Communities

Communities

A Peek into an Organic Prepper’s Pantry

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Having extra food put aside is something I have talked about quite a lot here, it’s a very important insurance policy for you and your family. Most lists and suggestions for what foods to store tend to be less than nutritious, of course having that is better than nothing. Here are ways to have some more nutritious foods in your pantry and in your stockpile of foods.…

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Communities

Pictures of the neighborhood

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A few weeks ago, I grabbed the camera on my way over to a friend’s house, I get to live in and drive through some very pretty country, we have been here a little over 5 years now, one of the first things I thought when we first moved here was that I hope I never get used to the views out here, I’m still awed by them. This is the high desert, in the mountains of far western Texas.…

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Communities

Keep your cool with warm weather cooking methods

thermometer-11029029I live in the high desert mountains of far western Texas, the summer days are hot, fortunately the evenings and nights tend to be cooler, I would like to have an outdoor kitchen, cooking during the day in the heat of summer is miserable at best, a kitchen out on the covered deck would make summer cooking so much better… until I get that outdoor kitchen set up, I found this article all about keeping your cool when cooking in the summer:

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As the mercury in the thermometer starts to climb, you may be looking for different ways to keep your home a bit cooler without an exponential increase in your electric bill. That battle starts in the kitchen.

The one thing that adds the most ambient heat is cooking.  Your choice of cooking methods can greatly increase the warmth that your air conditioner must then overcome.  And if you have no air conditioner, it can make your home humid, muggy and miserable.…

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Communities

Kosher Certification Program Bans All GMO Ingredients

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As always, I’m on the lookout for non-GMO foods, when I read this article I jumped for joy, finally a mainstream (at least as far as I’m concerned) food industry is going non-GMO, I am thrilled beyond words! Here is what I found on this:…

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Communities

Eggs Benedict on a mountain

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I read just the other day about some study “they” did that says people who take pictures of their food and post the pictures on social media MAY have a mental problem… well I am about to prove that I MAY have this problem, dinner tonight was special, something I haven’t made since we moved off-grid over 5 years ago now. Eggs Benedict. I used to make this at least once a month. I wondered if the altitude might be a problem, it sometimes works against me, and sometimes a dish does not work out at all.…

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Communities

Just say NO to GMO

no-gmo Little by little I have been actively working on removing GMO foods from my pantry, to make it more painless I focus on one food or one food group at a time.

I have always been an avid label reader, when my (now grown) son was a child, he had been diagnosed with ADHD, something that is unfortunately all too common, especially in boys. One of the things we did was to modify his diet by removing everything, and I do mean everything that was any sort of sugar, that meant every ingredient that ended in “ose”, the only exception to that was lactose, fortunately that didn’t seem to bother him. Some of the items removed from his diet was sucrose (table sugar), glucose, sucrose, dextrose, fructose, the hardest one was dextrose, that can even be found in table salt! As long as we kept his diet going, he behaved so much better, fortunately I was a prolific and adventurous cook, I had no problems making anything he wanted or needed, my son and the rest of us ate quite well. It’s my son’s birthday today, happy birthday Josh!…

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Communities

Scorpion season

scorpion2In a recent article, I talked about all the critters that poke, stick, sting and bite, one of those critters we deal with out here are the scorpions, and it’s the beginning of scorpion season now. A few years back, we had a rash of them inside the sky castle, we were killing one and two a night, every night. They become active after dark, coming out to hunt other insects, mostly crickets and such. I wouldn’t mind except for their nasty sting. When we had that bad rash of them, I had been sitting in front of my laptop one evening, it was warm, I was wearing shorts, I felt something on my leg next to my knee, I thought it was a fly and absentmindedly brushed my leg with my hand, that was the first time (and hopefully last time) I got hit by a scorpion, I have to say, it HURTS!…

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Communities

Life in the sky castle

I sit looking out the window, my view is magnificent, I am looking down across a high desert mountain valley, words cannot describe the beauty of the landscape that falls below me, but this is a harsh beauty, full of plants, bugs and critters that poke, stick, sting and bite. Some might find this a torture, I find it to be my Heaven on earth.

PB and I moved out here 5 years ago this last December, in some ways it was a huge move, in other ways it felt like coming home. After buying up just under 6 acres on a mountain side, in the high desert of far western Texas, one of the first things PB did was build our cabin, what would become our sky castle. …

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Communities

Sensible shoes makes sense

hhShoes, ladies I know you think about them a lot, and some of you guys too, but how many of you wear shoes that would let you down in an emergency situation? Ladies I talking about running around in high heels, or little flip flop sandals…

Now I’m not saying you can’t wear these kinds of shoes, but perhaps you should seriously consider stashing a more suitable pair of shoes that could be quickly accessed in an emergency. …

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Communities

Sleepy?

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Here’s a scenario, you are working hard, say chopping wood for winter, or perhaps you are starting your garden this spring, you have been working hard for hours, you realize it’s lunchtime, your stomach is growling, you need to refuel. Now you have some options, what to eat for lunch… often times after eating our bodies (and mind) slows down, instead of wanting to go back to work, you are looking at the recliner, or even the bed (that’s me, raising hand!)… how many times have you eaten and right afterward all you wanted to do was sleep? That is not what you want to have happen, you need to refuel and go back to work. What if I told you that what you eat can have an effect on whether you are ready to go back to work or you are ready to go to sleep?…

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Communities

Trailersteading – book review

trailersteadingcoversmHow many of you would like (love?) to to have your own place and live for just what you’d pay in taxes? Assuming you already have a piece of land (hint, look for so called “junk” land and you can often have it for a song)… Well that’s precisely what Anna Hess and her husband Mark did.…

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