November in Review and December Preps

I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving and have your Christmas preparations well under way. I am about 3/4 of the way done with my Christmas shopping, though I avoided the complete madness of Black Friday. Hubby Dear and I stayed at home in our pajamas and did our shopping online. We may not have bought any waffle irons for $2, but we stayed safe and sane, thank you very much!

November in  review:

1. Gardening

• We planted 1 lb of garlic cloves and mulched heavily over the top. Hopefully they will survive the winter depredations of field mice and emerge in the spring. We cleaned up all the garden debris and have everything clean and ready for spring plantings. 
• We finalized our plans for a survival orchard and planted three pecan trees. 
• Hubby Dear went through his garden journal and tallied up the final harvest totals. We learned a lot this year and I'll be sharing this information with you in a future post. 
• We have a tentative plan for next year's garden. We're expanding our garden yet again, which means we'll be building yet more square foot boxes. 

Finally! Some cauliflower! The heads were small but very tasty.

2. Food Storage

• I processed the pumpkins we grew in our garden into puree and froze it in 1 cup batches. Although I was initially disappointed with the flavor of the puree, I used it as a substitute for butternut squash in a pasta recipe I make regularly and it worked just fine. 
• I experimented with bouillon cubes and a vegan substitute for chicken broth. 
• I bought another couple of bucket of oats and wheat as well as more clarified butter from Emergency Essentials. I also bought 50 lb of sugar and packed it in a mylar bag and bucket myself. 
• I took advantage of holiday sales and stocked up on baking ingredients like chocolate chips and vanilla extract. 

I hope this captures some of the beauty of this particularly pretty sunset, despite my lack of camera skills! 

December Preps:

• My major goal this month is to finalize my year's supply of long term food storage items. I need to go over our inventory and see if there are gaps. I think we are complete other than in dry milk.
• I need to pre-order my chicks to be delivered in March! 
• My Christmas present to myself is the mack daddy chicken coop that will be delivered in January. I can't wait to share it with you all. 

That's it for me. Are you gifting yourself or others with any preparedness items? If so, please share in the comments. 

October in Review and November 2011 Preps

Is it just me or did October go by in the blink of an eye? I can hardly believe it is November and that Christmas is just around the corner. 

I don't feel like I did very much to prep this month. I bought a few new books to add to our survival library and added some odds and ends to our food storage (another gallon of oil and a few canned goods) but that's it. Hmm... I'll have to do better in November! 

I did have my first successful culinary experience with a Sun Oven.It makes me feel a lot more secure to know that I can bake bread without electricity - assuming that the sun is shining!

We also harvested the last tomatoes and peppers of the year. Both of the methods we are using to ripen green tomatoes are working well. It feels luxurious to have so many delicious tomatoes on hand when it is so cold outside.

Last, but certainly not least, we completed our chicken moat. I've wanted chickens for at least five years and I'm so excited that I finally get to buy chicks this spring! 

For November:

• We still need to plant the seed garlic we bought last month. Gotta get that in the ground soon.
• Our three pecan trees are due to be shipped soon so we'll be planting them as well.  
• I plan to process my pie pumpkins and freeze the pulp. The last of our cayenne peppers should finish drying this month and I'm planning on grinding them up for ground red pepper. We shall see if I can accomplish both of those objectives without chopping off any body parts or suffering wicked chile burns. 
• I've been using a borrowed Sun Oven for my solar oven experiments. I think I'm going to bite the bullet and buy one of my own. It is definitely an investment, but I think it is worth it. Yes, I've had some less than successful experiments, but I'm finally figuring out how to make the Sun Oven work for me. 
• I plan on taking advantage of the holiday sales to stock up on food storage items. I'm going to focus on chocolate chips, brownie mixes, sugar, flour, and other baking items. 
• Speaking of baking, I have a problem that I need your help with. It's time for another "Ask the Readers" post. Stay tuned for that later this week.

How did you prepare in October? What are your plans for this month?