07:23 – Good for NC Governor Pat McCrory, who just vetoed the “religious freedom” bill. I’d have been all in favor of any bill that protected individuals’ and private companies’ right to discriminate against anything or anyone for any reason or for no reason at all, but this bill conflated the rights of individuals with the non-rights of government employees acting in their public capacities. It would, for example, have allowed public officials to refuse to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. People have rights; governments do not.
Most of my time this week was devoted to working on science kit stuff and the prepping book, but here’s what I did to prep this week:
- I read several prepping fiction books, including all three of William Allen’s Walking in the Rain series and the first in Steven Bird’s The New Homefront series. Both series are mediocre at best, about what I’d expect from newbie fiction authors, but both are readable. Both authors are obviously newbies, prone to “information dumps” in great amounts of detail, particularly about firearms, and military firearms at that. If I could give authors like these one piece of advice, it’d be to avoid TMI. I recall in one of Heinlein’s books he conveyed a tremendous amount of information in three words, “The door dilated.” These guys would go on for pages and pages about the dilating mechanism and a lot of other unnecessary detail. They obviously haven’t learned the first rule of writing, which someone famously summed up as, “I’d have made it shorter if I’d had more time.”
- I read the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving.
- I read Tamara Price’s All Things Provident: Inspiring ideas to help use your food storage, manage your finances, and prepare for emergencies. She’s a member of the LDS Church, and there’s lots of church-related stuff in the book that won’t mean much to non-Mormon readers, but there’s still lots of useful information there. She does have an unfortunate tendency to write as though her freezer will still be working, but there are plenty of recipes that use only long-term storage items or items easily substituted for by shelf-stable items.
- I didn’t buy much, but I did a Walmart order for 17 28-ounce cans of Bush’s Best Baked Beans, 12 original recipe, 3 maple/bacon, and 2 onion. The price per ounce is lower than not just the regular 16.5-ounce cans but the larger sizes as well. I really like that Bush’s packages their products in four can sizes: the regular size 16.5-ounce cans (6.3 cents/ounce), the 28-ounce cans I ordered (5.4 cents/ounce), the 55-ounce cans (6.3 cents/ounce), and the 117-ounce #10 cans (5.8 cents/ounce).
- I also ordered one Bertolli Mushroom Alfredo Sauce to try, a can of Nestle Nido powdered whole milk, and (on Tamara Price’s recommendation) a bag of Krusteaz Family Size Buttermilk Pancake Mix.
All told, with only a few ounces of vegetable oil added, that order represents enough balanced nutrition to feed two people for a full week at 2,500 calories/day. Not that I’d want to eat baked beans and pancakes all day long every day for two weeks, but it’s still a nice addition to our stocks.
So, what precisely did you do to prepare this week? Tell me about it in the comments.
13:07 – Barbara and I are frequently amazed at what Colin will eat. He’s the most omnivorous dog we’ve had, and that’s saying something. One of our earlier Border Collies used to beg for lettuce, and loved celery. Just plain, you understand, not with salad dressing or other flavoring on it. I suppose we shouldn’t be too surprised, given what all of our dogs have been willing to pick up and eat from the street.
Further confirming that Colin will eat almost anything, I was just filling some 2-liter bottles with bulk staples and spilled a tiny bit of bread flour. Colin swooped in and licked it up off the floor.
Speaking of which, just in case you find it useful for planning, a 2-liter Coke bottle filled to the very top will hold 1.50 kilos (3 pounds, 5 ounces) of Harvest (Con-Agra) bread flour or 1.90 kilos (4 pounds, 3 ounces) of Dixie white granulated sugar. For the flour in particular, that includes bumping the bottle vigorously to help settle the flour.