As a nation we must WHAT? & April wk2 preps

Obama said,"...as a nation we must Share the Sacrifice..." THE HELL YOU SAY? Like as a nation we already haven't given enough shit for these wars and "humanitarian aid" and the replacement of jets and war machines. Meanwhile the schools, police, firemen, and sheriffs are being cut 30-50%.

Are you kidding me? You can slap that bullshit on a cupcake and feed it to some other moron coz I'm not choking it down.

Since I don't have any children I have never had any kind of deduction. I don't get any kind of income breaks and I always paid the most possible taxes out there. If it weren't for the deduction of the property taxes I pay and the remainder of the interest on a small school loan I wouldn't have ANY deductions. Meanwhile GE doesn't even pay taxes but gets far more breaks than a regular person.

This makes me really irate. As you can see from the photo above we bought the hype too. That was the day we voted for the bastard. Hope-nosis is a MF*&TJY!! It is what it is - but now we are awake and there is no going back. They are really about to twist it in and give it to us. Beware. If you don't have anything to protect your interests it might be wise to do something.

This is my Walgreens Haul from Sunday. The salmon was .99 cents, the cornbread was .29 cents, the royal jello stuff was 5 for $1 and the feminine products were free. It ended up being a little under 29 bucks. Nothing expires until about 2014.








I've been on a salt kick and a sugar kick. I picked these up for about 3.57. so 1.19 ea. They used to be around .89 cents for this 4 lb box. If you pickle and can buy your stuff now. I am buying this in anticipation of the garden I have started - it's been stop and go various times but I just keep trying.









I picked up this foldable bbq thing at the thrift store - it says $3.99 but because of this coupon thing I had it ended up being $2.79. We will still be making a couple rocket stoves but i figured this would just be good to have.











I had accidentally purchased 2 of some things and I returned them to Wally World - well I decided to look around the store since I had a 90 buck gift card resulting from the return (it would take 5 days to credit my debit card- bastids lol)...I found this water bottle that filters 99,9% of the cooties in water for only 11 bucks. Online it has a rating of 3.5% but i'm sure they paid 3x what I did. I decided that I didn't want to buy the bottle unless I could find the filters. Weird but i found 6 filters in the TOY DEPARTMENT marked down to 2.50 from like 9.50. So that is enough to filter 700 gallons including the one in the bottle.

Since I had quite a bit on the gift card I decided to check if they had anymore wheat berries (they didn't) and noticed that the sugar had gone up from 11.78 to 13.48. Are you EFFIN kidding me? In a matter of 6 days (i bought sugar Tue 4/4 and then went again on Mon 4/11), then my friend told me yesterday it went up ANOTHER 2 bucks. If you haven't purchased your sugar do it now. I didn't think we consumed that much sugar until I started really taking stock of my baking and now the making of preserves. Also you might consider it a trade item - especially if you are holding packs of kool aid in your preps.




2 surprises:

1) From my best chef friend who just came back from France to New Mexico - she sent me some marzipan and vanilla beans - YAY thank you.

2) A subscription to organic gardening from Mr. Man aka Afroprepper. Because I am always scrambling to look for stuff online and what not and I've gone to Bookman's used books many times with no luck finding books. thank you!




I popped by a couple of my usual stores to check out their sales and found 10 lbs of rice, 4 pkgs of whole cinnamon sticks (15 sticks per bag), organic salad greens and 1lb bags of whole flax seed. All of that was about $17.85.









It was also the Wacky Wednesday sale - so i picked up 3lbs of Braeburn Apples for .96 cents, 8 cucumbers for .99 cents, Mexican Grey squash was 2lbs for .98 cents, and 14 packet of ramen for $2. I really haven't stocked any ramen so I figure a dozen wouldn't hurt. That was 25 lbs of produce and 14 ramen and 4 hibiscus drink mixes for $11.17.







I didn't waste any time as soon as I got home I prepped the apples - the doggies are so happy to eat the cuttings off of them.

Whenever I buy apples at that super price I always have the produce manager cut one open so I can taste it and make sure they are big enough so that cooking them down isn't a waste of my efforts, these cut crisp and firm and tasted as a braeburn should - tart with a sweet afternote.






I also discovered the last of my cinnamon was gone so I reached into the preps part of the pantry and found some cinnamon I had scored a couple months ago. I had stopped by this little shop next to Safeway for page protectors --- when I went inside I noticed a bunch of spices on clearance for .62. I popped the tops to see if they were foil sealed and they were. So I grabbed 8 of them. Mind you these are double the size of what you buy in the store - so they were very much a steal.






While I prep the apples I melt the butter and sugar together and even burn the bottom a bit for that caramel flavor.











Then I throw half the apples on top and mix then throw the other half on, sprinkle the cinnamon and wait until it leaches the liquid out and shrinks the apples a bit. I take it to a quick hard boil but do NOT overcook them even if this is only 10 minutes in a boiling water canner








I didn't really find any instructions in my ball book so I took it to half an inch from the top and followed the directions for apple preserves. Since these are just a favorite of Mr. Man I did not want them to be gelatinized or made with pectin since they will be eaten warmed or on top of oatmeal or wheat cereals.

14lbs makes 12 pints - but the family ate about a pint of it. if you want the recipe it's below - if not just eyeball it - it will be fine.

The most work was chopping apples.


cinnamon apple recipe

13lbs braeburn apples - cleaned and chopped
1 stick butter
4 c sugar
1 c water
1/4 c lemon juice
3T cinnamon
1 tsp pumpkin spice

bring to a hard boil - put in hot bottles and process as apple preserves per blue ball book.


We also decided to try the compost from a guy about 2 streets and 3 blocks over - he only charged us $3 bucks a bag for compost - they are about 40 lbs a bag. I think Mom 1 is coming around as she offered to pay for 10-15 bags of compost and the potting soil to mix with it for our beds. I guess watching the news is paying off for her, whatever the case I am grateful.






Please try to garden.
Please try to stock up on anything you eat.
Please move carefully in this troubled world where people are feeling the strain of inflation.