Stacy Witscher

I do think like most things the less you do it, the harder it gets. I spend very little time with people outside of relatives so it gets harder and harder to do. I recently added a two weekend natural building workshop, and while it was great. I found the social part extremely stressful. Changes in my routine like this often take weeks for me to recover. I really like the idea of community but find the reality difficult.

The best coping mechanism for the feed back loop I've found is in reminding myself that I'm just not that important. Nobody else is replaying everything I said, they have their own lives and feedback loops to deal with.

I do find that I prefer events at my own place where I have places to escape.

Yeah, mine's totally not legal. But it also doesn't do any permanent alterations, so I can just remove the garbage can with the hose and no one's the wiser.

I haven't decided what I want to do when we move. We will see.

Wow, that's complicated. I have a garbage can that I put the laundry drain hose into (instead of the standpipe). The garbage can has a hose attached at the bottom with a spigot. I move the hose with every wash cycle, watering fruit trees. Pour out the little left in the bottom. Periodically, everything gets washed out, the hose attached to pressured water, etc. Works great.

To my taste, cream and/or butter are a good substitute for most things. And with pasta, most definitely.

My favorites for blackberries are jam, usually with apricots or loquats. And pie, but not a baked pie, a glace pie. I've never understood baking pies with fresh fruit, it totally changes the texture. And, of course, lots of fresh eating.

So, I tried to watch this, only got 1/2 way through. It's all over the place, switching between keto and paleo. The first "autistic" child obviously had co-morbidity issues like seizures, for which a high fat diet has been recommended for a very long time. Keto is so low carb that most of the pictured meals would never fit in. Paleo is not necessarily high fat. Without fat extraction and/or dairy, a meat and non-starchy veg diet is not likely to be high fat. Most, if not all of the followed people previously ate extremely poor diets.

In my research into keto, virtually all of the podcasts and blogs are by people recovering from eating disorders. While I'm glad that they have found something to help themselves, I'm reluctant to take nutrition advice from people with eating disorders.

None of the reviews mention a specific illness. I'm assuming it's epilepsy, a high fat diet has been recommended for epileptics for a long time.

As a person who has had to transition to a high fat/low carb diet recently, not as low as keto, but low. I'm finding it extremely hard to keep to, not very satisfying. Fat isn't nearly so lovely without carbs.

Carma - So I fill a quart bag about 1/2 full, then scrunch, squeeze and roll the herb leaves into a log inside the bag, squeeze as much air as possible out of the bag without losing the log shape, seal bag, roll, and secure with rubber bands. When frozen, you can remove the log from the quart bag, put it in a gallon bag, and save the quart bag in the gallon bag for the next roll. I like this technique for basil, parsley and dill. To use, slice pieces off the log with a sharp and/or serrated knife.

For some of my freezing, I have labeled freezer bags that I reuse that stock scraps, and when empty they just get tucked behind other things in the freezer for the next use. This way I don't have to worry about total cleanliness or permeated flavors.

For herbs, my two favorite ways to preserve are compound butters which are first wrapped in either plastic wrap or parchment paper, then a freezer bag - which I reuse for years. Or herb logs, where I use a quart bag to form a log of fresh herbs, and when frozen I transfer the log to a gallon bag, and keep the quart bag with it for the next log. I find these to get much less freezer burn then ice cube herbs.

While, none of these last forever, it does extend the life substantially.

Hi Dee,
Slugs and aphids can be problems for small plants and sometimes for large ones. And whatever I had underground would pull the entire plant into it's tunnel. My strategy tends to be to keep planting until some do well.