Skills

Following the basic rules of three, we can live without water for three days. That’s not entirely true, but it’s close enough. Water is largely what we’re made of, being between 50% and 60% of our makeup. Water keeps our brains working, flushes toxins out of our bodies and protects our muscles, helps lubricate our joints, and keeps the blood flowing through our veins. We can become dehydrated incredibly quickly, depending on our level of activity, the ambient temperature, and the humidity, so it’s important to keep drinking. A general rule of thumb is, if you’re feeling thirsty, you’re already well on the way to being badly dehydrated.

It is possible to become dangerously dehydrated within 24 hours. Dehydration is when you take in less water than your body is using up in sweat, tears, urination, etc. and it’s very serious. While you can be on day 2 or 3 of not having water and still survive it, it will be a painful survival. After that first day, you are not going to be thinking well, because your brain will not be functioning as easily. You will be sluggish. Your mouth will be dry, and possibly your nose, and skin. You become exponentially more likely to have seizures or experience hypovolemic shock (when your blood volume drops below a certain level). This all has to be kept in mind when you’re dealing with a SHTF scenario. Drinking is going to be incredibly important.

So how do you keep water on hand? That’s something you have to decide for yourself. I live in a water rich area of the world, and so I don’t store a lot of water. I keep enough on hand for 72 hours of drinking and washing (of myself and my dishes), which is about 2 to 3 gallons per person per day. Instead of keeping lots of water on hand, I keep water purification items on hand. I have the means and knowledge to get water, but I’ll need to purify it. To purify water, you have to either boil it, disinfect it, filter it, or treat it with UV light. For safety’s sake, I recommend doing at least two of the four methods, though depending on your emergency, that may change.

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Chris wanted me to share my sauce from last night, so I said heck with it. I liked it enough that I’m going to post it up here now.

To start off, this was my first attempt at making a Bolognese from scratch. I’ve always used jarred sauces and then “spiffed them up” in the past. I was in the mood to try something more challenging, but not too much because I’ve been so sick this week. The consistency was good, the amount of meat to sauce was good, the mouth feel was excellent, and the taste was incredible!

Ingredients:

• 1 lb ground pork (not flavored, just plain)
• 1 celery stick, finely diced
• 1 medium carrot, finely diced
• 1 onion small, finely diced
• 2-3 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 2 14.5 oz cans of crushed tomatoes or stewed tomatoes 
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 tbsp tomato paste
• 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 1/2 cup whole milk (or oat milk for dairy free)
• salt and pepper to taste
• grated Parmesan cheese for serving

Heat your olive oil in the bottom of a Dutch oven or saucepan, and add the ground pork. Stir regularly until it’s almost cooked through, about ten minutes. While the pork is browning, mince up your vegetables. Add these to the meat, once it’s no longer pink. Continue to cook on medium heat until the onions begin to soften and clarify.

Add in your tomato paste, Worcestershire sauce, and garlic. Cook for another 3 to 4 minutes, continually stirring. Reduce the heat to the lowest setting and add in the tomatoes, bay leaf, and dried oregano. Stir it together, and partially cover the pot. Simmer this on your lowest heat setting for 45 to 60 minutes. Stir the sauce every 15 minutes, to make sure it doesn’t stick to the bottom. Technically, this can continue to simmer for as long as you like. You want it to be fairly thick, so after an hour you may want to take the lid off, and stay there, stirring, while it thickens. If you’re in a rush, you can remove any excess liquid with a spoon or small ladle.

Turn off the heat, then add in the milk. Stir it together, taste, and then add salt and pepper to taste. If the sauce has a metallic or acid tang, add a half teaspoon of brown sugar to it. While you can skip adding the milk entirely, it really does add a depth to the sauce that makes it velvety. It also helps mellow out the tomato acidity.

Notes:

The original recipe calls for crushed tomatoes, but I didn’t have those. I could have stuck my stewed tomatoes into the blender and whizzed them up, but I chose to use the tomatoes chunky. I’m glad I did. Many of them broke up during the cooking of the sauce, but the pieces of tomato really added a lovely mouth-feel, and a certain “umami” to the final sauce.

This goes perfect over any kind of pasta, but it’s best over one that has a rough texture and lots of gripping surface. Think bowties or rotini, or even radiatori.

Serve this one up with a slice of hearty french bread, or some garlic knots. Don’t bother with salad; it’s much too meaty for that.

There are three ways of making pasta shapes. You can extrude the dough through shaped holes, cutting the forms off as needed. You can roll the dough thin, then hand cut the dough to be shaped. The same can be done using a “pasta machine” which rules the dough to a known thickness. Or you can use cutters to cut sheets of pasta.

I’ve been making pasta dough for a couple of years. I stepped up my game recently by deciding to roll my dough instead of squeezing it in the pasta machine.

Since I was going to roll out the dough, I decided to get rid of my mixing bowl and do it on my board with the well method.

This is a step forward. One of the lessons I’m still learning is how small a batch can be made this way. If the batch is not large enough, there isn’t enough floor on the board to create a well with deep enough walls.

I was lucky, there were only two eggs in play, so the eggs didn’t go everywhere, just a slight panic.

Which brings us back to dough. Normal pasta dough is an egg and floor mixture. My recipe is 3/4 of flour to 1 large egg. Occasionally, it is two eggs plus a yolk. It really depends on how the dough feels.

Today, the dough was too wet. I should have added more flour, but I didn’t.

The eggs are mixed into the flour until it comes together. At that point, I switch to kneading. I knead for 10 minutes, by the clock. The sad thing is that I always check the time remaining at 2:30. I don’t know how I get there, but I do.

This egg pasta works well for rolling out or squeezing. This was turned into rigatoni.

I didn’t know I could make this by hand, I thought I would need to use an extruder for rigatoni. I am happy with my results.

It does not look like machine made pasta. The dough was a little wet. I also had some issues cutting it. Next time I will use the bicycle cutter to get nice squares.

Ally took the other half of the egg pasta and made beautiful bow tie pasta.

The other type of pasta dough is made with water and semolina flour. Bluntly? I just guessed at the amount of warm water to add. It came out nearly perfect.

This pasta dough doesn’t roll out as flat as the egg pasta, but it is used for other pasta shapes. We started with Orecchiette. Those were easy to make, but I didn’t like them. Ally loved making them, so I let her do it.

This is made by cutting a 1/2 diameter rope of dough into 1/2 long chunks. Then you roll the under your thumb.

Malloreddus is made the same way, but the pasta is pressed on a grooved board to make a wonderful pattern. This was my favorite shape to make. They go fast, they look nice, and they have a good bite to them. Plus they hold the sauce.

The Busiate was another fun shape. It uses a 1/4 in rope of dough cut into 3 inch long sections. These are twisted around a skewer and the rolled flat.

I think they look delightful, I want to practice them some more.

I’m hoping that Ally will do an article about the sauce she made for our homemade pasta. I will say it is the best I’ve had in years.

Stew is the bedrock of my winter meal plan. Part of my family dislikes soup, but is okay with something thicker. Stew is the way to go! Stew is basically a protein (chicken, beef, lamb, etc), a fat (bacon grease, olive oil, veg oil, etc), vegetables (onions, carrots, celery, etc), and a starch (rice, beans, potatoes, etc). In whatever combination you like, mix together, and you have stew. Of course there’s a bit more to it, but that’s the basic “stew recipe.”

Because stew was usually made with leftovers or scraps, the little bits that weren’t enough for another full meal, we don’t really have written stew recipes.  A good stew is different every time you  make it, because the ingredients will never be exactly the same. That is the right way to do it! So let’s make a nice, hearty chicken stew.

Ingredients

• a cut up chicken, or several thighs, bone in and skin on
• 1 or 2 onions or leeks, rough chopped
• 3 large carrots, coined
• 2 ribs of celery, diced
• 4 cloves garlic, rough chopped
• white wine (optional)
• 1 purple top turnip, diced
• 2 parsnips, coined
• 2 to 3 cups shredded cabbage
• 1 cup barley, well rinsed
• spices (salt, pepper, oregano, parsley, dill, sage, rosemary, etc.)
• oil for searing
• water to fill the pot

In a large soup or stock pot, add a drizzle of oil (olive, safflower, or vegetable) and bring up to a medium heat. Add the chicken and brown it all over, then remove it from the pot (set it aside on a plate). Add the carrots, onions, and celery, and cook until the onions soften and begin to brown very slightly. While they’re cooking, you may need to add more oil. This mixture of carrots, onions, and celery is called a mire poix, and it’s the basis of most good quality soups and stews. You want to scrape any of the browned chicken off the bottom of the pan (that’s the fond and it’s part of what makes for a rich flavor later). Add in the garlic and saute until they are fragrant, usually less than a minute.

Drizzle in some of the wine (or chicken broth if you don’t do wine), and deglaze the pan entirely. Once that’s done, add the rest of the vegetables and allow them to cook for 2 to 3 minutes. Add all the remaining ingredients, and enough water to cover everything, plus 3 cups (this is to allow for the barley to absorb some of the water – you may want to try a bit more or less, to make it the thickness you prefer). Add in some salt, pepper, and other herbs to taste, and bring to a boil, then allow to simmer for a minimum of an hour.

Check for flavor, then add more spices as necessary. The above are only suggestions, and you’re welcome to try whichever spices you like! Simmer for another hour or more, until the chicken is falling off the bone and shreds easily. You may wish to pick out the skin and bones at this point, or serve it as is. Serve this up with fresh baked bread for a hearty and healthy meal.

Notes:

You can make this recipe with diced chicken breast if you prefer. I like the added flavor and the moistness of the meat when I use bone-in, but not everyone likes bones. I almost always make this recipe with either a full cut up chicken, or with chicken legs with thighs attached. It comes out meaty and delicious!

Recipe by M. Allyson Szabo, author of The Re-Enactor’s Cookbook (available on Amazon).

Allyson had picked up a wooden box a few years ago to take to events. It was a plain wooden box with just a bit of decoration and a porcelain knob attached to the sliding top.

The knob and screw holding it are not period. The rest was pretty period. Or more precisely, it was period-20.

It looked period at 20 feet.

Over the years, it has taken a beating. This knocked the back off, pulling out the brads.

She asked me if it could be repaired. TiteBond III to the rescue. I pried the back out enough to get glue where it was needed. Clamped the entire thing closed and called it a day.

Until I decided that it could be better.

Today, we use petrochemicals to create high-quality, strong, enduring coatings for our cabinetry and furniture.

Modern finishes are long chain polymers that have all the right characteristics for a long-lasting, shiny surface.

I’ve used polyurethane finishes. They can be polished to a near mirror like finish.

But that is the modern world? What were they doing 100 years ago? 200? 300? They were using some of the same finishing methods we use today.

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Are you ready for what happens after the apocalypse? I’m not talking about the zombie apocalypse here, nor am I referring to the next pandemic. The apocalypse I mean is the one that’s currently predicted: Harris winning the election. I know some of you are laughing, but please don’t. I am quite serious about this. What are your plans for if she wins?

There are so many moving parts to planning for a Harris win. We have to consider the possibility (likelihood?) of social unrest. There may be a repeat of January 6th, this time with weapons, even if Harris is a clear winner (which I think is unlikely). More importantly, we need to plan for the economic downfall of the country.

It’s time to stock up on some basic things. From now until the election, prices have eased slightly. Harris is trying to buy votes. I know money is tight, but it’s really time to go and buy up all the canned goods you use in a year. Pick up extras of all your dry goods. If you can, order a half cow and stash it in your freezer. I have a funny feeling that if she wins, the country is going to get very expensive, very fast.

I always say, prep what you eat, and eat what you prep. This isn’t for a long-term emergency, though. This is food that you expect to eat over the next year. So look at what you use on a regular basis. For me, in the canned goods department I use a ton of canned tomatoes (both regular and the type with the chilies in it). I use canned beans (black, red, chili, garbanzo, etc.) as well as dry ones. I use rice, specifically Jasmine or Basmati. My family likes sausage, and I can usually find them on sale, so I will buy extras and toss them into the freezer. Last week, I found turkey breasts on sale for 99 cents a pound, and I bought the limit.

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For me, the flavors in a good soup are the taste of autumn. I adore soup weather, and with the nights getting colder, I’m looking up my soup recipes. Last week, I made a small pot of beef barley soup, and I impressed even myself. It’s easy to do, and you can even pop it in the crock pot if you want.

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs beef shin bone (with bone and marrow)
• 1/4 cup red wine (for deglazing the pan)
• olive oil (for cooking)
• 1 onion, diced
• 2 ribs celery, diced
• 1 carrot, diced
• 6 cups beef broth
• 1-1/2 cups pearl barley, rinsed
• 1 tbsp tomato paste (optional)
• bay leaf
• spices to taste (salt, pepper, thyme, oregano, sage)

In a soup pot, add a bit of the olive oil and bring to a medium heat. When the oil is shimmering, add in the beef shin bones. If you have more than one, you may need to do them one at a time. Don’t crowd the bottom of the pot. You want to sear the meat for about 2 minutes per side, then set the meat aside.

Add a bit more olive oil if necessary, then toss in the onion, celery, and carrot (this is called a mirepoix, and it’s the base of many soups and stews), and saute until the vegetables are softened but not yet brown. Use the red wine, a little at a time, to deglaze the pan. Add in a drizzle of wine, and then use a wooden spoon or spatula (it should be wooden, NOT plastic or rubber) to scrape up all the stuff off the bottom of the pot. That “stuff” is called fond, and it’s delicious.

Once the pan is deglazed, put the meat back in (still on the bone), along with the broth, bay leaf, and tomato paste. Stir to combine the ingredients. Bring it to a boil, then lower the heat and allow the soup to simmer for about an hour. Taste the broth, and then adjust for flavor by adding the spices of your choice.

Rinse your barley well, and pick out any stones you may find. Add the barley to your soup, and raise the temperature enough to keep the liquid at a steady strong simmer. Check on your soup every 15 minutes or so, to ensure nothing is burning. Add more beef broth if necessary. Continue to simmer until the barley is completely cooked and is chewy.

Lower the heat to its lowest setting, and remove the meat from the soup. Carefully trim the meat from the bone and put it back into the soup. Get rid of any gristle or fat, but make sure that the marrow from the shin bone goes back into the soup. The marrow makes your broth rich and tasty. Taste and adjust the spices as necessary, and then serve.

I like to serve this soup with fresh baked bread, still warm from the oven. If you’re not a baker, pick up a nice ciabatta at the grocery store, drizzle olive oil over it and toss on some salt and pepper, then heat in the oven at 350F for five to ten minutes.

This soup freezes very well. If you have a pressure canner, you may can it, as well. I find I never have enough left over to can up, though! A note on the tomato paste: I find it adds a nice zing to the broth, but it isn’t necessary. Some people like to put crushed tomato or stewed tomato into their beef barley soup, but I’m a purist.

BOOM! It happens. The meteor hits, or the fungus zombies arise, or civil unrest causes a loss of infrastructure. Whatever the emergency, the S sure has HTF. It’s time to break out the bug out bag or the get home bag, or check on your emergency stash of stuff. Yep, all there.

My question is, do you know what to do with that stash?

I am constantly amazed at the number of people who “prep for the end of the world” but have absolutely no knowledge on how to use the items they put away. A prime example of this was from a few years ago, when we were making regular trips down to the LDS Cannery (back when it *was* a cannery… stupid FDA) to pick things up. The LDS, while not my idea of a religion, has some great ideas about preparing for the worst. They make it easy for their members to put up food for the end of the world. They have convenient kits, each designed for a specific number of people (usually two parents and two kids) for a specific length of time (a month, generally speaking). Each kit includes things like powdered milk and eggs, wheat berries, oats, canned proteins, beans, etc. Each LDS family dutifully purchases two years worth of these supplies over time. And then those supplies just sit there.

The last trip there, we watched a new couple picking up their first box of goods. We struck up conversation, because we were all standing around waiting for things and that’s what you do. Nice couple, working on having kids. Devout. Polite. Not uneducated. But in the process of chatting, I discovered that they didn’t have a wheat mill. They didn’t know how to cook dry beans. They had no idea what to do with dried eggs. They had no real understanding of what to do with the items in their emergency box.

My family stores ground wheat in “small amounts” (for me a “small amount” is a 25lb bag, separated into smaller bags that are sealed, frozen for 72 hours, then put away in a cool, dry, dark place) and wheat berries in larger amounts (though also separated into bags or cans and frozen for 72 hours… it kills off any bugs). I go through a 25lb bag of wheat in a short enough time that it doesn’t go off, because I bake weekly, and sometimes more often than that. The wheat berries are a long-term storage solution, because they don’t go off. They’re shelf stable for 20+ years. We have a hand powered mill (that can be hooked up to a bicycle or generator if we really want to make it easier, though we never do), and we use it to grind wheat berries, barley, and other grains to make wheat for baking. Mostly I do that for historic demos, but sometimes just for fun. We only grind what we plan to use, because “ground at home” wheat will not last as long as the store-bought stuff, as it still has all its oils and the germ in place.

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Some of you may have guessed that I like to collect cookbooks, in addition to writing them. I have, for a very long time, been interested in historical cookbooks. In particular, I like original recipes, even if the physical book I have is a reprint. One of the cookbooks I treasure most in my collection is The Original White House Cookbook. The first edition came out in 1887, but there have been several editions since then. You can buy many of the new volumes, but it’s hard to find originals (ie printed in 1887) of that first one. I have a reprint of the original edition, printed in the early 1900s, and I love it.

I’m preparing myself for going to the Fort again this weekend. I’m hosting a “show and tell” event over the Labor Day weekend, and I want to have some yummy recipes. As I was cooking breakfast this morning, I was thinking about what I’d like to make. My eyes strayed over to the cookbook shelf (actually a whole bookcase, but whatever), and I noticed that the White House one was on its side and out of its usual place. Likely one of the kids had it out and didn’t put it back right. When I had a moment, I went to straighten it, and then stopped, because an incredibly profound thought hit me.

That cookbook, that original one from 1887, was written for the American people. We were, at that time, barely a hundred years old as a country. We were essentially a toddler, in the grand scheme of things. And here we were, offering our entire people the opportunity to cook like the leaders of that country.

Our people were (and are) eating the same food, prepared in much the same way, as our leaders.

Do you get how very insane that sounds? To have a populace who eats what the elite are eating? In 1887, Queen Victoria was munching on oranges, locally sourced salmon, and an early version of the turducken (12 Tomatoes). Kaiser Wilhelm II was eating ice cream and “Fresh goose-liver medallions that have been seared and cooled before being coated with chaud-froid sauce, garnishes, and then sealed in a layer of Port jelly. (Royal Menus)” Napoleon wasn’t eating a lot of rich foods, but only because he suffered from gastritis and insisted on plain and even bland foods. The rich of Europe were eating well, and the poor and middle class citizenry were eating simple foods, and sometimes not much of them.

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It was a beautiful day for a visit to the Fort.

You all would have had a chuckle if you had seen me.

Remember the movie True Grit with John Wayne and Glen Campbell? Mattie Ross wore a black hat. That is the hat I felt I was wearing yesterday. Except mine didn’t have a tie strap. I kept waiting for it to fly away in the wind.

This was topped with a white linen vest, about four inches too small across the belly and 2 across the chest. But it looked period.

That was over a linen shirt. The shoulders of which were a little tight.

Black pants finished the look.

I had planned to do some spinning. I didn’t. I spent most of the day talking to people and learning and finding things that need to be fixed.

My primary learning goal was to observe and ask questions about how linen is made. They didn’t have anybody in the weaving room.

I did find a very knowledgeable lady, but she had knowledge but not skill.

A bit later, I managed to get one of the interpreters to actual show me how it was done. It is an interesting process. There are some specialized tools that are needed for the processing. I don’t have them, I think I can make them.

We bought a bound of flax seed from some monks a few years go. I think we might plant it this coming spring. Maybe at the fort.

Subsequently, I ended up talking to guests. I do not have the skill to disengage when I am done. So many interactions lasted to long.

Tomorrow’s post will be about some feedback I got from an Australian farmer who was there when they took the guns.

My daughter spent several years working for a corporation where she didn’t feel her skills were appreciated. One of her coworkers did not interact well with her.

When she changed positions and is in a new team, with a new chain of command, she was exposed to some people that she described as having “quiet competence”.

Ally came to me with a sickle. Told me it needed to be sharpened. I found some sharpening stones and did so.

I’m sitting out in the courtyard for the light on a capped well. The director took pictures.

Seems that there is a skill to sharpening, which I have been working on, but which I didn’t have on my list.

So I got another, “He just sharpened it, amazing.”

All in all, I had a good time. My bad knee hurts, but that’s a good hurt. I was outside most of the day. I meet people.

The only thing that would have enhanced it would have been if there was live fire involved.