Ambergris

Wait, Mother! Please tell me more!

I used to have a book about the work of a group of people that went around with a $50 kerosene fire-thing; they'd build an adobe dwelling, scrub the inside walls with salt, block up the windows and doors with brick-sized blocks of mud, and turn on the kerosene thing. By night the building would glow red-hot, and the kerosene would have burned out. When the building cooled, and they pulled out the brick blocks, the dwelling itself (walls and roof and floor and all) would have baked into brick. When earthquakes came, the uncooked dwellings collapsed but the cooked ones stayed standing. These were I think about 500-800 sq ft dwellings, but think about it.

I've seen a stick-and-mud chimney catch fire. The people immediately went out and lassoed the chimney, and pulled it away from the house to burn in the yard. The chimney was built to pull away easily. This left a hole in the wall, but it beat losing the roof--or maybe the whole house--to fire.

I'm not a building contractor, but I've seen some bad fireplaces, and I've asked questions of the people who fixed them. For a chimney to draw well, you need to have a tall, narrow chimney. Smoke has to push air out of the way, and this is easier with a smaller diameter. Also, the part you build the fire in has to have pretty specific proportions for the fireplace to work properly. The opening to the room should be wider than it is tall. The height should be two feet or more, because less is going to cause trouble loading and cleaning--not to mention enjoying--your fireplace. I've been told 30-32 inches is a good height but you could calculate the height based on the height of the bricks you're using plus mortar. My very effective fireplace opening is six courses of bricks high, but my bricks are larger than normal Most good fireplaces I've seen are 16-18 inches deep. The back wall of the fireplace should be narrower than the front wall, so that the side walls reflect heat into the room. The back wall can be as little as half as wide as the opening. Just like the back wall is narrower side to side, it's also shorter. 14 inches is good. If you have a four-foot-wide pig-roaster of a fireplace, you can raise the back height above 14 inches, but you want to keep it under a foot and a half. Above the 14-inch height, it should slope in toward the room, narrowing the opening to something just exactly wide enough to catch birds' nests. This is the opening your damper fits over. It's called the throat. This narrowest place should be a little less than a foot above the top of your fireplace opening. Immediately above the narrowest point is a "smoke shelf," which is a pain to keep clean and a fire hazard to ignore, and which also tends to collect bird nests. To prevent nightmares, reach up with a stick and scrape across this shelf before your first fire in a long time. Really--do this. I'm certain the smoke shelf is essential to the functioning of the fireplace or the chimney, because it's too annoying to exist otherwise. The only masonry chimney I've seen without a smoke shelf was notorious for a problem with high winds blowing crap into the room--which is not a good thing if the crap is on fire. Now the inside of the front of the fireplace, the part your damper is fixed to, should slant back toward the back wall, so that about two feet above the smoke shelf there's just room enough for the flue. My flue is 9 inches by 14 inches. The flue should be as smooth as you can get it, for ease of cleaning. This is the inside of the chimney. I'm nobody's idea of a housekeeper, but what sticks to the inside of the flue is combustible, and if you ever want to distract a firefighter, ask about the worst chimney fire he's ever seen. When you look down from the top of the chimney, you're looking down the flue, and all you should see is flue and smoke shelf. The smoke shelf is flat, like a book shelf, and goes straight back to where the back wall of the fireplace would have been if you'd not slanted it in. Ths chimney goes up from here. A 20-foot chimney is good. A 21-foot chimney is better. The taller ones draw better. To make the code guy happy, make the chimney 3 feet taller than the closest roof, and two feet higher than the ridge, if the ridge is within 10 or 12 feet. Just before you light your fire, light a twisted-up sheet of paper and hold it as high up the chimney as you can conveniently reach. This seems to do a good job of starting the airflow, which makes the fire easier to start and reduces that just-starting smoke that tries to pour out into your room. Does this make sense?

Actually, even here in Florida, I didn't have room by the back door for a winter's worth of wood. Too much else has to be kept handy. We did keep a knee-high stack there on the porch, for convenience and to keep it from being rained on, but the main woodpile was across the yard. If you're heading for snow country, wouldn't that be like six or seven cords? BTW, does everyone know that if you're heading across non-tree terrain, you can burn cowpies for fuel? The dryer the better, of course. If you hit grassland and can't find enough cowpies, you might have to do like Laura Ingalls and spend days on end twisting and knotting hay into "logs" to burn. +++ However, if you hit grassland, fire might not be your biggest problem. It's grassland because it doesn't get enough water to grow trees. If you go along and start noticing the trees getting sparse, twisty, and smallish, with leathery leaves, you'd best fill your waterbarrels at every opportunity and learn to scour your pots and pans with clean sand and wads of grass. At that point, "laundry" might largely consist of flying flags of yesterday's shirts. +++ Someone was talking about dumping water in winter without making a skating rink. One of the things you need close by the kitchen door is a pit, at least as big as a 13-gallon kitchen wastebasket, filled with rocks and gravel. You can dump anything from scrubbing water to urine to flaming grease in it. If you have several males in the household, make another one in a somewhat private spot and put a 2" pipe down the middle of it. Have the guys deposit their urine IN THE PIPE. We have used one of these for many years, and have caught a whiff only when some guy decided to aim at the pipe instead of in it. Here's a picture of something similar. http://www.urinal.net/camp_salerno/ Theirs stinks, but anyplace an army goes is bound to stink. +++ And I'm working so hard not to start reading the main section. I'd drown--I really would. How many people per wagon?

I have forced myself to stay out of this because I could just sink into it, and the time really is not there. ++++++ I saw a home-made hot tub. Saw a BIG barrel in half across the equator, or a little above if you can get an extra band that way. For the firebox, bend some heavy-gauge steel into the shape of a double-high/double-wide--not double-deep mailbox (a "country mailbox"), solder it securely, and insert a smokestack toward the closed end. Trace the butt end onto the wall of the barrel, rather closer to the bottom than the top rim of the barrel. The firebox needs to stay entirely submerged in water to work right. Cut a hole in the side of the barrel and insert the firebox. Seal the intersection of wood and firebox with something that doesn't easily burn or melt. Measure two or three inches in from the deepest intrusion of the firebox and wall off the firebox by making like an open picket fence. This could be used as a seat back. Fill the tub, then set a fire. It's not quick to heat, but the heat lasts a surprisingly long time. ++++++++++++++++ To start a fire, mix any two or three of the following and light them with a magnifying glass: Peel the bark off a dead tree and pound it into thready fibers--not into dust. Stomp some dry pinecones to bits, flinders, splinters. (And if you find some pine root or a stump that smells of turpentine, you've hit paydirt!) Char some cotton cloth, like bandage squares. Pack as many as you can into a tin like a Peculiarly Strong Mints tin, put a tiny (small nailtip) hole in the lid, and stick the tin into the coals of a fire. It should smoke, and stink. Don't melt the tin--that's too hot. Fish the tin out of the coals when it stops smoking, but leave it where it is until morning when all the ashes are cool. You've just made quick-lighting charcoal with thousands of ends and edges (each thread). Ends and edges are what catch fire easily. Stuff a bunch of dryer lint into a toilet paper core. Dip each end (each opening in the core) lightly in wax. Seal a bunch of these away until you need them. Collect an old bird's nest or two. Save a few charred pieces of wood from your last fire. Splinter them. Oh, and does everyone know that toasted wood catches and burns better? Take a few good splits and set them around your fire but don't burn them. If your fire goes all night long, these will toast adequately in one night. Otherwise you need two nights. The toasting drives water out of the wood to make it easier to burn, but also causes a chemical change--I don't remember the details because when I heard them I didn't understand them--that makes wood more burnable. Carry these splits with you and use them to start your fire the next day. And don't forget to toast new splits.

Consider also using solar cooking for the bones. Heat a cast-iron pot with a glass or iron lid, put the bones and liquid in, and stick it in the windshield of a vehicle parked in the sun. Put in an oven thermometer with a nice big gauge. Peek at the thermometer once in a while to make sure it's staying well above 160 degrees. When the sun's slanting too much to keep up the temp, either put what's left on the fire to finish cooking or refrigerate it and start over in the morning.

Cornmeal mush is good if you have it ground coarse. Boil it up like grits, though it looks more like cream of wheat. Using broth instead of water helps. Stirring in some sauteed onions really helps. Salt and pepper it, and eat hot. If you've had too much of it recently, try a shot of steak sauce on it one time and next time stir in a spoonful of pepper jelly or leftover fish bits. Stirring in some leftover gravy is really good, especially if you scraped a lot of scorched meat into the gravy. Mold the leftovers like a loaf. Next day, slice any leftover mush into slabs and fry, preferably in sausage grease (lots of flavor) or oil you've used to sautee onions or garlic. Melt a slice of cheese over it if you have any cheese, and treat it like a hamburger patty.

Skillet Cornbread Very generously grease a medium sized cast iron skillet, maybe 10 inches across, preferably with bacon drippings. Butter will burn. If you have a choice of a larger or smaller skillet, choose the larger. Thin cornbread cooks just fine and has extra crunch. Put in oven and turn knob to 400. Listen for it to hit a sizzle while you measure: 2 cups of cornmeal, preferably water-ground or coarsely ground. If not, substitute a little bit of yellow grits for some of the cornmeal 1/2 cup Bisquick Beat one egg into 2 cups buttermilk (or sour milk) as if scrambling. Stirring in a spoonful or so more of bacon grease won't hurt a bit If you don't have an egg, add a little more grease and expect it to be heavier, but it will still be okay. Stir wet into dry, leaving lumps. Do you hear the sizzle yet? Pour batter into sizzling pan. If it glops and needs scraping instead of pouring like grainy pudding and needing just a little finger-wipe to get out of the bowl, put a note in your mind you'll need to add a trifle more liquid for your conditions. If it needs help lying down in the pan, just smear it out. It will be a little crumblier this time, but you can fix it next time. Cook for about 20 minutes, or until the bread has a dark brown ring that has pulled away from the pan. If this is rather more or less than 20 minutes, make a note for your oven, your pan, and your ingredients.

Peas and Corn Bread When I was a kid, lunch very often was a hot ladle of black eyed peas served over a hot bowl of cornbread, with plenty of pea juice to moosh in with the bread. Here's something different: 1 qt frozen (or two cans) pink-eye purple hulls or black eyed peas 1 pt bag frozen niblet corn 1/2 pint salsa (more if you like, but drain it if you add more) 1 cup oil-and-vinegar salad dressing (Caesar is good, as is Italian. Creamy dressings like ranch work, but look funky) 1 clove garlic, minced, if you have any Lightly cook the peas if frozen. If canned, drain and rinse. Dump everything together in a bowl and refrigerate at least half a day. For lunch, make a big pan of crusty, crunchy cornbread, preferably with bacon grease in it. If your cornmeal is white or floury, throw in a half cup of yellow grits to give it texture. Crumble a handful of cornbread in your bowl and stir in the chilled beans. If you want to be fancy, put a dollop of yogurt or creme fraiche or Mexican sour cream on top.

I've tried a few times. Got out much less than I put in. People suggest the barrels overheated in my Florida summer. Frustratingly, one of those barrels (now replanted with a baby satsuma) must not have been cleaned out well because it's now got a huge volunteer bush growing in it. I'm keeping the barrel shaded by other planters, and seeing how it does. When the plant dies down, I'll see how many potatoes I can harvest without messing up my satsuma too much.

I am antsy about all this information appearing on an open part of the forum. Would it be possible to combine all the posts to one article, post that, and delete the names of the individuals who posted each contribution?

To use for toilet paper, grab two fistfuls about 6 or 8 inches apart. Twist and scrub the paper against itself or over the edge of a board to break up the slick surface and raise some of the fibers. When the surface is less slick, the paper absorbs more and smears less.

and I'll grind his BONES to make my bread! People who have a history of kidney stones might want to be careful, but otherwise this is just food.

Welcome! Does this mean Darlene has to quit saying "nobody knows the trouble I've been?"

Satsumas are often found at abandoned homesites in the deep south. When I was a kid we often found satsumas and kumquats while looking for old graves. Citrus is particularly suited to growing in pots, and is easier to grow in square pots than round ones. After looking at the price of the right pots, though, you'll head over to the lumber section. Read this: http://www.justfruitsandexotics.com/JF%20ContainerCitrus.pdf

I have problems with hydrolyzed soy protein, soy flour, and MSG. Does anyone know of a *good* reliable substitute for the chicken boullion in these recipes? Sometimes salt with a pinch of hickory salt flavoring works, and sometimes salt with a pinch of instant coffee works, but when a substitute doesn't work it is downright awful.

What is the cause of the pain, tweety? Most of what would really work to kill pain isn't legal to grow or process in this country, although last I heard valerian (muscle relaxant) is still legal. So is white willow, although that boils down to aspirin, and if he's been on fentanyl, he might not feel any benefits from it at all. If he can't get relief through rehab or yoga or something, your best bet might be stockpiling his medication, and see if you can avoid using it. If he can get relief from rehab or yoga or something, you need to get him into that now.

Sometimes I'm an INFJ; more often, I'm an INTJ.

Homeless shelter, battered women's refuge, every place I could think of. All said "no." One lady lectured me until I hung up on her.

A sampling off the top: Ultra Bright Beginnings 2 use by 2008 MA10 Ultra Bright Beginnings with iron use by 2007 DE19 Similac Organic use by 1 March 2008 Similac with iron use by 1 Feb 2009 (not a typo) Nestle Good Start with iron Supreme use by 29 Sept 2007 Nestle Good Start with Iron Supreme use by 26 Feb 2008 Similac Advance Singles use by 1 June 2008 Stored on grocery store shelves, and since then in air conditioned house.

I have an embarrasment of riches in the form of expired milk-based baby formula. This is premium stuff for the most part, some organic even, but the baby I picked it up for has been taken to soy. (Soy rant deleted. You're welcome.) I can't sell the stuff because I was given it for free on the understanding I would pass it on the same way. The shelter won't take it because it's out of date. Okay, so does anyone need a case or two of nonsoy formula? Expired, but apparently well-cared for? Or do I need to serve it to my chickens?

While you're googling, also google for images of genital warts caused by HPV.

1 If I had a daughter, she'd have it. I wouldn't wait for her late teens either. Rape can transmit the HPV, more easily than consensual sex, by a long shot, and is no respector of tender age. 2 Shouldn't. 3 I hope not. 4 Tell her it's a vaccine girls get. Period. If she needs to know more, it prevents certain kinds of warts. Which it does. 5 In a heartbeat.