Welcome Kate Downham, author of "A Year in an Off-Grid Kitchen" - Budget Edition !

Please join me in welcoming Kate Downham, author of A Year in an Off-Grid Kitchen!




Read the review of a Year in an Off-Grid Kitchen here!

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Kate Downham will be hanging out in the forums until this Friday answering questions and sharing her experiences with you all.

At the end of this week, we'll make a drawing for 4 lucky winners to win a copy of A Year in an Off-Grid Kitchen: Budget Edition in Black and White. From now until Friday, all new posts in the Frugality forum are eligible to win.
 
To win, you must use a name that follows our naming policy and you must have your email set up to receive the Daily-ish email. Higher quality posts are weighed more highly than posts that just say, "Wow, that's really cool! I want to win!"

When the four winners are selected, they will be announced in this thread and their email address will be sent to the publisher, and the publisher will sort out the delivery details with the winners.

Please remember that we favour perennial discussion.  The threads you start will last beyond the event.  You don't need to use Kate Downham's name to get her attention. We like these threads to be accessible to everyone, and some people may not post their experiences if the thread is directed to the author alone.
 

Posts in this thread won't count as an entry to win a copy of the book, but please say "Hi!" to Kate Downham and make her feel welcome!

Hello Kate and welcome!

I just read the reviews of your book here in Permies and wow, it sounds really good! The way it has been constructed sounds really user friendly.

I’m still in the very beginnings of my homesteading journey, I have made some jams and dried some herbs, but that’s it at this point. But you do have to start somewhere!

Canning food is not a thing in Finland (or any of the nordic countries I think) but it sounds like a thing that would be really useful to learn. The pressure canning sounds intimidating (and seems to require equipment that probably isn’t that easy or cheap to find in Finland) but water bath canning is something I would see myself trying at some point, hopefully in the end of summer I have plenty of tomatoes to preserve! I wonder was it even possible to can tomato sauces, I think I read something about water bath canning and tomatoes at somewhere, that there is something to take in consideration..? I have to do more research on that.. And so many other things! One step at a time.

I’ve been on Permies for a couple of months now, and the amount of information and resources can be alot to take in.. I haven’t dove in to the frugality forum yet at all, but now seems to be a good time!

I hope you enjoy your stay and get to have some good conversations here on Permies!

Hi, Kate! While I'm sure the color photos in the original printing are beautiful, I'm glad to see a budget-friendly version. I hope to someday have an outdoor kitchen and imagine that much of your book would be helpful there!

Welcome Kate!  I use the cookbook regularly, glad to hear you're putting out another version.

Thank you Kate! This is exactly what I've been looking for. Cooking from scratch, using what some call old fashion ways is very appealing to me. When I was a teenager my dad took me to visit his sister. Her home was a dirt floor no electricity little shack. She cooked up the best dinner I have ever eaten on her wood burning stove. Precious memory.

Hello Kate!

Having not yet read the book, I'm curious about the cooking methods: woodstove, solar-electric, biogas? I've run up against limitations of all three, even with bridging technologies like hay-box cookers. Curious to hear what you've come up with, and excited to eventually get off the propane cycle.

Thanks for all the thought you put into this volume, and for taking the time to make it available,
Marvin

Hi there Kate!!

Hello Kate, wonderful to know such a recipe book exists. Being a frugual empty nester, challenges are more so about portions (not cooking too much) ...and when cooking a batch of something you have purposely made a lot of to freeze...ensuring you eat it before it gets freezer burn or somehow lost in your small freezer.  Wasting food is not an option...but find when it is only my mouth to feed, food tends to go bad before i get round to it.  Eager to learn about preserving. There is so much to learn! Wish we could just eat words and then, know volumes of stuff after it has all digested.

Hello Kate,

Hoping you can help with a technical issue. I've been trying to bake my bread in an insulated tin box I made over my wood stove. I can't seem to get the temp up to 350. My next try is going to put some fire brick in the oven to see if that will hold enough heat for baking bread.
Any thoughts or ideas will be appreciated.

Mark

Hi! I've not been very active on Permies but hope to this year...looking forward to checking out the book. I've been a cookbook collector for about 20 years (started in my early 20s), pretty eclectic so this would be a nice addition (and practical).

Hello Kate!

I believe that canning may not be much use in Finland for  a couple of reasons: one, there is sometimes danger of the canned foods freezing; this is a big, messy disaster.  Linda Runyon, author of "Eat The Trees"  mentions their primtive root cellar freezing and every last jar exploding...and I think they were only in Maine.

Another reason the Finns don't can might be that they have other foodways which work better;  fish are dried and slated, fresh root vegetables are stored where they won't freeze, peas are dried and so is some of the bread.

Thank you all for the warm welcome!

The recipes in the book will work on any kind of stove. I tested them on our woodstove, and had helpful lovely recipe testers using all kinds of things, from gas stoves, to electric, to induction hotplates, to slow cookers.

I use a kind-of haybox cooking technique for some things, using the leftover heat from my wood stove to finish things off. The most important thing about cooking in this way is to get food to a really good boil first, and keep it as well-insulated as possible. Personally I wouldn't feel comfortable putting still-raw meat in one, but what I would do would be to start the cooking off on smaller cuts so that it is fully cooked, and then leave it (and the vegetables) once thoroughly boiling, in the haybox to finish and get beautiful and tender.

Solar cooking can be used for any slow cooker recipe on sunny days. I found with mine that fast-cooking things would just take longer than on the wood cooking stove.

Mark Grindahl wrote:Hello Kate,

Hoping you can help with a technical issue. I've been trying to bake my bread in an insulated tin box I made over my wood stove. I can't seem to get the temp up to 350. My next try is going to put some fire brick in the oven to see if that will hold enough heat for baking bread.
Any thoughts or ideas will be appreciated.

Mark

My guess would be that the top of the stove isn't getting hot enough (or the bottom of your box is blocking some heat). With a normal wood cooking stove there is an art to getting the fire hot enough for baking, and these stoves are designed to transfer the heat from the fire to the oven and stovetop, but a normal wood heating stove may be designed to insulate the top somewhat from the direct heat.

Removing some of the insulation from the top of the stove may help, if it doesn't cause safety issues, or checking that the bottom of the box is completely flush with the stovetop and isn't blocking heat is another thing, or removing the base altogether may also do the trick.

If your firebox is big enough, you might also be able to make dutch oven bread in the coals with a good solid cast iron dutch oven.

Betsy Carraway wrote:
Another reason the Finns don't can might be that they have other foodways which work better;  fish are dried and slated, fresh root vegetables are stored where they won't freeze, peas are dried and so is some of the bread.

In the historical context you are right. Nowadays we don’t can because of - well yes, better foodways -  there’s every kind of food you can imagine in the supermarket down the road from the average Finn; fresh greenhouse grown tomatoes are available all year round, frozen pizzas and minced meat in the shelves, not forgetting all the foreign delicacies you can just think of.

Tiiiny tiny part of a persentage store veggies (let alone grow them themselves) in a root cellar and basicly no one dryes fish nowadays.

I want to grow a buttload of tomatoes, make sauce and can it instead of buying the italian crushed tomatoes from the grocery store for tomato sauce.
I am takings steps back from modern times but not planning to go all the way to the root veggies, pine bark bread and pea soup for all winter -times. Maybe I have been Italian at somepoint in time, I can’t live without pizza and pasta!

And now that we have the great world wide web that gives us a chance to learn new methods, why not use it!

Oh and yes, root cellar is a family member and not a building, you cant just leave it hang alone in the backyard. Especially if it’s as leaky as ours is. So far a couple of candles under terracotta pots have kept it from freezing but we do have a wireless thermometer in there giving us info in real time.

Thanks Kate,

I did cut the bottom out of my box after two tries and my wood stove does have a grate on top for heading items. I may just need to let it heat up longer.
I do like the idea of trying a Dutch oven since I've never done that before.

Mark

Hi Kate.
I am presently building an off-grid home and love to cook. I have done some camp and chuckwagon cooking semi-professionally and love hearing about others' experiences. I often learn something new.
I look forward to learning more from you. Don't be surprised to hear from me in your threads here and in others you may have.

Neils Wright
Utah

Welcome Kate
So thoughtful of you to share your wisdom to drive down food costs and reduce wastage
Warm wishes

Just what I'm looking for when I run away to my dream♡♡♡♡

Hello!!... I.am new to.Permies just because I hadn't heard of it before. I have been following many diff youtube people with off grid ideas, and prepper ideas. I would love to have a copy of Kate Downham's black and white book!!! But of course it will be the luck of the draw!!... I think it is so wonderful that she is sharing her wisdom in these areas. I live in Hawai'i and am very blessed with the climate. But as in any place in the country living off grid is a smart way to live and learning to survive and thrive off grid is a smart way to live!! Mahalo for all you do on this site and in the sharing!! Aloha, mililani

Hi Kate happy to welcome you. Cooking was one big reason I got into permaculture... it just tastes better :) I'm happy to see a book like this available, and I hope it sparks the interest of a whole new crop of Permies.

I'm happy to announce the four winners of Kate's A Year in an Off-Grid Kitchen!

Drumroll please!



Congratulations!

Hal Schmidt
Roshni Chandy
Raphaël Blais
Nikki Roche

Please keep an eye out for a PM or email from Kate so she can coordinate the shipment of your books!



Huge thanks to Kate for not only giving away her books, but also for all the questions she answered during the giveaway, as well as all her work in coordinating giveaways with other authors and publishers. You all might not know this, but Kate does a lot behind the scenes to make our various different book giveaways happen. Thank you, Kate!


For those of you bummed that you didn't win, here's some handy-dandy links for purchasing her book:

Physical book, budget edition A Year in an Off-Grid Kitchen

Ebook, color edition -- Sold here on permies! A Year in an Off-Grid Kitchen

Physical book, color edition A Year in an Off-Grid Kitchen

I'm thrilled to have won for a few reasons
1. i hope to go off grid (just acquired the land)
2. I would love to collaborate for further experiments in my off grid kitchen
3. I consider myself a permaculture practitioner even in my apartment (most things home made, kitchen water recycled)
4. I call the gradual simplifying of life as "process optimization" to achieve maximum utility with customer enjoyment (p.s. I'm the customer and dam@it I'm going to enjoy myself thoroughly while I'm here on our beautiful blue jewel of a planet...bury me with compost and seeds in my pockets! 🤣)
Thank you thank you Kate!

congratulations to all the winners and to the folks who made this a fun week in the "Frugality" Forum.

Thank you to Kate for making this happen and to all involved.

Congratulations to the winners!

I've now sent an email off to every winner - if it's not in your inbox please check your spam folder in case it went there.

A lot of work goes on behind the scenes to make these giveaways happen, and I am grateful for the help of everyone that helped to make this one so lovely.