Found a Job!

Wow!  Where does the time go?  Oh, I know where it goes :).  A person gets busy!

I found a part-time job at the local Home Depot.  I love rambling around in the store and just looking.  It's a DIYer's paradise, with all kinds of cool stuff.  It takes me back to my childhood when Dad would take my brother and me to the hardware store to browse.  It is a good place to just look because when you need to do some work around the house, if you know what they have, then it can give you good ideas of ways to do the job.

I've been thinking about going back to school to take some practical skill, like Locksmithing :)  With people being more security conscious these days, it seems to be an in-demand skill.  ICS has the least expensive tuition that I've found.  I'll have to figure out if it's doable.

Scored 3 cartons of jars (about 6 dozen) for $6.00 of all different sizes, so I am scouting around for lids at a decent price.  It's too bad that my idea of decent is not the same as big biz's!

I've been doing research on dealing with diabetes as I won't have medical coverage for a while, and Metformin is expensive.  I learned that if I very carefully control my diet, I can keep my blood sugar down, and can get by with less Metformin.  I have gotten my A1C (3 month blood sugar average) down from 11% to 6.5% since January.  Yay, me!

The dietary recommendations for diabetics are to have 3 portions of carb at each meal (1 portion being 15 grams of carb).  What I have been doing is have 2 portions of carb for breakfast, and every other day, 2 portions of carb for the evening meal.  My favorite new breakfast is multi grain crackers (enough to make approximately 30 grams of carb), 2-3 oz of cheese or 2 hard boiled edgs, and 1 small fruit (apple, pear, strawberries), and a handful of almonds, walnuts or pumpkin seeds.

I can have a sandwich, as each slice of bread is one portion of carb, so that makes two portions of carb. What goes inside of a sandwich can vary wildly. I particularly like a veggie sandwich with cheese, cucumber, tomatoes, lettuce and some ranch dressing.  Or a roast beef sandwich.

I have discovered that bananas, my favorite fruit, are really starchy, so if I have one, it's my entire carb allowance for the meal, and at that, I can only have a small one, or half a large one.

In terms of treatment, I have discovered White Mulberry formulated for diabetics at my local drug store as well as the health food store.  The stuff from the drug store is a bit cheaper than the health food store.  I got a jar on sale for $6.99 (a one month supply).  So, when the Metformin runs out, I hope to be good to go!

In spite of the terrible apple crops back east, we have had fairly good crops locally, and apples were available for 67c per pound last week.  Yay!  I canned up some apples, and have some apples that want cooking down to make applesauce.

I am waiting for a big sale on pumpkins so that I can do up some pumpkin chucks and pumpkin seeds.  I remember back when I was a kid, every class at school would get a pumpkin to carve for Halloween, and my best friend and I would go and carry off the seeds so that we could clean them up and roast them.  Yum, yum!

We cleared out the tomato and pepper plants (those left after the depradations of the deer), and gathered the last of the herbs (again those left after the deer were chomping on them).  It was a pretty discouraging year. I have never seen the deer so aggressively present in the yard before.  Because the creek in back is so low or even non-existent, a new path has been trodden from the fields in back of our place with a bee-line to the garden.  Grr!

Anyhoo, that's a small update on doings up my way!

Canned Foods

I belong to the "store what you eat, eat what you store" school of prepping, and I found a great web site dedicated to cooking with canned foods to provide tasty and nutritious meals.  Its Canned Food UK.  Some of the dishes might seem a bit unusual to those of us in North America, but I've found some tasty recipes.  They even have webcasts and podcasts.

Over in the UK, the Department of Health recommends 5 servings of fruit and veg daily, and Canned Food UK has a handy chart to help you figure how much is a serving:

Hop along over to Canned Food UK, and take advantage of this valuable resource.

Weather Alerts

As usual, I was perusing my favorite blogs, and Modern Survival Blog had a post on the NOAA Weather Radio Channel List, which was cool.  It's always a good idea to keep on top of what the weather is doing, especially if extreme weather tends to be an issue in your area.

Being that here in Canada we also experience weather, it struck me as a good idea to look up similar information.  A weather radio should definitely be on my list of preparedness items to get.  Anyway, here's a link for Canadians to check out the local weather channels.

According to the website, Environment Canada issues alert bulletins for the following weather hazards:

Blizzard
Blowing Snow
Dust Storm
Flash Freeze
Freezing Drizzle
Freezing Rain
Frost
High Heat and Humidity
Humidex
Hurricane
Rainfall
Severe Thunderstorm
Snowfall
Snow Squall
Storm Surge
Tornado
Tropical Storm
Tsunami
Weather
Wind
Wind Chill
Winter Storm

In our area, we have to be alert to Tsunamis, Winter Storms, Earthquakes and Volcanic Eruptions, at least in the Mother Nature's fury department.

Out of Stock

Popped down to the hardware store to pick up some wide mouth canning lids, and got the very last package in the store.  The dear lady who runs the housewares department told me that she had ordered 46 cases and each case holds 36 packages, or 1656 packages of lids, and they are completely sold out and back-ordered from the warehouse.  Last year, they didn't run out at all, and she had ordered only 40 cases.  The canning season is no ways near over, and they are out of stock!  Guess I'm not the only one getting prepared for a hard winter.

I dropped in at the "Recycler" and managed to pick up a package of wide mouth lids for 25c, so I'll be good to go for at least today and tomorrow.  I've got more carrots to get ready and some corn to ready to can.  I also have some apples I want to can: apple sauce and apple chunks for apple crisp, pie, etc.

Took a few minutes to add some links to some of the blogs I follow.  Hope you enjoy!

By the way, if anyone knows a recipe for cauliflower and corn relish, I would love to have it.  An old neighbor used to make is all the time, but she passed on unexpectedly, and never shared her recipe.

No Need to Panic

Had a lovely day today.  Put the carrots I canned into the cupboard...

... along with a few other finds in the mark-down bin at the supermarket.  Still have a few jars of salmon left from last year.  Yum.

Picked up some corn to can.  I hope to get that finished up tomorrow morning, social events permitting.  My sister-in-law came over with news, another bun in the oven.  This will be her third New Year baby.  Woot!

Hubby has been talking about hunting rabbit and squirrel, and doing some fishing.  Hopefully, this actually progresses beyond the talking stage.

Onions are one of my favorite foods, but our little hole in the ground is a little too humid this time of year to store them, and by the time its dry enough, the prices for onions have gotten over the top. I'm thinking of canning half-pint jars of regular and carmelized onions .  Last year I canned onion "jam" and have just one half-pint left.  It is absolutely wonderful just right out of the jar.  I used this recipe from CDKitchen

Carmelized Onion Jam

INGREDIENTS:

3 tablespoons butter
4 large onions, sliced
2/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup brown malt vinegar
1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh rosemary

DIRECTIONS:

Heat butter in large pan, add onions, cook gently for 20 to 30 minutes until onions are very soft and lightly browned. Add sugar, stir to melt sugar, simmer uncovered, stirring occasionally until mixture is thick and caramelized. Add vinegar and simmer uncovered for about 5 minutes until thickened slightly. Stir in the rosemary.

I processed it in a water bath canner for 10 minutes in half-pint jars.

***DISCLAIMER:  This is not one of those approved by nanny government (USDA) canning recipes, so if you choose to can it, it's at your own risk.***

I also went to "The Recycler", which is what we call the local repository for unwanted, unsaleable junk.  The best time to go is the Monday or Tuesday after a nice weekend, when people bring all the crap they couldn't sell at their yard sales.  I've scored some great books, a bagful for $2 or less.

Here's a look at some of my "Recycler" scores:

The Woman's Build-It & Fix-It Handbook, by Florence Adams
Build-It-Better-Yourself, Country Furniture, published by Rodale Press
A Barefoot Doctor's Manual, Rev. & Enlarged, 1977
New Choices in Natural healing, ed. Bill Gottlieb
Uncommon Uses for Common Household Products, Gayle K. Wood
Fast Fixes and Simple Solutions, Gayle K. Wood

And a handful of novels.

We also got some barely used camping gear.  In a total non-sequitur, this reminds me of a camping gear related incident which occurred in June.  Hubby and I were at the local national chain hardware and automotive outlet, and there was a yuppie family there shopping for camping cookware.

Honest to god, the mother/wife/queen dog was making a huge ordeal out of the whole process, picking over every single set, and finding fault with it all. Clearly, she was not on board with this "camping experiment" her family was all gung-ho about, and was dragging her high-heels.  Yeah, she was wearing high-heels to "buy" camping gear. (Another non-sequitur here, or maybe not) -  Why are some women making such a bad name for the rest of us?

Well, anyway, that's my two cents worth.

Down the Rabbit Hole

Down the rabbit hole is where our modern consumer society is headed.  The Mad Hatter and friends are running the show down in Washington, and the Cheshire Cat keeps grinning away while everything disappears, including himself.  Decent paying jobs are fast disappearing, and the wise woman will get herself out of debt.

Speaking of debt, today, I was laid off from my job as a staff member in a call center.  The gross margin is looking very bad and so all the low-bucks on the totem pole are gradually being let go.  The keepers don't get a raise, and have to take over the work of the people let go without compensation.

I count myself fortunate.  Because I'm part of the first group being let go, I'm actually going to get a small severance package.  I feel bad for the people who get termed down the road.  It's not going to be quite so civilized. Jobs are being outsourced to the Philippines, and elsewhere.   But no worries.  I'm prepared.  

Dinner on the hoof right in the backyard!

Well, that's my two cents worth.