Thursday, August 29, 2019

strawberry oatmeal 2


STRAWBERRY OATMEAL 2
How does strawberry oatmeal tie in with “rewarding your frugality”? Easy. I came to love strawberry oatmeal, and then ran out. Which constituted a real problem which prompted this article. Okay, here I am with twenty or so boxes of strawberry oatmeal. Made of mostly oatmeal, which I hate. I'll eat it, so I don't hate it as I do cooked vegetables which I refuse to eat. If the world's hottest bikini model with huge real boobs offered to sleep with me ( cowgirl style ) if I ate her vegetarian dinner first, I would be by myself that evening.
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That is the extent of my displeasure over cooked veggies ( which were pounded down my throat under duress my entire childhood ). Oh, you poor dear, right? No. Hump you! It wasn't abuse but it sure was the perfect way to get me to never touch cooked bunny food ever again. Raw? You bet, with just a couple of exceptions like potatoes. And I don't touch broccoli or its illegitimate siblings. I don't care what I have to do to avoid them. You want me to be a dinner guest? No thanks, you vegetable cooking son of a bitch.
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So, oatmeal is no where near the train wreck, clown car wreck, slow motion car through the orphanage wreck horror show that cooked veggies are. I CAN eat it but would prefer almost anything else. Well, after a year and a half of slowly increasing inactivity and cheating on exercise in favor of writing and research, I'm starting to feel like a huge glob of crap. Not getting too fat as much as aging way beyond my years. Everything hurting, feeling like an eighty year old begging to not wake up next morning.
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I had to start exercising and more importantly, eating better. I've always eaten healthy, if you look at whole grains as healthy ( if you don't, I've heard all the arguments already, please and thank you ). But I needed to still improve the diet. Little things, like cutting down the chips to once a week instead of every day. Not taking vitamin C on an empty stomach, or drinking coffee on one. I kept seeing the oatmeal up on the office “food pantry” ( a spare shelf ). And I unearthed my BOB bag packed a decade previous and tried everything in it.
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Which included oatmeal-the kind with sugar, fake milk and fruit. Yeah, it was still perfectly edible ( along with the Top Ramen and Rice A Roni ) after sitting in the junked truck cab through summers and below zero winters. And I realized that oatmeal wasn't as horrid as I recalled, after that taste test. And just look at all those boxes of strawberry oatmeal, just waiting for me to start eating better. So I started eating oatmeal every day. I didn't LIKE it but my hatred was lessened. So, naturally, after a time I needed to go replenish what I had eaten.
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And you would think, after all the strawberry oatmeal that gets donated to the Food Bank, that nobody likes it. Yet, every time I went to buy on sale, they were usually out of strawberry. So all the other flavors I could stand ( NOT banana! ) were bought and began accumulating. I thought I was Chef Studly, finding all these cool flavors like blueberry when the Quaker brand oatmeal went on sale, but alas, that brand really tastes “off” compared to the Kroger brand, which only carries about four flavors I can eat.
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Well, the top of the “pantry” can hold up to forty boxes of oatmeal if you arrange then just right, and so I lost track of the fact I had run out of strawberry flavor. I just went through a box of apple, and I was getting sick of apple, and realized I hadn't had strawberry for awhile. I desperately started rooting around like a rabid piglet, and there was no strawberry. I had come to almost love strawberry, but only because the other flavors kind of sucked ( I have real issues with texture when eating-it isn't JUST taste that can turn me off ). This set me off on a mini-skulk.
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Here I was, eating this slop not because I wanted to but because I needed to, many foods from decades past put on the forbidden list. I'm chocking it down under the best of circumstances, and now I have to eat crappy flavors! The Humanity! I eat whole wheat microwave bread twice a day, dinner leftovers for lunch ( and there isn't a lot of variety there to begin with ), have cut back on my meat to almost nothing ( budgetary reasons-although “nothing” just means far below a pound a day ), and NOW, on top of this other deprivation I have to eat flavors of oatmeal I do NOT like, Sam I Am!
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Needless to say, I got every box of Kroger brand strawberry oatmeal they had in stock today. Now I feel much better. It isn't even as if I'm treating myself, like buying ten bags of Dorito's because they are $1.88 a bag if you buy 10. All I'm doing is giving myself a break on Sucking It Up. I'm still sucking crap through a straw, it is just occasionally a small diameter. Not to say I'll enter the apocalypse with such refined sensibilities with food. I'm not THAT spoiled to think I get an American diet post-apocalypse.
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No, I'm merely pointing out that when you self-discipline, it is okay to reward yourself slightly to encourage that discipline. To me, a better flavor of a sucky food is a deserved reward for eating the slop. If you give a kid Flintstones Flavored vitamins, the kid wants to take vitamins. Forcing horse pills tasting faintly of urine down their throats, screaming in your best drill sergeant voice about not being a maggot or a pussy, that is NOT the bit of sugar you need to make the medicine go down smoother. What harm in there is a little bribe, as long as it stays proportionate to the difficult task?
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If you just cut the $150 cable bill, that is enough. You did great. Denying yourself a $10 a month treat of Netflix ( or better yet, the $13 a month Amazon prime so you get a better selection of non-PC movies, PLUS get free shipping so you order stuff through my commission ads ) just so you can brag to your prepper buddies that “I don't watch TV-I'm too much of a stud for that”, well, that doesn't exactly reward your frugality, does it? I mean, obviously, you must enjoy TV for that example to apply, but I'm sure you take my meaning.
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Do the hard work, then give yourself a nice little dogie biscuit as a reward. Just filled a IBC tote with wheat, assuring yourself five years of emergency food? Go buy yourself a case of MRE's. Granted, the wheat was all of six hundred bucks, tote included, and the MRE's for a mere two weeks food is almost a hundred. So, yes, it is a COLOSSAL waste of money. But you earned it! It is your biscuit. Rewarded behavior is repeated, so reward yourself for doing the hard tasks with a little bit of sugar.
( .Y. )
( today's related Amazon link click here )
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note: free for today book, EMP HERE
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22 comments:

  1. Yes. During my own personal journey of prep stocking, there are invariably food items that are not first tier choices due to bland flavors or narrow singular course limitations, and not backed up by sexy packaging or marketing ads. They being redheaded stepchild foods that aren't precooked lazy wife meals or nuke and eat conveinances. But! Cost per ounce value, stupidly long storage capability, and not an already unhealthy poison from the start makes them more than excellent hermitage companions.

    I use sugar, cinnamon, butter lumps, etc to "Dope Them Oats", and make them palatable. Be sure to train self to also eat them oats in the near dark or low light, with no t.v. or radio blaring, while wearing a sidearm. This way you are programming for the appocalypse in a full realism training scenario. (No not necessary to wear the fritz helmet to meal tables, but if your ears are ringing put the tin foil hat on, as ((they)) are scanning your house again.) Usually for me, another entre that is salty, greasy, fatty, or has a sweet or tangy flavor re-directs you taste bud's attention allowing you to shovel down the bland belly filler items that may be most or all that you have to eat, because: austerity, poverty, under seige, living on the lam hiding out with next to nothing, you all know the reference examples, as it the future for most.

    Stay Frostiest...

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    1. I try to always avoid fully tasting what I'm eating, distracting it by being otherwise occupied. Stupid taste buds!

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  2. Rolled oats have a very long shelf-life. Not quite the 30 years of wheat, but next in line. Both are excellent choices for long-term storage. And remember: honey and sugar are 'forever' foods that make most anything palatable when spread/sprinkled on top.

    Here's a pro-tip for the frugal: whenever you visit a fast food joint, go inside but place your order as a take-out. Then hit the condiment counter and fill your bag with a dozen packets of everything they have to offer. Jams, jellies, honey (Chik-Fil-A has real honey!), salt, pepper, hot sauce, ketchup, mustard, dairy creamer, duck sauce, soy sauce, taco sauce, and of course a dozen napkins. Doing this makes a $3.85 Chick-Fil-A sandwich (with the requested extra pickles) a better deal for us preppers. Also, remember to request 2 of the dipping sauces that they keep behind the counter. The minimum wage worker taking your order doesn't give a shit and just wants to move on to the next customer.

    Some pilfered packets of strawberry jam spread on my post apocalypse oatmeal sounds appetizing enough that I almost want to try it now!

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    1. While I agree with the tactic, must you be THAT greedy? On the one hand, the ship is going down and you need to stuff your pockets with buffet bacon. On the other hand, if the packet pilfering gets out of hand, that source of freebies dries up. A real "pickle" ( I know, not much of a pun ).

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    2. Yeah moral conflict. Nope. If they can't lock up hillery and other felonius types, well then the system as whole betrayed my trust and cooperation. Mischief and misdemeanors are fair play with parameters. I am prepping to SURVIVE myself, so a few elbows into the ribs of a boomer geriatric crowding my condiments pilferage mission is in order and fair sport. It is better to be a hoarding sneaky type then on the fema bus hungry.

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    3. 8:38 is spot on with the fast food and individual commercial packaged condiments and etc. I being the salvaging scavenger as a result of a poverty upbringing always poached the goods as possible. When in the Marine infantry all over the world in the bush those little items made chow time into happy camp outs with arms and ordnance. Makes the day, those little things.

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    4. I bought a case of mayo packs when we were off grid with no fridge. Yes, it made life so much better.

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    5. 11:45-LOL. Okay, how can I argue with THAT :)

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    6. I just stay out of those poison palaces altogether !
      The savings from not eating in those fast food places is better spent buying bulk real honey or mayo.

      speaking of mayo...during all of our sailing years we never refrigerated the mayo...the trick is to never dip a utensil into the mayo jar twice. mayo will keep quite awhile without refrigeration so long as you never contaminate the jar by introducing foreign things into the mayo jar. single dipping only with a clean knife or spoon...

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    7. I followed said advice years ago and no problems-I was just afraid of keeping the jar past one week in the middle of summer ( even in BPOD )

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  3. Yes, I "Must" be that greedy. I'm 54 years old and have been unemployed for three years.

    I doubt your blog has a million readers per day that will cause the pilfering to get out of hand. Just a pro-tip that I felt inspired to pass along to fellow pilgrims.

    Also, don't forget the single serve packets of tarter sauce for the (illegally) caught local fish in the stream. And then there's the mayonnaise packets to serve Other Color visitors to assure that they won't ever visit again.

    I'm sure that I've neglected to mention many other choices of single-serve condiment packets. Who wants apocalypse possum meat without (complimentary) condiment packets?? Not me.

    You're a good sport to put up with me. I'll squeeze out $10 to send your way. I challenge a few other readers to do the same. You'll just piss the $'s away on something else anyways, so may as well give it to Jim. Always good to give to somebody you know will truly appreciate it.

    This concludes my rant.

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    1. Thanks for the fundraiser! It was 800 readers a day for the longest time. Now up to 1k after 'Ol Remus highlighted me a good many times. We certainly won't change the world! :)

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    2. No wonder your body is going downhill so rapidly.
      Ya gotta eat those greens son. Even a dog will die young if it only eats grain and meat...

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    3. Anon, you're sure not the only hoarder of ketchup etc packets, there's everyone from Shopping Cart Joe who's using them at the hobo camp to make "tomato soup" to the little old ladies worth millions of dollars who hoard the shit because back in Eastern Europe ....

      Nothing wrong with a little scrounging, as long as it's not hurting anyone. I mostly scrounge for things like bubble wrap because in my job I mail a lot things. But I do come across other things. Today's opportunity was tons of those really long Vietnamese green beans; I think past their prime but would be great deep fried, and a couple large bitter melons. I took none of the green beans and the larger of the bitter melons with the idea that I'll let it sit here and finish growing its seeds and then see how the seeds are, toasted.

      Pumpkin, melon, etc seeds are thrown out like crazy by everyone, and if you harvest those and sautee them with a little salt, they're wonderful.

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    4. That works good too if available...

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  4. First, the bad news:

    After cotton and mangos, strawberries are the most sprayed crop.

    According to the Environmental Working Group, strawberries consistently top The Dirty Dozen of foods to never eat unless they are organic... no GMO, no petroleum-based chemicals, no radiation.

    www.ewg.org

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    As a kid, one of my bonding experiences with my dad was opening a can of smoked oysters, and eating an oyster on a Ritz cracker drizzled with that fishy oil.

    I can't pass this tradition to the neighborhood kids; Ritz removed the butter, then added soy in its place.

    Most canned smoked oysters use cottonseed oil... the heaviest sprayed crop. (see above)

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    The Good News From Oregon:

    We took the neighborhood kids out on the boat for salmon at Reedsport on the mouth of the Umqua River... and I snagged a 60# tuna.

    What is a pelagic doing in brackish water? I don't care.

    I got it alongside, my buddy hooked its gill, and we instantly had it aboard... just as a sturgeon slapped up to steal our prize. We were focused on the tuna, and thought one of the kids fell in!

    Our boat is 26', the sturgeon was all of that plus some. Later, at the ramp, Fish&Game drove up. She was watching (to make sure the kids got their catch), and said that sturgeon could be 600-years old or 2000-years old. We don't know.

    Its gaping maw was easily big enough to swallow my head and shoulders. YeeHaw!

    About the tuna.
    We bled it, and sliced that sweet belly raw. Between the five of us, anchored right there on the river, we slurped probably 6# of belly. Or more.
    As good as it gets!

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    1. I don't know which part was nastier :)

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    2. Large Marge - Did you remember to bring some shoyu and wasabi? Congrats on hooking the thing, and then rescuing it from that freshwater sea monster. That belly must have tasted sweet!

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  5. You've commented in the past about becoming tired of the tastes of ramen. But if you add other foods into it, you can significantly improve and vary tastes. Especially when blending the spice packages. In fact I think the intent of these spice packages were for the various materials being added to ramen.

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    1. We have Ramnen about once a month, just as a break from other starches. It's okay. Just okay.

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    2. If you can get soba noodles in Elko, which is a long way from Japan, you might try soba. These are good cold in summer.
      https://recipes.mercola.com/how-to-cook-soba-noodles.aspx

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