2 hours ago, Jeepers said:

It seems like a few things are making a comeback since C-19. Dollar Tree was well stocked and I noticed over in the baby shampoo and stuff aisle they had Purell and GermX back on the shelf. I haven't seen either one of those brands since the lockdown. It wasn't over in the baby section but by the soaps and shampoos. 

 Our 99c Store and CVS pharmacy were divesting themselves of these types of products last year for pennies on the dollar. I think I have enough for a small army. But I'm sure you would have stocked up too at 25c/bottle! Even if you don't wind up using it for its intended purpose, it makes a good fire starter!

I put up 12 quarts of "unstuffed pepper soup!"

Check out the size of these peppers - they were only 59c each!

On 12/20/2023 at 4:25 PM, Jeepers said:

Midnightmom, how did your stress test go?

Stress test was "normal" and echo showed my "ejection fraction ratio" to be unchanged from the last one. And, like LittleSister, I wasn't tired out from it at all.

5 minutes ago, euphrasyne said:

cabbage comes in cans.  Its not preferable, but it is doable.  

I have cans of kraut. They are very salty and very strong, not at all suitable for eating straight out of the can or on a salad. This is the kind of kraut that I use when making pork and sauerkraut, or other long cooking recipes. However, I have come to really like the mild flavor and the crunch of fermented kraut. I just don't have enough room in my fridge to keep it all once it is done fermenting, and I don't want to do a "pickled" version using vinegar. 

On 12/29/2023 at 3:07 PM, Midnightmom said:

Just saw this one over on Sutton's Daze and am planning to make a batch!

I had to cook it in two different batches, but I put up 12 quarts of "Unstuffed Pepper Soup!"

I remember someone remarking (was it you @Littlesister ) that when they made it they didn't like the oregano/Italian herbs that Leisa used in her recipe. I looked up the original recipe that inspired Leisa's version and discovered that the herbs she used was basil and parsley. That sounded much better to me, so that is what I used. It is awesome with those herbs!

I did not have a freezer full of peppers that needed to be used up so I bought some at the store.

Can you believe the size of these things!!! And, they were only 68c each!

On 10/27/2023 at 11:23 PM, Midnightmom said:

 

Fermented cabbage (sauerkraut) tastes soooooooooooooooo good! It needs to be kept in the fridge though once it is completed. I am not sure you can "can" cabbage unless it is as sauerkraut - but then you lose the probiotic properties of the ferment. 

Apparently you can can fermented sauerkraut w/o losing all of the benefits of the fermentation! 

Sutton's Daze is currently doing "Canuary" where multiple YTers are posting a video a day. There is a video by Fermented Homestead on canning fermented sauerkraut!

Here's the title of the vid if you want to look it up and give it a try: Canning Sauerkraut | CANUARY | Fermented Homestead

I am going to give this a try the next time I make up a batch of kraut. 

Now I need to know if you can do the same thing with Giardiniera.

I was in town and had to rebook my appt instead of keeping it so I wandered into Big Lots. It's not one of my "normal" stops and I had plenty of time on my hands so I wandered here and there. The front half of the store still had Christmas stuff on clearance and I found some liquid soap that I had purchased elsewhere last year called, "Peppermint Swirl." I'd seen it prior to Christmas in the other store, but the bottle was half the size as it was last year (shrinkflation) and it was more expensive, so I passed it up. Needless to say, I was ecstatic to see the same size as I got last year at 50% off of last years' price too - 49c@. I bought all eight bottles for a grand total of $4.00!!! That was pretty much all I got, except for a few empty spice bottles for 99c each, but boy, was I a happy camper!!!  

Sorry I missed the party.        I hope you had a wonderful day with friends and family. 

How to MAKE a "Wonder Bag."

Make a Wonder Bag from pillow cases, an old sheet, or any fabric you wish.  Then use your favorite bread recipe to make  tasty loaves of crustless bread.  You will need an off-grid burner of some kind to boil water for 10 minutes and that is all the power required.  The rest is just wait time.  Be prepared!

13 hours ago, Littlesister said:

I have been trying hard to cut out carbs.

Are you familiar with Carolyn Ketchum? Her website is "All Day I Dream About Food" and she has a wide variety of recipes from soup and nuts to desserts (and everything in between).

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KETO AND LOW-CARB RECIPES!

Dreaming of truly delicious keto friendly recipes? You’ve come to the right place. I’m conjuring up low carb and sugar-free dishes that rival your old favorites. Everything from easy flavorful dinners to gorgeous keto desserts. Make keto fun again!

https://alldayidreamaboutfood.com/

On 1/13/2024 at 1:06 PM, Mother said:

Already I know I pay $1.09 each for small avocados?  Twice WM.

If you look in the fruit section of the freezer aisles you may be able to find a bag of diced avocados. It is just chunks of avo's so you can use only as much as you need at a time and not have to worry about the unused part of one going bad/getting brown in the fridge. They are very handy for making small batches of guacamole, or even larger portions then freezing it in individual serving sizes. They are also a pretty fair substitute for "Potatoes O'Brian" or just salted and roasted and served on the side as a "potato."

Testing a DIY Off-Grid Oven

On a partly cloudy day we successfully bake a loaf of bread in each of our DIY solar cookers.  They did not brown, but they were cooked through and tasted great. 

3 Meals in a Thermal Cooker

Demonstrating edeas for breakfast, lunch, and dinner meals that can be prepared using various thermal cookers. 

Testing Off-Grid Thermal Cookers 

Thermal cookers, or off-grid slow cookers, will be a necessity if the grid goes down for a long time, primarily for the fuel they will save.  

This is a series of vids where RoseRed Homestead demonstrated some off-grid emergency cooking methods.

Off Grid Cooking in Your Kitchen with a butane portable burner and a wonder bag

6 hours ago, Jeepers said:

I started coughing really badly. I think my throat went dry and it kept triggering a cough and a gag reflex. I left the line and hid out in the card section and dug through the cart for the cough drops. Of course they were on the bottom. But I ate 4 of them and it really helped with the cough enough to get myself through the store. I didn't want to just leave the cart because I had a lot of fridge/freezer stuff in it. People probably thought I had the plague. A couple of days ago I thought I was doing better. But it has come back with a vengeance. Now I'm back to the cough, sneezing, chills and stuffed up head. My nose is so stuffed up, I'm actually having trouble breathing.

Jeeps - I know don't know if you were aware of a "mystery disease" that was affecting dogs this past summer, but it put pooches into respiratory distress and some of them had to be put on oxygen. A lot of dogs were lost prior to discovering that oxygen tanks helped the dogs through the infection.

My point is, this vid explains some OTC and herbal remedies to help calm those respiratory episodes and I think the solutions would probably work on human "animals" as well. The tricky part would be figuring out the dosage! I have time-stamped the vid to start at the into to the various treatment options. Maybe it will be helpful: maybe ti won't. 

1 hour ago, Jeepers said:

I'm going with smaller (round) toilets.

Please consider that those are very low to the ground and might be difficult to get up from - unless you have grab bars - and even then it still might be difficult.

9 hours ago, Jeepers said:

I can get it to the shop but how to get from the shop back to the hotel. Then when it's finished, how to get to the shop to pick it back up. It's often those little things that people don't think about.

I guess I'm pretty forunate to live in a "small" town. The shop I take my car to will give me a ride home if they have to keep the car, then pick me up when it's ready. If they need to keep it for a few days and I know I will be needing to get myself somewhere, they have free loaner cars! And their labor prices are very reasonable, too. 

3 hours ago, Littlesister said:

I hate having to buy a new cell phone. Having to start over is no fun. But had no choice a few months ago. Mine was dying a slow death. I didn't get a smart phone. Too much to deal with on them. I stuck with an android. I can do almost anything on an android that I could on a smart phone. And for what I use mine for a smart phone made no since to me.

Isn't a "smart phone" and an "Android" the same thing? Isn't "Android" the platform a "smart phone" uses??? 

Radiant Max 5G from AT&T

On 1/3/2024 at 11:14 AM, Littlesister said:

Jeepers, do you have anyone that can call your phone while you are in the hotel room. If so, do that to see if it fell behind something. If you don't hear it ring, then when you go to house have someone call the number there if you don't see it. That's what I do when I misplace my phone. 

My cell phone is mostly a camera, then a few store apps, and sometimes use the text feature to "talk" to my son. But, the main reason I got a "smart" phone to replace the little flip-phone that I had was because a game I used to be able to play on my computer through FB's gaming platform, left the FB platform because there were too many bugs and glitches happening and the players were pounding on the game's developers to fix what was actually FB's responsibilty to fix but they weren't!

Anyway, since I don't use it as a "phone" (most of the time) I do not have the ringer turned on so I would not be able to find a "lost" phone that way. 

But I did have to replace that phone back in Aug/Sept because the charging port wasn't working, and the model of phone I had could not be charged by placing it on a charging platform instead of using the cable. 

However, it was that time of the year when everything was on sale for "back to school" needs - including cell phones. I went on the AT&T site and found a slightly newer model of the phone I had and got it on sale for a very reasonable price! I took it to the local AT&T store and they helped by moving the sim card over, but, unfortunately we were not able to transfer the info on the old/broken phone over to the new one. 

Soooooooooooooooo.................... I am right in there with you ladies who have recently had to re-enter all kinds of data - phone numbers, etc - into a new phone. What a PITA it is having to do that! But, it is done! However, I keep finding that I have to add contacts and phone numbers that I had forgotten were in the old phone. I think we may be all caught up now, but I wouldn't put a bet on it as a sure thing! 

On 1/1/2024 at 7:31 PM, Mother said:

The big candy canes switches places.  

Good eye!

Once I put the blue trucks out everything looked "off balance." So (and Jeepers will appreciate this) I "restored" the color balance by putting the red and green candy canes with the red and green Christmas trees, and all was right with the world again. 

19 hours ago, snapshotmiki said:

Woke up at 3:30 to smoke alarm chirping. Got up and changed battery.

I was innocently sitting at my computer a week or so ago  when I heard a chirp/tone that I wasn't  familiar with. I thought it was my cell phone trying to get my attention to deliver an alert of some kind, but I could not find and indication of it, so I did what any normal person (whoever said I was "normal") would do, I called the phone company and asked what setting(s) need to be changed/adjusted. As I was talking to the rep, the tone sounded again and I asked him if he could hear it. "Yes," he said, he could, BUT it did not sound like a telephone alert. It sounded more like a smoke detector or a carbon monoxide alarm. 

He was correct!

But, the thing is, this apt is all electric! I notified maintenance and found out that there had been a rash of the batteries in these devices going bad. They replaced all of the units in all of the apts - not because any appliances are gas, but because the apts are federally subsidized and they had to meet requirements. Anyway, that is my little misadventure with safety alarms. 

Head's Up!
 

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Zone hardiness maps have changed and they changed in a big way. This has caused quite a stir in the gardening community. I discuss what this means for you, what we are doing about it, and hopefully give you some peace of mind.

 

 

 

Round Three  

What are the differences between Garden3 and Garden4?

 #3   

#4