Oil of Madness

Quick.  Which country in the world has the most oil beneath it's land and territorial waters?

Which country in the world has enough coal for generating very affordable electricity for the next 200 or more years?

Which country in the whole world has not built a single nuclear reactor for generating power in over thirty years while many other nations produce as much as 90% of their electricity that way with no safety problems?

Yep.  Same country.

Which country in the entire world has such a perfect safety record with nuclear power at sea for over half a century, that all of its aircraft carriers, submarines, and now cruisers and destroyers are all being run on nuclear power?

Yep.  Same country.

Source article here.

If you think that "Big Oil" is to blame for you not being able to afford fuel at the pump, you probably also believe that movie actors want to see the prices at the box office get ridiculously expensive as well.

If you believe that it makes sense to shut down all drilling and oil recovery in all the coastal waters of the U.S. because of one rig exploding, you probably think it's a good idea to recall all cars made by GM because one had a mechanical failure that caused an accident.

You probably also believe that carbon dioxide causes earth's atmosphere to heat up.

You probably also believe that your plants understand you when you talk.

When Being Dense is Good

Have you ever stopped to really consider that the modern convenience of refrigeration is REALLY modern.  I mean, it has only existed since the early 1950s? Somebody figured out that the Second Law of Thermodynamics meant that it was possible to figure out a way to use chemistry and modern machinery to make heat flow  in such a way to cool things down, even in a tropical environment.  Amazing.

But modern, or should I say "post modern" man has become so irresponsible and lazy that he just takes this modern convenience for granted.


I'm pretty sure that anybody reading this has experienced a power failure and has had the experience of losing food and having to clean up the mess of thawed out freezers and refrigerators. Imagine the cleanup in New Orleans after Katrina.  Sorry for that mental image, but I've got a point to make.

What if refrigeration wasn't just temporarily gone for a few days? What if you were pretty sure that it was gone for the indefinite future?

Canned tomatoes and pickles

That's what we are planning on.  We still freeze stuff.  But we "can" a lot of stuff.  I put the word can in quotes because I have no idea how many people might come to this site and not understand this archaic term.  It's funny because the home, or do-it-yourself process doesn't involve cans, but rather jars.

Anything you see or buy in the grocery store that comes in a can, you can "can" yourself. (Why do I suddenly have this image of kicking legs and ruffle skirts?)  We haven't done it yet, but one of the next things we will can is chicken.

Left hand

Two things I need to type out at this point:  I just came back from a seminar about butchering animals.  I hurt myself pretty badly yesterday around noon. I was cutting up my spent tomato vines and other plants and in a rush I snipped my pinkie.  Okay, I really snipped my pinkie.  OKAY.  It's darned lucky I didn't hit the bone.  Picture to follow.  Shut up.  You know you want to see it.  It's a good thing there was a nurse in the house. She had me bandaged up and back to work in about 15 minutes.

So I'm sitting here trying to type and I've got duct tape on my left pinkie and it is seriously slowing me down.  Normally I can just type my thoughts, but this is like having a stroke or something.  It's taking forever to get the words out.  Now I know how stroke victims feel.

UPDATE:  Now I'm back to typing okay, but before I go back to doing any more gardening, I will have to bundle up the finger again.  So, where were we? Ah, the canning thing. I have to admit right here that Twyla is the one doing the canning.  I might help out with some of the prep work, like peeling and slicing, but she's the one who pays attention to the recipes and the time in the hot water bath. I chose to write about canning today because I went to a seminar last night at the church on butchering domestic and game animals, and the subject came up in passing when the risks of contamination were talked about.

Life is full of risks, but they are manageable when one uses caution and that rare thing called "common sense."  Sure, there is a possibility that you could get botulism poisoning from canned goods, even from store bought, factory produced food, but there are warning signs.  It wasn't that long ago that I opened a national brand can of tomato sauce and it turned out to be under pressure.  "DANGER!" I threw that can away.  Just use your head.

sliced for drying on silicone silpat

Canning is one of the safest and easiest ways to preserve your own food for long term storage.  With rare exceptions, most bad bacteria and other microbes that can harm you will easily die when exposed to temperatures of 140° - 160° F. Canning involves immersing the food and container in boiling water for anywhere from 20 to 45 minutes.  As the jars and lids cool down and you hear that distinctive pop as the vacuum sucks the lid down tight, you know you've got a good, airtight seal.

Apples, Tomatoes dehydrated

Another method of preserving food that takes up a lot less space is dehydration. For example; tomatoes are about 90% water, and it's the existence of that water that provides a medium for the microbes to rapidly decompose the fruit. Remove almost all that water and the remaining acid and other protective components will make the food last longer.  Vacuum pack the product and it will last for years.

Volume wise, this method is great because of how much food can be packed in such a small area. The jar of tomatoes you see on the right is approximately a dozen, and they are not even tightly packed.  I could add almost a dozen more and re-vacuum pack the jar.  There are more than a dozen apples in the other jar.  All the nutrition is there with no added chemicals or artificial preservatives.  These were done just using the gentle heat of the pilot light in the oven, since we have propane for the stove and oven and central heat.  And while the tomato is not really "sun-dried" I dare anyone to tell me they can taste the difference.

dehydrated tomatoes

Since we only have a couple of silicone silpats, another way to lay out fruits and veggies for drying without sticking, is to crumple a sheet of aluminum foil and then flatten it out, then swab it with a vegetable oil.  You don't want to cut the tomatoes too thin. You will be amazed how a slice of tomato nearly a quarter inch thick will shrink down to a paper thin piece.  My next project is to create a dehydrating box out of some relatively cheap materials.  I plan on taking step-by-step photographs of the process, in case anyone would like to duplicate it.

Another thing you should know is that there are lots of things that don't really even need refrigeration.  Chances are that everybody reading this has mayonnaise, mustard and ketchup in their fridge.  None of those things need to be in there.  Seriously. Did you know that even eggs can go two to three weeks in just moderately cool temperatures.

Stay tuned.

What a Grind

This is our new grain mill. It's brand-spankin' new. But it's very old fashioned. The motor is my arm. To be completely honest, it's really my whole upper body. Believe me, when you've finished grinding enough grain for  a loaf of bread, you've had a little workout. But this is really a good thing. I can feel it in my biceps, triceps, pectorals, deltoids and the rest.

The real reward is the most delicious bread you could possibly have, and more importantly, it's far more nutritious than anything you could buy in the store, and that includes your local "fresh" bakery.  How can I say that? Because with rare exception, I'm betting even your local bakery buys its flour already ground in very large commercial bags of 50 - 100 pounds each. Flour that has been processed so that it can maintain a very long shelf life, having many of the best nutrients purposely removed.  In fact, you might not know that it is required that key ingredients be removed during the processing to render the flour "safe" meaning that it can't explode if rapidly dispersed.  But even back in the days before such factory processing was done, the mere act of grinding grain exposed it to rapid oxidation. Such oxidation means that the flour loses up to 90% of its best nutrition within a week of being ground.

Hard Red Wheat

I will warn you that you might run into websites that challenge that assertion. They don't back it up with any facts, mind you, but you should already know that you can't believe everything you see on the internet. Think about it.  If you break the skin on a piece of fruit, what begins to happen to that fruit? Did you know that whole grain kernels have been found in storage that are hundreds of years old that are still capable of sprouting.  Why is that?  The big food companies that produce flour have to add vitamins and other things to the flour to keep it from rapidly spoiling. Any microbiologist can tell you that enzymes and amino acids and other organic compounds rapidly deteriorate once they are exposed to air.  You can do your own research, and you can believe what you want to, but my scientific mind and common sense tell me that this is the most nutritional way to go.

Organic Quinoa

We will be adding several more varieties of grains and even legumes to our inventory, but the two that we started with are the hard red wheat, and organic quinoa (pronounced "keen-wah").  Because Twyla has a thyroid condition and fibromyalgia, she is sensitive to gluten, but my suspicion is that she is mostly sensitive to the additives in most processed, factory produced foods. The quinoa is something that she can eat instead of pasta.  Since I already had a manual pasta maker, that's going to be one of the things I look forward to making. It will be very economical compared to buying already made quinoa pasta (about $6 for a one pound box). The red wheat is much cheaper; it works out to about $1.50 per pound. Of course it's not tremendously cheaper than store bought bread, but it is cheaper. But more importantly, it is nutrient dense food that will keep that way right up until we grind it and turn it into bread.  One very cool thing about grinding the grain is that the volume of the grain about doubles when it is ground, so a cup of red wheat and a half cup of quinoa becomes about 3 cups of flour.

Why a MANUAL grain mill?
Maybe you've heard of "cap & trade"?  A proposed bill that the leftists in government would like to impose on the United States. Along with other nefarious and unconstitutional acts, this would pretty much destroy energy production in this country, and you could expect for us to become a third-world banana republic in short order.  Of course, something else could happen.  Some natural disaster, or terrorist attack.  Did you know that all some rogue enemy has to do is to explode a nuclear weapon somewhere in high altitude over North America and it would destroy all the electronics for hundreds of miles from the electro-magnetic pulse or EMP.  It could take weeks or months to restore power, if ever. The neat thing about this model of grain mill is that the pulley that comes with it is a v-belt machine pulley, which means that I could mount a small motor on the board next to it and just get an old standard automotive v-belt and I could grind 10 pounds in ten minutes. Or, I could take an old stationary exercise bike and run a belt from the wheel of that thing to the pulley.There are many ways I could make it work easier.  But had we bought an electric model?  In a power shortage or outage, it would just become an interesting door stop.

In some future posts, I'll be sharing about the restoration and installation of an old porcelain and steel wood cook stove that dates from about 1913. That's going to become our primary source of heat during the winter in our little corner of the mountain.

I don't know if I've shared enough information to satisfy you. If you'd like to know more, please leave a comment below.  For now, I'll leave you with my basic bread recipe:

About three cups of flour (the blend I talk about above)
One egg (yep, from our own chickens)
One cup of milk (evaporated, or reconstituted from dry, or whatever)
Two teaspoons of yeast
Half cup of water
Three tablespoons olive oil (or vegetable oil)
Two tablespoons of sugar
A scant pinch of cinnamon, ginger, or nutmeg, or all three (they are not for flavor, they actually enhance the yeast growth, but the flavor is an added benefit)
One teaspoon of salt

Dissolve the sugar in the warm half cup of water and add the spices. The water should be warm and not hot, or not above 95 F. Then add the yeast and let it dissolve and give it about 15 minutes to bloom and start eating the sugar. Then whip in the egg and milk and oil until blended thoroughly, then start blending in the flour and salt.  I have no set measurements for any of this. You may need to add a little more flour or water depending on the texture and handling of the bread.  I adjust the mixture until the dough ball can be kneaded without sticking to my skin. No moister and no drier than that.  Then it goes back in the bowl and covered with plastic wrap or into a ziploc bag and then into the refrigerator. If that seems odd, don't let it put you off.  Allowing the dough to rest and rise very, very slowly makes for a much smoother, even texture in the final product. Your patience will be rewarded.

B'rakhot Adonai,

Moshe