Recycling Pickle Juice

 This is something I have been doing for a couple decades. I was in the Army for 36 years and have worked for the Army another seven years as a civilian. I move around a lot. As I move from place to place I try the local foods and the local commercial brands of all sorts of stuff. 

 I like pickles. I don't care for some flavors, but in general I do like pickles. It always seemed a shame to pour the leftover pickle brine down the drain once the pickles were gone and I always thought that other vegetables, like onions, peppers, and cauliflower would taste good pickled in that flavor brine. So, I started experimenting with reusing the pickle juice.

 It is a simple, basic process. There is usually enough juice left to make a pint of something else and I have a couple pint-size canning jars. I make sure the jar is spotlessly clean and I always wash the one-time use lid and the reusable sealing ring. I run hot water from the tap into the jar to pre-warm the glass. At the same time, I put the pickle juice in a pan and bring it to a boil. The vegetable I am going to use has already been washed and cut to size to fit in the pint jar. Then, I blanch the vegetable in boiling water for three minutes.

 Next, I empty the warm water from the jar, pack it with the vegetable and then pour the boiling pickle juice in to fill the jar up to one quarter inch below the rim. (Note: You must leave an air pocket in the jar to get a vacuum seal.) I wipe off the rim and lay the lid, rubber seal side down, on the jar and then screw the ring on, snug but not tight.

 The filled jar now goes into a pot of boiling water for five minutes then taken out and set on a cooling rack to cool down. As it starts cooling, it forms a vacuum seal and you will hear a loud, sharp "pop", when the canning jar lid gets sucked tight and slightly indents. 

 Let the jar cool to room temperature and set the jar on a shelf in a cool, dark place and leave it be for a month or two. By then, the vegetable will have absorbed the flavors of the pickle juice and you now have a delicious treat. 

 It takes very little work, costs next to nothing if you are using vegetables from your garden, and it provides long-lasting food for the future. I am currently eating pickled green beans ("dilly beans" some folks call them) that I picked from my garden three months ago. I used leftover brine from a gallon jar of German pickles. This is a good way to utilize excess fresh produce. Pickled onions and peppers are great in a salad, on sandwiches, or just eating by themselves. You retain all the nutrition of the vegetable and add the health benefits of vinegar. 

 

Staying Warm When the Power goes Out

  Modern home heating is effective, efficient, and comfortable. But what happens when the power goes out? All modern heating systems require electricity to operate. My house is 100% electric so when the power goes out the heating system doesn't work. Natural gas and home heating oil burners are also controlled by electrical components. No electricity and they don't operate either.

  One solution is to have a battery back-up or a generator to provide that needed power. It won't work on a 100% electric house like mine, the power requirements are too high, I would require a very powerful, whole-house back-up generator set-up. Those are quite expensive. But if you have coal, oil, or natural gas as your heat source, you can get by with a fairly small amount of battery back-up.

  Gas and oil furnaces need some electric, but not much. You can operate them off of a car battery, the battery from your boat's trolling motor, even the battery from your lawn tractor. Click on this link to see how easy it is to do. (88) Did You Know You Can Heat Your Home With A Car Battery? - YouTube

  You need three things: 1. A 12-volt battery. 2. A DC (Direct Current) to AC (Alternating Current) inverter. 3. An electric cord rated for the amps of your furnace.

  Notes: The bigger the battery, as measured in amp-hours or watt-hours, the better. You will want a DC to AC inverter of at least 600 watts (I would go with 800 watts as a minimum, but they get more and more expensive as they get bigger. Check the label on your furnace to see how many watts and amps it draws.). You probably don't need to buy an electric cord; most likely you have some un-used ones laying around from broken appliances or computers. But they need to be thick, heavy duty cords.

  If you live in an area where the power might be out for extended periods of time, you'll need a means to recharge your battery every two or three days. The best way is to have two batteries so that you can use one while the other is being charged. To recharge your battery, re-install it in your car and run the car for 20-30 minutes. This presumes that you didn't totally discharge the battery to where it won't crank your car engine. If you recharge it every other day, it shouldn't be a problem. 

  Alternately, you can buy and install a small 12-volt solar panel to charge the battery. I keep a tractor, with a snowplow mounted on it in the winter, out in a shed. On very cold days, the battery has a hard time starting the diesel motor. To keep it fully charged, I bought a 15-watt solar panel that has alligator clamps that connects directly to the battery. No charge controller is required for a low-wattage panel such as this. In direct sun, this panel will charge a nearly dead battery in three hours. If you have an access point, you could run the cable inside from outside and continuously charge the battery as it is being used.

  Above is a small selection from Amazon but these panels are sold in lots of places such as Northern Tools and Harbor Freight. For the purpose of emergency backup power, I would go with a minimum of 30-watts since winter days are short and you never know how much sun will be available.

  So, the above information is how to power your furnace. But what do you do if you have electric heat, like I do? It would take a very expensive to buy, and access to a lot of fuel to run, whole-house generator to operate the electric heating elements. For these houses, you will need to have some sort of a combustion heat source. In my case, I installed a wood-burning stove in my living room. I had an existing fireplace, but they are next to worthless for providing heat, Better than nothing, to be sure, but very inefficient. I bought a small woodstove, with an internal blower, and inserted it into the fireplace opening. It will heat the room without the blower operating but it is most effective and efficient with the blower operating; that requires electricity.

  Several years ago, we lost power during a snowstorm and the power was out for five days. Outside temperatures were well below freezing. I got the trolling motor battery out of my dad's boat, connected a 400-watt inverter, and ran my woodstove's blower fan for five days (off and on, not continuously). We were also able to run a box fan at the hallway entrance to the living room to move warm air into the rest of the house. We were able to maintain the house at 65 degrees the whole time with this simple set-up.

  After that experience, I decided to buy an Ecoflow solar generator with 400-watts of solar panels to keep it charged. There are many companies making these solar generators now. Do your own market research and buy the best system you can afford. My unit has a 1,300 watt-hours of power storage capacity and with the panels I can keep it charged indefinitely. My emergency essential power needs are fairly low but yours might be higher. These systems come in all sizes and price ranges. Watch for sales. I recently bought a 7,200-watt hours system at 55% off the normal list price. That is enough power to keep my home going for many days, even without recharging. But I will buy some used solar panels to keep it charged.

  Worst case scenario: You have no power, and you have no means to generate power and you don't have a fireplace or woodstove, how can you keep warm? The best way is to select the smallest room in your house or apartment and congregate there. Human bodies generate heat and getting all your heat into one smaller space will help to warm it up. Bring all your blankets to that room, maybe also enough mattresses so everyone can lie down to sleep and not be on the cold floor. If you don't have a small space (think open floor plans), you can divide off a smaller space with excess blankets, tarps, drop cloths, whatever you have. Remember making forts inside the house when you were a kid? Now that experience can save your life. Use a tent if you have one. Set it up and get everyone inside. Unscented candles are a great source of warmth for small spaces. Place one inside a can or cook pot or something to prevent it from being blown out or coming in contact with people or things that burn. An upside-down terra cotta flowerpot works well so long as there is a wide drain hole on the bottom for air.

CLAY POT HEATER TEST | Does It Actually Work?! (youtube.com)

 NEVER use more than one candle at a time. WARNING OF FLOWER POT CANDLE HEATERS FLASHPOINTS! - (Saving Lives & Saving You Money) (youtube.com)

  There are also indoors safe propane heaters such as the "Mr. Buddy Heater". You should still crack a window to reduce the buildup of carbon monoxide. They work nice, but they go through a lot of fuel.

  Gather your supplies BEFORE you need them. Store them in a convenient place. Inspect them every year.

Recycling Lead

 One of my many hobbies is metal detecting and we find a lot of lead. Lead bullets, lead fishing weights, lead used in plumbing. (The Latin word for lead is "Plumbum", which is where "Plumbing" comes from. The symbol for lead on the Periodic Table is Pb.) Lead has a low melting point, only 621.5 degrees f, which means it can be melted on a simple fire or over hot wood coals. Because of this, lead was used in the old days to make repairs to lots of things. You could melt it and pour it into a cracked pipe to seal it, for example. Thus, lead spills are found on almost every farm.

 

 

 Common sources of lead, for metal detectors, are shown above. At the top are large caliber lead musket balls, each one is about an ounce of lead. In the middle are .22 caliber rimfire bullets, these typically weigh 40 grains (there are 428 grains to the ounce). At the bottom is lead that was spilled onto the ground. I have also found lead pipes, lead toys (they didn't know that lead was toxic back then), lead figurines, and even lead buttons.

 

 Until recently, a good source of used lead, if you needed it, was at the local car repair shop. The weights used to balance a wheel were made from lead. The normal practice was to remove all the weights before rebalancing the wheels and they rarely re-used the old wheel weights. Yesterday, I picked up over 50 pounds of used wheel weights from a local garage (for free).

 

 Because lead is toxic, many states have banned the use of lead wheel weights (California, Minnesota, Illinois, Maine, New York, Vermont, Washington, New Jersey and Maryland). In those states (and most others) you will find wheel weights made from zinc, steel, or copper alloys. Zinc and steel are the more common forms. Zinc melts at 787 degrees f, so you would need forced air over coals to reach that temperature to melt it for recycling. You are not going to be able to melt the steel weights, but you could fill buckets with them and take them to an iron recycling center.

 Last year, I had more bits of lead than I had space to store it so I decided to melt it down, clean off the dirt/waste materials, and pour the lead into easy to store ingots. To do this, I went to a local antique market and walked through until I found heavy-duty, cast iron ladles, and a cast iron muffin pan. Then all I needed was a hot bed of coals.

 The two ladles I bought worked fine for small batches. This year I bought a much larger one that holds five times as much scrap material. I use the iron rod to stir the melted lead to get the dirt and waste material to float to the top so it can be skimmed off. Lead is very dense so almost any other material in the ladle will float on top of the lead, making it easy to remove.

 Then all you need is a hot bed of coals. I make a fire in my fire pit with hard wood and let it burn down to a deep bed of coals. I then fill the ladle with the scrap lead and place the bowl onto the hot coals. In less that five minutes, the lead melts and sinks to the bottom of the ladle. I use the spoon to skim off the floating waste and dirt and drop that into the can for later disposal. I cannot emphasize enough that lead is toxic. Only do this outdoors when there is a breeze blowing the fumes away from you. Do not spill any lead or the waste material you skim off the melted lead (it is called "dross" and rhymes with "gross") on the ground. If you do, that soil is contaminated and needs to be dug up and disposed of in the trash.

 The ladle and the spoon will get VERY hot. You can use welder's gloves if you have them, to protect your hands. I have a pair of fire fighter's gloves that work great for this task.

 Once you clean the lead, return it to the coals for another minute or two to get hot again. I often times scrape the inside of the ladle to make sure no dirt or foreign material is stuck to the sides. It will float to the top and you can do a final cleaning. Then pour the molten lead CAREFULLY into the muffin pan to the top of each cup. It is a good idea to warm up the muffin pan until it is too hot to touch. This ensures there is no moisture in the cup (pouring molten lead onto moisture will cause a steam explosion) and prevents the pan from cracking due to an extreme temperature change.

 What you end up with is purified lead (probably 90-95% pure) in an easy to stack and store shape. Bars would be better, but I have never seen a bar-shaped cast iron mold though you can purchase bar-shaped ingot molds on the internet. Each one of my lead "muffins" weighs 1/2 pound. I currently have twenty of them safely stored in my basement.

 Now what? That depends on your thoughts about the state of the world I suppose. Lead has many uses for repairs, casting bullets, casting fishing weights, etc. You could sell the lead via online marketplaces. Or, you could hold onto an amount of lead for future bartering.

Chef 5 Minute Meals Ration Taste Test

 

I bought this ration pack a year or two ago for a kayak camping trip but I didn't eat it. It has been stored in my basement since then. Last weekend I consolidated all my camping rations into one large tuff box that I got for free. Someone had placed it out at the curb to be thrown away. These boxes go for anywhere from $79.99 to $119.99, depending where you buy them. What a great save for me.

As I was going through the various freeze-dried foods, cans, and pouches, I came across this 5 Minute Chef meal. I checked the date and the "Best By" date was in August 2023. I am no stickler for these dates, which more often than not are just marketing ploys designed to entice you to either throw food away or quickly eat it and but more. In my cool, dry, dark basement, this meal packet would still be good to eat years from now. BUT, it was the only meal of this type I had on hand and I decided to eat it for lunch at work this past week.

I decided to heat it in the microwave and keep the chemical heater for later use. That is a very small portion, 9 ounces is what the label says. But I took along some naan bread, carrots, radishes, scallions, and a slice of pie for dessert so it ended up being a good meal. By itself it is basically a child's or a small woman's portion though. A full sized adult doing some physical work, such as hiking, would be very hungry afterwards

I give it two thumbs up for taste, texture, and appearance. I very much enjoyed it. It only has 210 calories, making it little more than a snack. It does have 15 grams of protein, which is pretty high for only 210 calories. It had a surprising amount of meat in the sauce. The little oblong meatballs are a perfect size for eating the meal with a spoon. Sodium is not too high, compared to most foods of this type. Sugars and carbs are low, which is one reason why the total calories are so low. Most people would probably want to shake some hot sauce on it to spice up the flavor.

It comes with a chemical heater, which has detailed instructions printed on it. I presume the idea behind the name is that it can be heated in five minutes. These chemical heaters can get very hot and can give off gases that are unpleasant, so it is best to use these outdoors.

It also comes with a plastic spoon and paper napkin. The spoon is way too short, you would never be able to get at the last of the meal without getting sauce all over your fingers. I always carry my own Army MRE spoon with me (several actually), because they are extra long and very sturdy.

This short "spork" is way too small. Oh, the meal pouch does not come open easily, I had to use the scissors of my Swiss Army knife to cut both the main bag that everything came in, and the pouch with the food in it. 

Final Grade: A for flavor and edibility, C for ease of use and serving size, F for long term storage.

These sell for $6.99 and I would consider that a good price for what you get. But you really should only consider it as the entree portion, you will need to add other items to make it a satisfactory meal.

Cash on the Side

 I work out of state and am only home two and a half days a week. But when I fully retire there are some opportunities to earn some cash on the side.

Today, I removed the flail mower from my biggest tractor and hauled it from my farm to my residence, three miles down the road. When I bought this tractor, a Kubota, it was advertised as including a five foot wide underbelly mower. What also came with it, and was not mentioned in the ad at all, was a five foot wide, front mounted snow blower. What it didn't come with was an operator's manual. But I grew up on a farm using 1950s tractors and equipment and our family built and ran a campground, which also had some equipment. As the only boy in the family of seven, it was up to me to do most of the farming and maintenance at the campground (from age nine until I left home at 18). Result" I'm pretty handy and mechanically inclined. I figured out how to mount and operate the snow blower.

The first year I owned it we had significant snow (32 inches in October) and I was in between jobs. I went around my village and volunteered to clear neighbors' driveways and parking lots. Some accepted the free offer and some declined. Some that accepted offered me money after I was done, I hadn't asked for any. Some of the offerings I accepted and some I declined. I know the relative economic standing of most of my neighbors. If I knew they could afford to give me ten dollars, I took it (fuel costs money).

I didn't go far, just immediate neighbors of my small village. But, when I retire, I will go around and offer my services, for a fee, as a sideline business. There are a couple people that I won't charge, like the lady whose grass I have been cutting for two years. She is on a rather small fixed income.

I already have the equipment, do all my own maintenance on it (I replaced all the blowers' bearings two years ago), and enjoy doing the work. In a winter that we actually get enough snow that my services would be needed, I could probably make enough to pay for all my grass cutting gas and diesel fuel requirements for the year. 

I also have unlimited supplies of standing dead trees and bundled firewood sells for $7.50 a bundle in my area. I used to cut and bundle five to six hundred bundles of wood to sell at our campground every year. We sold it for 50 cents a bundle and my parents gave me five cents a bundle. It was a lot of work for $25 a summer but in the early 1970s, that money went a long way. If I sold just one hundred bundles of wood a year, I could make $750. The trees need to be cut and cleared out off my land or it gets impossible to drive through and I need to cut three cords of firewood each year for my home heating. I need to keep my woods healthy, open enough to drive through, and maintain a low risk of forest fires by reducing the dead wood on the ground.

A few people have suggested that I hire myself out as a river guide for canoe and kayak trips. There are three major rivers within an hour of my house; The Lehigh (ten minutes away), the Schuylkill (thirty minutes away), and the Susquehanna (an hour away). I am familiar with all of them and could do this one on one with one or two guests. I know the full histories of the miles that I routinely paddle so if they are interested in learning, I have the knowledge. That could be fun.

What are your skills and what resources do you have at hand that you can parlay into a little bit of a side income? Extra income means extra food security.

Minding the Cold

 As November 2023 comes to a close, the weather is getting more and more like winter. There have already been many mornings with temps in the low 20s. Most of the time, it is still warming up into the 30s and 40 during the day. But as soon as the sun sets over the horizon, the temperature drops quickly.

I went kayak camping in the third week of October and the early morning temps were in the mid-20s then already. One can only carry so much gear in a fishing kayak so I did not have enough sleeping gear to stay warm. Then, this past weekend, my son and I were deer hunting and it was in the low 20s again in the mornings. But, unlike when I was paddling the kayak, I was just sitting in an elevated blind while hunting and wasn't generating any heat. It was cold.

But there are some hacks you can do to stay moderately comfortable in the cold. Staying dry is critical. If you are too warm you sweat and if your clothes get damp from sweat, you will soon freeze. The object is to stay cool, but not cold. Layering helps because you can take off layers of clothes if you are heating up too much and then put those clothing layers back on if you start to get cold.

In the deer stand, I brought along a bivy sack to get in. A bivy sack, or bivy bag, is like an outer shell for a sleeping bag. The one I have is an Old School sleeping bag shell from the old 1970s version of the Army mummy bag sleeping bag. I hated that sleeping bag, it was too confining for me. But the outer shell, made of light weight canvas, makes a great warm weather sleep system component and if you button it up with your lower body inside the bag, it keeps the wind away and is surprisingly warm. It holds your legs body heat around your legs.

Another trick is to place a lit, long burning candle between your feet and drape a blanket over your body with the candle beneath you. The rising heat will keep that small, enclosed space quite warm for as long as the candle burns. You can be sitting, squatting, or kneeling to do this. I have a small candle lantern that just holds a Tea Candle inside a lightweight aluminum lantern, with a glass chimney, which makes it safer to do this. There is no exposed flame.

A thermos full of hot coffee, tea, soup, or broth will make you feel warmer after a drink. I have a small one that only holds a pint and the screw on cup hold maybe four to six ounces. But it keeps the drink hot/warm for a very long time. I have an exterior neoprene cover that goes around the thin thermos, which greatly adds to the insulation.

High calorie food such as chocolate bars, energy bars, Pop-tarts, etc. will give your body the quick burning fuel it needs to generate heat. You don't want too much fat or protein in this snack, they are slow to digest and require energy to break down the food.

Chemical hand warmers are great and last a surprisingly long time. They can get very hot so make sure they are not in direct contact with your skin. Place them over your kidneys to warm your core, in your armpits to warm the blood going into your arms, in your pants front pockets to warm the blood going down to your legs. I like to put small ones between the layers of my shirts at my wrists to keep my hands warm. One or two in your sleeping bag can keep your feet warm but be careful not to over heat and sweat.

Wearing a scarf or neck gaiter to protect your neck is important. A lot of blood passes just under the surface of your neck and if exposed to the cold it will chill you down in a hurry. If you don't have one with you, pull up your collar (of your shirts, sweater, coat) and pull down your hat to cover as much exposed skin as possible. I have often used a spare undershirt or towel wrapped around my neck in emergencies.

Always wear a hat, even when sleeping. Wool socks are best since wool retains insulating properties even when wet. If you can afford it, buy a pair of shoes that are a full size too big and wear thicker socks. More insulation from thick wool socks will keep your feet warm and the extra room in your boots/shoes will allow for better blood circulation.

Winter adventures can be magical but they can also turn deadly if you aren't dressed properly and prepared. Carry a light pack with emergency gear such as fire making equipment, fire starters, some sort of wind-proof shelter material, a bit of food, a metal cup (to heat water), powdered drink mix (coffee, tea, hot cocoa, bullion cubes, etc.), a space blanket (at a minimum but I usually carry an Army-surplus wool blanket roll), and signalling devices (a good whistle at a minimum).

The Power of Loyalty Cards

 Loyalty cards at hotels, restaurants, gas stations, and grocery stores can save you a lot of money and often provide occasional bonuses.

We buy most of our groceries at a chain store called Giant. Using your card with every purchase "earns" cents off your gas at their gas pumps. The "cents off" is in ten cent increments and Giant has a 24 gallon maximum. So, any time we get up to 30 or 40 cents off, I wait until I am well below a quarter tank of gas, put two five gallon gas cans in the back of the car, and go fill 'er up. If you can max out at 24 gallons you get the most savings.

I live part-time in Maryland, where I work, and I have a rewards card with Royal Farms, a gas and food business. I earn a point per dollar spent. I also get a ten cent a gallon discount so my gas there is usually thirty to forty cents a gallon cheaper than at home in PA. With my points I can get free food and drinks. Royal Farms regularly gives out random bonuses such as a free coffee, free energy drinks, and a free chicken meal on your birthday.

My son travels a lot for work and his employer pays for his hotel stays but he gets to keep the reward nights. So when he and his wife go on personal travels, all their rooms are paid for with the reward points.

Panera Bread also has a reward point system and it takes a while, but I earn free drinks and free pastries after buying a few meals there.

A local car wash in my town has a reward card where after paying for nine car washes, you get the tenth one free. That is, effectively, a ten percent discount.

These cards generally cost nothing but pay off points for money that you were going to spend anyway. You need gas, so earn some free stuff when you pay for it. You need groceries, so get free stuff when you pay for them.