You can freeze-dry anything, it turns out.

[sapote]

So in a fit of mourning for laundry facilities, I ordered one of these washer plungers. I will report back! So far my primary finding is that it's not very ergonomic to use - the motion is much like a butter churn, so I'm thinking that finding a way to sit and put the bucket between my feet might be best.

The best thing about it is honestly the Emergency Essentials October Specials flyer that got mailed in the box with it. Did you know that Latter Day Saints are supposed to keep a year of stored food on hand? Here is a pamphlet about it! (pdf). I learned about this back when I read the Lathe Family blog regularly. Anyway Emergency Essentials is a company that seems to be founded with this mission partially in mind and they market a wide and I mean wide variety of shelf-stable foods to that end. Freeze dried ham chunks! Freeze dried marion berry! Nuclear winter getting you down? Good thing you laid in the ingredients for taco night in the fallout shelter! Sure, the Earth's skys have been blackened by a supervolcano, but this stir fry will never go bad!

I wish I could say that my interest is purely ironic but my adolescent fascination with survivalist novels surfaces pretty quickly. One moment I'm making distressed faces at the freeze-dried roast beef and the next I'm eyeballing closet space and wondering how much shelf-stable pancake mix I could fit in behind the shoe rack.

Anyway I will probably get back to the internet about the washer plunger eventually.

Comments

via network

[jumpuphigh]

Is is totally sad that I'm looking at the items thinking, "I could totally keep that around for making stews"?

Re: via network

[sapote]

I don't think so! You will never hear me argue about keeping anything around for making stews :D But when you do the price per unit a lot of the freeze-dried stuff is prohibitively expensive - for instance the freeze-dried cheese curls turn out to be about equivalent to paying $16 a pound for fresh cheese. I bet it doesn't taste like $16 cheese. I'm still eyeing the pancake mix though.