There is Beauty All Around

We completed graduation last night. Traditionally we all go out as family afterwards for a big barbeque supper, Dorian was disappointed that we would not be doing that. We did take him and the kids to Taco Bell. Darius and Alicia went to Publix to get some watermelon bowls. Lucky them. Roger, who is doing mostly raw, had a chicken bowl without the chicken, and one of their new fruit smoothie drinks (which is probably loaded with sugar), and I had water. I had no time during the day to prepare extra juices with the preparations necessary for graduation. Water is not so bad. I had what I would consider true hunger pains about 9 p.m., but they soon passed. I was too exhausted when we finally got home to burden my body with the digestion of even juice.

I am still having some congestion, but not anything too critical. The itching has stopped for the time being as well.

I am still amazed I am on a journey with no solid foods. I realize I am not doing the program as it is supposed to be done, and I hope that I will be able to get better with that. I realize I will be more successful the more I do implement it, but I don't know how to organize my time to look out for myself. It is a very foreign concept. This experience is helping me to learn that. Even forcing myself to do this is very hard, but it is helping me with insights that will hopefully improve my overall level of success.

We got to the graduation site early as I had scheduled some time at the beauty shop at 3:00. She couldn't do a later appointment, so I knew there would be some dead time. We used that to walk around the Ravines for about 40 minutes. It was a nice way to calm ourselves from all the hustle and bustle of preparing and packing for graduation. It was a beautiful day. There are no azaleas like in the photo at this time of year, but there is plenty of greenery. We saw a banana tree with bananas on it! I don't have too many opportunities to go outside, but I love it. I would like to do that more.

Today we were asked to put on one of our food storage programs like we used to do when we were serving as missionaries. A little out of our league now, we will do the best we can with what we have now. I believe the church's emphasis about long term storage is a lot more realistic especially in my circumstances. Should fresh vegetables and fruits not be available, we will have to fall back on stored grains. The Word of Wisdom says they should be our staff which indicates to me it is a crutch for when optimal foods are not available. I believe this is the pattern for all human eating. During famines, mankind would have to rely on grains. Unfortunately, much of the world is in a famine-like state much of the time due to climatic conditions, etc. We tend to think all the world has always been as it is now. A lot of it is because people have gotten away from the concept that they must till the ground for their food. They are relying on grain sources because it is easier than the day-to-day grind for fresh fruits and vegetables. The production of grain is more labor intensive, but when it is mechanized, we can buy large portions that last a long time. Vegetables and fruits require a constant vigil. Isn't that what we were told in the Garden of Eden: By the sweat of our brow would we produce our food? We must think of our whole continuum and where we are going with it.

Why, we use numbers every day...

I just wrote this tremendous dissertation, and when I went to the published page, there was nothing there. What a bummer! I guess I need to write it off line, and then copy, paste. This has happened twice now.

We went to the HSC on Saturday with a group from Savannah and a sister from Middleburg. The latter usually comes with daughters and daughter-in-laws as she really worries as I do that her children will have what they need should hard times come upon them. It is funny how we worry more about that when our children are grown. I guess we understand vulnerability more as we grow older.

Jac has gone to NYC with her mother and sisters. There is more than 11 feet of snow in upstate New York. I don't know how much where she is. We're hoping she gets home safely. Orion wanted us to stay in Jax on Saturday to watch a movie or something, but we are too whipped by the weekend to do much of anything. I felt bad as I know he doesn't like to be alone.

We had purchased 224 pounds of rye and 125 pounds of whole oats from Walton during the last order and needed to put it in storage containers.

I have been thinking of changing the way we do our food storage as I hate the waste that is generated by using the metal cans. I am thinking of going to 2 gallon pails. I can use a lid called a gamma lid on them which can be done and undone at will and seals completely when it is closed. The metal cans cost about 77 cents each, and when they are emptied, they are trash. The pails can be used over and over again.

Of course, if one stores their food and never uses it, the metal cans are a better option as long as they don't rust. But if one is using it as a working pantry, then the recycled $3 pails are a better choice. They come in 1 to 6 gallon sizes, but we have to consider how heavy they are when full and how long it will take to empty them.

The only source for gamma lids makes them about $6 each, but you can get in and out of the pails without compromising the storage ability of the lid. Again, they can be used over and over again, so each use depreciates the cost.

I have been thinking a lot about how Bonnie says they use half a #10 can every time they have pasta. They can buy a 20 pound box for 56 cents a pound. Each can holds about 3 1/2 pounds, so they are using about 2 pounds each time she prepares pasta (compared to our use of 4 oz at a time). Even a 20 pound box would only last them 10 uses at that rate. A six gallon pail would hold the 20 pounds, I think and last them 10 dinners. That's probably a 2 month supply, so she'd need 6 6-gallon pails (120 pounds of macaroni) for a year. (and lot's of powdered cheese!!!) It would be a lot cheaper to purchase the 6 pails and lids, and each year buy 6 more boxes of macaroni to fill them up. Once the initial pail purchase is made, there is no more storage container expense. I don't know if you'd need to oxypack them or not if they were only going to be stored for one year. I guess that wouldn't hurt.

When my kids were home, I used these big pails I found at the warehouse club for our flour, wheat, sugar, oatmeal, and cornmeal. It was a little tricky to find room for them, but after a while they become fixtures. They were too heavy to move around when they were full. I think they were the kids' seats for a while before we changed the kitchen around. If they were sitting when I was cooking, they just had to get up while I scooped. These were not air tight pails, but they did the job. It was a very efficient system. I don't recall any of the food getting buggy or anything. I still buy flour and sugar in 25 pound bags and store them in those containers that fit under the bed.

I guess it is silly that my mind is always playing these numbers games, but if more people did it, there wouldn't be as much waste in the world. I always told my kids growing up when they got a job that paid a certain wage per hour, they should truly work that hard. People make it sound like $5.00 / hr. isn't that much, but you can still fill a gas tank with 4 - 8 of them, and drive a heck of a long way. $5.00 will buy 20 pounds or more of grain which will feed a hungry person about 3 weeks. Sometimes we get too tied up in our luxury items and forget that the basics are not as expensive. We can have anything we want if we want the right things.

And so there you have it, we DO use numbers every day. Or they are being used on us...

Lake City, finally

I didn't have the opportunity to write yesterday because it was a busy day getting ready for the event in Lake City. I indicated finally in the title because we have been building up for this since November!


The yogurt cheese was absolutely divine. (I hate to be dramatic, but there is no other word for it.) I used 36 oz. of it to make the cheesecake in the biggest baking pan I have. I use another hunk for an olive sandwich spread, and still have quite a large chunk of it. I also have 2 quarts of regular yogurt left out of the 2 gallons. It was the only yogurt I have been able to tolerate straight up, but you all know, of course, I would prefer it sweetened. My favorite way to eat yogurt is with a little sweetener and some lemon juice over fresh or canned fruit - cantalope or pineapple are my favorites. The Lake City loved both the sandwich spread and the cheesecake; they devoured nearly all I made leaving only crumbs.


I had decided to bake bread since I couldn't see a food storage class without homemade bread, and a lot of people don't think you can make good homemade whole wheat bread, so I have to leave my mark there. The recipe I use for large batches makes 4 loaves. They ate 2 1/2 of them, so we have some to get us through the weekend. I was trying to make one loaf at a time and eat it fresh, but Roger really loves having bread around, so I am now baking this 4 loaf batch all the time. We slice it when it cools in my deli slicer so all the slices are thin enough for sandwiches, and then we freeze it in 2 slice portions in sandwich bags and a big loaf bag to protect it from freezer burn. I think the last batch lasted about 10 days, so I guess that is a good plan. Roger gets positively ballistic when there is no bread in the house. It doesn't seem to matter how much other stuff there is...


I also used a recipe I found the little food storage handout book for a grape-nut cereal like product. Once made, the large brick can be ground; the bigger chunks are used for cereal, and the crumbs can be used like graham cracker crumbs to make a pie crust. It is a very interesting recipe and one that I have wondered about for a long time. There was a sister in Lake City who routinely eats Grape-Nuts who said it tasted remarkably like them.


Here is the recipe in case you can't find your booklet:

CRUNCHY WHEAT CEREAL & CRUMBS

Makes approximately 5 cups cereal and 2 cups crumbs

6 cups whole wheat flour

1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt

1 1/2 cups brown sugar
2 cups buttermilk (2/3 cup powdered milk, 2 cups water, 2 tbsp. vinegar or lemon juice)

Mix ingredients thoroughly. Press or roll evenly to fit two ungreased cookie sheets. Bake at 350 degrees until golden brown around edges. Turn over with spatula, break into small pieces and return to 200 degree oven to dry out thoroughly. Grind chunks in food or meat chopper on coarse blade. Put ground chunks in strainer and sift out small granular pieces. Larger pieces may be used for cereal and casseroles. Finer pieces may be used as you would graham cracker crumbs for pie crusts and other desserts.

To make a pie crust:

CRUNCHY WHEAT PIE CRUST

1 1/3 cups Crunchy Wheat crumbs
2 tbsp. sugar
1/3 cup melted margarine

Using the finer crumbs sifted from the Crunchy Wheat cereal, combine all of the ingredients, mix well and press firmly against sides and bottom of pie tin. Pour filling into the shell and refrigerate until firmly set.

Here is the yogurt recipe:

1 qt. lukewarm water
2 cups dry milk powder
2 tbsp. plain yogurt or dry yogurt starter

Mix all ingredients together. Pour into a thermos bottle and let stand overnight.

To make cream cheese: Hang the finished yogurt in a cheesecloth bag overnight. Add salt to taste.

To make salad dressing or sour cream substitute: Add salt and seasonings.

To serve as a dessert, add sugar to taste.

To make yogurt cheese, you just dump the yogurt in a cheese-cloth lined colander overnight. In the morning you will have a nice ball of cream cheese like product that has no fat.

To make the cheesecake, I mixed 12 oz. of yogurt cheese with 1/2 cup lemon juice and 1/2 cup sugar and 2 eggs. It bakes at 350 degrees until it doesn't jiggle, about 20 minutes if you make a small pie plate size. Good stuff.

The sisters in Lake City couldn't believe it was all from food storage. I also make tuna salad with all the dehydrated veggies (onions, celery), homemade relish, and we served that with dilly beans. We had the olive spread to make sandwiches out of as well.

Olive Sandwich Spread

Yogurt cheese

small can black olives

a few green olives

some home pickled jalopeno peppers

I just ground it all up together in the food processor.

I think that was about it. We had some games to make up and picked out some prizes to give away, and off we went. It took us 2 1/2 hours to get there because we let Wilma guide us through all the back roads (Wilma is our Navigator), but only 1 hour and 45 minutes to get home when we went the way we knew. Of course traffic was not as bad coming home either. It was still a long haul.

There was about 26 folks there which I thought was great including several husbands and their stake president and his wife. She and I e-mail back and forth a lot about food storage, so I guess she wanted to check me out in real life. There were some very knowledgeable brothers and sisters there, but some who had not gotten started yet. One had 7 children, and we knew her dad from the temple. I was so glad she seemed committed to start her food storage. I can't imagine having 7 children and no way to provide for them when the bottom falls out. I will keep up with her through e-mail to encourage her.

We took the computer and our printer to print out the worksheets like we make up so that they would know how much product was needed. One of the things we have learned while serving at the HSC is that most people have no idea how much they really need if they were to truly have to live for a year without purchasing food. That is one of our goals in doing these classes.

Another thing we did was make up the food storage "seed" and demonstrate that people can store in other ways besides metal cans (that cost 75 cents apiece). We put some white wheat in a PETE juice bottle with an oxypack to demonstrate that. We also gave away 1/2 pint canning jars with 12 oxypacks in them so that they could do it at home themselves with stuff they buy in bulk at the grocery store or warehouse club, or they can buy bulk at the HSC and process it at home less expensively than the metal cans. Plus the PETE bottles are being recycled and can be used again and again. We are hard pressed to find uses for those 1 gallon cans when they start accumulating.

We saw a few things we need to improve upon for our next demonstration in 2 weeks, but it went very well, and the people there were very kind. They all said how nice it was and how much they appreciated us coming. I guess it was good to hear somebody different.

One member there, the one who originally invited me, is someone I have known through e-mail a couple of years. She and her husband are almost totally self-sufficient. We are going to go to their house to see how he built a solar powered pump that he uses to aerate a 2 acre pond he built for bass and blue-gill. He stocked it initially and keeps it self-perpetuating with minnows. It sounds amazing. The solar powered pump is what I am interested in because I worry so much about being without water if there is no power.

Today we had an assignment to work at the HSC, but they called to cancel at the last minute, so we spent the morning catching up in the garden. I planted about 8 different kinds of lettuce in one box and more cole crops in another. I also started some tomato seeds in the house. I am going to try little tomatoes this year; I always do so horribly with the bigger ones. I think the little ones are better suited to my conditions here. Anyway, I planted 3 different types, 24 seeds of each. I don't think I can resist one big one; I keep thinking I'll find the variety that will grow in my garden without being nasty.

I think the frost might have killed off most of the peppers, but it looks like some of the more tree-like ones might have survived it. I guess I will order more seed this spring as I don't want to be without peppers. I may order fewer varieties though. Those pickled peppers are so good! We had them with refried beans the other day and I used them in the sandwich spread. I'm going to bring some to the FHE super bowl party.

Oh, and I finished my wool-silk socks the other night and started a new pair yesterday of a wool blend put out by Paton called KROY. But these match my Christmas serape, so I like them in the dark green color, and the lace is pretty too. The picture doesn't do it justice. Anybody know how to get this to turn the other way? I have it right side up in my folder, but it won't move that way.