Easy Corn on the Cob for a Crowd, Frugal Food Storage. Grocery Cycles

Bruce’s Poor Man Survival Bulletin

A Digest of Urban Survival Resources

http://www.PoorManSurvival.com

For Independent Minded People!

ISSN 2161-5543

In This Issue:

1.       Best way to cook corn on the cob for a crowd

2.      Grocery Sale Cycles, Frugal storage tips

3.      Hide in Plain Sight

4.      Free know-how from Tractor Supply

5.      If I wanted America to Fail-Panic Now-Avoid the Rush

No matter what anyone may say
about making the rich and the corporations pay taxes,
in the end they come out of the people who toil."
-- Calvin Coolidge
(1873-1933), 30th US President

We live in an age of paranoia where many of us believe that foods go bad long before their time is up. We confuse sell-by and best-by dates with expiration, and doing so involves tossing out an item when it's still entirely edible. We often refrigerate foods that don't require refrigeration.

When a food looks and smells fine, chances are it is but I found that many people don't think that's true. I left out cooked green beans overnight and asked people on Twitter and Facebook to take bets if I would get sick. While many people assumed I'd be fine, about as many figured I was headed for disaster. If you believe leaving a vegetable out on the counter for about a day is going to result in it going bad, you're wrong. I was fine, even though it is recommended to refrigerate after just two hours.

 Sites like Still Tasty seeks to provide recommendations for how long food can survive under various conditions, but in my tests I found these estimates to be overly cautious. It's probably in Still Tasty's best interest to err on the side of safety, but generally you're a pretty good judge of what's good and what isn't. If it's not growing mold, it smells fine, and a taste test reveals nothing out of the ordinary, chances are you're good to go. In the end, safety is the most important thing but don't go throwing out perfectly good food out of paranoia. Check if it's still good first.

StillTasty.com has comprehensive information about how long you can keep thousands of foods and beverages.

Kill poison ivy by drenching the plants with a solution of salt and a little dishwashing liquid; also works on poison oak.

PM’s Compendium of Useful Resources

Finding reliable, trusted babysitters…UrbanSitter uses Facebook Connect to access, with permission, the networks of parents and babysitters, and bring the two together. UrbanSitter.com

The Best Way to Cook Corn on the Cob for a Crowd?
 It's Cooler Corn…

 We like corn on the cob. And with eight adults at the table, that means a
couple of dozen ears. We would have used the lobster pot to cook them all,
but the lobster pot was busy steaming lobster…

Use a Coleman cooler and wipe it clean, then fill
with the shucked ears. Next, two kettles-full of boiling water are poured
over the corn and the top closed.
The corn will remain at the perfect level of doneness for a couple of hours

Grocery Sales Cycles

If your favorite cereal is on sale this week, do you know how many weeks it will be before it goes on sale again? Find out, and you'll know how many boxes you should buy.

Start a Price Book

How to Build a Grocery Stockpile

More Stockpiling Resources

http://frugalliving.about.com/od/grocerysavings/tp/Build_a_Stockpile.htm?nl=1

Frugal Food Storage Tips
How do you take advantage of food sales when you have little food storage space? Get creative with these food storage ideas!

http://www.stretcher.com/stories/08/08apr28a.cfm?STT

Tractor Supply also Provides Know-How

Be sure to check how their “Know-How Central” section for useful DIY information.

Livestock, garden, building resources and more…

http://www.tractorsupply.com/

Hide In Plain Sight
A lot of people are trying to make themselves very visible on the internet so they learn how to use SEO to make sure they are found. You can use those same principles to blend in among the noise of the internet and make yourself very hard to find.

Some people want to be seen. Others want to fly under the radar. Most of us want a little bit of both. The real issue that most people have in the fight between public and private personal information is control over who has access to what information. We want the ability to reach out to the public at times, and at other times retreat into our sanctuary. Retreating is more and more difficult in a digital world.  More at:

http://www.howtovanish.com/2010/09/reverse-seo-3-ways-to-hide-in-plain-sight/?awt_l=9mqfI&awt_m=1pyFop_cFyxNxm

The Constitution should not be cast aside so quickly to achieve political ends, and its meaning must be carefully understood and respected. That's why The Heritage Foundation is proud to announce a new resource to help the American people and their elected representatives learn more about the history of our founding document. Heritage's Online Guide to the Constitution is a comprehensive and authoritative analysis of every single clause in the Constitution -- and it's available for free at ConstitutionOnline.com.

DIY Snack for Better Flowers

Before planting flowers this spring, mix 1 cup of sugar, 3 cups bone meal, and 1 cup of Epsom salts in an old bucket.  Sprinkle a pinch into the bottom of each hole as you’re planting.  The result?  A more colorful garden.

2 Liter Bottles of Light 

The slums of the Philippines are getting an extreme home makeover in the form of two liter bottles in their ceilings. The bottles function as 60-watt lights powered by 100% solar energy. Refraction is an amazing thing. If you drilled a hole in your ceiling light would drop directly through the opening in a straight line casting a shadow on the ground in the shape of the hole. By placing a bottle filled with water into the hole, the light is refracted by the water and emitted at 360 degrees like a light bulb. Light bulbs are taken for granted in America, yet are luxury item for the Philippines slums. The two liter bottles filled with water and a small amount of bleach to keep algae from growing, act as a light in the often-unlit slums.

The initiative in the Philippines to provide these lights to those who need them is known as “A liter of light”. It is estimated that each bottle light will last for about five years, which is more than any store-bought light bulb will do you for.

Read more AND find other useful, free how-to and DIY reports and resources at:

http://www.poormansurvival.com/Pages/diylinks.aspx

Get more creative and successful by carrying a personalized journal with you.  Put your name on the journal and make entries each time that creative light bulb goes off, even if at the moment is seems silly.

The Nanny State Updates…

Panic Now…Avoid the Rush!

Why is the DHS buying so much ammo for domestic use?

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), an agency that says its main purpose now is to thwart "homegrown terrorism," has awarded a contract to ammunition manufacturer ATK for acquiring 450 million rounds of .40 caliber hollow point ammo. You can view the announcement of the ammunition purchase at this press release: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/atk-secures-40-caliber-ammunition-co...

"Hollow point" ammunition is never purchased for practice or training. This ammunition is purchased for the sole purpose of being used in active fighting. At the same time, it is a violation of the Geneva Convention to use hollow point ammunition on the battle field.

The greatest global debt bubble in human history is showing signs that it is getting ready to burst…

According to CNN, the level of selling by insiders at corporations listed on the S&P 500 is the highest that it has been in almost a decade. Do those insiders know something that the rest of us do not?

The Parting Thought –

The Fall of the Soviet Union, If I wanted America to Fail & Cycles of Life

Does it seem there is more bad news today than ever before?  It sure seems that way to me.  Of course, our planet has a bigger population so the sheer numbers would indicate more bad things will happen and with the immediacy of news today, we hear about nearly every bad thing from car accidents in India to the sick things people do to their fellow citizen.

When the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet empire collapsed the world was supposed to collect a peace dividend from the end of the cold war - and we did for awhile.

It didn’t take long for a new bogey man to appear, terrorists. Our government now spends more on ‘security and preserving our freedom’ than we did for all of WWII and WWI combined…but somehow, I don’t feel any safer and as most would agree, we’ve sacrificed our freedoms and privacy in the name of security.

For decades, it has seemed as though history has been slowly building toward some sort of crescendo. The pace of change just keeps getting faster and faster and faster, and our world is becoming unstable…and it’s not just the Mayan 20212 prediction that seems to be wreaking havoc with our climate and weather.

The economy is falling apart, the fabric of society is starting to come apart at the seams, war in the Middle East could erupt at any moment and the planet itself is shaking in unprecedented ways.

Everything is cyclical.  Empires rise and fall.  The American way of life, thanks in large part to political greed and stupidity, is slipping away.  There is no doubt in my mind our climate is changing.  People throughout the world seem to be increasingly unhappy.

Over the years I have noted the cycles in my life.  They always seem to come in three’s…three good things, three negative cycles.  Is this just the natural rhythm of the cosmos or is it perhaps, the Mayan predictions coming true?  If the Mayans are indeed correct, how did they acquire this knowledge?

We certainly live in interesting times.  If you’re inclined to believe in such cycles both for the planet and for your own life, you may be interested in learning more about the seven cycles of life at:  http://www.life-cycles-destiny.com/for/yearly-life-cycles.htm

For another interesting take on what’s taking place in America as to why our country is slipping away today, view If I Wanted America to Fail:

http://times247.com/24-7-videos/if-i-wanted-america-to-fail

“Until the next revolution”, the Poor Man

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A Shallow Planet Production

Win $1000 Groceries, DIY Beer, Baking Mix, More

Bruce’s Poor Man Survival Bulletin

A digest of urban survival resources

http://www.PoorManSurvival.com

ISSN 2161-5543

In This Issue:

1.      DIY Beer, Root Beer, Baking Mix, more

2.      Nutritition on a shoestring budget

3.      Win a $1000 Worth of Groceries, Get more Coupons to help

4.      US Workers Underpaid, Rise in SWAT raids-targeting wrong home

If it moves, tax it.  If it keeps moving, regulate it.  And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

--Ronald Reagan

Share some sugar and shrink your bills, Offbeat News

   Most everyone I know is looking to save a buck so they can afford to fill their fuel tank!

I ran across a few more sites which might help.  Here’s another site you can use to borrow rather than buy stuff.  The site encourages community sharing and you can create your own online community group with friends and neighbors, other parents and others.  Go to ShareSomeSugar.com to learn more.

Here’s a site that will help you to shrink the bills you’ll likely not give up (cell phone, internet, cable).  It will help you compare and snag the lowest price for these services by providing you with unbiased suggestions based on your usage.  Go to:  BillShrink.com

One more site to share which should prove useful (only wish it would apply to our local water rates).  WhiteFence.com helps trim utility bills by giving you the average going rate in 20 cities, then offers free price quotes from competing vendors and let’s you switch immediately online with a best-price guarantee.

Finally, like most folks, I enjoy reading the tabloid headlines while waiting to checkout in the supermarket.  I like the offbeat headlines but admit, I liked the old National Enquirer much better when it features such mind-candy as “Cub Scout Hacks off Leg with Scout Knife.”  

When I taught marketing and copywriting, I often used the headlines from these magazines as examples of attention getting copy.  Helen Gurley Brown, the publisher of Cosmo magazine always wrote all of the cover copy and those headlines sold thousands of magazines in the checkout line – she was a master at teaser copy.  Too bad most of them now only offer up a garbage pail of celebrity nonsense. Whatever happened to the “Wacky World Weekly?”

Still, there are websites like NewsoftheWeird.com, Snopes.com (find the truth about online email stories) and BodyOdd.msnbc.msn.com which offer up a healthy dose of the weird and odd!

I read a lot of political works (what a surprise) so I need this bit of escape now and then!

Give children a small plot of land to grow a garden of their own.  A sure-fire way to occupy their summer free time and to get them to eat vegetables.

 

PM’s ‘Betty Shocker’ Compendium of Useful Stuff

Win $1000 in Groceries+Get Weekly Coupons+Learn to Stockpile

3^rd annual All You Grocery Challenge show you how to spend $25 or less per family member per week at the supermarket.

http://www.allyou.com/sweepstakes/grocery-challenge-00411000072299/

Beermaking demystified!

You can make your own beer with little effort and a fraction of the cost of commercial beer. This simple method uses just one fermenting process, so only one brewing container is needed.

http://eartheasy.com/eat_homebrew.htm

Easy Home Made Root Beer

Here's a quick and easy way to enjoy homemade root beer almost instantly. If you crave the old-fashioned version, made with yeast and fermented a few days, use the recipe at:

http://www.mccormick.com/Recipes/Beverages/Easy-Homemade-Root-Beer.aspx

Keep Your Beer in the Dark  Create your own ‘beer cellar’ by storing your suds in a cool, dark place where you won’t need to move those cases frequently…stays fresh for six months and stock up when there are sales.

Easy, at-home cheese making guide-Free

http://biology.clc.uc.edu/fankhauser/Cheese/Cheese_course/Cheese_course.htm

Nutrition on a Shoestring Budget - Food isn’t cheap; will get more expensive.

http://www.canadianliving.com/health/mind_and_spirit/nutrition_on_a_shoestring.php

New Coupon Site-More features to save money

By using free coupon codes provided on the site, users can save up to 90% on their regular purchases while shopping online at their favorite stores. Coupon codes are added twice a day by the CouponSpace editorial team and at the moment, the site has over 17,000 active coupon codes

The most interesting is the coupon code sharing functionality. This allows any user to share coupon codes not found on CouponSpace with the CouponSpace consumer community. All shared coupons will appear alongside the editorially chosen coupons on the site.

http://www.couponspace.net/

DIY Maven - Lots of how-to you can take advantage of!

Menu categories include: Beading, Before & After, Christmas, Crochet, Décor, DIY, Gardening, General Crafts, Knitting, Loom Knitting, MavenTV, Paper Crafts, Sewing, Uncategorized, and Woodworking.
http://diymaven.com/

Clean and freshen your toilet by pouring a cup of distilled vinegar into the bowl and let sit overnight.  Scrub well and flush.

Instead of buying Bisquick baking mix, make your own at home with a few simple ingredients.

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 10 minutes

Ingredients:

8 cups all-purpose flour (or 4 cups each all-purpose flour and whole wheat flour)

2 Tablespoons baking powder

1 Tablespoon salt

2 teaspoons cream of tartar

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 cups dry nonfat milk

2 cups shortening

Preparation:

Mix flour, baking powder, salt, cream of tartar, baking soda, nonfat milk, and shortening together in large bowl (if you have a large mixer it is ideal to use for blending this mix but it can also be done quite adequately using a pastry blender to cut in shortening). Add shortening about a half cup at a time mixing well after each addition. Mixture will be mealy when mixed adequately.

Put in air-tight container and store either in refrigerator or at room temperature. Use within about 3 months.

For Biscuits:
Mix 2 cups of Baking Mix with 1/2 cup water. Bake at 450 degrees F for 8 to 10 minutes.

For Muffins:
Mix 2 cups of Baking Mix with 2 Tablespoons sugar, 1 beaten egg and 2/3 cup milk. Bake at 400 degrees F for 15 minutes.

For Pancakes:
Mix 2 cups of baking mix with 1 beaten egg and 1-1/3 cup milk.

For Waffles:
Mix 2 cups of Baking Mix with 1 beaten egg, 2 Tablespoons oil, and 1-1/3 cup milk

A good soaking for your vegetable garden is better than light sprinkling and watering in the morning or evening works best.

The Nanny State Updates…

US Workers Underpaid

Over the last decade, the share of U.S. national income taken home by workers has plummeted to a record low.  Since the 1980s, income for the richest 1 percent of Americans has exploded, while hardly budging at all for everyone else.

Still, there's little sense that either Obama administration or Congress plan to do much about this growing inequality. Indeed, any serious action to boost the economy and cut unemployment now seems to be off the table.

Police are armed to the teeth... and while their official marketing slogan may be to 'keep people safe', their real function is to be the protectors and enforcers for the political class, all while keeping the people in check so that the know who's boss.

No Knock Raids-Using SWAT on Public Enemy #1 (Drugs) Often targeting the wrong home, 70,000 US raids annually, frequently killing innocent people, including children and old people usually of color.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pV7u91A3KGQ&feature=channel_video_title

Bethesda, Maryland. Just outside the gates of Congressional Country Club, the site of this year's U.S. Open, some kids were selling lemonade to patrons with the intention of donating the profits to children's charities.

Turns out there is something more American than that: government bureaucracy. Montgomery County inspectors repeatedly warned the children (and their parents) that they were violating a ban on vendors within county limits, and when the tots didn't shut down their operation, the government shut it down for them, slapping their parents with a $500 fine

The US economy will never ever, ever, ever, ever recover until it returns manufacturing to its shores. Manufacturing in China is not making it, no matter how cheap the price and crummy the goods. The federal government has projected large deficits for the entire duration of its budget projection. now it wants to increase its debt without any demonstrative means to repay it. eventually, creditors will wise up and refuse to lend to these reckless fools. eventually, the federal government will go broke unless it learns to live within its means.

--Nouriel Roubini

 

The Parting Shot…

As our country runs out of borrowed money, will it sink Obama?

   In a few weeks our country will run out of ‘borrowed’ money and the Treasury Dept. has already begun issuing IOUs rather than bonds to many government pension funds.  Unable to borrow $4 billion a day to pay its bills and with no compromise seen in Congress, we risk defaulting.

The International Monetary Fund cut its forecast for U.S. economic growth on Friday and warned Washington and debt-ridden European countries that they are "playing with fire" unless they take immediate steps to reduce their budget deficits.

The Fed and many in the White House inner circle and even China warn default would mean disaster for our economy with higher interest rates and prices on everything and even an average loss of more than $8000 per person on their IRAs and 401(k) plans.

Some think tanks are also suggesting it would mean the loss of more than 640,000 jobs.  As you may already know, America borrows 41 cents of each dollar it spends.  It may even mean more layoffs for federal workers (what a shame) and delays in welfare payments.

As you’ve heard me say again and again, the blame lies with both parties.  Each party has been dangerous and poor stewards of our resources.

I don’t believe any President has won re-election for a second term when the unemployment numbers were above eight percent.  The odds of Obama getting re-elected, in my opinion, are less than 35%. 

Although no president can truly ‘fix’ the economy and get companies hiring again…he can create a better economic environment by totally revamping our stupid tax system and bureaucratic system of red tape which is choking Americans at every level, rendering our country impotent against other countries.  Further, he could foster a climate which fuels research and development and entrepreneurship in this country.

One thing in his favor at the moment, is that the Republicans do not have a particularly strong candidate to run against Obama.  Another double-dip recession will almost certainly sink Obama’s second term aspirations.  What do you think?

That’s it from your political analyst, the Poor Man!

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