Discussions
Reply to: Has anyone trained a dog to carting? Posted January 12, 2023
Reply to: Recipes for cooking with only non-perishable food Posted November 2, 2022

Brunswick stew can be made easily out of only canned goods and pantry items,a big pot, a long handled spoon, a heat source, and a can opener. Canned chicken, corn, lima beans, I add canned peas and butter beans as well, tomatoes or canned or dried tomato product or ketchup, dried onion, and let it cook down a while or eat right away and you have a very tasty stew. There are a million different versions of Brunswick stew- it started out as a “whatever is on hand” kind of dish, but this is the version I used to make as a poverty stricken student. Canned goods got a bad rap because of salt content and 1950’s cooking, but they are relatively cheap, last forever unless the foods are acidic, are canned when the vegetables are very fresh, and low salt versions exist or rinse the vegetables in cold water to reduce salt if you are on a restricted salt diet. I ate peas from a 17 year old can last year by accident. They were still tasty and I had no ill effects.

Reply to: COVID at home: prepare for a severe case Posted March 28, 2022

Add to that a plan for isolation of the sick person and protection of yourself and other people in the household. If possible, put the person in a room with a door that will close and a window that will open for ventilation. Keep the number of people who have contact with the patient to a minimum. Wear masks and gloves when tending to the patient, discard those immediately after contact, and be careful dealing with emptying waste baskets or handling other materials which might be damp from sputum. With gloved hands, put used bed linen and towels in a trash bag and dump them directly into the wash machine without handling, (I picked up a nasty case of norovirus from my sick 1 year old great nephew by carrying his damp used towels to the laundry area hugged to my chest after he became soiled from diarrhea and needed to be bathed.  I learned my lesson from that one.) And keep easy to eat food, drinks, and disposible hygiene products, like premoistened bath cloths or wipes, by the bed so the person can take care of some of their own needs. 

Reply to: Volunteer fire departments Posted February 21, 2022

I worked for years with local governments that had volunteer fire departments. The number of volunteers has definitely declined over the years in those departments. One of the problems is that more people drive a farther distance to commute to their jobs, and are not near enough to their home community to respond quickly enough to a fire or EMS call. The communities I worked with required a volunteer to respond to a call for a minimum percentage of time, and had regular weekly  training sessions that were also required to be attended. Many people do not want to or cannot commit to spending the amount of time required by these departments. Another issue is the unwillingness of employers to allow time away from the job for a response. When some larger employers were locally owned, they actively encouraged their employees to volunteer and were very supportive of the local volunteer fire departments. But a lot of local companies have been bought up by large nationwide or international concerns that do not have the same stake in the local communities. 

Reply to: What did you learn from the experience from COVID-19? Posted June 29, 2020

Thanks, Zabeth. What I would do differently because of that, I think, is that I would be more aggressive in disseminating information to friends and family about the hazards that most people seemed to be unaware of at that time, whether they wanted to hear it or not. My friends had flown to visit their daughter and grandchildren in a city in California where three people had tested positive for the virus, which received national publicity. When they both returned with pneumonia two weeks later, I was immediately apprehensive from the circumstances and symptoms that it might be Covid-19, but did not mention my concerns, as the odds of them contracting the disease seemed very low at that time. He collapsed 10 days later, was taken to the hospital, and admitted to the ICU, where he spent 5 days intubated before dying. His widow said it had never dawned on either of them that he might have contracted the virus until his second day in the hospital, as they thought it was just something over in China and that the ban on travelers from China would keep it out of the US. I have found that many friends and family members do not closely follow the news and were equally uninformed of the progress of the disease. I doubt that alerting them to the possibility that they had been infected would have led to a different outcome for those friends, but now I would not hesitate to urge them to insist on being tested.

Reply to: What are you doing with your stimulus check? Posted June 28, 2020
Reply to: What did you learn from the experience from COVID-19? Posted June 28, 2020

I learned that I need to inventory my stocks of food and supplies on a more regular basis. Some items, like N95 masks, which I thought were in my pandemic supplies, were no longer there, as my other half had sent them to friends in China during the SARS epidemic when they were experiencing a shortage. A few of my canned goods were deteriorated, and my bins that did not close tightly showed signs of a mouse invasion, which necessitated disposal of some of the contents and some truly nasty scrubbing. Luckily, I started my inventory of food and supplies late last year before I had heard of the virus, but I had not yet replaced everything before the need to prepare for the current pandemic became apparent. I also learned that you may think you are psychologically ready for what is coming, but the actuality of dealing with the situation can still be a shock. I knew the virus would eventually make it to my midwestern state and my additional preparations were completed, but it still shook me greatly in early March when a close friend contracted the virus and died, the first death in our state. I somehow pictured the disease creeping slowly toward our state and my mental readiness and vigilance increasing the closer it got, not a member of my small circle suddenly dying of a pandemic that was still in its infancy with the only previous deaths in the US being few and far far away.

Reply to: Any options for cooking indoors when the power is down? Posted June 28, 2020
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Reply to: Has anyone trained a dog to carting? Posted January 12, 2023
Reply to: Recipes for cooking with only non-perishable food Posted November 2, 2022

Brunswick stew can be made easily out of only canned goods and pantry items,a big pot, a long handled spoon, a heat source, and a can opener. Canned chicken, corn, lima beans, I add canned peas and butter beans as well, tomatoes or canned or dried tomato product or ketchup, dried onion, and let it cook down a while or eat right away and you have a very tasty stew. There are a million different versions of Brunswick stew- it started out as a “whatever is on hand” kind of dish, but this is the version I used to make as a poverty stricken student. Canned goods got a bad rap because of salt content and 1950’s cooking, but they are relatively cheap, last forever unless the foods are acidic, are canned when the vegetables are very fresh, and low salt versions exist or rinse the vegetables in cold water to reduce salt if you are on a restricted salt diet. I ate peas from a 17 year old can last year by accident. They were still tasty and I had no ill effects.

Reply to: COVID at home: prepare for a severe case Posted March 28, 2022

Add to that a plan for isolation of the sick person and protection of yourself and other people in the household. If possible, put the person in a room with a door that will close and a window that will open for ventilation. Keep the number of people who have contact with the patient to a minimum. Wear masks and gloves when tending to the patient, discard those immediately after contact, and be careful dealing with emptying waste baskets or handling other materials which might be damp from sputum. With gloved hands, put used bed linen and towels in a trash bag and dump them directly into the wash machine without handling, (I picked up a nasty case of norovirus from my sick 1 year old great nephew by carrying his damp used towels to the laundry area hugged to my chest after he became soiled from diarrhea and needed to be bathed.  I learned my lesson from that one.) And keep easy to eat food, drinks, and disposible hygiene products, like premoistened bath cloths or wipes, by the bed so the person can take care of some of their own needs. 

Reply to: Volunteer fire departments Posted February 21, 2022

I worked for years with local governments that had volunteer fire departments. The number of volunteers has definitely declined over the years in those departments. One of the problems is that more people drive a farther distance to commute to their jobs, and are not near enough to their home community to respond quickly enough to a fire or EMS call. The communities I worked with required a volunteer to respond to a call for a minimum percentage of time, and had regular weekly  training sessions that were also required to be attended. Many people do not want to or cannot commit to spending the amount of time required by these departments. Another issue is the unwillingness of employers to allow time away from the job for a response. When some larger employers were locally owned, they actively encouraged their employees to volunteer and were very supportive of the local volunteer fire departments. But a lot of local companies have been bought up by large nationwide or international concerns that do not have the same stake in the local communities. 

Reply to: What did you learn from the experience from COVID-19? Posted June 29, 2020

Thanks, Zabeth. What I would do differently because of that, I think, is that I would be more aggressive in disseminating information to friends and family about the hazards that most people seemed to be unaware of at that time, whether they wanted to hear it or not. My friends had flown to visit their daughter and grandchildren in a city in California where three people had tested positive for the virus, which received national publicity. When they both returned with pneumonia two weeks later, I was immediately apprehensive from the circumstances and symptoms that it might be Covid-19, but did not mention my concerns, as the odds of them contracting the disease seemed very low at that time. He collapsed 10 days later, was taken to the hospital, and admitted to the ICU, where he spent 5 days intubated before dying. His widow said it had never dawned on either of them that he might have contracted the virus until his second day in the hospital, as they thought it was just something over in China and that the ban on travelers from China would keep it out of the US. I have found that many friends and family members do not closely follow the news and were equally uninformed of the progress of the disease. I doubt that alerting them to the possibility that they had been infected would have led to a different outcome for those friends, but now I would not hesitate to urge them to insist on being tested.

Reply to: What are you doing with your stimulus check? Posted June 28, 2020
Reply to: What did you learn from the experience from COVID-19? Posted June 28, 2020

I learned that I need to inventory my stocks of food and supplies on a more regular basis. Some items, like N95 masks, which I thought were in my pandemic supplies, were no longer there, as my other half had sent them to friends in China during the SARS epidemic when they were experiencing a shortage. A few of my canned goods were deteriorated, and my bins that did not close tightly showed signs of a mouse invasion, which necessitated disposal of some of the contents and some truly nasty scrubbing. Luckily, I started my inventory of food and supplies late last year before I had heard of the virus, but I had not yet replaced everything before the need to prepare for the current pandemic became apparent. I also learned that you may think you are psychologically ready for what is coming, but the actuality of dealing with the situation can still be a shock. I knew the virus would eventually make it to my midwestern state and my additional preparations were completed, but it still shook me greatly in early March when a close friend contracted the virus and died, the first death in our state. I somehow pictured the disease creeping slowly toward our state and my mental readiness and vigilance increasing the closer it got, not a member of my small circle suddenly dying of a pandemic that was still in its infancy with the only previous deaths in the US being few and far far away.

Reply to: Any options for cooking indoors when the power is down? Posted June 28, 2020