If you are looking for a great value on long-term food storage or emergency and preparedness supplies, you'll want to know that Thrive Life is having a great sale on "Black Friday."
There are a lot of items up to 50% off, and these prices are some of the lowest I've ever seen offered by the company.
Take at look at the flyer posted at:
http://www.thrivelife.com/files/materials/price-lists/Black-Friday-Sale.pdf
Here's a small preview below.
Support small business! Visit my Web site at:
http://thrivelife.com/eat2thrive
It's great food -- just freeze-dried or dehydrated versions of top-quality foods.
There are wonderful, nutritious foods and great treats. In fact, one of my favorite treats, the Neapolitan Bits, are on the sale. If your power ever goes out for a period of time and you start to miss ice cream, just break those out of your cupboard and enjoy.
It's not just for people. The sweet corn is perfect as a treat for your chickens. Nugget (our dog) is a big fan of the green beans.
Sale starts at midnight on November 29th and goes until December 2nd.
Thanks for looking, and thanks for your support!
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.
Jim went metal detecting all day, caught a quick bite when he got home, then made two (TWO!) pecan pies for Thanksgiving.
It was his first-ever pecan pie making. He's taking one with us to my mom's house to share, and he made one for his sister and her husband, which I think is very, very nice of him. We'll drop it by their house tomorrow, too.
Oh -- by the way, he's allergic to pecans and can't even eat them.
More on his metal detecting adventure soon.
My mother-in-law's cheesecake recipe, which caused me to gain a pound a day when we visited his parents in Arkansas, is coming, too.
So much to do, huh?
Also, what would Thanksgiving be if I didn't post my favorite Thanksgiving photo of our dog Nugget! He was only two or three in this picture. He's 13 now. I'll post a now photo of him next week, or Jim will.
Enjoy your day and don't forget to pray your thanks for those who serve our country.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Well, I finally got the word from my sister that I have permission to detect her neighbor's property.
The old fellow passed this past summer. Where the house sets now was once a homestead, with a dugout next to it in case of a Indian attack. The homestead, when it was built, was outside of Golden Colorado, by about three miles or so. I have not found out how big of a place it was or who first owned it. We are still checking some things out
The old boy was into hot-rods and motorcycles. After he was not allowed to drive anymore, he would pull out one of his hot-rods, fire it up, run it for a few minutes, and pull it back into the garage. Nice guy. I only got to talk to him a few times over the years.
It should be interesting to see what I can turn up. So, I'm off to do some relic/coin hunting. I'll fill you all in later, with a post, and I hope some pictures.
I'm SO EXCITED! This will be a chance that does not come along that often.
Have a great day.
Can you ever have to much TP? I don't think so. It could even be used to barter with. I mean, how many rolls can you carry if you have to bug out? Have you ever ran out of TP, and had to wipe your bum with leaves? And what if your bug out location has been invaded by rodents? Do you use a roll that has been munched by them boogers?
It is hard to fold one of them rolls and put it in your pocket. How many squares do you allow each person to use when it is time to do the paperwork? With leaves, do you have any idea how many it will take to get the job done --hope that you don't use poison oak or poison ivy. I would not suggest the use of pine cones. You might need to use them for fire starter.
I guess we could all do like the Romans and each one of us carry our very own sponge and vinegar. Or do like some pets do and see if we can drag our butts on the rug. 'Course that might be kind of hard to do in the wild. Nothing worse than your shorts being full of pine needles and such. So, what should we do? Toilet paper does not weigh all that much. But if you had to carry a 100 rolls or so, you would need some help.
Here is a thought. Every time you go to a fast food place, like McDonalds, Subway, Pizza Hut or the like, grab an extra handful of napkins. Before you know it you could have enough napkins to fill a shoe box. Now, myself, I like the napkins from Subway. They seem to be the gentlest on your backside. McDonalds napkins are more like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood toilet paper. (If you don't know what that means, ask someone.)
You want to look for napkins that are absorbent, easy to unfold, and gentle on your private parts. You don't want anything that is rough or that you can see wood chunks in. Try to stay with napkins in white. Colored napkins might run and leave you with your privates in different colored shades. (That's a story for another time.) Napkins fold nice and you can carry quite a few at one time.
They also work pretty good if you are a hunter and looking for a blood trail. The colored napkins can be used to mark your trail to and from your tree stand or duck blind. Try not to use any napkins with your company logo, name, or address on them. (Some people are so nosy!) I'm sure that you can come up with some other uses for your napkins. Like as a bib for when you eat real juicy strawberries, ribs, burgers, and other mouth watering things. When you're done with using it as a napkin you could fold it right up and still use it for later when nature calls.
So, don't throw them napkins away! Save 'em, hoard 'em, trade 'em (barter), even snitch a few. They won't miss 'em. You can even use them as a doily for when you're in camp, to show the others that you're not totally uncivilized. (Don't forget to hold out your little pinky when you drink.)
So, prep on my friends.
" If all the beasts were gone, men would die from a great loneliness of spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts also happens to the man. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the Earth."
--Chief Seattle of the Suquamish Tribe, in a letter to President Franklin Pierce
We're going to Thanksgiving at my Mom's house. We always do. I have 6 brothers and sisters, and all but one still live here. So, we take our families and some food and meet at my Mom's. My Mom asked us all to let her know what we are bringing when we know what it is, to help her plan a little.
I am usually a pretty crappy dessert maker. Well, unless it's a Pampered Chef dessert, and -- really -- who can mess one of those up?!
But this year, I'm thinking I might make Jim's mom's cheesecake.
Jim's mom was really a good cook.
When Jim and I traveled, we'd leave our dog, Nugget, with his parents, 'cause they loved him and treated him well.
I should say over treated.
One time we came back and Nugget had his regular vet check-up scheduled for just a few days later. They put him on the scale, and he weighed 7 pounds more than when we left -- and we'd only been gone a week!
It really kinda runs in the family, though. When Jim's parents still lived in Arkansas, we were with them 10 days and we each weighed 7 pounds more when we got back, too.
Jim's mom, Dennie, made a really interesting and tasty cheesecake. It was a recipe she got when she was growing up in Chicago. Her mom was a nightclub singer and the recipe came from one of the restaurants she sang at. I wish Dennie were still here so I could ask which restaurant it was from.
Anyway, it's pretty unique.
Dennie made it the first day we visited her in Arkansas and she and I ate it with every meal. Every meal! We'd eat breakfast and have some for dessert. We'd eat lunch and have some for dessert. We'd eat dinner and have some for dessert. . . with ice cream.
Well, it's easy to see why I gained 7 pounds. I don't know what Jim's excuse was. He and his dad ate it maybe once. The rest? Well, it was all up to us to polish that off.
I'll make it to take to my Mom's for Thanksgiving. I'll post the recipe and it's picture and let you know how it went.
Maybe you'll want to have dessert with all your meals, too.
"If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow man."
--St. Francis of Assisi
I like to read on my lunch hour. When I commuted by bus, I used to read there, too. And, I always carried a back-up book in addition to the one I was reading. I did not want to be without a book to read if I finished my current book in the middle of lunch or a bus ride.
That's why I love my Kindle Fire. I can carry a bunch of books with me at all times, without having to lug a bunch of heavy books around. I just download them to my Kindle Fire and I can read whatever I'm in the mood for at the time, and I never run out of things to read.
You can WIN a Kindle Fire from Purex. Purex is giving away Kindle Fires and a year's supply of Purex laundry detergent.
I'm a Purex Insider. That means that Purex shares information about its new products or promotions with me first so I can share them with you.
So, during the week of November 13th to the 19th, you could win a Kindle Fire HDX 8.9″ Tablet with 8.9″ HDX Display, Wi-Fi, Optional 4G LTE Wireless, 16GB, (ARV $ 379) + a year supply of Purex Detergent (Total ARV: $460) .
Just click here to enter. Good luck!
Peanut butter was first patented in Quebec in 1884. And it takes 540 peanuts to make one 12 ounce jar of peanut butter. So, peanut butter has been around for quite a while. And I feel for those who can't eat peanut butter. Just think of all the things that you can make with peanut butter.
There is peanut butter fudge, peanut butter pie, peanut butter and jelly, peanut butter cookies. I could go on and on. But, you can also use peanut butter in your preps. Besides it being a good source of protein, you can also use it to bait traps. I've used it on mousetraps for years, and it works really well. So, if you needed to, you could take a spring loaded rat trap, wire it up like on your fence or spike it down on a rabbit path, then add some peanut butter as bait.
Then wait.
When you hear the snap of the trap, you just might have a nice squirrel or a rabbit for the food pot. Some say that it works better than snares. As for me, I would do both. Rat traps are not too pricey. Use a few screws and some wire to keep them from being taken away by a larger animal.
We had a neighbor lady, years ago, who used rat traps to catch squirrels. She said it was easier to bait them with the peanut butter 'cause it sticks. There was many a time that she would show up at our house, when my dad was away at the air base in Little Rock, with a pot of squirrel soup with dumplings or fried squirrel with some gravy and biscuits or cornbread.
I can remember many a night that she would come over and spend time with my sister and mom and me. She also smoked a corn cob pipe. But that's for other stories down the road.
So, add some jars of peanut butter to your preps. It could come in real handy.
Have you ever wanted to fly? To be in control of an aircraft? My dad, before he took ill several years ago, got this crazy idea. He wanted to learn to fly.
He couldn't get a pilot license for medical reasons, but he heard about this thing called a sport pilot. All you need is your driver's license. Then he started to talk about building a plane. I was thinking that this was one of his many "ideas" that he'd get every so often. Some of them sound pretty neat. Others? Not so neat.
Well, he kept on about this sport pilot thing and wanting to build a plane for several weeks. So, I decided to do some checking. I looked at I don't know how many home-built planes and sites to buy a kit to build one of these things. Then I found a place in Kansas called "Rans." They had kits to build several different planes. So I told him to pack a lunch, cause we were going on a road trip. Mom wasn't too happy about it, but let him go anyway.
We made it to Kansas and found the Rans company. And guess what? Not only did they have kits for airplanes, but they also make bicycles. While we were there, we also found out that they gave demo rides in one of these little planes. Well, Dad was acting like a little kid in a toy store, all smiles and full of questions. His questions were answered, and he got to have some stick time in this fabric covered plane. I thought that once he got his feet back on the ground that would be the end of it, that he would say to hell with it and there was no way that he was going to fly in one of those.
I was wrong.
When they landed, he got out and had the biggest grin I have ever seen. And just like a kid, he said, "YOU HAVE GOT TO TRY THIS!" I had not seen him like this since he bought a motorcycle oh so many years ago. I took the plunge. Got in, strapped in, headphones in place, and away we went. All I'm going to say is HOLY CRAP, what a blast!
We flew around for about 30 minutes and the pilot answered all my questions, then let me have the stick. He wouldn't let me have control of the pedals, but I had the stick! Up, down, left turn, right turn. What a rush. I was hooked.
When we were back on the ground, I don't know who had the bigger smile, me or my dad. We would just look at one another and giggle like little girls. We almost purchased a kit, but I had seen another place in Kansas that had a kit plane made of metal. So we headed on home with these silly smiles still on our faces.
Several weeks later, we packed our bags and headed to Kansas again, all the way across the state. We went to Mexico, Missouri. The company is called "The Zenith Aircraft Company." They have a low-wing plane and a high-wing plane. We both got to go in both of the planes. It was just as exciting. My dad thought that he would like to build a metal kit plane. But first, we needed to find a place that trains sport pilots.
Well, we found one. We signed up for classes. (Mom wasn't too thrilled.) We did ground school, had all of the books, and these real neat headphones with a mic. On the way home after the first class, my dad put on his headset while I was driving and he kept repeating, "Bombardier to pilot! Bombardier to pilot!"
Well, we kept on taking our classes. We both logged a little over 12 hours of flying. Then one day my day said that he wasn't feeling too well, so I went ahead and took my class alone.
The next day, dad went to the doctor because he still wasn't feeling well. He was dizzy. Later that day he found out that he had meniere's disease, which is an inner ear thing that makes you feel dizzy and throws off your balance. So, he dropped out of flying class. I did, too, thinking we'd resume at a later time. He was a bit perturbed at me for stopping, but I told him that this was something that we both started, and that if he could not fly, then it would not be the same.
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I still have not gone back to finish. That was the beginning of my dad 's ill health.
I started this post several years ago and never got back to it until now. It kinda hurt to even think about, and I miss him a lot.
I should finish taking these flying lessons and buy the sport plane that he and I decided on. It would be fun, to a degree. And I know that Kathi would like me too also. There are lots of places we could go for what they call a $100 hamburger.
But, there is something missing. I can't explain it or put it into words. Besides, I've aged a few years since he and I started this adventure, and I'm not sure that I'm physically able to.
He has his wings now. And I'm sure he has driven Mom bananas with his whooping and hollering while he does barrel rolls and such.
"Don't interfere with something that isn't bothering you none." -- Unknown
Well, I received some deer meat and was asked if I could make up some jerky. I asked what flavor they would like, and was told teriyaki. So, here we go.
I was given five or six wrapped packages of meat. There was stew meat, a small roast, and some back strap. All of the meat was frozen when I got it. I decided to do the meat in small batches. When cutting the meat, you want it to be a bit thawed. It is a lot easier to get your slices that way. Slices should be about 1/4 thick or so.
First, I did some of the stew meat. Now, venison is lean, but there is still some fat. When making jerky, you want to trim as much of the fat off of the meat as you can. If you leave the fat on the meat, it can turn rancid and it does not keep for a long period of time. So, I trimmed and trimmed as much as I could from the stew meat.
I placed chunks of meat in a glass bowl. Don't use a metal bowl. It will give your jerky a funny taste. Pour a bottle of store-bought teriyaki sauce over the meat. Make sure it covers the meat. Stir, cover, and let marinate 24 hours for a light favor or 48 hours for a stronger teriyaki flavor. After marinating, remove the meat, and place it on paper towels or newspaper. Blot the meat to remove the excess sauce. At this point, if you want, you could sprinkle salt or some other spice lightly on the meat. If not, then it is ready for it to go onto dehydrator trays.
I cranked up my smoker, then smoked the chunks for about 1 hour with cherry wood. Then I put them on my racks for the dehydrator. I set the temperature on the dehydrator at 140, and dried the meat for 8 hours. You can use your oven at 200 degrees if you do not have a dehydrator. You'd put the meat on the oven racks with some foil on the bottom of the oven to catch any drips from the meat. You need to have the door of the oven cracked opened some. This lets the meat dry, instead of cooking. It takes about the same amount of time. 'Course, you may have to sample the meat as it dries. Want it drier? Add more time. When the first batch was done, I let the jerky cool before putting it in a zippered food storage bag.
The next couple of batches were the roast, the back strap and the rest of the stew meat. I cut strips of meat against the grain. It makes it more chewy.
After I poured off the marinade and blotted all of the meat, I sprinkled some with sweet BBQ rub, some with garlic powder, and the last bit with Cajun spice. I just did this lightly, but you can put on as much as you want. I only did this on one side of the meat. You don't need to rub it on. Put the meat on your racks and into your dehydrator. As before, 8 hours, 140 degrees.
I then bagged them up and marked the bags. My sister and brother-in-law are both a bit of a wusses when it comes to spicy food. So, the jerky with the Cajun spice was spiced very lightly. Play around with it. Come up with your own version of spices.
You can also make some homemade stew with the jerky. Shave or shred up some of your jerky, and put it in the pot with some of your dried 'taters, corn, peas, carrots, celery, or whatever else you like in your stew. My dad and I made up some dried stew in zippered food storage bags for hunting and camping trips. Figure out your serving sizes. (We made ours for two servings.) Everything can go in one bag, dried meat and veggies. We poured enough water over everything in a pot, then let it set for a few hours. When we came back to camp, we would add more water if we needed to.
For our evening meal, we would then bring it all to a boil, and let it simmer for a bit. We like ours served with a loaf of homemade sourdough bread and some chunks of cheese. A hearty meal on a cold night in elk camp -- YUM!
So, give it a try. Make some jerky. And FEED YOUR FACE!
As Nugget and I were on our walk around the lake today, some of the trees still had leaves of red, orange, and yellow. We stopped to take a little rest. As we sat there, I heard the sound of kids at play. There is a school not far from where we walk.
As I listened, memories started to come to mind. I remember Fall days of childhood. The crisp morning air as I walked to school. A puff of wind that is just cold enough to make you snuggle a bit deeper into your coat. And that wind makes your eyes water a bit. The leaves crackle and crunch under your feet as you walk.
You look up at the sky and you notice that the blue of the sky looks like a darker shade of blue as a back drop for the leaves in the trees. The colors of red, orange, and yellow seem to be so bright. On the wind you can smell that someone has their fire place going. Then the scent is gone.
On mornings like those, when I was so much younger, I wished that I could walk on for the rest of the day. No school, no teachers, no classrooms to go to. Just me and mother nature. Fall. And then we have Halloween, Thanksgiving, and then -- the big one -- CHRISTMAS, with all of the houses in our neighborhood decorated, and all of the different Christmas trees in peoples homes.
Fall, with the colors, the raking of leaves, and the smell of leaves being burned in your yard. Playing in a huge pile of leaves, the dust from them making you sneeze. The bits and pieces of leaves sticking to your clothes and your hair. When you're done playing in the leaves, going into a nice warm house and having a big mug of hot chocolate.
As I come back from my memories and Nugget and I continue our walk I wonder. It's been years since I have seen kids playing in the leaves. Do they? Nugget and I finish our walk. We arrive to our warm home, and I have a cup of coffee instead of hot chocolate. Nugget has a treat and we move ourselves to the family room.
We build a fire in the fireplace. Then I sit in the recliner, Nugget in front of the fire. Me with my thoughts of Fall days when I was young.
"Until one has loved an animal, a part of ones soul remains unawakened."
--Anatole France
