I know it’s not just me. We pretty much all have some family/friends caterwauling for Kamala (a family member, just today assured everyone on her FB that $750 is just a stop-gap for the hurricane victims, rah rah, cheer leading for the wrong side, just like clockwork). So this is deflating for me to see, even though I believe I know more than she does. So I think I just figured out a coping mechanism which may help me to keep this junk in perspective for one more month - and maybe it will help you too?

I will consider this family member to be like a broken toaster, which only knows how to burn toast until it is rendered completely irrelevant… I cannot fix the toaster; I can tolerate scraping off the black gunk a little while longer. There is no sense in yelling at the toaster if it burnt my toast yet AGAIN. I will try to understand this is broken, and I am not going to be able to fix it, so I will just try to tolerate the black junk while I sit here and figure out what happens next.

Most have learned not to make absurd pronouncements around me. With one question from me, they end up sputtering, realizing that there is no defense for their statement.
The question?
Why would you say something like that?
When faced with the prospect of having to explain themselves, their brain shuts down. They are reduced to babbling word salad like their idol.
Fortunately, I was not present when the mayor declared that he was sure that all the independent and undecided voters would make up their minds in the voting booth and do the right thing and vote for Harris. I would have fallen out of my chair from laughing so hard. That delusional statement is right up there with my guy who spends his days yelling at Russell Brand and Megan Fox. The only thing is. It’s apparent to all that one is insane and the other is considered normal. I know better.

My two biggest culprits are well-educated (I did not say well-informed, only well-educated) and the eloquence of their liberal rumination is something to behold. It is as if they have been fine-tuned and somehow planned several steps ahead of any current events, rehearsing their rebuttals beforehand, and they are not easily reduced to a babble, rather they tend to rise to the occasion and punish anyone who disagrees with their special flavor of delusion on any given day; these two avidly agree and are usually paired up, often throwing in some side stuff I never even heard of. I am at a loss for now to explain this any better than what I just said, but they are really just good at sinking their teeth into a lie and then running the clock out. They are generally very nice people on the surface, but clearly immunized against basic logic. I would love to invite you to Thanksgiving dinner 😂😂

Yeah. Those “well educated” ones came be a handful. They aren’t so much educated and indoctrinated. They are my favorite targets. Maybe it’s the look on my face that gets them? A cross between trying to decide if I’m smelling cat 💩 or if they’re simply just retarded. 🤣
The last one, a clinical social worker 🙄 decided to non sequitur that Israel gave Trump $100m after I mentioned to someone else that Trump released a statement that Iran was going to attack Israel and two minutes later it was posted that Iran was attacking Israel. Why would you say something like that? Well, that’s how Trump knew about the attack. Israel told him. ?? How does that work? I went on to tell her that China and Ukraine have given Joe millions of $’s. So, what was her point? She never even got the fact that if Obama hadn’t give Iran all that $, the attack on Israel wouldn’t have happened. She told me she wouldn’t say any more. I said, good, don’t. 🤣🤣🤣💀

ROFLMAO 🤣🤣🤣
My plan of attack this year is to play dumb and let them spend themselves. It will not work, because they will fish until they find a segway to bloviate anyhow, but I can use the old stand-by of being overloaded and in a media blackout… which is minorly effective (sometimes). Anything less than resting bitch face and a lack of input will mean I should just occasionally smile and then leave before pie. Nobody wants to leave before pie. Unless it is some weird arugula and broccoli pie with artificial sweeteners, then leaving before pie is admirable. They may bust me out back, digging in the trash to read labels containing sketch ingredients or GMO stuff, which is an entirely different argument. I did finally win the fat-free half and half debate, so I am no slouch. I am just choosing my battles 😇😂💪💞

Yeah, choosing battles is important. I just decided I’d had enough when the owner of the local radio station told me that I wasted my money on a house in the country because I still wasn’t going to be safe out there either. 1. I didn’t buy the house for safety reasons. 2. Nothing was ever mentioned about being safe. So where did that idiotic comment come from? I choose to live on vacation. What business is it of his? That’s just what the Marxists do. They act like they know what’s going on behind the scenes. He’s one of the ones that I’ve looked in the eye and told that he isn’t allowed to talk to me anymore. 🤣🤣 The looks I get when those words come out of my mouth. Priceless! He’s behaved himself since I found him on Truth Social and told him to calm down and go fishing. 🤣🤣 I didn’t go looking for him. He was just that obvious. 🤣🤣🤣

Well I just love your attitude and it is so nice to know that you can hold your own, probably banging on a tin pie pan when a bear gets too close. 😅 One of my lofty goals is living in the country again one day… and I’ll get there, I just know it. For now I am sitting in a burb outside of Denver proper, making some crab apple jelly from a friend’s nuisance tree and trying to perfect the texture of some crabapple butter. Nobody knows what to expect from me, a misfit, willing to try a little homesteading stuff while the Venezuelan Prison gangs are still sleeping off a Saturday night of fun… all a figment of my imagination, of course. 🎶 My thumbs are permanently stained red, from apples of course. All is well.

You sound like my kind of people! I’ve not done any homesteading yet, but I have bought mason jars and a pressure canner! Between the septic systems and how little land I have, it’s hard to grow much in the way of preserving. I suppose I should be nicer to people and make friends with the farmers? I sort of got off on the wrong foot out here. My former landlady was not well liked and had many enemies. Sort of guilt by association. Now we own and people are a little nicer. But they have looong memories and can hold a grudge forever.
We don’t have much excitement with the imports. They self segregate. One of the newer stores they opened is actually pretty nice. They even have a decent restaurant in it. Just don’t try to shoplift. One of the guys caught someone and went after them with a machete! 🫣🤪

Making friends with farmers is rarely a bad thing, but I might be so relieved just to get out of the city that it might be nice to just not talk to anyone for a little bit… you will figure out what works for you, not a doubt in my mind! I have done a little patio gardening over time. Tomatoes are easy if you have a way to tie them to a chair after they are too heavy for a cage. I hate raw tomatoes, but I do love a good tomato sauce. This is my first attempt at canning anything all by myself. My grandma used to can, but I was never more than a garden hand or a vegetable cleaner and cutter. I bought a cheap water bath canner and it worked impressively well for not knowing what I am doing. I just watched a bunch of YT videos and then jumped in. It is only condiments, so I am not too afraid of something that can spoil or cause botulism (yet). Every jar so far sealed well first try! I used to paraffin seal preserves way back when. Fun stuff!

Paraffin seals!! I remember those! We used to have a grape vine in our yard growing up. Every year we picked all the grapes and my mom made grape jelly and used paraffin to seal it. It was always a great day because she would make homemade bread and we’d spread the foam that was skimmed off of the jelly all over it. Nothing better in the whole world!
I’m sure I’ll figure out next moves on preserving things. I married a science teacher. He’s not a chemist, but he’ll hunt down all the yt vids for me and we’ll figure it out. I got the pressure canner so I could do both veggies and meat. I have no idea why. But the idea of putting up meat is intriguing to me. I may be a little weird. 🤣🤣

Homemade bread and homemade preserves is a combo that just smells and feels like “home”. I am curious to see how you do when it comes to meats! I do not plan on buying a pressure canner any time soon, but I would love to do some of that with my vegetable beef soup because when I make it the batch is always way too much food for the short term (and I don’t like freezing that, so I usually try to give some away while it is fresh).

We can be as weird as we want. The people who don’t understand us always seem to get a little friendlier if they smell really good stuff cooking 😉

I’ve got a whole ribeye roast in the oven that is waaaay too big for us to eat and I’m thinking of experimenting on that as my first foray into meat canning. It seams there are two ways to do it. One is a got method where the meat is seared off before packing in the jar and the other is cold where the raw meat is packed then canned. I’m leaning towards the hot method, just because I feel like that would have more flavor. I would think that since your stew was already thoroughly cooked, you may be able to do just the regular water bath to can it. It would be worth looking up! 😄

Not oven…freezer! Dumb brain told the fingers the wrong word! 🤣🤣

Freezer, oven, all good… just don’t call me late for dinner! 😂😂😂 My brain is catching up. I will look up soup canning!!! You are right, this could actually work 👀

So I got 12 half pint jars. Then after round one of jelly and apple butter, I needed lots more jars (go big or stay home - my apple project is daunting). I got 12 pint jars. Then I washed all those and looked at the pint jars drying on my counter. I had a little chat with myself about jellies. Nobody wants to open a jar and then spoil half of it, hmmm. So I went back and bought 24 more half pint jars. *sigh* I have two large ziplock bags of cooked apple pulp left to mill and about 11 cups of drained juice to work with. The pint jars are now earmarked for soup! What the heck did I get myself into? Okay, at least I am not still sitting outside prepping a few hundred hard little apples, this will be fine.

I am jazzed to learn about your meat preservation! Searing adds flavor and color, but both sound interesting 💕💪😋

Sounds like you’ve been very productive! I’ve been wandering around the internet and so far have not found a soup canning process that doesn’t involve the pressure canner. 🙄 Doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Just means the top ones that are pushed aren’t. Lots of people are scared to do things any other way than the way they know. But I’m pretty sure they didn’t have pressure canners in the olden days. I would think that if it were hot packed it would work. The main thing is the seal. Time for a deep dive!

I do think you are right. If I find a good one I will share! I was trying to understand why people stopped using paraffin on jelly and I actually think that is still a fine way to go - just a little harder to find the paraffin now, but Ace Hardware does still sell it, right beside their canning supplies. Old school is not all eradicated 🤷🏻‍♀️ Maybe it is just a matter of remembering some of the old ways and then teaching others about what works and what doesn’t (or when to use actual canning with a good seal). The old skills really could save our lives at some point. I have seen something about using salt for preserving meats too, but I have not really looked into that. The powers that be would probably rather scare us out of doing these types of things. It makes sense that sterile jars and lids, hot packing, and a water bath is a good way to go for many things. I am using a 220 oven to hold my jars and getting really good results so far. I have not even needed the pectin. 😇

All I keep finding is what the USDA recommends. I’m pretty sure I don’t believe anything they say. Between them and the FDA our food supply has become the most dangerous thing in the planet. Their recommendations have killed more people than all the things they tell us to be afraid of. We need to find some canning tips from the late 1800’s to the early 1900’s. But they’ve done a great job of destroying all the old info. I wonder if there is anything available from other countries.🤔

This one is really good! She talks about the fears and so much more. I can watch this one at 1.5 speed and catch everything she is saying 😎
https://youtu.be/tyjSTNK68JU?si=2fFotaxHK3ujvTmV

OMG!!! She’s so relatable! Thank you! She even answered a few things that I had questioned about other practices. Like…why the need for all the sterilization stuff if everything is going to be heated through. Yeah, things need to be clean. But do they all need to go through an autoclave?

She has other videos too, making tallow, canning meats, just a lot of great stuff! One video shows one of her kiddos cutting the feet off a freshly butchered chicken 👀 Um, I am not ready for that quite yet, but more power to this awesome family!

I just finished milling the rest of my apple pulp, so eleven cups of that sauce just went into a crockpot for apple butter 😎

I do hope you are having a lovely day/evening 🥰

I’m gonna take a look around her videos more when I get closer to getting things going. I’ll probably get my husband to watch them. He’s my technical researcher. 😆 I told him that we’re in the canning adventure together. So his part is to gather resource material so I don’t miss steps. 🤪 although the way she explains it, it looks fairly straightforward. We’re looking at buying a whole pig and half a cow and I’m hoping to be able to do some tallow. I’m hoping it will smell better than lard when I cook with it. I like the way animal fat fries things. But the only thing I can get in quantity for a reasonable price is lard. The processing of animals will probably always be left to the butcher. 😄
It’s been a wonderfully blowy evening and those are my favorite. Hope your evening is your favorite as well.🥰

Well I like your approach! You have a research team and everything 😁

We went in with some folks one time (mid-80’s) and got 1/4 cow - which was an amazing experience, good meat, and the butcher threw some other stuff into the package price including some frozen whole chickens, some pork products (including bacon), and they even processed the beef in a variety of clean and ready to use packages, clearly marked as steak, ground beef, ribs, etc. I do think it is wonderful if anyone is able to do this. It is a lot of meat, but I had a young family at the time and to us it was quite valuable.

I bet the tallow could be pretty clean, so getting the cracklings out and double straining probably eliminates most of the random odor… curious if I am right or if it still seems heavy.

Today was warmer than expected, but sunny!

We’ve dealt with this butcher before when someone gifted us half a pig. We’re going to sell a 1/4 of the pig and probably some of the cow as we go. We have space for it and they don’t so can’t expect them to be able to go all in at once. And of course, we’ll be gifting some of it as those needs arise. We live in chicken country, so most people don’t think it’s much of a bargain to have that thrown in. 🤪🤣 It’s the one thing that hasn’t really jumped in price. Just need to be careful to stay away from the halal stuff. It’s off when you buy it and doesn’t take but a day to go rancid. I’ve made the mistake. Once. 🤢🤮No, we didn’t eat it. I threw it away. But the smell is something I’ll never forget.
It’s interesting. I usually heave a sigh when I see replies on here. I’m not really chatty. I just wanted to let you know that I’ve really enjoyed our conversation. It’s been a bright spot in my day. Thank you.🙂