general

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Shoot, an update

So the pea shoots aren’t rooting at all.  I think they are just too crowded.  Videos show that the roots get all curled up together like a mat.  Mine, not so much. If you just gently tug a shoot, it will lift right out.  They did grow to about the height where they are pushing the cover off.  But only a few have leafed past the initial cotyledon stage.  My tray looks less crowded and lush than any video examples that I saw in various videos.  There when they were ready to harvest its like a mini tangled jungle. Not that mine is ready to harvest.  But it’s sparse and anemic looking right now.

I’m not sure whether to cover them back up and hope the root situation improves, or to just pull the lid and see if they will green and leaf more.  I am going to go ahead and start the other side of the tray with fewer seeds, maybe try soaking 1/2 cup and see how that goes.

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Prepping Your Spouse for Prepping?

I’ve mentioned that my hubby thinks I am a nut.  Yesterday, I put up the risk management post, as an option not just for assessing risk and prioritizing my preps, but as a way perhaps to show my husband that I am not being paranoid or random — just provident.

111Although the more I think about it, it might be better to remove the more extreme possibilities from the list.  When I say I want to be prepared in case of earthquake (an event with a more than reasonable chance of happening), what he thinks I am saying is “I’m preparing because when the earthquake hits and half our state falls into the ocean and all the bridges collapse and our neighbors turn into a vicious starving mob of near-zombies and the grocery stores are empty and its TEOTWAWKI I don’t want to die” and even though I didn’t SAY or even THINK any of that; he really thinks that is what I’m concerned about and that I’m off my rocker.

I have read advice on various sites about bringing your spouse on board.  Most of them are written from a man’s perspective, convincing the wife.  Some things might apply either way, but some of it; well, not so much.

I have tried being reasonable about it.  I rarely bring it up and I haven’t been conspiracy theory, doomsday in the least.  I did mention EMP at one point because I was reading a post-apocalyptic novel about that topic.  And I mentioned it as the theme of the novel, kinda like “what this family has been through is crazy, how do you think we would do in that situation” like a conversation to be having a conversation more than a lets prepare chat (And so what he heard was, I’m convinced that we are going to be attacked by terrorists with low earth orbit nuclear weapons to destroy our infrastructure in the next few days and then when we have no power and our neighbors turn into a vicious starving mob of near-zombies and the grocery stores are empty and its TEOTWAWKI I don’t want to die”).  Any sense of urgency I feel is interpreted in the worst possible way.

I’ve tried talking about news events and pointing out challenges those affected people will face.  I’ve left One Second After casually laying about where he might pick it up and read a page or three and want to finish it. I’ve tried to focus on the safety aspects. Appealed to his protectiveness by explaining that this would just make me more comfortable.  I’ve told him that I’d love for us to share some of this, that I just want to spend some time with him, that he could treat it like a hobby that he might actually find more interesting than my paper crafts, cooking classes, or book club.  I’ve never said or even implied that he is wrong (except wrong about seeing me as a nutty doomsday prepper when I am not extreme!). I’ve avoided acronyms when talking to him, and don’t use a lot of pepper terms.  I asked him to attend an upcoming preparedness expo to look at some solar options (something he is slightly interested in as a way to eventually reduce our electricity costs), but no go there.

He’s agreed that storing some food and water isn’t a terrible thing, but security?  Any sustainable options (suburban livestock, gardening, offgrid heating, cooking, what have you)? Fergetaboutit.

Maybe I need to find some ridiculous Hollywood version of ladies post-apocalyptic wear ala Mad Maxx or whatnot made from 3 inches of leather straps, some metal rings and some spiked collar; that might convince him there is some value to thinking about the end of the world as we know it. 😉

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itty bitty leaves

Day 5 Pea Shoots. Look how fast they grow!

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We mist twice a day, keeping it covered aside from that.  These are still in the cotyledon stage, just about 2-3 inches, and I’m thinking we will go to the second true leaf, right when the tendrils start to unfold, before trying to green them in the gray end-of-October days.  FYI, I knew almost nothing about growing and cotyledons and true leaves or anything until I started this experiment. (At least no practical information.  I’m sure I diagrammed such things back in science class 1000 years ago ;)) I’ve learned about earthworm castings and vermiculite.  I’m feeling oddly confident; as if this were really anything like gardening.  But I always thought my thumbs weren’t so green.

My daughter is just loving seeing these things grow.  It’s a lot more instant gratification than the container tomato plant she got from a trip to a farm and tended this summer.  Every time we open it to mist, they’ve visibly changed.

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Food Storage, Frugality, & Feeding my Family

One thing to do now is to practice feeding my family from my food storage.  Not just making meals entirely from storage, although that’s good practice too, but just using what’s there so it gets rotated and such as I go.  While working on tightening up my finances, I started creating monthly menus to reduce food waste, make multiple meals from one cut of meat, make shopping lists easy, and cut back on my impulse purchases.  Sometimes I need to be flexible to take advantage of what’s in my CSA box or what’s on sale at the store, but overall I am finding my menus useful.  This dinner made use of all those things.

White Beans & Ham, Skillet Cornbread, and Sautéed Greens

I had a meaty hambone in the freezer from an earlier ham dinner.  I put it in with lots of meat on the bone with the intention of using for a lentil soup or something like that.  I had collard greens, leeks, and some peppers in my box, so I weighed out a pound of white beans and set them to soaking the night before.  The original recipe below.  I added leeks and peppers in addition to the onion, and I sautéed them a little before adding the other ingredients.  I reduced the sugar by half, because I don’t like overly sweet beans.  I also tossed in a bay leaf (removed before serving).  Instead of the diced ham, I threw in the whole bone, then at the end pulled it, pulled off the meat, diced it up, and tossed it back in.  It took longer than 2 hours to get the beans tender enough.  Cooked up some cornbread in a cast iron skillet, and made super simple greens with a bit of lemon since everything else was so rich.  Yum.

White Beans & Ham

1 pound dry great Northern beans
1/2 pound cooked ham, diced
1 small onion, diced
1/2 cup brown sugar
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon dried parsley

Rinse beans in a large pot; discard shriveled beans and any small stones. Add 8 cups of cold water. Let stand overnight or at least 8 hours. Drain and rinse beans. Return beans to pot and add ham, onion, brown sugar, salt, pepper, cayenne and parsley and water to cover. Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer 1 1/2 to 2 hours, until beans are tender. Add more water if necessary during cooking time.

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Two things – the basic recipe would be very easy to make all LTS.  With spam instead of ham (I think I would add it in the last 30 minutes; it’s not as sturdy as real ham), and dehydrated onions, you could create it completely from shelf stable foods.  I think dehydrated carrots would be tasty in there.  And you could switch up the seasonings.  Ooh, I think mushroom powder would add  nice umami undertone too.

And … How do people weigh the benefits of storing dried beans v. canned?  Canned are so much heavier and take more space and are more expensive unless you get them on sale.  Plus they are way saltier, and what else is in there?  But dried beans, while they store easily, can last practically forever when stored properly and are dirt cheap, take so much more time to prepare.  And more water.  And lots more fuel. If you can nestle a Dutch oven in your heating fire, or you have a wood stove, maybe you can let them cook slowly away while you heat your space and kill 2 birds with one stone.  But if you are relying on a one burner camping stove, or a rocket stove, that’s a lot of fuel to one pot of beans.

Its one thing if you are “only” planning and prepping for a short term emergency or recoverable disaster.  Space isn’t as critical, and a bit of extra salt and crud in the cans in the short time frame won’t make much difference I suppose.  But for the long haul?  Some of each?  How to balance it?

p.s. I’m still not smoking.  I had some nicotine gum to take the edge off a couple times (I already had it from a flight last February, so no money wasted), but I haven’t had an actual cigarette in my hand for over 48 hours.  I’m grouchy. I’m hating it.  I’ve wanted to buy a pack soooo badly.   But I haven’t yet.

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My last nerve twanging

img_0033So I am tackling a bit of my step 2 – health.  A bit is an understatement; I am quitting smoking. I’d quit for over a year a long while back, and it was the hardest thing I’d ever done.  Then, a single cigarette while off on a training weekend for early head start (my kiddo was a foster kid placed with us and had a bunch of interventions before we adopted), just one cigarette, and I was hooked again. Insane.  It was just a few a day, then half a pack for a long time, but it’s been creeping up. Now a decade later, I am quitting again.

I have “wanted” to for a while.  No one around me smokes.  This whole city is extremely smoker unfriendly (unless you are smoking weed, there’s a green cross on every other corner).  I don’t have to reiterate the health dangers of smoking.  We all know those.  The stink, the stained teeth, the example it sets to my kids, even though I’ve always tried to hide it.  Keep it outside, and always away from them, but they aren’t stupid.  And then, there is the cost.  But I really did not want to quit. My desire to keep smoking outweighed all the rest of it.

But now, with my financial concerns, with us even considering that I might need to find a job – I never finished college, and I haven’t held any job outside the home since 1999 – it pushed the balance the other direction.  I’d applied to a college for fall 2017 to go back to school before this and I dunno where that will go at this point.  But I am looking to trim expenses everywhere I can.  6.50 a day in savings, it’s kinda a no brainer.img_0034

So, the motivation is there,  but it’s pretty dang awful. The aches, the yo-yo emotions.  Nicotine fills serotonin receptors (and I already have issues with chemical depression so when you mess with my serotonin, woe to those around me), so I am alternatively pissy-irritable and weeping.  The mental fortitude it takes to resist hopping in the car to run to the mini mart, I can’t even describe. It feels like every nerve wants to jump out of my skin, sweating, headachey.  I want to sleep through some of this but I can’t sleep.  I keep busy, and for a moment or three I forget I’ve decided to be a non-smoker. I’ll reach a moment in my routine where I’d typically grab a smoke, almost start to do it and then it hits me.  Oh.  Yeah.  And then I am hit with a wave that I swear feels a lot like grief.  I know it sounds ridiculous but I am in mourning. Most of this should pass in 48 hours they say.  Some people feel it longer, like a couple weeks.  And then I read it could take months. That idea alone is almost enough to make me give up now!  So I’m not thinking about that.

I try instead to focus on the positives.

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For now, not smoking in this minute. And not the next minute either. I jut gotta keep doing the thing I don’t think I can do.  No problem, right?

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I’m your audience, not your customer

Im old. I know this.  I’ve been on the internet a long time.  I used to access usenet and irc II and email with PINE via a unix shell account.  I owned a 1200 baud modem.  My first “real” computer was an XT.   I pre-date the World Wide Web.  I suffered through AOL hometown and geocities (I did not have sites there; I was a snob ;)) and an epidemic of Comic Sans. Then came frontpage and even more heinous crimes against our eyes and ears.  When the first real blogging sites came along, they were mostly about people sharing opinions, providing information, connecting with others out there.  Open up a site and there it was.  The worst thing you’d get loading a page was some stupid music player. (I hate hate hated those sites.  No matter how much I enjoyed the content, if they put on a music player, off my visit list it went.)

I long for the days where the only annoyance and interference to page loading was a damn music player.  People just pile their pages with ads now.  Everyone apparently wants to generate income with thier sites.  This is not subtle.  Every Tom, dick, and harry seems to think thier opinions, recipes, advice, and what not is worth ads on both sides, in the middle of their content, covering the page and making you scroll, pop ups, multiple widgets directing you to all thier social media sites.  Links to Amazon stores, affiliate links, sales of digital content, pop ups to subscribe to thier email lists, banner ads that cover bits of the site, no matter how I resize the screen.  Selling site memberships.  Asking for by the video donations.  And the more we ignore them and because blind to them, when these digital billboards aren’t enough to get our attention, they ramp it up again.

This (I blurred, im not trying to shame anyone specific) isn’t even near a worst offender, I mean gosh, why isn’t there a cpc banner down both sides?!? —

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I’d already dismissed a hovering redundant social media link bar and a pop up to subscribe.  As you scroll down, there are ads every 3-4 lines.  It takes for freaking ever to load these pages.  It used to be we were grateful to have an audience, and you could make connections, actually have conversations via comments and develop friendships.

Now it’s all about duping us and selling to us and at the very least, making us pay with our time just to pull up a damn site.

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Shoots in a week or two?

I didn’t get process pictures. Oops.  But we did our next step in growing pea shoot microgreens today.  Daughter filled the half tray with our growing medium and dampened it well.  Then she rinsed the peas that have been soaking the last 24 hours and spread them out.  Here’s where it gets iffy. 3/4 cup looked like too much to me after soaking when you spread them out.  They are supposed to be sown close together, but a lot of these are touching and even maybe slightly overlapped.

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I’ve watched several videos and read a number of pages but nothing is very specific aside from the 1 1/2 cups for 20×10 tray that one YouTube video estimated.  Anyway, I set it where I think it will get the best light in a bay window-y area.  But while it’s sprouting, it is supposed to NOT get sun, so we flipped over a second 10×10 tray over the top.  I will go even out the peas a little bit when EllieBean is away; I didn’t want to diminish her sense of ownership in the project by tidying it in front of her

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Now we just need to mist it every day and wait for the magic to happen. 🙂

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Peas – don’t shoot, I’m unarmed!

One reason I have been working to get my preparedness binder in shape is that otherwise I get distracted with side projects. Take sprouting, for instance.  I was reading about food storage and clicked off on one link or another and was reading about sprouts.  A lot of nutrition, a good way to have something fresh and green with your food storage meals.  Apparently pretty easy to add sprouting items to your preps.

I remember a couple of my Mom’s friends who I suppose looking back, were homesteaders. They raised rabbit for food, had gardens, chickens and compost piles.  I don’t think we called it that, they were hippies. When I was there, meal time was very strange to me. I seem to recall everything had wheat germ in it. Anyway, 35-40 years ago were those times, and that’s the last time I ever really had “sprouts”.

So, reading about sprouts, picked up a kindle unlimited book to read and found learning about growing sprouts are often paired with learning about microgreens.  Well, I pay a fortune for pea shoots whenever they are available at my local New Seasons.   I can grow those?!  In my house?

Pea shoots are amazing. Tons of vitamins, far more than the actual peas that they would eventually produce.  Pea Shoots are a nutritious leaf with high levels of vitamin C and vitamin A. A 50g portion (about 2/3 a cereal bowl full) of these tasty greens offers more than half of the RDA for vitamin C, a quarter of the RDA for vitamin A and significant amounts of folic acid.   They aren’t a significant source of calories (only 9 for those 50g), but for nutrition and for varying your diet and preventing food fatigue, And just because I love them and they are expensive to buy, this sounds like something I “need”.

I tried to figure out online why kind of yield I could expect from a pound of pea seeds.  One site selling organic seeds suggested it’s only 1 pound per pound of seeds. The OSU extension office had far different yields. However, I think that was geared towards large scale growing with multiple harvests from each seed rather than indoor 20″x10″ planting trays, harvesting at the base when they reach a few inches.

So never mind I have a lot more important items to acquire first, I decide that I just have to test it myself. A few days pass.  Ding dong!  My box from sprout people arrived!

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(In addition to my pea shoot experiment, I also got a pound of a seed blend for traditional sprouting.) So 1 lb. of this particular pea seed was about 2 1/2 cups, and to do half the tray (as you can see, I got a split tray; that way I can stagger the plantings) should take about 3/4 cup.  So my daughter is excited about this experiment too.  She measured out the seeds and set them to soaking so tomorrow we can “plant” them.

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Of course, there is no way she will eat these. Probably. She might tolerate them in her salad; she does love a salad.  Time will tell 🙂

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Im So Giddy!

I was checking out Cragislist, sorta looking for food grade barrels and / or gamma lids, more to get an idea of availability and cost versus buying them new when I was browsing around and came across a listing for canning jars.  There’s lots of overpriced vintage jar ads, but this was different – clearly from a family who are no longer canning, not some re-saler looking to make a profit.  50-some 1/2 pint, 50-some pint, 40-some quart and a handful of 1/2 gallon jars, for a total of 152 jars, all stored in 4 Rubbermaid roughneck totes for only 25$ !!  The totes alone, if I purchased them new would cost more than that!

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I emailed them right away, and they got back to me today.  They wanted to make sure the jars were going to someone that actually wanted to can with them, and I assured them that this is a skill I really do want to become proficient in.  I rushed right over to get them. They even threw in a bag of rings and unopened boxes of lids! A 12 pack of quart jars, new, I haven’t seen for less than 30$ and I’ve see them for 50$ or more on amazon.  Half-Pints and Pints are a bit better at 10-15$ a dozen (but about half my half pints are the decorative cut glass looking ones).

The wife, who had been the canner, looking a little frail and very sweet, said she went through and recycled any jars that had chips or seemed unsafe.  I still will check them of course, but even if a few were unusable for actual canning, I can find a use for it.  (I love me some mason jar crafts)

Unless Santa brings me a Pressure Canner, I probably won’t get any use from my jars until next year, but I am absolutely giddy with excitement to have these supplies that I can fill with food to build the pantry.