Fat Soluble

Fat is good.  Natural fats produced by animals and plants are good and necessary.  They soften skin, they make hair shiny, and they signal fullness to our brains.  Now, another important reason to make sure fats are included in meals:

Vegetables have fat soluble nutrients in them.  This means fats are needed for the body to make use of certain nutrients.  If you don't have fat, you don't get the full benefit of these veggies.  So it's easy to say that in order to reduce calories, we'll cut out the butter or olive oil or salad dressing on our veggies.  However, this fact about fat soluble nutrients shows how it is possible for a person to be the slender picture of health and malnourished, missing out on many important nutrients for want of a little fat.  

Now, obviously, you can't go overboard, especially with saturated animal fats.  But dressing your salad or veggies with olive oil, oil and vinegar, or a modest serving of butter won't kill you.  In the long run, you'll do your body good.

Worth While

Yes, it really is worth while to run around obsessively turning off/unplugging appliances not currently in use.  A recent study showed that the average family could trim 20% from their monthly electric bill by turning off lights when not in use and unplugging out of use small appliances.  Basically, anything with a "vampire light" that glows when the appliance is not being used is still sucking energy.  If you unplug, no energy, electric usage goes down.  So stop making excuses and just do it!  If you have lots of small appliances, put things on power strips.  That way, you have just a few switches to flip instead of lots of cords to pull.  

The Boy With a Drum

There once was a boy 

With a little toy drum . . . . .

They all marched along 

With a rat a tat tat

The boy with his drum 

And the big friendly cat

And the horse and the cow

And the mouse and the dog

And the duck and the chicken

And the pig and the frog . . . . 

I've been reciting this story/poem to Yeled whenever he has trouble settling down to sleep.  The story is charming and sweet and has a irresistible rhythm that never fails to put Yeled sleep.  It struck me, a few nights ago, reciting for about the 200th time in as many weeks, that the story mirrors closely the ideas of self sufficiency and responsible small scale farming.  My Complete Book of Self Sufficiency that I quoted a few days ago repeatedly makes the point that nature abhors monoculture.  He talks about having small numbers of many different animals, rotating a variety of crops, and growing different crops together or several different types of trees.  He recommends having cows, a horse, sheep, goats, a couple species of poultry, and pigs.  Well, pigs are out of question for us but we want to have a little of everything else.

Given the publishing date on my copy of The Boy With a Drum, I doubt the author was simply writing a charming story introducing g children.  The more times I recite the thing, the more convinced I am that the author is mirroring the experience of small farmers everywhere, raising a variety of animals and crops that suite the land.

The more times one plants the same crop on the same piece of land, the more likely that crop is to eventually fall prey to disease.  Rotation and variety are the keys to not only keeping the land healthy but ensuring that crops and animals remain disease free.  The focus of modern commercial farms on just one or two market-oriented animals or crops is one of the primary reason why our farm land is struggling.  I want to grow and raise lots of different things to rehab the land and keep it healthy.

More Kitchen Short-cuts

*** Correction ***  I made up a batch of instant flavored coffee last night and realized that my previously posted recipe proportions were wildly inaccurate.  Use 1 C instant coffee, 1/2 C powdered milk, 1/2 C sugar, and approximately 1 T of any dry spices/flavorings you desire.  Please note this will not be as sweet as commercial instant flavored coffee.  If you want a sweeter mix, increase the sugar by 1/4 C increments until you get the sweetness you prefer.

Cream of Chicken Dry Mix - 2 C powdered milk, 3/4 C cornstarch, 1/4 chicken dry bouillon, 1/2 t. dry thyme, 1/2 t dry basil, 1/4 t pepper.

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and store in an airtight container.

To substitute for one can of condensed soup, stir together 1/3 C dry mix and 1 cup of water (or milk for extra richness) in a sauce pan.  Cook and stir until thickened.

This dry mix is the equivalent to nine cans of condensed soup.

Add dry celery for cream of celery, dried mushrooms for cream of mushrooms, or fresh broccoli during the cooking for cream of broccoli.

The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency

I've been reading this book, written by John Seymour and published by Corgi Books in the U.K.  Following are excerpts from the first chapter, titled The Way to Self Sufficiency.

"Now self-sufficiency is not "going back" . . . it is going forward to a new and better sort of life . . .a life that brings challenge and the use of daily initiative back to work, and variety, and occasional great success and occasional abysmal failure.  It means the acceptance of complete responsibility for what you do or what you do not do."

"it is the striving for a higher standard of living, for food which is fresh and organically grown and good, for the good life in pleasant surrounds, for the health of body and peace of mind which come with hard varied work in the open air, and for the satisfaction that comes from doing difficult and intricate jobs well and successfully."

"we will one day have to derive our sustenance from what the land, unaided by oil-derived chemicals, can produce.  We may not wish in the future to maintain a standard of living that depends entirely on elaborate and expensive equipment and machinery but we will always want to maintain a high standard of living in the things that really matter - good food, clothing, shelter, health, happiness, and fun with other people.  The land can support us, and it can do it without huge applications of artificial chemicals and manures and the use of expensive machinery.  But everyone who owns a piece of land should husband that land as wisely, knowledgeably, and intensively as possible.  The so-called "self-supporter" sitting among a riot of docks and thistles talking philosophy ought to go back to town.  He is not doing any good at all, and is occupying land which should be occupied by somebody who can really use it."

"Man should be a husbandman, not an exploiter.  This planet is not exclusively for our own use.  To destroy every form of life except such forms as are obviously directly of use to us is immoral, and ultimately quite possibly, will contribute to our own destruction."

"Man was not meant to be a one job animal.  We do not thrive as parts of a machine.  We are intended by nature to be diverse, to do diverse things, to have many skills."

Drink Special

Instead of buying gourmet coffee, which usually does taste better than the cheap stuff, add a teaspoon or so of sugar to your usual cheap grounds.  It really does make a difference.  This should be an obvious point but drink your coffee in a ceramic mug!  Plastics of any type change the flavor and make even the best coffee taste cheap and sour.

Don't buy creamer - make it.  Dry creamers are easy and cheap to make and keep for several months, as long as they're stored in airtight containers.  They also dissolve into coffee much better than commercial creamer.  Mix together equal parts sugar and powdered milk.  If you buy the powdered milk in bulk, it's MUCH cheaper in the store.  Do you have any idea how much volume one pound of powdered milk fills?  It's *a lot.*  Add ground spice to taste.  For two cups of creamer, I find 1 Tablespoon of spice is about right.  I just mixed up a pumpkin pie blend last night, it smells absolutely wonderful.  

For a little more variety in flavor, add a handful of sliced nuts to the sugar/milk mix.  Let these sit for about two weeks before opening them.  Half a vanilla bean works wonders.

In high school, I *loved* the International Cafe instant coffees.  But my money had to go towards school, piano lessons, and clothes so I stopped buying the stuff.  But now I know how to make them myself for much less money.  Take two cups of any creamer concoction you love and add an 8oz jar of instant coffee to the mix.  You can blend the whole thing fine in a food processor or blender if you want.  Voila!  Yummy instant coffee for pennies on the dollar.

Want gourmet flavored coffee?  Try tucking a couple vanilla beans into a can of your usual grind.  Or some sliced nuts and/or dried fruit.  Let these sit for a couple weeks before digging in.

I didn't have store bought hot chocolate mix until I was out on my own.  My mom always made her own mix.  I recently found a recipe that's pretty similar to what she always mixed up.  One-quarter cup cocoa powder, 1 cup sugar, and 7 cups dry milk.  Mix ingredients together in a quart jar. Put 4 Tablespoons hot cocoa mix in a cup and pour in boiling water.  Stir and cool slightly. For specialty flavored cocoa, tuck vanilla beans, sliced nuts, dried fruit, fresh herbs like mint or edible flowers (jasmine, lavender, nasturtiums, hibiscus), or coffee beans into the mix and let sit for two weeks before serving. 

Bean Sprouts

Remember the lima beans I mentioned recently?  They got planted almost two weeks ago.  As of yesterday, I have five sprouts poking up!  I planted 10 in a planter that really should have no more than two plants in it but since the beans were Wal Mart beans packaged for eating originally, I wanted to make sure I'd get at least one or two sprouts so way over planted.  I'll be thinning them out in another week or two.  I'm just so happy about this!

I wonder if I could sprout chickpeas also . . . . ?  This household loves chickpeas.

Fish Farming

I've been reading a book called The Handbook of Self-Sustainability.  It's a British book, which isn't terribly obvious but shows through every once in awhile in spelling and references.  One of the things mentioned in the book is fish farming.  Apparently, fish is one of the most economical ways to make use of your farm land.  You get more meat for the amount of food going into the fish.  It's recommended that you raise vegetarian species rather than carnivorous ones since vegetarian species can eat kitchen and garden scraps and you don't need to buy meat proteins to feed.  That book recommends a large pond where the fish grow and a small "stewpond" near the house where eating-weight fish can be moved for easy access when you want them.

Ba'al and I have been doing some research as a result.  Not only do we we have to keep in mind the type of water and climate, we also have the limitations of kashrut.  If we get the money together for a fish pond, I think we'll probably raise small mouth bass and maybe walleye as well.  We've been wanting to have a grist mill on the property as well and if we combine that with a large fish pond, we can keep the water moving by having it go through a sluiceway, turn a water wheel, and then pipped back up to the main pond.  That helps take care of the potential mosquito problem, by keeping the water moving.  That's an advantage to raising small mouth bass; they eat surface bugs and larvae.

As far as feed, small mouth bass are basically vegetarian.  They'll eat beer and wine wastes (good since I'm interested in wine making and Ba'al makes beer), kitchen scrapes, garden wastes, and so on.  I'm not worried about the cost of feeding the fish.  I'm not worried about raising way more than we can use because I can easily sell fish locally.  What I AM worried about is the cost of putting in the infrastructure.  I can see fish being a good, safe, economical source of protein for my family but it won't be the first thing we commit to.  Like it or not, putting in the fish pond and pipe system we envision will be expensive and to start, chickens and beef will be cheaper in start up costs.  But I like the idea of doing fish and if we wait until we have our land certified organic (definitely one of the long term goals) our fish would definitely be safer in terms of contaniments than practically any other fish on the market.

This self-sustainability thing is going in directions I never thought it would.