Worried about shelf/storage life?

I just received a link to the website, Still Tasty, in an e-mail from a preparedness expert earlier tonight. I haven't had a lot of time to look at it yet, but it looks like there is a lot of information included, and I was impressed with the section on lemon storage, for example. And in case the lemons that you are concerned about are not of the whole variety, you will most likely be amazed at your options for information when you feed in the word "lemons" on the home page...

 Many thanks to the preparedness expert who sent this, and for those who worry about stuff like this, (like I do) enjoy!

 

Found any good garage sale deals lately?

We found this little charcoal grill by driving by a garage sale on a street not to far from ours recently. It is a little (and I stress the little) grill that would be oh-so-easy to take camping, or throw in the back of a vehicle in the case of an evacuation. I pointed it out on the lawn in question, and my husband got out and checked the price--$10. It was later in the day (if I were a serious "garage sailer" I would have been out there early in the morning or even the night before, from what I understand) so I knew I didn't have much time if I decided I wanted it. Still, I'm not much of an impulse buyer, and since I only saw this little gem by accident, I needed some time to think about it. That, and a chance to check what prices for something like this little grill would be new. Soooo....we drove off.

Eventually, I got a chance to get online and check prices. My husband said that similar grills were available new at close to $10, and once again, he was correct. Still, it's nice to support individuals if the item is in good condition (which we knew was the case, since my husband checked it out when he was checking the price) so I got in the car and headed back to the garage sale. I bought the grill for the stated price, and brought it home.

When I talked to the lady selling the grill, she told me something interesting: she had had some charcoal out for sale as well, and it was one of the first things to go of the entire sale, even though one of the bags wasn't entirely full. When I headed out to buy some charcoal so we could try the grill out, I could see why the garage sale charcoal was so popular...

One of the reasons we bought this is because we didn't have a charcoal cooker of any kind, and we like to have options when it comes to activities that require fuel. Sometimes charcoal goes on sale with a really good price reduction, so next time I hear about a sale like that, I'm going to be a lot more interested in putting some aside... :)

Changing the subject--some of our garden has prospered, but some has not. The pumpkins, as usual, look good, and the corn and beans look promising. We had a pretty good raspberry season, too, so no complaints... :)

Hope everyone is having a great summer! Hope you are having/have had success with both gardening and any "garage sailing" you care to do!

Happy Birthday, America!

What about attitude?

I'm trying (yet again!) to use my other blog address. The newest post is here. 

Hope everyone's having a great summer! (Really hopefully, since it only started a couple of days ago... :)

Got seeds?

We do! For Christmas, I received a very generous gift card from one of my friends (thanks again, A.!) to a local nursery, and the other day we went to pick out the seeds for the garden to use part of the card. Some of them looked like this:

Unfortunately, you cannot tell from the image (unless you take out a magnifying glass or something) that the upper seeds are marked "heirloom" seeds. Although we did not have a striking success with watermelon last year, our children once again wanted to make the effort with that particular crop. Not pictured are the scooped pea and corn seed that we were also able to purchase.

I will most likely have to buy onion plants this year because I guess you were supposed to start seeds indoors for onions like weeks ago if you wanted to use them this year, but I couldn't resist picking up onion packets marked heirloom when I got the chance. I always appreciate when the seeds are clearly marked non-hybrid, and I'm trying to teach my children the difference. I know they're listening because I heard one tell my husband, "Mom won't want those, she only wants non-hybrid..." No pressure. :) Unfortunately, the non-hybrid type of seeds are not always available (at least I can't always find them) so we take what we can find when necessary, even if they are hybrid. I love planting food because it perpetuates your food storage--let's hope the weather will be good enough that we get a good harvest.

If you are planting a garden, I hope it is going well. We did buy a couple of plants at the farmer's market a while back, and the pepper plant is doing well inside, while the oregano plant, sadly, did not last. I was glad that the pepper plant was inside the other day when it started to hail..you gotta love Idaho. :)

Happy Memorial Day

We went to a Tolling of the Bells ceremony that was held by the Submarine Vets today. They concluded with a 21-gun salute and played Taps. That is an example of what Memorial Day is about.

With great appreciation for those whom we commemorate today--we will never forget.

And then, sometimes, it's all about the ingredients...

This could be considered a companion post, I guess, to my other blog, where I just posted about, how, for some recipes, you need a lot more than ingredients to make a recipe come out-- sometimes you need to know how to make the recipe work out, and practice it, because there are techniques involved that you may not be used to. This post, however, is a sad commentary on how sometimes what is promised on a box is not necessarily accurate, how when you just don't have time to do things from scratch you might find yourself in trouble, and how necessary it is to have vanilla flavoring in your home.

Yes, vanilla flavoring.  You read that right, and may be wondering why it was again that I actually write this blog. But I digress.

Here's the scenario: I had agreed to bring two dozen cupcakes to an event, so I thought I was prepared. I don't do much baking in the way of desserts, so I just picked up a cake mix. Said cake mix claimed that using its contents would result in a yield of 24 cupcakes. Perfect, right? My husband wanted to make the cupcakes with one of my children, so I let them have at it. It was a couple of hours before the planned event, so we would have wonderfully fresh cupcakes to present at the scheduled time, right? In theory.

My husband came to find me to let me know that the batter was gone and the count stood at 18 cupcakes. OooooK. There's always a recipe to be found on the iternet, right? Right, no problem. Well, no problem finding the recipe. Check, check, check on the ingredients, until we got to the vanilla flavoring. In my defense (which ends up amounting to not much) I was sure we had vanilla flavoring in the house. I was actually shocked to find that it wasn't in my kitchen cupboard. Well, then, it must be elsewhere, because I was sure I had some. A thorough search, however, proved me wrong, wrong, wrong. Now on to plan B. Time was running out. So I made some calls, found someone in the neighborhood to loan me some vanilla, and went to borrow it.

Long story short--the recipe in question took at least an hour to make, and we were running out of time. On to plan C.

I found someone else (don't I have great neighbors?) who was willing to part immediately with a cake mix, which would take a lot less time to throw together. The cupcakes were made and frosted, and I made it to the occasion, in the Idaho wind, only a little late. But late enough to be embarassing.

And then left at the end of the event with, if memory serves, 11 cupcakes.

So, what are the lessons from this experience?  Well, for me personally, I went out and bought more vanilla flavoring. As has been said elsewhere on the internet (sorry I forget who said it, since I have read so many great blogs) something along the lines of , "three is two, two is one, and one is none".  I thought I had one, but turns out I had none...

Make sure that what is said on a package is actually going to meet your needs. My package said 24 cupcakes, but it didn't work out that way. This was a dessert/treat thing, so not as big of a deal as say, a package of pancake mix that you are planning to use to feed x number of people that will only feed n number of people in the case of an emergency. Servings are not the same for everyone, and someone else's idea of a serving may leave you or someone that you're responsible for hungry when it's really inconvenient...

Just because you don't usually cook/bake something doesn't mean you won't wish that you had the means to do so in an emergency. In that vein, I now have a few cake mixes at my disposal, though who knows when I will use them... :)

Ah, yes, kind of embarassing, but I have never claimed to be an expert, so hope that someone else will benefit from what I'm learning as I go along...hence, that's one answer as to why I write this blog. Oh, and as a final note, the fact that I ended up with 11 cupcakes at the end of the day shows that sometimes things work out so much better than you think they will...

Thanks so much for reading--hope all is well with you and yours. Weird weather here (this is Idaho :)--it was snowing this morning....