August 2011 Preps, Halfway Through!

I know some of you have seen this and some of you haven't. This is the quick pic of our canning. There was 1 full case to the side that I coudn't include in the photo because I didn't want the table to bow lol.

We've been canning since March 20th and have given away about 20 jars. But we still have 22.5 cases of canned food. It is the best addiction ever and it puts your mind at ease to look at the "food room"

Lemon Juice and Acetone...keep it on the shelves, keep notebooks too folks.












I really try to buy domestically made stuff.













Last week this chicken was only 1.89 a lb. But this last WEEKEND boneless skinless breast was only $1.49, the drumsticks and thighs were only .68 cents a lb. UNBELIEVABLE.









Tonight we also went to purchase more ground chuck (our local store here does 90%lean for chuck) and it was holding at $1.88/lb. All I know is that I have this feeling that prices are going to hike astronomically because our prices here are UNBELIEVABLY cheap.







Canning Chicken is one of my favorite things out there. I like how it looks, how it makes the house smell and how it tastes.










I already reviewed this. Just click on the receipt below so you can feel the amazement.












There's my jardiniere and peaches in the background. I just have to keep it up.












Proof is in the Pudding.

Click on it twice to enlarge the pic.













Walgreen's is getting harder and harder to hustle.

Contact Solution: 8 bucks with instant $8 rebate
BPA free baby spoons: $1.09 clearance
Lindt Choco Truffles: $1.50 each
Aquafresh Whitening: $1.29 clearance
Johnson 500pc Q tips: $1.99





I recently started watching youtube videos on how to make your own laundry soap. Last week while I was out shopping I was just keeping an eye out for Fels Naptha/Octagon soap. I didn't find any here in the West Valley so I stocked the Lirio laundry bars (white for whites and yellow for coloured clothes)

The fels is only $1.39 at Food City in the East Valley and the 400g lirio is only .89 cents


The borax was about 2.60 a box and the washing soda is close to $3 a box. Even just having this much would make at least 110 gallons of laundry soap following the most basic recipe.









We stopped by Wally World to pick up my briquets for my brother. Well Mr.Man and I habitually cruise their clearance. Well I saw this coconut oil but I said it's still pricey. Well as we walked away from it this little Asian lady made eyes at him and said What do you Want Hunny I will mark it down for you! He said I will take these for $2...she said Ohhh only $2.50 is my Max Hunny. He said, "I'll TAKE em"




I was helping my brother organize his pantry, house and garage and I found this 25 compartment organizer thrown in the corner of his 3 car garage. I noticed the corner just needed a bit of duct tape and said Hey Can I take this and he said take it.

I'm going to use it to divvy out my first aid kit a bit. The other week Mr.Man got a pretty deep thumb cut and I had to dig inconveniently.


I had that $8 coupon for walgreens. So I went in there to use it before it expired. I found these baby wipes 3 - 100 packs for only $2.50. I also found Keri Lotion for 5.99 with a $5 rebate. Next to Cetaphil and Jergens, Keri is my next choice. I ended up paying $4.78 and they gave me a $5 instant rebate. LOL.

The white choco nestle chips were only 95 cents each at the local dollar store.



Hydrogen Peroxide was only 99 cents a quart at the 99 cent only store. That is one of the best prices I've seen for 32 ounces. We still have a few cases of hydrogen peroxide so I figured 5 quarts would suffice.








We went to the East Valley to drop off some canned stuff and things I got for the Father In Law while I was in Asia. I was really pushing my luck asking Mr.Man to stop at the Asian store when he barely got off a flight from a 4 day bachelor party. But he's a good sport and he went.

The sake was only $6.47 a bottle but they only had 2 left. I also picked up shredded seaweed, wasabi powder, toasted black sesame and salt, green tea incense and good rice flour.

While contemplating what to can I decided to throw a batch of creamcheese brownies for the boys and girls at Arizona Shootersworld - since they are SO nice to us.









While that baked I went outside to push the cucumbers aka WEEDS around - and don't you know I found a cucumber. A nice big 8 inch one that was happy to see me...









I looked again and saw this 5 inch one...













And sleeping under the other side was one more.

It's not much but at least our ghetto garden finally yielded something. I just wanted to can SOMETHING from our first gardening attempt. Looks like I'm gonna get my chance. Thank you Bees for working and thank you Mr.Man for not giving up!

Week Haul, April 28th, 2011

The prepping budget got hustled around a bit and we had some household necessities so I did what I could with what I had. I also made more salt and cornmeal purchases but didn't bother to take a pic of it coz I'm sure you've all been there and done that Haha.

Dried potatoes were $1 buck a piece. Pretty good deal. I'm going to try 1 pkg first and then go back for a case - this 1 pint container reconstitutes to about 1lb of hash browns.








The last day of the sale I picked up more pink salmon @ $1.79. It will be on sale again in about a month anyway. I also picked up a lb of plain almonds and another lb of cocoa powder.








Strawberries were pretty good so I picked up 10lbs and a few lbs were eaten...










...the rest were canned. 7 lbs made 8 1/4 pints of preserves. Fair enough











There was even a little extra to make preserves for the evil moms ice cream.











The girl stuff was 2.99 but it gave a 3 dollar in store rebate so I purchased the Jergens bar soap for 1.50 (for 8 bars) - we received about a dozen nepro samples free which is enfamil for diabetics and we threw them in the bob for extra vitamins and calories. i also picked up an extra can opener just to have it around for a buck.





We must just be lucky here because a lot of these discount stores carry a LOT of good stuff that is neither expired nor destroyed. We really like the 99 cent only because ours also carry produce, tea, Texas toast and first aid type things.

This is my first dirt purchase of 34 bags $34.66. That's a half cubic foot per bag @ .99 cents.



Found more of the chocolate chips for 95cents each and grabbed the 16 they had on the shelf. I also picked up some very large ghirardelli choco bars on final clearance for 1.19 ea.








I took the Swedish aunties to Ross to look for some gym clothes (they like adidas and puma) and they swore everything in there was cheap - well yeah it's cheap if you are a size 4 and a size 6 and everything on clearance has your name on it - haha. However I found these 1.5 loaf pans for 5.49 ea and a norpro pasta machine for 20 bucks. BUT on top of that they had the "senior" discount on a Tuesday so I got 10% off everything.


The most awesome part of the loafpans wasn't just the quality of them but they are made in the USA. Yeah unbelievable right. Someone told me they paid 12 bucks for theirs and they were made in China (bleh). Seems to me that a lot of prepping related things are often made in the US. If that ain't telling you something I dunno what is.




I stopped at Walgreens again to take advantage of the full rebate on the girly stuff and even used my rebate on some pretty cool stuff. Funny how 2 little 99cent bottles of nail polish seem like a treat, the rubber palmed gloves were only 1.49 and the gardening stuff was only 75 cents, I still had quite a bit left on the rebate so I picked up 4 bottles of 91% alcohol.



The tomato sauce was 5/$1 so I picked up 20 cans and called it a day.











We used more than half the 1st batch I bought to fill the small bed, so after my eye appt I stopped and picked up another 40 bags. yeah you heard me 40 bags.









Mom 2 was wandering the store and found this oyster sauce for only 99 cents. This exact same brand was selling at the asian store for $2.99. Unbelievable how much people lift that price on you if you don't know where you are buying stuff.







Afro picked up 4 more bags of compost, 10 bags of 'dirts' and found 4 tires "free take them" a few blocks down lol. We are going to use the tires for the tobacco plants to keep them high enough and away from the dogs since they seem fascinated with the gardening crap.

on Mr Mans Youtube someone posted that we should watch out for compost having hidden herbicides and roundup and such because it might impact the growth or non growth of our plants. Fair enough. He then went on to talk about he's been composting since 2009. LOL ok. we learned this crap 2 months ago. *shakes head* I find that most advice is too late, irrelevant to the desert, assumptive that we aren't already doing it or simply an attempt of tooting ones own horn. It is what it is --- but I find that good intentions are rarely good there is a bit of egocentricity in there. But when advice is good and it's people you know it's REALLY good. That potting mix comes from long beach shavings. They don't have much detail about their product but I did email them.

It's like this. We are doing as much as we can in the short time we've started prepping (5 months on the 1st). I'd like to think we are holding our own when it comes to this prepping thing. We are just trying to focus on what we can do - all the fine tuning will come later. Also, when it comes to prepping this quickly - we don't have time to do esoteric things like make our own compost on the spot (the leaves and grasses from our plants take a bit longer to compost), make our own toothpaste, buy the best mill, use only heirloom seeds (we're practicing with storeboughts), and don't get me started on every tom dick and harry telling us what kind of weapon to have. Look. We are further along than some people who have been prepping a year - at this point in time it is important to have each base covered rather than just ONE base covered well - that defies logic to focus your energies on one small detail because someone put in a bit of advice. It's called workarounds to prevent holes in your prepping. Prepping involves a wide array of preparations - and seeing as to how anything could hit the fan it's best to just cover yourself long enough to get to the point you can fine tune each area. Jeez.

We also had a lot of hidden expenses this month: optometrist appointments, 2 pairs of glasses each and contacts, gardening and hardware related expenses and of course the all mights ass kicking at the gas pump. Give me a damn break.

Preppin into Overhaul...the last 2 days

So last Sunday the head of World Bank stated We (the world) are one crisis away from complete shutdown. If that wasn't enough to bunch up your undies on Monday S&P put a toe tag on the US economy by declaring it as Negative. All I've got to say is WOW. If you still don't think we're headed into an obvious depression you are really living in a dream world.

I was going to take a "break this week" and slow down a bit with the prep purchasing but I am thankful that (yet again) something spurred me into action. I was starting to feel like I'm going a bit overboard but what would it really hurt to add preps? The ghetto garden is come and go - when I think it looks good it gets fried and when I think it's dead 8 plants show up- so I'm just watering it and letting it happen. Mr. Man will be building the beds this weekend so we'll see how that goes. Mom 1 insists that I use the old kiddie pool for yams and potatoes lol - I will do it just to amuse her. There will a blog on the ghetto garden this weekend!

I decided that if I couldn't find any hard white wheat this week I would dump the budget into preps related to canning; jars, pickling salt, vinegar, pectin, extra lids and funnels. But I did find some cool stuff along the way.


Yesterday I stopped at Wally world -sugar is still holding at 13.48 for 25 lbs - so I picked up a couple of those. I picked up 1 box of pint jars and 2 boxes of quart jars. Vinegar actually went down in price about .30 cents. Miracle.

Total about $49.40






Mom 1 is pretty spooked by the hyperinflation and is consistently contributing canned meats to my preps. I feel bad but at least she gets it.

Fortunately those were only 1.79 ea. I also picked up 3 extra packs of widemouth lids (about 2.75), 1 pack of regular lids (about 2.30), 10 packets of pectin (9 bucks), 2 backup funnels (1.30 each), 1 box pickling salt (i can't believe they were out), 6 dove bars (.39 cents ea).

Total: $36.99 +tax.
I stopped by the 2nd wally world I go to today and they were completely out of wheat berries. Dang - so I picked up another 2 bags of sugar, 5 pickling sugar, 2 organic plant food (4 bucks each), 1 more case of jars (9.44). The organic miracle grow is regular 10 bucks so i got a BIT of a deal.

Total. $36.52










This is my deal of the day. I stopped by my regular little grocery store but didn't like their Wacky Wednesday produce sale - so I checked out their sale aisles in hopes of finding more of the white corn meal - they were out. But I did find these - corn meal mix 5 lbs for $1...


Haha. Imagine that.








See it's 5 lbs and there's the nutrition info.
The expiration is set for Sept 2012, but it will be bagged and tagged by then so no worries.









On the way home, I passed the dollar store and went back to pick up 4 more packs of cinnamon sticks for 3.96. that's 60 sticks.











I'm not knocking anyone who's got it (money and means) and they don't want to prep. But watch yourselves, hedge your wealth. If you haven't bought anything try to store something at least 3 months of food. If you can learn new things; gardening, canning, sun drying, first aid - learn some kind of basic skill that will serve YOU. Inflation tension is so thick in the air you could cut it with a knife.

On a more positive note: 3 days ago we had a math test and the 3 chatterbox bimbos were cheating: everyone could see it they had formulas in their phone and were copying each others answers. I told them outloud - if you must cheat at least have the courtesy to play it off since the rest of us actually studied. Today 2 test results came back - um why did those HAMHEADS get 55 and 60's bwaa hahaha. I got 2 95% results hahahha. Life is GOOD.