Prepping Lesson Learned

I had half a head of lettuce in my fridge that needed to be used up, so I made myself a salad to go with supper.  There was no Ranch Dressing in the fridge so I raided my pantry closet, knowing there were three bottles of it on the shelf.

When I opened the dressing bottle, the contents smelled odd.  When I looked closely, I saw the color was darker than it should be.  The second bottle was the same as was the third.  They went in the trash.

The expiration date on all three bottles was Feb 2017.  Ordinarily I don't pay much attention to expiration dates or 'Best if used by' dates.  Many commercially canned foods are good long after those dates.  Apparently Ranch Dressing isn't one of them.

I don't know if the room where they were stored was too warm or if it was because so many foods like that are now packaged in plastic rather than glass.  I have had the same problem with ketchup in plastic bottles.  I also had one jar of mayo that tasted off, but I think that was because I bought the cheaper store brand.

I know there are dry mixes for ranch dressing.  I may try that.  I don't use much dressing, so it makes more sense to use a mix rather than try to keep bottles of it on hand.

I also found this recipe that looks good, so I may try it before buying the commercial mix.

RANCH DRESSING MIX

1/2 cup nonfat dry powdered milk
2 tablespoons dry parsley flakes
1 teaspoon dill weed
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon onion flakes
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon celery seed
1 teaspoon brown sugar

Mix all ingredients. Store in an airtight container. To make dressing, mix 1 heaping tablespoon into 1 cup buttermilk that's been mixed with 1 cup mayonnaise. Stir until well blended. Store covered in refrigerator until ready to use. Wait at least 30 minutes for flavors to combine.

RANCH DIP

1 cup mayonnaise
1 cup sour cream
1 heaping tablespoon Ranch Dressing Mix

Stir all ingredients together and refrigerate for 2 or more hours before serving to allow flavors to blend.

Buttermilk is not something  have on hand, but  found powdered buttermilk in the grocery store next to the non-fat instant powdered milk and I bought one.  I may get a couple more. I'll let you know how it all works out.

An Experiment...

Some time back I saw a few videos on homesteading and prepping channels about using Crisco to make candles.  As it happens, I have three or four large cans of Crisco that I bought at Sam's Club several years ago.  I find that I rarely use it for baking or frying like my mother did.  So the cans were taking up space that could be used for other things.

I filled a pint jar with Crisco, leaving about an inch of space at the top.  I have some utility- type candles that are about half an inch thick and 6 inches long.  I shoved one of these down into the center of the jar and lit the wick.  I let it burn for 8 hours and found it had burned down less than half an inch.   I don't yet know how far down it will burn before it goes out. There was no noticeable odor or smoke.

The Crisco burns sort of like the wax in any other container candle.  It melts as it burns so there is very little unmelted Crisco clinging to the inside of the jar.  I used a regular pint jar.  I'm not sure if the Crisco would have melted from the sides of a wide mouth jar as well as it does in the small mouth jar.

I have 6 more of the utility candles, so I will make more of the Crisco candles to use as emergency lighting.  I also have a couple of cases of the very small canning jars that hold 1/2 cup each.  I am wondering if I could also fill them with Crisco and use thick birthday cake candles for the wicks.  Those would be like over sized tea lights.

Sometimes ideas work and sometimes, not so much.  I was kind of surprised that the Crisco candle actually worked.  Candles don't give off a lot of light, but in a pinch, they are better than no light at all. 

Tuesday Tidbits

It has been a week and still no window guys.  Guess they are in hiding.  My landlord hasn't been able to get them to come back here to finish the job.  I sure hope he didn't pay them in advance.

I am loving the fact that Duane is back working at the restaurant where one of the perks is a meal each day he works.  The other evening he shared a meal of Chicken Alfredo.  It was delicious.  The man knows how to cook.  This from someone who, as a teenager, thought peanut butter and dill pickle sandwiches were the height of gourmet cooking.  (Shudder.)

So what does a quilter do when she can't get to her sewing machine?  She cuts out more quilt pieces, of course.  Spent some time yesterday cutting some of the scraps left over from other projects into squares for a scrap quilt.  Or maybe two quilts.  I have lots of scraps. 

Over the weekend I dehydrated 10 lbs. of potatoes and 5 lbs. of onions.  I decided to make my own packaged scalloped potato mix instead of ordering those boxed scalloped potatoes from the store.  I just put 3 cups of dehydrated potato slices into freezer bags and added one recipe of the basic sauce mix in a sandwich bag, on top of the potato slices, and sealed the freezer bag.  So now when I want scalloped potatoes, all I have to do is grab a bag of mix from the pantry, dump it into a crock pot, add water and butter and ta-da...scalloped potatoes for supper.  I can always add a jar of my home canned ham cubes or bacon or shredded cheese about an hour before serving.  The recipe is here.

Is anyone besides me already tired of political ads and politics 24/7 on most of the news outlets?  Good grief!  We have a year and a half to go until the next presidential election.  Give it a rest for a little while before we have total politics burn-out.  And as a side note, someone needs to tell Bernie et al, there is no such thing as free lunch.  Someone has to pay the bills for their 'Free Medicare For All' ideas.  A good sized chunk of money is taken from my Social Security every month to cover my Medicare.  I'm not complaining.  I have decent coverage.  But it is not free.  Nothing is.  (Soapbox kicked back into the corner now.)

Not much else going on here in my little corner of the world.  Outside it is cool and rainy.  Inside it is warm and cozy.  I have lots to do to keep me busy.  Life is good.  :)

The Light in the Tunnel Was a Freight Train...

headed my way.

The window guys did manage to install the two remaining windows in my living room on Tuesday.  Wednesday morning they did some work on the outside of the building.  I haven't seen them since. I wouldn't mind so much except for the fact that they moved furniture again - a couple of pieces into my bedroom and the rest taking up most of the floor space in my living room.  I can't get to the new windows to open them to let in the lovely spring air.  I can't get to my sewing table because one of my shelving units now sits in front of it.  They did cover my sewing table that holds several quilt tops I am working on, but they neglected to cover my sewing machine.  I wonder if I can get the dust out of it so it isn't ruined.  Sigh.

I called my landlord but he had no better luck in getting them back here to put up the trim around the windows and straighten things up.  I thought about going all mad-as-a-hornet old lady on them, but realized that if they didn't care enough to move things so a woman with mobility issues could easily walk in her living room, I doubted they would get the point.  I have come to the conclusion that good manners and common sense are basically a thing of the past.

So now that I have griped enough, the rest of the week has been productive.  I have 10 lbs. of sliced potatoes in the dehydrators.  Tomorrow I will dry 5 lbs. of onions. 

Earlier I had dehydrated the cranberry pulp left over from making cranberry juice, so I dug that out and turned it into powder.  I now have nearly two pints of cranberry powder.  I know it can be used for flavoring like in cranberry/banana bread, but I wonder if it could be mixed with something like lemonade and honey as a tea and used in place of the cranberry juice that I keep on hand for urinary infections.  I remember that years ago I bought cranberry powder at a pet store, on the advice of my vet, to treat a cat with a urinary infection.  I may have to experiment with it.

My kids always get me something nice for Mother's Day and my birthday in June.  This year I have something specific in mind.  I can no longer drive or even go out without help.  So I talked with my youngest daughter Jeri, and she is going to take me to a huge thrift store nearby.  I love rummaging about in thrift stores and particularly want to add to my collection of reading material along with browsing among the kitchen stuff.  David called today and I talked with him about a trip to Sam's Club to stock up on some of the things I can't order with my grocery delivery service or are cheaper at Sam's.  He thought that was a great idea.  Jill doesn't know it yet, but she will be taking me to the fabric store.  I need fabric for the backs of quilts, quilt batting and a few miscellaneous sewing notions.  Duane can't drive yet because of the effects of his stroke, so we won't be going anywhere, but once in a while he brings me food from the restaurant where he is working, so I will let him off the hook!  Today he showed up with a half a pizza, so I didn't have to cook supper.  Last Sunday he brought me some sliced turkey, ham and roast beef along with a big bowl of mixed fresh fruit.  I'd say that was more than enough of a gift.  :)

So that's what is going on in my little corner of the world.  Even with a couple of irritations, life is still pretty darned good!

Keep smiling and keep prepping.  :)

There is light at the end of the tunnel...

and also in my living room.

The windows guys showed up bright and early this morning.  They don't know how lucky they are that I had already had my first cup of coffee.

They are busy tearing things apart and hopefully, they will be just as good at putting them back together again.  On the up side, it is not below freezing outside this time.  The plywood that was covering one window opening is gone before I painted flowers all over it as I had threatened to do.

I will return when things get back to what passes for normal here in my little corner of the world.  :)

Just a Bit of a Ramble

It has been one of those weeks when nothing of any great value gets done, but lots of little chores are accomplished.

First off, Bella the Rat Terrier stayed with me for three extra days, not that I'm complaining, mind you!  Apparently the restaurant where Duane is working was so happy to have him back at work that they scheduled him for more days than he thought they would.  So Vicki's Doggie Day Care Service was called upon to help out.  And when there is a pup to pet and belly rub and spoil, not much else gets done, especially when said dog is afraid of the thunder when a storm rolled through on Wednesday morning.  If I sat at my desk, she was under it with her chin on my foot.  If I sat in my recliner, she was on my lap, snuggling and trembling.  I don't think she got more than two feet away from me all morning.  But once the storm passed, she laid claim to my green fuzzy blanket and snoozed until Duane picked her up later in the day.  She went home Wednesday evening in order to be there when her owner arrived on Thursday.  I miss her.

I have four large jars of bread and butter pickles in my pantry.  I can not eat an entire jar of pickles and chances are pretty good that if I put a large opened jar of pickles in the fridge, I will either lose it or forget about it.  So I re-can them into half pint jars.  This was the plan until I discovered I am low on canning lids.  Canning lids are not in the catalog I use for ordering groceries, but I have found a couple of places where I can order them in bulk, so that is on my 'to do' list for next month. 

I re-can several food items that I buy in bulk - usually in #10 cans - that are cheaper to buy than individual cans.  There was a time when I would get 25 lb. boxes of tomatoes from the Farmer's Market and make my own pasta sauce, tomato sauce and ketchup, but these days, age and arthritis have slowed down that process.  Re-canning makes it possible to get some foods at a good price and put them up in smaller batches that work better for a single person living alone.  I have done the same thing with cheese sauce and nacho cheese sauce, both of which turn out just fine.  Pickles turn out just a wee bit softer than the original, but that doesn't bother me at all. 

Most grocery stores have a shelf of bulk foods.  Mine includes instant mashed potatoes in a 3.5 lb. carton.  I will buy two or three cartons and divide the contents into single servings, stored in zip lock bags.  If I want flavored mashed potatoes, I just add a little garlic powder or onion powder or parsley flakes when I make it.

There was a time when I thought it was a sin to serve anything that wasn't totally made from scratch.  But that was when I had a huge garden and when I milked my own cow and raised my own chickens.  And when I was decades younger.  I have since changed my mind.

I know how to make chocolate or butterscotch pudding from scratch, but I prefer to add milk to a mix and whisk it for a couple of minutes instead of standing at my stove and cooking the pudding.  Sometimes I would rather use a Hamburger Helper mix for a quick meal rather than making a casserole from scratch.  Same with stuffing or the mashed potatoes.  Those of us with mobility issues often look for methods of doing things that don't hurt.  But it seems we need permission to use convenience foods because our mothers and grandmother cooked everything from scratch.  Sometimes I use store bought mixes and sometimes I make my own.  But if they will make life a little bit more bearable, it is OK.

And that is enough rambling for one day.

This is me...wishing all of you a blessed Easter.

Survive and Thrive

In my travels through the Internet, I found that FEMA had once recommended that citizens keep a three day supply of food and water in their homes.  Then their recommendation was six weeks worth of supplies.  The latest FEMA warning I read says that six months worth of food and water is recommended and they talk about power outages lasting that long.  Do they know something we don't?

We have become a nation of selfish, lazy people.  I wish I had a dime for every time someone has remarked that they wouldn't go to all the work of preserving their own food because they can just buy what they want at the store.  And I might add, pay a whopping price for organic, non GMO food.

People don't know how to do much of anything any more.  Why bother learning the old skills when you can just hire someone else to do the work.  Or push a button on the microwave.  Or Google to find out whatever you want to know.  This got me to thinking about how my grandparents were able to cope in their world without electricity and running water.

At Grandma's farm in northern Minnesota, water was obtained by pumping it into buckets at the hand pump outside the back door and hauling it into the house.  A bucket of drinking water with a dipper in it was kept on a stool in the kitchen by the back door.  If hot water was needed, it was heated in big pots on a wood burning stove.

Meals were cooked and bread was baked in that same wood burning stove in the kitchen.  That meant that Grandma and her daughters needed to know how much wood to use in order to cook food or bake bread but not burn it.  Someone also needed to know how to cut down trees, how to season the wood so it would burn properly and how to cut it up into pieces that would fit in the stove's burn compartment, as well as how to cut kindling to get the fire started.

Grandma didn't have an electric refrigerator, even after the family finally got electricity in the house.  She had a wooden, tin lined ice box.  One door opened to shelves that held the food and another compartment held blocks of ice.  There was a tray below that held the water from the melting ice.

 In the country there were no ice delivery services as there were in the cities.  To get the blocks of ice, in the dead of winter, Grandpa and his sons hitched up a hay wagon to their team of horses and went to a nearby frozen  lake.  They used hand saws to cut through the thick ice and cut the ice into blocks.  They loaded the blocks onto the wagon and drove the team back home.

 A large hole had been dug in the side of the hill behind the house.  It was like a small cave with steps leading down into it and wooden beams shoring up the ceiling and walls.  There was a wooden door installed at ground level that when closed acted like a trap door.  This was their root cellar where potatoes, cabbages, carrots and rutabagas were kept.  It was in this root cellar the blocks of ice were hauled and packed in thick straw, where they remained frozen all summer for use in the ice box.

In the summer, Grandpa and the boys would load a small wood stove onto a wagon.  Grandma would get together food for a few days, canning jars and canning supplies and off the family would go to the blueberry bogs north of their home.  There the kids would pick blueberries and Grandma would can them up in jars using the wood stove for heat.  They slept on quilts under the wagon at night and worked during the day until Grandma had filled all her jars with canned blueberries, usually enough to last a year.  Then they would pack up and go home.

I remember walking to the barn with my Uncle Kenneth when he went to milk the cows by the light of a kerosene lantern.  The fresh milk was run through a hand cranked cream separator, the milk running out a spout into a bucket on one side and the cream on another side.  Grandma would churn much of the cream into butter.

The family kept a huge garden and Grandma canned most of the vegetables, but she stored some of them in the root cellar to have fresh over the winter.  She washed clothes in a wash tub using a washboard and handmade lye soap.  Her clothes dryer was a rope strung between two trees and a bag full of clothespins.  She and her daughters sewed their own clothes as well as shirts for the boys.  They saved chicken feathers to stuff pillows with.  They stuffed mattresses with straw.  They sold eggs and butter to pay for what they couldn't make themselves.  During the Depression, some of the girls taught in rural schools and some of the boys rode freight trains west to earn money on wheat thrashing crews or picking potatoes in Idaho, all of them sending money home to help the family.

Grandma, Grandpa and their nine children not only survived, but thrived because they knew how to do things.  The family had greater importance in their eyes than families seem to today.  I have a hard time envisioning kids today working as hard as my Dad and his siblings did, without complaint, to see that the family had what they needed.  Given the same living conditions, and that's pretty much what we will have if the lights go out for an extended period of time, I have to wonder just how many these days would be able to cope.