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Food Supply Blinders
“Go to the store, and buy some vegetables.” If given this instruction, chances are, 90% of America would return with one of two things:
1. A can of corn, a can of green beans, and a can of peas, or perhaps the frozen versions of them.
2. A head of iceberg lettuce (or Romaine if they are particularly adventurous), a bag of carrots, and a bag of celery. Perhaps a head of broccoli.
If asked to get fruit, they would return with canned peaches and pears, or with a bag of apples, oranges, or a bunch of bananas.
Meats consist of beef, chicken, and pork, and seafood is a limited range of fish and shrimp.
These are the foods that commercial agriculture has determined that we need to have in abundance on our grocery store shelves, so we are conditioned to think of them as being the only things available. Sure, you think of onions, parsley, cabbage, or other similar foods that are also available, but this is still an EXTREMELY limited range!
The other day I saw a post on “What to do with the strange vegetables that come in your CSA box”. Those “strange vegetables” aren’t really strange at all! They are traditional herbs and vegetables that have been served up on the tables in regions around the world since time immemorial.
While there is some difference in regional availability of some items, our stores do not carry the wide wealth of cultural heritage that our ancestors knew. Since the industrialization of food, so many foods have disappeared from the collective memory.
Does anyone else remember eating ground cherries? I still remember the flavor. So completely unique there has been nothing else that even compares. I remember huckleberry jam. Eating smelt, fried in cornmeal. Parsnips in the soup. And the flavor of Jerusalem Artichokes – another unforgettably distinctive flavor that I can recall to mind even though I’ve not had them for more than 30 years.
Now, in a completely different cultural region from where I grew up, I am finding that the grocery store is pretty much the same here as anywhere else. But the garden potential is not!
Strangely, the gardens here tend to grow the same things as gardens elsewhere, even though there are many plants that grow here, exceptionally well, and produce better. Again, industrial agriculture has sanitized the individuality from the seed catalogs – that is, until recently. Within the last 10 years, the availability of regional foods is once again being promoted in seed catalogs, and there is an absolute wealth of foods which your grocer never heard of!
One of the great strengths of eating local is that some local farms are now returning to providing a wider variety of regionally appropriate foods. This means farmer’s markets, CSAs, co-ops, and on-farm purchasing provide access to some pretty amazing stuff.
We’ve also been conditioned to think of many things as “weeds”, when in times past, they were valuable forage crops for people. Some of them come up and produce long before your garden is ready to hand you a salad. Chickweed is a great example. It makes a very nice salad, grows prolifically, produces very early in the spring (often coming up before the snow is completely gone), and insists on growing whether you want it to or not. It is healthy and delicious. Instead of trying to exterminate it (this is the commercial ag solution – which feeds the coffers of the chemical companies, and makes you buy vegetables instead of eating the chickweed), we should be eating it! There are no problem weeds if we are eating them! And a surprising number of the most pernicious weeds are edible!
Locally, you may also be able to find duck, rabbit, pigeon, crawdad, freshwater shrimp, and other meats that you would not find in the grocery store. You may find grass-fed liver, marrow bones, and other good foods.
Look beyond the blinders of the grocery store food supply. Consider food in a new way. Look for sources for the old and traditional foods. Many of them provide the health benefits to compensate for the modern life, and hold the keys to preventing avoidable diseases. You don’t have to use them medicinally – you just have to eat a wider variety of foods!
Conditioning is a powerful thing, but breaking out of it is a wonderfully liberating feeling. We are told over and over that industrial agriculture is the key to “cheap food”, but in fact, opening our eyes and seeing what is already here, free, and discovering the things that grow best in our area with the least effort is the real key to affordable food. Small local farms, and backyard gardens can achieve this far better than large and impersonal “rule by popularity” industrial farms.
Take a look around, and see what you can find that you didn’t see before. Give it a try. There’s some amazing stuff out there, right in plain sight!
Frying Potatoes in a Ceramic Skillet
After seeing a friend cooking eggs in an Ogreenics skillet, I finally thought a ceramic skillet might be worth a try. She was cooking eggs, without oil. They adhered, but peeled easily away when the eggs were turned.
I cook a lot of potatoes in the skillet. And potatoes stick, in everything except teflon. Teflon wears out, fast, and bits come off in the food. Ick. Food purist or not, teflon just isn’t a good option for hard use. No matter how gentle you are with it, eventually, it peels.
Cast iron is great for a lot of things, but potatoes, and corned beef, stick, even if your cast iron is nicely seasoned. They stick to stainless steel also. Hopelessly. They stick regardless of the amount of oil in the pan. They stick regardless of the type of oil. They just stick. And you loose all that delicious crunch, because it all sticks to the pan, and you have to soak it off when you wash the pan. And really, why bother frying potatoes if you lose the very reason you fried them in the first place?
I purchased a Wearever ceramic coated skillet.
First, we cooked bacon. The skillet is so slick that you really need kitchen tongs to cook bacon. Trying to catch it any other way is near impossible. It just slides around in the pan and you can’t even get the utensil under it. But it wiped out afterward without the tiniest bit of sticky brown bits.
Then, the potato test. Diced potatoes, sausage, onion, all into the pan along with some butter. Heat on. The whole mess slid around effortlessly in the pan. Again, the problem was not with sticking, it was with sliding. Hard to get the turner under it to flip it. But at the end, the finished food slid out cleanly onto the plate.
It passed the test without even working up a sweat. I suspect it would handle reheating mashed potatoes much like it handles eggs.
Nothing sticks to this. You can’t make it. And you can use a durable metal pancake turner on it. No need to use a wimbly plastic thing.
I suppose someday someone will find some kind of health reason to not use ceramic cooking pots and pans. But until they do, I’m sold.
Dry Leaves
There is something magical about the feel of dry leaves under one’s feet. The crackle and crunch still delights me. I first discovered the magic of crackling leaves in the Yakima Valley, while I was dating Kevin. The magic of the leaves somehow mingling with the magic of being totally, completely head over heels in love.
Having grown up near the Washington Coast, where rain is an assumption rather than an event, I had never experienced the sound of leaves crunching under my shoes as a child. Leaves did not crunch there. They wilted, and sogged. I had read about fall leaves crunching underfoot, but had never been able to produce the sound, in spite of trying many times.
So now I walk down the streets, with brown leaves littering the edges and the gutters, and try to surreptitiously step on promising looking clusters or larger leaves. Trying to step on them, to hear that cheerful sound, but of course, wanting very much to not LOOK like I am trying to step on them. Best of all, holding hands with Kevin while the leaves crackle underfoot. And I am still totally, and completely, head over heels in love.
Freedom Plus Responsibility Equals Independence #liberty
I believe that one of the reasons so few people prize Liberty anymore is because they do not know what it is. They equate Liberty with “getting what they want without working for it” instead of “the freedom to choose to prosper without the help or permission of anyone else”.
There is a huge difference between the two concepts. We saw a BBC production on the Titanic recently. In it a maid said, “So in America everyone eats from porcelain and drinks from crystal?” The immigrant she was speaking to replied, “No, but in America there is at least the hope that they might.”. (This may be slightly misquoted, but the essence is there – I was unable to find an exact quote.)
Early immigrants understood that if you wanted to “eat from porcelain”, you had to work to do so. What they wanted was the OPPORTUNITY.
They did not want someone to hand them a finished product. They knew that if someone did that, it would be someone ELSE’S idea of what they needed, not THEIR idea. When you are restricted to accepting what someone else thinks you need, you are not free, you are a slave.
The more the government does for us, the fewer choices we have. If the government provides housing for us, then we have to accept their idea of what we need. Take a look at Low Income Housing, and see if it is all you want for the rest of your life.
If the government provides food for us, then we must accept what they deem is appropriate for our food, and we must accept the amount of food that they deem appropriate. Food stamp recipients receive the amount the government dictates, and can only spend it on things the government specifies for it.
If the government provides healthcare, then we must accept them dictating what conditions can be treated, how they can be treated, and even who is eligible for treatment. We have surrendered our right to choose what we prefer, by giving someone else the responsibility of providing it.
You cannot have true Freedom without Responsibility. You must be willing to take responsibility for your own:
- Housing
- Food
- Healthcare
- State of Wellbeing (not being “offended” by what others say)
- Relation with your Neighbors (not asking for laws to forbid them doing things you do not like)
- Employment
- Children’s Education
- Phone Bill
- Product safety – we use common sense rather than expecting the government to make sure it is all safe.
- Community and charitable giving.
- And yes, even things such as Disability, Retirement, Insurance and other “safety nets” that we think we cannot do without.
If you want true freedom, you have to step up and do the work. When someone else provides for you, whether it is the government or someone else, THEY decide, you do not. If you go to a Soup Kitchen for a meal, they will hand you a meal. You don’t get to decide what you’ll have for dinner that night, they decide that. Any help you receive from anyone is based on their determination of your needs, not your own.
The early immigrants had had enough of that. Someone else had made the decisions for them long enough. How sad for their posterity, that they are so willing to give it all away, for the hope of the ease of having someone else do the work so they don’t have to.
The real irony of it all is, that as soon as you are enslaved, you realize that not only is the government making the choices for you, YOU are still having to do the work. Eventually, the money runs out. When it does, the eligibility standards tighten and tighten, and pretty soon everyone is impoverished, and everyone is slaving for the government, to feed the fat hog that takes its portion from the top before anything is disbursed to the starving masses.
Equality never meant that everyone had the same things. All it meant is that anyone who chose to work had the same potential of having more, and of deciding for themselves what they did with what they earned.
It did not then, nor does it now mean Equal THINGS.
It just means Equal CHOICE, and Equal RESPONSIBILITY.
When we have the Freedom to choose, and the Responsibility for our own life, then we are truly a free people. If we do not understand that, we will never comprehend the value of Liberty.
The Loss of Common Knowledge (Part 2)
So yesterday, after writing the first article on this topic, Kevin and I had a conversation. It was very revealing – one of those where you start thinking about things in a way you have not thought about them before. There is a second part to this topic. One just as important as the first. Homeschoolers… you are gonna like this!
When a person decides to plant a garden, or raise chickens, there is a good chance they won’t remember having done so with their parents. They’ll be completely groundless as to where to start. Perhaps they have a neighbor or friend to point them in the right direction. Or perhaps they go to books or the internet to find out how to do it.
Centuries ago, we learned gardening and animal husbandry from our parents, by being involved in those tasks throughout our childhood. We were taught by DOING, not by TELLING. Nobody knew the microscopic details of photosynthesis or the exact scientific processes of seed germination, or the genus and species and molecular and DNA lineage of their chickens. Those things did not matter. Results mattered. Getting the work done each day, in an efficient manner, so that the essentials were done, mattered.
The twentieth century changed all that. We went from a nation that DID things, to a nation that STUDIED things. We went from PRODUCERS, to CONSUMERS. Each person became a cog in the wheel, taking our place on the assembly-line of human production. We went from EDUCATORS, to BELIEVERS. We no longer taught our children ourselves, we let someone else teach them, and we began to lose our confidence in our own ability to make a choice without professional advice. Pediatricians began dispensing child rearing advice. Schools began overseeing parenting. Industrial ag became the “experts” on farming and food production. Science became a subject at school, where each thing was dissected and discussed, but where nothing was produced.
So now, you want to garden, and you realize that all you did in school, was plant a seed to study germination. You did not actually GROW anything. You did not follow it through to PRODUCE anything. Science in the schools is a disjointed thing with little connection to day to day activities and life around us. We are taught to observe, but not to DO. And when science gets involved in industrial agriculture, it then tries to scale those concepts down for the home grower, and they NEVER scale down, they just over-complicate the whole thing. The government is also involved in telling us how to do it, and they are the experts at overcomplicating, NOT the experts at actually DOING a thing well (after all, the government does not actually FARM… they just tell people HOW do to it… how backward is that?).
You may have had a pet when you grew up, but you never raised anything that gave something back to you. Raising an animal to produce something is an entirely different equation. Science and the government are again involved, and they have thoroughly mucked things up, making raising chickens sound like it requires a college course and a hefty budget, scientifically formulated feeds, and a veterinary on retainer! Your great-great grandmother knew better.
Chickens were economical then, gardens were grown to SAVE, not to SPEND, and they can be now, if we can regain what great-great grandma knew.
The first thing you need to realize is that government produced information has infiltrated everything about your life. If you try to do anything “self-sufficient”, chances are there is a government pamphlet out there that the source you are using is relying on, either first or second hand. They have muddied the waters and injected false information in every area – raising animals, growing food, preserving food, cooking food, making clothes, building a barn, growing a mushroom, storing food, creating a 72 hour kit, etc. Somehow, we think that our government is the “final authority” on all of these topics! Our government whose goal is dependency, not independence, whose aims are of encouraging purchases not self-sufficiency, and who produces laws that stop us from doing the very things they are trying to tell us they know how to do better than we do.
Here’s the wake-up call – More than HALF of the information they produce on DOING things, is WRONG. Because they don’t DO things. Their information is completely disconnected from the reality of having to make things economically feasible, and manageable on a small scale (or even a large one). The people telling you how to create a growing bed in your garden have NEVER had to do that on a restricted budget, with two toddlers running around trying to eat dirt, a crock pot of stew simmering in the kitchen, and in a climate where only a few things grow well. They’ve NEVER done it! Are you honestly going to believe that they are the best source to tell YOU how to do it?
They are never going to tell you that if you just dig, manure, seed, and water, chances are, the things you planted will grow, and produce just as well as if you followed their instructions. They’ll never tell you that a few weeds in the garden are actually a helpful thing, or that planting things closer together helps them thrive. They’ll never tell you that there are ways to save time and cut the work by 75% or more, and still end up with the same, or even BETTER yields. You see, they don’t study home gardens. They study industrial ag.
We live in a world of “experts” who all want us to believe that they ARE the expert. This means they can NEVER really empower you – if they do, they are no longer the authority, everyone shares the knowledge. In order to perpetuate their elevated status, they must diminish YOUR status. We’ve been accepting that so long we are now a nation of people who do not trust their own ability to make logical and reasoned decisions about anything! As a consequence, we are being lead where someone else wants us to go, without us even realizing we are being lead – we think we are being given “scientific” or “valid” information, when in fact, we are not. We are living in a world where much of what we accept as “fact”, is in fact, fallacy.
The only way we can ever relearn truth, is by DOING. We can’t just talk about it, pontificate, study and watch. We have to DO. We have to go out and dig a hole and stick something in it and see if it grows, because someone else telling you that it will or will not is NOT truth! What happens when you do it is truth. We have to mix our ingredients, and see if it tastes good, because it does not matter if someone else likes it, what matters is if YOU like it. We have to roll up our sleeves and get to work and produce things for ourselves. Miracles happen when we do!
Homeschoolers have an advantage. They can help their children learn by doing. Even they must realize though, that a lot of what they are teaching comes straight from the government in one form or another, and learn to question, and trust their own judgment.
This is what I’d like people to know…
When you are trying to learn how to do something, and all you can think is, “There’s gotta be an easier way than this!”, trust that thought! It is RIGHT! Twentieth century instructions are NOT what allowed humans to survive for thousands of years! Before that, it was MUCH simpler. It was WORK, but it was not COMPLICATED work.
When things just do not sound logical, trust that feeling! Dig a little deeper. Try it another way! Have the courage to resist being herded into a box that does not fit, and will never fit, because it was constructed wrong in every respect right from the start! Build your own container and make it any shape you like!
If we are to throw off the yolk of bondage, we must learn to do things ourselves, and to develop our own expertise in enough things to be an asset to others who are trying to do the same thing. Thankfully, the internet not only brings us the party line, it also brings us the radicals – Back to Eden gardening, Hugelkultur, Crowded Gardening, Feeding Chickens and Rabbits on things you grow, and other work saving and health enhancing techniques which the government is completely silent about.
You don’t have to pick up arms to start a revolution. You just have to dig in the dirt a little, and make something grow!
Finding the Answer in Cottage Industry
Cottage Industry, as defined for purposes of this post, includes any kind of home manufacturing – where materials of one kind are turned into a product of another kind. This includes making parts, assembling parts into another product, making crafts, doing needlework, etc. It can be as complex as machining, and as simple as crocheted dishcloths.
This article is long, but it does explain something very cool. Something that our Nation is really ready for.
I believe in the power of the individual to create something better than a monster corporation can create it. I have long believed that the solution in hard economic times, for people who need employment that is rewarding and lucrative, is in the home, not in the factory or city. For the impatient, the fastest way to get predictable income, is to become an employee of someone else. But then you are also somewhat enslaved – you are subject to the rules, whims, and employment vagaries of someone else.
I love independence a bit too much to love employment. I’ve worked jobs, and done so well. But I don’t like it. I’d rather have ownership. I’d rather produce a homemade product that has character than work in a factory producing carefully calculated and electronically machined items that are stamped out at hundreds per second.
There is absolutely a place for the assembly line. But there is also a place and time to break free from it. I haven’t drawn any firm conclusions yet about the shape this will take with us. I’m still revolving the options around in my mind, but I have determined on a few things that I think are worth sharing.
I had always thought that if I invented something that I could make at home, eventually we’d reach the point where we had to contract with a manufacturing company for parts to be custom molded and milled, in order to keep costs affordable and in order to produce enough, fast enough. I’ve changed my mind on that. I think there may be a better way, and a better market to tap.
Most of our manufacturing has gone to China. This is a result of the mentality of having to reduce and reduce and reduce the costs of production to accommodate an ever increasing supply chain, and the costs attendant with it, coupled with increases in operational costs due to Unions and Taxes. The US is handicapped in the manufacturing sector, and is now dependent upon overseas suppliers, and the unpredictability that goes with it. That isn’t a good thing.
“Buy America” is NOT the answer.
“Build America” IS the answer.
So here is a potential business model – one we are working as I write this:
- Design something unique. Find a way to make it yourself.
- At first, you are going to spend quite a bit of time making each item, possibly using make-do equipment or tools. They can get better as you go, but be careful! Once you move to “commercial” production materials, costs increase exponentially. If you set a goal of NOT going into debt, you’ll be able to avoid that trap.
- Perfect the process for making it. Write down the steps. Get it worked out so that you can teach someone else how to do it.
- Assemble a materials kit – everything you need to make the item you are making. Create a training kit as well. If it is simple, and based on common skills, you can skip the next step. If the processes or tools require special knowledge or skills, you’ll need the next step.
- Hold a training camp. DON’T charge for it. DO pre-screen attendees for suitability. Train them in how to make the item you need, and train them in meeting your quality standards.
- From the attendees, select one or two to do a pilot program. Rent equipment to them for a low fee (do NOT look at this as a moneymaking opportunity – sales of your product is where your money comes from!). Sign a contract with them that they ONLY manufacture the item for YOUR company. Have a deposit on any rented equipment so you get it back if they quit. Agree on a set output per week or month. Pay them well enough for them to make a nice income if they do it fast and accurately. THEY pay for materials – you may supply them, but they pay for them (this is also NOT a money-making opportunity for you, you sell them to them at cost, or tell them where to get approved materials). They are sub-contractors, NOT employees. They own their own business, and manufacture something for you.
- Add more trained subcontractors as needed. Hold periodic training camps to train new prospects.
Now, there are people who will be terrified at this idea. They will feel that in doing this, they’ll be giving up their proprietary rights to someone else.
Don’t be so paranoid! Is there a risk that one of these hotshots will take the training and then go copycat? Of course! But they are going to do that anyway! Most people who are dishonest copycats don’t have the motivation to see it through – they think that having a hot product is enough. It is not! They are usually bad at marketing and actually competing with an established business. Most people whom you train will rather sell to you for a predictable income than to want to take on the marketing, additional costs, and additional time and hassle of direct selling the product, even if they can make more from each sale. That extra money is hard won!
If you watch, you’ll get a feel for those who are content with a predictable income stream, and those who have a more entrepreneurial spirit in them. They are usually easy to differentiate.
The potential here is that long term, you can be the means of not only keeping YOUR business in the country, but of helping dozens of small businesses get a firm foothold, while it benefits the growth of your own business. Your business stays comfortably small, but gains the income benefits of a much larger business.
So how can you do this affordably? There are a couple of keys to it:
- Setting your pricing for YOUR production at the start – in other words, base your sale price on what it costs you to manufacture when you start out – don’t decrease and decrease it if your costs go down, you may go broke without realizing it, and you eliminate the room for paying someone else, and get into a trap. As you go along, your production costs will drop as you learn to work faster and as you refine your processes – this is good, it means that you will be able to “split the difference”, and pay someone else less than it cost you to start, but a bit more than it cost you doing it yourself at your fastest. Don’t get sucked in by greed either – having to have it all. Share your bounty, enough is enough.
- Setting a fair price per hour for YOUR labor. Count that into your production costs, so you don’t run off feeling like you can’t subcontract because now your parts are going to cost twice as much (when all you are counting is the cost of materials).
- Pay a fair price to your subcontractors. This is tricky. You pay them BY THE PART, not by the hour. The faster they work, the more they make. So work out how many you were making per hour when you were in about the middle of the speed range, and base what you pay them on that. If they can make $15 per hour working at a moderate pace, they can probably make twice that once they learn to work really fast. If they choose not to work fast, that is their choice, you are not responsible for that choice. Just make sure that you provide a reasonable opportunity for good earnings. If you do, you’ll never lack for subcontractors.
There is plenty of room for this kind of business model. This is how things were done traditionally, and it worked for thousands of years. Our society has NOT outgrown it with the advent of assembly line production. You can take advantage of that in your business, by batch processing at specific stages and contracting single stage production tasks out to different individuals.
Think of what you can accomplish this way:
You can have a home business without having to “move up” to a factory. You can retain all those wonderful advantages of a home business.
You can provide those advantages to other people, and enrich our society by doing so – keeping parents in the home with their young children, giving opportunities to people who have been dropped from the job market but who are still good workers, and by encouraging independence and true performance based compensation.
You can get the government out of your business more than you can if you have employees. It is far more economical to run a business without employees than with. EVERYBODY benefits more in this kind of scenario.
You eliminate the supply chain from the cost equation. Most items double the price at multiple points along the distribution chain – raw material, shipped, refined material, shipped, manufactured part, shipped, distribution center, shipped, wholesaler, shipped, retailer, shipped, you. When you manufacture your own parts, you eliminate a LOT of steps and shipping, and markups. Maybe you have to pay twice as much to your subcontractors for the part as you would from a manufacturer, but at the same time, you are direct selling to your customers, so you can afford to do that and still make good money, whereas if you sold to the distribution center, you’d be making far less from it. Of course you also have marketing and other tasks, but overall, it is a win-win situation. You and your subcontractors take the place of multiple steps along the way, so you and your subcontractors can share the profit that those steps would normally siphon off. This assumes that you are purchasing refined goods to manufacture yourself.
This concept was originally discussed with a friend of mine who makes hair bows. An alternative to Direct Sales Companies, for other people to own a business and really profit well. I believe that this is what many people really want. They really just want a job to do at home that they can get paid for.
From the customer perspective, I also see that there is a growing market of people who would rather purchase a hand manufactured item with imperfections and irregularities than a more perfect looking one that has been imported from China.
Bigger isn’t better. Smaller is the trend that will save our nation economically.
Our company is now offering Cottage Industry Consulting.
Naturally Healthy Hair
My hair and I get along most days. Sometimes though, the relationship becomes decidedly uneasy, as something changes that my hair does not like – and then IT changes in a way I do not like! I don’t have the answers to everyone’s hair distresses (yes, that is a pun), but I have learned a few things that might be of use.
Anemia causes hair loss – if you notice slowed hair growth on your legs and thinning of hair on your head, it may be from anemia. If you don’t get enough iron in your diet, or if you have heavy bleeding, your hair may thin. This one is pretty easy to fix unless you have an underlying disorder. Get more green veggies and clean red meat in your diet (yes, I said meat! And I won’t apologize!). Egg yolks help too. If you have heavy menstrual bleeding, get the artificial hormones OUT of your meat and dairy (they mess up female hormones), stop using tampons (they increase bleeding), and get the refined foods out of your diet as much as you realistically can. Folic Acid and B-12 supplements can also help dramatically reduce menstrual bleeding – take them starting when your period starts.
Dying hair, and perming hair also causes hair loss. Most people know that it causes damage to hair, but it also is very hard on the scalp. If you already have hair loss for other reasons, this can be even more damaging. Dye or perm your hair less often. Even an extra two weeks between chemical treatments can give your scalp time to recover.
Dying and perming hair also contributes to an increase in split ends and breakage. Treating less often can help with this, but other solutions for split ends will also help. The same chemicals that stress your hair, are absorbed into your body through the scalp, and may stress your body also, so slowing down a bit and treating your hair less often may help your physical health in ways you did not expect.
Aging can also cause hair loss, which means many men and women will fail to recognize reversible types of hair loss. Whether or not diet or exercise can affect age related hair loss is debatable.
I have oily hair. I do not mean hair that gets a little oily. I mean hair that has to be washed every day, and hair that will look oily if it gets rained on in the afternoon. I mean hair that can’t be washed at night and then worn the next day – after it has been slept on, it is too oily for public. So dry hair isn’t something I have experience with. I do have issues with sceborrhetic dermatitis on my scalp though, combined with chemical sensitivities, and my hair does get split ends and breakage when it gets about waist length.
I’ve found that the best treatment for the dermatitis is Borage Oil. One capsule a day, taken internally, has a really nice effect on reducing the symptoms of sceborrhea. It also has some other really cool effects… though one is not so cool in my situation.
Borage Oil makes my skin more oily. While this is good news for people with dry hair, I could do without that, my skin is like my hair, and adding more oil to an oil slick isn’t what I’d consider a good idea. I do take it at times though, because of the effect on the sceborrhea, and because of one other really cool thing:
Borage Oil helps prevent split ends and hair breakage. It strengthens the hair (and fingernails too, by the way), while the hair is forming in the follicle. So taking Borage oil today, will help you NOT have split ends two years from now. The hair is more elastic, and less prone to developing split ends, and less prone to developing breaks up an inch or two from the bottom. I took it on and off for a few years, and as my hair grew out, I could clearly see where I had been taking it, and where I had not. The hair that grew while I was using the Borage Oil was just so much healthier two years down the road.
You can get Borage Oil at Wal-Mart. I’ve not seen it anywhere else in the stores, but you can also order it online.
I’ve also been through times when I could not use shampoos that had the common chemicals in them. Many shampoos with organic sounding names, are not, in fact, organic. They have the same ingredients that other shampoos have. Many shampoos made by small companies are just standard shampoo blends, with a few custom ingredients ordered. Getting away from the chemicals in shampoo is really hard.
I used Burt’s Bees Shampoo for a time, when that was all I could get. But I don’t much care for it – it leaves my hair feeling VERY greasy. Not a good thing, since I’m fighting oily hair anyway. It seems to have a Castile Soap base (as do many homemade soap recipes), which does not remove oil from hair.
The BEST shampoo I EVER used was Tate’s. The last time I bought it though, it was NOT the same shampoo I used originally. The smell was so strong it gave me headaches – NOT the Tate’s I remember. I will not use it again.
Hair responds very much to your overall health and to good nutrition. I don’t mean what the USDA says is “balanced nutrition”, I mean REAL food. The stuff that does not come in a box or can, or from the freezer case. I mean fruits, vegetables, whole grains, clean meats and clean dairy. Your body recognizes and responds to fresh food, and so does your hair. Hair is an optional thing – no longer needed for survival. So when your body is nutritionally stressed, it often cuts back on the non-essentials. Your hair growth will slow dramatically, and you’ll develop problems with hair and fingernails. Yes, you can be overweight, and still be undernourished. Getting too much refined food that your body does not need (so it stores it around your middle), and not enough of the nutrient dense food that it needs (so it keeps telling you that you are hungry, even when you just ate).
Pay attention to your hair, and make a few changes to keep it healthy. Those changes will help your body stay healthy too.
A Better Way for Airlock Fermenting
In the fermenting world, debates rage over topics such as “anerobic environments”, “airtight containers”, and “traditional methods”. The debates tend to center on two extremes:
One point of view is that traditional fermenting was done under very imperfect conditions, and following a few simple rules can yield success in most situations. In fact, tradition does teach us that if food is kept under brine, it ferments just fine most of the time. A few climates, or home environments, may make this more challenging. A few people with specific health issues may have problems with foods fermented this way. But this IS true traditional fermenting, imperfections and all.
The other point of view is that in order to achieve a true “anerobic ferment”, you have to have an “airless environment”, in an “airtight container”. A system is recommended which is costly, awkward, and which is not in fact, an airtight container at all (explanation is here). It does, however, manage to achieve one thing: It limits air exchange, and microbe exchange from outside the container, and reduces the chances of some kinds of errors. It does this by allowing gas buildup to escape, while eliminating the need to open the jar to release it, or to leave the cap off. Since the container is clear glass, it also allows outside observation – this one factor is perhaps the most important, as it helps people keep their fingers out of it and not mess with it while it is in the initial fermentation stages.
I am not a proponent of either method. I know that it can be done well, either way. I know that certain things REQUIRE an open fermenting environment – that is, they will not work in an airlock system (vinegar, and wild yeast are two of those things). There are other instances where an open environment is preferable, to achieve a specific desired result. There are other instances where an airlock environment is preferable, to achieve a different specific desired result.
That said, many people prefer an airlock system, and I do like the ease of an air-release system, because I don’t have to fuss with the jar to keep it from getting messy! So I began looking for an alternative to the high priced airlock systems. Sure enough, people were making their own airlock caps to go on mason jars. But they had some of the same disadvantages as the expensive systems – they are clunky, and awkward, and the water lock stuck up out of the jar in a very cumbersome manner. I KNEW there had to be a better way, and I could instantly “see” it in my mind. A one-way valve is simpler, more compact, and requires no special instructions to properly operate it. It just works.
The problem is that nobody makes a one way valve for a mason jar lid. And nobody makes a one way valve of the type that is needed, in the configuration needed, at an affordable price! Similar one way valves are available (the concept is scientifically sound, and frequently used in many applications), but they cost upward of $10 apiece. NOT an affordable option, since our goal is to make fermenting MORE affordable, not less!
Long story short, in a trip through a hardware store, I found the pieces I needed, and was able to source appropriate versions of them, to assemble together to make a simple, elegant little Fermenting Jar Cap that goes on any standard size mason jar (Narrow or Wide Mouth). This product is now available for sale on our Fermenta Cap site, under the name of Fermenta Lock.
While we are making and selling them, we are not yet able to sell it at the price that I’d like to be able to sell it, but it is still far less expensive to assemble the parts than are the more costly systems.
A competing Pickling system sells a 1 quart pickling jar and dunker for $23. It is a one quart jar, and nothing more. Price goes up for larger jar sizes, and you have to buy one for every size you need, and more than one if you want to ferment or store more than one item at a time.
In comparison, Wide Mouth Size Fermenta Lock is $8.50, which includes an airlock cap, and a storage cap. A Fermenta Dunk plus Dunk Extender in the same size, is $5.75. So far we are up to $14.25. Add a Quart Mason Jar, for just under $1, or a Half Gallon Mason Jar, for $1.60, and we are still under $16.00 for everything (we don’t sell Mason jars – this is the price for which they typically are sold in stores).
The Fermenta Lock cap is interchangeable. You aren’t stuck spending $23 for one size jar, $25 for another size jar, and so on, and having to buy more and more of them to ferment different sizes or to ferment and then store.
A couple of cases of standard Mason Jars, or jars saved and salvaged from recycled sources give you all you need. Two Fermenta Lock Caps, and a few Fermenta Dunks and Extenders keep a range of things going, and you can swap out the lids and only use the expensive stuff during fermentation times, without having to tie it up for storage as well. Easy, flexible, and cost effective.
You can also assemble things one piece at a time, according to whatever you think is most important – get a Dunker this month, an Airlock Cap next month. No need to spend a lot all at once.
Certainly, our competition may disagree with us, but we think this is definitely a “better way”, and it makes Fermenting more affordable, and more predictable, no matter how you choose to do it!
We won’t stop there. There are more things we can see that we need to do, and we’ve been researching more parts, and suppliers, and thinking creatively to solve problems to provide good solutions for more flexible pickling and fermenting choices, for wholesale purchase of our products, and more. Because we keep looking at other aspects and thinking “There has to be a better way!”. Usually there is. Give us a little time… we’ll find it!
Of Keys, and Outhouses, and Little Boy’s Prayers
“Mom!”, shouted my oldest son, his feet pounding louder as he neared the campsite, “Alex is locked in the outhouse!”
It was already that kind of camping trip. We had come a day early into the weekend. Our favorite campsite on the Platte River was just 5 minutes from Kevin’s job, so we had come in the night before, and he had left that morning to work as usual on Friday, so I was now alone with the kids – all seven of them – beside the lazy river in September.
It was not really a real campground, so much as an area with possible campsites along the river, with a single concession to camping comfort – a solid concrete block double outhouse set upon a rise, just high enough to be above the high water line during the spring flood season. There were several short roads, with a nice broad area at the end of each, suitable for tents, tables, and chairs. Typically one or two other campers were on our end of the area, and a few fishers at the other end. It was frequently used, but not highly populated. We loved camping there, being able to swim on and off through the day, floating the quarter mile stretch of river near our campsite, and listening to the soft sounds of the river at night, and waking to squirrels chattering and birds chirping in the morning.
Friday evening, before dinner, I had worked on some writing using my computer in the front seat of the car. We had gone into the river, wading and floating on tubes, and I had not wanted to lose my keys if they fell out of my pocket, so I had tucked the car keys under the front seat. And forgot them. And locked the car right before bed. Like good campers we had put all of the food in the trunk of the car prior to shutting down for the night. (This was Wyoming, so not locking the car during the day was not a big deal, but it needed locked at night.)
It was morning before we figured out that the keys were securely locked up under the seat of the car. We did not have a cell phone. The nearest residence was about a mile down the road. Town (and Kevin’s set of keys) was five miles away. Prayer was our only resource, so I gathered the kids around, and we had a prayer together. We explained that our keys were locked in the car, we were hungry, and had no food, and had no practical way of getting help to unlock the car, and we asked that we know what to do to get our keys out of the car.
We finished the prayer, and Sean (oldest boy) decided to go around and ask the other campers there if anyone could help. Maybe a cell phone, or something.
Sean returned with a helpful handyman with a slimjim. One of the three other campers there had the very tool we needed to be able to get into the car. He quickly opened the car for us, we thanked him profusely, and he left smiling to return to his campsite.
We knew that had to be divine intervention. It was too unusual to be coincidence. We gathered again to say a prayer of thanks.
A little later, as we got ready to do something together, our next to youngest child was nowhere to be found. We called her name, and received no answer. So we gathered again, and said a prayer, and then hollered some more. Within a few more hollers, she came out of the trees, and said she had been down by the river washing up, and didn’t think she was gone that long. It wasn’t misbehavior, it was just my daughter, trying to take care of something she felt was important. But the answer to the prayer stuck.
Now, as I hurried down the road and up the small hill to the outhouse, I was already considering how one extracts a small boy from a solid block structure. I already knew it had a heavy metal door, with hinge pins that could not be removed without a blowtorch. The door closed with a 3/4 inch square metal bar slide lock. Heavy, and difficult to move, even for an adult. Sean routinely accompanied Alex to the outhouse, and stood outside, but Alex did not lock the door. I guess his six year old sense of independence was coming to the fore, because this time he locked it, and had been required to give it a good hard shove to get it to slide into place. Hard enough to get it well and truly stuck.
Alex was not the average six year old. We knew things were not right, but could not get a doctor to acknowledge it. He did not have the strength to ride a bike fast enough to get the training wheels off the ground. His arms and legs were stick thin, with far less muscle than they should have had, and he had an obvious curvature to his shin bones, in spite of being well fed. So it wasn’t just a six year old boy stuck in that outhouse. It was one who lacked the physical strength to even begin to help himself. (He was later diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease, during treatment for Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia at the age of 7.)
I reached the outhouse, let Alex know I was there, and looked it over. One tiny vent, up at the peak of the roof. Not quite big enough to let someone else in, or a small boy out, assuming he could even get up that high without falling into the pit trying. No, not really an option. I had visions in my head of having to call Wyoming Game and Fish Department to have them come and dismantle the outhouse to get him out. Prospective newspaper headlines danced in my head for a few moments. I quickly realized that our only option, again, was prayer.
I told Alex that he would have to do it. That we needed to say a prayer together, and he needed to ask Heavenly Father to make him strong enough to move that bolt.
Alex said a prayer on his side, and I said one on my side. Then he grabbed that bolt and yanked. Nothing happened. “Try again!” I encouraged. He threw his weight behind it and tugged again.
“Mom!” he cried excitedly, “It moved!”
“Good! Try again!” I answered. Sean cheered him on in the background, telling him he could do it.
He tried again, and it moved another fraction of an inch. And again, and again, bit by bit he worked that bolt far enough over that it finally slid free with a solid clank.
Alex came out of the outhouse and gave me a hug, and together we said a prayer of thanks. There was no doubt that the Lord had truly given him the strength to move the lock, because Alex simply could not do it himself. Ever since that day, this has been my favorite “God answers little boy’s prayers” story. I must have told it at least 50 times.
It proved to me that our Heavenly Parents do indeed hear the prayers of harried mothers who lock their keys in their cars, or have a child go missing, and little boys locked in outhouses. I have also imagined their kindly amusement as they gave Alex the strength in his puny arms to move that great big stubborn bolt.
It was not until years later that I really put the whole thing together and realized that not only had God answered our prayers earlier that day, and Alex’s prayer later, but that there was a connection between the two. That the example earlier of my keys being locked in the car, and an unquestionable miracle in getting them out, and then and Betsy’s absence and return, had given Alex the confidence to know that God could indeed give him the strength to do what he knew he could not do. I can imagine Heavenly Father watching my son since we got to the river, with Alex eyeing that bolt every time he went to the bathroom, surely thinking, “Today, I MUST be big enough.”, and preparing my son for the disaster that was surely in the offing.
Locking my keys in my car had not just been a random event, it had been a vital part of delivering Alex from his smelly concrete prison later that same day. As to Betsy’s absence, I don’t want to encourage my kids to think going missing is a positive event, so I’ll not speculate where that falls, except that the prayer WAS answered.
God does indeed answer the prayers of little boys. Sometimes He starts answering them before little boys even know they are going to need help.
Someone suggested to me recently that their visions regarding my son’s fate, as they read this story for the first time, centered on wondering how one goes about taking care of a child locked in an outhouse, unable to get out. Pushing sandwiches through the vent, so he could grow strong enough to move that bolt.
And that sign in every outhouse… “Please do not put trash into the toilet, it is very difficult to remove.” No doubt. And little boys more so!
(A Forest Service worker has suggested that perhaps another sign in the outhouse could help. “Please do not lock your children in the outhouse, they are very difficult to remove.”)
THIS STORY and many more can be found on Amazon, for Kindle, in Laura’s storybook: A Little Romp Through Laura’s Storyland
I am the Bug
He told the story toward the end of Stake Conference. “One afternoon I went out and got in my car, and there was this big bug on the windshield. I didn’t want to make a mess with the wipers, so I decided to just start driving and see how long it took for it to be pushed off.
“I got onto the street, and that bug hung on. I went from the street to the highway, and it still hung on. I was starting to have some respect for that little bug. I got up to 55 miles per hour, and he was still hanging on – though he was kind of slowly shifting around. He got his head down and is back end up, so he was more aerodynamic.
“I got out onto the expressway and kept speeding up, finally up to 75 miles per hour. That bug was still hanging on.
“It suddenly occurred to me, that maybe he didn’t know what else to do. And I felt the Spirit tell me, ‘Slow down, and let the bug go.’ I thought that was weird. But it came again, “Slow down, and let him go.”
“So I pulled off to the side, and when I had slowed way down, the bug finally let go, and flew off.
“Some people are like that. Hanging on because they just don’t know what else to do, hoping for someone to rescue them, and they are TIRED.” He went on to make a point about helping others.
All I could think, with tears streaming down my face, is “I am the bug”. Hanging on for dear life, so tired I wonder sometimes if I can make it to the next day, just wishing things would slow down, that just ONE THING would get better, that something would change to give me hope. That somehow, a miracle would occur to make the whole unmanageable mess, somehow, manageable.
This is not about having a pity party. This is about depression. This is what it feels like to have depression. It may also be described as feeling like you are in a tunnel. Like all the color has gone out of the world. Like the laughter has somehow taken a vacation. Like all the effort to make things change for the better just does not help, and there just isn’t enough of you to keep up anymore. Like somehow the rules of life that used to apply, and seem to apply for everyone else just don’t apply to you anymore. Like God loves you, and COULD fix it, but you know He probably won’t. Life just hurts, and feels so heavy. Sometimes it hurts so much you don’t know how you can bear it for one more day.
From the outside it does not look like this. From the outside it looks like this person just grumbles a lot more than they used to. It looks like they have a bad attitude, and they may be more impatient and more angry. It looks like they are lazy and just not making an effort to help themselves. It looks like they’ve become more selfish. It looks like they do not appreciate your encouragement and good advice.
If you identify with either side of this – if you feel like you are the bug, then it is likely that depression is having an effect on you, or if you know someone who just doesn’t seem to be coping in the way you remember them doing, it is likely that they are under the weight of serious depression.
Now, we aren’t talking about “gee, I feel down today” when you have a crying jag due to PMS or something else. We are talking about something that goes on for more than a few months – almost when the person cannot remember the last time they had a good day, or a time when they had more good days than bad days. They feel like they’ve gone in and just can’t get back out. And it feels like it is their fault.
There are two types of depression – Situational, and Clinical. Situational is depression caused by a specific situation – loss, change, relationship problems, etc. Counseling, exercise, activities, and other strategies may help a lot with situational depression. Clinical depression is caused by changes in the chemistry or hormones in the body, and no matter how many “good things” you do to “fix it”, it simply may not respond with enough impact to pull out of the depression. Medication may be helpful with clinical depression, as may diet changes. Sunlight, and working in the dirt (seriously! bacteria in the dirt has a specific mood enhancing effect on the brain) may help either type of depression, but it may or may not be enough to turn things around.
It usually takes something outside themselves to break the pattern. Medication may be PART of the solution, but is rarely the whole thing. In some instances, medication makes little difference – it simply may not be appropriate for some individuals. Herbs may help – St. John’s Wort can help (though it will make you sensitive to the sun), and so can Borage Oil, or Lemon Balm. In either case, you can’t just tell someone with depression what to do to help themselves – they literally may not have the strength to make an appointment to get help, or go to the grocery store to get Borage Oil.
If you have a friend who seems to have depression, don’t try to tell them how to “fix” it. Ask them to go somewhere with you. Be patient if they say no, and ask again. Don’t be surprised if you ask what you can do, and they don’t know – be specific when asking them if they want you to help them with something. Bring them dinner now and again, and bring enough that they have leftovers. Let them know you care. And be patient with their discouraging mood. This is how they feel right now. It isn’t fun, and it isn’t nice to be around sometimes, but if you are patient, they have more hope of pulling out of it. Hugs help. Love helps. Not judging them helps. Helping them see the good in THEM helps.
Certainly, if you feel like hurting yourself, or someone else, you need to tell someone. And if your friend or family member expresses that kind of feeling, you need to call a Mental Health Crisis Center and ask what to do. Because someone may feel so much pain that they really can’t stand it any longer.
Depression can sneak up on anyone. No one is immune. In fact, most people will experience at least one serious depressive episode in their life, when it is the support and kindness of others that allows them to feel the love of the Lord enough to keep going. It is part of the opposition in life that allows us to recognize joy because of pain, and good because of bad. And it is one of our greatest opportunities to be the recipients of Christlike love from those around us, if they but choose to give it.
If we are on the outside looking in, this is a chance to BE the hands of Jesus Christ. To give true charity – “the pure love of Christ”. You may not be able to slow down the car and let them off. But you can cover their hands with yours, and “lift up the hands that hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees”.
Today, I am the bug. Tomorrow, you might be. Together, we are all strong enough to hang on.
Using Milk Kefir Grains Day to Day
Kefir grains are both a blessing, and a burden. They provide you with healthy, microbe rich milk products every day, but they also take daily care, and daily “feeding”. You have to keep milk in supply, and be there to refresh it every day, as a general rule. Sure, you can skip a day now and then, but things go wrong if you make a habit of it! You can also store them in several ways for longer periods of time, but again, things go wrong if you get sloppy about it.
If you’ve been considering getting Milk Kefir Grains, and aren’t sure what it will mean in a day to day routine, this post is meant to give you a picture.
I started with two tablespoons of fresh grains, mailed to me. So they had spent three days in a starved state by the time I got them, which means they may take a few days to re-balance. I promptly stuck them in about two cups of milk and left them on the top of the fridge to incubate.
By the next evening the milk was separated, and the jar spewed on me when I opened it – there was a lot of pressure built up in the jar (I had checked it earlier in the day and it was not set – it seemed to set and go explosive all of a sudden!). The grains were floating at the top of the jar (a good sign), so it looked like the grains were healthy and responsible for the culturing of the milk.
The milk did not smell quite right for kefir – it did not smell disgusting or anything, but it wasn’t right for kefir, so I discarded it and replaced it. I also rinsed the grains in milk – the only time I did that, normally I do not do that. I did it this time just to help them get back in balance, by removing some of the imbalanced bacteria and yeasts from the outside. I put another two cups of milk in with the grains, and set them back up on the fridge.
The next morning, I checked it and it was set, so I opened it and smelled. It smelled better, so I dumped it in the strainer, over a bowl, and tapped the strainer until nothing was left but the grains and some curds and milk slime (yes, it is slimy if the grains are healthy). This time I kept the kefir – I dumped it into a larger bottle, added about another two quarts of milk, and left that on the counter to culture overnight.
Meanwhile, I washed my original jar and lid, returned the grains to the jar, filled to two cups of milk, shook it, and left it to incubate again.
The next morning both jars were set nicely. I noticed that kefir made with pasteurized milk has more of a sour milk smell than kefir made with raw milk (which smells more buttermilk-yogurty than sour-yogurty). I drained the kefir for the day, washed the small jar, added the grains back, filled to two cups with milk, and set it back to incubate. This is now part of my daily routine. We also have kefir every morning, mixed with juice – about half a cup of kefir, and about 2/3 of a cup of juice, stirred together (it stirs weird, because of the stringiness of the kefir, but does eventually blend smooth just by stirring with a spoon in the cup).
The second larger jar of kefir was dumped into a strainer that was lined with a woven dishcloth (not a towel – a smoother, large dishcloth). I left it to set for several hours, then checked it. The solids were firming up, and the clear whey was collecting below. The edges and bottom of the solids were dry enough to separate easily from the cloth (they are sticky at first, but as the whey drains they get dryer and pull easily away from the cloth). I pulled the edges into the middle so the runnier stuff in the middle could go to the edges and drain better. I let it set for another few hours.
By evening, I had about a pint and a half of whey, and two cups of solids that tasted like a slightly sharp cream cheese. The consistency was the same as cream cheese at room temp. I rounded it up into a ball inside the cloth, squeezed it gently (not too hard, or the solids will get stuck in the cloth and it won’t release easily) to get the last bits of whey out that were easy to get out. I now had a partial ball of cheese – the bottom that was against the cloth was smooth and rounded, the top more rough and crumbly looking. So I took a small bowl and turned it upside-down on the ball, and then flipped it, and peeled off the cloth. This left me with a very nice looking rounded white cheese, neatly in the bowl.
The whey went into a separate container, and into the fridge, where we use it as a moistening liquid in various recipes.
That night, I added some seasoning to part of the cheese, and we had it on toasted homemade bread. I used the rest of it several days later, stirred into potato soup, and taco soup, where it added a delightful tang.
The next day I noticed that the kefir was starting to be mostly set by evening, and very hard set by morning. This means the grains are growing and are culturing the milk faster. The solution is to add more milk, until I have enough grains to separate off. Temperatures in our home are moderately warm, it is a warm spring in Oklahoma, which also makes them culture more quickly. I upped the milk to about two and a half cups. I could see we were growing out of our little not-quite-quart jar. I also got some quart containers to use with the kefir.
By this time I was getting a solid two cups of kefir (you lose just a little due to the volume of the grains in the container, and due to what sticks to the bowl and strainer). We are using between 1 and 2 cups per day, so overall, it is increasing slowly in the fridge. The new stuff goes in the back, the older stuff to the front.
After several more days, the kefir is needing more milk again. So we move up to a Ball half gallon canning jar – room to grow! We increase the milk to the four cup mark, and it cultures nicely in 24 hours – I can see that we are going to have to increase that soon as well. It looks like I’ll be able to separate the grains in about a week. I can’t really SEE that they are growing yet – it is hard to tell whether I am putting back 2 or 3 tablespoons. But I can see how they culture the milk, and I can tell by the amount of milk they are culturing that they are growing.
We are now getting just shy of 1 quart per day of cultured milk. I have had the grains for just two weeks.
When I get two quarts of surplus, in addition to the partial that we are using from in the front, I make cheese again. The second time I made cheese I let it sit overnight, and it ended up the same firmer consistency as cream cheese – I got about 1 lb of soft cheese from two quarts of kefir. The flavor still has a sour edge to it, because of the milk (when we did this using raw milk in Texas, it did not have that sour flavor, so I am sure it is the pasteurized milk that does it). But it is not nasty, and it takes various seasonings well.
The next round of cheese will be a cooked, pressed cheese. There are many types of cheese that can be made from kefir. I am already decreasing the amount of cheese that I buy.
So how will I keep this going? How will I keep enough milk to keep the grains happy? At this rate, they are doubling their culturing volume about once a week. That is a lot of milk potential!
The grains will be ready to split soon. At that time, I’ll preserve some for backup. I’ll also start making them available to other people. A quart a day seems to be a good amount right now, to make sufficient kefir and cheese.
One of the issues with kefir that people worry about is the daily maintenance. It takes literally 5 minutes a day to drain the grains, wash the jar, return the grains to the jar and refill with milk, shake, and place them to culture, and then pour the kefir into a container and pop it into the fridge.
Making soft drained cheese is also easy – 2 minutes to set it up to drain. 2 minutes in the middle to adjust it to drain better. 2 minutes at the end to package the cheese. 3-4 minutes to wash the cloth (I do it by hand in the sink with a little dishwashing detergent, and remove any sticky cheese by rubbing the cloth against itself).
I made ranch dressing a few days ago from mayonnaise and kefir – but I can also make it just from kefir, by using some of the thicker cream cheese style kefir, blended with some fresh. The ranch dressing was really good. It is usable in place of milk, yogurt, sour cream, cream cheese, soft cheese, cottage cheese, and many other dairy ingredients. It takes about 1 minute to toss the ingredients for Ranch into kefir or cheese and stir it up. It stores well, so you can make up a cup or so at a time and use it slowly if you want.
The hardest thing is keeping a steady supply of milk. But once that problem is solved, I am loving having the kefir every day, and loving having a steady supply of cheese starter just right there. It just builds up naturally, takes no special effort on my part, and I just drain it out when I have enough.
I’m all about easy. I’ll do the hard work when that is the only way to get things done, but if I can work out a simpler way, I always will. Kefir has ended up being easy. And convenient in ways I had not thought it would.
Letting Pandora Out of the Box
Guest post by Kevin (Laura’s husband)
I grew up with a strong foundation in music. I played in band throughout junior high, high school, and college. I actually have a degree in Music Education. I love listening to music. At home, in the car, in the bathroom, where ever. Sometimes it drives my wife nuts. But silence, especially for a prolonged span of time, drives me nuts – unless I’m up in the woods. (I managed to survive a week up at Scout camp without a radio or iPod, and I’ve been up in the mountains hunting deer and elk. While working at Camp for a whole summer, we could watch movies on the computers, and listen to iTunes, so I had some respite from squirrel chitters and bird song.) I’ve been trying to tell my wife for years that I think better when music is playing. She is only recently realizing that I’ve got one of those anomalies in my brain that needs music to get it jump started. I’ve been trying to tell her that for years, but her brain works best in quiet, so her assumption was understandable.
I am always on the lookout for how to pump music from somewhere. A few weeks ago, I stumbled across a reference to the Pandora web site. “Free internet radio” it said. “Great!”, I said. On Pandora, you can create “radio stations” and it will pick “similar” tracks to what you originally put in. For instance, if you tell it Mozart, it will play Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, and similar other artists. If you create another radio station and start it with Glenn Miller, you will hear Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey, and other Big Band leaders. Yes, it does contemporary too.
Laura and I like to play “spiritual” music during business hours. We work from home, and it keeps us in a better “frame of mind” towards each other, and the internet frustrations, if we have music playing. So I started a station using the name Janice Kapp Perry. For a while we got similar artists like April Meservey, Mindy Gledhill. But a couple of days ago, I was only half-way paying attention, and I definitely heard some Country music. I love country music, but I didn’t want it on that station. I looked, and saw that it was a semi-religious tune by Tracy Lawrence, so I marked that I liked it. Pretty soon, I kept hearing more Country artists. At first a couple of similarly “religious” tunes, but then we got a “drinking” song. I think there was some kind of mention of bar tramps, too. I marked it that I didn’t like it. Then Pandora started adding Enya and Sissel to my Religious radio station. I like the music these ladies produce, but I didn’t want it on my “spiritual” radio station. As a matter of fact, I had already created a station specifically for Sissel, Enya, Celtic Woman, and all of their other “New Age” sisters.
So I deleted my religious station, and tried to start over. I kept putting in names of the spiritual artists that I liked, but it wouldn’t start with those artists. It would immediately start playing Sissel or Enya. After several attempts I finally gave up.
What we think happened is that I had marked that I liked Sissel, Enya, Tracy Lawrence, Charlotte Church, Diamond Rio, and it wasn’t following the original parameters anymore. Pandora searches for similar “qualities” in artists, and makes it’s choices from there. You can only tell a computer so much before the limited qualities of brain-like function give up the pretense that it can handle anything that differs from the parameters that it’s been given.
On my Sissel Radio, I had marked a bunch of artists that I liked. On my Spiritual radio, I had marked artists that liked there. I had a radio station for Broadway musicals, and pretty soon Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole started showing up there, because I had marked that I liked them on certain show tunes. But I think Pandora was getting confused, because my “parameters” didn’t fit it’s parameters. I expanded my choices because of my personal likes and dislikes. I was outside of Pandora’s box, and it was getting confused.
The point being that if you stick to Pandora’s pre-defined categories, then you and they will get along just fine.
The “Tumbs Up” and “Tumbs Down” buttons work just fine, when controlling what you want to hear on your radio station as a whole. But if you decide that you don’t want to hear “Boot Scoot Boogie” just after your cat died, and you give it a “Thumbs Down” then you will never hear it again.
One other negative. You can’t just “leave it alone”. I don’t know how long it takes for this feature to kick in. I have been seeing to other tasks in the house when Pandora decides to quit. If you don’t click on something every once in a while, the music will stop and you will get this window that asks if you are listening. If you click that you are still listening, it will keep going from where it left off.
I think that Pandora is a handy way to get radio over the internet, and have some degree over customization, but it needs more options for a listener to “truly” optimize their listening experience.
It will be interesting to see if Pandora’s options improve over the next few years, or if some “hot shot” company will come from out of no-where and pull the rug out from under them.
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