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Category: weekly prepping

Friday, 14 August 2015

08:48 – We had a tough time with Colin yesterday and overnight. He had the squirties. Fortunately, he goes to the hall bathroom when he can’t hold it, and the floor there is ceramic tile. After several indoor accidents yesterday, we thought he was past it when we went to bed. Not so. He woke me up about midnight and had had an accident. I took him out then, and then again two or three times more. At 4:30 he was throwing up and had rushed to the front door, so I let him out loose. He sniffed around the front yard and finally squatted, but then instead of coming in when I called him he trotted down the street, hung a left down our neighbors’ driveway, and disappeared. We ended up driving around the neighborhood until we found him. We were not amused.

Barbara leaves Sunday with her friend Bonnie. They’re headed up to Brasstown, in the mountains in the far southwestern corner of North Carolina for a craft workshop. They’ll return sometime Friday afternoon or evening.

While they’re gone, I’ll be cooking for myself, using only long-term storage food. There are several recipes and methods I want to try, and this is a good opportunity. Some of the recipes I want to try are real recipes, but I also want to try some ad hoc fast meals like combining rice with a can of Bush’s Best Baked Beans. Barbara would gag just at the idea of that one, although she likes both ingredients separately. I want to see how they go together. I figure that if it turns out inedible I’m out only a cup of rice and a can of beans; if it turns out decent, I’ll know one way to make a quick, cheap, nutritious, appetizing meal in an emergency. I also want to try (re-try) methods like slow-cooking noodles or rice in a Thermos bottle. I’ve done that before and it works fine, but I haven’t done it for more than 30 years.

Most of my time this week was devoted to working on science kit stuff, as usual in August, but here’s what I did to prep this week:

  • I bought a couple packs of these hotel/institutional washcloths. They’re cheap and handy to have around. I wrote about them in the book in the Sanitation chapter, both for bathing and as the best imperfect substitute if you run out of toilet paper or tampons. The idea of using them as a re-usable toilet paper substitute is pretty gross, but it’s much better than using a handful of leaves or doing without. And with only a couple of five-gallon pails, some chlorine bleach or HTH pool chlorination granules, some hand sanitizer, and some rubber gloves it’s perfectly sanitary. Women need sets of three to six; one for bathing, one for micturation, one for defecation, and possibly additional ones if they’re of menstrual age. Men need sets of two; one for bathing and one for defecation. And even if push never comes to shove, they’re handy to have around if only as cleaning rags or paper-towel substitutes.
  • I ordered a Coleman Portable Camp Oven. This can be used on a standard Coleman camp stove, but it can also be used on a propane barbecue grill, a charcoal hibachi, or even a wood fire. For $28, it’s worth having available.
  • I ordered 1,000 each of Crossman Destroyer .177 pellets and RWS Diabolo .177 pellets. At a penny to 1.5 cents each, they’re a cheap way to practice. I don’t think Barbara has ever fired a serious pellet gun. It’ll be a lot closer to shooting a .22 rimfire than she expects, and I think she’ll have fun doing it. Back when I was about 12, I used to take my pellet rifle to the dump to shoot rats. It worked very well on them.
  • I read the first book in Joe Nobody’s Holding Their Own series, A Story of Survival. Like most other so-called authors in the PA genre, he’s a horrible writer. The first volume was barely readable, full of typos, misused words, bad grammar, poor plotting, cardboard characters, and stupid dialog. Adding injury to insult, the price of these books is outrageous. There are almost a dozen in the series, and most of them are priced at $9 or $10 for the Kindle. Like Tate’s books, I suspect a lot of people just torrent them. This style of PA novel seems to be a new trend, unfortunately. Write what amounts to one very long prepping novel, hack it into 10 or so pieces without much regard for continuity, and then sell those chunks at $10 a pop. It’s insulting to readers.
  • I ordered ten 18.8-ounce cans of Campbell’s Hearty Cheeseburger Chunky Soup and a dozen 18.8-ounce cans each of Campbell’s Beef with Country Vegetable Chunky Soup and Campbell’s Chunky Grilled Chicken and Sausage Gumbo. There’s not much nutrition in each can, 200 to 400 calories or so, but one can mixed into a large pot of rice produces an easy, quick, nutritious, and reasonable tasty meal. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t order from Prime Pantry. They started out with reasonable prices, but now they’re far more expensive on most items than Costco or Walmart, and they charge $6/box shipping in addition to the higher prices for the products themselves. But I had three $5 credits for choosing no-rush shipping, so I decided to find what I could that was reasonably priced and see if they’d apply all three $5 credits to one order. They applied two, so I’m not sure what’s going on.
  • I started on a revamp of my long-term food storage inventory spreadsheet, adding nutrition/container and total nutrition columns for net weight, calories, carbohydrates, protein, and fat. That’ll give me a much better handle on what we actually have available. I also institute a formal checkout sheet method for recording transfers from our long-term pantry downstairs to our upstairs kitchen pantry.

So, what precisely did you do to prepare this week? Tell me about it in the comments.

Read the comments: 55 Comments

Friday, 7 August 2015

07:45 – I get a lot of email from new preppers, and one of the most common questions is what to do with those 50-pound bags of flour, sugar, beans, and other dry staples that they’re buying at Costco or Sam’s Club. The good news is that they don’t have to do anything at all immediately other than keep the bags in a cool, dry place where insects and rodents can’t get to them. The bags themselves are usually pretty resistant to water vapor and air. If you check the best-by dates on these large bags of bulk staples, you’ll usually find that they’re at least a year or two out.

But when you have time, it’s a good idea to repackage these foods in containers more suitable for long-term storage. Use oxygen absorbers if you have them, other than for sugar, but if you don’t have oxygen absorbers don’t worry too much about it. There really isn’t all that much oxygen in a full container anyway.

Clean, empty 2-liter soda bottles are a popular choice because they’re free and readily available, and do an excellent job of protecting against oxygen and moisture. The downsides are that they provide no protection against light, little protection against rodents, and are a pain in the butt to fill. We consider this the fourth-best method, and recommend that you save those bottles and use them for water storage instead.

Another popular choice is 5-, 6-, or 7-gallon plastic pails. You can often get these at little or no cost just by asking a restaurant to save their old buckets for you. Alternatively, you can buy them relatively inexpensively from Home Depot, Lowes, or a paint store. Don’t worry about them being rated food-grade, because you need to use a foil-laminate Mylar bag as a pail liner. These cost about $2.50 each, including a 2000cc oxygen absorber, less in quantity. The food itself comes into contact only with the food-safe Mylar bag, so whether or not the pail is rated as food-safe is immaterial. I wouldn’t re-use a pail that had contained paint, solvents, insecticides, or similar toxic materials, but otherwise you should be fine.

Most bulk dry staples stored in a thick foil-laminate Mylar bag inside a plastic pail with an oxygen absorber should remain good for at least 10 to 20 years. This method provides excellent protection from light, oxygen, moisture, and insects, and reasonable protection from rodents. You can simply fill bags with the bulk staple. Just before you seal the bags, toss in an oxygen absorber and then seal the tops of the bags using an old clothes iron set on high (no steam), making sure the edge to be sealed is free of food dust or other contaminants. When you’ve finished that, squeeze as much air as possible out of the bag and seal the small remaining gap. Depending on the type of food and its packed density, you’ll probably be able to fit 25 to 40 pounds in one 5-gallon pail. We consider this the third-best method.

Another method is to use one-gallon foil-laminate bags and oxygen absorbers and then, optionally, store those bags in a new steel trashcan. The one gallon bags will typically hold 5 to 8 pounds of food, and you should be able to fit about 25 of those bags into a $25 32-gallon steel trashcan. This method offers excellent protection against light, oxygen, moisture, insects, and (if you use the trashcan) rodents. You can purchase 7-mil (very thick) foil-laminate one-gallon bags and oxygen absorbers from the LDS on-line store for about $0.45 each in quantity 250. We consider this the second-best method.

So what’s the best method? For items they offer, we recommend buying bulk staples in #10 steel cans from your nearest LDS Home Storage Center. You’ll pay more per pound than buying the bulk staples in 50-pound bags, but it’s already packaged for long-term storage. If you have more money than time, this is definitely the way to go. If money is tight, go with the one-gallon Mylar bags.

My time this week was occupied almost exclusively on science kits and relocation issues, but I did spend some time in the evenings doing prepping research.

  • We put in an offer on a house in the mountains. The asking price was way high, and the house has been on the market for a couple of years. We made a reasonable cash offer, and they came back at only about 3% below their asking price. It’s a nice house, but their asking price was about a third higher than it should have been for that neighborhood. Oh, well. We’re in a strong position because we’re paying cash and we’re not in any hurry.
  • I read the rest of the post-apocalyptic novels in Angery American’s Going Home series. Books 1 and 2 were okay; books 3, 4, and 5 less so.
  • I was able to get an hour or so in on the prepping book, again mostly just jotting down notes about stuff I want to write about in detail.
  • I ordered one or two minor long-term food storage items, including four pounds of yeast.

So, what did you do to prep this week? Tell me about it in the comments.

09:26 – One of the signs of a chemistry geek is that they often use lab beakers with handles instead of normal drinking mugs. I’ve always thought that was a really bad idea. The last thing a working chemist should make a habit of is drinking from lab beakers. Otherwise, one day in the lab he’s likely to grab a beaker off the bench and take a big gulp of whatever happens to be in it.

That said, one of the items that arrive yesterday from one of our lab equipment suppliers was some one-liter polypropylene beakers with pouring spouts and handles. Normal people would call them measuring cups. They’re pretty heavy-duty plastic, are reasonably light, semi-nesting (the handles don’t allow them to nest fully), and graduated. I decided to add a couple of them to each of our car emergency kits. They’re tall-form rather than short-form, which means they have the form factor of a regular mug. They’ll work fine as drinking mugs or as bowls, come to that.

Read the comments: 87 Comments

Friday, 31 July 2015

08:48 – I got email yesterday from another woman who wants to remain anonymous. I’ll call her Jen II, so that I can just use the Jen category. Besides which, she reminds me a lot of original Jen. They’re both determined and decisive.

Jen II isn’t LDS, but she’s prepping for her family of five and has jumped into the Mormon “Big Four” long-term food storage with both feet: 1,500 pounds of flour, oats, pasta, instant potatoes, and rice; 300 pounds of beans; 300 pounds of sugar/honey; 72 pounds of milk powder; 50 liters of vegetable oil; 50 pounds of salt; and various other dry staples. They bought most of that in a couple of runs to their nearest LDS Home Storage Center in #10 cans and foil-laminate bags, hauled it home in their pickup, and stacked it in the basement.

She’s now set for a year of feeding five people on iron rations, and could probably stretch that to 18 months with other regular foods she has stocked. Their basement is now stacked with cases of #10 cans, but she knows this is just the basic staples. She needs to (a) add lots of supplemental dried and canned foods–meats, fruits, vegetables, powdered eggs and cheese, sauces, spices, and so on, (b) get it all organized, and (c) figure out exactly what to do with it if/when worse comes to horrible. Her goal is to have what she needs to feed her own immediate family plus some other family and friends for a year or more. Fortunately, her husband is fully on board with all of this, and is happy to leave the decisions to her. Money isn’t much of issue, nor is storage space.

She and her husband are both retired professionals. They live in a small town that sounds ideal. The rest of her family consists of their adult daughter, their son-in-law, and their early-teens grandson.

My first suggestion to her was to pick up a good cookbook oriented toward cooking from long-term storage, such as MD Creekmore’s , and the freely-downloadable Shelf Storage Recipes, both of which are collections of recipes contributed by people who routinely cook from long-term storage. Then to go through those, pick out some recipes to try and figure out which ones she likes, and order whatever supplemental foods are needed from Augason Farms via Walmart on-line.

My time this week was occupied almost exclusively on science kits, but I did spend some time in the evenings doing prepping research.

  • I spent a lot of time researching relocation issues. We’re still looking at homes, and have decided to look at some that are farther out into the county. One or two of them are located not far from the oddly-named hamlet of Meat Camp, NC.
  • I was able to get an hour or so in on the prepping book, again mostly just jotting down notes about stuff I want to write about in detail.

So, what precisely did you do to prep this week? Tell me about it in the comments.

Read the comments: 69 Comments

Friday, 24 July 2015

07:10 – The great ammunition shortage seems to be ending, other than .22 rimfire, which is still hard to find and extremely expensive. Bricks of 500 selling for $50! Ten cents a round is outrageous, but the problem is that ammunition makers aren’t willing to build expensive new plants to address what they consider a temporary shortage. They’re working around the clock on existing production lines, but they’re not going to build any new ones.

Interestingly, most common rifle and pistol calibers are readily available at high but not outrageous prices. I just saw one site, for example, that was selling Russian steel-case .223/5.56 in bulk at 22 cents a round, and even name-brand US-made brass-case .223/5.56 was available for not much more than 30 cents a round in bulk. I also found .40S&W cheap stuff for about 23 cents a round, which was cheaper even than .38 Special. At some point, if we start shooting a lot of pistol at the range, I may get us each a .40S&W just to be able to use the cheaper ammunition. I suppose it makes sense that .40S&W is cheap, given that the federal government buys the stuff literally by the ton. I’d guess that ammo makers probably have production lines devoted exclusively to that caliber, so it makes sense that they’d have a lot of overruns to get rid of, keeping prices down. Barbara and I both like to shoot, and we’ll probably be doing a lot more of that once we get relocated.

The latest thing in shooting ranges seems to be “guntry clubs“, which apparently appeal particularly to young people and women and even liberals. Fine. I’m in favor of anything that encourages people to take up shooting as a hobby, even those ridiculous pink pistols. But I’d really rather shoot at a range that’s intended for Good Old Boys who drink plain old coffee and would be flummoxed by Starbuck’s offerings. One of the gun stores in Jefferson that we drove past is also an old-fashioned diner, which is more my speed.

My time this week was occupied almost exclusively on science kits, but I did spend some time in the evenings doing prepping research.

  • I spent a lot of time researching relocation issues. I now know more than I ever wanted to know about Internet service availability in Ashe County. Standard copper-cable service is available in some scattered areas. Fiber broadband up to 1 Gb/s is available in much of the northern through southwest areas of the county, although the service map looks kind of like a doughnut, with no service in towns of Jefferson and West Jefferson.  The fiber infrastructure is being built out under a federal grant, and I suspect the terms of that grant mandated bringing service to the remote areas of the county before they deployed fiber in the towns.
  • I read four or five PA novels, all of which sucked except Ken Benton’s SurviRal, which I bought a week ago on Jen’s recommendation when it was on sale for $0.99. Despite the hokey title, it was actually decent. That author released his second PA novel three weeks or so ago, so I’ll get it as well. Oddly, his two PA novels are not the beginning of a series. The second one has a complete different location, set of characters, etc.
  • I read a half dozen prepping-related non-fiction titles, including one on solar power that was written by an engineer and looked that way. Right now, we have just enough gear to keep a bunch of NiMH rechargeables charged to power things like radios, LED flashlights and lanterns, and so on.  If we end up in a house that depends on well water, I want to have sufficient capacity to power a well pump, which is one reason I’d prefer a spring as our water source. That’s pretty common up in Ashe county.
  • I was able to get an hour or so in on the prepping book, mostly just jotting down notes about stuff I want to write about in detail. I emailed Pournelle yesterday to ask him if he had time to write a Foreward for me. Couldn’t hurt sales to have his name on the cover as well as mine.

Neither Barbara nor I has ever lived in a home that didn’t have municipal water and sewer, so there are a lot of things we don’t know. For example, my reading tells me that a lot of wells have over-size pumps installed. They might have a 1-hp or 3/4-hp pump installed where a 1/2-hp or even 1/4-hp would be more than sufficient. That doesn’t matter much when you’re on utility power, but it makes a huge difference if you need to drive the pump on solar power. The start-up current draw with one of the large pumps may be two to four times what it would be on a smaller pump, which means you need a much larger, more expensive inverter to meet the current demands of the larger pump. If we end up with a well rather than a spring house, I’ll probably buy a smaller well pump and put it on the shelf. They’re not that expensive, and it’d be a good idea to have a spare, just in case.

So, what precisely did you do to prep this week? Tell me about it in the comments.

11:28 – In praise of mature women. FTA:

“We have to tolerate young girls because we need them to breed. Outside of that, they’re pretty much worthless until they get some laugh lines and a couple crow’s-feet.”

Just the other night, Barbara and I were watching a program that featured Sasha Alexander, who was in her late 20’s at the time, and Jessica Steen (Lisa on Heartland), who was in her late 30’s. No comparison. Jessica Steen is a much more attractive woman, and that remains true now that she’s about to turn 50 years old. Mature women rock.

Read the comments: 33 Comments

Friday, 17 July 2015

07:42 – I’ve been working on science kit stuff all week, so there hasn’t been much time left for prepping activities. I did get email yesterday from a guy who wants to remain anonymous, so I’ll just call him Bill.

I guess I’m in the wannabe prepper category you mentioned in one of your comments today. Either that, or I’m just really slow at getting started. I’ve bought Fernando Aguire’s Surviving The Economic Collapse. I bought
some oxygen absorbers from Amazon, and collected 24 two liter soda bottles. I even have a Sam’s Club Membership so I can buy stuff to store in the two liter bottles. I just haven’t bought anything to put in the two liter bottles. It’s taken over a month for me to do this little. In my defense, I will point out that real life keeps raising it’s ugly head and distracting me from prepping.

I have decided I’m going to start storing rice first rather than flour. My wife and I routinely cook with rice and use very little flour. I have started looking for recipes that use all purpose flour. It wasn’t clear from your list of iron rations whether you talking about all purpose or bread flour. I have assumed you meant all purpose flour. Julia Child’s French Bread recipe calls for all purpose flour and a video can be found on Youtube. The other common recipe for all purpose flour is egg noodles made from one cup of flour and one egg. Before I start stocking flour in bulk, I’m going to at least figure out how to make the tortillas in the recipe linked below.

http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/homemade-tortillas

To which I replied:

Real life always gets in the way.

Why not just stop by Costco/Sam’s/Walmart this afternoon and pick up some basic food? Keep it simple to start.

1. A few cases of bottled water. [Following added for this post. RBT] Rinse out those two dozen 2-liter bottles with dilute bleach and fill them with tap water. You can never have too much safe water.

2. A 50-pound bag of white rice, for probably $17. Don’t even worry about transferring it to other containers for now. It’ll keep just fine for at least a couple years in the original bag.

3. Two dozen cans of assorted canned soups. You can use these with the rice to make a simple but tasty meal.

4. A case or two of canned meats (chicken, tuna, salmon, Spam, etc.)

5. A case or two of canned fruit, jars of applesauce, etc.

6. A case or two of canned vegetables, whatever you like.

7. A dozen jars of spaghetti sauce and a dozen packages of pasta.

8. A large bottle of olive oil.

9. A couple large jars of peanut butter and a couple large boxes of Ritz crackers.

10. Big jars of onion powder/flakes, garlic powder/granules, cinnamon, and any other spices you like.

All of this stuff, including the crackers, keeps for at least a year in the original packages.

As to the flour, there’s really not that much difference between types of white flour, other than varying protein levels (gluten). You can substitute them pretty freely. For example, if you make bread with all-purpose flour, the texture of the bread won’t be as good as it’d be if you used bread flour, but it will work just fine.

To which he replied:

That is an excellent idea. You ask why not do it this afternoon? One of the instances of real life happening is three days in the last two weeks when we got 4+ inches of rain. As soon as we get the basement sorted out, I will get a sturdy shelving unit and stuff from your list from Sam’s Club.

And, surprise, I heard from Jen’s husband for the first time. I’ll call him Ben. Ben is not as prepping-oriented as Jen, but he says he’s coming around to her view of things, and has no real objection to most of the actions she’s taking and the stuff she’s buying. Like Barbara, he’s more concerned about the amount of space it takes and the clutter than the cost, and he asks a reasonable question: “When have we done enough to declare that our preparation is complete?”

Just about any prepping website will tell you that you’re never done, that prepping is a journey rather than a destination. And that’s fine as far as it goes. But Ben’s question is still valid with regard to purchases. Is a ton of food each enough for them? Two tons? Ten? When does it stop?

My attitude is that you can indeed reach a level at which you can consider your acquisition of food and other supplies complete, at which point you can consider that your supplies have reached steady-state, where you buy only enough stuff to replace what you’ve used, whether food, ammunition, or other classes of supplies. For me, that level is a three-year supply. Some people are comfortable with just a year’s worth, and I have no argument with that. Others keep a five or ten year supply on hand, and I have no argument with that, either. What should never stop is your acquisition of additional knowledge and skills.

So, what precisely did you do to prepare this week? Tell me about it in the comments.

09:07 – Everything appears to be working normally, with a few minor exception like the placement of bullet points midway down the paragraph rather than on the first line. The other weird thing is that followed links seem to remain the same color as unfollowed ones, which makes it hard for me to keep track of the last comment I read.

Otherwise, I’m happy with this theme. I showed Barbara the new theme when she was on her way out this morning, and asked if she wanted me to install it on her site. She said to go ahead and do it, but I think I’ll wait a day or two to let any problems show up before I chance breaking her site.

Read the comments: 56 Comments

Friday, 10 July 2015

07:46 – For some reason, there’s been a flood of orders for forensic science kits. Our inventory of them is now -1, with (so far) one outstanding order for a kit that I don’t have available to ship. So today I’m building another batch of forensic kits.

Most of my time this week was devoted to working on science kit stuff, as will be true for the next month to six weeks, but here’s what I did to prep this week:

  • I spent a lot of time on relocation issues. We’re gradually getting all our ducks lined up. We’ll probably end up making at least a couple more trips up to look at homes, but it’s very possible we could find a suitable one on our next trip. If so, we’ll need to make the decision to make an offer versus keep looking. Actually, we may do both pending acceptance of our offer. Even though we plan to pay cash for the house, it’ll probably take 45 days or so from getting a house under contract to actually closing on it. I also need to find a good attorney up there, ideally one who can do the closing and also handle our business needs.
  • I read the first book in Glen Tate’s 299 Days series, The Preparation. Tate, like Bracken and Konkoly and unlike most other so-called authors in the PA genre, is a reasonably competent writer. Yeah, he needs an editor, as all of them do, and there are occasional howlers (repel down a cliff), but at least the first volume is readable. Tate is unabashedly conservative/libertarian, which drives the prog reviewers on Amazon to froth at the mouth. The real downside is that the price of these books is outrageous. There are ten in the series, and most of them are priced at $9.95 for the Kindle. I suspect a lot of people just torrent them.
  • I read 100-day Pantry: 100 Quick and Easy Gourmet Meals. “Gourmet” is a gross exaggeration. This book is a collection of recipes that use only shelf-stable foods–mostly canned soups, pasta, canned meats and vegetables, a basic set of spices, and so on–to assemble edible meals as quickly and easily as possible, with minimal actual cooking. If you’re not already experienced at cooking from scratch this is an excellent resource for using the stuff you’ve stored.

So, what precisely did you do to prepare this week? Tell me about it in the comments.

08:55 – Another email from Jen. When her husband got home from work yesterday, he told her about a conversation he’d had over lunch with a guy they shoot sporting clays with. It’s spreading. The other guy remarked that he and his wife were becoming very concerned about social unrest in the cities, and thought maybe it’d be a good idea to keep a bit of extra food and other supplies on hand. Jen’s husband said that he and Jen were also worried, and suggested that the other guy not put it off, but make a Costco run or two to get stocked up on canned foods and other supplies. He also invited the guy and his wife over to their place for a cookout next weekend, where he plans to feel them out to see how serious they are about prepping.

Read the comments: 56 Comments

Saturday, 4 July 2015

Happy Birthday USA!

More work on science kits today.

12:35 – The only prepping I did this week was relocation-related stuff. Oh, that and I bought 35 pounds (4.5 gallons) of soybean oil at Sam’s Club yesterday.

Last night, Barbara cooked dinner purely from food storage. A pound of pasta ($0.90), a 14.5-ounce can of Keystone canned chicken ($4.44), and a 15-ounce jar of Bertolli Mushroom Alfredo sauce ($2.12). It made enough for two meals for us, so she froze the excess. It would easily feed four people, for just over $7 total.

In any emergency that lasts longer than a few days, pasta meals and skillet meals will be important. Pasta can be cooked fuel-efficiently simply by transferring the dry pasta to a pre-heated Thermos bottle, adding boiling water, and allowing the pasta to cook in that hot water. And whipping up a skillet sauce is pretty simple, particularly if you have shelf-stable commercially-packaged sauces or flavoring packets on hand. We keep enough of those on hand to produce several skillet meals a week for the two of us plus a couple of guests to last at least one year, and I’d suggest you do the same.

Incidentally, Barbara gave her seal of approval to both the Keystone canned chicken and the Bertolli Mushroom Alfredo sauce. That’s significant, because she has pretty strong food preferences, while I’m not very picky.

Read the comments: 27 Comments

Saturday, 27 June 2015

07:15 – Things are a lot more pleasant around here now that the heat wave has broken. I had Barbara pick up a bottle of barbecue sauce at the supermarket yesterday because I wanted to try making barbecue sandwiches with the Keystone Meats canned pork. I could have made the sauce myself with stuff we stock, but I just wanted to try the pork without spending too much time in the kitchen. So we had barbecue sandwiches for dinner last night. Barbara is used to the Western North Carolina barbecue, which uses a thin, vinegary sauce, but I think she liked the Kansas City sauce just fine. KC sauce is, after all, just a derivative of Western North Carolina barbecue sauce. She’s still not crazy about any kind of canned meat. I agree that fresh meat is better, but the canned pork was certainly okay.

A lot of my time this week was devoted to working on science kit stuff, including development work on a new kit, but here’s what I did to prep this week:

  • I spent a lot of time on relocation research issues, as well as figuring out what needs to be done to continue our kit business uninterrupted while we’re in the process of moving.
  • I spent more time researching solar power. As of now, we have what we need to keep a reasonable number of AA and AAA cells recharged using only the sun, but my goal eventually is get beyond that. It’ll be a long time, if ever, before we have a full off-grid solar installation, but I intend to make incremental progress over the coming months and years. Prices have fallen dramatically and will continue to fall, so I’m not in a hurry to buy solar panels, controllers, inverters, batteries, and related gear. Nor am I interested in a grid-connected system or selling back power to the utility company. We’ll eventually have an off-grid solar system, or perhaps a grid-connected system, but never a grid-linked system.

So, what precisely did you do to prepare this week? Tell me about it in the comments.

16:33 – We just got back from a trip to West Jefferson, where we looked at seven houses. Five, we ruled out; two are possibles. Of those two, my favorite is a 2,500 square foot ranch with a full basement, sitting on a bit less than an acre. That’s 2500 SF of living area on the main floor, with an extra 1,800 SF of unfinished basement, with the remaining 700 SF being basement garage area. It was built in 1951, which means it was built without the shortcuts that builders started making in the 60’s and 70’s, such as eliminating a row or two of concrete block from the basement walls to yield a 7-foot ceiling rather than the previously standard 8 feet. All carpeted, but with hardwood floors under the carpet. Like the other house we liked, this one was listed as having two full baths, but both also had an extra bath with sink/toilet/shower in the basement. Both also had completely dry basements, in contrast to the five rejects, all of which had water problems.

One of the homes was obviously owned by preppers. It’s a dead giveaway when there are piles of cartons in the basement with labels like “Beans – 2012”. Several of the homes had shelves in the basement loaded with scores to hundreds of canning jars, but that’s par for the course in the mountains. The one we liked best also had a spare stove in the basement next to the laundry area, which tells me that a serious canner lived there.

There should be a lot more homes coming on the market in the next month or two, so we’ll schedule another trip to see what’s newly available. But I don’t think we’ll have any problem finding something that suits us and is within our budget.

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Saturday, 20 June 2015

09:54 – Thanks to OFD for this link to an article about a common thread in mass killings over the last couple decades. The killers had been on psychoactive drugs such as Ritalin, Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft.

Yesterday afternoon, Barbara took Colin to see our vet, Sue Stephens. He got his rabies booster, heartworm check, and so on. They ended up having to put a snout protector on Colin because he snapped at Sue while she was working on him. It wasn’t a serious attempt to bite her, just a warning not to hurt him. Colin has always been a timid dog, although he has a truly fearsome threat display. But he didn’t pull his fake Cujo routine with Sue, nor even show his fangs. He just snapped at her.

We’ll be spending as little time as possible outside over the next couple of weeks. The highs recently have been up near body temperature, and the next couple of weeks are to be the same. It’s even been hot up in Jefferson, although usually 10F or so cooler than it’s been here.

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 finished the remaining books in James Wesley, Rawles’ Patriots series. Rawles pretty much defines the term “information dump”. The first book in the series was just okay, but unfortunately the other books in the series are noticeably worse. In absolute terms, I’d give the series 2 out of 5 stars. But for some reason PA novels average much worse than other genres, so in relative terms, I’d give it 3 of 5 stars.
  • I ordered some sample cans of Keystone Meats chicken and pork to test. now that Walmart offers these items on its website, it’ll be a lot easier and cheaper to get them if we like them. We already have two dozen 28-ounce cans of Keystone ground beef on the pantry shelves. Barbara and I agree that the Keystone ground beef isn’t as good as the fresh stuff she buys at Costco, but it’s not bad. I’m looking forward to trying their chicken, pork, beef chunks, and even their turkey.

So, what precisely did you do to prepare this week? Tell me about it in the comments.

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Friday, 12 June 2015

08:12 – After dinner yesterday, Barbara commented that it was still 92F (33C) outside. I checked the temperature in West Jefferson, which was 73F (23C). That’s pretty much the norm. When it’s very hot down here in the flatlands, it’s usually 10 to 20F cooler up in the mountains. According to the real estate agent, many homes there don’t have central air conditioning because it’s not really needed. Winter temperatures are lower up there as well, but usually not all that much lower. It gets below freezing more often up there, and there is more snow, but the difference isn’t great enough to be a problem.

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 finished book one in James Wesley, Rawles’ Patriots series. It’s a bit disconcerting to read a novel that includes a glossary and an index. Rawles isn’t the best writer I’ve ever read, not by a long shot, but he can at least write competently. Rawles self-identifies as a Constitutionalist Christian libertarian, and the book is chock-full of religious stuff. Characters are constantly thanking God, stopping to kneel and pray, and reciting bible verses, but I can live with that. At least Rawles doesn’t want to force his beliefs on others. He even has a Jewish main character and another who’s agnostic (although the latter eventually converts). He also has odd gaps in his technical knowledge. For example, he thinks butane gas is added to gasoline as an octane booster, and he thinks a frequency-agile transmitter is one that can transmit outside authorized frequencies, like a 2-meter ham HT that can be unlocked to transmit outside the 144 – 148 MHz range. But overall it’s not a bad book, particularly compared to others in the PA genre. In absolute terms, I’d give it 2.5 stars out of 5. In relative terms, I’d give it 3.5 or 4. I started the second in the series last night.

So, what precisely did you do to prepare this week? Tell me about it in the comments.

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