"One Year After" more than a book review...

One of my earlier childhood memories was lying on the floor in front of the bookcase, running my fingers a long the beautiful bound pages and wondering what great adventure was inside.

I seem to remember pulling “Atlas Shrugged” off the shelf and trying to read the tome. I was probably about 5 or 6 and didn't get too far...

Needless to say, when I read a book I read from the first page to the last. That includes the forward, acknowledgments through the epilogue. Recently I re-read “One Second After” in preparation for the recent release of “One Year After”, by William R. Forstchen.

Sometimes in apocalyptic fiction you find books that are not well written and filled with pie in the sky prepped situations. Granted we are able to learn from most anything if we put our minds to it. These two books are well written, easy to read and extremely well thought out.
What sets these two books apart for me is first the characters were not prepared. For me, I think I learn more from fiction books where the people are not prepared for what ever catastrophic event occurs. Not only do you see the dire situation of not having food, water or any type of plan in place and the collapse that could ensue; but in the more realistic books you will see the importance of medical preparations as people start dying off as they go off their life saving modern medicines & devices.

You will find my reviews have less with retelling you the actual story line, but why I recommend a certain book.

One of the first things that grabbed my attention with “One Year After” was reading the forward. Mr. Forstchen intended to write a book to expose the real possibility of an EMP event and how our nation as a whole doesn't see the reality and how we are not prepared. His point of view comes from being involved with people in the real world who are involved in the decision making process of being more prepared for an EMP attack on our nation. What he didn't foresee with his first book was he would be be introduced to the prepper community. He started to glimpse into our world, so much so that he eventually married a women from the prepping community (I believe I have that right). He addresses the fact most of the prepping community are just normal people, not like those crazed idiots often portrayed on popular “reality t.v.”.

Now, specifically “One Year After” starts after people have started to work together and the “government” is injected back into the scene. There is a lot of struggle with the concept of being a loyalist vs. a patriot. For me, it caused me to again reevaluate the lines that I would draw in the sand.

Overall it is scientifically on point and based on his research something our nation is ill equipped to handle. For me, I particularly like that he has a background in history that he weaves into the story. At times it is straight up referencing historical battle and at other times it has more oblique references that made me smile. That is why I started posting the hash tag comments like ‪#‎ByTheWatersOfBabylon‬. In the book BBC radio was sending out coded messages to the people resisting the EPTB (Evil Powers That Be - my terminology) that were seeking to control various nations with nefarious intent.

I highly recommend this book because eventually we have to think beyond beans, bullets and band-aids. Again, we could do our thinking when the “s” hits the fan or start building community now. In my opinion, we have to part of the solution. A catalyst for change. We really need to practice the skills of dealing with people in our life now. Dealing with that friend that says they are “coming to our house”. Trying to establish relationships with our neighbors if we plan on bugging in. These are concepts I hope to be exploring more with you soon.

You may be interested in this post on books I recommend: 43 Good Books for Your Library: Reading Can Seriously Damage Your Ignorance

Links for these books and a few others I highly recommend owning. Buy the real book.

I participate in the Amazon Associate program, where I receive a small % commission for linking products that I recommend. I only recommend products I personally used and like. Your support is very appreciated, anything you choose to purchase through my link, is helping me to be able to share more things that I do with you. Perky Gramma Teaches Amazon link.

Autumn Olive Thumbprint Cookies

It is a little hard to explain my strange thing about jam and jelly. If asked I say I don't eat them. It's not that I don't like jam or jelly, it's just I only eat jam or jelly in one item: Thumbprint Cookies. Last year I made some with muscadine grape jelly, which I received as a gift.

Very recently I was given some Autumn Olive Jam, so after a taste test, I was off on another cookie making adventure.
Now, I have only recently heard of autumn olives and in fact it was just over a week ago that I receive that jam. What a difference a week makes. It seems to be a forager's secret, for these tasty treats seem to be a very common wild fruit. I particularly like that they have just a little bit to the taste.
While it is considered an invasive plant, the berries have some very high impact nutritional value, particularly they are high in lycopene.
Then Sunday morning, I was sitting on my back stoop and I spied what I thought may be a bush of this new delightful treasure. I snapped a pic and threw it up on a plant identification site and BAM! After I got back from church they had i.d.'d my bush as autumn olive. I had already tasted them.
Later my grand babies came to visit and we were walking the property and what to my wondering eyes did appear, an entire wall of autumn olive bushes. They enjoyed tasting the olives, particularly my brave youngest who tends to like tart things.

Now I know the secret...

Autumn Olive Thumbprint Cookies

Ingredients
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon fine salt

3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
2/3 cup sugar
1 large egg (How To Store Eggs With Coconut Oil)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract (How to Make Your Own Vanilla Extract)

1/3 cup jam

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Prepare baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone mats.

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together in a bowl.

In another bowl, whip the butter and the sugar with a hand-held mixer until fluffy. Beat in the egg and vanilla until combined. Slowly beat in the dry ingredients in sections, mixing until combined..

Roll the dough into 1-inch balls. Place 2-inches apart on the prepared baking sheets. Press your thumb into the center of each ball, about 1/2-inch deep (the thumbprint). Fill each thumbprint with about 3/4 teaspoon of the jam.

Bake cookies for about 15 minutes, until the edges are golden brown, about 15 minutes.
By the end of the day I had picked a large container of these little berries, which I didn't even know about last week ready to learn about making them into jam. That is how I like life - a learning adventure.

What you see here are things I try. If you like this article, please feel free to join our community on Facebook (Perky Gramma Teaches).

Items I have used in some way today:

  

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My Favorite Fried Chicken Recipe

I thought I would share our very favorite fried chicken.
I got my "recipe" from "Tips from Heloise", the mom not the daughter, early in my life. So simple:

• Rinse the pieces of chicken
• Shake in a bag with flour
• Let sit for 30 minutes
• Then fry.
• Season after it comes out of the pan

The only change I have made over the years is I now use coconut oil to fry with.
Of course it is better fried in a cast iron skillet.
No matter what, it is our favorite! Here I am making chicken gizzards and livers.
 What is your favorite fried chicken recipe?

Items I used or ordered this week:

  

I participate in the Amazon Associate program, where I receive a small % commission for linking products that I recommend. I only recommend products I personally used and like. Your support is very appreciated, anything you choose to purchase through my link, is helping me to be able to share more things that I do with you. Perky Gramma Teaches Amazon link.

Perky's Bloopers

I have always said I would share my prepping successes and failures. Success is a process of learning what doesn't work and paying attention so we may learn.
I strongly believe that we learn more from what doesn't work. What I am about to share really emphasizes the importance of rotation in storage, using what you store.
I am willing to try things to see how they work. As I was working through storing various types of milks in the beginning, I seriously tried many things. i don't drink milk, but I use a lot of milk in my cooking. So I started trying to find thins to store, I already knew that I wasn't a fan of low fat milk.
i have a habit of literally searching high and low on the grocery shelves to see what pops out.
This is a collection of some of the milks I gathered to test out for storage. i stored a few of the Ultra High Temperature (UHT) pasteurized milk. UHT is the process of heating milk to approximately 280 °F for just 2 seconds and then chilling it back down rapidly. The result is milk that's 99.9% free from bacteria. You have a shelf stable milk that doesn't need refrigeration until after you open the package.

The Nido and the canned milk have held up well so far. But, since I don't use lower fat milk in cooking, the Parmalat milk didn't last. To be fair it wasn't designed for long term storage.
If you rotate and use the product it will be fine, but it doesn't work for long term storage.
Here is the proof, this was stored in 2012 & over three years later the milk was curdled:

 

I wasn't a fan of the various tastes of these milk and that is why I decided to figure out if I could dehydrate and pressure can milk. That is how I got started on the journey of How to Dehydrate Milk for Long Term Storage and pressure canning White Stuff from Cows. While dehydrating milk takes up less storage space and is more convenient to travel, note that you will still need stored water to reconstitute. Overall, now I only pressure can my milk. You will also what to read What the USDA Actually Says About Pressure Caning Milk.

I had a cabinet that was extremely deep and honestly it existed before I started prepping. It was separate from my prep storage, so I wasn't rotating. When I was cleaning it out for the move I found some really frightening things that I will be honest about and share though it is a bit embarrassing. But, I felt it really emphasizes why rotation is very important.
Below are two pictures. The one on the left is a jar of really old mayonnaise and the one on the right I honestly have no clue what it was, but it was a can of something. Learn from my mistakes.

 

The one on the right I actually treated s a very hazard item. i used rubber gloves and wrapped the can out in several layers of plastic before disposing. The cabinet was actually going to be trashed anyway.
There will be mistakes that you able able to learn a lot from. I think one of things that separates me from others is I am not afraid to try and I do share the successes and the things that didn't work which I learned from. I wanted to end by sharing something Mandi wrote to me.
"If I had any one tid-bit advise for any one journeying into endeavors not yet experienced before, it would simply be: Don’t ever grow discouraged because there is no such thing as perfection; the more you try and try again and again, the more experienced you will become. No matter what you attempt it will never be perfect but instead it will be much better because it will become your own, a unique creation that only you can create."

So go forth and do something, learn something, get your prep on...

Items I used or ordered this week:

    

I participate in the Amazon Associate program, where I receive a small % commission for linking products that I recommend. I only recommend products I personally used and like. Your support is very appreciated, anything you choose to purchase through my link, is helping me to be able to share more things that I do with you. Perky Gramma Teaches Amazon link.

Are You Prepared For a Holiday?

One thing I don't believe I have ever seen mentioned is prepping for the holidays.
In the aftermath of of a "s" hit the fan scenario, I believe that holidays will be a stabilizing factor for families.
Since in the beginning I started storing items as I used them through out the day, then seasonal items easily started making their way into my storage. 
First let's start with the birthday cake. I am not a fan of cake, but my dear Mr. Perky enjoys cake. He likes cold chocolate cake, without any fanfare. 
As with any prep, you want to have a primary and secondary back-up stored. I also am not much of a baker at this time, though that will be changing.
So, in the beginning I simply bought and stored some cake mixes and stored them in Mylar bags. I haven't really been a baker in life in more recent years, though I did when I was younger. I have eggs stored with coconut oil, coconut oil which I now substitute for any oil & the mix.
I cut the directions out which I keep with my recipes. While doing this yesterday, I realized that I don't have birthday candles stored. Mr. Perky doesn't want to big deal made of his birthday, but you may want to store birthday candles if it is important to your celebrations.
About that baking pan...it is technically a brownie pan that bakes all edge piece brownies. After I got married I learned there are people that prefer inside chewy, moist pieces and those that like outside, crisp brownies.
I am an inside chewy and Mr. Perky is an outside crispy.
I found it works for cakes also. So when something is just for Mr. Perky I use this special pan.

Also, I stored two mixes at a time to conserve space. I just wanted to share this TIP. I opened the Mylar bag with my Food Saver to create a very straight cut line, which enabled my to reseal my package with the Food Saver again. Using the vacuum sealer only will seal a mylar bag, it will not extract the air.

 

You may also use an iron or flat iron for hair to seal the packages.
While I do have all this stored. I also have plenty of the items stored to bake a real cake again as needed. I will be using my grandmother's recipe.

Now gift wrapping. Paper is something that I believe will become valuable. Eventually we will start saving what wrapping we have and reuse it over and over again. We will use practical things we have on hand. Like these gifts for Mr. Perky. One is wrapped in some craft paper I have and tied with string (which I have stored for cheese waxing).
A second method I have been using is now being called "furoshiki". Actually it is a method that has been utilized for ages, but is coming back into style and really easy to do. Here is the second gift I wrapped and a simple graphic to get you started.

But it really is fairly simple to do. 
Sometimes "thinking" is an important part of prepping. For example thinking about what would be needed to be stored to make holiday traditional treats? Like for a birthday. As the next few months roll along, I will be sharing specific things that I stored to make some of our traditional holiday foods. Some of the items will eventually run out (pineapple for example), but for the beginning we would be able to maintain some of our family traditions which I pray will give my family extra heart doing tough times.
How have you prepped for holidays?

What I do here is simply share our preparedness journey. We would love it if you joined our Perky Prepping Gramma community on Facebook.

Here are some items I used or ordered this week:


   

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Your support is very appreciated, anything you choose to purchase through my link, is helping me to be able to share more things that I do with you. Perky Prepping Gramma Amazon link.

Luck Won't Exist...

Almost everything about being prepared is simply repetition. Each day is the same right now, I take a few boxes, wash everything, then determine if I am going to find a storage place for the items or put it with the every growing yard sale pile. At this rate I may be unpacked within a year. But the thing is I manage to do something everyday, that also applies to our preps.
I consider this time the calm before the storm, which works on so many levels.

Practice Skills

Once I started prepping, it didn't take me long to determine I needed to learn how to grow my own food. We are gearing up for preparing our garden plot for next year. We will be utilizing the “Back to Eden” method again, which worked so well for us in the past.

Use What You Store, Store What You Use

Actually this is such an ongoing dilemma. I find I will store something somewhere, then I move it. But since I am basically setting up my home for the future from the beginning I want to take time to insure that everything has a logical spot. Easier said then done. Moving things around, buying or creating shelf space so that I am able to maximize the space we have. Doing inventory of what we have...
Along with that, I am cooking a lot more from storage. What I am learning is that some stuff I stored in the beginning really wasn't based on what we are eating. But, as time progresses, I learned to really store what we eat (drink).

 

"But about that day or hour no one knows...”

We really don't know what will happen nor when it will happen. But, the storm is coming,
But, isn't that life is about anyway?

I firmly believe there won't be any luck in those days, it will all come down to how well you have prepared and that starts today.

Items I used or ordered this week:

  

I participate in the Amazon Associate program, where I receive a small % commission for linking products that I recommend. I only recommend products I personally used and like. Your support is very appreciated, anything you choose to purchase through my link, is helping me to be able to share more things that I do with you. Perky Gramma Teaches Amazon link.

The Gift of Preparing

Those very early days when Mr. Perky and I began prepping, we felt so alone in many ways. It seemed to be no one saw the the vision and it was a tough road to understand.
Yet there have been several times when our preps have come to the rescue for everyday happenings. For example being snowed in and having everything we needed.
The biggest one for us was when our heat pump went out over the holidays. Preps to the rescue. We had ample tools we had stored to keep us toasty and warm without having to call in an emergency repair person, which saved us a ton of money.
Prepping set us on the path of getting out of debt and purchasing our lovely farmette. We are now working on a lifestyle of self-sufficiency. and reawakened dreams of our youth. There is such a comfort in knowing that we are far better prepared than most people. While we can't foresee everything, we just keep learning and growing our skill sets.
The biggest gift of all is the blessing of having all of you in my life. Albeit most of you are cyber friends, I have had the pleasure of meeting several people in real time.  Meeting people dispels the stereotype of preppers being odd people. Each and everyone I have met or chatted with are normal, sane people who have seen the truth.
You all are such a blessing in my life.

Items I have used this week:

   

I participate in the Amazon Associate program, where I receive a small % commission for linking products that I recommend. I only recommend products I personally used and like. Your support is very appreciated, anything you choose to purchase through my link, is helping me to be able to share more things that I do with you. Perky Gramma Teaches Amazon link.