Learning To Cook Our Favourite Restaurant Foods - Vietnamese Salad Rolls

Salad rolls with peanut sauce. Fresh, colourful, and tasty. Very tasty.
Recipe at bottom of page.

Eating out is fun. Who doesn't like someone else to do all the cooking and cleaning up? But at what cost to your food budget?

Eating out accounts for about 44% of what the average North American stuffs in their pie hole every year. The food bought may be yummy, but it is also several times more expensive than the same food made at home. 

Many years ago Linda and I were looking to tighten our budget. Eating out was a natural place to look to save a lot of money. 

Rice paper is available in the import section of your grocery store.

We decided to eliminate eating outside our home, something that could potentially save us thousands of dollars a year. 

We began to miss some of our favourite restaurant foods. We had to either learn to live without them, or learn to make them ourselves. We chose the later alternative.

That meant learning to make dishes from Mexico, India, Thailand, and Vietnam, among others. It has also meant many years of enjoyment learning about different cultures, geographies, and foods. 

Vietnamese salad rolls with peanut sauce provided one such tasty lesson. 

We had them tonight, and they did not disappoint. We added dried basil and green onions from our garden. Salad rolls often include shrimp or pork. We made ours with tofu.

They are considered an hor d'oeuvre, although we ate ours as a main course. 

Next time we will pair them with a hot and sour soup recipe that we made earlier this week for the first time.

Our cooking knowledge has come in handy now that we live in a rural area where there are few restaurants of the type we would frequent back in the day. 

We can still enjoy the foods we learned to love in restaurants, and save a ton of money in the process.

Start saving money now by reducing restaurant visits, and increasing home cooked meals. Save money, have fun, eat well. That's what I call a win-win-win.

Vietnamese Salad Rolls With Peanut Sauce Recipe


In this recipe, the only thing that needs to be cooked is rice noodles, and they cook quickly, say, 2-3 minutes at a boil. When they are done, drain and use cold water to cool off. Drain again.

The tricky part is rehydrating and handling the rounds of rice paper. The dry rounds are immersed in warm water for a few seconds. I leave mine in the water for up to 60 seconds, then transfer them to a clean, dry cloth for another 30 seconds (to absorb water), then on to a plate for filling and rolling.

I usually soak and use two at a time to make a roll. That is because a single rice paper is difficult to handle and roll without tearing. 


Once on the plate, we filled the round with:

- rice noodles, cold

- marinated baked tofu, strips

- green onions

- shredded carrot

- shredded lettuce

- bell pepper, sliced

- basil, fresh or dried



To roll up:

- filling should be at bottom end of round. Fold sides in and over the filling a bit, then start rolling up from the bottom, holding it all together as you go. Be patient, and once you get going and repeatedly make one after another, it becomes meditative. If you roll it tightly it will all stick together, no problem.



To make the peanut sauce combine:

3 tbsp peanut butter

2 tsp   Bragg or soy sauce

1 tsp   sesame oil

1/2 tsp chili flakes

Top with a few fresh peanuts.


If sauce is thick it can be used as is, or if you like it runnier, dilute with a bit of water, or coconut milk if you have some on hand. 


Enjoy.

Finding A New Place To Grow

Our search for a place to settle more self-sufficiently (and cheaply) in Nova Scotia is off to a slow start, mostly because we do everything slowly. But that is not the only reason for our leisurely pace.

There are a few other reasons not to rush into making one of the largest purchases of our lives.

1. House prices have been dropping since we got here in 2014, and continue to drop.

2. We planted our garden. We can't leave it now, can we?

3. The rental we are currently living is, in many ways, perfect for our needs. Plus, our new landlords are excellent folks. 

4. We have never bought a home before, and it's a scary commitment. 

The house shown above caught our interest as we continue our research into the market here. 

At 79 sq m (850 sq ft), it was listed at $84,000 one year ago. Since then its price had been reduced to $47,500, and it just sold for $42,000. That is a substantial discount, and shows that rushing right now could cost us more.

This particular house, though, was too far from services, requiring a 30 minute drive to the nearest town. It was on a smaller lot (929 sq m/10,000 sq ft), which was sloped. Not the best for a wheelchair. 

On the plus side, the house was in the size range we are looking for, and came with 4 cords of wood. It also has the historical significance of being on the oldest graded road in Canada. 

Granville Road was established in 1606 by Samuel de Champlain, running from Port-Royal to Digby Cape, NS.

Better than that, how about the view across the street?

In between watering and weeding our garden, we will continue to look for a new place to grow and thrive. Until we discover our special place, we will continue to enjoy where we are here and now.

We hope you are doing the same.

Over The Top

The consumer economy is on the downside.

People want to believe that the consumer thrill ride is a roller coaster that only goes up. That defies reality, and the laws of physics - throwing something up in the air and expecting it to stay there.

"What goes up, must come down." And in many parts of the world economies based on unchecked consumerism are coming down. This global ride is over the top. It seems like a good time to me to prepare for the ride down the other side.

There are many reasons not to buy a ticket for a ride on the rickety consumer trolley car . Right now one good reason is to save money, use it to pay off debt, and prepare for the possibility of continuing tough times.

Most of what people are shopping for today are wasteful distractions. If I were to buy anything right now it would be something that would help me live more self-sufficiently. My current list includes things like a hand-cranked flour mill.

And since we pretty much gave away everything we owned before moving from coast to coast two years ago, we could use some gardening tools, a large soup pot, and canning equipment.

We are not planning any spending on travel, electronics or shopping for things like clothing. We are getting ready for continued, if not worsening, tough times. If nothing really adverse happens, then at least we will be ready for anything, and some sort of economic change must eventually transpire as we use the planet up.

What goes up, must come down, and it never hurts to be prepared.

This ride does not have to go from AAA to AAAAAAAAAA! If one is ready to take care of the basics, hopefully with the help of a strong family and community, the ride down the other side can be enjoyable - like life was before the wobbly consumer thrill ride laid tracks over the whole planet.

Hold on to your hats. A post consumer world is at the bottom of this slope.

Living Is My Work

My office - this is where I like to work most.

"Maybe a person's time would be as well spent raising food as raising money to buy food." 

- Frank A. Clark

I have always thought that I would rather work at providing for myself directly rather than work at a "career" making money so I could pay someone else to help provide for my needs.

I'm not that interested in working for money, or in buying things with that money. Some people may interpret that as lazy or unmotivated, but they would be wrong.

Just because I am not motivated by paid work doesn't mean I don't like work. I enjoy expending effort, vigorously at times, but I want to do so while honouring my priorities and meeting my own needs in a more vital, nourishing manner.

I enjoy hard work while building things, or growing food, or transporting myself around on my bike. Canning food for the winter, baking bread, cleaning my house, or fixing things - these are all work activities that I get excited about.

Living is my work, and I love it.

A day at the "office"? Only if it is my garden.

"Growing your own food is like printing your own money."

 - Ron Finley

Homesteading Wish List

Yesterday we celebrated giving our notice to move out of our beach home. As of June 1st we will be officially homeless, although we prefer to call it being "on the road" for a while. It is a very exciting time for us as we transition into the next phase of our lives.

For years we have been brainstorming what our ideal sanctuary might look like. Below is the  homesteading wish list that we have come up with.

• 2 to 10 acres of land
• a few acres of forest
• a pond, stream, or river 
• chickens
• goats
• rain barrels
• wind turbine
• wood stove
• tiny home of 350 - 900 square feet
• area for large garden near house
• root cellar
• fruit trees
• solar panels
• solar hot water heating
• clean non-fracked well water
• no mines, fracking, polluting industry or development of any kind in the area.
• no extreme hot or cold weather

And if that is not enough, we want the land and home to cost less than $50,000 dollars. There is only one place in Canada that can provide what we want at the price we are willing to pay - the East Coast.

It looks like we are going to have a 6000 kilometre cross-country adventure in our near future. First though, we need to pare down our possessions to what will fit in the back of our truck, a space about the size of a small closet.

In order to achieve our homesteading goal we are going to have to go extremely minimal first. We are both looking forward to dumping our excess baggage and being light and free for a while.

Then, Sanctuary.

10 Tips For Living Like It's The Collapse

#8: Have a well stocked pantry.

There is nothing like a good, old collapse to put things into perspective. You really find out what is important after the supermarket shelves are empty, gas stations closed, and the unprepared are in a panic.

Although we have escaped total collapse so far, middle- and lower-class citizens around the world are experiencing a significant drop in their standard of living. Some analysts predict that this trend will continue resulting in catastrophic changes that will drop citizen's standard of living forever.

How would you handle a post-collapse standard-of-living equivalent to half of what it is now, or worst case, one-third? If you earned $60,000 annually today, then your post-collapse standard-of-living could be between $20,000 and $30,000.

If you think voluntary simple living can be tough (and it can), think about what involuntary simple living would feel like. Forced simplicity is the norm for more and more people that previously enjoyed globally lavish lifestyles. By all appearances, collapse has already begun.

People wonder when things will get better. I wonder if they will get better. I would say that rather than continue to chase a fading dream, now is time to face a new reality that will require everyone to live more simply.

Choosing to adopt a simpler lifestyle now will be much easier than being forced to after an economic or environmental collapse.

It will be better to be prepared rather than panicked.


10 Tips For Living Like Its The Collapse

1. Keep it light enough to travel (only own essential things that add to your life).
2. Know how to cook using basic food staples like flour, rice, and dried beans.
3. Grow a garden, cultivate fruit trees, compost.
4. Live in an area of low population density.
5. Know your neighbours, cultivate community through shared projects.
6. Develop skills that allow you to live a happy, healthy lifestyle with very little.
7. Think of what you have to offer for bartering - possessions, or skills like hair cutting, baking, sewing, farming, animal husbandry, building, fixing...
8. Keep a well stocked pantry, rotate through foods for maximum efficiency.
9. Have an emergency kit prepared (good for coping with weather disasters, earthquakes, or economic troubles).
10. Build savings to cover basic expenses during an emergency, period of unemployment, or an outright collapse.

I don't know if we will reach collapse in my lifetime, and I hope we don't. But history shows that collapses have occurred many times before, and will occur again. It is a worthy endeavour to think about what is most important to you before rather than after something happens, then build a life around what you find.

Some will find that a simpler life is more agreeable to them than their previous lifestyle, collapse or no collapse.

Simple Pleasures: Growing Food

Crazy growth! Yumm - organic veggies for next to nothing.

There are not many things I enjoy more than growing food. Nurturing a garden means entering into an intimate relationship with the environment. And what an amazing, loving, giving, abundant relationship it is.

Not only do I enjoy learning to work with nature in order to procure the things I need to live, but I also enjoy being able to do so without the continual exchange of money. Cash is not natural.

The exchange that we enter when we grow our own food utilizes other forms of currency, including respect, reciprocity, and romance. We enter into a love affair with the earth, and we must strive to make sure it is not an abusive relationship.

Sunflowers, beans, kale, strawberries, and one potato plant growing enthusiastically
in a chaos of edible joy

Yesterday I biked the 4 km from home to the community garden to check on the progress of our 4X8 raised bed plot. It had been a few days since my last visit and I was not sure what to expect.

When I arrived I felt like my little bit of soil was throwing a surprise party for me. It was a fiesta of growth celebrating another season of tapping the green fuse.

I harvested a big bag of kale, which allowed the chard more room to stretch out. I tended to the beans which were leaning into the sunflowers which were leaning into the sun. The potato was tamed to benefit the kale, and then everything got a good spray of cool, clean water.

This gives me a wonderful feeling I don't get in the grocery store.

After picking (and eating) some red and juicy strawberries, it was time for the pleasant 4 km ride home with the goodie bag presented to me stuffed in my back pack.

Before I left, as I gazed lovingly into the wild tangle of my garden, I sensed that it is also enjoying this mutually beneficial relationship. It shows its appreciation for my efforts by feeding me for darn near free.

Growing my own food gives me a jolt of pure simple pleasure. I can't think of a better way to spend my time, or of a better relationship to cultivate.

Amish Get Last LOL

There is nothing funny about millions of people losing grid power, but when I saw the Amish meme going around since Sandy hit, I had a bit of a chuckle. Those Amish are obviously on to something.

Amish members live simple lives and tend to be wary of modern day conveniences. They live by the rules of the church, (outlined in the Ordnung, which means 'order'), which regulate day to day living. Among other things, the Ordnung includes prohibitions on the use of things like cars, telephones, and grid electricity.

There are restrictions against grid electricity because the Amish wish to be disconnected from the greater society and modern values that are inconsistent with their teachings. Connecting to the grid would allow worldly influences to enter their homes, and could spark a competition for what they call 'status goods'.

Trying to think like the Amish, I came up with a possible scenario:

Grid power = TV/radio/computer = exposure to advertising = manufactured desire for goods and the status they confer = competition = discordance in the community.

This is certainly the scene played out endlessly in the consumer world by which the Amish are surrounded. Unlike the outside world, I doubt that Amish kids beat each other up in order to steal trendy sneakers, or ball caps, or coats, or ipods, or any other status item.

The Amish aren't against electricity however, and do make their own moderate amounts of power using generators, solar panels, and other technologies that allow them to be self-sufficient. It is enough power to do certain limited things, but not enough to be used indiscriminately and wastefully.

The Amish are not afraid of manual labour, and consider it to be character building. Therefore, labour saving devices hold little appeal for them, although you might find a washing machine hooked up to a generator in some communities. These simple living folks may seem backward, but they aren't stupid (not that it is stupid to wash clothes by hand, it is just really difficult, especially if you have 7 kids).

The Amish are indeed on to something, and that is - use electricity (and modern conveniences) selectively, and only if they are powered by self-generated electricity. Living more simply allows them to use less power, be energy self-sufficient, and enjoy the benefits of good old manual labour. Green on green on green, Amish style.

The Amish Action Plan

1. Take a page from the Ordnung regarding electricity use.
2. Read it by candle light.
3. Get rid of most of your power hungry appliances and electronics. 
4. Set up your solar panels/wind generator and say goodbye to the power grid.
5. Be gentle on the earth, live well, and be prepared for the next extreme weather event.

Muscle Power Monday

Sustainable camping

A more muscle-powered future beacons. Energy is continually getting more expensive. A good way to reduce energy use and power bills is to put your body to work. Get ready for the return of good old fashioned work.

Work is good for your body, good for your bank account, and good for the environment. It's what I call green-on-green-on-green.

It has psychological benefits, too. As author Madeleine L'Engle pointed out to procrastinators everywhere,

"Inspiration usually comes during work rather than before it." 

Physical work, or 'exercise' as it is often referred to, is proven good medicine for mind and body, and is even better when performed for the practical purposes of every day living. I am thinking less treadmill and more turning topsoil.

Less thigh master, and more using your bicycle to pull the trailer to the campground.

Muscle Powered Activities For Fitness, Frugality, And The Earth

• walking or riding a bike for transportation
• kneading bread
• growing a garden
• doing dishes
• washing laundry manually
• hanging laundry on a line
• using a push mower
• playing outside with the kids
• raking leaves (with a rake) for composting
• turning compost
• pumping water from the well
• grinding grain into flour
• using hand tools

Get work done - be inspired!

Spaceship Earth Monday

Spaceship Earth

The National Space Society (NSS) is a non-profit organization dedicated to the creation of a spacefaring civilization. Their mission is "to promote social, economic, technological, and political change in order to expand civilization beyond Earth, to settle space and to use the resulting resources to build a hopeful and prosperous future for humanity." Wow.

While I am all for exploration, I think we should concentrate on getting our stuff together here on spaceship Earth first before we go blasting around the universe looking for new places to exploit and destroy.

Perhaps the findings of the NSS can help us build a hopeful and prosperous future for humanity here at home.

The following suggestions are made on the NSS website in a section called Colonies In Space. If these guidelines were applied on Earth we wouldn't need to look around for somewhere to go when this planet is done.

Colonies In Space, T. A. Heppenheimer 

• Most if not all of the colonists' wastes will have to be recycled. The space colony will therefore have to be a closed-cycle ecology par excellence. 
• Steak will be a rarity. Meat poses a problem because of the waste involved in feeding animals a diet which puts them in competition with human beings. Cattle are rather wasteful at converting feed to beef. They need over twice as much feed as rabbits to produce a pound of edible meat. What is worse, cattle feed includes a lot of corn or grain which can be eaten directly by humans. Rabbits, chickens, and goats are the most efficient animals for a given amount of feed. Fish are nearly as productive as the rabbit.
• Colonists can have plenty of grain and vegetables and they can also have fruit.
• The problem of waste treatment requires a solution which not only gets rid of the wastes, but which turns them into useful products. The usual processes used in Earthside communities, such as biological degradation or incineration, are unsuitable for the colony. These processes either produce pollution, or are incomplete since they produce a very messy sludge which must be disposed of.
• Wastes must be purified and converted into useful products without producing pollution. Minerals and fertilizers must be carefully recycled. 
• There will be no autos in the colony. 
• Colonists will spend several hours a week in the space farm, then go home to eat the meat or cook potatoes and vegetables which they have grown with their own hands.
• There is one job which probably will prove too tedious to attract volunteers. This is the hand-pollination of vegetables. For this, the farm should include several hives of docile bees bred without stings or selected as particularly slow to get angry.

In his book Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, R. Buckminster Fuller reminds us that "we are all astronauts." Indeed, we are the crew on this glorious global spaceship, and like any crew, our job is to work together harmoniously for the greater good.

Earth is our original 'space colony' and we would be wise to adopt policies, behaviours, and attitudes that support and protect the systems on which we all depend. If so, this old, dependable, spaceship should be good for a few billion more trips around the Sun.

Off Grid Housing

Romania's entry to the 2012 European Solar Decathlon
produces 20% more power than it uses

My dad once accused me of being "so damn independent", and I guess it's true - I do enjoy the challenge of taking care of my own needs.

I would rather grow a garden than go to work to make money so I can pay someone else to provide my food. I don't mind being dependent on other people, because we are all dependent on each other, but I don't want to be dependent on corporations which, despite laws to the contrary, are not people.

I also don't like being dependent on a large, centralized power generation and distribution system run by number crunchers in expensive suits. When this system is the only game in town, and there are few to no alternatives to turn to when rates jump by 50% or more, I feel less like a valued customer, and more like a vassal.

It is time to break out of the Middle Ages, and quit paying tribute to the feudal corporate conglomerates that currently control power distribution in most parts of the world. Corporations are not people, and we therefore can not depend on them to provide our basic needs - they only care about profit, and not us or the best interests of the planet.

What we certainly can depend on, is our nearest star, the Sun. This massive, flaming ball of gas constantly washes the globe in enough free and abundant energy to meet all our needs. Our sustainable future will take advantage of this fact to bypass damaging private power production using coal, gas, and nuclear. It will enable each of us to become our own power producers.

The first U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon took place in 2002, and takes place biennially (the next one is Oct. 2013). The free-to-the-public event "challenges collegiate teams to design, build, and operate solar-powered houses that are cost-effective, energy-efficient, and attractive. The winner of the competition is the team that best blends affordability, consumer appeal, and design excellence with optimal energy production and maximum efficiency."


The purpose of the Solar Decathlon is to:

• Educate students and the public about money-saving opportunities and environmental benefits presented by clean-energy products and design solutions.
• Demonstrate to the public the comfort and affordability of homes that combine energy-efficient construction and appliances with renewable energy systems available today.

The first European Solar Decathlon (modeled after the US event) was in 2010, and another is taking place this year. One entry for this year's competition is generating more than electricity - it is also producing a lot of interest in small, simple, energy self-sufficient homes.

Romania's entry (shown above) is so efficient that it creates 20% more power than is required by the house. The student team wanted to keep a simple, traditional design in mind for their prefabricated high-tech house. Building materials include engineered wood, along with regular timber and steel. The outside walls are pre-built including insulation, and are load-bearing, allowing the inside space to be free of supports.

To further increase efficiency, all of the technical infrastructure such as the heating and cooling systems, and the energy converters, are in one tech room. In Romania, the house produces 9501kWh/yr and consumes 7508.11kWh/yr.

The building decisions allowed the Romanian team to keep the home's interior simple, open, and bright, while maintaining a small environmental footprint. The prototype cost $149,000 to build, but in time the team hopes that their sun-powered homes can be made for about $86,000.

My dad would have liked it if I had leaned on him more, for that support is what good fathers provide their children. But he would have agreed that leaning on large, profit-hungry, non-human entities for basic needs is probably not a good idea.

He would have also agreed that it is time to take advantage of the freedom and independence of off-grid housing  using the free and abundant energy that the Sun provides as nature's gift to all life on earth.

Swiss Chard - Wonder Food

Swiss chard belongs in every garden

Swiss chard is a wonder food, and has been a staple of gardens around the world for centuries. It is considered to be one of the healthiest vegetables around. How is it, then, that I have never eaten chard until harvesting some from my new garden allotment this spring?

I could see instantly at my garden that chard is a force of nature. Our plot was previously tended, so it was full of life when we got it, and there has been little to do except weed, water, and enjoy harvesting fresh food.

Most of the bed is in strawberries, which we will make into jam. But dominating a corner of our small raised bed is a steroidal Swiss chard that towers over everything else. It scared me at first.

A little research told me that chard is known by many, many other names. I wondered how it could actually be good with so many aliases - it was obviously trying to hide something.

Our towering plant of large leaves is known as White swiss chard, Spinach chard, or Silverbeet. But the name that convinced me of its value was 'sea kale', which is fitting as the community garden allotments are on land just a couple of kilometers from the ocean.

Sea kale, or swiss chard, is an annual plant that grows vigorously between June and November. Leaves can be continually harvested during the growing season.

Swiss Chard: Super Food

• Swiss chard, like spinach, has many phytonutrients that have disease prevention properties.
• Chard is an excellent source of anti-oxidant vitamin, vitamin-C. Its leaves provide about 33% of daily recommended levels per 100 g.
• Chard is one of the excellent vegetable sources for vitamin-K; 100 g provides about 700% of daily recommended intake.
• It is a rich source of omega-3 fatty acids; vitamin-A, flavonoids anti-oxidants, and B-complex group of vitamins.
• It is also a rich source of minerals like copper, calcium, sodium, potassium, iron, manganese and phosphorus.

I have gone from never having tried chard to putting it in everything. It's that good.

This versatile, easy to grow food can be used in an infinite variety of dishes, but these are a few I have tried already:

• steamed and served with butter and vinegar (or lemon juice)
• replaced spinach in a veggie lasagna
• in the filling for enchiladas
• as a pizza topping
• replaced bok choy in noodle soup

Chard is easy to grow from seed, and can be grown in containers. With care, a plant can provide dark, green leafy goodness for years.

Consider it a low maintenance, highly productive plant in the garden or container that can provide as much good stuff as expensive pill supplements.

Sea kale is nature's supplement factory, converting soil into things every healthy body needs!

Happy summer solstice, and happy gardening.