Matthew Nistico

Mary Cook wrote:But I agree that USDA is very conservative

Yes, USDA.  Not FDA, as I had written.  Sorry.

Mary Cook wrote:But 45 years ago, local women here in West Virginia told me they just canned tomatoes and jams "open kettle," meaning you got the contents boiling, the jars in boiling water, filled the jars and sealed them and you were done. And I did it that way for years with no ill effects.

Yep.  That is how I do it now, also without ill effects.  Though between us, our sample size of two is hardly a conclusive experiment.  Nonetheless, that is how it has been done for centuries.  I put my trust in the wisdom of ages.  People of past generations may have embraced many non-scientific beliefs, but they weren't stupid - they usually figured out pretty well what practices were and were not safe.

Because I currently only have a single cooking eye, which will be occupied with the boiling jam, I instead sterilize my jars by baking them at 250 during the last 30 minutes of the jam boil.

Mary Cook wrote:Leigh--I question the "ripens before frost, therefore astringent" part. I think frost is irrelevant to the question of ripening and astringency, and that astringency means it isn't ripe. For the wild trees, even the ones in the open that have branches closer to the ground, most persimmons need to be picked up off the ground--and USUALLY their being on the ground means they're ripe. Not all, but you can generally tell because the ripe ones are orange and soft. For me, I have gotten the runs after eating persimmons off the ground, so now I use persimmon only cooked--baked actually, as my three recipes all involve baking. The grafted ones are significantly bigger and have fewer or no seeds. This is one of the things I'm wondering about the Asian ones--do they have similar seeds? I also wonder if there are any hybrids with much larger fruit than American ones but hardy to zone 6.

I agree that, with American persimmons, I only ever pick fruit from the ground.  And doing so even before the first frost usually provides ripe enough fruit free from astringency.  It's not 100%, but it's good enough.  After colder weather sets in, then its about a 100% guarantee.  I've never gotten the runs before doing this, but then I am blessed with a mostly bullet-proof immune system.

And yes, from what I understand, American-Asian hybrids should do well for you.  I am just planting mine, but I am very excited about them.  Some have more American-type fruit quality, others more Asian-type fruit quality.  But with all hybrids the idea is to combine the tree and fruit characteristics of Asian persimmons with the cold-hardiness of American persimmons.  One of the more commonly available hybrid cultivars is Nikita's Gift, which is advertised as suitable for Zones 5-10.  Which means one should be able to grow it confidently in Zones 6-9.

Check out this excellent podcast to learn all about hybrid persimmons: Orchard People Podcast ep93

Em Nichols wrote:Out of desperation after 4 years of debilitating pain, I went full carnivore - meat, bacon, butter, eggs, salt and milk. Within three days my pain disappeared. 30 Days into carnivore, I started adding avocado, cucumber and zucchini.  I felt fantastic. I was so happy that I discovered a way of eating that worked for me, and I am able to source a good amount of what we eat from our homestead. That's the point, right?  

Well, the holidays came and mama likes her stuffing, potatoes and gravy!  I need to go back full carnivore. It's cheap, I feel FANTASTIC on it and it is SO easy.  There is very little food waste at all because I don't have to buy a bunch of weird ingredients to make full meals.  Oh, that's another thing - I was eating one meal a day!  I was so full and I wasn't hungry.  If I wanted a snack, I would eat bacon or pork rinds.

Easy. Cheap. Ability to provide 90% of what we ate from what we already produce. Effective.  It is perfect for me.

Great to hear that this diet works for you.  It definitely qualifies as a "simple diet," as you've eliminated the majority of common foodstuffs.  I have a friend for whom a similar diet has also worked well.  I don't feel the need to experiment with it myself, as I already feel great as a health-focused but fairly conventional omnivore.  I assume you eat seafood as well?

I must say, though, that it seems hard to imagine the full carnivore diet as inexpensive for those who don't raise their own animals.  Meat from the store is expensive, though probably even less so than it would be in a fair, unsubsidized market.

Megan Palmer wrote:

Tereza Okava wrote:I cook a persimmon "jam" (more like a compote) just enough to make it stable in the fridge for a week, so my husband can throw it into his oatmeal every morning.

In NZ, water bathing is the most common method of preserving, pressure canning is not the norm.   Your compotes sound like perfect candidates for water bathing and the fruit would only need to be barely softened enough to fit into the jars easily as they would continue to cook in the water bath.

Our pantry is well stocked with peach, apricot, apple, rhubarb compotes that are over a year old that do not have any added sugar in them - if the jar lid bulges or there are signs of bubbles, I wouldn’t eat them but touch wood, that is yet to happen to me.

Wow, I am amazed at your track record with successfully water-bath canning compotes.  Conventional wisdom says that you can only safely can food that has either sufficiently low pH (acidic foods) or sufficiently high sugar content (preserves).

Now, I do recognize that the official version of food safety here in the US is extremely conservative.  For example, the FDA verdict is that all jams must be water-bath canned.  Whereas many Europeans react to this with puzzlement.  They simply ladle boiling jam into sterilized jars and set them in the cupboard, no canning required.  And they've been doing it that way for centuries.  I no longer can all of my jams and, like you, I've had nothing but good results - but my jams still have a bunch of added sugar in them!  Unlike your compotes, presumably.

Tereza Okava wrote:When I was in college my housemate, an electrical engineer, relied heavily on his "vulcan nature" and decided it would be so much more logical and would save so much time to simply eat one food, preferably something minimal prep. This was, of course, before the tech people were reviving soylent green-- I don't know who their main shareholders are but I'd not be surprised to see him there.
In any case, for the entire 3 years I knew him he ate peanut butter sandwiches with grape jelly. We occasionally would all go out and he'd eat normal college student food, and he didn't pass up a beer or three, but otherwise it was PBJ. Seemed to do him good, even. Go figure!

Unfortunately, 3 years is not an adequate timeframe for a truly revealing experiment in chronic malnutrition.  And it sounds like his diet was not even as nutritionally lacking as it might have been.  Did he drink milk with his PB&J?  A classic combo, after all, and milk goes a long way to rectifying any deficiencies.  Even just using whole grain bread and occasionally varying the type of fruit jam would go a long way towards making this a complete diet.

Provided it is given enough calories, the human body can synthesize many of the compounds it needs to continue operating, even on a nutritionally limited diet.  People living at a subsistence level in many different environments and cultures and historical periods maintained themselves on a similarly limited and unvarying diet: a handful of staples with only the rarest of variety added.

That does not mean such a diet provides optimal nutrition for optimal health.  You can survive like that without developing acute deficiencies.  You can even thrive like that, for a time.  But given a long enough window of observation, detrimental impacts of such a limited diet will tell.

Zach Moreau wrote:In your own words, you are describing foods that are not "easily palatable" in their raw state. This is a clue that they are not the ideal foods for humans.

An intriguing point!

Carla Burke wrote:You've answered your own question, Matthew. Jam is shelf stable. Unpreserved fruit is not.

It all depends on total sugar content.  In theory, raw fruit pulp with sufficient sugar would keep.  Like I said, perhaps American persimmon pulp qualifies, but I don't know and have not demonstrated it.  And probably don't particularly care to try.

I will say this, though: I scavenge my persimmons from a public tree (I have one of my own, but it is still small) and pick everything windfall off of the ground.  Many of those fruit have likely lain on the ground for a good while before I get to them.  Some get smushed, some dry up and become mummies, some succumb to ants.  But I have never seen a moldy persimmon where I forage.

I don't think they do mold.  I think they have too much sugar.

Zach Moreau wrote:I eat a raw vegan diet...  Eating a simple diet is very important for maintaining good health. Our bodies digest whole foods much better than processed foods with a paragraph-long ingredient list.

A good point about whole foods vs highly processed foods, but I don't believe you are using the phrase "simple diet" the same way as the OP intended.

Zach Moreau wrote:Digestion is the most metabolically expensive process our bodies undergo, so the less energy we expend on digestion, the more we have for other important functions like growth and repair.

I am not following your logic here.  Yes, digestion is metabolically expensive.  That is why we cook food.  So, why do you follow a raw diet if you're concerned with metabolic efficiency?

Cooking many foods improves their taste and texture in the opinions of most people, and it can make some difficult-to-eat foods - the kinds you have to chew for five minutes just to eat them raw - more easily palatable.  But the primary benefit of cooking food is to increase energy available to the body.  This has always been the primary benefit, whether primitive humans first adopting the habit of cooking consciously realized it or not.

Here is an illustrative example using numbers I just made up: a beef steak contains 1000 calories of energy.  But the body must dedicate 500 calories in order to digest it - all of those proteins are hard to break down.  By breaking down its constituent molecules a little bit in advance with heat, we reduce the caloric value of a cooked steak to 900 calories, but the body now only requires 300 calories to digest it.  Thus, the net value in energy available to the metabolism is INCREASED by cooking the steak, from 500 calories to 600.

Mary Cook wrote:I had the experience as Carla, only trying to can pawpaw pulp. So I've never tried to make persimmon jam, as I figured it would turn out the same. What I do is pick out the seeds, then freeze the pulp till I want it for a recipe--muffins, cake and cookie bars ate my three persimmon recipes.

I don't know why anyone would want or need to make persimmon jam.  At least as it concerns American persimmons (I'm less familiar with, and therefore can't comment on Asian persimmons).  They are so sweet naturally that I simply spread raw persimmon pulp - the result of smashing the persimmons into goo by hand in order to remove the seeds - on toast and on cakes, similar to how one might use jam.  It's delicious.  The only drawback is that I keep it frozen between fruiting seasons; I don't know that it is shelf stable like a jam with added sugar.  Perhaps, but I doubt it and have never put it to the test.

Gray Henon wrote:While studying indigenous cultures, I’ve noticed several that survive on very simple diets, perhaps 3-4 staple foods.  They may or may not be supplemented with in-season wild, minimally cultivated foods, or game.  I know I’d get bored with it, but I wonder how this would affect weight control. No reason to overeat when the next meal is just more of the same.  A simple staple diet may also combat “homesteaders fatigue”, which seems to be induced by running around trying to produce the food variety that we are used to in the modern world.  Thoughts?"

I think the OP's focus on potential weight control benefits is likely misguided.  I suspect the greater weight control benefit for indigenous peoples comes from a more physically active, less sedentary lifestyle, not from their available foods.  Most staple foods are starchy, so the more reliant one is on staples, the more naturally inclined to weight gain one's diet would be, I should think.

But producing the majority of your own food without technological assistance requires substantial physical exertion.  Actually, it requires substantial exertion even with technological assistance!  As does simply getting around without technological assistance; i.e. walking everywhere all the time.  I suspect this is the most relevant factor for health.

My father is a Type II Diabetic.  Last winter, he and I took a week-long vacation to the Florida Keys that included a lot of nature- and bird-watching as well as tourism.  We spent a lot of time hiking around town and through the bush.  He stopped taking his normal diabetes medications entirely that week, based on his blood sugar readings.  It turns out the best management of Type II Diabetes is measured in steps per day.  Our diet during the week was not significantly different than at any other time.  Only his level of aerobic exercise had changed.

As to the larger question, I am sure with adequate vigilance for specific micronutrient deficiencies, one could make a simplified diet work for a very long time.  My immediate response: why should one try?  Surely a diverse diet is best for optimal health.  The human body is a natural machine.  As permaculturalists, we appreciate more than most how vital diversity is to the optimal functioning of any natural system.

A diverse diet is good for optimal mental health as well.  I love to cook, because I love to eat.  I recognize that some people don't have the same positive and stimulating relationship to food that I do, even if I don't understand them.  Still, most people would simply become bored by a simple diet, as the OP wrote.

As to "homesteaders fatigue," I'm not familiar with that phrase.  Certainly, homesteading is a LOT of work.  I suppose focusing production on a few staple crops would simplify and thus reduce the workload a bit.  I would think livestock should be one of those staple crops.  Animals take a lot of attention, but they are effective at concentrating a wide and diverse number of system elements - many different plants and other animals - into just a couple of yields.

All of this will vary based on one's homesteading goals and circumstances.  For example, I aim to be a "modern homesteader," not a "survivalist."  I don't need to produce 100% of the calories, 100% of the nutrition, or 100% of the variety in my diet.  I still enjoy convenient and affordable access to the global economy, particularly to the continental food distribution network.  In fact, the more money I save growing a portion of my own food, the more remains to spend on specialty items - exotic, out-of-season, or specially processed foods - to enhance my menu.  I have no desire to abstain from such items.  If I lived remotely, or if I were choosing to prep for a future collapse scenario, I might think differently.  With my medical limitations, in any type of major collapse I'm likely doomed, so I don't bother planning for extreme eventualities.

So long as I'm content to plug in to the larger system, and so long as that system remains available to me, this actually has the opposite effect on my homesteading plans than what I think the OP implied by mentioning "homesteaders fatigue."  I am LESS inclined to dedicate space to staple crops.  I give them some space, but I focus more on low-calorie crops, including lots of herbs, veggies, and berries.  Why?  Because I can readily get my staples from the larger system.  Bread, pasta, potatoes, dry beans, even bulk onions, etc., are reliably and affordably available at the store in just as good a quality as I could grow.  Whereas high quality fresh herbs, veggies, and berries at the store are expensive!