Christopher Weeks

paul wheaton wrote:is there anything that would bump something off of my current top 3?

           (sunchokes, walking onions and kale)

There's some discussion toward the (current) end of the great big sunchoke thread about how productivity falls off if they're not harvested (for thinning purposes) each year. That makes it less automatic. But you've seen what you've seen and it seems like you've seen different.

I'm pretty skeptical that kale will self-seed enough to continue production for four years and especially if you're looking for increase -- but maybe...I don't live where you live.

Nancy Reading wrote:

paul wheaton wrote:I asked google and google said

Any potatoes left in the ground would have already frozen solid during the colder months. The freezing process ruptures the potato's cell walls, turning the flesh gray or reddish-brown. When thawed, the potatoes would become a mushy, inedible mess.

Google obviously doesn't live in a mild area! They overwinter quite happily here too.

Or a very harsh area! We occasionally hit -40 C/F and potatoes overwinter for me too, but it depends on the variety. A theory I'd been playing with is that our sand allows all water to drain away from the tubers, but I've also seen people on clay say taters overwinter for them as well. So I guess genetics is my current best theory.

Timothy Norton wrote:the squirrels decimated mine this year.

Shush -- don't say that where my squirrels can hear! I harvested mine a little early because the birds were going wild on them -- I *really* don't need the squirrels to figure it out too. :-)

(I should probably run a germination test before sending any out -- whether to Noah, or back to GTS.)

I'm in! I'll PM you.

Additionally, I'm drying down my own sunflower seeds (a mix of these and these) and would be happy to send a baggie of seeds soonish, even before trying to cross with Noah's plants, if that's something he'd like.

Another batch!

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.

Last night I made nachos! It’s a little junk-foody, but my family’s favorite.

- Start with a carefully arranged bed of the finest tortilla chips you can obtain. Probably you can't get good ones*. If you make tortillas, the air-fryer is your friend for this.
- Add a healthy layer of cheese. You can definitely put on too much, but it's easier for me to put on too little. You want the first layer of cheese to form a matrix of the chips.
- Top that with whatever you like: beans, meat or "meat", chiles, onion, olives, leftover chili, salsa, hot sauce, other stuff.
- And top that with another layer of cheese.

We serve the crispy outside edge for dinner and then eat the insides the next day after recrisping in the air-fryer for lunch (or breakfast)

I only have a small sample -- maybe ten people, but everyone who tries my nachos agrees that they're better than whatever other nachos they used to like best. I'm sure someone must prefer stale chips dipped in canned "cheese" sauce, but not us.

*Maybe you can get the Frontera orange bag -- that's the best I can buy currently. When I lived in Chicago, getting better than that was as trivial as walking into the nearest Jewel and looking for the plainest label. But in semi-rural Minnesota, I feel grateful that I can get something pretty good. (And I haven't yet found better at the tortillarias in the Twin Cities.)

We bought a disposable can of spray oil four years ago when we got our first air fryer but we haven't used it up yet. Thirty years ago we had a refillable stainless steel and plastic can that you could pressurize by hand-pumping but it kept getting clogged with sticky olive oil so we got rid of it. Mostly we use brushes for the kind of thing you're talking about though we don't really use the waffle iron very often.

That place really does seem like a great resource!

There's a new thread that was created after this was years old for answering BB questions, so I'm just adding this for anyone who stumbles into this thread in the future: https://permies.com/t/280/210060/skills-inherit-property/BB-clarification-thread