The Prepping Thread - A Newer Beginning ;)

Whitefiver

In the days when we had both, Mrs Fiver always used to add angelica (not the green sugary stuff) from the garden into her stewed rhubarb or rhubarb crumble - lovely.

MrsCD

boultdj said:

The white part of the rhubarb is where the plant stores the sugar, I've found by including that part I can cut the sugar in half when making a crumble, my Mum always cut the white bit off, if only she knew.

I never knew that either! I was always told to cut it off.

annieb64

We got rid of our angelica as it was taking over the garden!

boultdj

MrsCD said:

boultdj said:

The white part of the rhubarb is where the plant stores the sugar, I've found by including that part I can cut the sugar in half when making a crumble, my Mum always cut the white bit off, if only she knew.

I never knew that either! I was always told to cut it off.

I was told it about 27 years ago by a neighbour who was a farmers daughter, she was in here 80's then and she saw me coming back from my Mum's with a bag of rhubarb and asked if she could have a stick as she had not had any for years, that's when she told me about the white bit of the rhubarb, she got it from her gran.  As they say. you learn something new everyday.    

MingVase

Talking today on another forum about the way ahead, the way things here are going. The shortages of fresh food to come, because no pickers and no drivers. The national grid struggling and about to get worse when winter comes. The number of people out of work or unable to work due to long coivd, etc etc. Interesting discussion. A lot of people think things will deteriorate and we'll end up back in the 70s. I lived through the 70s once and could do it again - but it was not a happy time at all.  If anybody remembers The Boys From the Black Stuff on tv - I still to this day can't watch it. Too many bad memories  of hubby always unemployed, us living on social security, no work to be got anywhere. I was working 2 jobs, one weekend night shift and one early morning cleaning. Compared to now, it seems a very bleak time. I wonder how people now would cope if it does happen..

Nargleblast

Ming, much the same as we have seen over the last 18 months with the pandemic situation. Some would fall to bits, others would just crack on and deal with it because there's no alternative.

thriftwizard

Food & fuel prices have definitely risen quite massively lately & I too have found myself wondering gently about the 70s; I was a teenager & didn't have too bad a time, but there were plenty of days when we went to bed hungry. Not starving, but far from full. Mum did an amazing job of keeping two teens fed on the pittance that she was able to earn (our elder brothers having already left home) considering that she hates cooking, but I can't help thinking that my passion for growing food, and my younger brother's, is something to do with never having enough when we were young!

Drove through our county town today and was dismayed by the number of empty & shuttered shop & restaurant fronts. Staycationers everywhere, and the roads are a nightmare already, but there's nowhere for them to eat...

pollyanna_26

I remember the 70s Mar and the Boys from the Blackstuff. I watched it once but could never watch it again. Mans inhumanity to man just like the Jarrow Lads,

pollyx

MingVase

Very true Polly. Folk never change eh?

Karmacat

Urg.  I remember the 70s too - I didn't watch Blackstuff - I was in the first few years of my career, studying at evening class, unpaid overtime, a new job every year, a lot of liquid and other refreshment, etc.  But the tv programme I can't watch these days is Life On Mars, about going back in time to the police in the 70s.  The attitude towards women is exactly what I remember it was horrible.  

I've seen a lot of articles recently about how the pandemic has scrubbed out years of social, economic and political gains for women, there's a real echo in that.  

We'll survive that, of course - if you look at documentaries of the 1980s, everything looks so poor, but it *felt* better: my nan's council house was renovated (she got an upstairs toilet); my mum and dad got central heating; I had 3 or 4 pairs of shoes to my name, as well as wellingtons, rather than the two I'd had previously.  Like ming, I'm not sure how most people nowadays would cope with that, though people who're *already* living in poverty right now are coping with issues that are very similar.

But our production system right now seems to be in a right mess: food gets grown, but not harvested/ processed/ packed/ transported.  Covid and it's effects on our global trading system, plus local-to-us Brexit issues, are causing trouble, and they're going to cause more.  Plus the rising cost of energy production, as laid out (a little repetitively, it has to be said ) by Tim Watkins.