Ribs and Rifles

My friend Mike is visiting. We’ve had quite a day.

We went to Core Rifle Systems to pick up some ammo he ordered, and it turned out they had Hornady ELD-M 140-grain match ammo, which was better than what he had asked for. We arranged a switch, and now he’s all set for the weekend. We plan to get his new rifle running.

We also hit Rural King, where, unbelievably, they were selling Norma match ammo at a Rural King price. He snapped up several boxes.

Before running our errand, we stuck two racks of ribs in the smoker. Mike was the first person to fix decent ribs for me, about 30 years ago, and he inspired me to get my new smoker. This week, I was only able to get baby backs and trimmed St. Louis ribs. No full racks of spare ribs. I decided to make one rack of each type and do a comparison. We also had macaroni and cheese, barbecue beans with smoked sausage, and Texas toast made with homemade bread.

This was a good opportunity for me to compare baby backs to St. Louis ribs. I’ve never been a fan of baby backs. They’re small, dry, and expensive. That’s what I believed, but I decided to give them a fresh chance anyway. Turned out I was right. They’re worthless. The St. Louis ribs were nearly perfect, but the baby backs were on the dry side and had a lot less flavor.

I don’t know why people eat baby backs. Ignorance, I guess.

I have finally produced what I think is nearly perfect macaroni and cheese. How did I do it? Predictably enough, by correcting Alton Brown. The more I know about cooking, the less I think of him.

When I created my old recipe, I used Brown’s recipe, along with at least one other, as a starting point. The dish was good, but I felt it could be better. I thought the cheese could be smoother and cheesier.

Brown says to put cheese, panko bread crumbs, and butter atop macaroni and cheese and bake it. This is a bad idea. It tends to make the cheese separate. You don’t want to overheat macaroni and cheese. Baking it is not a good move.

Here’s what I did. I made the noodles. I made the sauce using cheese, half and half, butter, starch, an egg yolk, and sodium citrate, among other things. It was silky-smooth. I did not boil it.

I put the noodles in the microwave and nuked them until they were blistering hot, and then I stirred them into the sauce. This way, I got hot macaroni and cheese without boiling. I put the crust ingredients on top and broiled them. This gave me a perfect crust without heating the rest of the dish too much.

It’s magnificent. Couldn’t be much better.

I used 12 ounces of cheese and 8 dry ounces of noodles. This doesn’t include the top crust.

It was great having Mike in the kitchen, because when I needed help with something, I didn’t have to explain it, do it for him, or do it over. And he knows good food when he tastes it. Most people don’t.

We were talking about the microwave. I said I didn’t like using it when I cooked for guests. He said he always used it to cook for guests, because they couldn’t tell the difference.

He has a point.

If we ever recover from dinner, we’ll get some guns ready for tomorrow. We plan to do a rimfire invasion in the pasture.

Yesterday we shot .22 pistols. Mike was concerned about his skills, but we set up around 50 feet from the 6″ steel targets, and he had no problems. I had to explain that most people would have a hard time hitting a 6″ target from 7 yards. Tomorrow we’ll probably start with .22 rifles and move on to .17 HMR.

I suggest never eating baby back ribs, and be careful about listening to Alton Brown. He’s entertaining, but sometimes I wonder if he can cook at all.

I don’t want to get back into cooking heavily, but when I cook things I already know how to make, I might as well do it right.

Hope your Black Friday went well.

Insert Clever 20/20 Vision Reference Here

I continue to marvel at the dual realities that exist in America.

For a long time, I’ve been writing about the alternate reality the children of darkness live in. Covid has made it much more obvious. Leftists and other enemies of God live in terror, locked in their houses, obsessing on masks and other things that don’t really do much to halt the spread of disease. They’re scared to death of a mild respiratory disease that does what other mild respiratory diseases do: it kills a tiny percentage of the people it infects, generally taking those who were in poor health and likely to die soon regardless.

I can understand why an octogenarian would worry, but young people are wearing masks when they mow their yards.

It’s amazing that we killed off old people with bad policies instead of protecting the easily-identified groups who were really vulnerable. Liberal governors sent the sick into old folks homes, pretty much guaranteeing the enormous loss of life we saw in the Northeast. What Cuomo did is pretty similar to the Inuit practice of exposing old people in winter to kill them, except the Inuits knew what they were doing.

Today I read about smallpox. Its fatality rate was about 30%, and people who got it died slowly, in agony, covered with extremely painful sores that made them feel like they were on fire whenever they moved. That’s what real plagues are like, but half of America is sacrificing its liberty and prosperity in the vain hope of avoiding a disease that kills something like one in 1000 victims.

Antichristians have more shortages than God’s children. People in major cities went without meat for months while people like me were buying it on sale. Generally, antichristians have fewer firearms, and they have had not been able to come anywhere near matching the abundance of ammunition Christians had on hand when the crisis started. Christian areas have fewer economic problems, too.

Today I can’t help thinking about the two realities. Toilet paper and antiseptic wipes are disappearing again in blue areas. Here, toilet paper is not hard to get, and antiseptic wipes are on sale. I saw canisters of wipes selling for $2.98 at Walmart this week, and I bought Lysol wipes for $4.98 later. Try buying them on Amazon or Ebay. Expect to pay nearly $30.

Here’s something crazy: local Walmarts are full of wipes, but Walmart’s website will not sell them. You have to go in and get them yourself. This means people in blue areas, where Walmarts have no wipes, can’t get them at all!

I have enough toilet paper and paper towels to get me through the better part of a year. I had ample supplies at the beginning of last week, and I picked up a little more when I heard the insanity was starting again. I never did without paper goods during the last wave of craziness, and I expect to do fine this time, too.

I wouldn’t have stocked up at all, but I know that fear of shortages causes shortages. Once one lemming goes over the cliff, the rest will follow. Even here, things are tightening up somewhat, and I have to get involved simply to insure that my supply won’t end up in someone else’s 1000-roll stockpile.

When my mother talked about old men from the country who were plainspoken and unsophisticated, she would say they were “rough as cobs.” The toilet paper shortage made me think about that. Now I know what the expression means. Hope I never have to experience it.

I’ve got lots of rubbing alcohol, which I use to clean counters. I have more hand sanitizer than I know what to do with; I bought one type and then decided I liked another, so I stocked up on it, too. I have all kinds of wipes. I bought extra in case my cousin who lives in Illinois needs me to ship them.

I don’t think I can get Lysol spray unless I pay through the nose online, but then I never used it anyway. My cousin asked about it. Her mother is in ill health, and they go through a lot of cleaning products. Today at the grocery, I saw another spray which is full of the really nasty chemical in Lysol. I sent my cousin a photo and asked if she wanted me to get it for her.

Here’s a tip: Lysol is ethanol and quaternary ammonium. You can buy both separately under other brand names, and Home Depot sells spray bottles.

I’m making crisis food again. I have a batch of dried apples in the dehydrator, and beef slices for jerky are marinating in the fridge. My paranoia room is starting to overflow. I don’t think I’ll be here for the really hard times, but I may be wrong, and if I’m right, someone else will benefit from my efforts.

I could have done better on the ammunition front. There are some calibers I never expect to have to buy again, but others are different. Example: I didn’t get into 6.5mm Creedmoor until this year. I have what most people would consider a lot of 6.5, but I wouldn’t be comfortable maintaining what I would consider a normal routine of range trips with it.

Decent Creedmore ammunition still pops up from time to time, and I have materials to make 400 more rounds, so things could be worse. I should probably try to get a few dozen shotgun shells for squirrels. They’re not too hard to get.

Here’s a weird lesson. The traditional wisdom is that you should buy guns in common calibers so ammunition is easy to find. Forget that. I’ve taken on tons of ammo in unpopular calibers since the insanity started, at very good prices. You can get popular stuff cheaper during normal times, but when things go nuts, your 9mm and .22 weapons will starve. I think 6.5 cents per round is a good price for .22 ammo. Right now, people are selling the cheap stuff for 28.

Today I learned something disturbing. I am not storing jerky correctly. I found one piece in a bag with what could have been a thin patch of mold on it. I wasn’t sure. It could have been solidified fat. I did a responsible scientific test to find out. I ate it. It seemed okay. I hope it was. I’m not dead yet, and I’m not having visions. I started burrowing through my other bags, and I found one that definitely had serious mold. I couldn’t rationalize eating it, so I threw it out.

It didn’t occur to me that I should not be opening and closing bags randomly as my desire for jerky dictated. I should have left all the bags closed except for the one I was slowly emptying, and I should have put that one in the fridge.

Now all of my jerky is in the freezer while I take steps to save it.

I learned that I should use oxygen absorbers to slow spoilage down, so I ordered a bunch. I’m also going to move the meat to vacuum bags.

I plan to heat it before I move it. I read that mold and most mold spores die at 120°, so I’ll heat it past that point before storing it again.

I think the reason only one bag went funny is that I killed the bacteria and mold when I dehydrated the jerky. My dehydrator works at 155°. When I opened bags to take pieces out, I must have reintroduced mold and microbes.

It may be that I didn’t dry the meat enough. I’m not sure. It seems awfully dry. Dryer than many store brands.

I can move it to vacuum bags, freeze most of them, and leave one out to see what happens to it. I don’t really want my freezer jammed up with jerky, so if I can store it at room temperature, I will.

There are no problems with my dried apples yet, but I plan to add oxygen absorbers anyway. My grandmother just put hers in big jars and forgot about them, and they never spoiled. Her apples were somewhat drier than mine, though. I went by guidelines I found on the web.

Things are going well. It’s frustrating to hear about other people who are trapped in leftist strongholds where it’s like Soylent Green every day. I pray for God to reach people, but I don’t think there is much time left.

Taking Ecclesiastes 10:18 to Heart

I learned something useful today. Putting a small amount of ginger in beef jerky really improves it.

I made another batch yesterday, and while I was mixing the marinade, I thought about teriyaki. My best guess is that teriyaki jerky requires replacing all of the Worcestershire sauce with soy sauce, but for some reason, I stuck with half and half, and I added about a quarter of a teaspoon of ground ginger. I didn’t have fresh ginger.

It made a big difference. I wouldn’t say it tastes gingery. It just has more zing to it. I think powdered ginger will actually work better than fresh, because it has a sharper flavor.

So that was nice.

I grabbed the wrong cut of meat by mistake. I wanted eye round, and I think I bought bottom round. Anyway, today, the surface of the jerky has oil on it. It’s not congealed fat. Just oil. They say you should use beef with as little fat as possible. This cut seems to have more fat than eye round. The danger of using fatty meat is that the fat will go rancid. Will that happen when the meat is still lean but slightly fattier than eye round? I don’t know, but it tastes better. I’ll keep an eye on it, and if it doesn’t go bad, maybe I’ll switch to this cut permanently.

I also got new gutters installed. This house had only one roof gutter when I moved here, and it was between the roof and the patio enclosure. There was no guttering over the garage, so big, fat raindrops fell directly on the driveway. They were starting to wear it away, and I couldn’t leave the doors open when it rained, because so much water splattered into the garage. I had them run guttering over both doors. Feeling smug about that.

There was also an issue over the front porch. The roof was designed in such a way that a huge amount of water was directed onto the porch roof when it rained. It caused some rot, and I had to spend a grand on repairs. Now there is some hope the new guttering will direct the rain elsewhere.

The strangest part of the roof design was the lack of guttering on the workshop roof. The rain fell straight onto the grass, in front of a concrete porch. The rain destroyed a strip of grass beside the concrete and washed out a lot of the dirt. I could not grow anything in front of the porch. Rain also threw dirt all over the concrete. Now I have a gutter that runs the length of the building, and I may go crazy and plant something in the ugly rut where the rain used to fall.

I don’t know what’s happening in the world, and that suits me very well. I have plenty of jobs to keep me busy. I don’t need to read fake news to kill time as well as my digestion. The election will have an outcome whether I read about it or not, and if the rapture comes, it won’t matter. It shouldn’t matter, regardless, because God looks after me very well.

It has occurred to me that readers may be confused because I say I feel like the rapture is upon us, but I also talk about planning for shortages, civil war, and so on. I’m writing about different possible futures. One involves me being here while leftists torch the country and force sane people to dig in and defend, and the other involves me being somewhere above, gleefully oblivious to everything that happens here. I keep feeling powerful indications that I won’t be here, but I have been wrong before.

Today I prayed God would see to it I never found myself in a situation in which I would truly need to use a firearm. I have asked for that before. I don’t want to be pulled down into the mire with the pigs. I don’t think Christians were put here to shoot people. I think when you find yourself in a situation like that, it means something has gone wrong in your relationship with God.

The ammunition situation has gotten even worse. I set up alerts so a search site would tell me when certain types of ammunition were available. This morning I got an alert, and when I checked before 8:30 a.m., the site was sold out. People are hovering by their computers, snapping ammunition up as soon as it appears. Either that, or George Soros has a bot doing it to keep patriots from getting cartridges. Of course, people have been storing up ammunition since the Obama years, so Soros and Bloomberg could bankrupt themselves and still fail to accomplish their goal.

I don’t really think billionaires are buying ammunition to cause problems, but it would make a great conspiracy theory.

I wonder what life in blue America is like. Hell, I suppose. Terrorism, lack, and irrational fear surrounding a mild disease. My cousin near Chicago still can’t buy disinfectant wipes, but they’re slashing them to $2.98 per can at my local Walmart, just to get rid of them. My cousin near Atlanta says they finally have meat in stores, although restaurants can’t get what they want because they’re last in line. My Illinois cousin is visiting my aunt in Kentucky, and she can’t get wipes there, either. Of course, Kentucky isn’t all that red. Not down deep, regardless of whom they voted for. They love government handouts too much.

There are two realities, and I’m very satisfied with mine. I have zero interest in experiencing or even witnessing the false, unnecessary reality of leftists.

If you think about it, the two-reality solution continues after death. It might as well start now.

My Welcome Wore Out Years Ago

I have a new batch of beef jerky in the dehydrator, and I just made macaroni and cheese using a new recipe. I also put a new laser/flashlight device on my AK-47. It’s an uneventful and peaceful day, which is odd, since it keeps looking more and more like the end of the age is here.

Yesterday I texted a few people I don’t hear from much. Two are former armorbearers from Trinity Church, the corrupt money-worshiping establishment I attended for about 4 years. One said he was looking for an AR-15; I don’t think he understands that he can’t wait around. The other just bought a C308, which is a knockoff of the Heckler & Koch G3, a 7.62x51mm semiauto sort of like an AR10. These guys live in Broward County, which is the county where Fort Lauderdale is located. We don’t communicate often, so it’s not like we’re conspiring to amass firearms and ammunition. It’s a grassroots thing, which means it’s probably supernatural.

I keep thinking of On the Beach, a 1959 film featuring Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner. The story goes like this: there has been a nuclear war. There is a deadly layer of fallout suspended in the atmosphere, and it has sterilized entire continents. Because most of the explosions took place above the equator, the radiation is confined there temporarily. People still live normally in the Southern Hemisphere, but they expect to die like everyone else. The only question is how long it will take the fallout to move south.

Gregory Peck plays a married submarine captain. Ava Gardner plays a single American woman who lives in Australia. Peck takes his boat to Australia, where he and his crew work together with the Australian government. There is some doubt as to whether the fallout has completely exterminated the human race above the equator.

The movie’s characters don’t stop living just because they believe there is no hope. They avoid thinking about their destiny. They continue raising families and doing their jobs. They have parties. A character played by Fred Astaire restores a used race car and competes in it. Old men at a private club discuss the best way to make sure they waste as little as possible of the club’s wine collection. People try to make the most of life, but at the same time, the government distributes suicide pills intended to help citizens avoid dying slowly from radiation sickness.

Isn’t this a lot like our situation? It’s as if the sentence has been pronounced and we’re just waiting for the walk to the gallows.

The big difference between our current predicament and the one depicted in On the Beach is that only one group of modern people is headed for disaster: those who aren’t close to God. A much smaller group expects deliverance and relief. We actually look forward to the end.

It’s yet another illustration of the fact that we live in different realities. The children of darkness dislike God and morality, they think 2020 is a disaster, and they’re worried and afraid. The children of light cling to God and feel grateful for the way he has prepared them. They see 2020 as a time to prepare for something beautiful. They look forward to dropping their earthly problems and being transported to heaven in perfect, youthful bodies.

I’m having a pleasant day, thinking about things like macaroni and cheese and beef jerky, but all over America, people are stewing in resentment and fear, plotting violence and theft. I’m not worried about getting sick. I’m not wondering if I can pay the rent. My head isn’t full of demonic fantasies about horrific oppression under a second Trump administration. I’m making reasonable efforts to prepare to defend myself if someone brings violence to me, but I don’t feel like hurting anyone. I don’t blame other people for my problems. I don’t think people of another race have stolen all the land and money. I don’t believe Jews run the world and need to be dealt with. I don’t think taking up arms and cleansing the world of people who disagree with me is a smart idea.

My religion tells me God will do any cleansing that has to be done.

With the passing of every week, it looks more like the things people like me have been expecting are really happening. America is becoming like a violent banana republic. Even leftists are talking about civil war. Signs of the rapture keep accumulating.

I suppose it’s always hard to believe it when you find yourself witnessing historical events of extreme impact. Noah’s friends must have been stunned when water started falling from the sky for the first time, just as Noah had predicted. The disciples must have been amazed to learn that Jesus really had risen. But extraordinary things do happen, and when they happen, people do witness them. Someone has to be be there. There is no reason why it can’t be us. Just because life has been very different all our lives doesn’t mean we can’t witness a world transformed by a blizzard of obvious supernatural events.

People are behaving as though what we’re seeing were a momentary aberration to be followed by a return to life as it was in 2019. They get engaged, build houses, and start businesses. They buy stocks and other investments in hopes of long-term gains. Businesses send out email ads trying to sell us things we may not be able to use for very long. We plant trees we know take several years to start bearing. Vintners are putting up bottles of wine they know won’t be ready for at least 10 years. High school seniors started 4-year colleges this fall. But how much of it will pay off? What good is it to give someone a 5-year car loan today if the tribulation will be howling around both of you in November of 2021?

I have a tenant who wants a 3-year lease. I refused to do it because some people who think they hear from God are predicting extreme inflation for next year. I don’t want to be locked into x dollars per month if the market rate will be 5x in two years. I think I should have been more flexible. If the tribulation is about to start, I won’t be here to worry about inflation.

More and more, I feel that it doesn’t matter what I do to safeguard my future. I see things I want, and I think, “I shouldn’t spend the money.” Then I think, “It makes no difference at all. Go ahead.” I’m not thinking about investing. I have no interest in cancer screenings. I just can’t believe I’m going to be here very long.

I thought about writing a will, but then I thought this: most people I would want to leave wealth to are going to go in the rapture. Do I really care which child of the devil gets my property? It will be a curse to that person, regardless of who it is. Does a butterfly worry about what happens to its chrysalis?

If the end of the age is really here, terrorist rioting will increase and become as bad as it can possibly be. Conservatives may finally start taking part as aggressors, not victims. It will be part of normal life. Major wars will start. Diseases that make coronavirus look like chickenpox will cover the globe. People won’t just lack toilet paper and Lysol wipes. They’ll lack bread, canned goods, grain, and produce. They’ll eat rats, squirrels, crows, pigeons, and songbirds. They’ll eat their own pets. They’ll butcher zoo animals, like they did in Venezuela. They’ll go to parks to kill ducks and swans. They’ll trap ants for food.

I walk across parking lots now to get into stores, and I see scenes from disaster movies. I see people wearing masks. I see markers on the pavement and sidewalks, telling people where to stand. I hear creepy, insincerely cheerful recorded female voices reminding us to be nice because we’re all in this together. It’s like HAL 9000 had daughters.

The voices are always female, because psychologists who advise businesses say female voices will comfort us and not make us feel bullied or challenged. How do I know that? I know it because I’m old and smart. I don’t have to check.

Coronavirus is not a big deal, but we’re already living as though the plagues were here. God is showing us two things: diseases we can’t beat can happen, and when they do, we will respond irrationally, making things much worse than they have to be.

Coronavirus is a mild disease which appears to be vulnerable to vaccines, but what if it were like AIDS? There is no reason we can’t have a fatal airborne disease that can’t be cured and won’t let us create vaccines. It looks like coronavirus doesn’t produce symptoms in most people. There have been infectious diseases that killed the majority of their victims even with treatment, and some of those diseases are still active. They haven’t done the damage they could have because they were contained or because they’re not easy to transmit, but there is no law that says an infectious disease can’t be untreatable, unpreventable, and easily transmitted.

Imagine what America would be like if we had a real plague. What if we had an incurable disease with a 50% mortality rate, with no hope of finding a vaccine? If 200,000 deaths confined almost exclusively to people who were likely to die anyway have driven us to hoard and tyrannize, think what a real plague would do to us.

How quick we have been to give up our humanity. I’ve been taking ludicrous continuing legal education courses, and I’m required to get several hours of training in the area of technology. It’s amazing to hear the speakers talk about Zoom and cloud computing. They say many firms have discovered they make more money by staying home and avoiding nearly all in-person encounters. Our noses have been rubbed in the fact that remote communication isn’t more expensive; it’s cheaper and more efficient.

If it’s true in law, it’s true for many other businesses. It means we’re not going back to normal interaction even if coronavirus disappears. Unless there is a compelling reason for you to be among other people, it’s not going to happen. We’re making ourselves a nation of shut-ins, deliberately. It’s like we’re all turning into gamers, living on Cheetos and satisfying our need for socialization by spewing hate on 4chan.

It doesn’t take much of a threat to turn us into willing matrix residents. Our homes are turning into wombs, with ethernet-cable umbilical cords and Amazon Prime bloodstreams.

Maybe the only mentally healthy people in the future will be those whose jobs have physical components, like using shovels and handing people bags of hamburgers. If you don’t have to shower and go to work to make a living, you may have to start forcing yourself to get together with people in order to get your RDA of human contact.

The human race has a natural tendency to use technology to minimize contact. I don’t think we understood that 30 years ago, but it’s obvious now, and our overblown pandemic has exacerbated this pathological inclination.

I guess I’m off on a tangent. To get back to the subject, I know we are in a unique era unlike all previous human crises, and very few of us realize it. It makes sense that the end of the age should come now, because there doesn’t seem to be any way for us to continue as we are. I hate to use one of the left’s favorite manipulative words, but our situation is unsustainable.

I don’t know whether my impressions are right or not, but it doesn’t matter, because we’ll know by the end of the year. If coronavirus is under control, terrorist riots have stopped, and people have forgotten all about civil war, then my impressions will have been proven wrong. If I’m right, things will be much worse than they are now, and the trend will be downward.

I will not stop praying for the rapture. The quality of life for American Christians is no longer acceptable, so I would like to go home with my brothers and sisters. Even though I have peace, prosperity, good health, and fun things to do, I don’t want to hang around in a world where there is no major Christian nation left.

This must be how Jews felt before 1948.

It must seem strange to pray for the end when my life is so pleasant, but the one who makes it pleasant showed me there is a much better place.

One longs for a world in which his kind is mainstream. I think that’s understandable. If there were a movie-style matrix, then Neo would want to unplug at the end of the day and enjoy the company of other people who lived in the real world. He wouldn’t want to live forever in a place where no one understood reality or him. For me, it’s like living in Miami, where half the population can’t speak English because they have no gratitude. I used to have to use hand signals and do pantomime in order to make people understand me. Getting a haircut or ordering a meal could be a tiresome process. It’s nice to be in a place where people understand me without a lot of striving.

I don’t know what’s happening with the pandemic. If a real second wave comes, or just seems to come, I may need to get out and buy more paper towels and toilet paper. I suppose more frozen meat couldn’t hurt. Apart from these possible concerns, I don’t foresee any other practical issues.

That’s all I have. I should sign off and spend time in prayer. If things pan out the way I expect, I hope neither you nor I are here to witness it.

Newly-Minted Beef Tycoon Solves Your Problems

To answer the question I know you want to ask, yes, I have mastered the art of making beef jerky.

It’s like saying you’ve mastered the art of stirring coffee, but still.

Making jerky is extremely easy, but as is the case with many foods, you can have problems because people provide bad information.

Yes, Alton Brown is on my mind. How did you guess?

Alton Brown says to marinate jerky for 3-6 hours. I tried that. Like many tips from Alton Brown (Shun knives cough cough), it does not work. You would be surprised how long it takes marinade to get into a thin piece of beef. I made my first batch of jerky his way, and it was okay, but it was not as flavorful as store jerky. Yesterday I made a batch using beef that had been soaking for about a day, and it was very flavorful. Hand it to someone who didn’t know any better, and he would think it came from a factory.

It might actually be good to dilute the marinade or to go 12 hours. My jerky is so full of marinade flavor, it almost covers the meat taste. This morning I put a piece in my mouth while I was closing the bag, and in the few seconds I was holding it, I started to drool on myself. More than usual.

Brown also says to slice beef as thin as possible. Bad idea. When jerky is too thin, it gets too dry, it’s no fun to eat because it’s tiny and crumbly, and it takes up way too much room in the dehydrator. If slicing jerky 1/4″ thick makes a pound of beef cover three shelves, slicing it half as thick makes it take up 6. How big is your dehydrator? Do you really want to take over twice as long per ounce of jerky, and to clean everything twice?

I like 1/4″ slices. They work. When you eat a piece of jerky made from 1/4″-thick beef, you know you’re eating something. It’s not like chewing air.

I also learned that smoking the meat is a waste of time. To give Brown a little credit, he recommends liquid smoke. Real jerky manufacturers have smokers, but I did it both ways, and if there is a difference, it’s not worth the effort.

You don’t need to cook your jerky in the oven, either. Do your own safety research instead of listening to me, but my dehydrator heats to 155°, and my jerky was not raw when I took it out.

Final thing: don’t overdry your jerky. A lot of people recommend going up to 13 hours. That’s lunacy. Yesterday I went from noon until around 5 p.m. at 155°, using jerky up to 1/4″ thick, and it was dryer than it needed to be.

Here is what I recommend:

Use eye round roast. Maybe other cuts will work. This one is guaranteed.

Soak your meat for at least 12 hours.

Use liquid smoke instead of smoking.

Cut the meat at least 1/4″ thick.

Don’t bother cooking the meat before drying it.

Be very careful not to overdry the meat.

Use 1-1/3 cups of marinade per pound of beef, and marinate in a bag to make the marinade go further.

Use the same “secret” recipe everyone else uses. Here is what I used, and you can substitute ingredients.

INGREDIENTS

2/3 cup Worcestershire sauce
2/3 cup soy sauce
2 tbsp. brown sugar
2 tsp. pepper
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. Liquid Smoke
2 tsp. Thai chili sauce (not sriracha, although sriracha would work)

I think teriyaki jerky will result if you use pure soy sauce and add a bunch of fresh ginger. Just a guess, but how could it not work? If you like spicy jerky, use more chili sauce. I’ll bet you would have figured that out on your own.

There must be a thousand recipes that work just fine. Everyone pretends their recipe is astonishing and special, but they’re not. It’s extremely simple.

I don’t get Alton Brown. Is he ever right? He’s wrong about knives, jerky, and steaks. Is there ever a good reason to listen to him? I can make bad food just fine without his help. If I look to someone else for tips, obviously, I want tips that actually work. Otherwise, I waste food and my time.

I guess the answer is to use his advice, but only when it has been tested by people you can trust. Good luck finding any! People who fawn on TV chefs will defend them even when their food tastes like sawdust mixed with dog chow.

Some guy on Youtube recommends the Presto Dehydro dehydrator. He says you can buy a small one and add shelves later. I have not tried it. The small one is $40.

I have a 9-tray Excalibur I bought a long time ago, when prepping first entered the mainstream of American conservative thought. You can’t buy one now. If you go to their website, you’ll see that they’re sold out. Maybe that should concern you. Maybe God has been warning a lot of people.

If you simply buy your own jerky, you won’t spend a whole lot more, and of course, jerky is not the unique solution to food supply chain interruptions. You can buy beans, macaroni, canned fish, canned soup, protein bars, protein powder, canned milk, rice, white flour, and all sorts of other stuff. You can buy butter on sale and make ghee, which doesn’t need refrigeration. You can even buy fancy bagged bugout rations, which seem ridiculous to me. You need water and heat to make them work, and if I have water and heat, then why not make something resembling real food, for a tenth of the price?

I’m pleased with my jerky. It will last at least a year, even without oxygen-sucking packets to extend its viability. My dried apples will last years, plural. If a food crisis lasts more than a year, it means the tribulation is here, big time, so a few crisis supplies, or a garden, won’t really help.

Here’s something preppers don’t seem to talk about: human beings are resilient. We find new ways to cooperate and survive. If blue-staters manage to deprive us of stuff to keep nuclear plants going, we’ll adapt and use our endless supply of coal and oil. If they kill our cell service, we’ll build networks. If they confiscate our bank and security accounts, we’ll create our own banks and securities firms. We have the vast majority of the farmland, we have the oil and the coal, we have lots of industry (not like the 1860’s), we are much better at fighting, and we have God on our side. We even control a lot of California farmland. Unless the tribulation itself comes down on us, we should be able to keep civilization going in “Jesusland,” as Der Spiegel calls conservative America, regardless of whether there is a civil war. We may get damaging interruptions, but they would last weeks, not years. That’s my opinion at this moment.

I’ve probably said it before, but I always think of this when I think of prepper scenarios: Jews in Auschwitz had submachine guns and hand grenades. Look it up. People have ways of getting what they need when God is with them.

I have been too pessimistic about the dystopian future. Barring the complete manifestation of the tribulation, things shouldn’t be all that bad in red America. Even in the tribulation, billions of non-prepping human beings will survive 7 years. They will wish they had died, but still.

I think blue America has more to fear, and that makes sense, because they reject God more completely. They don’t produce a lot of food or oil, the police and military will break against them, they don’t know how to fight, they don’t have the kind of armament we have, and they are burdened with huge numbers of ignorant, hostile, ungovernable welfare addicts who will do nothing but complain, riot, and steal. People who live on the government nipple will be useless for fighting and government works, and they will attack the people who are actually able to get things done. Blue society may decapitate itself, as it did in Cambodia. Without competent people to organize and command, how will a new nation of mindless terrorists pose a threat to red-staters? If they were any good at anything, they wouldn’t be what they are today.

I suppose this situation would breed a new crop of blue-state conservatives, too late to do them any good. There will be a price for being a virtue-signaling poser.

Let’s say Orlando residents rise up against people in my red county and try to kill us and take what we have. First, you would have to organize that kind of rabble and get them to act in concert. Can’t be done to any significant degree. Maybe you would get occasional caravans of unintelligent, selfish, unskilled people who would be more likely to shoot each other than to harm me or my neighbors. Second, you would have to get them to drive a long way to attack. That’s not something they’re inclined to do. They’re inclined to loot stores and homes that are within walking distance, and they are inclined to prey on each other because it’s convenient and they are lazy. History proves this. Third, they would have to be able to overcome us when they arrive. So people who don’t know how to shoot would have to overcome entrenched, orderly, easily commanded, highly motivated 2A proponents, many of whom enjoy shooting scoped rifles, and many of whom are sitting on large stockpiles of ammunition.

Anyone who can kill a deer at 200 yards can kill a person at the same distance. What percentage of our modern terrorists can hit anything at 7 yards?

Think about Kyle Rittenhouse. He was up against at least two assailants with firearms, and he maimed one of them. He also killed a “man” armed with a skateboard and a third person who was attacking him. He did it quickly and easily, he didn’t harm the innocent, and he got away. That’s a picture of future encounters if America has a civil war. People who aren’t ready shouldn’t start trouble with people who are. A gun doesn’t make you a factor unless you know how to use it.

To shoot invaders on my land, I would just have to get a big screen TV box and put it in the pasture. I would wait for them to fight over it, and then they’d be easy pickings. They might even kill each other and save me the trouble.

I guarantee you, we would have a real militia in place before the Antichrist’s ad hoc troops arrived. I wouldn’t have to go it alone. I wouldn’t have to stay awake every night, peering across my land with a thermal scope in order to kill invaders before they arrived at the house. There would be patrols and watches. The sheriff and the police departments would be everywhere, helping coordinate the effort. It would be the exact opposite of the situation in blue cities, where people would be too busy looting, burning, killing, and raping to think about coordinated sorties into other areas.

There would also be large prayer meetings here, all the time. That’s the most important thing.

Life would be different for stubborn conservatives who live in places like New York and LA. They would be killed in their yards or in front of their apartment buildings, by people who see them (or pretend to see them) as thieves and traitors. Law enforcement could not save them. The neighborhoods of professional victims are too big; the supply of murderers is too abundant. Conservatives, Jews, and Christians (not fake Marxist Christians) would drown in seas of demon-controlled handout addicts. So would their children.

It would be nice to offer my property as a shelter for unprepared blue-area friends, but how would I feed them, and how would they get here? Sometimes you can’t help people even if you want to. I know a number of people who would like to hole up here. Can’t take all of them. Maybe a few, if they bring their own food. If trying to help your family just means I have to starve along with you, it’s not helpful at all.

Once the closest ones arrived, the rest would probably be up the creek.

It’s interesting to speculate about the future. I just hope God removes me before things get bad. If I’m storing up arms, ammunition, and food for people who will be left behind, fine with me. They are welcome to it as long as I’m with God. It’s a fantastic trade.

In the meantime, I enjoy my little efforts at preparing food. Hope it goes bad because I never need it, but it’s comforting to make an effort.

Give me Dried Meat, Water, and Bullets, and I can Survive Anything

My first batch of beef jerky is done. I just took it out of the dehydrator. The verdict: pass. It’s real jerky. It will work.

I used about 2 pounds of eye round. I cut off maybe an ounce of fat, and I ended up with 14.8 ounces of jerky. I thought the yield would be a lot smaller. It looks like the ratio of jerky to fresh meat is nearly 50%. The meat is slightly drier than I would like, so I think the ratio, once I get it together, will be at or above 50%. Based on a perusal of per-ounce prices of store jerky, I believe I made between 20 and 40 dollars’ worth for $15 or so, including marinade.

I’m leaving the bag open so condensation will not settle in it and make the meat wet. I think that will cause mold. I plan to close the bag up when the meat is cool.

Is it worth the effort? It doesn’t look like a giant bargain compared to the jerky I could have gotten for $20 per pound, but it looks great compared to the stuff that costs over $40 per pound.

I can get Uncle Buck’s jerky from Bass Pro for $20 per pound, and I like it a lot. On the other hand, it’s not as dry as my jerky, so I would be paying for a considerable amount of water. Wild guess: with water taken into consideration, I’ll say an Uncle Buck’s price of $25 per pound would more accurately reflect the food value I’m getting. Maybe I’m getting a 40% savings?

I may keep making it. I think I can make top-notch jerky, and a 40% savings is pretty good.

As has often been the case, I am disappointed in Alton Brown. He recommends marinating for 3-6 hours. Based on my results, let’s make that 24 hours. I went over three hours, and the flavor could be stronger. Smoking for one hour (smoke time, not including warm-up) worked fine, though. I don’t know if his Liquid Smoke idea is any good. It would allow me to skip the smoker, so that’s a big plus.

Do I really want to make jerky as well as I can? If it tastes fantastic, it will be hard to go easy on it in lean times. Maybe okay jerky is best.

I saw a How It’s Made video about making jerky. Maybe I’ll watch it again and look for tips.

I plan to keep drying apples until I can no longer stand it. They’re wonderful.

Walmart sells nuts really cheap, so I bought pecans. I guess if I bought raisins and almonds, I could make my own trail mix. Lots of calories, good shelf life, and not much weight or bulk.

I got two big jars of Hoosier Farms powdered cheddar. This is the stuff they use in things like Cheetos. I pop corn with bacon grease and put powdered cheddar on it. It’s decadent. I figure I can also use it to make mac and cheese, along with my ghee and evaporated milk.

None of this is going to be very helpful if our dystopia doesn’t include electricity. I’ll have no water. I supposed it will be made available somehow, but people would probably have to wait in long lines at distribution points, which could be impossible to reach without gasoline or diesel.

I’m putting my chips on an electrified apocalypse. A generator and diesel would run me over $50,000 for one year, and if diesel were hard to find, I would be able to do it no matter what I was willing to spend. You can’t just put a 20,000-gallon diesel tank in your yard. Not unless you’re a hard core nut. If your tank isn’t enormous, you’ll have to refuel it often, and if there is no fuel, you’ll look pretty stupid after the first tank runs out.

I have relatives (long deceased) who had natural gas on their land. They sold the rights, and in the package, they demanded to have gas piped to their house, free of charge. People like that are sitting pretty. If you live in Appalachia where there are hills, and you have gas, a clean creek, and enough land to grow food, you will be an aristocrat when Democrats destroy civilization.

Conservatives have nearly all of the oil and coal, and we have lots of refineries. We have lots of ports. Presumably, some things will still be available to us even after demon-ridden leftists extend their Tiktok-video mouth-frothing and shrieking from 30-second periods to entire days.

Tomorrow I’ll try to knock off more dried apples, and I’ll probably hit Walmart one more time. Then it’s time to sit back, pray, and hope the people who expect an imminent rapture are right. Leaving for heaven would be a lot better than sitting in my house eating disaster food and scanning the woods for “protesters” with a rifle scope.

Today, as part of my doomsday preparations, I am trying to make beef jerky.

I think I made jerky a long time ago, but I don’t remember. This time, I looked at recipes online to get started. They all look pretty much alike, so I chose one from the Food Network, figuring their lawyers would have looked it over to make sure it couldn’t cause food poisoning.

The recipe is credited to Alton Brown, a guy I don’t trust. He makes biscuits with vegetable shortening, which is odd, and he slices steaks up and serves them lukewarm. He also promoted Shun knives and claimed he used them, but now he promotes, and claims to use, another brand. So he found a great set of products, liked it so much he stocked his own kitchen, and then inexplicable abandoned them and started using something else? Real cooks don’t do things like that. If something works, you keep it. Brown had some kind of problem with the Kershaw company, the real manufacturer of fake-Damascus Shuns. Either they let him go, or the money wasn’t right, or there was a dispute. There is no way he suddenly decided another company’s products were so much better he had to adopt them without a blink.

Shuns are fragile and very expensive. If you put one in the dishwasher next to flatware, there’s a good chance it will emerge with chunks missing from the edge. He had to know he was promoting junk.

If you can’t trust a celebrity cook with regard to one thing, why should you trust him about other things? But here I am, adapting his recipe anyway.

He uses a device known as a Blo-hard 3000 to make his jerky. Wild guess: this is a cardboard box with a fan. I don’t know, but I know he likes boxes, and I find it hard to believe there’s a real product called “Blo-Hard 3000.”

Might as well Google.

I can’t find much information, but a Youtube video says Alton Brown dries beef on air conditioner filters because they give a “tougher, longer-lasting texture” than dehydrators.

I think Alton Brown is once again confirming my suspicions about him. I am not sure why I would want a tougher product, and I have a lot of confidence in my ability to make jerky that will be as dry, and therefore long-lasting, as I want. If the dehydrator doesn’t get it dry enough, which would be odd, considering what dehydrators so, I can always put the meat in the fridge, uncovered, for a day or two. That really dries things out.

I’m not going to have a bunch of dirty air filters around my house, attracting bugs. Who does that?

It looks like he and other jerky chefs do not use heat.

I bought eye round roast, which is a rubber-like product useful chiefly for braising, a cooking method that can render nearly anything edible. I have read that eye round is a top choice because it has so little tasty fat in it. Fat can go rancid, so apparently, you want to keep it out of your jerky.

Based on what Alton Brown says, as well as some Googling, I chilled the meat to firm it up, sliced off the fat, sliced the meat very thinly, and put it in the fridge in a bag of marinade. Alton Brown’s marinade contains liquid smoke, which is one more strike against him in my book. It also contains honey, which is not the most flavorful meat condiment on earth.

Here is what I’m trying:

2/3 cup Worcestershire sauce
2/3 cup soy sauce
1 shot Harvey’s Bristol Cream
2 teaspoons pepper
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 heaping teaspoon Thai chili sauce
1 tablespoon sorghum

Brown says to marinate for 3-6 hours. Once I’m done with that, I plan to smoke the meat for one hour with hickory at 200°, and then I’ll stick it in the dehydrator. The smoker should wipe out the bulk of the bacteria and mold and whatever, even if it isn’t necessary.

This pretty much has to be good. It’s smoked meat with a lot of salt, sugar, and acid added. I don’t think much can go wrong. As Jeremy Clarkson says, “How hard can it be?”

Brown says he has kept jerky for up to a year. Probably next to his Shun knives.

It would be a lot of work to dry enough beef to make a real dent in a post-election dystopic famine, but it can’t hurt. I also bought canned corned beef, so I’m not putting all my jerky in one basket.

I don’t know if jerky is cost-effective. I’m going to get nearly two pounds of jerky (pre-smoked weight), and I believe I paid $5 per pound. Adding half a bottle of Worcestershire and half a bottle of soy sauce run the price up quite a bit. Maybe a total of $15? I can weigh what comes out of the dehydrator and compare it to store prices. If it can’t be cheap, it can at least be better than factory food.

Shortage Preparation Goes Well

Today I did something really great, and I’m here to share it. I modified my apple-peeling machine and improved it tremendously. It only takes about 15 minutes, but you have to have a tap.

The world’s most popular peeler/corer is a Chinese contraption made of cast iron. They run around $25. They look like they could not possibly work, but they’re excellent. You can peel, slice, and core an apple in around 10 seconds, including putting it on the machine and taking it off.

The machine has a screw, and on the end of the screw, there is a fork. You jam your apple onto the fork and turn the screw. The screw shoves the apple toward a stainless blade with a hole in it. The core goes through the hole, the blade spiral-slices the apple, and a second attachment removes the skin.

It’s not perfect. You will usually get a core that’s cut off-center, so you will often need to cut little hard bits out of the slices. If you think that’s a big deal, spend an hour coring, slicing and peeling apples without a machine. You will sing a different tune when you’re done.

The big problem with these machines is that the stainless blades move around. They’re held in place by a single screw, so the blades can rotate when the apples hit them, shoving the core hole off to the side. The solution? Drill a second small hole in the blade beside the hole for the original screw. Drill a corresponding hole in the cast iron of the machine. Tap the hole in the cast iron and run a small screw through the blade and into the machine.

Now you have a blade held in place by one big screw and one little one. It will never move again.

I modified the machine because I’m drying apples.

People who think they hear from God are predicting food shortages. I’ve written about it before. I don’t plan to try to become self-sufficient, eating bugs and worms and whatever for the long term, but as I have said in other posts, I think it can’t hurt to have enough food for a month or two. Dried apples are high in calories, they taste great, they can be used in things like fried apple pies, and they will keep you regular. In a big way, if you overindulge.

It would be hard to get the yellow transparent apples my grandmother used to dry in Kentucky, but Granny Smiths are somewhat similar, and they make fantastic dried apples. Forgive me if I repeat myself. I am too lazy to go back over what I’ve already written. I made a batch of dried apples yesterday, and I have a bigger batch in the dehydrator. The ones I made yesterday are so good it will be hard to leave them alone.

I should learn how to make fried pies. I have an excellent, authentic Eastern Kentucky cookbook, and the recipe is probably good. If not, I can use it as a starting point and improve it.

Fried pies seem to last forever. I know they will go at least a week in a covered container.

I now have protein bars, a jug of whey protein, corned beef, beef for jerky, lots of oatmeal, a good deal of flour, extra sugar, all the caffeine-free Coke in the county (they quit making it “just until the pandemic is over”), and two big jars of grated cheese to go with my many pounds of dried pasta. I now think getting through a month will be a breeze, as long as I have electricity. I won’t stop gathering, though. I want more nuts.

Here’s hoping this all turns out to be a huge waste of time.

No Let-Up in the Forecast

Tropical Storm Eta is oppressing the Southeast. How long has it been out there? It sat on Nicaragua for days, and now it’s finally stumbling around the gulf. The NHC thinks it will be around until at least Friday!

I wouldn’t care, but I think it’s killing the cool weather that should be here now. We’re under pre-hurricane-style clouds, and the air is warm and a little stuffy.

I’m used to seeing storms get it together or vanish in a few days. This storm is defective.

I can’t help wondering if it has supernatural significance. Storms vary in duration, but this seems crazy, and God has taught me that unlikely events can have supernatural origins.

Many people thought Katrina was a message. The name means “catharsis,” and the storm did great damage to an area full of sinful, unrepentant people. It killed people by flooding, and the strange thing about that is that the dead let themselves die. They could have escaped easily, but they chose to stay home, in areas that were likely to flood. A commonly held theory says they stayed home because they thought they had to be there in order to receive their government checks. I don’t know if it’s true, but it would make sense. Leftists who are addicted to welfare suffer from something called “learned helplessness.” Things that don’t faze conservatives devastate them.

I’ve noticed this in my dealings with friends who come from government-dependent cultures. They can’t do anything. They can’t fix their cars. They don’t know how to fix their credit. They can’t do home repairs. They always need advice with regard to simple matters other people don’t consider challenges. Maybe the War on Poverty is the reason. When you’re used to sitting at home waiting for handout checks, the police, and social workers, you don’t have much motivation to become capable. If anything, you are rewarded for weakness and passivity.

“Eta” doesn’t seem to mean anything. It’s the name of a letter.

An imaginative person might say it seems like Eta is hovering over us as a sign that there is a lingering battle among supernatural beings over the election.

The other day, I said the only earthly entities that could end the election and resolve the matter for good were Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and the courts. I forgot the electors.

Electors have traditionally had the liberty to vote as they pleased. It may disturb people to read it, but when you vote in a presidential election, you’re not really voting for a candidate. You’re voting for a representative, and your vote is a strong recommendation, not an order. It’s like Congress. Because of past electoral defections, many states have passed laws making it illegal for electors to go against their mandate. Not all states have done this, and at least some of the laws have no enforcement provisions. At least one law’s enforcement provision is so weak, it would not provide much discouragement.

When leftists say they want to abolish the Electoral College, it’s not a small thing. In fact, it’s revolutionary, in the sense that they want to accomplish a leftist revolution by destroying a Constitutionally created representative body. Leftists are the Antichrist’s children, and they want revolution, not mere change. Sadly, Americans don’t hate the notion of revolution. Our country was born in a revolution, and somehow that has persuaded many of us that revolutions are good things. There are a lot of Chinese, Cuban, and Russian people who feel differently.

The more I think about it, the more I think the American Revolution was a stupid, counterproductive act that has brought curses on us. People think we wouldn’t have been free had we not rebelled. Oh, really? So we would have been put in gulags and death camps, like Canadians and Australians? I admit, Canadians and Australians have lost a lot of freedom in recent years, but they have done pretty well for most of their history.

I now believe kings are better than mindless electorates. Putting ignorant, dishonest, selfish people in voting booths is a practice that has to lead to destruction eventually. Hitler came to power in a fair election, as did Daniel Ortega. I think deposing or killing or rebelling against a monarch is something Christians should only do in the gravest of circumstances. Eighteenth-century Americans were not miserable or desperate.

America was established as a leftist enterprise. We shouldn’t be surprised if leftism increases and destroys us.

Trying to abolish the college or nullify its purpose is not much different from trying to abolish Congress. It’s a gigantic power grab intended to turn people who don’t live in blue states into slaves who lack representation in the Executive Branch.

People who hate the Electoral College should also hate the Senate. It works the same way. The House of Representatives provides representatives for each area depending on its population, and that’s how leftists think the government should work. The Senate gives Alaska and Wyoming the same number of senators as California and Texas, in order to prevent low-population states from being enslaved. If the Electoral College is evil because it gives rural citizens more power per capita than urban citizens, then the Senate is much, much worse.

Will the Senate be slated for destruction when the left is in charge? I don’t see why it should not be. It should be a pressing goal for the revolutionaries. I’m sure they would be willing to give up Hawaii’s disproportionate power in order to conquer red America.

I don’t know if it matters, because I expect Skynet–the Internet and the wireless web–to overcome and replace the world’s government. Future human beings will be like the Borg, if God doesn’t show up and prevent it. Elon Musk is even trying to hardwire IT devices into our brains. The likelihood that such devices would not be made Internet-capable is zero.

People think the election is over, but it hasn’t been held yet. It won’t be held until the electors meet. A lot of things can happen during that time. Biden could be exposed as a criminal because of his China ties, he could die, or the press could “suddenly” discover his dementia and make such a big deal out of it electors would feel justified in abandoning him. Or the left’s astounding, proven campaign of voter fraud could be exposed so thoroughly, electors would be unable to make themselves vote for Biden. Maybe electors will switch their votes simply because they dislike the man.

This is a crazy year, so expect more crazy things to happen.

Like Tropical Storm Eta, the election fight hovers over us, spoiling the atmosphere and refusing to let us rest.

Biden didn’t lose his mind during the campaign. He has not been right in the head for a while. I can’t help wondering if it’s because of his two brain surgeries and his plastic surgeries. Many experts believe there is a strong link between receiving general anaesthesia and developing dementia. Is this why Biden is a shadow of his 2018 self? Is there any possibility that the condition that gave him two aneurysms has produced other abnormalities that would explain his reckless behavior and uncontrolled outbursts? These are things I think about.

Biden has hair plugs, and he has had work done on his eyes. I don’t know what else he has had done. Plastic surgeons say he has had a facelift, and there are scars in front of his ears to prove it. He also appears to be on botox, and he is famous for his bleached smile.

Trump’s first wife claims he had a scalp reduction, but as anyone who has seen a Trump rally can tell you, he is as sharp as a tack. He may be eccentric, but he knows where he is and what’s going on, and he can talk at great length without a teleprompter.

A shocking Trump resurgence would fit in beautifully with the rest of the 2020 perfect storm. This year seems to have been designed to infuriate the Antichrist’s children. We have a mild pandemic the press has convinced us is a major crisis, and the left is using it to control and imprison people. They have also convinced them it’s Trump’s fault. We have a president leftists hate with insane fervor, for no good reason. We have a 6-3 Supreme Court, thanks to a confirmation leftists wrongly believe was illegal, and that court has ultimate jurisidiction over the election results. If Trump had won handily on election day, it would have angered leftists, and riots would have ensued, but it wouldn’t be as provocative as a false Biden victory followed by events that put Trump on top before the electors met. Such a scenario would likely plunge us into immediate, widespread chaos and violence. If we are supposed to have a future of chaos and murder, a Trump rebound makes much more sense than a relatively clean election day blowout.

Pastor Dana Coverstone had some famous dreams about this season, beginning months ago, and he said he saw foreign troops on the ground here. He said he expected food shortages, too. As far as I know, none of the things he expected have been proven impossible. They keep coming true. Can it be that he really is a prophet? He doesn’t make that claim, but he’s doing as well as a true prophet could hope to.

I’m still working on emergency food. I dug out my food dehydrator, and I dried Granny Smith apples. The problem with them is that they taste too good. It will be hard to leave them in bags until I need them. I’m not positive my first batch is as dry as it should be, so after I removed it from the dehydrator, I put the apples in a bowl in the refrigerator. If that doesn’t dry them out, nothing will. I sometimes wonder why people don’t use refrigerators as dehydrators. They seem to do a great job of dehydrating things we don’t want dehydrated.

I should make a bigger batch today. It takes 4/3 of an apple to fill a dehydrator shelf, so I’ll do the math and work it out so I don’t end up with partial loads.

My apple peeler is a great help, but the sheet metal part that slices and cores moves around. It’s held steady by one screw. I may drill and tap and add a second screw so it can’t go anywhere. Or maybe I should look for a better machine.

I don’t know if homemade jerky is cheaper or better than the store kind. I’ll find out.

I keep praying for the rapture to come fast. I believe the WAP world is so rotten, it’s time for the tribulation. I want a better atmosphere, and I want to be with people who are like me. I want to be somewhere where I know I’m at home. That will never happen on Earth.

Things to do While America Tries to Kill Itself

It has been a pretty stress-free day. I woke up at 7:00, which was way too early because I was up past midnight. I prayed and so on, and when I woke up again, it was nearly 11. Not bad!

I had a strange dream. My grandmother was still alive, and she was driving me and another grandchild to Lexington, Kentucky. She was old, but her mind was clear. Nonetheless, her driving was scary. I kept suggesting she let me drive, but she said her doctor had told her driving was good for her.

We had to stop at a government facility where everyone emptied their pockets and set the contents in baskets on conveyor belts. I didn’t put my carry piece in the basket. When I got to the other side, my stuff didn’t come through. I remember longing for the good old days when Americans could get in the car and drive from place to place without stopping to be searched. Apparently, in the world of my dream, those days were over.

I don’t know if the dream means anything. My mother generally represents the church in my dreams. Who, then, does her mother represent? Catholics? The Jews? You would think it would be a body that gave rise to the modern church.

Last night and today, I received nice packages that gave me something to do.

I don’t want a bulky, expensive grill that costs $2000 and does nothing a cheap grill won’t do, so I have a turkey fryer and a small stainless Pit Boss Grill. For a long time, I’ve had them on the patio on a cheap Home Depot table. The heat did a number on the plastic, so I ordered myself a stainless prep table. They sell them on Amazon for a little over a hundred bucks, but the Amazon jobs use thin steel, and their lower shelves and legs are galvanized, so they will rust. I decided to splurge and get a real commercial table with stainless shelves and legs. It’s very sturdy. I should be able to clean it very easily, and any rust should be negligible.

I also got a stand for my smoker. They cost a lot, but it’s no fun putting meat in a smoker that sits nearly on the floor. I now have a much more convenient height, and the stand has wings for things like BBQ tongs, sauces, and seasonings.

I had to assemble everything. Putting the smoker on the stand was quite a job.

I’ll post a photo. Yes, there are shovels on my patio. I’m still not done removing the stump from the poolside planter.

I haven’t bothered getting a real patio table. I looked around, but I didn’t see anything good on the web or at the local consignment place. I don’t want to blow $1500 on a new set. It doesn’t matter. My plastic folding table is very practical, and no one seems to mind.

Tomorrow, I expect to receive a wireless BBQ thermometer with two probes, and it should be accompanied by some other items.

I installed an induction stove a while back, but I did’t get nonstick pans, and somehow, a couple of my saucepans didn’t make the trip from Miami, so I ordered two induction-ready skillets and some replacement saucepans. I have several pans I should get rid of because they don’t cooperate with induction. Time to visit the Salvation Army, I guess.

The thermometer will make barbecuing easier.

The runup to the election has been unpleasant. I would hate to see a great president who honors God and puts his country first put out of office by witches, terrorists, a corrupt and vile press, the Chinese, and a lying, demented hack no one in his own corrupt party respects. Now that there is nothing to do but watch and pray, I feel better. If Biden wins, it won’t harm me personally. God looks after me regardless of what happens around me. Other people won’t fare so well, but they will be getting what they chose, and I don’t have the power to control their actions.

I will try not to watch the returns, and I hope I can sleep without help. I don’t want to find myself staring at the computer at 3 a.m.

I hope I won’t continue watching the news after today, apart from occasional glances. I hate reading the news. Smith Wigglesworth wouldn’t allow newspapers in his house, and he did just fine.

It’s nice to have pleasant projects to pass the time during what could have been a rough day. Hope everyone who reads this has peace. Don’t forget: our president isn’t the source of your safety and blessings, so there is no reason to despair if a man the Democrats rejected for three decades somehow wins the prize. Like all hard times, a Biden rule would be hardest on people who don’t know God.

Isn’t Democracy Wonderful?

Today I dove deeper into the sea of pre-post-election-dystopia preparation. I picked up some more panic-related items while I was shopping.

I grabbed a bottle of ghee. I don’t know how well butter will keep if left-wing terrorists manage to mess with the power, but I want to be able to make macaroni and cheese while the apocalypse dawns. I picked up 8 cans of evaporated milk, and I may go back and buy Velveeta. It may not be cheese, but it’s pretty close, and bacteria are afraid of it.

I bought oatmeal and disinfecting wipes, too. Oatmeal can be eaten raw, and sanitizing wipes are supposedly in danger of vanishing again, just as they started reappearing on shelves. I love sanitizing wipes. Being without them is not an option.

I should dry apples. I should do that whether or not the world ends. Dried apples are wonderful.

Right now, I’m smoking a chicken. I still haven’t produced a decent smoked chicken with the new smoker. I used too much of this and that. Hoping for a home run this time.

I injected it with Jim Beam, salt, and sugar, and I gave it a cautious sprinkling of my BBQ rub. I’m smoking it with citrus wood taken from the diseased trees I had to cut down. I don’t know if citrus is the best choice, but I want to see what it tastes like, and even if it’s not optimal, it will surely be good.

I have a wireless thermometer on the way so I can keep a close eye on future smokes. It has two probes. One will go in the food, and the other will measure the smoker temperature.

I guess I should have waited until tomorrow to smoke the chicken, because I still have some smoked ribs. Oh, well. I’ll manage to deal with the surplus.

Some time tomorrow night, we should have some idea whether or not America is irredeemably insane. They say mail-in ballots may delay the election results, but we’ll probably have strong evidence as to who won. I hate to think of Kamala Harris running this country. She strikes me as a nastier person than Biden, which is saying a lot, and she’s the farthest-left senator we have. She will do incredibly stupid things if she finds her way into the Oval Office. When I pray, I keep feeling very strongly that Trump is going to win. That would be wonderful. The morning of November 9, 2016, was one of the best of my life. Reliving it would be even better.

I just found out I’m better prepared than I thought. When I moved 3 years ago, I left a box of junk in the garage and ignored it. Today I looked inside and found 4,000 pistol primers, a bunch of brass, and unused pistol bullets.

Anyone who says laziness doesn’t pay is a fool.

More

The chicken did not make me happy.

I have come to the conclusion that the people who wrote the directions that came with the smoker know a lot about how much wood to use but not much about anything else. Today I set my smoker at about 225, and I cooked the chicken until it hit 172 inside. The directions said to go to 165, but it just didn’t seem right. Anyway, I was only a few minutes off, and the chicken was extremely juicy but tough.

I think I need to go back to my old ways. Go down to 200 and go 4 hours. It invariably worked. If you can pick your barbecued chicken up by the leg, it’s no good. The leg should fall off. I don’t want a chicken that fights with me.

I stuck the chicken in the oven in a covered dish at 300, and I’m giving it an hour and a half. I know I can save it.

As for the citrus wood, I don’t like it. It reminds me of the smell of burning shrubs. Next time I’m using hickory again, and I’m going to cut up some oak so it dries out for future use.

The mac and cheese was wonderful, but I think I can make it better. I think I should forget about baking it, because that breaks the cheese into chewy clods. I like the chewy clods, but I also like smooth, silky cheese sauce. Next time, I’m going to make it in a saucepan on very low heat, move it to a casserole dish, and only bake it long enough to set the bread crumb crust. It will be magnificent.

Citrus might be good for smoking fish. People say it is. It’s not for chicken. Avoid.

Scratch That off the List

Three projects are behind me now: my welding cart, smoked ribs, and mac and cheese. Well, four projects if you include my new kitchen blackboard. I put a list of things to do on it. “Paint cart” is at the top.

The ribs are fine, except I think I should decrease the salt and avoid using too much rub. The mac and cheese was gritty in spite of using starch instead of flour. I’m melting the cheese too fast. The cart is just about perfect. Here it is.

I was going to wait for the paint to cure completely before assembling it, but it looked like it would hold up, so I moved ahead.

I already put two welders on it. I need to get a bigger C25 bottle. Perhaps tomorrow.

Once I get things settled, I’ll decide where to put cord hangers.

I hate to sell my Harbor Freight Vulcan cart. It’s a great tool. I just don’t need it any more. My Eastwood carts are okay, but they’re cumbersome, and they always seem to be in the way.

I plan to build a second cart as soon as possible. The workshop has to be tamed, and welding carts are central to the plan. Today after I finished this one, I experienced a taste of my future. Some Vise Grips and other tools were lying around in the way, and I grabbed them and put them in the cart’s drawers. It felt wonderful. I couldn’t see them any more.

I should probably be building a bulletproof cart with rifle ports so I can welcome uninvited Biden supporters (undocumented guests) in November and December, but maybe they’ll be too busy killing Republicans and running over cops in their own cities to visit me out here.

I wore my MAGA hat while running errands today and yesterday, and it seemed like I couldn’t go to a single store without being accosted and congratulated on my good taste. A guy who was rounding up grocery carts told me we had to keep praying.

I have 48 cans of tuna, my own well, and enough ammunition to kill a small city. I hope the rapture comes in December. If not, I think I will still make it through January.

Jim Beam and Corn Starch Trial #1

Our nation is hurtling downward toward chaos, BLM is trying to kill cops in Philadelphia, Christians are predicting a 2020 rapture, and what am I doing? I’m smoking ribs.

I’ve been eating cheeseburgers for lunch. There is nothing wrong with that, but I don’t want to eat a big cheeseburger every day from now on. When I got my new smoker, one of my hopes was that I would be able to increase my protein and fat consumption in style, while–I told myself–reducing refined carbs. Ribs and many other smoked meats aren’t served with buns.

I’m going to try to smoke once a week. That will cover me for three dinners.

Yesterday, I went to Walmart to buy motor oil. You should know about Walmart’s oil prices. Advance Auto Parts had a sale on oil, and it would have cost me about $40 to do one change, with a dubious filter included. I bought 6 quarts of synthetic oil at Walmart yesterday for about $16, and I bought a Fram Titanium filter at Advance. My total cost will be around $28. Not bad.

Anyway, Walmart’s price for St. Louis ribs was pretty good, so I picked some up. They’re smoking right now.

I wanted to marinate them, but I don’t like wasting marinade. I like to use liquor, so a pint costs a lot. Today I tried a new strategy.

Ribs come in shrink wrap. I have giant cattle hypodermics. I made a mixture of Jim Beam, sugar, and salt, and I shot it into the rib package through a tiny hole. I tried to cover the hole with tape, but it wouldn’t stick. I should have tried a waterproof bandage. Anyhow, it was not a problem. The plastic confined the marinade close to the ribs, and none spilled. I was able to rotate the package and distribute the marinade, and I put the package on the counter, meat side down, for half an hour.

It worked really well.

I used around half a cup of liquor. I can’t think of a better use for it. I wish it wasn’t a brand promoted by Mila Kunis, a well-known proponent of the murder of unborn babies, but it will do the job.

Last year, Jim Beam (part of a Japanese company) suffered a huge warehouse fire and lost 45,000 barrels of liquor. They told the press the lost whiskey was “young.” Eerie.

Smoking meat with a rub is not hard at all. I make my rub, put the meat on a towel, apply the rub, put the meat in the smoker, shake the towel out in the yard, and put the towel in the laundry. No mess to speak of.

As for my carb intentions, things are not going as well. The other day, I was starving after a long fabricating session, and I decided to throw some old stuff together and make macaroni and cheese. I got to thinking about it, and I wondered if putting flour in the sauce was a good idea. Flour doesn’t convert completely into a gel. Even in gravy or a roux, it’s slightly gritty. It occurred to me that starch might work better.

I Googled around, and sure enough, people do use starch. I’m going to try it today. I’m also going to use a block of cheese instead of shredded, because shredded cheese has tiny cellulose fibers in it.

The trick to making ribs part of a healthy diet is to stop thinking of them as special-occasion food. Ordinarily, when I eat ribs, it’s a big deal, so I want Texas toast, beans, mac and cheese, and dessert. The key is to think of ribs as just another protein.

Clearly, I have not met that goal yet.

The Smokin-It smoker is a joy to use. Highly recommended.

Project Revived by Dose of Plasma

I got myself some more metal today, and I went back to work on the welding cart project.

This project should take a day, plus time for paint to dry. I had problems locating bolts, however, and then I decided to make the job harder than it had to be. I could have made a very simple top bracket for the bottles, but I’m making a fairly nice one that will hold TIG wire.

I had to make a plate with round recesses for the tanks. I didn’t HAVE to; I could have put something simple together from flat bar, or I could have made square or V-shaped recesses. But I wanted round recesses. That meant cutting steel.

I decided to use plasma. That meant I would need something to guide the torch. I thought a lot, and then I remembered I had several large cans of pizza sauce. They’re just the right size. If you press a torch against one and go around it, you get a cut just right for a 7″ bottle.

I won’t go into the complicated workholding solution needed to make this work, but I found a way to fasten the metal down, and I made the cuts. I left a little steel uncut to hold the plate together. Then I cut out the unnecessary steel and used the flap wheel to clean everything up.

Here is the result.

Should be perfect. I just need to weld brackets to it to attach it to the cart. I also have to drill the TIG-wire holds.

It should take half an hour to weld brackets on it, and if I don’t blow it, cutting the holes should be another 15 minutes. Then I have to add chain attachments and paint.

It’s basically done. Not hard at all.

Some carts like this have widened wheelbases under the bottles. I don’t see a need for that. You could knock it over with a car if you tried, but then you could also do that if it were 6″ wider. Short of a vehicle collision, nothing is going to topple it.

If I decide I’m wrong, adding a little steel and moving casters will be easy.

I can’t wait to get finished. The more I work on this thing, the more I realize I need it. There is clutter all over my welding table. I can barely see it. Most of that junk would be inside the tool chest if it were operational.

As soon as this thing comes together, I plan to fill it up and move one empty cart outdoors. Then I plan to get another tool chest and do the job over again, for my other MIG and my plasma cutter. Then I can sweep about 50 pounds of chips, steel filings, and grit off the workshop floor.

After that, I may actually buy a real welding table.

I’m in a frustrating position. The shop is a mess because I’m doing a project, but the finished project is needed to conquer the mess.

The pizza sauce can was not harmed. Thank God for that. That stuff is gold.

I Have a Panic HOUSE

Today I am having my roof fixed. I’m paying $1000 for something I could probably do myself, but I am not interested in rolling off the roof and becoming a permanent yard ornament. I’m also not excited about having my ceiling fall because I didn’t know how to do roofing correctly.

I wanted to put blinds in my former dining room before the roofers showed up. Why? Because it’s a workshop/gun room now. I have a lot of ammunition in that room, and anyone looking into a window would know what it was. These days, ammunition is like gold. You can buy it, but if it’s a popular caliber, you’re likely to shell out three times what it cost last year.

Roofing companies are a top resource for released prison inmates. If you can’t get a job anywhere else, a roofer will probably take a chance on you. Good information to have, if you’re a homeowner or, perhaps more importantly, a homeowner’s wife or daughter. The thought of an electrician or plumber seeing my stuff doesn’t concern me all that much. Roofers are different.

Sadly, I signed a contract before buying blinds, and I didn’t think I had time to get them installed before the roofers showed up, so I didn’t do anything.

Today the roofers showed up without warning, so moving my ammunition out of sight, one container at a time, was not an option. Someone was looking out for me, however, because I had my ammunition loaded on a wheeled shelf unit. I rolled it into a hallway, and I was all set.

I should have bought these shelves a lot sooner. I cheaped out at first. I bought plastic shelves from Home Depot. I wrote about this a couple of days ago. They run $40 each, and when you overload them, they bend. Mine bent. The shelves I have now are fancy chromed Seville Classics jobs from Amazon. I have two units. One is mostly dedicated to ammunition. The other is for reloading components and other items. I have hundreds of pounds on the first one, and it’s not sagging at all. Wish I could say the same of myself.

I moved one of my plastic shelves to the laundry room, where it has become my paranoia storage area.

I went to Walmart yesterday for dishwashing powder and salt, and I bought a big, heavy bag of jasmine rice. I also picked up 4 pounds of great northern beans, canned salmon, two large jars of Skippy, and 6 pounds of pasta. This is a lot of food. One person could probably go a month on it. I also have 6 gallon cans of Stanislaus pizza sauce.

You would think a long-term food supply would take up a lot of room and cost a lot of money, but you would be wrong. My shelf unit is maybe 25% full. My total bill at Walmart was around $80, and I bought a lot of things unrelated to preparation.

I plan to add more rice and maybe some different beans. I have 48 cans of tuna on the way. I want to dry apples. When you’re from Appalachia, not having dried apples is uncivilized. Ordinarily, drying apples is a pain because of bugs, but I have a screened-in pool, so no flies.

I checked into generators. Not a great option, unfortunately. I would have to spend close to $20,000 to get a whole-house rig that would cost me $5 per hour to run. That’s about $3600 per month for electricity, assuming diesel would even be available, and the price would go way up in a crisis. Unless you have your own natural gas well or hydroelectric plant, I think you can pretty well expect to do without power in a hard core prepper scenario. Maybe you can run your laptop off solar panels.

I wonder if people are buying manual pumps for their wells.

There is zero fresh water near me, unless you count swampy ponds.

I suppose I’ll have to hope we still have power during the civil war.

The Internet says my power company uses a mix of coal, uranium, “biomass,” and natural gas. What is “biomass”? Chicken manure, maybe? Is there anything chicken manure can’t do?

Let’s see. Coal comes from the South, so that may still be available after the North turns on us. Natural gas comes from the South. I would guess that biomass comes from the South. Would we still have nuclear power? The plants are in-state, but would we be able to get uranium? Maybe the Chinese would sell it to us on Alibaba or Banggood.

There is a lot of oil in Jesus-friendly areas, and there are also many refineries. That’s good.

If you would like to dry your own apples, I have the ultimate tip. Spend $25 on an apple peeler. They really work. You can core, peel, and slice an apple in 5 seconds. I should go get apples today. You can dry them by setting them on a window screen.

I don’t like factory dried apples, because they put a chemical on them to keep them white. It kills the flavor. To get the real flavor of dried apples, you need to avoid that stuff. Real dried apples taste like apple butter. Factory apples taste like air.

The future is uncertain. Are we looking at a few weeks of pro-Biden terrorist riots followed by a crackdown and resumed calm, will we have a full-blown civil war complete with drawn borders, or will we simply move into an Israel-type situation in which terrorism is a normal part of daily life? Actually, we’re already in that situation, except that the acts of terrorism committed here haven’t been as serious as the ones Israelis face.

A full-blown civil war with new borders would be a catastrophe, because leftists would freeze or simply steal the bank and security accounts of conservatives and centrists, and they would also cut off our access to phones, the Internet, and credit. Leftists would probably be massacred routinely due to their inferior capacity for violence. They’re pretty good at throwing bottles of pee, but they would do poorly while trying to familiarize themselves with firearms, camouflage, tactics, and so on. Jesus people have been shooting, hunting, and serving in the military for centuries.

My hat is off to people who think they can do well after a total breakdown of society. It would be very hard to prepare sufficiently well to guarantee that. I figure it’s realistic to prepare for a bad month or two, tops, and I see no hope of providing my own electricity over long periods. I will have to bank on a future in which companies in my area adapt and continue producing power.

Should I cut some firewood? Arrgh. Anything but that.

In my area, I would probably need wood for maybe 45 days. That’s a lot of wood. To prepare it, I would need to create huge snake-infested piles which would eventually attract termites and rot.

I have a lot of downed wood already. Maybe I should just wait and see what happens. I can cut it into firewood if I have to. I was going to burn it, but maybe it has value.

In any case, there is no possibility my ammunition will get the roofers excited today.