If we had access, it would be highly pleasurable to follow the money trail and we’d see just how much of the leadership in Washington, D.C. are getting rich and who is making them rich.
I am sure both the "Infrastructure" bill and the $40 billion to Ukraine have mostly graft involved, like so much in government. This administration seems more corrupt than most. Look how the Covid money was spent that was supposed to support small business.
There are lots of threads that give advice on different topics that might be of survival use in the coming months/year, so I thought I would drop a related find I made in this "closest fit" thread. I've been on survival forums reading about food storage & such, and was trying to find out if my 3 year out-of-date nonfat dry milk in its original foil envelopes was still good, and if my 2 month out-of-date full fat dry milk (Nestle NIDO Fortificada) in its original bulk container was salvageable, when I came across a comment that Dollar Tree sells Gossner brand non-refrigerated UHT (ultra-high temp pasteurized) milk. I drove by there today (one recently opened up near my Walmart) and saw that they sell lots of varieties of this product: 1%, 2%, full fat, lactose-free. The full fat has a Best By date of May 2023. Best of all, it's only $1.25/quart!! If you buy a 12 pak on Amazon, they charge $4.42/quart (of course, they're covering their shipping costs.) By way of comparison, Walmart sells Parmalat 2% UHT milk in the store for $3.17/quart (they do not sell full fat UHT). A half gallon of Walmart brand refrigerated milk is $1.14/quart. I thought I would pass this along. I never though of looking in the dollar stores for UHT milk...this is CHEAP!!!! Dollar Tree also sell a variety of dehydrated fruits. I don't know what they cost relative to DIY...there were no prices on the peg hooks and I didn't feel like chasing it down. Another tip I saw on the survival forum was on how to make reconstituted nonfat dry milk a little more palatable (apparently it's pretty nasty.) One guy adds 1 TB vanilla pudding (I assume he means the powdered mix and not the finished product) to a quart of reconstituted milk and lets it sit in the fridge overnight. I guess the pudding adds vanilla flavor and the sweetener takes the "bite" out of the milk.
I think your nonfat dry milk will keep forever, but the UHT milk, while safe to drink, can get kinda yuck tasting when it goes a lot past its use-by date.
I kind of wonder what damage 'rancid' food does. I know it smells and tastes off, but I saw some 'scientists' speculating on trying a frozen woolly mammoth baby steak. The people had been mining mammoth tusks for their ivory in the frozen tundra.
Definitely not factual but a line in the movie Armageddon comes to me when it was asked where they got the money for all 'this'. 'You don't think they actually paid $7000 for a hammer, $40,000 for a toilet seat, do you?' And how long ago was that. Like in a lot of things in life, gov't waste and graft started small and when it was gotten away with, it got bigger. It didn't just start here. But those that take are insulated by laws they passed for themselves. I guess that is where revolutions come from and why getting people's guns is so important now.
Yeh, some comments said that the USDA agrees with you on the "infinite" nonfat dry milk shelf-life (although I've not seen the direct reference.) The FDA Emergency Preparedness document only references dried milk in a can and not sealed envelopes. Regarding UHT: everything I've read says that the process supports a months-long shelf life¹, but the Gossner is stamped "May 2023." I have no idea when it was manufactured. I'd be inclined to throw it in the trash on June 1, assuming it's been stored properly. I'll have to look at the Parmalat in Walmart to see how long it's stated shelf-life is. I've always been real conservative regarding the safety of what I eat. It's never worth saving a couple of bucks to risk illness, and even less so in a SHTF environment where you're using emergency preps. ¹As I read about UHT processing, I found opinions that the increased heat may kill the beneficial bacteria in milk. It got me to thinking about the loss I'm causing when I dehydrate yogurt. I'm gonna kick the heat back from the recommended 135°F to 115°F and see how it does.
Powdered skim milk has come a long way from what it used to be like, and most of it now is relatively easy to mix up, and tastes as good as the skim milk you would buy at the store. Skim milk is never going to taste like whole milk, no matter how fresh it is. You can also add a little bit of dry coffee cream powder (like Coffeemate) and that will give it a richer taste, but when you do that you need to either use hot water to dissolve the creamer, or mix it all up with a blender. Once you have the skim milk, you can use that to make homemade yogurt or buttermilk, so you do not have to just drink it plain. You can add chocolate and have chocolate milk, too. When I make yogurt, I usually stir in about 1/4 cup of powdered milk powder into the milk and it gives you a thicker yogurt and adds more nutrients.
That is the fight about raw vs processed milk. The beneficial bacteria/enzymes are already destroyed with pasturization. But it keeps the bad bacteria at ground zero for a bit with refrigeration. But when you think about it, if you can harvest your own nuts, veggies, fruits...They have not been irradiated/cooked like a lot of foods in the stores which destroys nutritional benefits too, saving you from bad bacteria. If you need to just survive short term till you can get your feet under you, calories is what you will need.
Exactly. Which is why I keep at least 360 days of the vitamins & supplements I take. As soon as I crack open the bottle that takes my inventory below that threshold, I reorder. The only thing I would really miss is a fresh salad. I can tell if I miss having one just one day...the next day it tastes so good, as though I've not had one in weeks.
Still a lot of wilds you need to try. They will be different but still good. Sow thistle buds, purslane leaves, mallow seed pods thrown in your salad. The spring weeds make good salad greens. If you gently but firmly pull the stem of a cattail now, and nibble the white end of the stem, tell me that does not taste like a cucumber. Unfortunately it will not keep much past picking When you find your wild food group they can teach you to make a salad with better vitamins and minerals. I was watching about using nettle to make vitamin supplements for my chickens. Dry the leaves and run them through a blender to make a powder. I thought, why should chickens get all the goodies and will pack some in gel caps. Going to hang some up today. It is nice and cool and sunny. Weird summer.
We used all forms of strange milk when we lived in the bush. Died milk we tried to dilute 50/50 with fresh when we could get it. That certainly helped the taste for fresh use. We used the UHT as well, and it was better than powdered for fresh use, but developed an off-taste if you kept it long after the "use-by" date. Even pasteurization at low temps destroys many of the beneficial bacteria, but it increases the stability by denaturing the breakdown enzymes as well, so it is all a trade-off for safety and stability.
The silly thing is, I only use milk for my cereal (and maybe some cooking,) but it's a necessary accompaniment. When I was a kid, I would only drink chocolate milk. The only milk that I ever liked as an adult was really fresh when I visited a dairy, and it was chilled to near-freezing. It still had all the cream, and you could tell. This reminds me...I should get some Nestle Quik to have on hand.
Hershey warns of Halloween candy shortage They claim they will fall short of meeting demand for Halloween and Christmas. The reasons? COVID (supply chain disruptions) and Ukraine (ingredients.)
there's a Hershey plant not far from us....they're building....hiring signs out front...they'd lost people due to the jab madate....i won't be buying their products anyway...