Day to day prepping

      When people think of preppers they tend to think of underground bunkers and crazy people dressed in camouflage with guns.   Wrong, yes there are those kinds but the truth is we should all prep.  Each family should have at least 3 months worth of food and water at home, some way of keeping warm in a power failure, some plan in place.  Recent events in Texas should give you a clue why being prepared would have saved lives.  I know preppers who are living through the Texas nightmare without any problems because they took steps in advance to be prepared in case this type of thing happened.

     You wouldn't think of driving your car without insurance, well I know some idiots will but people should think as prepping as being insurance you  will survive some type of disaster, you family will survive and hopefully if well prepared your friends.  FEMA used to recommend at  least 2 weeks,  I have heard they are now saying 3 months.   Here is a nice basic list to follow to get started.   https://www.ready.gov/food

     I have relatives who lived though the depression.   My mother in law was a prepper because that is how she was raised.  She wouldn't have called herself a prepper but her pantry was always full of stable shelf life foods,  she canned, she saved and washed baggies, she knew how to cook from scraps anything and make it taste good.  When things were on sale she bought several of them.  Her mother raised chickens, had a cow and a large garden.  The depression didn't affect them because they always had grown what they needed or made it.  So many of people now a days don't know how to do cooking from scratch or the joy of growing things in a garden.  People in large cities will suffer in a new depression.  Unless they are prepared.

    I retired almost 1 1/2 years ago.  Since I have retired I have seen food prices double.   Covid happened,  what used to cost me 50 dollars at the grocery store was now almost 150.   Gas prices will soon be up to 4 dollars a gallon.  A new depression in on the way helped in large part by our new socialist government.  The signs are all there is you are paying attention.  And I am.

    People think during some type of crisis the government will swoop in and save them.   How did that work during Katrina?  How did that work during our flooding.   Who swoops in and saves you is yourself and hopefully your neighbors.   The government will take longer to get there, can you live that long?  And why should you wait for them to help when you could have easily helped yourself.  It's not that hard.  You are responsible for your own well being, no one else.  You are responsible for your families safety, no one else.  Be responsible, be prepared.

    There is so much information out there.  Start doing your research.  Start small, get extra cans of food on hand with a long shelf life.  Get extra water on hand.  Learn how to properly store it.  Learn how to grow you own food.   For city dwellers learn container gardening.  Every payday buy one more thing.  Buy in bulk and make sure to store safely and label everything and date everything. Learn how to rotate your storage products.   Learn how to cook from scratch,  basic things like bread and meals with high nutritional value and inexpensive.  Store foods you like to eat.  Learn how to dehydrate food for making soup jars or dry camping bag meals.  You can buy them but it is just as easy to make them and much cheaper.  Learn to sew.  Learn to do without all the silly things you think are necessary but really aren't.  Prep for the area you live in and the disasters you are likely to face.   Tornado alley, prep for power being out for days.  Hurricane, same thing, power outages, water shortages, shelter.   Fire areas, bug out bags in your vehicles ready to go at all times.   Depression and economic collapse.  Seeds,  gardening skills,  bartering skills.  

    Prepping should be something every single person in your family does but make it fun.  There is a ton of good information out there and the same amount of bad information out there.  We all can't live off grid in a sustainable farm,  most can't afford it and we have to live near where we work.  I have room for a garden and my house is paid for, sure I would love a cow and chickens, but  I don't have the pens and would have to pay to get them built because the ole guy just isn't handy that way and I am on a fixed income so money is tight.  So I do what I can.  I plan on just adding stuff I think of as I go.   

   So see, prepping isn't just for survivalists, but prepping will help you survive, so yes, you will become a prepper survivalist, but isn't that better then dead, of course it is.  Check back as I add information.  Start your prepping, become a responsible adult.

Mustards and vinegars

 

   I have been having fun making vinegars and mustards.   Above is a citrus vinegar I have making for cleaning with.   It takes about 20 days to turn into vinegar and then I remove the fruit and give it another 10 days to finish.   It makes everything smell so good when you clean with it.  To make it all you have to do is cut up some oranges and a lemon or two, add 1/4th cup sugar and fill with spring water.   Cover it with a cloth or a coffee filter and stir everyday.   When you Ph reaches 3.5 or higher it is done.   I also made a raisin vinegar for cooking my stir fry's in, it has a lovely mellow flavor.   I made blueberry and strawberry for making vinaigrette this summer for my salads.   I love that it is all organic and so much cheaper then store bought.

 

  Another thing I have gotten into is mustard making.  I love a good coarse brown mustard so the first one I made was a lacto fermented one.  I use yellow and brown mustard seeds, a habarnero  pepper I grew, some garlic and ginger and then I fermented it for about a month.   I loved the flavor and shared a lot with friends.   I then made a maple syrup mustard but didn't ferment that one.  I had some organic maple syrup I picked up from a family in Wisconsin and used that and then for a little kick added just a pinch of cayenne pepper I grew, dried and powered this summer.   It has a sweet taste with a heat kick at the end.   Last week I made a 24 hour mustard using mostly yellow mustard because I didn't want it as strong and added herbs I grew like dill, ginger, cumin, garlic and chives.   It is yummy.

     I love messing around with these and sharing them with some friends who are also mustard lovers.  We trade our products so I get there hot sauces or home made beer.  This summer I had a lot of curly parsley I grew so I made pesto hot sauce out of some and pesto sauce out of the rest.  I froze a lot of the pesto but used the last up last week on some chicken.   Bummer.  I am going to plant a lot more parsley this year.   The flat leaf doesn't taste as good making it into pesto and they don't sell any curly leaf in the stores so I guess I will have to wait until next year to get more.

    Next I am going to make some Blueberry water kefir.   I drink a lot of water and it gets boring so a nice sparkling flavored water will be great.

   I hate to waste anything from the garden so the strawberries I pick and clean to dehydrate I use the cutting from them to make vinegar.  I cut off the top that isn't quite as sweet and stick them in a jar.  If I don't have enough I freeze them until I do then I stick them in filtered water, add a little sugar and make vinegar out of them, green tops and all.  I do the same with apples.  I save all my cores and skins and make apple cider vinegar.   It tastes so much better then store bought and is so much cheaper.

    So that is what I have been doing.  Lots of dehydrating and making soup mixes for storage.  Ready for lean times. 

Getting ready for lean times

     I have been watching the price of food skyrocket for months.   Up over 200% from 3 years ago and unfortunately it isn't ever going to go down.   If this terrible New Green Deal goes down food is even going to be scarcer because how are farmers going to be able to plant their fields and harvest and how will they get to market.   It could be the death of the family farm.

    Ideally you live on a small acreage and can have a few stock, cows, a pig or 2 and some chickens and are able to put in a large garden.    I live on the outskirts of town and am able to put in a garden and if I had the money could have someone build me a chicken coop since I am not at all handy about that kind of stuff but the truth is I am retired and my extra funds are limited.

    I decided months ago I need to start a long term food storage pantry.    I got a really good dehydrator off of marketplace on facebook.  The excalibur 9 tray.   I paid 100 dollars saving me a couple of hundred dollars.  I call mine Big Bertha.

 

   I have been using her a lot.   I also bought the bible of food dehydrating book, everything you always wanted to know about how to safely dehydrate and store food is in the book.  

 

 I watched youtube videos on how to make simple meals and dehydrate them so all I would have to do was add them to water and the meal was ready.  I found the best recipes on camping video how too.  

    As a nurse for 40 years I always go by the old adage, prepare for the worse but pray for the best.   I would rather have enough food to feed us then not enough, we are too old to go foraging for supplies.  

    I have been having fun making these and learned a lot on the way.  I also have been making mustards, vinegars, extracts, you name it.

   So this morning I decided I wanted to do something with these blueberries I dehydrated.  Frankly out of all the fruit these were a disappointment and I can't get they to re-hydrate to where I like them.  I could have powdered them and added them to pancakes, cakes etc but I saw a youtube video today where he talked about the fact that dried fruit works better for making vinegar then fresh and it is really easy to make vinegar.   I have been making apple scrap vinegar with my apples cores and peels for awhile and love the freshness, it is not a true apple cider vinegar but for flavoring it is wonderful and works great in cooking.   So I put my dried blueberries in a sterile jar, added bottled water and put a coffee filter and a rubber band on it so it can start to ferment.   This needs to be stirred daily but he says you have less chance of getting mold.   Taste it in about 10 days and when the taste is what you like then strain it and bottle it.  He also ranted and raved about the raisin vinegar so I made some of that also.  Please excuse the labels, when I bottle these I will print some nice looking ones but I reuse these so often I am getting lazy.  The really important thing is dating them, and stirring the vinegars daily.  In the back row I have some triple strength vanilla I have made.  To turn out really great it takes 18 months, you can have good vanilla extra in a couple of weeks but for great concentrated vanilla this is the best.  I used bourbon madagascar vanilla beans, 2 whole beans to 1 pint of vodka.   This needs to be shaken daily for about a month and then just once a week or so when you think about it.  I used Tito in one and for kicks and giggle Captain Morgan in the other.  The darker one is the Captain Morgan.

       A few days ago I dehydrated 10 pounds of onions and about 25 large bunches of garlic.    I really like keeping this on hand and trust me, it is so much more flavorful then store bought you have no idea how long it has been on the shelf.  Every time I see a good deal on either I buy it up.  The prep time sucks and many tears are spilled but my mandoline.    I use one similar to this. 

 I had a different one and kept cutting my finger tips even with my cut resistant gloves.   This cuts down the chopping time by hours.  Then I dehydrated them which took about 18 hours.   I will condition them jars and then in a couple days I will make onion powder out of some and garlic powder out of some and then just keep the minced for adding to soups.   I like to make meal packs to add to my long term storage so then when I have enough of everything dried I measure it up into different soups and use my vacuum sealer to seal them.  I usually don't had the spices directly to my soup mixes but will make us seasoning packets and after I have my meal sealed in the first vacuum pack I stick the both into a mylar bags,  I will vacuum seal my seasoning packets in small bags.  I date them, very important, and then I keep them in my finishing cupboard for a few days to make sure I have no bag failure and then I transfer them to my food storage buckets and transfer them to my long term storage shelves.   

    I love to eat and although I don't consider myself a true prepper I am getting prepared because our country has been taken over and things are going to get bad.   I am not so stupid to think the government will provide for our needs.   Never trust politicians as they don't give a hoot about you.  I think Trump was the only one there who was fighting to keep our country free and it is because he wasn't a politician.  So they are doing their best to steal the election and I am afraid they might succeed. They have done a hostile coup.  I have read the  Communist Manifesto,  first time decades ago and I re read it again last year, they are following the guidelines to turn us into a communist country by the book.   They started in our schools and slowly turned our children against the country, then they put them in offices, had radicals teach in our colleges, started the politically correct movement to effectively shut people up and then we are seeing our freedom of speech being silenced by social media sites.   The news is all the same owned by the same people.  Go to any channel and listen to the news and it is read off the same teleprompter approved by their leaders.  Go against it and you are attacked and your career is over.  Doctors speak the truth and are silenced.   The mindless masses blinding follow instructions and people listen to politicians instead of scientists and doctors.

    Not all of us though.  So in a nutshell that is why I am preparing.   I know communism doesn't work, I know we have to provide for ourselves and like I said, I like to eat.

Made my goal

  A year has gone by since I joined weight watchers and what a journey it has been.  As of today I am down 68 pounds.  Add that to what I lost before and in 2 pounds I will be down 100.   I made my goal.

   I am now on maintenance.   My doc set my goal weight, higher then younger people but perfect for me.    And I made another goal.  I retired.   Years of taking care of some most amazing people, now I am taking care of myself to be the healthiest I can be.

  I found WW easy, maybe because I was so ready to finally get the weight off completely.   I like the points.  It makes it easy.  I did however continue with myfitnesspal because I like knowing how many calories  I am eating.  I have learned so much, like for me, don't count your exercise calories because I will be tempted to eat them back.   WW is great because they don't add extra points for exercises like my fitness pal does.   You just get the same points so you aren't tempted to overeat.  Something about not wanting to go over my points works for me.

     I feel so much better, fit and active and if it weren't for my bum knee I could walk forever.   I am forever grateful that when I looked into getting lapband surgery they made me try to lose weight on my own first, and I found out if truly motivated I could.   The friends I had that had the surgery regret it and it turned out to not be as successful as they thought it would.  It really just comes down to eating a deficit to what your body needs.  And I can eat what I want, just in proper portions.

  What a difference.   

My WW journey.

 

      It has been 10 months since I started weight watchers and almost a decade since I decided to lose this weight.  In 6 pounds I will be down 100 pounds, 60 since I joined WW.   I am finally getting to where I want to be.

   I am not sure why WW is the program that seemed to click with me.  I have been logging my foods for years, but with WW you just do points.   Actually I still log my food on my fitness pal every day also.  I need the accountability.   Things I have noticed using WW is they are death on any type of smoothie, carbs or meat other then fish, chicken and turkey.   You eat regular bread and bam, 17 points.  I one had a piece of buttermilk pie since I had never tried it before, yikes, 33 points.  I get 23 points a day.  That was a day and a half with one small slice of pie.  I made the mistake of eating before checking the points.  I check first now.   

     This has been the longest journey.  Many stops and stalls along the way.   I always kept active which helped since when I did gain I never gained it all back but it got harder and harder to get it back.   I am not getting younger.   I had to have several surgeries which really stopped my progress and my exercise.   Also several seriously terrible times in my life made me not put my health on the front burner and I spiraled down a deep hole of despair.  But, I can't stay down for long and was not happy with being that sad fat person so I would climb on my trusty bike and start logging food again.  And that is the secret to success.  Never giving up.  

   When I first started WW  I made a few mistakes.  They have over 200 free point foods.   I once ate a bag of grapes, great grapes because I kept thinking they were free, in fact I ate several free foods in great quantities.   Fortunately common sense and logging on my fitness pal woke me up.  In proper portions those foods are free, but they do have calories and many people, myself included made this mistake.  Eat a normal portion though and it is great.  Now a days I don't do many free foods, I have found out eating too many fruits will make me stall.  Even eating what they say you should eat a day will make me stall.  So a couple a day work for me. 

   The first couple of weeks I had a headache from getting the sugar out they say.  I have to admit I was eating way to many treats.   I was also hungry and staying in my points was a challenge but it is easy now.  I have points left over in fact most days.  Another thing I don't do, but many do with success is eat my weeklies, extra points often.   I learned the hard way that I found myself exercising more so I could eat more and that is the beginning of making bad choices and eating too much for me.  I always ate healthy but too much.  The ole guy always cooked to much and I hate to waste food.  Just an excuse but it is the fact of the matter.

  I also made changes in WW.  When I started back to the gym and was working out a lot plus riding my bike and down 35 pounds I was bummed I still didn't feel better, I was tired all the time, no energy.  I expected to feel great.   After reading though my old journal I found a entry about micronutrients and the importance of fat and carbs for energy so I have added some more carbs, in reason and good fats like olive oil and coconut oil to  routine and now have the energy I need to make my workouts counts.

   I am now considered overweight.   No longer morbidly obese and it feels great.  I can wear medium clothes and shop in normal sections.  That is a thrill.  Things I have noticed.   Being bony hurts,  I have banged my shoulder blades which used to be covered in flesh.  My tailbone hurts on my bike and I had to get a new seat.   Sadly also since it took me so long to figure out this weight loss thing instead of getting tone and looking great I now have a lot of saggy flesh.  Sagging neck, sagging arms and saggy gut.  But, I have muscles and my biking calves are amazing and I feel amazing and fully clothed I don't look too bad.  So win win.  

   Well, that is my update.   If your thinking of weight watchers and wonder if it works it does.  The weight loss is slow, which is better as it keeps you from feeling deprived.  Everything you want to eat you can with planning.  If I now I am going out to eat that night I eat a zero or low point breakfast and lunch, eggs are free and save my points for supper.   I try to plan before I get there what I can eat and figure out my points first.  I have pizza once a week, but do the thin slice mostly veggie kind.   I had a piece of heavenly strawberry rhubarb pie but had a small slice which still tasted great.   Finally I am doing this weight loss thing.  Correctly.  Yippy to me.

Weight watchers 9 months in

  Slowly but surely the weight is coming off.   From a size 22 or 3X to a 14.   This new WW makes its pretty easy if you follow the plan.   This has taken me a long time and I am a ways yet before I get to where I want to go.  

   When I first joined I put my goal weight pretty high.  I reached my first goal fairly easily.

 Wow. I did it.  But I knew I wasn't finished.   I could do better and get lower.  So I committed to a new goal weight of 20 pounds less, and I am now 8 pounds away from that goal and am pretty sure I will just keep on going.

   The best thing is I am back on my bike and working out at the gym again.   I bought a bike helmet for the first time and am feeling great for a 64 year old woman.  And I took a selfie, harder then it looks.

   If you think you can't do it your wrong.  You can.  Just never think you have failed when you have a bad day.   Just start fresh the next.  

Weight watchers 4 months in

Winter is around the corner and we are getting cold.

 It has been 4 months since I started weight watchers.  I am down 15 pounds.  Slow.  But my clothes are fitting better and I had to get new uniforms because the bag lady look is sloppy.

   They said this new freestyle is a more slow weight loss geared to eating healthier then the old WW and staying off.

   I like this point system.  The problem I am having is I was never much of a snacker, more of a portion control problem with me.   I think with this program you have to eat your zero points and be mindful of what they are.  I love fruit and vegetables so that isn't a problem but feeling like snacking is, so I am still just making my meals worth it and loading up on my vegetables then.

   The recipes on WW are surprisingly good also, most of them.  The taco soup and chili is to die for and I love making stir fry so that is good but I hate the way your almost penalized for eating any kind of bread or noodle.  Or butter.  I don't like noodles make of vegetables, I want my wheat noodles so I just eat them and count them.  I hate fake butter so I still use butter in small amounts.  I want to eat healthy and hate sugar free products that taste like chemicals and have chemicals in them so I stay clear of them also.

   I have been cooking a lot.  I don't mind cooking when I have everything but I hate shopping.  I might make a recipe list and order on line and then just go pick it up, lazy I am.  I tried to get the ole guy to make the recipes but he has decided this year to not cook much.  We are both getting lazy as we get older.   Eating out is such a problem because they cook everything in butter and sauces so  I have a hard time figuring out what to eat and don't want salads every single day.   I wish I had been born thin with a really good metabolism.  Unfortunately I wasn't so this struggle has been going on for years.

   I did have a large weight loss a few years back and never regained all of that weight but go up and down, up and down.  Now that I am older then dirt my knees and ankles are a pain so getting the weight off will help but exercising is becoming more difficult.  And for each 5 pounds lost I gained 100 wrinkles, I am looking like a prune and I have to admit that bothers me, but I am 64.  My mom always used to say for each new wrinkle you have to put on 5 pounds, but when deflated my old skin looks saggy, but eating so healthy makes me feel great so I will just not look in the mirror anymore. haha.