Kitchen Science

I really can get excited about the silliest things, really.

For example, I've been fermenting cabbage on my counter for a couple of weeks.

I knew, when I put the cabbage seeds into the ground in the spring, that I intended to make sauerkraut this year. I really like sauerkraut, and I've always wanted to make it. I tried last year, but what I ended up with was just incredibly salty cabbage, because I didn't let it ferment.

Last year, I salted the cabbage in pint-sized jars, added a bit of hot water, and canned it in a boiling water bath - all in the same day. The end result was not so good, and I ended up just tossing it all.

I harvested all of the cabbage in my garden about two weeks ago. It was a bunch of fairly compact, very small heads that I trimmed, cored and sliced into thin shreds.

Then, I put the shreds into a plastic container and every two inches or so of cabbage, I'd add about a tablespoon of salt. When I got to the top of the container, I pressed everything down real tight, and added enough hot water to cover the cabbage with about a half inch of liquid (when it was weighted). I covered the cabbage with a cheesecloth, and then, I put a lid on it and weighted it with ... well, a weight - you know, one of those hand weights that people use for strengthening exercises :).

And I left it ... mostly because I didn't know what to do next.

I tried it today.

It's sauerkraut - a little saltier than maybe some people who don't like salt would enjoy, but it definitely has that distinct sauerkraut tang ... and crispy! Not at all like the watery, stringy, limp stuff I've had from the store. It's seriously good stuff!

I'm planning to water-bath can part of it tonight, because we won't eat it all very fast, but I'll leave some in the refrigerator, where it will stay alive.

I purchased several more heads of cabbage at the Farmer's Market, and I'm going to make more sauerkraut. I'm thinking for one batch I'll add one of the chili peppers I grew and a couple of cloves of crushed garlic. That should give it an interesting flavor :). I also have a head of red cabbage, which will be just yummy as pink sauerkraut.

I'm so pleased with myself - to be truthful. A lot of the stuff we do, I'm learning by experimenting. Growing up, my family never ate things like sauerkraut. The first time I canned anything was just over twelve years ago. None of it is difficult (intimidating, yes, but difficult, not at all), and the sense of satisfaction at actually doing it is so incredible. When I succeed in something that I thought would be hard, I feel such a sense of empowerment.

See what I mean? I really can get excited about the silliest things, really.

Drum Roll, please ...

I entered the names of all of the participants of the Break the Chain Challenge into my incredibly complicated name picker aparatus.




With the help of a lovely assistant, a name was randomly selected.



And the winner is ...

Fleecenik Farm.

Karin, send me an email at office(at symbol)*first word in blog address*(dot)com with all of the pertinent information, including which book you'd like. The choices are: The Good Life, Depletion and Abundance and The Long Emergency.

Horror in Uniform

So sad.

This after I was reading an article in which the author stated ... with spending and debt already at record peacetime levels ....

Wait .... What? Peacetime levels?

Last time I looked (and granted, I haven't watched television in a long time) we were still at war.

Aren't we?

There was no cease fire ... no Treaty of Baghdad ... no pulling out of troops.

We're still fighting and still deploying troops and still losing soldiers, every day.

In fact, the tragedy at Ft Hood is because one soldier (and I use the term very loosely) didn't want to be deployed.

Nobody wants to be deployed, but those people who are responsible and have integrity understand that when they agree to serve, they are obligated to do the job.

Like cops ...

and firefighters ...

and septic tank pumpers.

I have no sympathy for him, and I'm not sure a firing squad is enough.

My heart goes out to the families and soldiers at Fort Hood. May we all find peace soon.

Some Thoughts on Shopping

I wanted to respond to Woolysheep's comment here, because some people don't read comments, and I think she asks some very important questions.

In response to my last post, she said,

You need not worry about WalMart going out of business. It isn't small to medium sized and they're sittin' pretty. It's the mom-n-pops and small regional chains and/or franchises. What happens if your local shops can't get the loan to buy the supplies and materials needed by your local craftsmen? What happens when some of those local craftsmen and farmers can't get the financing they need to create next seasons stock?

In today's world, without credit, your community could end up with ONLY WalMart at which to shop.

Her last sentence is exactly the reason I hosted the Break the Chain challenge. If we spend the money we might have spent at Wal*Mart, in a locally owned or regional shop, then those small businesses stand a better chance of surviving, even in today's world of credit.

But that's not all.

In response to the questions asked, my local shops don't have to be the only venue for local craftspeople to sell their wares. It is possible that I could commission a local knitter to make me a couple of sweaters and some socks. I give my money to the craftsperson, who takes the money and gives it to a local spinner, who takes the money to a local farmer, who has sheep. The farmer shears the sheep, the spinner cards and spins the wool into yarn, and the knitter makes the items I have commissioned. *I* am providing the financing for the products I will be buying.

The other question is what happens when local craftspeople and farmers can't get financing for next years' stock, and local farmers have already solved that problem. It's called CSA or Community Supported Agriculture.

The thing is, if *we*, the consumers, ask for it, someone will provide it.

Two years ago, the only place to buy fresh vegetables during the winter was at the large, regional chain grocery store. This year, because *we*, the customers at our local Farmer's Market, asked for it, the host farm (of the Farmer's Market) will be offering storage crops suring the winter. The farmer's market closed last weekend, but their farm store is open daily until Thanksgiving, and then, they're open two Saturdays in December and two Saturdays in January. This will be the first year that they've done this, and it's a trial. If it goes well, who knows what they'll offer next year.

But the point is that there were enough of us asking for it, and so they found a way to make it happen. It helps them, and it helps us.

In short, if *we*, the consumers, decide to start shopping local - more -, and stop giving - most of - our dollars to the large chain stores, just because that's the easiest thing to do, more small to medium sized businesses will thrive, even in these tough times, and the too-big-to-fail big box chains will be the ones shuttering up instead.

It really is up to us, and none of us need sit idly by while the big box stores take over our communities. *We* can make a difference, but we have to be willing to make the effort.

Shopping Challenge

The post today on the Automatic Earth is about CIT Group's bankruptcy. CIT Group is one of the primary lenders for small to medium-sized businesses, and with the need to stock-up for holiday sales the concern is that many of these businesses will shutter-up (an estimated 200 to 300 retail stores in the average-sized population centers, which are cities between 20,000 and 30,000 people).

Ilargi says:
Makes you wonder where you’ll go buy your present next time Christmas comes around, doesn't it?

For those of us who participated in the Break the Chain challenge or the Handmade challenge, the answer is no, not really.

It doesn't make the situation any less horrible, but it does give one some peace of mind to not have to worry about whether the local Wal-Mart will still be in business this holiday season (we can hope not ...).

Don't forget to comment about how it went for you. I'll do the drawing on Friday.

Break the Chain - The Last Day

We participated in the Great American Halloween tradition of Trick-or-Treating, which is always said as all one word and turned into a verb. It is an action, after all, walking around the neighborhood, knocking on doors and saying "Trick or Treat" with an open hand waiting for candy.

Like the candy-filled Easter basket, though, it's such a pervasive tradition, and so much a part of what our culture does, that it's really hard, even for someone as on the fringe as we are, to let it go - or to convince my girls to discard in favor of developing new traditions - something not quite so ... commercialized and sugar-laden.

But I'm working on it ....

As we were walking over to the trick-or-treating street in the subdivision across the road from where we live, I joked that we should have gone to the mall (when the girls were younger, we used to go to the mall, but not since 2001 - I was joking about it, because it was supposed to rain :).

Little Fire Faery said, "We can't go to the mall. It's a chain store!"

Success comes in small increments.

Today is the last day of the challenge. I was going to wait until tomorrow to post my wrap-up for the challenge, but it's going to be a busy, busy day tomorrow ... what with all the shopping I have to do ...

Seriously, though. I did learn a few things over the month of not shopping at chain stores.

I started the month confident that I had a very good handle on the types of things I might need over the month, and I was pretty sure of where I'd get them.

I discovered that was not exactly true. I didn't anticipate needing to get office supplies. There is no place, except a chain store, to get those sorts of things, and even if I had ordered the very specialized paper and labels online, it would have been from a chain supplier, and I didn't have time to wait from them to get to me.

The other thing I didn't figure on needing to buy is diapers. I don't have any diaper-wearing children of my own (my youngest is six), and when I did, they were in cloth diapers. But I babysit my granddaughter several days per week, and I will usually buy diapers and clothes and shoes to use when she's at my house. It helps my daughter, and it really is better for me to just have those things, because sometimes in the rush to get out of the door and over to Grandma's house so that Mom and Dad can get to work on time, things get forgotten. It just happens.

This week, I ran out of diapers, and I had to stop at Hannaford.

I also learned that there are just some things that local stores don't carry. Like diapers. I could not think of any place in my area that was not a chain or supplied by a chain (IGA) that would carry diapers.

The other issue is that very little manufacturing is done in the United States anymore, which means that most of the things we're going to buy anyway are shipped across the world.

We have a salvage store in the area, and I went there last week looking for yarn. It's a Maine-only chain, but none of the stuff is they sell is "local." It's all reject stuff - probably from Wal-Mart :). Unfortunately, they didn't have the yarn I was looking for, and worse, the store is in the same plaza as Joanne's Fabric (where they do have the yarn I needed), and I didn't succumb to temptation, but I did look longingly at the windows as we walked by.

The worst part about the challenge, though, was that I seemed to spend a lot more time driving around to the different stores. I live in a small town, surrounded by small towns, but only one of the towns where I spend a lot of time has a walkable downtown area, and the shopping centers they have are occupied mostly by chain stores.

We didn't buy a lot of stuff this month, though. Mostly it was food, and unfortunately, because we were shopping for just our regular things (like the same sugar we can get at Hannaford for 50 cents less per pound than we paid), we probably spent a little more money than we would have in an ordinary month.

The flip-side of that is that because we weren't going to the grocery store, we weren't doing much impulse grocery shopping, and so we saved money. Maybe in the end, we actually broke even.

The really awesome thing I learned was that my food stores are phenomenal! We ran out of coffee, tea, sugar! and dog food. Other than that, we only purchased fresh items, like produce and diary. Everything else we still have plenty of.

Ultimately, the lesson I learned is that when it comes to food, we could source everything we need from local vendors (not 100% local food, though, as some products we buy regularly, like sugar and flour, are not Maine-based products usually), and much of it from local producers.

When it comes to other goods, like office supplies, we're less successful. The pervasiveness of chain stores and shopping centers filled with them have all but stamped out most general store-type businesses.

Starting tomorrow, the challenge is over, and we will go back to Hannaford. But, maybe, Deus Ex Machina will continue to drive the extra couple of miles to visit the tattoo girl at the local coffee house in the morning, instead of visiting Mike at Tim Horton's.

I know that I will always prefer my local booksellers, who may not have what I want in stock, but who will always, willingly and ably, order any book title I request.

The locally-owned feedstore will always trump Tractor Supply for my business, because everyone who works there knows my face (if not my name), and I don't ever expect to get that at Tractor Supply (plus, the products at the local place are a better quality, in my opinion).

Today was the last day of the Farmer's Market for the season, but one of the vendors will be opening their farm store over the winter, twice in December and twice in January, and I will make a point to be free on those Saturdays so that I can stock up. In the spring, I'll be back at the Farmer's Market on opening day, and I will buy something from everyone who is there, and inquire about their winter ... and many of them will probably remember me - enough to ask how my winter went, as well.

Until they close for the season, the farm store (different from the one mentioned above) will be a regular stop, because they do know my name, and that's just a nice feeling.

We visited a local consignment shop today, where the clothes are a bit more expensive than Goodwill, but a much superior quality. I found everything I was looking for there, and saw a bunch of stuff I didn't know we might need, until I saw it. I'm thinking if I buy any gifts for the holidays, that's where I'm going first.

I am glad I challenged myself and my family, thus, this month. It was actually kind of fun, and as evidenced by my daughter's comments, I think they may have actually gotten something out of it. In the end, it was me who was waffling and ready to break the challenge, but they (especially Deus Ex Machina, who was just a super trooper through the whole month!) pulled me back and helped me think of alternatives.

Last night, Deus Ex Machina and I went to the World Premier of the stage adaptation of An American Werewolf in London. It was an incredible show, and as a long-time fan of the movie (that came out in theatres when I was a teenager, and I saw it in the theatres - very cool on the big screen!), I have to say that they did an amazingly AWESOME job! I can't praise the show enough.

With the exception of the community theatre that is associated with my girls' dance school, we've never really participated in local stage productions. At the beginning of the show, the director came out on stage and gave a little intro/instructional speech. In closing he said, "Support community theatre. Let's help each other through these tough times."

And I agree. Support local ... support all local. Let's help each other through these tough times.

And that's what I learned from this project.

How about you?

If you have been participating, please leave a comment and I will do the drawing for the winner of one of my (very precious and sacred) books :).

Angry Elf

Disclaimer: The following video contains strong language and violence as he mutilates a fax machine with a baseball bat.

The commentary, while laced with profanity, is sobering for its unadulterated presentation of the truth as it is, not as our corporate media tells us it is.



What's very sad about this video is that this average Joe gets it. Our economy is in shambles, and the news reports are simply lying - plain and simple - and this guy, who, let's face it, doesn't really fit the stereotype of the intellectual elite, sees what our esteemed and (supposedly) more learned and experienced leaders (either) cannot see (or are simply hiding from us).