Finding a New Home: Research vs. Reality

My apologies for the length of this post. Because I withheld details before our trip, there is much to share with you here about our decision-making process. My intent is not to portray the following area in a bad light but to share what made us decide it would not be a good fit for us. There are people who are very happy living there and other folks who may find it fits their criteria for relocation. Each of us needs to find the best fit for ourselves.


Before we left for our trip, I'd hoped to get a post done on how to do research to find a new home. I ran out of time and now I'm glad I did. We have been pondering the relocation issue for well over a year. My sweetie has been doing most of the research*, working from a list of criteria we developed and continue to refine. We'd find potential places only to do a little more research and discover some aspect that made it unacceptable.

Last year, he started pushing for Missouri. I resisted, especially after the flooding in that region. I've also spent no time in the Midwest other than driving through it so I was completely unfamiliar with the area. For family and employment reasons, we eventually decided to stay in Arizona and spent months researching our options. When we finally got to the point of looking for a place to buy, reality smacked us upside the head; we couldn't afford anything other than a real dump in a rural area with a horrible commute. We considered having my sweetie live in a Tucson apartment during the work week to reduce the driving but we've done that before and hated it. It would also severely limit his time for gardening.

It was back to the drawing board. Again, Missouri emerged as an area that met many of our criteria. I still had some concerns. One was cultural differences as religion figures more importantly in the Bible Belt than it does here. Political differences also concerned me, especially since forming community would be important in our future. We narrowed the search down to the northern half of the state since the Columbia and St. Louis areas are more liberal and open to religious and cultural diversity (so we've heard and read).

Due to city size, the search narrowed in on the Columbia area. It has some real appeal. Their Farmer's Market boasts twice as many vendors, in a city of 100,000, as does ours here in a city of 1,000,000. Local harvest shows a lot of local organic food activity for the area. The city even has a vegetarian restaurant whose chef and baker has a tasty little blog. The weather is obviously conducive to growing food, although the summers are sticky and humid and the winters chilly. Chilly, that is, to a desert dweller, but not as brutally cold as Wisconsin, one of the other states long in the running for relocation. It is not, however, immune to tornado possibilities and, in fact, had potential severe weather forecast for the afternoon of the day we boogied on out of there.

In addition to good soil and plenty of water, a big draw to the area was cheap housing and low property taxes. We initially looked at smaller towns and somewhat rural areas. We both fell in love with a property online: a 7 acre parcel for sale with beautiful house, shop with power (that could be converted into housing for my mother-in-law), barn, and irrigation well for less than what a ratty little house on a normal lot in a rural desert community here (with no jobs) would cost. We threw all our eggs in the basket and decided this was it, we were moving to the Columbia area.

My sweetie arranged vacation time from work, I made the travel reservations, and even began pulling up roots here. I informed my CSA that we hoped to find a place on this trip and be moved by the end of June. We hauled all of our good finished compost to a friend's garden. I contacted Peak Oil Hausfrau to arrange to visit on our way through her area. I emailed lots of questions to bloggers in the area: Jennifer (another vegan!) in Columbia, and several others in St. Louis. All were very nice and I looked forward to eventually getting to meet them in person. I checked out the great local resources Jennifer lists on her blog's sidebar and felt like we could make this area work.

As the time to leave drew closer, doubts began to crop up. Could we deal with the culture shock? I mean the Midwest and the Southwest are pretty different! Could my sweetie deal with the hot, humid summers given his predisposition to overheat in hot temperatures? Could I deal with the lack of mountains? Would we freeze to death in January when the average high is 39 degrees and the average low is 19? Would we be able to find a place for us that could squeeze in my mother-in-law as well, if she decided she could deal with living in the Midwest?

We started discussing whether a place with enough acreage to be more self-sufficient (5-10 acres) was more important than living closer to the city where we'd be able to develop stronger community ties. We gradually shifted to thinking community was more important, which leads to higher property prices for smaller lots. Still, my sweetie found a couple of 1 acre places almost in the city and several other 1-3 acre places within 15 miles that were (barely) in our price range. We decided to take the leap of faith and trust that we could find a suitable future home.

I have to be honest. Missouri did not make a good impression on me in the first hour or so on the freeway. We'd driven through long, boring, radio-dead stretches followed by the prettier mountainous areas in New Mexico, the smallest chunk of Texas possible to drive through (the northern panhandle), and Oklahoma which was prettier than we expected. As we drove through Missouri, there were lovely trees in bloom but it was hard to fully appreciate them amidst the barrage of double-decker billboards. And what is with all the adult superstores on the freeway? I'm no prude, but I was shocked at the number of advertisements, and stores, located right on the interstate.

Still, I was trying hard to keep an open mind. At the end of another long day of driving, we pulled into our hotel in Moberly, some 30 miles north of Columbia. I couldn't find a hotel room in Columbia for our first five days there due to some event in town. We headed into Columbia the next morning. On the way, I noticed a place with a for sale sign and mentioned it. It turned out to be one on our list, so we went back to take a look from across the highway. It looked like a possibility, although it was a good 15 miles outside of Columbia on a highway.

Keeping the place in mind, I noted there was a fair amount of traffic. No, actually there was quite a lot of traffic. Still, it had potential because there was a nice wide shoulder on the highway where we could safely bike. That is, until we got to the outskirts of Columbia where the shoulder completely disappeared. Bikes would have to be in with traffic, still at high speeds, and in an industrial area. This was not looking so good anymore. No worries, more places left on the list.

As we drove through town, I spotted a bike store and we pulled in to get a map. They were out of bike maps but assured us it was a bike-friendly area and lots of people biked. We explored the city a bit and stumbled across the visitor center where I picked up a city map and lots of local information (but no bike map there either). We saw a few people walking around but not many, except in a city park which was packed with cars and people walking for exercise around a little lake. Next, I wanted to see where the vegetarian restaurant was in the downtown area. As we looked for a parking spot, I noticed there were only a few bikes locked up outside of the stores and we saw only one person on a bike (riding on the sidewalk).

Being able to bike to get around is a high priority for us and will be increasingly important as peak oil eventually drives gas prices back up. Despite the assurances from the bike store, that was not our observation. The only other people we saw on bikes were a guy riding in the park and one commuter. There were no bike lanes on the roads. The painted symbols indicated bikes were riding in with traffic. From what we could see, the drivers did not seem very bike-aware, although it's hard to say since we saw no bikes on the road with the cars! The traffic was bumper to bumper, though, with people zipping in a lane as soon as there was the slightest space available (just like in Tucson....but we have separate bike lanes). All in all, it did not feel or look bike-friendly to us. In fact, we saw more bike commuters this morning on our .8 mile walk with the dog here than we saw in all of Columbia.

Still, we did not want to discard our plans yet. Some testimonials online indicated at least a few people did commute by bike. We headed out of town to check out another potential area with several homes listed for sale. The road leading out had a shoulder for a brief time, but it was rough. Then it disappeared entirely and we were left on a narrow two-lane country road with twists and turns (read: blind corners) and fast traffic. This is not a safe combination for bike commuting. We went another direction to check out another house and ran into significant construction that looked like it would be going on for some time. The house was no longer on the market either.

One concern I voiced before the trip was the lack of mountains. I'd decided this was something I'd simply have to get used to because we really didn't feel staying in Arizona was an option, financially or for climate reasons. Driving through Oklahoma, we both realized the lack of mountains at the edge of the horizon was strange. After a while in Columbia, my sweetie mentioned that he felt disoriented without mountains to help him determine direction. I knew just what he meant.

In Arizona, there are small mountain ranges everywhere. Any direction you look has a mountain range in the distance. (See pictures from the Bosque post for examples of this.) Here at home, the Rincons are to the east, the Santa Catalinas to the northeast, the Santa Ritas to the south, and the Tucson Mountains to the west. A quick glance to the horizon makes a compass unnecessary for normal everyday travel.

Despite these various concerns, we probably still would have been willing to give it a go except for one last thing. It just didn't feel right. We have learned to trust our instincts over the years and we both had the feeling that this was not the right place for us. We could live there, of course, but we knew we wouldn't be happy living there. Quality of life is important, even in the search for a place that will fare well through climate change and peak oil challenges. We sadly decided this was not our answer and we spent our last day sightseeing. The subsequent incident with the dogs just confirmed our decision.

So, what now? We're not sure. We've decided that we'd be happiest staying in the Western states. The Southwest won't fare well with water so we'll be looking northward. Home prices are higher there so we plan to wait another 6-12 months for prices to drop, hopefully, within our range.

Was this trip a waste of our time and money? It's easy to feel that way, but, in all honesty, it was not. It taught us that what seems good on paper may not be what we really want in person. It gave us the opportunity for a much-needed vacation and we truly enjoyed meeting and visiting with Peak Oil Hausfrau and her family. We appreciated getting to see the countryside in the Midwest and had fun birding along the way and in a great little park in Moberly. We learned our dog could be quite the trouble-maker given the opportunity. The experience has re-affirmed the importance of remembering to find someplace we can live happily, not just someplace we can survive.



*For those of you also still researching options for relocation, here are some of the resources my sweetie recommends:

RealClimate & Global Change Research Program - for climate change predictions. Also read new studies as they come out.

Wikipedia - lots of good trivia about places

City-data - good demographics & community information

Chamber of Commerce & City websites - community information

Fema - flood maps

EPA - Superfund sites

LocalHarvest - CSAs, farms, farmer's markets

Google and Mapquest - maps


Once you are ready to look at real estate, here are a couple resources:

Foreclosures

Realty-trac

Zillow - good for value comparisons, but their actual numbers tend to be on the high side for the current market.

And some advice: You have to look at a lot of sources to find all of the houses in a market. Check local newspapers and realtors found through Yahoo searches. A lot of MLS searches get filtered through the realtor site that you use to link into the MLS. Not all area MLS sites allow direct public searches. So you need to access the MLS through multiple links to get a good picture.

Bosque's Gone to the Dogs

The Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, located 80 miles south of Albuquerque, New Mexico, holds a special place in my heart. For about 30 years, I have ventured there every November that I could swing a trip. (I've probably been at least a dozen times.) This refuge is very popular with the public, and especially with birders and photographers.

In the late fall and winter months, over 10,000 Sandhill cranes, 40,000 Snow and Ross's geese, and thousands of other waterfowl use the refuge as a wintering stopover or home. Bald and golden eagles are commonly seen, as are coyotes, deer, and elk. I'll share some of my photos from November 2005, taken with just a little digital point and shoot camera. (Click on photo to enlarge.) For really good photos, just do a little searching online. There are hardcore photographers that go there with thousands of dollars worth of equipment every year, and take far better pictures than mine.


Although it's brutally cold (below freezing) in mid-November, it is well worth dragging yourself out of your nice warm hotel or B&B bed before dawn to head to the refuge for the dawn flyout. The light geese congregate in one large pond before dawn.


They take off en masse around dawn in an absolutely spectacular flight. (Listen to the recording of the noise they make here at the Friends of Bosque website.) The entire sky above is filled with flying white-colored geese.


The geese feed in the fields during the day.


Here are a few cranes in with them, too. (The larger gray birds are the Sandhill cranes.)


By afternoon, the geese settle back in the ponds all over the refuge.

After the dawn flyout, the rest of the day is spent slowly driving around an auto tour loop, stopping frequently to look and listen to the wide assortment of other birds at the refuge.

The place draws me back because of the spectacle and because I never know what I might see that year. When I first started going as a youngster, a few Whooping Cranes would show up each year. It was always a challenge to try to spot 3 or 4 white cranes in amongst ten thousand gray Sandhill cranes. Getting to know where certain types of birds hung out was fun. Watching for coyotes trotting along the edges of the fields kept me busy, except for the year when they were incredibly easy to spot because a disease was sweeping through the Snow geese and they had easy pickin's. The coyotes looked like show dogs that year, filled out and flush with glossy coats from all the goose fat. The last time we were in Bosque, in 2005, we watched a large herd of elk come into a pond in the evening and had a great view of the bull male.

On our way home from this trip, we were to pass through Socorro, the closest town to the refuge. Since we were coming home early, we decided to salvage the vacation aspect of the trip and spend a morning at Bosque. We had never been to Bosque in the spring and didn't quite know what to expect. There would be no cranes, no light geese, no Bald eagles, and far fewer waterfowl. There would also likely be far fewer people, which turned out to be a very nice bonus. We checked the website and found out we could go with Angel. I'm sure they didn't used to allow dogs on the refuge, even in a vehicle. There may have been a time when they were then allowed but had to stay in the car. Now they are permitted on the refuge but must be on a leash and absolutely cannot harass the wildlife.


There was no need to arrive at dawn, so we took our time getting to the refuge in the morning. As we started around the auto loop, Angel was interested enough in the new sights and smells to forgo her napping. We let her out on the leash a few times but often left her in the car while we walked to an observation deck. She seemed just fine. We headed down a road with ponds on both sides. The smells were strong and I noticed Angel's head right next to mine as she sniffed the air coming in my open window. I laughed and mentioned to my sweetie that her nose was really twitching. His mistake was rolling her window in the back down halfway. She sniffed and sniffed.


We stopped to look at some egrets on our left after checking the ducks and Canada geese on our right to see if there was anything new. The Canada geese were at the edge of the pond and pretty close to the car, and apparently were too much for Angel to ignore.

All of the sudden, we heard scrambling noises in the back and turned to see Angel heading out her window. My sweetie was yelling at her to stop while I was trying to get turned around to grab her. By the time I did, her butt was the only thing left in the car. Her back feet were up on the window's edge and she was heading for a goose dinner. We, of course, were panicking because of the potential disaster brewing here. Would she really kill a goose? Would we be able to get her to come back? Would my sweetie have to go into the water to fetch her? Would we be banned from the refuge forever?

Knowing it was futile, I grabbed at her butt and got a chunk of fur just above her stumpy tail. There was no way I could reach up to get her harness or stop her and I knew she was going to be gone in another second. Amazingly, she dropped back down into the car! I didn't even have hold of skin. My sweetie thinks she was a little bit stuck in the window since it was only open halfway. I don't know what happened but we were both incredibly relieved that she didn't get out. We rolled the window up, all the way, and tried to calm down.

Angel was rather unhappy at her failed attempt to chase the biggest, most interesting bird she's ever seen. She gave us dirty looks and huffed occasionally for the rest of the tour.


We now know that our lazy dog can move fast when she wants to. We also know she will never, ever, be allowed to hang with the chickens if we ever get some (for bug control in the garden). She is not to be trusted, no matter how cute and innocent she may appear.


"I could've had goose."

Don't Blog When Tired

Anyone reading yesterday's short post probably thought I was a big baby. After all, I was whining about driving 1,350 miles in 8 days.

Well, my sweetie pointed out the typo to me this morning.

It was 3,350 miles. Yes, over just eight days. Brutal, and I wasn't even the one driving.


In other updates, here are pictures of the dog damaged bumper - which we will have to pay to repair or replace. If the cost is less than our deductible, we'll just pay the rental car company. More and we'll make a claim against insurance and pay the deductible, which is about the same amount we saved by returning the car a week early.

Click on photos to enlarge to see the gory details.


Not all that bad, right?



Look closer and you'll see tooth marks.



The damn dogs were trying to eat the car!

Home

We didn't find a new home. We're back from our trip already. I'll post about it when I'm rested up. 1,350 miles in 8 days in exhausting and tomorrow will be spent dealing with the dog-damaged bumper on the rental car so we can return it.

Update: Oops. That should have been 3,350 miles.

Chile's Travel Tips

Food

While traveling may seem like the perfect time to indulge your cravings, don't. If you are on a road trip, you need your system to stay regular. Junk food from vending machines and fast food at truck stops will throw your digestive system for a loop. (That is, assuming you eat pretty healthy food at home...) Trust me; the last thing you want to deal with on the road is constipation or diarrhea!

If possible, take your own food that your body is familiar with. See this post for ideas if you have plenty of space or will be camping, or my more recent posts regarding planning for this trip if you have limited space and are stuck in hotels.

If at all possible, reserve hotel rooms with a microwave and mini-fridge. This expands your non-restaurant food options considerably. If you can't get a microwave, invest in a $5 immersion heater so you can heat water in your room for instant oatmeal, soup cups, or even backpacking food. Yes, you can use the in-room coffee pot to heat water, but it may not be cleaned very often.

If you are going somewhere new and exciting with regional food specialties, by all means sample the local fare. Splurge on a dinner out when you have no driving plans the next day....just in case.

If you must buy food from fast food joints, make healthy choices. I've been amazed this trip to see that there is a Subway franchise at darn near every exit. We can always get a healthy sandwich there: whole wheat bread, mustard or fatfree sweet onion sauce, no meat/cheese (choose low-fat turkey breast and no cheese if you're not a vegetarian), tons of vegetables, and salt and pepper. Baked chips are better than fries, but even better than that would be the apple slices. (Better than that would be a whole apple from a produce stand...) Skip the soda and drink water to keep hydrated.


On the Road

Speaking of keeping hydrated, take advantage of rest areas as soon as you feel the slightest need. Just because you are positive you can make it to the next rest area, only "28 miles away", doesn't mean it will actually be open! Some roads also go hundreds of miles without a single bush or tree to hide behind in an emergency.

You will hit construction zones. It doesn't matter where you are, there will be construction and delays. Take a deep breath and relax. Getting frustrated about it won't change it.

There will be idiots on the road. This is guaranteed. I trust you are not one of the idiots but you will be driving behind or next to them, or have them merge on to the freeway and slow down forcing you to try to slow from 70 mph to 40 mph in seconds. Again, take a deep breath and relax. Screaming at them will not get them to change their behavior. Remember, they are idiots. Don't incite a road rage incident by reacting badly. Just get as far away from them, at a legal and safe speed, as you can.

If possible, do not plan to go a zillion miles each day, especially if you are getting older. Your body will stiffen up between rest stops and ache terribly at the end of the day. The hotel beds will not allow enough restful sleep to adequately recover.

Avoid traveling during holidays, weekend, and Spring Break. There are more idiots on the road.


Choice of Hotels

You may have spent hours online researching hotel options - finding the ones that allow pets but don't charge a $150 non-refundable deposit for them, have rooms with microwave and fridge, guarantee non-smoking rooms, and seem like you will be able to rest up for the next day's brutal drive.

Signs that you still made a poor choice include:

Having no power in your room.

Seeing a number of young men carrying cases of beer to several rooms close to yours.

Sharing the hotel with a large number of illegal immigrants.

Getting a non-smoking room right across the hall from a chain smoker so that the hallway reeks every time you leave the room.

Settling for a hotel with a microwave in the lobby only and discovering that really annoying people hang out in the lobby all the time.

Getting stuck on the second floor because the entire first floor is full of long-term rentals to construction workers, and then finding out there is no elevator. Your dog will not appreciate all the trips up and down the stairs, especially after you already took her for 3 long walks that day.

Having an acrobatic family check in to the room next door with a child who practices by jumping on the bed until 11:30 pm.

Leaving before dawn and finding the parking lot covered with cockroaches...also leaving your hotel.


Can you tell I don't really care for road trips?

Attacked by a Pack of Dogs

Today we decided to drive through a rural area, mostly because we read that it had a number of Amish farms. Sure enough, we passed quite a few of them. It was nice to see some gardens because, quite frankly, we've seen extremely few gardens here.

As we continued up the road, I noticed a number of dogs lounging in the grass alongside the road in front of a non-Amish house. All of the sudden, the car was surrounded by over a dozen dogs, barking, jumping, running in circles. They showed no fear of being run over and no-one came running out of the house to round them up. We proceeded at just a couple of miles an hour giving the dogs time to get out of the way. They continued to surround and attack the car for several minutes while I sat petrified that we'd hear the crunch of tires rolling over a dog at any moment.

Finally, we got through them and gunned it. We stopped a while later and I checked the rental car for scratches. Holy Cow! The entire front bumper is covered with deep claw marks which stripped the paint and gouged the plastic. There are a number of tooth punctures in it as well. Thanks to this irresponsible country resident (not the first words that come to mind), we now have a problem on our hands. The bumper is part of the entire front panel of this car and would be expensive to replace. Our insurance would probably cover this but our deductible is $250. My sweetie thinks he might be able to use filler and vehicle touch-up paint to repair this but I think it will be very difficult to match the factory finish.

This experience makes us think twice about our plans. We want to buy a home with a bit of land. This probably means not being right in town. How the heck would we deal with a neighbor like this? How would we able to bike past a pack of dogs like this? I talked to a couple of local folks at the laundromat this afternoon and one gal mentioned they had a similar problem with a neighbor. Calling the sheriff and talking to the neighbor did no good and they continued to have problems with the neighbor's dogs until her husband resolved it himself. (Don't ask.)

Why does trying to find a way to build a sustainable and more self-sufficient life have to be so difficult?!

Low-Speed Birding

I told you about the type of birds we saw at freeway speeds. When able to slow down and look for birds on foot or at in-town speeds, it is far easier to see, hear, and identify a larger variety of birds. Yesterday was a stressful day in many ways, but as far as the birds went, it was pretty good.

Birds seen in parks, rural areas, and town (in order of appearance):

American robin
Canada geese
Chipping sparrow
Red-bellied woodpecker
Downy woodpecker
Brown thrasher
Yellow-rumped warbler
Tufted titmouse
White-breasted nuthatch
Brown-headed cowbird
Turkey vulture
Pied-billed grebe
Eastern bluebird
European starling
Red-headed woodpecker
Northern cardinal
Great blue heron
House finch
Killdeer
Common grackle
Chimney swift
Eastern meadowlark
Duck butt
Red-tailed hawk
American crow
Mallard
Red-winged blackbird
Barn swallow
Belted kingfisher

We're pretty sure several of these birds are new sightings for us so we can add them to our "Life List" when we get home.

Today's Tasty Meal Plan

Breakfast was pretty boring as it was the hotel's continental offerings. Rather than haul my soymilk down to the lobby tomorrow to eat sugary cereal, I think I'll just break into our big box of Shredded Wheat in the room. It'll be easier and better for me, too.

I spent half an hour in the room prepping our lunch. Since I knew we wouldn't have a microwave in the room today and I really don't feel like trekking down to the lobby to use theirs (again), I used the immersion heater I picked up before leaving home. As long as you remember to never ever plug it in unless it is already in the water, they work like a charm. I have burned out several of these in the past by either forgetting to put it in the water before plugging it in or taking it out of the hot water before unplugging it.

Anyway, I needed the hot water to rehydrate some of the bean spread I made and dehydrated last week. While that was rehydrating, I sliced a tomato I picked up at the market yesterday, set aside some lettuce leaves from home, and put some whole wheat bread (also purchased yesterday) in a bag for today's travels. When the beans were creamy, I added some sliced green onions from home. Snacks today will be Pretzel Thins from Trader Joe's, the last Arizona sweet orange, apple slices with peanut butter, and/or carrot sticks.

I wish more of today's meal was local but I think I'm doing pretty good with the beans, green onions, lettuce, and orange. I hope to get by a local Farmer's Market this weekend to pick up some local fare.

Tonight will probably see us munching on our dehydrated backpacking food again. They are okay for this situation but I wouldn't want to live on the stuff. However, as I recall from my younger backpacking days, darn near anything tastes great on the trail at the end of a long hike!

Hi-Speed Birding

Birding while travelling at freeway speeds is an interesting experience. There is no way to slow down for a better look, get the binoculars out much less focused on anything, and then there is the issue of being in unfamiliar territory. Nevertheless, it is possible to identify common and/or familiar species based on range, appearance (as best you can tell), habitat, behavior (on the ground versus soaring, for instance), and how common the bird is in the region. Big birds are also easier to identify.

Here are the birds we've seen in the past three days, in no particular order:

Red-tailed hawk
Swainson's hawk
Ferruginous hawk
American Kestrel
Turkey Vulture
Ring-necked pheasant
Roadrunner (hotel parking lot)
Canada geese
Coot
Cattle egret
Great egret
Great blue heron
White-faced ibis
Mourning dove
Western kingbird
American crow
Chihuahuan raven
Common raven
Barn swallow
American robin
Yellow-rumped warbler (rest area)
European starling
Meadowlark
Red-winged blackbird
Great-tackled grackle
Common grackle
House sparrow

We've also seen a pronghorn antelope and lots of domestic animals.

For those of you with a morbid bent, we've seen quite a lot of roadkill as well. Skunk, opossum, raccoon, deer (herd spread over 1/2 mile), hawk, and something we're not sure of, maybe a groundhog.

Local Food Miles

We just had a wonderful dinner with produce from yesterday's CSA share: new Yukon gold potatoes, I'itoi onions, spring mix and cilantro. Last night, I boiled the potatoes in salted water until tender. I threw together a salad with the lettuce, onions, and cilantro. When we got checked into the hotel, I took our potatoes and Corelle plates to the lobby to use the only microwave. (I think the guy at the counter thought I was a bit strange.) We simply dumped the salad on top of the hot potatoes and seasoned with salt and pepper. Arizona sweet oranges were dessert.

Does my local food still count as local if we drove it 450 miles before eating it?

Not Exactly a Vacation

We're off soon to check out the area under consideration for relocation and to see if there are any affordable homes with enough space for Angel to run nap. I've paid the bills, emptied the produce drawers in the refrigerator, prepped food for the trip, told the house-sitter to eat as much chard as she wants, double-checked our packing list and reservations, and started cleaning out for the actual move.

What I didn't do, however, is write a bunch of blog posts ahead of time and schedule them to post while I'm gone. I am undecided as to whether I will blog on the road. It's likely, however, since ya'll know I just can't keep my mouth shut or my fingers still. But, since this is not exactly a vacation for us, my down time for putzing around on the computer will be limited.

I don't want to leave you bored and twiddling your thumbs so I have two suggestions. The first is to go check out the blogs listed in my sidebar, especially ones that you've never looked at. You might find some new writing that you just fall in love with.

The second suggestion is to read some of my old posts, especially if you are new here. I often write with the assumption that readers have read every single word I've ever published here (hardly an accurate assumption, I'm sure). Explore the archives, browse through the tags listed in the sidebar, and see if anything strikes your fancy. Let me know if you would like me to revisit some post or issue from the past. Are there subjects you would like me to explore more fully in the future?

See you on the road! (It is rather ironic that we will be spending Earth Day driving around all day, isn't it? We simply don't have the time to bike to our destination like some adventurous folks. Angel has also made it clear she would not willingly spend weeks riding in the trailer!)

A Book Giveaway

I have a bit of extra trade credit for the local used bookstore, handy for when I see books that I think would make fun giveaways here. This title jumped off the shelf at me and I think you'll understand why.


Who wouldn't want to know where to look for dinner when times get tough?!

The book covers edible plants and animals around the globe, and includes information about historical and current use, how hard it is to catch, gather, and prepare. Learn how to access the meat in armored catfish, use a remora for fishing, and how to toast termites to eat like popcorn. Decide whether to use reindeer moss to make alcohol, bread, or jelly. It is, however, not a detailed guide so much as an overview.

If you want a chance at winning this book, leave a comment here. A random drawing will be held in early May and then I'll contact the winner to ship it on out. In the meantime, it's my reading material for the trip.

UPDATE: Comments are now closed for this post. The drawing will be held soon!

Book Review for Science Book Challenge

I pledged to read three science books this year for the Science Book Challenge and then found little time to do the reading. However, I did finally finish one (I had to because the library wanted their book back.) and am ready to tell you about it.

The book is The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life by Ben Sherwood. Intrigued by an NPR interview with the author, I wanted to read about the characteristics and traits survivors share. The author interviewed people who survived some kind of physical or intense emotional trauma in their lives ranging from POWs, cancer survivors, plane crashes, accidents of an appalling variety, and even the Holocaust. Some of the stories are uncomfortable to read but each illustrates an important aspect of how and why some people survive when others don’t.

Interspersed with their stories are interviews with scientists who have studied survival from diverse perspectives. They share their findings on what it takes to survive a plane crash, how the body responds physically to accidents and stresses, whether attitude or faith makes a difference in survival, how to create your own luck, the genetic basis of resiliency, and why fear and adversity can be good for you.

In the second part of the book, Sherwood discusses the five types of personalities that survivors display: Fighter, Believer, Connector, Thinker, and Realist. Twelve psychological strengths emerged most often in interviews with survivors and discussions with the experts. These include adaptability, resilience, faith, hope, purpose, tenacity, love, empathy, intelligence, ingenuity, flow, and instinct. The author worked with a leading psychometrician – she studies the science of psychological measurement - to develop an Internet-based Survivor Profiler test. Readers of the book may take the test online to discover their Survivor personality and three dominant strengths (as well as the three weakest ones). By knowing your strengths, you can “exercise and build them like muscles, and mobilize them in a crunch.”

The test was interesting but I wasn’t terribly surprised at my dominant strengths. Returning to the book, however, left me wanting. Each of the five survivor types and twelve psychological strengths were described briefly but there were no recommendations on specific means to go about the exercising and building of them. For some clues on how to do that, you have to return to the beginning of the book to review the three rules of the Survivor Club:

First Rule: Everyone is a survivor. At some point in life, everyone faces some kind of hardship. A survivor is defined in the book as “anyone who faces and overcomes adversity, hardship, illness, or physical or emotional trauma.” They keep going, whether only for a short time or for years, no matter what they face. They understand that their life may be changed forever and never return to “normal.” They accept and move on, building a new “normal.”

This bit really resonated with me, as many who learn about the devastating impacts of climate change and peak oil on our current way of life go through emotional trauma. The steps to dealing with the realization that life will not continue as we know it are similar to those in dealing with any sort of loss.

Second Rule: It’s not all relative. Whatever adversity comes your way, whatever crisis you face, is your challenge to deal with at that moment. It may appear to be a less severe crisis than someone else went through but comparisons don't matter and they don't help. You have to deal with what you’ve been dealt and not waste time or energy comparing your crisis to what others have gone through. You have every right to be overwhelmed even if it, superficially, seems like it should be easier for you.

Third Rule: You’re stronger than you know. When facing adversity, survivors find that they have strengths and abilities they didn’t know they had. The desire for survival is strong and crises force people to pull on all available resources, whether physical, mental, or emotional. Dig deep!


I would recommend giving the book a read, whether you have faced a significant crisis or not, although I suspect those who are already in the “survivors club” may get more out of it than I did. You can also explore the website where additional survivors share their stories.

Damn Noisy Birds

Bloggers often wax poetic about the joys of enjoying the peace and quiet while hanging their laundry on the line. They obviously don’t live in my neighborhood. Usually I am serenaded by emergency sirens on nearby major streets, entertained by the neighbors’ outside chatter, excited by the sudden screech of brakes, or calmed by the white noise of a nearby pool motor.

Not this morning. I got started with laundry early, never imagining the damn birds would be so loud as to drown out the delightful sounds of the city. Just because they are itching to mate and nest is no excuse for the cacophony I had to endure while hanging a large load of laundry.

It started with the coo of the mourning dove and chirping of the busy little house sparrows. The incessant twittering of the house finches was not constant enough for pleasant white noise but at least it wasn’t as loud as the curve-billed thrasher’s two-note whistle. The cactus wren scolded me noisily from above while the gila woodpeckers alternated drumming on my metal chimney and laughing about it. The verdins tried to sing sweetly next door but were drowned out by the mockingbird showing off his repertoire for the ladies. And if those white-winged doves ask me “Who cooks for you?” one more time, they are going to be on the menu!

Even Angel looked perturbed as the birds made it impossible to listen for cats trying to sneak into her yard. She couldn’t focus fully on watching for a coyote slipping down the street a little late in the morning. Even now, I can barely concentrate on writing this as the birds continue to chirp, chatter, sing, and drum outside. My yard is not a damn concert hall. Shut up already so I can listen for the police helicopter.

Composting Old Files

One might assume that my file cabinets were mostly empty following the Cut the Crap challenge I held a year ago, especially since I wrote several times about dealing with paper clutter. One would have been wrong in that assumption, however. I tackled some of the files but got behind as I kept moving through the month, blogging about decluttering the entire house, yard, and garage.

With a potential move coming up within a few months, it was time to complete the task. Well, actually, it was time to start all over and be brutal about the culling. Moving is great motivation to get rid of everything extraneous in your life, and files, especially if you are the one packing it all up and trudging up and down the moving van ramp with heavy boxes. My files always lose a lot of weight right before a move.

I'm happy to announce that I have finally completed going through every one of my file drawers. I recycled quite a lot of paper and filled the shredder basket four times. By "filled", I mean absolutely packed it full. Rather than have to empty it several times in a day, I take the shredder top off and stomp down the shredded paper so I can fit more into the basket. The total amount probably would have filled a large garbage bag.



Stop cringing at all the waste, people. The paper wasn't wasted. Innocuous paper was recycled at the city's facility. Full sheets of paper with one clean side were added to my stash of used paper for printing. (See above. Yes, that is my "computer mouse" watching over me.) All papers with sensitive information were shredded and added to the compost.

Shredded paper composts very well, adding important carbon to the pile. We have two compost bins. One is layered with carbon materials such as leaves and straw, fresh nitrogen in the form of kitchen waste, and animal manure, another source of nitrogen. The second bin is a holding bin for more animal manure (goat, sheep, chicken, and pig) mixed with the leaves I had on hand.



Shredded paper tends to clump up when added as a layer so I decided to incorporate it into the animal manure first. I dumped it all in the poop bin and used a pitchfork to mix it. That bin really started cooking after I did this. Now, any time we add fresh kitchen waste to the first bin, I use a bucket to scoop up some animal manure mixed with shredded paper and leaves to cover it up. It's working great and will produce some lovely compost for my gardening friends when we leave.

I'm working my way through other decluttering in the house and yard, but preparations for our trip are starting to take precedence. It will be easier to determine how much we need to get rid of once we have found a new home.

Pumpkin Rescue!

Long-time readers here may recall the pumpkin I lost to mold last year. We get pumpkins around Halloween at our CSA and one of mine molded last year in mid-February. I learned from that experience and stored my two large pumpkins in a cooler room this year. I made sure they had sufficient air circulation around them and were not touching anything on the sides. (The bad one last year started rotting where it was in contact with a wall.)


On Saturday afternoon, however, I noticed a soft spot starting on the back of my pumpkin. It was time to process it. As luck would have it, I woke up early on Sunday morning so I decided to tackle the 17 pound squash. Normally, I bake winter squash - it brings out their natural sweetness - to puree and store in the freezer. That didn't seem like the best idea right now since I'm trying to empty out the freezer. However, I can use up some pureed pumpkin before we move, in breads, muffins, soups, and faux cheesy sauces, so I decided to bake half of it. That's all that would fit in the oven anyway!

For the other half, I pondered whether to dehydrate it or can it. Canning it would force me to try out the pressure canner again, but I already had a full day planned in the kitchen baking a cake and making burritos (including the tortillas) from scratch. I decided to dehydrate it instead. Little did I realize how labor-intensive that would turn out to be.

To dehydrate winter squash, the recommendation is to cut it into 1" wide strips, peel them, and then cut them crosswise in 1/8" slices. Whew. This took quite some time. The slices then need to be blanched, in small batches, for 4 minutes before being laid out on the dehydrating trays. This whole process took several hours but I finally had all ten of my dehydrating trays loaded and drying.

There was still about one-fifth of the pumpkin left! I decided to bake it too, but using a different method. I originally saw this recipe in a Hopi Indian cookbook and found another version online. Cut the pumpkin into cubes and place in a baking pan. Add a boatload of brown sugar. Yes, "boatload" is the measurement I use. Sprinkle with salt and cinnamon. Dot with vegan margarine (or butter, if you insist). Cover and bake at 350 degrees until soft. (Check it at about 45 minutes.) I cooked this in the solar oven since it was a nice afternoon, baking it a couple of hours at the lower heat.

While that was cooking, I processed the baked pumpkin half. Did I mention that I used retained heat cooking for part of the time? We wanted to go to the Farmer's Market on Easter to get the last strawberries of the season. The pumpkin was not tender yet, so I turned the oven off and set up my retained heat system in a box to accommodate the large roasting pan. By afternoon, the pumpkin was done. I pureed it in batches to freeze.

On Monday morning, I collected all the tiny bits of dried pumpkin from the dehydrator. It always amazes me how much food shrinks when dry. They also look a little bit like orange corn flakes, so I guess it would be a good idea for me to label them clearly.


Here is a picture of the processed pumpkin. The frozen puree is probably equal to at least 6, and maybe 8, cans of pumpkin puree. The dehydrated pumpkin will rehydrate to a fair amount of squash. And the sweet baked pumpkin will be tasty for breakfast or dessert. Probably breakfast because we're still eating strawberries.

Good Enough

One effective way I've learned to reduce my stress is to realize that everything I do does not have to be perfect. For you Type B personality types out there, this may not sound like a big deal, but the Type A readers know that perfectionism can be a driving force causing undue stress in our lives. Accepting some results as "good enough" can free one from pressure to only do those things that can be done perfectly in addition to allowing more possibilities into your life.

Enter baking a birthday cake. If you consult with Martha Stewart, she will send you off to the specialty bakeware store to stock up on the latest, greatest pans to make the most beautiful cake. You, of course, need a lovely cake stand upon which to display your creation. You must also have all the fancy tools to frost and decorate the cake, and spend hours practicing so that your guests will think you paid a professional to produce it.

Not in my house. I don't own springform pans because I bake cakes only for birthdays and special occasions. I've pared down my kitchen pots and pans to eliminate these kind of specialty items. On the rare occasions that I bake a cake, I generally just make a 13 x 9" sheet cake. I can, with a little ingenuity however, still manage a layer cake. Not a beautiful one but one that is tasty and that is good enough.

Today I made a vegan lemon cake recipe with lemon filling. I was thrilled to find this recipe as lemon curd and lemon filling are usually made with eggs so I have not eaten either in years. A filling, of course, goes between layers. I started with a 13 x 9" cake. Once it was cool enough, I removed it from the pan and cut it in half. These halves can be stacked to make a rectangular (almost square) layer cake.


I got ambitious and also split each layer so I could add more filling.


It took a fair amount of frosting to cover the somewhat uneven edges and the resulting cake was definitely not a showstopper. There was no fancy cake stand, only a glass baking sheet. It didn't matter. The cake looked good enough and tasted wonderful. There was no need to beat myself up trying to create the perfect cake when everyone was happy with this one.

Half Empty or Half Full?

Are you a half empty or half full kind of person? When bad things happen, do you chalk it up to your rotten luck, or do you find the silver lining in the situation?

I tend to be in the former category but I want to be in the latter. I think I'd be happier. And, based on the chapter on luck in the book I'm reading right now (The Survivor's Club by Ben Sherwood), I'd be more likely to survive in a rough situation. Perhaps it is because I just read that chapter last night that I chose to see the good in an incident this morning.

There was a small amount of rice left in the rice cooker after my sweetie had breakfast and packed his lunch. I scraped it out, planning to eat it with some cabbage kimchi I made last week. First, though, I made a couple of loaves of quick bread, so by the time I was ready to eat breakfast, the rice was cold. I popped my bowl into the microwave for a minute to warm it up.

When it was hot, I removed the bowl and was standing by the counter holding it. All of the sudden, half the bowl broke off and fell on the floor spilling rice on the counter and floor. My first reaction was shock, of course, and wondering what I'd have for breakfast now. Immediately, though, I realized how lucky I was. Why?

1. I was not hurt.
2. Angel was not hurt. (It dropped right next to her food and water bowl.)
3. Plain rice with no sauce on it was easy to clean up.
4. My sweetie made basmati rice rather than Jasmine rice. Basmati is nice and dry whereas the Jasmine would have been a sticky mess.
5. I had just cleaned the floor the day before so clean-up was simple.
6. One less heavy bowl to move!
7. When scrounging for something else for breakfast, I found some chard sauce in the refrigerator I'd forgotten about. It's part of tonight's dinner plan now.


Is your bowl half empty or half full? Remember that you can cultivate a resilient nature, be open to opportunities, and look for the silver lining (while still being realistic) to enhance your ability to survive, and thrive, when disaster strikes or times are tough.

Not Your Momma's Tuna Noodle Casserole

Nope, my “tuna” noodle casserole is vegan and much lower in fat and salt than the original classic. I’ve been feeling really stressed lately with the moving plans and our upcoming attempt to scout out property in too little time. When I’m stressed, junk food happens. I crave the comfort foods of childhood and tuna noodle casserole is a dish I remember fondly from church potlucks. I know what I am really trying to capture is the memory of fun, jovial gatherings of friendly folk rather than the actual dish, but I can’t replicate those times. The best I can do is hope a healthy facsimile of a dish associated with that time will ease my stress.

I hunted around online for the classic recipe as a jumping off point. It would need serious veganizing. After all, the original has tuna, egg noodles, and cream of mushroom soup. I wanted to replicate the flavor as much as possible without the fish, egg, or dairy in it.


Challenge #1: replace the tuna

This was actually the easiest of the replacements. Garbanzo beans (chickpeas), smashed with a fork, make a great stand-in for tuna. For tuna salad sandwiches without the tuna, just mash the garbanzo beans and add the normal tuna salad ingredients such as mayonnaise, pickle relish, and sweet onions.


Challenge #2: replace the egg noodles

This one was more challenging. Sure, I could have picked up some regular fettuccine to use in place of egg noodles, but I wanted to make this more difficult. I hadn't made pasta from scratch in ages and looked forward to the excuse to try to make eggfree noodles. Normal egg noodles are simply a combination of semolina, egg, and oil. Without the egg, I had to work a little harder to get an egg-like flavor. Here is the recipe I came up with:

No-Egg Noodles
1 cup semolina
1 tbs nutritional yeast
1/4 tsp onion powder
3 tbs flax egg substitute
1/2 tbs olive oil
Up to 3 tbs water

On a kneading surface, mix dry ingredients together.


Make a well and add the flax mixture, oil, and 1 tablespoon of water. Mix until the dough holds together, adding a little water if needed. Once the dough holds together, knead until smooth. This will take about 5 minutes and is hard work because this dough is stiffer than bread dough.


Let dough rest for 15 minutes, and then cut the dough into balls. Work with only a small portion at a time to keep it manageable. I doubled the recipe above but would not recommend that for the first time you try this.


Continue kneading the dough by passing it through the #1 setting on a manual pasta machine. (This can also be done by hand with a rolling pin.)


Each time the dough comes out, sprinkle it with semolina and fold it in thirds to pass it through again.


When it is nice and smooth, start passing it through progressively smaller settings on the machine. You can fold it in half or thirds before doing this or just pass the sheet through. For my noodles, I went up to setting #6.


My wide noodle cutter on the machine does not work well so I decided to hand-cut the pasta. I laid the long sheets down on my working surface and used a pizza roller. As you can see, I didn't make even cuts.


I carefully peeled these up from the cart and hung them on a clothes drying rack. It is not necessary to dry the homemade pasta; it can be cooked immediately, but I was making this several hours in advance and needed to dry it without it all clumping together.


When it was dry, I removed it from the rack. Some of it broke at the top, so I quickly learned to hold the tray underneath as I was lifting them up. Cleaning the floor before doing this is a good idea!

Homemade pasta cooks much more quickly than store-bought. If cooked while fresh, it should be dropped gradually into the boiling water so that the water never stops boiling. With it dried, we just put it all in at once and started testing it after just a couple of minutes for doneness. I wanted it quite al dente for the next part of the recipe.


Challenge #3: replace the cream of mushroom soup

This wasn't too difficult. I was not happy with the results of a recipe I tried in the past, using fresh mushrooms that are sauteed and then added to a cream sauce. This time, I opted to use my dried mushrooms. Dried mushrooms have a much more concentrated flavor.

I didn't measure for this recipe so adjust seasonings to your liking.

~1/2 cup whole wheat flour
~1 tbs arrowroot
~2 tbs nutritional yeast
~1 tsp onion powder
~1 tsp salt
~1/4 cup crushed dried mushrooms
3 cups soy milk

Mix dry ingredients in a saucepan.
Stir in milk.
Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly until it thickens.


Assembly:

Tuna Noodle Casserole also needs green peas and potato chips. I didn't have any peas left in the freezer so I had to use canned. The day before, I picked up a bad of natural potato chips that were on sale.

Once the soup was thickened, I stirred in the smashed garbanzo beans and the drained peas to heat them through. I poured this into a 13 x 9" pan and mixed it with the cooked and drained pasta.

Ordinarily, the dish would bake for half an hour at 400 degrees. Then the potato chips would be crushed and sprinkled over the top before baking it another 10 minutes. That sounded like a lot of energy to use, which is why I made sure to heat the beans and peas with the soup first. I immediately sprinkled the dish with the potato chips and baked it a mere 15 minutes.


It was delicious! I now have a great recipe for a pretty healthy comfort food that could even go to a church potluck.

Bean Spreads - Easy to Make, Easy to Dry

Some people wonder how to make a tasty sandwich without any meat or cheese. I'll tell you how: beans! Cooked beans can be used to make a wide variety of really tasty spreads, perfect for sandwiches but also good for crackers, carrots, and cucumbers. For a sandwich, spread on one slice of bread and add any vegetables you ordinarily enjoy, such as tomatoes, lettuce, sprouts, red onion, and avocado.

Most folks are probably familiar with hummus, the Middle Eastern garlicky garbanzo (aka chickpea) spread. Many grocery stores now sell tubs of prepared hummus in the deli or boxes of instant hummus on the shelf. Hummus is so easy to make at home, though, I never buy anything but the ingredients to make it from scratch. I also won't buy prepared hummus in the store because I like my version better than theirs.


Chile's Lowfat Hummus

2 cloves garlic
15 oz can garbanzos OR 1 1/4 cups cooked garbanzos
Juice from can or cooking pot
2 tbs lemon juice
1/4 tsp cumin
1/8 tsp salt
1 tbs sesame tahini or peanut butter

Put garlic in food processor. Whir for about 10 seconds to mince.
Add remaining ingredients and process until smooth and creamy.
Taste and adjust seasonings as desired.
Blend in a little bean juice if necessary to thin the hummus to make it spread more easily.
Use as a sandwich spread on whole wheat bread or in whole-wheat pitas with alfalfa sprouts, sliced tomato and red onion.

Note: Using sesame tahini will give the hummus a traditional middle Eastern flavor. If you don't have any tahini, though, peanut butter works fine. Your hummus will have an Americanized flavor.


I made a double batch of hummus yesterday and dehydrated most of it for our trip. There was just enough left over for my sweetie to take hummus sandwiches in to work today.

This morning, I tried a new recipe for a Roasted Red Pepper - White Bean Dip. I modified it to make it fatfree and to use my basil cubes*. Here's my version.


Great Northern Bean-Red Pepper Sandwich Spread

2 cloves garlic
1 can Great Northern white beans, drained
1 roasted red pepper, peeled and seeded
2 basil cubes*, thawed (May substitute 1/4 cup fresh basil)
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
2 tsp balsamic vinegar

Put garlic in food processor. Whir for about 10 seconds to mince.
Add remaining ingredients and process until smooth and creamy.
Taste and adjust seasonings as desired.
Blend in a little bean juice if necessary to thin the spread.
Use as a sandwich spread on whole wheat bread or in whole-wheat pitas with alfalfa sprouts, sliced tomato and red onion.


I spread this on my plastic dehydrator tray liners and let it dry at 135 degrees this morning. (Parchment paper can be used instead of the trays.) After about 3 hours, it dries up quite a bit as you can see in the tray on the right. However, the inside of the trays don't seem to dry as rapidly as the outside so I crumble it up (tray on left) to ensure the moist parts dry totally.

To rehydrate, I'll add warm water to some of the dried mix, stir, and let it sit a few minutes. I don't have measurements for this so I'll be sure to add just a little bit of water to start. A mix that is too thick is easy to thin. We'll have tasty sandwiches on the road.


*The basil cubes are my fatfree vegan answer to "What can I do with a ton of basil if I don't want to make pesto with oil, nuts, and cheese?!" I roast fresh tomatoes and remove the skins when they are cool enough to handle. These go in the food processor with lots of fresh basil. The dark green puree is poured into ice cube trays to freeze and then popped out to store in plastic bags in the freezer. They are great added to soups, stews, and rice dishes.

Keeping Track of Emergency Food Supplies

Sharon (of Casaubon's Book) was the first person I've really been able to show our emergency food storage without fear of being thought crazy or paranoid. In fact, she was a strong influence in our decision to build up a larder in the first place. You can read all of Sharon's posts on why and how to store food here.

The Center for Disease Control recommends everyone have a minimum of two weeks' food supplies on hand to weather any natural or human-caused disasters. The LDS Church, for a variety of reasons, urges its members to keep a one year supply of food on hand and they even have a handy calculator to help figure out how much is needed. With increasing food costs and job losses, building up your pantry gives you a safety net for hard times. How much food you decide to keep on hand is really up to you. Decide what would give you peace of mind, what you can afford, and what you can store. I think a three-month supply is a happy medium.

How do you build up your pantry? I've already talked about food security a number of times here and recommend you try some of the ideas I've thrown out such as buying in bulk, checking the sales and discontinued items, shopping for nutrition, gardening, and preserving food (see also canning). Of course, avoiding food waste is important too! Sharon has also discussed this (see link given above) and had a series of posts focused on building up your supplies one week at a time. Justice Desserts had the ticking time bomb version of emergency preparedness that will get you ramped up for food and everything else you need in just three weeks.

Once you have gathered up some food stocks, though, you don't just tuck them in the spare closet and forget about them. The food you've stored should be food that you are willing to eat regularly; otherwise there isn't much point in having it. If you choose to buy staples suggested by the LDS calculator - such as wheat, oats, and legumes as well as flour, sugar, and dried milk - you should make sure you know how to prepare them. If they are new foods to you, start incorporating them into your daily menus now.

Your extra food should be stored properly and rotated regularly to maintain the quality of the food. I collected food grade buckets from my local grocery store's bakery department and a restaurant. For rice, wheat, oats, and legumes, I wrapped a 4 oz chunk of dry ice in a paper towel and put it on the bottom of the bucket before pouring in the bulk food. I left the lid sitting loosely on top for half an hour to allow the dry ice to drive out the oxygen before tamping down the lid tightly. For a couple of hours, I kept checking the lids to make sure no more pressure built up from any remaining dry ice. If it did, a quick "burp" of the lid took care of it. Many people advise buying special oxygen removers and gamma lids but I have not spent the money on that yet. For small quantities, I used my vacuum sealer attachment for canning lids to tightly seal food in half gallon or smaller canning jars.

To make sure the food is rotated regularly, it's important to know when you got it. For foods that store well, such as dry grains, pasta, and legumes, I write the date I got the food on the container. These are then put in the storage area with the oldest items most accessible. For foods with printed expiration dates on them, such as condiments, I also organize them to use the oldest ones first. For commercially canned food, you can sometimes decipher the coding to determine date of manufacture. Canned food keeps well in the proper storage conditions although the nutrition of the food may diminish over time. Since store stock rotates regularly, you can write your purchase date on the lid of canned goods with a permanent marker as one way to help keep track of its freshness.

Storing emergency food supplies is not useful unless you know what you have on hand. Without some kind of inventory, you may end up with too much of one type of food and not nearly enough of another, and you will be less likely to remember to rotate the food. If, like me, you have fairly limited space in which to store your emergency food supplies, your tracking system can help save you time in finding out whether you still have a specific food in your stores and where to find it.

I use a notebook with printed sheets to keep track of my inventory. I keep it, with a pen attached, in the pantry. I can check it easily to see if I am running low on particular items. My inventory is broken down into types of food. I use these categories because it is how I mentally categorize the food and organizing the list makes it more manageable.

Below is a list of the categories that I use. For each one, I've listed the type of foods that I would include in it. This is not a recommendation to store all of these items, but simply an example of how I group foods. Use what works for you.

• Asian food - foods specific to Asian cuisine, such as dried bracken, nori, shiitake mushrooms, and rice vinegar. Also includes condiments that are specifically Asian such as red curry paste, Sriracha sauce, soy sauce, and wasabi.


• Baking supplies - includes baking yeast, arrowroot, baking powder, baking soda, egg replacer (powder), flax seeds, flour, & salt.


• Beans - all beans & legumes. List specifies whether they are canned, dehydrated (precooked & dried), or dry.


• Beverages - includes tea bags, coffee beans, nondairy milk mixes and aseptic packages, and drink mixes. If you brew your own wine or beer, include supplies such as yeast and hops here.


• Condiments - includes any food item used as a condiment, but does not includes herbs, spices, or extracts. Examples: banana chutney, mustard, nutritional yeast, relish, salsa, and vinegar.


• Dehydrated meals - includes backpacking food and dried soups.


• Flavorings - includes all herbs, spices, and extracts. Savory flavorings are stored separately from sweet flavorings. (You don't want your cinnamon to smell like garlic powder.) Vacuum packing helps maintain their freshness and contain their odors.


• Fruit - includes dehydrated and canned fruit as well as fruit-based jams, jellies, and syrups.


• Grains - includes whole and partially processed grains such as wheat berries, cream of wheat cereal, popcorn kernels, etc. Flour is tallied with baking supplies.


• Nuts & Oils - includes oil, oil spray, nut butters, sesame or sunflower seeds, and nuts.


• Pasta - includes pasta as well as semolina flour for making pasta from scratch.


• Rice - any kind of rice. Rice flour is tallied with Asian food or baking supplies.


• Sugars - includes all sweeteners, such as sugar, brown sugar, honey, molasses, maple syrup, and even stevia.


• Vegetables - includes any vegetable foods whether canned, dehydrated, or pickled. Seeds for sprouting are also listed here.

A spreadsheet is a really handy way to organize the food inventory. Each category has its own worksheet and the foods listed in each category are alphabetized so that I can scan the printed list quickly. If there are multiple forms of the same food, the food is listed first and the form second. (For example: "tomatoes, dried" and "tomatoes, diced with basil, canned".) I also have a column to note where the food is located since I've had to carve space out in several places throughout the house. The amount of each food item is noted in another column and some spreadsheets have these totaled at the bottom. It is useful, for instance, to know how many pounds of beans or grains are on hand. It is not really useful, however, to know how many total ounces of spices I have.

When I first put the notebook together, I printed out all the worksheets from the spreadsheet to put in my notebook. I subtract and add items as needed by hand on the hard copy in the notebook. I've only updated the spreadsheets on the computer once - when I added a number of new foods in multiple categories after several weeks of canning. Yes, the notebook gets messy, but it's still usable. If you are diligent about marking items off as you remove them from the pantry, or adding new items when you go shopping, it will stay pretty accurate. There should be no need to completely re-inventory your stock more often than once a year.

For those of you with multiple family members pulling items out of storage, be sure to explain whatever system you use to everyone so that your inventory stays up to date. If there are children or others that will not cooperate, consider putting the emergency food storage under lock and key.

The only aspect of tracking our emergency food stores that I have not incorporated into the notebook is tracking how quickly we eat the food. I've been pondering ways to do that and hope to put something in place when we move. To do this, I will probably have to include all of the food I have on my kitchen shelves as well as the emergency stored food. At this time, I don't include the kitchen food because it seems like it would get really onerous to mark things off every single time I make a meal.

Do you have a system for tracking your food supplies that works really well? How do you keep track of how quickly you go through various foods?

Keeping it Simple

After stressing about dealing with all the food in the refrigerator and figuring out what to take on our road trip, I've decided I need a simpler solution. The important issues to keep in mind are the need to avoid wasting food and money, yet eat reasonably well on our trip. We don't have to eat as well as we do at home because it is, after all, only for a short while.

At my CSA pick-up on Friday, I was thrilled to see that two out of our eight items were dried foods - beans and wheat berries. I purposely traded some of my fresh food for these items as they became available in the trading baskets. I can store (and move) the beans and wheat easily without worrying about them rotting. You may think I was crazy to get rid of my grapefruits, carrots, and turnips, but it works out better for me right now. I still came home with green onions, spring mix, and sweet potatoes.

Does this mean we're eating very few vegetables this week? No way! I'm supplementing with pureed beets from the freezer, the last few carrots from the previous week, chard fresh from the garden, and pickled and preserved vegetables in the refrigerator. I've also got some dehydrated and canned vegetables in the food storage for use in a pinch.

On Friday, I also consulted with another member who is an expert at dehydrating food for trips. Lori dried lots of food, including parts of her CSA share, for a long backpacking trip on the Pacific Crest Trail. I was comfortable with drying individual items, such as chard, but unsure about mixed dishes. She assured me that entire meals could be dehydrated, and re-hydrated, quite successfully. I went home very enthused to start cooking and drying all sorts of dishes for our trip.

Overnight, however, my enthusiasm waned as I looked at the list of other work I needed to tackle. After some pondering, I decided to compromise and make my life simpler. Last year, we used our REI dividend (earned from their credit card) to stock up the food pantry. REI sells a variety of dried food for backpackers and I was able to find some vegan options. While it is important to have food stored for hard times, it is equally important to rotate that food.

Yesterday, I pulled out some of the dried packs, and some soup cups purchased on sale, from our food stores. We will eat these for our dinners on our trip, supplemented by some fresh, hopefully local, produce and breads purchased on the road.

Lunches will generally be on the road to and from our destination, as well as while we are out house-hunting, so cold foods are the plan. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches will feature homemade prickly pear or pomegranate jelly. Pita pockets will be stuffed with bean spreads with lettuce and tomatoes. This week, I will be making up several varieties of bean spreads, such as hummus and white bean with roasted red peppers, to dehydrate. Lori tells me these work really well.

You may be wondering about frozen food. Originally, I planned to take some meals I have frozen already since most of our hotel rooms feature a microwave oven. After doing a dry run on packing for the trip this weekend to determine what size rental car we'll need, we decided to eliminate the large ice chest. Instead, we'll take a small one that has just enough room for a carton of soymilk (for drinks and breakfast cereal or oatmeal) and some fresh fruit and vegetables for snacks. We'll save the meals already in the freezer for times when we need something quickly at home, such as the night we return home from the trip.

Now, if only I could find a way to simplify all the other planning. I've spent the last several days assembling the paperwork needed for the trip (rental car reservation, hotel reservations, trip route, maps, and more), doing a thorough clean-out on financial files, planning meals to continue using up perishable food on hand, and starting to think about all the address and account changes that come with a big move. I could really use some chocolate to deal with the stress, but that would just make me dizzy.

Energizer Chard

It just keeps growing and growing and growing...

A week ago, I harvested the whole bed of chard. I did this because our temperatures were rising (up to 90 degrees!) and it was wilting terribly during the day. Some of the leaves were starting to look a bit crispy around the edges. My sweetie suggested I just harvest it all and that would be the end of it.

Well, as occasionally happens, I ignored my sweetie's advice. I did harvest all of it, almost, but I refused to give up on it. As I was cutting the stems, I noticed that all of the plants had young leaves nestled down in the center. Maybe they would keep growing. I knew, though, once I harvested the big leaves, the lack of shade meant the hot sun was going to roast those poor tender leaves within an hour.


This was an easy problem to fix. We had a metal cage that would fit over them and a few small pieces of shade cloth in the garage. I used some spare blocks and pavers to secure the edges since we've been having high winds lately. A few minutes of work and the chard was protected.


This is the result one week later. The leaves are growing quickly. I'll harvest some tomorrow for lunch and see how long I can keep this bed going. Maybe I should ignore my sweetie more often. Well, maybe not, but even he will have to admit that I was right this time.

Melon Candy

During the summer, my CSA farmer produces a plethora of melons. Thirty pound watermelons, smaller seedless watermelon, yellow watermelons, Sharlyn melons, Canary melons, Honeydew melons, Cantaloupes, and several others that I can't recall right now. When the melons come the first time, there is tremendous excitement. A bite of crisp cool watermelon in the midst of a sweltering hot summer's day can go a long ways towards making the desert heat bearable.

The next week, the melons are greeted with enthusiasm again as people wax poetic over how wonderful the first one was. This continues for another week or two until people start mentioning they still have part of last week's melon left over. Plans are hatched to invite friends and neighbors, who hopefully don't have their own CSA share, over to help savor the melon surplus. Finally, by the end of the season, members are sharing tips on how to puree and freeze the melon flesh.

That's what happened to me last summer and how I ended up with bags of Sharlyn melon puree in my freezer. I pulled one out while Sharon was in town to make prickly pear-melon smoothie. A couple of days later, I made these for my sweetie. I intended to make them again this week but I forgot about the bag and let the melon defrost completely. We have no ice cube trays in the freezer to compensate for the defrosted pulp so I decided to do something else entirely.

When I was busy processing all the prickly pear fruits months ago, I tried making a fruit leather with prickly pear syrup and pureed fresh melon. It came out beautifully. Instead of opening up a new jar of prickly pear syrup, though, I mixed the pulp with the little bit of leftover raspberry chipotle sauce. Unfortunately, there was not nearly enough to sweeten or flavor the melon so I had to improvise. A spoonful of (local) honey plus a shot of homemade cherry liqueur seemed to do the trick. My dehydrating book suggests that if the mixture tastes good in the blender, it will taste good dehydrated.

The author was right. I dried the mixture overnight because it was not yet dry last night. Parts of it are leathery but other parts are brittle enough to break into chunks. This is not a problem as the crisp pieces taste like candy with just the tiniest hint of the chipotle heat. I've packaged it up and plan to take it on our road trip as a nice little snack. It will certainly be a healthier, and cheaper, option than anything we could pick up on the way.