It didn’t take too long to figure out that 120 channels of useless crap wasn’t appreciably better than 60 channels of useless crap. The digital box never worked right and Spouse could not get accustomed to the remote you had to use with it. #1 Son hooked up the box to his TV for a short while, but he too soon figured out that the additional channels weren’t worth watching.

So the introductory pricing came to an end, and our cable bill jumped from $79 to $120 a month. We had a quick discussion about how much TV we actually watched (me — none; Spouse — occasional movie on Turner Classic Movies, plus Mystery! on public television; #1 Son — the local NBC channel only, because anything else he watched through Hulu.com). So I took the box back and downgraded to internet plus “basic basic” (public television and the local channels), which dropped the bill back to about $70 a month.

The interesting thing was this. There were seven or eight people in line when I went to the office. Every single one of them was either canceling or downgrading service. No wonder the number of Charter’s robo sales calls has been ramping up lately.

They were small, ugly, and full of imperfections. That is the best stock for jelly and butter. I washed them a bit at a time, and carefully cut out the bad spots. The very best, tart ones, I have reserved for a cobbler tomorrow, but the rest became stock for jelly and butter.

None of the big box stores have any regular pint storage jars in stock, but I have found enough around the house to serve the purpose. I do not know what I will do when the tomatoes come on in a week or two, but I will deal with that then.

After I culled the bad spots from the apples (leaving on the skins, and the core), I picked out the best, clear, tart ones for a cobbler, and put the rest into the kettle for juice and butter. It has been rewarding, but lots of cutting and culling. I suspect that I have put in 12 hours on this single project. The juice emerging from the jelly bag is a nice color, feebly pink. The pulp remaining in it is full pectin, just asking to be made into apple butter.

I borrowed Helen’s (Preacher’s wife) ancient Foley Food Mill to separate the seeds and skins from the pulp. I want one of those, and will look for one at flea markets. In any event, I have a quart each of juice for jelly and pulp without skins nor seeds for butter. Here is the secret to keep apples, and other fruit, from darkening on contact with air.

Fruit Fresh is a commercial product that combines a lot of sugar with a little ascorbic acid (Vitamin C). They wanted five bucks for a relatively small pack of it a Kroger, so I just looked at the label and went home. There I crushed up four, 500 mg tablets of vitamin C and dispersed it in water. I started slicing apples, and dropped the sound parts into the treated water. Soon I saw that the discarded parts in the trash were getting very dark, whilst the good ones in the vitamin C bath were still fresh.

You can get a bottle of vitamin C at any store for only a couple of dollars, and that much Fruit Fresh would easily cost over $100. Just crush up the tablets, disperse the material in a little of water, and have undarkened fruit until you can process it. Cheap, effective, and just the same as Fruit Fresh does. I will let you know how the jelly and butter turns out after I have finished. Warmest regards, Doc.

Okay, I should be at the farmers market this very moment, but I’m leaving town for a few days tomorrow evening, and I don’t see the point of buying food I don’t have the time, room or means to handle before and during my absence. And my plans to run over to the peach festival and get a bushel or two? Good gawd almighty, what was I thinking?

Oh sure, I could just go for it and hope for the best. But I have a tiny refrigerator (for the purposes of energy conservation — yes, it does make a difference), and I’ve been keeping the air conditioning set at 80-85. Combine those two facts with a mess of ripe produce? You do the math! Besides, I’m working on a big coop order and need to be putting my energy into storing all those dry goods when they get here.

This time next year, I’ll have all this figured out — maybe.

The good news is, I have almost enough cabinet space now. The bad news is, I thought I could never get all of them full, but I was wrong. Not that they’re full yet, but getting close.

This is why everyone should have at least one zomg, it’s TEOTWAWKI, civilization is crashing down around our ears, and I’ve got to prepare! guides, or a good Fanny Farmer or somesuch.

My current favorite TEOTWAWKI guide has a couple of suggestions for storage: an in-home grocery store for foods you normally eat, and dehydrated and freeze-dried foods.

Let’s talk about doing an in-home grocery store.

If you have a pantry, you have the basis for an in-home grocery store. My current TEOTWAWKI guide, however, suggests shelves instead of cabinets — something I don’t have in the kitchen, but do have in the laundry room right next to the kitchen.

This makes perfect sense to me. Cabinets can be hard to manage, especially if you’re relatively short and many of your cabinets are high up, as is the case with me.

With shelves, it’s possible to see what you have with just a glance, especially if the shelves aren’t too deep. It all seems so obvious, but it’s good to point out.

The guide also suggests storing nonperishable versions of whatever foods you normally keep in the refrigerator, if they’re foods you commonly eat. This is where all of Kate’s tips on dehydration can come in handy.

Speaking of which, if anyone here has ever made jerky, I’d love to hear about it.

Another suggestion: keep is simple. Don’t buy volumes of weird foods for your in-house grocery store. Instead, make the bulk of the foods those you normally eat — unless your idea of normal eating is a beer and some Cheetoes, of course. Which brings us to another principle: strive for wholesome eats. Store the foods that will sustain you, should push come to shove.

And don’t forget condiments, spices, dried herbs. Just because a massive ice storm has hit and brought down all the electric lines and blocked roads for miles around and there’s no getting in or getting out besides which it wouldn’t help you much because all the food at the groceries stores has either been bought up or spoiled, thanks to conditions, doesn’t mean you have to suffer without your beloved Rooster sauce or green Tabasco.

Once you get your pantry going, rotate, rotate, rotate. Foods go bad, even canned goods, so be sure to keep an eye on those expiration dates. If you actually use your pantry, this shouldn’t be that much of an issue.

Just be sure to replace what you’ve eaten. If you get in the habit of eating out of your stores and shopping once or twice a month for the specific purpose of restocking, this shouldn’t be an issue.

While working on your pantry, or in-house grocery store, the TEOTWAWKI guide has a list of questions you should ask yourself:

1. Under what scenarios do you anticipate the need for using food reserves?
2. Will you be mobile?
3. Will food preparation facilities, supplies, and fuel be available?
4. Have you determined the length of time you desire the system to sustain you and your family?
5. How many people will be depending upon your food?
6. Are there special nutritional requirements?
7. How important is ease of preparation?
8. Have you considered your budget?
9. How many calories do you require per person?

A final suggestion for this week. The guide also strongly advises keeping your in-house grocery store (or pantry) in your living area because doing so deters rodents and other critters.

Having lived through the mousecapades at the old place (gad, sometimes I think rural areas are nothing but mice), I can testify to this one. When I first moved out there, I’d had hopes of root cellars and turning one of the sheds into a big food storage facility and omg, it would be so easy and convenient and free up all that space inside!!

Hooboy. I don’t think so.

Besides, one principle of the in-house grocery store {or pantry} is making sure your stores are not subjected to extremely hot or cold conditions. That way, there’s less chance of spoilage and degradation.

Not to mention, in-house means … oh, never mind.

Now, Kate’s written quite a bit about pantries, including here, I think. But I can’t find her posts at the moment. A bit later, I’ll run over to dKos and get some of her’s and tvb’s (the founder of What’s for Dinner?) posts on pantries because I know they wrote about them there.

For now, though, I got to — you know — mow.

I’ve got so much more work to do, but it’s the small things like this that are keeping my head from spinning off into the stratosphere. This, and the profoundly, unbelievably generous offer of a friend to give me a sofa and a bed with a rattan headboard. zomg, I can have people over to stay up late watching bad movies, spend the night, eat dinner, whatever!

You see, I don’t have any chairs right now. My sofa and comfy chair and ottoman all fell victim to the houndie grrl. I haven’t gotten my computer chair over here yet, or my other chairs, which are old high seated metal art school chairs that I painted a brilliant blue.

Of course, in a shed at the old place, there’s all the folding chairs from the old volunteer fire department. But they have smoke damage from when the fire department burned down. They were another gift to me, but I never quite figured out what to do with them. So I left them to the mud-dobbers and carpenter bees.

I won’t deny it — I was never a very good fashionista. I’m an even worse scuppie. And I’ve always worried that progressives would become no better than freepers if they adopted the Mighty Wurlitzer approach.

Even worse [warning: extremely long convoluted sentence ahead]: I’ve always thought the idea that progressivism is naturally laden with factions and battles because progressives are individualistic thinkers and trying to form them into a cohesive group is like herding cats is nothing more than typical middle to upper-middle class spoiled brattism speaking.

I like people who are just who they are, and homes that are comfortable and inviting, and gardens that do what they want to do, with just a bit of taming from the humans.

I like Monkeyfister’s approach to pickled peppers because not only is it good, it’s his. Monkeyfister’s not ripping anyone else in pursuit of scuppie-ism or that good old American 15 minutes of fame. Nor is he following behind in the hopes that that 15 minutes of fame will rub off on him.

I like Armando, too, and Maryscott, especially since their fall from grace and expulsion from Mighty Wurlitzer.

I love that Translator is writing about science here. I love that his passion for chemistry is shining through, and that we get to benefit from it — even though I’m still mystified.

It all reminds me of the smoke damaged chairs from the Cookson Hills Volunteer Fire Department that have sat in that shed for five years now.

It all reminds me of my new home with no chairs — mind you, I’m sitting on a step stool to write this.

It’s like the comfort I feel when I go into an old diner, one that’ll never be featured on HGTV, and see an ancient married couple having some grits and an egg.

We need to allow ourselves to become who we are, and not cave to the disguises that the world (and especially America) dangles in front of us.

Meh. I have to go mow some more. I brought my new mower up from the old place because I let the grass get too high for the manual.

If managing in a catastrophe were just about growing your own food, many (but not all) rural people would probably be just fine. If it were about repairing your machines, maintaining your roof, keeping the well running, a good many rural people would be okay.

But there’s a lot more than that involved in running the kind of society we all demand, things like public health systems, communications systems, transportation infrastructure, energy supplies, banking and finance, good governance innovations, an effective legal system, etc. Places with these systems do a heck of a lot better than places without them, and these are systems many communities are in a poor position to provide for themselves. In much of rural America, those systems aren’t even working very well today.

That’s the reality.

And, boy oh boy, is there ever a wealth of information on passive solar heaters.

In my less busy days, I bought the plans for this: Mother’s Heat Grabber. Unfortunately, though, I never got around to making it, in part because my neighbors had made me so self-conscious about doing anything. Long story, but …

… this was about the time I was planting trees out front at my old place. Mind you, I lived on pure rock, or so it seemed, and digging a hole deep enough for a tree required I use a hammer and stake. Now, just try sitting on the ground out front pounding away with a hammer and stake without attracting the attention of cowboys and bubbas and lay-abouts everywhere determined to stop you in your tracks. If it wasn’t “You shouldn’t be doing that, let me help you!,” it was the piling on of totally useless tools and advice, the worst being the post hole digger. Oh, yea, right, a 5’2″ female is going to bore right through a boulder with a post hole digger.

I swear, they about drove me crazy.

So perhaps it isn’t my lack of engineering expertise — more likely it was my fear of cowboy and bubba interference, and their determination to get me to stop doing whatever I was doing as quickly as possible because otherwise someone might expect them to do something.

But here: I have a privacy fence! Even better, I have relatively industrious neighbors!

Which means that, here, I can finally build my passive solar heater, unless, of course, I really am an engineering doofus!

In any case, there are plans for sale here. They were a mere $10 a few years ago and, hopefully, they still are reasonably priced.

I love my solar oven. I’ve had it since 2003 and have cooked countless meals in it. True, it’s a bit glitchy — I planned to use it today to to roast a nice buffalo chuck roast, but storms moved in last night and it’s too cloudy now. And it does require moving every few hours so that it catches the best rays.

Still, it does the trick, all the while saving on electricity and helping to keep the house cool on 95 degree days.

And, unless you’re insistent on technical sheets, it doesn’t require special recipes, at least not in my experience. I just put everything in it and go. True, as a result of my devil-may-care approach, there’ve been a few things I’ve been unable to replicate. For one, I was making a fantastic kind of upside down shepherd’s pie a few years ago, and danged if I can remember now how I did it.

But even my recipe memory lapses don’t stop me. My general approach is to just pile it in and go.

And food poisoning? Meh. I remember trying to have solar oven conversations on dKos and being besieged by Nervous Nellies horrified by the prospects of food poisoning! zomg, they would never, not in a million years, what am I thinking??

::pained sigh::

It boils down to this: if you know how to cook without landing yourself in the hospital with food poisoning, you know how to cook in a solar oven.

It’s why I only use mine on sunny days when I can be here to watch it. I simply put my ingredients into a covered Pyrex casserole dish, set the casserole into the solar cooker, aim the cooker at the sun and turn it however often is needed.

But, if you need further reassurance (which, if you’re reading this blog, you don’t need), this little article might help. Ultimately, though, it boils down to this: you don’t leave a nice roast in a crockpot overnight unless that crockpot is on. You don’t stew a chicken on the stovetop, then turn the flame off and leave it sitting ’til tomorrow. And you don’t cook a brisket in the solar oven, then let it sit for hours and hours when clouds move in, then evening approaches, then oops, it’s midnight, let’s see how that brisket turned out.

Common sense and knowledge of simple cooking techniques will ensure that botulism isn’t lurking around every corner, ready to chew you up and spit you out.

And, of course, you can make your own solar oven. I’m a bit of an engineering doofus, though, so I’ve never tried. If anyone has, though, your hints and guidance are most certainly appreciated!

There are just not enough of them of scale (Centennial Farm sized) right now, and all the media push toward them is going to hurt the whole excellent idea by overwhelming it.

This will be corporatized soon, I fear. I see “Whole Foods Own Exclusive CSA Produce Bundles– Variety Priced Right!” CSA.com bubble here we come, so it is good to bring the CSA radius closest to home. I hate to sound like the Concern Troll, but, the push is pretty severe, especially right now.

PSSSSST!!! I’ve got a hot little secret for you– CSA is short for “Community Supported Agriculture,” and dig this– you can do it on a neighborhood level.Someone on the block has the full sun to grow great tomatoes, one of you have a tree sorta shading the yard, but can grow lots of lettuces and radishes and carrots, One of you like growing Cucurbits or peppers or herbs… or raising chickens… rabbits… pigeons… bees… help each other expand the gardens, recycle poop and leaves and grass into compost, let the neighbor’s chickens tractor through your backyard garden for a few weeks post frost, etc., this way, you can buy/sell/trade amongst each other. This would be especially cool to get going in apartments with balconies, porches and urban courtyard neighborhoods. Heck– five to ten families in a Brooklyn neighborhood could nearly sustain themselves this way, save for grains and sugar and specialty spices. Someone with a big ol’ oak tree could easily inoculate the drip line and root areas with a host of excellent edible culinary mushrooms, and sell/barter them as they sprout up. Inoculate a stack of hardwood logs with shitakke mushroom spores. You get the picture. Every yard and space can grow SOMETHING. Get to know your neighbors. I bet they have some garden surplus or skill that they are dying to share.

It’s easier and localer*.

I think that we can all agree that those Covenants are pretty-well over now. It’s time to help each other live.

*–yep, localer.

Okay, so there isn’t, not much, but I figured I’d try to at least claim it. I’m just not a terribly organized person. But I do like my food, and I did grow up in a household of penny pinchers and cheapskates, and I adore catastrophic scenarios and (Hu)man Against Nature scenarios, so I have some idea how it works.

Here’s what I currently have stocked:

I‘ve never had a particularly organized approach to the pantry because it’s my experience that, when hard times come around, who knows what you’ll want and need? During the ice storm of 2007, for example, I had tons of stock, but all I ate for a week was popcorn. And while the world around me was falling apart — grocery shelves wiped clean for days – even weeks – roads blocked, electrical poles and wires flung everywhere, no water — while others were washing their work clothes by melting the ice hanging off their houses, I was eating popcorn.

And I was happy and healthy throughout all of it.

That said, I am somewhat organized about what’s kept where. For example, stuff I use all the time is kept in cabinets or canisters by the counters and stove, while bulk and less commonly used goods are stored away in loosely defined categories, like the Spices for Indian Cooking shelf, the TEOTWAWKI cabinet (stocked with first aid, candles, and the like), and the Zomg, I’m Going To Have To Be Pretty Desperate To Eat This Crap shelf (canned chili, just in case, and stuff to fend off armadillos and evil green beetles [cheap cayenne and dried garlic]).

Still, it’s good to have some idea of what you’re getting yourself into and what goods are better suited to your plans and family.

Let’s start with freeze dried vs. dehydrated goods.

Freeze-dried foods are subjected to a dehydration process by – well, by freezing at temperatures between ?50 °C and ?80 °C, then heated very, very slowly to create a vacuum and remove water, then sealed.

Dehydrated foods are dried, meaning water is removed by exposing them to low heat from the sun, wind or other means.

Needless to say, the average home cook can’t freeze-dry. But dehydrating foods is done commonly. I’m not good at it, probably because I’m so stubborn, but Kate is and, no doubt, Translator knows a thing or two about it.

And I can testify to the quality of freeze dried foods: the dried blueberries I have were freeze-dried, and they’re phenomenal.

Both freeze-dried and dehydrated foods are especially valuable when purchased in bulk because of the rise in prices over time. They’re also easy to store (if you have the space) and tend to have great longevity when stored properly.

Between them, however, there are some differences. My lovely, dystopic new find The Complete Y2K Home Preparation Guide does a fair job of outlining these differences (just one reason I think it’s a real find). Here they are:

Advantages of freeze-dried products:

Retain the original taste and nutritional value of the food.

Foods are quick and easy to prepare.

No waste.

Ideal method for maintaining flavors of meat, poultry, and fish.

Extends the shelf life of the product.

No preservatives are necessary.

Results in a super-lightweight/compact product.

A wide variety of foods are available.

Can be packaged as complete meals — not just individual dishes.

Disadvantages of freeze-dried products:

Can be expensive.

Some may be “taste challenged.”

As for dehydrated foods:

Advantages of dehydrated foods:

Foods are quick and easy to prepare.

No waste.

No preservatives are necessary.

Results in a super-lightweight/compact product.

Long shelf life.

Cost efficient food option.

No peeling, coring, trimming, or washing.

Provide year-round fresh like appearance and taste.

Require no refrigeration, freezing, or other expensive, energy-dependent storage.

Require much less space than other forms of food.

Are not subject to infestation or bacteria growth.

Are easily and quickly measured into precise servings that eliminate leftovers and waste.

Are idea for most kinds of special diets.

Disadvantages of dehydrated products:

Some may be “taste-challenged.”

A limited variety of foods are available. [note from biscuit: this might have changed in recent years]

Can be slow to reconstitute.

Well, enough of this. Next week, I’ll examine storage options. And I’m sure Kate will chime in with a diary or two, because pantries are kind of a specialty of hers.

I’m off to the gardens!

Now, bear in mind that I’ve been haunting online survivalist enclaves and befriending well-armed mountain men for years now, so it’s pretty hard to catch my eye. But this book did, not because it’s the best out there — far from it — but because, beyond its TEOTWAWKIness, it contains countless useful links.

So I grabbed it and tucked it into my bag, to be added to my ever expanding collection of dystopia-wrangling tools.

Then, while wasting my time at work contemplating whether a superior I happen to know is insane or suffering the early stages of dementia or maybe she’s just plain downright mean, I ran across this:

Do small steps actually lead anywhere? We all know the theory that small steps lead to bigger steps, which lead in turn to real change. And there are certainly a lot of small steps on offer these days, from the latest home energy tracker to the solar bikini. But it’s not at all clear that the ready abundance of small steps is actually making any difference. Indeed, between greenwashing and green fatigue, emphasizing little behavioral changes may actually be hurting.

Until recently, suggesting that “going green” in this fashion wasn’t a correct path was a quick route to condemnation. But now, some of the world’s most prestigious environmental advocates are beginning to call for a whole new approach.

WWF recently published a major report, Weathercocks and Signposts: the environment movement at a crossroads, which launches a major assault on green consumerism and social marketing as avenues to sustainability, and encourages instead a new and more committed values-based approach.

Specifically, the report says:
Pro-environmental behavioural change strategies often stress the importance of small and painless steps – frequently in the expectation that, once they have embarked upon these steps, people will become motivated to engage in more significant behavioural changes.

…

We talked with Dr. Tom Crompton, the study’s author, who shed some interesting light on their conclusion that to create lasting change, groups working for environmental change should be targeting the intrinsic set of values that motivates the public, rather than tantalizing their extrinsic desires.

…

The current marketing-based approach is fatally flawed, Crompton says. His work debunks the popularly held “foot-in-the-door” mantra (change your light bulb today, and you’ll move to a walkable neighborhood and sell your car before you know it!)

…

But the report’s other findings are even more worrying: small steps, even when they do open the door to greater environmental understanding, are rarely followed by calls for the kinds of profound change that sustainability actually demands.

And yes. It’s true.

I agree. You see, green consumerism is still feeding the American lust for goods, for that 15 minutes of fame, for gimme gimme gimme I want it and I want it now. The only way to flush that consumerism from our lives and our minds is to submit ourselves to a complete change of mind — a paradigm shift, so to speak, one which isn’t hooked into our socio-cultural mapping.

The problem is that’s impossible, not without significant upheaval of either the personal or collective kind. Or maybe both.

I mean, have you ever found yourself wondering at the irony of having to purchase “things” to diminish dependence on “things?” I remember suffering that cognitive disconnect and immediately stopping in my tracks, just stopping everything I was doing because I couldn’t quite resolve the conflict.

Besides, it’s really hard.

But we can do it with a little self-reflection and a lot of effort.

There’s really no reasonable conclusion for this. There isn’t time for me to write a reasonable conclusion. I suppose I’m just throwing some thoughts out there, things my mind is meandering around and starting to form into a relatively rational system of thought.

So I’ll leave you with a list from my wonderful catch of yesterday:

Selecting a Food Reserve System

The following questions will assist you in identifying a system for you and your family:

1. Under what scenarios do you anticipate the need for using food reserves?
2. Will you be mobile?
3. Will food preparation facilities, supplies, and fuel be available?
4. Have you determined the length of time you desire the system to sustain you and your family?
5. How many people will be depending upong your food?
6. Are there any special nutritional requirements?
7. How important is ease of preparation?
8. Have you considered your budget?
9. How many calories do you require per person?

Considerations
1. PURITY OF INGREDIENTS
2. FAMILIARITY
3. SHELF LIFE
4. PREPARATION CONVENIENCE
5. PROPER ROTATION

I‘ll post more lists tomorrow. For now, I have to go mow, then settle in with a good dystopian novel.