Finally decided to pull the trigger and purchase the wildly expensive, but well regarded, Country Living Grain mill. No sooner had I ordered it than the price went up a half hour later. I suppose demand must be high, but geez…it went up something like $70 not long after I ordered it. Fortunately, I beat the increase.

I purchased it because I’m finally at a point in my life where I can afford such things, and also because I’m expanding my cooking repertoire and I’d like to grind my own cornmeal. This, naturally, means I need to start stocking dried corn. I already have a small (<50#) amount of wheat sitting in storage (thank you LDS cannery), but given my enjoyment of things like pasta it makes sense to have the materials to start making it from scratch. Sure, I store flour…and it stores well enough…but not as well or as long as the wheat itself. So…grain mill. I figure between wheat, corn, and rice I’ll be pretty well covered for making things like flour, porridge, polenta, etc.

And, because I’m a suspender-and-a-belt kind of guy I ordered the spare parts kit and a few other accessories as well.

I’m rather looking forward to experimenting. I haven’t baked bread in quite a while and I’m wondering how much of a difference in flavor will be noticed between freshly ground flour and store-bought. There’s a bakery three blocks from where I live and once in a rare while I’ll get some bread there and, dang it, it’s good. So good that just a thick slice of it and some soft, creamy butter is practically a meal all by itself. But, in addition to bread, I also wanna take a swing at making my own fresh pasta and that sort of thing. Also, I’ve found a recipe for a cornmeal porridge that I really, really like and would like to try with fresh cornmeal. So..I guess it was time to spend the money and get the grain mill.

Now I need to head out to the places that sell bulk grains and start seeing whats available. Nice thing is, even without an end-of-the-world it’ll still be nice to have fresh bread and that sort of thing.

It’s not just theory…you really do need to rotate stuff from food storage. Today’s example: salsa from two years ago. It keeps just fine in the classic ‘cool, dark place’..like my basement…but I figured it was time to update. So…a quick trip to CostCo. As you may notice, there are some markings on the lids. The ‘C’ in a circle indicates it was purchased at CostCo, the price is marked on it, and the date.

I keep quite a bit of this sort of product on hand. Cook up some chicken (or open a can of chicken), shread it up, cook it in a bunch of salsa, mix in a large amount of cooked rice, cover with Mexican cheese blend, and eat with corn chips. Cheap, filling, and pretty yummy.

But, the takeaway here is that you need to rotate through your stuff otherwise when you finally need it you might not like what you find. Also, ‘best buy’ dates are wildly conservative.

So this was the bulk grains section at Winco two days ago:
This was it today:

Make of it what you will.

Because there’s no point in not erring on the side of caution, I’ve been gilding the lily a bit in terms of adding to the already large amount of things packed away. In today’s case: meat. Bought some of those two foot long pork loins at CostCo, cut them to length, vacuum sealed them, and set them off for a cryo-nap. Animal protein at $1.98/#. A pork loin roast outta the freezer, some insant potatoes, a can of corn, some butter and salt, and you’ve got a relatively cheap dinner while the rest of the world has to choose between paying the electric bill or letting the kids eat meat at dinner.

I swung (Swinged? Swang? Swung?) by the restaurant supply place today to check out their prices and availability on a few things as well. They were pretty good on 10# torpedos of 80/20 ground beef at $3.09/#, and they had some decent prices on other cuts as well. But, sadly, I am out of room in the freezer and I really don’t want to have to buy another one.

Between the freezer, whats in the freezer in the refrigerator, canned meats, and the freeze drieds, I feel like I’ve a good chunk of the protein angle nailed down for the better part of a year. Rice and chicken, beef with noodles, spaghetti with bolognese, etc, etc, will all be on the menu. And I genuinely don’t believe that anyone in this country is going to starve, but I do believe a lot of people are going to have to make some choices…..plebian milk instead of organic, fair trade, free range milk, generic mac and cheese instead of the Trader joe’s stuff, store brand crushed tomatoes rather than the Hunt’s or Contadina, the generic ‘puffed rice cereal’ instead of Rice Krispies, etc, etc. Fortunately, I’m a snob only when it comes to ice cream, cola beverages, corn flakes. I can adjust to the rest. But…thats the beauty about stockpiling. I won’t have to…at least not to the extent the sheeple will. And, more importantly, if ‘supply chain issues’ become an even bigger thing I’ll be in an even better position since I’ll have it stacked on wire shelves in my basement while they’re standing in line at Walmart for rationed Spaghetti-O’s.

And, in an even greater Sign O’ The Times, I topped off the tank while I was at CostCo….even though the gauge was 7/8th full. Why? Because the three gallons of gas I put it in at almost $12 is gonna cost more by the time my tank was down to 1/4. So…try to stay ahead by keeping it topped off. Thanks Brandon!

There’s a lot of things I like about being a survivalist…the clothing is usually quite durable, the sense of security is quite nice, and there’s a satisfaction from being somewhat resourceful and prepared. But, on the other hand…the hours are horrible and there is often a lot of heavy lifting. Case in point…..

Because it was solidly below freezing today, today became Organize The Freezer Day. It could also be called Arctic Archaeology Day.

Let’s be reasonable, if you’re going to ‘clean out’ and organize your freezer you need to temporarily remove the frozen contents. The key challenge in this is, naturally, keeping stuff frozen. There are two ways to do this: have an empty extra freezer or wait until it’s 5-degrees outside and stage your freezer contents outside. I went with option #2.

First off, I discovered that I have a lot more butter than I thought I did. A lot. Same for ground beef. And at least a half dozen half-turkeys that were bought at post-Thanksgiving sales five years ago. but, since they were vacuum sealed and in the freezer all this time, they’ll cook up just fine. They are, however, bulky. Stuff I did not know I have? Well, there was a brisket the size of a folded beach towel. And a buncha short ribs. I had no idea they were there but they’ve been there for at least the last six years so it’s time to crack them open and do something with them. It was also interesting to note the prices over the years as well. It made the coming year look even more dismal.

But…it needed to be done. I was literally out of room in my deep freeze and in the kitchen freezer. On the good side, having no room means I am at full capacity on food. The bad news is that I  have no capacity to increase the supply unless I wanna buy another freezer…which I do not.

But, my advice to you is this: if it’s close to 0-degrees where you are, one of these weekend you might wanna block out a few hours and go through your freezer(s) and get a feel for what you have and make some more space for more food.

Nothing good lasts forever. I was disheartened to learn that the Albertson’s grcery is no longer carrying The Meat Tray. The Meat Tray is gone. Long live the Meat Tray.

Fortunately, although it isn’t the same as the meat tray, it turns out that the local WinCo will ‘remainder’ meat as well. And since their prices are already pretty fair, the remaindered prices are just a solid deal all around:

My freezer is already at capacity, and I really don’t want to get another one, so I’ll just keep this stuff in mind for when I rotate through the frozen stuff. But…animal protein at discount is always a good thing.

That pork in the pictures? I take that, put it in the slow cooker with a half bottle of salsa verde, let it go for about six hours, shred it up, serve with rice, melt Mexican cheese blend on top, and scoop it up with tortilla chips. Sooo good, so cheap, and so much. Highly recommend.

I’m sure some folks would say, “Dude..my life is too short to get worked up about saving $14 on a styrofoam tray of meat once a week.” Fair enough. Let’s tackle it from a different direction. Imagine a supermarket where, when you buy a tray of meat they give you two free Pmags. Or a voucher for three gallons of gas at the Conoco down the street. Or they give you a free refill on your propane tank for your barbecue. You’d get pretty excited about that, right? Same. Exact. Thing.

Every dollar I don’t spend on an item is an extra dollar I have for another item. It’s another dollar in the Roth, in silver, in cash, in the land fund, etc.Thats the mindset that makes the difference when you’re trying to prepare for the inevitable-yet-unpredictable.