I'd like to thank the people who came to the meeting
yesterday. During the discussion of water purification everyone contributed and
the ideas exchanged were great. That's what our meetings are all about and a
special thanks for the new folks who came out and enjoyed the beautiful day with
us. You contributed your experience and gave us lots of ideas to run with. We
were delighted you came and hope you will be permanent members of our group.
A couple who attended their first meeting with us yesterday, Ruth & Greg, are
interested in getting together with the group and making "meals in a jar" (or
Mylar bag) using freeze dried food that we would buy in bulk. These "meals in a
jar" would only need water added, an excellent idea for a number of reasons.
First, in ordinary life if you're tired and don't want to cook, you take out
your "meal in a jar" pour in some hot water, and have a tasty meal. This would
enable you to rotate your stores so that if you do need to live off of stores,
your food would be fresh. "Just add water" meals would also enable you to
maintain a low profile and not advertise by cooking smells that you have
something to eat when the shelves at the grocery store may be bare. Another
excellent point is that you'll know *exactly* what's in your jar/bag. You'll
know what spices are in it or not, you'll know how much salt there is and you'll
know there's no MSG. If someone needs gluten-free I'm certain we could work with
that. It has been discussed that we would decide on a certain
recipe to be putting together, figuring out the cost of each jar (or bag) of
that particular recipe, then pay for the quantity each of us wants. After the
month has been collected Ruth or I would order the material (food, jars & lids
or bags) then we would meet to put them together. I'm thinking if we met at the
range we could use their tables and air conditioning/heat so we wouldn't have to
worry about the humidity or weather effecting the freeze dried food. If the
schedule we agree to is once/month we could combine the SAAMAG monthly meeting
from 9-11 with putting together the meals, say from 11-12 or so.
I need your thoughts please. If you're *seriously* interested and are willing to
commit to paying for the meals and coming to the meeting to help put them
together, let me know. I'm also looking for ideas for monthly meetings. What
would you like to learn? Can you give a presentation to the group? Show us how
to build/make something we might need or something to make our lives easier?
Thanks again for the folks who came out yesterday. Maybe we'll see the rest of
you next time. Our next meeting will be November 21st, location to be
determined. If we can get things together and ready by 11/21 maybe we can meet
to put together our first batch of "Meals In A Jar". Pat |