A year's worth of food

[itsybitsy]

Liis have you seen those tin rotation systems you can buy - I'd love one of those!

[diamond lil]

Porridge made with water and salt, then some single cream on top, is awesomely gorgeous. I could live on it fulltime but would get scurvy lol.
Sauces are great for tweaking bland food I agree.
I'm very tidy too, I cant stand guddle. I like the neatness of those racks Itsy but I'd want to play at shops !
Costco have a full sack of Manitoba wheat flour suitable for bread making at £11.
The next problem for me is how to store home grown veg without buying fancy dehydrators and stuff..

[itsybitsy]

Porridge made with water and salt, then some single cream on top, is awesomely gorgeous. I could live on it fulltime but would get scurvy lol.
Sauces are great for tweaking bland food I agree.
I'm very tidy too, I cant stand guddle. I like the neatness of those racks Itsy but I'd want to play at shops !
Costco have a full sack of Manitoba wheat flour suitable for bread making at £11.
The next problem for me is how to store home grown veg without buying fancy dehydrators and stuff..

Lil you can get a dehydrator for about £40.00. I guess, unless you get a fully rotational crop system going to ensure seasonal veg all year round, then you may need to invest in one? Tatties will last a couple of months in a hessian sack somewhere dark and cool, and you can hang onions for a while too but other than that I don't know much about long term fresh veg storage. Also - there's always the possibility that crops may fail and then you may be up poopoo creek without a paddle...so to speak.

[southernPrepper]

Clamp spuds outside under straw and soil. Google provides.

[Bladerunner]

Wifey and I have a good few months of stuff stashed away.

The problem is the family. Wifey will not want them to go hungry so that will be 2 families with 2 kids each making 10 people. Suddenly my few months is down to a couple of weeks. One son-in-law has 3 siblings and the other has 2. Are they going to let their families go hungry while I have food? Where does it stop?

I can see my few months lasting a couple of days. If I put my foot down then I would probably the one getting kicked out of the house.

They are also the sort of people who like to eat fresh and healthy food, so they probably only have a few days of food in their own homes at most.

By the way, they all think I am stark raving mad with my prepping so I don't mention it to them any more. I tried all things but they are brianwashed that the government will help them out no matter what the problem is.

I can wind them up at birthday and Chirstmas time though when I request stuff that makes me look even more mad.

Be lucky (and paranoid)

[Ian]

Bladerunner, have you come across the concept of the 'ticket'?

If you go to the cinema you only get in with a ticket. Your relatives also only get access to your stores (all stores) with a 'ticket'. The form of the 'ticket' is up to you, more food, fuel, accommodation, your choice. But no 'ticket', no entry.

What you are buying is insurance in the form of usable goods to ameliorate the effect of a problem instead of a promise to compensate you after the problem, so you are cutting out the broker's fees. Perhaps explaining that and the savings you make by bulk buying and buying when the price is low or on offer might persuade them.

[Bladerunner]

Hi Ian,

Despite my grammar school education, I still had to look up ameliorate.

A good idea and I shall give it some thought.

By the way, ameliorate nearly set off my hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia. And yes, that is a real word and yes I can pronounce it.

Be lucky (and literate)

[Ian]

Bladerunner, I suspect we are of different generations. At school I was taught that language was a tool and needed to be honed sharp, the right word in the right place. Good comprehension and vocabulary were to be applauded not criticised. If one can't communicate correctly one will get nowhere.

I listen to the coming generations, who I am sure are as bright and interested as any other generation, and I despair at their poor manner of speaking and writing. I am sure you have all seen posts (on other fora (forums? I was taught fora) thankfully) that are incomprehensible. You can have the best idea in the world but if you can't explain it coherently, it and you will be lost.

My difficulty is grammar. I was never taught it (a long illness took it out of my curriculum) and I really have to think hard about where apostrophes go, too many exceptions to the rules.

But I have always strived to expand my vocabulary, I find it fun and read dictionaries for leisure and I delight when I find an older one containing long lost words. Yesterday, for example, I spent an enjoyable twenty minutes researching the word 'camouflage' just because to me it sticks out as an oddity in the English language (it appears to go back to a Walloon term 'to blow smoke into someone's face'. Great fun, but I can see the connection, more work to be done)

Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is just made up as a joke sometime in 2002 as it it a long word ostensibly describing a fear of long words. The correct, accepted, term used by psychologists is 'sesquipedaliophobia'. Still a good joke though.

Ameliorate is not so long, perhaps better would be 'neologophobia', a fear of new words.

Have a look for the origin of 'garage' and have a 'supercalifragilisticexpialidocious'* day.

*1964 A nonsense word meaning fantastic, based on Supercalafajalistickexpialadojus 1949 which in my opinion is better.

[diamond lil]

There are exceptions to apostrophes?

[itsybitsy]

There are exceptions to apostrophes?

For God's sake man - don't encourage them!