Good Sabbath to you all! Hope you had a great Valentines Day. I find it interesting how St. Valentine was a martyr for Christianity. He died February 14, 270 A.D. when he was beaten then beheaded by the Roman Emperor Claudius II for first performing marriage ceremonies when it was illegal, and then after his arrest when he met the Emperor, who was very impressed with him, he tried to convert the Emperor to Christianity (which brought about his sentence of imminent beating and beheading). A long time ago, I was told St. Valentines day was the day you told people how you truly felt about them (love or loath).. Anyway I found some interesting info on St. Valentines day, and wow, this is a busy day in history!
Ok, well onto other things..I have sooo much information to share it isn't even funny.. Does anyone by any chance have a template for a newsletter? I need one, that way I can send out a newsletter weekly too.. M and I made the recipe below, and everyone loved them. They were a great treat to have for our St. Valentines Day dessert. We are freezing some to see how well they freeze.
Tips: Where are you storing your dry canned and white bucket foods? Do not store any food on cement or dirt floors. Why??? Moisture and condensation, you would hate to have cans rusting, or moldy grains. So please put them up, atleast on a pallet so they are not in direct contact with the floor. And yes ALL canning lids have BPA on them. So do any food grade plastics. This is why we do not recommend heating foods in plastic. You may want to consider lining your plastic buckets with mylar before filling (mylar bags for buckets), I am researching places to get these bags. So far I have not sure a liner in my buckets, but I would like to. Also very important: what temperature is the room your food storage is in at?? Did you know the ideal temp for food storage is ..... 40 degrees or less? NOT freezing, but pretty cold. The cooler the temp, the longer the food will store. Dry pack foods will store longer. But home canned foods should be eaten in about a year or two. We eat a lot of home canned foods, and we rotate them pretty quickly. I love home canning as I can control what is in my food :)
Canning Lids and White Food grade buckets: Also, I have a source for white buckets with lids (remember you need to wash them as soon as you get them), looks like they will run $2 each and I will be placing an order the later March or early April; I am looking for another source though.. As for cannind lids, I am still working on a good source, but will hopefully have info on this soon.
Grain Mills: I am soo very excited, my new Country Living Grain mill has arrived. It does need to be attached to something sturdy. A sister in Duvall has her's attached to her center island as she uses it daily. I too will be attaching mine permanently, but not until after we have our RS meeting so I can show it too you, along with my other one. Also when we have this meeting, please bring your grain mills as well (with your name on it!!) so we can all see the different kinds. Again, I do not and will not recommend stone grinders as they are well known for glazing over and hence being useless and also they lose stone into your flour which grinds your teeth down (not good). I have an excellent place to get grain mills so we won't have to pay sales tax. (I'm all for not paying too many taxes)
The Scoop on Garden Seeds
It’s time to purchase and/or order the right seeds for your food garden. For those of you who grow your starts from seeds, it’s time to start your shallots now
One of the confusions for those of us who are new vegetable gardeners is to understand the difference between HYBRID, HEIRLOOM and GMO (genetically-modified) seed so we can make the right seed choice for our individual families. So, Kathryn of Frog Chorus Farm in Snohomish has written a humdinger of an article for us and posted it on her website, Grow Food At Home.
The link for the report is:
Advanced Organizer for the article:
Pages 1-4 Introduction and Basic Genetics
Pages 4-6 Heirloom and Hybrid seeds (based on the genetics discussion)
Pages 6-7 GMO Seeds
Pages 7-9 Implications in the Age of GMO’s: Fears and Myths
At the Country Living Expo in Stanwood on Jan 30, Dr. Carol Miles from the WSU Skagit Valley Extension Service talked about the importance of buying quality seed that is right for your area. Her favorites are from Johnny’s Seeds (in Maine) and Territorial Seed in Oregon. Peaceful Valley also produces quality organic seed and Ed Hume’s Seed is developed outside of Puyallup. Why is it important to know where your seed came from?
First of all, read the Territorial Seed Catalog from cover to cover. It’s FULL of helpful and interesting information to help you grow things. You can pick one up for 25 cents at your local Ace Hardware Store or order a catalog online. This catalog teaches you a lot of things about how to grow vegetables successfully in our area.
When Territorial Seed, Johnny’s Seeds or Ed Hume’s Seeds tell you the number of days to that seed’s maturity/ harvest, seed, they are far more accurate when talking about our area of Western Washington. For example, Gurney’s (Midwest) specifies that their Early Contender Bush Bean needs 49 days to maturity. The Ed Hume variety specifies 70 days to maturity. If you plant bush beans and expect them to be ready to eat in 50 days and it’s another 2 ½ weeks until they even look remotely ripe, you can get discouraged. Furthermore, since you plan your planting for the season, your entire schedule will need to be revamped depending upon your crop cycle.
We purchase our Gourmet Lettuce Blend from Johnny’s, our Kale, Beets, Collards and Beans from either Ed Hume or Territorial Seed and they do what they SAY they do in terms of days to maturity and germination and planting tips that have helped us have food.
Fred Meyer:
Large Navel oranges $0.58/#
Med. yellow onions or bulk carrots 3#/ $1.00
WITH COUPON:
Bandon Medium Cheddar 2-pound $3.99 each LIMIT 2
Kroger Corned Beef Brisket $1.79/# LIMIT 3 packages
Purex Laundry Detergent (50-oz liquid or 55-oz powder) or Softener (44-oz) $1.99 each LIMIT 2
What to add to your storage this week??? TOILET PAPER !! It is so annoying when you finally get your turn in the bathroom, only to find that the last person use the last of the TP and didn't put out a new roll, so you look under the sink, and there isn't any.. So you call for someone to bring you some.. only EVERYONE is outside! UGH... Finally someone comes in and you are told, "oh sorry there isn't any, I'll bring you a napkin".. (YUCK!!!).. When we were first married, we only needed 4 rolls a week, more when we had friends over, so ok, we needed closer to 8. We had friends over EVERY day, not kidding! And we fed them too! Anyway, We use 2 whole Costco Kirkland brand TP packages a month! But we use it for kleenex too. Sometimes we use less than that. So if you have to buy toilet paper, buy twice what you need, this will help you to stock up. But only if you can afford to. :)
REMEMBER, Fred Meyer and Walmart sales are from Sun to Sat. Everyone else is Wed to Tues. Kind of a pain in the neck. Also just because it says 10/$10 at safeway (SFWY) doesn't mean you have to buy 10. Although if it is something you will eat, check the dates when you are buying it, will you use that much or more in a year or before the expiration date?? Think yearly, not weekly or monthly. IF we ate tuna, 10 cans would be good for 5 to 10 months for us. But we don't, we can and eat our own chicken :) What about other conveniences?? Spices? IF you are looking to save money, sometimes making things from scratch is cheaper than buying convenience foods.
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