Food Poisoning Recall List - Check Your Storage

There is a serious food contamination alert. People can die from it, or become very ill from eating the contaminated food. 

This update on the food recall is written October 11, 2012. The list on this post still applies, but I got on an email notification list and have been getting hundreds of additional foods that have been recalled. The majority of these additional recalled foods are highly processed desserts and snack foods. 

The FDA site should have some additional recalled foods on it. Eating highly processed foods is not that great just because of the preservatives and other chemicals in them. Now they can make you sick or die from food poisoning as well. I find the huge list of recalled foods to check for to be too much work to check. My approach to this is to stop eating any desserts or snacks that I don't make myself. If you are overwhelmed by the immensity of the number of recalled foods to watch out for, you may wish to only eat homemade snacks and desserts for a while, as well.

I am giving my readers a list of foods that have been recalled due to a salmonella contamination. The largest group of items on this list are peanut butter and things made with it, but there are also other nuts and even tahini.

The original source of the contamination was a wholesale company that sells peanut butter by the barrel to other manufacturers who process it and put their own labels on it. Many of the labels are ones that might be found in health food stores.

You need to read the list and make certain that none of your food storage or everyday foods is on the list.

Here is a link to a site that has the list of contaminated foods:

http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/food-poisoning/news/20120926/peanut-butter-recall-expanded

Here is the Food and Drug Administration's site for recalled items. 

http://www.fda.gov/AJAX/All/default.htm?Label=All%20Recalls

It has a lot more on it than the peanut butter, almond butter, tahini recall. You might want to print it out and examine your food storage and carry it with you on shopping trips. 

The length of this list is daunting to me. Since I already looked at the other list, I also know that this list does not go into adequate detail and items on the other list are not on this one. That makes me wonder what else is left off of this list.

I am going to include a link to the Center for Disease Control site for you here also. I hope that one has recalled items that are not on the FDA site. 
http://www.cdc.gov/salmonella/bredeney-09-12/index.html

Here is a link to different types of food poisonings by year - there are a lot more of them than this one for 2012.
www.cdc.gov/salmonella/bredeney-09-12/index.html

Here is the CDC "advice to consumers, etc.":

Advice to Consumers, Retailers, and Others

Contaminated peanut butter and other products containing nuts and seeds   [PDF - 5 pages] may make people sick.

• Based on available information, CDC recommends that consumers do not eat recalled peanut butter and other products containing nuts and seeds and dispose of any remaining jars of these products in the home or return the jars to the place of purchase.
  • This is especially important for children under the age of 5 years, older adults, and people with weak immune systems.
• Persons who think they might have become ill from eating possibly contaminated peanut butter or other products containing nuts and seeds should consult their health care providers.
  • Symptoms include:
    • Diarrhea, fever, and abdominal cramps 12 to 72 hours after infection.
    • The illness usually lasts 4 to 7 days, and most persons recover without treatment.
    • See Signs and Symptoms for more information.

Contaminated peanut butter and other products containing nuts and seeds may still be in consumers' homes or available for sale on the internet.

Here are the signs and symptoms of this type of salmonella illness:

Signs & Symptoms

Most persons infected with Salmonella bacteria develop diarrhea, fever, and abdominal cramps 12 to 72 hours after infection. The illness usually lasts 4 to 7 days, and most persons recover without treatment. However, in some persons, the diarrhea may be so severe that the patient needs to be hospitalized. Salmonella infection may spread from the intestines to the bloodstream and then to other body sites and can cause death unless the person is treated promptly with antibiotics. Older adults, infants, and those with impaired immune systems are more likely to have a severe illness from Salmonella infection. More information about Salmonella, and steps people can take to reduce their risk of infection with Salmonella in general, can be found on the CDC Salmonella Web Page and the CDC Vital Signs Web Page.

You can also get food borne illnesses from your food at home. It is a good idea to read more about how to prevent this by using good food handling techniques and cleanliness. 


I will not post this weekend, but will be back with a new post on Monday, October 1.

Grinding Your Own Oats For Diarrhea, Constipation, Etc. During Emergencies

If you have read many of my posts you already know that I believe that part of emergency preparedness should include the medicinal use of herbs. I don't think this will work if you only stash a book at the back of your preparedness storage and leave it there.

Medical care is very difficult to come by in most emergencies, especially long term ones. If you are serious about tasking care of yourself and your loved ones during a time when regular medical care is not available, you must read about it, collect the herbs and seeds, know how to grow them and how to use them. This is not something that can happen overnight.

You do not need to think about performing brain surgery in your spare time to practice some home medical care with herbs. If you learn what herbs will take care of common ailments and how to prepare the herbs for use, that will be a big step toward your preparedness.

One way that you can get in practice is to handle small illnesses that you would ordinarily go to the local drugstore for. You can also make some of your own toiletries and cosmetics. Many of the skills required for toiletries and cosmetics are the same ones you will need to take care of illness when you can't get medical care.

I have already posted on the use of oats for many digestive problems. In some of these posts I also mentioned that oat grass is very good for animals and is the first thing they look for when they are not feeling well. I grow oat grass and have it available for my cats whenever they want it. They usually eat it daily.

When my cats or I are having more trouble with stomach or almost any kind of digestive upset including diarrhea, I use old fashioned rolled oats ground to a fine powder. It is eaten raw. 

When I use it myself, I just lick the tip of a finger and dip it into the oat powder and lick it off. It is best to slowly swallow it with a lot of saliva. Pause a little between fingertips full of the oat powder. This lets it go slowly and gently into your system. I usually experience relief within a few minutes, often much less than twenty minutes.

When I give the oat powder to my cats I either take a small pinch between finger and thumb and drop it on the cat's tongue or pull out their lower lip and drop it in there. Once your cat sees how much better they feel from eating oat powder, they will usually lick it off of you hand when you offer it to them. My older one does this and meows for it when he feels bad.

I just got a new thing that is wonderful for grinding oat powder. It is a little ceramic bowl with ridges cut into the inside of the bowl. It comes with a pestle that is made of very dense wood. I  ground oat powder in it for my cat. It really grinds it fast. It is much faster than other methods that I have used. 

If you are serious about taking care of your medical needs in an emergency you need to have a way to grind up your herbs and other things like oats. You need to be able to do it without electricity. That means it may be a good idea to have something like this item I just described, or a mortar and pestle. 

You can find something similar in Mexican food stores. It is usually made from granite and looks like a large mortar and pestle. They occasionally carry a larger version that is used for grinding grain. 

I have ground stuff on the sidewalk or curb with a rock or used two rocks from the beach. You can do the same thing, but if that is your plan, it would be a good idea to go get it and put it with your preparedness supplies as soon as possible. 

You might even want to start using it now. There is a little bit of a learning curve on grinding things in a mortar and pestle. It would probably not be good to take a couple of days to grind up something to treat an illness during an emergency. 

Somebody I know did this for digestive problems. It actually took that long to grind up oats. Once you know how, it can be done in a few minutes. The practice now could be very valuable in an emergency.

Avoid Appetite Fatigue - "Gift Wrapped" Food For Everyday And Emergencies

I just commented on another survival or prepper blog. They were talking about food fatigue from eating the same thing all the time. I am probably not one of those "picky eaters" who die young that were mentioned in that blog post. :-)

I have been through too many bad times where I did not have much choice or variety in what I ate. It is a lot easier to take the same food if you vary it, however. I already posted on the importance of having spices and herbs in your food storage for this reason.

During one of my difficult times, I had not much else to eat besides rice. I saved my pennies to buy one bottle of spice and then another, so that I could make the rice taste different. 

I also learned to do urban foraging. I found all kinds of fruit trees and bushes even in shopping centers where the fruit was left rotting on the ground. I always asked before helping myself. 

I was often told that the owners of the fruit were not aware that it was edible! lol. I sometimes gave them a taste of the fruit as a thank you. Other times I cooked it and gave them some.

Many people who had not been aware that the fruit was edible did not want to harvest it even when they knew it was edible, because they thought it was too much trouble.

I already posted about ways to vary your food by how you prepare it. It is possible to even make it taste quite different by using another way of preparing it. An example that I used was crispy rice. I would spread it out on a sheet or flat pan and slightly burn it, not black just brown. That would give it a nutty taste and a nice crunchiness. 

In the comment on the other blog I mentioned something that I have not posted about here. I have mentioned it, however. I like to collect recipes that "package" foods in special ways. 

This is probably due to some of my hard times when I did not have much variety in my diet. I still especially enjoy different food packaging. Tortillas are not a new thing to me because I grew up in California where they were common.

I usually include pita bread in with tortillas, but they do taste different and are made differently as well. You can use the same fillings as you do with tortillas. I like to use Middle Eastern fillings, condiments and spices for variety some of the time. 

Naan, or Persian flat bread is very easy to make and you can use nothing but flour and water to make it. You can even cook it in without oil, if you have to. A small amount of water in the pan can help to reduce burning.

Pot pies were not new during my lean times either. I just got more creative about what I put in them. You can even use them for dessert. Rice and fruit ended up as pot pies when I didn't have much else to eat.

Egg rolls and other dim sum are pleasant ways to gift wrap food and make it special. There are some wraps in Asian stores that do not need refrigeration to store. These would be very good for storage foods.

I also make my own little pies that are similar to pop tarts. I make them thin so they don't fall apart easily and defrost quickly when frozen. They are good for food storage in a freezer and are very handy for busy times without a particular emergency. 

There are quite a few other gift wraps that I like to use for food, but these ideas should be good enough to get you started watching for more of your own favorites.

Celebration Of The 300th Post On This Blog

Monday I reached my magical number of 300 posts on this blog. I decided a little while back that once I reached this number, I would give myself a break and reduce the number of posts that I do on here to five a week or less. 

I intend to try five and see what happens for a little bit and then decide from that whether I want to keep doing that many. One of the things that I intend to watch when I drop to five posts a week is what Google does. 

Google sends out "bots" or "spiders", which are automated programs that catalog information out on the internet and put it into a format that is convenient for search engines to use when they answer queries.

When you enter something into a search engine that you want to find, you are usually given the results of what the spiders found.

The Google spiders seem to have grown very fond of my blog. I can tell by the statistics about what searches are sent to my blog. I believe my blog has become the default answer for weird queries that Google doesn't know what else to do with. It is like, "It's weird and we don't know what to do with this question, so we'll send it to yvonnessilverlinings.blogspot.com.


Many people who end up on my blog with a weird search engine query come back to look at it some more. Thank you Google, and Google spiders.

I did not post this yesterday, because I was in the middle of telling about the school for spiritual gifts. That is very dear to my heart, and this had to wait. However, the 300th post published does rate some cheers, a cuppa choco DE and a couple of good cat hugs.

I also treated myself to some fluffy pajama bottoms on sale at Wal Mart. They are turquoise and have snowflakes and feel like wearing a warm cloud. I also got a nice piece of black fluffy material to make a top to go with it. I'm using the part cut off from hemming the bottom to trim the top to match. That satisfies my matchy-poo urges.

Anyway. I am going to take a little vacation and cut back and take weekends off from posting here. I will probably use the time to start at least one other blog. I think I want to write one about the school for spiritual gifts and a place to live in that goes with it. It will be a good place for preppers.

I used to write ten blogs quite few years ago. I gave it up because of constant hacker attacks. Google seems to defend this one much better than AOL did. 

It is pretty likely that I will try out some other blogs as well. The next most likely one is one about my cats. They are always doing cute stuff and they seem to be at least resigned to being photographed. They do tricks and say some recognizable words. They say some  words that are pretty hard to understand, but I mostly figure them out eventually. I have recorded a few of their words already and may see if I can learn enough (ick) techy stuff to share them on a blog.

TEOTAWKI Has Arrived

One of the things that you need to do to be prepared for emergencies is find out that an emergency is coming as early as possible. There are many emergencies that involve getting out of the way, or evacuating. 

If you are prepared for emergencies, you will have a go bag, or bug out bag. This bag will be packed with your absolute essentials and will be easy to grab and head out the door when you know that an emergency requiring evacuation is coming.

Some emergencies do not require evacuation. Many TEOTAWKI (The End Of The World As We Know It), emergencies do not require immediate evacuation, or evacuation at all.

If you live in the United States, you are already in TEOTAWKI. If you do not live in the United States, you will be affected, but maybe not as soon or as much. If you do not live in the United States, it is much as if a very large tree is getting ready to fall and you are in the way. I am sort of saying, "Timberrr!" 

Since I live in the United States, it is a little odd to be saying, "Timber!" when it is my tree that is falling. I live in Alaska, though, so it might not count. :-p

It is really peculiar that most Americans are going about their lives as though nothing of importance has happened. I am also going about my business, but not as if nothing important has happened. I am going about my business nervously. :-p

The source of this particular TEOTAWKI is China. People outside of the United States read international news and pay more attention than most Americans do. This means that it is probably news to most Americans that our money has just been trashed by China.

China announced a few days ago that it will now sell oil to any country that wants it in their own currency. That means the status of the American dollar as the world reserve currency is dead. 

The reason China can do this is because Russia and China just announced that they are doing business now. Russia will now proceed to allow China to buy as much oil as it wants. That means that China has unlimited oil to sell. 

By offering to sell oil in the money of the country buying the oil, the country buying is getting a steal of a deal. Probably nobody will be able to resist a deal like that.

This means that the United States dollar will plummet. It will be harder and harder to buy anything from other countries. 

The United States buys more natural resources than any other country, except maybe China. The USA will probably be buying a lot less stuff from other countries as the dollar shrinks. 

Wal Mart will get expen$ive. Other stores will get more expen$ive. The USA depends a lot on imports to keep going. Even our agriculture depends a lot on importing fertilizer and other necessities to grow our food, and food for a lot of the rest of the world.

The standard of living of most people or perhaps all but our 1%, will have to become drastically lower as a result of all of these repercussions. Not having international reserve currency status will have the effect of making a lot of our national debt come due. 

I have been paying more attention to things happening in the rest of the world, than most Americans. I am aware of my ignorance in world affairs, but I do know enough to realize that TEOTAWKI is already here. I hope that yelling, "Timberr! will help my readers to prepare for an emergency that is here, even if we don't understand it yet.

A School For Developing Spiritual Gifts

A remote area free of nearby power plants is the best sort of location for a school for developing spiritual gifts. I mentioned this in the post yesterday.

It is difficult both for the student who is developing spiritual gifts, and others nearby, to have batteries draining, fluorescent lights exploding, and power failures going on. The simplest way to avoid all of this is to avoid the batteries, fluorescent light tubes, and power plants while in the wobbly, training wheels stages of spiritual gifts development.

I hope to have wealthy individuals as early students. I hope that these wealthy individuals will pay enough for their training that it will enable people who can not pay anything to attend.

I hope that every country in the world will eventually send students to the school to develop their spiritual gifts. It would be nice if these students would be willing and able to go home and teach more people to do the same thing.

It would be helpful to have people of different religions and other beliefs to come together to work out ethics and guidelines for training, development and use of spiritual gifts. 

Once a person begins using their spiritual gifts they are much like a very strong man. I knew a very strong man who told me what it was like. 

He said that he had to always be aware of the difference between his strength and others. He had to be careful not to hurt others by careless use of his strength. It is the same way with spiritual gifts. You have to be careful not to hurt others who are not using their spiritual gifts yet.

Part of the work in a school for developing spiritual gifts would be finding ways to deal with others who are not using their spiritual gifts. It may take quite a while for the world to get used to having people in it, who are using their spiritual gifts in public and as part of every day living.

It may even take a while for a lot of people to even get used to the existence of spiritual gifts in others, and in themselves.  A school for developing spiritual gifts could need to spend a lot of time on the last mentioned problem. 

It can be hard to accept that little old you, can do fancy things involving spiritual gifts. You can feel something along the lines of, "Who am I to be doing these things?" 

We all have spiritual gifts that are meant to be used. We have them for a reason and we need to start using them. A school for developing spiritual gifts would be a good start on that process.

Moving Mountains Spiritual Gift - Recognizing It

My last post did not say anything about how to recognize the possibility that you might have the moving large objects spiritual gift. That is because it might make you a little nervous to know. I think you should be more nervous not to know.

One of the earliest signs of the existence of this spiritual gift is draining batteries. Watch batteries are usually the first to go. You may have a brand new battery in your watch or a brand new watch with a brand new battery. The watch goes dead. 

You will probably blame the store you got it from. If you take it back, they may be nice and give you a new watch or battery, because when they test it, the battery will be dead, very dead.

After you have a run in with a few watch batteries, you may begin to suspect that you have something to do with them going dead. It helps if you use a watchband that keeps the watch from touching your skin. 

If you can't find one, it is easy to make your own with velcro or tape and loop fasteners. Just run one part of the fuzzy soft part of the velcro through both watchband holders on the watch so that it goes under the watch and back out. You just attach a small amount of the hook part of the velcro to the end of the fuzzy part to fasten it.

Once you start draining watch batteries, you get bigger stuff going dead. Car batteries are the most common next thing. Once you get to this stage, you should pray a lot, if that is your kind of thing. If it isn't your sort of thing, do your nearest substitute.

When you get to the car battery stage, you can lay hands on the car and get it to go again. This often works on cars that you didn't drain the battery. If you are a praying type, this makes the process work much better. If you believe in Gd I think you should always pray at these times.

Once you graduate to car batteries, you should be able to exercise some control over draining batteries and be able to consciously decide to stop draining. 

The next step, or sometimes it happens at the same time as the batteries, is electric power or lights. Something is going on inside your head that can be harmful, unless it is tended to. It is usually instinctive for an earth mover spiritual gift user to protect themself by doing something with a sort of energy build up that gets out of control. 

This excess energy is usually dumped suddenly into a light bulb or tube. Fluorescent tubes are the most common. This sudden dumping of energy usually results in an exploding fluorescent tube. 

If you get a sudden funny feeling in your head that is not like a headache and actually feels as if your head is going to explode, pick a fluorescent tube and put the energy there. You need to do this so you will not hurt yourself with the energy. It could kill you. Pick one that is away from people and try to direct the energy in a direction away from people. The tube will explode away from people when you do that.

You can scream or yell and look toward the tube that is going to explode, to give people a little warning. Do this right before it goes and nobody will notice that you screamed before it went.

The next phase will usually be electric power. Lights will start flickering when you feel very strong emotion. You need to start doing meditation or other methods of remaining calm under stress. If you don't learn how to stay calm, you are going to cause some power failures.

It is a mystery why this battery draining, etc. comes with the moving large objects spiritual gift, but it does. Somewhere along in there, you will find that you can begin to make things hanging on the wall wobble and fall down. 

Most people start with small objects first. Once you get going, you can move larger and larger things. 

As soon as you suspect that you are the cause of batteries being drained, you need to do something to protect yourself. Even in the earliest stages you are dealing with enormous amounts of energy. I call this energy "grace", because that is my frame of reference for it. Call it whatever you want.

You need to keep yourself from getting an overload of the energy, or grace. If you lose control of it, the energy can literally cause you to burst into flames. This is called "spontaneous combustion". This is what happened to Thomas Merton. 

The easiest way to protect yourself is to pray, or your nearest equivalent, and ask for help handling this energy. For people who believe in Gd, this means asking Gd to take over and take in the excess energy when there is more than you can handle. I tell people who do not believe in Gd different ways of doing it once I understand their frame of reference for their beliefs. If this spiritual gift is kicking in, then you need to figure out your substitute for praying.

It is also possible for someone who is experienced in dealing with this kind of energy and moving large objects spiritual gift, to help newbies. You can act as a sort of circuit breaker and do the praying for them. I think this is the safest way to avoid spontaneous combustion.

I also think that it would be best for people who are working hard on developing their spiritual gifts to be in a remote area without power plants nearby. It can save a lot of wear and tear on you, others, and the power grid.

I hope to start a school for spiritual gifts located in a remote area. I believe that the moving large objects, or moving mountains, spiritual gift could be used to earn large amounts of money for this purpose.  I wish to post tomorrow on what the school for spiritual gifts might be like.

Spiritual Earth Moving

Yesterday I mentioned that I would post about the moving large things spiritual gift. Some Christians would say this is not a spiritual gift, but Jesus said that if one has faith the size of a mustard seed one can move mountains. I'd say that he was giving his approval of that particular form of earth moving activity as a spiritual gift. 

Christians are the group I have considered most likely to want to burn other people at the stake for using their spiritual gifts. I don't think all Christians would do that, but there are some that I would be pretty worried about in that department.

Icebergs are not mountains, but some of them are about the same size as mountains or larger and I think we have a much more immediate need to move icebergs than we do mountains. Therefore I think we should start moving icebergs first.

People have already talked about using tug boats to tow icebergs to areas that need the water. Moving the icebergs using spiritual gifts has several advantages over using tug boats. 

• It is less dangerous for tug boat crews and other water traffic.
• It does not use precious fuel.
• It is cheaper, depending. :-)
• It does not waste a lot of water from the melting of the iceberg as it is towed.
• It does not require the iceberg to be blown up or cut up.
• It does not require further transport on land.
• It would be a good beginning for PR on the use of spiritual gifts.

The use of spiritual gifts for this iceberg delivery purpose has a few disadvantages.

• The first few people to do this could be burnt at the stake.
• Bilderbergs might put a contract out on the first few people to do this.
• The use of spiritual gifts has not been tested in public a lot recently and thinking of the first two disadvantages could cause problems for someone trying to use this spiritual gift.
• Success with such a project might make the spiritual gift user want to place large objects on papparazzi or their equipment. Or both. :-p

Maybe you have the spiritual earth mover gift. If so we need you out there using it. You don't have to go first. You can just practice in private and start up after it is safer to use it in public.

Once there are enough people who can use this spiritual gift, I believe it will be possible for a group effort to actually move the planet to dodge speeding asteroids on a collision course and especially bad coronal mass ejections from the sun. This gift could be a real collective bacon saver for the human race, so we need it a lot.

Death By Chocolate Recipe for Chocaholics

I posted last night about a Bible Codes site. It informed me that there is going to be a war this year. I never did find out whether it will be with nuclear weapons or not. I think that program on the site I was using was not so good. It kept repeating information on searches no matter what the search was about. That seems a little fishy to me.

There are some other good Bible Code sites that you have to pay for a program and learn how to use them. They are not necessarily easy. For one thing searches have to be input in Hebrew. They have translators included, but you have to use a dictionary for terms, etc. I prefer to be lazy as much as possible. I think I will do that work anyway, but not right now.

I have a lot to do. I have a new storage idea that requires rearranging my entire apartment. That isn't easy any time, but it will be harder since I haven't completely recovered from falling recently.

I have to revamp my old recipes because I have entirely changed my diet for health reasons. I have a lot of new recipes to test. One of those is making my own tahini. I have not made hummus and I want to try that with homemade tahini.

One of the new recipes is not very healthy. It is for Mississippi Mud cake. Cake is bad enough, but getting Mississippi Mud into a cake is much much worse. However, it is really good. "Man does not live by bread alone." I think it should be okay to indulge in Mississippi Mud cake once a year or so.

The recipe for my annual cream puffs is already posted on this site near the beginning of the posts. I think I will share the recipe for Mississippi Mud cake with you as well. That way we can all die happy together. :-)

Mississippi Mud Cake

by Reeni

Prep Time: 30 minutes
Cook Time: 35 minutes

---

Mississippi mud cake starts with a rich chocolate cake topped with layers of marshmallow fluff, chocolate ganache, chopped nuts and coconut flakes.

Ingredients (1 (9x13) cake)

Cake:

·        1/2 cup Dutch-process cocoa

·        1 cup hot water

·        2 cups (8 1/2 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour

·        2 cups (14 ounces) sugar

·        1 teaspoon baking soda

·        1/2 teaspoon salt

·        1 teaspoon espresso powder

·        1/2 cup (4 ounces) sour cream

·        2 eggs

·        1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Topping:

·        2 cups (11 ounces) marshmallow fluff or marshmallow creme

·        1 cup (6 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips or chopped semisweet or bittersweet chocolate

·        1/2 cup (4 ounces) heavy cream

·        1 cup diced, toasted pecans or walnuts

·        1 cup coconut, optional

For Serving:

·        freshly whipped cream or vanilla ice cream

·        maraschino cherries

Powered by Recipage

http://www.cinnamonspiceandeverythingnice.com/recipe-index/?recipe_id=6032448  This is the hazardous site that it came from. She likes horrible unhealthy stuff like bacon and sour cream and sugar. 

I was going to post about the moving large objects or small ones spiritual gift. I guess I can do that tomorrow. I think it would be good to use that one to move icebergs. There will be a lot of call for that as Antarctica and the Arctic melt and fall into the ocean in very large pieces. Other places could put all of that clean water to much better use than letting ships play dodge-the-icebergs. 

People could get a lot of clean drinking water out of it and there would be plenty left over for agriculture. Whoever goes first with that will probably get to play dodge-the-Bilderbergs to stay alive. It will seriously interfere with the Bilderberg plans to kill the other 99% of us off. I really don't think we should let them do that.

We can kill ourselves in a much more fun way with Mississippi Mud cakes. I don't like bacon, but that'll work too.

The Bible Codes And Your Survival

A book was published a while back, called the Bible Codes. It caused quite a sensation because it was discovered that using skip codes to look up things in the Bible, the death of President Kennedy and the name of his assassin were in there. These could only be found at the time by using old original texts made into computer programs. 

I investigated a site that has one of the Bible Code programs online that you can use for free. That is why my post is late tonight. I got lost and didn't come up for air until it was time to publish today's blog post. I usually have some extras ready, but not today. I already published some while I was working on the site.

Something that I found on the site by using it was quite relevant to this preparedness blog. It seems to be saying that we will get war this year. I am not sure whether this is particularly significant or not since we always have war somewhere. That question is one that I have been pursuing an answer to.

I discovered that my name is to be found repeatedly through the Bible. That really got my attention. I know that I was in the mind of my Creator before my spirit came to my bones in the womb of my mother, but the parts of the Bible that mention my name were written a lot before that.

This information seems relevant to people who do not believe in any Religion or who have a different Holy Book. Many events throughout history are to be found in the Bible Codes. It is always helpful to get a little advance warning about information necessary to survival and historical events are part of that. Historical events have a way of making it hard for some people to survive them. Any way of knowing about one of these ahead of time might help one's survival.

I know I have been posting on spiritual gifts and how to recognize them. This sort of applies. One of the spiritual gifts is being able to know about events before they happen. This spiritual gift is called prophecy. Whatever method you use to give a heads up on coming events that will affect you and others is good. I think it is still prophecy if you use Bible Codes. You might try out some free Bible Codes sites to see if it works for you. It could be a way to get going on your spiritual gift of prophecy.

Here is a link that is kind of technical for the average person, but if you are any kind of math or science buff, you may really like it: http://www.research-systems.com/codes/mathcode-web.pdf

It deals with the Torah, specifically, but since it was stolen from the Hebrews and used in the Bible, I consider them the same. My apologies to Hebrews.

I am not a math buff, so I have taken the word of one who is, and find the results to be beautiful and astounding.

Here is a site that I have been examining and using that allows the free use of one of the Bible code software programs:
http://www.biblecodewisdom.com/

This is the one where I found the mention of war this year. I am still working to find out whether this program will let me know whether this is a war of particular significance.

In case you want to find the same information on this program, you need to put this year in as words because the program will not accept numbers. I did it as two thousand twelve. I'm going to find out whether it is going to be WWIII, if that is possible.

My Personal Jihad - This Blog

I don't exactly try to hide the fact that I write this blog for my own spiritual reasons. The more personal part of my reasons for writing it is that it pains me to think of people dying for lack of some simple knowledge, like how to make a go bag or bug out bag.

I do not think that I can personally rescue very many people from disasters either near me or far away. This blog is a way of extending my reach, in a way, to help more people. 

I do not know everything you need to know to prepare to survive any or all kinds of disasters. I have worked with all my might to find out more than I already knew and find people and sites to tell you more than I know.

This has been going on almost every day for close to a year. I don't think it hurts to cover the same material again occasionally. One can have new insights to share, or learn new things to pass on. I do think the value of repetition is limited on this sort of material, however.

This blog currently contains 295 published posts. I believe that about 300 will be plenty of material for those interested to find what they need. Once I reach 300 posts published, I plan to cut back to posting five days a week. I will see how that works. I may drop down to less new posts weekly than five.

I would like to spend more time on spiritual preparedness. That would include my own spiritual preparedness and the spiritual preparedness of others. It seems especially important that people find and develop their spiritual gifts as soon as possible. We have an urgent need for the use of spiritual gifts in the world.

I apologize for the apparent arrogance of offering to help others develop their spiritual gifts. It is one of the tasks that I believe was given to me by my Gd. 

I believe I was given abilities and gifts especially for this purpose. I have all of the standard spiritual gifts and some unusual ones for this purpose. I believe that this unusual abundance of different spiritual gifts makes it easier for me to recognize the spiritual gifts of others and help them to develop those spiritual gifts.

Regardless of what religion you believe in or whether you have or believe in any at all, you have spiritual gifts. It is more reliable that people are born with spiritual gifts than that they are born with two eyes. 

Not all of us have the same spiritual gifts. The specific spiritual gifts and sets of them are distributed among us according to numbers of people needed to use a particular spiritual gift or set of them. The agriculture, growing things, or green thumb spiritual gift or set of them is probably the most common. This is because in order to grow food, without making damage such as climate change worse, we need many people to work on the growing.

Service is another very common spiritual gift, because we need a lot of people to use this particular spiritual gift. If you have the spiritual gift of service, you will feel a sort of drive or compulsion to serve people. This can take many forms of service. I have a rather large dose of this particular spiritual gift myself. Part of my drive to keep writing this blog comes from my gift of service. 

You can get further confirmation of the correct identification and use of your spiritual gift of service by how you feel when you are using it. There is a certain satisfaction and peacefulness that does not come from anything else. This feeling applies to the use of other spiritual gifts as well.

Tomorrow I will probably continue writing my post on what some of the other spiritual gifts are and ways to recognize them.

Islam Versus Christianity - Jihad

 Many Christians and Muslims think of their religions as opposite forces. I don't think so. I already posted that we 99% people have more in common with each other than we do with the 1% in our own country. I wish to do this post about what Christians and Muslims have in common. 

Jihad is a big one. Jihad does not mean "holy war", as a lot of non-Muslims think it does. My understanding of what it actually means is something like, "utmost effort", or "strive with all your might", or "try as hard as you possibly can". It can apply to war. It can also apply to doing other things. 

It would be possible to have a Jihad on studying your holy book. You could have a Jihad on stopping pollution. You could have a Jihad on getting sustainable agriculture going to feed everyone. There could be a Jihad on reversing climate change. I am not sure whether it would be acceptable to have a Jihad on getting your home organized, but maybe. The thought would work anyway.

I happen to like to learn about the word of the being that I choose to call God which I prefer to write as Gd. I enjoy it in different holy books, but I believe the particular book that was meant for me to use most of the time is the Bible. The specifics one is  the Old King James version of the Bible. I hope that you will look up what I say in your version of a Holy Book and satisfy yourself that it fits what you think is right to do. I will refer to my Holy Book and the version that works best for me. 

I believe the different Holy Books all say the same important things. The Bible tells us to have Jihads also. Ecclesiastes 9:10 "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom."

There are other places in the Bible where it talks of the Christian equivalent of Jihads besides Ecclesiastes 9:10. That one is my favorite, however. This is not a Bible study blog, so you will have to do that yourself. 

If you do not already do this and you are a Christian, I suggest Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible with Greek and Hebrew Dictionaries. I like the old King James Version of the Bible because I believe it to be the most accurate along with it's matching Concordance, the Strong's that I  just mentioned. If you are a Christian and you do not study your Holy Book, the Bible, you are like a ship without a rudder. We are facing stormy seas and we need direction.

If you are still reading this and you are not a Christian, I suggest you get your Holy Book and study it with all your might. You too, need a rudder in these stormy seas that we all face. I mean people who have Holy Books like the Pali Canon, Grimoires, Bhagavad Gita, etc. as well as the obviously connected ones like the Bible, Koran, and Torah. 

I am not sure how to put this to avoid offense to Atheists and Humanists, etc., but you also have books that give you direction in your life. I think you should use them as well. 

I can not mention all of the Holy Books here, but you know what yours is, so use it. It was written for a reason and your existence is part of that reason.

How We Can Feed Us All

The human race can not survive unless we continue to eat and drink. We are not paying enough attention to this fact.

Having enough food and enough good drinking water to go around is going to be a worse and worse problem from now on. We humans have largely created the problem with growing enough food for us all and having enough good drinking water.

We like to plant cities where we have the best land for growing food.  Our food is grown in ways that ruin the land that is used to grow it. We have been doing things that have even changed our weather to make it harder and harder to grow food. 

Climate change, bad farming techniques and pollution have all combined to ruin a lot of the good drinking water on earth. Many of our large cities all over the world are in such great need of drinking water that they destroy agriculture by stealing agriculture water, for long distances around them. 

We need to stop wasting our time and energy fighting each other and start working on growing food in ways that will keep on working in the future. These land wrecking ways to grow food have to stop. 

The fight to keep growing enough food to eat and repair the damage we have done to the earth is a greater battle than any battles between humans. 

We don't have enough people who are good at growing food, to be able to grow as much as we need on small sustainable farms. Growing food is not something that can usually be learned overnight. It may take even longer than learning regular agriculture to learn to grow food sustainably.

sustainable [səˈsteɪnəb^əl]

adj

1. (Economics) capable of being sustained

2. (Life Sciences & Allied Applications / Environmental Science) (of economic development, energy sources, etc.) capable of being maintained at a steady level without exhausting natural resources or causing severe ecological damage sustainable development

3. (Economics) (of economic growth) non-inflationary

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003

The definition above came from here:

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sustainable

I think we will not only need to make use of sustainable agriculture techniques to get ourselves out of this mess. I think we will have to use our spiritual gifts to grow our food. When you use spiritual gifts for growing things you can get a good crop during circumstances such as droughts, or other bad weather and grow more and better food in a much shorter time than usual. With extremely moody weather, we will need that.

Using spiritual gifts for agriculture is not something that you could get a timetable for learning. I expect everyone has their own time for having it kick in. The biggest barrier to getting your spiritual gift of growing things working seems to be not believing you can do it. If that is going on, you will have a brown thumb and kill every plant you get your hands on. 

If a brown thumb is happening, you probably are meant to have a green thumb. It is against chance for you to be that bad. It means you have some kind of reverse thing going on with your green thumb spiritual gift. The minute you get over whatever is blocking your gift, every plant you touch will grow like crazy. 

Just having your green thumb gift working won't completely make up for a lack of knowledge. If it starts working, or you want it to, do whatever you can to learn about growing things. I think sprouts are the easiest way to start. Don't waste any time. You will need that green thumb spiritual gift working and educated, and so will the rest of the human race.

Working With Nature

Some people are working to help with our food problem and climate change as well. Sepp Holzer is one of those people.

I am reading a book that he wrote, He started doing Permaculture before it was a word. If you have no idea what Permaculture is, no problem. I didn't know what it was until recently either. 

per·ma·cul·ture

  [pur-muh-kuhl-cher] Show IPA

noun

a system of cultivation intended to maintain permanent agriculture or horticulture by relying on renewable resources and a self-sustaining ecosystem.

Here is the link this came from: 

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Permaculture

I think that doing agriculture should be for the long term instead of to make a quick buck and leave a mess to clean up. 

Sepp Holzer seems to be trying to work with the rest of our planet with his agriculture instead of against it. I have been interested in his sort of approach for a long time. I read about a Japanese man who does "no till" agriculture. He has been working on his method even longer than Sepp Holzer.

Masanobu Fukuoka is the name of the Japanese man who practiced no-till farming. People came from all over the world to learn how to do this kind of agriculture.

The thing I read said that the journalist who came from the US to watch Masanobu Fukuoka at work, didn't see much. He said he followed him around on his land for several days. 

The journalist said that Masanubu just appeared to run around on his land and lie down and watch bugs and plants. He spread a few seeds on top of some dirt. Apparently the journalist thought that was the most agricultural sort of thing he saw done.

Sepp Holzer said right at the beginning of his book that his sort of agriculture is something you have to learn by doing and watching. He said you can't really learn it from a book and there are no recipes to follow. Every place is different and must be treated differently.

I suspect the American journalist got to see Masanubu doing the observing part of his version of Permaculture.

I think the world is sick from people being cut off from nature and the land. It is part of humanity to belong to the earth and its systems and rhythms. Most of us only see small slivers of green amidst concrete and asphalt.

It is time we healed ourselves by getting into contact with nature. It is also time for us to begin to heal the damage we have done to nature, before we destroy the planet, including ourselves. 

Middle East 101 For Preppers

Part of your preparedness is finding out information that affects your survival as soon as possible. Just as you can handle an emergency better if you keep tabs on storms headed your way, you will do better preparedness if you keep track of civil and political storms in the Middle East. 

Most people need fuel for their daily lives and a lot of the world's supply of fuel comes from the Middle East, or not. If there is a big enough disturbance in the Middle East, there can be an immediate fuel crisis.

War in the Middle East has a way of spreading and dragging other countries clear across the world into it, as peacekeepers, if not doing the fighting.

It is very difficult to figure out what is going on in the Middle East unless you know some basics about Islamic people and countries. I am not an expert on Islamic people and countries, but I took a class on this and have been interested and learning about it since. Therefore I know something about it, which practically makes me an expert compared to the average person. :-P

There are two main sects in the Muslim religion. They are Sunnis and Shiites. Shiites tend to be more fundamentalist than Sunnis most of the time. This means Shiites usually like a stricter, more literal interpretation of the Koran than most Sunnis. 

Sunnis are often more tolerant of people who have different religions. There is a part of the Koran (Islamic Holy Book), that says that other "people of the Book" are ok and their beliefs are acceptable to Gd and Muslims. This is usually interpreted as two "Books", the Christian Bible, and the Jewish Torah. Tolerant Muslims even consider it acceptable to marry other people of the Book. 

You may not be considered to be people of the Book if you belong to the religions, or churches that believe in the Bible or Torah and do not practice your religion. If you are not people of the Book, that can mean to some Muslim fundamentalists that they have a duty to kill you or convert you. Most Muslims are not that extreme, however.

There is another Islamic sect that is fairly numerous and well known. They are called Sufis. They are Muslim mystics. They dance as a form of worship and meditation is an important part of their religious practice. They are generally accepted by both Shiites and Sunnis. Shiites and Sunnis are sometimes not on good terms with each other, and occasionally fight each other. This most often happens when the members of the ruling class belong to Sunnis and most of the general populace is Shiite or vice versa.

There are various smaller factions within Shiites and Sunnis who may have quite different beliefs from the general ones in their Islamic sect. One of these is Salufis. The rulers of Saudi Arabia and Osama Bin Laden and many of the early El Quaeda members were Salufis.

Salufis are more conservative than most Sunnis. Some of the people who took action on their feeling of offense by the video demeaning Mohammed were Salufis. Here is a link explaining more about Salifis:

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/0510/Salafis-101-5-key-facts/Do-Salafis-support-violent-jihad

One major difference between Muslims and Christians is how much agreement there is between members. A room full of Christians could have a hard time agreeing on much of anything. It would be different with a room full of Muslims. 

One of the things that a room full of Muslims would agree on is what happens if their religion or one of its important parts is insulted. This comparative unanimity can be very bad for someone who does the insulting, or anyone connected to them.

This comparative shared Muslim agreement can make it hard for an average Muslim to understand why if one Christian insults them or their religion, that all other Christians were not involved. This can also be true for someone from one country who insults them. A lot of Muslims do not get it that all Americans did not insult their religion, or intend to do that, even though one American dweeb insulted them. 

Misunderstandings like that can get people killed and even start wars. Now that we have a misunderstanding going between many Muslims and Americans, you might want to work a little harder on your emergency preparedness. That would apply whether you are Muslim, American, or work in an Embassy.

Your Survival And War

World headlines have an effect on your survival. If your country goes to war with another country or even participates in "peacekeeping", you or your loved ones could end up in a military uniform and become cannon fodder. 

Even people whose religious beliefs do not allow military service can be affected by a war. I know a lot of Seventh Day Adventists who refused to serve in the military during WWII. 

Now, when this situation arises, the Conscientious Objector is allowed to perform non-military public service or sometimes non-fighting functions such as medical personnel jobs. 

All of the Seventh Day Adventists that I mentioned had been put in prison because of their refusal to serve in the military. In the event of a draft today, the C. O. s would be offered the other service options instead of a choice between following their religious beliefs or going to prison.

Even if you do not have religious beliefs or think that you need to be concerned about a draft, you could still be affected by your country going to war. When a country runs short of troops during war time, it is not uncommon to start putting people who are not usually eligible for military service, into battle. This has meant that elderly, young boys, and disabled are sent to fight. Since women are being used increasingly in the military, it is likely that women would be used to fight as well, when troops get scarce.

There are reasons why you will be affected by war even if there is absolutely no worry about going to battle. Most of those have to do with money.

You probably noticed that it takes a lot of money to go to war. All of that military money takes money away from other things. That can mean cuts to everything from libraries, to medical care, to retirement money, to schools, roads, public buildings and judicial systems. If it takes money, it can probably be cut for war money.

One of the reasons why a war costs so much money is that it takes a lot of supplies to keep troops in the field. During a war, the military usually gets priority over supplies. That can lead to rationing for the general public. 

Even if the general public is not forced into actual rationing, the amount of supplies needed for the military during war can raise prices. If the military needs a lot of fuel, the fuel price is very likely to rise for the general public. 

The same thing can happen with any other supplies that the military needs during war. This can mean food, leather, fabric, metal, or manufactured goods or anything else. If the military needs a lot of it, the price will probably go up for you to get it.

Most of the people in the world already know that their survival is affected by what happens in the Middle East. Fuel prices can go up if fighting in oil fields or supply lines, stops the oil getting out.

I have discovered that a lot of people do not know very much about the Middle East, or think much about what happens there can affect them. I am going to write about that tomorrow.

What Can You Do About Your Food?

Even anorexics will admit they need to eat something. The rest of us are even more interested in eating. We are also interested in continuing to eat. 

Climate change and how our food is produced now are a threat to our being able to grow enough food, get it to the people who need and want it and afford to buy it.

I get sticker shock when I see the prices in the produce section of my local grocery store. The rest of the grocery store is not necessarily much better. 

The severe drought that struck most of the food producers in the US will probably raise food prices quite a lot in the whole world. I will probably have company in my food price sticker shock.

There are many things you can do to help out with our food situation. One of these is to grow as much food as you possibly can. Even if you live in an apartment and have no yard, you can still manage a pot or two of herbs. You can grow sprouts even while you are backpacking. I have already posted about growing herbs and sprouts.

You can grow much more even if you only have a balcony or rooftop. You can make a substantial contribution to your food budget and quality of life if you have a yard and can manage even a very small garden. 

If any form of gardening is absolutely not your forte' you can patronize farmers' markets and buy locally grown food. Not only will local food taste better and be fresher, you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you are helping out your community. 

You are even being very ecological because local food has not used fuel to ship it across the world. You are also helping to keep a small farmer on his farm. This is a strike against the huge corporate monoculture farms and a help to the Earth.

mon·o·cul·ture  (mn-klchr)

n.

1. The cultivation of a single crop on a farm or in a region or country.

2. A single, homogeneous culture without diversity or dissension.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/monoculture

My favorite contribution that you can make to helping with the world food situation and your own food is your spiritual contribution. Find out what your own spiritual gift(s) is/are. 

There is a very high chance that your spiritual gift involves growing something. You won't know unless you try. Don't make one attempt and give up either. 

Instinct and a spiritual gift don't compensate for knowledge. Read the directions or get somebody to show you how to get started. There is a big chunk of your happiness missing if you don't find and use your spiritual gift(s). 

Good News And Bad News About Your Food

This blog post is about eating and getting food to eat. I don't want to only tell you the bad news with this post. I want you to know the disasters we need to get ready for so you can prepare to survive them. Then I want you to start thinking about what we can do to fix this climate change mess and make it better. It won't be easy. 

It probably will take a long time. It could even take many generations to fix our climate mess. Part of this mess affects our food. For some people to understand this takes a bit of explaining.


I would like to do whatever I can to survive the many disasters that I believe we have coming, as a result of the changes humans have made to the planet we live on. One of those changes is climate change. 

Climate change does not sound that bad when you first hear it. You might think that it will be rather nice having warmer winters. We have already noticed that means warmer summers too. The warmers summers we are getting are bad enough to kill people. We have barely gotten started with climate change.

Climate change is a much better term to use for what is happening on Earth than global warming. That is because we won't get anything as predictable as only warming. It is going to be as if weather all over the world was put into a giant blender and scrambled. 

Weathermen will probably all have gray hair before their time. Our weather is already doing lots of record highs, lows, wet, dry, etc. It is going to get more and more unpredictable for the rest of our lives. We are going to get more storms and bigger ones. 

Really bad unpredictable weather can kill us, especially if we are unprepared for the disasters it causes. The worst part of all of this unpredictable weather is our food. 

There is a smaller part of the human race that has any connection to producing our food now than ever in history. In the US it is less than 1% of the population. That brings a bad lack of understanding about where food comes and how it gets to our tables. This means you may have to work a little to even understand how bad our food problem is.

Even without climate change, we would be in very bad trouble with food worldwide. Good farmland and good water and the fuel to run farm equipment and get the food from the farms to our tables are disappearing fast. This is happening while we are making too many more people who need to eat that food. 

Giant factory farms that raise only one crop have been the answer to this problem for a while. They do produce a lot of food. The cost to produce that food on the giant factory farms is too high, and it is not only the money cost.

Those giant factory farms are the agricultural equivalent of the banksters and mega corporation moguls who keep robbing the public of money. 

There is no way that I can explain how all of this works to people who think milk comes from the grocery store and tomatoes grow in cans, in this blog. If you care about continuing to eat, you need to find out more for yourself about what is involved in your food.

I can tell you simply that what we are doing now to get our food will not keep working. We need to do something different and we need to get right on making the changes.

There are necessary changes that even little everyday people like you and I can make. I would like to begin telling you tomorrow about some things to think about and do to help you and others be able to keep eating.