Preparedness for when

GreyQueen

greenbee wrote: »

The cheesecake doesn't need cooking GQ. I suggest you dispense with the rest of the meal and focus on the good bit... :cool:

I had cake for breakfast. Just cake. And more cake when I came home from work.

I think I better eat something not sugar-based for a few hours, but don't think I hadn't considered it, because I have.........:p

Just chucked a pork chop into the oven, will have it with bits and bobs from the fridge. I'll hold the cheesecake in reserve in case there are any spare corners which need filling up.

mardatha

When I'm knackered GQ I live on cornflakes and crisps

Popperwell

I've gone through many periods where cereal and similar meals hit the spot. Now crisps are something(and considering all that I have in my home)that I have run out of.

Perplexed_Pineapple

A good prepping day today, added 20kg of flour to the stocks in anticipation of prices shooting up later in the year due to poor harvests. Also more lentils. If the SHTF our bugging-in diet will be boring, but nutritious and healthy. Just hope we can grow some chillies to spice it up a bit, although if the weather carries on like this will have to find some more traditional English herbs and spices to jazz it up. Plenty of rosemary, mint and sage in the garden, not our usual accompaniments to lentils though.....have to wait for that global warming to cultivate curry spices :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

GreyQueen

PP, I was giving thought to what would happen if we had no imports of all the lovely spices which we've been used to and how sad that would make me.

One thing I have learned is that unground pepper corns can be stored almost indefinately. As in a decade or more. So, as prices of everything are liable to go up, perhaps we could consider sinking some spare cash into peppercorn futures?

Tell ya, come the Apocalypse, they'll be valuable trade goods.

elona

GQ

I can see now why a "peppercorn rent" in olden days was not as cheap or small a thing as we think nowadays.

When I remember the limited fruit and veg available in winter in the fifties it makes my spirits sink - carrots, onions, tatties, turnip. cabbage and some cooking apples was about it!!

DH has just been looking online and reckons inflation is going to zoom very quickly and I made the point that if countries (including us) don't manufacture or create then how can they continue to prosper?

You can't keep working on illusion of monetary supply etc as sometime the music will stop!

Popperwell

At present its easier to list countries that haven't people on the street protesting against governments. Lately its Brazil. Frightening. Then again just maybe its the winds of change...

GreyQueen

I was reading a book by George Borrow (19th century writer, real character) and he mentioned in passing a peddlar who sold nutmegs door to door.

He'd been doing this for years but he could never go back to the same place twice as the "nutmegs" were just effigy-nutmegs carved from stained wood and this would be revealed when the housewife went to grate some off for the first time and just got sawdust............they were expensive enough to make this a viable fraud.

Hard to think that many of the everyday things we enjoy are luxuries only a very few would have known in previous generations. Even people still living were raised on much blander fare. Mum has a grim expression when recalling childhood meals in the 1940s and 1950s; we ate a lot of suet, she says.

I share your misgivings about the state of the world's financial system, it feels like a huge bubble about to burst and it will make life very hard for a lot of people when it goes. There may even be disruptions to the degree that threaten the food supply, which is a scarey thought.

I just feel that a lot of our fellow citizens have no idea how little food there is in the country's food distribution system, and how reliant we are on imports. The UK wasn't food-independant when Queen Victoria was on the throne and the population was much less than it is now.

If it goes horribly wrong in this oil and debt-ridden global economy, starvation and disease will spread. I know that there are grave concerns about disease transmission around the world, caused by mass movements. The Hajj pilgrimage will bring people from all over the world into Saudi Arabia later this year, jam them all together in a perfect petri dish for spreading disease, and then they will go back home with possibly some little viral or microbial passengers.

The potential for that to spread a flu or other disease chills me even on a warm and humid night like tonight.

elona

GQ

Have you seen the info about MERS ? Looks more lethal than SARS and in Arabic region now and reports by WHO on how dangerous it is.

I keep trying to tell DH and DDs just how little "stuff" is available should there be problems but they just don't get it. The best I can do is to fill the cupboards with good deals on "stuff that will make stuff"
and convince them it is a money saving exercise - which, to be fair - it is!

Perplexed_Pineapple

GQ, I have a couple of George Borrow's books on the shelf which I haven't got round to reading yet, I love reading stuff from the Victorian era and before, they had hardships which would appal us today but which they took in their stride. Normalcy bias I guess. The late 1940s and 1950s by all accounts were grim. My grandfather was a prepper - he stocked up on rice and cereals, in 1937-8. He didn't forsee that the worst food shortages would come after the war. Fascinating stuff which I shall pass on to my kids if I can.