What Preps are you doing this week? Part 7.

[bobble]

Picked some more tomatoes and bottled them. Also picked beets and made a jar of beetroot pickle!

[peejay]

Had the first wood-fuel session of the season today & came away with a nice boot-load of log that I shall look forward to processing on a drier day. Glad to see that plenty of thought had been put into Covid safety & common sense was observed throughout.

[Turkey Doughnuts]

Bought some jars for my first foray into canning and vinegar making.

Also my drain pipes have arrived and I have a saw now for them so hopefully will get some better weather to cut them into pieces for my burying experiment.

Bring in the last of the pumpkins and plant out the last of the leafy greens.

Hopefully will find some time to do some cupboard clearing.

[Dutch_Uncle]

My life as an ongoing, slightly surreal punchline to a joke;
So, I had to take my elderly dear auld Mam by taxi to a local hospital for an echocardiogram today. What with Covid restrictions and all that jazz they asked me to hand her over and to come back in half an hour or so.
I took the opportunity to go in search of a local bakers nearby to grab us both a coffee and something to eat. There was one of those Starbucks sin-palaces near, but knowing myself it just wouldn't have been worth the required months of talking therapy and cursing the wicked decadence of the modern world I would have needed down the pub to get over the trauma of paying three quid ( or whatever ) per cup of coffee. Instead, my eyes fell upon the sign for a Lidl's a little further on.
Instead of coming straight back out with what I needed, I eventually staggered back to the department about £130 lighter and overloaded with a 6 kg ABC powder fire extinguisher and three heavy duty nylon Lidl's bags full of Continental treats and preps.

I haven't been able to provide links from the main Lidl website but the fire extinguisher was £24.99.
The other relevant prepping bargains included in my haul were;
A Medisana inhaler/ nebuliser (to back up the nebuliser I bough at the start of the outbreak) : £ 24.99
Battery kitchen scales (for when I start baking) : £5.99
A 1.3 Litre Ernesto enamelled cast iron casserole dish (in the hope it might prove durable enough for outdoor cooking if need be ; to compliment the two Dutch ovens I'm ordering this week.) : £14. 99.
An Ernesto tin opener £ 2.99

It's not easy being mental sometimes.

[Yorkshire Andy]

with a 6 kg ABC powder fire extinguisher and three heavy duty nylon Lidl's bags full of Continental treats and preps.

I haven't been able to provide links from the main Lidl website but the fire extinguisher was £24.99.

You and me both
https://www.anaf.eu/en/products/ps6-hj-abc

Closest I can see on their website bar the hose stowage been different

[Arzosah]

Tidying up! Who knew it was so important? Sort of like the spreadsheety admin thing we were talking about on another thread. It's meant I've increased my water storage slightly, been able to pack away more food so its not obvious when people walk into my house, digging over the front border before the fencer arrives (please god let the fencer arrive, sometime) so I can plant herbs and bee-friendly plants.

I'd started to get a production line for face masks, but finishing off projects became more important. Today, though, the new projects take precedence again - a delivery from Wickes, to enable 3 projects for later in the year, tiling, raised beds (not tiling a raised bed, of course ) and sorting the patio.

[Arwen Thebard]

Collected another four bags of compost, ten now ready for the spring. (Not going short again next year).

[diamond lil]

I've thoughtfully and bravely ordered my xmas desserts early, just in case.... wouldn't like to face the End of Life as we Knowit without a sticky toffee caramel cheesecake.

[Lemne]

I'm researching on the internet and getting lost down rabbit holes. I need to make a list and stick to it. I'm still vac packing. More water under the bath. 25l container filled and in the wardrobe. So basically lots of flapping but not much action!

[jennyjj01]

I'm researching on the internet and getting lost down rabbit holes. I need to make a list and stick to it. I'm still vac packing. More water under the bath. 25l container filled and in the wardrobe. So basically lots of flapping but not much action!

To help you get on track...

Just imagine, you were to be locked in for a week with just what you could grab in a supermarket basket.

#1, Inexpensive Calories (pasta, rice, dried spuds, oats, oil) so you won't starve (Carbs)
#2, Tea, coffee, milk, beer and wine (Morale)
#3, Flexible Flavour (Tinned tomatoes, cook-in sauces, sachets) so you won't hate the calories (Vitamins and morale)
#4, Some sort of meat or substitute, such as Pek, corned beef or spam and lots of soya granules (Protien)
#5, Pulses and flour, but only if you know how to use them (Fibre)
#6, Then just augment with nicer stuff like tinned fruit and custard. Oxo, raisins, whatever you like.

#7, Try living on the above and see what you are missing, then augment and build on it.
Rinse, repeat.

DON'T devote all your energy to one aspect. Better to have a weeks worth of tinned soup and a bag of oats than a years worth of just water.

Stashing all that water only really defends against a sudden, total loss of potable water. It takes up valuable space. Assuming you get a days worth of advance warning, you could source that in a day by just filling baths and wheely bins from a hose, till you rig up some sort of harvesting/collection system. When has the UK been a dessert? Obviously have some sort of filter to hand, but don't go over the top.

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