Kathleen Sanderson

Andrew Welser wrote:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
--Robert A. Heinlein  

For me, it's been difficult to hold a career path: I want to change jobs every few years because I'm getting board and want to learn something new.

I think that's a characteristic of highly intelligent people, especially males. My brothers had the same issue, especially in school. They both ended up dropping out of high school because they were bored, but did well in their working lives as long as they had a variety of things to do. Retired now, they still keep busy with a variety of projects. The older of the two is working on building me a new wood stove right now, out of an old pressure tank cut down to fit the small space I have available - figuring out as he goes along how to put in an ash tray, and the stove pipe collar, and a flat top for cooking on, and how to make the air run inside for better combustion (I wish we could do a rocket mass heater, but that would entail cutting a hole in the floor of my house and building a foundation for it - though, honestly, by the time my brother has all of this stuff figured out, it might have been just as fast to do that!). He's having fun, LOL!

This is an interesting topic. I'm a bit of a 'polymath,' and it seems like most of the people I know are. I'm going to conjecture that 'polymath' is probably the default state for human beings, if they don't grow up on modern mass media in the public education system (and often, even if they did). But sitting in front of a TV, or at a desk all day long, limits the number of skills a person is able to develop while they are young, which is when they should be beginning to develop those skills!

The only downside to having chestnuts as your primary staple crop would be that once in a while, the crop fails. Best to have several strings to your staple crop bow! But they are definitely worth having if you have room for large trees.

Rick Valley wrote:I grew up in the NE: New York, Ohio, and moved into the East Coast, New England, Maryland. I'm used to going t the Farmers Market and getting fresh roasted chestnuts, or roasting them in the fireplace. It's always fun to leave one un-pierced, so it POPS!
If you have the time,  roasting, peeling and maybe slicing them into cassaroles and stir fries. Or boil them and make cream of chestnut soup. But most definitely: Turkey Stuffing on Thanksgiving, with Celeriac and red pepper slices* that's un poco picante pero dulce. *slices must be of a size to have a reasonable stuffing texture: not too big but distinct, not minced. Dammit, I've planted chestnuts all over, and here in Eugene I don't know any trees to gather from. I'll just have to buy some.

If you don't mind a trip over to the coast, I can tell you where to find some chestnuts. (If someone hasn't cut the trees down in the last twenty years since I last gathered nuts from them.) I sprouted some, right before we moved with my grandmother over to Klamath County, but they didn't survive the winters over there. I think it's too late for nuts from those trees this year - I gathered them in September. But the nuts fall on the road, and in the ditch. (The trees are high up on a steep bank above the road - not sure you could even reach them.)  My grandmother's grandparents settled near those trees in the early 1870's - the first white family to live there; she was born there in 1913. She told me that the parent tree was old when she was a little girl, and nobody knew who had planted it; the only settlers before her family moved there were single men, who her family knew, and none of them had planted it. I've wondered if there was a chestnut-tree 'Johnny Appleseed' (Johnny Chestnut?) who went around planting trees in weird places....And when you consider that there was no road up there until the late 1920's (the settlers used the river, mostly), someone had to have walked up the river, or over several hills, and stopped on the bluff above the river to plant a chestnut.  Definitely an odd place to put one.

They are European-type.  If you want to go looking, head towards Florence. Shortly before you reach Florence, you'll cross the North Fork of the Siuslaw River; turn right on the North Fork Road. Go between five and six miles up - sorry I can't be more precise. I know the house we used to live in is at seven miles up, and those trees are between one and two miles back down the road towards town. The trees will be on your left and well above the road as you go upstream, with a pasture on the right side of the road (and just before that, the river is on the right side of the road). Just a little past the trees is a low pasture on the left side of the road, then a hill with a house on the side of it, back a ways (one of my cousins lives there). It would make a good excursion! If you hit it right, you'll probably see some nuts on the road, but you might need to park (carefully - there's no shoulders) and walk the ditches looking for nuts.

Otherwise, if you want to plant trees, look at Burnt Ridge Nursery - they have really good prices for very small trees of some varieties.

Brian Cady wrote:There are different types, which are best prepared differently:
European & American are great roasted quickly at high temperatures, after cutting through the shell.
Chinese chestnuts are starchier, typically, and best roasted slowly at low temperatures, without cutting the shell.

Below is James Nave's Chinese chestnut cooking guide:

Brian
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How to Cook Chinese Chestnuts – J. M. Nave

If you have some favorite way of cooking Chinese chestnuts, I'm not trying to change that. I'm just trying to show people how you can best bring out the flavors of Chinese nuts and get better textures. Cooking Chinese nuts the same way you would cook European or American nuts is not optimal because Chinese nuts are much denser. And if you are cooking Chinese nuts optimally, you don't need to cut the shell. Low and slow is the optimal way to cook Chinese chestnuts.
The most interesting way, and most common way, to cook chestnuts in China is to roast chestnuts at low temperatures (240F or less) for extended periods of time (60 minutes or more). Roasting at lower temperatures for longer periods of time breaks down the dense Chinese nut and fully releases the flavors in the nut. It also gives the nut a softer texture, more like an American or European chestnut. A  Chinese chestnut that is cooked at 350F or above for short periods of  time (30 minutes or less), will normally have a burnt or hard exterior and an almost uncooked interior. The flavor will not be well developed. Cooking Chinese chestnuts in this manner has led to the common belief in the US that Chinese nuts are inferior to American or European chestnuts. American and European chestnuts that are cooked at high temperatures for short periods or time will be mostly cooked and falling apart and the flavors will be well developed. Because Chinese chestnuts are much denser than American and European chestnuts, they benefit from slower more thorough cooking at lower temperatures. Their density also gives Chinese nuts greater versatility in cooking. For example, Chinese chestnuts can be used in many dishes such as soups and stews without falling apart.
To fully understand how the density of the nut impacts cooking, it may be helpful to compare cooking chestnuts to cooking beef. Different cuts of beef have different textures and densities. Tenderloin (so named because of the soft texture of the meat) is quite different than brisket. Tenderloin may be cooked at high temperatures for short periods of time. The result is beef that is soft and full of flavor. Brisket on the other hand is a much denser cut of meat. Cooking it at high temperatures for short periods of time will result in a burnt exterior and an uncooked interior. The meat will also be tough and difficult to chew. To properly cook brisket requires cooking for longer periods of time at lower temperatures to allow the heat to penetrate to the interior of the meat. This results in a much more flavorful brisket with a softer texture. Chinese chestnuts are the brisket of the chestnut world. They are exceptionally good eating when properly cooked.
Another benefit to cooking Chinese chestnuts at lower temperatures is that the shells do not need to be cut. In the US, chestnut shells are normally cut when nuts are to be roasted to allow heated water vapor to escape. If the shell is not cut, the expanding water vapor will cause the shell to explode. But when a Chinese chestnut is cooked at 240F or below, it will not normally explode because the buildup of water vapor is very slow and it can escape without exploding the shell. This also results in another benefit. When the shell is not cut, the cooked nut retains more moisture which results in a better texture for the nut. To some extent, not cutting the shell also results in a partial steaming of the nut. It’s simply a better way to cook Chinese chestnuts. Which brings up the point that Chinese chestnuts can also be cooked by boiling for at least 60 minutes. Boiling is not optimal for American or European chestnuts because the nuts tend to get very soggy and fall apart which also makes them difficult to peel. Because Chinese nuts are denser, they don’t absorb much water and tend not to fall apart after boiling, which also makes them as easy to peel after boiling as they are before boiling.

Thank you for explaining the difference between Chinese chestnuts, and American and European. My only experience has been with the European types. This may also explain why Chinese chestnuts are considered to be not quite as good as the other two by some people - they don't know to cook them differently.

Leigh Tate wrote:My neighbor gifted me with a bunch of chestnuts. I've never had them before. So except for the old seasonal song that mentions them roasting by an open fire, I don't know what to do with them. I tried one raw but wasn't too keen on that. Does anyone have some ideas to share? Recipes?

I haven't done much with them, but we have a young chestnut tree in the yard (and I'd like to put in a couple more). They seem to do well in our area. I've had some canned ones that seemed a little sweet - don't know if any sugar had been added. But I liked them. A lady at church, every fall when she has chestnuts from her own trees, brings them to church dinners wrapped in bacon and roasted. That's good! I would say, experiment. They work with both sweet and savory flavors, and are more starchy than oily like most other nuts.

Cassie Martin wrote:I don't know if they do this everywhere, but potatoes are tenacious where I live. If you miss just one or two little potatoes, they grow big, healthy plants next year. There are potatoes growing in the lawn areas where we had garden beds years ago. They could hypothetically be harvested any time, you would just need to know where they were in the winter.

Could you mark the plants with stakes?

Christopher Weeks wrote:

Kathleen Sanderson wrote:The sunchokes would probably grow just fine, but I suspect my daughter (adult, handicapped) can't eat them. Most plant foods seem to trigger extreme gut problems for her...Daughter tolerates sauerkraut well (and dill pickles); it seems likely that kale could be made into sauerkraut...

It might be worth trying fermented sunroots. There's some chance that the fermentation is what's making hard to handle veggies work, and if it worked for these, you might have a staple.

That is definitely something worth trying. I have been planning to do a variety of fermented vegetables, and see what she (and I) tolerate. We both tolerate fermented dairy much better than non-fermented, too.

Been reading through this and pondering our options here in south-central Kentucky (growing zone 6b or 7a, depending on which chart you look at, though I think it's more 6b, given that we've had temps down to minus 10 F the last two winters, and minus 5 just about every previous winter since we moved here).

The sunchokes would probably grow just fine, but I suspect my daughter (adult, handicapped) can't eat them. Most plant foods seem to trigger extreme gut problems for her, leading to her not being able to eat and losing way too much weight (possible Crohn's, but definitely something along those lines). We've found a few things that she seems to be able to safely eat, but sunchokes are high in fiber and I suspect those wouldn't work for her. On the other hand, she seems to be okay with winter squash or sweet potatoes, and those both grow well in our climate. Both keep quite well, given appropriate storage conditions, and are pretty hardy even in adverse growing conditions, and are easy enough to plant. Daughter doesn't tolerate nightshade family plants well, so potatoes won't work for us.

The walking onions should be fine, since onions are used for seasoning, rather than as a primary vegetable. Our diet now is primarily meat, but we still use some onion and garlic.

The kale - I'm not sure about. It's a good choice in a lot of respects. Daughter tolerates sauerkraut well (and dill pickles); it seems likely that kale could be made into sauerkraut, though it would be a little different....

My major focus is on raising the meat portion of our diet, complicated because we are both sensitive to eggs (which qualify as meat for diet purposes); she's extremely sensitive to eggs, and eating them causes her autistic behaviors to come roaring back. We have about an acre and a half of pasture, and currently have eight goats on that (feeding hay in the winter), but we've had issues with parasites with them, in spite of regular worming, and I want to sell the goats and get some St. Croix sheep instead. Don't know if we can raise all of our meat, but if we could raise all of our red meat from ruminants, we could continue buying some poultry and pork (and fish).

I have a fenced garden area (it's only 32' x 52'), and dogs on the property that keep deer and most other pests away, so don't have to worry too much about my stuff getting eaten, just out-competed by the weeds!

Because of the goats, I haven't progressed much on tree-planting, but would like to put in mulberries and persimmons (which are native here), and chestnuts, all widely spaced in our small pasture. There are wild black walnuts all over the place which usually have a fair crop, too.

So that's where we are at.

I have no amazing dishes to post here. I've been admiring, and drooling over, all of yours! But daughter and I are essentially eating nothing but meat, salt, and a little fermented dairy. The only plant foods I've found that I'm sure are safe for both of us are sauerkraut, dill pickles, and blueberries (in moderation). Once in a while, we get away with a little garlic powder or onion. Last time I tried lentils (cooked in the pressure cooker, in hopes that would help), my daughter lost ten pounds or so because she was in pain and couldn't eat regularly for several weeks. Pepper (black or capsicum) is even worse, triggering autoimmune conditions for both of us.

So, right now I have about five pounds of ground beef in the oven - that's lunch today and tomorrow for the two of us. Then there's a big ham in the frig to use up, followed by some chicken legs. I'm not really complaining - our food is tasty enough (you come to appreciate the base flavor of the food, if you aren't putting a lot of seasoning on it). But I have to admit that I do miss some of the flavors of the plant foods we can't eat.

Thankfully, contrary to some of the information floating around out there, meat is highly nutritious, and yes, you can live just fine on an all-meat diet. So we don't NEED the plant foods, they'd just be nice.