Surviving the Hard Times

Lamb Chops or Adventures in Burning Things

2009-12-18T21:00:00.000-08:00

I love roast lamb or would that be mutton? Let's just say I like roast flesh of sheep. Today, at the store I see a nice piece of meat in the Manager's Special section for $2.22. Cool! I'll buy that. Mmmmm lamb shoulder chop. Ok never cooked that before. Wonder if I can roast it? Well, play dates, phone calls and getting hubby off to work ensued and roasting never happened. So I browsed a few websites and got a general idea of how to cook a lamb chop. Pretty easy. Marinade it, season it or otherwise spice it up. Heat a skillet smokin' hot and sear the lamb chop for 3-4 minutes per side. Easy enough. I can do that.

So I start the big heavy cast iron skillet to heating. The door bell rings. It's my neighbor. She's come to bearing gifts for the children. Thank you! Back to the kitchen. See hubby off to work. Is that the door bell again? Yes, it is. Back to the door, where I find my neighbor again with yet another item. Cool! Thank you again. I really am going to get dinner cooked. The skillet is definitely smokin' hot. I haven't seasoned the lamb chops yet.

With scissors in hand, I dash out the door. Ok, I was not running with scissors. More like moving slightly fast with scissors. I rarely run with anything these days. My knees object at the very thought of running. Why was I headed out the door with scissors? Rosemary. There's a big bunch of it growing just off the front porch. It's a nice hardy variety that has endured our coldest winter and hottest summer. Rosemary, coarse salt and pepper sounded like the perfect seasonings for the lamb chops.

So I pour a little oil in the smokin' hot skillet and rip open the lamb chops. I'm sprinkling salt, grinding pepper and trying to keep the skillet from bursting into flames. The lamb chops are finally in the skillet when I realize that I didn't add any rosemary. I quickly strip some leaves from the stem and sprinkle them over the lamb chops. Ahh the beautiful sound of sizzling meat.

They sizzled their way to a wonderful smell. Time to move the lamb chops in the heavy cast iron skillet to the oven. I forgot to open the oven door before engaging the heavy two-hands necessary skillet. So I park it on a pot holder until I can open the oven door. I slide it in but don't like the way fat is still popping around and producing smoke. So I set it back on an unheated burner and move onto the potatoes. After the fat has calmed down, I slide it into the oven. No smoke this time. No fire. A calm dinner will be achieved.

Fast forward to serving time. The children have been called down. The potatoes are finished. The meat has now rested nicely in the oven. Gravy. Gravy would be nice with the potatoes. And best would be gravy with the rosemary flavored pan drippings. So out comes the heavy, two-handed cast iron skillet. But it doesn't want to leave the oven. The pan hangs on the rack. That's odd. Just then I notice that the pot holder is underneath the skillet. Apparently the potholder couldn't handle the heat of a red hot, smokin' cast iron skillet.

My cast iron skillet is still sitting on the counter downstairs with a pot holder adhered to the bottom. I can't decide whether to soak it off in the sink or to build a fire in the fireplace and complete the incineration process. By the way, the lamb chops were delicious and both children ate their portion. Success...minus one burned potholder.

Blue Monday

2009-12-14T21:39:00.000-08:00

Monday is rolling around. If anyone reads this at all, they probably won't be reading it until Monday. I'm just a little blue. Last week there were winter storm warnings flying all around the place. It's coming in on Saturday. It's coming in on Friday. It never came in at all. I'm all prepared. I've got extra milk...powdered if it's needed. I'm stocked on food. We have a wood burning fireplace and plenty of wood. The storm fizzled out about an hour away from us. Nothing, nada, zilch. I didn't get my snow/ice storm. I'm a bit grumpy about that fact.

While there was no snow down on the valley floor, it was snowing and blowing quite a storm up on the mountain.

Inspiration

2009-12-09T08:17:00.000-08:00

Where do we get inspiration? I'm always inspired by a great craft tutorial that I'm sure I'm going to make. I even get so far as buying the materials. Then life happens and I have to put things aside. Just this week, I've bought fabric and cut out a skirt for my daughter. Here it lies beside me, a sad testament to life's ability to keep me from creating. Yesterday, I spent a bit of time out in the cold weather seeing to a neighbor's broken pipes. No, I didn't fix them. Just used the phone to track them down, call the water company, rouse the troops to shut off the water. Now, I'm behind on the cleaning and decorating for the party. It was inspiring to help a neighbor. Helping feels good.

When I started writing this, I thought I was going to write about how music is inspiring. But maybe my real topic is how helping people is inspiring. Maybe the topic is both things. I've always wanted to write a story about a neighborhood or cluster of houses band together in really, really hard times. Maybe this is the start of that story. I just can't seem to get a plot going. So maybe it's not the story for me, yet.

Today, I'm having trouble with this topic in my writing exercises. I read one blog that spoke of thinking "that could be a great story" during the day while listening to friends, the news, etc. It does seem at times that the brain works better when the hands are busy at mundane tasks. So I think I'll go work on the decorating. If inspiration hits, I'll come back and write some more.

Indecision

2009-12-08T08:48:00.000-08:00

That's the topic for the writing experience today. Perhaps it is appropriate for the survival minded. Indecision can kill, plain and simple.

I'll cop to a slightly embarrassing story from last winter. We like to snow shoe. The deep, deep snow up on the mountain, they are necessary. It gets cold up on the mountain. It is often in the 20s with blowing snow. So we take our backpack stove along to heat up food and make hot chocolate. This is a small stove the folds up and is heated by a can of jell fuel much like they use in the catering business. The outside of the can and, of course, the folding stove get hot. We stick in the snow for a bit to make sure they are cold before they are packed away. Trips to the mountain aren't just about snowshoeing. The children like to go sledding. We acquired a bright orange toboggan at a great price. It works well. The kids have fun.

So now we've got a fuel source, lots of fluffy winter clothes and a bright orange toboggan in the back of the Equinox. I'm driving down off the mountain. It's one of the better days. It is not snowing. We've reached the lower elevations where the road is bare but wet from run off. It's late in the day and the sun is beginning to set. When I drive, especially in snow or ice conditions, I worry about the people behind me as much as the people in front of me. I check the rear view mirror a lot. I check my mirror and see an orange glow filling the back of the vehicle. "We've got fire!" Luckily, we were on a straight-away with no ditch on the right. As I skidded to a stop, I gave orders. "Out of the car on Ana's side!" That was the side away from the highway and near the forest. The kids were wearing long johns, they'd taken off their snow pants and their boots. By the time my husband and I were out of the car, headed to the back, the 4-year old had unbuckled and was opening her door. My oldest, at 7 was still sitting buckled in her seat. She was indecisive, in spite of receiving instructions.

To my relief and embarrassment, we realized that the fiery orange glow in the radiating off the ceiling and sides of the car was caused by the sun reflecting off a bit of the orange toboggan. We quickly stopped the youngest from stepping out into the snow in her stocking feet. The oldest was more interested in what we were doing that removing herself from her seat. So we had a good laugh at my mistake but it was a good fire drill on acting in an emergency.

Indecision. It can be a killer.

Experiment in Writing

2009-12-07T21:36:00.000-08:00

So I'm going to try a little experiment that will hopefully get me writing more. I'm going to write something everyday. It might not be on the topic of hard times or food or survival. Who knows what I'll write about? At least, I will be writing. Writing is always better than seeing my entry from September 4th just sitting there boring you. I'm going to start now.

Why do I write? I used to think I had something different to say. Something that was important for people to read. But after a few Google searches, you discover that most things have been said and said and said. There may not be that much new to say. I may also be totally wrong about that point too. There may be many new things to say. I just haven't thought of them yet. But there is the point. Maybe by writing more, I'll think of those new things to say.

I used to write a lot. I would write about a life that I imagined. It wasn't necessarily a happy, won-the-lottery life. It was just a different life. I also used to write tech books. Very dry, step by step books that would walk you through using software to keep track of all those important people in your life. It was was my first published book. It was money above and beyond my job at the software company. I was a writer! I have a photocopy of my first check in a drawer somewhere. Actually, or sadly, I think I know exactly which drawer and file folder contains that photocopy. That makes me sound super organized. I'm not. I am so not the super organized person. My documentation was organized. My office was and still is stacks of papers. They are organized and I know which stack contains which items. I'm trying to develop OCD to help with the housework and organization. So far, that idea isn't panning out.

I used to write some really personal stuff. Now I'm much more guarded. Maybe it's because employers have their HR departments busily searching the web for information about potential employees. Guarded and writing don't always go together in my opinion. When you try to be perfect, you get distracted from the flow of ideas. Stream of consciousness can be a terrific writing tool. So tonight and in the next few weeks, you might not like my writing very much. I might not like my writing very much. You might not learn anything useful. But I'm going to write.

I write because I must create. I must create something. My hands must be busy. I used to crochet a lot. My eyesight isn't as good as it used to be. I found I didn't enjoy crocheting as much anymore. Counted cross stitch went the same way. Sewing requires the sewing machine and can disturb the sleeping husband. There are also small children who being ultra curious creatures kept trying to stick their fingers into various parts of the machine while I was sewing. I made paper Christmas ornaments and sold them one year. I enjoyed it. It's where I acquired the name, The Ornament Gal. However, I think people in sweat shops in China were making more money than people wanted to pay me for my ornaments. So creation is a part of me.

What is one of the least expensive creative endeavors to start today? Writing. What do you need to write? Paper. Pen or pencil. Not very expensive. Sure, writing on the web is fun but I still like writing things out long hand. I write most of my recipes out in spiral bound, hard back notebooks. Of course, that leads to me not being able to find my recipes easily but they are much more permanent that way. I like writing with fountain pens. I like the scratchy sound of the nib on the paper. I'm not totally fond of some of the ink stains on my fingers but it doesn't bother me too much. I like being able to flip through a notebook and see that I've filled four or five pages with words and thoughts. They may not make any sense to anyone but me. But I did something on the day that I wrote those words. I thought something. I felt something and I wrote it down.

The sinus medicine is beginning to make me drowsy so I think I'll stop writing today. I plan to write again tomorrow. Even if it's just for five minutes. Do you think sinus medication, scissors and tulle will go together? I want to make a tutu for my daughter's Christmas present. Perhaps tomorrow I'll write about 'less is more for Christmas'.

Tomatilla Salsa

2009-09-04T10:32:00.000-07:00

Last night I was cooking grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner. Why waste that space around the sandwich. The bag from the CSA Farm included some tomatillas. There were 6-8 of them in various shades of green. They were still wearing their papery wrappers. I rolled them around the edges of the skillet. They cooked in spots. All the cheese sandwiches were finished so there was a nice hot skillet available.

I removed their wrappers and tossed them back in the skillet. Meanwhile, I pulled out a banana pepper, took a tentative bite and declared it mild enough for the sauce. It was chopped and added to the skillet. Please note that I'm not following a recipe for this salsa. I did read a recipe the other day but didn't commit it to memory. Normal salsa uses tomato, onion, pepper, cilantro and a few other things. Next, I grab a small quarter sized onion from the bag, peel and chop it. Into the skillet it goes.

This is salsa so it needs a little heat. With kitchen shears in hand, I head out front. It's almost dark and the porch light doesn't do much for seeing into the leafy depths of the jalapeno plant. I pick by feel, judging the size of the peppers with my fingers, moving from pepper to pepper and deciding on four. With their stems held between my fingers, I maneuver the kitchen shears to clip them free. No fingers were lost during these maneuvers.

Inside, I decide not to detour to the garage for gloves. I'll live dangerously and seed the jalapenos barehanded. That went off without a hitch. The girls decided that they wanted bananas with their sandwiches. The bananas must be sliced. Not a problem, I grab the knife and starts slicing. Later, I hear that the bananas are spicey. Ana wants her sandwich reheated so I toss it into the microwave....the bananas are still on the plate. She later proclaims that her bananas taste like cherries...OK.

So now the skillet contains tomatillos, jalapenos, onion, banana pepper. At some point, I picked out the whole tomatillos and chopped them. Once they started cooking, they began to turn that salsa verde color. Things began to dry out a little in the skillet. I grabbed a lime and squeezed half of it into the skillet. Salt and pepper were added. I turned off the heat and let it sit while I enjoyed my slightly cold cheese and Canadian bacon sandwich.

The salsa is still in the fridge. The right food will be cooked eventually for it to accompany.

I'm beginning to understand the cooking style of my older relatives. There were rarely cookbooks out unless they were baking. It's finally occured to me. Cooking really isn't about recipes. It's about technique. Once you know how to cook things, you don't really need recipes because you can make those up as you go along.

Something Like a Frittata

2009-09-04T09:59:00.000-07:00

Morning. Breakfast. Five dozen eggs on my counter. I like to buy eggs in bulk. $4.95-6.99 for 5 dozen at the restaurant supply warehouse. Sure beats $3 a dozen at the grocery store. I like having my eggs for breakfast. It's hard getting the eggs in the fridge because there's a bag of mixed veggies: baby eggplant, banana peppers, tomatillas, etc. I've got some new red potatoes on the counter. Hmmm maybe a frittata of sorts.

First, I slice the potato thin and put it in a nonstick skillet sprayed with some cooking spray. Next a banana pepper cut in half lengthwise and cut into little half circles. A small quarter sized onion gets chopped and added. I let those cook for a while and beat up a couple of eggs. In hindsight, two eggs really wasn't enough egg for this mixture. Three or four would have been better. The beaten eggs were added to the mixture. I kept shaking the pan to make sure it didn't stick. It didn't. Success so far.

Now I need to flip this over and get the other side to cook. Now if I'd used a skillet that had an oven safe handle, I wouldn't have had the next little adventure. I'd have just popped the whole thing under the broiler for a few minutes and it would have been done. But having the skillet with the plastic handle meant other methods of flipping. So I slid the whole thing off onto a plate. That worked well. Next, I put my skillet over the plate...here's where things started to go not so well. I'm trying to hold the plate and skillet together. A larger plate would have helped. They were too close in size. The skillet burned my finger, half of the frittata slipped out from between the plate and skillet and fell on the downdraft exhaust. Only a slight mess, it was mostly cooked.

So there's my quick take on a frittata.

What to do with a squash...

2009-08-29T10:15:00.000-07:00

We were headed out of town for a week and I asked my neighbor to water my plants and enjoy the produce. We were looking at the soccer ball-sized Blue Hubbard squash. I said, "Pick it". She said she wouldn't know what to do with it. Hmmm. Would I know what to do with it? I'd probably peel it chop it into pieces and steam it. I might lose a finger or at least some skin in the process.

I've found an easier way. Chop it half. Scoop out the seeds. Slap the squash halves face down on a cookie sheet. I lined mine with one of those silicon baking liners. Next stick some cloves of garlic under the squash. Set the oven to 350°F and let it bake for 20-50 minutes until the outer shell is soft. Let it cool until you can handle it and then scoop out the flesh. Easy peasy. No need to peel the squash. No cut fingers. No trips to the ER.

So what did I do with this cooked squash? Well, I had one large helping with my dinner. Just salt and pepper it a bit and it's pretty good. You could add butter, cheese, nuts or anything. Right now, I'm baking some bread that used the rest of this squash. The recipe is from Cooking Thin with Chef Kathleen, Sweet Potato Bread with Cranberries, Currants, and Pecans, page 88. Although I haven't tried it yet, I think almost any recipe for banana bread could be used. Just substitute the cooked squash for the bananas.

I can't seem to find fresh cranberries except around Thanksgiving and then they are incredibly expensive. I find that weird because some cranberries are grown here in Oregon. Instead I used dried cranberries. To entice the family to eat the bread, I added chocolate chips. Not so good on the waistline but hey they're eating squash!

So there it is...the first recipe from Cooking Thin with Chef Kathleen. Maybe I won't cook through the whole cookbook but there are a lot of good recipes in here. I may just learn a bit more about cooking other unusual foods.

Update -- Bread is out of the oven. It looks and smells good. Waiting for it to cool down. Since the oven was hot, I decided to roast the other Blue Hubbard squash. About six beets were included in the food from Red Basket Farm yesterday. So I tossed those in...trimmed, scrubbed, and rubbed them with oil and tossed them on the baking sheet. Then I took a look in the cookbook for beets. Should have read the cookbook first. Seems you want to wrap beets in foil or half cover them with water and cover with foil. Sigh. My own fault. So I went and pulled the beets out of the oven. They were still cool enough to handle with bare hands. I compromised and a foil pouch for all of the beets. We'll see how that turns out.

Update to the Update -- The beets turned out beautifully. To peel them, I just held them under a small stream water and rubbed. The tough outer layer just came right off. Easy peasy.

The slow cooker project....maybe

2009-08-26T20:32:00.000-07:00

I was at the library today and saw the Fix-It and Forget-It Cookbook -- Feasting with your Slow Cooker. So I checked it out. Now tonight, I'm looking at it to see if there is a chance to work my way through it. Pages 5-15 look like a primer on how to gain weight via application of cheese dip to hips, thighs and belly. I did see a bit of hope when I looked at the Breakfast Foods section. Any recipe (in this case Welsh Rarebit) that begins with 12-oz can beer can't be all that bad. Unless of course, you're looking to cut down on the calorie intake.

The more I look at the Fix-IT and Forget-It Cookbook, the more I think it's not the cookbook I want to cook from. The appetizer section has multiple versions of cheese dip. There's no calorie information in the book but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that eating a lot of these recipes isn't going to do wonders for my waistline.

Next stop, Cooking Thin with Chef Kathleen. You may remember Kathleen Daelemans from her Cooking Thin television show. It's not a bad book. It does drive me a little crazy that there's no calorie information. She says she doesn't keep track of all the numbers and thus doesn't include that information on the recipes. But then on the other hand, she talks about her "calorie bank account" where she keeps a running track of her calorie range. Does she not realize that it would be much easier for ME to keep track of MY calorie range if calorie and nutritional information were included with the recipes? Sigh. I guess I can alway enter all the ingredients into FitDay or another website to get a rough calorie count for 20 servings of Crunchy Granola. Then hoping the calculator on my computer behaves, I should be able to get a rough idea of the calorie count on any given recipe. Thanks for the extra work, Kathleen.

Now are there 8 cups of rolled oats in the house? I keep eyeing that 25-lb bag of oats at WinCo. But I don't have any food safe buckets available for storage of the leftovers. Still, homemade granola is very, very yummy. I think I've found my first recipe.

A cooking project?

2009-08-26T11:37:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading Julie & Julia. I haven't seen the movie yet. The book was good. I can relate to the obsession with wanting to finish this project. It's an interesting project. I'm tempted to try to repeat that project as I'm sure hundreds of people who have read the book or seen the movie are doing right now. But I have two children, not nearly enough budget and that much butter is just not in my dietary budget. I'm trying to lose weight.

I'm thinking that maybe cooking my way through a slow-cooker cookbook might be more my speed. It would help with the crazy days of swim and soccer practice. My family might even eat what I've cooked. I know that my husband will never eat kidneys, brain or liver. The children like chicken hearts but the more exotic organs would just be wasted. Or maybe a trip through the Foods That Heal cookbook would be good. It's full of recipes using beans and other healthy foods. That would be useful. I want to be sure that I know lots of ways to use my stock of dried beans and grains. This would be the most useful project. I'm sure lots of beans will be wasted before the children decide that they are normal food.

So look for posts about those foods in the near future. I really do plan on doing more writing. Even if no one reads or comments on this blog, it's just good practice for me to write the words.

Today's cooking exercise was Ceviche. If you've never eaten ceviche, don't be afraid of it. It sounds like raw fish but tastes nothing like raw fish. It's simply fish that has been marinated or acid cooked in lime and lemon juice. From there, recipes vary widely. Today, I used a pound of sole for the fish, two small red jalapenos, half a red pepper, half a green pepper, about two tablespoons of chopped cilantro, a small red onion, and a few cherry tomatoes. It's marinating in the fridge now. The fish is already beginning to look cooked. When I get home from swim class it should be ready for me to have a small dish on the front porch. Such a simple dish and most of the ingredients came from my garden (or would have if the tomatoes would ripen). If I were a fisherman, I could even use my own fish but the whole gutting and cleaning fish just doesn't sound like fun. It's much more fun to use the filleted sole from the store.

I never would have tried making ceviche were it not for a sample table at the Japanese grocery. I tried ceviche and thought it was wonderful. I've made several batches now. I've used tilapia which works but seems to go a little soft. I'm trying the more expensive sole this time which seems to be firmer. Don't be afraid. Step out and try something new.

Canned Butter

2009-08-25T20:37:00.001-07:00

Today I found a link for canning butter. We can peas, beans, tomatoes and now I've canned butter. The Indians have been canning butter for a long time. It's called ghee. Seems like a nice thing to have tucked away on the pantry shelf.

It's pretty simple actually. Start with butter. One pound of butter will fill a one pint jar with a table spoon or so left over. So decide how many pounds of butter you want to can and collect an equivalent number of jars with one extra for the extra butter.

Place sterilized jars in a roasting pan in the oven at 250° F for 20 minutes.

While the jars are heating, begin melting the butter. Use a pan that is a lot larger than the amount of butter you'll be melting. You'll be boiling the butter. Butter foams and pops as it boils so a lot of head space in the pot is a good thing. Also think about long sleeves, long pants, oven mitts, shoes and even safety glasses to keep hot, flying butter from sensitive body parts.

In a small pan, start some water heating. This is to sterilize the jar lids used to close the jars.

In another pan, over medium heat, melt the butter. Continue heating until the butter begins to boil. Stir so that the butter doesn't scorch. This is boiled butter, not browned butter; so avoid scorching. Once the butter boils, turn down the heat and let the butter boil for five more minutes. For frozen butter, the melting, boiling and simmering will take the 20 minutes that it takes for the jars to heat in the oven. The jar lids will have reached a boil during this time period as well.

Remove the jars from the oven. Using a canning funnel, ladle or pour the butter into the jars. Leave 3/4 inch of head space (You'll be shaking the butter later). When the jar has been filled to the appropriate level, place a lid and ring on the jar. After tightening the ring, set the jar aside. Don't shake at this point...I tried. Bad idea. The butter comes flying out.

When you start to hear the ping of sealed jars, it's time to shake the butter. The butter separates into clarified butter and milk solids during the boiling process. Shaking while the butter is cooling will recombine these components. With no shaking, the butter will solidify into separate layers. If that happens, it's not the end of the world. After shaking for a bit, place the butter in the refrigerator, wait five minutes and then shake again. Keep doing this while the butter cools, until it achieves a consistent, single layer. But as I said, if you have to pick the kids up from school, or go to soccer, and the butter doesn't get shaken, it will still turn out ok.

I plan on canning more butter when I find it on sale. I've read that it will keep for three years when stored in a cool, dark pantry. I can't attest to that since I've only just canned my first batch of butter. Canned butter is also said to not need refrigeration after opening if used within a reasonable period of time. Although next time around, I think I'll use half-pint jars. Canned butter seems such a handy thing to have in the pantry. After all butter stored in the freezer isn't going to stay frozen if there's a long term power outage.

Fancy Dog Food or What We Now Call Polenta

2009-03-27T14:05:00.000-07:00

I'm amused when I read gourmet cooking magazines and read the menu in some restaurants and see polenta. If you've don't know about polenta, the simple definition is a thick, cornmeal mush. What does that have to do with dog food? Well, growing up as a poor kid on a farm with numerous dogs, my Mom often made food for the dogs. She'd start with some leftover grease in a big cast iron skillet, pour in milk and when it was hot she'd start adding cornmeal. Milk was cheap most of the year since we had a milk cow. We grew corn, shelled and ground it by hand. So corn was inexpensive too. As it cooked, the cornmeal mush thickened and table scraps were add. My dogs knew the meaning of the words, "Mom cooked." They sometimes turned their noses up at commercial dog food.

Years later, I moved to the Pacific Northwest and encountered polenta in restaurants. It looked familiar and made me chuckle. Here was a basic simple food being served in restaurants accompanying expensive entrees. It looked familiar. A bit more jazzed up that what Mom used to cook but basically the same thing.

Polenta is simple. It consists of water, cornmeal, maybe some salt and other flavorings. Spice it up or dress it down. It's simply boiled, allowed to set up and then baked or fried.

Polenta

3 cups water
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup cornmeal

Spray a loaf pan with nonstick cooking spray.

Bring 3 cups water and the salt to a boil. Reduce the heat and gradually add the cornmeal. Pour in a thin, slow stream while whisking constantly so that lumps don't form. Cook, stirring frequently, until thickened, 5-10 minutes. If you want to spice it up, stir in a 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes.

Spread the polenta in the prepared loaf pan and smooth the top. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm, at least 30 minutes.

Remove polenta from the loaf pan and slice in 1/2 inch slices. Place slices on the baking sheet. At this point you can add as many calories as you'd like by buttering the polenta, or topping with cheese, or leave it plain. Bake uncovered at 350 F for 20 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 F. Lightly spray a baking sheet with nonstick cooking spray. Bake until polenta develops a nice color.

Another cornmeal mush type dish comes to us from Africa. It is called Ugali. Ugali is made with a white maize flour. Although many recipes suggest that grits or yellow cornmeal may be substituted. Ugali can vary in consistency from a soupy porridge to a thicker dough. Since ugali is traditionally eaten by rolling it into a bite-size ball, creating an indention and using it to scoop up a stew or curry.

Ugali

4 cups water
1 tsp salt
2 cups white maize flour

Over high heat, bring water and salt to a boil. Add the flour slowly, 1 tablespoon at a time, while stirring constantly with a whisk to avoid lumps. Continue until all the flour is used.

Reduce heat to medium-low and cook until mixture reduces and thickens, and pulls away from the sides of the pot, about 5-6 minutes.

Let sit for about 5 minutes, then remove from heat. Let sit another minute, then serve.

Makes 4 servings.

There used to be tales of elderly people buying and eating canned cat and dog food because it was what they could afford. Those canned foods have gotten expensive. I think we can eat more nutritiously without resorting to canned pet foods. Just stir up a batch of polenta or ugali. I wonder now if the family pets knew what wonderful things my mother was cooking up for them. I think they did since they often rejected the store bought dog food.

Bargains in Bulk

2009-03-07T11:14:00.000-08:00

While watching the evening news, I caught a segment on how to eat on a budget. It was good segment that extolled the virtues of brown rice, eggs and beans. However, the lovely lady shopping grabbed the box of brown rice and the carton on eggs. Perhaps she didn’t want to be seen lugging a 25 lb bag of rice or beans. But the real value in these foods can be found by buying in bulk. For the price of two cartons of eggs, you can purchase 5 dozen eggs in a bulk package. That’s like getting three dozen eggs for free. Just ask neighbors to save egg cartons for you and repackage them when you get home.

If your pantry won’t hold a 25 or 50 pound bag of rice or beans and you must store it in the garage, be sure to find a food safe container to hold your grains and beans. I hear that in Utah, Wal-Mart carries food safe buckets and lids. You can also find food safe buckets at restaurant suppliers or online at places such as Emergency Essentials. If you’re cheap like me, visit a local Chinese restaurant. Why Chinese? Soy sauce comes in 5 gallon buckets. Chinese restaurants use lots of soy sauce. These buckets often go into the trash. I find that, after a wash with bleach and a good airing, that the smell of the soy sauce is negligible. So you can accomplish several goals at once. You can save a plastic bucket from the landfill and provide safe storage for your big bag of rice or beans.

Many people, whether because of their religious or political beliefs, have decided to keep at least a year’s supply of food. Long before the government decided that the country was in a recession, I decided that extra food was a good thing to have on hand. After going organizing my extremely deep pantry shelves, I discovered that many of the cans of vegetables had gotten lost and were out dated. The texture and color of cans that were opened just wasn’t appetizing…even if they retained any nutritional value. This experience made me begin to look for foods that remain appetizing, edible and nutritious during longer storage times. Beans, grains, and dry pasta all met those requirements. So we know that these products store well and most of us know how to cook pasta but what about those dry beans and whole grains? First let's talk about those whole grains. If you decide to stock hard red or white wheat, you are going to need some method of grinding or cracking the wheat. Hand mills for grinding the wheat range in price from $75 to $400+. You should take this cost into consideration before you decide to store a supply of wheat or other grain. I've found that 1 cup of wheat berries as they are called will grind out to 2 cups of whole wheat flour. This is also a good workout for the arm muscles. There are electric mills but that seems to defeat the purpose of also being prepared for an emergency. I'd prefer not to be dependent on electricity to grind my wheat into flour.

Why stock whole wheat berries? Whole grains retain their freshness and nutrient content better when they are in their original form. Once ground into flour, the wheat berry has many surfaces which are exposed to the air where nature begins the process of decomposition. It is always better to store the products as whole grains rather than flour or cornmeal. Of course, for value and savings, I buy 50 lb bags of flour and store it in 5 gallon buckets. Flour has many uses in cooking, from breads to thickening gravies. When most of us think of bread we think of fluffy white bread. However, there are many delicious flat breads that are easy to make. These include naan bread, tortillas, and a camp favorite called bannock. All of these breads are basically flour, water, salt and perhaps a bit of yeast or baking powder to get a rise and fat in the form of oil or bacon grease. Simple stuff and easy to make over a fire with some cast iron cookware.

Since we're talking about buying in bulk and saving money, I have to let the folks on the West coast in on a great place to get bargains in bulk. Cash & Carry Smart Food Service looks like a restaurant supply business, which it is, however, it also caters to the general public. Their sign says wholesale only, don't let that scare you away. Just take into account that most things are packaged in bulk quantities for restaurants. You won't be able to walk in and buy a couple of onions...you can buy a 10 pound bag of onions. Now this next special doesn't fall into my no electricity emergency food supply category, it is a great buy. FlavorPac frozen vegetables in a 5 lb bag for $3.48. Frozen mixed fruit in a 5 lb bag 6.49. Shredded Cheddar Cheese 5 lbs for $7.97. Cash & Carry is also a great place to pick up the 5 dozen egg packs, milk and cream. These are the specials for my local store. The store in your area may be featuring different items. When looking for bargains, don't be afraid to venture into different types of stores. The worst that can happen is that you walk around and leave without buying. The upside may be some terrific bargains.

I also stock buckets of beans in various varieties. I've found that a one cup of dried beans will expand to a 2 1/2 cups when soaked and cooked. Many recipes call for 1 lb of a particular bean variety. For kidney beans, this is approximately 1 1/2 cup. For lima, navy, and soy beans, this is about 2 1/3 cup. One pound of split peas is equal to roughly 2 cups. For lentils, you'll need 2 1/3 cups to equal one pound. A 15 or 25 pound bag of dried beans contains a lot of servings. You can overcome some of the inconvenience of cooking with dried beans by soaking them, draining and then storing in the refrigerator. If you have time, you can go a step further and cook until tender and then store in the refrigerator. Think of lentils as the convenience food of dried beans. A lentil dish can be prepared in about 30 minutes. Dried beans do require a little more effort on your part but time is money. Do you want to pay someone else to prepare your beans or would you rather have that money to buy more beans?

As promised, I'm stopping back by with a few tips and recipes for beans. Most recipes simply state to cook beans until tender. Some will give an estimated time but the cooking time for beans will vary based on factors such as size of bean and time of storage. Older beans take longer to cook. Peas and smaller beans take less than an hour. Larger beans may take longer; lima beans are an exception to the large bean rule. Lima beans may tenderize in less than an hour. Soy beans while small, may take 3 to 4 hours to tenderize. Since the cooking times are longer for beans, for efficiency, cook more than one pound at once and freeze or refrigerate those not needed for your recipe.

Mexican Chili Beans

1 lb dried red kidney beans
2 qts water
1/4 lb bacon, finely diced
1 onion, finely chopped
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon pepper
2-4 teaspoons chili powder
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon cumin
3/4 cup tomato paste
1 cup tomato sauce

Soak the kidney beans in the water overnight or use the quick method. (Quick 'soak' method: bring water and beans to a boil and cook 2 minutes. Cover, remove from heat, and let stand for one hour. This is equivalent to an overnight soak.)

After soaking overnight or quick soaking, bring the beans and water to a boil. Simmer until just tender, about 40 minutes.

Fry baon in a Dutch oven. When crisp, add the onions and garlic and saute until golden.

Add salt, pepper, chili powder to taste, oregano, cumin, tomato paste and tomato sauce. Simmer for 15 minutes.

Drain beans, reserving liquid. Add beans and 2 cups of the reserved liquid to the tomato mixture in the Dutch oven. Cover and simmer for 1 hour.

Serves 6

Potato Candy

2008-12-21T11:46:00.001-08:00

Sounds strange, doesn't it? But so does rice as a sweetener. It's all in the treatment and the additional ingredients. Potato candy uses three ingredients: a boiled potato, powdered sugar and peanut butter. It's a simple old fashioned candy. UPDATE: I found my actual recipe. The candy should have a teaspoon of vanilla and a dash of salt.

First scrub a potato and boil it in a saucepan of water. Yesterday, I used just an average sized potato from a 10 pound bag. It was about the size of my fist. A woman's fist. How long to boil? Until you can stick a fork in several places and it goes in easily. You don't want to have any hard undercooked areas. Those undercooked areas are very hard to mash.

Once the potato has boiled until tender, take it out. Just stick a fork in it and use the fork to hold it while you pick the skin off with a paring knife. It will be one of the easiest potatoes you've ever peeled.

While the potato is still hot begin to work in the powdered sugar, a teaspoon of vanilla and a dash of salt. I like to use a pie plate and a fork for this process. Watch a Christmas special or the falling snow while doing this...you're going to be at it for a little while. I worked 3/4 or more of a bag of powdered sugar into the potato I cooked. There is no exact amount since the size of the potato will vary. Just keep adding powdered sugar until you get a stiff dough that you'll be able to spread out. Don't get too stiff though, you will need to roll the dough like a jelly roll.

Once you've decided that you have a stiff dough, it's time to spread it out. I used plastic wrap on my counter. Waxed paper probably would have been better. What I didn't do but should have is to put some 'bench flour' aka powdered sugar down before I started working my dough out into a rectangle. It stuck to the plastic wrap a bit. Just use extra powdered sugar in the same way you use flour when working with bread dough. Use a spatula, your hands, whatever works to manipulate the dough into an even thickness and shape. About 1/4 inch is a good thickness.

Once you've got a rectangle of dough, spread on the peanut butter. If you really love peanut butter, put it on thicker.

Next, roll the dough like a jelly roll. I roll from the longest side because I want to be able to cut a lot of pieces of candy from this. In fact, once I get the candy rolled, I cut the roll in half and then roll it like I'm making a play dough snake. It will get thinner and longer and let you cut more pieces of candy.

After cutting the candy, place it on a cookie sheet and let it dry. Without drying, the moisture remaining in the dough may grow mold if just tossed into an airtight container.

This is a super sweet candy. It's basically powdered sugar but it's good.

Rustic Pizza at Home

2008-12-17T09:06:00.000-08:00

The Northwest has been hit by wave after wave of snow and ice. Ok, when I lived in the middle of the country, I wouldn't have even blinked at this stuff. Ok, now that I've got the vehicle properly outfitted for the winter, I'm not too concerned about it now. Unfortunately, there tend to be a lot of other people who don't get their vehicle outfitted and aren't concerned about the weather. They're the ones that you sit around and watch on TV as they clog up the freeway and prevent the snow plows from doing their job.

So what does snow and ice have to do with pizza? Delivery or the lack thereof. I sometimes make pizza at home. I use an old pizza stone that's in two pieces. (Never put anything frozen on the pizza stone that has heated in the oven...cracking will ensue!) Sometimes I use a dough with yeast. Sometimes I just use flour, salt and water. The yeast dough is a soft dough. The flour, salt, water dough produces a dough that is crisper; more like a cracker.

Here's the recipe that I use when I think about pizza early in the afternoon and have time for the dough to rise.

Pizza Dough

1 cup warm water (105-115°F)
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 package (¼ oz.) active dry yeast (one package of yeast = 2¼ teaspoon of yeast)

Combine the water sugar and yeast. Proof until foamy, about 5 minutes.

2¼ cups all purpose flour
1 cup cake flour
1 Tablespoon Kosher salt

Mix flours and salt. If you have a stand mixer with a dough hook, use it.

2 Tablespoons olive oil

Add oil to yeast mixture once it has proofed, then pour into the flour mixture. Knead by hand or on low speed on the mixer for 10 minutes.

Place dough in a lightly oiled bowl, turning to coat. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 2 hours.

Punch dough down and divide into four balls, pinching the bottoms closed. Cover with plastic wrap, and let wrise in a warm place another hour.

I don't tend to buy cake flour. In my latest experiment (cooking is always an experiment for me) instead of adding more white all-purpose flour, I grabbed a container of hand ground wheat flour. I wondered if it would make it too hard. Instead, it seemed to make a softer dough. Way back, many, many moons ago, I was in 4-H. I actually have a trophy for making bread. Our 4-H project book had an experiment using various flours. It was designed to teach the gluten content of various flours. I learned it at the time but the many moons have removed that information from my memory. Maybe I'll have to search for that information and learn it again.

When I'm ready to use my pizza dough, I roll it out into 5-8" rounds or semi-rounds or just irregular shapes. The pizza stone has been heating in the oven. After I get the dough rolled out, I toss it on the hot stone. No toppings. I just want to firm up the dough a little bit. So I cook it on one side and then flip it over and cook the over side for a minute or so. I begin topping the cooked crusts while I cook more crusts.

The pleasant surprise on my last batch of pizzas was the bubbling! Yes, the pizza rounds turned into big round balloons. This was a pleasant surprise. I have been trying to make pita type bread for some time and haven't been able to get that ballooning. I have more experimenting to do. I must learn the reason for my success. Was it the addition of the wheat flour? Was it the use of a yeast dough? My naan bread recipe is supposed to puff and doesn't use yeast. I've never achieved a really successful balloon with the naan bread recipe. So if you like pita bread, this recipe with some wheat flour might do the trick for you.

Fireplace Bread aka Flour Tortillas

2008-12-15T09:49:00.000-08:00

Bread has been called the staff of life. When most of us think of bread, we think of nice loaves of fluffy white bread. But bread comes in many forms from many parts of the world. It can be simple or complex. It can take hours or minutes to make. I've got a batch of sourdough starter and a sweet Friendship Bread starter but lately, I prefer simple. The only thing complex about tortillas is rolling them out. My children did that last time I made tortillas so it's not hard.

The first tortillas that I made were cooked on the comal in the woodburning fireplace. I was very proud of my irregular shaped tortillas. They tasted good; all smokey and with a bit of ash here and there. But my husband loved them and the kids ate them. My second batch weren't as good. They cracked when I tried to roll them. Perhaps it was because I added too much water then had to add more flour. On the third try, I solved the mystery of the 2nd batch. I was cooking them too long.

Here's roughly the recipe that I use when I'm making tortillas. I say roughly because I've stopped measuring exactly.

Flour Tortillas

3 cups flour
2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
4-6 tablespoons vegetable shortening or lard
1¼ cups warm water

Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl.

Add the vegetable shortening or lard and use a pastry cutter or your hands to cut it in. I personally use a fork to work it in so there are no obvious blobs of shortening or lard. I then rub the flour/shortening mixture between my hands until it looks like a fine cornmeal.

Add warm water a little at a time until your dough is soft and not sticky. This 'adding moisture' step which is where I either have good tortillas or I totally mess them up. Start with about a tablespoon at a time. As it begins to look like a dough, add the water a teaspoon at a time.

Knead the dough for a few minutes. Then separate the dough into 12 small dough balls. Let them rest for about 10 minutes. Start heating up the cast iron skillet or comal while the dough rests. If you are working on the stove, set it to medium to high heat. You don't want the heat too high or the tortillas will cook too fast. If you're cooking in the fireplace, you just have to try a few times to get an eye for your fire.

Roll out the dough with a rolling pin. It is a good idea to dust each dough ball with flour before rolling it out. Roll the dough out on an unfloured surface. Place your rolling pin in the center of a dough ball. Roll up. Center your rolling pin again and roll down. Rotate the tortilla and repeat until the tortilla is fairly thin.

I give the rolled tortillas a pinch of flour dusted over the surface to keep the stack of tortillas from sticking together. When they are all rolled out, it's time to cook.

Lay your tortilla on a heated, dry comal or cast iron skillet. It takes just a few seconds to cook. Flip to the other side. When they are done it should have lots of nice brown speckles. If you overcook the tortillas, they'll become stiff little rounds that are not pliable.

Place cooked tortillas in a towel to keep them warm.

Maize Mamma

2008-12-01T15:46:00.000-08:00

I've been promising cornbread and haven't got around to making it or writing about it even. I've turned over the cornbread duties to my husband. First he was hooked on the little cornbread muffin mixes that come in the blue box. Yuck. I'd never had cornbread from a mix. It was nothing like my mamma's cornbread. There was no taste. But most importantly, there was no texture. It was almost like a flour muffin with some corn flavor.

Then our finances got better. My husband bought the bag of Marie Callender's cornbread mix. Better but still not mamma's cornbread. Again that corn texture was missing. The cornbread was too light and airy. It wasn't dense and crumbling with a texture like, well, corn meal. It didn't have that dark bottom from cooking in a cast iron skillet.

That all changed one night when my husband wanted cornbread. I dug in the too deep shelves in the pantry and found his bag of Marie Callender's mix. One whiff told the story, the fat in it had gone rancid. Now in a really bad situation, any of us would probably eat it just for the nutritional value. But things weren't that bad yet. So I chucked it out for the birds and grabbed my handy journal book of recipes. No, it isn't my Mamma's recipe for cornbread. There never was a recipe for her cornbread. She just made it. Measurements were "a little bit", "maybe a little more", etc. As a kid trying to learn to cook it frustrated me to tears. Now days if you tried to stop Mamma in the middle of cooking and work out the measurements, it would probably frustrate her into leaving the kitchen. It's just not the way she cooks.

What I found in my recipe journal that night was a recipe for cornbread cooked in a dutch oven. Close enough. The ingredient list looked close to the things I'd remembered Mamma using. It made a good starting point. It's gone through a little bit of mutation since that night.

Cast Iron Skillet Cornbread

1 cup yellow corn meal
1 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 eggs
1 cup milk
2 tablespoon honey or 1/4 cup sugar

Grease your cast iron skillet (10-12") and start it heating in a 425°F oven while you mix the cornbread.

Mix the dry ingredients together. Then add the milk, eggs, and honey. Pour the batter into your heated cast iron skillet. Bake for 20-30 minutes or until a wooden skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.

I prefer honey in my cornbread. My husband perfers the no mess method of adding a bit of sugar. You can add more, less or none at all.

Next up, flour tortillas cooked in the fireplace.

Poor House Gravy Train

2008-10-15T09:50:00.001-07:00

I hope none of us end up in the poor house. Do poor houses even exist anymore? I don’t think so. I think we replaced those with our welfare system. No more working on the poor farm. No more working on the prison farm. Just the free handouts. It’s a system that I don’t believe can be sustained. We need to learn how to do things in a sustainable way. Whether it’s building from sustainable, renewable products, growing our own food or governing our country, we need to focus on whether we can sustain the ideas that we propose. We need to approach the world as though it were a marathon. Can we sustain this pace? Do we need to make adjustments now so we can make it to the end of the race, or will we drop out before the end?

Shelter, water, and food are essential to life. Shelter is generally provided and often an afterthought in today’s society. People are beginning to think more about it in these last few months. People are beginning to feel threatened. The thought is finally beginning to intrude, “Where will I go if I lose my house?” The old ideas of thrift are beginning to return. So where can we be more thrifty? Where can we cut back and save money?

So back to the poor house food or how we can pinch pennies to stay in our house and out of the poor house. This isn’t going to be about clipping coupons and buying in bulk. There are other people who write about those areas. This is more about a trip down memory lane to the rocky hills of a farm. I’ve written about the brown beans, the lamb’s quarter and poke salad. There are other areas that seem like a luxury now. There were steaks, hamburger, heart and liver. Now days I don’t cook steak often, nor use much red meat. Not because I’m a vegetarian or opposed to red meat, it’s the price of meat plain and simple. It would almost be sacrilege in my family to be a vegetarian, I come from a family that raises beef cattle. It’s not a big operation. There are no feedlots. There are no veal shacks. The pastures aren’t overgrazed (unless it’s a dry year and things get really tight then the grass gets skimpy). There was a steer that was fed up every year for eating. He was sent to the local slaughterhouse (There’s another small town business that’s disappearing) to be packaged and then stored in the huge freezer. Since we weren’t buying the meat in the grocery store it was cheap for us. I doubt I’ll be able to feed my children the way my mother fed me. There will be less meat loaf, little or no steak, and fewer hamburgers.

I read on various blogs and forums about people buying bags of rice. White rice is good. I like white rice but I think it could get old really quick by itself. One of my memories of childhood is tuna gravy over rice. People don't seem to make gravy anymore. With all the weight loss concerns, we've been taught to leave off the gravy. It's fattening and unnecessary. Tuna gravy is just a white sauce/gravy with a can of tuna dumped in for flavor, texture and nutrition. Place a bed of rice on the plate and ladle on the gravy. Right now it's probably not the best thing for your waist. If times get harder, we may all be eating a lot less and have lost a bit of weight, in which case, we'll be looking for a few extra calories.

So let's look at gravy a bit more. There are infinite varieties of gravy. I could do the whole Forest Gump name all the forms of gravy but I'll refrain. I'm fond of white gravy myself. Just look around the pantry and you'll find all sorts of things to either toss in the gravy or to toss the gravy over. If you have a large freezer for food storage, look around for a restaurant supply store. Here on the West Coast of America we have a chain called Cash and Carry. They are open to the public. You'll find there are big bags of crumbled sausage, Canadian bacon, link sausage, all in large packages that cost less per ounce than the small individual packaging you find at the local grocery store. Just look around and imagine things swimming in a creamy white sauce. As long as the electricity holds out to power the freezer, you can have a ready supply of tasty protein to toss into your gravies.

So you've got a tasty gravy, now what? Put something under it and chow down. Got bread? Got bread that doesn't taste quite as fresh as you'd like? Toast it and top it with your gravy. Getting sick of that white rice? Add the tuna or sausage gravy with some salt and pepper. If you're lucky enough to have some hamburger, steak or chicken, bread it and fry it in chicken fried steak fashion and top with plain white gravy. A bit of corn or green beans on the side and you've got a meal.

For those of you who have only made gravy by opening a jar, or mixing water with the ingredients of a package, here are a few tips. I have to admit. I most often end up with lumpy gravy or scorched gravy and various other incarnations of gravy. It comes from doing too many things at once. It doesn't bother me. I like my gravy, lumpy, scorched or otherwise.

Basic Gravy Recipe

4 tablespoons margarine or butter
4 tablespoons flour
2 cups water, white wine, chicken stock or milk

Melt the butter over low heat, then add the liquid and the flour, stir for 3-4 minutes with a fork or wire whisk. Now that you have a basic sauce or gravy, you can start flavoring it. A pinch of salt, a can of tuna, a handful of sausage or a heavy grinding of black pepper are good starting points. Keep stirring until the gravy reaches the desired thickness.

Next up on the menu....cornbread!

Food of My Youth

2008-10-15T09:21:00.000-07:00

It’s been an interesting few weeks. We’ve seen unpresidented swings in the stock market. We’ve seen a bailout/rescue bill fail in the House of Representatives. We’ve seen the Senate take up the same bill and add favorite tax cuts and incentives to the bill. The Senate passed the bill…so did the House. So we’ve been bailed out. The stock market didn’t come bounding back after the bill was passed.

How does this affect me? How does this affect you? Does it affect us at all? I believe that it will impact our world. Whether your world is in rural America, suburbia or the inner city. There will be a ripple happen. Whether that ripple is a result of the original cause (the need for a bail out) or whether it is the result of the bail out itself, we may never know. I believe that we are in for a rough ride ahead. This bail out plan may not have the desired results. I’ve been reading about the Great Depression in America. It is believed that the bailout plans instituted then may have actually prolonged the depression. By trying to do good, the natural recovery of the economy was prolonged. I am not an economist. I have not studied these things in depth. I openly admit when I do not have all the answers.

What I do know, however, is that we must begin to change the way that we are living. We cannot continue to live in the credit bubble that has been providing the livestyle for many of us. I am not happy with my current credit state. I would like to have less credit and more money in the bank. My plan for the future is to pay off as many bills as possible and get back to saving. I plan to change the way I eat, the way I shop, and the way I cook.

Lately, I’ve been reading lots of food books. They are interesting and tend to involve travel and eating the local foods. Then I realized that many of these books were written by wealthy people; people who every year spend a month in Maine. I began to wonder why poor people didn’t write food books. Is it that we are boring? Surely the food of poor folks is just as interesting as that of the more affluent. I began to think back on the food of my youth. I grew up poor; one of six kids on a rocky flint and limestone farm in hillbilly country. What did we eat? So I sat one afternoon and started listed the foods that I grew up eating. There were always the brown beans. There were pots of brown beans with an oxtail. Not a ham hock, as mother attended a church with psuedo-Jewish traditions, so there was no pork eaten. The beans were always served with a vinegary relish called chow chow. We made chow chow every fall. It consisted of all the garden leftovers that would die with the first frost. Cabbage, green peppers, green tomatoes, sweet red peppers, cucumbers and onions all ground in the hand grinder then cooked with vinegar, sugar, and spices. It smelled heavenly when cooking and going into the jars. It tasted heavenly during the winter over plates of brown beans with thick homemade bread spread with butter. If the milk cow was giving milk, there would be homemade butter. Hard and tough to spread but which melted into the hot slices of freshly baked bread.

The beans might have been my first thought but as I wrote I realized that our diet was quite varied. There were the greens picked wild from the field and cooked down. These were lamb’s quarter or poke salad. From the garden there was swiss chard and mustard greens. Tossed into the big pot with water and salt and cooked down. They were often served beside the brown beans. There was a glass cruet filled with vinegar to pour over the greens once they were on your plate.

I find the regional differences in eating styles amusing. My husband seems to have little reference to vinegary foods. I’m not even sure that he eats relish on his hot dogs. Perhaps it’s my Southern upbringing or my German genes. I have a love of sauerkraut, pickled herring, beans with chow chow, a freezer coleslaw that has a vinegar base and greens with vinegar. In my more adult years, I gravitated to vinegar and salt potato chips. Vinegar seems to be a staple of life for me. I feel that it is a good thing. Vinegar is a good preservative.

One of my recent joys is fermentation. It’s not exactly recent to me. It’s more like a rediscovery of something that I haven’t done in many years. I used to help my mother prepare cabbage for sauerkraut. Many delicious things come from things that most people throw out. We’ve become so out of touch with how food is manufactured that we’re afraid of anything that doesn’t look surgically sterile. It never ceases to amuse me when people want to discard sour cream that has been sitting out for a few hours. I am certain that they are unaware of how to sour cream, cheese, and yogurt are made. It is that very process of letting the milk sit and sour that creates these wonderful concoctions. I often laugh about my kids making ricotta cheese in their lost sippy cups. But the truth is that it’s a pretty good start on a pretty good cheese.

I think we need to start getting back in touch with our food. It can save us in the future. Save us from wasting perfectly good food. Save our life from starvation because we fear eating perfectly good food. We need to get over these food phobias.

Looking around the country

2008-08-23T10:32:00.000-07:00

Normally I do my real estate searching via the Internet. I know I'm missing lots of properties but it's a way for me to get a general idea of what an area looks like. It's also fun to start looking at the Department of Emergency Management (DEM) for an area. They love to post pictures of them operating during the last disaster. One small town in Kansas looked very good...and then I saw the pictures from the DEM. Apparently large areas may be prone to flooding. I have an aversion to seeing all or portions of my house underwater. So I quietly crossed that area off my list of possible areas for a new homestead.

This past week I got the opportunity to do a little traveling. Down through Oregon and into Northern California. It's a beautiful drive. A little less lovely when it's 105°F in Grants Pass but still nice to see that part of the country. I've made a permanent note to self to never drive Hwy 199 between Grants Pass and Crescent City, California again. It's beautiful, wild remote country. But the twisty, little highway hanging above the river in the canyon really eats up the time and gas and tends to make passengers carsick. Ok, the driver felt sick on occasion too!

Driving along the California coast was nice and much cooler than the inland Oregon temperatures. It's nice to think about the bounty of the sea. There's salt to be produced from the salt water, fish, mussels, crabs, and seaweed to be harvested. I also wonder if it would be safe to eat those items or whether we've managed to pollute the water so much that we've created toxic food sources. If we lose power and can't process waste water, will we further pollute the coastal waters? My feeling is that we would see more pollution being dumped there.

There were Tsunami warning signs. Some of them were in areas where you couldn't even see the ocean but it was flat and marshy towards the west; an easy path for water from the ocean to your front door if you lived there. My husband and I began asking ourselves just what is the size of tsunami wave that is used when they determine which areas are in or out of tsunami danger. All the upwards grades were marked 'Leaving Tsunami Danger Area' but all of them didn't seem that safe to me. I'll have to do a bit of research and see how high the tsunami wave was in the computer simulations used to post the signs. I'm thinking it wasn't as high as I'd like. I wonder if it takes into account rising sea levels as various glaciers and ice caps melt. Will they need to move and repost the signs every year to stay ahead of the rising water? As we're driving along, we notice a large power plant located between Hwy 101 and the ocean, on flat lowland. If a tsunami hits, the area will lose power, for quite some time it would appear.

We drove inland and upwards out of tsunami danger. It was dryer. Not arid, just not the lush, squishy wetness of my current location. A nice flat plot of land. An old plum tree grew near the old house. There was a bee hive in an old apple tree. Other apple trees grew on a steep slope. There was a drainage ditch that came into the property and runs in the winter. There's a nice three feet of drop which would make a nice spot for a little hydroelectric generator. In the early morning, I watched four deer grazing on the upper edge of the property. Over the years of suburban living, I've lost my ability to gauge acreage. Six acres sounds big on paper. It looked tiny to me. There are supposed to be lots of survival/sustainability types in the area. It's all about organic in this area. There is apparently a fair amount of bartering going on in the area.

I was sleeping on the floor while I was there. I felt a familiar rippling feeling the first night. Either an earthquake occurred nearby or my inner ear is messing with me again. It's happened before and I've been convinced that the foundation of our house had become unstable. When that trembling unstableness followed me to get my haircut at a strip mall, I admitted that it was me and not our house. This didn't feel the same. Just about three ripples of the earth and it stopped. No one else felt it but me. I love the Internet for earthquake research. A 4.6 earthquake that was nine miles deep near Trinidad, CA doesn't make the news. It's nice to go online and confirm that there had been an earthquake nearby.

At first glance, this little corner of California seemed like a perfectly idyllic sactuary for a retreat. The more I thought though, the more I decided that it wasn't perfect for me. I like warmth. I don't mind hot days. Sure hauling hay or building fence on a 100°F day isn't that terrific but with fluids one can survive and get the job done. I also like snow. I've slogged through mid-thigh deep snow to feed cattle and haul wood. It's not fun but where I lived at the time, it didn't last more than a week or two at the most. This particular area of California doesn't provide me with those weather patterns. While this region may be perfect for other people, I'm not sure it's my first choice for a hideaway. It's a just a reminder that everyone is different and we all have to consider all aspects of our lives when we're making decisions about the best location for us and our families. What is perfect for one may not be perfect for another. Of course, there are things that all good homestead sites have in common: water, good soil, a good building site, etc. I won't enumerate all of those qualities. There are many articles on the subject so I won't reinvent the wheel.

So I'll continue searching for that perfect utopian homestead and perhaps one day in the near future, I'll find it.

Collecting

2008-08-04T22:06:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've done any writing. I've been busily growing the veggies out front...picked the first cucumber this week! But mostly I've been collecting. I'm a packrat by nature but lately what I've been collecting is information. My library selections are very eclectic or maybe not to Jericho fans. Some of the topics are homesteading, gardening, solar power, wind power, self-sufficiency, underground houses, nutrition, hydroponics, cookbooks, especially those about camp cooking, vegetarian recipes, cultural cookbooks. I've been collecting little bits of information from all of these books and writing them in my notebooks. Writing helps me remember things and I'm not counting on having a working computer at all times in the future.

The future is uncertain. We're seeing rising gas prices (Ok, they dropped some this week but I'm not going to count on them staying down), rising food prices, a crisis in the mortgage and banking industry due to bad loans, the possibility that we've reached peak oil and the list goes on. So what do we do in uncertain times? We can worry. We can imagine. We can prepare. There are well respected segments of the religious community that teach members of their faith to be prepared. They recommend having a years supply of food stored. That has been taught for many years...before the oil embargo of the 70s, before the S&L debacle of the 80s, before our current uncertainty. I think it's a good idea. After all, I really don't expect food prices to drop anytime soon. So buying and properly storing some extra food can't hurt.

My summer gardening experiments in hydroponics have been interesting. I've determined that during the summer, there is no real advantage to growing my tomatoes and cucumbers in a hydroponics tub. The tomato might have slightly larger fruit that it's counterpart growing in soil. However, they are different varieties so it's a bit hard to determine the size difference. The New Zealand spinach in the dirt is certainly larger than that in the tub but again the spinach in the tub tends to get pinched off and eaten more since it's clean all the time with no grit. Cucumbers I can evaluate side by side. I have one in water and one in soil very near each other so they get almost the same sunlight. The one in soil is much larger and produced cucumbers faster.

I will admit to not being as precise as I should be with the hydroponics. I haven't been dumping my solution as often as recommended, etc. I'm trying to imagine using this setup in hard times. In hard times, I won't be able to afford the nutrients. Talk about sticker shock! I put a gallon of nutrients on the counter and was told it was $118. Excuse me? The sign said $24.95...turns out that was the price for a pint. The tags were in the wrong spots. Needless to say, I went looking for something less expensive. This calls for more reading to find a way to make a natural solution for growing plants. Something that I could make and feed the plants if commercial solutions weren't available. There's that self-sufficiency theme popping up again. Comfrey popped up in several places as a tea for feeding soil based plants. So it's on my research list.

There are several books that were quite informative. Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times by Steve Solomon was very good and set for some interesting points. This book provides good information on saving seed, growing food in dry conditions, organic fertilizer and irrigation. I hadn't really thought about it until I read this book but think about the lot size of older homes. Homes from the 40s and 50s and even through most of the 70s are on what are now considered HUGE lots. Those lots were the perfect size for a house and a garden spot. Victory gardens were grown during the war to provide food for families. Rationing was in effect. Men were away at war. Times were hard. People grew as much food as possible. Growing a garden then was not the 'hobby' that it's become now. It was something that almost anyone with land did. I'm beginning to itch for more land. Growing a few plants this summer makes me want to plant a big garden again. There are community gardens but the plots are tiny, if you can get one, and just the gas to drive there to water the plants would make it inefficient. Water is a very important factor. If you live in the city or a suburb, your water most likely comes from the faucet, from the water treatment plant. What if these services are unavailable in the future? It will be hard to get drinking water for yourself, let alone water for plants. From this book, I learned about spacing plants for growing in the dry season.

Another book surprised me. I expected a foodie book and instead found some wonderful tidbits of information inside. Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally by Alisa Smith and J.B. Mackinnon. What would happen if you suddenly decided to eat only foods that were grown within 100 miles of your home? Easy? Maybe until you begin to think about things like salt, flour (wheat), apples, oranges. Imagine spending several weeks at a cabin with no running water, electricity, or nearby store. How would you feed yourself? If it's summer, you may be able to find food in the woods and fields nearby. You may be able to catch fish from a nearby stream. It occurred to me that there's lots of food around most of us. We walk on it. We throw frisbees and footballs across it. We may sniff it and admire it's color. The parks around our towns may hold food that we've never considered before. I shall soon be buying a native plants handbook for my area. I need to discover the food plants that may be growing nearby. Reading the detailed history (as opposed to the high school history book version) of expeditions such as Lewis and Clark may tell us what people in our region were eating at that time.

Our agriculture has changed over the years. Most of the small family farms are gone. The methods of the small farm have been replaced with growing on a mass scale with tractors and irrigation systems. We've come to think of certain regions of the US as areas where corn is grown, or wheat, soybeans, rice. We've been told that wheat only grows in a specific region. What I learned from Plenty is that this is not entirely true. Perhaps wheat grows best in Eastern Oregon or Montana but it can also grow in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia. Start visiting farmer's markets. Get to know the farmers. Ask where the food is grown. This information may become important in the future. Knowing someone locally who has grown wheat may give you a chance at loaf of bread in the future. It can also lead you to some food that tastes very different than that in the local supermarket.

Maybe it's being the child of a mechanic that makes me want to know how things work. I've been reading more science books and watching some interesting things on The History Channel. People don't often tinker as they once did. We've become a throw away society. If it stops working, buy a new one. I think that those who are mechanically inclined and able to fix things, will be valued if our country falls into hard times.

That is enough rambling for tonight. Hopefully I'll get a chance to write again before another month passes.

Green Schools

2008-06-06T23:12:00.000-07:00

Watching Jericho and imagining living for three months without power, is a strong reminder that energy is precious. We should not waste it. We should do everything in our power to conserve it and find new ways to create it. So this morning while watching the news, I hear that President Bush plans to veto legislation to upgrade older schools to make them more energy efficient. Why? Apparently he feels that it would not be 'fiscally responsible'.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has information and further links to this legislation on her website. Read it. Does this sound 'fiscally irresponsible' to you? Those words from our President make me angry. Why wouldn't we want to make our public school buildings more energy efficient? Is it too expensive? It's expected to cost $20 billion. Yes, billions. That does sound expensive to me. But wait a second.... How much have we spent on the war in Iraq? Not billions but trillions. This continues to mystify me. We are able to find (or borrow) trillions of dollars to wage war in another country and to rebuild that country but twenty billion dollars for our own country is too expensive.

What's wrong with this picture? What is wrong with my government? What's wrong with me and my fellow citizens? Why are we letting this happen? The phones should be ringing in Washington, D.C. Mail should be delivered by the bag full. Email boxes should be filled to capacity. We should not sit idly by while our President vetoes this legislation. Write or call the members of Cress who represent you and let them know that any veto must be overridden. Too often we blame our Senators and Representatives for voting for or against pieces of legislation but how often have we written and told them how we want them to vote? The Internet has made it much easier for us to communicate with out government. Let's use the power at our fingertips to make a difference. Start here to find the members representing your state and district.

As I've been studying solar and wind power, I've learned that the first thing to do is cut your energy usage by making the building more energy efficient. In homes this is usually done by replacing windows, sealing ductwork, and adding insulation. So why doesn't President Bush want to make our public school buildings as energy efficient as possible? Is there some hidden agenda here? Are the right companies not in line to make money from this deal? Is greed getting in the way of common sense? Should we start looking for the money trail? Maybe it's just ignorance about the physics, renewable energy (and the fact that oil isn't considered renewable) that makes President Bush think that we can continue to do the same things and have different results in the future. The oil supplies aren't going to last forever. We have to start to make changes NOW! We cannot wait until the world is fighting for the last dregs of oil to begin converting to renewable energy. We've got to start now.

We have to begin educating people so they understand the benefits of these renewable energy sources. What better place to do that than in a school? When children attend a green school powered by alternative energy, they see these principles at work everyday. It's the way life works for them. They can see the solar panels that generate power for the lights. They are taught the principles of recycling and reusing on a daily basis. It becomes habit. A good habit.

While the Green Schools Bill would cost billions to implement, it's billions invested in this country. The citizens of this country were the ones who were taxed to obtain those billions and who will be taxed in the future to pay back any loans and interest. Isn't it about time that we started investing in America again? The housing industry is in a slump. Housing construction has slowed and stopped in some areas. Why would our President veto the opportunity to put people to work? When people have good steady jobs, they spend money and the economy benefits.

I, for one, am tired of feeling second rate. I pay taxes. I'm a citizen of the United States of America. I want my government to invest in America. I want our children to attend schools that aren't crumbling, leaking and growing mold. It's time for the citizens of this country to start telling our politicians how to run this government. We've spent too many years sitting around letting the politicians run our government. We complain about the government and the politicians but how many of us have taken the time to write, call, or email our politicians to express our views? WE need to take action and take control.

This is a great opportunity to start moving our nation away from it's dependence on foreign oil and oil in general. If we make buildings more energy efficient, we use less fossil fuels to heat and cool them. If we add solar panels, we take an even bigger step away from our addiction to oil. Yes, I said addiction. We are so dependent on the way things are now that we're unwilling to give it up for something new. Oil is our drug of choice whether for our cars, power plants or homes. We need to get into rehab. How about we start with the rehabilitation of our schools?

Disaster Preparedness Class

2008-06-06T00:05:00.000-07:00

Last week the husband and I went to a disaster preparedness class. I found out that we weren't really as prepared as I thought. I have lots of things that are useful in a disaster. I just don't have them organized where you could grab them and go out the door or hunker down in a room to 'shelter in place'.

The class was interesting in more ways than you'd think. My husband and I were perhaps the youngest people attending...we're in our 40s. I'm not sure what that means. Does it mean that the younger crowd doesn't think anything will ever happen? Do they think that the government will take care of them in a disaster? or maybe it's because they've looked all this up on the Internet and have prepared disaster kits. I hope the latter is the case.

Another interesting thing that I learned was don't go to the fire station or hospital if there's a disaster. Well, let me qualify that. If you are having a medical emergency, then you belong at the hospital. If you can walk yourself to the hospital, then you don't belong there and they are likely going to tell you to go home or at the very least to the end of the line. They are going to be very busy taking care of people who are seriously injured and in danger of dying. There was a scene in Jericho where Dale and Skylar are at the hospital after the riot/fight at the mine. Skylar has sprained her ankle and Dale is trying to get some attention for her. When I first viewed that episode I thought she was being ignored because people didn't like how she handled her ownership of the mine. I thought it was about feelings and relationship. In reality, she would probably receive the same treatment even if the doctors and nursing staff didn't know her. A sprained ankle would be very minor when patients are being triaged. So in a disaster think about that scene and whether you really belong at the hospital. You may be wasting your time getting to a hospital. You may end up being more comfortable at home, in the park, or wherever safe shelter can be found. It's not going to be fun sitting around a hospital watching other people get treated in front of you. If you're not suffering from a life threatening ailment, then stay at home. Be prepared to treat your own scrapes and bruises.

I'll repeat that again because it's important to understand. Be prepared to take care of yourself. That really begins with the prepared part of the equation. If you or a member of your family depends on oxygen, do you have extra canisters? Do you want to stake your life or the life of a loved one on the fire department or some other organization being able to reach you with another oxygen canister? I wouldn't.

Medications: Are there medicines that you require to stay alive? Do you have a seven day supply on hand? Yes, seven days at least. Just think back to those news images of the Super dome in New Orleans or the recent earthquake in China. Consider that it may take at least a week before you are in an area with a functioning pharmacy. Don't count on the Red Cross or any other relief efforts to provide you with medication. Even if you do get to an area with a pharmacy, they aren't going to just hand you medications because you say so. Make things easier for everyone by having your bottle with the prescription information on it or a copy of the prescription written by your doctor.

Are we beginning to see the theme here? Being prepared helps the whole system work better.

So husband and I have begun to work on getting all those disaster items that we have in various areas of the house organized. I started by organizing the food stores. I actually started that before attending the preparedness class. With food prices, I don't want to buy food that I may already have on hand. I found that I have seven jars of marshmallow creme fluff...or did the total rise to nine? Anyway, more than enough fluff. The movement of food from the four foot deep pantry shelves to walk-around shelving in the garage netted about twenty boxes of Hamburger helper. Oh well if we get tired of it we can just cook the noodles and use the flavor packets for broth or something.

Turns out that the pantry design creates shelving that is too deep. Things get pushed to the back of the shelves and stays for years. The plan is to put plastic shelves in the garage. They are free standing so we're able to walk around them and shop from our own little store. Since they can be disassembled, they'll move along with us if we decide to go somewhere else. So what about all that pantry space in the house? I've decided to move the deep fryer, steamer, rice cooker, etc into those deep shelves in the pantry. After all it's a lot easier to see that big rice cooker behind the fryer than it is to find the can of beats behind the cans of pineapple and corn. Hopefully, we'll have no more lost food. We'll know how many cans of pasta sauce we have on hand and will buy more only when the supply reaches the restock level.

The other messy place where food gets lost is the bulk foods tub. It didn't start out that way. It started out in plastic bags from the grocery store that collected on the counter top. Then it got cleaned off for a party and parked in a tote (still in their plastic bags from the store). Pretty soon we didn't know whether we had dried cherries, corn meal or farina. So I've gone on a buying spree to acquire square or rectangle storage containers. Round containers seem to leave too much wasted space. The containers must stack. They must be labeled. Now I'm focusing my obessive organization skills on our food supply. Now we can quickly tell how much bottled water we have on hand.

I'm still reminded of the Jericho episode where Jake is talking to Hawkins. "You have a generator and a food supply..." Jake seems to think that makes Hawkins a terrorist. Why? Maybe he's just prepared for the nexted disaster. Sad to think that someone might be labeled a terrorist just for being prepared. Although I'm not as prepared as Hawkins, I don't have a generator. I don't have a concrete room in my basement. Mainly because a basement doesn't really working in my semi-wet geographic location next to the old swimming hole. However, if I ever move to Kansas, I will have a basement. I grew up on the edge of tornado alley. I've seen a few of them on the ground. I've heard them in the air when they didn't touch down and I've driven through the aftermath of tornadoes. For Kansas, I'll have a safe room in the basement or an underground house.

Which brings me to my dream house....good for tornadoes, nuclear attacks, and keeping burglars out. Call me crazy, a recluse, or maybe the woman of your dreams but I want my very own missile silo. I want to win the lottery and convert my missile silo into a luxury home. This website shows one man's dream plan for converting a missile silo into living space and more. It's called "World's End". Just imagine fourteen levels of living space. Swimming pool, theater, and all the storage you could ever want. No danger from tornadoes. Just build a nice earth sheltered garage above and you can laugh at the weather. I'm sure lots of neighbors would start stopping by whenever the weather started getting rough. Well, at least there'd be plenty of room for everyone.

I'm chuckling right now as I write. I'm sitting in a Starbuck's in an upper class neighborhood while I write this. Not exactly the type of place where you hear conversations about disaster preparedness, growing food in tubs or living in missile silos. Of course, I'm drawing more than a few glances in my jeans, hiking boots and waterproof jacket. Of course, if they were designer jeans and the latest in high tech outdoor gear, I'd be acceptable. But here I sit writing away. They'll just have to deal with this decaf drinking hick chick. Oh yes, did I mention I ordered and am drinking black decaf coffee? Not an Americano, not a latte, just plain old decaf coffee. In the Pacific Northwest, that's almost as bad as walking into a Northwest brew pub and ordering a Budweiser. Sacrilege! But hey I got free coffee because they had to brew it. Didn't expect that...that is the free coffee. They always have to brew decaf for me.

This is quite the rambling post but maybe you'll stick with me and learn something or begin to think about things. It doesn't matter if you don't learn from me. If you just start to think about things and go elsewhere to learn more, then I feel like I've accomplished something.

Since watching Jericho, I've found myself reading more. I read about solar power and hydroponics. In searching out these books at my library, I've remembered how much I love libraries. They are magical places for me. With a book and some time, there isn't anything I can't do. My husband has rediscovered the library and now has his own library card. He loves movies and used to buy lots of DVDs. Then there was the day that he bagged up a grocery bag of DVDs that he no longer wanted. Of course, several hundred dollars of DVDs will get you less than fifty when you sell them. So back to the library. You can check out DVDs at the library. Wow! Free DVD rental! In this economy that can be a wonderful thing. So I urge everyone to find their local library, get your library card and spend a few hours discovering what's available.

The well of words has finally run dry for the day.

The Lettuce Raft Lives!

2008-06-05T14:53:00.000-07:00

Yes, it is true. The lettuce in the raft has transformed from seeds into small plants. I haven't managed to kill them yet. It's a relatively simple setup. I went to the large box hardware store and over to the insulation area. That's where you'll find sheets of the 1-1/2 inch styrofoam. Cut that a size that will allow free floating inside a nice tote tub. Then it was off to the hydroponics store to find net cups. (I've since discovered that just taking a knife to a regular little pot will transform it into something that will hold rockwool and let the roots out to the nutrient fluid.) The pet store yielded an inexpensive pump, air stone (for making bubbles) and some air hose. Quick inexpensive little hydro or aeroponics set up. Right now I dont' care about the terms. I have plants growing on my front porch!

The lettuce is up and growing. It might be planted a little close together but I moved some over into the cantaloupe pot. The cantaloupe didn't seem to be sprouting so I figured at least give some of the lettuce a chance in that pot. The peas are looking very good. I haven't killed off the tomato either. In fact, I see that it has a bloom on it.

So I started another raft system. I managed to score a pot of burpless cucumbers that had three plants in the pot for $3. That's $1 per plant and gives me a head start which I really need here in the cooler climate. It's 54 here today, cloudy and rainy...the plants don't seem to be growing much. I did shock the plants a bit when I added them to the second tub. It was nice and warm when I filled the tub...of course the water was cold. So I removed the plants from their dirt and packed them into pots with rockwool and stuck them in their raft. A few hours later they were looking wilted. OOOPS! So I pulled the pots and sat them on the raft out of the water. Back in and wilt, back on the raft for recovery. After a few trips they seem to have figured out that they are going to have to adjust to the new temperature.

I started some New Zealand spinach in the dirt starter disks. They've been sitting outside with their little plastic cover held in place by rubberbands. They were used to the weather. They didn't go into shock when I placed them in the raft. So it looks like I'm going to have some success growing food in tubs of water and nutrients. I'm hoping to move everything inside for the winter.

Beets in the Bathtub, Lettuce on a Raft

2008-05-12T20:54:00.000-07:00

So I'm in Costco today. A lady wants to know where the rice is located. Turns out they had no white rice in stock. They were sold out. Only brown rice was available. Limit of 5 bags on the 25 pound bags of pinto beans.

I'm reminded of the Jericho boy whose mom was at home trying to grow beets in the bathtub. Not such a bad idea...well not necessarily turning your bathtub into a gardening operation but learning to grow vegetables indoors using hydroponics might not be such a bad idea. It seems hydroponics components are not that easily acquired in my area. Forget about buying all the parts at Home Depot and I was sadly disappointed by the selection of items at my local plant nurseries. They seem to have all switched to ornamental plants with just a tiny selection of seeds. Their hydroponics selection consisted of an 'as seen on television' sit on your kitchen counter growing setup. Not exactly what I had in mind and too pricey for my budget.

This weekend I began collecting parts to build my own lettuce raft. What the heck is a lettuce raft? It's a raft of styrofoam that floats in a tub of the nutrients feeding the lettuce roots. I already have an 18 gallon rubber storage tub. Net cups to hold the seeds and growing medium? No where to be found locally...by locally, I mean less than an hours drive away. After all it's not the distance but all the stop lights and stop and go city traffic that kills the gas mileage. Hydroponics nutrients and rockwool...zip, nada. Might as well have asked for moon rocks cause they had no idea what I meant when I said rockwool. Rockwool is made from basalt rock and chalk that are heated together and spun like cotton candy. It looks a bit like wool, thus rockwool.

What I did manage to find locally was the pump, air line for the pump and my air stone. Hello, Petco aquatics department. Of course, a couple of betta fish came home with the kids. They've survived a day and half and are not plant food yet. It appears as though the kids may be on their way to having a larger pet in their future. Or maybe we'll step up to raising trout in a barrel before we go for the dog. Worst case scenario, it's a lot easier to eat one of the fish from the barrel than the dog that licked your face and kept you warm last night.

So the plan is to start with lettuce on a raft, if I can manage that without any huge setbacks...or children sitting on the raft, I'll move on to other vegetables. I want to get the kinks worked out before winter when I'll move the tub indoors. Perhaps that big, unused, jetted bathtub would make a great place to park the tubs. It's got good sunlight....oh wait, we're talking Oregon in Winter. Cross out that sun part. We'll just call it daylight. I think the towel bars will work nicely for clamping a grow light above the plants. I think window boxes of carrots around the tub should add a nice touch, perhaps some beets and radishes for color.

I don't think food is going to get cheaper or more plentiful anytime soon. It's in our own best interest to learn to grow some of our food ourselves. It doesn't take much to grow bean or alfalfa sprouts on the window sill. Wheatgrass looks nice, cleans the air and has lots of nutrients. I'm not sure how successful I'll be but I just put a couple of avocado pits to sprout. I love glass block vases and candle holders. They have clear lines and river gravel for aquariums look nice in them. So much better than sticking toothpicks in the avocado pit.

I'll update on the lettuce raft when the rest of the parts arrive and I begin the adventure of assembling all of the parts into a growing system.

Preparedness Begins

2008-05-03T00:03:00.000-07:00

It started one night as I was watching the SciFi channel. They ran a marathon of Jericho episodes. I was hooked. I should have been working. I should have been writing but instead I watched. I was fascinated, intrigued, and thinking.

If you've never seen Jericho, here's the scenario. Jericho, Kansas, population 5,000 is cut off and fending for itself after 23 nuclear weapons are detonated in cities around the country. They receive Homeland Security messages to sit tight, help is on the way. Then they are hit with an EMP pulse that knocks out most electrical circuits. Winter comes and food is getting scarce. If that scenario intrigues you, as well, then stop by CBS.com and catch up on all the episodes.

Twenty-three nukes exploding on US soil would be devestating to this country and mind-boggling to many of it's citizens. In this fictional account, Washington, DC was one of the targets. So it's safe to assume that a good portion of the government as we know it would be destroyed. Our government hasn't shown itself horribly efficient at handling emergencies lately but it is nice to know that there is still a government. Without a defined goverment, many people try to become the government usually for their own best interests.

The writers for Jericho have been quite imaginative or maybe it's just realistic. After the attacks of 9-11-2001, government officials commented that they'd never imagined someone flying an airplane into a building. Perhaps they need to watch a few more television shows and read a few more books...after all, Tom Clancy imagined a plane flying into the capital building in one of his books and he imagined it before 9-11 happened. So if writers can imagine these things, then so can the bad guys. There are hundreds of things that can be used to attack this country; just spend a little time reading about EMP bombs. There is little that a country can do to protect against it without ruining the things that make this the country that we love. So what do we do? Cower in fear? I suggest preparedness.

Other than being observant of things around me and performing self-defense tactics in the face of danger, there is little that an ordinary citizen does day to day that fights terrorists. It's sort of like fighting Mother Nature. Do we give up? No. We continue to build dams, control avalanches, predict the weather. But what do we do when Mother Nature hits us with a devastating blow from a hurricane? We pick up the pieces and try to be prepared for the next one. That's the big lesson that I learned from watching Jericho...preparedness. Everyone, everyday can do small things to be better prepared for a disaster; buy an extra bag of dried beans, a couple of extra cans of food, an extra pack of toilet paper. You don't have to buy 300 pounds of rice, 20 cases of bottled water, and a generator in one trip. Just a little extra here and there.

So there's the first lesson from Jericho. I'll be writing and letting the thoughts flow as they come along. That may mean two posts a day or one a week. The topics will be wandering and varied. Lots of things interest me these days. It's been a circular trip lately through wind power, moon shining (ok, ever wonder how to make a still?), solar power, hydroelectric generation, storing vegetables in the ground for winter, hydroponics, seed storage, and earth sheltered dwellings. I'm an expert on none of these but after watching Jericho, some knowledge on the topics might prove useful. Knowledge is power. Let's learn more.