I went for a 5 km run on Sunday. After an approximately 9 month leave from running I decided it was time to abandon my comfort zone and dive back in. Over the years I've run several marathons and too many halves to count and when injury strikes I have a bad habit of stopping all together.

Good for you Antsy. Personal fitness is always important. In a SHTF situation it may well mean the difference between life and death.

This week we vacpacked (with oxygen absorbers and a few bayleaves) pounds of pasta.
My son did more water for me (on his own... wanted more water, feels we are lacking there)
Salsa was on sale for $1.50 a jar so, we got a case.
And more black, red kidney and white kidney beans 🙂

Just finished testing the pressure canner I got at last week's fleamarket. I needed a nut for the pressure guage , so I picked one up at the hardware store and got it installed. I followed the directions for testing (found the manual online) and it works like a charm.
With 4 cups of water in the canner, I started it off at medium heat. Once steam had vented for 10 minutes, I placed the regulator over the vent. As a note, the pressure indicator/lid lick and overpressure plug popped up way before the steam started to vent.
I reduced the heat to medium low and the guage rose about 1lb per minute until the regulator started rocking at about 13 lbs. I was really impressed at how low the stove could be set to maintain this pressure.
I thought it kind of odd that the regulator wouldn't rock until 13lbs, but I'm not sure it is original to the canner. Oh well, I only need 11 lbs as I am well below 1000ft, so a little over that won't do any harm.
I ran the canner for about 15 minutes and figure that if everything went normal for that long, I am good to go!
The canner took just a little longer to cool than it did to get up to pressure, but a lot less time than I thought it would.

You can cool the presure canner with a wet towel or just pour water on it till you hear the suction. This is what we use to do with no damage to cooker.

You can cool the pressure canner with a wet towel or just pour water on it till you hear the suction. This is what we use to do with no damage to cooker.

Well, it was up to pressure for 15 minutes, so the temp. was pretty good...only took about 16 or 17 minutes to get the pressure indicator/lid lock to go down...so not so bad at all. By the sounds of some of the things I read, I thought I may be waiting a lot longer. I was more interested in how high the stove needed to be to keep the pressure up. Happily, not that high at all.

You can cool the presure canner with a wet towel or just pour water on it till you hear the suction. This is what we use to do with no damage to cooker.

Just DO NOT do this when you are pressure canning. The sharp drop in temperature will make all the jars break. Patience is a virtue 😉

Have to second Anita, when pressure canning food, everything I have read says let the canner cool at its own speed..

So got home mid-week so far, I have added in a few things to do with canning equipment that is on sale, picked currents, blueberries, rasberries and blackberries from the garden, dried elderberry flowers, mints, clover, daylily flowers, horseradish greens, I have planted in more root veggies, I tried out my 2.50 from a farm sale brichen with girl and we had a training session for basic's, hauled some ditch hay/bedding down to the barn, can't wait to do that with a box/wagon instead of on her back but I want to keep the skill alive an well, plus did some of training on her riding lessions, today we had full body weight on the back with her in a stand with no issues. Dh didn't much like dangling over her back with feet a foot plus off the ground, but it was the next step in working towards teaching her to being ridden.

With this heat and lack of rain, lots of mulching going on in the gardens to try and keep the plants shaded.. got my first blush of pink on tomato's in the garden, the plants sure are small, producing but smaller then normal that is for sure.

Otherwise, set up part of the summer kitchen, picking and canning up a few jars of grape leaves to see if everything is working..

We have never had any of our jars break, and the jars were still to hot to handle when opening the pressure container. When we did it, if you didn't open the top quick enough the canner would repressurize from the heat of the jars. But, what ever works for you. 😉

8 x 925g Maxwell House Coffee (this brings me back to about a 1 year supply)
4 x bandanas (good for prefiltering water)
a few more e-books on various topics

Anita just posted on her blog an interesting review of the LDS / Mormon Long Term Preparedness Manual. You will also find a link to the download page.
http://adventures-in-country-living.blogspot.ca/2012/07/latest-lds-preparedness-manual-free.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+AdventuresInCountryLiving+(Adventures+in+Country+Living)

I am checking out the Manual right now and I have to say I like it more than the last one as well. Although I am not a Mormon indeed I am spiritual rather than Church centric, the parables and stories presented are very good reading. The imagery is enough to hold the attention of a child as well (so Carbon, go read it >:)...

Recently in another topic someone was hotly debating the followings of the earlier manual for information, I agreed with them on most points, the points I did not agree with have been updated in this newest volume. It now Lists.. Grains over just wheat!

FarmGal has a great post as well about her Farm and food gathering and preparations, not going to read that as it makes me hungry and her recipe for Stuffed Grape Leaves, uses Goad Cheese and well I rather miss being able to eat cheese. http://livingmydreamlifeonthefarm.wordpress.com/2012/07/08/goat-stuffed-grape-leaves-in-a-red-pepper-sauce-with-greek-yogurt/ For those who are not hungry and full right now, although after seeing her cuisine you might just get hungry again!

Scored a new BOB from Valu Village...American Tourister duffel bag...looks to be brand new. It shall replace my current BOB and that shall become the pet BOB.

5 x 1.5 liters water @ 5 / 2.00
rechecked and restocked all first aid kits
Changed out EDC bag for something a bit bigger and added a few items
Started to put last ear's storage gas in vehicles and refilling gas cans...with stabilizer of course.

We will be having a power outage here on Wednesday for routine maintenance...should be a good test of the preps. I will finally be able to judge the generator and fuel usage under full load conditions.

I haven't posted in a while but we've been slowly restocking since we let some supplies drain before we moved.

We've spent a lot of money restocking canned food, peanut butter, and toiletries now that we're in the new house.

Starting to get quotes on the basement development so that we can get the water barrels built into the furnace room and the shelving up behind the stairs. We're going to have the contractor put a water line in above the water tanks in the furnace room so that we can fill them easily. We're going with the http://www.incaseof.ca/ico-supertanker so that we can pick them up directly from Briden Solutions in calgary and avoid the shipping costs.

Be sure to insure that the plumber put in a back flow stop, if your on city water.