what have you done toward prepping this week?

I try to do something toward our preps every week.  Sometimes when we can afford it we lay in supplies or equipment.  But if we can't afford to I still need to work on preps.  Learn a new skill.  In today's computer age that is easy!  Web sites and you tube videos abound!  Of course you need to use some common sense watching those video's.  Just because they make a video up doesn't mean they actually know what they are doing!  Most do but I've seen enough who don't to warn you to use good sense.  If they are teaching a skill you don't know but are thinking that it doesn't look right then check out other videos covering that skill and compare.  You can learn all kinds of things like cooking, canning, storing foods, hunting, trapping, I even found some great videos about using sling shots!  Once you watch the video's then you need to practice the skill so you know how to do it.  

The last several weeks I've been on a new learning curve.  When you suddenly find out you and family members are allergic to eggs, all gluten, all dairy, peanuts, tree nuts, shell fish, mushrooms, sesame seeds, corn, soy beans and the list goes on.  You have to start from scratch and learn to cook all over again. 

You can't use the same grain grinders without a lot of trouble.  If I run a gluten grain through my mill then I have to wash thoroughly all that can be washed and after it's dry then I have to run white rice through it until it finally comes out white.  Then I have to wash it all again.  It takes a couple days to get it back so I can grind our non gluten grains again.  Then you have to know what has to be ran through the blender instead of the grain mill and what has to go through the hand grinder instead of the electric mill. 

Next I went through our food storage recipes and out of the 133 recipes we had, we can still use 45 of them and another 10 with some adaptions. 

Trips to the grocery store have became a long affair.  You have to read each and every label.  Some items are easy to spot like wheat or eggs but others we had to learn the hard way.  "Modified"  Anything that has been modified we now know to avoid.  Modified corn starch has wheat in it.  I can use corn starch but 2 other family members can not so we have to use arrow root or tapioca starch instead.  These items are important because when you make up non gluten all purpose flours they have a good portion of starch in them.  Like 1 cup brown rice flour and 1 cup white rice flour and 1 cup corn starch.  There are several different blends of all purpose flour but that is the easiest one to do. 

Any way I have a good handle on all of this now so I'm back to building up our storage again.  We had a roast chicken this last week so I made chicken broth up and got 7 pints off of it.  I also had gone grocery shopping and discovered I could not use a single can of any of the canned soups available.  I even had a hard time finding beef and chicken broth I could use!  So I need to start making my own canned chicken & rice soup and my own cream of chicken soup and cream of celery soup to have on hand for the meals that need those. 

I made 7 can Taco soup this last week and canned up 4 pints with our left overs.  I also canned up red and white beans.  The last time I bought canned beans and made chili with them we discovered the beans were hard and really messed up our meal.  I will now regularly cook up beans and can them to have ready to use. 

So now I'm on a roll again.  I would love to hear what you have been doing toward your preps too!

Cherlynn
brchbell@yahoo.com