Suncat

My parents were paramedics.. they'd do this with dental floss if I remember right.

I have kids playing lacrosse and this is one of the best sites I've seen for information and treatment of concussions. http://www.momsteam.com/health-safety/concussion-safety

High's in the 40's low's in the 30's cloudy but not really rainy though it sprinkles now and again. Could really still use more snow pack. It's not looking pretty for this summer (drought!) unless we get more snow pack and in general more moisture. I mean look at this.. most of OREGON is showing severe drought.

Do people prep for just ONE type of event? hmm I guess maybe if you live with a high probability of something like in tornado alley or hurricane or earthquake country you might.. but that would be more at the level of "a bad storm" that they're not looking for.

You'd probably still want to heat or keep it in the canner longer. That way you're getting to the same temp. By not heating it before canning it, it will take longer to get to the same temp and may not be hot enough for safety.

We're finally getting snow after an unseasonably warm and dry January. People were already talking drought conditions. Gardens around here don't go in the ground before mid-May.. and then only if you can get them covered to protect them from the last few frosts of the year. I have my lists and if it looks like we can get the garden area moved and an automatic watering system set up somehow then I might give it a whirl again. But with our schedules the auto-watering has to be in place or it's pointless to try.

Alot of it will depend on why I'm stressed. Sometimes, I can deal with the cause of stress. Sometimes I just need to deal with my perception. Reading is a great escape. I can't think about my problems while immersed in fiction. Walking is a good way to release stress. Laughing is wonderful. An amusing tv show or movie with some crocheting to keep my hands busy so I can relax with the tv is lovely. Prayer.. definitely. Examples of dealing with the cause of stress. Worried about how to manage to do something. You research it and find out how, and break it down into bits that you can deal with. I was on bed rest while pregnant with my youngest. When I started grocery shopping again the price increase was just killing me. I joked that it was post-traumatic *shopping* disorder. And I found that more frequent trips with smaller purchases helped. I was spending the same amount but in increments so it wasn't effecting me as much. And I don't say no to the occasional glass of wine with or after dinner.

Love it! I'm using one of those for my sourdough starter. I have the gallon glass jars that pickles and whatnot used to come in for my canisters

Well we heat with wood so overnight is definitely cooler so slows the rise. Also, once I get the hang of working with it we may use it up and take a break now that we know how to get a good starter going. I have a folder that's disappeared with some recipes I want to try though,including a sourdough chocolate cake I need to figure out where that is.

I've been wanting to try some sourdough again. I tried it once here and didn't have a lot of luck. But I did some more research since I didn't really want to use a commercial yeast and found these directions Wild Yeast Sourdough Starter It was different from what I'd tried before so we started it and have a good starter going. My daughter made the first loaves and those were kinda heavy and blah.. not bad but not great. We tried some pancakes, So I looked for another bread recipe and found This Bread Recipe I'd also been doing a bit of reading elsewhere I combined with things I knew and just needed jarred loose I determined that I wanted to work the bread with all ingredients but less flour creating a sponge to proof, then mixing in the flour and letting that rise in a greased bowl and then punching it down and letting it rise the second time as loaves. I also rolled this one out and did a cinnamon sugar mix for a cinnamon swirl loaf. But I forgot I'd doubled it and should have been making 4 loaves so I ended up having to let them be free form on a cookie sheet.. kinda spread out but really nice and soft yummy bread. I've got 4 plain loaves in loaf pans this time, that I'll be baking up later today. And then I've tried some real honest to goodness sourdough biscuits (no other leavening) with This biscuit recipe. These came out great. The only thing I changed was that I mixed up the dough and left it in a bowl to rise over night.. then with only a couple of kneading strokes spread it out with my hands to cut out the biscuits. A definite hit.

The cast iron skillet I learned to cook with was my grandmother's (no clue what happened to it). My grandfather found it in a junk pile during WWII when iron was scarce. It was completely rusted over and he used a sand blaster to clean it off.. seasoned it and it was still being used as I said, when I was learning to cook. I imagine that it was gotten rid of when my grandfather died (1987) and it was too heavy for my grandmother to use and my mom had carpal tunnel so she couldn't lift it and my sister and I didn't have our own households yet.

And lye soap isn't that hard to make. I'd rate it no more difficult or dangerous than using a pressure cooker/canner or making candy. You do need a location with good ventilation but since the cold process works well it's not like you'd have to stay in the kitchen.. then you could use the slivers from your homemade soap to make your soft soap.

hmmm I'm not sure.. but when I make garlic oil for ear aches, I heat the oil with the garlic in it.. then strain and cool (I use it warm but cool down so it won't burn)

i discovered cooking tamales in the pressure cooker this Christmas. It was great! Even with the heat up and cool down, it was so much faster.

Well it's pretty but.. It makes me nervous.. how long until the weight is gonna tweak that tiny little lip that's holding the jars up by their threads? and what if you live in earthquake country? Takes a huge amount of wall space. It not a deep storage so you have to spread further out. I know I end up with a lot of one type rather than many different types of canned foods, so you'll have a lot of the same thing in many rows. And depending on how much you choose to store, it'll be a pain in the neck to rotate.

Interesting.. I got 33%.. But what I found interesting is that sure some egomaniac types would score higher.. but also those that we depend on like firefighters and police. (some of whom also are an egomaniac type) but most also shut down the emotions in a panic situation and deal with what's going on.

So, I talked to my 15 yr old son. And he's now on board for this. BUT as nice as the days are, the ground is still pretty frozen. So we may not be able to do as much as I'd hoped right now. We'll still have plenty of time with the ground thawing and too early for planting to do it. But I was hoping to use these unusually nice January days.

Oh it's not just the parents. Most kids are pulled out of their families for the vast majority of the day and then spend their time with parents who are already worn out from the day. The schools, the tv shows, the friends, everyone contributes to how people, society, sees things like disabilities and responsibility. And imo that bit about letting 4 month old's cry it out, has little to do with teaching children old enough to understand how to behave. Not bragging, nor claiming that any of us here are perfect. But my kids are pretty good kids that know how to work, and we never used cry it out. It's also a sign of how little respect we have for differences. If you can't fit in the tiny little box of approved behavior, you must have something wrong with you.

Thanks for the welcome. It occured to me today that I have an older boy needing to replace his Kindle Fire. Hmmmmm, I think the manual labor to move the garden to where I want to try it might be worth that. What I really want to do but requires more money is a drip system. If we did it with pvc type pipe and attached it to the garden hose.. we could put it on a timer for when we're gone but it'll be fairly easy to drain for winter. And we won't have to mess with the plumbing of the house.. just attach the hose when we want to use it but we can use the hose for other things as well.

Oh I have a love/hate relationship with gardens. I hate doing them but love the results. I guess I'm not really a gardener at heart. I keep hoping one of my kids will have inherited that from my grandmother. On top of that I'm in cold, high desert and in town. So I can do a largish garden but it's nothing like what you'd need to really make a big dent in what a family of 12-13 (my mom lives with us part time) needs. I try to mainly grow things that cost more to buy to help make it worth doing a garden. But short season. Cooler weather within that short season. I really need a heated green house. I tried a cold frame, I think the plants get too hot and too cold in it. I certainly don't have space in the house for starting seeds for long. There are times when gardening seems way to complicated. Though once we actually get it into the ground, it's not too bad. So I've had a list of what I'd like to grow, and in considering seed saving, I've been reducing the numbers of types of plants to mostly eliminate crosses. And hunting around websites for varieties of what I'd like to have that would be better suited to our climate.

I hate that my first post here is about a problem. But everytime I go to the home page (I simply bypass it and type in the url to the forums) my computer warns me of a trojan horse. I dont' know if my computer is being overzealous. But I thought it was worth mentioning.