PREPPER FRIDAY RETURNS! Making A Plan

 Good morning!

I dropped the ball on this last fall. For some reason, the fall season just ceased to exist for me. I couldn't seem to get footing. I just wanted to sit and veg.

Not so this year. 

As I approach 60 and Bob's retirement only a couple of years away, I've decided I need a two-year plan to lay in as much supply of non-perishables and paper products as possible. I'm also gradually adding home-canned/ preserved/ dehydrated to the pantry.

Courtesy of Pixabay User

With parts of I-70 still under clean-up as well as other natural disasters and a shortage of quality drivers, there is still the issue of getting product. I don't think this is something that is going to resolve any time soon. I don't like to be a fear-monger, but this has to make us think about supply and demand down the line. They are still touting variant strains of the virus as well as the potential for non-vaccinated people allowed in some public places. Seriously? This has to stop somewhere.

In the mean time, we have to take control of our own well-being.  That means taking stock of three areas:

1 - What we use on a regular basis

2 - How much of those items we have on hand

3 - How to break our purchases down into financially manageable chunks.

Take a note pad and pen and go through each room in your home. For me, that would be:

Bathroom

Kitchen

Laundry room

Living room

Dining room

Bedroom

Office

Basemement

I recommend at least one sheet per room.

List what you have on hand that you USE

Pitch everything that is out-dated or that you no longer use

Next, go back through your USE list and determine how many you have on hand AND how many you need to sustain you for 1 year. For now, I'm talking dry goods/ non-perishables. We'll get to the actual FOOD items in a future post. 

I'm working on a PDF that I can offer as a Beta test for a book. You're input would be invaluable.

For now, get reacquainted with your home and as always...

Enjoy the Journey!

~Kelly 

PREPPER FRIDAY - What's Enough?

 

Good morning, everyone!

As I hear the stories of everyone 'stocking up' and constant buying, wiping out shelves I find myself asking... What's Enough?

I'm pretty sure Bob has asked 'do we have enough, already' as he put together two new shelving units we purchased from Menards.

We have a wall between the shower room and Bob's man came. The side on the shower room is open stud. I saw this drop can storage unit on Pinterest and knew the studded wall could be converted.

 The wall is only about 6' long so not a lot of storage. Our canned goods overflow to a heavy duty shelving unit Bob built when we first moved in to this house.

In the spare room we have the two shelving units from Menards, an upright freezer that houses most of the meat. I also have four 5-shelf book cases that initially held all of my smaller pieces of fabric. I've since moved those to a storage shed in the back yard that I've dubbed my crafting warehouse. The Menards units hold paper and cleaning supplies. The bookcases hold all of our dry goods. I have one other bakers rack to move downstairs for all of the baking supplies. I want to add one more of the big shelving units to hold all of our water storage. Right now everything sits on the floor - in the way. 

So, back to the question. 

The amount is going to vary by the individual's situation.

I'm planning for a year. Not necessarily for another lock-down. (We haven't really experienced that here in the US like other countries) but should Bob be off work for whatever reason as well as working towards having a serious food supply for the early days of his retirement - which I'm hoping will happen in two years. 

What's your version of 'What's Enough?'

PREPPER FRIDAY - Where to Begin - Replay

 

Since the onset of Covid-19, there have been a lot of people joining the prepper forces. 2020 will go down in history as the Great Toilet Paper Shortage... except for those of us who've been stocking up on necessities for years. 

I purchase stock-up supplies on a rotation, many of the items I buy from Dollar General. They are closest to me and while they are a chain store, they put money back into my small community of around 650 people.  Every penny counts. 

We often have a $5 off $25 coupon to be used on Saturdays and I take advantage of that extra $5 to buy a couple extra things. While not in any particular order, one week is all paper supplies, another week, personal hygeine, the next week might be canned good items and the final week fills in the gaps or holiday items. We can't be totally practical, after all. :-)

Many of the newbies on this journey began buying willy  nilly and panic buying bulk items they'll probably never use because someone on YouTube said that's what they should stock-pile. 

I thought for this week, we'd go back to another post from February 2014.

* * * * * *

Anytime someone wants to start something new, their first question is usually something to the effect of 'how do I start?' or 'where do I begin?'  My Mom always said any project is best started at the beginning. So I'm going to start this whole Prepping series at the beginning.

Start with DECLUTTERING a space to use as your new storage area. For us, that is in our utility room. Even with the wood burner cranking in the middle of winter, our utility room is the coolest room in the basement with two exterior (while well ground-insulated) concrete walls. One West and one North.

Aside from shelves on the West wall, we turned a wall separating the Man Cave from the shower room into a rotating can storage similar to this one on My Family Essentials. The link will take you to the page where she talks about food storage and the picture of her can rotation system. For a quick look, I have a pic on my Pinterest Board - Emergency Preparedness -   CAN STORAGE  I really like this and wish I could turn more of the walls into this system. 

We use this cabinet to store our bath necessities as there is a shower in this room as well. But we also store the overstock of personal, beauty and paper products here.

A storage area can be one location in your home (ideal) or have zones throughout your house. Under the bed for instance, is a great place to store cases of bottled water. Think about repurposing various pieces of furniture such as an entertainment center (most people don't even need these now with the flat screen now a common household item.  Can you put shelves on the wall above the toilet area for extra rolls of toilet paper or personal products. While having them in plain view may not be the prettiest, how important is pretty when you need to have those items on hand?  A wooden chest doubling as a coffee table, end of the bed seat or even a hassock that has an opening top can be used to store canned goods.  

If you have a garage, how much can you declutter this area and add shelves for bulk items such as toilet paper, paper towels, detergent, etc.

Your assignment this week if you choose to accept it is to take a tour of your home. What can you get rid of and what necessary emergency supplies could you store there instead.

Start a blog about your Prepper journey and link me. Sharing ideas could save numerous lives!

Kelly

PREPPING - Let's Be Squirrels!

According to the weather folks, our temps are finally supposed to start cooling down. I am so ready. I mean, seriously, today (as I type this) is October 1 and I'm still running the AC!) I am so ready for a REAL fall.

I do know 'winter' will be here eventually so I'm beginning to think about Prepping for winter.

I shop a lot at Dollar General. They carry the brand of toilet paper we prefer and price comparative to the other box stores. Periodically, they offer a $5 off $25 coupon to be used on the Saturday of that week. I stop in during the week and pick up one item from my list then go back on Saturday to stock up on a specific item.
Some of the items I purchase:

Charmin Mega Rolls
semi-generic paper towels
napkins
Bob's drink addatives (He likes the root beer, Orange and grape)
cans of Queso cheese
Personal hygiene products...

I pick up enough of the pricier items like the TP and Paper Towels one week. Next time the coupon comes around, I'll go to the next item on my list.
I'm spending $20 plus tax and gettting the necessities of the house

I will add that they do offer an app (of course there's an app for that!) where some weeks the coupon is only good on 'app' items.  I don't use the app. I don't need any more of my information being tracked than there is already. Some things you can avoid... others, not so much. Be selective.

What I'm going to suggest is that we take this room by room each week in October. By the end of the month, you should have a nice supply.

Week 1 - Bathroom
This one is pretty easy, that's why I started here.
Designate $20 (or as much as you can apply)
Go through your bathroom and make a list of the things you need to get through the winter
     toilet tissue
     personal items
     dental hygiene
     Vitamins
     hair care
     make-up 
            Note: I list this one if you use make-up on a regular basis. Anytihng other than 6 months                                should be tossed.
     cold/ flu over the counter items you use regularly like Nyquil, Ibuprophen, etc.

You get the idea.
This is also a good time to pitch things you've not used.

CYA next Friday for another Prepper/ Stock-up!
NOTE: I'm going to re-run this series.. IN COMPLETION.... beginning as soon as the SIP is lifted.

Country Blessings from the Ozarks.

WEEKEND TRAVELS - Pizza Sauce

While this is supposed to be a Weekend Travels post, most of our traveling these days is out to the garden. 

As I told you last week, I was putting Adrian in charge of washing all of those tomatoes she and Abby picked. This batch became half of a batch of pizza sauce. Making sauce has changed a lot from when I was learning how to can.

After the tomatoes were washed, I dropped them in scald water to slip the skins then into a sink of cold water to stop the cooking and help further release the skins. I peeled/ cored each one, cut them up then dropped them into the food processor where they were turned into a thin puree.

When I was a girl we would have put the puree into a pot on the stove and spent several hours stirring the sauce to keep it from sticking to the bottom of the pan as we cooked it to the desired consistency. I've learned a good shortcut... My crock pot is my friend LOL

I poured the puree into my 6 qt (?) oval crock pot covered with a lint free towel (NO lid!) and set it to low. From there, I just let it cook down all day. Just before bedtime, I stirred in a packet of McCormick Spaghetti Sauce mix then let it continue to cook down throughout the night. The next morning I had perfect Pizza Sauce consistency. I could have continued to cook another 6 hours or so for tomato paste. As the tomatoes continue to ripen (I have nearly half of a 5 gal bucket waiting), I might make the next batch into paste and put into 1/2-sized jelly jars.

So far I've put up three pints of diced tomatoes from last year's haul and these lovely seven pints of Pizza Sauce:

Now all I have to do is rearrange some things on shelves downstairs and make room. Wish me luck!

STOCKING UP - Drying Bella Mushrooms

I've been wanting to dry Baby Bella mushrooms for awhile. When I'm home alone, I can't go through an entire #1 carton on my own before they start to fuzz over. This picture shows 1 of 4 racks on my food dehydrater. I also only use the caps. I don't care for the stems.

My trays are lined with wire mesh screen I purchased from the local hardware store and cut to fit.

This is what they looked like after 24 hours:

I didn't need to leave them for 24 hours I don't think, but I got up way earlier than I wanted so went back to bed... much longer than I wanted. LOL

And this is the final result:

#1 mushrooms dried to 1 cup. A tight fit in a jelly jar.

I tried some the next morning. I rehydrated about 4 T of the dried mushrooms in hot water for about ten minutes then added them to my egg scramble. Perfect!

Now that I know this works well, I'm going to buy a larger quantity at Sam's Club and get a bunch of them put into jars.

Have you tried dehydrating mushrooms? Do you find a difference between varieties? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

PUTTING FOOD BY - Prepackaged Pasta

While they are not my favorite thing to purchase, having quick fix foods in the pantry do make life easier when the rest of the world refuses to stop spinning for two seconds. However, I do not like keeping things in their original packaging. I prefer glass canning jars.

The picture above shows items pulled from the kitchen cabinets. The picture below is their repackaged version:

I try to package pastas in wide mouth quarts. I do not use half-gallon jars (though I could), because once I pop the seal I want to use them up in a week or two as opposed to resealing a larger jar.

I've heard, though I can not get confirmation on the fact, that you should not use the vacuum seal for powdered items as they can clog the air canal. Makes sense. So the pastas are in jars and if they have a coordinating powder mix in a separate pouch, I put those in the 1/2 jelly jars and screw the lids on tight. These are the jars I will use first. 

On a recent trip to Big Lots, I found small tortellini pasta in several varieties. These cute little bags were perfect for me as Bob does not eat anything that includes the name of a vegetable or green leafy additive.

I did get a couple bags of four-cheese so I could fix something for the two of us, but primarily this purchase was for my meals when he is gone. I stored them in pint jars... just enough for two meal-preps each.

I will probably get at least four meals from each jar, but I'll cook them in batches of two so that I'll have meals for two days in a row then the other half of the jar for the following week. 

What types of pastas do your family enjoy? Share your favs, or a link to a favorite pasta recipe.

PUTTING FOOD BY - Cereal

Bob loves cinnamon toast, cinnamon rolls, etc. So when I found Cinnamon Roll Captain Crunch I knew this would become a favorite. Since the product is new on the shelves (in our area at least), I thought I'd better stock up while I could find the cereal.

I'm not a sweet cereal fan so these are all for Bob. I packaged them in quart jars. I figure he'll go through one jar in a couple of  'man' servings so the contents won't have time to get stale. He can alternate cereal a couple of days a week with other things like his 'leftovers' omelets, sausage gravy with biscuits, pancakes/ eggs/ bacon, etc... all his other favorites.

As you can see I only got eight jars. I'm thinking I might want to stop by Big Lots today and pick up a few more boxes. I think this was three boxes.  At only .75 per breakfast I think we can add a few more to the pantry.