Fall Means Time To Make Basil Walnut Pesto

This year's basil walnut pesto about to go in the freezer.

It's not even Fall officially yet, and I am already mourning the missing solar radiation. What we lack in light and heat though, is easily made up by the bounty of the summer we are now harvesting.

Earlier this week we harvested our basil before first frost came, which it did a couple of days later. And when the basil is in, it is time to make pesto.


Our Basil Walnut Recipe


4 cups (packed) fresh basil

1 cup toasted walnuts

4 large cloves garlic

1 cup olive oil

1/2 cup Parmesan cheese

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper


I put all ingredients into our 1970s Osterizer blender, saving the oil for last. I pulsed the blender, and used my wooden spoon to push everything down between pulses.

When nicely mixed, I put it all into ice cube trays to be frozen and used over the next few months. This is a very convenient way to preserve and dispense this yummy fresh food.

Usually we use our pesto on pasta. Recently we were thrilled to discover how to use it on pizza as an alternative to tomato based pizza sauce. 

We make a pesto and kale pizza that is a total taste sensation, that is made with our pesto, our dough, our kale, and mozzarella (we don't make that... yet).

Tomorrow will be pizza day as we now have lots of pesto, and our kale is going gangbusters due to the cooler weather we have been having lately. 

And what gardener doesn't like discovering new ways of using kale? 

Happy harvest to all the gardeners (and eaters) out there. Enjoy your celebration of good food, good friends, and good times.

Garlic Harvest

It's the last two weeks of summer, but the signs of fall are everywhere.

Our grassy field is turning brown, temperatures are cooling, and the hummingbirds are almost all gone. It can only mean one thing - harvest time. 

Freshly harvested garlic. We cured it outside and in the garage for two weeks.

One of the joys of this year's harvest has been our first ever crop of garlic. Our experiment was a success. The challenge now? Could I learn to braid it?

Hey, this isn't what the nice lady's braid looked like.

Linda and I watched a video posted by a woman that had been working on a garlic farm for decades and had probably done hundreds of braids in her day. She had prepared the scapes (stems) beforehand by soaking them in water to make them more pliable, and put together a beautiful braid in no time. It was hard work, even for her.

My messy twist of cured garlic.

Having watched one video once, I gathered together our cured garlic to try my hand at a new skill. It was fun to work with, but I did not soak the scapes first and it was amazing how tough they were to manipulate. But I persevered bravely, and attempted to organize the uncooperative stems into something both functional and beautiful.

I got functional, although garlic plants are inherently beautiful, so you can't really go wrong, even if they aren't perfectly put together.

Our first homegrown garlic, ready for eating.

After I was done I downgraded my description from "braid" to "weave".  Then maybe to "twisted"? Or "mangled"? But I did end up with a structure that had a handle on top, and all the garlic together so it can be hung.

Just a few more weeks and we will be planting next year's garlic plot. It will be the first using our own cloves. It will be another opportunity to perfect my braiding technique.

A Year Without Jam

2011-2012: Our year without jam

Giving things up for a trial period of one year challenges us to overcome habitual, lazy thinking. People often automatically figure that they could never live without a whole range of vitally important 'necessities'. Often a 'year without' project can challenge these ideas.

There are a lot of things that inquisitive people have given up for a year in order to test themselves and their notions of what is really required for a happy, content life. There are thousands of such challenges, including going a year without:

• paying for groceries
• heat 
• Disney 
• alcohol 
• plastic
• TV 
• shopping, and 
• buying anything new. 

My favourite is Dilbert comic creator Scott Adams and his year without fear project, or "My Year Of Living Dangerously", as he quipped.

What I have never seen, is anyone that has done a year without jam, something we did over the past slightly less sweet 365 days. "Who would want to do that?" you may ask. It would be like going a year without candy (which has been done). But as crazy as it seems, we did it.

We didn't only go without our own homemade blackberry jam, we didn't buy any jam either. No jam at all.

Last year, after picking several kilograms of blackberries, we decided not to make our usual batch of jam. Wanting to skip the dreaded 4 cups of berries to 7 cups of sugar, we chose to freeze the berries instead (freeze on a cookie tray first, then transfer to a ziplock bag). We used them throughout the year, no sugar added.

Our anti-jam status was partly a result of our urge to simplify things (it is a process to make and can jam), part health consciousness and wanting to avoid the 'white death', and part wanting to see what would happen if we tried to live without our perfect preserves.

All my pampered life I have had jam on toast, peanut butter and jam sandwiches, and biscuits 'n jam. I would have thought that I would have had withdrawal symptoms when we went jamless. Or at least experienced some irritability or anxiety when we didn't get our purple sugar fix. But no - it was wham-bam-forget-the-jam, and on life went. There was no hardship, no drama. It was almost too easy.

It is easy to get used to luxuries, but it is also true that it is easy living without them. If we never try to give up any of what we believe is essential to our happiness, how can we know if they really are essential? What if we are wrong, and life without them is better?

A "year without" project usually ends up teaching us that we can live without most of the stuff we are working so hard to attain. It also shows us that we can be resilient, rise to the challenge, and be a better person going forward.

Scott Adams, after his year without fear, found that he had sustained a few more minor injuries during his project. However, they were all worth it, he said, because he enjoyed being the kind of person that does not hesitate, and says YES to life's opportunities.

During our year without jam we learned a bit more about what is really necessary in life (very little as it turns out). Also, we learned that we like to be the kind of disciplined people that can say no to pathways that do not lead to healthfulness and happiness in the long run.

Our past year may have been slightly less sweet, but it was so much more satisfying.

Emboldened by our no jam success, we now figure that we could live without a lot of other things, too. Toilet paper? Driving? Negativity? Money?

So much to give up, so much to learn, so little time.

Best Before Date: Using Food Efficiently

Are we approaching our best before date?

The person who is full says, "That is past its best before date", while someone who is hungry says, "Let me take a look."

If a cook threw out all food on or immediately after the best before date (BBD) printed on them, they would end up wasting a lot of food. In order to maximize on nutrition we should eat food as fresh as possible, but in order to use food efficiently, we should not throw out food that is still edible.

The best before date on food should be read flexibly. They are manufacturers suggestions, and are therefore advisories rather than edicts. No one is going to get sick (within reason), or arrested, for using food past the stamped date.

Some foods are still edible (although possibly not as tasty or nutritious) long past the date printed on them. Honey, for example, may have a BBD, even though it literally never goes bad. Archaeologists in Egypt discovered honey thousands of years old that was still edible, although past its BBD by a few eons.

So what is the true shelf life of various foods and beverages? Such information is crucial to know so that we can:

1. Maintain food safety - we want to get efficient, not sick, and
   
2. Save money - it is inefficient to throw out still edible food.
   

An excellent resource that can help extend the contents of your fridge and pantry is the website eatbydate.com.

In the site's About section they state: "Eat by Date offers info, answers and analysis related to food shelf life, food safety, food storage and how long will food last." There is a lot of interesting information here that may cause you to look at best before dates, and your food, differently.

If you are into cooking, cutting food waste, maintaining your health, and saving money, check out this handy kitchen management tool. I found out that my fish sauce could be good for up to a couple of years past the BBD.

Time to make a big, hot pot of Asian noodle soup!

Valuing Berry Patches And The Commons

"Rather than by your culture spoiled,
Desist, and give us nature wild."
- Matthew Green

I have been gleaning late season blackberries this week. My pink, purple stained hands are a work of art with angry red slashes and dots recording my encounters with piercing thorns. Still, what joy to experience a part of my world that has not been privatized, put behind fences and gated off. The ample blackberry brambles along roadways are still in the commons, and are free to all willing to pay the price in a bit of pain.

Small thorns are still in my fingers, not-so-gentle reminders of my brush with the brambles. While picking I thought of how out of place the practice of free berry picking is in our current system. There is no monetary value assigned to these berries, and enclosure has not struck... yet.

But occasionally I expect to show up at my favourite location only to see the berry patch surrounded by a chain link fence, and some 'businessperson' at the gate collecting admission fee. What a sad day that would be, however expected the outcome. Land-grabs are still taking place all over the globe, including in our own back yards. We must protect what is left of the commons before they take that, too.

About 500 years ago, before capitalists started assigning everything a monetary value, the planet was our supermarket, our mega, mega mall. It was all the commons, and humans gleaned freely from it.

"The commons were traditionally defined as the elements of the environment - forests, atmosphere, rivers, fisheries or grazing land - that are shared, used and enjoyed by all. It refers to resources that are collectively owned or shared between or among populations. These resources are said to be 'held in common'. In some areas the process by which the commons were transformed into private property was termed enclosure."

We can not even comprehend the freedom of the commons in our money based economy. Today we are more familiar with commercial complexes called "The Commons", which is a complete bastardization of the term. More generously, we define the commons as parks and places where we recreate in order to recover from being privatized to near death. At one time we knew the value of the commons, and the struggle against enclosure was, and is, persistent.

Today we know, as Oscar Wilde said, 'the price of everything, but the value on nothing'. Most of us have no other way of valuing the world around us except with money equivalents.

However, the experience of picking the berries has great value for me, and it pays off in mental well-being. I value being outside in nature. On one day of picking, the soft warm rain was an added bonus. As was the quiet that surrounded me, punctuated only by my occasional cries of "ouch!", and the guttural vocalizations of the resident ravens. The air so fresh, the berries on the vine so shiny black, the spiders and their webs so HUGE. Bending, moving, stretching, reaching. I am doing a slow motion Berry Dance. How many money equivalents is this experience worth?

And then there is that jam, that sweet, purple profusion of perfectness. And frozen berries to put in smoothies in the morning. Many things have great value, but are beyond our limited ways of pricing things arbitrarily. It seems to me that the things that can not be bought with cash are the most valuable of all.

Things like friendship, love, play, and watching the fog lift off the hills. Berry patches, the commons, and home made jam spread on bread fresh out of the oven have no price. These are, hopefully, forever beyond enclosure and the range of the for-profit soldiers and their price guns.

Save Money On Groceries

"The price of food relative to average income is heading for levels that have not been seen since the early 19th century, and it will not come down again in our lifetimes."
- Gwynne Dyer

Food prices are rising faster than they have in decades, marking the end of fifty years of Cheap Food. The Associated Press reported in April that, "Wholesale prices rose more than expected last month as food prices surged by the most in 26 years." Produce prices went up a whopping 49% in March. With prices increasing at such an alarming rate more and more people are wondering how to save money on groceries.

Here are a few of the ways we use to save money on our grocery budget.

1. Take advantage of discounted food. Food is constantly marked down in all areas of grocery stores. Some items, like cereal boxes cut open during stocking, or goods approaching their best before date, are barely different than the items surrounding them. Discounts can be as high as 50% off regular price or more. I have bargained with staff to get a discount on the discount. Often they are happy to get these products out the door. Choose carefully, though, and have a rough plan for what you might do with certain products. For example, discounted peanut butter could be used to make cookies to throw in the freezer and share with friends. A big bag of tomatoes can be used to make a tomato soup much more savory than any salt-heavy canned variety. Be prepared to eat, or process, discounted items as soon as possible.
2. Make a list and go shopping on a full stomach. Do not go foraging for food with a growling stomach, or wander the aisles - you will be prone to expensive impulse purchases. Know what you are there for and don't be distracted. We start our Master List with the ongoing one that we keep on the fridge. Using our local store flyer online we identifying sales and coupons. Shopping is a large purchase and we plan ahead: what do we want, what do we need, are expensive things on sale? We will wait until the price is right, then stock up. Planning ahead reduces your grocery bill, and minimizes having to run out for things at unexpected times.
   
3. Know the price/100gms of your purchases. When you know the cost per hundred grams of your food you can start to compare items. Comparing brand names vs. generics, varieties of protein sources, and costs of processed foods vs. whole foods makes you think about things like the nutritional value of products, where your food comes from, and why items cost what they do.
4. Use the bulk foods section selectively. Armed with your understanding of cost per hundred grams you can use the bulk foods section when it makes sense to do so. Often we believe bulk foods are always cheaper. This is not the case. Using cost/100g, the last time I went shopping I discovered that walnuts and sultana raisins in the baking section were cheaper than the bulk food section.
5. Use your food efficiently to maximize freshness and minimize waste. Minimize the waste that occurs once you have the food at home. Decide what to make depending on what needs to be eaten so that all foods move through your kitchen at peak freshness. Use your freezer to preserve foods for quick meals later. Many fresh foods can be frozen whole such as tomatoes, mushrooms, bananas and berries. Even the freezer in your fridge, when organized well, can hold a great amount of food.
   
6. Avoid the middle aisles of the grocery store. The perimeter of the store is where you will find fresh whole foods. Middle aisles feature processed, expensive, and nutritionally questionable foods.
7. Process your own food. With wholesome ingredients you can make many of the flaccid foods manufacturers try to sell you at jacked up prices. Things like ketchup, jams, salsa, baked and refried beans, bakery products, and yogurt are all examples of foods that you can process yourself. The foods you process will have fewer artificial ingredients, and will be fresher and tastier. You may enjoy creating your own special brands just the way you like them. Never mind the savings - it is fun.
   
8. Check your receipt. I give my receipt the once-over before I leave the store, or after I put my groceries away at home. If I find any mistakes I take the receipt to Customer Service for a refund. Mistakes happen (sometimes often) and are always fixed by courteous staff. The grocery trade is highly competitive - you are a valued customer that they want to keep.
   
9. Grow your own food. The ultimate way to save on your food bill - plant a garden.
10. Consider going on a CR diet, or at least cutting your calories to suit your requirements. How would you like to save 10-25% on your food bill? It seems almost too simple, but just eat less. CR diets (not just for weight loss) restrict calorie intake rather than eating without consumption limits. Do not eat for entertainment, and only eat what you need to maintain health.

Once food is in our home I minimize wastage as much as possible. It is estimated that 50% of food is never eaten. Edible food is wasted every day in the food industry, including grocery stores. There are ways to save money and do your part to keep good food from going to the dumpster. I am not going to the back of the store for grub yet, but many do. You will find edible food there, and at a discount that is hard to beat.




Photo: Edible food 'rescued' from a grocery store dumpster by People Helping People, a group that takes the food to local food banks.

Emergency Preparedness: Surviving In Tough Times

5 year map of earthquake epicentres in SW British Columbia/Pacific NW

Here on the west coast of North America being prepared for an emergency, say a 7.5 earthquake, has a very good chance of saving your life. This week 600 000 people on the east coast have been without power for days after the worst winter storm in decades. More snow is forecast for today. At times like these, having a plan and ready supplies can make the difference between a memorable experience and discomfort, injury, and possibly death.

Our longest period without power since being on the coast was in December of 2006. At that time we experienced the most powerful winter storm in these parts since the 1960s. There was a lot of rain, but far worse were the gale force winds. The roof blew off the building next door and 20 residents had to be evacuated in the middle of the night.

Besides missing some siding, our building rode out the storm. But it was a rough ride in our third floor unit fearing the shrieking winds would blow our windows in. Lying in our shaking bed trying to sleep that night we could feel that the whole wood-frame building was shuddering with the gusts. We were without power and heat for almost five days after the storm.

Emergency preparedness focuses on independence, self-reliance, and community robustness, qualities that we have largely abandoned in recent decades. As we have gained wealth we have chosen to pay others to provide us with everything we need. But our supply chains are notoriously fragile and entirely dependent on a disappearing fossil fuels. In an emergency it will not matter how much money you have. What you will need is an emergency plan and supplies so you can rely on yourself.

Relying on self-interested corporations and governments is a recipe for disaster in itself. They don't so much want to help us as exploit us for their own purposes. As soon as we become unprofitable, or vote for a different party, they will move on, leaving us to fend for ourselves (like we used to, and will again). We must be able to care for ourselves for a minimum of 3 days in the event of a disaster, and perhaps much longer if capitalism experiences a USSR-style collapse, which still seems to be a distinct possibility.

Speaking of collapse, in 2008 when the so-called good times came to a crashing halt, I noticed the effects in my local grocery store. Half the time it looked like there had just been a food riot. Shelves of staples like flour were near empty and disheveled. Most grocery stores would empty out in 3 days or less after a catastrophic event. I thought about that while scrounging for food, and it was a pretty scary thought; I felt very vulnerable. Perhaps it was coincidence, but conditions have improved along with the stock market since then.

Over the past few years we have improved our personal preparedness. The goals are consistent with our trend toward a simpler, more stable, secure, independent life. I am no survivalist, but I do want to be prepared, and being ready for emergencies gets me closer to my ultimate goal which is to live in as sustainable a way as possible. I can do without being preyed on by a system that benefits from our dependence and ignorance.


There is a lot of good information out there to help you implement your own emergency plan and help you attain some level of independence. Preparedness expert, Kathy Harrison, wrote Just In Case: How To Be Self-Sufficient When The Unexpected Happens to help individuals and families plan for unplanned events. It more or less covers everything you need to know to begin to take care of yourself and your loved ones. Harrison implores us, for our own good, to be prepared for the endless list of potential emergencies. She convinced me.

There are also very good resources on line, and available in your community. Often local programs focus on the risks appropriate to your area. At the library, on-line, or at city hall look for information on emergency preparedness, living off grid, simple living, or preppers. Look up 'survivalists' if you want to go hard core. All will assist you in increasing your ability to care for yourself when others can't or won't.

These are the basic beginning steps Linda and I have taken so far:

• stored water to last two people a week with minimal rations (1L/person/day), plus chemical water treatment to prepare additional water if needed
• two grab bags with warm clothing, food, water, tent, sleeping bags, multi-tool and other supplies
  
• a single-burner white gas stove for cooking, with extra gas
  
• a set of sturdy footwear by bed to prevent cuts from broken glass and debris
• identified safe places in our home (in doorways), as well as in the area (higher ground out of the tsunami zone)
• have handy flashlights, candles, crank-powered radio
• lashed down heavy objects to stabilize them in the event of the inevitable Big One
• stored food to last a few weeks
  

It is easy to deny the essential nature of emergency preparedness. No one likes to think of the ground shifting violently around them whether from earthquakes or financial collapse. I am relying less on the fragile consumer system and am learning to take care of myself. Increasing self-sufficiency pays dividends whether in response to local natural disasters or global economic turmoil.

I feel safer and more secure knowing I am prepared for another economic collapse, or a once every 500 year earthquake. I don't know about you, but the images of Haiti would have spurred me into action if I had not already started. Don't wait. Your life, and the lives of your loved ones could literally depend on it. Plus it feels very good to know you are prepared and able to care for one's self and family.

Here's to a safe, secure and simple life.

Old Skills For A New World: Canning, Baking, Gardening on The Upswing

Modern society moves at a bewildering pace. Hardly able to keep up we succumb to the enticements of technology, entertainment, and the fast life. We are busy having fun, but along the way we have forgotten how to take care of ourselves. Basic skills of self sufficiency are dying with our elders. Increasingly, people are looking to low tech 'heritage' methods of living.

Progress and prosperity have made us into the largest collection of humanity in history incapable of taking care of ourselves. Houses and cars have become wombs, government and big business the umbilical cord. What will we do as we are born into a new world of expensive energy and deteriorating environment?

Our fault is to feel safe and secure in our habits, as if the way things are now is the way they will always be. Recent global economic turmoil has shown us the precariousness of this illusion. Things can, and will change, and we best be ready.

Heritage skills, as we refer to them today, are tried and tested instructions for taking care of ourselves. Activities like sewing, canning, and kneading bread seem like quaint pastimes from ancient history. Victory Gardens are making a comeback, as are food preservation workshops.

VicinSea, commenting on a previous post here, let me know she is a 20 year simple liver and part-time heritage skills teacher teaching food preservation, basketry, sewing/repairs and other self-sufficiency workshops in the Seattle area. It looks like she is keeping busy.

We are dependent on technology and low cost fossil energy to provide us with what we need. What happens when cheap energy is gone? Will you reach for the power can opener, or its hand-powered equivalent? What happens if trucks stop delivering food to our supermarkets, or the food they deliver is so expensive we can't afford it? We can learn skills to take care of our needs within our communities. Victoria, B.C. has a variety of options for learning.

Who has time to bake bread, let alone can your own produce? Make your own clothing? Right. But when cheap energy is gone, or we have lost or quit our job, we will need to look for healthier, less expensive alternatives. Life skills from days gone by will serve us well in the future.

Choosing a less complicated lifestyle is about freeing up time so I can live in ways that are beneficial to myself, others, and the environment. You either spend time in the blackberry bramble and the canning corner, or you spend time at work so you can pay someone to pick the berries, process them, and ship them to your local store.

I would rather harvest the berries and risk the bramble thorns. I would rather tend a bubbling cauldron of blackberry jamiliciousness. I would rather live a slower, less money-oriented, independent existence.

I love having the time to choose to pick berries and get scratched... in the rain. An added benefit is that I know what is in my food. I am in complete control of ingredients. No MSG, no high-sucrose corn syrup. And it saves me money.

If you are a life-long student, creating a simpler, slower-paced lifestyle could be for you. My household has already had Blackberry JamFest 2009, and a case of the freshest Blackberry jam available awaits the whole wheat, home-baked bread. We have had time to learn about a whole food, vegetarian diet. It has not been a burden, this change to simpler, lower-tech living. It is an interesting, thrilling, and tasty adventure.

Now my partner and I are learning how to cut each others hair. This is a money saving idea that is sure to be popular with the women, most of whom would rather go out in public without makeup than let their partner anywhere near their hair with scissors. Go slowly - you can always cut it shorter, you can't cut it longer. What could be next? Rock wall building? Hide tanning? Flint knapping?

What will you do when the power goes out? How about setting your songbook up on your inert laptop, take out your acoustic guitar, and, using your old-style ipod shuffle as a slide, sing the power's-out blues. Then have some home-baked bread with your own canned jam, followed by canned peaches by candle light. When it is time to turn in you can crawl under the bed cover you quilted with scrap pieces of fabric from your electric blanket. Heritage skills, not just for your grandparents any more.