Typical books about preserving garden produce nearly always assume that modern “kitchen gardeners” will boil or freeze their vegetables and fruits.
Yet Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning goes back to the future—celebrating traditional but little-known French techniques for storing and preserving edibles in ways that maximize flavor and nutrition.
Translated into English, and with a new foreword by Deborah Madison, Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning deliberately ignores freezing and high-temperature canning in favor of methods that are superior because they are less costly and more energy-efficient.
As Eliot Coleman says in his foreword to the first edition, “Food preservation techniques can be divided into two categories: the modern scientific methods that remove the life from food, and the natural ‘poetic’ methods that maintain or enhance the life in food. The poetic techniques produce… foods that have been celebrated for centuries and are considered gourmet delights today.”
Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning offers more than 250 easy and enjoyable recipes featuring locally grown and minimally refined ingredients. It is an essential guide for those who seek healthy food for a healthy world.
I can’t stress how much food production is important for preppers. I don’t care how much you store, you will eventually run out. Being able to produce and store food is vital.
The Complete Tightwad Gazette is along-awaited complete compendium of tightwad tips for fabulous frugal living!
In a newsletter published from May 1990 to December 1996 as well as in three enormously successful books, Amy Dacyczyn established herself as the expert of economy.
Now The Complete Tightwad Gazette brings together all of her best ideas and thriftiest thinking into one volume, along with new articles never published before in book format.
Dacyczyn describes this collection as “the book I wish I’d had when I began my adult life.” Packed with humor, creativity, and insight, The Complete Tightwad Gazette includes hundreds of tips and topics, such as:
Travel for tightwads
How to transform old blue jeans into potholders and quilts
Ten painless ways to save $100 this year
Picture-framing for pennies
A comparison of painting versus re-siding your house
Halloween costumes from scrounged materials
Thrifty window treatments
Ways to dry up dry-cleaning costs
Inexpensive gifts
Creative fundraisers for kids
Slashing your electric bill
Frugal fix-its
Cutting the cost of college
Moving for less
Saving on groceries
Gift-wrapping for tightwads
Furniture-fusion fundamentals
Cheap breakfast cereals
Avoiding credit card debt
Using items you were about to throw away (milk jugs, plastic meat trays, and more!)
The Complete Tightwad Gazette also contains recipes galore, from penny-pinching pizza to toaster pastries¸ And much much more . . .
I first heard of eMeals several years ago from Dave Ramsey, and I subscribed for about a year. I found the service to be very easy, and only let it lapse because I changed banks and was too lazy to change the account.
Now that we have a baby, and I am busier with classes and night shift I wanted to find an easier way to eat better without having to put a lot of thought into it.
I was very surprised when I went back to the eMeals site and saw how many new plans they have now – my wife and I spent some time “talking” about what would be better. I wanted slow-cooker for simplicity, or the Aldi plan for frugality – but the clean eating plan won. I couldn’t even get a compromise on the slow cooker clean eating plan.
Oh well, if that’s what Genny wants, I can accommodate – after all, how many wives will let their crazy husbands grow fish in the basement or run a steam engine on the stove…
I recommend you looking at their site, even if you don’t subscribe to their service, they have a very good concept, and I think you will be well served by checking it out.
They also have a referral program, that I learned about as I went back to reactivate my service – if you have a website you can make a little from passing the word around. If you click on the link from my site, I make a small percentage of your purchase – but its okay – its going into the I want some land fund, I promise I won’t use it to pay tuition at Diamond Dave’s Ninji School.
This is the first guest post I have added since opening up the blog to other writers. I have been interested in Dogs for Personal Protection for a long time, and at one time did a little work helping train some protection dogs, but I realized I don’t have the attention to detail that it takes to be successful. This is one area where you need some help and guidance from someone with lots of experience.
Dogs for Personal Protection
Any of us are susceptible to an invasion of our home or personal space. Having another soul to rely on can make a situation a lot less frightening and a lot more safe. A dog, for example, can be not only an extremely loyal companion, but an excellent source of security.
General Positives and Negatives of Owning a Dog for Protection
Positives
Safety – if you live in a big city, bad neighborhood, etc. having a dog can be a constant reassurance of safety, and in general the image of a dog being with you makes you less susceptible for attack
Confidence/fulfillment – achieving goals with your dog is motivating and helps you feel accomplished
Companionship/emotional support – having a dog can be highly stress relieving
Socializing – you meet a host of people when involving yourself in training dogs
Negatives
Responsibility comes with owning a dog – and that means time on the owner’s part. You gain respect and loyalty through your efforts, however, which is well worth it.
Expenses, such as training and maintenance costs
There’s a chance of aggression in a high-drive dog if mis-trained or improperly bred
Frustration and difficulty – dogs can be very hard to understand for the uninformed, and it can be difficult to help them learn something when you are unaware of how they learn. At times, dogs also can be stubborn, which is why consistency is extremely important. Getting all others who may live with the dog on the same page can also be cause of further hindrance.
Remorse if your dog is hurt or killed from protecting you
Choosing a Breed
If you don’t already have a dog, or are considering obtaining one for safety, than there are some more capable of protection than others. It’s also important that you find a reputable breeder, preferably one specializing in high drive dogs (dogs that are not docile, but love to work), with a healthy and impressive pedigree.
Great breeds to work with for personal protection:
German Shepherd
Malinois
Dutch Shepherd
Rottweiler
Mastiff (variety)
Pit Bull (variety)
Doberman Pinscher
Dogo Argentino
Cane Corso
BoerBoel
Ridgeback (variety)
Akita Inu
These such dogs could be effectively trained to not only watch, but act. There are certain breeds designated to alert (many small breeds), and others to react quickly – the protection dog. The German sport Schutzhund (literally “protection dog”) has rules and a scoring system which are effective standards of everything a protection dog should be able to do – obedience, tracking, and protection. Tracking is often the least interesting when dealing with personal protection, and more appealing to police and investigative work.
Expenses
There are drawbacks with this method of safety assurance, such as the costs of the dog itself (a good German Shepherd on average is $1300.00), maintenance, as well as having the patience, time, and money to train. You’ll need the proper equipment, such as body suites or hidden arm sleeves, which are rather expensive, and not easy to make from scratch.
Preparation
Giving the dog the ultimate amount of exposure possible is also necessary, such as preparing him/her for as many situations as you can. Mondeo and French Ring Sport are great sports which challenge the dog’s courage and reaction traits.
Situations to be prepared for:
Yelling/threatening
Gun Shots
Attacking from a car window
Assault on owner or dog itself
Masks (on the offender)
Attacking in narrow spaces
Purse snatching
etc.
The more varied the environment and situation the dog is trained in, the better suitable he/she will be as an attack dog.
Considering a Dog for Protection?
The first place to start is to find a reputable breeder, with proper papers to prove a satisfactory bloodline in the dog. In America, AKC certified dogs do not mean a dog is of good quality, so keep this in mind. Germany, on the other hand, has very strict breeding practices in their country as far as qualifications go. It’s best to do your research beforehand. Note that if you already have a dog, it is very possible to train him/her in protection – it just may take more time and effort. It will not always happen, as some dogs are simply just too docile/submissive.
Secondly, you should supply yourself with proper equipment and a trainer if you don’t wish to self-educate. Good trainers usually have titled dogs in protection sports, or have a list of references of the work they’ve accomplished. If you get a puppy, train early!
Dogs have shown to be courageous hero’s in wars, police work, and for personal guarding. Most dogs have an intuition in and of themselves, and are aware of their surroundings when need be, making dogs an excellent form of defense.
Black Swan events are events hat comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight. Most preppers are preparing for such events.
The Black Swan describes black swan theory and how to thrive during such occurrences.The Author shows in a playful way that Black Swan events explain almost everything about our world, and yet we—especially the experts—are blind to them.
In this second edition, Taleb has added a new essay, On Robustness and Fragility, which offers tools to navigate and exploit a Black Swan world.
The idea of anti-fragility – being robust in the face of danger is something that we preparedness minded folks should understand and internalize.
I reccomend this book just for the added essay, but the entire book is definitely worth reading if you are a thinker type.
If you are a doer, and don’t care how things work then that’s okay too, It is easy to get bog down in the academic. I know that as I sit in my classes I am waiting for the nuggets of practical use.
I know that these things are important, but how can I use the information to make my life better…..
The Complete Tightwad Gazette is along-awaited complete compendium of tightwad tips for fabulous frugal living!
This is the first guest post I have added since opening up the blog to other writers. I have been interested in Dogs for Personal Protection for a long time, and at one time did a little work helping train some protection dogs, but I realized I don’t have the attention to detail that it takes to be successful. This is one area where you need some help and guidance from someone with lots of experience.
Black Swan events are events