Monday, June 16, 2014

It's that time of the year folks....


Yup, It's time for yet another "serious" attempt at losing weight. Not for holidays or anything but I'm well overweight and need to lose at least 100 pounds. Yup one little fat B'tard (R.I.P. Rick Mayall).

Plus I'm type 2 diabetic so I guess i should be doing the weight loss for that reason if any.

So I weighed in on Saturday the 14th June 2014 at 297 pounds which is around 135 kg. My goal is 85 KG or 187 pounds.

Prior to this attempt I've lost 12 kg since last august 5th 2013 but it certainly is not 2 pound a week.

Had 40g or porridge made with water today and half a banana cup of tea with 50 mls of milk.
I am aiming for 2080 kcals a day or less but we will see how this goes. I'm going to try what I think is the "paleo" diet where you eat few if any grains, pasta, breads etc but more meat, butter , lard etc.

I don't know what my weight mistress would say but hey, ask no questions get no lies as they say.

Lunch was some raw carrots and some old potatoes that were in the fridge from Saturday... Well only 3 of them. Tea is going to be pork chops and stir fry curry sachet from Asda.

by tea time I had changed my mind again. we had a large bowl of french onion soup with some slices of granary baguette and some Gruyere cheese. Ok so it was a bit too much cheese but I'll be good tomorrow. 

I was almost good...ish yesterday. I had some porridge for breakfast then fruit for lunch and some pork stirfry   for tea but then spoilt it all by making some delicious rhubarb Crumble and had that with icecream. Granted it was not as much as we would normally have but we still had it.

Today was a mix of stuff for breakfsst. I haven't been sleeping well at all for a few weeks now with constant pain in the back, neck, knees, in fact all over an the oxy, having been increased is still not doing to much to help, but I guess it is helping a bit as I'm mobile more, as in I can walk round the garden twice in a day,lol.

So breakfast for this fat B'tard was a cup of tea, some cornflakes and slpendida sweetner, then some pasta mix I made for my wifes lunch last night, well about 3.30 this montning actually. It was bloody delicious which just goes to show that it takes time for flavours to imalgumate because last night it tasted lousy, lol.

That was going to be lunch so I guess i had lunch at 6.50 am ! At lunch time I had a small mince and onion pie in puff pastry and when I say small I mean the size of your mothers yorkshire pudding tin, the ones with 12 to a sheet size. I also had a couple of eggs scrambled and a large pot of tea, like 6 cups in one.....

Tea is going to be a couple of those pies with some veg and a very few small potatoes.

Thursday, June 5, 2014

Have you got a "War Cupboard"?

I've been watching TV today and a lot of the coverage has been about the 70th aniversary of the  D Day landings in the second world war. On there were a lot of interviews of modern day "cadets" or young people in the armed forces all under 18 and the overwhelming thought from these young uns was that they would not want to go to war and they would be scared.  I bet the paras and the landing forces were shitting bricks as well but they had no option but to run up the beach under fire.

So what would you do in terms of prepping if war was either iminent or in flow. Bare in mind we currently have the likes of syria that could have been a tipping point for war or more realistically the problems of the Ukraine becomeing a flash point. After all what American President can for go the thought of poking a big russian bear.

When we were putting the shopping away on a saturday afternoon in the 1970's ( this was when shops closed all day Wednesday and obly opened until 12 noon on a saturday) to put certain tins in "the war cupboard".  When asked what this was and what it meant she would say that it's in case there is another war.

She would buy an extra tin of something and put it away for future use. The aim being that you wouldn't miss the cost of an extra tin of beans or a tin of vorned beef each saturday but id there was another war then she would be able to suppliament the ration book with other food from her war cupboard.

So have you got "a war cupboard" ? If not, why not?

As mentioned above this is an easy way to build up some stock for your prepping without actually realizing you are doing it. Of course you can throw a lot of money at it and buy in bulk with a credit card etc but this way gets you into thinking about prepping every time you go shopping and these days it is more than once a week.

To start with you can write down what is in your cupboards at home. Then work out from this list what you will use these food items for in the week. As many of us only have 3 or 4 days of food in store anyway it shouldn't be to hard to do.

Alternativly you can make up a set of lists for meal plans you will eat over the nezt week or 2 weeks to start with.
This serves a few good ideas because you only buy food you need for that week so you don't waste food or money, you get to make fresh meals from fresh ingredients and also you keep alive your cooking skills in case TSHTF.
If you are so busy you need to use micro meals then this use of fresh foods can be done on your day off or on a weekend or when you are on holiday etc. There is no reasons why you cannot learn to cook  a hearty meal from freshly preppared foods. After all putting an egg in some hot water for 6 minutes makes a meal from fresh ingredients so it is a start.
If you really, really cannot use fresh ingredients then do the same thing with lists of frozen meals or whatever you use today to feed your good self as this will also help you to reduce wasteage and money after all we are told that modern canning and freezing techniques are as good as fresh ingredients. Personally I don't think so but then I love cooking and I have the time. 

Anyway, rant over but once you have you list of fresh food or your list of other foods you can start to buy an extra ingredient when you go shopping.

On your list you might have 5 tins of baked beans that you will use in  1 week. Each week when you go shopping you will buy an extra tin of beans over and above those you replaceso on week 1 you buy 6 tins of beans. 5 to replace those used and 1 for your "war cupboard" week two you buy another 6 tins so you replace the 5 you use and now have 2 tins in your war cupboard. Week 3 the same and so on until week five you have replaced the 5 tins you use each week and now you have 5 tins in the war cupboard for emergencies etc.

The following week you might buy tins of peas, cornbeef, dried pasta, tinned pies, tinned tomatoes etc.

Of course if your budget stretches further you can buy a lot more tins more frequently but this is down to you and your budget.
Don't fall into the trap that I did and buy a lot all at once then have no money left at the end of the month and thus I had to use my "war ciupboard" to feed the family. once learnt never forgoten.

Over time you will have a complete weeks meals in your cupboard that is extra to what you normally eat and the cost of this will not have been missed.

If you keep doing this day in day out, week in week out every time you go shopping then you will soon get a large amount of food saved up for whatever you deem to be an emergency because we all hope that we don't have to go to war any time soon.

 

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Paranoia strikes again in the world of prepping


Ok, it might be a bit of an assumption but I think we all, at some time or other think about things in life from a paranoid view point.
As for me it's more than a bit and the odd time but where would I be if my friend paranoia wasn't there for me to cuddle up to.
Take for instance the current threat to our lives on the internet. This  worm or virus that has been created by some Russian computer hacker (note: the story was released by the Americans, good old standby for impending doom those ruskies) that takes countless billions of rubbles, euro's, pounds and of course the US Dollars out of bank accounts the world over. So what happens, the NCA or National Crime Agency, the BBC and the large industry anti virus companies get together and anounce they have shut down this russian gangster fro exactly 2 weeks to allow us to sort out our computers and update the anti virus programmes before they "switch off" the gangsters coputers for good.

Now I ask here why is it taking two weeks to shut them down, why are we being warned of it and what is the likely outcome of it all?
The last bit first, probably nothing. Everything will go on as it is in endless postings of what we had for tea on facebook and tweittering twaterings on other social media and I'll prepare tea for my dear wife.

On the other hand it could be that worms like Stuxnet and other zero day problems are too complicated now and the powers that be are going to try and take control of the internet in some way or other.

Here is one paranoid thought. TPTB are going to blast the internet with a wide scale virus / worm / trojan etc and they don't know what will happen so it all goes tits up then the problem will be you computer will be infected with this worm and you did nowt about it so it's your fault.

Or nothing bad happens but TPTB have a strong hold into the internet world and can now control the web with their worm / virus / trojan etc.

Going back to the bit above about 2 weeks notice. Why do we have to have two weeks notice for them to shut down the so called bad guys? Surely they should have done that as a matter of course and we don't get to hear about it in mainland surburbia.

If the worms have turned so to speak and are now "out in the wild" and infecting power plants, car assembly lines, the national grid, shopping centres like Asda and Wall mart etc that run on card payments and not cash and just in time deliveries then this is why TPTB need to try to act in the next 2 weeks.

Even governments say that we need to keep 3 months worth of food and water in stock for " minor problems" etc. What happens if this warning is one that we should heed in a larger way and stock up on food and water etc just in case it is "the big one" where we all get to experience the world as it was pre computers....

Oh I'm going for a lie down as this paranoia is getting me, well paranoid........

Saturday, February 15, 2014

Living on Fresh air part 2

To save having to scroll down a long way I have decided to do a second page for this topic.

I've had a few days out of action again with the back but the cooking budget goes on. I have now spent £88.61 in February on food for my wife and I but that includes £22.14 on some whoopsie / yellow label meat. I got 2 joints of topside beef weighing 6.5 kg, 5kg of shoulder of pork, 3 pork chops, 10 chicken drumsticks and a pork pie for that money. I was well chuffed and am now finding out the different times the staff mark down the goods. In Asda Hartlepool it used to be 09.30hrs, 15.30hrs, 21.30hrs and 23,30 hrs for all departments and after the likes of Matin of Money saving expert fame mentioned these times to the masses everyone started shopping at these times so people like me who have to use these yellow labels to live kept losing out on the deals.

Asda also started losing out on sales as many, many people stopped shopping at other times. Now one might say that the people are greedy but it could also be  said that the government cuts are far to severe or Asda's prices are too high.  I don't know the answer but cultivating the staff with a thank you and a smile still works wonders.

Out of the beef I got 5 joints of beef for pot roasts, 2 kg of mince and about 1.8 kg of steak cut into 6 slices. The pork shoulder I cut in 2 bits, 2kg and 3 kg and had a sunday roast with the first and made 6 kg of sausages out of the 3 kg bit. This was about 78% meat and were pork and apple, cumberland, lincolnshire and 4 links of pork and beef with a bit of the beef mince.

The chops were used in 2 meals and the chicken was used in 7 meals, mainly stew type meals that can be bulked out with other "stuff" such as oats and veg to make them go further.

A;though the budget is up at £88 I have enough meat left for this month and a good couple of weeks next month and a few veg left.
I'm still making bread and whilst on this restricted budget I have lost 17 pounds in weight since the 1st of Feb and 11 cm on the circumfrence of my stomach.

I've not been that hungry as time has gone on but the first week was sheer purgatory. I'm not a vengful person by any means but I truly hope with all my heart David Cameron and his cronies get booted at the general elections next year. I know Labour will carry on a lot of the same "Economic restructuring policies" but it has to get better. I also hope with all my heart that the tories don't win a majority because if they do then the Thatcher years in the 80's will be like living in the land of milk and honey compared to what this lot will do given the chance.

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

living on fresh air... Updated


Well not quite "living on fresh air..." but very near to it.This bastard government of ours are being true to their colours in that the majority are Tories and are giving tax cuts to the rich and screwing over the rest of us. Anyway, no more ranting for now. The title of this post is what I expect a lot of people are now having to do such as eat or heat where people are so poor that they have to choose whether to eat food or heat their home which to be honest in thew 21st century in the 4th richest country in the world is quite frankly absolutely disgusting but then when will the Tory led government think about the poor when all of the cabinet members including the Lib Dem ones are all millionaires!!
Anyway, I digress once more.
We only have £100 per month to feed two of us which sounds a lot but for that £100 I will need to provide 186 meals at an average cost of less than 54p per meal. This is 3 meals a day for 2 people for 31 days in the month.
Now we tend to eat porridge most mornings so my first thoughts were we could pinch a bit of money from Breakfast so just out of interest here is the breakdown for a breakfast meal.
I use water and Dried milk for porridge and i buy a 340g tub of dried milk powder  from Aldi at a cost of £1.84.This tub will make 5.96 pints of milk or 3385mils of milk and each serving of porridge uses 275mls of milk and 40g of oats.
Therefore so far the cost is thus:
Porridge oats 1 kg box £2.18 Each serving is 40g so....
Oats cost 8.72p.
Milk is 12.31p.
Sweetener is 4.15p per teaspoon.
So the total cost excluding the cost of the water and the gas to cook it is 25.18p per serving. If we both have porridge oats for breakfast every day the cost per month is £15.62.
We generally have sandwiches for lunch so an average egg mayo sarnie is 3 organic home produced eggs at a cost of 51p plus 8p for Asda smart price mayonnaise. I like to add the juice of a 1/2 a lemon at a cost of 17p per half a lemon. I make bread every day and tend to use James Martin bagged flours at £2.15 per packet. To this you need to add 3 Tbs of olive oil at  a cost of 46p
So if we were to have egg mayo sarnies every day, using half a packet of bread the cost would be £1.04 per day per serving or £64.48 per month. 
Thus the cost of Breakfast and lunch would be £80.10 which doesn't leave much for the evening meal for both of us.
Sometimes we have Tuna mayo sarnies for lunch and toast or cereals for breakfast. I like to try and cook a decent meal for each evening, Monday to Friday as my wife works hard and looks forward to her tea.
For evening meals I try to use meat of some description around 3 times per week. If I were to neck one of the chickens then that could be classed as free but maybe it shouldn't be as we have to feed it and we lose the egg machine. After all we have a cost per egg of 17 p each.

The other two nights of the week are vegetable nights or curries so I can use cheap cuts of meat or scraps of chicken etc.

If we have a joint of pork for one evening meal then it will make sarnies for the next day, a second evening meal and possibly a second round of sarnies depending on the size of the joint.

Cheap cuts of beef like shin, rump or tail can easily be made into scrumptiousus dishes if cooked long and slow in a rich gravy.
We bulk up on vegetables and as such we have maybe 5 or 7 different veg each evening meal. We don't have sugar and salt for dietary concerns but we do use White and Black Pepper and also use fennel seeds in the black pepper grinder. We try to grow fruit and veg in our garden and as such this keeps our food bill down. Last year we were able to grow about 60% of our fruit and veg and we were able to spend £255 a month on shop bought food. I am not looking forward to this £100 challenge but this blog will keep us up to date on the following month starting on the 1st of February and i hope that this will give you some ideas on how to eek out some of your money that you need to spend on food.

  I was  going to start on the 1st of Feb but have brought that forward to  start today. the 29th of January.

Breakfast. 
Home made bread toasted. 28p for 2 people.
Dinner will be ham sarnie with home made bread. Will price later 80p each, £1.60 for 2.
Tea will be a large bagette each filled with some bacon, mushrooms, onions, blue cheeseand topped with roasted sweet peppers. The total cost for this was £1.32 per portion.
Tea drinks throughout the day limited to 5 ( which is an abismal amount to drink) This cost 8.86p per cup which equastes to 5 for me and 3 for my wife  =  71p per day.
Also 3 ltrs of water and sugar free juice. Cost 25p or 50p for the two of us.

Cost running total so far is £5.73. If we carry on like this then our monthly food budget would be £177.33 which we don't have so it will be some veg soup for a couple of meals.

Having said that veg soup can be amazing if made properly. If you have some parmasan cheese then when you get to the rind a lot of people throw this away. Instead what I do is put them in a plastic bag and freeze them. When I am making some soup I put a couple of these rinds into the soup and it really lifts the flavour to another level. 

30th of January
Porridge with some dried fruit on top. 27.2p per serving so that is 54.4p 
Dinner veg soup and crusty home made bun 38.6 p per portion. 77.2p 
Evening meal. Some fresh salmon out of the freezer  that was bought for Christmas but not used. It was on a yellow whoopsie label for 25p.
Some sheets of filo pastry and 1 egg. 40p + 17 p for the egg.
Califlower and broccoli cheese bake 86p per portion. £1.76 for two of us
Tea to drink and juice both as above 71p + 50p. 

Total for today is £5.10 Running total is 10.83  Based on prices so far our month;y bill would be £167.87 so it is coming down. Our daily average food bill needs to be around £3.24 for the two of us. 

31st of January.       

Porridge again but today we only had one bowl between us. We got up late and buy the time we settled down we only had half rations as they say. It will be interesting to see if we are more hungry than yesterday. 
Tonight I'm planning to use the rest of the cali and broccoli bake, some butter and orange carrots, peas and roast potatoes. I will also make some more fresh mixed seed bread 

Breakfast 25.18p 
Lunch. Home made pizza 33p per portion 66p in total.
 The cali bake is £1.76p
The carrots, peas and potatoes are all out of the garden so these will only have cost pennies to produce as my garden is organic and run on a permiculture basis.

Total for today is £2.77 Running total is 13.60  Based on prices so far our month;y bill would be £140.55 so it is coming down.

  1st Of February.

Started this month off with a nice big fat Bacon Sarnie with a pack of asda smart price back bacon and some home made bread from yesterday with 4 cups of tea between us.
 £1.40 +  35.44p for the tea. 
 Total cost  for breakfast £1.76

Thursday, January 23, 2014

First of all sorry for being MIA for the last few days. The bad back has deemed itself fit to remind me who or what is boss and took a turn for the worse. At least I had a bit of sleep last night.

During my bouts of near madness with the pain it got me thinking to try and focus on something other than pain and that was what would disabled people do to "Prepare". This series of thoughts were not coherent but it lingered their lobe enough to think that it would be so much harder for a disabled person to prep than an abled bodied person. Obviously it depends on the disability but take me for instance. I have chronic back problem among other things so lifting, walking, bending etc is very hard and at times impossible.
Take for instance food storage. The consensus is that you store 25 or 50 kg of wheat in 1 or 2 buckets with Mylar bags and Oxy tabs etc but who can really lift 25 KG? I know I can't for sure but maybe that was why I inadvertently packet up smaller packets of around 800 g without thinking.Maybe it's ok to have a garden but who can cultivate it for you if you can't due to illness or disability ? Maybe it's the art of saving water in drinks bottles rather than 20 ltr Jerry cans.


Just a short one today and I hope you all get to read it soon.
Take care,

Alan

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Just what is self sufficiency??? Updated.

Anyway, what is self sufficiency?

To me    Self Sufficiency would be total Independence from everything and everybody. You would be self sufficient in power, food production, transport and housing, security, welfare, in total, Everything.

What does it mean to you? 

I personally believe that it would be intolerable and lonely to be "totally Self Sufficient" because you would need no one else in the whole world and to me, not being a Buddhist Monk in solitary contemplation yet, means I would be missing out on a whole load of interaction. Also I truly believe that no one person can totally be self sufficient.

You may have heard of the saying "Jack of all trades, master of non".This is usually a disparaging remark aimed at people who are not very good at anything and especially any trade but if you were to take this concept further with the thought of Self Sufficiency then it would be quite apt. When Neanderthal man decided to move into a group living set up rather than live a solitary life in a cave he started the path we are on now where we become social creature.

Besides, we cannot in one life time master all of the trades required to live as we do today. Think of your home. Could you dig the foundations, pour the concrete, build the house and then furnish it.
Oh hang on in that simple question ( all be it a leading one) could you find and plant a tree seed and wait maybe 20 years to harvest a piece of wood to make a spade shaft? Could you find the ore to smelt to make metal and then fashion a workable spade design? Then of course there is the concrete you would need to collect the pebbles from a beach, manufacture some cement and collect some sand, as this is a course sand in concreting. Then you wait for it to rain to collect some water and all together you are not even "out of the ground" as they say.

With this simple few paragraphs you can see that you would have insurmountable problems doing everything yourself.
So what could self sufficiently really mean in a more modern context true to the ideas of being self sufficient.

For me it is off grid so I am self sufficient of the power grid and any charges or blackouts that are coming in the near future which may be as early as next year!! To be self sufficient would also mean I had enough food to eat that could be grown or foraged by myself. That in itself would mean my diet would be predominately  vegetarian with perhaps the fresh road kill to supplement the veggie diet.

A fresh water supply is paramount and also somewhere to live where I would be warm and safe so that in turn would need fuel for a fire such as gathering wood for a wood fired fire.
When it comes to transport to be self sufficient would probably mean the use of a pedal cycle or horse to get away from the reliance of the fuel companies.

Add to this we would need to do some sort of work or live in a place where bartering or exchange of goods and services were done.

On the whole those who espouse to be wanting to be self sufficient are, in my opinion living in cloud cuckoo land and I say that with a heavy heart as I was one of them until I actually looked at the topic and thought long and hard about the topic and how I would become  self sufficient in the future.

With reference to the future and the ideas of prepping and what we can do if there is an economic and/or a social collapse then all is not lost because if we learn to garden, grow a bit of food, store some water, which can be a few water barrels in the garden and thus become more self sufficient in every day life then if the melt down happens then YOU, I, WE all have tradeable skills and tradeable goods because we wanted to be more self sufficient.

Monday, January 13, 2014

Prepper Accronyms and other useful phrases...updated

Ok folks,

It's been long enough for you to have worked out what the accronyms mean so here is a link to a site where they came from. This site is an absolute mine of infomation and help.

There are a lot of things you can do today but visiting this SITE and also the forums is one you REALLY SHOULD DO.

Take Care,
Alan

Saturday, January 11, 2014

Emergency Blackout Boxes.

Blackout.

So you are reading this on your computer at the moment but what would you do if there was a blackout? The power goes out, the lights and plug sockets don't work and you are sat in the total darkness of a full blown Blackout. Even the Street lights are out, your neighbours lights are out and you are all in total darkness.


So what do you do?

As this is part of the Prepper 101 series for beginners I will hazard a guess that you startto talk to the other members of the family to see where they are and to get them to come all into one room. After that what will you do? As you cannot answer this so I can hear I'kll tell you what i would do because I think about prepping as a lifestyle change.
I would get the EBB or Emergency Blackout Box from under the stairs. All members of our family and selected, trusted members of our extrended family, boyfriends, girlfriends etc all know that the blackout box is made up, what is in it and where they can access it in emergencies.


This post is only a starting point for you so you might not need somethings that are in my box or you feel you might need other items then please substitute or add them to YOUR box and that is the key. IT is YOUR Box..

In My EBB for instance are the following.

Torches for each person in  the house including spare batteries for these torches.
There are also a couple of wind up torches and 2 wind up led lanterns.
There are also a selection of container candles which are basically candles held in a glass jar or a non spill holder of some description. Candles are not considered to be a safe option these days as over 85% of all house fires havecandles as a contributory factor but if you have nowt else at the moment then you need a couple of candles.

If you live withing the releative distance to another family member then you could include a set of two way radio set just for family use. Don't forget that power outages might be as simple as a short circuit in your home right the way up to an EMP strike by a Terrorist and many land lines now need an electric source to be used so if your electric is off ao will your phone.
I also have good quality head light torches for each person and very important is a few glow sticks and some reflective tape for the dog.We put some on his Collar and some on his tail with a loose elastic band and he is not bothered. Cats I wouldn't know because i hate cats and as such don't have any thoughts about what you would do with cats but I'm sure a cat lover will be along soon.  Tripping over a dog or cat is the last thing you want to do but in a blackout it IS certainly the last thing you want to do for obvious reasons that it might hurt the dog but if you were to fall and break a bone or cut yourself badly then dealing with a fracture or bleed emergency in the blackout is something you are best to avoid. Think back to the phone service being down...
The next bit isn't actually in the box but here goes. I also have a set of “remote” lights that work when the power is off. You leave these in various sockets around the home and they light up when the power is cut. Primarily these act as night lights so little bairns don't get frightened in the dark but they give out a lot of light, enough to see your way safely up and down stairs with only one at the top or bottom. Obviously more would be better but 2 will get you going. Mine also act on a PIR system so they light up for 20 seconds or so when the PIR is activated during low light levels so you don't need to go putting on the big lights everytime you go to the toilet in the night. This is an added bonus.
I also have several packs of 10 lighters, about 6 dozen boxes of matches of various types and lengths and a fire steel, vasaline laden cotton wool balls just in case we need to use the candles without a naked flame.

I also have a secondary means of cooking in the box as well. You might ask why here but the simple answer is that we know where it is. It's only a small hexe stove but it is enough to be able to make a brew because we all know the world is better after a good Brew.  

Please note: The use of the hexe stove has to be outside as it will give off noxious fumes that will probobly killl you.

Of course this is just a basic of basic kit in one area of the house that everyone knows where it is and how to use the items in it but that is a small step to the world of prepping. We also have torches andspare bateries in every draw in the house, on the back of most doors in the house and also by the beds. If you do this then you will wonder how you managed before without torches.

We have some spare wind up lanterns for giving out to neighbours, especially the elderly and the infirm  in times like these because its just the right thing to do. Some people think prepping is all guns and camo with secret bunkers full of dried food but to preppers it'sjust a way of life and if you do this emergency Blackout Box and never need it then you never need it and it sits there quietly and patiently waiting....
However if you do have a blackout and you have small children and hystericasl partners who are scared of the dark then an EBB will be a godsend to you.

Going back to the issue of candles which used to be the sole method of lighting in the powercuts of the 70's please be careful if you use candles as they can be deadly. Always put them in a holder of some sort and keep an eye on what they are doing. If you use pillar candles and open a door then the draft will suck the flame towards the door. If you have it on the window sill for example and open the door then the flame could, if you have them catch fire to your curtains.

True Container Candles are where the wax melts into a pool of wax and keeps the wick burning. Again be careful with these as you might get hold of one and the holder is hot. You drop the glas, hot melted wax goes all over the flooring which could be carpet.....

Then add in elderly or infirm people and you soon realise why it's worth going to the poundshop and buying a few of their emergency led lamps...

If you have anything else to add then please leave a comment and I'll do what I can, when I can to help make living on the edge a safer place.
Take care
Alan

Friday, January 10, 2014

Prepping 101 For Beginners Part 2.

OK so we have started to prep by keeping a stock of food and possibly money on hand.
Other parts to prepping could include the following depending on your personal prepping needs or situations  but this list will never be finished in reality.

Self defence
Weapons
Welfare
Hygiene and sanitation
Water requirements
Children
Pets
Lone wolf or committed groupie
Livestock and killing of such
Power
Emergency blackout boxes
Stay at home or move out in the event of a crisis.
Fitness
Vehicles

We will try to cover these topics over the next few months but like always please leave a comment if you want them covered in any particular order.

Other topics i will be looking at include Politics, Europe, Wealth, Acronyms such as MZB, BOB,INCH ET AL, Do it yourself, raising chickens in the back garden, Wood burning ovens, smoke control areas, Cooking including recipes, solar ovens, rocket stoves, fire pit cooking, dutch ovens, barbeque's, chimera cooking, wood fired ovens such as the old pizza oven etc.

Hope that wets your appetite somewhat and you enjoy my missives and ramblings. If you do enjoy these blogs posts then please spread the word by telling others and follow my posts.


Take care,
Alan

Prepping 101 for begginers...

So you want to be a prepper eh?
What do you need to do? buy loads of freeze dried foods, store buckets and buckets of water, buy guns, live in a neo critical commune with a mass underground survival bunker with loads of other like minded red necks..
Oops sorry that is the Doomsday Prepper example on TV.
The more civilised genteel British version is a long way from that but then we are not sucked into the mentality of the TV shows all the time.

For me "prepping" like organic gardening, like saving money like being vegetarian is more of a lifestyle change. You were not "born" a Prepper or an organic gardener or a money savvy person or vegetarian etc you may have drifted into the change by associating with other people of that ilk or you might have got up one morning with a stonking hangover and made a new years resolution to be a Vegitarian or a Prepper etc.

With that in mind "Prepping" is just a word and to do it properly and with some justice you need to work out just what you are prepping for. There is a set of ideas that help you prep which when I find the links I'll update this blog. Simply put there are high probability low probability high effect and low effect.
For instance, A nuclear bomb going off in your back garden may be considered a LOW PROBABILITY BUT A HIGH EFFECT if it did where as losing your job if you hit the boss may be a high probability with a high value effect especially if you are the only income earner in the household.

When prepping you need to decide what to prep for. In the two examples above you could "prepper" by buying a nuclear fall out shelter or you could "Prepper" buy 6 months food and have cash reserves equal to six months bills.

Then if a bomb does go off you have your shelter and are Prepared or if you do bang the boss one then you will have enough food and cash to see you OK for 6 months thus you are prepared. Personally with some of the bosses I've had I would go for the food !!

If you are staring from scratch then write down a list of things that are worrying you such as potential job loss, having the house re possessed, nuclear war, economic depression like it was in the 1930's or 2008 for example.

Take one of these above, say losing your job. You still need to provide food for your family and yourself. You still need to pay the bills and you still need to look for more work. So whilst you are working now and you go shopping for your food then write out a shopping list of items you want to buy. Each separate item you buy, add an extra one on the basket. You buy 2 tins of beans, buy 3 instead. Buy 2 tins of chopped tomatoes, instead buy 3. Those extra buys got in your prepping cupboard.
If you use bottled water buy extra and store but also keep your empty bottles and fill with tap water, if you can't drink it then flush the toilet with it.

Look for special offers and so and so on. Look at the blog posts earlier in this year for more ideas on this.

Save what money you can and even if you save £1 a week then keep it away from your normal money because it will get spent if you don't. If your new years resolution is to stop smoking or eat less crappy food then make sure you attach a monetary value to these actions. For every pack of fags not smoked, put the money away. If you eat one less KF* or Big ** then put that money away and you will be absolutely amazed at how much you Save / waste depending on your standpoint.

What you carry on like this you will build up food and money for one weeks worth of living. Then 2 weeks then 4 weeks then 8 weeks etc and before you know it you have enough food and money to last you a year.
Then you could keep say 6 months of cash and invest the rest in extra debt payments or buy a big ticket item like extra sources of cooking food etc.

That will have to do for now as I am in critical pain again today but I will carry on this soon.

AS A FOOT NOTE, I practise what I preach. I changed my electric and gas supplier and saved £21 a month. I then swapped it again 3 months later, I.E. last week and saved another £28 a month. My fuel bill was £121 a month and now from February it will be  £67 a month so the extra £54 will be going into a jam jar. Also the wife got a better deal on buying a car and the car insurance so that saved us about £21 a month so added to the £54 for the utilities we are saving be£75 a month every month. I'm going to be using this to snowball one of my debt credit cards so instead of paying the normal £50 in February I will be paying £125 which has reduced the time for charging interest down to 4 months instead of 12 !!!

Take care and keep prepping.....



Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Gardening and Grow Your Own

Growing your own food these days is more accepted in the main. Even if it's a few herbs on the windowsill right up to a small holder plot of several acres with animals it is seen as either the thing TO Do or the thing you WANT to do.The reality for the vast majority is that people spend a large proportion of their income on food and the fuel it takes to get the food to our stores from the supplier and then from the store to our homes. After a few days the plastic packets with some arbitrary lettering on it say it's too dodgy to eat so you chuck it in the bin and head off to the supermarket to do the ritual all over again..

I once watched a programme with two chefs who took certain sets of people, very rich, students, 2 working parents with kids etc and the aim was to stop a lot of the waste and save money. The rich couple were spending something like £1000 a week on food and throwing away probably £800 worth and the same but in proportion to the incomes were the other groups. This programme showed up one glaringly obvious point and that was we buy a lot of food, but what about growing a lot of food? What effects would growing your own food have on you and your family etc?

A lot of people reading this will have a reason for not growing some of their food.It may be you are too busy, you have a hectic lifestyle or even you are just not interested. All valid reasons but why not turn each one around especially if you are looking to be more self sufficient or prepared for the tribulations that life might throw at us from time to time. Why not let me turn your objections around and give you a reason why you SHOULD grow at least some of your own food. Planting seeds is not rocket science. You put some soil in a dish and sprinkle some seeds on the top and add a bit of water and leave. Even between the extra activities you are taking the bairns to can spare a few minutes here. Maybe you could do this right before you go to bed? Of course you WILL save money even from just growing herbs providing you use herbs of course.. You will also know where your food comes from, the fact that they have "food feet" instead of Food miles and they are fresh. The best example of sweetness, if a little difficult to grow is Sweetcorn. As sweetcorn is picked the sugars that make it sweet instantly start turning to starch so what I do is get a pan of water boiling on the oven then go to the garden, pull a couple of corn cobs from the plant, run inside and put them into the boiling water.

Oh man, the taste of these are just out of this world but how much of the sugars have turned to starch in the cobs that are grown in Argentina or the USA!! You think that sweetcorn is good, try your own grown corn and you will never buy another cob.

Now I am not at all a romantic with rose coloured glasses but everyone could grow some herbs on a window sill. If you make a pizza for tea why not throw on the top of it a handful of sweet basil as you serve it up.

Mint is another easy to grow herb and can be used for minted peas or potatoes. Just make sure it is in a self contained pot of some type as the roots are quite virulent and it becomes a bit of a garden thug.
If you don't like cats don't grow cat mint... They love it and you get probably 100's of screaming moggies in your garden.  If you grow some thyme then this works well with pork as does the various sages. Try making some Yorkshire puddings and as you rest the mix in the fridge add a few sprigs of lemon thyme and leave it for an hour or two to rest. The taste difference is enormous when you bite into a crisp, hot, yorky pud!!. 

Going on from the window sill you can grow in plant pots if you have a balcony or a patio.  If you plant specific crops at the right times of the year you can get a lot of flavoursome food from very little space. A 12" or 15" plant pot will give you a good 2 kilo of new potatoes. You could plant Garlic in pots, carrots, parsnips, onions, leeks in fact there is probably an odd one or two crops you can't grow in a plant pot but as yet I've not seen them.

Moving on up from the plant pot you can use a plastic dustbin or a thick black sack like a compost bag to grow your crops the same as the plant pot version. Heck it's even been known for me to stick a couple of seed potatoes in a fresh bag of compost and forget about them.

The next upward stage is into a garden setting but again, many of you reading this will say I haven't got the room. You have. At least if you have 1 sq ft of land that is 30cm x 30cm or 12" x 12" then you can grow food in the "square foot garden " version. With square foot gardening it all grows against the traditional long rows and careful weeding regimes. In SFG the idea is to plant many seeds a lot closer together but pick younger, sweeter, fresher crops all the year round. Take for instance Beetroot. You can grow beetroots until they resemble tennis ball size and they taste really nice. In a Square Foot of space you might get 2 plants to grow and each at harvest might weigh say 4ounce or 100 g so you have 200g of beetroots. You might get another crop out of the same soil if you have a good season. Thus in total you have grown 4 beetroots which weigh around 400g in total. In Square foot gardening you might plant 10 seeds in the square of ground. as they germinate and start to put on leaves you plant a second set of seeds in the spaces you have left between your first lot of seeds. This will probably be about 3-4 weeks after the first sowing.

As the first sowings get larger, say 8 weeks after first sowing you pull a few baby beets for your meal. In this space you plant a third crop of seeds. Your first crop is 8 weeks old, your second crop is 4 weeks old and your third crop is new. You keep going on like this until the season finishes and you can end up with as much as 25 to 30 pounds in weight of fresh garden baby beets. Now have a look in the shops to see how much this amount of food would cost, subtract the cost of your seeds and fertilizer and the rest is profit that you can use as you wish but you can also use it to pay down your loans or mortgages. 2 seasons ago I grew food in a deep bed with a size of 4.8m x 1.2m divided up into square foot gardening spaces. It total I had 48 little plots all nicely divided up by string and nails in the deep beds and I grew over 800 pounds of food crops. It cost me about £45 in manure and chicken pellets and another £24 in extra soils / compost to help rejuvenate the soil but I hammered the land and it paid dividends. In the end I had to give away a lot of fresh produce.

Other versions of gardening for larger scales ( larger than plant pots) are allotments, permaculture, three sisters, Hoogerculture and no dig no weed deep beds.
So you can see that from a small windowsill up to many acres YOU can grow at least some of your food and boy does it taste so much fresher.
 During this season I was able to pay over £1800 off my mortgage that I would have spent on fruit and veg and this represented about 75% self sufficient AND I was able to save seeds for last year as they were not F1 hybridised seeds etc.

Please do leave comments on any posts I do, especially if you want a topic looked at or anything clarified.

take care,


Alan

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Water

 Today's topic is all about water and to be honest I NEED A BIG SLAP AROUND THE HEAD!! In my last post I asked what we really needed to survive etc. The one thing we definitely need and I missed off the list was WATER! How I missed that, I will never know considering I had just been in the garden cleaning the water butts out. Anyway, consider me well and truly SLAPPED and here is a whole topic on water to make amends.
Water is vital to life, YOUR LIFE, My life, everyone’s and everything’s life. In the western world, we turn a tap on and hey presto clean safe water usually comes out. In the UK, we have a privatised water system where the water companies have shareholders and have to make a profit for them whilst providing water for the populous. My personal view is that water should not be in the hands of a private company, which, as a first priority makes profits in order to give those dividends out to the so called "investors". The flip side of this is that, again, in the UK, we have some of the cleanest water in the world and in general, it is affordable. The big drive so far is to get every household onto water meters so you get charged by the cubic metre or 1 tonne of water used. This makes you look at your consumption like the other utilities of gas and electric but you don't need gas and electric to exist, water you do. 
Anyway, why should you be concerned about the water supply? I've already said it is safe, relatively cheap and ready at the turn of a tap but what would happen if it wasn't any of these things.
If it was dirty water, if it was contaminated, expensive or intermittent? What would you do? 
At present, each water company has a legal responsibility to provide every person in a given area with 10 litres of clean water per day. End of. So, if your water supply is going to be off for more than 18 hours you will either get a bowser of water in your street or bottled water. The thing is the water companies only need to supply it to a given area. What happens to it then is not regulated so, as happened in 2012 a lorry full of 25000 litre bottles of water was taken to a car park ready for local distribution. A gang of armed men stole the lorry, drove it off and then stole the water and returned the lorry to the road network and locked the doors. The water company did not have to replenish the water that was stolen.
So what would you do? The obvious answer is to store your own water the same way as you would store some extra food. Also, this is not being paranoid or an American Doomsday Prepper or the likes, it is sound government advice taken from the www.gov.uk website which states that you should keep enough food and water stored in your home to last you at least 3 weeks. This linky is from the F&CO and applies to those Brits that may have to live through a "Hurricane Season". Although we don't get hurricanes much in the UK maonland it is a good source to show you what to keep as emergency stocks. The water element states at least 1/2 a gallon of fresh water per person per day. More water will be needed for sanitation and washing so this link advises you to store other water which could be a pond in your garden or water barrels so you have water available that could be sterilised for personal, clothing and household washing. 
If your water supply was cut off for whatever reason how long could YOU or your LOVED ONES survive? The answer varies upon each persons needs but it is generally thought of as three days without water and you are dead.
If there is a flu pandemic then the staff at the local water company might be ill and thus your water is either not treated properly or is switched off.  A flu pandemic can and probably will last over 90 days or 3 months.
If a terrorist wants to infect a lot of people in a short space of time then the water supply is a key route post water works.
Health can be compromised without good hygiene, many foods needs water to be cooked in or with and what would us Brits do without our marvellous cup of TEA??
Pets need water also. Did you know an average medium sized dog like a Red Setter, Labrador or Vimarana (Doberman / Greyhound cross) all drink up to 3 gallons of water a day!!
In order to ensure you are not to go without your water you need to start looking at storing water TODAY. It would be really nice to have an IBC or two that holds 1000 ltrs or a cubic tonne of water in each but to start with today have a look around your home. You can fill up bowls and dishes immediately, now, this instance. At least that way you have water if your tap runs dry in the next 20 minutes. Also, start looking at ways of keeping water in “pop” bottles. These are generally 2 ltrs in size and once full can be dropped from a good height and not damaged.
10 pop bottles of water is good, 15 would be better and that 30 ltrs is what one person should be storing for 1 days use and that does not include the toilet or washing machine or dishwasher.
Plastic milk bottles are also OK for short term storage but make sure these are washed out thoroughly.
You can do a search on the WWWeb to find suitable containers that you can afford and store water in them. You can use water butts in the garden and even a garden pond if need be. This topic is too big to be covered in one sitting especially as I mention storing water outside of the home in the garden or pond.
Therefore, I will be revisiting this topic later this week with reference to usage, storage methods and conditions, Purification or filtration, ( do you know the difference??).
As for today, if you are looking to buy storage containers MAKE SURE THE CONTAINERS ARE FOOD GRADE USE.
Also, look for new containers. Many available are “reconditioned” or cleaned and refurbished. They are OK if you are storing non foodstuffs like diesel or lubricating oils but for food stuffs and water you really don’t want to be taking the risk, well in my opinion you don’t and as for that I’ll wrap up my thoughts for this episode of Tales from the edge of town.  

Take care,
Alan

Sunday, January 5, 2014

What do people REALLY NEED?

OK, so what do people "really need"? 
A smart phone perhaps or maybe a 55" TV ? How about a fast car, year we all love fast cars. Oh I forgot, all the money to buy them so we need a well paid low stress short hours job. Yeah that's what we all need.

In fact what we all need is shelter, food, warmth, security and perhaps company. We also need to be debt free. OK I hear you say, when am I going to be debt free? probably when I die which is the case for so many of us but it doesn't need to be.
Going back to what we really need, the shelter, food, warmth, security, company bit is really all we NEED but I am the first to say that 55" TVs are also important but we don't NEED the TV, we may WANT the TV but we don't need it.

Why is it seemingly important to get ourselves debt free? Simples, because if you owe someone some thing and this is mainly money then the product isn't yours until it's paid for whether that's your house on a mortgage, a car on HP or a full house of luxury goods on tick. We might be able to pay the bills when they come in each month but what if we lose our jobs? have a read of yesterday's missive below about being a Boy Scout and you will see the effect of not having a prepared mentality.

Only when we are debt free can we begin to be more secure in our way of life, well that's my take on it. 
What you need to do is SNOWBALL YOUR DEBT. I lay NO claim to this theory but it is widely held as a good way. So here is how it can work for you.
Say for instance you have 5 debts on credit cards and store cards etc without the big ones like the mortgage and car payments.

Say for instance your five debts are £100, £200, £900, £2000 and £5000 and you pay off the minimum each month to keep the card and shop companies happy.

What you need to do is find extra income from somewhere. If that means getting an extra job locally to your home then do it. You might only work 4 hours extra a month but even at minimum wage that's an extra £30 or there abouts. You could also sell off all your stuff in the house that you don't use but keep "just in case it comes in handy" It's called hoarding and I'll admit I am one of the best at it but if you can sell a few bits and pay the money off your smallest debt then you will save money in interest and also get rid of your debt faster.

For instance you pay £20 a month off the £100 debt. Forgetting about the interest for now, you have £80 left to pay so you plan to pay that off in 4 more installments of £20. If you do the extra 4 hours work and pay the £30 off that debt WITH your original £20 you can then pay that debt off in 2 months instead of 5.

Then you start on the next debt. In this case it is the £200 debt and say you were paying this off in 10 payments of £20. You keep paying this £20 as normal but you also have £50 from the 1st debt made up of £20 payment and the extra £30 you earned. So the next monthly payment will be £30 plus the £50 from the first debt or £80 in total. So again you pay the second debt off in a little over 2 months instead of 10 !!
The third debt of £900 was 30 monthly payments of £30 but by snowballing the debts you pay the £30, the £20 from the second debt and the £50 from the first debt. All totalled up you pay the £900 debt off in 9 months of £100. This carries on and on until you pay off all the debts but the VERY IMPORTANT part is not to take on more debt to replace the debts you are removing each month.

Secondly do we need to spend £1000 a month on food or do we want to show off to our fellow shoppers and neighbours that we can spend such money if we want to? A man need about 4000 calories a day with hard work like an outdoors job or about 2400 for a more sedentary job like an office job.A woman needs about 3000 calories, again for a physical outdoors type job and 1500 for a more sedentary job so do we need all the butter, cream. salt, sugar and ready meals and eating out or can we learn to cook wholesome nutritious food at home that we can enjoy THAT IS HEALTHY for us to eat.

If you decide that you can cut back a bit on your shopping bill then the average money saved could go towards the mortgage because you have already paid the debts of haven't you??

Warmth, we all like to be warm but do we actually need to have central heating on in every room and at a temperature of 80 degrees F or about 23 deg C? why not put the heating on a timer for an hour in the morning and a couple of hours in the evening especially if you are out at work all day and then only have it set to 20 Deg c with the aim of reducing it to 18 Deg C / 35 deg F. Again money saved on your bills can go direct to your debts and if you do this well enough then you will get to be debt free before you die.

Security is also paramount and shouldn't be skimped on to save money but it can be done cheaper. If you have a garden then put a spiky hedge in place around the perimeter fence. Put low energy lights on a timer in different rooms at different times of the day. Play a radio or TV the same way and if you want get a dog. the bigger the better but make sure you can look after it well.

Hopefully that has given you a bit to think about and if you would like to comment then please please do. If you have any ideas that you want me t cover in future blog posts then please also leave a comment.

For those living on the edge and not wanting to fall off it!!

Take care Alan.

Saturday, January 4, 2014

Oh to be a Boy Scout.


Hi folks,

At 52 ish I am a bit long in the tooth  to be a REAL boy Scout but like Boy Scouts the world over I want to "be Prepared" as they say.
To me being prepared is not like those numpties you see on Doomsday Prepper or other American lifestyle programmes on Discovery et al.

To me being prepared is common sense and what your mothers or grand mothers did as a matter of course.
In fact these stalwarts of the community used to keep a "war cupboard" where they would buy an extra tin of something and leave it in the cupboard in case war broke out. Now you might think that the great war ended in 1945 et al but what about the Korean war, the Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam, Ireland, Afghanistan, Iraq!! Any of these could have turned into full scale world war so even today it could be prudent, to keep a "war cupboard". Actually thinking about it keeping a war cupboard these days is probably more important than in any time in the past 70 odd years !!

It's not only in times of war that we need to plan or prep for. We are all living in "austere times" well the politicians might not be unless austere to them means only spending £200 on a bottle of wine but that's another rant.

What about your living, could you lose your job and if so do you have enough money saved for 6 months worth of bills and 6 months food stocked away? No? I thought not and if you said yes then well done to you. You will be interested in many of my blogs coming soon.

If you haven't got 6 months worth stashed away what will you do? Go to the DSS? the rules have all changed so like me you might well find out that you are not entitled to any help at all!!
So to recap you don't have to be in a war, fear of war, lose your job or anything else to start to prepare for these things but it might be prudent to do so just in case they happen.

When you go shopping buy an extra tin of things you eat. You can easily plan these things if you want but put simply if you buy 4 tins of baked beans for a months supply buy an extra 1 and then over 4 months you have an extra months worth of beans stored away. Now you can of course do it faster if you want but don't let it impact on your normal life.
Buy 4 tins of beans plus 2 extra tins then in a month do that again so in 2 months you have an extra months beans. Do something like this every time you go shopping and you will be surprised at how much you can stash away for your " war cupboard".
Another way to do this is watching for special offers. There might be a certain tinned pie on offer for £1 or soups for 50p for example. If you buy 4 tins of soup for £3 that's 75p each tin. When the 50p off is on don't just buy the usual 4 tins but buy the same amount of money's worth thus you still spend £3 but you get 6 tins of soup. Put the two extra in your supplies box etc. If of course you were buying 4 for £3 AND THEN AN EXTRA 2 for another £150 as above with the beans idea then you will be buying £4.50 worth of soups. Last week at 75p each you would get 6. this week on the 50p offer you will get 9 so you have a surplus of 5 over the original 4 you wanted.

It's not rocket science but it does help you if you think about what you are doing.You can also partake in BOGOF offers, Buy One Get One Free or buy 2 and get 1 free. Again, only buy what you eat and eat what you buy. 

You can look for coupons to get free or cheaper products and put these in your stash. If your favourite tooth paste is on offer buy whatever you can. If you use one tube of paste every month then buy 12 on offer and you have 12 months worth. If you use this and say after 3 months there is another offer on then buy another 12 months sup[plies at the offer price and so on.

If you or we do have a war or people fall on hard times or even just a prolonged severe winter that stops food and supplies getting into the shops "just in time" what value can you put on a toilet roll or a pack of ladies sanitary requirements? Don't be squeamish about these things as it is currently a supply and demand where as we demand and the shops supply but in hard times people still have demands and you as a prepper will have the goods on hand to be able to barter.
Think about it.
Until next time take care and go shopping........

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Hello folks,
If you are reading this can you let me know please as I'm going to blog a good bit more from now on and also hope to start doing a podcast.

The podcast will vary on topic theme but it will be based around living well but cheaply if at all possible. Also there will be topics covering the state of the country and world, economic disasters, a bit of how we can prepare for any future economic failures. Also I will be doing shows on storing food by various methods, paying down debts, gardening and topics like that. I won't be preaching religion or conspiracy theories but I will be challenging you all to try new skills and actively try to change yourself because we cannot make the world a better place until we make ourselves better people.

Well thanks for reading so please do let me know how you are and what topics, if any in articular you would like me to cover.

Take care,

Alan Teather