Day: November 17, 2016

10:02 – I know it’s trivial, but I love to watch what oxygen absorbers do to containers. Yesterday afternoon, I added an oxygen absorber to each of the 21 bottles of pinto beans we’d repackaged in 2-liter soda bottles. A couple of hours later, I looked at the bottles, all of which were by then dented in, indicating both a good seal and that the oxygen absorbers were doing their jobs.

Incidentally, if you need oxygen absorbers, buy them from the LDS store. A pack of a hundred 300cc absorbers costs only $12, versus typically twice that or more from commercial resellers. In the original package, they remain good for years. If you have any left over from a pack, store them in the smallest glass jar you can find that has a metal lid. Wide-mouth canning jars work well. If you’re ever in doubt about whether oxygen absorbers are still good, just bend one between your fingers. A good one is soft and flexible; one that’s exhausted hardens and loses flexibility.

More email from Cassie, the newbie prepper I mentioned a couple days ago. They’re rural enough that their nearest Walmart Super Center is an hour’s drive one-way, and the nearest Sam’s or Costco is farther still. So she plans to stock up from Amazon and Walmart on-line for stuff she can’t get at her local supermarket, where she works as a checker. They live in her husband’s parents’ house and her husband has his own plumbing business, so their combined income is solidly middle-class and they have much lower expenses than a typical young married couple.

They’re focusing on food first. They’re on well water, but they have a year-round spring on their property, so Cassie figures they’re in good shape for water. Her husband hunts, and they have a couple of rifles and a couple of shotguns, which they figure is enough for now. They’ll add some more ammunition, first-aid supplies, and so on, but otherwise the concentration will be on food, food, food. Yesterday, Cassie came home from work with two five-pound bags of sugar, two ten-pound bags of flour, several one-pound bags of pasta, a jug of cooking oil, two boxes of iodized salt, several jars of pasta sauce, and two cases of soup. She intends to do the same thing two or three times a week until they’re stocked at a level they’re comfortable with.