Ambergris

Twenty-five pounds of finely ground corn meal completely fills a 3.5 gallon bucket plus a ten-cup container, and leaves five cups for the kitchen. Two one pound, twelve-ounce packages of slow grits will fill a ten-cup container with a little airspace. Two 2-lb bags of quick grits will fill a half-gallon jar with roughly a cup, eyeball-measured in the bag, left over for the kitchen. Four pounds of small red beans will fill a half-gallon jar to the lid with a slightly heaping cup left over. My guess is that settling would make these containers hold more after a little jostling, but topping them off might not be worth buying more.

Doesn't everyone have a packet drawer these days?

When we go through any drive through, we ask for extra napkins. People we know ask for us, as kind of "she's funny that way." Dishes are first cleaned with a good wipe of a paper napkin, or a few of them. This goes very far in reducing the effort of washing dishes, whether they go in the sink or the dishwasher. Paper towels work, but they cost money.

I'm glad your grandson is coming to help you.

The citrus did well. The other fruit trees are too young to do anything.

This is a no-mulberry year. "Big" tree (about two inches thick in the trunk) died from grape-vine strangling and something else unidentified. Baby trees just...did nothing. I'm hoping it's just one of those years and nex year we get a bucketful.

I couldn't handle neurontin/gabapentin. It made me a zombie. But I know people who do fine with it. You should try to have people around you the first few days you are on it, if at all possible.

Fingers crossed!

In the US, food is still very cheap as a total percentage of the average household expenditures. You can bet this won't last. Remember: a day's pay for a measure of wheat (a loaf of bread) or three measures of barley.

Pain and MIL stress might be affecting his BP too.

You've hit a major one: I water down shampoo/conditioner. (I buy them combined because I can't read in the shower). I also water down dish soap before I set it out. I also keep a shower chair in the bathtub. I bought it the day it took me twenty-some minutes to climb out of the bathtub, and I have been very happy to have it ever since. (After going through a couple of models.) I have a subscription to scouring pads that come in a sixpack with a stick. The stick snaps onto a disposable pad, which is supposed to be whipped around the toilet once and tossed. (The next pad is for the next cleaning.) Well, I use the pad for cleaning corners, especially behind the toilet, all around the bathroom. It works up a huge lather, and the stick is delicate enough to remind me not to put in so much effort that I will cause myself a problem. Just wiping up the lather removes the gunk, but wiping up all the lather can be a pain. So I go knock on the door of someone who would never in years (trust me on this--not in YEARS) see gunk behind a toilet or in corners and say, "Hey, do me a favor and go clean up all that blue lather in the big bathroom before it dries. My back is killing me." My bathrooms haven't stayed this clean in years. The cat door in the window saves me from getting up and getting down dozens of times a day. It opens onto the screen porch. There's a cat door on the screen porch too, but the cats prefer to open the screen door. The burglar bar jammed into the frame above the cat door to keep the window from opening any wider makes me feel a tad more secure about this gap. The cat door cuts down on the kitty litter bill, although they prefer to race inside to poop. Buying frozen vegetables to dehydrate is something a lot of us do, I guess. They're already washed, blanched, and cut to uniform sizes/shapes, and they are often cheaper than fresh. The air fryer, the Instant Pot, and in summer the toaster oven/in winter the slow cooker stay out on the counter next to the mixer and the coffee pot. Under grease/dust covers behind them are the blender, the mixer, and less-often used appliances. I can't be digging through cabinets and hauling out gadgets any more. The creme brulee torch, the electric frying pan, and all those things are on a shelf in another room, and will be given away as soon as anyone mentions a desire for them. We got rid of the carpets long ago. Cats and carpets can be a nasty combination. Small rugs are so much easier to clean, and so much cheaper to replace. We have to hire out the mowing, so only a little bit of the yard gets mowed. In a crisis, the yard guy would lose a job. The rest of the ground is rewilding or is planted in ground cover. The yard guy doesn't know the ground cover is edible.

The garage won't get nearly as hot if you put a radiant barrier in the roof or build a plywood attic to catch the radiant heat. Picture a tent. Sunlight striking one level of barrier, like a tent wall, changes into a different wavelength that heats up the next thing it hits, whether that is the person inside the tent or the lining wall for your tent, which is why 19th century teepees had lining walls and why people camping in the US today get uncomfortably hot in a tent on a mildly warm sunny day. A radiant barrier or an attic floor up below the roof of the garage is the next thing those waves hit. The radiant barrier reflects the waves back up/out, while the attic absorbs them and dully radiates less of the heat on around. Either way, the garage below stays cooler on sunny days.

Red Star still sells cakes of yeast. The two-ounce cakes are equivalent to six tablespoons, and the new cubes of yeast are equivalent to an envelope apiece. The brown jar and a measuring spoon works better for me.

Creutzfeldt-Jakob causes slow degeneration of the brain. Mad cow disease in humans is probably a new variant of that disease. Approximately 270 people per year die in the US from classic Creutzfeldt-Jakob.

Please keep us updated.

(I know I sure use a lot more than half a gallon of vinegar in a year. I use a gallon just for cleaning my kitchen. That doesn't count the cooking vinegar or the bathroom-cleaning vinegar. And do these people not think any pickling will be going on???? And my gallon jug of molasses weighs about twelve pounds. A pound of molasses is about a cup and a half. How is that supposed to last a year? But meanwhile you're expected to go through SIX POUNDS of KOOL AID powder???)

I tried to do these two lists as columns, but couldn't get the format to work. Copy them and past them on your own page next to each other to see the comparison. These are both from websites that only go by the year. You can tell that either one is copying off the other or they are taking information from the same source. Otherwise, where would some of these oddball measurements come from? Wheat 200 lbs Flour 50 lbs Corn Meal 25 lbs Oats 25 lbs Rice 50 lbs Pasta 25 lbs Total Grains 375 lbs Shortening 4 lbs Vegetable Oil 2 gal Mayonnaise 2 qts Salad Dressing 1 qts Peanut Butter 4 lbs Total Fats 13 lbs Beans, dry 30 lbs Lima Beans 10 lbs Soy Beans 10 lbs Split Peas 5 lbs Lentils 10 lbs Dry Soup Mix 10 lbs Total Legumes 75 lbs Vegetables 45 lbs Honey 5 lbs Sugar 40 lbs Brown Sugar 3 lbs Molasses 1 lbs Corn Syrup 3 lbs Jams 5 lbs Fruit drink powder 6 lbs Flavored Gelatin 2 lbs Total Sugars 65 lbs Dry Milk 60 lbs Evaporated Milk 12 can Other 13 lbs Total Dairy 75 lbs Baking Powder 1 lbs Baking Soda 1 lbs Yeast 0.5 lbs Salt 5 lbs Vinegar 0.5 gal Bleach 1 gal Water 365 gal Wheat 150 lbs Flour 25 lbs Corn Meal 25 lbs Oats 25 lbs Rice 50 lbs Pasta 25 lbs Grain total 300 lbs Fats 4 lbs Oils 2 gal Mayonnaise 2 qts Salad Dressing 1 qts Peanut Butter 4 lbs Beans, dry 30 lbs Lima Beans 5 lbs Soy Beans 10 lbs Split Peas 5 lbs Lentils 5 lbs Dry Soup Mix 5 lbs Total Legumes 60 lbs Honey 3 lbs Sugar 40 lbs Brown Sugar 3 lbs Molasses 1 lbs Corn Syrup 3 lbs Jams 3 lbs Fruit Drink, powdered 6 lbs Flavored Gelatin 1 lbs Total Sugars 60 lbs Powd Milk 60 lbs Evap Milk 12 cans Other 13 lbs Total Dairy 75 lbs Baking Powder 1 lbs Baking Soda 1 lbs Yeast 0.5 lbs Salt 5 lbs Vinegar 0.5 gal Bleach 1 gal *Water 182.5 gal

Food Storage EZ Prepper Food Per Person Per Month Provident Living Food Per Person Per Month (4.3 weeks) Grains (Wheat, Rice, Flour, etc.) 32.5 lbs 33 lbs Canned or Dried Meats (Freeze Dried, Beef, Jerky, Spam, fish, chicken, etc.) 1.6 lbs Fats and Oils (Vegetable Oil, Peanut Butter, Shortening, etc.) 2 lbs 2 lbs Beans (Dried Beans, Soy Beans, Split Peas, Dry Soup Mix, etc.) 5.8 lbs 5 lbs Milk and Dairy (Powdered Milk, extra dairy) add about 2 cans of Evaporated Milk per month to the est. lbs 7.25 lbs 2 lbs Sugars (Sugar, Brown Sugar, Honey, Powdered Drink Mixes, etc.) 5 lbs 5 lbs Cooking Essentials (Salt, Baking Powder, Yeast, Vinegar, Jams, etc.) .7 lbs 2 lbs Fruits & Vegetables (Dried) 8 lbs Fruits & Vegetables (Canned) 27 qts Water Storage (Drinking Water Only) 16 Gallons 28 Gallons

I spend a lot of money on BOGO sales. My last grocery trip was just over $300 spent and savings of $135, because only half the items I got were on sale. If I have charted the trip carefully, with coupons in hand and sales in mind, I have sometimes brought home a receipt that said something like $100 spent, $135 saved. Or better. Back when there were three grocery chains in town that took each other's store coupons and honored each other's advertised sale prices if you brought in the flyer, I routinely brought home receipts with 40% to 70% savings marked, but those days are long gone. We buy Pantene not just because it does a decent job at an only mildly eye-crossing price, but because (at CVS) it very frequently puts out good-sized paper coupons and electronic coupons AND often goes on buy two get one sales AND often goes on the kinds of sales where if you buy three, you get a cash coupon to use on anything in the store, AND if you spend X number of dollars on this set of goods you get another cash coupon to use on anything in the store AND ... So sure, we'll use Pantene and we'll buy it at CVS. Planned right, buying the three bottles of it can hand me $15 in cash more than the shampoo costs. If the shampoo section of the pantry shelf clogs up, I can find a good home for it with a clear conscience because (unless I was particularly lazy the day I bought that bottle) it was better than free. DS1 cannot stop drinking his name-brand sodas, but the flavor he gets is the flavor that's on sale. Some kind always is. Similarly, our favorite pasta sauce normally just happens to be whatever is on half price this week. There is pretty much always something on sale. One kind we are particularly fond of, but at $5.50 a jar, we can't justify getting it without a coupon or a sale--preferably both. Sometimes what's on sale is a kind that makes me sick, so those weeks we eat what's on the shelf at home. If there's a BOGO, or B2G1, you have to know (look up or ask) if there's a limit, and not be shy about getting the limit if you can use it. Sometimes it's one pair/trio, sometimes it's six. I normally stop with six pair or four trios, because I don't want to get famous, unless it's a staggeringly good price that only an idiot wouldn't buy the maximum of. (The store is full of idiots.) Sometimes you bring in a coupon for a dollar off a three-dollar item and they apply it to both the one you pay for and the one you get free, meaning you've paid one dollar for two items. This happens to me a lot more often when I bring in a paper coupon than when I use an electronic coupon. Sometimes they apply it to only the one I pay for. That's still not a bad deal. Watch for coupons that say if you buy this milk (or any milk) you get a dollar off bread (usually any bread), or if you buy any cheese you get a dollar off any meat. It's worth buying a little package of meat or bread even if you hadn't planned to, if the dollar off makes it a good deal and you will eat it (or can donate it in a good place). The two stores I shop at most often send me electronic coupons every week. I have to click on the ones I want. I clock on every one I have the most remote interest in. It's marketing information for them, and potentially a dollar (or fifteen dollars) for me. If I want to get things I don't want registered, or if I want to buy an amount I think would be memorable in an unwelcome way, I go back (or go to another location) and buy more with cash without registering the purchase under my phone number or other ID number.

Welcome home.

A Corona-type corn mill would be better to break corn or beans. After the beans are broken, you can cook them soft, then mash them and dry the mush in a layer like fruit leather (faster because of the lack of sugar). Then break up the dried sheets (thick lumpy blankets, more like) and grind those. It's a process, but it's worth it if you want something like nonfat refried beans, beans to stir into your chicken scratch, or something protein-rich to thicken your stew broth. If the beans are less than a few years old, you don't have to break them first. But maybe after a few years, certainly after several years, breaking them is worth it to avoid days of cooking.

And hose down the poop!

I'm raising mealworms for my chickens. They are the larvae of the darkling beetle. OG had an article back in 72 about using earthworms in a miniature system, raising catfish in a barrel. My grandfather raised a couple of different kinds of earthworms in some old deep-freezers. I tried the same with spotty success, having a lot less incentive than he did--he was an avid fisherman while I don't like sitting in the blazing sun to drown a bunch of worms.

Do I ever want custard now.

I couldn't handle work today. Spun my wheels for hours. The draft just wasn't making any sense no matter how much I put into it, so I came home early and took a two-hour nap. Ugh. Getting older, you know? Ordered some 3.5 gallon food-grade buckets, all the right size. My old ones have all been drilled to be planters, somehow. The new buckets cost twice as much on Amazon as they would have at Lowe's, but they're marked food grade and...I can get to them. Have not been able to get to Lowe's despite some weeks of trying. There just isn't enough energy. Especially since I also have to drum up a ride.