Happy Thanksgiving

I'm posting this early in case I don't get to do it in the morning.

On this Thanksgiving lets think a little bit about the pilgrims. I pulled this off of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute Forum:


Enjoy this brief history:

On August 1, 1620, a ship called the "Mayflower" left England with 102 passengers bound for the New World. The manifest included two groups. The Separatists, led by William Bradford, had fled their homeland and the oppressive Church of England under King James I in search of a home where they could live and worship God according to their own conscience. The Strangers sought the New World for other reasons. Together they formed the Pilgrims.

Their intended crossing to Virginia strayed off course, and they instead landed on Cape Cod -- outside the territory covered by the King's Charter. Thus, the Pilgrims were responsible for their own governance. Following the nine-week journey, the Pilgrims composed an agreement that would establish just and equal laws for all members of the new community. Indeed, the revolutionary ideas expressed in the Mayflower Compact were derived from none other than the Holy Bible.

Only then, on November 11, 1620, did the Pilgrims leave the Mayflower. A cold and barren wilderness awaited them. There were no friends to greet them, no houses to shelter them, nor stores of food to sustain them. That first winter was perilous, as half the Pilgrims died of starvation, sickness, or exposure.

When spring arrived, an Indian named Squanto taught the settlers how to plant corn, fish, use fertilizer, and stalk deer. Bradford wrote that Squanto was "a special instrument sent of God for their good beyond their expectations."

In October, following their first harvest, Governor Bradford set aside a day of thanksgiving. Squanto, his chief Massasoit, and other members of the tribe were invited to the thanksgiving feast. The Indians brought deer and turkeys, while the Pilgrim women cooked vegetables and fruit pies. The purpose of the feast was not to give thanks to the Indians or Mother Earth, as contemporary history textbooks commonly report, but as a devout expression of gratitude to God.

What modern history texts also omit is that the contract the Pilgrims brokered with their merchant-sponsors in London specified that everything they produce go into a common store, with each member entitled to one common share. In addition, all the land they cleared and the structures they built belonged to the community.

William Bradford, Governor of the new colony, realized the futility of collectivism and abandoned the practice. Instead, Bradford assigned a plot of land to each family and permitted them to market their own crops and other products, thereby unleashing the power of free enterprise. What Bradford had wisely realized was that these industrious people had no reason to work any harder than anyone else without the motivation of personal incentive.

Thus, what can only be called the Pilgrims' attempt at socialism ended like all other attempts at socialism -- in failure. What Bradford subsequently wrote about the experiment should be in every American history textbook. The lesson provided therein is invaluable.

"The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato's and other ancients applauded by some of later times; that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God. For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For the young men, that were most able and fit for labour and service, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any recompense."

And what happened after collectivism was replaced by capitalism and the concept of private property?

"This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content."

The Pilgrims soon found they had more food than they could eat, so they set up trading posts and exchanged goods with the Indians. The profits they realized allowed them to pay off their debts to the merchants in London. The success and prosperity of the original Plymouth settlement attracted more European settlers, setting off what came to be known as the "Great Puritan Migration."

Three hundred and eighty-two years later, Americans still set aside the fourth Thursday in November each year as a celebration of thanksgiving. Although this quintessentially American holiday has become more secular than religious, it was originated by devoutly Christian people who were expressing gratitude for the bounty brought forth by their labor and the blessings bestowed upon them by God.

A lot to think about... I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving carcass

Dear Lord, Thank you for this turkey and the carcass it is about to be. Amen.

(No blasphemy intended, seriously.)

The meat you will consume tomorrow is muscle tissue surrounding a skeletal system of a once living critter. I'm no vegan-greenpeace-animal rights activist sort of gal, but I think it is right, especially at Thanksgiving, to take a moment to reflect on the fact that we humans are part of the food-chain network. To be thankful for it. And to recognize our place in it. Just a thought.

On Friday, Sinky Day (the day people eat lunch over the sink), you will probably have turkey sandwiches, no doubt on homemade bread, with homemade mayonnaise... . Pardon me while I prepare for a food comma.

On Saturday, you may have a turkey casserole. Depending on the number of folks picking on this carcass, you may have enough meat to freeze. But at some point... .

When you are finished picking every last bit of muscle tissue worth picking off that carcass... you've made it to the really good part, the skeleton-- the bones. This means the best turkey gumbo you've ever had in your life is just as hop & a skip away. (Lord, thank you for Thanksgiving.)

Basic chicken stock recipe, adjust at will for the turkey carcass. The key is to fully immerse the carcass in water, to have the same proportions of seasonings (celery, carrots, etc.), and to boil it slowly to get the marrow from the bones. (So if it takes more than 5 qts water to immerse the carcass, adjust the quantity of celery, etc., accordingly.) From John's Big Food Manual and Survivalist Flourishing Guide:


CHICKEN STOCK

Makes 4 quarts, but freezes well

5-6 lb hen
1 medium onion, chopped coarse
3 ribs celery, chopped coarse
2 carrots, scraped and chopped coarse
2 bay leaves (preferably fresh)
5 quarts water

Put all ingredients into a large (2 gallon) stock pot. Simmer slowly until hen is tender, about 2 ½ hours. Let stock cool with hen in it. Remove hen and strain.


LEFTOVER TURKEY GUMBO
2 quarts turkey stock, made from leftover turkey carcass
½ C flour
½ C oil (can use bacon fat for real Cajun flavor and calories)
Leftover turkey meat, chopped into bite-sized pieces
½ lb andouille sausage (preferably homemade—see recipes in Meats section)
1 lb shrimp, optional
1 lb ckra, sliced (can use frozen—1 ½ boxes)
1 big onion, chopped
1 bunch green onions, chopped (mostly white parts)
1 bell pepper, chopped
2-3 ribs celery, chopped
3 (or more) cloves garlic, chopped
1 bay leaf
½ bunch parsley, chopped
Creole seasoning, to taste
Tabasco, to taste
Salt and black pepper, to taste
Steaming long-grain rice
File powder

Remove meat from the turkey carcass. Cut up and set aside. Boil the carcass in water to make the turkey stock. Remove carcass from stock and skim stock. Measure out two quarts stock in a large stockpot and have stock simmering slowly, covered. Chop onions, green onions, bell pepper, and celery and have ready in a big bowl while you make your roux.

Make a roux: blend flour and fat, and cook over medium-high heat, stirring constantly. Be careful not to burn the roux—if black flecks appear, it has been burned and must be thrown away. Keep stirring until the roux gets darker and darker. You can stop at chocolate brown if you wish, but I try for the color of coffee. (The darker you get the roux, the darker will be the shade of your gumbo.) As soon as you reach the desired color, turn off the fire and add the chopped veggies immediately. (This stops the roux from cooking further.)

Stir the veggies into the roux thoroughly and keep stirring until the mixture begins to cool a bit. Add the roux to the turkey stock. Chunk the andouille and fry off. Drain fat and add andouille to stock. Add bay leaf and Creole seasoning and stir.

Bring stock to a boil then immediately reduce to simmer. Let stock simmer about 30 minutes uncovered. Taste occasionally and adjust seasonings. Add okra and cook another 30 minutes uncovered (long enough to make sure that the “sliminess” is gone from the gumbo). Add parsley and reserved turkey meat. Simmer for 15 minutes uncovered. Add shrimp if used. Cook for 5-6 minutes, just until shrimp turn pink. Taste. Add salt, pepper, and Tabasco. (This gumbo should not be too spicy hot.)

Let gumbo sit, covered, until ready to serve. If any fat accumulates on gumbo surface, skim it off. To serve, press ½ cup rice into measuring cup and place in a mound in center of gumbo bowl. Ladle gumbo around the rice mound. Sprinkle with file powder (1/4 – ½ tsp.)

Eat hearty—there’s plenty!


Dear Lord, Thank you for bringing John, who knows how to make the best turkey gumbo ever, into my life. Amen.

A pinch of this and a dash of that....

My thanks to Marica for all of her posts, I'm waiting too on the Christmas ideas and have been working on few of my own here. Between finishing off league football, (finally over yeah!), and being taking down by a URI, I am trying to get back on the ball. I am still working on prepper hookups and I have one person for each person who responded so far so if you are out there and want to check in please do so.
What are your traditions for Thanksgiving if you celebrate? I'd love to hear them even if you have downsized over the years. What's on the menu?
Today I will brine the turkey and bake the pies. Pies vary, this year will be pumpkin and tart cherry. We also will be having yams, mashed potatoes, green beans, stuffing and, of course, cranberries. This year is just my immediate family. In the morning, after Tom is taking care of, usually finds us on the phone with family and friends since we are so far away from them. Then we make our rounds through the neighborhood since our neighbors are out smoking or deep frying their turkeys as well. Some times we bring appetizers over but usually if someone is making something different we all want to try we send out a sample plate and/or receive one as well. I usually send out some homemade canned relish or sweet jalapenos.
For my Dad in NY, they usually have one person in the building cook the bird and everyone brings a side dish in a community Thanksgiving. After the holiday is what to make out of leftovers and get ready for Christmas baking. I am hoping my in laws will be here for Christmas. Of course that means finishing up homemade gifts!! I also have two deer waiting to be brought down. In case you don't know what to do with a deer here are some options:

Well isn't' that just like me! I start off talking turkey and end up with deer on the brain. Just can't beat under a dollar a pound for ground meat though LOL. Hope you all are having a good one today!

Prepper-inspired Christmas gifts

Stay tuned for a post on prepper-inspired, do-it-yourself (or on the real cheap) Christmas gifts for teachers, co-workers, the mailman (really?), and anyone else you can't afford to buy for, but would like to give something to. Focus on kid involvement. Gathering ideas as I type. (Actually, I posted to APN forum & Pioneer Living asking for ideas. They're coming in.)

Quote: I am a high income professional but I am battening down hatches as fast as I can

I came across this at Instapundit. I only skimmed the links, which do have good advise. It was the reader's comment to Glenn Reynolds (the blogger "Instapundit" and the "voice" in the post) that got my attention.

LEAD US NOT INTO DEBT: Megan McArdle on Dave Ramsey.

His debt advice sounds good — I don’t really have any debt except a modest mortgage, so I haven’t tried it, since we’ve always favored a sort of Dave Ramsey-lite approach to finances — ...

UPDATE: Some related thoughts from Megan here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Michael Kennedy writes:
I think we are in for a long and severe period of fiscal bad times. I am a high income professional but I am battening down hatches as fast as I can, including selling things I don’t need to own. Those kinds of links will be popular, not as popular as they should be, but that will change. It is heavy weather ahead and worse than we have seen since the 1930s. The fools running the country have no idea what they are doing.

It does appear that way. But perhaps we’re simply too dull to fathom their cunning plans.

Next time someone pokes fun at your prepping-- tell 'em you're battening down hatches, just like the "high income professionals."

Holiday baking goods sales & a strategy for getting started

Herbalpagen (Emily) has a nice post up at on American Preppers about taking advantage of holiday sales on baking goods, and comfort foods like chocolate, cocoa, and so on. She also shares her strategy for food storage decisions:

--can I live without it?
--do I want to live without it?
--could I get it if the trucks stopped bringing it to the shelves?
... IF a big emergency came a long, would that item be available locally or would it be hard to get. Sugar can't be grown locally for me, neither can exotic spices and many other baking ingredients. ...

[I like that Emily doesn’t want to live without chocolate! When big stuff happens it’s important to keep things as “normal” as possible. (Aggie has posted about this.)]

Grocery stores are putting baking goods and things like dried fruits on sale, so now is the time to stock up. But if you’re just getting started, you may be wondering how much/many of these items you should be buying and storing? Here’s my strategy. It will take about an hour or so of your time. (Yikes! Not to read it, to do it!) Note that it will work for any category of thing you want to stock up on; I’ll stick to baking goods here.

First, go to the cupboard where you keep your baking supplies and take a peek inside. What’s there? What do you have? Make a list including the item, the size of the container, and amount you have. EX:

flour: 1 1/2 5-lb. bags (one opened, one in reserve)
crisco: 3 1-cup sticks

(This is also a good time to do a little purging of really old stuff.)

Record everything you have, get a cup of coffee, and have a seat at the kitchen table.

Organize your list by making categories: FLOURS (white, whole wheat), SUGARS (cane, brown, kayro), MIXES/MEALS (corn meal, jiffy mix). I do this by transferring the list to a spreadsheet, but you can do it in pencil & paper. At this point, you may see that you’re completely out of somethings. These would be things you’d usually buy just when you need them for a recipe, or things you threw away when you were purging the old stuff. Be sure to add these to the list. They have a quantity = 0.

An added benefit to organizing is that you’re able to see substitutions. Next time you’re baking cookies, substitute dark for light brown sugar if you found an extra box of dark. You may also see that you’re “overstocked” in raisins that are getting stale. Surprise the kiddies with some oatmeal raisin cookies!

Once you have the list in order, you’re going to start evaluating what you need, setting some goals, and making your prepper shopping list. Your first goal is to replace those things that you purged. Bear in mind that not every item on the list is equally important. If you threw away a five-year old plastic container of dried cherries... take dried cherries off the list. Using Emily’s strategy, if you lived without them for this long... . This means that even if you see dried cherries on sale for 20 cents, unless you are planning on making a lot of fruit cake, don’t waste 20 cents. If, on the other hand, you realized you were completely out of yeast... . You get the idea.

My strategy now is to say, “I need at least two of everything, even things we only use occasionally.” That’s my first goal. Remember that there are two overall goals: saving some money by taking advantage of the sales on baking goods, and building up your stores. Anything you have one or fewer (i.e., open packages) goes on the shopping list. It doesn’t mean you’re going to buy it right away-- not every item is equally important-- but it does go on the list, with either “1” or “2” (have one, need one; have none need two) next to it.

If your finances only allow you to achieve this first goal, you’re farther along than you might have been. Just be sure to always have “one on hand, and one in stock” (one back-up, like in your “stock room”). As you use one, replace it with one from stock in your own store, and put one of whatever it is on your normal grocery list. Ideally, buy it on sale.

The next step is to set another goal-- a time goal. One or two months is a good place to start. Go through the list, item by item, and ask, “How much of this do I use in two months?” Here it is critically important to think of some what-if scenarios, based on why you're prepping, and what you are preparing for. “What if I lost my job, had no income, couldn’t go to the store to buy bread, and had to bake my own. THEN how much flour would I use in two months?” That’s your two month set point. Do the calculations-- what do you have? what do you need for two months?-- and add/adjust your prepper shopping list.

Notice I said, "based on why you're prepping, and what you are preparing for." Job loss might be one thing, unstable economy (inflation?) another, hurricanes... . Just remember that you may not know what may come down the pike. If you are reading this is Ohio, where the threat of hurricanes is low... remember good old Duke Energy & Hurricane Ike.

About that shopping list... . Use discretion. It just isn’t smart to go out and buy everything on the list at one time. You may find better sales. More importantly, you may find you need to tweek your set-point. You may not really need/use 16 boxes of jiffy corn bread mix, even if it is on sale for 50 cents. (Although I admit, I’d find that pretty hard to pass up.) Unless you have unlimited CASH, use discretion. Not all items are equally important. And be flexible. If your set point on flour is 4 5-lb bags, and you are down to 3, and it’s not on sale... do NOT buy one at full price. Flour goes on sale all the time. You know your stores and what things are advertised regularly vs. only occasionally. Use discretion.

About shopping... . This may not work for everyone, but here’s what we're doing now-- in large part because we are seeing a lot of sales on basics and staples. We typically spend about $100-125/week on groceries, including preps. And we go to the store once a week with a list of what we need for this week’s menu, and for staples. We have our set point, we “shop” first in our own “store” to rotate our stock, and then (with discretion) replace those items. This amount includes stuff I’m stocking up on, too, because it’s on sale, because the move wiped out a lot of our preps, and because we have just established a new set point. Things were getting really confusing, especially when we unpacked the groceries: Do we need this this week? Am I replacing this? Is this extra?

To eliminate the confusion-- two shopping trips. One morning we go to the stores (ours and the grocery) to get what we need for the week’s menu. I make note of what’s on sale. John notes what’s on sale in the meat department. We spend far less than $100. Another morning I take our prepper shopping list, and we budget the difference between what we spent and $125 or so, and that’s what we spend on preps (including meat for the deep freezer).

We are odd in that John does the meal planning and most of the cooking, we have his and hers grocery lists, and shop together. So John is totally into prepping. (He keeps his own records of what meat is in the deep freezer, and he uses that to plan the menu.) But this two-part grocery shopping might be a way for those of you with... shall we say... less than enthusiastic spouses to illustrate the value of prepping. Once you’ve gotten your lists together, spend every extra buck you can find on prepper shopping-- only sale items! It won’t be too long before you see a reduction in your regular grocery bill, because you're first shopping from your bargain basement store. Point this out! “Hey honey, I only spent $75 at the store! Want to know why?”

How to get others into the Prepping Mindset

Prepping is great! You can be self-sufficient, grow or stock food, secure your residence, and save a bunch of money in the long run, what's the downside? Everyone should be excited about this or at least consider it, right? WRONG!
Friends and family might be looking into the nearest home or the one thing they might consider to save money is building you your own padded room. Your spouse or significant other might have that eyes glazed over look when you tell them you bought yet another case of beans or ammo was on sale. And what do you mean you want to have a bug out drill and it doesn't include a hotel with a shower?
If you are there, I'm right there with you! Trust me on this. I daydream on the computer looking at pictures of other people's food supplies while my husband says "o.k. whatever we forgot at the store, I'll just pick up on my way home from work". Or a neighbor asks, "why grow it when you can just go buy it on the store?". Statements like this are just like finger nails on a chalkboard, they have the same effect.
Start slow and be prepared, it could take a long while before the light bulb goes off. You can go quicker with things that won't be in the other person's area of your shared life. For example: If your wife has nothing to do with your guns and ammo, there is your big starting point where you can almost go full throttle prepping in that area. If your husband leaves the kitchen entirely up to you..food is where you want to begin.
I leave ideas laying around. Books and articles on things I would like to try to do that I would need his help with. Usually, in the um....library, that's it! Where he will have some undivided attention and doesn't have to listen to my voice. (just so you know why I used the picture above lol). It's pretty effective. I still have a long way to go. He sees overstocking on things as an illness, which is fine but soon he will have to come to terms of why I really had to have more shelves in the storeroom.
Friends and family are different. Most of them are just under the impression that there will always be "more" so why bother. I did have a friend who going through a tough economic crisis with her family, got it, ran with it and it helped her through the rough spots. I had another friend, who just nods when I talk about it, doesn't get it and continues to complain and struggle. Most fall some where inbetween. Again, another slow process.
When it dawns on them that this could be worth the effort one or two things usually happens, they want to learn more and are a bit cautious or they panic because they feel they are far behind and just want to spend, spend, spend, to keep up. This is where they need your help! Reign in the ones who feel the end of the race is here and they are still at the starting gate! Talk them out of cases of freeze dried food they haven't tried yet and super expensive gear they may or may not need, use or can get cheaper. Show them how much they can produce in a garden and can, or save money in other ways so they can stock up on food if they don't have access to a garden. Pawn shops are great for some guns and ammo and some places online are better. People who are slow and cautious will soak up information like a sponge and decide what is best for their situation and will come prepared with questions, give an ear be supportive and offer advice.
Above all else, remember, you are not alone. We are here for you!