Posted on 02/26/2018 12:12:20 PM PST by CottonBall
I’ve been missing the vast amount of information on prepping, survival, camping, simple cooking, the old ways of doing just about everything – all the things nw_arizona_granny knew so much about and shared with us, along with numerous other posters with a vast array of skills and knowledge.
We have our various related-threads here, a recipe thread, a gardening thread, and even a prepper thread. They are all great and I don’t mean to take anything away from those and the hard work their owners put in.
But I was missing a place to talk about ALL those things, to get the camaraderie that we used to have on granny’s thread.
I learned how to can on those threads! The pressure canner was not my friend, I thought, but I bought one and stared at it for a month, intimidated. Then I read the directions for another month. But with the help and encouragement of posters on granny’s threads, I jumped in and now have my very own food storage room in the basement with lovely jars of shelf-stable meats, vegetables, and fruit. When we moved, I fashioned my food storage room – and insisted upon having a basement – from what I learned on her threads. Getting started gardening was from her threads. Making my own cleaning products….the list is endless.
So I thought I would take the chance and start another comprehensive prepper thread and see how it goes. I used to have granny’s ping list since I made one of the threads for her, but alas, with numerous computer changes, I cannot find it. So please pass this onto any posters you think might be interested.
We’ll just keep it running until..whenever. Granny created a new thread at 10,000 posts or so. I do like the idea of having ONE thread to go to – because often I cannot find or keep track of the weekly threads. I won’t be posting lots of recipes or tidbits myself – to any mods concerned about the size of this thread. I’d just like a place to chat, post questions, post ideas, make new prepping friends.
Here are granny’s threads, if anyone wants to peruse them:
nw_arizona_granny’s Thread #1
I just had him take the chainsaw out of the room with the weight machine. He said he wanted to leave it there temporarily—that was 3 weeks ago—On the bed downstairs he has a bunch of tools and equipment—drill, bits, nails, screws etc. It’s awful. If you have an empty space, he will fill it up, unless you actively move it—daily and hourly.
I'm not alone???????
Can’t beat good old glass jars. My granny used her mayo jars for jelly. Grandpa would get wild black berries and grapes.
She made the jelly —never used sure jell. She put a layer of was over the jelly after it was in the jar and then added the lid.
Never crystallized or molded. They gave me a box of the jelly when we had to move out of state. Grandpa died a few months later. Granny sold the farm and moved to town.
We “saved” the jelly for special times and only opened a jar per year. Last one was still perfect after about 15 years.
YOU TOO???? Ha Ha. Misery loves company. LOL
How did you do that with the apple sauce? I have never made apple butter, but I do have some applesauce that could use a make over.
Today I started on a project to empty the freezer. I am dehydrating some green beans and carrots.
I have some tomatoes that I stuck in the freezer until I had enough to make some sauce. Instead I have decided to make stewed tomatoes and can those.
No telling what else I will find in that freezer—it’s a chest type—which I have never really mastered the art of organizing and rotating. The freezer above the Frig. works better for me.
We had a nice new Upright freezer—but darn thing had complicated controls. It clicked along fine and then shut down —things started melting before we found out.
It was still under warranty. Service man came and it was working fine per him. Did it again. Warranty was no longer in effect. So I just gave up on it.
Use my frig. freezer and the little chest freezer from Walmart that hubby insisted we buy. I like frozen veggies over canned, but we don’t have many of those. Two or three bags to use in soup or a casserole.
I almost always have fresh lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, celery, onions, and potatoes. That’s our main stays.
Since I’ve started making a couple of batches of bone broth every week, those fresh veggies when stale go into the bone broth—so they aren’t getting as stale as they used to. LOL
I put it all in my big pot and simmer the snot out of it.
I cook it down for a couple hours until I like the thick consistency, stirring occasionally to prevent burning.
Then add a lot of cinnamon, some cloves and nutmeg until I like the taste, and then can it and process it like applesauce.
You may want to add a little sugar as well. It’s been so long since I’ve done that that I don’t exactly recall, but I think it needed some sugar.
If you add too much cinnamon, it does get snotty, very elastic in consistency. It’s kind of weird.
We just bought a new chest freezer that is supposed to work even in a 0 degree environment so it’s out in the garage of our new house.
I am filling the bottom of it with dried beans in jars. I don’t use a lot of them so decided to freeze them, my herbs, and nuts to keep them longer.
It’s nowhere near full yet so have not had that problem, but as we move out there, I’m slowly emptying my upright and moving the stuff out there.
Main reason we got the little chest freezer was for a quarter of beef that we bought from a local farmer, and to put some garden produce in—like the tomatoes.
If I have extra green beans after canning, I’ll steam them and then freeze them to use in soups. We like to freeze the sweet corn husk and all. Wrap it in wax paper and micro wave it.
Hack off the end of the stalk, grab the tip with the tassels and give it a shake—all the tassels etc. are just peeled off and a fresh steamy corn cob is laying there begging for butter. LOL
Ping
JoMa
you’re on!
Do you mind sharing your laundry soap recipe? I tried making some a while ago, make that about a decade, but I quit using it a few years ago because it didn’t really work in cold or just lukewarm water. I had little flakes of things floating. Worse than that was the liquid I made, it came out with the consistency of snot. And then eventually thickened in the container and I couldn’t use it at all.
homemade laundry soap baffles me, lol
They are easier to clean, and easier to put stuff in. Like chicken thighs or drumsticks. Can’t even imagine trying to do that in a regular mouth.
Although sometimes I do like the look of the old fashion regular mouth jars.
i guess I like the look of all mason jars. I have some salt and pepper shakers that look like them, I use chip ones as a pencil pen holder, suppose I could use some for drinking as well.
Thanks for telling us that, it is hard to keep spices fresh. I’m going to have to clear out a shelf in my freezer and store seeds there and now spices. I really need to quit buying so much other junk, those things are important to get in there.
Think I’ll have a thread on spices one day, and your tip will come in handy. A lot of the prepped foods are bland, rice, beans, wheat. I think we are going to appreciate that we stored spices.
“A friend told me recently that she heard you shouldn’t freeze canning jars as it make them more prone to breaking, but I never noticed a problem.”
That’s interesting, they are made of really good tempered glass. As are windshields. I don’t think freezing weather makes windshields more likely to break, except when they are cold, anything would be more brittle then.
I love it, remaking old food! there’s a good thread topic! Hey if we can do it with clothing we can do it with food. Or at least people used to do it with clothing. Now the stuff is so cheap typically you have to just throw it away or use it as rags.
Depends on the brand. I’ve started making shorts out of Duluth Longtail t-shirts.
I have this favorite pair of shorts that I’ve worn for more than 20 years. The tag has long since faded, so I have no idea what brand it is, and I’ve never been able to find anything quite the same. Then one day it occurred to me that the material felt exactly the same as the Longtail shirts. I live near one of the Duluth outlet stores, so I raided their $5 t-shirt rack and started making shorts out of them. The fabric is durable enough to hold up to a lot of abuse.
(When I worked for Duluth, there were stories we’d get from customers about the horrible accidents they had been in. Accidents involving everything from industrial drilling machines, to grease fires, to chainsaw mishaps, to wild animal attacks. The Duluth clothing was tough enough that every one of their doctors credited it with saving their life.)
Course, I grow my own spices.
In NY, sage, thyme, oregano, and chives are winter hardy.
Rosemary can tolerate a little cold but anything much below 28-29 kills it.
Obviously, basil is not.
I buy the spice from Lowe’s or Home Depot in the spring when they have herbs on sale.
I also grow my own garlic and save enough for next years crop. Garlic is ridiculously easy to grow and nothing bothers it.
When I make homemade spaghetti sauce, I use home canned tomatoes and homegrown garlic and herbs. AWESOME stuff!
That’s where I am at, too, that I hate to waste anything. We often given the bones to our “girls” (our doggies), but I asked my husband to save them (plus that fatty part) for our broth next time. I almost want to have steak again just to make it, lol!
Yes, it would be my pleasure! I’ve been making this for a few years, and it’s a recipe a friend (who also homesteads) shared with me:
1 cup Borax
1 cup washing soda
1 Fels-Naptha (or even a cheap bar soap), grated up
Mix all ingredients and periodically mix a little before using. Cottonball, it works for me in cold water and I’ve never seen flakes. It also does as good or better a job than the store-bought detergent. What I like to do is make a couple of batches at a time, because it’s just me and the hubby, so it lasts. During the rinse cycle I sometimes add a few drops of essential oil that give the clothes a lovely scent (like lavender).
Recently, I saw someone on YouTube use just soap scraps and washing soda, no Borax. I may try that sometime, too.
Let me know if it works good for you!
They can still have them.
When you’re done making broth out of them.
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