Valerean

I'm writing this post on April 30th (yep, I'm eight weeks ahead on posts again) because of a growing problem that isn't helping anyone but people who want to make a lot of money by terrorizing the public: fear mongering. If you're not familiar with the term, it's deliberately alarming people with questionable claims in order to manipulate their behavior, primarily in this country to sell products and services. You've also been a victim of fear mongering if you bought something because the advertising made you afraid of what would happen if you didn't. When you need to sell anything from storm shutters to counter cleaners, frightening your targeted consumer is an excellent and effective marketing tool. You don't even have to be telling them the truth. Just scare the crap out of them and they'll hand over their money -- and people wonder why everyone's anxiety level is through the roof lately ( According to this , in 2024, 43% of adults sa...

Hurricane Season just began, but our preparations for it started back in March. We go through the same routine every year by checking our supplies, testing equipment we use during and after hurricanes, and purchasing replacements or extra stock to see us through. Everyone in the usual strike zones should be doing the same. Maintaining the emergency pantry has really helped eliminate a lot of last-minute food shopping for the season. We now always keep six months of extra non-perishable food on hand, and I'm working toward beefing that up gradually to a year's worth. One of the best investments I made last year was buying a Battery Daddy case to hold all our batteries. It's double sided, and now I know in a glance how many of each size battery we have on hand. It also keeps them organized so much better than just tossing them in a shoebox. I got mine on Amazon for $14.98 last September. I wanted a better option than bottled water for our drinking water suppl...

It's been a year since I started my emergency pantry project, which has provided all kinds of benefits I never expected it would. I think these are the top three: Convenience: When I run out of a staple I don't have to drive to a store; I now always have plenty on hand. Lower Food Bills: I can buy nonperishables we frequently use when they're on sale and keep the extra in the emergency pantry. Less Waste: Thanks to the first-in first-out strategy and the labeling of expiration dates on the face of food products, we've also been able to cycle foods into our working pantry as they grow close to expiring, so nothing is wasted (in a year the only thing I've not used before it expired was a dollar store package of ramen.) I'm also able to see what we constantly use (soups, rice, pasta, canned veggies, small containers) versus what we don't (dehydrated foods, mixes, canned meats, huge containers) so I have a better idea of what to stock up on for...

Once I finished creating, stocking and organizing our emergency pantry, I thought "Done." Actually, I wasn't. While cleaning out our closet in the master bedroom I decided to also unload and clean out the adjoining hidden closet under the stairs. That created a whole new space with shelves to use, which was ideal for our emergency pantry. So I packed up the emergency pantry and moved it in there. I know it may seem like I'm hiding the food, but this space really works better for me than the laundry room cabinet, as I have to use my stepping stool to reach the top shelves in that. Here I can see everything, reach everything easily, and I have more space, so I moved our paper goods and bottled water supplies in here, too. I'll keep the non-food hurricane season supplies in the laundry room for now, but eventually they may move here too so everything is in one place.

Last month I finished buying and storing an extra supply of nonperishable foods along with beverages, sides, snacks and things I'll need to make bread and such in our emergency pantry. It's a big relief for me to have this project done, as it provides a sense of food security I've really needed. My math was a bit off. My goal was 180 individual meals, which would be a three month supply for me and my guy. I calculated the number of meals I could make from all the emergency supplies I've collected, and it's about 290, or about four and a half months of food for each of us. In my defense I didn't know that 4 lbs. of peanut butter would actually make 128 sandwiches! Now my task is to make sure we use up the food before it expires, and then replace it as we do. My inventory list will help a lot with that. :)

I've just finished inventorying, labeling and organizing our emergency pantry supplies. The first thing I did was clear the non-food hurricane supplies from the cabinet (they're going to live on some shelves across from it) and rearrange the foods as I was labeling them with their expiration date. I was able to move almost all the food from under the sink to the top cabinet. Now anything I add to the emergency pantry will need to be labelled and placed in first-in-first-out order. I also created an inventory list on word that will be easy to check before I go shopping, and update as I add new supplies. I have one version in alphabetical order by item, and another sorted by expiration date. At the beginning of each month my guy and I will check the expiration list, and rotate foods that need to be used before they expire into our regular pantry. Here's how much space I created by reorganizing. This should be enough room to hold our larger items, and maybe e...

Since starting this project in April I've been buying extra nonperishable food weekly to add to our new emergency pantry. I have about an extra month's worth stored now. We're also trying different canned foods to see what they're like, and decide if we really want to live on them possibly for months. Hormel canned chili, for example, was surprisingly good -- we agreed we'd eat it even in non-emergency situations when I don't have time to make chili from scratch. Spam roasted turkey tastes just like the ham variety (and all Spam has a lot of salt in it.) In addition to food I've invested in nonfat dry milk, baking soda and powder, salt, yeast and other ingredients I'd need for baking. Thanks to the military I can make almost anything in a skillet over a campfire, including flat bread, cornbread, pizza and rolls. The most challenging part of this project has been finding enough variety. If you've tried one Chef Boyardee pasta, for example, y...

I'm preparing a little earlier this year for hurricane season, mainly because I want to build a three month supply of non-perishable food in addition to the six month supply I already have. I may or may not extend the emergency supplies to another six month's worth so my guy and I can take care of ourselves for a year without food supplies, if need be. Anyway, since my regular pantry is full, I had to find a new place for the emergency pantry, which I did in the laundry room (and yes, I need to better organize the bottom shelf, which I'm still using for bird seed as well as hurricane supplies.) My calculations for how much food to store are bit complicated (and it will require me to use other areas for storage as well.) I'm going by our necessary calorie intake and our specific diet requirements (no sugar or any fat besides olive oil for me, and I try to keep sodium to a minimum for both of us) but it roughly works out to 450 portions to make 180 meals for me (I ...

Last month we had a week of nothing but rain -- the deluge variety, which soaked the ground and did nice things for our water table, I imagine. Living in lake country, we've gotten used to this. Everything here is almost always wet, like a swamp. That said, we're not used to it raining so hard that our yard and roads out become flooded every day, and we lose the internet, which happened on one day in particular. It was like an early start to hurricane season. The rain on that day actually filled up the big drainage easement in our back yard, and came close to drowning our trailer, as you see here. It doesn't make me nervous, but glad I prepped well and early for storm season. We can be cut off from civilization by flooding for weeks, even months, and we'll be able to live quite comfortably, using our supplies.

We've begun regularly shopping at Ollie's, which is a closeout liquidator chain that buys up unwanted stock from other retailers and sells them at a discount. This includes print editions like this slow cooker cookbook for $2.99. I bought it because it had a lot of recipes I thought would appeal to my guy that I could also tweak to be safe for me. I needed some new large jar candles for hurricane season, but the prices the stores want for them (lately, $28.00 for a big jar candle) are too much. Ollie's sells an offbrand in the size I want for $4.99, and they smell just as nice. I don't usually endorse a store chain, but I think Ollie's is worth a look if you have one near you. For food items do remember to check the expiration dates, as liquidators often get food lots close to expiring. Also, look at sizes and weights and compare them to the unit price of what you're buying at other stores. Ollie's had a smaller jug of clothes detergent th...

I picked the first of our cosmic carrots, which are growing into monsters in the garden, to use in a chicken potpie recipe. To give you some perspective on just how big they are, this is after I topped it and trimmed off the baby rootlets. Also, a light bulb went off for me when I was thinking about water storage for hurricane season. This was because I'd just seen the prices for official water storage containers, which are beyond ridiculous, and most of what's out there is cheap and flimsy. So I was in the sewing room moving the tote of thrifted fabric when I happened to look at the label on the side. 66 quarts is 16.5 gallons, right? And I probably have twenty or thirty of these nice, sturdy plastic bins with locking lids from my spring clean last year; they're sitting in the garage. They're perfect, no cracks, and a snap to wash out. I can even double what I have if I emptied my fabric stash out of the ones in the closet. So here's how I think t...

With hurricane season fast approaching, I need to start my annual preparations by inventorying our nonperishable food, batteries, pet food, medicines, etc. and have my guy test our generator and get an extra tank of propane for the grill. My new thinking after experiencing the flooding in 2022 is to boost our food stores so we can hunker down for longer periods of time if we have to. All the country roads leading out of our area are prone to flooding out, plus they're getting old now, so there may be times ahead when the roads become impassable. I'm thinking in addition to bottled water I might invest in a few five-gallon storage containers. We fill buckets and the bathtubs whenever there's a storm approaching, but if our outside well pump gets wiped out we won't have water for days or weeks, and there's never a guarantee we can drive out to buy some. I'll also have to freeze more bottled water now that we have the chest freezer to keep cold (I freeze...

Hurricane Nicole didn't cause as much tree damage as Ian did, but there was a lot of little stuff to pick up -- one of the downsides to having a lot of trees around us. At sunset on the day after the storm the sky began to turn beautiful colors. I didn't mind the work involved in cleaning up. Everyone has to deal with some kind of recurring weather extreme where they live -- snow, tornadoes, wind spreading wildfires -- and (aside from the years I spent in the military) hurricanes have always been part of my life. I'd much rather spend a day picking up tree debris than six months shovelling snow, or run to a storm cellar during a tornado, or evacuate in the face of a wildfire. Actually we have wildfires here, too, and one year we almost had to run from one. Anyway, it's not that hurricanes are less destructive. Sometimes, as with mini-tornado that hit us during Irma, they can be terrifying. But more often than not they are just a day or two of wind an...

August is usually the worst month of hurricane season, and by today Fred will reach us, probably as a tropical storm. I'm not as worried about that as I am what comes in the next couple of weeks. Andrew hit back in 1992 on August 23rd; Katrina landed on August 29th. Even when we get into September and October we're not in the clear; Irma arrived on September 10th; Matthew on October 7th. Storms are also the reason I'm not terrible fond of fall -- it means cooler temps and pretty leaves in other parts of the country; here it means monster hurricanes. Although it's always a roll of the dice whether or not we'll make it through storm season without a direct hit, I'd still rather deal with hurricanes than blizzards, droughts, or wildfires.

Elsa's outer bands reached us at about 4 am yesterday, and brought thunder, lots of rain and a little wind (this is why I don't get too worried about storms under category 3 -- by the time they reach us they lose a lot of their punch.) After a few hours of that the downpours were sporadic, and the day mostly overcast. No damage to the house, the gardens or the trees, so we were lucky.

We've got the first (potential) tropical storm headed for the central Gulf coast, so I've started checking the National Hurricane Center web site each morning to get into that habit again. Edward ran our generator, which is working fine, and he got all the trees properly trimmed this spring. He's also been keeping our tanks full and keeping enough fuel stored to run everything we need should the power go out for days. For my part I've restocked the bottled water, batteries and nonperishable food supplies we need -- it's not much now that it's just the two of us. I also checked the first-aid kit to make sure that's well-stocked, but I generally keep it that way year-round. We also keep the house prepared for storm trouble all year, so if/when a bad one heads our way all we basically do is move the grill and the porch plants into the garage and rearrange the vehicles to protect them and whatever side of the house is facing the wind. Some of our neig...