Preparedness for when

[Deleted User]

I've just been looking online and found that UHT milk and the reconstituted dried skimmed milk can't be used to make paneer. So I think I'll have to find another source of cheese if I'm to be successful. I know that old fashioned cheeses will store for many months under the correct conditions but I'm fairly certain that they won't be found in a domestic dwelling so back on with my thinking cap!!!

Thanks HERBILY, I'm so pleased that your lamp is now working for you. I've never had problems getting the recharge from the window sill right through the year. Brilliant things aren't they? Lyn xxx.

tryingtobethrifty

thriftwizard wrote: »

I could however do a 3-month "Survival Lite" version - staying out of supermarkets & chain stores completely - and would be very happy to try it!

That was a challenge on here a few years ago I joined in. I lasted a good few months. Took a bit more time but I really enjoyed doing it and I saved some money not getting taken in with special offers in the supermarkets.

Here is something I thought you all might like
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2513154/Farmer-builds-house-just-150-using-materials-skips--current-tenant-pays-rent-MILK.html

[Deleted User]

I've just read that you can make farmers/cottage cheese from reconstituted skimmed milk powder and that's useful as you can then use the whey in bread making, using all the nutritive elements in it, the alternative is feeding the whey to pigs, but, as I don't have a pig.........bread it will have to be, so I think the challenge can be done!!! Lyn xxx.

GreyQueen

Evening all.

Just back from archery and feeling very happy. It may be daft but it makes me grin from ear-to-ear.

Learned today that modern compound bows, the men's models, will fire an arrow at 200 feet per second for up to 600m. That, my friends, is seriously-scary. My crowd are shooting with recurve bows, which are more traditional, but a bit harder to use.

The compound bows are very highly technical pieces of equipment and require professional attention it their bits and bobs get out of true, which makes them fun toys but probably a lot less useful in a post-SHTF when you might be out after bunnies and squirrels.

You won't be doing it this side of a disaster as bow-hunting has been illegal in the UK for about 350 years. And you can't be arrested for carrying a bow in public, regular, compound or crossbow, as it is the arrows which consititute the "offensive weapon" part of the equipment. This has been tested in law, so don't take any nonsense if the police try it on.

Our tutor reckons an easy way to get the polis to offer you a ride home in a police car is to just carry a bow (no arrows) on the street. When asked, say you're going home and they're apparently so keen to get you off the streets with this bit of kit that they'll run you home themselves.

Useful to know if you can't afford cabfare, isn't it?

ALIBOBSY

MrsLurcherwalker wrote: »

We can grow leeks like young trees here and parsnips go well but can we grow celery or carrots? Oh no no no!!! I could never get aquilegia to grow in the garden when we lived in Kent but here it grows wild and seeds itself on every patch of spare soil and on all the waste patches too but can I grow Delphiniums which grew like a forest in Kent? Oh no no no!!! Horses for courses eh?

Have you tried the self blanching stuff, I found it a doddle this year. Apart from the initial stages where I found the slugs love the seedlings, so best grown on in pots till its a bigger size. Then planted in a block and left to get on with it. I used it like cut and come again around the edges over summer and froze loads for use in stews etc over winter. Even dug up one plant and transplanted into a pot in the unheated greenhouse and it is still growing.
I found it has more leaf and less stem than the trad type, but seems to have a stronger flavour so you don't need as much and is easy to grow, or at least was for me.

Ali x

[Deleted User]

Hi ALI yes we've tried the stuff you trench and blanch in newspaper and the self blanching kind with no success whatsoever. The only thing we've been successful with and that was only once in a very good year, is celeriac and just the once we had 3 x 16 foot rows of football sized beauties which kept us going right through the next winter. I guess the soil is just wrong for celery, but it's OK we can grow most other things, Lyn xxx.

ALIBOBSY

nuatha wrote: »

I went from retail to IT a couple of decades ago (though I acquired a sideline in hotel management along the way) there's still things about IT that amaze me.

My OH was on the first bulletin boards right at the start of what became the internet in his teens and has worked for big international companies amongst others and even after almost 30 years of using computers and over 20 years of working in the IT industry he says you still get stuff that suprises you. Often issues are thrown up by weird conflicts between software. OH reckons his first questions always include, when did it last work properly, and what was the last bit of software you downloaded/added.

He is honest with people and if its an issue he thinks will take a while to narrow down will tell them up front as sometimes it maybe more cost effective for them to buy new. He nearly always gets a no when asking if people have a boot disk or even copies of the operating system disks. So he is often copying stuff off or recovering data for people.

One lady was in tears when he got back all the photos she had of her children from birth which she hadn't backed up.

Ali x

grandma247

Alibobsy I think I could do with borrowing that OH of yours

I was tearful a couple of weeks ago when I found a few photos in a very old email sent to a friend that I thought were lost forever because I had them online and the company just closed down and I discovered it too late. They had also been on my external disk which ds and dgs broke when they knocked it to the floor in a scuffle. The computer also stopped working and we can't seem to get anything off it. I have kept the disks in the hope that one day I will be able to do something about them.

If you are in the habit of sending photos in emails and think you have lost some forever check your sent file.

pineapple

tryingtobethrifty wrote: »

Here is something I thought you all might like
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2513154/Farmer-builds-house-just-150-using-materials-skips--current-tenant-pays-rent-MILK.html

F A B U L O U S
I want that house!
Seriously most of us gather 'stuff' then we need stuff for the stuff.....

For a while in Uganda I lived in the servants quarters of a well to do Kenyan woman. She lived in a mini mansion and I lived in a little one room affair at the bottom of her garden. :eek: It had everything I needed and were it not for her gardeners continually leering in, it would have been perfect

pineapple

grandma247 wrote: »

They had also been on my external disk which ds and dgs broke when they knocked it to the floor in a scuffle. The computer also stopped working and we can't seem to get anything off it. I have kept the disks in the hope that one day I will be able to do something about them.

Don't know where you are but I can recommend a computer place in Halifax which has done repairs and also retrieved data for me.