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I have three really good, very easy, food storage friendly desserts to share with you this week. The first recipe is the best tasting rice pudding that I have ever eaten. Lamb’s Rice Pudding 1 cup long grain rice (I use sticky rice because that is what I have stored and I like it better) 1 cup sugar 8 cups milk 4 eggs 2 (more) cups milk ¼ cup (more) sugar 2 teaspoon vanilla Ground cinnamon In a large pan, combine rice with 1 cup sugar and 8 cups milk. Stir to blend. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until rice is tender. In a mixing bowl, combine eggs, 2 cups milk, ¼ cup sugar and vanilla. Beat well with mixer. When the rice is tender, add egg mixture just until it starts to come to a boil. Remove from heat; cool, then chill. Now, to make it the easy way, do like I do and cook it in the crock-pot. Put all of the ingredients in the crock pot. Turn it on high and cook for about 3 to 3 ½ hours. Stir it every once in a while, so it won’t burn on the bottom. It is so yummy, and it just amazes me how far 1-cup of rice will go. My next favorite recipe is tapioca. There is just something decadent about Tapioca; it is so creamy and rich tasting. Homemade tapioca is the best, it is so very easy to make, and it can store forever in your food storage. Tapioca 1/3 cup sugar 2 ¾ cup milk 3 tablespoons tapioca 1 egg, slightly beaten 1 teaspoon vanilla Combine everything except the vanilla in a saucepan. Let stand for 5 minutes. Cook on medium until a full boil. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla. Cool for 20 minutes, stir, and serve warm or chilled. Makes 6 cups. I saved the best for last, Red Mush with Cream. I love this stuff. My great-grandparents came from Denmark and brought this recipe with them. My grandma always had a big bowl of this in her fridge and we would eat it for breakfast or dessert. It was wonderful. Red Mush with Cream ¼ cup tapioca A dash of salt 2 ½ cups fruit juice (we prefer plum juice) ½ cup sugar, or sweeten to taste Mix tapioca, fruit juice and salt and sugar. Let stand 5 minutes. Bring to a boil over medium heat until it comes to a boil. Cool for 20 minutes. Stir well and serve warm or cold. Basically, it is tapioca pudding made with fruit juice, preferably plum juice, instead of using milk. You can use other juices, like apricot, cherry, apple, or orange juice, but plum is the best. That is how easy it is. To make it redder in color, my grandma used to color it with beet juice; you can use food color if you want. To serve, cool it down and put it in individual bowls, sprinkle with a little sugar and cinnamon, and pour cream or canned milk over it. I could eat this every day. Dawn

Do you like handy hints? I sure do. I have a couple of really good household hints. The first one is a wall cleaning solution. I have washed a lot of walls in my time; my parents owned several apartments and until a short time ago, my husband and I owned a duplex for more than 16 years. The solution that I use to wash walls is very effective, very easy to make, very inexpensive, and the ingredients are all in my food storage – and hopefully yours. Wall Cleaner 1 cup ammonia ½ cup white vinegar ¼ cup baking soda 1 gallon of warm water Mix together and get washing. An additional hint: when washing walls, start at the bottom and work your way up, they say that it works better that way. I say you are washing the whole wall, and it doesn’t matter. I prefer the top down. Please, do not use a mop to wash your walls, I have seen people do that and it is just WRONG, not to mention that it doesn’t do a good job – just trust me. My daughter disagrees and she uses a mop. One thing we both agree on is to dust your walls before washing. That way your water and rag (or mop) will stay cleaner longer. My friend gave me a really good recipe for getting rid of the weeds that grow in the cracks of your sidewalks and driveway. I can’t wait to try this recipe, she swears by it, and it only has three ingredients that should be in your food storage. Sidewalk Weed Killer 1 tablespoon liquid dish soap (It doesn’t matter what brand) 1 gallon white vinegar 1 cup salt Do not spray this on your weeds. Only pour the solution directly on the weeds that you want to get rid of and only where you don’t want anything to EVER grow – like the cracks in your sidewalk or driveway. Then just sit in your lawn chair and watch the weeds in the sidewalk cracks DIE! I’m going to use it as a preventative measure next year. In areas where you want to kill one particular plant, but not bother the others plants (like morning glory – which isn’t so glorious), I just pour boiling water directly on the plant. You might need to do it multiple times, but eventually they will give up and DIE! This is how I keep my morning glory at bay without using chemicals. Last tip. Homemade window wash solution. If you want to try this solution, to make sure that it works before using it on your own windows, I’ve got a bunch of windows you can practice on. I’m willing to sacrifice just so that you can make sure that this solution is something that you find high quality enough to use in your own home. The friend that gave me this recipe swears by it and has been using it for years. She stores it in a hard plastic gallon jug with the recipe written right on the jug so that she won’t forget it. Window Wash 1 pint rubbing alcohol 1 tablespoon VO5 shampoo (I don’t know why VO5 and neither does she, but I has to be VO5 shampoo) Water Put ingredients in a 1-gallon container and add water to make one gallon of solution. She also adds a little food coloring just because. Sometimes it will be blue, sometimes red, other times green – or whatever she feels like at the time. The key to really making this effective is to apply the solution, wash it with a rag and then use a top-of-the-line good quality squeegee to finish it off. She says that it works every time, and believe me, her windows are clean all the time! Mine on the other hand, are not. Remember that the right tool for the right job really makes a difference. You can pick up a good squeegee at any janitorial supply place. Another good tip when washing windows is to use a clean old-fashioned dry chalkboard eraser to go over your windows when you have finished. If you “erase” your windows after drying them, it will get rid of any streaks and residue that you can’t see. Now you can get cleaning right away or better yet just be prepared in advance for your big spring-cleaning ritual. You can put off your cleaning, but don’t procrastinate when it comes to your water storage. Two gallons per person, per day, for a two week period. Get it done! Dawn

School is going to start soon; I can feel it in the air. Actually, I can’t, but my mailbox is being bombarded with back-to-school advertisements and that is a dead giveaway. Last year I forgot that school was starting until I got a frantic phone call from my son. He had gone deer hunting with his cousin and on the drive back his cousin asked him if he was excited for school to start because it was his first year of high school. His heart stopped; he had forgotten too. He borrowed the cell phone and frantically called me asking if I would grab some new clothes and school supplies for him. It was about 7:00 at night when I ran out the door hoping that the shelves wouldn’t be bare. The next morning, he went to school dressed in new clothes and he was well prepared for his classes with sharpened pencils and new class implements. I then went back to the store to return all of the extras that he decided against. (Whew.) For somebody that likes to be prepared, I was sorely lacking. The year before, when I remembered the date that school started, I was prepared – for the entire year. It was a wonderful feeling. I am going to give you some tips that have helped me in the past to cut down on those “I forgot I have a report due tomorrow” blues. 1. I buy my computer paper by the box because it is cheaper that way and you don’t have to worry about running out. We don’t seem to use lined paper for the older kids as much these days because we use computers, but I have found that it has been very helpful to have a bunch of refill lined paper on hand – just because it always seems to come in handy. Pick up an extra cartridge of ink for the computer too. 2. One year I bought over a dozen different colored poster boards, and it was one of the most brilliant things I have ever done. The one rule that I had is that the kids realized that the poster board had two sides and when possible, I had them use the other side for a different project. I also told them to plan out their project on a piece of paper before putting it on the poster board – there were no do-overs with a new poster board if they made a mistake. 3. Buy some really good quality colored markers and make it the big pack (don’t buy the cheap ones – they are just an exercise in frustration). Also, buy one whole box of black Sharpie, fine tip, permanent markers. These are invaluable especially if you have the poster boards mentioned above and are doing class projects. I had a couple of rules concerning the markers: a) they were mine and I would lend them IF they didn’t leave the caps off when not using them, and b) they had to put them ALL back when they were finished. Actually, that was the rule for when they used anything. 4. Stock up on glue sticks. They are easy for elementary kids to use, and they are portable for older kids. You will also have fewer clean up problems. These ideas are very simple, fairly inexpensive, and very helpful. You are probably thinking, “What does this have to do with preparedness?” Everything. Being prepared is a way to relieve stress – in all aspects of life - food, finances, water, or school supplies. Having kids in school is stressful enough. It only makes sense to prepare you and your kids ahead of time. It will pay off – and then you can sit back and smile, kind of like when you got your water stored! Dawn

Even when it is insanely hot outside, I sometimes have the biggest craving for French Dip sandwiches and Onion soup. This is a really good food storage recipe and very simple to make. The secret behind a good Onion soup is how you cook the onions. Take about four medium onions and slice them really thin and put them in a large saucepan and sauté them in olive oil until golden. This takes about eight to ten minutes. If you want to take a little bit more time, about 15-20 minutes, then turn the pan down and sweat the onions until the sugars in them (yes, onions have sugar) start to caramelize. It is heaven, if I didn’t want the onion soup so bad because I’m craving French Dip sandwiches, I would stop right there and just eat the onions. Now sprinkle about two tablespoons of flour over the onions and add a pinch or two of sugar. Cook a little bit longer in order to get the flour mixed in with the onions and melt the sugar. Make sure to stir constantly. Turn the heat up a little bit and add about five cups of beef broth, ½ teaspoon of thyme, a bay leaf, and salt and pepper to taste. Take the bay leaf out before serving. This is the best recipe. My husband first made this for me as a surprise. He took the basic recipe from the Lion House cookbook, and I just love it. Another thing that I like about onion soup is that you can use your food storage to make it. Instead of using fresh onions, re-hydrate dry onion flakes, about four to five teaspoons, and then sauté’ them in a little bit of olive oil; at the end add the flour and cook a little bit longer. Add about five cups of water and enough beef bouillon to flavor the soup, and add the rest of the spices. If you want to add more flavor, just add a little bit of butter to the soup just before serving. Of course, you can always make the soup even faster by just opening a packet of onion soup mix and adding water, but if you are going to do that you will need to have the soup mix in your food storage. Actually, that would be a really good idea because you can use the dry soup mix for a variety of different recipes, including flavored hamburgers, crock pot roasts – with incredible gravy, chip dip, and a variety of other things. Now when it comes to eating the French Dip sandwiches you can do several things. The authentic French Dip is a buttered stale French roll with sliced beef inside. What a wonderful way to use leftovers. If you don’t have stale bread or an old roast to cut up, don’t worry, just toast some bread, butter it and start dipping. You can also break the bread up, just like bread and milk, and eat it that way. I am going to have to turn the air-conditioning down so that I can satisfy my craving and eat soup. Dawn

I don’t even have to turn on the news any more to know that there are a lot of people that have lost friends, family, houses, and more because of all of the different fires that periodically rage through our state. People have had to leave their homes and, in some cases, leave everything they own behind. They will come back to a lot of smoke damage and in some cases, loss of property. If I did turn on the news, I would hear about flooding, an earthquake here, a tornado there, and a variety of other calamities and mass destruction. The question that I have is: how much longer will we be protected in our safe little corner of the world and what trials will we eventually have to face? Personally? As a family? As a community? I was talking to a gentleman today that owned a house that was involved in a mudslide a few years ago who lives north of where I live. He said that when the mud started coming down that he had just moments to leave and save himself and his family. Several neighborhoods were affected, and everyone had to leave their homes. They ended up living in a local church for about two weeks and sleeping on cots at night. He was disappointed with the response from the city because there was a lot of confusion and disorganization. The only sense of organization came from his local church leaders. Are you ready to help your community in a disaster? Are you practicing emergency principles in CERT and other emergency organizations in your city? If not, go to your city leaders and ask what you can do. Don’t take on the attitude of “What is somebody else going to do to take care of me during a disaster?” Instead, go out and be pro-active about becoming part of a very much-needed solution for a “gonna’-happen-someday” problem. The second observation that he made was the reaction of his neighbors and people who lived in the area that was affected. People that he thought were good, upstanding, law-abiding citizens changed to people that would try to circumvent the law and instigate contentious situations out of frustration and anger. Let’s just say that there was rioting in the streets and downright destructive type attitudes. The police had cordoned off the neighborhoods and wouldn’t let anyone back into their houses. Some people got very abusive and were screaming and fighting with the police while trying to cross the barricades. Others were sneaking past the police and entering unsafe houses that had been pushed off of their foundations. Unsafe, illegal, and very disappointing. One thing that has been observed about people and human nature is that whatever they are, they become more of IT when under stress. I’m not talking about our personalities that we want people to see, but our true personalities – what we keep in check inside. Novice complainers turn pro, nervous Nellie’s become hysterical, and those who are practical become useful. Or, for some of you, you will find a quiet strength that you never knew you had and help in ways that you didn’t know you were capable of. All of us are going to go through tough times in our individual communities - one of these days. After all, we can’t be isolated from hard things forever. Because I live in Utah, it will most likely be an earthquake. Get your water stored. Get your under-the-bed kits made; get your 72-hour kits completed. Gather your important documents together. Go over your emergency plans with your family; get your out-of-area contact in order. Make sure that the person you have chosen as a contact knows what their role as a contact person is. Yes, you can push your luck and hope that you won’t be around when something happens. And, lucky you if you aren’t. But it is still your responsibility to teach those around you how to take charge of their own salvation when you aren’t there to help them – physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Instead of pushing your luck, make your own luck and get prepared. Dawn

I’m going to talk about water. I know I sound like a broken record, but I think that right now, with the extreme heat that we are experiencing, that it should bring home the importance of water. We are all feeling pretty comfortable in our lives, well at least I am. I have refrigeration, cold and hot running water, ceiling fans, and air conditioning. I can get along without the refrigeration, the ceiling fans, and even the air conditioning. I don’t want to, but I will not die if I don’t have them. However, if I don’t have drinkable water, I will die. A short time ago my mom got sick, and she kept throwing up. For days she was afraid to drink water, or any liquid, because she was so afraid of throwing up, and she was so miserable. About the third day she and my dad got worried and so she finally went to the doctors. The doctor rushed her over to the hospital and hooked her up to an IV. She was in the hospital for several days while the doctors worked on re-hydrating her. They told her that she had just been hours away from kidney failure and death. My mom was just hours away from death because she had not been drinking water! The kidneys aren’t like the heart; once they shut down, they can’t be restarted. Fortunately her community wasn’t in an emergency and she could get proper medical attention. During an emergency it won’t be so easy to get proper help and you might not be so lucky. Get your water stored! You should store two gallons of water per day, per person, for a two-week period and you should store them in different types of containers so that you can still use the water if you need to leave your dwelling. Fill a 50+-gallon drum, some five-gallon containers, and a bunch of two-liter bottles. Please, if you do nothing else this week – please get your water stored! I BEG YOU. Now, I said that I could do without refrigeration, ceiling fans, and air conditioning, but I don’t want to. I would have made a lousy pioneer. Do you have a generator? If nothing else, it would be a good idea to have a portable generator, with back-up fuel, that can at least keep your refrigerator and freezer going. I was watching a show on TV about a family and their everyday life and one of the challenges they had to face was having their power go out on a regular basis. One time they had the power out for two weeks and were forced to move to a motel. They weren’t very happy about it. The first thing they did when they got back home was to go out and buy a couple of generators. They had used them several times since then because they were in an area where the power goes out quite often, especially in the winter. These days they make generators that can be directly wired into your house and will sense when the power goes out and it automatically turns on. This is especially good when you are not home, and your fridge and freezer might be at risk. I especially like generators that run off of propane because you can store a lot of fuel on-site, and you don’t have to worry about getting enough gas to run it when the power is out. Remember that the gas pumps won’t work if they are also affected by the power outage. Go figure. Another reason that I like these hard-wired, automatic generators is because if you are medically challenged and need electronic devices to work to keep you alive and healthy, it is sort of a necessity. Do you use a C-pap, is your oxygen dependent on a rechargeable battery system, does your bed raise and lower with a remote, are you confined to an electric chair? Does your medicine need to be refrigerated? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you might want to consider looking into it. If you can't afford it by yourself, you might consider going in on the price with other family members and offering your house as an emergency bug-out refuge during a crisis. Just putting out options to consider. Dawn

I had a friend e-mail me the other day asking about how to make quick easy meals. Actually, most all of my recipes are quick and easy, and unless you want to eat out every night or get to know the pizza delivery man by his first name, you are going to have to put some energy into refueling your body on a daily basis. There are several ways that this can be accomplished. One that I really like is what my mom and dad did when I was younger. My grandmother was living by herself, and she just wasn’t paying attention to what she was eating and she wasn’t eating nearly enough to keep herself healthy. My parents’ solution was to make homemade TV dinners. This was in the pre-microwave era and so my parents went to a local restaurant supply store and bought a bunch of tin TV dinner style trays. My mom would fix up a week’s worth of lunches and dinners and take them to my grandma’s house and put them in her freezer. Each night before going to bed my grandma would take out two meals of whatever she felt like eating the next day for lunch and dinner (everything was labeled on the tinfoil covering the meals), and put them in the fridge to thaw out. The next day she would put them in the oven at the appropriate time and have a delicious, nutritious, home cooked meal. At the end of the week mom and dad would retrieve the trays and trade them for the next weeks’ worth of meals. Grandma stayed healthy and my parents didn’t worry about whether or not she was eating well. If there is only one or two of you at home, this is a really easy way to keep quick and easy meals on hand, and also save money. I know that you can buy TV dinners, but if you make them from scratch, using your food storage, you will know exactly what is in it, and it will be cheaper and healthier. Also, we now have the microwave and reusable plastic containers, some with separate compartments. Life just gets better and better. If your family is larger, then it gets even easier. You can make casserole type dinners, such as lasagna, and freeze them in one large container. Think about what you like eating and then just adapt the recipe. One good idea is to pre-cook and pre-season the hamburger. Cook a pound of hamburger and season it with taco seasoning and then freeze it. Make a dozen tortilla shells (use the recipe I gave you), cook them up and then freeze them. Then, the night before, take the meat and tortillas out of the freezer and put them in the fridge to thaw. When everybody comes home for dinner, all you have to do is dice up a tomato, throw the meat into the microwave and set the table with your favorite condiments and presto! Dinner is ready! And it tastes good. Think about what your family likes and see what can be prepared ahead of time. Soups and chili freeze well too. There are two ways to go about getting meals prepared ahead of time. One way is to make double or triple the amount of whatever you are making for dinner at the time, and just freeze the other portions for another day when you really, really don’t want to cook. The other way is to take a Saturday afternoon, and a list of what you want to eat all week long, and then just get to cookin’. There are actually a lot of people who do this and if you think about it, it is just plain smart. You can either cook for only three to four hours on a Saturday versus a half an hour or an hour EVERY night. You also only have to clean up one cooking mess on Saturday, OR you will end up cleaning a cooking mess every night. And if you think about it, you use a lot of the same pans and utensils and cook a lot of the same stuff for every meal. For example, if you are going to have sloppy joes one night, tacos the next and spaghetti after that, then you can cook three pounds of hamburger ALL AT ONCE. One pan, one clean up, same amount of time and it is quick and easy. There a now a lot of local people that you can order pre-made healthy meals if you are inclined to go in that direction, and can afford it. Whatever you have to do to stay healthy, eat healthy, and have food in your storage. Consider buying an extra meal each time you order and throwing it in your freezer. That is also food storage. Dawn

An article or so ago I made a mistake. I know – hard to believe (sorry to I had to take a laugh break). I wrote how you could brush your teeth, make a poultice for an insect bite, and refresh your fridge with baking powder. YOU CAN’T, you have to use BAKING SODA. Sorry about that. But it got me thinking. How many of you know how to make your own baking powder? Actually, it is quite easy. For one-teaspoon worth of baking powder simply mix a ½ teaspoon of cream of tartar and a ¼ teaspoon of baking soda. I will continue to purchase the pre-made baking powder, but I have used this recipe as an emergency backup, and it works quite well. (In reality, when I found out how easy it was to make, I just started making it all the time in larger batches – 2 parts cream of tartar, and 1 part baking soda.) Since we have brought up the subject of cream of tartar (from the recipe above), I wanted to find out a bit more about it. I have always been curious about cream of tartar, and I was once told that it was a by-product of wine making. Come to find out, it is. The scientific name for cream of tartar is potassium hydrogen tartrate. It is an acid salt that comes from grapes and is easily extracted during the wine making process when the “tartaric acid is half neutralized with potassium hydroxide, transforming it into a salt.” (www.ochef.com) When it settles in the bottom of the wine barrels as a sediment, it can be easily extracted. It’s all science to me, but I did find out that grapes are the only significant source of cream of tartar. Cream of tartar is a natural acid that when used in cooking will help to stabilize egg whites, which are not acidic, and give them more volume – and isn’t that all we need to know? Actually, I also found out that, “egg whites, baking soda, and milk are the only non-acidic (alkaline) foods we have.” (www.ochef.com) I didn’t know that. Not only does Cream of Tartar help egg whites get more volume, but it also helps to make candy and frosting creamier, and you will also find cream of tartar in commercially processed products like gelatin, soft drinks, desserts, and photography products. Photography products? Maybe older photography products, but with the digital age, I just don’t know. In a pinch, if you don’t have enough cream of tartar on hand, you can substitute lemon juice or white vinegar, three times the amount, in most of your baking recipes. The lemon juice and vinegar aren’t a perfect substitute though because it has a tendency to make your creations a bit coarser in texture and shrinkage might happen with your end product. Just make sure that you have stored enough cream of tartar in your storage. Find out how much you will need with the A Prepared Home food storage calculator. Now that we know the what and the why of cream of tartar, I have a useful drain cleaner recipe using the white acidic powder. Take one-cup baking SODA, one-cup salt and ¼ cup cream of tartar and mix together. Put ¼ cup of the mixture in the drain and add 1 cup of water and then let it sit for a while. Another really good drain cleaning recipe is to put about a cup of baking SODA in the drain and then pour about a cup or more of white vinegar to activate the soda (remember the school volcano experiments?). Do this about once a month and it will help your drains to stay clean and fresh smelling. Another tip, it can be used to clean brass and copper cookware. I have used both of the drain cleaner recipes, but I prefer the second one because I don’t have to keep anything mixed – I’m a bit of a minimalist, a conserver of energy. Dawn

The last time that I bought popcorn, I bought 50 lbs. of it for only $9.88 (2007). And so, you say “Big deal, why in the world would you want to store 50lbs. of popcorn?” Well, it’s because I like popcorn – that and I can grind it and have fresh ground cornmeal. Also, popcorn stores for a very long time in your food storage. When grinding popcorn, it is important that you use an electric grinder and preferably a cooler one. I tried to grind the popcorn by hand once, but it got too hot, and they started to pop. For one of my favorite corn bread recipes, I use fresh ground popcorn kernels. Mom’s Cornbread 1 ½ cups flour ¾ teaspoon salt 1 ½ cups cornmeal 3 eggs 2 tablespoons baking powder ¾ cup oil ¾ cup sugar 1 ½ cups milk Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Mix all ingredients just until well moistened. Pour into a greased 9×13 pan and bake for 20 minutes. I actually prefer to pour my batter into a greased or sprayed muffin tin. This is a very moist cornbread, and it tastes really good, but cornbread is inherently crumbly and somewhat difficult for kids, and me, to handle. I have found that by serving it up muffin style it is easier to pop off the top and butter it while still maintaining its shape better than the traditional cut square style. Muffin style also makes it easier to eat on the run or as a snack. Another really quick, yummy, easy recipe is Tamale Pie. This is especially good for camping out or for scouts that want to cook up something quick, easy, and delicious in the Dutch Oven. Tamale Pie 6 cups chili – homemade or your favorite brand 2 cups cornmeal 5 cups water 1 teaspoon salt Place water, cornmeal and salt in a double boiler and cook covered for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally until quite stiff. Line the bottom of a greased deep casserole dish with ½ of the prepared cornmeal. Pour in the chili and then spread the top with the remaining cornmeal. Bake for about 30 minutes at 350 degrees Farenheit. This is so very easy, why wait to try it. And really, look at how many ingredients there are – four. If you have your water stored then you will be able to cook this in an emergency (two gallons, per person, per day for a two-week period). And what would our food storage be if we couldn’t use it to make dessert? Useless. Not really, but certainly not as delicious and remember we want to make our food storage nutritious, easy, and good tasting! Caramel Corn 12 to 14 cups popped popcorn ¾ cup packed brown sugar ½ cup butter or margarine ¼ cup light corn syrup ½ teaspoon salt ½ teaspoon baking soda Divide popcorn between two un-greased 9×13 pans. Cook brown sugar, butter, corn syrup and salt over medium heat, stirring occasionally until bubbly around the edges. Continue cooking for five more minutes and then remove from heat. Stir in baking soda until it goes all foamy (FYI –use one of your larger saucepans or you’ll have a mess on your hands – this is from experience). Pour over popcorn and stir until coated. For crunchier corn, bake uncovered in a 200 degree Fahrenheit oven for one hour, stirring every 15 minutes. I have never had the patience to do that and so we have always eaten it sticky and gooey, and yummy! Happy food storage eating! Dawn

Is it just too hot to bake yummy treats? We all know the remedy for that. No, I do not mean just run down to the local bakery. Yes, that can be an option, but only if you run out of a few essential food storage items. My suggestion would be to make Chocolate No-bake cookies. Those are three beautiful words – “Chocolate”, “no-bake” and “cookies.” There are a lot of different items that you can add to this basic recipe like coconut, crushed peanuts, Rice Crispies, or anything else that sounds good, but sometimes the simplest is the best. Chocolate No-bake Cookies 1 cube margarine or butter Dash of salt ¼ cup cocoa ½ cup peanut butter – smooth or crunchy 2 cups sugar 2 teaspoons vanilla ½ cup milk 3 cups oatmeal Bring butter, cocoa, sugar, milk, and salt to a boil for one minute. Take off the heat. Add the peanut butter, vanilla, and oatmeal. Spoon onto wax paper and let set for about 10 minutes. After it sets up, just sit back, and eat in a nice cool kitchen. In a pinch you could even make this over a fire or emergency stove – does it get any better? If you look at the above items, you would be surprised at how many things can be made from just these simple items. You can make baked oatmeal cookies, peanut butter bars, oatmeal mush, and peanut butter sandwiches. You can even use the oatmeal to extend your hamburger or meatloaf. And don’t forget the ever-popular oatmeal facial scrubs. There are Chinese dishes that use peanut butter to flavor their sauces. Also, oatmeal and peanut butter are very healthy to eat, and they taste good. I love to eat oatmeal raw in a bowl with milk poured over it with a touch of sugar, or just pour soft yogurt over raw oatmeal with a little bit of fruit and eat it like they do in Europe. So good! That is how we need to look at our food storage – as versatile. Don’t just stop at the most obvious use for an item; explore all of the different ways that you can use stored ingredients. Take baking soda for example. You can use it to soothe stomachaches, brush your teeth, use it as a poultice, clean your house, and freshen up your fridge, or bring back stale food. Cornstarch is another multi-use item. The most obvious use is that of thickening gravies, but you can also use it like a talcum powder. If you have a large makeup brush, a light dusting of cornstarch makes a really good base for your face after you put your makeup concealer on, but before you put on your eye makeup. I have done that for years. It will also help you to freshen up when you want to touch your makeup up a bit. Remember, food storage should taste good, be useful, and be available – and don’t forget your water (two gallons of water, per person, per day for a two week period.) Dawn

A long time ago, in a generation far, far away, children used to play. They used to play at, or imitate, adult’s behaviors and adult skills. Little girls played “house,” and they rocked their dolls, “cooked” dinners, and washed and ironed their doll clothes. Little boys had miniature tool sets, that were metal – not plastic. They could really build things like birdhouses, and doghouses, and soap box race cars, and, well, anything their little imaginations could come up with. The children learned to be resourceful and to improve their skills so that when they got older, they actually had the beginning of useful skills. Now the toys we give them teach them to sit for very long periods of time, or to become fashion divas. How is that going to prepare them for anything? Even becoming really talented at playing computer games isn’t going to teach them how to create or implement their ideas. You need an education or useful skills to do that. In a time, not too long ago, we started our children out at a very young age learning a trade or profession and they would study their craft for years under the tutelage of a craftsman or mentor. The one advantage to this is that they didn’t graduate from high school or college still wondering what they were going to be when they grew up. The bad side of the “way-it-was” is that the child didn’t always get to choose what they wanted to do. I now feel that the pendulum has swung too far to the opposite end because there is so much to choose from that many of our kids are choosing not to do anything. As parents we need to help them choose before they graduate to adulthood – with nothing. Now that school is out and our youngsters are out looking for summer jobs, let’s look at what they can accomplish. The one thing that you need to realize is that it should not be about the money, but more importantly, about what skills they are learning and how having a particular job will help them achieve their career goals. That is another thing, sit down and help them define possible career goals, before going to high school - or at least before graduating. Not the career that you want them to have, but rather the career that they are interested in. If they want to learn how to take care of growing plants, or landscaping and sprinkler systems, then have them get a job at a city parks department. If they are interested in a legal profession, have them apply for a summer job, or volunteer, at a law office. If they want to go into the medical field, how about a paid/unpaid internship at a medical office or pharmacy? Do they have an interest in cars? Have them work with a mechanic or at an auto parts store. Interested in animals or farm work? There are always farmers looking for kids to haul hay or muck out animal stalls. Get a job at a tack and feed store, or they can volunteer at a zoo or a veterinarian office. The point is – let them get a taste of what they think they might like to do – and then let them. There is more to life than working at a fast food establishment for a paycheck, unless of course they want to be a chef. What does this have to do with preparedness? Everything! Preparedness isn’t just about storing food and water, even though that is important. Preparing our children with life skills and the ability to reason things out, make decisions, and work hard is vitally important. It is a waste of time, life, and money if our kids go out in the world without usable skills. I have always felt that everybody should have a technical skill and a profession. Don’t just let your child’s life just sort of happen. Instead, prepare them to make educated choices and decisions that help them get to where they want to be someday – when they’ve grown up. Dawn

There are so many different things that we need to think about when getting prepared for emergencies or in most cases, just everyday life. One of the things that we need to seriously consider is preparing our children – not just for emergencies, but for everyday life. My philosophy on motherhood is to become obsolete – not as a loving, caring mother, but as a caretaker. After all, if I am going to have my kids take care of me when I get old, then I need to teach them how. I know that there are a lot of good parents out there that teach their children the skills of life like working hard, cooking, taking care of their possessions and such, but there are also a lot of parents who do everything for their kids. If you are doing everything for your kids, you are just teaching them that they need to be taken care of and when they reach adulthood, they won’t have the everyday skills that they need to live successfully. They will still want to be taken care of. Employers hate that. Spouses hate that. They will blame you. Teach your children how to read a recipe and how to measure food products accurately. Get them involved with fixing the family meals, not just portions of it – let them cook the whole thing, including dessert! I know, you will need to build them up with the necessary skills little by little, but isn’t that how we learn things, little by little? Line upon line, precept upon precept? When my daughter was twelve years old, I came home late exhausted from cleaning somebody else’s house. I was so tired that boxed macaroni and cheese actually sounded good. Even eating the cardboard box it came in sounded good. When I walked through the door of my house I was overwhelmed with the most incredible smells. My daughter, knowing that I would be tired when I came home, roasted an Italian style chicken smothered with a homemade tomato based sauce and she made focaccia bread from scratch – yeast and all! I had never made focaccia bread before. It was a delicious feast – not just because I was tired and eating cardboard sounded good, but because it was honest-to-goodness delicious. In fact, it was so good that our family had her make the same meal several more times. What was really great was that we didn’t have all of the ingredients for the focaccia bread and so she substituted other items - and it tasted wonderful. She was twelve. She had been practicing cooking and following recipes since she was eight years old; boy did that practicing pay off – for me! Teach your kids to cook. Teach your kids to learn to love work. They will resist. I know it is hard to believe that our blessed, sweet, shiny-faced children would balk at working up a little sweat, but they do. Work is a wonderful gift from God, and it is important that we allow them to “practice” working at work – until they learn to love it. The only rule that I ask you to follow is that when working, your children are not allowed to complain – that just takes all of the fun out of doing a good job. Show them that working up a sweat is not lethal. This year my husband just wasn’t up to planting or taking care of the garden. My son, without being asked, went out and planted a garden of his own – he was 17. We enjoyed eating chard, radishes, corn, and tomatoes. To him it is no longer a chore, but a labor of love. Have them do repetitive jobs. Have them keep their rooms clean (don’t roll your eyes at this), have them help keep the house clean, maintain and keep their possessions clean and straight. Have them wash the laundry, then fold the laundry and finally, PUT THE LAUNDRY AWAY – all on the same day. Teach them to mow lawns, weed flowerbeds and all of the other stuff that needs to be done on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Don’t let your kids go out into the cold cruel world thinking that things magically get clean, get picked up, or are self-maintaining – it just isn’t fair to them. Get them busy. If your kids aren’t mad at you for a while, then you aren’t doing it right. Teach your sons and your daughters to maintain their tricycles, then their bikes, and finally their cars. Teach them to mend their clothes and to sew on their own buttons. Teach them to wash and iron their clothes. Teach them that their bedroom floors are not the biggest shelf in the house - AND DON’T GIVE UP! We are shortchanging our children by not helping them to stretch and grow. The momma bear only feeds her young when they are very small and then little by little, she teaches her cubs what they need to know to make it on their own. Then she lets them go (or pushes them out – whichever). Sure, they do it on a lot faster time scale, but we have more to teach our kids. How to text really, really fast on their cell phone, or get to level gazillion on some computer game, just won’t help them when they go out on their own, unless they are texting you to ask you how to run the washer and dryer at their apartment. If you love ‘em, let ‘em learn – and then they can take care of themselves and you can enjoy them as they should be enjoyed, as responsible adults. Dawn