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Nourishing Traditions revisited


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:bump1:      I'm really bumping this whole forum to the front because it has a lot more to offer than just another diet.  It's a different way to look at our food and how we not only prepare it but how to store and preserve it. And it might be the very thing we need to give us a different perspective on our lifestyles.  

 

I started using some of the alternative ways to store foods almost 60 years ago; fermenting, dehydrating, root cellaring, making dairy products, processing our own meat, canning, and more.  Some of the old ways I learned from my Mom and my Grandma. Some of them, however, I learned from Carla Emory's Old Fashioned Recipe Book.  My original one was printed on a mimeograph machine and sent out in Chapter form.  I still have that one but it has long since fallen apart and I've bought two or three since then along with a few more to use as gifts.  I had Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappe and still have Recipes for a Small Planet by Ellen Buchman Ewald.  I have Dry it You'll Like It by Gen Macmaniman, a ton of Rodale books, and dozens of Storey booklets on various aspects of homesteading.  I had borrowed a book ( I forget the name now) that told about the old fashioned ways of preserving foods in Europe, some of which are still used today and I have hundreds of old copies of The Mother Earth News, Countryside, Backwoods Home and Back Home  magazines.  Jackie Clay was one of my favorite contributors.  I was a member of the Weston A. Price foundation for years and read everything I could get on his recommendations.  I found Nourishing Traditions early in this century. It was "The cookbook that challenges politically correct nutrition and the diet Dictocrats" and I found so much in that which changed my way of thinking about our food.  

 

As our children left home and changes came about in our life the homesteading lifestyle faded but the books stayed on the shelves.  I continue to use those old ways as often as possible for just the two of us.  I use my very old ten-tray dehydrator often but because our ability to grow bushels of food has been curtailed I now often buy frozen vegetables, usually organic, ten and twelve packages at a time and dry those. I dehydrate bananas and pineapple and other fruit when it's on sale.  I use it to make dehydrated cookies, still a favorite with our kids and now our grands.  I often make zucchini, kale, and other chips, dehydrated crackers, jerky, and so much more.   We still make fermented pickles and sauerkraut and other fermented fruits and veggies. We make homemade bread, both regular and gluten free, but now use the bread maker or stand mixer. 

 

Through the years the diet dictocrats have come out with more and more suggestions for ways to eat but we know now that most of what they recommend is not based as much on science as it is dictated by money.  Now, more than ever with this virus bringing the earth to it's knees, with canning supplies in high demand and scarce, with the need to save and use every bit of food we have, with the need for as healthy of a diet as we can get, it has been a good time to brush the dust off the books that sit on my shelf and give them a fresh look.  

 

Perhaps we all need to take another look at this forum to see what it has to offer us in these trying times.  What do you think? :shrug:

:grouphug:

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I had so many of the same books/magazines you have. When we sold everything and headed to the mission field, I sold most of them. They went for high prices and we used the money to travel from project to project. Great memories. So were all the animals we raised.   :thumbs:

 

We've eaten just about every kind of animal species that crawls, walks, or runs. Some of them would be considered pets around here.  :hidingsmile: We beefed up our immune systems to handle just about every attack. We lived through SARS in SE Asia and Ebola in Africa. My biggest concern since retiring is letting down our guard and allowing our immune systems to weaken. We're killing ourselves by staying away from germs and viruses, not to mention so little sunshine in the wintertime up north. I won't even talk about our diets and rampant obesity in America. It is always such a stark reality when we've been gone for months and then land at our first US international airport. It takes our breath away. :0327:

 

All of my kitchen equipment went in the auction, but family has been buying us replacements at holidays and birthdays. Not everyone is thrilled and jumps up and down when they receive a bread machine or canner.   :hapydancsmil: Does anyone else get excited when they receive a homemade food gift in a Ball canning jar at Christmas and say, "OH BOY, ANOTHER CANNING JAR FOR THIS YEAR?"   :24:

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Homey, I love kitchen 'gadgets' and I would LOVE to see them as gifts.  And I DID get excited at Christmas time because the grandson got me two antique canning jars as a gift. They were the kind with bail top glass lids.  I'd recently broken a couple that I use for storage and it really was a thoughtful gift.  I have rubber rings for them and could use them for canning if I wanted.  LOL

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