Family Ready Plan

Moving to a new blog

2010-06-28T10:24:00.000-06:00

I've moved to a new blog, FamilyLifeBoat.com.
See you there.

Cooking Corn Tortillas for Tostadas

2010-06-25T11:11:00.001-06:00

We love tostadas as a light summer meal, especially when it gets near 100°F. In the winter we usually we bake them in the oven; you can also deep fry them but they often get bubbles that way which makes them structurally weak.

My current favorite is to pan fry them, it doesn't heat up the kitchen so much and is pretty fast. A little oil brushed on and cooked in the pan. I noticed that it was beginning to curl so I put the bacon press on top, they turned out nice and flat and crispy.

There are a architectural rules you need to follow when building a successful tostada. Refried beans are great for forming a foundation, they are sticky so the food stays on the tortilla and not just slid off. It will also hold the tortilla together a little when it breaks. But after a layer of meat, cheese and salsa the beans will be blocked so they can't hold onto the higher toppings.

Now a layer sour cream or guacamole under the top layer of lettuce and tomatoes and the whole thing holds together even if you drop it, which of course I did. I just used my fork to flip it back over and expect for a few stray bits of lettuce it had held together.

A Storm is Coming

2010-06-24T15:14:00.002-06:00

There's storms a coming, not just one but several and they look to be coming together as a perfect storm. They will affect the whole world.

Terrorists who want the blood of Americans to run in our streets.

Dictator bullies who envy everything we have, and want to take everything, even life itself.

Bugs and blights that spread from field to field and destroy crops.

Pandemics that sicken and kill.

Natural disasters that destroy cities.

Politicians that waffle on important issues.

Man-made disasters that pollute.

Economies that dip and weave.

Then there are small disasters, that are disasters for our families but that go unremarked by the world. A job loss, being hit by a drink driver, or just getting sick.

Why do we prepare? Because we can see these storms coming, these things have happened before and they'll happen again. So we learn from what happened to other people and apply the lessons learned to us and our families and our communities.

We go outside in the summer time and when we see clouds building, towering into the stratosphere we know that a thunderstorm will soon be upon us. There will be rain, and wind, maybe even hail and tornados.

Do we still go out on the picnic we were planning? No, of course not, we batten down the hatches. We put the resin chairs in the garage with the bicycles and shut the windows. We run to the store for milk, bread, batteries and ice.

The storm may miss us like it did last time and the time before that, but we remember the storm that did hit us a few years ago. We talked to the widow down the street who told us about the Big One all those years ago that nearly leveled the town. We hear on the news what's happening to other lands. We read in books what happened in other times.

Like the ants and the grasshopper, ants live many seasons and so they prepare for the winter. Grasshoppers only live for a season, long enough to mate, lay eggs and die. Grasshoppers will die even before fall, much less winter, comes.

How do you feel when you run out of toilet paper? How do you feel when you're out of toilet paper and you were just at the store? Building a home reserve let's us completely lose that feeling. Oh, out of paper, just go downstairs and pull one off the shelf. No fuss, no muss.

If you're laid off, how would you feel if all you had was that 2 weeks pay severance check, versus if you had 3 months of food and cash stored up at home? What kind of job would you take, what would you sell, if that severance check was all there was between you and foreclosure?

Being prepared is not about being scared, it's about moving beyond fear and getting ready so you don't have to be scared anymore. If your city is shut down because a pandemic has quarantined everyone for two weeks, you know you'll be fine because you have a months food at home and you don't need to go to the store where people are fighting over the last of the milk and bread.

Preparedness is also about freedom. Say you get a new boss, who's a bully. Who's going to stand up to him or walk away when the economy is in the tank? How much of a hold can he have on you if you have 6 months cash in the bank and a food in the pantry and a garden to grow more.

Preparation 101 What Parts of Your Life Readiness Touches

2010-06-23T15:02:00.000-06:00

I thought to list out the major things you need to be conversant with to help put some bounds on the problem of become ready for future events we can see coming or have a distinct possibility of happening. And I found it touches all parts of your life. When it comes to readiness it is in many ways a lifestyle.

But that is okay, I don't want to spend all my time going to work and staying inside the lines and all that. I want something more, I am okay with doing some things now that will pay off in the future.

Bad things happen and having an emergency fund and food storage as a cushion let's you absorb the shock and allows you to rebound much more quickly to get back on your feet. Is that really all that different from taking night classes for a better job in the future?

Taking night class is preparing for something good to happen, an emergency fund and food storage is preparing for something bad to happen. Look at history, then look at the news and what do you think you need to be ready for?

Food

Cooking

Hygiene

Recipe

Gardening

Permaculture

Food Storage

Preserving

Canning

Meats

Fruits

Vegetables

Composting

Water

Sources

Purification

Storage

Sewage

Shelter

Heating

Cooling

Fire

Light

Flashlights

Clothes

Tools

Home Design

Transportation

Automotive

Bicycle

Medical

Skills

Supplies

Sanitation

First Aid

Financial

Personal Finance

Work

Business

Banking

Community

Neighborhood

Politics

CERT

Security

Personal

Spiritual

Emotional

Intellectual

Physical

Communications

AM/FM/TV/Weather Band

FRS/GMRS/CB

Amateur Radio

Computer

Internet

Newspaper/Magazines

Mail

Mobile Phone

Telephone

Disasters

Man-Made

Chemical Spill

Utility Failure

Job Loss

Fire

Crime

War

Medical Emergency

Computer Failure

Natural

Earthquake

Tornado

Tsunami

Volcano

Wildfire

Blizzard

Flood

Solar Flare

Thoughts on Guerrilla Food Gardening

2010-06-22T12:37:00.000-06:00

One of the big problems with living in an apartment is not having anyplace to plant a garden. A few pots of herbs and other small plants is better then nothing but is not going to produce anywhere near enough to feed a family.

While I really like the idea of permaculture it really does take some actual ground to really pull off a self-sustaining food source. Actually, Oma in East Germany pulled off something that could be called permaculture.

I recently came across Guerrilla Gardening. And while mostly they seem to be about planting flowers and ornamental stuff but only a little bit on vegetables. This is a good strong idea that we can adapt for survival production.

While planting flowers in the median isn't going to keep you alive, even if it is something like an edible nasturtium. There are ways we can leverage this for something good.

We are not going to be plopping a full-on garden in the middle of some park or forest and hope nobody finds it. Where we can get to, someone else can get to, too. Some places, like federal lands, may have other illegal growers already doing stuff. We have to think different.

Seed balls are a great way to get started. Using a little fertilizer, some native edible plant seeds and some clay you can make lots of marble sized seed balls. Now where can we drop them?

Suburban Colorado has a lot of Open Space and Nature Areas. These are often irregular block areas between neighborhoods to provide some buffer space. Most are just empty lots with a sign on it, that are over grown, though the edge will be mown to keep the sidewalks clear and the chance of wildfire down.

Most are full of native prairie grass, which is fine, but even if we use native edible plants they would be out competed by the grass, especially since it is usually so dry here. What we need is some water and shade.

I have noticed a few open spaces that have some trees always are by a creek that runs through them. This is a very good thing. The creek may only be seasonal but with the shade and mulch from the trees it should be okay. The land around a creek is uneven so it is unlikely to be mown.

There is often plenty of trash around blown in by the wind, so people will be coming through cleaning up a few times a year. So expect it to be discovered, so hide it in plain sight and since seeds are cheap spread them out over a large area so there is something left somewhere.

This is not the kind of thing you'll want to visit often, it'll have to take care of itself. To not call attention to yourself you'll want to look like what people would expect, a hiker or birder. A daypack, binoculars and a camera would be expected. A bag for trash would be good too, leaving a place better then you found it is always a good thing.

Apartment Survival Strategies

2010-06-21T13:53:00.000-06:00

One of the problems of living in an apartment is that you are highly dependent on infrastructure: water/sewer, power, trash and the like.

While an ultimate solution is to bug out to a family member's home in the country; that isn't always possible for many reasons, like if you are trapped because of a blizzard.

So remember the basics: food, water, shelter (heat and light) and medical supplies.

An apartment doesn't have a basement so you'll have to get creative with storage.

Bottled water is easy to store. A great place is under the kitchen and bathroom sinks, because water bottles aren't concerned about moisture and those spaces are often not completely filled anyway.

Food is a little more interesting. Obviously, you are not going to have a big freezer so most of your food will have to be boxed or canned. But that means we can fit it practically anywhere they can fit.

A note about boxes. Food tends to be heavy so don't get big boxes, think small like large shoebox sized.

To make them more useful organize the food in the boxes so that you have several meals ready to go. That way you don't have to dig through a bunch of boxes looking for the right ingredients.

Putting labels of what is inside on the outside so you can find things easily. You could even put recipes in there to make it even easier. If you are worried about peekers, just use a generic label like taxes 1999 and reference code and keep the master list in a safe place, but add the location so you know where to look.

At home improvement and home deco stores you can usually get inexpensive side tables that are some legs, a round top and a fabric covering. There is plenty of room under there for several boxes worth of dry goods.

There are underbed storage boxes that allow you to easily slip lots of stuff under the bed.

There are risers for sofas and beds that give you an extra 6 inches under them. They are made for people who have a hard time getting in and out but this also gives us extra space to store food.

If you pull the sofa out from the wall a little you can stack boxes behind it and disguise it with a board on top and a fabric covering.

And over the toilet storage rack opens up space for soap, toilet paper and cleaning chemicals.

Dr. Wes: The Day After

2010-06-18T12:10:00.000-06:00

Dr. Wes: The Day After: "In business, nothing changes quickly. Especially big, money-hungry, bureaucratic machines. But the paranoia will grow amongst the administrative and medical supplier ranks as senior leadership looks to cut back. You see, doctors are just the first.

And then there's the patients. If you're in a big town, you won't notice the difference. That's because in the operating rooms, there will still be one nurse where there had been two. In the ICU's, your nurse will visit you a bit less, but thanks to electronics, she'll still be watching or listening for you. You might notice it's harder to understand the foreign accent of your doctor, but he or she will be pleasant. At least until the next doctor arrives on the night shift.

But for the rural patients. Best of luck. Hope you've got frequent flier miles or low mileage on your car. You're going to need it. I have no doubt that you'll be able to get a telemedicine doctor to see you, provided you have more than a dial-up connection and a new computer with a videocam. What, you can't afford one? Better ask the government for a computer, then, okay? And while you're on the phone, ask them how possible acute appendicitis will be handled, will you?"

So what do you do?

Move to the city? Don't get sick? Don't have accidents?

Think outside the box.

Combining Powerful Ideas

2010-06-17T10:00:00.001-06:00

There are some amazingly powerful ideas floating around out there, getting traction in different places solving problems and doing good. Not all ideas work in all places since there are legal and cultural barriers but that's okay, there are plenty of good solutions to most of the problems out there.

The problem is that often only one or two ideas get implemented in a particular place, when getting all these ideas together would make an order of magnitude difference or more.

Many of these ideas don't scale well, but that might be an advantage sometimes. You can't economically run an aluminum smelter on solar, it needs the density of coal or nuclear power, but then we don't need a lot of aluminum smelters.

Passive solar homes, maximize the use of sun, shade and wind to minimize the amount of heating and cooling a home needs during the year. The building materials can be pretty flexible too, from sod to straw-bale to adobe to insulated concrete panels.

Alternative power from solar, wind, and microhydro allows you to generate electricity.

Biodiesel for automotive fuel.

Biogas for cooking fuel and fertilizer.

Squarefoot gardening for high density home gardening, it gets a power boost when combined with succession planting.

Permaculture gardening strives for a permanent agricultural solution by maximizing the harvest of rainwater, and extensive use of native and zone compatible perennial edible plants in a layered approach.

Many of these ideas can be combined to create a sustainable lifestyle to keep you and your family alive and healthy during really tough times. Tough times come to everyone in one way or another being prepared will give you peace of mind.

Michael Yon: Gobar Gas II

2010-06-16T14:45:00.000-06:00

I love articles like this. It shows us how people are solving a survival problem, but aren't thinking about it as a survival problem. To them it is just the answer.

A Gurkha veteran named Lalit whom I met, deep in the jungles of Borneo, at a British Army man-tracking school, came with good ideas. Lalit began a conversation by announcing that many of Afghanistan's energy, land restoration and fuel needs could be solved if the Afghans would immediately adopt "Gobar Gas" production. This mysterious substance could improve the lives of Afghans as it had that of the Nepalese, he said, as, with great enthusiasm, he began to explain.

...

“Gobar” is the Nepali word for cow dung. The “Gas” refers to biogas derived from the natural decay of dung and other waste products and biomass. In Nepal, villagers use buffalo, cow, human, and other waste products for biogas production. Pig and chicken dung are used in some places, as are raw kitchen wastes, including rotted vegetation.

Gobar is typically mixed with a roughly equal amount of water, and gravity-fed through a pipe into an airtight underground “digester,” where naturally occurring bacteria feast on the mixture. This anaerobic process produces small but precious amounts of gas. That gas can be fed directly into a heat source, such as a cooking stove, and used to power it.

The biogas that is produced is 50-70% methane by volume, similar to natural gas, and a convenient source of clean energy. The biogas is easily collected and stored for lighting, cooking and other household uses. After the bacteria have finished digesting the dung, the byproduct is a rich organic fertilizer (sometimes called slurry). That fertilizer is more effective than raw dung, with two important benefits for hands-on farmers: it doesn’t smell bad, and almost all the pathogens and weed seeds have been destroyed. There is no downside. No waste. No poisonous residues or batteries. No moving parts. Gobar Gas is an astonishingly elegant tap into “the circle of life” that environmentalists, economists, development people and humanitarians should all appreciate.

...

Before coming to the biogas sector, Mr. Rai worked in photovoltaic energy. “Biogas has much greater socio-economic benefits,” said Mr. Rai in his Kathmandu office, “but biogas is not sexy like photovoltaic, which mostly helps men. Biogas mostly helps women—the men don’t really notice because they still get cooked food, so why would a man invest 25,000 rupees? But men will invest in photovoltaic because they get the sexy solar panel,” he said. “Even women sometimes will opt for photovoltaic solar power because they don’t realize the headaches, coughing and eye problems come from cooking.”

...

Ten kilos of dung yields roughly an hour of stove burning time, and one of those skinny cows produces about 12 kilos per day. KQ had a great herd of sheep—probably a couple hundred—kept in pens when not out feeding. Villagers scrape sheep dung from the pens, which they mixed with cow (I saw only one), mule and horse manure for cooking. A small stream runs through the village. Afghans will use greenhouses if taught; I’ve seen them in Helmand and Oruzgan.

...

The bio-slurry from the digester is so effective for growing crops that in some countries, according to Mr. Rai, biogas is not an energy program but an agricultural initiative. In Vietnam it has been adopted for sanitation. The biogas and the great sanitation benefits, including reduction of waste-borne diseases, are byproducts in one place and impetus in another. In Karbasha Qalat, with a few greenhouses using the bio-slurry, the standard of life could dramatically improve. There must be thousands of “Karbasha Qalats” in Afghanistan.

...

For a typical Nepalese family, installing a biogas facility, even with subsidies, is expensive. But people feel that the investment pays for itself quickly. Some women reported that Gobar Gas installations completely returned the investment within a year to 18 months. SNV figures are more conservative, but even they show a complete return on investment after about three years.

...

But it’s important to consider the less easily monetized but still very real benefits of using Gobar Gas. Saving 2,500 kilograms of trees each year per family has long-term economic value to farmers as the soil is revived. Improved health from better sanitation and the absence of constant wood smoke in the home has clear economic benefits, as does the ability to send children, freed from the labor of searching for fuel, to school. These gains and many others don’t fit on a balance sheet. But they are the conditions for real, long-term economic and social development in the Third World.

...

Households of four to five people require about two cows or buffalos to create enough raw materials. A thousand chickens or a hundred small humans can match one big water buffalo, and four pigs equal about two cows in dung production. Connecting the family outhouse gives a slight Gobar boost, but is more useful for sanitation than fuel.

...

Afghanistan recently won the silver medal in a competition for the world’s most corrupt nation. Somalia beat them by a nose, walking away with the gold medal, and all the gold that was meant for the people. Adding resources to Afghanistan has only made it more corrupt by giving thieves something to steal and more power after they steal it. Grassroots efforts can bypass many of these issues.

More than forty of the world’s most developed nations are nurturing Afghanistan, trying to push, pull and prod it into shape. Simultaneously, it won a silver medal for corruption. This means, at very least, that top-down solutions are typically not working. The government cannot be trusted with development money, because they don’t care about the development part. We might as well feed the money into bio-digesters. Fundamental progress in Afghanistan can best be achieved with more bottom up efforts. That’s what worked in Nepal.

...

The caloric rollercoaster for the star anaerobes begins at about 15ºC (59ºF). That’s when they start waking up and going to work. To kick them out of bed, some farmers pile straw atop the digester. Decaying straw produces heat. Busy anaerobes begin to help by producing heat inside the digester. Some people build greenhouses over top, or barns. In China, according to Jan Lam, the SNV biogas project manager in Cambodia, “The ‘3 in 1’ approach is popular. A greenhouse contains a vegetable garden, pig sty and biodigester. Vegetable waste is fed into the pigs and their waste goes directly into the plant which is often large enough for cooking and a water heater.”

In cold weather, digestion can be prodded with warm water. As temperature rises, production rises, but the top of the “thermo coaster,” the ideal temperature, is about 35ºC (95ºF). Good dung, plenty of water, little oxygen, and the anaerobes do their job. Above that temperature, they slow down, trying to shed some heat. But if slowing down doesn’t work, if their world gets too hot, they die.

Installing a digester is like adopting a baby elephant. It can’t get too hot or cold. It must eat every day, and drink lots of water. Sometimes it needs a little washing. If the water source is far, the system is impractical. Many parts of Nepal and Afghanistan are impractical for baby elephants and biogas.

So we have here a simple and durable system for creating cooking fuel, that also handles major sanitation issues and creates great fertilizer as a byproduct.

Unless you are running a diary farm you aren't going to have enough input to make heating fuel, but cooking fuel is a great first step. But a well designed and well sited house will not need very much heating or cooling.

News Roundup

2010-06-15T14:51:00.000-06:00

Masters of Disaster At Wharton's Risk Management and Decision Processes Center, researchers are investigating why humans do such a poor job planning for, and learning from, catastrophes.
ECONOMIC & POLITICAL WISDOM - JERRY POURNELLE

Cooking: The Blanche

2010-06-15T12:42:00.000-06:00

Cooking foods does lots of great things for us. First off it often improves the taste, which is always nice. Cooking can also liberate more nutrients providing more power for our bodies. Proper cooking can also kill off surface bacteria.

I'll focus on the last one for this post: Killing surface bacteria.

Generally speaking most of the food we have is pretty darn clean, but people walking around the produce section can and do cough and sneeze. A simple wash will wash off most of these germs but if you need to be sure your vegetables are germ free you can employ the blanche.

Blanching food does several things. It will kill surface bacteria, it will liberate cellular oxygen allowing the base color of the food to be more easily seen and it will loosen the skins on certain foods.

You already know that bring water to a boil will kill the germs in the water, but did you realize that boil water will kill the germs on the outside of the things put into the water? Nobody ever mentions it but this is actually very important.

Have you ever noticed how bright the colors are on those vegetable trays you can get at the store but the raw vegetables you get from the produce section are rather lackluster looking at the same time? The reason is that raw foods still have lots of oxygen bound up in them. By blanching foods the heat will cause the oxygen to liberate from the cells of the food allowing the colors underneath to shine through. Overcooking will cause the colors and the cellular structure of the food to breakdown resulting in an ugly gray goo. We're going to prevent that with an ice-water shock bath. This works best on foods like broccoli, beans, carrots and celery, you know, the foods you usually see on a veggie tray.

Blanching will loosen the skins on certain foods, like tomatoes and peaches, for easier processing. Cooking tends to weaken cellular structures, since a blanche is so quick only the very outside of the food will cook, that makes skinning the food much easier and less wasteful. This is most often used on foods like tomatoes and peaches. This is the first step to making Tomato Concassé, which is the foundation of tomato sauce, or peach cobbler.

Blanching

To blanche food you need:

A big pot to boil the water in. Wider is better so the food will have room to float around and not touch other food. Lots of water means that the boil will recover the boil faster.

A large bowl, filled with a 1:1 ration of water and ice. After about 5 minutes you will have water at 32°F (0°C). This will shock the food, cooling it down quickly and stopping the cooking process. If we just let it sit on the counter it will continue cooking until it reach equilibrium.

A spider or slotted spoon. To get food in and out of the boiling water.

Since you are working with lots of water a few towels would be handy.

For a veggie tray, you'll want to cut the foods into bite-sized pieces before blanching. Lower a spider full into the water and allow to cook for 30 seconds, then using the spider again remove them into the ice-water bath for the shock. after 1 minute they will have stopped cooking. You can dry them in a salad spinner or on some towels. If you are not going to eat them within the hour store them in the refrigerator to keep them out of the Danger Zone, wrapped in some moist towels to keep them from drying out.

Fresh Tomato Sauce

If you have a garden with tomatoes one of the great things to make is your own tomato sauce. To make a good homemade tomato sauce you should start with a tomato concassé, because the seeds are tough and bitter and the skin will curl up into nasty little tubes that never soften.

Ingredients

20 Roma Tomatoes, concasséd

1/4 cup olive oil

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1 teaspoon pepper

1 cup finely diced onion

2 teaspoon minced garlic

1 tablespoon finally chopped fresh oregano leaves

1 tablespoon finally chopped fresh thyme leaves

The juice of 1 lemon

Tomato Concassé

For skinning fruit, you'll need to cut a small X in the base (non-stem end) of the fruit and lower 2-3 of them into the water with the spider for 30 seconds. Then remove them with the spider and shock them in the ice-water bath. After a minute you can peel them by rubbing them in a towel to remove the skin or if the skin is still hanging on too tight with a paring knife by grabbing the loose skin at the X we made between the knife and thumb and pulling. We live at high-altitude so we need to go for 60 seconds to loosen the skins enough. Discard skins.

Cut the tomatoes in half and using your finger remove the seeds and pulp, discard the seeds and pulp. Chop the tomatoes into large cubes discarding the hard stem.

In a large non-reactive pot cook on low the tomato concassé, oil, salt, pepper, onion, garlic, and herbs for about half an hour until most of the liquid has cooked out.

Add the lemon juice. Let that return to a boil. Check the seasoning and adjust salt and pepper to taste.

News Roundup

2010-06-14T15:32:00.000-06:00

It Just Isn't Possible to Prepare Enough Sometimes

2010-06-14T12:58:00.000-06:00

What happened to them is terrible and shows one of the biggest holes I've seen in many preparation plans.

I know exactly what they went through. We were hit by a drunk driver that crossed the median of the Interstate. My pregnant wife and I ended up in the hospital for a month and, unusually, the drunk was died on scene. Miraculously, we both had the same insurance company and when the hospital called they got agents who were sitting back to back, which expedited things nicely.

Our emergency fund was depleted in the helicopter and ambulance charges just to get to the hospital. Helicopters are expensive. Ending up in the hospital tends to be very expensive. The cost of healthcare is greatly distorted because of how insurance companies and the government handle claims.

A car crash is one of the more expansive accidents that can happen to you. Cars are very safe nowadays and you tend to survive things that used to kill people outright but injuries can be worse because of it.

I once read that you could self-insure yourself if you had $1 million in the bank. While that is a great goal, you need to build up to it.

Most advise you get for an emergency fund is 2-3 months of expenses. I prefer 1 month of expenses per $10k salary per year you make.

Take it to the next level for a crash fund. The trouble is that a crash fund would have to be by definition pretty big. We're talking about $100k+ here. That would be 2-3 years salary for an average person. You can't do that very quickly at all, unless you hit it big on the lottery or something.

Cash, CDs, gold, silver and other commodities, and the like. Right now stocks and bonds are not looking so great right now but they are options too things will change and they may be valid choices again.

The easiest way to do this is to make it a combined fund: retirement and crash. Don't put all of your funds into locked accounts like an IRA or 401(k) keep some of it liquid and semi-liquid.

The Canning Experience in Denver

2010-06-11T15:16:00.000-06:00

One of the great experiences we get to have is to go to the Denver Cannery and do some volunteer work. The products we do go to the poor and needy and disaster victims, but you can buy some of it yourself.

The LDS Cannery in Denver recently got upgraded to handle meats. So, yesterday we did beef chunks, they also can do chicken and pork and cream of chicken soup, as well as the old standbys of tomato soup and salsa. The USDA inspector comes at least once every day and said he's been impressed by the quality and cleanliness of the volunteers, usually beating the professional meat packers he's also inspecting. I would have loved to get a chance to ask him why he thought that was the case but it was to noisy and busy.

We had about a dozen volunteers doing most of the work, packing the meat into the cans, putting the cans into the basket to go into the pressure canners and packing the finished cans into boxes.

There were 4 missionaries, not the young kids most people see, these are older people doing a couple of years of service who are trained at the process and how to repair the machines and do the more critical/hazardous work like using the crane to move the baskets of cans to and from the pressure canners.

The most amazing thing is how with about 5 minutes of instruction we just self-organized into doing jobs we thought ourselves were best suited for and dove right in.

We blazed through 4 pallets of beef chunks, about 1600 pounds of meat in 4 hours. Even with the lidding machine occasionally eating cans instead of topping and sealing them properly. The cannery itself did 80,000 pounds in the past 4 weeks. Not bad for a place of only about 3000 sq. ft. and a bunch of volunteers.

I was near the front of the line getting the meat from the tubes it came in to the canning table where most people were concentrated. We would dump 25-30 pounds of meat onto to the table every couple of minutes, when things were moving smoothly, to keep the packers supplied with enough meat to not fall behind the cans. We were soon covered in blood up to our biceps.

Near the end we were getting cramps in our hands from all the work. I couldn't do that work all day, we were warned that it was tough work and he wasn't kidding. But if I had too it wouldn't be too bad if you could rotate out to an easier job from time to time.

I noticed a lot of the county Food Banks from around the state are signed up to do turns on the schedule: Arvada, Boulder, Larimar, Weld, Food Bank of the Rookies and even The Salvation Army and Jewish Family Services. Next month there is a Mayor's Night, mayors from around the state have been invited to come join in to participate in some canning to get an idea of what is going on in here.

And all that is just the Wet Pack Cannery, the Dry Pack has its own area, personnel and schedule.

Most of you don't live by Denver and so I found a list of community canneries by state but it doesn't list the one I know about here in Denver so you'd better look around in your own community.

The Absolute Beginners Guide to Learning How To Cook for Survival: Part 15 Technique Blanching

2010-06-11T13:06:00.000-06:00

I'll focus on the last one for this post: Killing surface bacteria.

Blanching

To blanche food you need:

A big pot to boil the water in. Wider is better so the food will have room to float around and not touch other food. Lots of water means that the boil will recover the boil faster.

A spider or slotted spoon. To get food in and out of the boiling water.

Since you are working with lots of water a few towels would be handy.

Fresh Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

20 Roma Tomatoes, concasséd

1/4 cup olive oil

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1 teaspoon pepper

1 cup finely diced onion

2 teaspoon minced garlic

1 tablespoon finally chopped fresh oregano leaves

1 tablespoon finally chopped fresh thyme leaves

The juice of 1 lemon

Tomato Concassé

Cut the tomatoes in half and using your finger remove the seeds and pulp, discard the seeds and pulp. Chop the tomatoes into large cubes discarding the hard stem.

In a large non-reactive pot cook on low the tomato concassé, oil, salt, pepper, onion, garlic, and herbs for about half an hour until most of the liquid has cooked out.

Add the lemon juice. Let that return to a boil. Check the seasoning and adjust salt and pepper to taste.

The Road to Serfdom as a Comic Book @ AMERICAN DIGEST

2010-06-10T17:23:00.000-06:00

It looks like Glenn Beck's show on The Road to Serfdom has caused Chicago Press to sell a 6 month supply of the book (about 13,000 copies) in less then 24 hours.

There is a Comic Book version available.

The Absolute Beginners Guide to Learning How To Cook for Survival: Part 14 Canning supplies

2010-06-10T10:00:00.000-06:00

Whether there is a societal breakdown or not being able to preserve the food you may get cheaply at harvest time or in some other kind of windfall is a powerful way to save money.
Canning was created because Napoleon needed a way to feed his army without antagonizing the locals by eating all their food as the army passed through. Napoleon offered a X-prize to solve this problem. If you get food from a jar or a can you have to thank Nicolas Appert who won the prize after he invented a way to stuff food into a modified champagne bottle, seal it and boil it to make it safe from spoilage. Some rivals took the idea and decided to save money by skipped the boiling step, which allowed us to discover the dangers of botulism.
The most important thing we are trying to do in canning is to kill the Clostridium botulinum microorganism which produces botulism toxin which can paralyze your muscles within 72 hours, including those used for breathing. Oh, it leaves your brain and nervous system intact, so you can be wide awake the whole time. As little as 1 microgram is fatal to humans. While it can be killed at regular boiling temperatures it can form heat resistant spores. These spores cannot survive high acid environments like jams and tomato sauce. In a low acid environment the spores can survive and release the microorganism which thrives in a low-oxygen environment like a sealed jar of meat and vegetables filling it with botulinum toxins. To kill the spores the temperature of the jar needs to reach at least 240°F and the only way to make water reach that temperature is to increase the pressure.
There are several ways to preserve food all with there own kinds of specialized tools. You could improvise but it is much better to have the proper tools to make it safer and easier. And when it comes to preserving foods safer is better.
Canning foods has the potential of being really dangerous, even fatal, so follow the recipe. The best resources are the Ball Blue Book of Preserving and your local extension office.
Most supermarkets seem to carry a canning supplies in the summer at least. They even have kits with almost everything you need to get started. I'd also recommend getting the quart sized rather then the pint sized kit, you can do pints in a quart sized pot but not the other way around, we did that and trying to can 40 pints of strawberry jam takes a really long time when doing only 7 pints at a time.
There are two basic variations, water bath canning and pressure canning. Water bath is just that, the jars take a bath in boiling water. For meats and other low-acid foods a pressure canner must be used.
While the kits have almost everything you need, you may need to have a few other things like a spare set of tongs, preferably with silicone tips to grab sterilized jars and rings, since it needs to be sterilized too it needs to be silicone to withstand the boiling water without breaking down.
If you are making more then one batch another large pot to sterilize the next batch while the first is being processed is handy, but you should already have a stockpot that will do that duty.
A small pot for the lids, you need to sterilize them but not so much that the sealing compound is damaged. A small pot gives you better control and you should have this already anyway.
A timer for obvious reasons.
Towels, canning is a very wet process and lots of towels will keep things clean and dry.
Plenty of counter space. You don't really want to move a bunch of hot and wet jars into your pantry. You'll generally need to let the jars sit for several hours to seal and cool. You'll hear lots of popping as the jars vacuum seal themselves. What is happening is that you caused the everything to expand as it was heated; it also pushed out some of the air from the jars when they were in the water bath, as they cool everything shrinks including the air and that is how the seal is created. If you move it around too much while hot the seal won't hold, even with the rings.

News Roundup

2010-06-09T13:41:00.000-06:00

Increase Kitchen Efficiency by Learning Basic Knife Handling Skills

Minimum Payments: A Monster That Will Eat You Alive

Life inside the North Korean bubble

Top 10 Design Myths

10 Ways to Prevent a Home-Plumbing Nightmare

Food Fight

Wheat rust: 'cereal killer' in Kenya

15 Unusual Uses For Baking Soda

Off-grid Laundry machine

FTC floats Drudge tax

How to Be a Hegemon

The Dr. Zhivago Option

2010 Grasshopper Forecast

Obama loses the Left: suddenly, it's cool to bash Barack

Nancy Pelosi, the liberal House speaker, is heckled by liberals

Disturbing Job Ads: 'The Unemployed Will Not Be Considered'

Aging Baby Boomers and the Generational Housing Bubble: Foresight and Mitigation of an Epic Transition

How to Preserve Food for Future Consumption Using Three Simple Old Fashioned Methods

Vanishing Farmland: How It's Destabilizing America's Food Supply

Phoenix-area hospitals fight highly toxic 'supergerm'

As the Sun Awakens, NASA Keeps a Wary Eye on Space Weather

Severe weather rakes Midwest; 7 dead

Watching California Wind Power Output

Time can't erase D-Day memories

More rain in Boise. When will it stop? When will the sun return? Where is summer?

BEST HOUSEPLANTS TO IMPROVE INDOOR AIR QUALITY

KEEPING KITCHEN STAPLES FRESH

Double-Decker Drum Composter

Salt

Preparing Your Information for Disaster, Part Two

From the oil spill to the financial crisis, why we don't plan for the worst

I'm Tired--some updates

U.S.’s $13 Trillion Debt Poised to Overtake GDP: Chart of Day

The Finger of God

Declutter Your Home and Simplify by Choosing Classic Designs

A Self-Appointed Teacher Runs a One-Man 'Academy' on YouTube

A diet of the mind

Time Machine plus a clone secure the day

A “Systems” Explanation of How Bailouts can Cause Business Cycles

ZYWICKI: Why aren't banks lending?

A Future With Fewer New Miracle Drugs

A Classical Education: Back to the Future

The Overton Window

The Absolute Beginners Guide to Learning How To Cook for Survival: Part 13 Cooking Utensils part 2

2010-06-09T13:15:00.000-06:00

Bowls A good set of nesting bowls is very helpful and doesn't take up much space. Metal is better then plastic since plastic will link with fat molecules so they are hard to get really clean. Glass is also great since you can put them in the microwave if you need to heat or defrost something, but they can break. Bigger is often better but don't get one so big it doesn't fit in your cabinet or dishwasher.

Graters Lots of things need to be grated and a good box grater makes it easier, it needs a nice wide base. For hard cheeses, citrus and other fine grating jobs a microplane grater rocks.

Stainers and colanders are for separating foods and liquids. Slots work better for draining liquids and make sure to have a bowl or other container big enough for the stainer to fit in. Wire mesh strainers can be also be used for sifting flour. You'll want a big one that will fit into a 6 Quart bowl for washing large amounts of food like before a canning session. A medium sized one of 2 Quart size for pasta, and a small one of 1 cup size for straining loose teas and other herbal infusions, this is also great for sifting flour and powdered sugar when baking.

Can opener, get at least three of these for your kitchen and two in your emergency kits. You can brute force your way into a can with a strong knife but a can opener is much easier and safer.

Measuring cups and spoons and scale, all recipes have ingredients that need to be measured. Two sets are important, stainless steel is the most durable. An electronic scale is fine, a manual balance scale would be great.

Peelers or vegetable peelers are designed for getting the skin off of foods like carrots. They are also very good at making very thin slices of firm foods like potatoes; homemade potato chips a breeze to make. The most important thing is to get one that's comfortable for your hand.

Scissors are really useful. You want a few of these. A pair of general purpose scissors for opening bags and cutting butcher's twine is a must. They can be good but not great pair. On the other hand a great pair of kitchen shears can save you a lot of work. It can cut the back out of a chicken carcass or the fins off of a fish. Since this is for cutting raw meat, this must be stainless steel and they must can come apart so you can really clean it.

Bench scraper, amazingly useful not just for manipulating dough but also transferring chopped foods from the cutting board to a bowl or pan.

Ladles are really just spoons with a deeper bowl. I like the calibrated ones, 1/4 cup, 1/2 cup and 1 cup. It makes potion control easier.

Spice grinders, pepper mills and mortar & pestle. Whole spices last years so they are great for storage, but you need to break them up when you want to use them. Whole pepper is a great and easy addition. Pepper mills are good for pepper, obviously, and other pepper sized spices like allspice. For something like cinnamon sticks or chunks you need something different like a spice grinder or mortar and pestle.

Mallet or meat tenderizer sometimes you need to flatten food, but don't over do it or you'll make mush. There are two basic styles, Hammer style and vertical style, a flat base and a vertical handle. A matte finish with rounded edges is best.

Food mill is a manual food processor, something very handy for preparing foods for canning or making mashed potatoes.

Storage containers there'll be no more plastic bags after a collapse so some good and durable storage containers are going to come in handy. Plastic is fine as all materials will eventually wear out or break.

Ice trays not just for ice any more, get them in the 2 Tablespoon size which are good for freezing egg whites, and small amounts of stock for helping dishes.

Rolling pin, a solid one piece French style rolling pin is almost indestructible. But an 1.5 inch wooden dowel will work fine.

News Roundup

2010-06-08T14:14:00.000-06:00

Emergency Plan: Better Than an Emergency Fund
Tales from a DC Kitchen
10 People Who Survived the Impossible
35 More Secrets the ER Staff Won’t Tell You
Americans stock up to be ready for end of the world
Rescuing adult authority in the twenty-first century
DIY and Danger
Put Together a Rock Solid Home Tool Kit
Al Dente: How to Feed the World: Monsanto vs. Michael Pollan

The Absolute Beginners Guide to Learning How To Cook for Survival: Part 12 Cooking Utensils part 1

2010-06-08T13:15:00.000-06:00

If you're cooking you don't want to use your hands to reach in and try to flip things over and unless you're on top of Mount Everest you don't want to reach into a pot of boiling water. That are what the various utensils are for. You want to have at least 2 sets: one for working raw foods, particularly meats, and one for cooked. Switch when the last raw side goes down to the hot surface. And have at least one set for working over a fire or outdoor grill.

Spatulas are one of the first thing to use to manipulate foods on the stove. Spatula is an overloaded word used to describe a flat metal flipper or a soft silicone paddle. Generally speaking when talking about cooking a spatula is a one of the flat ones not the rubber ones usually used in baking, which I'll talk about later. They can be solid, perforated or slotted. The holes reduce surface friction and allow fat to drain. Slotted ones are best for turning fish as a solid spatula will shred the fish, the long open slots allow the fish to slide without catching. Metal allows for more flexibility but should not be used on non-stick surfaces which require plastic.

Rubber spatulas are often just called spatulas in the baking context. Rubber spatulas usually made from things other then rubber. High temperature silicone can be using one the stovetop without melting and are great for making omelets. Get a small one for getting into jars and frosting cakes, a large one for folding ingredients together, and a spoonula for transferring creamy, fluffy foods like puddings and whipped cream.

Spoons let you bring out samples of foods for tasting, which is very important so you can adjust the seasoning before serving. Slotted spoons allow you to drain foods that have been poached or deep fried. Metals spoons can be lighter and more aggressively shaped then wood or plastic but conduct heat which is bad for candy-making. When getting a wooden spoon get one with a thick handle so you can use it as a spurtle or a pestle.

Tongs are great for manipulating foods. Too often I need to flip something cubic over and a spatula will sometimes just flip it all the way over. Tongs give you way more control.

Whisk works best in a rounded bowl or a saucier where it can reach the corners. It is best at combining particulates and liquids. There are two basic type the round for working up the sides and the flat for scraping the bottom of the pan. Lots of tines and big round head is better.

Remembering D-Day, 66 years ago - The Big Picture - Boston.com

2010-06-07T20:28:00.000-06:00

Remembering D-Day, 66 years ago - The Big Picture - Boston.com

Disturbing Job Ads: 'The Unemployed Will Not Be Considered'

2010-06-07T16:00:00.000-06:00

Disturbing Job Ads: 'The Unemployed Will Not Be Considered': "In a current job posting on The People Place, a job recruiting website for the telecommunications, aerospace/defense and engineering industries, an anonymous electronics company in Angleton, Texas, advertises for a 'Quality Engineer.' Qualifications for the job are the usual: computer skills, oral and written communication skills, light to moderate lifting. But red print at the bottom of the ad says, 'Client will not consider/review anyone NOT currently employed regardless of the reason.'"

I understand that companies need to filter resumes. I saw a company that got a stack of resumes 5 feet tall every week, without the envelopes. That is a lot. Far too many to actually read individually.

So they add requirements: college, x GPA or higher, x years of experience, &etc.

How's that working for you? Do you really need someone with a BS for being a retail clerk? A 3.9 GPA for driving a package delivery truck?

I remember one of my professors telling us something significant that he noticed about students when he asked them to do thing.

For example, he would ask a student to fix an electric motor and bolt it on a wooden base.

An A student would quickly tinker with the motor and put it on the wooden base. It might work.

A B student would tinker with the motor for a while and mount it with a hand tightened bolt. It might work.

A C student would get the motor working and mount it on the base and it would tell the professor that it was done, but would take the longest time.

Which one would you hire?

The absolute Beginners Guide to Learning How To Cook for Survival: Part 11 Towels

2010-06-07T14:00:00.002-06:00

The next most important thing are towels. Towels!? Yes, towels. The basis for safe cooking is a clean and hygienic kitchen and you can accomplish that best with towels.

You'll need wash cloths that generally stay at the sink for wiping things with lots of water and scrubbing vegetables and pans and the counter. This really don't need to be fancy at all, bar mops are cheap and sturdy. All-white cotton cloths are nice so you can bleach them clean.

Dish towels for wiping your hands, soaking up larger spills and keeping foods covered. You don't want fancy embroidery or decals, those are art for hanging on the walls, not serious kitchen tools. I like sturdy, waffle-weave towels and terry cloth.

We also like flour sack towels for covering food since they are so light, and also for wringing out water laden foods like frozen spinach and shredded potatoes.

Some people like sponges, but those are germ hotels. Sure, you can put them in the dishwasher or boil them or even zap them in the microwave, but those might be hard to pull off after a crash. I prefer to use towels and go with a fresh set every morning after they had the night to dry, they just go in the next load of laundry. You'll be doing laundry anyway.

You should have enough towels to go for at least a week without doing laundry. You'll want a wash cloth for each sink and a dish towel next to each sink and next to the stove for cleaning up spills.

An important accessory for a towel is a small spray bottle filled with about a cup of water and 1/4 teaspoon of chlorine bleach, the unscented stuff, please. This is a powerful sanitizing solution you can spray around the kitchen to kill bacteria and viruses. That you should definitely use after cooking a meal with raw meat or at the end of the day.

Sanitizing Solution Formula: 1/4 teaspoon chlorine bleach per cup of water or 1 Tablespoon per gallon.

Anniversary of D-Day

2010-06-07T12:57:00.000-06:00

They went out to fight for someone else's freedom and to stop tyranny.

It was not a line in the sand, it was a root canal.

Thank you.

News Roundup

2010-06-04T13:44:00.000-06:00

The absolute Beginners Guide to Learning How To Cook for Survival: Part 10 Knives

2010-06-04T13:30:00.002-06:00

Knives are a big deal they are the oldest kitchen tool of all. Like most old tools there are an enormous number of specialized variations for all kinds of jobs. They also come in a wide variety of metals and non-metals.
The most important feature of a knife is how well it fits in your hand. If it doesn't fit you well, you won't be able to use it well and it will be more likely to slip and cut you.
You need two basic knives: a chefs knife and a paring knife. Mostly an 8" chefs knife and a 3" paring knife will do most of the work you'll ever do in the kitchen. But remember to make sure it fits you. My wife has smaller hands and so a 6" knife is better for her. I am on the large size and a 10" knife works best for me.
If you do a lot of some specialize task then getting a specialized knife makes sense. If you do a lot of fishing a fillet knife is helpful. Baking your own bread, which my wife does a lot, a serrated bread knife is great. We also like getting whole chickens and breaking them down ourselves, and a boning knife makes that job easier and faster.

There are some important accessories that your knife needs.
Two cutting boards, a plastic one for cutting raw meats that you can put in your dishwasher, and a wooden one for cutting vegetables since a good wood cutting board is a fast surface for cutting lots of ingredients quickly.
A honing steel, will realign the edge of the blade to true which keeps it sharp. It doesn't sharpen the blade, that requires a sharpening stone, which you should also own and learn to use.
A knife holder. Don't keep the knife in the drawer, it is dangerous and will dull your blade and scratch on everything else in the drawer. Whichever you choose make sure that the edge of the blade has minimal contact. You don't want the vertical blocks where it sits on the edge.

News Roundup

2010-06-03T11:02:00.001-06:00

Rise of the replicators
Providing Health Care Will Get You Investigated
The memory manipulators:
How long can a human live unprotected in space?

The absolute Beginners Guide to Learning How To Cook for Survival: Part 9 Thermometers

2010-06-03T09:00:00.001-06:00

Accurate Thermal Guessing Stick or thermometers.
The power of the kitchen comes from the control of temperature. Heat and cold are your allies and your enemies. Mastering thermal control is the Jedi level of kitchen mastery. And to do that you are going to need something to measure temperature. LIke most tools there are many variations specialized at doing different things.

The oldest style is the analog glass-bulb, formerly filled with mercury, generally the ones you can find today are filled with a dyed alcohol which is easier to read and plenty accurate. They are found in all kinds of enclosure styles for many different temperature ranges. Since alcohol has a constant coefficient of expansion over a relatively small temperature range, there are different formulations for different temperature ranges. Most often found in oven, refrigerator and candy thermometer styles.

There are the analog bi-metalic style. Two metals are welded together into long strips. Since they have different rates of thermal expansion they coil around each other. They are reasonably accurate and very inexpensive but sometimes have mild calibration issues, this also has range issues so they use different metals for different ranges. These are often used in the big dial style thermometers. You most often see these in oven, refrigerator and unpowered instant read and meat thermometers.

There are the digital thermistor based thermometers. A thermistor is a thermal-resistor, a small ceramic disk that changes its resistance as the temperature changes. A small battery powered device measures the change in resistance and translates that into a temperature reading for us. Virtually all of the digital electronic kitchen thermometers on the market today are based on this technology. This also has a very wide temperature range it can detect, so it can accurately measure temperature from freezing ice cream to deep-frying oil. Because it is battery powered you may want to pick up some extra rechargeable batteries and a solar powered battery charger so you can keep cooking after civilization falls. Another downside is that the ceramic disk is usually pretty big putting big holes in your food.

Finally, there are the digital thermocouples. These are two different metal wires that are welded together that create a voltage when heated and an electronic circuit can detect that and give us a temperature reading. Very fast, very accurate and makes for nice thin probes. They are also the most expensive. If you already have a Digital Multi Meter (DMM) in your home tool kit then getting a thermocouple attachment for your DMM is inexpensive. Same battery precautions as the thermistor-based thermometers as well.

Oh, there is one more the digital infrared thermometer, that is specialized as reading temperatures of the surface of objects at a distance usually a few feet. Not really useful in the average kitchen.

How many thermometers and what kind do you need?
You'll need one each for the refrigerator and the freezer(s). I like the bulb style because they are smaller and don't get in the way.
You'll need one for the oven, where a nice big dial style makes reading it easy from a distance.
A probe thermometer. I like the digital thermistor ones with the long probe so you can read the internal temperature of what is in the oven without having to open the oven, which would let out the heat, waste energy and increase the cooking time. Having two of these is great for Thanksgiving so you can monitor the white and dark meats, and for smoking foods so you can monitor the smoke box and the food temperatures simultaneously.
A handheld instant read thermometer for probing smaller foods like steaks and chops.
If you are making your own bread a thermometer for the proofing box is very handy.
Finally, you'll want a few regular room thermometers for the kitchen, pantry and storage room, just so you know how warm they are. The warmer the food in storage is, the shorter it will last before spoiling.

News Roundup

2010-06-02T10:39:00.000-06:00

Disaster Planning
Infrastructure Mapping
Catastrophe Calculator: Estimate Asteroid Impact Effects Online
Imagining The Fate Of Data After The Apocalypse
A 'Culture of Disaster Preparedness' Requires Careful Planning
30 Striking Natural Disasters
Authors Ask: How Terrifying Will Our Future Be?
Peak Wood: Nature Does Impose Limits

Personal Development
First, care.
Is this noise inside my head bothering you?
Caring for your online introvert

Money
10 Actions You Can Take To Avoid Credit Card Fraud
Putting Out Fires
How To Protect Your Receipts
The Phishing Flow Chart Highlights Red Flags in Dangerous Emails
Some Thoughts on Hiring People
Finding Self Employed Health Insurance
A Visible Fall in US Money M3 Worries Some Analysts
Owners Stop Paying Mortgages, And Stop Fretting

DIY
The Parabolic Stress Skin System part 1
Project BLT Making a sandwich from scratch.
The 50-Percent Solution
Ketchup (Catsup) Recipe

The Absolute Beginners Guide to Learning How To Cook for Survival: Part 8 Bakeware

2010-06-02T10:20:00.000-06:00

Baking is the most complex part of cooking, combining physics, chemistry and often biology.

Baking often involves a specialize pan of some kind or other. Do you need all these pans? Probably not. Bread has been baked freeform for millennia. Pies made without a pan are called a galette. Though a good casserole is great for many things, a round one will also work as a soufflé pan. And a half-sheet pan is amazingly versatile from making sheet cakes to cookies and acting as a tray.

Most recipes expect a matte metal pan usually aluminum. If you are using a dark or glass pan reducing the heat by 25°F helps brown things at the right time. A shiny metal pan would reflect heat increasing the heat by 25°F would keep the cooking time the same. If you are at high altitude reducing the heat by 25° helps protein structures set on time.

A covered roasting pan, after the end of the world getting aluminum foil may be hard to get to cover things for steam roasting.
Pie plate, I like glass for even browning. Get three (corn starch, egg, coating) for doing coatings for deep fried foods.
Cake pan, matte rolled-aluminum for even heating.
Casserole, ceramic so you can't see inside, round or oval to eliminate dry corners.
Ramekins, for individual desserts like creme brulee and organizing ingredients.
Soufflé pan, optional, a round ceramic casserole will work but a good way to use up eggs.
Loaf pan, for breads and meat loaf.
Rectangular 9x13 pan, for brownies, lasagna and cakes. I like glass and folded metal with sharp corners.
Square 8x8 or 9x9 pan, see 9x13 pan.
Sheet pan (in half size) or jelly roll pan. Matte, rolled aluminum is remarkably useful as a cookie sheet, sheet cakes, and even as a tray.
Cookie sheet, I don't like them since they tend to warp.
Bundt cake pan or Tube pan, Angel food cake pan, optional
Springform pan, mainly for cheesecakes and they tend to leak, a cake pan is better.
Tart pan, a variation on the pie pan with a pop out bottom making it easier to remove.
Muffin pan and Popover pan, optional
Pizza pan and deep dish pizza pan, I like to use a perforated one on the grill instead of one of those speciality grill top pans.

news Roundup

2010-06-01T17:01:00.000-06:00

Development

Economy

Lessons

Energy

Cooking

The Absolute Beginners Guide to Learning How To Cook for Survival: Part 7 Pots and Pans: General Recommendations

2010-06-01T10:00:00.000-06:00

Now that the materials are out of the way we can start to talk about pots and pans.

I am sure you know what a pot and a pan is but in general terms a pot is taller then wider and often comes with a lid and a pan is wider then taller and may have a lid but usually not.

If you look at the catalogs there are a lot of different type of pots and pans, I am just going to cover some of the major types. I am putting down some definitions so we can talk and most of the time these will hold but sometimes manufactures go a little nuts with naming for marketing purposes.

Pans

Pans come with a straight out handle. When looking at a pan get one with an oven-safe handle so you can let a not quite done dish finish in the oven or just let it stay warm. They are differentiated by diameter.

Griddle

The most basic pan is the griddle, it can be as simple as flat rock, but usually is a round, square or rectangular slab of metal with no or very minimal sides. This is designed to make it easy to get under the food being cooked with a spatula and flipping it. Things like pancakes and hamburgers.

Grill pan

If it has ridges along the bottom it's a grill pan and is designed to allow excess fat to drain away, like if your hamburger meat is very fatty and you don't want to deep fry your burger in its own juices.

Skillet

If the pan has sloped or flared sides it is called a skillet, frying pan, frypan or omelette pan. The sloped sides are designed to allow you to slide you food out of the pan in onto your plate or serving piece.

Sauté pan

If the pan has straight sides it is a sauté pan. It is designed to allow steam to escape for faster evaporation to allow pan sauces to concentrate before the previously cooked food gets cold. The straight sides also allow you to toss the food and help it land back in the pan, with a little practice. Sauté pans often come with lids so you can steam foods.

Chicken frier

This is a large pan that usually has an extra loop handle on the opposite side of the straight handle.

Pan recommendations

What pan you need depend a great deal on what you cook and how big your family is.

What we use as a family of three is a small 8" nonstick skillet for eggs and pancakes. A 10" anodized aluminum skillet for general use and a 12" cast iron skillet for searing meats and pan frying chicken.

Knowing what I now know -- I would stick with the 8" nonstick skillet, a 10" cast iron pan and a 12" stainless steel sauté pan with a glass lid so we can see how its cooking, because a 12" cast iron pan is pretty darn heavy.

Pots

Pots are at least as tall as they are wide and are not always called pots, as we'll see. They are differentiated by volume. The lids should also be designed so that the steam that condenses on them runs back into the pot. It is also good if the lid sits well upside down for stacking.

Pots smaller then 6 Quarts are generally called saucepans or sauce pots or soup pots and come with a lid and a straight handle.

The funny thing is, is that sauce pots are not very good at cooking sauces, for actual sauce making a saucier which has rounded sides or a Windsor pan with sloping sides is better as they are designed to allow a whisk to get into the corner of the pan.

Stockpots are larger then 6 Quarts; come with lids and two loop handles on the sides. Taller is better then wider to minimize evaporation. Since you usually cook food in pots for a long time make sure the handles are big enough to grasp while using pot holders.

Dutch ovens are made heavy with heavy lids often with teeth or ridges designed to cause the condensed steam to drop back into the pot uniformly. Foods cooked in a Dutch oven are often started on the stovetop and then moved to the oven for a long slow braise.

If a Dutch oven has legs and a lip around the lid it's also known as a camp stove. It works great in a campfire where you can put it in the fire with coals on top and it'll act like an oven for baking.

If a pot is made from ceramic it is usually called a beanpot or bean crock and lots of people have them in a standalone electric version more commonly called a slowcooker or Crockpot(tm)

A braising pan is just like a dutch oven expect that it is shallow. It specializes in cooking tough pieces of meat in a small amount of liquid for a long time, generally in the oven. You can also find these made out of clay, called a Römertopf.

A roasting pan is what you use for cooking roast beast in the oven. It may come with a rack to keep the roast from stewing in its own juices and it may come with a lid if you want to steam it. The most important feature to pay attention to are the handles: will they fit into your oven and can you grab them with pot holders, because it will be hot and heavy.

A wok specializes in heating the center to a high heat while using a minimal amount of fuel. While Westerners generally only think about using a wok for making stir-fry, it is a large pot that you can use for steaming, boiling and deep frying with the right accessories. I like the straight handle, it is easier to manipulate that way. We use ours all the time for boiling our pasta and popping popcorn. This is such a useful pan I couldn't leave it out.

A Pressure cooker is a pot with a locking lid that makes a seal to increase the interior pressure allowing for a higher cooking temperature, making food cook faster. Get one designed without a rubber seal so it will last long after civilization has crashed.

There are a number of accessories for pots like steamer baskets, and deep fry baskets that can be useful.

Pot Recommendations

What pots you need depend on what you tend to cook and how big your family is.

Our most used pot is a 3 Quart pot stainless steel it's good for about 80% of the jobs we do; soup, short pasta, macaroni & cheese and crispy rice treats.

We have found that a 6 Q steel wok we use for cooking long pasta, stir fries and popcorn (yum).

And a 8 Q enameled cast iron dutch oven for pot roast, deep frying, and stock making, but those are expensive so a regular cast iron dutch oven will do fine.

Memorial Day

2010-05-31T09:04:00.000-06:00

May we honor those who gave their lives to preserve freedom and the Republic.
May we always remember their sacrifice.
Let us remember to do our part to maintain freedom.

News Roundup

2010-05-28T11:42:00.000-06:00

Emergency Preparation

Food

Health

Money

Politics

Energy

Miniature power plants to create “swarm power”

Personal Development

The Absolute Beginners Guide to Learning How To Cook for Survival: Part 6 Pots and Pans: Ceramic

2010-05-28T11:04:00.000-06:00

Ceramic is second oldest form of cookware, right after the large flat rock.

Ceramic comes in two forms: glazed, like porcelain and unglazed, like terra cotta; both are insulators. Glazed ceramic is non-reactive and non-porous, however some glazes have been made with high-concentrations of lead, so if you are unsure of the origin of a pan take it to your local extension office to be tested. Unglazed ceramic is porous, liquids can leech into the pan and stain it. Some pans like the Römertopf use that as a feature requiring you to soak the pan in water before use allowing it to absorb water which it can release to steam the food as it cooks in the oven.

The Absolute Beginners Guide to Learning How To Cook for Survival: Part 5 Pots and Pans: Glass

2010-05-27T10:20:00.003-06:00

Glass is a popular in bakeware, some of it is even safe for stovetop use. It is non-reactive and if its a borosilicate glass safe at oven temperatures. It is an amorphous solid making it an insulator so it takes so time to heat up but will also release the heat slowly, this can allow pans make of glass to cook foods more evenly. That also means it will cool more slowly once out of the oven. That makes it good for serving where it will keep the food warm on the table for a while.

Glass is susceptible to thermal shock, one of the easiest ways to break a glass dish, besides dropping it is to put it on something wet. That area cools and starts to contract which creating sufficient stress to shatter the pan.

Glass-ceramics such as Corningware have a very low coefficient of thermal expansion making them almost immune from thermal shock breakage.

News Roundup

2010-05-26T10:52:00.000-06:00

The Absolute Beginners Guide to Learning How To Cook for Survival: Part 4 Pots and Pans: Steel

2010-05-26T09:51:00.002-06:00

Steel is the other major material used for making cooking pots and pans. Usually found in the stainless variety but you can find non-stainless steel pans out there.

Stainless steel is tough and durable. Since it is non-reactive it can handle high acid foods like citrus and tomatoes.

Stainless steel is not a great conductor so you often find it bonded to or clad with other metals, like aluminum or copper, to improve its heat transfer capabilities.

Stainless steel is also a little bit sticky, which is good for building pan sauces from the fond or the brown bits left after searing your food. You can deglaze the pan with water, stock or other water-type liquid to release the fond and flavor the pan sauce.

News Roundup

2010-05-25T11:33:00.001-06:00

The Absolute Beginners Guide to Learning How To Cook for Survival: Part 3 Pots and Pans: Aluminum

2010-05-25T10:53:00.001-06:00

Aluminum is lightweight and a fast conductor of heat, that also means it tends to have hot spots and makes it harder to properly sear foods. Aluminum is a reactive metal but unlike cast iron cannot be seasoned. Aluminum is also somewhat soft and is easily scratched. Regular aluminum generally used for very large pots and bakeware.

It would be better to go with either anodized aluminum or one of the non-stick coatings.

Aluminum is anodized by giving it a bath in an electrified acid tank. This causes oxygen to combine with the aluminum to create a sapphire coating. This makes these pans corrosion and wear resistant. A good thick anodized aluminum pan is good for all kinds of uses and is a fine general use pan. The only real downside is that the anodization is usually very dark making it a little hard to tell how done the food is. An anodized aluminum pot is ideal for long term simmering of high acid foods like tomato sauce. It is also lightweight enough to boil water for pasta and still be able to carry it to the sink. Get pots and pans with oven-safe handles, so you can finish an underdone dish in the oven without burning it.

Aluminum is also often coated with a non-stick material polytetrafluoroethylene aka Teflon(tm). It is so slippery not even a gecko can climb it. A non-stick pan is ideal for cooking eggs, which are liquid protein and will find any crack or pit to hang on to. Obviously, you wouldn't want to use it for making pot-stickers. While it is non-reactive it can start breaking down in kitchen temperatures about 500°F (260°C) and it's not very durable. Pans made by better manufactures don't require special non-metal tools to prevent scratching, stay away from any that do.

News Roundup

2010-05-24T12:25:00.000-06:00

The Absolute Beginners Guide to Learning How To Cook for Survival: Part 2 Pots and Pans

2010-05-24T09:21:00.000-06:00

Now we turn to pots and pans. While ceramic and large rocks have been the traditional standard for thousands of years, I am going to stick to the major modern materials: cast iron, aluminum, steel, glass, and ceramic.

Cast iron is simple and durable. Can go from freezer to oven without complaint. Plenty of grandparents have passed their cookware down to their granddaughters and beyond. Cast iron can rust, this can be countered somewhat with proper seasoning (see manufacturers instructions). Another downside is that it is reactive, therefore generally bad for cooking high acid foods in for long periods of time, this will affect the color and taste of your food, though a good seasoning mitigate that. This can be countered by coating the cast iron with enamel giving it an impervious surface. Cast iron is very heavy this is good because that means it will hold on to a lot of heat that it can transfer into the food, but hard to maneuver because of its weight. Cast iron is a slow conductor which makes the pan slow to preheat and slow to cool.

A cast iron pan is ideal for searing a steak and a cast iron pot is ideal for baked beans, chili and pot roast. An enameled cast iron pot is ideal for high acid foods like tomato sauce and onion soup.

Clean then with kosher salt and a scrubbie. Do not use soap, it will strip off the seasoning and flavor the pan.

News Roundup

2010-05-21T13:18:00.000-06:00

The Absolute Beginners Guide to Learning How To Cook for Survival: What Food is Made Of

2010-05-21T10:09:00.001-06:00

Too many people I talk to lately have no idea how to cook. They can follow a recipe but they can't think of what else they can do with it. This will be an ongoing series on what food is and how to cook it.

Food is made up of thing like proteins, carbohydrates, water, oils and various vitamins and minerals.

Heat breaks down the cell walls of food releasing more of the nutrition inside. Sure, some nutrients will be destroyed in the cooking process but far more will be liberated to make up for that. If that wasn't the case why would anyone keep cooking food. Gathering firewood and maintaining a fire would not be worth the effort to do if the food was better without cooking.

Meat is primarily made up of proteins which are made up of long molecular strands, that uncurl when heated. This is called denaturing and tends to make meat tender and that is why meat is generally has the best texture at medium rare to medium, especially if you let the meat rest for a few minutes to allow the juices to redistribute within the meat. As you keep heating the proteins they will tangle up with each other and begin to contract again, as they contract they will squeeze out the water that was floating between the protein strands, making the meat tough and dry floating on a plateful of juices.

Staple foods like potatoes and grains and most vegetables are made up mostly of carbohydrates or starches. Starches are a plant's way of storing energy, like animals use fat. Usually as complex carbohydrates, which are large molecular structures. The only problem is that our bodies aren't able to break down such large molecules, that is why we get gas after eating beans. So we need to break them down into something smaller that the chemical and physical processes we have can break those down. The heat of cooking will break down those complex carbohydrates into simple sugars which we can process very easily.

One of the reasons food turns brown, when it is cooked, is because the sugars, that the carbohydrates are breaking down into, are being caramelized.

News Roundup

2010-05-20T13:30:00.000-06:00

World
World stocks tumble as debt woes rumble on
Cramer: Europe to Collapse in 48 Hours – or Never
Slightly scary stories about the leverage of European banks
Germany About to Pull the Plug On Europe, This is Going to Hurt!
Thousands of nonprofits may lose tax-exempt status
Greece Syndrome Defined
Earth in the Balance: 7 Crucial Tipping Points

Scientists forecast decades of ash clouds

Are You Ready for the Next Housing Bubble?

The Ammo Shortage Continues

The Battle for the Internet

The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to “The Office”

Only in economics are floors above ceilings!

Medical
Toilet brush 'blunder' death

Why Is Population Control Such a Radioactive Topic?

The despicable 'duty to die'

Government to monitor your children using non-scientific BMI

Ron Kind (D-WI-3) Wants The Government To Track How Much Your Daughter Weighs

A Need to Connect With Those Society Forgets

The Patient Experience

DIY

Photos reveal inside look at East Austin tunnel home

Plan B: Skip College

School funding process is failing

Mackenzie's ten thousand receipts: in all the useful and domestic arts

WHERE WERE YOU WHEN WOOD BECAME A FELONY?

Pennsylvania Residents Fight for Right to Hang Laundry

What Happens to Your Online Accounts When You Die?

DIY chicken plucking machine

Who says big ideas are rare?

Was Y2K a Waste?

My Garage Sale and Thrifting Toolkit

Disaster Movie Showcase

1001 Rules of my Unborn Son

The Best Time to Buy Almost Everything

The 40/30/30 Rule

A Permanent Breakdown in Communications

Cooperative Extension System Offices

2010-05-20T11:49:00.000-06:00

Here is a government program that sorta works, mainly because it is almost completely ignored by the government, so the people running it are free to do a good job.

We got a fantastic high-altitude cookbook from our local office when we first moved here that let my wife learn to make a killer loaf of French bread.

They often have some really useful gardening info.

And they have the equipment to check your pressure cooker.

How to Boil Water For Survival

2010-05-20T10:59:00.000-06:00

You would think that boiling water is simple and straightforward.
You grab a pot.
You put water from the tap in the pot.
You put the pot on the stove and crank it to high and wait a few minutes until water is all turbulent and steamy. It will go faster if you put a lid on top, higher partial pressure and all that.
Congratulations you just killed all the germs in that pot of water. You now have safe drinking water. At this point you could even add a flavorant, like my favorite: hot cocoa mix.

This is also known as pasteurization. One of the top 5 health upgrades ever. Good to know if you have a access to a cow or raw milk. And also helpful if you made some stock and going to use it just to be sure, since your average meat stock is low in acid and rich in protein, making it an ideal bacteria breeding ground.

If you are into canning you'll use this to sterilize your jars and tools, and it will also work on medical supplies if there is a long term emergency and you are having to do it yourself.
You can even pour it over dishes and flatware to sterilize them, a useful tip if the dishwasher isn't working and you're sick.

If you are out in the wilderness and can make a fire you can sterilize the water even if you don't have a pot. Water boils at 212°F (100°C) at sea level but only 203°F (95°C) in Denver. Which is a lot lower then the melting point of a lot of materials. You can boil water in a paper cup though the top edge will burn off. Even a plastic water bottle will work, but you'll want to suspend it over the fire with some rope, hot rocks would melt the plastic. The fire will only discolor it. You wouldn't want to do that for the long term, chemicals and stuff, but it would keep you alive until rescue.

This also prepares you for a cooking skill upgrade. Once you can boil water you can learn to poach, braise and simmer foods. But that is another post.

News Roundup

2010-05-19T13:30:00.000-06:00

Emotional Preparedness

2010-05-19T12:15:00.000-06:00

Are you ready to lose everything?

That is a very hard question to face. Our daughter died and it was very hard, she was only 9 days old.

Few people are brave enough to look at their own mortality much less their spouse's or their children's.

We are mortal and so we will all die. That is the nature of mortality. You can't make that go away and you can't ignore it.

Something that made dealing with it easier was suing decisions we had already made. We donated her organs and they were able to use her heart valves to save someone else's baby.

Since we are still young and tend to move around, we decided that whoever dies first should be cremated so we can keep them near until we could be buried together. So we keep her close in her urn.

The Family Lifeboat: Spiritual Preparedness

2010-05-18T16:44:00.000-06:00

Do you think America is in a sustainable recovery?
or
Do you think there is trouble ahead of America and the world?

If you think there is a recovery, why are you reading this?

On the other hand, if you think, like I do, that there remains quite a bit of trouble ahead for America and the world that needs to be worked through, we need to prepare for that.

We need to prepare in several ways:
Physical: with food and water and the like.
Mental: with learning and thinking about what might be coming.
Emotional: by connecting with family and friends.

But today I want to write about the spiritual facet of our beings. We need to spend some of our time and efforts on strengthening our relationship with our God.

I have no idea what you believe or how you might worship, but are you putting the time into it that it deserves?

We can have a strong and personal relationship with our Heavenly Father and it is very simple:
Study the scriptures.
Pray to Him often, personally and as a family.
Spend time with our families talking about God and our relationship to God.
Go to church so we can worship Him and strengthen each other.

It's that simple. Most people think that is too simple. It isn't supposed to be hard. To be healed from snakebites all Israel had to do was look on a brazen serpent Moses put on top of a stick, but many wouldn't and died. Naaman the leper was told to wash in the Jordan river seven times and he would be cleansed and he almost didn't do it because it wasn't impressive enough.

This isn't a hard thing, but it is like a long-distance relationship, it takes extra special care and lots of little things to make it work.

Are you working on it?

News Roundup

2010-05-18T10:13:00.000-06:00

Massachusetts Insurers Post Big Losses
Erase Your Copy Machine's Hard Drive to Wipe Important Documents
New electricity grids may be smart, but not so private
ProLogis testing products from solar-energy companies
White House says 1.5 trillion calories to be cut from food supply?
Union cries foul after court blocks BA cabin crew strike
Winning a property-tax reduction on your home
Gold Investing: A beginners Guide to the Gold Market
For Wall Street Villains: The Five Best Hideouts -- With No Extradition
Why are Japanese houses so damn cold?
Suppose 21st Century Disasters Like 19th Century
AccidentSketch Helps You Create Detailed Accident Reports
This Cartoon Seemed Far-Fetched In 1948
Things You Really Need to Learn
Clean Your PC
A Weekend Project for You
Crashing America
The new food pessimism
Make It Easy To Do Right.
The Battle for the Internet:
The Dollar Meltdown: Surviving the Impending Currency Crisis
“Do I have the right to refuse this search?”
Why Bother?
What Survivalists Have Right
Waste not, want not: here comes the new austerity chic
China boom may be ending, warns OECD
Drought in southern China
The Toilet Paper Shortage of 1973
Greek and Roman classics available online
How to Fall 35,000 Feet—And Survive

News Roundup

2010-05-17T14:27:00.000-06:00

Why An Emergency Fund Matters

2010-05-17T11:48:00.000-06:00

Is your emergency fund big enough to replace the tires on your car?

Over the weekend we had to make use of some emergency finds.

As we were going out on Saturday night we ran over a nail and got a flat tire, just as we were going into a left turn lane with a red light. It was a two lane turn so we weren't really blocking traffic.

I turned on the hazard flashers and set out the triangle (lesson learned: put it far enough over so people will avoid you and not just the car.)

A friendly police officer pulled in behind us just as I was getting the jack set and offered to help, which was fine, as that let me unpack the spare and everything else.

A big plastic bag is great for putting the dirty old tire on to keep things cleaner in back.

I had noticed that one of the tires was getting a bit low in tread back on the equinox, so I have been looking into new tires. I figured I had a couple of more months but this forced the issue. Actually two of the tires were bad and needed replacing.

Tires are pretty much a commodity at the low end, and with more then 100,000 miles on the car I am not going to put really great tires on it. Depending on the sales you may be able to get a good deal but mostly the real variation is in service and other fees.

The real thing comes down to trust. I eliminated one store outright because they were hard selling me when I came to look, and I did not like them.

What are the Most Important Rooms of Your Home?

2010-05-14T11:14:00.000-06:00

After reading Millioniare Mommy's post on how much a spare room costs. I got to thinking about what are the most essential rooms of our home.

Since we live on the Great Plains having a safe room is important. Last Spring we had tornados within 5 miles of our place for two weeks straight. It is also the bathroom so we get some multitasking action going. While a basement or steel reinforced concrete safe room would be ideal, we go with what we got. Our dream home has something better.

Obviously, if you live in a flood zone your safe room should be upstairs, if you live in/near a potential terrorist target city you have different concerns too.

The bathroom is vital for personal hygiene. The kitchen and pantry for food storage and preparation. The bedroom for sleep. The laundry to keep clothes and bedding clean. Finally, the utility rooms feeds those rooms with water, electricity and warm/cool air.

This is not a floor plan but an idea plan. In real life it wouldn't be unusual to have 2 pantries, a small one in the kitchen and a bigger one in the garage or basement. Most homes would have more then one bedroom and bathroom.

Obviously, you need a dining room or eating nook to sit and eat in, and a living room or family room for sitting in. But ask yourself how much you really need.

I've seen 4 bedroom/4 bath homes with 3 kitchens and 4 dining rooms. Just crazy. And then I've seen homes remodeled to make big holiday family meals easier but only get used twice a year. Something I want in my dream home is an eating nook that is open to the living room so we can extend the table for Thanksgiving and Easter when everyone comes over.

News Roundup

2010-05-14T10:03:00.000-06:00

US faces same problems as Greece, says Bank of England
Millions of jobs that were cut won't likely return
The Toaster Project by Thomas Thwaites
Low runoff could affect farmers, rafters, fish in some Colo. basins
Speech Restrictions Aimed at Making Sure People Act in “Right-Thinking” Ways
NASA fuels space shuttle Atlantis for final voyage
Do you know how many dollars your spare room is costing you?
Carnival of Personal Finance: The Origin of the Piggy Bank

The Blackout Box

2010-05-13T12:49:00.000-06:00

It sure is Spring in Colorado. It snowed again and of course the lights started to flicker. They didn't go out this time, praise be, but they will likely go out again sometime soon.

Does the power go out often where you live? Do you have things handy to deal with that?

Flashlights are obvious, they give plenty of light and are not a fire hazard. I like LED based flashlights, since LEDs use only 10% of the energy of an incandescent or Krypton bulb the batteries will last way longer. A regular D-cell flashlight will last a few hours before the batteries die, an LED flashlight can last a hundred hours or more. You can get replacement LED bulbs for many regular flashlights.

How big is the blackout? Why did it happen? What is going on? A battery powered radio is an important tool in getting that information. Information is empowerment for survival. A simple AM/FM radio is all you need to start with. Your car has one, but you'll want to run the engine for a few minutes out of every hour to top off the battery.
As an upgrade a radio that can receive weather alerts can be handy, especially if you live in an area prone to tornado and other weather events.
To cover really bad incidents a shortwave or world band radio will allow you to tune into stations from around the world.

A little entertainment can go a long way to wile away the time until the power comes back. Some games, and books would be helpful. Coloring books and crayons or colored pencils would be good for kids.

If the blackout lasts more then a day you have to worry about food in the refrigerator and freezer spoiling. Always keeping a few extra jugs of water, juice or soda will keep things cooler longer. A few partially filled bottles of water in the freezer will stretch things out for the freezer. Many homeowner's and renter's insurance policies cover spoiled food so check with your insurance company for procedures.

If the blackout lasts more then a few hours and the weather is really cold or really hot you may have to worry about being able to stay warm or cool. If you live in the American South or SouthWest, have a generator and have someone that is sensitive to extreme heat like babies and the elderly, consider getting a small window air conditioner and setting up a cool room to help them survive.

A generator is great for as long as it has fuel. Make sure it is outside and no the garage with the door open does not count. Even if it is outside make sure that the exhaust is pointed away from the house. Most walls are not airtight so carbon monoxide can migrate through the wall the exhaust is facing, penetrate the house and kill you.

News Roundup

2010-05-13T09:55:00.002-06:00

News Roundup

2010-05-12T12:14:00.000-06:00

Will Nickel-Free Nickels Make a Dime's Worth of Difference?
Multi-level bunker found under East Austin home
“Like Neurons in the Brain”: A Molecular Computer That Evolves
A Drug Raid Goes Viral
Greek workers call one-day strike May 20

The Top Ten things You Need to Get Started Preparing

2010-05-12T11:38:00.002-06:00

For some reason a lot of people think getting prepared costs a lot of money up front. I mean you have to have guns, gold and a 4x4 truck. Don't you?

No, not really. Sure, those things are nice and good to have but they aren't on the most necessary list.

Like anything you can spend a lot of money getting ready for anything, but the reality is you don't need to spend big money to reach a good level of preparedness. You probably have a large amount of the most important things already, you just need to assess what you have and tweak it to last a little longer.

Imagine being stuck at home for a couple of weeks because of a pandemic or blizzard or something. A simple disaster that can happen in your area.

Food: We need to eat several times a day usually and an everyone goes to the store at least a couple of times a week. Keep your eyes out for sales on foods you normally eat and pick up an extra can or box and put it in your pantry.

A pantry doesn't have to be anything fancy: the cabinet over the sink or a shelf in the basement is a good enough place to start.

If you use milk a lot, pick up some dried milk powder and some of the canned evaporated milk, if you aren't into skim milk add a can of the evaporated milk to a jug of reconstituted milk to bring up the fat content which makes it taste a lot better.

Your first goal should be 3 days, then 2 weeks, 3 months, up to about a year per person.

Water: You don't even need to buy bottled water, just fill up some well-cleaned soda bottles or even milk jugs and store them under the sink. If you use milk jugs you'll want to date them so you can replace them every year, they tend to deteriorate after several months.

Sometimes there is a problem with the water system and you need to boil your water to make it safe. You probably already have have a 6-8 quart pot for doing just that for cooking pasta and soups.

If you can't boil the water and it needs to be purified some pure, unscented chlorine bleach will do the job. You can use up the scented stuff in your laundry as normal but buy the unscented from now on and keep a spare bottle and rotate it through as normal.

You need 1/4 teaspoon per gallon for clear water and 1/2 teaspoon per gallon for cloudy water.

You'll need at least 1 gallon per person per day. Your first goal is for 3 days, then 2 weeks. Once you get up to a months storage you'll want to think about a water purification system because water is really bulky.

Shelter: Obviously, this is your primary residence, but it also includes your clothes, shoes and vehicles. Blankets, tarps and large plastic bags fall in this category too. While a tent, RV or second home would be nice, you probably already have plenty of materials on hand to construct some kind of emergency shelter.

Light: There is something very comforting about having light at night. Blackout happen pretty often so having some alternate source of light is handy.

Flashlights are great since they are easily portable. LED bulbs allow the batteries to last a lot longer then regular bulbs. Keep extra batteries on hand and check their expiration dates yearly.

Candles work fine too, though you have to worry a bit about them tipping over and setting the place on fire. Short and wide is better then tall and skinny but use what you have. Make sure to have lighters and matches and a fire extinguisher or small bucket of water or sand, or box of baking soda nearby.

OIl, propane, kerosene or gas lanterns are nice, but those are the kind of thing to get later after you've got all the basics covered. But if you see one at a garage sale, go for it.

Heat and Fire: I bet you have this one covered already: 79% of homes have a grill of some kind in the backyard. This lets you heat food and water, and also bricks to take inside to warm your beds. An extra cylinder of propane or a few bags of charcoal would add a lot of comfort in times of emergency.

Camp stoves are nice if you are looking for portability, but again this is something to watch for at a garage sale. A wood burning stove or fireplace in you home would be good but terribly expensive to retrofit.

Medical supplies: This includes things like prescription medications, glasses, canes, and a first aid kit, of course.

Don't forget policy and contact information for your health insurance, doctor, pediatrician, dentist, optician, and local hospitals. Everyone in the family should keep a copy in your wallet and your cell phone.

Tool kit: Things break, and fixing them is often worth your while, if you have the tools. Installing a shelf, fixing a cabinet, getting your car on the road again are all things you can do.

A home tool kit doesn't need to be fancy or any fancy boxes. A sturdy rubber tub will do. A hammer and some nails, a flat/phillips screwdriver and screws, a saw, a crescent wrench and some pliers will go a long way to dealing with most home problems.

A plumbing kit needs some specialized tools for that.

Your car kit will need things depending on the kind of car you have but you should be able to change the oil and filters and brake pads. The mechanic's manual is important for that.

Document kit: This is something a lot of people completely ignore, but you should organize your family's personal documents, Social Security cards, birth certificates, contracts, debts, accounts, leases, mortgages, diplomas, insurance policies, titles and so on. These should all be organized and copied so you have a backup set somewhere off-site. The originals should be stored in a fire safe or safe deposit box.

Financial: If you are in debt, you need to retire that debt as soon as you can. It is holding you down, it is slavery. List you debts, expenses and income and work out a plan with your family to get out of debt. Dave Ramsey's debt snowball is a great plan to do just that.

Knowledge: Knowledge is power, pure and simple. You can get a lot of knowledge on the internet and from the library. Learn as much as you can, so you can make better decisions later. The most valuable knowledge comes from other people's experience, that costs way less then learn from your own experience.

You do still want a few books in house so they are available when you need them. A first-aid manual, a local edible plants guidebook, your car's mechanics manual, a home repair book, a general survival book and an all-around cookbook that covers as many different ingredients as possible.

Once you have good coverage on these items then you can worry about getting gold, guns and MRE's.

New Roundup

2010-05-11T12:39:00.000-06:00

The First Things Many People Think Of When It is Time To Prepare, Which Are Wrong

2010-05-11T12:24:00.000-06:00

Most people start to prepare when the time for preparation is over. When the floodwaters are lapping at their doorstep, or when they see the storm bearing down on them.

That is when they head to the store to battle it out over the last case of bottled water and loaf of bread.

When there is a call to evacuate they all head straight to the Interstate turning it into a parking lot.

It isn't that the first idea that pops into your head is bad by itself, it is just that almost everyone else has the exact same idea and there is no system in place that will handle 80% of the people all doing the same thing at the same time.
These ideas also tend not be be in the top ten most important things to do to prepare before the disaster happens.
Sure, they are usually something that needs doing or having at some point but there are usually far more important things to do first.

Gold is a big one. Unprepared people will go into debt to buy gold, which is insanity. It is far, far more important to get out of debt then it is to buy gold. Having gold and being in debt is much worse then having no gold and being debt free. Once you retire all your debt you can start investing in gold and other commodities.
A garden and food storage is far more important then owning gold, you can eat food, you can't eat gold.

Survival skills is another major subject where people jump to wilderness survival first thing. They say they'll pack everyone up and go into the wilderness and survive of the land, like a real man. Some even say they'll leave they families to go it alone shooting game and somehow surviving by themselves. That tends to fail in the long term.
The next disaster to strike will probably not be the bringing down of civilization kind. Are your ready to survive the most likely disasters in your city? Which may be as simple as a blackout or blizzard.

Another thing people jump to on the subject of survival is guns. On the one hand you have some people who think that if they have their EBR and plenty of ammunition they can steal whatever they need. They'll even announce this is their only plan if the topic comes up in conversation. These are coworkers, neighbors, friends and even family. They seem to be under the delusion that a gun makes them all-powerful. On the other hand they don't seem to realize that about half of the households in the country are also armed. Guns are a useful tool but they are not the be all end all some people think they are.

In conclusion, it isn't that these are bad things to have to prepare with, but they are not on the top ten list of essential items. Cover the basics first: food, water, shelter, medical supplies, financial, communications, transportation, heat, light and fire. Then you can worry about adding these other things.

Build a Financial Lifeboat

2010-05-10T11:24:00.000-06:00

Do you think the economy is getting better or worse?

If you think the economy is getting better, do you think that there could be another recession sometime in the next decade?

If you think the economy is getting worse, how bad can it get?

U.S. Debt Shock May Hit In 2018, Maybe As Soon As 2013: Moody's - IBD - Investors.com

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) certainly thinks things will get worse in the next few years. Losing our AAA credit rating would be very bad as that would cause interest payments to jump. Like all those people who got the ARM mortgages and could barely make the minimums then the rates reset and then they were underwater on their loans and they had to either go into bankruptcy or sell at a loss.

The country could go into bankruptcy and default on its loans. The government has an option the people don't and that is print more money but that would lead to inflation and possibly even hyper-inflation.

There are also two other options but they are only temporary:

Create a new global currency, and cap-and-trade would be one way of doing that, with all the derivates and insurance instruments of the housing bubble, which will only cause another bubble with an even bigger crash at the end, but by that point the current leadership will be out of power and it will be someone else watch. So they'll get the blame.

Or they could reset the dollar and back it with land, which the federal government owns a lot of. Germany did that during the Weimar Republic. That didn't turn out too well in the end.

So what can you do?

Build an emergency fund. They're doing it for the EU. It needs to be big enough to cover a major car repair, or major appliance replacement. A bout of hyper-inflation can wipe this out but that hasn't arrived yet.

The most important thing is to get out of debt. Debt is slavery. Inflation always puts the debtor behind the curve.

Store up food and plant a garden. "That's financial preparedness?" Yes, hyper-inflation can wipe out savings and dividends, but it can't touch canned goods and seeds. Growing food takes practice so get started now. There is still time to get plants in the ground this year.

Is you home a lifeboat or a boat anchor around your neck?

2010-05-07T13:14:00.002-06:00

If there was a virulent, and fatal pandemic, and a quarantine was imposed how long would you be able to feed your family and be comfortable?

If you were in an accident and were stuck in a wheelchair for a couple of months, would you have to live in your living room?

If you lost your job, how long before you would need to sell your home or lose it to foreclosure?

The Volokh Conspiracy The Further Left You Are the Less You Know About Economics:

2010-05-07T12:09:00.000-06:00

The Volokh Conspiracy The Further Left You Are the Less You Know About Economics:: "Those identifying as “libertarian” and “very conservative” were the most knowledgeable about basic economics. Those identifying as “Progressive” and “Liberal” were the worst."

This explains so much.

I remember my Econ101 class, it was very annoying since I never really felt like I was learning anything. Some of the stuff seemed like it would make sense to know if I was a Fortune 500 CFO or SecTreas or a Fed banker but as an engineer, not so much.

I wish they had taught something more down to earth like how banks and credit cards really worked and how to buy a car and house.

Roubini Says Rising Sovereign Debt Leads to Defaults (Correct) - BusinessWeek

2010-05-06T15:26:00.000-06:00

Roubini Says Rising Sovereign Debt Leads to Defaults (Correct) - BusinessWeek: "“Eventually, the fiscal problems of the U.S. will also come to the fore,” Roubini said during the panel discussion. “The risk of something serious happening in the U.S. in the next two or three years is going to be significant” because there’s “no willingness in Washington to do anything” unless forced by the bond markets."

Whenever it happens it will be bad. It can be inflation, it myy be hyperinflation, it could even be deflation. None of those are good choices.

What would you do if the money you have lost a quarter or half its value? What would happen to your job or business?

Nashville Flood 2010: The Disaster You May Not Have Heard About | NewsBusters.org

2010-05-06T10:00:00.000-06:00

Nashville Flood 2010: The Disaster You May Not Have Heard About | NewsBusters.org: "A great American city is currently buried under a sea of water, but you may not know much about it given all the attention media have given to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the failed car bomb attempt in New York's Times Square."

I think we can state categorically that Obama and the Feds were not there Day 1. It's been nearly a week.

What do you do for your family and community, if no help is coming?

Peak Water

2010-05-05T12:06:00.000-06:00

Tavis Smiley . Guest Blogger . Freshwater Scarcity: The Greatest Crisis Most Americans Have Never Heard Of | PBS: "History teaches that a difficult adjustment lies ahead, just as it has whenever population levels and key resource bases have gotten unsustainably out of balance. The chief question is how much suffering the adjustment will entail, and which societies make the nimblest adaptations and emerge as world leaders and which will not and decline."

So humans are all bad and are sucking the planet dry and all that. Admitted, we are using a whole bunch of pretty wasteful techniques to farm and stuff and we can do better.

Upfront costs are a big deal for farmers, so I understand that we haven't gotten to the latest and greatest tools and techniques. That is one of the problems of being an innovator, you are often leap-frogged by those you learned from your mistakes.

So what can we do? We can do some things to deal with our own family's water security. While being in an apartment isn't great even a suburban home would be better.

A well would be nice but it is the aquifers that are being depleted. So that might not be a good long term solution. But it is a good short-term solution.

If you live near an ocean or the Great Lakes some kind of system to purify water like a solar still or something would be very handy.

Rainwater harvesting is another solution. Straight from the sky the water is pure enough but after catching it with your roof you'll want to filter out the bird poop and other things. A big container to hold it in and some plumbing and such.

This is not the most urgent thing to work on. This is a medium to long term issue to work on. But it is something to keep an eye on.

You should have some stored water in your home for water main breaks, flooding and the like. A way to purify untreated surface water and things like that.

Punishing Savers, Again - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine

2010-05-04T16:07:00.000-06:00

Punishing Savers, Again - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine: "When President Obama took office, the personal savings rate for Americans was an anemic-but-getting-healthier 5 percent. That number peaked a year ago, and is now down to 2.8 percent. This drop is even more striking when you consider that asset prices have, until the beginning of this year, been dropping or flat almost across the board."

For some reason they don't even mention the fact that there are a lot of people out of work or underemployed and living off of savings.

China May ‘Crash’ in Next 9 to 12 Months, Faber Says (Update3) - Bloomberg.com

2010-05-04T14:15:00.000-06:00

China May ‘Crash’ in Next 9 to 12 Months, Faber Says (Update3) - Bloomberg.com: "China is “on a treadmill to hell” because it’s hooked on property development for driving growth, Chanos said in an interview last month. As much as 60 percent of the country’s gross domestic product relies on construction, he said. Rogoff said in February a debt-fueled bubble in China may trigger a regional recession within a decade."

Well, why not them too.

I'd've thought they would have learned their lesson from everyone else on the planet doing that first.

Beef prices shoot up after harsh winter -

2010-05-04T10:55:00.000-06:00

Beef prices shoot up after harsh winter -: "A harsh winter and cash-strapped ranchers — let's not forget commodity speculators — have reduced cattle herds and caused prices to shoot up nearly 25% since last year, the Financial Times reports. Expect that burger or steak to cost more in the months ahead, the meat experts say."

Another indication that food prices are going to rise for a while.

Will There Be Food Shortages?

2010-05-04T08:24:00.000-06:00

Probably not outright shortages, but it looks like some foods will be more expensive then usual over then next little while.

The bees did not do to well this winter. It looks like we lost another third of the bees this winter, which has been happening since 2006.

And Roundup resistant weeds are spreading. Meaning more work for farmers which will have to charge more, to cover their costs.

The oil spill has pretty much shutdown the Gulf fisheries. California's Central Valley's water was shut off. The cooler then normal weather has reduced crop yields in many northern plains states. And ranchers have been encouraged to cull their herds for some time.

What can we do about it?

There are two things: Store inexpensive staples now and grow our own.

A lot of food is still quite inexpensive, so we might as well stock up now. It is a great inflation hedge and will help out in times of need. Just make sure you know how to cook it.

Start a garden. Get out there and plant some food for yourself. Learn the skills so if it does get bad you can feed yourself. It is a little late to start seeds but nurseries have plenty of plants for sale now.

How to Handle a Water Emergencies

2010-05-03T13:14:00.000-06:00

What would you do if you opened the faucet and no water came out?
How long would you wait before going to the store to get water or other drinks?
Do you have any water at home, work, school or in your car to last at least a little while?

There are a couple of water emergencies going on over the weekend.
In Boston a major water main broke leaving 2 million people without water. Because of the loss of pressure the system is contaminated so they have to boil their water before drinking it.

Boiling water is very simple take a large pot of water and put it over high heat until it comes to a rolling boil, turn off the heat and let it cool. Here in Denver with my stove we can get half a gallon of water to a boil in about 5 minutes. Then it takes about 2 hours for it to cool.

The water will taste a little flat. To perk it up pour it between two clean containers a few times to aerate the water.

Alternatively you can filter the water. Understand those refrigerator and pitcher filters are mostly just activated charcoal and they deal with taste not contamination.
You need a filter with pores smaller then 1 micron to filter out spores and some filters go so small they even filter out viruses.

Stores are surging lots of bottled water in but it still takes time as everyone is doing the same thing, going to the store and buying bottled water.

Most people think to go first to the supermarket or megamart for bottled water, but lots of stores carry it. Convenience stores obviously, but I have also seen pallets of water and other drinks at home improvement, office supply stores and sporting good stores.

Tennessee has a different problem. They are being flooded and one of their water treatment plants is underwater. They need to keep the pressure in the system about 20 psi or contamination can backflow into the system, requiring a purge. So the government is asking people to halve the amount of water they use, but not why. Now the problem is people are filling up all the containers they have, but since everyone is doing it, it is hard to keep the pressure up and the water might be getting contaminated.

It is best just to have a few cases of bottled water stored up before something happens. It is very cheap insurance to fill a few empty and clean soda bottles with water. I don't recommend using milk jugs since they are biodegradable and will start leaking in a few months.

Keep at least 1 gallon/person/day on hand.
Keep it under the bathroom sink or other cool, dry place that won't freeze.
Rotate semi-annually.

The Volokh Conspiracy � Victims of Communism Day

2010-05-01T08:54:00.000-06:00

The Volokh Conspiracy � Victims of Communism Day: "Today is May 1, May Day. Back in 2007 and 2008, I advocated the idea of transforming this long-time communist holiday into Victims of Communism Day — a day of remembrance for the victims of history’s bloodiest ideology. This year, several bloggers are joining in an effort to commemorate the occasion. Jonathan Wilde of Distributed Republic deserves credit for organizing this effort."

Oil Spill’s ‘Fisheries Failure’ May Signal End of Coastal Towns - Bloomberg.com

2010-05-01T08:45:00.000-06:00

Oil Spill’s ‘Fisheries Failure’ May Signal End of Coastal Towns - Bloomberg.com: "“As the largest provider of domestic seafood in the continental United States, protection of Louisiana’s fisheries, habitats and catch are critical to our nation’s economy and food supply,” he wrote. “The seafood industry is not only a large economic driver, but a defining element of the unique culture, and a crucial tourist draw to the state.”"

So basically, another one of our food sources has been taken offline.

More on Levels

2010-04-30T13:53:00.000-06:00

A little more detail to the level system I was talking about yesterday.

We can also organize these thoughts not just from the center of your home to your yard and region and beyond. But we must also go vertically.

Layer 1 is Deep Underground where utilities and wells are and this can also include other underground mineral resources and tectonic plates.

Layer 2 is the Root Layer, we'd mostly be concerned about root and rhizomal crops but you can't forget about root systems in general.

Layer 3 is the Soil Surface, this would be ground cover and mulch layer. The first few inches of the surface. A lot of the action happens here, this is where all the plants get their water and their nutrients.

Layer 4 is the Low Shrub level where short shrubs and plants live, like strawberry plants.

Layer 5 is the High Shrub level where the big shrubs and plants live, like blueberries.

Layer 6 is the Low Tree level where dwarf and other small sized trees live, like dwarf apple trees.

Layer 7 is the HIgh Tree or Canopy level, like oak trees.

Layer 8 is the Sky level where we watch the wind and rain.

Layer 9 is the Space level where we watch the Sun (light and heat) and Moon (tides).

I am not going to show layers from the core of the planet to the edge of the known universe. There are far more detail to many of these layers but these are the ones we can work with easily. And that is what matters.

If you remember Level E your yard, that can be broken into zones to make things easier. Permaculture has a set of useful principles to organize your yard.

Zone 0 is the house, make it a good place to live.

Zone 1 is nearest the house and near the entrances, where you can plant things that you use often or need lots of attention. Often this is called the kitchen garden area.

Zone 2 is a little further out and is where you put the perennials plants that need some attention but less then the kitchen garden.

Zone 3 is for the main crops that only need attention once a week or so.

Zone 4 is a semi-wild area. In a suburban area this would be a small corner that is left wild, in an rural area this would be a manage woodland area.

Zone 5 is an actual wild area. Humans don't do things there except the occasional mushroom hunt or something. This is natures classroom. That is where we can go to see how nature is doing things around us that we can adapt to our systems.

Baklava

2010-04-30T10:41:00.001-06:00

Made Baklava last night and it turned out pretty good.

We had a bunch of nuts left over from the holidays and I didn't want to waste them, so I made them into Baklava.

Baklava makes 28 pieces

Phyllo Dough

1 package of Phyllo dough, set out to thaw, about 2 hours.

Filling: about 10 minutes not counting shelling the nuts

1 pound of mixed raw nuts, in this case walnuts, pecans, filberts (haselnuts), almonds, and Macadamias. Traditionally your used almonds, walnuts and pistachios, but I went with what we had.

2 teaspoons of ground cinnamon or cassia, about 1 stick

2 teaspoons ground allspice, about 15 whole berries

2/3 cup sugar

Combine in a food processor and pulse until finely chopped, 10-15 pulses. Don't over-process into a powder or paste.

Divide into three groups.

Clarified butter: about 20 minutes

3 sticks of butter

In a small pot melt the butter over medium low heat until it foams. Once it calms down turn up the heat and boil until it foams again and the milk solids brown, remove from heat and pour off the oil from the solids.

Syrup: about 20 minutes

1 1/4 cups water

1 1/4 cups sugar

1 1/4 cups honey

1 cinnamon stick

1 2 x 1/2 inch piece of fresh orange peel, use a vegetable peeler

Combine all ingredients in a medium pot over high heat. Stir to dissolve the sugar. Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Once boiling, allow the syrup to boil for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and discard cinnamon stick and orange peel.

Assemble the Baklava: about 10 minutes

Preheat oven to 350°F.

A 9x13 pan, pastry brush.

Cut phyllo dough to fit the 9x13 pan and divide into 4 groups. If it is a particularily dry day cover the phyllo with a damp towel.

Butter the pan and place one sheet of phyllo dough, brush with butter. Continue placing one sheet at a time with butter until the first set of dough is placed in the pan. If you place all the dough down at once and try drowning it in butter, it will fuse into one hard layer, not good eats.

Next spread 1/3 of the nut mixture onto the base layer of phyllo dough.

Then another sheet by sheet layer of phyllo dough.

The second third of the nut mixture.

Another sheet by sheet layer of phyllo dough.

The last third of the nut mixture.

And finally the last set of phyllo dough. Brush the top generously with butter.

Place in the oven and bake for 30 minutes.

Remove pan from the oven and cut into 28 pieces (4 pieces x 7 pieces).

Return pan to the oven for another 30 minutes.

Remove pan from the oven and let cool 2 hours, uncovered.

Recut the entire pan, following the line from earlier.

Reheat the syrup and pour the syrup evenly and slowly over the baklava letting it run over the cuts and edges of the pan.

Allow the pan to cool completely again. Cover and store at room temperature for at least 8 hours but overnight is better.

Store, covered, at room temperature for up to 5 days.

Dirt showers blamed on dust from Southwest windstorms - The Denver Post

2010-04-30T09:10:00.000-06:00

Dirt showers blamed on dust from Southwest windstorms - The Denver Post: "Spring rains are typically refreshing, but Thursday morning's moisture was mixed with dirt, depositing a dustlike film is some areas."

An actual news report on that mud-rain we had yesterday.

Video- Unemployment rates by county

2010-04-29T15:58:00.000-06:00

Watch the change from Jan 2007 until Jan 2010.

multimediafinal

How does that make you feel?

Spring In Colorado

2010-04-29T13:15:00.000-06:00

I just love Spring in Colorado, today we had a mudstorm.

It actually rained mud. It's that special.

A few years ago I was in a gravelstorm. Small gravel about 1-2mm in size were flying around and building up on the windshield. I was thinking that I didn't want to turn of the wipers so it wouldn't scratch the windshield.

Survival Thinking Breakthrough

2010-04-29T11:32:00.000-06:00

Trying to think about all the things associated with getting prepared can be quite overwhelming. BUt I had a breakthrough this morning about how to put some bounds on the problem to make it more manageable.

It is a lot easy to think about it in terms of levels and layers.

A level is a a circle of influence, it places a bounds on how far it needs to reach or how deep you need to think on it. And a layer is what needs and wants that level takes care of. At the very least a layer needs to provide or enhance food, water, shelter and medical supplies.

Level A

At the center of your home you need a Saferoom. This is the place were your most essential survival gear is collected and stored.

It doesn't have to be at the literal center of your home, just conceptually. In tornado country it should be downstairs, in flood regions upstairs. It doesn't need to be a steel-reinforced concrete but that would be nice if you lived in Tornado Alley without a basement.

It might be your master bedroom. Wherever it is it is the room you'll gather everyone to in times of emergency. It's where you'd gather if there was a blackout during a really bad thunderstorm at night.

This is the most basic and essential level. Hopefully you won't need this level very often, but if something does it should be able to get you through the vast majority of incidents. This is what you fall back to when the utilities that let level B work fail.

Level B

These is where most daily survival takes place. The kitchen, pantry, bathrooms, laundry room and bedrooms fall into this level. These cover your basic needs in everyday comfort. As long as normal support systems are in place you are fine. This is where you think about how the utility companies effect you. This is where you can clean and feed yourself and get some rest. If you work from home you would include your office/workshop in here since that is how you generate income.

Level C

These are all the other rooms of the house: the living room, dining room &etc. They are nice to have but not essential to your survival at any given time.

Level D

This is the shell of your house. The roof, foundation, walls, windows and doors of your home. Think about the box and how it could be better at helping your family survive, it could be better insulation, pricker bushes under the windows, upgraded windows and so on.

Level E

Your yard has all kinds of survival potential that needs to be explored unto itself.

This is where your gardens go. You can put lots of levels and layers in here. That will have to come later.

Level F

Your property line and your neighbors. You probably get things from your neighbors that you never thought about. Runoff from their properties and shade from their trees, bushes and houses. How does that effect your property is what you need to think about.

Level G

Your neighborhood. What kind of people live around you? How easy is it to come and go? How many ways in and out are there? Where are the supermarkets, schools, hospitals, fire houses, ambulances and other essential services?

Level H

Your workplace. How far away is it? How would you get home during a disaster? Or just bad weather or an accident on the regular route?

And your children's school(s). What would happen if they evacuated the school?

Level I

Your city or county. They have a Department of Emergency Management with a plan for when disaster happen. What is it?

Level J

Your region or state. This is where you think about your out-of-state contact.

Level K

Your country. This is mostly political in nature.

Level L

Your continent.

Level M

The planet.

and this can continue on into the solar system, galaxy and universe, but we don't really have to worry about those so much.

I'll go into the layers another time.

Gambling with Other People's Money | Mercatus

2010-04-28T18:09:00.000-06:00

Gambling with Other People's Money
| Mercatus: "In this paper, I argue that public-policy decisions have perverted the incentives that naturally create stability in financial markets and the market for housing. Over the last three decades, government policy has coddled creditors, reducing the risk they face from financing bad investments. Not surprisingly, this encouraged risky investments financed by borrowed money. The increasing use of debt mixed with housing policy, monetary policy, and tax policy crippled the housing market and the financial sector. Wall Street is not blameless in this debacle. It lobbied for the policy decisions that created the mess."

Some extra points to go with the Debt paper from earlier today.

Debt: The first five thousand years - The Long Now Blog

2010-04-28T15:42:00.000-06:00

Debt: The first five thousand years - The Long Now Blog: "“Societies” are really states, the logic of states is that of conquest, the logic of conquest is ultimately identical to that of slavery. True, in the hands of state apologists, this becomes transformed into a notion of a more benevolent “social debt”. Here there is a little story told, a kind of myth. We are all born with an infinite debt to the society that raised, nurtured, fed and clothed us, to those long dead who invented our language and traditions, to all those who made it possible for us to exist. In ancient times we thought we owed this to the gods (it was repaid in sacrifice, or, sacrifice was really just the payment of interest – ultimately, it was repaid by death). Later the debt was adopted by the state, itself a divine institution, with taxes substituted for sacrifice, and military service for one’s debt of life. Money is simply the concrete form of this social debt, the way that it is managed. Keynesians like this sort of logic. So do various strains of socialist, social democrats, even crypto-fascists like Auguste Comte (the first, as far as I am aware, to actually coin the phrase “social debt”)."

This is an impressive piece. Heavy but interesting.

Peak Everything? - Reason Magazine

2010-04-28T15:10:00.000-06:00

Peak Everything? - Reason Magazine: "The debate over peak oil is heavily politicized, so let's set it aside and test the idea of imminent resource peaks and their consequences for economic growth on three other non-renewable resources: lithium, neodymium, and phosphorus."

Oh bother. This is getting nuts. It just seems like more and more it isn't about doing good for the environment and more about controlling our choices.

Look at phosphorus, we can get plenty from our own urine. Why do we need special toilets? It all runs to water treatment plants anyway so why not separate it out there?

All it really takes is energy. Oh, yeah. We can't make much more energy because of cap and trade and Jimmy Carter's ban on reprocessing nuclear fuel.

Silly me, I thought this was about helping the little guy. I didn't realize that the "little guy" was a smelt.

Afghanistan PowerPoint slide: Generals left baffled by PowerPoint slide | Mail Online

2010-04-28T14:37:00.000-06:00

Afghanistan PowerPoint slide: Generals left baffled by PowerPoint slide
| Mail Online: "'When we understand that slide, we'll have won the war,' General Stanley McChrystal, the US and NATO force commander, remarked wryly when confronted by the sprawling spaghetti diagram in a briefing."

It looks like there is a Gordian knot that needs a sword through it.

Spain downgraded, Europe debt crisis widens - Yahoo! Finance

2010-04-28T14:31:00.000-06:00

Spain downgraded, Europe debt crisis widens - Yahoo! Finance: "Europe's debt crisis spread its contagion to another country Wednesday when a major credit agency downgraded Spain's credit rating, even as Germany grudgingly moved closer to bailing out Greece from imminent collapse."

Well, that was fast, but not exactly surprising.

How's your financial house doing?

Greece Cut to Junk at S&P as Contagion Spreads (Update2) - Bloomberg.com

2010-04-27T17:30:00.000-06:00

Greece Cut to Junk at S&P as Contagion Spreads (Update2) - Bloomberg.com: "Greece’s credit rating was cut three steps to junk by Standard and Poor’s, the first time a euro member has lost its investment grade since the currency’s 1999 debut. The euro weakened and stock markets throughout the region plunged."

This is troublesome.

European airspace timelapse, before and after the volcano

2010-04-27T13:33:00.000-06:00

European airspace timelapse, before and after the volcano

This combined with the reports of what the people were doing really showcase the power of normalcy bias.

The most interesting thing to see was that Spain and Italy seemed to remain open. The lesson learned here is to figure out what is happening and do the obvious but not normal thing.

It might take a day or so to travel by car or better yet train to Rome but from there you could fly. It may even have been easier to travel the long way round to get home.

That happened to us once, we got stuck in Hong Kong and an Air Traffic controller strike or something in Japan make it impossible to fly back to San Francisco, so we went West instead and stopped to see the Taj Mahal and the Pyramids of Gisa. It was fun and we still got back home faster then waiting to go the "regular" way.

If a fire broke out in a supermarket, I'm 96+% of people would try to exit through the fronts doors. There might even be people trampled. But going through one of the well-marked emergency exit doors, you'd be alone.

Don't Forget the Nails and Other Little Things

2010-04-27T13:08:00.000-06:00

A lot of kits and advice talk about the big flashy important things: guns and food. But often neglect the little things.

A good tool kit will need things like hammers and screwdrivers but do you have nails and screws? If you have a saw do you have a file and stone to keep it sharp and some oil to keep it from rusting.

Have you taken the time to think though all the maintenance requirements your main supplies need?

How many cartoons are there that have a character stuck on a deserted island with lots of canned food but no can opener? The old saying of 2 is 1 and 1 is none is something to remember. Do you have at least two can openers? You could cut the can open with a Ginzu but that has its own hazards.

Like a taking care of a good pair of leather shoes, you need the right things to take care of them; like leather cleaner, shoe polish, rags and brushes. Guns need cleaning rods, patches, and lubricants.

Your car has things that need replacing from time to time; belts, hoses, and filters. You might want to try doing it at least once so you know how to do it. Keep the old ones in the trunk as spares with the tools needed to do the job. Just in case you have to do it on the side of the road.

How about at home? Do you have the stuff and knowledge needed to fix, for example, a broken pipe, like a pipe cutter, small length of pipe, connectors and soldering supplies?

What else do you think you would need on hand?

Home Rainwater Management

2010-04-26T16:19:00.000-06:00

Have you ever noticed that some areas of your lawn are greener and grow faster then others? Aren't they often near the downspouts of your gutters or your neighbor's gutters.

One of the most interesting parts of permaculture is how they manage rainwater compared to the typical house.

Typically, and especially around Denver, your yard is shaped and landscaped to get rainwater that is coming off of the roof away from the house and off the property as fast as possible.

That makes a certain amount of sense. The builder really does not want water getting into the basement or hanging around the foundation too long because that can cause damage he would get sued for. Colorado has expansive soil with lots of clay that tends to expand if there is water around to hang on to.

And until recently there were laws in place that restricted rainwater harvesting, i.e. no rainbarrels. So the water could go to the Colorado River and on to California.

But there wasn't anything that required the rain to run off, it could mosey if you did it right. One of the big concepts of permaculture is to slow the rainwater runoff down and let it sink into the ground where the plants can get to it over time. This way you make the land itself drought resistant.

Next time it rains go outside and really look at where the runoff goes. Especially from your gutters and hardscapes like the sidewalk and driveway. If you really want to go nuts you can make a topographic map of your yard.

Where does it go to the street or neighbors yards?
Is there room at the bottoms of the downspouts for a raingarden to absorb some of that water that is not too close to the house?
Where could you put a set of small swales to make the water zigzag across your property to slow it down before it leaves your property?

What are the effects of a blackout on your home?

2010-04-23T10:42:00.000-06:00

What are the effects of a blackout on your home? After a few hours or a few days?

The first thing is that without heat or air conditioning your home will match the outside ambient temperature within a few hours, depending on your homes insulation. Since blackouts tend to happen on the hottest and coldest days of the year, this can be a problem.

If it happens on the hottest day of the year you need to worry about cooling, mainly the food in your refrigerator, and anybody who might have troubles in the heat like the very young or old, or the disabled. Having a small window air conditioner run by a generator that you can put in the coolest room, usually the one in the northeast corner, of your house could be a life saver. If you have a basement that will stay near 55°F because of all the earth around it.

After a few hours the food in your frig will warm up to the Danger Zone (40°F-140°F) where bacteria will start growing at an exponential rate. The food in the freezer will take about a day or so to thaw, depending on how good the insulation in your freezer is and what the ambient temperature is.

Keep the refrigerator doors closed as much as possible. If you have a probe thermometer you can keep an eye on the temperature from the outside.

If you can get ice you can keep your food out of the Danger Zone a lot longer. A few partially filled bottles of water in the freezer would help. If the blackout is local to just your neighborhood or town you might be able to drive to a store that still has ice. Get block ice if you can it melts slower. Putting the ice in a tub or bowl that can hold the melt water will keep your kitchen from getting all wet. Putting it on the top shelf is best as cold air is heavier then warm air.

The reason that many refrigerators still have the freezer on top is because of the old ice boxes from the late 19th and early 20th Century put the ice on top to cool the whole box.

If you have some ice, some coolers and a basement you can keep food out of the Danger Zone a lot longer because the room temperature is a lot cooler in the basement and will melt the ice more slowly.

On the coldest day keeping your food cold is not a problem, a few bowls of snow in the frig will do fine or just bury it in snow on the north side of your house. If you're worried about something getting to your food, you can put it in a cooler on the north side of your house, you don't want the sun to shine on it or the cooler will get too warm inside.

The real problem is keeping yourself and your family warm.

Most furnaces need electricity for the blower and control circuitry. A generator or other alternative energy source will work for that. A generator needs to go outside with the exhaust pointed away from the house, the garage doesn't count, even with the door open, there are too many coroners reports on that mistake. If you are worried about people stealing it chain it to your car on the drivers side blocking the door so you won't forget about it when you need to go somewhere.

Cooking can be done on a backyard propane grill, again that has to stay outside, the garage still doesn't count as outside, even with the door open. You can also put some bricks on the grill to heat up while your at it, you can then wrap them in towels and use them as bedwarmers.

If you don't have a generator or runout of fuel you can bring everyone into one room and keep the door closed to heat the room with body heat and a few candles or oil lamps, make sure they are placed so they can tip over safely.

You can setup a tent in the living room or basement that everyone can pile in. A tent will concentrate body heat, and with a blanket over the top will insulate pretty well. That is similar to what the Victorians did, the classic four-poster bed has heavy bedcurtains and a top making a nice tent that you heated with your own body heat.

Our electrical system, among others, is getting very fragile because of consumer pressure to cut costs.

It is possible for a single wire brushing against an overgrown tree to knock out power to 50 million people. That is what happen in 2003 in the Northeast. A similar thing happened in the West in the late 1990s. So it does happen here. For a few years they'll be diligent to keep the trees trimmed but eventually some bean-counter will say, "We haven't have a black out in ages, we can make more profit if we cut back on tree trimming expenses." And a couple of years will pass, because it takes a while for trees to grow. Then massive blackouts occur costing huge amounts in overtime because they stopped trimming the trees.

It doesn't matter why, but we are without power and that is a problem. Powering your whole home on your own is pretty expensive, but do you have to power everything all at once? Not really, you never actually have everything on all at once anyway, but there are some things that are more important then others.

So what are the most important things that you need to power in your home? Refrigerator, furnace, a few lights, maybe a computer. How about medical equipment?

So what are the alternatives? A generator is nice, it is small and portable and will run for a long time on a tank of gas. The problem is that it takes a steady supply of fuel. You'll be using fuel wether you are using electricity or not. A refrigerator only runs for 10 or so minutes per hour, a furnace might run for 2o minutes or so.

You can get around this a bit by instead of powering everything directly, you charge up a bank of batteries and then use the batteries to power your house on the intermittent basis your home actually uses.

Once you have a battery bank you can easily add other alternative energy forms like solar, wind or micro-hydro.

Instapundit Blog Archive VOLCANO ASH CLOUD SETS OFF GLOBAL DOMINO EFFECT: While the volcanic ash cloud covering parts of E…

2010-04-22T11:08:00.000-06:00

Instapundit � Blog Archive � VOLCANO ASH CLOUD SETS OFF GLOBAL DOMINO EFFECT:

While the volcanic ash cloud covering parts of E…: "UPDATE: Reader Stephen Skaggs writes: “This shows not only tightly-coupled the global economy has become, but illustrates the impossibilities of centrally planned economies.” Well, yes, we’re back to the old Knowledge Problem again . . . ."

His post links to several articles well worth reading. The modern world seems to have been incentivized to be fragile; that is a bad thing. Was it on purpose? I don't know, and neither does it matter, we need to make ourselves less fragile.

The important thing to do is to build in resilience to our systems.

Unfortunately, I don't see government stepping up to the plate, and frankly we don't need them to.

We need to build resilience into our own lives. Food, Water, and Energy are the big ones in this case.

A few weeks of food and water will help you survive most natural disasters, and few months supplies will help you survive a temporary job loss.

Some flashlights and a UPS will help you get through a typical blackout which lasts only a few hours. A small solar electric installation will do for longer blackouts, it doesn't have to power everything all at once, but if it can run the frig in the summer or the furnace in the winter and occasionally the dishwasher or clothes washer one-at-a-time, it would be enough.

Seth's Blog: Sad Tim

2010-04-22T09:26:00.000-06:00

Seth's Blog: Sad Tim

This happens a lot. You're smarter then that.

Disaster Survivors: Don’t Be Victimized By Fraud

2010-04-22T09:03:00.000-06:00

Disaster Survivors: Don’t Be Victimized By Fraud: "West Virginians affected by the March storms and flooding�are urged to be alert for and report potential fraud during recovery and rebuilding efforts.

Those who suspect anyone – contractor, inspector, disaster survivor or someone posing as any of these – of committing fraudulent activities should call the Disaster Fraud Hotline toll-free at 800-323-8603.

Complaints may also be made to local law enforcement agencies and through the West Virginia State Attorney General’s Office Consumer Hotline at 800-368-8808 or online at www.wvago.gov."

Whenever there is a disaster the creeps seems to come out of the woodwork. All kinds of fraudulent "charities" but also fake contractors and the like.

The best thing to do is to find a trustworthy contractor before something happens and keep his number in your info kit.

How do you find a contractor? Talk to your friends and neighbors, coworkers, church members and club members. Community is your friend here.

Also try out your contractor on a small job to see if you like his work and the way he works.

Put him on your Christmas card list and otherwise stay in contact from time to time to build a relationship.

Setting Up an External Boot Drive for a Mac

2010-04-21T13:05:00.000-06:00

Usually I keep a bootable CD for my computers, to help out when there is a problem. Sometimes there is a glitch and just booting from a clean system will let you do some simple repairs. For something more useful you can head over to LiveCD which have disk images you can create boot CDs from with all kinds of utilities.

I have a small external hard drive that wasn't been used for anything so I decided to make it a bootable disk that I can play with.

The first step is to have a OS install disk and a external hard drive.
Plug in the external drive and copy off anything you still want and reformat it to clean it off. You can do that with Disk Utility, click on the drive, go to the partition tab and make sure that under the Options... button it is set to GUID so it can boot an Intel Mac. Give it a good name, then hit Apply.

Once that is done restart while holding down the C key to boot from the Install disk. Make sure to select the external disk and start the install. Eventually it will finish and boot into the external drive. Make sure to run Software Update and get all the updates.

You'll then have a nice, clean fast system. The nice thing is that on an external disk I can add whatever application I need without compromising main real machine.

How to Stay Alive in a Hospital

2010-04-20T12:39:00.000-06:00

First off, I have never met a nurse that wasn't dedicated to the work of helping people heal. That said, governmental bureaucratic paperwork creates so much busywork that it limits the time that nurses have to care for patients.
And it is only going to get worse.

So like any other situation check the basics: food, water and shelter. I was in a hospital so all those things were available but once I was off the IV feeding and watering myself was a challenge, mainly because I had a broken leg and two broken arms.

I could not move or take care of myself for even the most basic things. Our parents would come as often as they could, we even had sisters from church come by and feed me. This is why building community before a disaster is important.

I was running into trouble a glass or two of water at meal times was just not enough. Another problem was that I was taking very strong pain killers and so I couldn't think straight. I knew there was a solution but it took a long time to work it out. I could remember that there was a product out there that was a water carrying backpack that had a hose you could drink from, but I couldn't remember the name or anything else.

Fortunately, Dad went to a sporting goods store and found a smart guy who could figure out what I was talking about: a Camelbak hydration system. He tied it to the side of the bed and would refill it whenever they stopped by. I credit Camelbak in saving my life, it allowed me to drink more and create some personal independence. It made healing go faster.

You also have to be aware of what is happening to your own body and not be afraid to bring it up. One of my wounds was healing much more slowly then others, I brought that up to the floor doctor, who brought in a wound care specialist and it was determined that the healing had stopped and so they did something to restart the healing process.

Volcanos, Solar Minimum and Agriculture

2010-04-19T11:26:00.001-06:00

Any volcano spewing lots ash into the atmosphere is going to cool the earth slightly. That is just the way it happens the ash is reflecting more sunlight back into space. The Icelandic volcano comes at a time that may make its effects more intense. It is probably not enough to cause a Year Without a Summer.

The sun is showing a minimum of sunspots and it has been for longer then expected. So we are not getting quick as much warmth from the sun as we had been a few years ago, which was also in effect during Year Without a Summer.

El Nino is changing more rapidly then expected as well. This is an unknown from 1816, but it doesn't matter so much.

The thing is, is that it won't be a huge deal this year outside of Europe. Europe will have some problems this year. Crop yields will be down.

But next year (2011) may be more interesting, by then the ash cloud will have been distributed across the global atmosphere and so we'll be cooler then normal.

If you are looking at gardening it might be a good idea to look into some extra cool weather plants for next year and storing up some extra staples. Frost may come a little later in the Spring and come a little earlier in the Fall, but it shouldn't be anything we can't handle with a little preparation.

Scenario: Interstate Drunk Driver

2010-04-19T11:20:00.000-06:00

You are driving along the Interstate on your way to work in the morning and a drink driver loses control of his car and jumps the median into your lane.
What do you do?

This actually happened to my family, 10 years ago. My pregnant wife and I were going to do some church volunteer work on a Saturday morning when a drunk driver lost control of his car and crossed the median.

Something they don't tell you in Driver's Ed is that at 70 mph slamming on the brakes and turning the wheel does nothing for a long time, except for making lots of noise as you go skidding down the street. Sure they may tell you to have an escape route planned, like going into the ditch on one side or the other, that seems to assume they are coming straight toward you and not crosswise like he did.

The State Patrol was actually surprised that I got on the brakes at all because usually in these kinds of crashes it happens too quickly for people to react. It was estimated that it was about 0.8 seconds from the time the drunk driver crossed the median to the time of impact.

Which is interesting, human reaction time is about 0.25 seconds. That should give you time to make about 3 decisions. The real problem is that it take a typical car about 8 seconds to come to a stop from 65 mph. Physics, what are you going to do?

The thing that really saved us were our seatbelts, our old car did not have airbags, and our heavy winter coats. The coats did so much to cushion us that we did not sustain significant internal injuries so much so that the trauma team treating me scanned me three different ways and got extra more experienced doctors to look to make sure they weren't missing something.

Unfortunately, our unborn daughter suffered injuries due to the impact and died after 9 days.

Al Dente: Climbing the Walls: Mario Batali's Edible Vertical Garden

2010-04-15T10:07:00.000-06:00

Al Dente: Climbing the Walls: Mario Batali's Edible Vertical Garden: "A few years ago the urban garden moved from the ground floor to the rooftop, and now it's climbing the walls. Just a few days ago Mario Batali unveiled the edible, vertical garden he commissioned for his Los Angeles restaurant, Pizzeria Mozza."

This is a good step for the urban scene. I would love to do something like that but the apartment agreement doesn't allow that. So we do containers as best we can.

Volcanic ash from Iceland closes British airports - Telegraph

2010-04-15T09:08:00.000-06:00

Volcanic ash from Iceland closes British airports - Telegraph: "Hundreds of flights have already been cancelled, and airports in Scotland, northern England and Northern Ireland shut down, with the ash cloud forecast to spread southward towards London, causing more disruption."

It should make some nice sunsets for the next few weeks.