What preps are you doing this week? Part 3.

[nickdutch]

NickD: Please post in Recipes all your TVP experiments, I'm interested in finding nice food that I can cook for a chilli hating veggie.

The only real ingredients that I have been using have involved liquid smoke, barbecue sauce and the like.
I have discovered that it goes bland as buggery when you add it to a soup or stew, so its best to cook it in its own sauce an serve it up in its own sauce with side dish of other stuff. keep them compartmentalised rather than the British way of cooking everything together in one big pot.

[Stasher]

We've been doing a lot of maths and marking the kitchen calendar. We have been stashing for more years than I want to admit (no, seriously, who are these people who claim they don't remember the summer of '76 because they weren't born!?!). It is a shocking amount of time to be stashing. BUT we are not very disciplined and stash according to what we think we need and what's on offer. We now have a better handle on what we need to cover ourselves for a five month period and it's thrown up some interesting anomalies in what we have stored.

On the anomaly front I am praying we manage to get thro all the frozen beans before this years harvest comes..........................

[Allycat]

There was a newspaper article a couple weeks ago stating that most 'middle class' families would struggle if they were hit by a sudden £500 bill and would have to borrow to get through it.

Well this week exactly that scenario happen to my little family in the form of a £500 vet bill. I'm very pleased to say that we didn't need to borrow any money as even though the situation has left us with very little cash till the end of the month - thanks to our preps we don't actually need very much - maybe a couple quid for some fresh bread and fresh mushrooms (possibly...) other than that we are covered.


The cat is fine - she had a tumour on her bum removed that luckily turned out to be benign

[Decaff]

Was getting low on canned mushrooms, yesterday I canned 1 kilo to help replenish some of the stock in my canned pantry cupboard. If the humidity drops a bit more I will do the kilo of corn and the 2 kilos of peas. It's far too hot to have the canner going at the moment.

I have a rather big bunch of chives to dehydrate and a few big chunks of bread to be made into breadcrumbs.

Strawberry season is about to start here so will need to get myself ready to can, jam and dehydrate the juicy red beasties! Plus, not forgetting the marmalade!

Busy busy busy at chez Decaff

[DustyDog]

Decaf, how do you can your mushrooms??? What kind of canning device do you have??? Me n Mrs dustydog lurve mushrooms and I can buy them in bulk from a supplier but they go off before we can scoff em all. Ta.

[Tizzie]

Hairdressing scissors. Only to be used by myself in extreme circumstances, different sizes of pudding bowls at the ready.!!!

[Decaff]

Decaf, how do you can your mushrooms??? What kind of canning device do you have??? Me n Mrs dustydog lurve mushrooms and I can buy them in bulk from a supplier but they go off before we can scoff em all. Ta.

Hi Dusty, I follow the Blue Book as per below:

Clean mushrooms with soft brush, rinse under cold water, drain and trim ends. Leave small mushrooms whole, cut large in half (mine were quite big so I decided to slice them).
Put into large pan and add just enough water to cover them, bring to a boil, reduce heat and gentle boil for 5 minutes.
Pack hot mushrooms into hot jar leaving 1 inch headspace(I drain off the water as it's brown and not very nice looking and add fresh boiled from the kettle water) you can add in 1/4 to 1/2tsp of salt if you want to, I prefer not to as I may not want salt in my recipe.
Remove air bubbles from jar, fit disc and screw on band to fingertip tight, place in canner.
Vent steam for 10 minutes, add weighted gauge and bring up to pressure for the correct altitude in your area. Pressure can for 240ml jars or 490ml jars for 45 minutes.
Turn off heat, cool canner till zero pressure remains, remove lid after 5 minutes, let jars cool for 10 minutes before removing.
Cool jars overnight, then remove bands and check for seal, wash, dry and label and put in store.

I have a Presto Pressure Canner. Best imported item I've ever bought, saved me so much money by buying in bulk and when in season!

Dehydrating is also a great way to preserve mushrooms, I do both.

Hope this helps.

[Briggs 2.0]

Aquaponics - My IBC project has been going fairly well. Too well in fact, because the fish stock has increased in size with the net result that the grow beds are not big enough to do the job of filtration. It's a nice problem to have because we've been doing water-changes and using the heavily-nitrated surplus water to feed non-aquaponic beds and the growth rates are quite remarkably increased. We were dosing our early potatoes with fish-nitrate water and the size and quantity is about 30% greater. Our main test crop is broccoli which is blooming. The strawberries look happy and the big surprise has been the wasabi plants. They also seem to be thriving.

We have lost a few fish due to them leaping out of the IBC before we fitted nets and one died due to boredom perhaps, but on the whole, they are doing okay and we've seen good growth, harvesting a couple of trout that made very good fillets.

It's not all been clear sailing. The siphons need constantly tweaking. I thought I had two good designs which were working without fail but then they stopped siphoning which stuffs the aquaponic process. if the siphoning stops, the flood and drain system stops and the plants have no soil to keep moisture around their roots. I've identified that the gradual build up of dirty water and algae makes the push fit connections looser and air gaps form, which effect the siphon. I've re-glued and sealed with plumber's mait to overcome this but when I revise the set up I will upgrade from 20mm push fit pipe to 32mm fittings with gaskets/O-ring seals.

The other downside that I did not foresee is the huge number of small midges and thunder bugs that swarm around the tanks, obviously happy as they can be in fish-sh*t.

Overall, as a project it's not going too bad and I've learnt a lot so that if/when we do expand the system, we will be able to create a better balanced setup.

Impending house move means I'm shutting down the system over the weekend.

[PreppingPingu]

We put some storage in the back of the garage last week, so I am setting aside a couple of shelves for tinned food - save them cluttering up the house. I have other things I want to put under my beds rather than tinned food! So I will be filling those shelves this week end with current stores and some new ones.

[Deeps]

Aquaponics - My IBC project has been going fairly well. Too well in fact, because the fish stock has increased in size with the net result that the grow beds are not big enough to do the job of filtration. It's a nice problem to have because we've been doing water-changes and using the heavily-nitrated surplus water to feed non-aquaponic beds and the growth rates are quite remarkably increased. We were dosing our early potatoes with fish-nitrate water and the size and quantity is about 30% greater. Our main test crop is broccoli which is blooming. The strawberries look happy and the big surprise has been the wasabi plants. They also seem to be thriving.

We have lost a few fish due to them leaping out of the IBC before we fitted nets and one died due to boredom perhaps, but on the whole, they are doing okay and we've seen good growth, harvesting a couple of trout that made very good fillets.

It's not all been clear sailing. The siphons need constantly tweaking. I thought I had two good designs which were working without fail but then they stopped siphoning which stuffs the aquaponic process. if the siphoning stops, the flood and drain system stops and the plants have no soil to keep moisture around their roots. I've identified that the gradual build up of dirty water and algae makes the push fit connections looser and air gaps form, which effect the siphon. I've re-glued and sealed with plumber's mait to overcome this but when I revise the set up I will upgrade from 20mm push fit pipe to 32mm fittings with gaskets/O-ring seals.

The other downside that I did not foresee is the huge number of small midges and thunder bugs that swarm around the tanks, obviously happy as they can be in fish-sh*t.

Overall, as a project it's not going too bad and I've learnt a lot so that if/when we do expand the system, we will be able to create a better balanced setup.

Impending house move means I'm shutting down the system over the weekend.

Glad you got it sorted mate, it sounds like you're well on top of it for you next one, handy byproduct for the tatties too. Kudos for going for it.