Jay Angler

John Suavecito wrote: I'm now trying to figure out what to do with the old bags that have holes in them.

I use them for all sorts of things...
1. nest box liners form my chickens and ducks
2. quick mulch to slow down weeds
3. cut and rolled into a cylinder to make a biodegradable plant pot that lasts longer than a paper pot.
4. I just tied a bunch to some hardware cloth on a duck run to give some winter wind protection.
5. Add to my compost when I need more "browns". (I tend to have more greens and chicken shit, so I'm always looking to balance that.) This is an "end" use when they're done with higher level uses.
6. This is up-coming. I cut holes in a regular pattern, place the sack on my garden bed, and put a garlic clove in each hole. I have issues with some bird tending to pull up the cloves when they see a green shoot come up. The sack seems to help the cloves get their roots down quickly so birds can't mess with them. It also slows the weeds down while the garlic gets going.  It also helps me get the cloves fairly evenly spaced.

That's all I can think of at the moment. We have an organic coffee distributer not too far away, so we get sacks by the hundred every so often. The ones we get have been sewn shut with a thread that isn't biodegradable, so I always try to remove that before using the sack for plants/compost.

Tereza Okava wrote:

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.

It was an online recipe for green tomato mincemeat. It called for 4 cups each of finely chopped green tomatoes and apple.

That said, I'm betting you're correct - 1/4 tsp ground cloves would make more sense. No one had rated or added comments to the recipe. I have so many green tomatoes, and years ago a friend gave me green tomato mincemeat, and they are supposed to be spicy, but... big but... I will use much less cloves next time, and check a few more recipes to see what spice they call for! The quantity would make at least 2 - maybe 3 - pies.

I've been baking for decades. I don't do "fancy", but do plenty of what I call, "deserts with redeeming characteristics." To me, pumpkin pie fits that description. It has whole milk, pumpkin mush, and eggs. The honey I add, doesn't undo the healthy stuff too much!

However, I'm also not one for carefully following recipes. Usually, I get away with it. This week... well... not so much!

The recipe called for "3/4 teaspoon ground cloves".

I already had the 1/2 teaspoon in my hand. However, for some reason, I could not find my ground cloves. I know I finished a small container, but I'm sure we got some. I'm also sure that at some point when I'm looking for something else, I will find it.

But I did find whole cloves. I was in a rush - I had to get the job done. I have a small spice grinder. I put what my eyes said was a scant amount of whole cloves in the 1/2 tsp. I dropped them in the spice grinder. They whizzed wonderfully. Clearly they had aromatic oils, despite being probably a decade old. I added it to the dish.

I cooked it up, and all I could smell was overwhelming clove flavor. I *know* that freshly ground spices are more powerful, but I really thought I'd allowed for that. Alas, not enough.

So a big reminder to all my permies friends - yes, freshly ground really is more powerful than powdered spices. Use with caution!

The good news is that I left the dish sitting in the fridge for 4 days and it had mellowed a lot. This morning I baked it into squares.  The oatmeal crust is enough to balance the spice. I will eat it. I'm betting #2 Son will also. My DiL is a much bigger question mark. Hubby's away for another week, so unless I freeze some, I won't get to experiment on him, but I suspect he'd reject it on principle, but he might surprise me. I would make this recipe again... I'd just make sure I only used a scant 1/4 tsp of freshly ground cloves!

So what crazy, unexpected kitchen events have you all had?

paul wheaton wrote:     strawberries that spread prolifically  

If you can find someone with some very old domestic strawberries, you could get some medium sized fruit with much better flavor than the modern larger strawberries.

However, I would advise deer protection while they're getting started. The deer have been known to mow unprotected strawberry leaves on my land, and it has generally killed the plants, or at least seriously slowed them down. Birds, slugs, sow bugs and European Wall Lizards (yes, an imported pest in my area) are all known to taste every fruit (if they'd only just eat 1 whole fruit, I wouldn't mind so much), but that doesn't kill the whole plant like repeated deer browsing does.

Kendal Webster wrote: We thought we would only be in the trailers for about 6 months...boy were we wrong!!! It was closer to 3 years!!!

I've heard that tune before! That's why it's important not to make the "temporary" situation too simple and makeshift. It has to be both secure and conducive to eating and sleeping well if you want to have the time and energy to be building safely.

Ed Waters wrote: There is what looks like a part of the spine on the leg quarter which we remove, and use those pieces for crab bait.  Living on the coast of Maine its pretty easy to catch a bucket of green crabs which are a lot of work to pick but delicious.  

We raise chickens and if we have one die of predation or other mishap where or when we don't have time to turn it properly into people food, I take any of the easy stuff and we have a bin in our freezer clearly marked "crab bait". Friends use it more than I do (just too busy to take the time off when the weather and tide is perfect for crabbing), but they invite me for dinner, so I get the benefits! The target here are "Red Rock" crabs.  Considering the cost of crabs at the grocery store, upcycling dead chicken into crab dinner is an awesome use!

S Smithsson wrote: Let them dry on the vine and hand pick pods/crush into tubs.  

Are you only using the dry beans a seeds for planting, or are there recipes you use them in?

I have made a Scarlet Runner Bean dip based on a hummus recipe and everyone really liked it. They're a very large bean for some recipes, like chili.

At Nina's request:

Jay's Liver Pate

1-2 chicken livers and hearts chopped finely
2-4 mushrooms chopped (depending on size)
either: ~1 cup of green onions (I use walking onions) or ~1/2 cup of cooking onion microwaved to soften, both chopped finely
2-3 garlic cloves finely grated
1 egg
~1 Tbsp wine vinegar
~2 Tbsp mayonnaise

Put the livers, mushrooms and onion in the fry-pan and cook. Add the garlic when 1/2 done. Add the egg and scramble it when meat is essentially cooked. Download pan into whatever you're going to use to puree it (blender, food processor, hand blender bowl). Pour the vinegar into the pan and spatula it around to clean the pan and reduce it. Add the results to the liver mix. Add the mayo and whizz it. If things seem dry while preparing it, you can add extra of either the vinegar or mayo as you go. Walking onion seems moister than cooking onion, and the type and kind of mushrooms affect it also. It's one of those dishes one has to judge as one goes.

Maybe we need to ask Burra for her recipe?  See how different they are?

I *really* like the idea of 3 core plants that mostly look after themselves. Unfortunately, deer seem to learn to eat things they shouldn't like in my region. (Comfrey for Exhibit 1.) I absolutely would have to protect kale, but they're less interested in Daikon leaves, so I need to try planting some of those "in the wild."

They rarely eat the onion greens from walking onion, but other plants seem to out-compete it if I give it absolutely no care. However, in my climate they are prolific enough, that I *really* should try introducing some to the big field and see how they respond. Has anyone tried them as an understory plant under bamboo? It might be too much shade.

I'm on Glacial till where it rains all winter and is a drought all summer.  I have planted sunchokes twice, both times they survived a few years and then didn't sprout. In my climate, although they would very occasionally bloom, they never produced seed or spread.

My friend has had better luck, but also planted hers in better soil. However, "deer resistant" doesn't mean "deer won't decide they like it when it's the only food around." My friend thinks that the deer munching down her plants was enough in our climate to prevent them from producing many tubers.

I think that to realistically attempt this, I need someone to turn back the clock 20 years and teach a younger me about living fences. A well designed living fence in an amoeba shape (Ie -stealthy -  only humans do straight lines... well, nurse logs sometimes do also) that's bushy enough that the deer can't destroy it, to surround a patch of land large enough to house an Automatic food pump, and improve the soil inside the area just enough to give the plants a fighting chance, and then the only big concern would be that it would start a lot of baby fir/maple/cedar trees, so it would need "weeding" a couple times a year to prevent reversion to forest.

I only use our dryer if I need to shrink something.

If it's really damp like today, I hang the clothes on a rack and point the output of our dehumidifier at it. We use the dehumidifier water to fill the washing machine, as our deep well has very hard water which doesn't clean as well as the dehumidifier water does.

We also have a wood stove for if it's cold, and that does a fine job of drying clothes also.

There are creative ways to upcycle the embodied energy of your old dryer if you're not going to ever use it. Most of them aren't that easy to sell, as they tend to last much longer than washing machines.