Allyson

Cold, wet weather practically demands chili. I love all kinds of chili. This is one I make around this time of year, because I can use fresh pumpkin rather than the canned stuff. It makes a huge difference!

Ingredients:

• 2 cans navy beans* OR 1 bag (soaked overnight)
• vegetable or chicken broth
• butter or margarine
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 can fire roasted stewed tomatoes
• 1 small can tomato sauce
• 1 tiny can chopped green chillies
• 1 “pie” pumpkin (small), roasted and the meat scraped out
• spices: coriander, cumin, garlic flakes, rosemary, chili powder, red pepper flakes, oregano, salt, pepper

If you want to make this vegan and gluten free, dump all of the above into a crockpot, put it on high, and cook for about 6 hours. Check the beans at the 4 hour mark and every hour thereafter. Cook until the beans are soft but not too mushy. Add in extra liquid if necessary. You can add heat to it with a hot sauce, or simply sprinkle with more red pepper flakes at the table.

If you want this to be meaty, I actually recommend ground turkey or chicken rather than beef for this one. You don’t want to overpower the flavor of the pumpkin, which ground beef will do. Instead, brown up your ground turkey or chicken, then add it in with the other ingredients.

When it comes to the *beans, you don’t have to use navy beans. Feel free to use whatever type or combination of types that you like. Because I want the pumpkin to shine through, I went with navy beans. You could use little white beans, kidney beans, black beans… it’s up to you. One bag of dried beans, soaked overnight, is equivalent to 2 of the big cans of beans, rinsed and dumped into the cooker.

Serve your chili with a side of cornbread, and top it with green onions, parsley, sour cream (or a dairy free alternative), and/or cheese. Enjoy!

We’ve talked elsewhere about making sure you don’t go shopping over the next couple of weeks, because some people have made what we consider to be credible threats. So here’s the thing… if you’re not already stocked up on canned goods at this point, you’re not ready.

Going out today to pick up a few things, that’s fine. I’m picking up “milk, bread, eggs” on Monday, in the morning when I can have Chris ride shotgun (literally). If something violent happens between now and then, I’ll bake bread, buy eggs from the lady up the street, and pull out the milk powder. We have toilet paper, cleaning supplies, food (fresh, frozen, canned, and dehydrated), oil and wood for heating, gas for the stove. I just picked up a zillion candles for free, and we have 2 big jugs of oil for our decorative (and very useful) oil lamps. The world can go to hell; we’ll be fine.

If your cupboard is bare, you’re too late. If you don’t have things squirreled away “just in case,”  you’re too late. I need to hammer that into everyone’s heads. The only excuse for not having a stash, at this point, is if you just started prepping in the past couple of months. Even then, if you’ve been reading my posts, ignorance is not an excuse. You KNOW.

Head on a swivel is not enough. If shit is going down, you’re not going shopping. You’re going to tell your spouse she can’t have the milk and eggs she wants. She’s going to make unhappy noises, and your life is going to be miserable. The fact that it’ll be short lived doesn’t mean a thing when you’re actually living it.

If you want food security, you have to make it. That means long term stuff like planting a garden, knowing how to hunt and trap, understanding how to dress and prepare meat for canning or the freezer. It means having canned goods on hand, stashed in a back corner or under a bed. It means having enough toilet paper or equivalent on hand so that you don’t have to be concerned. If you truly want to be prepared, and today is a good day to be prepared, then starting now is not good enough.

I am hoping that the people calling for riots and stealing are just making noise. I am preparing for them to be telling the absolute truth. If that means I don’t go shopping this week or next, we’ll be fine. Instead of beef tips and chicken breast, we’ll be eating tongue and heart and lots of soup over the next couple of weeks. But we have the food. Do you?

A Right leaning friend of mine posted the above, and it made me think. This was my reply to him:

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Chris wants me to write about something else, but I just don’t have the words for it right now. I’ll get there… eventually. For the moment, SNAP and other food benefits seem to be the topic of the week, so I’m going to go with that.

So there are a lot of people doing a lot of things right now. There’s “rage bait” folks out filling carts with junk and claiming it’s with EBT. There are assholes who are scamming the system by making fraudulent claims. And then there’s honest, hard working people (and/or those who are disabled or otherwise unable to work) legitimately trying to make ends meet getting caught in the SNAP shut down, who are actually going to suffer. This last category is the only one that I actually care about.

Different states have different rules for SNAP. To my knowledge, all states have work requirements for eligibility. There are also new rules for ABAWD, or Able Bodied Adults Without Dependents, who are those between 18 and 54 who otherwise have no reason not to work. The ABAWD requirements do not apply to those who are not able bodied, or those who have children under 14. For the most part, I don’t have any issues with those rules, as written, with the sole exception of pregnant women. Pregnant women are considered “disabled” for ABAWD and work requirements for SNAP. This means that a woman who keeps herself continually pregnant is fully exempt from having to work in any way. Before anyone gets on my case, WIC takes care of pregnant and breastfeeding women, so they do not need a special exemption for this. IMO, of course.

The name SNAP means “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.” The program, at its beginning, was meant to provide supplemental food for those who were working but not able to make ends meet. I know I’ve been there (though I’ve never been on SNAP). The important words here are “supplemental” (meaning “…provided in addition to what is already present or available to complete or enhance it.” – Oxford English Dictionary) and “assistance” (meaning, “…the provision of money, resources, or information to help someone.” – ibid). As most of us know, SNAP and the other helper programs were meant to be a hand up, not a hand out. They weren’t meant to be lived on, but instead were meant to help you get on your feet after something bad happened (death of a spouse or supporting guardian, loss of job/career, military families, etc.). That’s not what is happening now.

There are families who have been on SNAP and other benefit programs for generations. The reasons start out honest enough, with people being in low paying jobs and being unable to move or find better work, and going on from there. These generational problems are systemic. The current means of helping people doesn’t actually help them. It traps them.

At one point, I was a single mother. I left an abusive wusband, stayed in a women’s shelter until I could get to court, and eventually was given low income housing in a gated community and welfare to pay my bills. I had gone from being the breadwinner, when my wusband was staying at home with the kid, to being stuck at home for an undefined amount of time. I tried several times to get work. I WANTED to get work. I despised being on the dole. The problem was, the cheapest childcare I could get cost more than I would earn (as in, in its entirety… childcare was very expensive where I was living). I couldn’t get help paying for childcare, because a) if I could work, I obviously didn’t need help anymore and b) if I was at work, my wusband could take the kid. The fact that abuse was part of the pattern and an ongoing issue between us didn’t seem to matter. This is a social “help” trap. There’s no way to escape it without outside help, help which my father thankfully provided, at great cost I might add.

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I found this one on TikTok, and decided to try it!

Ingredients:

• 4 chicken thighs, skin removed (bone in or out, doesn’t matter)
• 1.5 cups cherry tomatoes
• 3/4 cup green olives (no pimento)
• 1 shallot, sliced thinly
• 8 baby potatoes, quartered
• 8 to 10 whole cloves garlic
• 2 to 4 tbsp white wine (or white wine vinegar)
• 2 to 4 tbsp good quality olive oil
• 1 large sprig fresh rosemary, minced OR 2 tbsp dried rosemary
• 1 tbsp herbs de provence
• salt, to taste

Preheat your oven to 375°F.

In an oven-safe casserole dish with high sides, place your chicken thighs evenly in a single layer. Add the cherry tomatoes (whole) and olives (also whole) around the chicken. Add the shallot in a layer over everything, and the baby potatoes above the shallot. Tuck the garlic in between the potato pieces. Drizzle the wine and olive oil over everything, and then add your spices.

Bake your Poulet Provencal in the oven for 30 minutes, then check. Your chicken should register 165°F, and the potatoes should be ready to eat. If not, return the dish to the oven for 15 more minutes, checking every 5 minutes.

Serve with a side salad, or a nice crusty French bread. Your choice!

I run into things on TikTok and Facebook that are funny, sad, embarrassing, frustrating, and the whole gamut of other emotions. This one, though, hit home. It talks about something near and dear to my heart: going hungry. You can ask any of my friends, even at my poorest moments in the past 20 years, I have ALWAYS had a full fridge, freezer, and pantry. Always. If that meant I had to visit a food bank, so be it. I’ve been hungry before, and I never intend to be there again.

Take a pause and watch…

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Truth hurts.
“If we aren’t being taught how to grow our own food, how to take care of ourselves and our families, and how to live without the need for huge governments, banks, or corporations — as our ancestors once did — then we aren’t being educated; we are being indoctrinated to be dependent and subservient to the system.” ~ Gavin Nascimento

That is the original text (above) that came with the image to the left. Below is what I wrote.

I will continue to point this out until the cows come home. Our forefathers knew that giant government, whether by senators or King, could not sustain itself forever. Eventually you run out of money.

First, you run out of general money. We’ve already done that. Then you run out of spare money, the stuff you tucked away in case of emergencies. We’ve run out of that too. Then you run out of other people’s money to spend. Believe it or not, we’re past that as well. Until we stop spending money we don’t have, we will never get better.

I wish I had better words to explain this. To me, it’s just common sense. You look at the budget and you go. I don’t have enough money to get that thing. It doesn’t matter how much I want it, or even how much I need it. If the money is not there, you just don’t get it. That is what our government needs to do.

I think that Musk started it, but then so much of it got reversed that it’s like it never happened at all. I’m horribly disappointed by that. And now, everybody still wants to spend money. While I think the Democrats are doing more of it than the Republicans, the Republicans aren’t blameless either. We can’t afford any of it. We can’t afford to pay for the very basic things in our country right now.

Do we all want to be rats in a drowning ship? I don’t. I’d like to see the government shut down until every last penny has to be pinched so hard that it screams. I want to see all of the people in DC not getting paychecks, maybe not even when they are in office. Definitely not when they’re not working. I know that terrifies a lot of you. It scares me too. I have aches and pains that I need to address, and maybe they’re not as bad as some of my friends, but I think I at least get the general idea. Those safety nets are really important. The problem is that those safety nets are full of holes right now and they have been for decades. I’m pretty sure you all know that, because you don’t get the help that you probably need. Some of that is because of bad spending habits on the part of the government, a very tiny part of it might be part of bad spending habits on the part of people receiving money, but the biggest part is people who are defrauding the government. And while I do mean some people who are getting safety net help when they should not, I mean looking at every red cent that our government spends. I don’t want any money going to other countries until we have made sure that our people are safe.

Some people might think that it’s horrible that I would say that, but I’m much more interested in seeing my disabled friends getting the help that they need without having to not get married or pretend or whatever. I just want them to be able to get help. And as long as there’s money going to people from other countries, whether it’s vasectomies for people in Iran or knitting lessons for folks in Scandinavia, it doesn’t matter. However useful or necessary or not necessary those out of country items are, none of them are more important than my friends and my neighbors.

From the Maine Wire, Mon. October 20, 2025:

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When the grid fails, your calm mind might be the last light on. I know, it sounds cheesy, but it’s true. The idea of mental health in prepping is often relegated to a short oneliner: “Three months without hope.” Bam, done. Except it’s not done, and in many ways, mental health is something we ought to be paying a ton more attention to, and it’s also something we almost entirely ignore. Current prepper magazines and e-zines talk a lot about ammo, food, shelter, the Rule of Threes, types of firearms and other weapons, even first aid… but they don’t talk about what to do if someone’s mind breaks.

There are a handful of stories out there about preppers who went a little “funny” while getting anxious over expired food or having the right stuff in their go-bags. It’s definitely easy to let your anxiety run you down, especially if you’re actually IN an emergency already. Isolation is a huge contributor to mental health issues, and even if you have your family with you, bunker life or hunkering down at home is going to cause some problems. We know more about this than we should, thanks to the pandemic. With that in mind, we should be applying mental health prep to our general SHTF preparations. The topic deserves more than one line. We need to give mental health its proper focus, as an integral and continuing part of our everyday prepping activities.

The idea of a “loneliness spike” is not a new one. We know it from studying trauma after real disasters (Harvard study). We are aware of how insecurity and worry causes brain fog (Medical News Today). There are studies done on survivors of hurricanes and the prevalence of PTSD among them (National Institute of Health), where mental health issues can affect up to 30% of those who make it through. Then there’s the idea of survivor’s guilt, which is absolutely real and devastating, and something we know both from horrors like the Holocaust, and soldiers coming back from war, and even families caught in natural disasters. All of these problems are things that could and likely will happen in a SHTF scenario, and so we must begin to come up with methods to help minimize the trauma response. After all, you want the person who’s got your back to be sane… and they want the same thing.

So how do we minimize the kind of mental health problems we’re likely to see in a post-apocalypse or post-big-emergency world? Some of the most banal and stupid practices done in therapists offices around the world are the most effective. Breathing exercises (in for 4, hold for 4, out for 4, hold for 4), journaling positive things, active exercises just for the sake of doing it, avoiding reading the news (which may or may not be a problem come the apocalypse), and checking in on friends are all methods you can use to keep your panic down and your mental load a bit more healthy. Yes, the world may be falling to ruin around you, but if that’s your focus, you will go to ruin with it. The most resilient minds are the ones that can ignore “all that stuff out there” and instead focus on what can be done here and now.

Community is a big part of what keeps us on an even keel. Yes, the smallest community is your family, but at some point you have to reach beyond that. Human beings are meant to live in villages, and we need the company of others to keep us straight and sane. Whether you’re organizing a town meeting, bartering your skills for therapy (like in The Last Of Us), or having a sit down “come to Jesus” moment like an AA meeting, doesn’t really matter. It’s the doing that’s important, rather than what it is you’re doing. When paranoia is the word of the day, it’s going to be tough to reach out to people and form lasting connections, but it’s something that has to be done. If you can’t come to terms with doing it for yourself, think of doing it for the sake of your kids or your neighbors’ kids.

The big question is how to make the best SHTF armor possible, not just for the body, but for the mind as well. Group talks and forums can help, if there’s still internet to be had. But there are some really simple things you can do every day to make sure your mental health doesn’t become a liability. The first and most important thing is to get enough sleep. Obviously if you’re fighting zombies, that might get pushed back in priority… but only for a while. If you want to live rather than just survive, you’re going to have to get to a point where you can sleep on the regular. You have to get food into your body, too. Good quality food (even if it’s canned) is going to be a huge help in making you feel safe. Going for a walk, whenever it’s safe and possible, also helps, as does gardening (National Institute of Health).

So there you have it. Stock up your mental health preps right beside your beans. Be ready to surround yourself with the start of a community, and be prepared to keep building. Focus on the end goal, which is to thrive. Survival should only be your goal in the beginning. Once you’ve achieved survival, it’s time to live and thrive, to grow and heal. That’s your focus; a healthy, happy world for the children we bring into it. Don’t ignore mental health preps. We’ve seen what happens when you do (look “to the Left” for visual cues).

On Saturday, while I was camped out at a lovely open air farmer and maker’s market for the afternoon, a Left friend reached out to people “on her feed” on Facebook. She said she was aware some of her followers and friends had voted for Trump, and asked if we were willing to explain why, and whether we feel Trump is doing an adequate job since getting into office. She made it crystal clear that no one was going to be dogpiled for responding (though I’m not sure how she intends to ensure that, since she can only control what’s on her wall, but the gesture was nice). She legitimately wanted to know.

I thought about it for a long time. I could have answered. I didn’t really want to do so in public, though. As I’ve said before, I’m still trying to keep my customers around, many of whom are on the Left. I don’t believe in mixing politics and business (other than what’s required by law… I mean that a business hanging a Trump or Dem sign out front is basically telling people that they value politics over business, and I might do so privately but not publicly). So I paged her privately and said I’d talk with her, but only in private.

She wanted to know why. I sat with that one for a good five minutes before finally explaining, “Because there’s been a lot of violence toward people on the Right of late, including a number of shootings. I don’t want to be shot, hun.” It took her a while to respond, and when she did, she admitted she understood now that it was explained, and that she was sorry if I felt threatened.

That led to me telling her I’d talk to her today or tomorrow (looks like tomorrow wins, as she’s busy today). I didn’t have time to get into long discussions with her while vending at a craft fair. She got it… she does the same thing (and well; she’s formed her own thriving business that is keeping her in her home, supporting her daughter, and paying for lawyers to keep her abusive ex out of her life). But I did explain to her that, while I didn’t think there was much chance of my being shot, it was something I thought about. A lot. Maybe Chris would get shot. Maybe one of my kids. I pointed out that an awful lot of Leftists and Liberals are talking freely right now, tromping around in front of ICE and the government, with no worry for their lives… and conservatives and Right leaning folk are wearing flak vests and standing behind bullet proof glass just to have simple conversations. After another long pause, she agreed. “Yeah…”

In the scattered long-distance chat we had over Saturday, she learned just how often I’d been called a Nazi of late, or a bigot, or a few other hateful names. She just couldn’t understand that. She’s known me since her girl was a little one, and left that little girl in my care on a few occasions during faire. She knows I support human beings living however they want, provided they’re consenting adults. She knows I’m poly, pagan, kinky, pansexual, all the things. She knows I’m not a Nazi, or a bigot. She knows, from personal experience, that I walk my talk.

What I intend to suggest to her is that, if we’d had the conversation in public, there might have come a moment when someone else used one of those horrid names for me. At that point, she would have had to either tell the person they were wrong (setting herself up as a target for her own people… ie largely how I ended up over here initially), be silent and let it happen (tacit approval), or engage in calling me names herself (open approval). Would she be willing to stand up for someone when it might put her at risk, or her kid? It’s a legitimate concern right now, after all. And that might lead to her asking herself why she’s involved with someone or a group of someones who would push her away because she had spoken with someone “like me.”

I think it’s going to be an interesting conversation…