Ambergris

I have a sourdough sponge going on in the kitchen right now, and today I'm doing something that I hope will end up as a vinegar (as opposed to aromatic compost like my recent ginger bug). I also have trays of fodder going on for the critters, although they're not technically in the kitchen. One is three days old, one two days old, one is from yesterday, and I'm going to start another today. They need to grow about seven to eight days to be useful. (Actually I think one is four days old, and I skipped a day, not that it will matter in the long run.) If I gather the oompf to walk back to town this afternoon, I plan to pick up onions for the dehydrator and garlic for a black-garlic project, although the priority is paying a bill.

Note that people relying on a solar still are advised to cut up vegetation to put under the plastic to increase the amount of liquid condensing on the plastic. Also note that what he calls a quarter cup might be a bit more.

I once bought a $130 hot plate that advertised it was good for canning. It had a dial for heat, infinitely adjustable, and was very strong/heavy. I did a good bit of canning on it before it disappeared.

I want to do this because it's only one shelf of the dehydrator, and I can do onions or other savories on other shelves for the 4-8 weeks as the garlic simmers along.

GenZ with ADHD and an obsession.

Thank you! I picked up Sandor Katz's Wild Fermentation from a French girl at the market a couple of weeks ago. Are you going to watch?

What's the first rule of cutting hot peppers? What happens when you get distracted after cutting hot peppers? ARGH! (As an aside, the toothpaste trick works pretty well.)

I'm still looking for a true pressure canner here instead of a pressure cooker. While the canned chicken here tastes better than the canned chicken in the US, it's not as good as my bottled chicken. Considering that a half-cup sized can is a very solid basis for a meal for me, I would look at a one-pint jar as something to open about twice a week. So for a year, I would bottle at most about 40-50 pints of various kinds of chicken, 24-32 of various kinds of pork, and about 24-32 of stew beef and variety meat, these jars including meat-rich soups and chilis, etc. as well as pure cold-pack meat (and bone). In addition, I would bottle up as many pint or quart jars of pure broth as possible. Broth is gold. The canned fish here is better than mine, and the tastiest kinds are rich in hunger-resolving fat as well as protein. I wouldn't bottle it ahead of time, but if I had fish and no freezer, you bet I'd bottle it.

Miki, how do you prepare the sweet potatoes? I would just dehydrate them enough to get them leathery and get rid of the stickiness.

https://www.hipchickdigs.com/2013/05/how-to-use-bantam-eggs/

Telling you that you don't smell it is called 'gaslighting' and is classified as a form of abuse. It is an attempt to control your reality. I would not get the camera, as that can open a whole new can of worms and in some places cause you legal troubles even in your own house (because it is a room devoted to his use). It can certainly cause you social issues. Besides, you don't need proof for something you know. All you need is your nose and what you know. Don't let him control your reality and make you go to increasingly ridiculous lengths to prove that the sun rises in the east. Say that if you think you smell it, that's going to be it, and he can live with the consequences. Give him notice that the burden is on him to keep you from smelling it, and that there will be no argument as to whether you do.

The post office here was disbanded. Receiving a letter costs $6 to $10, depending. Sending it costs also. Some private party has bought the rights to the mail delivery and is talking about starting it back up. We're waiting to see how things shake out. I'm going through a lot of videos on the Three Baskets channel:

The naked neck (turken) is really heat resistant, and also easy to pluck. Mine have also tended to be the most intelligent and often the tamest of the flock.

I just now clapped a mosquito and knocked my glasses off. ow

Right now you have breathing space. Even if it does mean that you don't see the shoe that's falling, you need to enjoy the breathing space as much as you can. When all's said and done, "right now" is all the time we really do have. Don't waste it.

https://espressomio.ru/en/from-fruit/chto-delat-esli-fasol-gorchit-pochemu-gorchit-fasol-posle-varki-pochemu/ TLDR: You could try the sometimes condescending advice in the article for removing the bitterness. Sometimes, however, the beans are bad from the start, being poorly grown, or were old/damaged when you bought them. If so, there's no cure.

Didn't Westie's daughter react to eggs fed with soy feed? Or am I misremembering? Anyway, when I have chickens, I have to work pretty hard to get them feed without soy because I have to limit my soy. It's one of the things that can trigger my migraines and cause "sleeping sickness," (my name for what I get and sleep to get through, not what you'll find if you look the term up) and it's EVERYWHERE. I just snip it out of my diet wherever I can, like I do nitrites (sigh, so much for bacon or ham every morning) and yeast extract/MSG, and hope that's enough to keep below critical level. And yes, I can tell the difference when I eat eggs based on what the hens eat. I can eat three or four eggs a day when they're mine or C's (I know what her hens eat), and not have problems, but no more than one or two a day without problems when they're cheap store eggs. There's a question of whether it's the hormones in the soy (which is a potent phyto estrogen) or whether it's the Roundup in the soy, but that might be too political an issue to get into here.

Quiche is the first thing I thought of. Then white sauce (butter, milk, flour) since that's the basis of "cream of" anything soup. Add cheese and short pasta (macaroni or shells, mostly) and you have macaroni and cheese. Or add chopped tomatoes and crackers and bake, and it's good.

I've used this mix. Makes a wet, sloppy batter like my granny's. Try White Lily flour. I don't knead or cut, though. I do like Granny did and flour my hands, and pinch off a bit of the batter, pat it gently into shape, sprinkling a bit of flour on it to give a dry surface, and setting it on the pan with as little handling as possible. Note that heavy cream has twice the fat of sour cream. If you try substituting sour cream, you have to add in butter, lard, or bacon grease to up the shortening factor.

If it's a disposable lid, I put an ice pick through the middle of the top. It comes off easy as anything once the vacuum breaks.

Mother's right: Pen first, critter last. Six is a great start-up number, and one I go with over and over, although I've never had more than one Red Star at a time. In Florida, I had to go for heat resistance and environmental toughness. Over and over, the Easter Eggers (a mixed breed) came out champs. Never got worms, ever. Never got bumblefoot, ever. Never got pox, ever. Never ate garden strings or the cord from hay-bales, ever. And you could tell which hen laid which egg.

Get a thin rail, preferably no bigger around than a mop handle, that you can wrap your hand around. Get it before those things cripple you. Taking the carpet up would also help. It's loose.

Got one. Don't use it. Messy, very messy. Incredibly noisy. Takes all kinds of fiddly work to keep it running properly. There are user websites devoted to information the company should be putting out. Unfortunately, you can't always tell which information goes with which generation of machine. The company knows about various fixes and tweaks/upgrades, but sells them instead of putting them on the machine as it comes out of the box.