So how well did we calculate for y2k?

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This post could be under food or energy but wry humor looks best to me this Saturday.

OK, so we're 3 months into 2000.

Jerry was assigned water/energy and I was in charge of food in our division of labor for y2k. We have some lovely outgassing L-16's that need both air and warmpth in what I planned as our basement bathroom in the new house. Other than that "he done good."

I just cooked another round of hot cereal for him. We are into the third box of way too many boxes of cream of wheat. I am at the end of the first 50# bag of high gluten wheat flour out of 300#. I have been making all the bread we eat since 1/1/2000. The 100 # of potatoes are an unbelievable amount of potatoes to eat. What WAS I thinking. I finally used 1 pound of beans--and they lasted a week as side dishes. The spam is great as "ham salad" but losing it's appeal after 3 months.

We will be plowing through this stuff for years. So my question is, how are all you who prepared doing out there with your food stuffs? Are you too doing your best to eat through it? Are you laughing, as I am, at the sheer quantity of it all?

-- Pam (jpjgood@penn.com), April 08, 2000

Answers

Hi, Pam. We are laughing. Yes, and very soon will not be able to look at another bean or grain of rice. Do you remember the Monty Python skit about Spam? That's us.

-- Very (Grateful@still.here), April 08, 2000.

Hi Promethius-- I'm not saying it's all over. We have been having trouble with the power this week. And I prepped when Russia invaded Afghanistan--let alone for y2k. BUT, I planned for more than the two of us for this year. The potatoes and carrots and 15 jars of mayo will only keep so long. We are doing our best to eat it and then I see the cans of vegies (make that CASES of vegies) and the peanut butter and the oatmeal AND THE BEANS and I just have to laugh.

-- Pam (jpjgood@penn.com), April 08, 2000.

It is impossible to rotate this shit. Especially if you bought for more than your immediate family.

Store what you eat = eat what you store is bullshit advice! How many of us eat canned food on a regular basis - PERIOD? The stuff is laden with salt, preservatives, fat, and mostly useless calories that will deteriate your arteries if you try to consume it to get rid of it.

Rotate it occasionally into your diet and shitcan the rest. Charities are willing to take it off your hands.

2 months food storage is realistic. Beyond that - you'll wish you were dead!

-- (doomerstomper@usa.net), April 08, 2000.


Yep: and all the canned beans will soon start bubbling once opened. Good thing we only bought 3 years' worth or so it seems. What about all the clear plastic-bottled water expiring very soon right now in my basement? Keep that for emergency flushing? Or set the canned sardines free in it? jmfung@hotmail.com

-- Mahkel Maile (jmfung@hotmail.com), April 08, 2000.

Well, Pam, even though I was a Polly, I DID store some stuff in 1998. It can go quickly with a little ingenuity.

Peanut butter wasn't a problem. We go through it quickly. We haven't been eating oatmeal lately, however, so I've used it in meatloaf and in oatmeal cookies. I don't like spam, so never purchased that, but the summer sausages and canned meats like vienna sausages are already gone. [There's a protein nut in this house. I just haven't quite figured out yet who it is.] I still have canned nuts, but the next time I make cookies, I'll throw those in the blender and forget about purchasing nuts for those oatmeal cookies.

Instant mashed potatoes can be placed atop a meatloaf and thrown in the oven to make a nice glaze. [You make the potatoes first and throw the RESULTS on the meatloaf.] The flakes themselves make a FINE batter for fish, chicken, pork, etc. I like that one so much that I keep a spoon in the instant mashed potato box just to scatter some of those flakes over fresh meats. It doesn't matter if the expiration date is past. An instant potato flake is an instant potato flake. Jams/jellies ALSO make a GREAT topping for pork.

I've been making home-made yogurt from dry-milk. I throw in canned fruit as well. This requires a small jar of yogurt be purchased as a starter, but anything that uses up dry milk is okay in my book.

Canned veggies are going quickly as well. You might try looking for recipes on the DelMonte site for creative cooking ideas with canned vegetables. Contrary to what another poster stated, canned vegetables actually have quite a bit of nutrition. I found information on that in 1998 and would be glad to offer the URL upon request.

The charcoal purchased for cooking outdoors is being used [outside of the two bags that SO gave away to his daughter for her birthday BBQ party.] The self-igniting stuff lost its ability to self-ignite, but still burns if one sprinkles some charcoal fluid on it.

The bottled water is being used during dry periods for the container garden on the front driveway. Our droughts come in August, so the water will still help the beans, spinach, tomatoes, etc. at that time. Plants don't care if the water is old.

I DID purchase a package of maxi-pads, and here I would agree with the "What WAS I thinking?" No one in this house uses them. However, I have an internet friend who was recently looking for some classical music for home-schooling purposes, and we have tons of cassettes which I will send that have been replaced by CD's. SHE still uses maxi-pads, and I'll send those in the package as well as the packages of ice-cube trays [my alternative in case the refrigerator didn't work], as her children can use them to mix paints for art projects.

The canned hams [and I would think the same would work for spam and other canned meats] were chopped along with fresh onion, pepper, etc. for entrance into breakfast omelettes. The leftovers were eaten by the protein freak....still anonymous.

The Dinty Moore meals were MY real concern until I was too lazy one night to cook and offered one to SO. Since then, I notice the packages in the garbage almost every day. It seems he likes them....great mid-day snacking there. Be very lazy and someone will help themselves to whatever is there.

If you need recipes that include foods you have that you don't really want, just ask. I'm sure I have one for EVERYTHING. I've ventured into areas I never would have previously considered, simply because I had the stuff at hand.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), April 08, 2000.



Pam, I agree, I'm sick to death of looking at beans and rice and oatmeal and pasta. I swear that stuff is breeding in the basement. I only bought 30 # of potatoes and we are still working on them. I only had four cans of Spam but I fed it to the dogs. It's ungodly fat.

We gave the Ramen noodles to the mission kitchen in the next town, along with a lot of canned stuff. I hate all canned veggies except pickled beets and carrots. I don't think they're very good for you. Besides I love fresh, preferably that I've grown organically.

doomstomper, you are right! It is impossible to rotate this stuff, and a chore and a bore too. I now also agree that eat what you store and store what you eat is bullshit. We hardly ever eat canned food. Two months food storage or maybe three max, but no more.

Mahkel, one good thing about sardines is that they are so good for you and the shelf life is from 2 to 6 years. I like the silly things too.

I hate mashed potatoes in any form, but especially instant. Going to give them away.

Anita, I would really appreciate it if you would tell me how to make yogurt. I really don't want to buy a yogurt machine, considering all the money I've pissed off on my temporary insanity of FUD. I've got 50# of dry milk. Can you believe that?? And I look like a rather sane person when I'm just walking around. What were we thinking about??? NUTS listening to NUTS!!

What would you suggest to use up canned black beans? Thanks in advance. I'm impressed with your ingenuity. As you may have guessed, I really don't like to cook, but I feel obligated to use some of the less nasty stuff.

-- gilda (jess@listbot.com), April 08, 2000.


Good for you Anita....and my other comment is that IF YOU WERE HUNGRY you would be hugging those boxes of cream of wheat and cans of spam!! But we are not hungry! I personaly enjoy having my own grocery store in the house. However....we have a major problem with all the food. Chubby Hubby and I just had annual physicals,.... that hadn't been annual for about 7 years,.... and we both have cholesteral that is out of sight. So now we are on fat free diets. Obviously the diet does not include Spam or canned hams and bacon. However, we are eating the oat meal each morning and lots of homemade bread so I can control the amount of fat in it, with lots of jelly on it. Beans and rice are getting eaten. Fat free refried beans mixed with a can of creole fat free black beans, spread on a fat free tortilla with some fresh onion, lettuce and tomatoe is VERY GOOD. We eat lots of stuff wrapped in a tortilla. I lived in Mexico as a kid and I could live on tortillas and beans and be happy. But Chubby hubby is a meat and potato and gravy guy. But...to my surprise, all of those various gravy mixes that I bought are fat free. But can I interest anyone in some Velveeta Cheese?? LOL, That is one item I should never have bought. Yuk!!! All in all we are doing pretty good using our preps and figure if something happens and there is no food, we will eat the Spam, etc...cholesterol or not! I do intend to keep preps all the time. And as far as rotating stuff, I haven't found it to be a problem. The work was getting it all organized so I COULD rotate it. Also dated everythig before it was put away. All of the open polLinated seeds that I had so carefully collected pre y2k, are doing just great in the garden A couple of them I hadn't marked what they were so have a few bush beans in among my pole beans. But all came up just great including tomatoes and egg plant. We are now eating lettuce, chard, green onions and turnips from the garden and have tomatoes the size of golf balls. Y2k forced me to get off my butt and get organized... and I am grateful for the push. I am so stimulated now that I have started on the outside getting things picked up and put away BEFORE hurricane season. Usually I an running around in the rain and the wind trying to gather up anything that can blow. Bottom line? Chubby hubby and I did real good. And we sure enjoyed our 40 kw generator when the power was off a couple of days, and we are certainly enjoying our solar hot water heater. I do my washing and run the dishwasher during mid day and the hot water heater never comes on. Smug?? Yeah,.... kinda,.... I guess.

Taz

-- Taz (Tassie123@aol.com), April 08, 2000.


Good for you Anita....and my other comment is that IF YOU WERE HUNGRY you would be hugging those boxes of cream of wheat and cans of spam!! But we are not hungry! I personaly enjoy having my own grocery store in the house. However....we have a major problem with all the food. Chubby Hubby and I just had annual physicals,.... that hadn't been annual for about 7 years,.... and we both have cholesteral that is out of sight. So now we are on fat free diets. Obviously the diet does not include Spam or canned hams and bacon. However, we are eating the oat meal each morning and lots of homemade bread... so I can control the amount of fat in it, with lots of jelly on it. Beans and rice are getting eaten. Fat free refried beans mixed with a can of creole fat free black beans, spread on a fat free tortilla with some fresh onion, lettuce and tomatoe is VERY GOOD. We eat lots of stuff wrapped in a tortilla. I lived in Mexico as a kid and I could live on tortillas and beans and be happy. But Chubby hubby is a meat and potato and gravy guy. But...to my surprise, all of those various gravy mixes that I bought are fat free. But can I interest anyone in some Velveeta Cheese?? LOL, That is one item I should never have bought. Yuk!!! All in all we are doing pretty good using our preps and figure if something happens and there is no food, we will eat the Spam, etc...cholesterol or not! I do intend to keep preps all the time. And as far as rotating stuff, I haven't found it to be a problem. The work was getting it all organized so I COULD rotate it. Also dated everythig before it was put away. All of the open polLinated seeds that I had so carefully collected pre y2k, are doing just great in the garden A couple of them I hadn't marked what they were so have a few bush beans in among my pole beans. But all came up just great including tomatoes and egg plant. We are now eating lettuce, chard, green onions and turnips from the garden and have tomatoes the size of golf balls. Y2k forced me to get off my butt and get organized... and I am grateful for the push. I am so stimulated now that I have started on the outside getting things picked up and put away BEFORE hurricane season. Usually I an running around in the rain and the wind trying to gather up anything that can blow. Bottom line? Chubby hubby and I did real good. And we sure enjoyed our 40 kw generator when the power was off a couple of days, and we are certainly enjoying our solar hot water heater. I do my washing and run the dishwasher during mid day and the hot water heater never comes on. Smug?? Yeah,.... kinda,.... I guess.

Taz

-- Taz (Tassie123@aol.com), April 08, 2000.


I've made good use of some of the beans, rice and legumes - using the pressure cooker and Lorna Sass' cookbooks. If they had a Nobel Prize in Cooking she deserves it! She does use lots of beans and rice, but plenty of other ingredients which would never have been available post-TEOTWAWKI, which make gourmet, luxurious tasting food that is pretty healthy too. Gilda, if you have a pressure cooker, check out her recipes for black beans.

If no pressure cooker, I'd suggest Lorna Sass' Short-Cut Vegetarian I am not a vegetarian but find these recipes great! Well, it's true a book is one more thing to buy. But she makes cooking really delicious stuff, easy IMO, even if you don't care for cooking. (Whenever I cook ad lib it comes out kind of dismal - I need recipes for inspiration.)

We wish we had not bought all that white rice - 150 pounds of it just sits there! We are eating only the brown rice, one 25-lb. bag, and that's almost all used up now. "What was I thinking?" - oh yeah! As I remember, the white rice was the cheapest food I could find, with the purpose of "fending off the starving hordes." heh heh

150 pounds of pinto beans is mostly unused. I musta been in a coma as I went out and kept buying more and more bags of pinto beans, just because they were cheap and available in Sam's Club. The split peas, black beans, chick peas, lentils, and white beans are so much more delicious and versatile, and not too much more costly. If I was going to stock up, those are what I should have stocked up with more of, instead of the pinto beans! So we will be buying more of those.

We are more less Zoners and like to keep our carb consumption down, so we are sort of rationalizing that at least these are all good carbs anyway. :-)

Bought few canned veges - don't like em- but the canned tuna, chicken, and ham, we are using plenty of that. No freeze-dried survival foods, thank goodness, except for a sample pail from Lumen Foods. Gag me with a spoon - it looks gross and we keep postponing trying it.

The grocery bill is 60% lower than last year and will be for a long time. Finally broke the JIT style of shopping and eating, not running around at the last minute going "There's nothing to eat!" and running to the market or the restaurant and spending a fortune (you always do when you're hungry). We are eating better and enjoying it more. Bulk buys of stuff on sale wherever possible. I always thought I couldn't get it together to plan ahead, but now that I have, there's no looking back.

No, I'm not one to go out in the garage every day and caress my preps ;-) but the food angle has worked out pretty well.

Now to find a taker for those pinto beans and white rice... And we have way, WAY more plastic buckets, lids, oxygen absorbers and mylar bags than we'll ever use...

-- Debbie (dbspence@usa.net), April 08, 2000.


I didn't spend myself silly, just a little here, and some more there. Still rotating what I have, and not run out of ways to come up with some inventive meals. But, here in So. Calif., only a nut case waits till the BIG one hits, or the next fire storm comes through or there are flash floods that knock out all the roads. This is not a stable area.

Spam? Well, hate to make this confession, but I like the stuff. Although I am heavier on the Dutch and Danish pressed hams than Spam.

No regretts here.

-- Richard (Astral-Acres@webtv.net), April 08, 2000.



About canned beans of any kind: mash them, spice them nicely to your own taste, and keep a stash in the freezer/fridge as a wonderful spread on toast, or heat them as a nice side to meats. Chopped garlic, a touch of basil-flakes, perhaps ground coriander etc. will do wonders to the spread. And don't forget the fresh parsley.

-- Mahkel (jmfung@hotmail.com), April 08, 2000.

Gilda:

Toss me an E-mail and I'll send you some URL's on home-made yogurt. I'm sure I can find a recipe for canned black beans, although that's something NOT in my cupboard. No need to purchase a yogurt maker. You can even go further and make a soft cheese from the finished yogurt that makes a GREAT cheesecake, lined with canned fruits.

BTW, I've never liked canned veggies either. HOWEVER, I learned that the green-bean casserole with the mushroom soup and onion rings recipe turns out GREAT with canned green-beans. I've found other casserole recipes on the net that utilize a wide array of canned vegetables mixed with various pasta types, spices, etc. combined with leftover meats. Of course since you're a vegetarian, many of these recipes are inappropriate, but I'm sure they'd be just as tasty sans the meat.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), April 08, 2000.


I really don't want to buy a yogurt machine, considering all the money I've pissed off on my temporary insanity of FUD.

You are so funny gilda!

Word to the wise on o2 absorbers -- I just noticed mine are no good. Bought them a year ago from the mormon cannery. The little pink pill is purple now. I remember reading a few months ago that they only have a shelf life of 6 months or so. Figured I better check mine. Might want to use yours up Debbie.

-- (doomerstomper@usa.net), April 08, 2000.


Hi Anita-- How about posting how to make the cheesecake? Dried milk to cheesecake sounds great to me.

-- Pam (jpjgood@penn.com), April 08, 2000.

"As for me...I shall continue to rotate my stocks LOL..."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Shakey~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-- Shakey (ina_bunker@forty.feet), April 09, 2000.



Gilda:

YOU don't like to cook? I'm the official microwave queen! My home-made cooking consisted of a microwave lasagna with a salad on the side. Remember that old Folger advertisement about a mountain coming to a town near you? Well, a mountain moved me into the kitchen to start using some of this stuff....combined with the time to actually figure out where to start.

I'll provide URL's to some stuff tomorrow [actually today now, I see] for those of you interested.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), April 09, 2000.


Here's a site that not only tells one HOW to make yogurt at home from dry milk, but includes trouble-shooting information if you don't like the results.

Making Yogurt At Home

If you are accustomed to the more custard-type of consistency in yogurt, another site said you can add half an envelope of unflavored gelatin to the mixture before culturing.

Pam: The cheese is made from the yogurt. You simply put some yogurt in a clean cloth and hang it from your kitchen faucet overnight. The excess liquid drips through the cloth into the sink, leaving the equivalent of a soft cheese. There's a name for this cheese, just as there's a name for the excess liquid, but I don't remember them right now.

They call it Cheese Pie, but I made this one, Pam, and it tasted delicious. I would think even Taz and Chubby Hubby could eat it if she used the no-fat coolwhip. I had the mandarin oranges already, but found their taste a little bitter to just eat from the can.

MANDARIN ORANGE CHEESE PIE Time to serve: 2 hours or overnight 8 servings 8 oz. cream cheese, softened 1/4 cup orange marmalade 2 cups frozen whipped topping, thawed 2 cans (11 oz. or 15 oz. each) DEL MONTE. Mandarin Oranges, well drained 1 (9-inch) ready-to-use or homemade graham cracker pie crust

Blend cream cheese and orange marmalade; stir in whipped topping. Place a single layer of oranges on bottom of pie crust. Spoon cream cheese mixture over oranges. Garnish with all remaining oranges. Cover and chill 2 hours or overnight. Garnish with remaining whipped topping. Get Creative: For variety, try using other Del Monte Fruits, such as Pineapple, Sliced Peaches or Pears.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), April 09, 2000.


Gilda:

This site could help with some recipes for canned black beans. I clicked on the Spicy Hot Black Beans and Tomatoes sublink and in addition to the recipe, there was a recipe archive for veggies A to Z.

Black Beans

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), April 09, 2000.


Last, but not least, here's a site which explains the results of a 1997 study comparing the nutritional value of canned vegetables/fruits to their fresh or frozen counterparts.

Canned Foods and Nutrition

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), April 09, 2000.


Sometimes I laugh and sometimes I cry.

So far most of the cans sit while we enjoy fresh foods. I would feel alright if I wasn't feeling "pressured" to use items because of expiration dates. I don't worry about the rice and beans because they last forever.

I have given away alot and still have SOOOOO much. Oh well, live and learn.

My son who is in college comes home to do his grocery shopping in my pantry. My 18 and 13 year olds bring their friends to my house after school for their "after school meals"...and that brings a smile to my face. Now if only I can turn them on to Dinty Moore Beef Stew! :)

-- Debra (mypantryis@full.com), April 09, 2000.


Anita, I can't believe it. There are actually many more recipes for black beans, than I have of black beans. This is wonderful.

But the dried milk was so expensive, I really feel I should use some of it. Thanks a lot.

I having started cooking some of this stuff, but like Debra, I really prefer fresh food.

-- gilda (jess@listbot.com), April 09, 2000.


Anita--Thank you. I have all the ingredients. Have made yogurt cheese last year from fresh milk and have the Rhodale cookbook recipe for the dry milk kind. I made oodles of jam last year too including orange marmalade just in case we never got oranges here in PA again! Boy was I prepared.

-- Pam (jpjgood@penn.com), April 09, 2000.

Although I have the feeling Pam started this thread to commiserate with others who have a ton of preserved food to deal with, I'll share my tale, too.

In normal times our household stored from one to two months of food in the basement pantry. It wasn't very systematic storage, either. We only wanted to stock up on sale items. We also buy some items in bulk that we know we use on a regular basis, like canned tomatos.

For Y2K, we became systematic. We wanted to bulk up to about 4 months of food, vitamins and common non-food items. We wanted something like a balanced diet out of our pantry, so we bought some things we normally didn't store much.

So far, it looks like the canned fruit is going to last us several years at the rate we're eating it. Just about everything else is on track to disappear in the next year to 16 months. In order to achieve this, we are not really changing our normal diet very much. Maybe one meal a week is overly influenced by the need to draw down the pantry.

When we get down to about a month's worth of any item, we'll start buying and stocking it up again. We won't need to toss anything out. We may increase our donations to the food bank, but we aren't feeling any pressure to do that.

-- Brian McLaughlin (brianm@ims.com), April 09, 2000.


Hi Brian-- The title of my post really expressed my feelings of bemusement early on a Saturday morning. I'm quite decent at math but my miscalculations about and for y2k suddenly hit me. I guess I just wanted to share the small humor that a relatively competent person had calculated carefully, bought carefully and had wound up with SUCH A MOUND OF STUFF.

-- Pam (jpjgood@penn.com), April 09, 2000.

Wait a minute, Brian-- I just reread your post. Sounds like you too are experiencing the "self replicating food syndrome". You wanted to store 4 months of food, right? You say you are on track and it will take the next year to 16 months to eat that 4 months supply, right? Well, I think that's exactly what has happened to my supplies. I must be pretty slow today not to notice the humor sooner.

-- Pam (jpjgood@penn.com), April 09, 2000.

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