Ambergris

Oh, how annoying! I spent a good chunk of the morning with a spreadsheet, putting in all the goods I've bought in the past four months. Only to save the blank form on top of the final version. ARRGH! This is, unfortunately, something I keep doing at the office too.

I nailed a knotted string to the pantry doorframe, and put Sharpies on the string. The Sharpies keep migrating, but sometimes one will return to the string over and over for months.

Got in some beans, onions, salt, and so on at (sigh) Amazon prices and packaged them up while DS napped. Went in to the grocery store and found that the dried blackeye peas were $1.89 a pound, which is a hair cheaper than the cheapest Amazon price ($50.98 for 24 lbs with subscription). Still cheaper than two pounds of wheat or six pounds of barley for a day's pay. Picked up nine pounds, which filled my planned container plus a quart jar overflow container. Filled up all my available containers with the week's shipments and today's store run. I need to go to the dollar store and pick up another storage container or a couple more (mayyyyybe?) to fill.

Someone in our local poultry group has hatched poults. I'm tempted, but raising chicks for eggs is hard enough here.

I liked Red Famine: Stalin's War on the Ukraine by Annie Applebaum.

Nice! When I was a very young newlywed, a steak restaurant chain opened its first restaurant in town and offered two full meals for $5 in a coupon without an expiration date. It was in the newspaper. I knew a guy who didn't eat in restaurants but delivered papers. I helped him deliver papers that Sunday in return for all of that day's unsold papers, which (after he swapped with some friends) turned out to be several dozen of them. Considering we were two people living on $168 a month after rent (and it had to cover utilities, groceries, shampoo, bus passes, everything), this really helped.

They've just turned 20, and they are "mine" only when they choose to be. The college kid comes by about once a month, and the one on disability is here almost every weekend (assuming her mother allows). They do lifting and reaching I can't do any more, while I give them a place to decompress and do a little baking.

My beans are just sprouting. If the twins come by this weekend, I hope to get them to plant some squash and bury the Irish potatoes (which might still grow...)

Ordering takeout is like getting a 20% discount, if you don't have to tip the people who fix the takeout bag.

I was so happy when mine graduated to Nido. We couldn't get whole milk powder from places like Land o Lakes then. Kind of nice to get validation from the DH like that, isn't it?

Euphrasyne, you can invite me anytime. I tried to steer my eldest into butchery when he decided on a career in cooking, but he had no interest in it. Now he's at loose ends, with no specialized skills. He points out that the job market for butchers has been declining for several years and has no upturn in sight, but you know, that's the big markets, the nationwide outlook. The local-stock butcher shops here are horribly overloaded and have a backlog three months out. If she specializes in killing and butchering, she could grow quite a clientele.

Have a safe trip! I was supposed to close on the new house today, but it isn't happening. Instead I'm using the day off to work on taxes and try to get my medical records straightened out. Dr Shoulder says if I get repair surgery now, it will just rip apart next time my neck causes spasms, that the neck is the problem. Dr. Neck, the one I saw Monday, says I don't need neck surgery this year and probably won't next year, but that I desperately need shoulder surgery. Meanwhile, Dr Brain sent me EEG reports after I filed a written request for EEG scans. I called to ask when I could get the SCANS that I'd filed the written request for, and was transferred twice only to end up speaking to voice mail. Got a little snippy describing the transfers and quoted CFR language into the voice mail. Let's see what happens now.

They are way cheaper at the Indian grocery. This is just what there is if you need to have them shipped in.

Nineteen cents an ounce is right at three dollars a pound.

Looked at a few of these, mostly red beans, on Amazon just now. Birch & Meadow has a one-gallon bucket for about .28 per ounce Goya has a six-pack of four-pound bags for .07 per ounce (Goya normally has VERY fresh beans from Central America.) Iberia has four-pound bags at .10 per ounce Palouse (grown in USA) has five pound bags ranging from .20 to .31 per ounce Food To Live has twenty-pound bags at .17 per ounce AIVA has four-pound bags for .23 per ounce Torino Michigan (USA) has fifty or 100 pound bags at .15 per ounce Clear Creek (Palouse) grown in Idaho has sproutable lentils in a twenty-five pound bag for .15 per ounce edit and Camelia has a twenty five pound bag (75 dollars) of lady cream peas All of these are either with free shipping or Amazon Prime shipping--none of that cheap product with high shipping trickery. You would want to go to the product's store to get what best suits your needs.

I'm not sure there are any cheap cuts of beef any more. You can still get cheap pork neck bones here, sometimes, and you can cut the chicken backs off leg quarters. (Leg quarters are an excellent buy. Pop those babies apart and you pretty much double the value to what the thigh and drumstick would have cost in the store, and the back piece is free for soup.) Also, if you like party wings, buy whole wings for much cheaper, chop them apart, and save the tip-third for soup.

I didn't get my floor done until I emailed the man and said if he was too busy, he could refund my money and I could find someone else.

And you should to be taking some Vitamin C with the calcium, unless it's a certain kind of calcium, to make sure your body can use it properly.

I started it around lunchtime today. Supposed to start it this morning. We are trying to get more information.

24-hour EEG

I have an electric tortilla maker (presses and cooks--think waffle-maker but smooth) and a heavy plastic/resin tortilla press. Guess which one is still in the box? I really prefer the flour tortillas, but what we can grow easily here is corn. So corn is what we have to be used to eating. Easy way to grind corn is to nixtamalize it (make hominy out of it) first, mash the hominy, dry the mash, then grind the dried mash. It's easier to digest all the nutrients that way, too.

https://homesteading.com/essential-oil-distiller/

For a bread machine, or any loaf bread, you want some high-protein flour like Gold Medal or King Arthur, or really anything that says FOR BREAD MACHINES on it. Mixing high-protein wheat with your nonwheat flours will give a much more predictable result also. If you have any wheat-belly people in your family, look into the antique wheats like black awn wheat or einkorn. They are very expensive if thought of as wheat, but cheap as medication goes. Getting a box of gluten will help if bread flour is hard to come by in your area. A spoonful effectively raises the protein level of your flour. White Lily makes great biscuits and terrible loaf bread (unless you add gluten). Use material for what it's good for. Don't think of the sugar as something you can leave out. You won't be eating it anyway. The yeastie beasties will be eating it.