Mark A

Sidecarist, please keep us updated on the salad experiment. To me it seems counterintuitive as the vacuum would draw moisture out of the lettuce causing it to wilt sooner. My wife makes up her lunch salads on Sunday and in addition to washing and spinning the lettuce she also put a small piece of damp paper towel on top to keep the veggies hydrated. We've also started using chopped kale and shredded broccoli stems in place of some of the lettuce. They seem to hold up a bit better. JAB, get thyself to the sporting goods stores and pick up some hand warmers while they are on clearance. They are cheaper than dedicated O2 absorbers, are packaged in packs of one or two, and are the same thing. Mark

Here is a link to the sale: Cabela's

Can't comment on using the Foodsaver brand but we find that we have much more success with lids that have been used once to pressure or water bath can. They have a well defined ring depression that fits a little more sung than new lids. Hope that helps, Mark

JAB, what I have seen with vacuum packed jerky is if it isn't clean break crispy dry when you vacuum pack it it will pull any liquid out of the meat. The first time it happened to me I took a couple of good smells and then took a very small bite. It didn't kill me and I ate the rest just fine. I just looked like I did when I pulled the trigger on my first reload. I was as far away from my pistol as I could physically be and still touch the trigger. The guy shooting next me laughed and said he did the same thing on shooting his first reload Mark

I got a sales ad a couple of days ago about a sale at Cabela's. I think it starts on the 9th. I'm pretty sure their 15" commercial version is on sale for $150 off and there is a mid-grade one on sale as well. I just can't remember which one and I'm on the road until Friday afternoon. Mark

We use ours a ton because we dehydrate a lot. As things ripen during the year we dehydrate and then pull a vacuum on the jars. This is for stuff like fruits and berries. My wife uses them in oatmeal and granola etc... We also dehydrate a lot of cherry tomatoes as she likes them on her salads. For me, I like to dehydrate things like garlic, onions, and herbs. They all store well in jars. I also put together soup fixins in jars and dry can them. I put the beans and various dried veggies in the jar, add a seasoning pack in a zip lock baggie and fold a set of cooking instructions in there. I've given them as gifts, given them to neighbors during winter storm outages, and even to folks handling a loss of a family member. It is amazing how relaxing walking into a house with some home made soup cooking can be. If you do a lot of dry canning you might consider a vacucanner. I've almost made one a couple of times. If we have a good harvest this year I might just knock one out. Vacucanner Mark

DS, let me know how your celery does. I've about given up trying to start it from seed... We are trying some new things this year. I should have something to show in a couple of weeks...

Yours looks like the newer version of mine. All I did was buy the little jar attachment and hose kit. I open the lid and stick the hose down into the suction port on the right and run it for about 30 seconds and turn it off. If I'm using the 1/2 gallon jars I run it a bit longer. I don't know the exact level of vacuum in there but the sticks well and I've had stuff stored for 5 or 6 years now and it is still in good shape. I don't think I got the foodsaver brand but here is a link to that one on Amazon: Wide mouth and standard mouth combo kit. You can buy just one or the other if you want to try it for less. And... yes Mr Peej. I have all sorts of fun and interesting things vacuum packed

Cabelas commercial unit fanboy here. Went through 2 or 3 foodsavers. All broke and you can't fix them. Bit the bullet and bought a Cabelas commercial model. Built like a tank and you can order parts for it. It is the last generation version. Pretty sure Weston made it for Cabelas. We usually buy a whole cow and a whole pig once a year. The processor puts the cuts in cheap bags. We reseal them in good bags. We also dehydrate a lot of veggies and meat. Vacuum packed and stuck in a chest freezer it has an expiration date of forever... rumor has it you can make a bag long enough for an sks, then stick it in a pvc tube that is sealed and put away for that special day... Sidecarist, they said mine wouldn't vacuum seal jars either but I do it every week. Let us know your model number and I will look it up and see if the same trick will work for you mark

A long time ago in my former life as an HVAC tech we had a server farm that had pretty bad power (not a good combination). We would lose motors and boards on a semi-regular basis. One of the onsite maintenance men acquired a new Fluke meter. He found transient voltage everywhere including the building steel. Didn't show up on our analog meters so we all went out and bought new Flukes and sure enough there was voltage EVERYWHERE!!! We started in the switch gear room and began working our way outward. This is 4 journeymen techs. We spent a week trying to isolate the problem with no resolution. We rented very sensitive chart recorders from GE instrumentation and set them in 10 different locations and worked for another week and couldn't find the source of the transient voltage. The chart recorders of course didn't pick up anything. So, we called the GE rep and the Fluke rep out to meet with us. Had a big meeting in the conference room with all the bigwigs and explained the problem. We first went to a couple of the chart recorders and the GE guy calibrated them and assured us they were working properly. Then we got our shiny new fluke meters out and as soon as we took a measurement the fluke rep started laughing. We were measuring something like .00005 of a volt but because the meters were auto ranging the number looked big. Now we had around 400 man hours and all the cost for the recorders etc. The CEO listened to the entire story, and the maintenance man stood up for us and said he'd sent us on a wild goose chase. The CEO asked everyone if they'd learned anything and we all said yes. He looked over and the CFO and said pay the bill and walked out. The project manager for us on that account about passed out. We scheduled a mandatory after hours training meeting the next week for all service techs and the construction start up guys and went over what happened and how to properly use the new digital meters we were getting. Service had 92 techs and construction had 10 so it wasn't a cheap meeting but we worked for a great company and they wanted to make sure nothing like that ever happened again. Mark

oops...my bad

You need to google why she left and the 20 million settlement she got from it... Interesting stuff and big changes shortly thereafter at Fox

Well, William Forstchen's new book " The Final Day" is set to release in a couple of days. I was pretty disappointed in one year after. Apparently I was not alone as it is selling for 2.99 for the Kindle version. The new one is 12.99. I think I will pass and wait for this one to arrive at the library. Mark

There was only one other bone but trust me, I thought about it

Man, I wish I could like this more than once.....

Cabela's... To me it is not even close. The food prep stuff that Cabela's sells is top notch. I'm bummed about BP buying them. What really sucks is that I lived in Ft Oglethorpe GA for 10 years. Right after we moved there they started working on the roads and the underground infrastructure there. So, for 10 years I lived with a bunch of torn up roads on the main way for me to get in and out. We were big fans of Costco when we moved up from Atlanta but there was not one in the Chattanooga area. So what happens after we move? The build a Costco and a Cabela's that is about 6 minutes from our old house and I would have driven right past twice a day minimum... We pop down to the one in Huntsville every couple of months. Gives us an excuse to break out of the normal weekend routine. Sometimes we take back roads to get there just to see different areas and not drone down the interstate Mark

You go to a really nice restaurant for your company Christmas dinner, order a bone in ribeye steak and at the end of the meal ask the server for a to-go box so you can take the bone home to your dog. But, it really goes in a bag of bones in the freezer to make beef stock with. Share some stories... we need to get this subforum active again.

308... 5.56 is so yesterday... 308 outside, 300 blk 220 gr subsonic with a suppressor inside. That right there is a winning combination...

And, at least in my 20 it is extremely accurate. Haven't had a chance to try it in the 29 yet but I expect good things. Can't wait until I get my reloading act back together again. I have some 200 gr XTP's that are just begging to go fast.

My favorite handgun round is the 357 sig. All of the pistols I have in that calibers I also own 40 s&w barrels for. Love the 357, hate the 40. For some reason the recoil impulse from the 40 makes it uncomfortable for me to shoot. But, I have a bunch of 40 loaded up just in case I need it. A few years back we went to Alaska for our 20th anniversary. Couldn't find a g20 anywhere so I picked up a g29 and some full sized mags. Carried buffalo bore when we were hiking and Underwood for 2 legged animals. That thing is a blast to shoot with full tilt boogie ammo. I swore I wasn't going to cave to pre-election jitters but that Tuesday night I caved and ordered a g20. Don't have a ton of rounds down it yet but it seems to shoot fine. I think the 29 may be a bit more fun but I haven't shot them back to back yet. I carry a G33 on my ankle most days. Don't know if the 29 is too heavy to carry in an ankle holster but i'm going to find out. I think a 29 on my ankle and a 20 on my hip sounds pretty good. I thought long and hard about getting a 41mag instead. Really like that caliber. Finally decided for that trip that the 10mm was the better choice for both hiking and around town. Plus, everyone knows the 10mm is the boom of doom...

Big fan of PRI-G & PRI-D.Really good products that I've used for years.

Also read that this time it affects the entire eastern seaboard. Things could get a little interesting. Mark

They were doing great last year until I stuck them in the greenhouse. We don't live up there yet and I didn't have permanent power so I couldn't regulate the temperature well. With a propane heater I was able to keep it from getting too cold but I had no way to automatically ventilated if it got too hot. I think we basically fried them. I nursed them back to health but so far they've shown no indications of setting fruit. If something doesn't start happening by next summer I will take it as a lesson learned and buy some new ones. Mark

I buy the cans from Amazon. Somehow, the new EPA mandated nozzles keep getting lost in shipping so I have to buy the regular replacement and add a vent. I know that means I'm stuck with the same old cans I've used for decades but I'm learning to deal with it. If you had access to buckets made out of HDPE you could use those. They make a valve (bung?) That you can put in the lid. This could be a cheap source of storage container. One more thing. As an old fart I'm beginning to hate dealing with the weight of 5 gallon cans. My wife really can't deal with them. I bought some fuel hose and a couple of marine grade squeeze bulbs like you use with outboard boat motors and made some siphon hoses. I can get the can to the toolbox on my truck and set it there. I made the hoses long so I can stick one end in the can and the other into the filler hole on the truck. A couple of squeezes and everything starts flowing. For my wife I bought a 1 gallon can. She can lift the 5 gallon can on to a step in the garage and siphon into the smaller can. It takes a while but this gives her a way to deal with fuel if I'm not home to take care of it. Mark

For those of us in the affected area, did you find any holes in your plans? I was in pretty good shape on gas. I have 12 cans numbered 1-12. I dump one can each month into one of the cars (this month was #10, next month is number 11...) and fill it with fresh gas. I'm fortunate to work right by a gas station that sells 100% gas so that is what I store. It seems to store better than 15% ethanol. I don't treat it with anything. When I first started I stored ethanol gas because that was all I could find. At first I pulled sta-bil in it but then tried it for a year without and it did just fine. My hole was diesel. I have an old dodge that is relegated to farm duty. It was only about 1/2 full when the shortage hit. At the time I had about 30 gallons stored but digging ditches, clearing brush and generally running the tractor for 10 hours a day each weekend put a dent in that pretty quickly. I decided to move to the same 12 month rotation I use on gas. I bought 5 more cans with the intention of filling them up one per month but filled them all tonight when I heard about the shutdown again. I have hundreds of feet of trench to dig this weekend and the price I pay for being the world's worst backhoe operator us it takes me a long time and I burn a lot of fuel. BTW, I use the word trench loosely. It is more a series of deep holes with little connecting shallow ditches. Hopefully with a few hundred more years of practice I will get better. When I first did the gas cans I bought 1 per month and filled it up. In 12 months I had 60 gallons built up without taking a major hit to the wallet. After that it costs nothing to rotate the gas on a monthly basis. I would be remiss if I didn't point out you need to not store this in your garage. It needs to be in an out building. Storing that much gas will void most home owners insurance policies if you have a fire. Mark