Preppy Prepping

In my continued search for high protein foods to add to my Stores, I ran across another unique piece of information. A common pond plant, known as duckweed, is currently being researched and is quickly moving into the position of our newest “superfood”. It’s packed with protein, far more by volume than almost ANY other protein source, doubles in volume every 24 hours (making it very plentiful), and can be eaten fresh alone, added to other foods such as salads or sandwiches, or dried and made into a powder to be sprinkled on eggs or any other food to add extra protein. It also can be fed to ducks, as it’s name suggests. I was fascinated! Since we have a backyard pond, I did more research. Turns out, it won’t work on our pond, which has a waterfall. It doesn’t like moving water. But it will grow in any nutrient-rich standing water. It reproduces asexually, like cloning, so it typically doesn’t seed. Some studies seem to indicate that, while it dies off at first frost, some particles drop...

Have you ever considered that, one day, you might find it necessary to evacuate your area. We live in a relatively safe area of the country where the need to evacuate from floods, hurricanes, tsunamis, or tornadoes is pretty non-existent. But we also live near several nuclear facilities. In the past, our city has hosted evacuees from coastal areas numerous times, including Hurricane Katrina. Shelters have overflowed and many evacuees simply can’t afford hotel rooms, even if any were available. It begs the question, if my family was forced to evacuate, what would we do? After Hurricane Katrina, my family discussed this very issue in detail. There are several concerns that have to be addressed if an evacuation order is issued for your area. First and foremost, how do you go about gathering your family? This was a huge question, since my husband worked at one of those nuclear facilities, a 55-minute drive from our home. We discussed in detail (and never fully resolved, unfortunately) a ra...

As I’ve previously mentioned, my husband and I moved our family to England several years ago for a short stay. His job assigned him to a project in northern England and provided a furnished home for us for about 3 months. While it was very short, it afforded my children an opportunity to live in a different country and culture without having the handicap of a foreign language (or so we thought. Turns out, English is NOT what we speak. We speak American, which is absolutely not what “they” speak.) We learned many, many things while there, but a couple of the things that changed my life forever are detailed below. First off, they don’t perk or drip their coffee. They refer to both coffee and tea as “a brew”, and both are prepared in relatively the same way - good old boiling water. Every kitchen, and even every hotel room, is equipped with an electric kettle, but not the kind I grew up around. These are cordless kettles. You plug a base into an outlet, remove the insulated kettle, fill i...