Stock Up!!!!

just finished my last jar. Got a little bit of baloney left, though

I have some coffee brewing and some cheese....

Let us all find our place in the Nest and have a powwow!

Always,
LittleFire

I am posting this news article in this thread because it falls in line with LittleFire's warning:

Quote :

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12, 2008

22:59 MECCA TIME, 19:59 GMT

Warning over world food shortages

The UN secretary general has warned that millions of people are at risk of starvation as global food stocks have fallen to their lowest levels for decades.

In a letter to a US newspaper Ban Ki Moon warned that shortages are forcing prices to rise which may have devastating consequences for the world's most vulnerable communities

The most acute effects have been seen in Egypt, where thousands of people have resorted to violence due to shortages of basic food commodities and rising food prices.

At least 10 people have died over the past two weeks, in riots that erupted at government subsidised bakeries.

The unavailability of basic food products such as bread, rice, sugar and cooking oil, coupled with high food prices has led many to protest against the Egyptian government and resort to violent tactics.

National crisis

An Egyptian man said: "People are fighting. Killing for bread, some are even pulling out knives. What is happening? What is this? Famine? "

Another woman, waiting at a government bakery said: "I've been standing here from 7am. Its now 2pm and I can't get hold of even one loaf of bread."

"I have five children. What am I supposed to do? You now need to bribe someone to get bread, if you do not want to get trampled on."

Egypt is one of the world's largest importers of wheat and this year alone spent $2.6 billion on its wheat-import.

However, soaring food prices has driven many Egyptians to the brink of starvation.

Al Jazeera's Jamal El Shayyal reported from Cairo, that people were demanding drastic measures to be taken and wanted the military to be called in, to solve the food crisis.

An Egyptian waiting in a queue for bread, said: "The army is the only power capable to plant the people's wheat. We want the government to distribute the wheat fairly amongst the poor."

Meanwhile, the Egyptian government has added an additional 15 million names to the register of people who are eligible to receive subsidies on basic products such as sugar, rice and oil, which has compounded the problem.

Egyptians are demanding for the regular availability of basic food products and a cut in the price of essential commodities.

Global phenomena

The shortage of food has now assumed a global dimension; some 73 million people in 78 countries depend on the United Nations World Food Programme (UNWFP).

According to their figures, 1 out of every 80 person relies on somebody else to provide for basic food requirements.

Most of these handouts are taking place in Africa, Asia and Central America, but developed countries are feeling the impact for the first time as well.

Rice, corn, dairy and poultry products are the worst affected commodities,around the globe.

Multiple factors

Marcus Prior, spokesman for the World Food Programme in East Africa said, that there were multiple factors contributing to this global crisis.

"There are a number of elements that have all come together at the same time," he told Al Jazeera.

"Perhaps, the most important is the rise in global fuel prices, which is having a chain-reaction effect through the food production system. Right from the cost of input such as fertiliser and seeds, through the harvesting and the storage and delivery process."

Prior said that there has been an enormous increase in the demand from booming economies such as India and China.

"People there are eating a lot more meat than they used to," he said.

The UNWFP said another key factor contributing in the global decrease of productivity was weather irregularities all across the world.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/958CC5D2-638C-428E-AF84-91041B355EF0.htm

I just realized something, with grain prices going up that means the price of beer will probably go up too, AAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!!! I'd better stock up!

It is going to happen here also. I have noticed the grocery prices soaring.

MID I read that the Mexicans are burning huge fields of Blue Agave to replant corn because they get better prices for it now that it is in demand for biofuels.

I am going to run out and get some tequila for my margaritas. LOL Got to have my blue agave!

I've noticed the prices going up like crazy too. Part of which is why I try to buy extra when I can, before it goes up more. I am seriously considering giving up smoking. It costs over $6.00 for a pack of cigs. and a Dr. Pepper. Thats about $100.00 a month for me!! Thats insane!!! I went to a used book store the other day to get a book on juicing, the owner had told me he thought he had some, he didn't but a book on the shelf "jumped out at me" called, "stocking up" I bought it. It was written in 1977. I absolutely love it. It seems to be a homesteading type book. I hope my garden is bountiful this year, I can't wait to start canning. I planted 3 cherry trees and 3 cherry bushes last week, I have some blueberry bushes on the way. I may have found a place to buy raw milk so I can make my own butter and cheeses. Did you know you can make butter in a blender? I read that in the book last night, I'm learning all kinds of cool stuff. Now if I can just put it to use.

I just found this article looking for a butter churn.
g
g Living Simply Site
Jennifer Minekheim
BellaOnline's Living Simply Editor

g

Make Your Own Butter
Guest Author - Jill Florio

Click Here To Buy This Poster - In Association with Art.com
The principle is simple, really - agitate cream long enough and it will turn into butter! What happens during concussion (a fancy word for shaking or agitating) is that the fat blobs suspended in the cream start bashing into other fat blobs, and eventually they all join forces and make the transformation into butter.

You can use many different tools to churn your butter - I like to use a simple Mason jar with a good tight lid. You can use a clean mayonnaise jar if you wish - after all, it's free and you are recycling it! It´s a fun challenge to shake until you just can't go on, then pass it on to another family member, round and round, until it's ready. It's good exercise and kids really think it's a kick. If you prefer, you can use a whisk or even an electric mixer to agitate the cream, but my personal results have never been very good with those methods. In the olden days in the Middle East, leather bags were filled with cream and strapped to galloping horses! When the riders arrived at their destination, viola, they had their butter.

If you plan on making butter for your family on a regular basis, you will want to invest in a churn. A hand churn resembles a large pear-shaped glass jar. A paddle attachment is screwed on as the lid, and a crank handle is turned to create the churning action. If you wish, electric churns can also be purchased. And if you are really adventurous, you can still find those old wooden upright churns used in pioneer days!

Start with fresh cream, slightly ripened (ripened is a nicer word than soured, but that's what it means). To ripen your cream, leave it at room temperature for 12 to 24 hours, or until it starts to look shiny and tastes a bit acid. Do not let it set out longer than 24 hours, or it will become sour tasting.

If you are nervous about safety during the ripening process, you can pasteurize your cream first. Using a double boiler, heat your cream to between 180 and 200 degrees, and hold it at that heat for 40 minutes. Let cool for 12 hours, then add a little bit of sour cream, yogurt, or buttermilk to the pasteurized cream before you start churning it.

You want your cream to be about 60 degrees F. If it's too warm, your butter will be soft and won't keep well, if it's too cold, you´ll be churning forever to get your butter formed. When your cream is the right temperature, pour into your churn and get moving! Within about 15 minutes, it should start feeling heavier. If not, check the temperature to see if you are in the right range. Churn for another 10 to 20 minutes, and you'll start to see the cream separating into buttermilk containing very small butter "pellets".

Once you see these pellets develop, stop churning. Pour off the buttermilk (you can use it in any recipe calling for buttermilk or you can drink it), and rinse the butter with cold water. The easiest way I have found to rinse the butter is to line a colander with cheesecloth, lay your butter in it, and gently run cold water over the butter and through the cheesecloth. At this stage, you are rinsing away all traces of buttermilk, since any that remains on the butter will make it taste sour. Now plop your butter into a bowl, and start working it with a wooden spoon or a butter paddle. Add salt at this stage, about 1/2 teaspoon per pound. This will help retard spoilage as well as add flavor. Keep working the butter until all the granules have blended together, and any stray moisture has been worked out. You can form it into any shape you wish at this stage - you can make a simple block, or press it into molds if you want to make fancy little individual pats. When you are done, wrap your butter in wax paper and keep it in the refrigerator, away from air and light.

Recommended Reading...

MID, wow, thanks for bringing this article, that was quite interesting. Yes, food prices are going up, gas prices are going up. One day, many of us will be trading, selling amongst ourselves just to survive, we know who we are...

Always,
LittleFire

http://nysun.com/news/food-rationing-confronts-breadbasket-world


Food Rationing Confronts Breadbasket of the World
April 21, 2008

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Many parts of America, long considered the breadbasket of the world, are now confronting a once unthinkable phenomenon: food rationing.

Major retailers in New York, in areas of New England, and on the West Coast are limiting purchases of flour, rice, and cooking oil as demand outstrips supply. There are also anecdotal reports that some consumers are hoarding grain stocks.

At a Costco Warehouse in Mountain View, Calif., yesterday, shoppers grew frustrated and occasionally uttered expletives as they searched in vain for the large sacks of rice they usually buy.

“Where’s the rice?” an engineer from Palo Alto, Calif., Yajun Liu, said. “You should be able to buy something like rice. This is ridiculous.”

The bustling store in the heart of Silicon Valley usually sells four or five varieties of rice to a clientele largely of Asian immigrants, but only about half a pallet of Indian-grown Basmati rice was left in stock. A 20-pound bag was selling for $15.99.

“You can’t eat this every day. It’s too heavy,” a health care executive from Palo Alto, Sharad Patel, grumbled as his son loaded two sacks of the Basmati into a shopping cart. “We only need one bag but I’m getting two in case a neighbor or a friend needs it,” the elder man said.

The Patels seemed headed for disappointment, as most Costco members were being allowed to buy only one bag. Moments earlier, a clerk dropped two sacks back on the stack after taking them from another customer who tried to exceed the one-bag cap.

“Due to the limited availability of rice, we are limiting rice purchases based on your prior purchasing history,” a sign above the dwindling supply said.

Shoppers said the limits had been in place for a few days, and that rice supplies had been spotty for a few weeks. A store manager referred questions to officials at Costco headquarters near Seattle, who did not return calls or e-mail messages yesterday.

An employee at the Costco store in Queens said there were no restrictions on rice buying, but limits were being imposed on purchases of oil and flour. Internet postings attributed some of the shortage at the retail level to bakery owners who flocked to warehouse stores when the price of flour from commercial suppliers doubled.

The curbs and shortages are being tracked with concern by survivalists who view the phenomenon as a harbinger of more serious trouble to come.

“It’s sporadic. It’s not every store, but it’s becoming more commonplace,” the editor of SurvivalBlog.com, James Rawles, said. “The number of reports I’ve been getting from readers who have seen signs posted with limits has increased almost exponentially, I’d say in the last three to five weeks.”

Spiking food prices have led to riots in recent weeks in Haiti, Indonesia, and several African nations. India recently banned export of all but the highest quality rice, and Vietnam blocked the signing of new contract for foreign rice sales.

“I’m surprised the Bush administration hasn’t slapped export controls on wheat,” Mr. Rawles said. “The Asian countries are here buying every kind of wheat.”

Mr. Rawles said it is hard to know how much of the shortages are due to lagging supply and how much is caused by consumers hedging against future price hikes or a total lack of product.

“There have been so many stories about worldwide shortages that it encourages people to stock up. What most people don’t realize is that supply chains have changed, so inventories are very short,” Mr. Rawles, a former Army intelligence officer, said. “Even if people increased their purchasing by 20%, all the store shelves would be wiped out.”

At the moment, large chain retailers seem more prone to shortages and limits than do smaller chains and mom-and-pop stores, perhaps because store managers at the larger companies have less discretion to increase prices locally.

Mr. Rawles said the spot shortages seemed to be most frequent in the Northeast and all the way along the West Coast. He said he had heard reports of buying limits at Sam’s Club warehouses, which are owned by Wal-Mart Stores, but a spokesman for the company, Kory Lundberg, said he was not aware of any shortages or limits.

An anonymous high-tech professional writing on an investment Web site, Seeking Alpha, said he recently bought 10 50-pound bags of rice at Costco. “I am concerned that when the news of rice shortage spreads, there will be panic buying and the shelves will be empty in no time. I do not intend to cause a panic, and I am not speculating on rice to make profit. I am just hoarding some for my own consumption,” he wrote.

For now, rice is available at Asian markets in California, though consumers have fewer choices when buying the largest bags. “At our neighborhood store, it’s very expensive, more than $30” for a 25-pound bag, a housewife from Mountain View, Theresa Esquerra, said. “I’m not going to pay $30. Maybe we’ll just eat bread.”

I've tried to stock up on some things when I can but, I've been so broke that I'm having to eat some of my stocks! I've got some rice and beans stocked up but, I don't usually eat those items. I use rice occasionally. I do have a couple of extra bags of flour because I do like to bake. My main problem is storage. I get ants, mice and the house is really damp this time of year and I haven't been able to buy any storage containers to put them in. OH well.

As Other Staples Soar, Potatoes Break New Ground
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=47974
LIMA - As wheat and rice prices surge, the humble potato -- long derided as a boring tuber prone to making you fat -- is being rediscovered as a nutritious crop that could cheaply feed an increasingly hungry world.Potatoes, which are native to Peru, can be grown at almost any elevation or climate: from the barren, frigid slopes of the Andes Mountains to the tropical flatlands of Asia. They require very little water, mature in as little as 50 days, and can yield between two and four times more food per hectare than wheat or rice."The shocks to the food supply are very real and that means we could potentially be moving into a reality where there is not enough food to feed the world," said Pamela Anderson, director of the International Potato Centre in Lima (CIP), a non-profit scientific group researching the potato family to promote food security.Like others, she says the potato is part of the solution.The potato has potential as an antidote to hunger caused by higher food prices, a population that is growing by one billion people each decade, climbing costs for fertilizer and diesel, and more cropland being sown for biofuel production.To focus attention on this, the United Nations named 2008 the International Year of the Potato, calling the vegetable a "hidden treasure". CLIP

Spring, NOW I KNOW WHERE I FIRST MET YOU. IT WAS ON MY COUCH! Ouch! YOU MUST BE A PCP like me! (Potato Couch Person) :party01:

potatoes are comfort food, rice is not. Plus potates will fill you up, rice usually doesn't. Pass the sour cream and butter please.

Today is earth day, hug a tree (or a potatoe) today. THose garlic rosemary roasted potatoes sound good, how do you make them? We may need to add a recipe catagory. I was also thinking an "aww" catagory for pictures of cute critters and stories that make us go AAWWW.

good point, both. Potatoes is it, survival food! wild fennel (like baby dill) is also incredibly good, like rosemary and lemon, and grows everywhere. Potatoes gone rotten thrown out the kitchen window or on a hill behind the house where I grew up. That's where my folks put organic scraps, which end up sprouting and seemingly never die....like tomatoes , cucumbers and squash, all do able if every potato, tomato cucumber you eat from now on, you save a few seeds/potatoe eyes, you can be in the process, like the manna from heaven, making food all the time out of very little indeed....info worth adding to the arsenal of survival tactics.... (one potato eye, one cucumber seed, one tomato seed and one squash seed can provide an awful lot of food).

At one time while camping from campground to campground, I did just that, instead of putting my scraps in the garbage containers available at the campground, I threw my seeds in the bushes next to the creek/lake/river. sometimes covering them up sometimes not. 'Course birds could have gotten them. On the other hand, there might already be food out there since I've been doing that (others I know, too) that might not be there if people didn't do as much recycling as many have already done. Its going to be an interesting ride....to say the least....

MID, that is a great idea. This topic reminded me of Jhodi's mashed cauliflower. I normally cannot stand it, but with enough garlic, hey, I'd even eat brussel sprouts. Maybe.

Melissa, I couldn't stand that mashed cauliflower the next day!

Hahaha! There has to be some use for it. Maybe if you could load it up with some of that ceasar dressing and use it as a sandwich spread? lol

I saw a sign at the Ozark Mountain Smokehouse that said due to the rising cost of grain, they've had to increase the prices on their sandwiches. Interesting.

Yeah, everything is skyrocketing.

Does that mean it may become scarce? I dunno. I guess all it would take is a truckers strike and our shelves would be bare in 24 hours.

Quote :

Wednesday, Apr. 23 2008
Wal-Mart Rations Rice, Warns of 'Supply and Demand' Concerns
Ken Sweet
FOXBusiness


Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, said Wednesday that it would ration the amount of rice each customer can purchase at its Sam's Club warehouse stores because of recent “supply and demand trends.”

“We are limiting the sale of Jasmine, Basmati and Long Grain White Rices to four bags per member visit,” the company said in a statement. “This is effective immediately in all of our U.S. clubs, where quantity restrictions are allowed by law.”

Wal-Mart (WMT) is the second-major grocer to limit the purchasing of a commodity because of the recent run-up in prices. The company said it is not limiting the purchase of other basic food products like flour or oil.

The price of rice, which is the primary foodstuff for the majority of the human population around the world, rose to $894 a metric ton according to the Thai Rice Exporters Association. That’s compared to the $327.25 a ton average price in the same month last year.

In Chicago, the price of export-quality rice rose to $24.745 per 100 pounds on Tuesday.

The run up in price in rice is primarily related to poor harvests and countries curbing exports. Thailand, Asia’s largest exporter of rice, said it may curb exports.

The World Food Program called the recent run up in prices of rice and other basic commodities a “silent famine.”


Wal-Mart did not say when the rationing would end, but it was “working with our suppliers to address this matter to ensure we are in stock, and we are asking for our members' cooperation and patience.”