The Prepping Thread - A Newer Beginning ;)

annieb64

We woke up on Christmas  Eve to find we had no electricity  downstairs.  While DH was testing all the appliances  I was able to make tea and prepare porridge.  The fault was in the last thing he tested-the socket for the gas boiler. We were able to keep warm, cook and listen to music while waiting  for the engineer.
That's  twice in six months I've  been glad of our preparations.  The other time was when there was a burst pipe in town and we had no water all day.

Karmacat

Toonie said:

I found out some disappointing news today, the family I nanny for has decided to emigrate and so I'll be losing my job in September. It's frustrating as they had recently indicated they wanted to keep me on as they were having another child. So, I've already rewritten my CV and applied for two jobs this evening. I'm also going to use my day off this week to pull apart budgets and stores and see where I can make savings and what we've got lurking and so I can then try to get in some extra longer term preps to help out if the job market is tricky.

Sorry to hear your news, Toonie, good for you for getting right on the case and looking for other work.  Depending on where you are in the country, that could be better than you think - I know of two families who'd never have considered having a nanny who've had one for over a year now, because of working at home and needing that constant input, rather than the patchwork of nursery/shared au pair/grannie coming to stay that they relied on before.  Best of luck.

[Deleted User]

It's just the domestic style 'emergency' situation that started me prepping all those years ago and we were mightily glad of it when we got very heavy overnight snow, some 4' of it  back in 1986 when we lived in Kent and were the only house on the estate that had power, spent all day making tea and heating meals for everyone else and also after the hurricane in 1987 where again we were the only house to keep power on the estate and did the same thing.  That and the fact we had a very ancient Lada Riva estate car which not only started but drove in the dreadfully slippery conditions so we could ferry people to work when their cars wouldn't start or were absolutely snowed in. Having had that experience it's just always made sense to be prepared not for the zombie apocalypse but for power outs, bad weather even hurricanes.  Never once though did I think we'd be dealing with a pandemic in 2020 but the preps and equipment would have served us well should we have needed them in the early frankly very scary days of it.  It's a sensible thing to do and has become a way of life now.

Toonie

Karmacat said:

Sorry to hear your news, Toonie, good for you for getting right on the case and looking for other work.  Depending on where you are in the country, that could be better than you think - I know of two families who'd never have considered having a nanny who've had one for over a year now, because of working at home and needing that constant input, rather than the patchwork of nursery/shared au pair/grannie coming to stay that they relied on before.  Best of luck.

Thanks Karmacat

I'm in London so it's quite a busy job market, but it's trying to find the right position in the right area. A while back I was working 13 hour days and then had an hours travel each way (as long as traffic wasn't too bad ad the buses were running on time) and it did me in, so need to find something that won't destroy me. Day off tomorrow so I'm going to do a little gardening (raised veg beds) and sort through the cupboards and see what is knocking around.

[Deleted User]

I have quite a lot of stocks that are home dehydrated and I'm going to use them up over the next few weeks and replace with fresh now we're beginning to get local produce in the shops, a friend has decided to make up soup and stew packs from combinations of home dehydrated things ready to go into the pot which seems such a sensible idea I'm going to follow suit.  I'm going to dehydrate as much of our own home growns as is possible, I think it's a more sensible way of storage than freezing and I've got the space to store things here in the storeroom.  I shall use the vacuum sealer to minimise space and store the sealed packs in big lock and lock containers out of the light in a cool room. From the news this morning covid isn't going to stop making life somewhat limited for a while yet so I shall keep stock levels up to where they are now for as long as seems sensible.

silvasava

Are you going to try dehydrating your own cheese Boazu? I know you posted a while ago about buying some just wondered if you thought it might be worthwhile doing it yourself.

[Deleted User]

I can certainly give it a try, I think I'd have to use the cheese plane and get the slices as thin as I can but that's a really good idea Silvasava.  What has been a real success through the winter has been the dried herbs from the garden, they've kept really well in ordinary glass screw cap jars in the darkness of a cupboard under the work surface and the flavour is still as good as when they were first dried.

Floss

I have always had home dried herbs in my cupboard, ever since I got my first garden back in 1987. It's so easy to do.

Living_proof

Just recently I have been getting masses of apricots, plums and peaches in the Lidl F & V Boxes and I don't have room in the freezer to keep them, so I have pureed and dried as fruit leathers which are dead easy to store and over the summer I will attempt using them (rehydrated) to make ice cream. I have masses of stored veg dried and must start using up to make way for this season's produce. The texture is seldom the same but it's a great way of avoiding waste and having stocks which don't rely on electricity to survive.

[Deleted User]

A good picking of rhubarb arriving from the allotment to be processed and dehydrated today...I declare 2021 season of prepping to be under way!