I bought a new Crock pot for $10.00 at Albertsons. It’s a small 1.5 quart, has a removable ceramic crock and only uses 120 watts. I have a couple large crock pots but I wanted some one I could use for smaller meals and used less energy than the big crock pots. I tried out the little crock pot last night making up overnight steel cut oats. They turned out okay but I learned to give the oats and water a good stir to makes sure the all oats mix with the water, use spray or coat the crock with oil to prevent sticking. My recipe for about 2 servings was 1/2 cup of oats, 2 cups of water and then set the crock pot on low overnight. Talk about an easy morning, breakfast and coffee were all ready to go when I got up.
While I was at Albertsons they were having another good sale on seafood, so I picked up some lobster tails for $3.88 each, a pound of large shrimp and had a seafood night for myself. I’m set for food for the rest of the year so I have been able to splurge a bit on some treats for myself. Albertsons had a good sale on toilet paper 12 double rolls for $3,98 so I’m bought two packages to try out. If I lke it great, if not I can add the TP to the barter box.
I did a little shopping at Paul’s and picked up a couple pounds of sausage and some nice looking pork chops. They were out of the pails of lard but I got a rain check for them. Don’t forget oils and fats when you are preparing, most sites recommend about 16 pounds of oils and fats per person. Figure a gallon of oil weights about eight pounds that should give you a good working number on how much you need on hand.
My aunt got some goats and was looking for equipment to make yogurts, cheese even soap and butter from the goats milk. I hooked her up with the beer lady at Nampa Brewers. I got Mom “the make your own vinegar” kit when I stopped to get a bag of barley and stuff for beer making. It is fascinating just how many things you can do on your own if you are willing to put in the time and a little effort to learn. These things are easy to do they just take time.
I signed the contract for the stove and got to see the hearth pad and I like how it looks.
My new hearth pad
The neutral color should work great with the decorating ideas I want to try out this winter.
My Adventures in selfreliance 
You’re doing well on your food supplies. I store olive oil rather than a lot of lard, but I do have some lard in sealed mylar packages. Never hurts to have choices.
Harry I have all kinds of oils and fats except canola oil. When it comes to baking especially pastry it’s hard to beat lard. If you have wild game you want to make into sausage, Deep frying and seasoning cast iron. I like olive oil but it has a low smoke point so it’s not good for deep frying.
I m going back to real stuff like real butter and fats instead of all those chemically prodused oils the governments says are good for us.
jamie – will you slow the crap down gurl – yer making the rest of us look really bad!!! i love the hearth pad – oh it’s gorgeous! and, i think i already sent you the recipe for overnight oats eh? you can make them, they are delicious AND recquire no electricity!!! let me know if i haven’t sent the recipe – i have sent it to a gazillion people – it’s so delicious – and i want people to be able to eat good steel cut oats with some fresh fruit every day! good job on all of your scores today!
your friend,
kymber
Yeah for someone disabled, you out work any three abled bodied people.
😉
Matt – she really does! and she makes me tired and makes my head spin with all of the crap that she does!
listen jamie – you are gonna start losing readers if you don’t slow down gurl – i mean it – bahahahahahah!
u no hoo
Matt: a lot of the stuff I do takes time but I don’t have to do much after the first part of the job is done or there is big rest break between steps. I cheat a lot to make things as easy as possible.
It may not sound like a big deal but getting a couple of those thick micro fiber plush bath mats and setting them in front of the kitchen stove and sink have made standing and doing my cooking and cleaning jobs more comfortable.
kymber, I have been blessed this year. Selling the boat not only gave me some cash, I cleared the carport for wood storage.
This has been the year where all of the work I did before really started to come together and pay off in more ways than I can count. Those years of getting cheap,out of debt and paying cash, got me a good credit score to refi my house. I got the refi done when rates were super low and now had more cash on hand to get the solar setup started and start working on the wood stove. Even I’m a bit breatless on how quickly things are coming together.
Did you ever see that old TV show from the BBC called “Conections”? How something we used today was traced back to discoveries or inventions in the past that seem unrelated but every step was needed to get where we are today. I sort of feel like that and it all started when I got sick and disabled. If I hadn’t got sick I would not have prepared or got out of debt and start this little adventure.
I did get your recipe for the yogurt and oats but until I could cook the oats overnight properly I didn’t want to waste the yogurt. Wednesday Paul’s has Whole milk on sale for $1.88 a gallon, I’ll pick up a couple of gallons and try my hand at making my own yogurt. Other than the milk I have everything on hand
kymber, I’m so excited about the hearth pad and I think the all black stove and big glass window for the fire will look awesome with the stone of the pad. The pad is huge 61 inches x 48 inches and would cost about $400.00 retail so I got lucky that the guys doing the stove installation will let me have it for only $100.00.
Now all I can think about is how much space I will have for drying clothes inside in the winter or being able to set down a pot or space to make my beer easily using the wood stove.
whats the shelf life on the lard? i stock olive oil and ghee but i grew up on lard…….wifey might be losing her job soon, so i did an experiment when i went to the grocery today. i bought my usual stuff, as always, a hundred bucks. when i got home i ran down the list to see what we could do without. all but 8 bucks. and the 8 bucks was cheese on sale. ninety-two bucks of junk, comfort foods, beer, stuff we could bake ourself, and canned dog food. rusty would really miss his treat of canned food, and i’d miss my beer, but the rest of it we could do without or make from stored scratch and never miss it. 368 bucks a month, hmmm.
river: I have read anywhere from 2-10 years for lard it might be longer if stored under perfect conditions. I don’t know if you saw the story on the bog butter (Ireland I think) that was over 700 years old and still safe to eat.
I have a lot of fun making beer and after the initial investment and going with the all-grain method you can make a case of “craft” beer for about $12.00 worth of ingredients or less.
I don’t know how much you have “stored” of what you need daily but I know I had a huge mental shift once I had six months worth of my daily needs on hand. Some of it was that I no longer needed anything so I was free to stock up on sale or loss leaders. Another big thing was cooking from scratch a lot more starting with bread.
It used to be my treat for myself was to order a pizza delivered once a month $20.00 gone. But if I spent that money buying a more expensive meat in the store like a Ribeye roast or seafood when it was on sale and cook it myself I saved money and ended up with several meals instead of just pizza and cold pizza for a snack. Besides now I can make pizza.
I have two pekes and I give them each about a tablespoon of canned dog food for “breakfast” and they have a good quality dry dog food and they seem happy with that amount. A can of dog food will last them about a week.
j, roger all of above. we have 5 or 6 years worth of just about everything except milk and cheese, stuff we want fairly fresh. as you see, most of what we buy weekly is junk and wants not needs. if she loses the job i want to start baking bread, maybe look into beer making. there is a brewery near that sells homebrew supplies. the dog got spoiled when he was healing from being hit by a truck. before that he had dry food only. i’m also considering going into business together. his and her handyman service or something. she wants to but i’m leary of working together. we did it to build this house, and remodel the previous one. i’m not easy to work for, at least for civilians. she’s fond of telling me i’m not a master sergeant at home.
river, Never piss off momma or the dog so you are kind of trapped! Dogs are pretty easy I just go to something like my breakfast mode for my pekes of giving the dog a tablespoon or two of wet food. While you wake up, get the coffee going and go through your routine.
I’d say go for the business if you can set up lines of responsibility for whatever you and your wife are best at and agree on. I haven’t been married so take my advice as someone looking at it from the outside.
You might look at how your wife feels if you don’t set up the business when she loses her job. I know you are trying not to piss her off by playing “Master Sargent” but how do you think she will feel if you don’t even take a shot at it? She might see it as you not trusting her. Women are complicated!
If you can say “Honey I’m not sure about the business because I love you and do not want to screw up our married life for a business. But if you want to give it a shot… I am in charge/the boss over this part of the business. You (the wife) are in charge/the boss over this part of the business. Then write it out and make sure you are both on the same page.
The last thing any marriage needs is someone trying to win argument points in the bedroom over a business.
I just opened a #10 can of brownie mix that I canned back in 1999. That was before I read that storing mixes with baking powder, etc, is not that best thing. The problem: they didn’t rise as much as a fresh mix, but they were good! I folded one of the packets and it’s mixing instructions in the can, so I knew how to use and proportions that much brownie mix called for. Knowledge and gaining experience is power!
dee, I always seem to be doing tests of stuff to see if theory and practice have anything to do with one another. I think my eyeopener was my water test and two big lessons were a gallon of water a day is not enough water to keep a house going or healthy/comfortable for more than about 3 days. Water is freaking heavy when you have to do all the moving and heavy lifting and can’t use the tap or the water heater.
Doing tests have made me much more confident in my preps along with learning how to save my own physical energy.
I gave the installers a choice of three spots to install the stove and the best spot was just a bit closer the the big bathroom than the kitchen by a few feet. But I think that placement will work out very well as far as heating and moving water. If it get’s really cold I could close off almost half of the house to retain heat.
j, very good advice. sure you aren’t married? the business will have to wait a bit. her ederly mother is coming to live with us. i have to build a room on the back asap. she’s no bother/cost. we just don’t want her by herself anymore, neither does she.