In this job market people are droppin’ from their jobs like flies. My neighbor where I grew up lost his job after 26 years on a production line where he made sports equipment. Electricians and carpenters at work are going out the door. People have mortgages and bills piling up. Someone who got laid off asked me what I thought they should do and I said that I did not know. But I wanted to tell him that you can almost eliminate food as an expense. If you buy a 50 pound bag of oatmeal and stick it in the corner of the kitchen, it can liberate yourself from the fear of starving. Just knowing that you can eat that bag for months and even years. The kids are not going to go for it but anybody can switch their thinking to eat the same food everyday at almost no cost. The Asian culture eats rice everyday and we eat bread everyday as a staple. So adding a simple food like oatmeal everyday is taking a staple food to another level. And when you buy it in 50 pound bags you make the cost of it almost negligible. Any cook book will supply the recipes for making yogurt at home. So with that, the infinite combinations of raw oatmeal and yogurt you can come up with to eat, will take you off the whole food grid that we go through everyday in the three square meals a day habit. If you are not working, your first instinct is to simplify. First you start turning off the lights and turning down the thermostat. So reducing the expense of living is natural. You will be surprised to see how healthy and cheaply one can eat with a staple like oatmeal. Simply taking some milk and fruit and mixing it with some raw oatmeal will make a really tasty and quick meal. Remember to add a little sugar or honey and don’t overdo it with the oatmeal, around a quarter cup per serving. There will be no cooking and very little clean up when you wash out the blender. I know that I mentioned these eating options earlier in the book. But since we are accumulating an army of unemployed in this time and place, people are going to have to get creative to survive and live without traditional work. We still are going to have to take care of business. Only it is not going to be in a 40 hour work week. At least when we are all unemployed time will be on our side. The only possessions we will have to worry about are food, clothes and shelter. When we are all unemployed at least will have that in common. We will have time to get the house and car in super shape. And we will have to dust off the library card and check-out all those how-to–do books. And we will have to teach ourselves how to do everything. I wonder if I will be able to give myself a root canal. Do-it-yourself surgery might be on the horizon….