PREPS AND HILLBILLIES AND WHATNOT

Shelled more beans today. Love it. These Horticulture beans are so good and so good for you it is surprising that they are not eaten more than they are. But maybe it is not so surprising after all. The good stuff is generally held back from us masses. I am surprised they let Black Beans out on the market. I believe they are at the top of the bean chain as far as nutrition is concerned. But Hillbillies know about "Cranberry" Beans and have eaten them for decades. They just ain't made it to your local Kroger store as yet.



I ate something called Taboule for lunch. It is a Wheat salad. They use Bulgar Wheat to make it and it is loaded with Parsley flakes. It is a quick meal and the Handmaiden chopped up some of our tomatoes and made it extra special good. Not bad! I did notice that it is marketed by NEAR EAST and that company is owned by PepsiCo. Anything owned by PepsiCo is suspect in my book. It does have the right idea, just the wrong owner. Supposed to be natural ingredients and I did notice there is no MSG in the stuff. Could PepsiCo be getting the message? Naw... it must be a slip up somewhere in the corporate structure. It is pronounced Tah Boo Lee and I reckon it must be Asiatic Hillbilly food.



Hillbilly food is generally cheap and nutritious. A self respecting Hillbilly will know the market price of most of his diet and when the store gets to shoving it a little too high he will change his diet and go right on. A Hillbilly generally has a garden that produces good food and there are chickens and hogs and maybe a steer getting fat for family consumption. And these people live all over the world. Southeast Asians are eating forest rats right now. Other meat is too high and they have switched and gone to eating the rats. India is encouraging it. That might make you gag and choke but you better look up the squirrel family and see where it belongs. If you see the word rodentia that means it is a member of the rat family.



Hillbillies around the world are doing what they can to stay alive and eat their meals in a regular fashion. It doesn't matter where they live. What matters is the heart that is in them. They are people who don't like others messing around in their lives and they prize their privacy. Their family and friends matter to them. Outsiders don't carry as much weight. Sorta like some people around this country. People who just want to be left alone to pursue their lives.



Poor people are just used to getting by the best way they can and this is what surviving is all about. I was reading Commander Zero the other day and he said he had over 20,000 22LR shells in his stash. Wonderful! The person I really get a laugh out of is Comrade Simba. You can find him at http://www.comradesimba.com/blog/ and he is a hoot. He has a knack for telling the god-awful truth in a humorous way. But he is a stout hearted prepper and means to stay with it. A good read and worth your time.



I am thinking about Garlic. I have missed planting Fall Garlic for the last two years and I think it is time to remedy the situation. Garlic is great for what ails you. It is also great for cooking. And you can make a damn good bug spray out of the stuff. I used it and it worked. The stuff is fine with me! The Handmaiden treated her kitten's ear mites with Garlic and Mullein Oil and it seems to have worked. She treated it twice and the kitten shows no sign of scratching her ears anymore. The Handmaiden did not make the oil, she bought it. But she is on to it now and I would say it is only a matter of time before she moves into that arena.



The Handmaiden is daily processing tomato sauce using tomatoes from our garden. She makes a pot of the stuff and when it has finished she freezes it. The freezer depends on the electrical grid but while we are on it we will have tomato sauce. So be it. She is also sun drying tomato slices. She really likes the taste of sun dried tomatoes. She has her first batch of dried onion bits and it quite pleased with the results. All of this kind of stuff makes for good tasting meals on a poorly financed survival budget. If you are poor you just have to make do. We have purchased a lot of food and now it is time to make it instead of buying it. The satisfaction and the taste is so very edifying when it comes from your own seat off of your own ground. I guess what I am saying is get busy and MAKE your preps if you cannot afford to buy. The Handmaiden is freezing Lamb's Quarters about every weekend. They grow in abundance down at her Amish friend Lydia's farm and Lydia does not fool with them. Tells the Handmaiden to go pick all she wants. Can't beat the price!



I watched a great video today showing a guy making Elderberry syrup. Got my hunger up pretty good! But he was picking the berries in the hills of Washington and I was just watching to see a big bear come out of the scrub and eat his ass. It was wild country and here was this wild food guy picking Elderberries out on a lark. I could do that, as long as I had a friend with a 12 gauge slug gun watching over me. The interesting thing was the wild yeast that coats the berries. Find the right berries and you would have the makings of some great wine.



That is all for now. Stay alive!



Michael



mboone@rtccom.net