Independence Challenge - Week 27

Pickled Pineapple, with dried cranberries and mint.

I saw a fox! It was at dusk, up on the mountain on the way to the soccer field. It ran/floated across the road in front of our car, and DD15 and I both yelled, "That's a fox!" as it disappeared into the underbrush. I know there are wild turkeys and pheasants up there, and the usual skunks, raccoons, groundhogs, possums. We see deer all the time. But I've never seen a live fox before. It was cool.

Fairly short update this week; really busy week.

Planted: Nothing, but I ordered some veggie seeds from an end-of-year sale.

Harvested: The last bits of mint tea and basil. Rose hips. Walnut husks for dye. Went to the second-to-last local market for the season, and got more sweet potatoes, more #10 apples, eggs, and a few springs of oregano.

Preserved: Pickled Pineapple, using our mint and a fresh pineapple I got on sale. It's a refrigerator pickle, so no two-part lid. My mom and I tasted it after a few days, and it was really good. Hope it doesn't get over-pickled for Thanksgiving. Does that happen? Checked on my sauerkraut, which smells OK so far. We compared the canned pickles I made earlier this summer with a recipe that calls for liming, with the refrigerator pickle recipe I made a few weeks ago. Both are bread-n-butter style. DH and I liked the crisper ones, my mom liked the fridge recipe. I think it pays to make a bunch of different kinds.

Cooked: DH surprised me with a 4-lb pot roast. With it, I made a new recipe for a potato and rice cake made in a skillet. Good with the gravy DD15 made from the beef drippings. "Oh, you found another vehicle for gravy, I see!" said smart-ass DH. We are still eating the leftover beef in sandwiches.

A big ham shank I got for only $2.

I tend to have a day of the week when I get in the mood to cook a lot. On Halloween Morning, I made yogurt and bread, the pickled pineapple, put Ham and 16-Bean Soup in the crockpot, and made Apple Coffee Cake. None of that was much work, scattered among other tasks, but I would not be able to get that done if I didn't work from home. DH liked waking up to the smell of bread, and DD15 was inspired to come down and make cheese grits, sage-onion gravy, and scrambled eggs that got done as the bread came out. All of the ingredients came from storage or the yard, except fresh milk, eggs, and the pineapple.

Drained some yogurt to make lebne, yogurt cheese, which I sweetened up with some plum preserves to make something like plum cream cheese. I tried it on the waffles and on a bagel. Yowsa!


Stocked: Wow. For the first time in months, I stored nothing this week. It was a busy week, with Halloween, the election, soccer, food bank, and getting ready for another youth conference this weekend in Annapolis.


Prepped: I found Tupperware Heaven! Actually, it was a yard sale. But I got a lot of nice big containers, and some smaller ones for the fridge. I like the flat square one for freezing a batch up muffins for short-term eating. I also got a 5-foot tower of 12x12x12 plastic drawers for the cellar, making more clean storage for craft and fabric stuff I drag out of the attic. ALL for $5. And a free half-pint jar. I just love yard sales like that.

At another sale, D12 found a great pair of soccer shinguards to replace her hand-me-downs. DD15 found a large plastic sewing box full of notions, including cute sew-in tags that say, "Made with Love by Nana." We'll do good things with that grandma's stuff. That's one of the things I like about sales - you don't just get stuff, you get ghosts tagging along, at no extra charge.

Managed: Checked all the "cellared" vegetables in the cellar and found three giant carrots in a plastic bag that had slipped behind something else. One carrot was in the process of liquifying, but the other two are still good. Would have lost those other two carrots if I hadn't done a good check. See how well this Independence Challenge works? If I hadn't needed something to write in this category, would I have checked the veg? I don't think so.

Reduced, Reused, Recycled - It usually doesn't get cold until mid-November. I don't think I turned on any heat until almost Thanksgiving last year. But the almanac and the forecasters are saying that early winter will be colder and snowier than usual. Mid-winter is supposed to be milder, and then a bad March. It doesn't help that the past winters few have been mild, with few big storms - it will make this one seem all the worse.

Our days are still variable - some days we turn on a space heater, some days not. I patrolled the house, looking for airleaks. Kinda futile - it's 100 years old, and it all leaks. Even the baseboards leak, since there are spaces between the wood, the plaster walls, the wood floor boards, and the exterior brick. I did recaulk the front door trim. The terrible aluminum storm windows rattle, and the curtains move with the windows closed. But some days it is too hot to have the quilts hung, so I am not worried until we have the heat on all the time.

In past years, the attic has been unheated storage space, with a door tightly closed at the bottom of the atttic stairs. We tried putting one of the girls up there a few years ago, but the first cold month cost us $100 in electric heat. I plan to have this insulated by the end of the month, and covered with inexpensive paneling. Paneling is ugly, to my taste, but this is a rental house, and the landlord refused to contribute. I just want it functionally warm, since it only needs to make it through this winter. I'm nailing a power strip to the rafter next to the only outlet, so we can plug in lights, space heater, and clock radio for the girls when they move up there.

Local/Family: DD15 and I volunteered at our church's monthly food bank distribution yesterday. We had a longer line than ever, and less canned goods to give out. Short on canned vegetables, cereal, bread. We did have cases of celery and jars of peanut butter to give out. One of the volunteers is going to the regional food bank meeting to see what we can expect in the next few months. We will have to also do an internal food drive.

Library: Found a copy of The Williamsburg Art of Cookery, a reproduction of a 1742 recipe collection, or "Accomplish'd Gentlewoman's Companion." I don't find colonial recipes to be very followable, and it's annoying when all the S's look like F's, but reading them always makes me feel humbly grateful for the invention of the stove.

I also found Volume 5 of Olive Miller's BookHouse series of children's literature anthologies, from 1921, From the Tower Window. It is beautifully illustrated. Might be fun to read from some winter evening. From an Amazon description:

In March 1919, Olive Beaupre Miller and her husband Harry started a book publishing company to sell Olive's compilation of children's literature known as, "The Book House for Children." Using an all female sales staff, their employees went door to door selling subscriptions to the six volume set. Much in the way that encyclopedias were also sold. The series was an immediate success and was continually republished until the 1970's. If you were a middle class parent in the 1930's through 1950's, this was the set of books to purchase for your children. Millions of Americans grew up reading these well written tales of virtue and morality. Over the decades, Olive produced many other books that were to become classics of the genre.

Fascinating. My mother, a generation of childrearing later, had a shelf of the 1954 Childcraft series of literature - still on the bookcase behind her front door, next to the 1960's World Book Encyclopedia. I was born in 1961, and my brother in 1964. I recall a series of endless grade-school reports on states, faithfully paraphrased from these volumes, and typed on our violent electric typewriter. It would move the whole dining room table when I hit the return.

Autumn Color in the City

We are supposed to have rain for the next few days, which means most of the leaves will fall. As I went places yesterday, I turned on my camera and shot out my car window at stop lights. I've seen a lot of beautiful fall color photos on many garden and homestead blogs, so I though I would show you what it looks like in a city.

Just outside my door, I can (and do) look up the street and watch the mountain change with the seasons. The city owns most of the mountainside as a wildlife preserve, studded with bits of private property here and there.

If we drove up on that mountain, we would be able to look out over the city from several lookouts. It was overcast and misty yesterday. Reading and it's surrounding suburbs are nestled into the nooks of a series of rolling hills. Mt. Penn is the one rising above my house.

There is a scenic road called Skyline Drive, lined with stone walls that were built by CCC workers during the (first) Depression. One end is anchored by the Pagoda, a local landmark that just turned 100 years old, and is being restored. It exhibits its own fall color change in a jacket of yellow scaffolding.

We can see the foot of Neversink Mountain across the little valley below the Pagoda, rising behind East Reading.

OK, now back to where I was going... taking DD15 to work at the coffee shop at the Fairgrounds Mall. The mall is on the site of the old Reading Fair and Racetrack. This huge tree at the edge of the parking lot is one of the few remaining veterans of the Fair.

There is color even in tedious parking lot landscaping, like this convenience store grass.

This field could be anywhere - full of goldenrod, knotweed, and sumac. But just to the left is the convenience store (the Wawa on Rockland, for you locals).

The hillside next to the turning lane on 11th Street.

The other side of the same stretch. (Waiting at a light.)

"Mommy, why is that lady pulled up to that planter?" She's looking at the Sedum 'Angelina' turning colors. It will get darker red as it gets colder.

View of Mt. Penn from the parking lot at the Giant grocery store. Skyline Drive runs along the top of that ridge.

I know it's trash vegetation in a vacant lot between the CVS and the Weis market, but I like it better than the commercial landscaping.

It has more color.

An iron fence near a school. There was a guy in a car just to the right where I shot this out of my car window. I think he thought I was stalking him.

A lovely small tree along 13th St on the way back home.

Autumn Joy Sedum, or what the aphids have left of it, in front of my house.

Time to drive DD12 to soccer. I like this house at the stoplight. It was restored last year. Before that it looked like a classic haunted house. You can't see it in this windshield photo, but I like the purple that they used as an accent color.

Late goldenrod along the roadside.

A view down into City Park, still taken from my car at the red light.

A row of Japanese Bloodgrass next to Central Catholic High School, whose colors are red and white.

I think this tree on Hill Road flowers in the spring. It sure turns nice shades of yellow, apricot and orange in the fall.

My favorite group of trees on the way to soccer. I watch them do things all year.

A little red maple I always notice in the understory along the road.

The soccer field is on top of the mountain, a grass and gravel clearing surrounded by forest. The Rotary Club runs this field for Little League and our rec league, the Reading Soccer Club. We have to leave out snacks for the raccoons to keep them from digging in the trash cans and making a mess. It gets very dark, and you can see the stars, when they turn out the field lights.

Kat, Gillian, Diana, Kiera, DD12, and Precious waiting for a kicking drill. This will go on until long after dark, under lights, so that is the end of the day's photos. But...

I want to throw in some photos from this Sunday's grower market in West Reading. It's part of my fall color, and will also soon be gone for the winter. Stoudt's Orchards is where I get those #10 apples I keep raving about. I like how they offer samples of each variety, and baskets of seconds for those of us that go home and make jam.

Go Fish Seafood had a new stand there this week. They are a vendor at the Fairground's Market, and recently opened a storefront in West Reading. DD15 used to work at the market stand, and now we are spoiled for cheap grocery store seafood. They will only sell at the market on cooler spring and fall Sundays next year.

B&H Produce is one of the stands were I have been stocking up on carrots and celeriac. I will also be buying organic wheat berries from them. I hope they will grow more spelt next year.

So, that's my fall tour. I didn't really get "downtown" yesterday, where there are some nice trees and other plantings. Maybe another post on another day, if the rain doesn't take all the leaves.

Don't Forget to Vote!

I know it would be hard to forget to vote today, with all the media coverage and community excitement, but don't wait for the last minute. Lines may be long in some places.

Workmen started ripping up the street in front of our polling place yesterday. It's the elementary school across the street. The jackhammer started at 8AM this morning, and they blocked the street in front of the polling entrance. The police came by, but I heard the jackhammer again a few minutes ago, so I don't think it was stopped. We are going to vote in about half an hour, and I will check it out. I'm gonna call the local TV station and the Mayor's office if they are blocking the entrance. If it isn't deliberate, it sure sends the message that it might be.

Update: We were able to vote without issue at about 11:30 AM, and the construction does not block foot access to the polling place, but the road in front of it is closed, and that ain't right, on election day. The Poll watcher told me an official protest had been lodged, and they were waiting for a response. It's a UGI crew, a natural gas utility, but it is not an emergency.

Independence Challenge - Six Month Anniversary

These self-sown petunias just keep blooming through the freezing nights.

Happy anniversary to me! I can't believe it has been six months since I started the Independence Challenge! What a difference it made. The world has changed, too - or at least, the problems that worried us have now become more visible to everyone.

- We have more than 3 months of food stored, and we had none 6 months ago.
- We shop differently, buying bulk, locally where possible, to save money and control the quality of our food.
- We grew a lot of herbs and some of our vegetables.
- We cook and eat differently. We always cooked from scratch more than most people, and I am particularly hooked on making my own stock. But now we also make yogurt and bread regularly, eat smaller meat portions, and buy little prepared food.
- We preserve more, canning jam and pickles, drying herbs and fruit, cellaring root veggies. We bought a freezer to enable us to buy meat and freeze veggies in bulk.
- We reduced our trash and recycling output, and started worm composting.
- Our house is more energy efficient, and we are prepared to be frugally chilly.
- We have a plan to combine households with my mother over the next year or two, starting with her living with us over the winter.
- We have a plan to adapt this rented house, and later my mother's house to lower energy use.
-I made a lot of contacts in the local food and farm community, with an intent to do something to increase connectivity between producers and city residents.
- DH and I have a much more shared mindset about how the future may roll out, and how we will respond. We are certainly concerned about climate change, peak oil, and the economic downturn, but we feel confident about our ability to adapt.

We're far from perfect. We are still attracted to fast food. Our showers are still too long, and we often forget to turn off computers at night. We haven't established ourselves in sustainable jobs or businesses that will allow us to ride out a depression. We need to get better at planning meals out of storage, remembering to defrost things, and soaking beans overnight. We could grow more vegetables.

But we are doing, not just talking or just worrying, and I think that is what this Challenge is about. Six months of daily baby steps adds up to a lot of action. Imagine where we could be after a year.


Planted: My spinach in fish boxes has not sprouted. I don't know if the dirt is too cold, or the seeds were too old, or what. I think I may consider myself done gardening until spring, so I can focus on getting this house ready for Mom to stay with us - and then there is endless work to do on her house.

Harvested: Local produce from the market included sweet potatoes, No. 10 apples, Goldrush apples, Bartlett pears, sage, thyme, oregano, and eggs. Only two more weeks of that market left until next May. Boo hoo! I hate to go back to commercial eggs for the winter.

Preserved: Dried schnitz (PA Dutch talk for dried apple slices).

Cooked: Fall is definitely my time to get better at cooking out of storage. I want to bake, and make soup, and put things in the crockpot all the time. I am starting to queue the recipes I want to try.

I love making yogurt, just so I can mix in some of that plum jam I made a few weeks ago. It's like eating perfume. (In a good way, not a toxic alcoholic way.) I love to mix it with fruit and oatmeal. Yesterday, I ate a bowl of yogurt, pears, and nutty granola for lunch. I read a tip about making a separate little jar of yogurt to put aside as the starter for the next batch, so I make a half-pint jarful when I make the quart. Works great.

Stored: I am trying to focus now non-food supplies. I reserved a little of our food storage budget for later, as I cook more and discover what I forgot to store. Q-tips, toothpaste, lotion, 40# clay cat litter, laundry detergent. Cheddar cheese blocks on sale for less than $3/lb. Ten canisters of rolled oats, and 6 jars of applesauce at a dollar sale. A roll of duct tape for the bug-out bag.

But I couldn't resist stopping into the grocery liquidator when another errand took me past it: 6 boxes washing soda at $1.25, borax, toilet paper, yet more rolled oats, three bags of cereal, 2 big bottles of 100% fruit juice, 4 boxes of hot cereal, jello, 6 boxes of the granola bars DD12 likes to eat on the way to school, a few more cans of tomatoes and greens. Six more bags of chocolate chips for .65 each. Favorite score of the week: A #10 can full of bay leaves for $3.49. They don't expire until 2011, and I may still be using them!

I really like that store for trying out things I would not try at full-price: kosher barley soup mix (good), organic mushroom soup in aseptic boxes (good), Italian pesto in a tube (good), organic fat-free ramen noodles (yuck). If we like the samples, I buy more for the pantry.

Prepped: DH bought clothes for the new retail job. They want jeans, khakis, plain t-shirts and polo shirts, and he got a lot of new socks. (He likes black socks, and we discovered that hanging them outside turns them into gray socks and seems to weaken them - so now they will be dried inside.) He had a 20% discount coupon for everything. His clothes last for years, and all of this stuff can be worn for any occasion, even if he gets a different job, so it felt like "stocking up."

DH is taking over the development of our bug-out bags. He bought us a solar lantern that also comes with an AC/DC charger and a car cigarette lighter charger. He is a former private investigator that gets police and military supply catalogs in the mail, so I am not surprised. He already bought LED flashlights and multi-tools for everyone. I keep mine in my purse and find that I use them all the time. You have to be careful if you go into a courthouse or other government building; the knife on the multi-tool means you may have to check it as a weapon. (But I find that they usually miss it in the bag check- the profile on the Xray looks like a pliers, not a knife.)

We are developing a personal bug-out bag for each of us, and a family box or bucket with more food and tools that would evacuate to the car. We will also work on assembling all of our personal data and scans of important documents on a flash drive, with hard copies for the bags. Gotta remember to add my mom to the bug-out plan and develop her bag, too. DH is working on local maps with marked routes to rendezvous points, in case we are separated. We'll have bug-out drills, like we have family fire drills. In theory, once we get the kits together we will rotate the clothes and food every 6 months.

I stop at the Goodwill at least once a week, since it is very close to DD15's job. This week I found another plastic colander, a big jar, a plastic organizer basket for my jar lids, a nice cotton blanket for DH, and a roll of bright orange labels that say "biohazard" for DD15 to entertain herself.

I got three 5-gallon plastic oil vessels via Freecycle. A local family restaurant gets the oil direct from a relative's farm in Lebanon, and rebottles it to sell at their Middle Eastern restaurant. I met the wife-half of the couple on the Freecycle list, and she told me how to make yogurt in a crockpot - I like her. The oil jugs have screw tops and are stackable. The oil seems odorless (not rancid or used oil that would leave a smell in the plastic), so if I can get them clean enough, they will be great for water storage. I will have to wash and fill them in the bathtub.

Pursuing our media plan, DH reports that we will be able to use his Xbox 360 as an internet appliance to watch Netflix movie downloads. He already arranged the Xbox account, and we just need a Netflix account, when we are ready. The service launches Nov 19th.

Managed: I worked on finding more storage containers this week. The big blue bins with lids get too heavy to move around, which makes the stacks hard to use. Buckets will be more managable for most bulk food, and the bins can be converted to storing other things.

The Giant grocery bakeries say they don't save or give out buckets because it was "too hard to manage" and apparently people were fighting over them. But the smaller Weis store nearby will save buckets for me. I got 7 buckets this week, but only five lids that matched up. They were rinsed, so washing wasn't too bad (unlike one that I wheedled from a Giant, still smeared with frosting). I dried them with a towel and then further air-dried them for a day. The ingredient labels on the bakery buckets are horrifying. In no way are grocery store baked goods "natural."

I decanted sugar, oats, and cat food, so far. I haven't done anything with mylar bags or oxygen absorbers, yet, but this is a step up from sacks and cardboard boxes. A 25-lb sack of sugar fits in a 4-gallon frosting bucket quite nicely. The 4-gallon buckets hold about 12 pounds of rolled oats - I have two buckets of oats, and probably enough canisters to fill another. A 20-lb bag of cat food barely fits into a 5 gallon bucket.

The bakery lids do not look like they really seal once they are opened. I want to get some Gamma lids and see how they fit on the various bakery buckets. At more than $6/each, they aren't cheap. But I like the idea of a lid I can open and reseal easily.

Reduced, Reused, Recycled: I found a big masonry nail to anchor the end of the clothes drying rack, so we are back in business with that. I will only using the dryer for towels and sheets that are too big and heavy to hang indoors with out current set-up.

After two days that didn't break 50F outside, and nights below freezing, we finally broke down and turned on the oil-filled radiator in the living room. We all sit in chairs working at computers for long periods, and we were too chilled. It's about 64-66F in the living room during the day. The electric baseboard heater in our bedroom is set to low, just enough take off the chill. Part of our room overhangs the front porch, and there is no insulation in the floor. I need to find some carpet padding and scrap carpet to insulate that.

Local/Family: I actually used some of my stored water for a real emergency! My mom is having trouble with a bad pipe leak, and she turned off her water until we figure out what to do. I took her jugged water to tide her over, and she can sh0wer at my house or my brother's. The Universe is conspiring to move her toward our house.

Our City Council of elected idiots is seriously considering closing the library as a cost-cutting measure, to meet a budget short-fall. I plan to get involved in that discussion. I am organizing attendance at a City Council meeting, a letter-writing campaign, and a response from DD12's middle school. Perhaps an afterschool rally on the steps of the main library branch.

Learned: Found that Weaver's Orchard has cold-pasteurized cider, which is what I want for making hard cider. I am picking some up this weekend. Cold pasteurization uses UV light, instead of heating to kill bacteria, leaving the desirable yeast bodies alive. I am also tracking down a report of a roadside stand with "wild" cider that is completely unpasteurized. I may start two buckets of it.

Read an interesting post on La Vida Locavore, about how to lobby your Congressman about a food issue, or any issue. I do write letters and email my to my elected state and federal officials regularly, but this gave me a lot more ideas for how to make it count more. She also has an informative article abut Tim Holden (D), a local Congressman that is the vice-chair of the House Agriculture Committee. I'm not interested in blogging about politics - I don't feel qualified - but I am trying to learn more about the people that are going to decide whether we starve in the next decade or so.

Library: I realized this week that it has been a year since I started cataloging recipes on the WeGottaEat.com website. I now have over 550 recipes entered and tagged with keywords. I am their biggest, and probably most frequent, user. I stop in almost every day and add a receipe or print our a hardcopy of something I want to make. I keep the hard copies in a binder, building a family print cookbook. I really like this site.

Semi-Recycled Halloween

We are having a semi-recycled Halloween. We have always liked making our own costumes out of bits and pieces. All year long we watch for potential costume pieces at yard sales.

Last year, DD12 wore a Gone-With-the-Wind gown I found for $1 at a church rummage - a lovely pale yellow dotted-swiss gown from someone's long-ago. Then she found a broad straw hat and white gloves, and her sister bought her a vintage parasol to complete the ensemble. She looked like she was an extra in a movie.

DD12 decided to be a doctor this year, using a lab coat at a yard sale. I often buy oddball pieces of clothing for future costumes. We got scrubs at the Goodwill for $6.

The stethoscope was an issue. I couldn't find a toy one anywhere I looked. The Halloween accessory aisles in stores have very limited supplies. Apparently, no matter what your age or gender, you can only be a Sexy Vampire, a Sexy Witch, a Sexy Pirate, or a Monster. You cannot be a doctor, a lawyer, or a Native American Tribal Leader.

We ended up buying a real stethoscop at a drug store, with a blood pressure cuff for $17. I am sorta justifying that as an addition to our medical supplies. Now someone has to learn how to take blood pressure readings!

DD12 wore the costume to a birthday costume part for a soccer teammate last weekend, and will wear it to trick-or-treat on Friday. Sunday, it will be re-used by a small-framed boy at chruch for the Haunted Basement. Not bad, in terms of costume mileage.

DD15 bought fangs at the dollar store and is making fake blood. Vampires in casual street clothes are very popular with teens. We are going trick-or-treating at a friend's house, as we have for the past few years - we parents sit in their driveway and give out candy, while the kids go around the neighborhood together. It's an area with lots of kids, so lots of families give out candy; I combine my bags of candy with our friends' bags, saving us both money. DD12 is thinking of this as her last trick-or-treat year. Darn! Now I have to buy my own Mary Janes, instead of snitching them from the kids.

Not a lot houses do candy in our own neighborhood - some people consider it too pagan, and I think it has become too expensive for some families. I find the "Harvest Festival" they do at school to be far more pagan-themed than costumes and candy were, which are merely commercial. Apparently, the evangelical Christian parents that pressured the school board to stop celebrating Halloween, just don't realize that Harvest worship is the oldest pagan theme there is. Tee hee!

On Sunday, we will have a Day of the Dead celebration at church, and remember our loved ones that have died. I think I will take a photo of my grandmother. Our city has lots of Hispanic families that celebrate Dia De los Muertos on All Souls' Day, so our annual service feels nicely connected to that. Then we have a bake sale Haunted Basement fundraiser afterward at Coffee Hour, to benefit UNICEF. The teen group puts on the haunted basement each year, and they have a lot of fun with it. This year's theme is Bedlam (the London insane asylum of yore).

It will be interesting to see how the celebration of Halloween progresses over the next decade or so, as the economy, energy crisis, and climate change take us all for a ride.

Independence Challenge - Week 25

Witchhazel blooming along a road on the

wooded mountain above our city neighborhood.

I'm feeling good, at least about food storage. I'm not done, but I have a really healthy supply now. Crowded shelves and a nearly-full freezer. Some odds and ends left to get, and I need to organize a re-stocking routine. Water storage still needs more work. We'll have more time to catch up after soccer season ends in November, and we have the attic insulated.

I like the LDS/Mormon-style preparedness plan I've been reading about, where families have a 72-hour kit for bugging out, then a 3-month food supply for immediate use, then a year of long-term storage of major staples like wheat, beans, oats, and rice. I have most of the bug-out bags, and the 3-month supply. I found a local wheat source, but I need to find more barrels and buckets before I start on the long-term stuff. I may not subscribe to the LDS religious beliefs, but I surely do believe in their food storage plan.

Planted: Nothing new, but we are planning to finish a spinach cold frame and a worm composting farm next week. My ginger root is sprouting - does that count?


Harvested: We had our first freeze predicted Tuesday night, so I harvested everything tender from the yard - 10 green peppers I laid out to ripen, three heads of celery, two parsley plants. Also picked a small head of cabbage. The outside leaves were pretty chewed up by beetles, but the inside was lovely.

Preserved: Dried lots of celery and minced parsley. I use celery almost exclusively for stock-making, so I dry the whole stalk and all the leaves in hanging bunches. My home-grown celery stalks are much thinner and leafier than grocery-store celery, but it's the taste I am after anyway. I also dried celeriac leaves, which taste like celery.



Made a pint of sauerkraut with the little head of cabbage. Used my vintage potato chip slicer, since it was such a small head. Packed the salted cabbage in a quart mason jar - my favorite old cast iron potato masher fits in there perfectly to squoosh it down. It juiced right up. I cut a circle out of a plastic lid and put a bottle of juice inside the jar to weigh it all down, I put it on a shelf over the cellar steps, to wait out the 2 weeks of initial fermentation. I set an email reminder, so I don't forget to check it every few days.

I have about 8 more small heads of cabbage still out in the garden, so if this works out nicely, I will make more. DH and my mother are our only kraut-eaters, so I don't want to get carried away.

Blanched and froze another 2 giants heads each of cauliflower and broccoli - about 10 meal-sized quart bags. One of the cauliflowers was deep purple - turns a pretty lavender color when you blanch it. I hope it doesn't lose much more color when I cook it later - it would turn gray, which is unappetizing.
The last pint of bread-n-butter pickles from the summer got opened, and I found Kirby cukes on sale, so it was pretty quick to slice them and boil some syrup for 2 quarts of refrigerator pickles.

Cooked: Made a huge batch of broccoli-cauliflower-cheddar soup, and froze a quart before the ravening hordes sucked down the rest. Made the first parsnip cake of the season -I love that stuff, this time with craisins and walnuts.

Grilled the corn from the market, and cut off the kernels, then made corn cob stock from the cobs. The corn went into a Cuban-Inspired Pork Chili I tried for the first time. The stock went into a new cornbread recipe. Then the cobs went to compost bucket for the worms. I used the hell out of those last four ears of fresh corn!

I'm getting better with the seasonal cooking from the pantry. Now, if only I could stay in the bread-making groove. I just keep forgetting to put it in.

Managed: Found a big popcorn tin for all my baking chocolate. Mom says she has more tins for other things that come in soft packaging. Tins are really common at yard sales, too, but I usuallly ignore them. I labeled the storage jars I've added lately - DH notices if I don't and asks what is in every jar. Updated the list of what's in the freezer.

Checked the potatoes and squash I stored a few weeks ago, and everything looks okay. It hasn't been really chilly in the cellar yet, so I am a little worried things will start to spoil. I still need to get more onions, potatoes, and sweet potatoes, but I don't think the cellar is cold enough yet.

We have hard water that leaves soap scum and lime scale in the tub and toilet. I've tried all the combos of vinegar, salt, and baking soda cleanser that I can stand, and I am going back to chemicals for now, until we are out of this rented hovel, with its bathroom mold problem. The scum and scale provide a foothold for the mold that regularly creeps out from behind the poorly-intalled plastic shower walls to climb the walls and climbs the shower curtain. I feel guilty about the chemicals, but I can't stand the mold. I hate when people visit and have to see our bathroom. Ugh.

Prepped: At the Goodwill, I found a large black metal picture frame that gave me a holiday gift idea. Found a package of Graco stroller netting intended to protect babies in strollers from mosquitoes, but I am going to use it to protect containerized plants from bugs next summer.


Fabulous Freecycle Find: I got a very large cast iron griddle. The brand is Texsport, and appears to sell online for $35-40. I've wanted a griddle for a long time. This one is 24" deep, almost 27" with the handles, and is actually too big for my current stove. It would be great on a commercial stove with cast iron burners. It would also work ourdoors over a fire or a charcoal grill. I'm dying to be able to make more than one pancake at a time. The flip side has a ridged grilling surface.

Stored: DH brought home 4 cartons of grits (6#). When I looked surprised, he said, "I don't know why you are always so surprised when you ask me to get something and I actually come home with it." He's right; I don't give him credit for being a good shopper. And he really is 100% behind our efforts to stock up, even if he and I disagree on where the economic crisis will ultimately take us. He also brought two big boxes of decaf tea bags and two canisters of hot cocoa mix when he saw them listed on our shopping white board.

Made a last large food run (about $250), shopping the sales at various places. I remember a line from someone's blog, something like this: "I never need anything from the store. I shop to restock, taking a advantage of loss-leader sales. If you don't need something, you can always wait for the best price." That's my goal, and I am almost there. I only need milk, eggs, cheese, a little produce (like bananas), a few bread and cracker products. I am not making enough bread and rolls yet. We also buy a few treats, but not from need.

Redner's had a 40% off sale on store-brand fresh chicken, so I bought about $20 worth and froze 10 meal-sized packages: 4 bags chicken breast, 2 bags boneless thighs, 2 bags whole thighs, 2 bags drumsticks. Also got 4 canisters of bread crumbs, and 4# of margarine for baking, to freeze.

Price-Rite was good for 12 assorted cans of beans, 10 cans of albacore tuna, a gallon of white vinegar, 2# of brown sugar, cat litter, boullion cubes, pound bags of candied ginger and dried pineapple (only $1.49!), 4# box of dry milk, and pork ribs for the chili. For the freezer, I got 3# of shrimp, 3# of hot dogs, a pound of bacon, two bags of bagels, 2# of meatloaf mix, and 2 pints of heavy cream. They also had cheap garlic and kirby pickles. It's a great place to buy Hispanic seasonings, and I got dried chipotle peppers that I jarred up.

Big Lots did not impress me. Their prices on odd lots of canned goods are not much better than regular grocery sales. I like the Buy-Rite liquidator much more. I did buy 15 cans of Campbell's soup, a 7oz bottle of vanilla extract, a 2# can of peanuts (for granola), 3# of whole grain pasta, and 3 canisters of raisins. Cleaning products were cheap, so I got steel wool, cleanser, toilet cleaner for hard water, and citrus cleaner.

I cherry-picked the Giant specials: 30# of King Arthur white whole wheat flour for $3.20 per 5# bag (regularly 4.49) was my favorite deal. Lots of Buy-One-Get-One-Free: kielbasi, bacon, split chicken breast, frozen ravioli, Bagel Bites for DD12. Half price center-cut pork chops. Good sale on ricotta and mozzarella - can't freeze them, but they will stay good unopened in the fridge for several months. Also picked up some Fels Naptha soap, washing soda, baby wipes, natural dish soap.

Aldi rounded out the freezer: Bratwurst, chicken nuggets, five 1# rolls of frozen ground turkey, a 12# ham, and 4# of butter. Also got more dandruff shampoo, oats, ziplock bags, lemon juice, chunk light tuna, sugar, peanut butter, pancake syrup, rice crispies, saltines, a stash of fig newtons, and extra toothbrushes.

Reduced, Reused, Recycled: Still haven't turned on any heat. The residual daytime heat is still enough carry us through the night, even when it hits freezing. It's about 64-67 in here during the day, a little warmer near one of the two south-facing windows. Sweatshirts and slipper-socks are enough to be warm, with lap blankets when we sit still. We closed the storm windows throughout the house. DH needs to get another blanket on his side of the bed; his feather comforter is getting old and a little thin. We each have our own layer of bedcovers to roll up in, allowing each of us the right coverage for our own internal thermostats. Like two giant larvae snuggled together.

We are doing badly at not using the dryer. I haven't found a masonry nail that will hold up the clothes rod, and we run out of indoor clothesline fast. The windy weather has landed some laundry in the neighbor's muddy yard, and that wastes water on rewashing. I need to do some exploring of laundry aids at Home Depot or maybe Tractor Supply.

Local/Family: I bought local produce at the West Reading market: celeriac, baby bok choy, apples, carrots, eggs, 4 ears of the last sweet corn of the season, and 2 pecks of organic sweet potatoes to store. Some of what I bought at the more commercial Fairgrounds market was from a 100-mile radius. Erica from the B&H organic farm gave me a sample of the hard red wheat they have siloed; I plan to buy 50# from her, and encouraged her to grow spelt again, too.

Spent last weekend with DD15 at a youth retreat in Towson, Maryland. There is another in November in Annapolis, and I am scheduled for youth leader training in Philadelphia. Note to self: figure out how to tie the youth stuff into the food security stuff. Maybe develop an awareness workshop that presents basic info and makes suggestions for action - sorta like An Inconvenient Truth, but for food.

Learned: Checked with my chef-friend Rosella, who used to own a fresh pasta business. I wanted recommendations for a pasta machine. She said that most of the all-metal manual pasta makers are fine and cost less than $20 on eBay. That was a relief, after pricing water filters and grain mills that run $250-300, and the $200 Squeezo fruit mill. I will ask Rosella for a pasta-making lesson for the girls and I. We can also try making crackers.

DH found a great article at PlanetGreen about Green Sex. We both thought the bamboo sheets sounded good. Lots of resources listed there, as well as discussion about phthalates in sex toys and condoms. You'd think sex was already a pretty green activity, wouldn't you?

Library: Stopped at a used book store in Maryland last weekend, and bought some fiction. Looked at the garden and food books, but didn't find anything I really wanted. The gardening books were almost all about ornamentals, which once would have made me happy. Now, I want books about growing and preserving food.

DH and I each have a large collection of winter reading - I suspect we will run out of winter before we run out of books. I can't begin to express how much I love having a reading partner, after several oldbad relationships with people who were jealous of the booktime. DH and I even often like the same stuff; we've expanded each other's reading horizons. I can face any apocalypse, if I just have enough books and right person with whom to share them.

Thoughts about the future

This post is in two parts, intended to preserve some ramblings I posted on an Adaptation discussion list, a place where we talk about adapting to a low-energy low-cash future. My blog here is public, but also a journal for me - when I come back in a year or five, I want to remember what I was thinking about, what I was planning, what I was working on.

~~~~~ PART ONE

My family would probably be nearly as unprepared as everyone else, if I had not stumbled on Sharon's blog this past spring.

I was a gardener - but I grew flowers and a couple herbs. From someone's garden blog, I was led to Sharon's blog. Shortly after, she issued her Independence Challenge. I've been doing that challenge now for almost 6 months, and been working hard at it.

Part of that time was spent floundering around and wrapping my head around the changes we'd have to make. Finding resources, reading things, talking to my family, figuring our what parts of our plans might have to be abandoned.

I feel sorry for the folks that will not have the "adjustment" time before they are forced to make major changes in lifestyle, with far fewer resources. It's gonna be tough to catch up - impossible for many.

I get to go to auctions and yard sales while there is still little competition for useful items. I get look for good deals on food without standing in lines. I get to buy a grain mill and a water filter and a pasta machine before they are out of reach. I have an education and some financial resources.

It's easy to feel "holier than thou" when we watch the oblivious masses continue to shop. But they are oblivious because the media and the government are both telling them that things are going to be OK. And because it's hard to imagine the decline of the US as a wealthy superpower, let alone the decline of our own expectations. Most of us have been drilled all of our lives to measure our happiness by our possessions and our socio-economic status.

This past weekend, I was at a youth retreat in Towson, MD, with my daughter. On the way down, my car started acting funny, so on Saturday I hunted down a car service joint (Firestone) to hook up for a computer diagnosis. While I waited the 2 hours, I walked down the street to a Panera Bread and had lunch - iced chai, a pannini, and a scone. Tasty, but I spent $10 that felt wasted. The place was packed, as were the shopping centers around me.

I had a book to read - the 4th in the post-apocalyptic "Change" series by SM Stirling. There I sat, surrounded by real people in a consumer wonderland, reading about fictional people in a post-consumerist agrarian future, feeling unhappy about how much I love Panera's Orange Scones. The world is just full of cognitive dissonance, lately.

I was able to drive the car the 95 miles home, but it will probably need major service. We can't be without a car yet, but we can't afford to upgrade the 2000 Jeep Cherokee to a more efficient car.

Losing a car can mean losing a lot more. I've been carless in the past, and not in a good way - unable to get to better jobs, cheaper food sources. I live in an area with poor public transit - if we didn't have some savings to pay for repairs, losing this car would mean my DH losing the little seasonal retail job he just found, and DD15 losing her job. It is already hard for DH to face working in a Bed Bath & Beyond after spending three years working for his degree. But the savings are a finite resource that have to get us to our "adapting place," and he is a practical guy.

But at least we have that savings cushion, for now. A lot of people are a lot closer to the edge than they realize.


~~~~~ PART TWO

Some pretty good news: DH got a job at Bed Bath & Beyond. They start everyone part-time, up to 35 hours/week. Just short of the 36 where they would be required to offer some benefits. It pays $10.50/hr, slightly more than we expected. We don't know what his schedule will look like.

He doesn't feel good at all about finishing his degree and then working in retail. But it's certainly better than no work at all. It will be an easy job to leave, if something better comes along.

The big point is that it will enable us to pay all our current living expenses out of income, not take the rent out of savings, as we have been doing for 6 months. That's a huge plus for us.

Once we get him settled in, we will find a new job for DD15. The coffee shop she works at cut everyone's hours and will probably go out of business. It's barely worth driving her back and forth. There is a caterer that has a production kitchen within walking distance of us. If they are going to need more help, it is going to be during the holiday party season.

We are putting a second car on the road. Sounds counter-productive, but if we don't, everyone's life will rotate around DH's BBB schedule. He has a 1994 Jeep Wrangler garaged, that needs a transmission. It gets good mileage, and he will use it to commute. The 2000 Jeep Cherokee that gets worse mileage will stay home for me to use sporadically. I go out foraging about once or twice a week, and I usually do fill the whole vehicle. There are soccer practices, and DD15's job until she gets another. And, I need to be able to get to my mother's house (3 miles) if I am going to keep her moving along.

Feels like we are going backward, but we need to do what is necessary to fund the longer-term plan. Everyone will produce income while we can, to pay for the changes we need to make for a different future lifestyle.

We've made excellent progress on our food storage preparedness, which feels great. Our house is mostly ready for winter. The conversion of the unheated attic to living space (by insulating and paneling) has not begun, but I have two months left until my self-imposed deadline. Then my mother will come to stay through the end of March.

With the (rather large) exception of DH not being able to find a professional job, the economic downturn has not directly impacted us much, yet. We did move our savings from a large bank to a small local credit union. Gas prices went down (for now), and we are able to find lots of cheap food. The lifestyle changes we have made were our own decisions, not forced by changes in the economy. So far.