Good Cheap Food

I push self sufficiency, self reliance, or what every else you want to call it! In fact, I'm kind of a nag about it. I was going through my old magazines and found a 2007 issue of Mother Earth News and an article by Craig Idlebrook. He has 75 way to live on less. He just doesn't tell a story, he actually practices what he preaches. I'm not going to share them all at once, because I want us all to think on a little bit at a time and not get overwhelmed. And, by the way, I am now a subscriber to this wonderful magazine! ~Karin

Self Sufficiency

Part 1 of Hmmm, Not Sure Yet

Good Cheap Food

1. Buy raw ingredients instead of prepackaged foods. If you don't know how to cook, learn. You'll save on food bills, and your body will thank you for it in the long run. (I was shopping last week and the young mother in front of me, in line, had a cart full of frozen and prepackaged food. I just couldn't imagine her feeding her children food with all the additives and yuck that in those foods.)
2. Buy in bulk from a local health food store, or place bulk orders directly with mail-order companies. If you can't meet their minimum order size, go in on an order with another family, or organize a larger food buying club. (Customers do this all the time where I work, group sales are GREAT!)
3. Avoid the middleman and buy directly from farmers. Look for farm stands, community supported agriculture programs and farms markets.
4. Eat fruits and vegetables in season, when they are least expensive. (Once, we found organic watermelon for three cents a pound!) Stock up when they're cheap and freeze or can any excess for later use. (Now is the time!!)
5. Keep up with what's in your refrigerator and make sure nothing spoils. Once a week, make soup or casseroles to use up vegetables and other leftovers.
6. Calculate the price of food per pound when you visit supermarkets. Doing the math will help you spot good deals. 
7. Don't overeat. When you do, you're flushing money the the drain. (Literally!)

Butter vs. Margarine

Yeah, I know you people love my off-the-wall posts! ~ Karin

Butter vs. Margarine

        In the rush to lower cholesterol, many health authorities recommend eating margarine instead of butter. However, there is more to consider about margarine than just cholesterol.

What is Margarine?

     Margarine is made from cheap, poor quality oils that have already turned rancid - because the oils had been extracted from oil seeds using high temperature, and that damages the oils. Some of the oils used, such as cottonseed oil, are not suitable for human consumption because they contain naturally toxic substances.

     At the end of the hydrogenation process, the resulting margarine is grey and smelly! It is then bleached and deodorized, artificially flavored and, dyed yellow before humans would eat it. The final product contains saturated fat and trans-fatty acids, no matter what the label says. These are man-made fatty acids which increase inflammation in the body. Research also shows that this can worsen illnesses such as colitis and arthritis and also the trans-fatty acids in margarine raise the bad LDL cholesterol.

     The final product also contains nickel, cadmium and other toxic contaminants used as hardening agents to keep the margarine in a cube form. These are heavy metals that have been linked to lung cancer, kidney disease, arteriosclerosis, high blood pressure and malignancy.

What is butter?

     Butter is made from the cream that rises to the top if milk is allowed to sit for a time. Butter is made by churning cream. This causes a chemical reaction that causes the cream to harden slightly, giving it the buttery consistency. Butter does not contain trans-fatty acids or toxic metals. Butter is an excellent source of fat-soluble vitamins such as vitamin A, D, E and K. (These are not in margarine). Dr. Weston Price identified a factor in butter that is essential for growth and development of bone structure. He called it 'factor X' and wrote about it in his book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration.

So what is your choice? Butter or Margarine? Rumor has it that even the fly won't land on margarine!

Thoughts

I was remembering some past things presently.  I remember one of the best pieces of advice that I pulled from my experience at the university....BYU....was given to me by one of my first business professors, who just happened to be Dr  Dean Taylor, the elderly Dean of the School of Business.  He presented a lecture on the method of making decisions.  I have always had some difficulty in making decisions.  So, his advice was music to my ears, and was ingrained in my memory.  He said, "There are two ways to make decisions.  One way is to take all of the empirical evidence and crunch the  numbers, then do a "gut check" and see what the "gut" says.  If the "gut" says no and the empirical evidence says yes....go for it but with the understanding that you may be treading on thin ice.  If the "gut" says yes and the empirical evidence says no...proceed  with care but proceed anyway.  If the "gut" says yes and the empirical evidence says yes....Go for it."  He also said, "Don't take things too seriously.  If you go overboard you will ruin your life and your health".

Over the months we have talked about a lot of things that could be taken so seriously that if one were to go overboard on the information, one could literally go broke financially, and worry so much that their family and personal life would deteriorate considerably.  In response to this I plead with you who read this site to use discreation in what you do, and how you take this information.  There is nothing that I put in here that I don't believe is good stuff to learn.  But to learn all of it at once in folly in the greatest degree.  Read, study, get your own empirical information and then get the "gut feel".  The gut feel comes from prayer and contemplation.  Make your decision based on Dean Taylor's formula and then relax and enjoy your family and your life.

Now to that end I would like to suggest a couple of things.....this time in New York City at the United Nations may be a pivoting point for our economic and military future.  If we side with Israel which I believe we will do we will be heartily punished by those in the Middle East, and our oil prices will increase dramatically for a time.  However, this is the wrong time for this action.  It will cause inflation not only in fuel prices, but since much of our industrial production and all of our transportation is based greatly on petroleum and our government refuses to utilize our own resources you can plan on a steep slope and an increase speed due to that slope in our economic collapse......$5-6 gas, and diesel/kerosene commensurately higher.  This causes, higher prices in food, transportation, and air transportation.

On the other hand if we side with the most of the rest of the world and side on the Arab cause, we must expect Israel to prepare for war immediately.  If Obama presses the Israeli's to move to the pre '67 war boundaries this will most certainly happen.  Since the "Arab Spring" has been so successful, it will not be long before we will see a major move by Israel to bolster their IDF people.

So....maybe store up on some fuel.  Plan for less personal travel.  Buy a couple of extra cases of soup, and keep storing the water.

Keep your chin up....cheers.....DWB

Israeli Trauma Dressing

The Israeli Trauma Bandage

The ETD is essentially an ACE bandage, a tourniquet and a trauma dressing all wrapped into one. They’ve taken elements from the C.A.T. tourniquet, the typical sports (ACE) bandage and the traditional camouflage combat dressing and rolled them into one more efficient, more compact package.
The Israeli bandage has a built in tension bar that applies continuous pressure to the wound, allowing the bandage to act as a stand-alone field dressing, sling, pressure dressing and mild tourniquet. It is ideal for head wounds, because it can be wrapped very easily. Directions on how to use the bandage are printed on the back of the package.
The Israeli Bandage was developed by Jerusalem-based First Care Products Ltd., a startup company founded by inventor Bernard Bar-Natan.
Since it’s invention in 2003, the Emergency Trauma Bandage has become a mainstay for U.S. Combat Forces stationed world wide..


The ETD is very simple to administer properly. First Care’s website writes:

Nine Steps to Apply the Israeli Bandage Properly
1. Remove the emergency trauma bandage package from the casualty’s kit
2. Remove the bandage from the pouch
3. Place the pad (dressing) on the wound
4. Wrap the elastic bandage around the wounded extremity
5. Insert the elastic bandage completely into the pressure bar
6. Pull the elastic bandage back over the top of the pressure bar, forcing the bar down onto the pad
7. Wrap the elastic bandage tightly over the pressure bar
8. Continue to wrap the elastic bandage around the limb so that all edges of the pad are covered
9. Secure the hooking end of the closing bar into the elastic bandage to secure the bandage

Here’s a pictorial representation of how to utilize the above 9 steps:

Open the package and give your ETD it’s first wrap around the trauma site, with the trauma pad against the wound.
Thread the elastic bandage through the pressure bar.Pull the elastic bandage over the pressure bar, forcing it flat.

Wrap until you’re out of elastic bandage and secure the bandage to itself with the hooking ends of the closure bar.
Here’s a pictorial representation of how you can apply the ETD to cover a very wide range of traumatic injuries to both trunk, head and extremity.



The Emergency Trauma Bandage comes in many different sizes and configurations which allows you, the medic, to pick and choose which dressing will best serve your patient’s needs.


Here’s a few selling points from the manufacturer:

* Immediate direct pressure to the wound site
* Quick, easy personal and professional application
* Consolidation of numerous treatment equipment into a single unit
* Significant per treatment time and cost savings
* The product is designed with the end-users in mind.
*The Victim and the Care-Giver (sometimes one and the same)

The Israeli Bandage is NOT for head wounds. If it’s a small
laceration and they have not hit their head or done anything to cause
raised Intracranial pressure (ICP) is fine (very rarely will you ever
see this scenario in the battlefield or on the civilian side).
However, if you apply any elastic bandage to a head injury even the
smallest amount of pressure can raise the ICP (Just think about the
last time you wore a hat that didn’t quite fit right and you got a
headache, that’s a good example of how easily ICP can be raised). This
can cause anything from an anuerism to leakage of blood or
cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) into the brain matter. Obviously this can
cause serious brain damage or kill someone. A simple dressing of 4×4
gauze with a bandage of roller gauze will suffice. The bandage may
even be applied in the same manner you have applied it in your
picture.

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