Rebecca Norman

When my sourdough isn't giving the rising results that I want, I add a tiny bit of commercial yeast. Like 1/8 teaspoon. It makes a big difference in rising but takes long enough that the sourdough still has time to develop the flavor and everything.

I use a probe thermometer to make sure the inside of the loaf gets hot enough. This makes a huge difference in the quality of the loaf. I like to make it almost 100% whole grain, or at least 75%, and I find that getting the inside of the loaf up to 210F or more (the boiling point of water here at sea level) makes a good loaf, not gummy.

The no-knead method has changed my life. I still am unable to make myself measure, but the method is great. I have learned that a good size of a loaf starts with 250 to 300ml of liquid, usually water, sometimes part yogurt whey. Add about 1 Tbs starter, a smidgen of dry yeast (maybe 1/8 tsp), and 1 tsp salt. Then I mix flour in, starting with the whole grain part, and stir a lot till it's not lumpy. Let it rest a few minutes, then mix in any seeds wanted, and enough flour to make a dough. Stir as long as I can so that I don't have to go in with my hands and get sticky. Then I let the dough rest, and do lift and fold (or lift and roll) every half hour or every two hours for the rest of the day. Approx. Letting the final shaping rise enough before baking in a preheated cast-iron pan is very very important to avoiding a brick.

To avoid gumminess, I've learned not to go for maximum hydration as I was taught by the no-knead method. I get better bread if the dough is a little firm.

Also, I don't start in a super-hot oven as recommended by the no-knead method. A 350F oven with the top on for 15 min, and top off for 15-25 min bakes the interior well without burning the bottom.

Edward Lye wrote: light bulbs
So I asked a couple of them what we can do when there are
no more incandescent bulbs . . . silence.

I for one will probably look for a used hair dryer or toaster.

Oven lights still use incandescent bulbs, so you can always get an oven light.

In addition to the dehydrating and canning or sauce suggestions, I would recommend freezing some of the small hot ones that you cook with.

Last year a friend and I split a box of small hot red and a box of small green hot peppers. I froze them on a tray in the freezer so they would stay separate, then put them in a glass jar in the freezer.

They have stayed separate and easy to get one out. I slice them up and use them in cooking, and they work great.

Happy update on the house I posted here previously:

I lived in it until late 2024, and a friend has lived in it since. We used no backup heat except a small section of heated floor in the living room for feet, and personally I used an electric blanket (but I use that or water bottles even in a chilly heated house, due to cold feet).

The northern buffer zone never touched freezing again even at floor level under the stairs. That's from covering most of the single-glazed windows in that sections with white foam, and for the coldest part of winter, sealing that windward west-facing exterior door with a sheet of plastic and not using it. We installed a battery back-up system due to frequent power cuts, and later installed solar panels on half of the roof. The batteries on the floor below the stairs have remained warm enough.

The attached greenhouse (October to May) has been the only real heat source and it is also a joy in winter. I would highly recommend seasonal attached greenhouse as a solar gain strategy that gives you fresh leafy veg and herbs, flowers, and greenery while everything is frozen solid outdoors for 3 or more months.

I still want to increase the insulation in the roof, replace most of the single-glazed windows with double, and add an airlock door to the downstairs corridor so the windward exterior door won't be such a problem.

Rebecca Norman wrote:Well, my house isn't exactly a double envelope, but it's entirely solar heated and the whole north side is what we call the thermal buffer zone, which I think is a similar idea. I'm sorry I don't have any technical specs for you, but I can share my experience from living in it.

The kitchen, bathing room, living room, bedrooms and little study or bedroom are in the south side of the house and as such are solar heated. The northern unheated buffer zone includes corridor, storerooms, stairs, and the two-story dry composting toilet. The upstairs cold corridor also has a washing machine and a handwashing sink outside the dry compost toilet room.

My contractor used only "straw clay" for insulation above the horizontal roof beams, and didn't insulate below the beams; insulated between the heated space and the buffer zone, but didn't insulate the outer walls of the buffer zone; and used single glazing on all the windows in it. Last winter the bottom of the corridor under the stairs did just touch freezing, but the upstairs corridor was a few degrees warmer, and the sink and washing machine had no trouble. This year hopefully the buffer zone will stay warmer, because we've put up white foam insulation mat on all the windows in the buffer zone. I hope to add roof insulation between the beams next year which I hope will also keep the house warmer.

In New Hampshire I think there are local habits and requirements for insulation that will be great. If I try to suggest that much insulation in the roof here people would be shocked and think it sounds completely unreasonable. I wish I could get good northeast US type insulation. Like, a foot thick, or R50. I just wish. My climate is high desert and good 10-15 degrees south of you (10,500 feet high and 34N), so the solar gain in winter is still pretty good, and being made of rammed earth my thermal mass is good. If only I could manage a LOT more insulation I think it would be a lot warmer in winter in this house.

The 3D picture below is not exactly what finally got built. We included an 18 inch overhang over both ground floor and upstairs on the south face, and all the upstairs windows on the south face are half-trombe wall, which in the 3d drawing is only shown on the leftmost window.

I insisted on single glazing on those upstairs south windows but maybe I regret it, because the bedrooms really do get damn chilly in the winter. Down in the low 50s F on January nights last year despite the wool curtains. Maybe even 40s. I don't want homemade double glazing because it gets moisture, dust, and insects inside, but if professionally made double glazing becomes available here I think I'll replace them. The east and west windows in the southern rooms are double glazed, but I wish we'd done double glazing on the windows of the buffer zone, too.

Edited in 2026 to add: The house has performed great. I'm adding a comment about it below.

William Bronson wrote: I tried to access the article again and it seems to be gated now 🤬
Ah, well, googling del monte bankruptcy and peach farmers gets other sources.

I searched for "delmonte peaches bankruptcy" and found several similar articles on the this.

Hi, I spent over 30 years in India, in Ladakh which is a very different climate than yours. There are lots of people doing various forms of permaculture and natural building and living in India, many of them in your climate. Of course visiting each other is unlikely, but I hope you can connect with them online and get some ideas and tips. I'm sure there are many in Pakistan as well.

I look forward to seeing your posts about your project and progress.

I used tetrapaks before, and now that I'm gardening in the US, I'm saving milk cartons for: starting cucurbit seedlings. I like how I can simply dig a hole, see if it's deep enough, then stand the carton in the hole and peel it away from the roots while pushing the soil in around it. This doesn't disturb the infamously delicate cucurbit roots and always works for me.

Burra Maluca wrote:And also establishing things like a chive bed, which will give me green onions to use for many years to come with no extra effort.

I want to give a call out for perennial scallions, sometimes called "welsh onions" or Japanese negi. They are perennial, and in my experience high producing, and they're much more like green onions than chives are. I mean, I grow and use both.

I find wintercress, Barbarea vulgaris, to be horribly bitter when raw (but tasty cooked) while a friend of mine insists that it just tastes sweet to him.

Haha, I only just tasted bittercress for the first time a few days ago and it was delicious, not bitter to me at all! It tastes like arugula (rocket) when it's just right and not spicy at all. (And BTW arugula was rarely too spicy/hot when I grew it in the high desert. Go figure!)

I see repeated allegations that modern people are just soft and don't like bitter food. That's not what's happening with me. I do like some bitter foods -- for example I love bitter gourd and am planning to grow it this year. And that's really very bitter. And I like some other bitter vegetables. So that's not why I didn't like the specific bitterness of this plant.

And then some people in this thread say their Good King Henry is not bitter. I wonder if maybe in the high desert environment I was growing it in, it was more bitter than usual.