taste fatigue

TASTE FATIGUE


Well, the battery tester saga continues. After going to two auto parts stores and getting no answers to the pretty Gott Damn simple question, How Do I Tell If My Batteries Are Charged From My Generator So I Don’t Over Friggin Charge Them, I then proceeded to the RV store who you might imagine had some magic device that not only answered aforementioned question but also separated you from all the money you had in your children’s college fund which let’s face facts is no big deal at all since by the time your kids graduate high school assuming they survived Crips and Bloods gangs battling over the right to wear the prettiest Doo Rags and creating crossfires ( duck and cover! ) the price per semester would be running about three and a half trillion ObammyBucks which would be slightly out of anyone’s price range. No such luck. The guy mumbled and grumbled and essentially declared without saying so but was as clear as the black tinge over a politicians heart if you read between the lines that he had no stinking clue and please go away so he could charge triple the normal price for an RV widget to the nice old couple behind me. I then went to the last auto parts store and got no better answers but came away with yet more information to obscure the issue.

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If you bought a lowly volt tester you can check the amount of charge in a battery. But the catch was that you had to let the battery settle after charging for several hours before you got a reading, otherwise it gave a false high. No good if I have to check the battery after ten minutes of charging to see if its full or needs another ten minutes. But I was also informed that if I had two batteries connected to each other, they had to be disconnected and each separately tested or the reading would also be false. Oh, joy. Now I had to both wait until testing and separate the batteries. This was stupid and impractical. So, I bought an AC charger that automatically shuts off when the battery is charged. I would love to report this solved the problem, but it just added another dimension. The DC charger on the generator runs 10 amps. The AC runs at 9/10’s of 1 amp. It takes over ten times the generator run time to charge the bastard. How could it overcharge, just on that feature alone? I would love to say I noticed this little factoid in the store, clearly labeled as it was, but I didn’t and I can’t even blame lack of coffee on my head-up-assness. But all was not lost. I figured I would just charge on DC for awhile and switch over to AC just to get a charge indicator. Here’s how that went. It was cloudy as I’m running the generator. Towards the end the sun peeks out for a bit. I disconnect the generator and the solar panel charge controller indicates full. I put the AC charger back on and it doesn’t indicate full. So which is correct? I can only assume the AC charger sucks since the charge controller on the solar has been doing fine for years. My next course of action is to order a charge controller ( the unit you use to keep your panels from over charging the batteries, or to keep your batteries from draining through the night ) of higher amp rating and splice it into the DC generator wire. Plug from generator, wire, controller, wire, battery connector. That should, in theory if I’m not full of crap, keep the battery from being overcharged from the generator while keeping the DC efficiency in charging. Why can’t anything be easy? [ added note- this was written two weeks ago. I've ordered the controller and am waiting its delivery.  Updates will follow ]

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We’ve talked before about my unenviable eating habits. Nuke bread for breakfast and lunch, meat and potatoes or other starch for dinner. I can tolerate taste fatigue with the first two meals of the day. Whole wheat is something I always crave, it is nutritious and it is so cheap the frugal aspect diminishes the repetitive nature of the diet. But I do need a bit of variety come dinner. Even if it is meat and tators I still need at least a weekly variety. Rice and pork, potatoes and chicken, vary the sauces, throw in beef once in awhile. Vary the potatoes, vary the pasta style. You get the picture. The variety isn’t much. But it is there. Well, last week was when I had the crud going around, for the second time. It wasn’t as nearly as severe as in November, but it just wouldn’t go away. I had a good case of General Crapness. Every once in awhile a fever would start up, last a few hours or overnight, then go away. Constant coughing, at least every time I went outside in the cold. Hell, I wasn’t even interested in sex, and that usually takes a lot to bring about. And food tasted like crap. All of it. I could barely force myself to eat a bare minimum. But the point here is, I was more susceptible to taste fatigue. I would eat half my bread and throw the rest away or skip it altogether. And as luck would have it that whole week I could only buy the same cut of pork. My meat budget is ten bucks a week for fresh meat ( well, freshly cut up in one of three national centers by underpaid illegal workers who gladly contribute doses of human flesh in the form of fingers on a regular basis, frozen to preserve the fresh cases of bacteria present, shipped several thousand miles and thawed each night to appear fresh in your grocery case every day ), at least until I get off my lazy ass and start canning so I can buy twice the meat for the same price. But right now I can only buy single serving packs of meat so the variety is limited.

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By the end of the week I was so tired of that one cut of pork I got meat taste fatigue. This was a relatively new problem, previously only experienced with turkey after Christmas. I was shocked and dismayed. But it gave me an idea. If your survival stash is like mine, mostly just three items with one item being 90%, you have the issue of taste fatigue to worry about. If you can’t see how your budget can afford to diversify, try to give yourself taste fatigue now. Deliberately restrict your diet to just a few items. By the end you should be at the point where your mental clarity returns and you magically find room in your budget for some inexpensive condiments. Bullion powder, soy sauce, spices, that kind of thing. It doesn’t need to be a completely different food, but at least different tastes. You can still eat the same carb, but dress it up a few different ways. Long ago I started adding to my stash of wheat and beans. I’ve been self-imposing taste fatigue on myself for a long time due to a combination of laziness and cheapness. But it can, if unchecked, actually endanger your life. You won’t eat enough. Yes, I know I’ve been critical of over expensive diets that use taste fatigue as an excuse. Hunger is indeed the best sauce. All I’m saying is that the next level of preparedness after a basic stash of wheat and beans is acquired, the next step up the ladder from bare necessity to luxury eating is to spend a few bucks on spices and condiments. I’m not saying spending three grand on freeze dried foods is a good idea, just that $50 spent on pepper and bullion and soy sauce and paprika, etc., will go a long way towards making a potential problem go away. Calories, first and foremost. Lots of calories. Only then different tastes. But I do suggest you try out a diet to bring about taste fatigue. It is instructive.

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