Posted on 03/25/2013 1:33:13 PM PDT by Kartographer
Huge sales on food items at the supermarket are so tempting. It's an opportunity to save lots of money and ensure plenty of cheap meals (and "pantry shopping" when you're out of money or time) for days to come. But food isn't cheap if it spoils and you have to dump it, and some foods have a shorter shelf life than you might think.
Here's an overview of foods to stock up on, and those you should buy as needed.
(Excerpt) Read more at shine.yahoo.com ...
for cost reason i did not keep air on all the time. what i found that goes bad quickly in heat is lemon juice yeast parmasean cheese.
also salad dressing not too good shortly after expiration.
the part about pickles surprised me
i have been makibg home made laundry detergent. its awesome. turned about 10-20 people who in turn turned on more. it cost abt 4 cents a load. instructions on you tube.
fels naptha bar of soap, borax and arm and hammer washing soda.
you can buy all three at ace hardware or walmart. stock up.
each batch makes 10 gallons. it good for HE washers. also good for those with sensitive skin. everyone raves about it
Sounds like it could be used against "zombies" as a bio-toxin stand off weapon. Just have to design a proper delivery platform. I wonder if it would keep critters away from the garden or draw them?
But who buys pickles in a can? Surely they would be good for a long time in a vac sealed glass jar.
if the olive oil goes bad use it as lantern oil. OO doesnt smoke up like other oils. i use it with lemon juice as furnture polish.
Great advice!
Part of my problem is I don’t know if I would recognize a rancid oil.
I guess I could compare the smell/taste to a freshly bought one.
Rancid oil, you may not not know it going in, but you will going out.
LOL
Bump!
“...nothing beats the scott 1000 rolls.”
We stock up on TP and paper towels too, but in my opinion Scott’s 1000 TP is not economical. It takes more per use. It is not good TP. Only thing that is sometimes going for it is that it is ‘cheap’...in more ways than one. As long as the good stuff is available, we buy on sale and enjoy. If at some point after the shtf and we run out, it is corncob or catalog time...or maybe it is time to use plantain leaves (the broadleaf weed that grows in your yard), they are healing as well, if soreasses sets in... :)
Paper towels do have many uses, though I think they are a poor choice for drying things, mopping up etc as long as we can launder cloth towels. I find the select-a-size useful as a hankerchief. Sanitary, more effective than facial tissues, and may be used more than once.
As I mentioned in my earlier post, we make our own soap, as grandma did, using fat/grease and lye. There are many good recipes available on the internet. We turn all our fat/grease from cooking into soap. We use coconut oil for many things, including deep frying, and maybe once a month or so we start over with fresh oil and turn the old stuff into soap, along with other accumulated fats. Once you get the hang of it, it is easy. We use bars in the shower (I use it for body and hair) and we grate it for the laundry. We have used it in the dishwasher successfully, though we usually use ‘Cascade’ or equivalent.
Yes, paper items are easily stored, but why be concerned about rotating them? No deteriation likely.
The Five Healthiest Backyard Weeds
Christopher Wanjek, LiveScience’s Bad Medicine Columnist
Date: 31 July 2011
http://www.livescience.com/15322-healthiest-backyard-weeds.html
Do you have the summer gardening blues? Has the heat wave turned your cucumbers vines into rope and left your tomatoes as brown as the cracked dirt they’re growing in?
Fear not. You likely have weeds in your garden or in your neighborhood that are striving in the heat and are actually far more healthful than almost anything you can grow or buy.
Far from famine food, these so-called weeds can be delicious if prepared properly. And they are absolutely free.
Just a few words of caution: Be sure to identify the weed properly. (The ones described here are easy to spot.) Avoid harvesting from anyplace you suspect pollution — such as from vehicle exhaust, lawn pesticide or doggy business. And remember that edible does not mean allergen-free.
Got your garden gloves? Ok, here we go.
Dandelion:
Dandelion is one of the healthiest and most versatile vegetables on the planet. The entire plant is edible. The leaves are like vitamin pills, containing generous amounts of vitamins A, C and K — far more than those garden tomatoes, in fact — along with calcium, iron, manganese, and potassium.
The leaves are most tender, and tastiest, when they are young. This happens in the spring but also all summer along as the plant tries to rebound after being cut or pulled. You can add them to soup in great abundance. Or you can prepare them Italian style by sautéing with a little olive oil, salt, garlic and some hot red pepper.
You can eat the bright, open flower heads in a lightly fried batter. You can also make a simple wine with the flowers by fermenting them with raisins and yeast. If you are slightly adventurous, you can roast the dandelion root, grind it, and brew it like coffee. It’s an acquired taste. You might want to have some sugar on hand.
Purslane:
If you’ve ever lived in the city, you have seen good ol’ Portulaca olearacea, or common purslane. The stuff grows in cracks in the sidewalk. Aside from being surprisingly tasty for a crack dweller, purslane tops the list of plants with omega-3 fatty acids, the type of healthy fat found in salmon. [7 Perfect Survival Foods]
If you dislike the bitter taste of dandelion greens, you still might like the lemony taste of purslane. The stems, leaves and flowers are all edible; and they can be eaten raw on salads — as they are prepared worldwide — or lightly sautéed.
You should keep a few things in mind, though, before your harvest. Watch out for spurge, a similar-looking sidewalk-crack dweller. Spurge is much thinner than purslane, and it contains a milky sap, so you can easily differentiate it. Also, your mother might have warned you about eating things off the sidewalk; so instead, look for purslane growing in your garden, or consider transplanting it to your garden from a sidewalk.
Also, note the some folks incorrectly call purslane “pigweed,” but that’s a different weed — edible but not as tasty.
Purslane:
If you’ve ever lived in the city, you have seen good ol’ Portulaca olearacea, or common purslane. The stuff grows in cracks in the sidewalk. Aside from being surprisingly tasty for a crack dweller, purslane tops the list of plants with omega-3 fatty acids, the type of healthy fat found in salmon. [7 Perfect Survival Foods]
If you dislike the bitter taste of dandelion greens, you still might like the lemony taste of purslane. The stems, leaves and flowers are all edible; and they can be eaten raw on salads — as they are prepared worldwide — or lightly sautéed.
You should keep a few things in mind, though, before your harvest. Watch out for spurge, a similar-looking sidewalk-crack dweller. Spurge is much thinner than purslane, and it contains a milky sap, so you can easily differentiate it. Also, your mother might have warned you about eating things off the sidewalk; so instead, look for purslane growing in your garden, or consider transplanting it to your garden from a sidewalk.
Also, note the some folks incorrectly call purslane “pigweed,” but that’s a different weed — edible but not as tasty.
Plantain
Plantain, like dandelion, is a healthy, hardy weed as ubiquitous in the city as broken glass. You know what it looks like, but you might not have known the name.
Part of the confusion is that plantain shares its name with something utterly different, the banana-like plantain, whose etymology is a mix of Spanish and native Caribbean. The so-called weed plantain, or Plantago major, was cultivated in pre-Columbus Europe; and indeed Native Americans called it “the white man’s footprint,” because it seemed to follow European settlers.
Plantain has a nutritional profile similar to dandelion — that is, loaded with iron and other important vitamins and minerals. The leaves are tastiest when small and tender, usually in the spring but whenever new shoots appear after being cut back by a lawnmower. Bigger leaves are edible but bitter and fibrous. [World’s Plants Growing Less Thanks to Warming]
The shoots of the broadleaf plantain, when green and tender and no longer than about four inches, can be described as a poor-man’s fiddlehead, with a nutty, asparagus-like taste. Pan-fry in olive oil for just a few seconds to bring out this taste. The longer, browner shoots are also tasty prepared the same way, but the inner stem is too fibrous. You’ll need to place the shoot in your mouth, clench with your teeth, and quickly pull out the stem. What you’re eating are the plantain seeds.
The leaves of the equally ubiquitous narrow-leaf plantain, or Plantago lanceolata, also are edible when young. The shoot is “edible” only with quotation marks. You can eat the seeds should you have the patience to collect hundreds of plants for the handful of seeds you’d harvest. With time being money, it’s likely not worth it.
Stinging Nettles
It sounds like a cruel joke, but stinging nettles — should you be able to handle them without getting a painful rash from the tiny, acid-filled needles — are delicious cooked or prepared as a tea.
You may have brushed by these in the woods or even in your garden, not knowing what hit you, having been trained all your life to identify poison ivy and nothing else. The tiny needles fortunately fall off when steamed or boiled. The trick is merely using garden gloves to get the nettles into a bag. [Video – Watch Gorillas Process and Eat Stinging Nettles]
Nettles tastes a little like spinach, only more flavorful and more healthful. They are loaded with essential minerals you won’t find together outside a multivitamin bottle, and these include iodine, magnesium, potassium, phosphorous, silica and sulfur. Nettles also have more protein than most plants.
Like all weeds, nettles are free. But you get even more of a bargain if you boil them. You can eat the leaves and then drink the water as tea, with or without sugar, hot or cold. If you are adventurous — or, well, just plain cheap — you can collect entire plants to dry in your basement. The needles will eventually fall off, and you can save the dried leaves for tea all winter long.
Go to the link to see pics of these weed/herbs...
http://www.livescience.com/15322-healthiest-backyard-weeds.html
“That means two things; One: You run the good chance that twenty percent or more of your storage you won’t eat and Two: After a while what you will have left is mostly stuff you don’t like and won’t eat unless forced and that will get OLD very fast.
I think that you are better off storing 100% things you know you will eat and in as much a variety as possible. That’s my thoughts.”
Sir, my thoughts too, are not unlike what I think yours are...
I am always in favor of fresh, we prepare vs packaged whatever it might be. We can prepare from shelved items, or from garden or from game hunted, and we can do it better than any of the MRE’s.
We prefer to stock canned ‘staples’ such as fruit and veggies in 16 to 35 oz cans, though we might stock some things in #10 cans.
What is done with what we would prepare depends on what preservation techniques are available to us when the shtf...canning, freexing, etc.
I might add, that we have determined we are in a location that is defendable and is not subject to most catastrophic situations that might mean ‘bugout’...this is our ‘bugout’ location.
I’ve been using this one for about a year now and since it is a powder there is less space used to store it. I use 1/2 c white vinegar in the softener slot and about 1 T soap for a full load. I’m happy I know what’s in my soap and my are cleaned cheaply.
http://candleandsoap.about.com/od/soaprecipes/ss/powderedlaundrysoapsteps.htm
I think the white vinegar is a substitute for fabric softener.
Fabric softener is supposed to weaken the threads of your clothes and thus make tham less sustainable....vinegar is supposed to make that problem obsolete and it does not make your clothes smell like vinegar instead of Bounce! It just makes them happy clothes!.
I do have to go with the Scott TP lasts a lot longer. I hadn’t used it in years but for stocking up purposes, I decided to test it against Charmin. One roll lasts over twice as long as Charmin very large rolls.
if the olive oil goes bad use it as lantern oil
Lehmans sells jars for olive oil (or other oils). If you want lamps it can be a viable option. Cheap too.
Problem is, they take 10 to even BECOME edible.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.