If any organically grown food is worth the extra cost, it is apples. Or if you can find a farm/orchard that grows them using just the dormant sulphur/oil spray that is fine too.

A sincere injunction. Even if you are not into buying organic stuff and don't even go for fruits or vegetables. Make cleanly grown apples a part of your daily diet.

When you eat the apple - at least one a day - make especially sure to eat the seeds - the entire apple core. But make sure you chew the seeds before swallowing them, otherwise they will just pass through your system.

Do not pay attention to the idiotic parrots on the internet who mindlessly blabber about how apple seeds "contain cyanide" - LOL - and therefore should be avoided.

Let's repeat: eat organically grown apples everyday. Eat the seeds in the apple, chewing them well. Tell anyone who says to you "Oh, apple seeds contain cyanide" to eff off.

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Also tell that to people who say, "Oh, figs have worms". People are so stupid. Any fruit that has gone overripe can and may likely have the larva of the fruit fly in it. This is especially true of overripe cherries and blackberries. You will know when a fruit is overripe, past its prime.

In fact, there is a smell the fruit will have that will tell you it has SWD - Spotted Wing Drosophila. And by the way, as an aside, while no one wants to eat the fruit fly larva, ultimately it really is only protein. It will not breed inside you. In other words, it will not "give you worms".

You want to know how this bullshit started with the fig? It's not because they have worms. In fact, they are less likely to have the fruit fly larva than other fruits. You want to know what happened? Some dumb schmoe opened up a spoiled fig that naturally had the fruit fly larva, and what did he see that sparked his imagination? Ever look at the inside of a fresh fig? The whole inside bears a certain resemblance to worms. (Though really to anyone who is more diligent and clear in his imagination the inside of the fig bears a certain fertile representation of sperms making their way to some nucleus.) Thus was born the whole stupid parrot fest about figs containing worms.

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"Oh, you shouldn't plant bee-loving plants where children are going to be playing." LOL. People parrot this ignorant bullshit as though having plants that bees love near where children are going to be playing is the same as putting hives of bees and wasps there. Bees are never more safe to be around as when they are foraging nectar and pollen from blossoms. A single stray bee is more dangerous than an entire host that is busy at work on some flowering plant. And a host of bees busy on some flowering plant does not make for any strays, because they have found flowers, and are therefore occupied.

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"Oh, putting coffee grounds into the soil will turn it acidic" - LOL. "Oh, you shouldn't bury meat or bones with your scraps in the garden" - LOL. "Oh, drinking raw milk will make you sick" - LOL. "Oh, the police in helicopters will descend on your garden if you grow opium poppies" - LOL.

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"Oh, wild pigs are rapidly multiplying in Canada - they're taking over!" - LOL.

I'm all for that. Sounds like lots of free food to me, and delicious food, thanks to Global Warming. If they become that invasive the government can simply say, "Go out and kill. Take and eat."

But I can imagine the Pork Industry wouldn't like that very much. They would spawn a whole lot of official-sounding bullshit on the public about how wild pigs contain cyanide and worms and will eat children and the cops will come and get you and shit.

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"Oh, this plant is seeding itself all over the garden - it's invasive!" - LOL.

Listen, I'm from the Pacific Northwest where the temperate rainforest climate is very conducive for invasive species, both flora and fauna. I know invasive. A plant seeding itself - or even aggressively seeding itself - does not make it invasive, alright? Be happy, and thankful, that you don't have to deal with horsetail, creeping buttercup, Himalayan blackberry, morning glory, Japanese knotweed, et alia - yes.

Be happy. And eat apples and the apple seeds.

Sand Leaves

A few of the very bottom leaves. They are always small and the first to go yellow and cure, outside under the plant. They are called sand leaves because of the dirt spraying up on them from watering and rain.

I picked up those three from the ground and put them in my car, and with the heat of day they very quickly gave off that sweet tobacco smell - Virginia, or Canadian Virginia.

I can't describe how much I love that smell. It is one of the glories of God. He gives these leaves that give sweet aromas after they have died and dried - like Katsura leaves, and like the Pacific Northwest's own Vanilla Leaf, or as it also called, Sweet-after-death.

 

Hiedroefillick

I agree

The First Cure

Misc.

One way of knowing you made a good cup of coffee: it is as drinkable and enjoyable after it has gone cold as when it was hot.

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I now understand why the ancients tended not to write formulaic recipes as we understand them today with delineated amounts, temperatures and cooking times etc. If you read any modern recipe, even baking recipes, there is typically only one or two components in the process that make that particular dish what it is. More often than a particular ingredient, it is a particular combination at a particular time - and not so much even a particular combination of ingredients, as a combination of two different cookings, like, for instance, de-glazing, which is basically dry fry meeting wet simmer.

In relation to what is being cooked and for what result and for how long, there is only low temperature, medium temperature and high temperature. All this business about 350 and 475 and 235 and what have you is really a bunch of nonsense. Same goes for cooking times. Higher temperatures generally mean shorter cooking time; lower temperatures mean longer.

When you understand what the acid of vinegar does, or the saltiness of salt and the sweetness of sugar, and how far each goes in relation to any other amount of other ingredients, it is not so much that you don't need to know what amounts are required anymore, but that you have enough understanding to proceed were you not given the amounts. What you do need to know is that this is a "fat and acid" or a "sweet and sour" or a more complex combination and so forth.

Dry ingredients tend towards concentrated flavour; wet ingredients towards their dispersal, and thus towards dissipation and quick alteration. Bringing the two together is very often a key thing, an essential part of a recipe. That is one example.

Go ahead and look at any recipe. Look for that one essential thing or two that makes that recipe what it is. For that is the recipe. Learn how to rip that out and integrate it into your own arsenal. When you read a recipe that you really want to try but it lists faraway gourmet ingredients, do not say, "Oh, I can't make that!" Strip recipes down mercilessly. Be like the ancients. Be traditional. Don't be a slave.

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When you have to forcefully tell the credit card pushers, "No, I don't want that credit card" three times before they relent; when the credit card pushers send you credit cards without you asking for one; when credit card pushers tell you you are "pre-approved"; when credit card pushers are lying in wait for you at the entrance of the bank, then you know that "credit ratings" mean precisely nothing.

Your so-called "good credit rating" is like the government announcing they balanced the budget. It is utterly meaningless.

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I wonder why the legalization of marijuana issue is always framed as "people being allowed to smoke pot." In my view that is a tiny fraction of the large picture, which is basically people having the right to grow marijuana for fresh consumption, for fibre and all its many other uses, with an emphasis on the right to grow it. Even official organs of the government recognize the powerful medicinal properties of this plant. The stories of people being healed of this and that by consuming fresh marijuana (one can consume as much as one wants in its fresh state; but when it is heated by burning or drying, that is when it becomes psychoactive) are many.

One cannot argue that it would take too much to monitor farmers to make sure they aren't growing it for the drug trade. The dairy industry is monitored - or inspected, whatever term you want to use. And anyways, the stuff that's grown for the drug trade is a special hybrid, if I understand correctly, and it's only really worthwhile grown inside, hydroponically; for outside here in northern North America you could get a harvest of good bud, but not nearly as much as you can continually get growing it inside. Thus farmers growing it in their fields wouldn't even want to be bothered with that when it would be far more profitable for them to grow it for all the many other uses that people are very, very willing to pay for.

If marijuana can heal a person of his or her cancer and there are farmers wanting to grow the stuff for those people, then what the hell business is it of the government to say no? They don't own marijuana. They don't have a patent on it. It is not evil. It is God's creation. It is not a contradiction at all for the government to allow people to grow it while still fighting the drug trade.

What potential there is in growing marijuana! It was grown commercially not too long ago, only it was called hemp. Stop it with this stupid prohibitionist holdover from the very recent past. And stop framing the issue in a stupid way, you idiotic pot heads and prohibitionists.

Government Priorities

Raw Milk: The New Prohibition

"Total diarrheal episodes annually USA -------> 217,973,045

Total foodborne illnesses annually USA -------> 48,000,000

Annual confirmed foodborne infections from the four "pathogens" (all foods) -------> 1,937,561

Average number of illnesses attributed to consuming raw milk (Dr. Beals, 1999–2011) -------> 42

Average number of illnesses attributed to consuming raw milk (Drs. Oliver and others, 2000–2008) -------> 27


From the perspective of a national public health professional looking at an estimated total of 48 million foodborne illnesses each year; or from the perspective of a healthcare professional looking at a total of 90,771 (data from Healthy People 20204) confirmed bacterial foodborne infections each year (about 0.2 percent), there is no rational justification to focus national attention on raw milk, which may be associated with an average of 42 illnesses maximum among the more than nine million people (about 0.0005 percent) who have chosen to drink milk in its fresh unprocessed form.

Using this average of 42 illnesses per year, we can show, using government figures, that you are about 35,000 times more likely to become ill from other foods than you are from raw milk.

It is irresponsible for a senior national government administrator to testify that because of those forty-two people, raw milk is inherently hazardous, parents should not be allowed to decide which foods they serve their children and milk should be banned across the nation unless it has been pasteurized.

...In no way do I wish to trivialize the personal impact of these illnesses. However, all activities have risk. Consumption of any food has some risk of illness or adverse reaction. And the consequence of basing public policy on horrific personal experiences is that all foods will ultimately be banned, and we will not be able to participate in any activity."

--Ted Beals, MS, MD, Those Pathogens, What You Should Know

H/T: The Justice Report