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Well, yesterday, really.

Well, this whole last month or so. One a day.

About three years ago, I freeze dried a whole bag of these sausage patties https://u.smutty.horse/mlejdzwtpcu.jpeg

I expected it to fail because of the fat/grease content. If it didn't fail, I fully expected them to go rancid.

To prep them, I popped them onto a baking tray, slammed them in the oven, patted and squeezed some grease off. When I pulled them out of the freeze dryer, they were somewhat bendy and looked like really really old sausage patties. Like it'd been sitting under a McDonald's grill for three weeks because of lazy workers.

I tried one. It tasted fine though it was a little tough and chewy. So I put the lot in a thick mylar bag, threw in some O2 absorbers, sealed it up and put it on a shelf for worse days.

Three years later... https://u.smutty.horse/mlejexagqfe.png

Opened it up and... it looked the same. Smelled fine. I was wary. Licked one. No rancid taste. At all. Surprising but not surprising since it's the air that makes oil go "off".

So I popped one in a small pot of boiling water for about 5 minutes. It came out... pretty much the same. Didn't rehydrate, really. Oh, sure, not gonna break my teeth or anything but it wasn't before. It was still bendy.

So I've been popping one of those on a bagel every morning for breakfast for the last month-ish.

Pretty tasty.

And then there's the three year old green onions. So got a fuckton of green onions about three years back. Cut 'em up, freeze dried, put in vacuum sealed jars and put them on the shelf.

They're starting to turn a little brown and don't clink in the jar like they used to.

I opened a jar up. Smelled fine. Licked on. Tasted fine. Just looked off. So I put the whole jar in a soup. Tasted just fine. Weak and limpy like you might expect from an onion that had been frozen and thawed.

But I'm still alive.

So...

Sausages: Pass the test.

Onions: Pass the test.

Today, I'm focusing on the food part. Later, I'll post different preps. My hope is that we can discuss certain preps, why, and whatnot.

So... first up, my grocery store.

https://pic8.co/sh/v1r47Y.png

Carts are $79 to $120 depending on what model you get. Stocking it up was hella expensive but took place over the span of 2.5 years by buying two of everything I needed at any time and then buying extra of things I didn't normally stock. I have no idea how much I've spent on these groceries but I'd estimate maybe ... $1000? More? In any case, I have food enough to last me a year easily but I'm planning that in a bug-in scenario, I'll have a few people helping watch my back so I need to feed them too. Which means two more people drags that down to about 4 months. Also great if unemployment hits.

From left to right, we have:

1. Spices, condiments, juices, drinks, coffee, carton milk, gatorade, soda. Comfort foods go a long way in the mental department when things go to shit.

2. Canned food. Soup, veggies, pork and beans, and so on.

3. Baking and starches. Mashed potatoes, ramen, flour, sugar, pasta, and a few jars of freeze dried veggies, canned meat also.

4. Freeze dried goods and water. I have a freeze dryer. Things here range from freeze dried meat, shelf stable meat, freeze dried pizza, freeze dried fruit and veggies. Freeze dried ice cream and cookie dough are here too.

In the background and the next photo:

https://pic8.co/sh/RQsfzn.png

The battery for my solar backup. This will power most of the house for just shy of three days assuming it's dark and deeply overcast (not generating power). The can of soup is for size reference.

On to (some of) the frozen stuff...

https://pic8.co/sh/L8OCNg.png

Inventory (not shown) is on the freezer door

This is one of three units I have. This one is a freezer, the other two are refrigerators. This one is mostly meat, milk, bread with a few other tidbits. That top shelf there is almost exclusively steaks and hotdogs.

The second shelf is various other meats including pork and chicken.

The next shelf down is milk (4 gallons), chicken that I fucked up and bought twice as much as I thought I was (for a total of 20 pounds of frozen chicken), tomato juice from the garden, more meat.

Bottom, behind the grate: breads. Bagels, bread, english muffins, and so on.

Door: Meat, tomato sauce and home made spaghetti sauce, pork, cheese, read-to-eat biscuits, stocks and broths.

The next photo is a pic of the water I have stockpiled just for the toilet should the mains go down: https://pic8.co/sh/wm2vY1.png

You don't store drinkable water in milk jugs.

And finally, puppy tax: https://pic8.co/sh/sYE1Ua.png

She's a West German Shepherd and growing like a weed at 5 months old. I'm slowly introducing her to schutzhund training. In short, protection and guard work and many police and military dogs are not only West German Shepherds but also go through the same training. She likes long walks, sticks, her tennis ball, and is obsessed with feet. Sorry fellas, she's mine so go find your own lady. I've had to teach her to bark, bite. She picks up on most things I teach her in about 5 minutes (along with hand signals) but requires a lot of reinforcement on some of them. She's still too bitey and hyper to learn "down" but sit and "paw" are second nature to her now. Also gasp and "what's that" will get her barking. I'm training her "hide and seek" and when she finds me, she has to bark before she gets praise. This not only exercises her mind but teaches her to observe hiding places and alert me if people are present and staying still.

Edit: Fucking catbox. Updated photos

Inflation is nuts right now. We went food shopping for everything but meat last week and it cost us $130. We generally only buy raw vegetables, dairy, pickled products, and minimal snack food.


I finally pulled the trigger on a chest freezer and $200 worth of Costco meats.

I suggest you all do the same.

We already have a years worth of food prepped. If we started that now, it would be too expensive.

I am planting my garden to full capacity (for the first time) this year. That's a 1600 square foot plot. I'm planting it in order to give it away to neighbors and friends this summer. This is mostly to build neighborly relations in general but also if (when?) things go to shit. And it's already working. My two neighbors have already volunteered that "If you ever need anything..."

I have extended the invitation to my garden to friends as well and will be extending it to my landscapers (a useful and hard working lot).

Inventory:

2 regular tomato plants
2 cherry tomato plants
3 cucumber plants
3 watermelon plants
5 bell pepper (2 green, 2 red, 1 yellow)
4 yellow squash
175 corn (that would be 350+ ears at harvest)
175 green bean plants (companion planted)
150 snow pea plants

Fruit:

5 peach trees absolutely loaded with baby peaches ("buds") right now
1 apple tree, still small, loaded
1 crab apple tree, still small, loaded
1 grape vine (I stopped counting at 60 little baby bunches)

Herbs:

Sage
Italian oregano
chocolate mint (mint, but tastes like chocolate mint)

Planned additions for this summer:

2 more regular tomato plants
5 more bell pepper plants, sprouted from seeds saved last year
1 cantaloupe plant, sprouted from seed
4 eggplant plants, sprouted from seed
one catnip plant, just because I have a cat
2 black birch trees if I can get the seeds to sprout (good for wintergreen oil)

Cantaloupe and eggplant are from seed because no one is selling that shit this year.

I still need to get a yard/garden toolbox-whatever-it's-called to put shears/scissors in, plastic bags for people to use so they don't rip shit off the plant. I still need to print and laminate and then mount some signs identifying plants and noting when they should be ripe, how to tell if.

Edit: I'm using blossom set on all of it. It is a plant hormone that forces flowers to produce. All of them. Faster, larger.

Edit edit: For those curious, I have included in my soil prep:

A layer of mulch to amend the soil, hold in moisture, block weeds
Eggshells for calcium (prevents blossom end rot)
Bone meal
Blood meal
Potash

https://pic8.co/sh/U17O9x.png
Totally forgot the "before hydration" pic, sorry.

Honestly, the after pic looks completely shitty compared to how it actually looked. I'm not a food photographer, fuck off.

Anywho, on opening the bag, the potatoes and onions were in great condition. Excellent texture, good aroma, wonderful taste. I was sorely tempted to just eat it that way but I was opening to make my dinner cooking efforts a lot easier.

Not much else. No failures or weird crap to report other than I have this sudden urge to go to Ireland, lose a lot of weight, and then head back to America. I think that's normal though.

Updates:

Garden:

The garden is doing well, mostly. The pH level is shite so the snow peas didn't make it. I've done some quick amending but the real fix will need to come this fall after final harvest. That will involve ashes and quicklime.

The tomatoes are being tomatoes and complaining that the soil isn't perfect as there was a serious depletion of calcium. Amendments were added and the tomatoes didn't die but they didn't thrive at first either. I also have a metric fuckton of cherry tomato plants popping up from seed from the last two years where they went insane on their own. They started to show a little yellowing at the center of their top leaves but that isn't spreading which means that the calcium amendments held (for now).

Corn was completely replanted as the first batch of seeds had only about a 19% germination rate. Second planting is closer to the 90%+ that I'm accustomed to.

The green beans are thriving (second planting as first didn't germinate as well as I would have liked), such as they can with rabbits coming by. The hawk that usually guards my garden seems to be gone this year so I have to rely on other methods (repellents, fox urine, etc.) which seems to be working. At one point, there were 5 of the little bastards just chilling in the patch and thinking the green bean plants were fucking gourmet salad. Between me, repellents and the pup having an absolute blast chasing them, they're largely gone - I'll sometimes find one little brazen fucker just hiding in the patch like we can't see them and I smack it with the dog leash and the dog chases it off - it stays away for a day or two after that.

I companion planted the corn and green beans. Eh, it seems to be working and they're climbing the corn so I don't need to worry about that but I'm not as impressed as I had hoped I would be and I don't know why.

I've already harvested 7 squash that were about 15 inches long and given all but two away. There's about 10 more ready to harvest very soon.

Eggplants are starting to flower and I already have a watermelon fruit.

I've just planted pumpkin seeds hoping to get some in time for Halloween for the neighbors.

And the cucumber plants are doing well enough and I've already harvested 5 and given 3 away.

The pepper plants are doing well enough (two of them are stunted from the calcium/pH issues).

The entire plot should be remulched and that will be between 13 and 16 cubic yards... about $400 and a fuckton of work.

Oh, and a "wild potato plant appeared" so I'm curious to see how that will turn out.

In short, the "community" garden is doing very well all things considered.

Found another "wild" (unplanned) peach tree for a total of 7 on the property. They're all loaded. Apple trees are still too young to create a lot of output but there's a couple here and there. Blackberries are creating again this year and I might have a few figs from the two trees.

All grapevines are producing this year with the youngest two only producing one bunch and the oldest producing 60+ bunches. I stopped counting at 60 because I got the point by then that I'm going to have more grapes than I will ever be able to consume on my own.

The neighbors have been grateful so far but it's not gotten to crazy levels of harvest yet and soon they're probably going to have to give food away which makes them seem more awesome to their neighbors which strengthens community cohesion even more.

There seems to be plenty of deer that come and chill in the back of the property and I do believe that a groundhog has moved in. All of this is fine as long as they leave the garden alone. Also, moles have been trying to get to the garden plot but the railroad ties bordering the edge seems to stop them somehow. Them little fuckers will burrow back and forth along the outside of the ties but can seem to figure out how to go deeper to get under them or something. In any case, they're leaving the garden plot alone so I'm fine.


Grocery Update:

I've done two grocery top-offs since December when I stopped grocery shopping regularly. There seems to be lulls in the pricing craziness where they drop for a little while, maybe a weekend here and there, and I can top things off without spending more than I feel is reasonable. The scant harvest from the garden I've taken (three tomatoes, 2 peppers, two squash) has bumped up my kitchen stores notably (meaning that's like enough to extend my stores for a week or two depending on how I cook). Shopping and timing this way, I've been able to top off at December's prices twice. Most of the time, the items that get topped off are flour and meats for the dog (she gets meat every day). And milk. I always get about four gallons, reserve one for drinking, 2/3 for general cooking, and turn the rest into yogurt (which generates a fuckton of whey used in making breads) which is then freeze dried and vacuum sealed for later use. Just add water, hit with an immersion blender, use as needed.

Coffee supplies finally got a little low (less than 10 pounds left in the stores). I consider 10 pounds a little low during potential issues but 2 pounds is generally what I keep on hand when things are otherwise fine. And honestly I'm getting tired of having such a huge stockpile although it's handy as fuck to go into the basement to get more of something instead of the store.

General updates:

The puppy is one year old today. She's still a little behind in her training (because of when I got her) but is currently wearing a cone of shame since she was fixed (and had an umbilical hernia fixed at the same time). She gets all the good foods today including steak. On that note, I can do anything I want to her but the vet has no end of trouble and she had to be sedated for them to put the cone on her. I'm not sure if I view this as a good thing or a concerning thing. If society becomes completely unstable, I don't want her trusting anyone that well but if things stay relatively stable, this might be an issue. To that end, I've trained her that she can't take a single thing (treat, steak, chicken, whatever) from my hand until I give her the command to take it. It works on impulse and focus training and I'm hoping that will reel her in a bit at least while I'm nearby.

https://www.wnd.com/2022/05/india-2nd-largest-wheat-producer-bans-exports-amid-food-supply-concerns/

Buy your flour now. Freeze it for two weeks and then seal it up.

I think the power/gas bill image says everything that needs to be said: https://files.catbox.moe/mc219f.png

The electric bill is much more of a decrease than the gas bill because it uses the same small fan to move air that the AC does. It's not quite as efficient as I probably should have but it was installed in the late 90s and efficiency wasn't much of a thing back then. $11 of the gas bill is just going to be a "having it on" cost. I wonder if the 6 degree difference is enough to account for the gas cost difference but that fan not running because of the heat savings is saving a HUGE chunk. The solar heater still isn't going to keep you from being at least chilly but it helps keep my wallet fatter and if I forget to kick the heat on on a sunny day, it still doesn't drop below 60 degrees inside.

I did one extremely minor grocery order but that's because I needed more of a cleaner that escaped my inventory efforts and the delivery service had a "minimum order amount". So I popped in a couple of items. I thought I'd do what should have been $60 worth just to top up a few things but once I added those to the cart, the total was over $120 so fuck that, I just got a gallon of milk, some bread and like two other things (can't remember what now). Been making more bread myself than I normally do. Otherwise, I haven't done any grocery shopping since late December and my stores are still well stocked. Shelf stable milk (boxed) tends to clump and settle because the protein and thickeners (if it's chocolate) tend to settle but it's fine and safe and a few seconds in a blender fixes it right up like new. I'm pretty sure I'll run out of chicken and hot dogs before anything else because the dog gets meat almost every day but that's gonna be an expense I don't mind terribly. Broke the coffee pot so now I'm making coffee 4 pots at a time in one of those big serving makers kind of like one of these: https://bit.ly/3BK0TnP

And I eliminated sugar from my coffee entirely by using 2 drops of stevia with half a teaspoon of xylitol to hide the stevia taste.

Eh, what else...

Oh, I stocked up the fuel reserves in case the whole Russia thing drives gas prices up. Both cars are topped off and I have almost 150 gallons of diesel for the truck. I should be fine for a while.

There's really not much else.

I’m mostly thinking ammo here. Besides all your 9 and 223, why not have something you can trade with? Say, some .380, or some .32. Maybe some .44.

Just a thought.

https://u.smutty.horse/mlflmupuxhj.png
The bag is from Harvest Right. 7 mil thickness. More info here: https://harvestright.com/product/50-pack-mylar-bags/

As you can see, March 2nd, 2020 was the freeze dry and package date.

On the left, right out of the bag.

Top right is right out of the boiling water.

Bottom right is with American Cheese, home made mayo, and half a toasted everything bagel.

The sausage, like I said, didn't rehydrate hardly at all and this is not really surprising since it's loaded with grease which repels water.

Normally, when I make this, a fork is enough to cut it. This shit needs a knife.

So... I'm not dead. I didn't get sick.


Mayo recipe, for those interested: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/159507/whole-egg-mayonnaise/

Protip: Use an immersion blender. As you put the blender into the mix, it goes through and actually causes enough mixing between the oil, egg, and vinegar to work. Foolproof 100% of the time. I cannot say the same about using a regular blender.