She’s Back

Knowing his mother was likely going through withdrawal without a working computer, Youngest Son took pity on me and delivered a new one today.  And, bless his heart, he got it up and running for me as well.  Later on I will take both laptops to the computer doctor to see if they can be salvaged for backups.  Thankfully, I have an external hard drive so I didn’t lose anything important.

The end of last week and the weekend were taken up with canning.  I wound up with 54 pints of chicken vegetable soup, 32 half pints of chicken and 24 half pints of the leftover veggies.  I will be concentrating on other preps as I am nearly out of canning jars and definitely out of shelf space.

The weather here is weird.  We have been having beautiful, cool fall temps.  But today the thermometer reads in the mid 80’s with 75% humidity.  But tomorrow promises to be back down to the 60’s.  I like that much better.

So I believe the rest of the afternoon will be spent installing programs and figuring out a new operating system.  Not my most favorite thing to do, but I won’t complain.  I have a computer that works, and that makes me a very happy, chubby granny.  😊

Dead Computer

My main computer went belly up this morning.  The old one I am on right now heats up within minutes.  So I will be off line until Youngest Son brings me a new computer, hopefully over the weekend.  Other than learning some not so nice words while dealing with the dead computer, all is well here in my little corner of the world.

More Canning

Last evening my long, tall son dragged the last eight chickens from my freezer.  This morning I cooked three in stock pots on top of the stove, baked two in a roasting pan in the oven and cooked another three in my electric roaster.  All eight are cooling in bowls and pans on the kitchen table.  As soon as they are cool enough to handle, the meat will be removed from the bones and stored in the fridge.  Tomorrow some of the meat will be canned, part of it in half pint jars, which is a good size for sandwiches like a can of tuna, and more in pints.

My Thursday grocery delivery includes frozen peas and corn, potatoes, onions, carrots and celery.  Lots of them.  These will be chopped and added to chicken in pint jars with a bit of chicken bouillon on top for flavor.  This will be canned as chicken vegetable soup.  If there are any vegetables left over I will use them for vegetable bean soup.

So if things are quiet here, you know that I haven't run away from home.  I am just up to my neck in chicken.  :)

Stand Up For What Is Right

The 'Freedom From Religion Foundation,' an atheist group that is notorious for doing everything they possibly can to eliminate religion from the public square, has been bested by a group of school kids.

A high school in Alabama traditionally offered a prayer over the loudspeakers before football games.  This, of course, caused the atheists to get their knickers in a twist and they pressured school officials to eliminate the prayer and replace it with a moment of silence.

The kids were having none of it.  At the next football game the students stood en masse along with the rest of the fans and loudly recited The Lord's Prayer.  The full article is HERE.

We hear about students who are woefully ignorant when it comes to their grasp of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.  We hear of kids who blindly follow along with whatever is the latest stupidity preached by the lunatic left.  But these kids made a decision to literally stand up for their beliefs.

I applaud this group of students as well as their parents who obviously raised them right.

A Drama Free Life

There have been a couple of days of R & R going on here.  That is par for the course when one has been going nuts with canning.  Now fully rested, it is time to get busy again.

I have eight more whole chickens in the freezer and hopefully my long, tall son will drag four of them out tomorrow so they can thaw and I will then cook them up and can the meat.  I have plans for the last four chickens that include ordering a variety of fresh and frozen vegetables that will be delivered Thursday next week to layer in jars along with the chicken for chicken vegetable soup to can.

Other than plans for the next few days, life just goes quietly on.  There is enough crazy and drama in the news, so I don't need to create any here.  The biggest thing happening will be the arrival of my daughter tomorrow, who has promised to show up with bags of shredded zucchini for my freezer.  I may have to keep some out for a loaf of zucchini bread.

Most times a quiet life and zucchini bread is far preferable to the insanity around us.

Beans, Beans, the Musical Fruit...

Yesterday I cooked up a double batch of baked beans.  The link to the recipe is in the previous post.  Because I got a late start, I didn't get them jarred up and canned until today.

I used half pint jars.  That works out well as a serving for one or two people.  I put a couple of pieces of cooked bacon on top of the beans in each jar.   The last canner load is processing as I write.  A double batch gave me 60 half pint jars of baked beans.

In about an hour this canner load will be done.  And then I do believe a nap is called for.  :)

Keep on prepping.

Bacon Update

Over the weekend I turned 25 lbs. of bacon into 38 half pints to add to the shelves.  A general rule of thumb is that 1 lb. of meat equals one pint canned.  Considering the amount of bacon I set aside for eating and to add to baked beans, along with the amount I consumed for 'quality control,' (Come on.  It is bacon.  The temptation was just too great.) the amount canned was just about right.

Last evening I set 4 quarts of white beans to soaking and they are now in my big electric roaster, cooking.  Later this afternoon I will jar them up, add a little cooked bacon to each jar and process them.  The recipe can be found HERE.

This recipe is kind of fussy and time consuming, what with the pre-cooking, but I have tried several recipes and methods over the years and found this one to be really good.  It is worth the time and trouble.

I have a long list of food I need to can up before prices become too outrageous.   I hope my kids won't be too unhappy with me if I wind up needing them to lug more jars up the stairs.   :)

If you had any doubt...

about what the intentions of the left are, the last 'debate' should have told you.  They don't even try to hide it any more.  They want to control every part of your life.  They want to take your guns.  They want power and they want to keep power.

Rev. Paul over at "Way Up North" has an article that lays it out clearly and completely and is well worth your time to read.  We are in deep doo, folks, and I believe God is the only one who can fix this.

Pray and prepare.

Going AWOL Again

Yesterday 25 lbs. of bacon arrived in my kitchen via my son whom I often refer to as my pack mule for all the supplies he has huffed up the stairs to my apartment over the years.  After we appropriated several slices each for further use, I sliced the rest into one inch pieces, filling roughly six one-gallon bags plus about 3/4 of a quart bag to be used when canning baked beans. 

So I am off to the kitchen to start browning the bacon, packing it into half pint jars and running it through the pressure canner.  I have no clue how long this process will take, but I hope to resurface by Monday.

Have yourselves a lovely weekend.

We Said We Would Never Forget

Those of us who are old enough to remember, know exactly where we were when we heard the news about a plane crashing into the first tower.  We watched in horror as the second plane hit the second tower.  The news of the plane crashes at the Pentagon and in a field in Pennsylvania came later.

Eyes glued to TV screens, we watched the first tower come down, followed by the second.  We saw people running in terror, trying to escape the devastation.  We later learned that over 3,000 lives were lost that terrible day.

That day we came together as a nation.  In New York, strangers clung to each other, eyes wide in fear and horror or with tears streaming down grief stricken faces.  In small towns all across America, folks gathered on street corners, looking up at a sky empty of planes and wondering how on earth something like this could happen here.

Before 9/11, we were a patriotic people.  But the day after, Old Glory flew everywhere.  When the body count came in, we grieved as one.  We gathered in churches and prayed for the souls of the dead and for the families left behind.  We said we would never, ever forget.

But we have forgotten, haven't we.  Oh, we remember during the week that marks each anniversary.  But during the other 51 weeks of the year, we are more divided than we have been since the Civil War.  Many of us are still patriotic.  But too many have forgotten what a truly marvelous nation we live in.  They would rather turn it into something totally unrecognizable. 

On that day of terror, the first responders ran toward the horrors, the saving of lives their first priority.  Over 400 of those brave men and women died in the process.  Today firemen, police, emergency medical personnel still rush to the scene in times of trouble.  But more and more often, they are exposed to hostile actions from those who have absolutely no respect for their bravery and their willingness to stand between us and evil.

I don't ever want to see anything as horrible as we saw on that day.  But I sure wouldn't mind seeing seeing a glimpse of the coming together of our country that existed when we all felt wounded and when we all became angry when we discovered the plot to destroy us and when we felt the pride as one nation that even though evil tried to destroy us, we did not break.  Yeah, I wouldn't mind seeing that again.

How Much Home Canned Food is Enough

The other day I was looking at my shelves full of home canned food, feeling all smug and superior - right up to the point where I actually did an inventory.  Turns out I don't have enough full jars to feed two of us for a year.  And in a crisis situation where I was feeding several family members, the food in jars would be gone quickly.  So much for smug superiority.

When I figured the amounts needed to feed two people, I went with pint jar size.  Figuring one jar each of meat and vegetables daily for the main meal, it would take 365 pints of each for one year.  If we had soup for lunch 3 times weekly, I would need 312 pints of soup, as one pint is a meal for one person.  If we added fruit to our diet, dividing one pint between two people twice a week, I would need 104 pints.  That's over 1100 pints of food.  And that's not counting foods like tomatoes, pasta sauce, chicken broth and other foods used to make different dishes.

Granted, there are other foods in storage like pasta, rice, beans, cornmeal and oatmeal, along with flour and yeast for making bread.  And there are cans of tuna and salmon along with other store bought food in cans.

Thing is...it is easy to fool ourselves into thinking we have enough - to become complacent.  I have 15 family members, including grands and spouses.  I doubt that all of them would come knocking on my door in an emergency situation, but even if half a dozen of them did, I would be hard pressed to be able to feed them for any length of time. 

Now is not the time to slack off.  The world around us grows more insane by the day. 

Keep on prepping.