Thursday, December 6, 2018

honky food 2 of 2


HONKY FOOD 2
As I said yesterday, I could be wrong on the general trend of food prices rising.  I just doubt it.  The only reason I throw the caveat in is because between store competition, selling below cost as Loss Leaders, rising interest rates effecting old acquisition loans and corporate desperation over financial markets, there is a LOT of noise out there that could be queering my analysis.  So, let me put it this way.  While prices might not rise as I’m forecasting, what prices probably WON’T do is decrease further.  Prices on White Foods are artificially low.  Buy now.
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You know that 3.5 cent rimfire ammunition you just bought?  My guess is that it was at or below cost.  If you wait for it to go down again in price, I would probably call you a damn fool.  You buy it NOW, because life offers few guarantees ( although two are death and taxes and inflation is a tax ).  Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.  Buy on the dip ( NOT on Bitcoin, you sorry specimen of a minion! ).  If Wal-Mart is giving away White Food, striking at Kroger at a vulnerable moment trying to lure away business, BUY!
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Remember awhile ago, when I was yelling at you at the top of my lungs to run down to Kroger and buy up cans of shortening ( a bit after I had yelled at you to buy their generic SPAM )?  They were some ridiculously low price like $2.  That was a clearance sale.  What is Kroger oil now?  Something like $4.  Wal-Mart is still at $3.  Selling below cost is as fragile and unsustainable of a trend as that Kroger clearance sale was.  Buy the holy living crap out of honky foods-NOW!
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You might have my attitude on a lot of sales.  As in, no big deal.  I don’t need that much and I’m not spending that much extra per year.  If you eat chili once a month, a case sale taking cans from $1.36 down to .99cents might not be a powerful motivator, even if that is a huge savings.  So if sugar is regularly $1.79 and Wally sells it for $1.39, since you don’t use much you fail to be impressed.  If you use two bags a year, you save under a buck stocking up.  This is understandable since you can only overstock so much.
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But how much White Food do you really think you’ll stock?  Even if you have a ton of wheat ( literally ), you need a LOT less white flour than that.  You are only using white foods as SUPPLEMENTS, not as substitutions, if you are smart.  You cannot suddenly shift the family to an all whole wheat diet, so you start out with more white than wheat and slowly reverse that.  But we are not just talking about the collapse here.  Most likely there will be a period of extreme decline where you live off of more storage foods, but not exclusively. 
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A lot of your white foods can be in the regular pantry.  That is where most of my noodles and all of my oatmeal are.  The Mac & Cheese only takes up half of one shelf, since I only store about thirty boxes ( we only eat a few a year ), as one For Instance.  But sugar?  I have totes and plastic bottles everywhere in the basement.  No idea how much, either.  Perhaps 250 pounds?  Maybe more.  I know of one tote with fifty pounds and probably four buckets for another hundred, but I’m unsure how many two liter bottles or old coffee cans.
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Hey, what can I say?  I single mindedly stock one item until I stop panicking.  My point is that I probably go overboard and it still doesn’t take all that much in containers or space.  I like the 18 gallon totes.  Wally USED to sell them for $4, then $5, but lately I’ve only seen the affordable ones as 15 gallons.  Don’t use those for 25 bags in storage.  There isn’t enough room for four bags, at 25 pounds each.  With the 18 gallon totes four bags, 100 pounds, fits in nicely.  I don’t have bug issues.
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Your mileage might vary, being in a wetter and hotter climate.  Then your storage costs go up.  That is why I stock much more sugar than white flour.  First, I don’t need to mix any with my whole wheat ( just enough to “train” the NOL to eat wheat ) and second, white flour is “poofy”.  Sugar stores far more compactly.  So I need less containers.  I also will be using more sugar than white flour, since I have a LOT of coffee and with my heartburn I need sugar in it.  Plus, it helps in wheat recipes.
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As I said, this is condiment food.  All white foods have All Calories, No Nutrition.  Empty calories.  You don’t want to JUST eat them, but rather use them to increase your calorie count with real food.  The example I like to use is that if you cannot find whole wheat locally and must buy it from Wally, it is very expensive ( although not as bad as mail order ).  So you buy white flour to replace a lot of whole wheat.  $1 a pound whole kernel wheat and 27 cent white flour combined 50/50 is more affordable.
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White rice is empty calories.  The beans you eat with it are the only nutrition.  The rice are just calories.  Pasta?  Empty calories.  If you aren’t eating all that nasty fresh tomato sauce and zucchini and other slop Lucifer cursed the Wops with, you are in trouble with your diet.  I wouldn’t eat shortening at all, unless forced to under extreme poverty.  That crap works post-apocalypse only because NO fat is less healthy than eating the shortening, and it has a very long shelf life ( do NOT store lard, even though it is hydrogenated.  It barely squeaks out a five year shelf life ).
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White Foods should only comprise as much of your diet as you are forced to accept if you cannot get real food.  The Ornamentals get away with it as they eat plenty of fresh veggies.  You got away with eating all that Ramen in college only because of youth, SOME other types of food and perhaps all that yeast in beer J.  But it will probably comprise more of your diet, shortly, as the economy worsens.  You might as well buy it while it is so cheap.
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Here is a short video on bay leaves and other plants to keep pests away from food:
( .Y. )
( today's related link here )
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18 comments:

  1. Your putting rounds on target, Jim. All costs for food and commodities are, or will increase. (they stealthly rise under your radar, inevitable) Any sale pricing is just loss leaders or clearance of back inventory. When factoring pricing food staples I use it's projected storage life and storage durability into the price consideration. Canned meats, dehydrated potatoes, pasta, rice, etc. At any decent sale pricing, they will increase it's value due to natural evil banker inflation, and on hand availability when out of money, out of work or no income, or the stores are closed. That usefullness later on is a value added asset when talking food in the belly. "Whatever you may pay today, will most probably be cheaper than what you pay tomorrow". Minions are advised to use obsessive phsycosis storage methods (vacuum sealer, mason jar canning,etc) to safeguard and preserve their "investment". Food stocks are more valuable than those queer flir topped ar15s.

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  2. I just spent almost two rifles worth on canned butter. I SHOULD be upgrading from the Enfield to 5.56 bolt actions ( or break-opens ), to halve my ammunition expenditures ( accuracy wise ). But food first, always. I could do both, granted. I still might. But I can always survive without a modern arsenal. Without food, not so much. You WILL wake up one day with the stockpiling option gone.

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  3. Yeah, stick with the guns ya brung. Round out all of the other more important needs before going gay for some wants. Nice to haves won't be available post collapse anyway.

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    1. I "wants to have" my money turned into tangibles. Alas, I need to have money, for the period between No Jobs and then hyperinflation. So turning my savings into a Want is retarded, yes. I must constantly remind myself of this. The last time I got extra nervous about "too much soon to be inflated cash", I ended up buying overpriced land I'll probably never use but can't sell because of the loss. That was an expensive lesson- $3k. Damn, and thirteen years ago. How time flies.

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  4. One possible option if wheat is scare in your area, would be to buy the white flour in bulk, and a few sacks of wheat berries from Walmart, online, or what not. You could then use the bulk of the white flour as filler (One up from Africans with their mud pies) and sprout the wheat berries as a source of green nutrition. My understanding is that the greens are rich in vitamin C, as well as many other nutrients.

    I know as little about gardening, as Rosie O’Dumbbell knows about dieting :D But one time I grew some turnips. My first crop did surprisingly well, and would have done better had I only heeded the advice on the seed package to thin the plants to prevent overcrowding. Why do I mention this? Well, turnips, in addition to storing well, are rich in carbohydrates, as are most root crops. In addition, the turnip greens are said to be some of the most nutritious of all. In fact, some people grow them for the greens alone. In the old days it was common for some farmers to grow them to tide their livestock over the winter. This might have been in the days when such crops were thought of as “poor people” food, not fit for consumption among the upper classes. Turnips are very easy to grow, and everyone should try their hand at growing them as survival food. They’re tasty too, in my opinion.

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    1. Even if you hate turnips, after awhile of mostly white flour you might change your mind.

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    2. If you like potatoes, you will probably like turnips, as the two taste very similar. Baby turnips are tender enough to be eaten raw. The skin on turnips has the taste of radish, so eating baby turnips raw is similar to eating a radish. Cooking them kills the radish flavor, and then they taste similar to a potato. Cook them as you would a potato, and add a little butter and salt and pepper, and they are very good.

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    3. Okay, thank you. I had never heard that before, and I'd wonder, how could Russian peasants eat turnips? I was only used to the raw taste.

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  5. Mr D

    I hope folk are buying nutritional supps also ... we and the great apes are the only critter who do not synthesize ascorbate ... hello scurvey. Building collagen and maintaining anti-oxidant function requires Vit C (and Zinc)

    Anything is gonna be better than nothing. Tabs should be ground up w/ mortar and pestle to enhance absorption. The RDA touted in labeling is the amount that prevents frank scurvey ... smart does is 1-2 grams a day ( 1000 > 2000 mg)

    Like you're saying, cheapo now; priceless later

    Multi's, C, B-plex, D, Ca++ / Mg++, Zinc and chromium. A respiratory enzyme that exchanges CO2 and O2 in alveoli require chromium. CA and MG are really important for immune function, asnd competively inhibit the absorption of bad-boy metal 'cousins' [cesium, strontium, rad-K, et al] that continue to kite in from weareFuckedShima; Calms and CalmsPlus are a great source

    Cheap now ... likely unavailable later

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    1. I consider five years worth of Vit C and multi's a minimum. Just like wheat. But just go ahead and start at one year at a time. Build up from there. Then just keep it rotated. Sprouts are priceless for enzymes and trace amounts of stuff not known. Supplements do most of the heavy lifting.

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    2. I second the recommendation for storing some vitamins. Vitamin C crystals I use to keep pealed apples from turning brown until I can cut them up and put in a pie, then oven. Tablets are available at Costco cheap. I buy the big bottles on sale. Keep the vitamin C and the B's in a cool place out of sunlight!

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    3. I haven't found anywhere cheaper than Wally. I could be wrong-there seemed to be lots of cheap mail order vitamin companies way back when. Could still be. Nothing shows up on a Google search, though.

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  6. You might find this interesting Mr. Dakin.

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/12/181206135643.htm


    https://www.oilandgas360.com/repsol-and-armstrong-energy-announce-largest-u-s-onshore-conventional-hydrocarbons-discovery-in-30-years/


    https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/middle_east/is-there-really-more-oil-in-the-golan-heights-than-is-saudi-arabia/

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  7. "Most likely there will be a period of extreme decline where you live off of more storage foods, but not exclusively."

    Several years ago you had an article answering the question, "When do I start eating my stored food?" You gave several options such as unemployment, food stamps/EBT weren't enough help, reduced availability so you're slowly losing weight, etc. Your conclusion was that you don't dig into your stored foods until it's mad max/WROL/chaos in the streets. Do you still feel the same way, or is your position becoming more flexible?
    Peace out

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    1. Yes. It's all storage food, technically. But I look at them in tiers. Your collapse storage is for exactly that. Your grocery storage, where you buy your everyday food in bulk, is a different storage that is for unemployment. You can eat it everyday, but you should always be added in multiples for every one you take out. I look at grocery storage as six months of everyday eating except produce. When any item is on sale, you buy dozens. You eat one, you at least replace one, and then wait on sale to buy dozens. Say, six months mac & cheese is twenty boxes. If you have forty on hand, you can keep eating until the next sale, at least until you get down to 20. Then you must replace at regular price, absent a sale. It doesn't have to be anal compulsive. I just eyeball/rule of thumb it. I never stressed this aspect previously, from lack of space and lack of a on grid freezer. But these last years I went crazy on money savings and everyday food savings. It was my way of dealing with the stress of the world going crazier. My recommended amounts are of course just what allows me to sleep better at night. You might want more or less. I'm trying to go Full Pessimist. Well, not exactly. REALLY paranoid I'd have taken all that money and had forty years of just wheat. But since I can't see living too much longer, or finding a replacement tribe, I felt safe going long on meat and butter and a bit of variety ( for instance, I never used to have any sugar. Now I feel comfortable splurging on that ). I guess the short answer is I came to view, as a more likely scenario, a longer period of Not Quite Collapse/End Of Decline. It was what I wasn't as prepared for. Now I am.

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  8. How and where did you store your lard? Did you buy it at a grocery store in a plastic container? Did you do any extra packaging of it for storage such as mylar bar, oxygen absorbers, etc.

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    1. Take a metal coffee can, must be large enough. Place plastic tub of shortening ( I don't do lard any more. 50% more expensive, goes rancid in 4-5 years. Shortening goes a lot longer ) upside down. Place coffee can over that, then flip both over. Now the fat can is upright, the coffee can facing down. Place lid of coffee can. Mice can't get in unless they chew into the shelf it sits on. Just make sure the fat still has the plastic film sealed, and it should be good stored as is.

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    2. I think I screwed up that description. The coffee can faces down, the shortening can faces right side up, inside the coffee can. That is the end result you want. Sorry, brain dead at the end of the day.

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