THE Prepping thread - a new beginning :)

DigForVictory

Don't count on a Scout being able to shoot with bow & arrow for the pot - the rules are very clear - target faces only, no animal or human graphics or photos. Likewise air rifle - strict competition target faces.

That said, any Scout who can use a bow or gun outside scouts almost certainly has not been taught to revere edible life/vermin, but the whole useful how to gralloch Thumper bit? Deliberately omitted from Scout Lore.

Happily, so long as you're prepared to learn, anyone processing an animal for their own use will usually accept a hand, and may even overlook the initial turning green etc. We all have to start somewhere, sometime.

Far as I know, hunting with bow & arrow is illegal in the UK & the arrowheads for the job are export only items. Yet setting a figure 4 trap is fine. Well, legal & many Scouts will be able to whittle the sticks to order. I find the whole law around where & who may use what against what laws a bit odd, but that's largely to do with "rights" (plus a snifter of Elf & Safety) which come TEOTW will likely be pretty moot. Bowfishing another realm & as for what sort of gun - well, somewhere else again, it being as personal a tool as a bow.

If medicine is a currency, fresh safe to eat meat will also be a tradable commodity, so stock your mental larders on how-to too.

Yes, knitting is a prepping skill, and so is being able to convert the tufts of wool lifted off barbed wire into something spun to a more or less knittable hank. If you're up for shearing, and sorting & carding & spinning - it's a slow way of generating trade goods, but a useful 'hobby'. (Says she with a pile of old blankets stashed - my spinning includes language that leaves rugby players blushing, but I can cut & sew a blanket into an overshirt.)

ETA Just watching the news about Oroville - town by a California dam, concern for said dam, mandatory evacuation and the startling lack of (reported) preparedness.
If you lived near a dam, wouldn't you have a BOB, map, plan?!

Cappella

Digforvictory said:

Yes, knitting is a prepping skill, and so is being able to convert the tufts of wool lifted off barbed wire into something spun to a more or less knittable hank. If you're up for shearing, and sorting & carding & spinning - it's a slow way of generating trade goods, but a useful 'hobby'.

How about weaving? I can spin, (badly) but I've just been gifted an inkle loom which is very portable. I can only weave braids up to 4" across with it so making anything wearable could take a while. I could make very tough patches on it though as well as straps and leads.
I HAVE knitted so manny jumpers, woolly hats and pairs of gloves in my life that I don't need to follow a pattern. (tried this out of curiosity). Would knowing how to knit a garment'freestyle' be a useful skill do you think?

Karmacat

thriftwizard wrote: »

Karmacat, we started off with Sandor Katz's Wild Fermentation and have since progressed to his Art of Fermentation. As long as you can interpret American, they're very readable & do-able.

Thank you thriftwizard! I'm realising now how much of all this is American - which means that even though there are people in the UK interested, and practising, the numbers must be too tiny for books to be written specifically for us very sad.

I do have trouble translating American amounts (cups and whatnot) so I'll have to deface the books I buy by writing in them

Cappella wrote: »

How about weaving? I can spin, (badly) but I've just been gifted an inkle loom which is very portable. I can only weave braids up to 4" across with it so making anything wearable could take a while. I could make very tough patches on it though as well as straps and leads.
I HAVE knitted so manny jumpers, woolly hats and pairs of gloves in my life that I don't need to follow a pattern. (tried this out of curiosity). Would knowing how to knit a garment'freestyle' be a useful skill do you think?

I definitely agree that knitting is a prepping skill - and so is weaving, even if the braids are only 4" across - that's how the original carpets in Turkey etc were woven, more or less (a little bit bigger, but not much) because the lifestyle was nomadic, and the looms were small because they had to be dismantled and carried on pack animals.

Karmacat

I was following up on one of the things I was researching and came across whirligigs, and their reinvention by a biologist at Stanford University as a medical centrifuge for areas where there's no electricity:
http://www.nature.com/news/spinning-toy-reinvented-as-low-tech-centrifuge-1.21273
and there's lots of videos on youtube about how to make them

thriftwizard

Karmacat, it's a whole lot easier just to buy a set of cups... plastic ones are available at £land, or stainless steel shouldn't cost more than £8 & will last a lifetime. A very worthwhile investment as I have recipes from other traditions (mostly Welsh & Scottish) that are measured in cups too, even though they probably meant tea-cups. However the advantage of cooking by volume is that it's usually much easier to scale things up! I make my sourdough bread with 2 cups of Maltstar (granary) flour and 2 of strong white, a tablespoon of salt, around 2 cups of (warm) water and half a jar of starter - very much easier & quicker than weighing stuff out.

jk0

Anyone reading about the Oroville Dam in California? This is an interesting forum about it: https://www.metabunk.org/oroville-dam-spillway-failure.t8381/

DigForVictory

That is intriguing from here, but must be pretty spooky for the Californians & tough on the folk of Sacramento too.
160 000 folk told to evacuate. That's a Federal level of fuss. Hoping the aged, the sick & the schools are all moved securely!

moneyistooshorttomention

I've found there seem to be two different sets of cup measures/spoon measures (as in measurements being very slightly different).

In the event - I have spoons and cup measures in both. But I don't think it matters unduly - as its the proportions of ingredients to each other thats the thing.

So - left to myself - I'll be cooking in lbs and ozs. But I'll adapt to metric measures or cups and just do what that particular recipe does.

So my "defacing" of books amounts to changing the name of some of the less familiar ingredients if it's written in American rather than English. I remember zucchini is courgettes for instance - but I do forget for things that I don't use very often.

Thinking of American terminology and someone on this Board recently (dont know if it was this thread?) commented about doing overnight oats with courgettes as part of the ingredient. Initial reaction to that = ???? yuk!. But I've duly had a go at making zoats (ie zucchini oats) for myself and was pleasantly surprised that I actually liked it in the event.

ariarnia

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

So - left to myself - I'll be cooking in lbs and ozs. But I'll adapt to metric measures or cups and just do what that particular recipe does.

Left to myself it's a handful of this and a lump of that with a pinch of close enough :rotfl:

Karmacat

thriftwizard wrote: »

Karmacat, it's a whole lot easier just to buy a set of cups... plastic ones are available at £land, or stainless steel shouldn't cost more than £8 & will last a lifetime. A very worthwhile investment as I have recipes from other traditions (mostly Welsh & Scottish) that are measured in cups too, even though they probably meant tea-cups. However the advantage of cooking by volume is that it's usually much easier to scale things up! I make my sourdough bread with 2 cups of Maltstar (granary) flour and 2 of strong white, a tablespoon of salt, around 2 cups of (warm) water and half a jar of starter - very much easier & quicker than weighing stuff out.

Thanks for this, thriftwizard - I think I got discouraged by those metal cones you can buy, where each sort of thing - sugar, flour, oats, whatever - has a different level you fill it up to to equal a cup. Like this, said she, remembering image search: http://thumbs4.picclick.com/d/l400/pict/192018127611_/Vintage-Metal-TALA-COOKs-MEASURE-Measuring-CONE-Kitchenalia.jpg

So that isn't essential? There's a glass version that does cups, its only half a litre, it's at John Lewis: http://www.johnlewis.com/ocuisine-jug-0-5l/p2825427 For the level of cookery I do, thats going to be good enough :o:o