Tereza Okava

Jay Angler wrote: "3/4 teaspoon ground cloves".

unless your cloves are maybe of dubious providence and cut with... i dunno, flour? 3/4 t of cloves is WAY too much cloves for any pie I've ever made!!! In fact I think the only time I've ever seen 1/4 or 1/2 t (or anything greater than a pinch) in a recipe is for something like a spiced gingerbread or something with clove in the name!!! So in your defense, I'd call that a typo.

I have messed up cheese, and several times I've screwed up dill pickles (they just turned to icky mush. there's a reason people don't often do sour pickles in the tropics....)

I regularly screw up making tofu fa (a homemade tofu that you congeal with gypsum). If it doesn't set up, I make pudding wtih the soymilk. Nobody needs to know.... I do a lot of repurposing when things turn out "wrong".

I also tried making rejuvelac (a ferment thing) several times. Every time it came out smelling like something that belonged in the toilet. All my gear was super clean, so it wasn't external contamination, I just assume it is supposed to smell nasty, and I moved on to other recipes...

but the mistake that makes me maddest is marmelade, a few years ago. I used rangpurs and read about how people love bitter marmelade, and figured I'd be okay. But the bitter level of rangpur marmelade is off the stinking charts. A year and a half of rest and they're only barely edible, by people who eat bitter herbs for dessert (me), but the rest of the family puts it in poison category. I have a good number of jars still in the pantry. In 6 months i'll try again.

that squash casserole looks nice, what's in it, Jeremy?

where I live caterpillars are a big problem (various kinds).
I don't work out in the garden without long sleeves and gloves, but my husband recently "got caterpillared" without such protections. No fun, for sure! The article you link to, Rez, notes something really important- the stinging spines can hang around for YEARS even if the caterpillars are long gone.

last night I worked late (my husband plays soccer on Tuesday) and dinner was a banana and a piece of cheese.
Tonight, however, will be Turkish lentil soup, some whole wheat flatbread, strained yogurt with garlic and poached eggs, some chickpea dip (not hummus-- made from chickpea flour, Ethiopian shiro, which while not Turkish goes REALLY well with Turkish flavors), and something invented with a bit of beef I found in the freezer. Maybe just sliced fine and fried up with garlic and carrots and a bit of red pepper. Oh and with paprika/pepper butter, of course, and whatever kind of fresh salad I can wrangle up.

In college, we did something similar with ice cubes to "fool" the thermostats in our drafty, freezing apartments  (where our slumlords had lockboxes over the thermostats, cheapskates). When the cup of water on your desk froze solid at night, you knew things were getting out of control and you needed to take action....

Jake Esselstyn wrote:I am often conflicted about whether I should leave the summer plants in to continue producing at the risk of being too late getting the fall plants in..

This, and its contrary, are an ongoing challenge here for me as well (I ripped out one snow pea plant today- they're still producing but next week I'm putting in the spring planting. Which in fact is early seeding of our high summer plants, to get a jump on the season. The weather is too unpredictable and it looks like we're going to get heat early, so I'm trying. I didn't get a single blessed okra last year, this year i am determined to get okra.

https://www.pathtopro.com/free-training/

seems legit. the list of programs does involve HVAC, plumbing, welding, etc.
Obviously, self study only goes so far, but for the homesteader/tinkerer/etc, could be useful.
https://www.pathtopro.com/trade-careers/

Just a thought: soon is (for the US) the time of year when people often do have a lot of meat that they might find themselves "rescuing" - I'm talking about Thanksgiving where you might find yourself with a whole bird you got real cheap, or someone gave you, or you got for next to nothing with a supermarket coupon (we had years when as a family of 4 we had 6 turkeys by Thanksgiving day. The food bank got a few, and we broke down the rest. Knowing how to break down a turkey (or a leg of pork, or whatever) can be a useful skill.

I do hear you about time efficiency. Time is money, etc etc (if i think about it that way, most of my homestead and garden are losing propositions. Luckily you can't put a price on happiness or mental health....). If you have to prioritize, you pay for convenience.

I had one overwinter (despite a frost that killed most everything else in the garden-- the actual plant was in a nice sheltered spot) and it's been there for quite a while, at least one year if not two. The spring rains just came in the last month or so and the darn thing has exploded into a tangle of vines and flowers. I'm going to see how long this plant lasts-- I have planted a few more fruits in hope of having more, but they haven't made it.
I don't really eat the squash, they're cheap as dirt here and probably less flavorful. But they shade the rabbit run and the girls really enjoy eating them, thinking it's prime garden produce they're stealing from me (their favorite pastime is eating whatever greens they can reach through the fence).

i love this thread.
where i am, whole chickens are not usually the cheapest options, but if I'm willing to buy the cheapest cuts (bone in leg/thigh/back, usually) I can pay about half. Bone-in breast usually costs a few bucks a kg less than boneless, too.
knowing how to break down your meat, whatever it is, can save you a lot of money (and  the bones make a lot of stock)