National Preparedness Month

Yup, September is it. So why do we have a month set aside to reflect on being prepared, and for what? What does it mean to be prepared? Why all these questions? A whole month?!?! That's a long time, right?

Being prepared is both a state of mind and a level of physical preparation. Let's start with the state of mind and how to get one. Do I know what the potential emergencies are in my part of the world? Can I take care of myself and my family before, during and in the aftermath of the most likely emergencies? Where do I/we go if my home is no longer safe? Those are some of the questions that a prepared household member can answer.

We just observed the fifth anniversary of hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans. We await Earl's arrival on the east coast of the US. Californians are always moments away from 'the big one," earthquake, of course. Yup, there's stuff to be prepared for, and usually when it's bearing down upon you, it may be a smidge late to begin the thought process in any way that will bring meaningful results.

So this first post is just about getting you to think about what the reasonable and slightly less reasonable potential emergencies are that could affect you and your family based on where you live and work. (Exclude asteroid strikes that cause mass extinction for now.)

That's all. Just think about that question for a day or two. If you are really energized by this exciting post, you can go ahead and think about whether you have a conceptual plan for how you'd deal with 'it,' whatever emergency 'it' is for you, if it happens right...NOW. Just think about it.

New Buttons!!

You may notice the new buttons on my page. I use these websites and thought I'd share them with others. So what are they about? These are websites to help you with your home and family preparedness -- I'm getting the jump on September, which is National Preparedness month.

"Prepared for what?" you may ask. Well, that depends on where you are and what's happening there. It could be for getting through hurricane season, a tornado or other weather-related disaster. For others, it could be that their industry is being hit hard by the recession and they want to be prepared in the event of losing a paycheck or two. For me, it's living in a relatively remote area, and having the potential to lose power at any time for an unknown length of time.

So what is the "Food Storage Analyzer" all about? It's like the old saying "If you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there." If you don't know what makes for balanced, healthy food provisions, who knows whether you can stay healthy if you need them! By using the food storage analyzer, even for your regular groceries in your pantry, you can feel confident that what you store will provide a good balanced diet with the essential nutrients, like calcium, vitamins A and C, and iron -- along with a good balance of carbs, fiber, fat and protein.

It is really easy to use, the templates walk you through how many calories each person in your household needs, then to categories of food items. You can select common pantry items or add you own. The calculator provides you with nutritional information AND how long your clan can live on what you have stored. If you register, you can save the info and return to it. I'm very private with my personal information (which you might guess if you read my profile!!), and the registration asks for a bare minimum -- essentially enough to allow you to recover your user ID and password if you forget.

When I first used it, I discovered that I did not have much vitamin A in my pantry, and was very low on fats and oils. I added a couple cans of olive oil and carrots. Now I know that we can count on the basics. If the highway between here and the interstate is closed for weather or emergency I have all we need to get us through.

It is incredibly easy to use, and you can add your own pantry items with the info on the food labels. Give it a try! Get a head start on September!!

Being Green

No, this entry is not about any ecological movement or frogs -- well there may be mention of frogs, but only in passing. It is about the beauty and bounty of RAIN. We’ve had a lot of it since the monsoon started last month. So much that we are seeing things I have not seen in years. Plants thought long dead have come back to life – dormant but not dead before. A pomegranate tree I thought was ornamental is bearing fruit. I put up a couple of quarts of black currant preserves from a bush that previously had offered a few shriveled blebs to the birds.

What is even more amazing is that some places that I have never seen green up are verdant. Usually cattle in this part of the world have a hard time scrounging enough to eat. Lately, they are actually so full of sweet green grass that they are lying down to ruminate.

There are puddles! Frogs are calling and tarantulas are out hunting for mates, which means that the ground is soft and moist enough for them to come out of hibernation.

Being in a place where rain is a blessing, not an inconvenience, reminds me that our world is a bucketful of miracles. We're having a miraculous summer!

Snapware Giveaway Contest!

Head on over to Happily Domestic at http://happilydomestic.blogspot.com/ to enter her contest for a Snapware giveaway! I have a ton of the product and love it. In fact, if you read my post below, there's snapware in the picture under the Back to basics grain mill.

What’s for Breakfast?

With new camera in tow, I made my usual breakfast bread. We slice and freeze this loaf, pulling and toasting a piece to eat each morning en route to work. Usually peanut butter or someof my home-made jam is involved. Most recent jam involved black currants, but that’s a different story.

The loaf starts with the dry ingredients. I love spices, so breakfast bread is a creative outlet. A normal loaf has cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, orange peel and cardamom. Not many bakers use cardamom, but a smidge in your baking makes things taste as good as they smell. I hate it when a baked item smells yummy but tastes flat. Not so with cardamom. I use Penzey’s spices and extracts. They are high quality and you can buy in bulk. There is no middle man, so prices are great. For the cost of a small bottle of cinnamon in the grocery store, you can get a 4 ounce bag of very high quality cinnamon from Penzey’s. Who doesn’t have old spice jars to reuse? OK, if you are the ONE person who does not, you can buy it the first time ina jar, then refill it from the larger bulk bags. I use about 1.5 t of cinnamon and 1/4 t of everything else. If I can get TRADER JOE’S Pumpkin Pie Spice blend, I throw in 1.5 t of that as well. It is a wonderful blend for most baking, but seems to be available only around the holidays.

To the spices, I add 1.5 teaspoons of kosher salt (Morton’s), 2 Tablespoons of dry milk, 1 tablespoon of Bob’s Red Mill vital wheat gluten for each cup of fresh-ground flour I will add and 1.5 cups of ‘store-bought’ flour, usually a bread flour like King Arthur or Gold Medal. Note: for bread-baking purposes, a cup is by weight, not volume, so one ‘cup’ at my altitude and humidity is about 3/4 of a normal measuring cup.

To this mix I add 3.5 cups of fresh ground flour. I usually mix at least 2 grains for more balanced proteins. Today it was rye and hard white wheat. If I have KAMUT on hand, I will throw some of that in the mix. I experimented with grinding popcorn the other day, so had a quarter of a cup to throw in. Occasionally I ‘ll throw in some buckwheat also, as it also has some differences that improve the nutrition of the loaf, which is the point in doing all this.

I’m currently using a small BACK to BASICS mill, which makes good flour. If you are feeding two, it’s fine. I’ve been looking at a larger mill from Lehmann’s. I had to return the one I bought as there was some odd problem. It could have been operator error, which would embarrass me a lot.

When I have other good dry additives on hand, I will throw some in before I leave the dry bin. My favorites include oat bran, wheat bran or almond meal. Today, it was almond meal, chopped dry ginger and some pecan pieces.

The wet stuff goes right into the zojirushi bread pan. 2 eggs, 3 T olive oil (if I have virgin coconut oil I will substitute 1T of this for 1 of the olive oil), 3T honey, 1.5 t of almond extract, and about 1.25 cups of warm water. I usually put the Pyrex measuring cup of water into the microwave for 30 seconds. This allows me to use the ‘quick’ cycle of the bread machine. That way if I make bread in the evening, I don’t have to wait up for it to come in before I go to bed!

After giving this all a little stir, I add the dry mix on top and add about 2t of RED STAR yeast.

I close the lid, set on quick wheat bread (2 hours and 8 minutes) and let it ROCK AND ROLL. I will check it often in the first 15 minutes. Between the altitude and the low humidity, adjustments are needed to almost every loaf. Sometimes it’s a tablespoon or two of water, other times it is flour. Once it has ‘cleared to floor’ of the bread machine, I leave it alone. By ‘clear the floor’ I mean that the beater bars are not surrounded by a soft dough and the mix has a soft but not too mushy texture.

Before I walk away, I chop some dried fruit. Today I used about half a cup of golden raisins, chopped dried pineapple and dried apricots for a total of a loose cup of fruit. When the zo beeped for additives, I dumped in the fruit and started doing other chores.

The scent of baking bread begins to permeate the house. Is there anything more wonderful? Yes! Enjoying the fruits of your labor!

　

Daily Mini-vacations

I work in a truly beautiful place. Some days are more beautiful than others. Today was one of those. Luckily I had my camera. I took a mini-vacation on the porch of the historic building that holds my office. Thought I'd share. A wonderful monsoon storm was moving in, the breeze was picking up and the blue sky was running for cover. Here is the view:

Monsoon Season Comes to the High Desert

It’s here!! The glorious rainy season, the MONSOON has truly arrived. The official date (15 June) came and went. The traditional kick-off date (July 4 – independence from the heat!) came and went. The three consecutive days of dew point above 55 degrees F came and went. We had a few sprinkles, but no MONSOON until Saturday. In a good 2 month monsoon season we will receive 65% of our annual rain. In a poor one, the year will be dismal, as we will be dry again until December.

So what makes it the real McCoy? It is the end of heat that makes you run from shadow to shadow, to pant with the jackrabbits. It is the cool stiff breeze that rolls in ahead of the massive deep gray sky. It is the bright orange sunset seen through the building clouds. It is the rain so brief yet so hard that the streets and streambeds run like little rivers and my 200 gallon rainbarrel fills in half an hour. It is the brilliant lightning with thunder so loud and so fast you wonder if you’re dead and don’t know it yet.

It is also the handsome, majestic tarantulas creeping up from their long hibernation to mate. Other strange creatures and unusual flowers make their brief annual but flamboyant appearances. You can feel a release of the tension that builds day after scorching day during June. Suddenly, it is another spring. A luxurious, wet green glorious spring in July. The earth is renewed. We are renewed.

Some good storms will drop an inch of rain in an hour. Occasionally the winds take down a power line or pole. Who needs power when you have rain and cool breezes?

The sunset looked like a forest fire in our mountains through the deep gray brewing sky tonight. A cool wind is blowing and there’s a whopper heading our way. No problem. We are prepared. My candles and matches are strategically placed around the house and my filtered water jug is full. Let it rip. IT’S THE MONSOON !!

Living with Fibromyalgia (part 2)

How time flies! So here is part two on managing fibromyalgia – at least how I do it. Several aspects of daily life play a huge roll in managing pain levels. Having a routine and trying to generally keep to it is important. I’m not sure why, perhaps because it helps keep from running out of energy, but it works for me. My ideal routine would be sleep until 7 and then slowly ease my way into the day. By 9 or 10 a.m. I’d be starting a couple hours of gentle exercise for the day. What qualifies as gentle exercise for us may be different than for normal people. Doing two loads of laundry (I use All free and clear) and folding it is a good workout. Making beds and vacuuming the floors is another. A couple hours of gardening is a good stretch-and-tone work out. To most people, this does not seem like exercise, but to a sufferer, these chores stretch muscles and allow some good movement without triggering a flare-up. I’d follow this with a nice walk and then some time on the computer, baking bread, or running errands. Finish up the day with a light dinner and some reading or television and turn in around 11 pm.

So what is a flare-up? Everyone has their definition. For me, its any level of pain above that controlled by VOLTAREN GEL and ADVIL LIQUI-GELS. The Advil liqui-gels are a wonderdrug!! I can pop two of these and experience a significant pain decrease in about 20 minutes. In contrast, I experience NO relief from regular ibuprofen, tylenol or aspirin. I use the voltaren gel on my lower back, due to pain from degenerative disk disease. Not sure whether that relates to the fibro or not, but it can add to the discomfort and this topical gel has replaced oral meds that I’d prefer not to take.

Unfortunately, my job doesn’t allow me to keep to my ideal routine, except on weekends. So getting to work is a different routine that I know I need to follow to be functional. Alarm rings at 6 a.m., grab a cup of hot chocolate with a splash of instant coffee, and dive into a very warm shower. I use the combination of warm water and some great lavender bath gel to substitute for two hours of stretching and warming up. Toss on makeup, dry hair, throw on clothes and am out the door by 7:30. Keeping hair short is helpful. Having a good makeup system is also essential. For me, the Trish McEvoy system is indispensable. Her product line has great selection and lets me have what I want in one container. I usually duplicate everything in another pallette, in case I need to take it to work or on travel. I solved the ‘clothes that don’t hurt’ dilemma by using a lot of Chico’s travelers tops and jackets. Coupling these with a basic black pallette (skirts, trousers, shoes, stockings) helps me look some what professional without my clothing being physically painful, which it can be. I avoid anything with a snug waistband or other pressure points. For shoes, I wear a lot of MUNRO AMERICAN, a brand made in the US, which are high quality and have a lot of padding in the sole. Whatever pantyhose I use, I buy at least one size larger than recommended for my height and weight, again to avoid the pressure- point pain.

Next time – traveling with Fibro. How to avoid spending your trip in bed with a flare-up!