consuming to invest 19

CONSUMING TO INVEST 19

Grain Grinder

A grain grinder does pay for itself pretty quickly.  Just in whole wheat flour alone, you spend fifty cents a pound in the store ( and, it is already partially rancid.  Not like brown rice which has different oils and really goes “off”, but with old wheat flour, if nothing else, you’ve lost vitamins ), and that is the cheap stuff.  Sometimes you are spending seventy-five cents a pound.  The feed store sells whole wheat kernels for twenty-five cents a pound ( they were thirty-I was pleasantly surprised to see a decrease.  This was January 2015, so if you read this down the road and wheat is a lot more, don’t get pissy with me ).  Half the price, and much healthier.  It might take a year or two to pay for itself, but it does.  And, a very helpful post-apocalypse tool it does make ( have more than one ).  Considering today’s transportation and smelting ( and mining ) costs, a $40 grinder is not a bad deal.  Sure, it is twice as much as it was five years ago.  But so is everything else, except your salary.  Still need incentive to invest now, before prices double again?  And what was that you say?  The “fracking gas/oil miracle of national energy independence” didn’t keep product prices from doubling?  How could that possibly be?  Oh, my, a paradigm shift!  I believe I’m getting a case of the vapors!  Ready to accept resource depletion for real, yet?

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If you have a baby, a grinder also helps with that rice cereal.  You know, the crap in the box that sits on the shelf for years?  Granted, no oils to go rancid or vitamins to lose, since it is white rice.  But you can save plenty by making your own.  I don’t know anyone who is so in love with themselves that they can’t drink regular generic coffee out of the can ( perking really increases the flavor, with a french press a close second ), but if you are some spoiled rich puke, you can always grind your own coffee beans with a grain grinder.  Also, legumes.  Grind, then boil the paste.  Refried beans without all day boiling.  Just remember what we talked about last year.  There is something in beans that protect it against raw digestion ( so birds crap it out and the plant spreads ).  You can’t, as I once believed, just add boiling water to the paste.  You must cook it for a bit.  It just won’t be an hour or two or longer like whole beans.  And older beans won’t cook up whole at all.  So there the paste comes in handy.  Also keep in mind the limitations of the cheaper Mexican grinders ( look around the upper right corner of Bison Prepper Blospot dotcom for a graphic link to Amazon for the grinder ).  They are made for corn.  For wheat, you must grind three times.  First on a course setting-plates far apart-then on a medium and then fine ( plates close but not touching ). 

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CONSUMING TO INVEST 20

Thermos

A Thermos is a great way to cut back on cooking times ( it is the same principle as a hay box cooker but for small portions ).  All a hay box cooker is is a crock pot without electricity.  You boil food for five or ten minutes, put it in the cooker ( the pot surrounded by hay or other insulation inside a larger box or other container ) and then it cooks itself for awhile.  It won’t work on all foods, and since the heat inside does dissipate even if very slowly, too long inside will spoil the food.  For instance, I would trust boiling up some meat and potatoes in the morning for a stew at lunch, but I would not think it would work for dinner.  From my own experiments, potatoes did not last the entire day to dinner without having a bit of an odor to them.  I didn’t experiment with meat since I don’t own a freezer or refrigerator.  Just be careful as the idea is to save money on cooking fuel, not to waste money on your funeral or hospital stay.  You will need to find a wide mouth stainless steel vacuum insulated thermos.  Good luck finding an affordable one.  Wally had nice $15 Korean ones but dropped those in favor of $25 brand name units. 

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You can also make coffee in a thermos.  Dump in your grounds and boiling water, seal and in ten minutes pour through a filter to get the grounds out.  About the same cost as a French press but without the moving parts to break.  Although it doesn’t clean up as easy.  I can never get all the grounds out-there is always a pesky one or two trapped in the cap or the cavity.  But think of it this way.  A drip coffee maker is $12-$15.  For just ten dollars more you have a food cooker AND a coffee maker which uses no electricity.  Yes, you must have enough patience to wait for your coffee.  A drip maker is one of the fastest ways to get a cup of coffee but it also makes the lousiest tasting one.  One final word on cooking with a thermos.  Set it one its side once the food is in, NOT straight up.  Then, the food cooks through out rather than just its bottom.

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