THE Prepping thread - a new beginning :)

GreyQueen

One of Englandshire's most famous teaching hospitals did express the desire to 'do experiments' once they'd got my condition stabilised.

Unfortunately for the world of Science, I moved house and came under the auspices of another (less famous) teaching hospital who haven't expressed the slightest interest in claiming me as their very own lab-rat. For which I give daily thanks.:rotfl:

Although, as my paper notes up there run two two folders the thickness of an encyclopaedia each, they have plenty of data to play with if they get bored.

:cool: I was turned down for Sniper School - bladder isn't up to all that waiting around, y'see. And the butler bringing regular trays of tea & biccies to my sniper nest was apt to blow my cover.

VJsmum

GreyQueen wrote: »

I have a resting heartbeat of < 50 bpm. Not sure if that means I am technically comatose most of the time, but it does seem to disconcert medical professionals.

One nurse pumped a BP cuff up on my arm four times in a row, frowning at the reading. I had to remind her that she was cutting off my circulation and my hand was going numb. Another yelled at me in terror after watching the BP fall like a stone after doing a lying down and then standing up reading. Once I'd parked my rear on the bed again, she explained that if I'd started to fall, she wasn't allowed to try to catch me.

Wouldn't have worked out anyway, I was considerably taller and heavier than her. But not the slightest bit spinny-headed, no matter what the old BP happened to be doing.

Can't claim super-athleticism as I am a stroller and a gentle-paced gardener rather than sporty. It seems to be genetic; Kid Bruv, our father and his father were/ are all the same with regard to low BP and slow heartbeats.

kittie, good choices about your potential future home. No point in making a rod for your own back. I've known folk buy, for no necessary reason, houses which have the living accomodation over three floors and the outside only accessible by steep stairs up from the road. This is ridiculous, imo, for people who are already in their seventies and eighties at point of purchase.

I have super low blood pressure. Typically 90/48. It puts medical people into a tailspin...

[Deleted User]

Prepping question.....What do you consider essential things to have in your Armageddon cupboard? I'm in process of running down my stores and have come across several items which I've thought 'Why on earth did I get that?' so particularly food stores what do you keep as essential emergency provender and what do you do with it to make a meal? also what stock levels do you feel are appropriate per person?

Karmacat

I don't think there's any one answer to that, MrsLW - I'm a vegetarian with an intolerance to dairy produce, and I need gluten free 95% of the time, so my food cupboard is going to look really different from one run by a meat eater with no digestive problems

I have dried peas and beans I can heat over a gaz stove and then let them cook in the haybox. I have tinned tatties and dried tatties. I have gazillion types of oil (rapeseed, walnut, toasted sesame, avocado). I have dried milk, and lots of types of sauces and chutneys. And quite a few other tins

How long I prep for - hmm, I think mostly about being ill the way I used to be, when sitting up at the computer was too stressful, so having lots of pasta in the house, and frozen veg, was a good thing. Plus if I can store a *lot* of something without it taking too much space, I do - at the start of winter, I have 6 months worth of dishwasher tabs, bleach, toilet cleaner, that sort of thing.

Can I ask why you're running your storecupboard down?

fuddle

Herbs, spices, vinegars, stock cubes, tinned toms, tinned baked beans, tinned soups, tinned fruit, tinned rice pudding. Dried peas, beans, pulses , veg, pudding rice, popping corn and tinned varieties as back up if not able to rehydrate. Tea, coffee , herbals, cupasoups, hot choc (options, no milk needed) uht and powdered milk. Rice, pasta. Tuna, tinned mackerel. Then the baking cupboard which isn't really useful without my oven in terms of Armageddon but its a must for money saving/do it myself items. That's pretty much my cupboards and I hardly deviate. I have basics, plenty of them, and make them do.

What I do intend to do is build on my preserve stocks but hopefully that will come as the plot produces. Both savory and sweet are needed.

Sorry that was blunt and to the point.

THIRZAH

Most of the items listed by Fuddle except the cupasoup and tinned fish-can't stand the stuff. I also keep some tinned fruit in case the freezer packs up or we have no power. We do eat meat so have tins of corned beef and a couple of tins of M&S creamed chicken and stewed steak. Also cous cous as it only needs hot water so can leave it while I heat something up on the camp stove.

I do keep flour etc as we could make griddle scones or pancakes if we can't use the oven. I have a gas hob.

[Deleted User]

We're hoping to move house KARMA and I'll stock us up at the new one if it ever happens (says she 3 weeks into being on the market!) but I'm not carting emergency stocks from one end of the country to the other, I'm using them up instead and saving the housekeeping I would have spent to replace them.

I'll re-think what I keep in for us when I do as I'd always kept a good supply of dried pulses and cereals but have worked out now that those will take altogether too much fuel to process in times of adversity and tins of beans etc. being already cooked wouldn't necessarily need even to be heated to make a nutritious meal. I won't have the store room available if we get the house we've found so I'll need to decide what I shall store and I'm interested in what all of you deem necessary and sensible to keep in stock.

pineapple

These days I don't stock for tshtf - just for less serious glitches. I used to routinely go through tinned tomatoes in stews etc but these days I prefer tomatoes or passata in boxes so as to use as little tinned produce as possible.
That said I do have tinned sardines in oil. Plus the basics of flour, oats, semolina, dried milk, pasta, rice, oils - and a good supply of salt, herbs and spices. It astonishes me that people find themselves in dire straits food wise when an ATM goes down. Just a few cheap basics will keep body and soul together - though obviously not a long term nutritional solution.
I also have the usual selection of dried pulses. The downside to these is the soaking/cooking time - though if the multifuel stove is on, I'm not using an extra heat source.
I could do with learning more about foraging. There is plenty of free food around us. I do use nettles sometimes - and just down the lane a huge area of wild garlic is making it's annual return. I love the flavour and add it to all sorts. I'm the only person who collects any! Going to google ways of preserving it this time around, as it's appearance is time limited.

Cappella

My list is similar to Fuddles, but like Thirzah we eat meat, but though there are some things I still buy in bulk our srores have been much depleted over the past three years (serious illness meant that the supermarkets didn’t see us for a long time) and I haven’t replaced many items. I now need to USE our spare bedroom as a bedroom rather than a grocery store and made the decision to keep enough food preps for 6-8 weeks but no for no longer. I prep now more for domestic emergencies rather than Armageddon, though we do still have emergency rations on the allotment and in one other place in case of civil unrest.
So:
Bulk buys:
25lbs of wholemeal flour, 14lbs oats.
Condiments
Salt, pepoercorns, malt and white vinegar, apple vinegar (I make this)
Home dried herbs and various spices.
Home made preserves, pickles and jams.
Honey (we have 7 hives and I don’t use sugar at all
Black treacle
Dried yeast 5 tins
Tinned beans, sweet corn, mushy peas, tomatoes, pulses, fruit, tuna, pilchards, salmon, sardines, corned beef, stewing steak, chicken in white sauce (useful for adding to a small amount of leftover chicken to make a quick chicken supreme if you gave no bacon or mushrooms).
Dehydrated vegetables (allotment produce)
Dried red lentils
Couscous
Rice basmati and brown long grain
Custard powder
Dried milk
Gravy granules

I think that’s the lot. Time I inventoried it properly, but it’s been useful having a quick look this morning. I’m interested in how much it resembles my mother’s everyday pantry in the 1950s and 60s. They say the Apple never falls far from the tree

[Deleted User]

Did a BP and pulse check, as soon as I woke up this morning.

BP was pretty normal (116/82), but pulse was way lower than normal, at 64.