09:35 – Barbara is off to the gym and supermarket. She spent the night last night at Bonnie’s our 88-year-old neighbor. Bonnie fell a few weeks ago and fractured her hip. Her local family are trying to keep someone with her 24 hours a day until she’s fully recovered, but providing 24-hour coverage isn’t easy for people who have their own responsibilities. So Barbara and Vickie, our neighbor on the other side, are doing what they can to help out. When she returned home this morning, Barbara said that Bonnie was doing well, and she thinks she’ll be okay by herself now. Bonnie does have a fell-and-can’t-get-up pendant, so she can summon help if necessary.
We made dinner again last night from only LTS food. Baked spaghetti, and we made up enough for at least two meals and probably three for the two of us. Baked spaghetti, which we made up in vegetarian form. It was quite good, even without any meat. After dinner, Barbara cooked up a pound of ground beef and added it to the leftovers before freezing them in two portions. I’ll be interested in seeing what it’s like with meat in it.
The recipe called for a jar of Cheez-Whiz or similar, so we made up some cheese dip with the Augason Farms Cheese Blend Powder. It tasted fine, but it needed more water. AF provides a recipe to make up cheese sauce and another to make up cheese dip. The latter specifies equal amounts of the cheese powder and water, and the former uses a higher proportion of water. I used 1.5 cups of the powder with 1.5 cups of water to make up two cups of cheese dip because I figured the cheese dip recipe would more closely resemble the Cheez-Whiz stuff. As it turned out, a 1:1 ratio is way too much cheese powder even for a dip. The next time we use the cheese powder, I’ll be mixing it with more water.
Prepping stuff from walmart.com and costco.com is starting to stack up in the foyer. In the last week, I’ve ordered and/or received a 26-pound bucket of Augason Farms Brown Rice, several #10 cans of Augason Farms Potato Shreds, another can of AF Cheese Blend Powder to replace the one we just opened, several different kinds of canned mushrooms to test, some spices we don’t currently stock, two 24-can cases of Costco canned chicken, two dozen quart wide-mouth Ball jars, a Victorio apple corer/peeler/slicer, a Lodge 8-quart deep cast-iron camping dutch oven with lid lifter, and a partridge in a pear tree.
On our next trip down to Costco, I want to restock a lot of items we’ve been using for the last year or so without replacing. Stuff like spaghetti sauce, applesauce, canned vegetables, and so on, as well as more bulk staples–bags of flour, sugar, rice, oats, etc.
So, what did you guys do to prep this week?
Back to work on science kits.