If Not Already Prepared.

[ShooterTom]

Stock up at on least three weeks worth of food and water. I believe things are about to get interesting.

 

Tom

[FC]

Amen to that!

[Dr.Hess]

Yeah.

[karlunity]

Yep 

karl 

[rdm1962]

I think when we are 6 months in to President Harris adminstration the real craziness will begin. It will take her that long to get get all the executive order in place. 

[AzRednek]

I have to re think my food stash. I’m in good shape for weeks BUT only as long as I have electricity. If I lose power with no fuel for my generator I’ll have a freezer full of spoiled food. I do have two nearby Mexican grocery stores that sell dry ice if necessary. Guess I need to stock up on canned and dry goods. 

[Dr.Hess]

A 50 lb sack of rice and a 50 lb sack of beans, some spices, salt and you have an emergency food source in the person-month range.  I forget exactly how long that will feed an adult, but it is a long time.  Cost is very minimal and it will store virtually forever in plastic 5 gal buckets with no electricity needed.

[manureman]

1 of the big galvanized garbage cans with a lid (mouse proof) will hold a 50 pound bag of oats a 50 pound bag of rice a 25 pound bag of pinto beans 5 pounds of pasta and 1 pound box of salt and not much more. 
   I bought my oats , beans and pasta from the Dutch store but Sams was way cheaper on the rice

  

[Dr.Hess]

What's "The Dutch Store"?  Is it an actual Dutch store?

 

And BTW, white rice is what you want to store.  "They Say" brown rice doesn't keep very long.

[manureman]

  Lots of Mennonite’s in this part of the world Doc, they call a lot of they’re business’s Dutch Country this that and the next thing.

   They make a very good living marketing they’re goods this way, particularly to the tourist heading to the lake.

   

[Dr.Hess]

OK.  We have some here as well.  They have a couple stores, but don't call anything "Dutch."  My friend has a bunch of them as friends.  His wife worked at one of their restaurants out in the sticks.  He said they they will come over and drink all your beer.

 

[AzRednek]

When I had my uniform store I had a lot of interactions with Mennonites. During the winter months they would send the elderly and lame to an apartment complex across the street. I used to stack cardboard boxes by my back door and they would usually disappear in a day. Saved me from crushing or paying more for a larger garbage container. The Mennonites would not take a cardboard box without asking permission and offering to pay for it. A couple times they offered to barter for the boxes by sweeping the parking lot or washing my windows.

There were some younger late teens that looked after them. One drove their van from back east for those that were afraid to fly to Phoenix. He would get bored and about once a week he came looking for a job then want to hang around and talk. I was a bit taken back by his lack of knowledge of current events. I know they don’t have tv’s but I don’t believe he ever picked up a newspaper. He had no knowledge about the LA riots and Rodney King situation. He told my brother he was an apprentice leather smith. 
 

After I expanded into medical uniforms I discovered they had two RN’s that accompanied the old folks. They both worked part time at a hospital about a quarter mile away. One of them had a real sweet personality the other one the opposite. The snooty one almost comically would make a real effort to avoid eye contact. I think my partner must have said something to her as she completely ignored him. My partner often offered can I buy you a beer to female customers he was hoping to get lucky with.  She gave me a bad time about the way I hemmed her white trousers and operated a blind stitching machine. Insisting I roll the cuff rather than cutting off the excess with pinking shears and sew the hem conventionally rather than blind stitching. They both decided after they had a short conversation in an unknown language to do it themselves. Guess they didn’t like my amateurish self taught sewing skills. The sweet one came by a few days later wanting to buy a spool of white thread. My thread was on large spools so I spun thread on a couple bobbins for her. I told her no charge and a few days later she returned with the bobbins and left over thread.

I missed it after the Mennonites got PO’d after some bikini clad sunbathers in an adjacent apartment complex refused to move out of their sight. I was told one of the sun bathers threatened a crippled up old man physically and cops were called. 

On the second winter visit a couple days before they departed. They treated us with fried chicken, home made biscuits and corn on the cob with real butter dinner. The fried chicken was some of the best I ever had. My brother suspected the chicken was fried in lard. I couldn’t tell and didn’t care it was really good. 
 

 

[manureman]

  Yes sir that they will ! As a young teenager I was working for a neighbor one summer and he had bought a new piece of hay equipment, part of the deal was the dealer had to deliver it, mount it and make all adjustments where it was ready to work.

  The dealer had mostly Mennonite employees and one delivered it. We worked for hours in the sun trying to get that thing right and a couple hours into it that Mennonite mashed the hell out of his thumb trying to beat a pin in with a three pound hammer. He cussed in English and German both at the same time

using combinations that I’d never dreamed of , I mean he was good at it and I got tickled and got to laughing about it, made him even madder. 

  I apologized and explained I wasn’t laughing because he mashed his thumb but because I never dreamed that they even new those kind of words let alone would dare even whisper them let alone let rip the way he was . 
  He laughed harder than me then and said “ oh hell we ain’t nothin but people too”
  

[AzRednek]

I once asked the young guy that drove the old people from back east why he was afraid to fly. His answer was they have plenty of those jet planes but there is only one me. I was working in my shop on a Sunday and watched the ones that could walk go to church. The fairly large crowd nearly stopped traffic as people slowed way down or stopped to see them in their Sunday dress. Women all wearing bonnets, granny boots and long plain dresses that they lifted just slightly to keep them from touching the ground. The men in dark suits most carrying bibles and they all looked like they just walked out of the early 1800’s. 

[AzRednek]

10 hours ago, manureman said:

  Lots of Mennonite’s in this part of the world Doc, they call a lot of they’re business’s Dutch Country this that and the next thing.

   They make a very good living marketing they’re goods this way, particularly to the tourist heading to the lake.

   

Several years ago my brother and his wife visited a Mennonite village in Pennsylvania to do some shopping. My sister in law told me they literally freaked out when she took a photo of a couple making potato chips in a large kettle. Guess there’s something in their religious values that doesn’t permit photographs of people. 
 

In 70 or 71 when I unsuccessfully tried to become an insurance agent for Farmers Insurance. A guy I started with both him and his wife grew up as Mennonites. He left and never returned after getting drafted and going to Nam as a conscientious objector. He drove fuel trucks and was once in combat when his truck convoy had a mortar attack. I felt bad for him as he was just to shy as a salesman and was fired for being non productive. It was a double whammy for him as his attractive wife worked in claims and got a managerial promotion about a week or so before he was canned. I ran into him a few years later. He was divorced and he went back to his Mennonite style dress. Wearing a straight billed hat, farmer’s coveralls, unkept beard but clean shaven mustache and face. He proudly bragged about just completing a GED coarse and was planning on going to Jr College. From what he told me his Mennonite education was just enough to learn basic math to handle money, reading, English and bible study. No US history beyond the early Mennonite settlers from Europe. 

[FC]

We've had real problems with a small moth getting into food. I've killed lots of the little boogers. They like to hang out on the ceiling. They're about 5/16" long and slender, gray-colored. They would eat through plastic. They got into my big bag of rice too. 

[Dr.Hess]

I would try sealing in the 5 gal plastic buckets, and purge the oxygen out of there first.  A common way to do it is to fill your bucket, put a block of dry ice (solid CO2) in, put the lid on loose, wait for the CO2 to go to gas, which will sink to the bottom and push out all the oxygen, then seal the bucket lid.  I put an additional seal of genuine UL listed Duct Tape (not Duck Tape) around the lid to make sure it stays sealed, but it is probably just overkill.

[AzRednek]

3 hours ago, Dr.Hess said:

I would try sealing in the 5 gal plastic buckets, and purge the oxygen out of there first.  A common way to do it is to fill your bucket, put a block of dry ice (solid CO2) in, put the lid on loose, wait for the CO2 to go to gas, which will sink to the bottom and push out all the oxygen, then seal the bucket lid.  I put an additional seal of genuine UL listed Duct Tape (not Duck Tape) around the lid to make sure it stays sealed, but it is probably just overkill.

During the Y2K scare a friend used large diameter plastic pipe to store rice. He sealed pipe caps with silicone. Right before he installed the final cap. He inserted a couple of lit candles. I didn’t see it but he claimed the burning candles used the oxygen and the suction pulled the cap tight. 

[manureman]

  I put my stuff inside 7ml Mylar bags with oxygen absorbers then use a food saver to vacuum the air out before heat sealing the bags then put them down in galvanized garbage cans to keep rodents out.

    I like fruit jars and oxygen absorbers a lot too , but worry about the jars breaking in certain situations . Mormons claim the above methods will make pasta beans and rice ......keep for decades.

  Salt, sugar , honey and maple syrup are considered forever foods and aren’t supposed to require any special packaging to last