Prepping for Brexit thread

Primrose

I,ve tried bottling bottling tomatoes in the past but as has been suggested you have to be scrupulously careful about hygiene and sterilising and bottles are not particularly space saving.
I find the best way is to chop them up and cook them with some chopped onion (and garlic if you like it) to make a pulp which I then zapp with a stick blender to turn into tomato pur!e. This can be bagged up in various portion sizes and used in soups casseroles, or for Spag Bol,sauces etc. If you don't have a stick blender you can also bag up the mixture as a more bulky sauce.

We also hope to have a good crop this year. Just praying that we don't have an bad attack of blight and lose all our crop.

[Deleted User]

Congrats on the new job CUDDLES as they say 'every little helps' it's a wise investment of hard earned wages xxx.

moneyistooshorttomention

cuddlymarm wrote: »

Moneyistooshorttomension Could you not find someone to swap some of your glut of tomatoes with? When my boys were young we used to have a babysitting circle where no money changed hands but you got to go out occasionally. Something like this but swapping goods could be nice maybe.
Anyway better go
Cuddles

T'aint me that's got the surplus tomatoes. I wish - as the plants I got just keeled over and died.

Personally I do give away any surplus whatever-I-do have (and this year it was blackcurrants). Some got just "given away" and I know I'm not going to get anything back from that direction. Others got given away where I know there'll be some sort of donation back again of something else at some point.

chirpychick

Congratulations on the new job cuddles.

Hubby is in no way a prepper, he see!!!8217;s it as a waste of money that could be in the bank but even he has been stocking up on some stuff, we learnt that a famous brand of children!!!8217;s paracetamol comes from France and own brand tends to be very low supply at the moment so as we have a child who often ends up in hospital we have started stocking up on that, my migraine tablets and other paracetamol and ibuprofen which is so cheap but as you can only buy 2 kids a time we have been grabbing a pack each time. Also stocked up on plasters, bandages that we use and vapour rub. We figured at the moment in time the cold and flu stuff is more readily available on the shelves than in about 3 months.
We have vowed to renew prescriptions as early as we can each time too, all 3 of us on lifelong medications so nothing will waste but I!!!8217;d like to ensure we have plenty of it in. Not exactly easy to stock up on prescription stuff (rightly so) but having say a month extra for just incase is going to do nobody any hardship.

We go away on Friday and ive basically used up everything in my fridge including condiments so that i can give it all a good clean, the freezer just has herbs, ice lollies and bread in and the cupboard very minimal also. But my plan is to start stocking up when we get back, even hubby has agreed to a small budget each month to build up our store cupboard, but after payday this month we will go to the wholesalers with our 3 month budget for that and stock up on tea, coffee, etc we only have a small house and a small freezer and having been prone to !!!8220;weasels!!!8221; in our flour we have decided to allocate one freezer drawer to store plain, SR and bread flower.
Vitamins will also be something we start stocking up on too.

I spoke to a friend today about all this and she thought i was totally crazy, but my feelings are that i believe there will be unrest, temporarily empty shelves and price hikes across the board. For me, having been through an IVA, Redundancy and having a family with health issues and having lost 2 family members this year I!!!8217;m of the opinion better safe and prepared than sorry and in the gutter.

And in all of this i must not forget the delicate poochies who!!!8217;s food i need to also start stocking up on.

[Deleted User]

There will always be many people who think we're crazy for looking ahead and seeing what 'might' happen and planning contingencies for if it does. I'd much rather have a stock of important things that I know will be used up in the fullness of time anyway and cover the prospect of shortages for any of a whole raft of reasons currently happening in this world, all of which are totally out of our control. Who is it going to hurt if you have an extra months worth of meds and 6 months stock of kiddies paracetamol? Look after you and yours because sure as eggs is eggs lovey no one else will if we do encounter real problems!

THIRZAH

My DH isn't a prepper either but even he has agreed that we should stock up. Several snow bound days last winter taught him the wisdom of keeping a good supply of food in the house. We are trying to build up a small supply of our prescription medicines by ordering them a few days early each time. I've also persuaded him not to talk about our preparations -if things do get bad we can help immediate family but some of the more distant members will have to fend for themselves.

MrsStepford

maryb wrote: »

NOOOOO! not another referendum:eek:

People might think that even if they voted remain first time round, that ship has sailed so the remain vote could be split. We wouldn't get clarity it would be an even worse mess than now

The Remain vote will go to whoever stops the madness of Brexit. It won't be split.

[Deleted User]

Are you sure you're happy posting on this thread love? you sound so scared at the prospect of the Brexit actually happening, would it be better for you to not read along?

I'm not exactly ecstatic about it either but if the country IS a democracy and the vote to leave is a democratic decision it can't be ignored because some don't want it to happen, that would be against the whole constitution. My take is IF it's going to happen I'll have to deal with it and to start thinking about how now before it happens might make the reality a little easier. Thar's just me, but you sound so very unhappy xxx.

MrsStepford

auburnette wrote: »

Hello everyone

I haven't posted on any of the prepping threads before but am seriously concerned about a no-deal Brexit and starting to think about ways to minimise the impact if it happens...

I don't think that there will be problems so much with milk and meat as much is UK produced, more fresh fruit and vegetables which won't be able to get through Dover quickly enough (and store cupboard ingredients). We have an allotment but March is an inconvenient time falling right in the 'hungry gap' where all you have going in the plot is brassicas. So maybe having some tinned veg is the way to go.

Does anyone know if it's possible to bottle and preserve chopped tomatoes and if so how? We will have a glut this year, possibly too much for the freezer.

Aside from that I think the likely shortages/disruption arising from no deal Brexit are:
-fuel
-energy

In event of no deal Brexit I would expect to see some sort of run on the pound, panic buying and sudden inflation. I guess that this would start before Brexit day itself at the point when it became clear that no-deal could in fact happen....

Sounds alarmist and hope that government and negotiators on both sides would never let it get to this point but I don't have very much faith in the way it is unfolding -seems like the sort of thing that everyone says 'surely not' and then we just end up running out of time to get something in place and crashing out :eek:

Husband has an account with a branch of a foreign bank and one phone call switches the contents of his current account to euros or dollars. We've used savings to pay off loan and credit card. I'm looking into a euro savings account with a foreign bank atm for rest of mine.

There's no point in putting off stuff that needs doing because prices won't go down. Looking at prices of log burners and log stores as we have one open fire already.

Have re-negotiated mobile contract, will be checking that gas&elec still on fixed deal and everything else.

Husband just got promoted yesterday so minimum £250 pcm gross extra to play with, and luckily same office which is within walking distance in town centre so no fares.

Arla has said that they supply many supermarkets in UK eg Sainsbury's and Morrisons with milk, but that Arla imports milk and dairy from their farms in EU because UK ISN'T self-sufficient in dairy. Article on MSN today about WTO tariffs - 74% on dairy.

Butter will freeze. Milk will freeze in plastic container with enough headroom for expansion. Tomatoes can be bottled for cooking - have a Google. Rural Americans still do a lot of bottling. If you have a microwave you can sterilize jars in that.

auburnette

Thanks all for the suggestions re tomatoes, we do have a water bath which could potentially be used for the bottling, but maybe a combo of dehydrator and freezing stuff is better/safer. Expecting a glut of apples too so a dehydrator could be useful, I know you can store them for a while but i find they go floury quite fast and I don't like the texture when they do that. Still fine for cooking with obviously.

Other preparations: I think we will avoid going away around the Brexit date, we normally travel to France in March but think we'll move it forwards to February to avoid any issues. If a hard brexit is likely it will presumably be known at least a month or so in advance so currency etc may already have taken a hit, perhaps we will book and pay for as much in advance as possible.

My job would not be at risk in the event of Brexit (in fact it would be likely to create jobs in my area due to work that is currently done in Brussels having to be done in the UK as well) but could be affected by a weak pound/inflation combined with stagnating salary. Planning to fix the mortgage for 5 years in November.

Lots of potatoes coming in from the allotment at the moment, all very floury due to dry conditions, but should make nice chips! Planning on processing and freezing for future use. Freezer is well stocked but in event of power cuts we would be stuffed...not sure there is much that can be done about this. We have a small fridge that can run on gas. However I don't think that residential power cuts lasting more than a few hrs are necessarily so likely in event of hard Brexit as govt/National Grid would first choke back commercial usage to maintain supply.