Preparedness for when

pineapple

daz378 wrote: »

got alky selzey ... but its out of date.... will try and stay compus mentis

I picked up some supposed new fangled pain med at Sainsbobs - cut price on account of the fact that it goes out of date on New Years Eve. So with a straight face I asked the assistant - does this mean it won't help the hangover on New Years Day? :rotfl:

DawnW

GQ - I totally agree on the dried vs tinned beans issue. Life really is too short! I do keep dried lentils though, as they don't need soaking, are easy to store, easy to throw in to a soup or stew, and only take 20 or so minutes to cook.

I soaked and cooked up the last of my dried beans (haricots) the other day too, did them in a batch and froze them once cooked.

Having said that I am toying with the idea of dried home grown beans though....

GreyQueen

Seems like we've come to the same conclusions.

The kidney beans I'm cooking now are more than will be required for the chilli con carne I'm making later today, so the intention is to freeze the rest.

I have red lentils and split peas still as dried goods, but everything else is tinned. I think that given the price of energy (I cook on gas) a prudent person has to make a trade-off in cooking time vs the relatively-modest savings from dried versus cans. Not to mention the aggro factor.

I will be looking at self-drying home grown beans next year, otherwise I end the summer with my tabletop freezer jam-packed with broad beans. Which limits the flexibility for batch-cooking and YS bargaineering.

I think we need to be as flexible as possible in our approaches to managing the ole domestic economy. If leccy gets truly silly, people might come to think When that freezer dies, I won't replace it.

A few years ago, my Nan was dejunking her wash-house with our help, an old-style meat safe was about to hit the bin. I begged it and am keeping it in my shed to store seeds in.

But I had an ulterior motive even then, which was in case of a post-fridge future. Mum had one of these when I was growing up, long since vanished, but it used to sit on a concrete slab shelf beside the airbricks in the larder. We definately used to keep meat in it, because I can recall one day the cat managed to get into it and drag out the carcase of a half-eaten chicken.

We had to laugh at his ingenuity; he'd managed to hook open a hollowcore modern (1960s) door, rear up onto the shelf, put his paw flush to the safe door and catch hold of the tiny holes with his claws.

This item didn't have a door knob in its dotage and even we bipeds with opposable thumbs could only open the door by sticking a knife in the crack alongside it and levering it open.

We couldn't be too cross with Ginger; we figured that amount of devious effort deserved its own reward; we caught him red-pawed crouching over the cacase which he'd pulled out onto the floor.........:rotfl:

jk0

Didn't someone mention the risk of mice to packs of tomatoes some time back?

In view of that, I ate up my SHTF packet tomato supplies and replaced them with tins. I still buy the packets for day to day use.

I just ordered one of these last night:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Streetwize-SWPP5-Power-Pack/dp/B004ITAF72/ref=pd_rhf_gw_p_t_2_K21F

It will be plugged into the Economy 7 socket under the stairs along with the other chargers.

GreyQueen

jk0 wrote: »

Didn't someone mention the risk of mice to packs of tomatoes some time back?

In view of that, I ate up my SHTF packet tomato supplies and replaced them with tins. I still buy the packets for day to day use.

I just ordered one of these last night:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Streetwize-SWPP5-Power-Pack/dp/B004ITAF72/ref=pd_rhf_gw_p_t_2_K21F

It will be plugged into the Economy 7 socket under the stairs along with the other chargers.

Yes, it was discussed as someone had known it to happen in their own home.

I perfectly believe mice are capable of chewing thru a TetraPak or similar carton because I have known them to chew thru very heavy duty rigid plastics in order to eat curry powder, of all blinking things. In Nan's larder. We caught the blighter with a Little Nipper mousetrap baited with an Elizabeth Fry choc mint crips leftover from Xmas and I did begrudge sacrificing it..............:rotfl:

However, mice are not going to be an equal menace to every householder. I live in a concrete jungle with mostly concrete, tarmac, close-mown grass and the odd shrubbery bed for several hundred meters in all directions. Plus there are a lot cats in the neighbourhood.

I consider my neighbourhood quite prejudical to the chances of mice infestation, plus my home is made of concrete and pretty modern (1970s). It would be a different matter for an older home, perhaps one in the countryside, although I know the little beggars can squirm through a hole no bigger than a pencil's diameter.

Anyway, I don't have a stash of food and a separate stash of emergency food. Later today I shall use two cans of tomatoes from the wallcupboard and reload the cupboard from the underbed canned stash. I am also intending to pick up a couple of passata cartons, which will join the underbed stash.

Rinse and repeat, eventually the tins are all gone and the cartons are consumed in date order.

Nice whatchamcallit on the linkie, btw.

[Deleted User]

We've been successful in growing and drying our own Borlotti Beans here in the UK and you can use those big hairy hoary runners that get left on the vines at the end of the season too, They make super additions to stews and casseroles in the winter. Make sure they're really,really dry though. I pod them and then keep them on top of the floor standing boiler in the utility room, spread out on a big tray and left for as much as 6 weeks until they are reduced in size, smooth and rock hard. I've had the odd disaster when I've thought they were dry enough and found the jar full of rotting sprouted beans a little later in the year. Works a treat, the only downside is that growing beans for drying takes up a big patch of ground for the whole season and lets the weeds thrive on that bit which inevitably means they seed onto the rest of your plot as the year goes on, Lyn xxx.

ginnyknit

Its all about juggling isnt it? To buy dried or tinned? grow which one crop or another? If I dried my bean crop it would fill an entire matchbox :rotfl:well I actually got a couple of meals this year!

I dont think mice would dare to get in my pantry as our spare cat sleeps in my office where the pantry is and he is an O/S tom cat who decides who and what can enter at their peril - he has just beaten the cr*p out of a passing stray that dared to come through the cat flap. Me and the stray thats sits next to the lap top jumped out of our skins - I leapt up to try and break up the fight and was totally ignored as they fought round my feet and laptop cat wandered in to watch. Its not totally crazy here but we are almost there.

GreyQueen

Spare cat ! Love it!

The home I visited on Thurs had a 'spare cat'. He was the one who was on my lap. He'd just moved in, notwithstanding the wishes of the householder or the two incumbant cats.

Cats are amazing critters and very old style rodent protection. Provided you can keep them out of the larder, of course.

Ginger looked as guilty as sin but he didn't stop scarfing even when caught at it. He's been dead 30 years now, bless his cotton socks, but I can still see that scene as clear as day.

[Deleted User]

That jump starter pack looks just what I need.

Should keep a laptop/netbook/portable DVD player going for days/weeks. :cool:

jk0

Bedsit_Bob wrote: »

That jump starter pack looks just what I need.

Should keep a laptop/netbook/portable DVD player going for days/weeks. :cool:

Well, I don't know about weeks Bob.

The battery is 17Ah, at 12V, so only about 200 watt hours of power storage. It might make the difference between misery and not misery though, certainly.