Busy Busy Busy

It's the busy time of year when there's lots of produce to be dealt with.  This weekend I canned salmon, pickled bean, asparagus and carrots, and deydrated bananas (yum).  Here's a few pics.

This is pink salmon.  Hubby absconded with a jar already for his fishing buddy.  I told him, this is why I can foods.  Because in the winter when pink salmon costs a fortune in the store, I'll have home-canned delicious salmon that cost a fraction of store-bought.  And it will taste better.

This is a "before" shot of the last of the salmon.

I also laid in a supply of Campbell's Low-Salt Ready-to-Serve soups on sale 65% off.  One can is a meal for two and no extra water is needed (although it does want salt). 

I've got more canning to do; I'm happy to report that Miss Deadbeat refuses to eat home-canned food 'cause it might poison her.  I'm not going to tell her differently.

Butter is on sale this week, so I'm hoping to make clarified butter and can it.  Jackie Clay's canning book has a recipe with instructions on how long to process (60 minutes in hot water bath).  Yay!  Unfortunately, this book is not available from Amazon right now.  Go to Backwoods Home Magazine's website to get her book, Growing and Canning Your Own Food.

Hubby still is not on board with prepping, but I believing canning is a great strategy to keep him from giving away too much stuff. 

New Thoughts on OpSec

I believe I mentioned that I have a new job at work.  I'm now "staff" which entailed a raise (yay), somewhat longer work hours (boo), a (shared) office and storage space in the form of my desk and a mostly empty filing cabinet.

I've been working on OpSec at work so that it won't seem odd to my workmates that I store things in my filing cabinet other than paperwork.  I've told them amusing anecdotes about hubby's diabetes and his love of chocolate, so they are quite understanding when I store "chocolate" and other "goodies" in the filing cabinet so he doesn't get into it and make himself ill.

I've also been telling people I'm "cheap" and I prefer to buy stuff when it's on sale, making a point to tell folks "such and such is on sale".  Why, just the other day, the gal at the next desk kindly saved me her coupons because she couldn't be bothered using them.  (Too bad they weren't for something food storage useful). The impression that I have been giving is that the stuff in the cabinet is chocolate and candy, and I occasionally actually buy some and put it in the drawer and make a bit of a production of taking a little bit home for hubby.

I'm also thinking about bringing in a plastic draw unit that can tuck under my desk in the back corner sometime when I'm the only one in.  The knee area is H-U-G-E, and properly positioned, the unit would only be visible if a person got down and looked.  Properly disguised, it could look like it's supposed to be there.  I need to give this further consideration!

Suddenly, I'm flashing on me as a kid and my granddad showing my brother and I the secret compartment in his roll-top desk!  Lol!

Canning and Drying and Pickling - Well, Mostly Dehydrating

Sorry I haven't been on in a while.  I've trying to figure out how to keep my preps where they belong, at home.

Things with the deadbeat got a bit melodramatic as she did something while doing drugs that had the whole hubby family up in arms, so the preps are a little safer.  Still, with my promotion at work, I now have a big locking file cabinet and room for personal stuff so I have some stuff stored there.  When hubby goes fishing, I bring the preps home and put them away where he wouldn't go looking for goodies.

Have done a lot of dehydrating - mainly strawberries and kiwi.  I have some potatoes that I plan to do up.  One thing is sure, I doubt hubby would be able to give away dehydrated potato flakes :).

Bottom line, though, prepping is going under deep cover.

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There's a newish show on Space called Outcasts that has been pretty interesting - people fleeing a war and ecologically ravaged Earth, and trying to make a new start on a planet called Carpathia.  Hopefully it won't disappoint the way Falling Skies has.

It's Been a While...

It's been a while since I last posted.  I've been kind of discouraged with hubby's insistence on being generous to someone who doesn't deserve it.  Come to find out his dead-beat sister has been doing drugs (again) and that's why she was so broke and starving. 

And he gave her stuff and lied to me about it, like I can't tell when something has gone missing.  So, he's just not going to know about or have access to my food storage.  And yes, I mean "my".  As I've mentioned before, he's decided if the poo hits the fan, he'll be one of the first to die, and his thinking stops there.  Apparently, if he's dead, nothing else matters.

Are you thinking what I'm thinking?  Maybe yes, maybe no.