melted it in a gallon of hot water, and meanwhile I filled 4 of my nifty tall rectangular 4-1/2-gallon buckets about 2/3 full of hot tap water. I divided one box of Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda ($2.59 plus tax = $2.77) between the 4 buckets, about 1-1/2 cups each. Then I added a cup of 20 Mule Team Borax powder (about $6 a box, only I used less than a quarter of the box, so let's say $1.50) to each bucket. And then here's the kicker: I divided one full bottle of Mrs. Meyer's detergent between the 4 buckets. And then once the fels naphtha was melted, I divided that solution between the four buckets. And topped each one off with more hot tap water. They are not completely full, so let's call it 4 gallons of laundry soap per bucket, times 4 buckets, equals 16 gallons. And they smell like lavender! Only not so strong and overwhelming. Just a gentle scent. And they have a little bit of the detergents in the Mrs. Meyer's, too, which I am hoping will help with the not-whitening-my-whites problem. A half cup should wash a load of laundry.

So, as a wrapup, I spent a total of $20.01 on all the ingredients. At half a cup per load, or 512 total loads, that's a year's worth of laundry for about twenty bucks. My per load cost is about 4 cents. And, as I said, it smells like lavender!

I'll let you know how I feel about it in a few weeks, after I get a chance to see how it handles my whites.

Pressure canning turkey

I'm trying something new (to me, at least). Right now I have about 30 pounds worth of turkey (2 birds, one large, one small) in a big stock pot with some herbs. I cut the turkeys apart but left the bones in. My plan is to cook them till nearly done, but not completely, strip the meat off the bones and pressure can it with its broth. I love the idea of having already cooked turkey meat ready to put into a recipe without defrosting. The freezer is also pretty full at the moment, and I want to make sure I keep a balance between canned and frozen foods anyway.

I'll let you know how it goes.

UPDATE: Two birds, 30 pounds dressed raw weight, ended up to be - drumroll please - about 7 quarts of cooked, boned meat. Wow. I thought it would be at least twice that.

Quarts are in the canner now for 90 minutes at 15 PSI. The bones are saved and I think I'll  cook them in the remaining broth (what I didn't use in the quarts) some more after the stove is available again.

Gift on the Hoof

We were given a wonderful gift this weekend: Our friend Conrad had friends visiting from Texas to bow hunt. They took a buck and a doe. Conrad knew things were tight for us this year and when his friends said they would like to give the meat away to someone who needed it, he called us. We took home the doe. She was a lovely, healthy, fat girl who had been shot right neatly through one shoulder and out the other, and she must have just dropped. So the meat was very, very good.

You may remember that I cut and wrapped a lamb last fall, so I had probably way too much confidence in my butchering abilities. I said I would do the cutting myself. I messed up the skinning part. Inexperience combined with inadequate knives meant that I went too deep into the muscle when I started my skinning cuts and it was hard to get back from that. I'm not sure the hide is any good after what I put it through.

But after that, I did pretty well, if I may say so myself. I used the instructions found on Eckrich.org. Very clear, with good photos and idiot-proof instructions. (Good thing.) It's all done now except for the 4 quarts of stock that are right now processing in my pressure canner, then it'll be all done.

I'll do a yield list again, like I did with the lamb, mostly for my own edification:


Breakfast sausage, total 11 pounds
Hamburger, total 8 pounds
Eyes of round, tied into a tender roast, just under 2 pounds
Bottom round, 1-3/4 lb.
Rump for stir fry, 2 packages, total about 2.6 pounds
Top round roast, about 2.6 pounds
Sirloin cubes for venison burgundy*, about 3-1/4 pounds
Bottom round cubes for burgundy*, about 2-2/3 pounds
Loin roasts, tied into a tender roast, just over a pound
Butterfly steaks, total 11 in 2 packages, total just under 4 pounds
7 quarts of canned venison chunks
4 quarts venison stock
rendered venison tallow, about 4-2/3 pounds

Total yield on the meat was about 44 pounds.

I used my trusty 1940s Dormeyer Power Chef mixer with its grinder attachment to grind all the meat for the hamburger and sausage, and it never even got warm. It's amazing.

* This is for Barry's favorite venison dish, which is beef burgundy prepared in a pressure cooker, only of course you use venison instead of beef. I have to say, it is pretty wonderful. It came from Pressure Cooking for Everyone by Rick Rodgers and Arlene Ward, a cookbook my sister in law Roseann recommended.

Want to be scared?

Not zombie-scared. Real-life, family survival scared.

Read this report on inflation.

Steam Juicing Apples and Pears

At long last I processed the pictures from how I used my steam juicer to juice some apples and pears last month. Two caveats: 1) I'm new to this, and 2) this is about the cheapest, smallest, most tinny-looking steam juicer you can buy. I did not want to invest mightily until I was sure this was going to be worthwhile. I think it is, and at some point I will buy a larger one of stainless steel.

Here are the parts of my steam juicer. 1) Water reservoir. 2) Juice pan with siphon tube. 3) Strainer basket. 4) Lid.

First is the water reservoir. This goes directly on the stove and is filled about 2/3 with water.

The juice pan is next.

It has this little wire clip that I don't trust, having learned the hard way that it doesn't do its job very well.

I direct it down into a Mason jar in the pot holder drawer. :o)

You fill the strainer pan with fresh fruit. Here I mixed tart apples with sweet pears. Wash the fruit and trim away any bad spots, but no need to chop, pit or peel. I cut the apples and pears in half or fourths just because, but you probably wouldn't even need to do that much.

Okay, so, we put the lid on and light the stove. We bring the water to a boil, and when steam starts to escape from around the rim of the lid, we turn it down to a simmer. We steam apples for 90 minutes. Here they are after maybe half an hour. Interestingly, the pears are holding their shape better than the apples. Not what I would have guessed.

If you like your juices clear, just let the fruit steam undisturbed. If you prefer it more unfiltered looking (and I do), stir the fruit every so often to break up the fibrous parts and infuse them into the juice. In fact, I pull off the juice and then run it back through the fruit again because I like a LOT of unfiltered stuff in my juice.

After 90 minutes. Wow! That's what's left. The pears had much less residue than the apples did. I was hoping for more, actually. I love pear sauce.

I forgot to take any pictures of the actual siphoning process, but it's just as well, as I burn myself every time anyway, without worrying about juggling a camera. Anyway, it comes out scalding hot, and if you siphon it directly into sterilized bottles or jars, you have a nice clean environment and don't need to water bath process afterward. Here you can see I appropriated some flip-top beer bottles Barry wasn't using. 

The leftover pulp gets run through a chinois strainer to make applesauce. Or, in this case, apple-pear sauce. That you do have to water-bath process, as by the time it's in the jars, it's well below scalding temperature and has been in contact with numerous preparation surfaces (chinois, bowl, spoon, etc.).

Meanwhile, I'm firing up the steamer again, this time with just pears. Don't forget to replenish the water in the water reservoir. You do not want this thing to cook dry.

And here's the yield from two steamer fulls of first apples and pears, then just pears. If I had used all apples, there would have been more yield. This is where you can see how a larger juicer would make sense, as I used a lot of energy doing this twice when one large steamer could probably have held more than the two loads I did.

My thanks to Judy Laquidara who first introduced me to the idea of steam juicing.

netTALK Duo coupon

The netTALK Duo is available for half off (before shipping fees) at the main site through November 15, if you want to give it a try. The coupon code is NTLKCRZYDISC.

Long-term food storage solutions *

A big part of managing our food budget has been minimizing waste. This family wastes an appalling amount of food. We are doing better than we used to, but still it's not good. Buying in bulk is a waste of time, money and space if you don't even use all the food you buy, and if it isn't stored properly, by the time you DO eat it, it will have lost a lot of its flavor and food value.

We have a medium-sized chest freezer, about 15 cubic feet if I remember right, and if I am careful, it can hold a lot of good stuff. But that means dumping everything out every so often and sorting it and repacking. I should do this about once a month but don't. I usually wait till the lid won't close right and it's getting everything frosty and by that point it's not just  a simple matter of sorting, it means a full-blown defrosting, and that's no fun.

Anyway I was already interested in finding a better way to store bulk flours and grains. Judy Laquidara mentioned offhand "gamma seal" lids numerous times on her blog and I was too embarrassed to ask what they are. I finally checked into them and they are just one of the wonders of the modern world! They are a 2-piece lid that fits nearly any standard 12-inch-diameter plastic pail. You know, the ubiquitous 5-gallon buckets that you can get from bakeries and delis and such? With the horrible lids that rip your fingernails off when you open them? No longer. You put the gamma seal lid on these and you have an airtight seal that is EASY TO OPEN. Amazing. There's a ring that you hammer onto the rim of the lid, and then the other half of the lid is a screw-on seal that is very easy to manage. Airtight storage. No critters are gettin' in there, no sirree. And they stack neatly.

Here's a nifty video that explains it very clearly:

I ordered mine from Baytec Containers, which had the best price I could find for smallish quantities when I figured in shipping (they use 3 carriers and ship the cheapest, which for me was FedEx Ground).

I found when I put mine on my buckets that it worked best to push one part of the seal ring down really hard till it snapped into place, then use a rubber mallet to pound it down from there all the way around, moving a couple of inches at a time. I first tried using the mallet on opposite sides of the ring, but the ring kept popping off the opposite side from where I was hammering. I thought, "Oh no, they say it fits virtually any 12-inch bucket, I must have found the mutant bucket it won't fit!" No, it was just user error.

By the way, I got mine in red. Are you surprised?

And the other thing I wanted to tell you about was that I found an eBay seller who sells 4-1/2-gallon square buckets with lids and handles, food grade plastic (though he doesn't call them that, but they are, I know from the manufacturer's website), that he sells 5 for $19.99 postpaid. Four bucks each. Now the lids are good, though not gamma-seal good; they're decent for sealing packaged foods. What I'm doing with these is I'm sorting the deep freeze into them. So one bucket is vegetables, one is fruits, one is poultry, one's fish, one's red meat, et cetera. They sit down in the bottom of the freezer providing nice vertical dividers to keep everything sorted out. Plus, if I want to search through one, I just grab the bale handle and yank it out of the freezer to look through it without upending myself into the deep-freeze. I am really happy with this idea. And with my particular freezer, I can stack them two high and they fit just right. No more losing stuff in the deeps.

Note that the buckets had glass beads in them originally. The seller cleans them nicely before shipping them, and I washed them again when I got them, but if you have any concerns about them not being food safe, just use them for packaged foods, like I do, rather than, say, filling one up with flour or grain, though honestly they would be such a handy way to store stuff like that in a deep freeze. But that's what the gamma seals are for.

By the way, if you want great tips on food storage, make friends with a Mormon. :o) It's an act of faith for an LDS family to put away food against coming catastrophe, and they have made an art of it, collecting practical ideas for storage and food economy even if you don't have much storage space. I have been offered excellent tips by a friend of mine who is LDS.

Buying in bulk and making it work requires that you find a system that meshes with  your daily life. The gamma seal lids are a good example of this. If it is a huge ordeal to store your flour in a 5-gallon bucket, are you gonna do it? I'm not. Losing fingernails is strong negative reinforcement. But if it's easy? And it even comes in my favorite color?! You betcha I will.

* By the way, when I say "long term storage," I mean, like, a year or two. I googled something related to that and found out that to a good number of people, "long term sotrage" means 20-30 years and/or after the Zombie Apocalypse. So don't take this blog post too seriously if you are really into long, Long, LONG term storage. You'd need to have oxygen absorption packs and Mylar bags and that sort of thing in your packaging if that's what you are doing.

We eat too much around here to store it up for that period of time. I would make a terrible survivalist. I'd eat up 5 years' worth of supplies in about 2 weeks.