Prepping amidst Pandemic - Thread 17

[Sprayitall]

Hi all, starting this thread to continue from preppers thread 16. Because we are amidst a pandemic now, I have changed the title to prepping amidst pandemic than “for pandemic”. I hope all of you keep well amidst this and get all the help, support and hope needed to cope during this challenging times. Feel free to add your thoughts, preps and ideas here.

I will look at a few ginger beer recipes and adjust to suit my ingredients. I also have a couple of pineapples to use, so will come up with a fermented recipe for one of those.!
I will report back!

@Weedsnseeds1 wow 1780’s .. that should be lovely then.

If anyone else is looking to buy some hand sanitizers - it’s called sursol, one of the local group suggested that it was available in the age uk shop a while ago. I found it is also available elsewhere. It’s not alcohol based so it’s non drying but still good because it’s considered effective against sars kind of viruses. There is also groupon deal on it. So please check before your buy.

I also found some alcohol based hand gels available still on groupon. can’t believe my eyes ;) Just to be clear, no I don’t have any kind of links or affiliations with any of the products.

A lot of the brewers and distillers have started making sanitiser now. Brewdog for one.
My gingerbeer is fermenting away already. I used 600g sugar, 4litres water, about 50g dried ginger, some pink peppercorns and a couple of dried red chillies ( I like it spicy). Bubbling away already. I also started some cantaloupe, strawberry and mint and a Mexican drink called Tepache that is made from pineapple skins and cores.

@Weedsnseeds1 how do you make it fizzy? Could you please elaborate on the recipe please. I had store bought yoghurt today and was wondering how safe it is to have amidst this? Or should I avoid having it for sometime? I have it regularly for my gut health after I ended up with terrible Ibs like symptom few years ago. Does anyone know? I can’t have it cooked as the live cultures are important but wondering if it’s safe

I can't see a problem with commercial yoghurt, there is no point where the product is touched. Its all done in pipework, tanks and automatic fillers and lidding is automated too. Even the pots come in a big stack in a plastic sleeve that is fed into the machine.
I have used some of my wild raisin yeast to get the ginger beer going ( just the yeast water, without the flour added as I used for my bread starter)
You could also use a bit of dry baker's yeast.
I have put it in a demi-Jon with an airlock, be a use I make wine sometimes, so have them available, but you could use a wide neck jar, with some paper towel and an e l astic band to hold it tight, or a plastic soft drink bottle, but you will need to open it once a day to let gas out.
Once the fizzing starts slowing, put a teaspoon of sugar into an empty plastic drinks bottle or swing top glass bottle ( don't use other glass bottles such as wine bottles, as they will exode).
Sit at room temperature for a couple of days, then chill to halt fermentation. Ready to drink once chilled

This is the ginger beer.
You can also use whey to make a lactic ferment. If won't be as fizzy as thd yeast version.
The yeast version will be slightly alcoholic, about 1% but not a proper alcoholic drink as you aren't using wine or beer yeast

The pineapple one uses the yeast on the pineapple skin, so that is just in a bucket with a lid at the moment, until it gets going.

I need to re-sort my food stores. Teen DD kindly “tidied” a large cupboard. Didn’t occur to her that I had things in date order 🤦‍♀️ It’s now neatly arranged to her liking

I’m beginning to grow some things this year, branching out from potatoes and tomato plants to carrot, beetroot, leek, tomato and peppers from seeds.

Hoping to get a small greenhouse soon, funds permitting.

@adorabell I wanted to get a green house too because my house doesn’t have a conservatory. Everytime I start to shop for greenhouses I end up with something else. Last time it ended up with me buying a garden swing lol 😂 I have large trees outside the fence on one side so not sure how safe the green houses will be with twigs and leaves falling often.

@Weedsnseeds1 I’m seriously impressed .. how do you know all this!? I think you can start a proper ginger beer brewery with your expertise I think, if such things exist 😀 I love pineapples and when I was little I used to grow them in our garden. Mangoes, bananas and jack fruit are the three fruits that are considered divine and auspicious in south India but I think they should definitely include pine apples too.

I'm a Food Scientist by profession Sprayitall!
I haven't made the pineapple one before, but found some references on the Internet and thought it sounded interesting.
The strawberry one blew it's airlock out today, and hit the ceiling, so it's clearly very active yeast!

Just waiting for OH to come home and hold the ladder, so I can clean the ceiling!

Turkish pide style bread

How are you all today..
@weeds all your recipes are lovely.. did you manage to tidy up the ceiling? nice to know you are a food scientist.

Does anyone know how long is it safe to sit in the garden? With weather being nice, dd always wants to stay in the garden all day. I am already worried a little about her cough that won’t go away.

Yes, the ceiling is now clean and the soda split into two demijons!
Stay in your garden as long as you like, it's probably better in thd fresh air than indoors, nice breeze, no hard surfaces and plenty of vitamin D

Honey and thyme loaf, with spelt flour, using raisin yeast.

Dh managed to find a bag of all purpose wheat flour in Sainsburys today. It says it's perfect for pastries, pizza, fresh pasta & bread. Would I be able to use it for cakes & biscuits do you think?
See picture attached.

It seems to be American flour, from a quick Google. They use all purpose flour for everything, if you Google recipes, so it's worth a go, but you will need to use baking powder to get it to rise.

It's 00 flour, so fairly high gluten. You could mix a cpuple of tablespoons of cornflour in if you have it, which would reduce the gluten and make it a bit softer for cakes.

Thank you. I'll stick to pastries and bread with this flour and hope that Sr flour comes in my next delivery. I will make samosas tomorrow and this flour should be OK for samosa pastry. Wish me luck & I'll post pictures if successful.

Dear friends, I only got as far as Oxyiz first message and started tearing up. What a difficult month this has been. Dad’s funeral on Friday.

Really thank God for prepping as I couldn’t have kept us all fed and watered without easy meals when I couldn’t- can’t think or function in any kind of normal way.

There’s another really serious family crisis in progress and I’d so appreciate some advice from some of you wise people. I won’t put it on this thread (too personal with other people’s information) but if you’re willing to lend me your wisdom please PM me.

When I feel a bit better explosive yeast experiments are definitely on the (homesteadingschool) timetable 🍍💥🥖

Funeral was last Friday 24th, not Friday to come. Me and my brother at the Crematorium, massive number of friends and family on Zoom. Very hard. Can’t believe Dad is really gone.

A month ago the nurses at his oncology clinic gave him cake and a birthday card, he looks so well and happy in the photo. His cancer was under control, he was looking forward to many good years. Less than a week after the photo he was feeling poorly, Covid 19 pneumonia took him two weeks after that happy birthday.

🥀

I'm so sorry @Neome . I've been through this in normal times with both my parents. It's so cruel that this extra shitiness happened this way.

Tescos didn't have the two usual Felix products my cats have last week. Asked DD to check where she works (a wellknown smaller supermarket) and it's out of stock there as well. Not online with Tescos or Sainsburys either. Just been in Tescos today, and not only are their two usual out of stock, other Felix products are as well.

I'm sure everyone with cats on Felix is prepped for this scenario but just in case ...

@Neome I am so sorry to hear this .. I can’t imagine what this must feel like for you now.. hope you get the strength you need to sail these tough times x

@Weedsnseeds1 Yes we were staying in the garden a bit more but was concerned because the people won’t stay inside their homes and kept walking in the walking path that’s next to the fence.
@Ineedabreak19 Ooh I love samosas. I find the onions here are more sweeter than we get in India. I love the pink onions to make samosas. Awesome comfort food with hot tea. I also miss eating chaats - fancying some proper bhel puris and panipuris .. have haldirams bhel puri somewhere in the cupboard, must find some time to make them but I miss eating plates of panipuris very much. I missed prepping that 😂 and now I am craving them. we often had chaat, samosa and bhaji parties where I worked :)

DD’s cough is still there, but yesterday propped her up a bit more with 3 pillows at night for sometimes and it lessened. The cough has turned to more dry though. I have been giving her traditional cough meds and home remedies as I can’t use the allergy syrup more than few days. I am giving her honey tea (she doesn’t like lemon in it) , Tulsi tea with honey , traditional medicine herbal decoction for colds and coughs with spices (made from spices - trust me this is helping her much more than antihistamines) saline spray etc. I really wish her cough goes away and for once we all can start to relax to enjoy our lockdown a bit more & make the best out of the situation. On a brighter note, our 14 day self isolation ends today so yay (nope- we are not going anywhere anyway but still glad to have an option)

News about it’s affecting kids now is making me really concerned. Does that mean it has mutated once again?