Home gardening offers ways to trim grocery costs [Survival Today, an on going thread]

Dallas News.com ^ | March 14th, 2008 | DEAN FOSDICK

[nw_arizona_granny]

Americans finding soaring food prices hard to stomach can battle back by growing their own food. [Click image for a larger version] Dean Fosdick Dean Fosdick

Home vegetable gardens appear to be booming as a result of the twin movements to eat local and pinch pennies.

At the Southeastern Flower Show in Atlanta this winter, D. Landreth Seed Co. of New Freedom, Pa., sold three to four times more seed packets than last year, says Barb Melera, president. "This is the first time I've ever heard people say, 'I can grow this more cheaply than I can buy it in the supermarket.' That's a 180-degree turn from the norm."

Roger Doiron, a gardener and fresh-food advocate from Scarborough, Maine, said he turned $85 worth of seeds into more than six months of vegetables for his family of five.

A year later, he says, the family still had "several quarts of tomato sauce, bags of mixed vegetables and ice-cube trays of pesto in the freezer; 20 heads of garlic, a five-gallon crock of sauerkraut, more homegrown hot-pepper sauce than one family could comfortably eat in a year and three sorts of squash, which we make into soups, stews and bread."

[snipped]

She compares the current period of market uncertainty with that of the early- to mid-20th century when the concept of victory gardens became popular.

"A lot of companies during the world wars and the Great Depression era encouraged vegetable gardening as a way of addressing layoffs, reduced wages and such," she says. "Some companies, like U.S. Steel, made gardens available at the workplace. Railroads provided easements they'd rent to employees and others for gardening."

[TenthAmendmentChampion]

From:

Dot-Painted China

On its own, a dot looks very lonely indeed. But group several together and they make a striking impression. Consider, for example, the patterned wings of a ladybug or monarch butterfly. Luckily, Mother Nature doesn't have a monopoly on making things beautiful with spots -- you can do the same with ceramic or porcelain dishes, basic art supplies, and a little imagination.

Putting paint to porcelain is easier than you think. Uncomplicated designs can be done freehand; for others, use our templates or create your own. You'll trace the shapes using transfer paper and a ballpoint pen, then cover those marks with painted dots -- paint applicator makes it a cinch to do this neatly. The delightful freckles lend themselves to a variety of motifs, from organic florals to monograms to geometric patterns. Those pieces you plan to use for food and drink should be heated in the oven to set the paint. If you can bear to part with them, dot-painted ceramics make wonderful gifts. Arrange the ones you keep on open shelves or behind glass cabinet doors-they are, after all, works of art.

Tools and Materials
Baby wipes
Scissors
Red transfer paper
Clear tape
Ceramic plate or other item
Ballpoint pen
Food-safe ceramic paint (such as Porcelaine 150)
Paper muffin cups
Wooden coffee stirrers
Paint applicator bottles
Straight pin

Dot-Painting How-To
If you make a mistake, remove errant paint with a baby wipe.

1. Photocopy or print templates and enlarge or reduce as desired; cut out. Cut transfer paper slightly larger than template. Place it under template, and tape both to plate. Firmly trace template with a ballpoint pen.

2. Mix paint colors (we added white to make lighter shades), then pour into applicator bottle.

3. Practice making dots on scrap paper: Squeeze bottle gently for small dots and harder for larger ones. Make dots on traced design (use pin to unclog bottle tip as necessary). Let dry 2 hours; remove transfer lines with baby wipe. Heat in 300-degree oven for 30 minutes. To store extra paint, insert pin into bottle tip.

First Published: January 2006

[nw_arizona_granny]

Thanks for the ping, N A Granny!<<<

I ran across your bookmark post back a few hundred pings and did not know if I had missed it or once again forgotten one of the names from the thread.

LOL, you are welcome and I am honored that you came to read and join in the fun.

[TenthAmendmentChampion]

I can imagine, if cheese is a main staple for you, that the situation would make you very nervous. I wish I had some good advice for you. Cheese is up to 3.70 a pound here in California and undoubtedly going higher. There's no good substitute for it.

My brother in law used to own a pizza shop, and he said the same thing. The price fluctuated a lot, and many times the water content was so high it was difficult to grate easily even with a commercial grater. It was just soggy and hard to use. And he wasn't even worried about nutritional quality or additives!

If I hear of anything or run across anything that can help you I will post it right away. I hope the situation doesn't get worse... but then I guess that's why we're here on this thread.

[nw_arizona_granny]

Resources for Grains, Beans and Dried Foods
http://www.waltonfeed.com

Your list of links is a good one, Walton is the only one that I have personally dealt with, and hope to again.

I am actually hungry for their bags of fresh oatmeal, from the mills. It comes in 25# bags or is it#20, all their grains that is in bags, will have different mills, in different areas names on them and none that I bought were outside the U.S.

My first bag of oatmeal from them was $6.75 for the bag, I am sure it double that now.........

But look at what you paid for that 2 or 3 pound box on the shelf.

Dig into the Walton how to pages and links, lots of historical items there to read.

[TenthAmendmentChampion]

From their most recent catalog:

A076 Oats-Quick Rolled 50# bag $24.25
A077 Oats-Reg. Rolled 50# bag $24.25
A083 Oats-Quick Rolled 25# bag $14.05
A084 Oats-Reg. Rolled 25# bag $14.05

The days of $6 oats are long gone, it appears... organic oats are double that price. Wow.

[nw_arizona_granny]

Have you guys heard of this?

http://thesurvivalpodcast.com/forum/index.php

I haven’t listened, sounds interesting, if they are not all hung up on “Bush did it”.

Most of the stuff they say Bush did, was done by Clinton.

The Concentration camps are Clinton and it was Clinton who messed up FEMA.

When Clinton took office, FEMA was for the study of disasters and produced maps, that showed things like projected 100 and 500 years danger of floods..............I know, as I used the maps in my real estate office and still have a box of them in my storage room.

One wall of my office was the FEMA flood maps, so people could see what they are buying.

This area is famous for the cute little desert washes, that will wash a car or building away if it rains hard enough.

Across the street from me, is a lot, someone bought it, took the old mobile off [LOL, not nearly as old as mine] and brought in big equipment, made the entire 2+ acres into a level sandbox, which blows in my windows.

And are now setting up for the foundation of a home.

There is a for sale sign on the south half of the lot, we have one acre minimum lot size for a residence, and if it is sold before we get a good rain, someone will think they bought a nice lot, but never look at the big wash across the street or a flood map...........and about 2/3 of the lot should not be built on.

[nw_arizona_granny]

I have and use the Freeplay radio, every day, about the same as the one in the photo, has a wind up generator for when there is not electric and a solar panel for charging.

[nw_arizona_granny]

Yes, TenthAmendmentChampion is a Great addition to this thread... Glad she is here and sharing her wisdom as well!<<<

She has certainly picked up the thread, it needed a boost.

Yes, I am still here.

Did you quit cooking?

[nw_arizona_granny]

Thank you Nellie Mae.

Check in more often, at times I worry about you kids.

[nw_arizona_granny]

The Major Flaw in China’s Melamine Crackdown
Business Week ^ | November 20 | Bruce Einhorn

Posted on Sunday, November 23, 2008 4:44:41 PM by nickcarraway

Finally, some additional numbers from the Chinese government about the extent of the poisoned milk scandal. According to the Ministry of Health, 50,741 Chinese children sickened by the tainted milk have been released from hospitals in the past two months. Another 1,041 remain hospitalized. Conspicuously absent from the Xinhua report: The number of deaths. When the story first broke in September, the media reported four children had died as a result of having consumed large amounts of melamine milk. Are we to believe that of the tens of thousands of other children sickened, no one else died?

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2137133/posts?page=1

[TenthAmendmentChampion]

This area is famous for the cute little desert washes, that will wash a car or building away if it rains hard enough.

Across the street from me, is a lot, someone bought it, took the old mobile off [LOL, not nearly as old as mine] and brought in big equipment, made the entire 2+ acres into a level sandbox, which blows in my windows.

And are now setting up for the foundation of a home.

There is a for sale sign on the south half of the lot, we have one acre minimum lot size for a residence, and if it is sold before we get a good rain, someone will think they bought a nice lot, but never look at the big wash across the street or a flood map...........and about 2/3 of the lot should not be built on.

LOL "cute!" Sure!

We owned property west of the White Tank Mountains on the western outskirts of Phoenix. Some of the lots were set in a flood zone and the houses had to be built above the estimated 100 year flood level. It's shocking that the house lot you're looking at was allowed to be done below the future flood level.

There was a community in Phoenix built very close to the old floodway for Cave Creek. The houses flooded out when a monsoon came every August, and "no one new why." Someone finally looked at the floodplain map and whoops, the creek wanted to flow through there. They had to dig a huge diversion canal to take the water away. It fed into another diversion canal that ultimately emptied into the Agua Fria River. Fascinating that water diversion would be a problem in the desert... but when the rain comes at over 1" per hour, and everything's built up from concrete and asphalt, the water has to go somewhere!

[nw_arizona_granny]

Thanks for the Melamine update, this will fix your link, as it picked up the words as part of the address:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2137133/posts?page=1

[nw_arizona_granny]

Bath Fizzies<<<

If they do not hold together, then crush them and made then back into ‘bath salts’.

A few years ago, the recipes for ‘bath cookies’ went around the internet and many of the soap makers could not get them to hold together.

[nw_arizona_granny]

Good, news that someone is painting on china again.

It was a big hobby about 1890, all the ladies did it and I have in the past owned a couple of plates that were as fine as any oil painting.

Beauty feeds the soul, we need more of it.

[nw_arizona_granny]

It was just soggy and hard to use.<<<

The package that I am working on now, would not be grateable. [Yes, I invent words and then mis-spell them]

The price sounds about right, all Scott tells me is it has gone up, LOL, he does not want to hear me moan and order him to buy more store brands.

I am forced to buy cheap and he is one of those ‘name brand’ buyers.

But I control myself, as without him, I would not be able to eat or get supplies.

[kalee]

I have a set of 8 dinner plates and a complete luncheon service that were painted around 1911. Lovely hand painted roses adorn every piece. The colors are soft pastels, very dainty but elegant and a labor of love by the painter.

[nw_arizona_granny]

A084 Oats-Reg. Rolled 25# bag $14.05<<<

That is the one I bought [several times] and if it has gone up that much, do the math on the one on the store shelves and it will still be cheaper.

[nw_arizona_granny]

but when the rain comes at over 1” per hour, and everything’s built up from concrete and asphalt, the water has to go somewhere!<<<

It is recorded here 4 1/2 inches in 30 minutes, this happened several times to me when I lived on the mountain and it would wash my road out in 2 places, $400.00 to fix it and it might rain again the same day it was fixed.

Even here, a friend, years ago, worked at the Soil Conservation Federal Office, when the Federal photos came in, he came to check on us, as they showed us as a solid sheet of water.

We had been, I watched it happen, rain, look out the window, there are cute little washes, only inches or so wide, every few feet, look again, more of them, until it was a solid sheet, had it gotten any higher we would have been in trouble.

The east end of the mobile is at ground level, but the west end, some 55’ away, is 28 inches off the ground, a good slope for taking off water.

We have lost many cars in the flash floods and I took photos of a Greyhound bus washed off the highway..........it wasn’t so funny the next year, when we almost went off at the same spot, in a Toyota pickup, it was only Bills knowledge and strength, that kept us on the road, and it was at the deepest, maybe 6 inches, but the power of it.

Those flood maps, should be included in every escrow, but folks would not read it, as they don’t read contracts.

[nw_arizona_granny]

Your plates sound beautiful.

The world needs more beauty, all this hard plastic so called beauty, modern junk, is ugly to me.

There was a time when we had good china for special dinners and used handmade items.

Not so today.

I am so glad you still have a set of the beautiful dishes that we once used.

Those old plates were often hung on the walls as a decoration, I know I did for years, bought them whenever I saw one that I liked and added it to my wall.

In the old china catalogs, you will find blank plates for painting on.

I think it went out, about 1920.

[nw_arizona_granny]

This morning I got a request for my awesome blueberry pie... what a joke,
last year, at the last minute I realized that I had made extra pie crust so
I opened a can of blueberry pie filling and added some frozen blueberries.
That pie got rave reviews from my nephews and my husband!

So, of course I can make my secret recipe again... with pleasure.

Rina

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bread-machine/