Wednesday, October 29, 2014

The Art of "Hodgepodge Cooking"

[Shoestring Cooking]

When things aren't looking good outside your home I find that cooking to be almost as important as practicing your marksmanship at the range. In the past I've mentioned the importance of your cooking capability and how it can play a big role in survival for when the grocery store shelves go empty and your bugging in. Not only do the general basics of cooking have high value, but also the ability to mix and match seemingly random food items to make a meal.

A good example of this skill is the competitive cooking show Chopped. Obviously this is more for high-range restaurant quality meals, but it does offer some interesting ideas on how to mix seemingly unrelated foodstuffs into elegant and very edible entrees. I have been mixing and matching foods into small and sometime even large meals for myself for quite a few years now. With a wife with an opposite schedule I often find myself cooking for one rather than two. Preferably I am not going to spend money and gas to go out and get food alone all the time, but rather put something together for myself in the comfort of my own home. Sometimes I'll cook a full meal and leave leftovers for her for when she does get home, but other times I'll just throw something creative together.

I'll pull from random leftovers in the fridge, something neglected in the freezer and maybe something in the pantry that I totally forgot about for a couple months. Your mind has to be able to see the individual parts as a completed whole and go the extra step of understanding what it will taste like altogether. Not everybody has this innate understanding, and even if you do it requires LOTS of consistent practice - much like spending time on the range.

I look at my meals in a way that I know that if I was in a situation where food wasn't readily available I could sustain myself and be relatively healthy with each meal as opposed to just consuming calories for sustenance. You may not always have a box of pasta and a can or bottle of tomato sauce to whip up dinner in a jiffy. There may only be a few things left in your house to eat or the things you have may not at first glance seem to match up into a cohesive meal idea at first.

There exists literature and obviously even televised shows about this subject that are easy for just about anybody to access and learn from and it is surprisingly important skill to have. So I say... go ahead and try it!

Below is one of my examples of "Hodgepodge Cooking":

"Poor Man's Stir Fry"


From the Fridge:
Leftover Bamboo Shoots
Lettuce from salad
Sweet Peppers
Sriracha Sauce

From the Freezer: 
Crab Rangoon

From the Pantry: 
Canned scallops
Bean thread noodles

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Gas Masks - SGE 400/3

[New Paranoia]

Now that Ebola has skipped the pond to both North America and Europe I feel it is time to get a new and up-to-spec gas mask. With a new one I can retire my more or less novelty ex-Soviet and Czech masks as well. Just ordered an SGE 400/3 NBC gas mask to help ease my mind on the subject. I'll be looking for a decent-priced pack of 40mm filter cartridges as well to pair with it.

 Full review to come soon.
















*Update 10/27/2014*

Called the vendor to get an update on this mask and it seems that it's now back-ordered 2 months due to the Ebola scare. Sadly I'm not surprised.

Alternate Heat - Winter Months Part III

[Last minute changes]

So I've run into an issue with converting my less than efficient fireplace with an exterior-wall chimney into a super-heating machine. My new wood stove with included blower, being as small as it is... is still too big. Just small enough to be inserted, but after that you'd never get your hands in there to attach a lined chimney to it. So... back to plan B!

Back a couple months I got myself a barely used wood stove and now I think I'll be using it this season and in the room I originally wanted to utilize one in. Instead of heating my den at the far end of the house I'll be heating my living room, which is more central to where we spend most of our time in the homestead. Not only that, the floor above it is where our bedrooms are located so with enough heat it should transfer upstairs a bit as well - especially if we cut registers into the floors for the heat to travel up.

Luckily a local vendor is going to assist with the process and make sure the outside double-walled chimney will be up to code when being run up the side of our house. More on this soon...