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.

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.

 

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........

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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