Category Archives: Food for Thought

Used book for my first “book annotation” craft project.

With Thanksgiving fast approaching most people seem to forget the components of being thankful for all the blessings in our lives and the giving with an open heart, that heartfelt “thanksgiving” requires.

We’re surrounded by bad news being blared far and wide, in the news media and many people on social media, to the point where it’s easy to lose sight of the multitude of good things happening each and every day.

If all we focus on are the dark clouds of bad news and the worst case doom-casting, well then surely that’s going to block out some of the rays of sunshine trying to peek through. Since 2020, it seems too many people have gone off the deep end with their partisan politics, both left and right, where everyday it’s some new hyped drama they get fixated on as another ominous sign that this is “the worst time ever.”

Sure, there are serious events happening, but all the small steps that I’ve made at being better prepared and especially working on my organization leaves me feeling calmer. It’s when I go online, especially on social media, and consume hyped news and commentary tinged with fearmongering that I can feel that pull of negative influencing – and the doubts creep in about my own preparedness efforts. While it’s important not to bury your head in the sand, likewise it’s important not to let the news media drama faceplant you into a puddle of doom and gloom or keep your head spinning in a constant state of agitation. American media – left and right, because all of our media is now highly politicized, is mostly just agitation propaganda, often veering toward the old Soviet style. Of all the things for American news media to import from the communists, I would never have dreamed it would be the Soviet agitation propaganda style that lives on in our American news media.

With the news being such a cesspool of faked news and agitation propaganda to get people agitated and angry at “the other side,” well I take a very cautious approach to believing things. I like following politics and world news happenings, but I now take days or even sometimes a week or more off, where I just catch some headlines each day, but focus on other things. It takes more time than I care to invest daily to research hot news topics and get to some facts. In the past week I’ve been back to spending more time on reading and some paper crafting projects again. That led to racing down another YouTube rabbit hole by clicking on a book channel, where the young lady was talking about how she annotates in the books she’s reading.

Silly me, I thought she was talking about some sort of serious note-taking method, but it took watching a few other “book annotation” videos by young women to realize this is more a crafting/journaling type project than serious note-taking. However, by watching those few book annotation videos my YouTube feed filled up with all sorts of note-taking and “how to become a better reader” videos. Naturally, I got sucked into some of those too. I learned about the Cornell Note Taking System and the different types of reading techniques. Then there were videos on keeping a commonplace notebook and the importance of jotting down ideas wherever you’re at.

When I finally decided I’d explored this book annotation rabbit hole adventure far enough, I had ordered some book tabs, pretty colored highlighters and some other supplies for attempting a book annotation craft project. Once again, just like when I went down the “junk journaling” crafting rabbit hole several years ago, I was back to facing my wall when it comes to my books.

I do not write in my books and I do not ever bend down page corners, but most of all I try to keep my books in good condition. I don’t even lay my hardcover books down with them opened, because I don’t want the book spine damaged. I have books that I’ve had since I was a kid, that have traveled all over when we moved around the Army, and most are in very good condition. And, I do not let anyone borrow my books, unless it’s a book I won’t mind if it doesn’t get returned. That rule came about after books I cared about were not returned.

Some book YouTuber did a helpful video explaining what she learned about this crafty sort of book annotation fad. Like me, she has confused about why do this sort of elaborate book annotation and she also has an issue about not defacing her books. She set off to annotate a book using all the bells and whistles colorful tabs, pens and highlighters. She bought a book from a secondhand shop. So, I have some thrift store books and will use the one pictured above, Driving Over Lemons, for my first book annotation craft project.

How I have taken notes while reading since I was a kid is by using a notebook or notepad and index cards, where I jot down my notes and the page numbers of the book. I do use post-it book tabs to mark pages sometimes, but as soon as I’m done reading the book or have made notes on paper where I tabbed in the book, I remove all those post-it book tabs, so my book isn’t defaced.

So, why would someone with some rather OCD tendencies about “proper care of my books” even consider “junk journaling” using old books or this new “book annotation” crafting effort? Well, it’s because I keep trying to break some of my OCD tendencies, which are a form of trying to control everything.

Some people, like me, like to troubleshoot and contingency plan for everything imaginable and while that can be a good thing sometimes, it can lead to being too risk adverse and too rigid. My late husband used to tell me to just relax more and enjoy things rather than borrowing trouble constantly. He was able to shake off adversity and just charge ahead, by accepting F.I.S.H., but then you deal with it. He also had a very dry, dark sort of sense of humor, which probably helped when really bad stuff happened. I lack his type of self-confidence and I often get caught up in overthinking problems and trying to find the “best way” to do things. Most times it doesn’t take the best way to get a job done, but really just requires the willingness to get busy working on a solution. I’ve learned more from trial and error – and my failures – than I ever have from researching the best way to do most things. Workable is usually just fine, especially when time is of the essence, rather than trying to achieve perfection.

In 2021, I wrote about hearing part of a conversation in a local grocery store between a manager and an employee stocking store brand frozen turkeys in a bunker. Based off my fear of a turkey shortage, which several online preppers were warning about and bits of an overheard conversation, I snapped up the only turkey in the cooler of the brand I prefer – an over 18 pound turkey, which was way larger than I needed for my two sons and me. Plus, none of us are all that fond of turkey. There were plenty of turkeys available in my local grocery stores in 2021 and I had a lot of leftover turkey in the freezer to use up, but I was really happy to use that turkey carcass to make homemade turkey broth. That turkey broth went into several pots of soup over the next year. As a side note, there are always many good food sales from Thanksgiving through Christmas, so it’s a great time to stock up on many items.

Here it is 2023 and once again I thought about making something else for Thanksgiving, but then I bought a smaller turkey and there were plenty of turkeys this year too- many on sale. I haven’t ventured to making something else yet, but I’m considering a new side dish recipe. Small steps…

And with the preparedness mindset, like with everything else in life, probably moderation rather than letting preparing for every catastrophe imaginable consume your life, is a better approach. We still need to keep our daily lives primarily focused on living in the present and paying attention to the people we love. The most important thing to stockpile is goodwill toward others and to create memories to hold fast to in hard times – that requires living each day with an open and thankful heart.

I don’t generally make New Year’s resolutions, but I can get behind this one:

Prepper Potpourri brings up some important facts about the power of positive thinking in this video. Frankly, I think if you buy into believing everything is “doomed,” it severely impedes your ability to accurately assess situations and stay motivated to find creative solutions. I do mention my late husband a lot and he certainly had plenty of flaws, but he also had the most irreverent sense of humor (like many infantry soldiers), that helped me stay calm through bad situations. He often had me laughing out loud even in the midst of some pretty awful situations. He also didn’t want to hear about “Oh my God, we’re all going to die!” type drama. He was the type of person who would keep trying until he couldn’t try anymore. I am the worrying kind of person, so I have to work at seeing the glass as half full.

The other thing I’m working on is trying to listen more rather than jump into reacting, which is what most of social media runs on – hot takes and people who get worked up about one hot topic blazing across news and social media after another. I’ve done plenty of that too, but I’m working on breaking that habit and taking some time to think about things more, consider other angles and doing a bit of research on some things before getting entrenched in a position.

I’ll mention the young football player who collapsed during a football game the other night as the type of instantaneous reaction I’m talking about. Within minutes some right-wing pundits were ranting about the dangers of COVID vaccines. On the left, the same sort of leaping to conclusions flourishes too, heck, just look at how many things are blamed for climate change, even being tall. I kid you not, a NYT guest essayist, Mara Altman, penned a piece putting forth the idea that short people are better for the environment. I’ll quote from a NY Post write-up about this NYT essay (I don’t subscribe to the NYT):

“Altman continued, “Short people don’t just save resources, but as resources become scarcer because of the earth’s growing population and global warming, they may also be best suited for long-term survival (and not just because more of us will be able to jam into spaceships when we are forced off this planet we wrecked).”

Who needs tabloids with space alien stories by the supermarket registers anymore, when you can get all that from America’s paper of record…

Have a nice day!

Happy New Year!

I started out my morning putting a beef roast in the slow cooker with onions, carrots and celery. I’ll add potatoes when it’s closer to being done, so dinner’s cooking. And I’ve been thinking a lot about trite sayings that circulate online as if they’re the wisdom of the ages. Yesterday some video popped up in my YouTube feed about “focus on systems, not goals” and after I watched that one, several more videos spouting that same theme popped up. Then there have been the videos a few days ago about “hope is not a strategy” and I’ve seen several of those videos flitting by on my YouTube feed. It’s almost like how if you ever watch one “TED Talks” video on a subject, for the next few days, your YT feed will be filled with videos on that subject.

Whether people are aware of this, or not, this is how algorithms are designed to gauge your viewing habits and feed you more of the content that held your attention. It’s social media platforms designing rabbit holes for you to go down. The more alarmist content you consume, social media algorithms (and perhaps even the Feds) will find ways to pull you further down those rabbit holes. It’s also easy to assume that because you are seeing this particular viewpoint a lot, that it’s the mainstream view, when in reality it’s a view that was packaged to hold your attention.

For me, I kind of think this Bible verse sums up life, in general, and figuring what time you’re in can help you weather life’s storms.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 from the King James version:

” To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.” https://www.bible.com/bible/1/ECC.3.1-8.KJV

That kind of covered it for me, but in the secular world here’s how I look at “strategy” and “hope” and “goals vs. systems.” First, “hope” is crucial, because without hope we wouldn’t get off our butts and be motivated to have goals or come up with a plan (strategy), so hope is a critical factor in survival and even with getting things done, in my opinion. You can parcel that out into words like attitude or grit or determination, but a belief that you are going to work hard to survive and work to overcome adversity is critical.

The ideas I heard recently about focusing on systems not goals left me shaking my head too, because I believe in comprehensive strategic planning. Simply put, that means you have to set goals (ends) – period. Then we get to the “systems” and that’s the nitty-gritty for achieving goals – the ways and means of how you’re going to set about achieving your goals. All three components are vital for success, I think and all these trite word games that people come up with, as if they’re reinventing the wheel, just complicate matters. A comprehensive plan would include a tiered level of goals, ways and means to achieve those goals and some timelines for the various moving parts. Into all this comes dealing with adversity and failure, which are going to happen, even with the best laid plans. Here again that attitude factor comes into play as being critical. Some people quit after one try, while others will keep trying, reassess their “ways and means” and try again and again, until they succeed.

Setting up “systems” and getting some systems functioning in basic survival usually revolves around food, water, shelter, staying warm/cool, sanitation needs, and those sort of things. To live more comfortably, most of us rely on all sorts of systems in our home that we don’t think much about, like having a heating/cooling system installed in our home or building a home with a solid foundation, insulation and a reliable roof, having electricity and running water. Likewise, most of us rely on all sorts of complex global systems for the goods we routinely consume or use in our lives.

Rather than get caught up in the “sayings” floating around the internet or the partisan political flame-throwing and endless rabbit holes, I’m working toward assessing my own life and home and trying to figure out ways to simplify things. Since I’ve always liked repurposing and finding ways to reuse things, that’s going to be more of a focus this year than buying so much more stuff. In my kitchen, I want to start using the gadgets I already have more, rather than buying new ones. For instance, using my slow cookers more (I have three different size slow cookers – yes, ridiculous, I know). I want to find more ways to use my Instant Pot and dehydrator. The list goes on, because I have a lot of kitchen gadgets and small appliances.

Beyond all the goals vs. systems or hope vs. strategy stuff, mostly I want to work on functioning better alone, because March will be two years since my husband passed away and some days are still very hard. When I saw these YouTube topics about “focus on systems, not goals” and “hope is not a strategy,” I thought about my husband and what he would make of these ideas. I feel confident in saying he would have said something along the lines of “F” that bs. and let’s just get some s-h-i-t done around here. He had no patience for theoretical debates and he very much set goals – big and small ones and then he worked his butt off to make them happen. He had no interest in social media – ever, even before he became ill, but then again he never had any patience for a lot of small talk. He wanted to get things done. His can-do attitude reined in a lot of my daydreaming type big ideas and theorizing and wasting time on stuff that isn’t going to get a single constructive thing done today or in my life.

I’ve wasted a lot of time following politics, the news, the online “conversations” and frankly, I think my husband was right – focus on what we can do each day.

I started a blog post the day after Thanksgiving and despite editing and rewriting parts of it, I decided not to publish it, because it wasn’t quite expressing what I wanted to say. I became interested in becoming better prepared in 2020, mainly out of fear when my husband was placed on home hospice care and within weeks of that the pandemic craziness hit.

I’d always stocked up extra supplies and food, but I felt assuredly there were “experts” who know a lot more than I do. That’s when I started viewing YouTube prepper videos. I’d been watching homesteading videos for a long time too and that goes with my interest in learning about how people grow food and manage living off of small farms or village life around the world. When my husband and I were first married I told him my dream was to live on a small farm out in the country. We never tried farming and I likely won’t ever live on a small farm in the country, but I enjoy watching other people who have embarked on that adventure.

I’ve been watching an Azerbaijani lady cook food over open fire outside for years and even before I found that channel, I watched a grandma cook in her village in Sri Lanka. A few African village life channels popped up in my feed recently and I’ve watched a few of those too. The biggest takeaway is people do manage with a lot less, they take pride in talking about their lives and sharing native dishes. I’ve learned a lot watching these videos and there’s absolutely no drama, the people seem warm, friendly and excited to share their culture. Unlike so much of the sky-is-falling drama that permeates many of the American prepper and homesteading channels, these people living with so much less, seem more emotionally stable, calm and happy.

When I came across the William Bradford quote for Thanksgiving, the “out of small beginnings greater things have been produced” phrase stuck in my head. Bradford was a Puritan, who sailed to America on the Mayflower and became the governor of the Plymouth Colony, when the first governor, John Carver, died during the early months establishing the colony. Out of the 103 Mayflower passengers and around 30 crew on the ship, about half of them died during that 1620 voyage and first winter in America.

The Mayflower voyage went off course and the Pilgrims ended up reaching land much further north than planned, in November of 1620. They were running low on supplies and totally unprepared for the cold, hard winter there.

The first Thanksgiving was a 3-day harvest celebration in 1621. Although, those first settlers survived their first year in America, daily life was grueling, devoid of luxuries, and uncertain. Life in some parts of the world is still that way. I doubt any of the early American settlers could ever have imagined that out of their small beginnings, our United States of America would grow into a great and prosperous nation.

While we are facing some shortages now, Americans were facing all kinds of shortages, including food shortages, from the first settlers and there were years of failing crops, wheat shortages, and other shortages many times in American history, yet people couldn’t run to Costco or Walmart and try to stock up. They learned to make-do during wheat shortages with what they had and used substitutions, like barley, oats, corn to make bread.

Interestingly, while it’s easy to presume early settlers were all made of sterner stuff than people today and had some sort of unique survival skills, the truth is they were just people too. Their daily lives involved a great deal more hard labor and lack of physical comforts, so from an early age daily life required self-discipline, following a daily routine, and a sense of commitment. The Puritans had already moved from England to the Netherlands to avoid religious persecution, before embarking on the Mayflower voyage. Daily life in England and the Netherlands in the 1600s, was a far cry from arriving in America, where they were facing an uncertain situation with the Native Americans and an inhospitable land.

We all are products of the times we live in and as times change people adapt and change too, but even back in early America, some people didn’t cope well and they had all the same human emotions we have today.

William Bradford’s wife, Dorothy, died while Bradford was on his third scouting trip on land, as the other passengers stayed on the Mayflower, awaiting their return. She fell overboard and drowned while the Mayflower was moored in the harbor. Some historians question whether she committed suicide. There were passengers dying all around her and they had left their three-year old son behind in Amsterdam, with Dorothy’s parents.

Nathaniel Philbrick, in his book, Mayflower, wrote: “We think of the Pilgrims as resilient adventurers upheld by unwavering religious faith, but they were also human beings in the middle of what was, and continues to be, one of the most difficult emotional challenges a person can face: immigration and exile. Less than a year later, another group of English settlers arrived in Provincetown Harbor and were so overwhelmed by this “naked and barren place” that they convinced themselves that the Pilgrims must all be dead. In fear of being forsaken by the ship’s captain, the panicked settlers began to strip the sails from the yards “lest the ship should get away and leave them.” (pages 76-77)

Most of us adjust and learn as we face challenges, just as the Pilgrims did. Some people, even back then, fared better than others, but none of the first settlers in America, nor the Native Americans, already here, lived an easy life filled with comfort items and luxuries that we take for granted. However, we can all, little by little, choose to learn new skills and face new challenges with a positive spirit and small beginnings that produce greater things are still attainable, no matter what the latest shortage being hyped or online drama.

I watched a video the other day where the couple grew a dry corn variety this year and they ground some up and made cornbread. I found that very interesting. I bought a cookbook, Country Beans, earlier this year (used for under $6 on amazon), which explains a multitude of ways to use dry beans, peas and lentils, including making flour out of them. Each little bit of information I acquire and each little experiment learning new techniques and ways to use food, or even my small gardening effort, feels like time better spent than getting worked up about world crises or the latest hot topic flitting across social media.

We can all assuredly embark on a few small beginnings, just looking through our homes and pantries and trying to find new ways to use the things we already have. Unlike the early settlers we have access to information almost instantly. There are even apps available that can identify wild plants and trees with the snap of a photo on your phone. There is more information on ways to use almost any food than any of us can ever possibly use. Truly, we still live in a land of abundance here in America and I am thankful for that every day.

In my blog post yesterday I mentioned that my little container garden has brought me many hours of pleasure and it’s helped me come to terms with major loss and the loss part is what I want to write about today. No, this isn’t going to be about losing my husband, although that’s been the most crushing loss I’ve experienced in my life.

Being fearful is easy. Putting fear aside takes hard work. I speak from experience. I was an extremely fearful child, to the point “Scared” should have been my middle name. One of my biggest fears, besides the dark, was I was terrified of strangers. It took years and constant encouragement and prodding by my parents to get me past a lot of that. I had to work hard on dealing with my fears and learning to face them. Then I had to learn to not let fear take a hold of me and often that involves not listening to people spreading fear and for me it takes praying and asking God to help me.

Even as I reached adulthood, I was still a very fearful person and overly cautious. My husband helped me learn to face my fears and some of his courage and fearlessness rubbed off on me over 40 years of marriage. He always told me I can do things, while I would list the reasons why I would fail.I wandered around my home many hours each day for almost a year after my husband died last March.

Planting this little container garden hasn’t been some spectacular garden and some people would scoff at the small amounts it’s produced, but for me each seed that sprouted and grew into a plant felt like it was filling a hole in my heart. It felt like God was blessing me with growing things in my backyard and each tiny success gave me enormous hope.

When I was a kid one of the little habits I started when fears started taking hold was to deliberately focus on all the things that were good that were going on around me and all the many blessings all around me. By switching my focus to looking for positive things the bad didn’t disappear, but the good started taking an upper-hand over the bad and the fears. I prefer to focus on working on things I have some control over in my own life and trying to help people where I can. Worrying about global conspiracies, evil elites, even real major system failures with the global economy doesn’t get me anywhere, while looking around my own home, family, neighborhood and focusing on things I can actually do each day moves me in a better direction. What I do might not work for millions of people and it’s likely millions of people won’t agree with my views.

Writing blogs is a trend that’s losing popularity, as social media has moved on to other formats most people now use – video content is way more popular, podcasts are popular too. Instant and quick have large audiences while reading 1,000+ word blog posts is about like reading books – most people don’t want to invest that much time. In fact, even with news, it’s obvious on social media like Twitter that most of the blue checkmark crowd of politicos there react to headlines and don’t read through the articles linked.

Starting this blog was tackling another of my biggest fears. I always loved writing, but I had a lot of fears about writing and letting people read what I wrote. Self-doubt literally crippled me from writing. This blog was like a blank piece of paper that was mine to fill as I chose.

A friend urged me to start this blog and it’s been a whole lot of commentary on politics and current events. Watching the corruption expand in our institutions, from government to media to even things that shouldn’t be political, I’ve found myself becoming less of a right-wing partisan and thinking more in terms of just being an American citizen, as our politics has gone further off the rails in recent years. I don’t want to be part of Red Team America or part of Blue Team America. I just want to find ways to work toward things that matter to me and that I feel are positive for all of America.

I’ve had to catch myself recently with writing commentary on my blog about things I see on social media and disagree with, because I’m not into popularity contests, pissing contests, the clique mind-set or people caught up in their social media “followers” and “subscribers” status (I’ve watched this on Twitter, people on facebook bragging about the number of friends they have and on YouTube – those are the social media formats I’ve used.) And I do find a whole lot of things I see online that I think are fear-mongering for clicks, total bullshit, or the rush to weigh in without doing any fact-checking. It’s not just regular people who have social media formats that do this.

What’s really distressing is how many professional journalists, political pundits, and even political leaders rush to weigh in on every hot button thing that flits across social media too. In the process, trust in the news media and our political class has plummeted. Too much of America feeds on reacting rather than taking some time to think about information, do some fact-checking and then taking a little time to think things over. I write my blog posts for myself, as my space online to write what I think and believe is the truth. I will never monetize my blog and I have no desire to venture into more social media formats. I don’t do public speaking, have never taken a selfie in my life (I found that selfie trend very disturbing when my kids were younger), I don’t do videos and I intend to keep it that way.

I’m also going to be consuming less prepper-related content and less politics content online, because very little of it makes me feel any-better informed. I don’t want to indulge in reacting to the latest hot-take conspiracy theory, dire predictions, or news reporting that is more retweeted crap by journalists that none of them fact-checked. I also don’t want to hear reports that random people send to a content creator that haven’t been verified in any way. I don’t want to lose my peace of mind in living a simple lifestyle and succumb to fear-based shopping or financial decisions or feeling America is doomed based on information that will likely completely change in 10 minutes, an hour and in a day most of the current hot take information will turn out to be totally wrong. Very little of “the facts” in the news that create a buzz online holds up in 24 hours.

Spending more time in my backyard has made me think about many things. I felt a keen loss of quiet time that this little container gardening effort has restored as I’ve spent less time online. In a recent blog post I wrote about my quotes notebook and our retired pastor’s wife when I was a kid. Her nature walk came to mind, because of a loud squabble one recent morning sitting on my patio sipping coffee after I watered my garden. I watched a water fowl (could tell from the legs, feet and size of the bird, even though it was a good distance away). It flew and landed in a tall tree in the woods behind my back fence. That bird created a near riot among the mockingbirds, which flew in from both sides of my backyard and one flew out of the willow tree in my backyard. Those three mockingbirds were squawking loudly as they charged toward that tall tree to chase the water fowl away. It was fascinating to watch those mockingbirds. Often I feel like people act like that too.

The water fowl flew away and the mockingbirds settled down. I’m flying away from some contentious things online too – and moving back to reading more books and writing about some topics besides social media drama, current events, politics and doom and gloom economic news.

I want to write more stories from American history