What Preps are you doing this week? Part 8.

[Jerseyspud]

Catalogued all food that's arrived recently. Depressing that even though it looks alot that it only added a day calorie wise

Mind you I'd focused on protein so does explain alot

'Man cannot live by bread alone: He must have peanut butter'


Calories : Cheap and easy : The foundation stash.
Flavour : Essential. You won't want to live for more than a day on just calorific foods.
Protein* : If you want to survive long enough to see your calorific food expire.
Vitamins : Meh! What am I a doctor.

What protein foods did you embrace and why? Long life meat and fish products are indeed expensive.

Adding various tinned fish to my rotating stock actually led me to discover that I liked it and probably enhanced my diet. But those tiny tins of sardines and mackerel are obscenely expensive per kilo. Home Bargain and B&M have some cheap tinned fish, but try before you buy, because some is rubbish ( while some is remarkably good )

I reckon soya mince is one of the best value for money protein stashes. But the trick is to use it to pad out / dilute what real meat you have stored. Pulses are also good for protein, but many of us in the West just don't seem to give them space that they deserve in our diet.

Soylent Green is forecast to be a popular protein source next year

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green

Today's lot was chickpeas, evaporated milk, custard and pasta sauce and more instant mash

Protein wise I have tinned meat, tinned fish, vegetable protein dried and now chickpeas. Oh and some jerky

[Jerseyspud]

I do have a rsther large stash of peanut butter, Nutella and crackers

[Yorkshire Andy]

Protein wise I have tinned meat,

It goes with chips, eggs, beans, rice,

[Jerseyspud]

I'm not sure even if the world was ending I could convince my kids to eat it

[jennyjj01]

This last couple of weeks, I've been doing some batch cooking for the freezers. I don't know how wise it was, but I had some 6-12 month old meat in the freezer, ( at risk of freezer burn) which is now an assortment of casseroles, curry bases, sauces and all round ready to eat meals and snacks. I've seriously embraced zip-lock bags, (rather than my old favourite of foil trays) to freeze these in and I'm experimenting at freezing these bags of foods molded into flat blocks so that I can minimise volume and expel air that would lead to freezer burn.

Apart from ziplock bags, my new best friend is Al's kitchen
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC95tDL ... p3tBRBVjfw
This guy is brilliant at making Takeaway style indian food. No faffing about. Inspirational and he makes it look so easy.*

Just love the idea of having frozen prepared ziplocks of base gravy, pre-cooked meat, some rice, and a few surprise stash ingredients to get meals on the table in 10 minutes.

* Led me to discover that I need FAR more herbs and spices, and in the right proportions, not the hodge podge that I had.

[jennyjj01]

I'm not sure even if the world was ending I could convince my kids to eat it

LOL.
Start to persuade them now. Sneak it into their diet until they learn to love it.
Or more seriously, try out some of the various alternatives. There's a LOT of taste difference between say tinned 'bacon grill' and tinned 'luncheon pork' and similar. Some are gross, some are not half bad. And calorie, protein and VFM wise they can be similar. Lidl and Aldi have some good tinned meat, which seems to come and go for months at a time.

[pseudonym]

I'm not sure even if the world was ending I could convince my kids to eat it

Tomato sauce covers all ills.

[Jerseyspud]

I'm not sure even if the world was ending I could convince my kids to eat it

LOL.
Start to persuade them now. Sneak it into their diet until they learn to love it.
Or more seriously, try out some of the various alternatives. There's a LOT of taste difference between say tinned 'bacon grill' and tinned 'luncheon pork' and similar. Some are gross, some are not half bad. And calorie, protein and VFM wise they can be similar. Lidl and Aldi have some good tinned meat, which seems to come and go for months at a time.

No lidl here but if the world can just keep it's head clear till after summer I'm in the UK visiting my folks with the car and always stock up on cheap tinned whilst km over!

[jansman]

If I am honest Yorkshire Andy,I hate dealing with cars - even though I am reasonably competent at it.I am at the age now where a morning spent servicing a car could be a morning spent fishing

We are fortunate to have two very reputable,independent garages in the village. The one we use at the bottom of our road can fit you in quickly in an emergency,and doesn’t rob you. I had a motor a while back with a noisy exhaust. I drove in and asked them to take a look- expecting it to be a day or two.I had suggested it may need a new system.They told me,” you do your butchering,we’ll do the mechanicals!” An hour later I got a call to fetch it.They welded it ( and it passed two more MOT’s) and charged me 30 quid. Tomorrow I am dropping my wife’s car off for a service. She hates going to the main dealership ( still in warranty), but Brian says he’ll use genuine bits and stamp the book,and I can guarantee at a fraction of Vauxhall.

From a prepping point of view,it is good to have all those day to day emergencies covered: A good mechanic,vet,dentist,plumber,electrician etc. It’s all about a good working relationship. Last week the barrel on the front door started to fail. I looked online for a new one.However,what we have didn’t fall into line size- wise.Typical. I rang Colin. He is the local window and door repair man. He told me £40 fitted. That was a fiver cheaper than buying it and doing it myself! When he came,he extracted the barrel,but found a loose spring in the housing. “That’s your problem.” says he. Put the original in,and charged me Zero. He said I had put so much work his way,it was the least he could do.That’s a good working relationship I reckon.

[Arzosah]

There's a lot of inspirational posts on here in the last few days. Thank you all.

I'm not really passing muster, but I had part of my Sarah Raven delivery on Friday, 5 sage plants, repotted straight away (plantpots I had lined up were too small, so that was a whole other deal) so now I have 5 well potted plants to take care of before they're sturdy enough to be planted out (thick clay soil, I want to give them the best chance). I'm hardening them off, carrying them in and out of the house on a tray, and I'm currently having to tilt them on the tray edges so they're not sitting in a centimetre of rainwater! Showers are quite heavy today.