I'm not about to read that whole thing, but why didn't she slaughter the damn pigs herself?
TOO MANY THREADS THIS IS MAKING ME ANXIOUS
I guess she must have thought that it would be difficult to kill a large animal like that without (ho ho ho) butchering it. Though she could have followed this handy dandy guide (NB graphic pictures of bloody pigs).
Is it legal to up and slaughter a pig in a vacant lot? I doubt it.
Is it legal to raise a pig in a vacant lot? I have no idea.
But JM, the cops don't get involved in her neighborhood for anything short of murder (and she claims to have been killing turkeys and rabbits just fine).
Damned police state won't let you do anything in a vacant lot these days.
IME, anything of pig size*obstreperousness is worth having someone experienced do. Neighbors of ours swear they bounced two .45 bullets off a cow's head, and professional butchers had trouble with two of our pigs on an icy day. (They weren't good professional butchers; the steaks tended to be thicker on one end than the other.)
Other completions of "the killer handed me" on Google:
-- "a glass of water. Smiling."
-- "a cellphone but it was one of those old bulky kinds. I knew there was a knife concealed in it..."
-- "the dagger."
-- "a blunt ax and an ice pick and told me to strike him, and he stood with his back facing me."
Neighbors of ours swear they bounced two .45 bullets off a cow's head
That's what the big hammer is for. Dunno why they were futzing around with handguns.
Slaughtering a pig is not a one person job, for all the reasons given above. It needs at least one person to restrain it, even if it isn't very big. Also, if you want to save the blood, you need somebody to hold the bucket while another person slits its throat.
I learned a bit about this from an acquaintance who married a Polish farmer's daughter in the 1980s, and played quite a role in the preparations for the feast.
Yeah, my wife's family used to do this. Raise a pig and slaughter it. Stirring the blood while it drained was a girl's job. I don't think they've done it for a few years. The village has a smoke-house, though, so when they get a share of a pig someone else* has slaughtered it gets freshly smoked [and is absolutely amazing].
* in-laws/members of the extended family or whoever...
I had the same feeling of cosmic unfairness that I had felt when my ducks were slaughtered by an opossum. Injustice. Life gone bad. And, worst of all, it was my fault. Because I was a busy city person. Because I didn't have very much experience. Because I had lost control.
Because "country" people never lose animals? There are no opossums there? And hello, wolves?
It needs at least one person to restrain it, even if it isn't very big.
And sometimes three or four for this. They get big
19: Technically, if it gets very big, it is a hog and not a pig.
This article is making me dislike both DFHs and neighborhoods without cops--if the price of coplessness is white people being pretentious about food while they gentrify Oakland then I'm going to have to rethink this whole anarchism bit. Also, stop moving to Oakland, white people! Stay in your own neighborhoods and fix them for once. Import hippies there, deal with cops there, raise your secret pigs there. It's like we go to Eureka and mess it up, we go to Philly and make things worse, now it's time for Oakland.
I want to blame America. Class war now!
Wait, this is in Oakland?! Dude, that's insane.
21: But if I stay in my lilly white neighborhood, I won't get any street cred. You can't be tough in Squirrel Hill, though I see younger men trying. My favorite was guy wearing a kippah and a wife-beater.
Wait, this is in Oakland?!
Well, I knew of some people who kept a Vietnames Pot Bellied pig as a pet in San Leandro 15 years ago - they lived over the road from my SiL. I suppose it's just a logical progression.
22: Oakland is trendy. I live in the world of people who move to Oakland to be "surfer-carpenters" and things like that, if there is anything like that.
Oakland used to be the "I'm really badass, I [kinda] live in Oakland but I spend all my time in SF" place for the kind of DFHs who don't really have any politics. It was a seriously racialized discourse that relied on "Oakland is terrible, terrible--full of racism and death--and you should get a vicarious thrill from my proximity to it". Now Oakland is just fashionable. Next come the rich people!
I admit that maybe this writer is a delightful person with decent politics in real life. Still, I'm really tired of certain kinds of articles about "urban farming" that are really "urban artisan production of expensive things by people who are already in a pretty good social and economic position". Those stories really don't have very much in common with the struggle to get regular old vacant lots cleaned up and used by regular non-middle-class people. Or even with small-commercial urban farming, like we see in Minneapolis with a lot of immigrant farmers.
But you all should talk about food. I'd really rather read about food than rehash my class politics today. (So why did I post, then? Pique!) Talk about pig parts, people!
You can use every part of a pig but the squeal - discuss.
Talk about pig parts, people!
Kind of reminds me of a bumpersticker I saw once:
Visualize Burning Police Cars
And I remember at the time telling Skip Gates that it was probably not a good idea to have that on his bumper.
If anybody wants to gentrify someplace named Oakland, please feel free to try the Pittsburgh neighborhood called Oakland. Mostly you would be displacing white students with crappy landlords.
Keeping a smallish pig as a pet is one thing, but raising a pig for slaughter in a fairly urbanized area is quite another thing. Sure Oakland is somewhat fashionable nowadays (and some areas of it have always been posh), but it's still seriously paved over and inhabited. It's like Brooklyn.
It's like we go to Eureka and mess it up, we go to Philly and make things worse, now it's time for Oakland.
Frowner, it's what white people do. You wouldn't want them to lose their culture, would you?
You people are going to make me talk about food, eh? Just out of guilt for killing the thread? Well, Earthbalance Buttery Spread tastes almost like delicious pork fat!
Er, I had deep-fried cornmeal-battered portobello mushroom pieces last night and they were very tasty, although I personally don't believe in adding dried herbs to batter and didn't feel that they added anything. My companion had cheese curds. It was like a teeny-tiny state fair at our table!
"Well, Earthbalance Buttery Spread tastes almost like delicious pork fat!"
That is an obvious falsehood.
Have you ever tried making coconut cream? The fresh stuff tastes much more like butter and less like coconut than the canned stuff, so it's good for general cooking. On the other hand, it's a hassle to make.
34: Well, it tastes more like delicious pork fat than does, say, a rock. Or a pickle. Or a copy of Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide. And maybe the olive oil-based version is even better! You never know.
Organic, hormone-free pork, the last time I had looked, cost about $5 a pound.
This suggests that she believes that her pork is organic. She fed them random food from dumpsters. I'm not an expert, but I would think the rules for organic meat are a little more stringent than that.
36: Well, to my taste buds, most 'buttery' spreads don't even manage to taste like butter, let alone the king of fats. I am trying to use olive oil in place of butter in more cases. It is good, but it isn't the same.
35: How do you make coconut cream? How long does it keep? I suppose you could freeze it, since coconut milk freezes well.
39: Earthbalance tastes fairly buttery in things--I've had people ask me whether the frosting or the polenta or what-have-you was really vegan. It doesn't taste like good local grassfed butter, of course. On bread, the stuff in the tubs (as opposed to the stick kind) is like a very superior margarine, which I suppose it is. But no, it doesn't taste like pork fat.
I've actually been trying to deepen flavors more through remembering to reserve and use water from cooking beans and potatoes, deglazing pans, taking proper time to carmelize the onions and so on. (Which I'm sure all good Unfoggers already do as matter of course.) Vegetable fats don't have the depth of animal ones; there's no doubt about it. But I have definitely had rich, complex vegan dishes.
I was also reminded of this comment by dsquared (I mean the second half).
I've seen hams aging in bars in the middle of Seville, which is a pretty big place, and quite proud of its pig products. Seems more common than not there. They time them to be ready for Christmas.
41: Let just say that I've noticed I enjoy vegetarian meals much more when they aren't trying to imitate a regular food. I am trying to eat less meat and am much more successful at it now that I realize I'm shooting for a different set of flavors. (Vegan is not on my radar screen as the number of things that taste better with cheese is simply too vast to ignore.)
41: Grate coconut flesh fine, and pour boiling water over it and let it sit. (Maybe 2 cups of water for a coconut? I'm talking big, but I haven't done this in forever. Maybe a little less.) Let it sit until it's cool, and then squeeze the hell out of the coconut (wrap it in a cloth or something.) That's milk, and then if you let it sit in the fridge it'll separate and the top will be cream. When I've had it fresh, it just tastes rich, hardly 'coconut' flavored at all. I think the coconut flavor (which I like, but which isn't desirable in a general cooking fat) has something to do with drying or aging.
Assisting in the slaughter and processing of an animal is not the Michael-Pollan-in-the-Sunday-Times-Magazine festival of self-actualization that Whitey hippies damned dirty apes Mistah Kurtz people seem to expect. It's actually kind of unpleasant. Especially the noise.
Oh, and the squeezed-out coconut is still good -- you can use it for whatever you'd use coconut for.
If you took your commenting seriously, Flippanter, you would have struck out each of those options individually, leaving a space between. Oh well! This is what I've come to expect from America.
Which I'm sure all good Unfoggers already do as matter of course.
40.last is important. There is deepish issue at work here. Particularly when you are talking about western european/american styles of cookery, for a large fraction of dishes the only way you are going to get a really good outcome is to start with a good broth, period. It doesn't matter if you are talking omnivorous, vegan, vegetarian dishes here.
The problem is it is essentially impossible to buy a good broth commercially, and many peoples lives don't have broth-making time factored in. You can fake it with powders and cubes, but while that may improve things notably, it will always taste like you faked it with powders or cubes.
48: While I'm sure it is impossible to buy great broth commercially, you can do better or worse. Thanks to Whole Foods, I'm getting much better broth than I used to.
49: I've never found one I'm happy with, though I have looked. Maybe I discount the better (and expensive) ones because it isn't actually difficult to do for yourself, and we're set up for it. You end up with better and cheaper this way, often dramatically so. But I'm perfectly aware that there it's not an easy step for everyone, particularly if you don't cook much.
The worse to average stock/broth you can buy tinned though, I can't really understand putting in food. It's awful.
47: "I hate you. I hate you so much. I wish I could hate you to death."
I use the evocatively-named "Better Than Bouillon" vegetable base, which is actually fairly decent, pretty much as I might use something like five-spice or another spice blend. It has a carmelized kind of carroty flavor which is characteristic but not bad and it works very well with yams. Maybe this weekend I'll actually make a large quantity of stock and freeze it.
I had some chicken soup at a Mexican restaurant in Reykjavik that was amazingly flavorful. The chef told us it was his grandmother's recipe and basically relied on boiling a couple dozen chickens down to a relatively small amount of broth.
The couple times I've made my own vegetable broth it's been well worth the trouble.
"Better Than Bouillon"
I'm not a fan.
55: It's not like I joined the "Better Than Bouillon" Facebook group. I just find it better than bouillon.
The couple times I've made my own vegetable broth it's been well worth the trouble.
The few attempts I've made smelled wonderful but tasted bitter and muddy. Tips?
I use the evocatively-named "Better Than Bouillon"
I hope you get a better response to this than I did.
57: Ah, you should avoid adding bitter things and mud. Simple, really.
Is this the place to mention that I have 16 cups of broth, made from two tough old stringy hens?
Make sure you have an onion in there. Carrots are also great. Beyond that, I have no idea.
Hey soup, are you "flyby sb" in that thread?
The one time I made vegetable broth the finished product ended up tasting strongly of vegetation.
And by "that thread", I mean the one linked in 58.
54: One canonical trick for this is to (over) oven roast a couple of complete chickens to form the base of a really rich, darker chicken broth. You can't get there with just carcasses.
This is, of course, a bit of a pain. As is beef stock.
Regular veggie broth on the other hand is dead easy and takes less than an hour cooking time, with very little actual work. We pretty much always have it on hand, frozen.
Some vegetarian friendly stocks are a pain, like real french onion soup, but can be worth the time.
65: yeah, that sounds like me when I was avoiding this place and trying to do work.
I have this plan that may be a terrible terrible one...my food budget, you see, is about $25/week right now. So I have potatoes. And frozen vegetables. And various legumes. And some onions. (And a few other odds and ends, lemons, tofu, things that aren't especially relevant stock-wise) I cook large batches of things on Sunday, usually potatoes and beans which then get incorporated into bean gravy, a potato-bake thing with vegetables, etc. So perhaps one could take the bean liquid and the potato liquid and the onion scraps from the bean gravy and the one poor miserable carrot I've got sitting around and cook them and the result would be stock of a sort?
How long do you recommend cooking it? Til it's done, I assume...
16 cups of broth, made from two tough old stringy hens
He marched them up the hill, and he marched them down again.
The few attempts I've made smelled wonderful but tasted bitter and muddy. Tips?
What are you putting in?
Assisting in the slaughter and processing of an animal is not the Michael-Pollan-in-the-Sunday-Times-Magazine festival of self-actualization
To be fair, the Pollan account of assisting in slaughter and processing that I've read (in The Omnivore's Dilemma) did not really elide the unpleasantness of the task. It is also didn't strike me as being very much about self-actualization.
I think I used onion, celery, carrot, and some greens. Maybe just overcooked it?
Not that I ever doubted myself, naturally.
You can't get there with just carcasses.
Out of context that might sound strange.
I just find it better than bouillon.
There is some ambiguity here. `bouillion' used as short for `bouillion cubes' is different than used as (french for) broth, which is the usage I'm more familiar with.
Not that I ever doubted myself, naturally.
I'd have to read more than that one short comment to be sure. Re 55, it sounds like something I'd say.
So M/tch was "Heebie for the day" back in April. If we'd known it at the time we'd have treated you nicer. Sadly not possible at this late date.
68: I have a firm belief in the importance of celery to stock, either chicken or vegetable. On the rest of the plan (bean water, potato water), I'm not sure. It's plausible, but I'm not clear on how it would taste.
Frowner, don't you use the bean liquid in your "bean gravy" ?
80 just reminded me to once again wonder how I Don't Pay is faring these days.
80: I find your lack of faith repulsive.
I think I used onion, celery, carrot, and some greens. Maybe just overcooked it?
We usually put leek tops (well washed) in ours, and apple to balance. Celery standard too. Some onion. Overcooked is possible (45 min or so for most veggie stock I think), but I'm not sure where "muddy" is coming from. I expect you need some sweet (e.g. the apple) to counteract bitter though. Do you remember the greens?
Parmesian rinds are a yummy addition, but can make a fair mess.
81: It's real gravy!!! I put it on potatoes and everything.
I usually use most of it, but if I use all of it the gravy is too liquidy.
I'd have to read more than that one short comment to be sure. Re 55, it sounds like something I'd say.
Well at least you agree that it "sounds like soup", which was under contention.
Anyway, I expect a full report once you've completed the requisite research.
85: The quotes only signify that I didn't quite know what you meant by that. Some people I know refer to indian dishes as gravies, etc.
So perhaps one could take the bean liquid and the potato liquid and the onion scraps from the bean gravy and the one poor miserable carrot I've got sitting around and cook them and the result would be stock of a sort?
It will be a stock of a sort, but I think it would be pretty thin, having only onion scraps and a miserable carrot to render down.
88: Well, I can stop on by the dumpster and see if there's anything promising. (No, really, my fresh vegetable budget is almost nonexistent.) It's actually a rather nice carrot now that I think about it. And I could probably include a whole onion. Of course, a thin stock that can be doctored a bit is better than no stock at all.
84: Thank you! I'll try the apple next time. I think I used collards, but could have been mustard greens as well -- those are really the only greens I ever buy. I did learn the parmesan rind trick from another thread here -- that always goes in my turkey stock. I'm much better with meat stocks, but keep trying diligently to be less of a carnivore.
Standard veggie stock is just the usual, no? Onions, celery, carrots and (often) leek. As in a soffritto/mirepoix with water.
That should be sweet enough on its own. Carrots are sweet.
I wish I was one of these people who thought enough about food to cook well. Sigh.
I think overcooking is the problem. I used to cook my my vegetable stocks for a couple hours to concentrate the flavors, but (unlike meat, where the good collagen comes out over long cooking times) after about an hour I think you start to extract more starches and some of the bitterer flavors from your vegetables. My stocks are much cleaner and brighter tasting now that I only simmer them for an hour. You can reduce them afterward if you like.
(No, really, my fresh vegetable budget is almost nonexistent.)
I'm absolutely certain that I'm teaching my grandmother to suck eggs here, but I also have a hell of a time keeping my mouth shut. Have you asked your grocery store if they've got carrots, celery, whatever, that they'll give you cheap because they're too old and limp to sell? Taking the middleman out of dumpster diving, as it were?
For stock, limp, saggy veggies should be fine.
I wouldn't usually put dark-green greens in veggie stock at all, unless it was going to be used as an ingredient in some greens-based dish.
I think I used collards, but could have been mustard greens as well
I would guess that that's your bitterness. Dark green leafy stuff can get harsh.
Holy crap! It's an actual phrase!
94: It's a giant chain store so I don't know whether they would (they actually compact their garbage so no one can dumpster it--probably liability reasons, but I prefer to believe that it's on purpose to keep people from getting free food.) It would be scary to go talk to the manager, but I can try to work up to it.
Frowner, you've heard about our local farmers' markets right? For a dollar or two you could have three pounds of beets or zucchini or what have you. True, they won't be organic, but they'll be plenty.
99: My issue is caloric density--I end up spending on the potatoes and tofu and beans so that I get enough to eat. Fresh vegetables are delicious but not dense so it's hard to rationalize spending 1/8 - 1/5 of my budget on them. Although I've only been on this budget for about five weeks so I'm still figuring things out and can probably swap things around a bit.
I eat five pounds of potatoes every week! That's a lot of potatoes.
I got three pounds of young carrots for $2 at the Lynndale-Glenwood market week before last, which have since become carrot soup, carrot zucchini cake, and various salads and stirfrys.
90, see 91
you need some sweetness, carrot is the classic being aromatic + sugars.
We counterbalance leek greens (not the white base) with a little apple, but if there are enough, sweet enough carrots in, that's fine too. The apple is not standard I guess but we like.
this, though:
I think I used collards, but could have been mustard greens as well
is a departure from the usual that will definitely add bitter. Particularly if you keep it cooking for a long time.
I'm with 95 on that. I would tend to make the stock and use it in a dish with greens, but not put the greens in a stock.
Also to avoid in general, Brassicaceaes.
The overcooking veggie stocks thing is common, I think, because people think stock just has to take a long time.
1/5 of your food budget on veg doesn't sound out of line to me. I'm a meat eater and I'd be surprised if I didn't spend at least that (as a percentage), if not quite a bit more.
Just being nosy, and please say none of your business if you'd like -- is this a short-term tight budget until something changes, or are you that broke long term? Last I remember, you were a unionized admin -- I can't picture a fulltime job that would leave you with that little for food.
Wow that sounds like a really hard way to live, though I have a hard time reconciling it to budgeting for vegan margerine and the like. Still, you said it's a new austerity. Seriously, you need more than calories. enjoy the fresh growing summer while it lasts. make friends with people with gardens!
Frowner, out of curiousity where are you getting your legume supply? If you're really going through them, it might be worth a trip to an indian or mexican oriented grocer. You can get huge bags for next to nothing/pound that way. Rice, too.
of course, you've probably thought of 106
103: I think the issue is that the gross budget is so tiny that peeling any substantial amount off for anything but calories is a problem.
I have lived on the UK equivalent of about $25 a week for food within the last 7 or 8 years.* I ate better than Frowner's description. But it was quite hard work to keep the food interesting.
* periods early in my doctorate when I was unfunded and living on essentially zero income.
The overcooking veggie stocks thing is common, I think, because people think stock just has to take a long time.
This was my revelation from the brilliant, simple veg stock from the Inn at Little Washington. It's your usual suspects boiled for 20 min, then steeped for 45, and done. I adore it.
It's too thin/light to be the basis for a soup all alone*, but it's a great ingredient, and if you're adding, say, pureed root veg, it's fantastic.
* I think this is true of most veg stocks, just as a quick chicken stock is a little light for, say, chicken noodle soup where it's all about the broth. Something like neb's old gray mare stock would do well for that.
It's the $5 out of $25 on vegetables that's the kicker. $8 out of $40 would be different, for example. And actually it would probably be $10 or $12 out of forty.
104: My job is probably losing its funding in a year, so I'm trying to save. And people I live with have marginal/temporary employment right now. It's not technically that I can't get by on my money, but I can't handle the mortgage and other debt and keeping the house going on what I'll get in unemployment. Hence, saving like a mad thing!
I have assisted in the slaughter and processing of a cow. The cow had been kept in a separate feed pen for a week or so before-hand. Someone shot the cow in the head above the eyes. Its veins were cut open, and I lifted it up with a backhoe, suspended it for drainage.
I drove the cow around to a ten-foot square flat concrete surface where a group of about ten or so took her apart. The most important thing was to remove the sac of intestines and organs carefully to make sure the meat was not contaminated. I was responsible for removing the hooves with a hacksaw, which was slow but not complicated.
Slaughter hadn't been part of my work responsibilities at all, but I volunteered out of a sense of responsibility to the meat I was eating. It felt OK, not as moving as I expected; the cow was anxious as people gathered around it, but hardly comprehending. Two years later, I became a vegetarian and remain a "pescetarian".
Further: bone-derived stocks do take a lot of time & boiling to get out all the flavor/break down the various collagens, &c. This has led to the cultural presumption in favor of time-heavy stocks. But if you're using a meaty base (chicken thighs are awesome for this), then you can have a great stock in ~1 hour.
Since vegetables don't have collagen and the like, there's not much upside to long cooking. Even roasting them, you usually want to do it quick and hot so you get carmelization on the outside without destroying the interior fresh veggie-ness.
111: 104: My job is probably losing its funding in a year, so I'm trying to save. And people I live with have marginal/temporary employment right now. It's not technically that I can't get by on my money, but I can't handle the mortgage and other debt and keeping the house going on what I'll get in unemployment.
Okay, this is really none of my business. But if you spent an extra ten bucks a week on veggies, that's a difference in savings at the end of the year of $520. Do you really have everything calculated tightly enough that an extra (or a missing) five hundred bucks will solve (or cause) any significant problems for you, a year from now? It sounds like you may have cranked your savings a little tighter than optimal.
re: 111
But you don't eat animal products, no? I'd expect in those circumstances I'd be spending more like $10 or more out of $25 on veg, at least, as I'd be filling the rest of the budget up with rice, pasta, tinned tomatoes, cheap dried pulses, etc and those aren't expensive.
109: I think I eat pretty tasty food, mostly. (Also, as I get more of a feel for things, I hope I'll get better at planning) I do usually end up making some things to share too, so that costs money. And my schedule is fairly busy, so that means I cook things that I can make in a big batch and eat all week. It's not really that bad, and I did budget in a tiny bit of walking around money (hence the portobello mushrooms last night). I mean, I like bean gravy. And this week's lunch is chickpeas with onion, tomato, mustard seeds and japanese eggplant prepared a la Cooks Illustrated. And couscous. It's just that buying extra vegetables just to boil is difficult.
On the other hand, one of my friends says she is going to have a surplus of pumpkins this year, and I do love cooking pumpkin.
The food blog 30 Bucks a Week is about a Brooklyn couple that, yes, feeds themselves on $30 a week. They stretch it a bit by volunteering at a co-op grocery in exchange for discounted food, which I don't think is an option at any of the Twin Cities co-ops, though you could probably get close through farmer's market, bulk, and ethnic food store purchases. United Noodle has an excellent cheap selection.
The 30 bucks folks post some great recipes and while they are technically vegetarian a lot of their recipes are vegan.
It's more about what I think I can stick to--I know I'll slip up here and there on restaurant meals or fancy socks or a book or something, so I'm trying to be strict (and my diet is healthy) about regular food. If I spend more on food, I'll have to totally cut out the other stuff and I know I won't actually do that. $520 will make a difference, actually. My unemployment will be something like $800/month.
I've thought this over until I'm too done with it even to worry.
And how does the food budget go? Thus:
$5 on co-opy things, buttery spread, nutritional yeast, etc
$2.80, frozen vegetables
$1.50, legumes
$2 on two blocks of tofu
$2.50 on cheap potatoes
$2 soymilk every other week
$5 whatever has run out that week--cornmeal, couscous, sugar, flour, oil, spices, pasta, salt etc; sometimes a bit less than $5
$2 onions
$2 Usually, to be honest, something a little fancy--polish cookies last week. Tinned yams for a cake next.
Remainder is fresh vegetables.
111: What, a university soft-money position? I hear you on that one.
117: But seriously, how are they getting enough to eat? Here's a grocery list for a week (which obviously isn't everything they eat; they've obviously got a stockpile of proteiny stuff somewhere):
* daikon (not jicama, as Phil previously stated, that went in the carrot salad)
* baby red potatoes
* cilantro
* limes
* jalepenos
* plaintains (updated, I forgot about these)
* tonic water
* Total: $9.53
From Trader Joe's and Chinatown:
* tofu (2): 3.58
* carrots: .50
* small bag of almonds: .99
* cauliflower: 1.50
* baguette: 1.99
* whipping cream: $1
* Total: $9.56
Also, they live in a land of $1.50 cauliflower, I guess.
But seriously, I eat ~2000 calories a day, seven days a week. Maybe they're awesome really thin hipsters?
It's just that buying extra vegetables just to boil is difficult.
Yes, stock is dandy and there are plenty of recipes that do call for it, but I make loads of delicious vegetarian food week after week without a drop of stock. It's fine.
118: Also, if you're looking at being unemployed? I swear there's a lawyer somewhere in Minn. who'd thought they'd died and gone to heaven if they got a chance to hire you as an admin. In this climate, getting the job will be a hassle, but you're going to be way, way more desirable than many people with a lot more experience than you have, to anyone who looks past domain-specific experience into general competence.
I keep looking at that blog--can it be that some things are actually cheaper in New York? Even when I got discounted co-op produce at the now-closed co-op where I used to volunteer, it wasn't that cheap. And my food comes from United Noodles and Cub.
Obviously I'm doing some things wrong (but then, part of that is that I really literally don't have time to cook every night, so my meals will be a little stodgier).
Those plantains do look really good.
122: That's reassuring. I've kind of assumed that people like me can only ever work at universities (because we're all _weird_) and that I'm looking at long term unemployment. But I may not have considered my options with enough optimism.
124: In my, admitedly indirect, experience people who work at law firms often deliberately cultivate weirdness as if it could ward-off the legalness of their profession.
You can buy a ton of food at the Park Slope Co-op for $30.
Yeah, I don't know about other categories of admin jobs, but I know legal secretaries, and it's inexplicably difficult to find good ones. Weird is tolerable (and tolerated, at least at the places I've worked), and incompetent, sadly, is often tolerable. Don't sell yourself short.
(I'm assuming your proofing is good, given that your comments are clean. Given that, any lawyer who hired you would be weeping with delight.)
127: Hm. This interests me strangely.
It's true that I proof grant applications (much more carefully than I post here and with at least slightly better grammar).
Yeah, I don't know about other categories of admin jobs, but I know legal secretaries, and it's inexplicably difficult to find good ones.
My theory on this is that genuine competence is very often correlated with solid self-esteem. Someone who does very good work, and is able to recognize the comparative quality of that work, is probably a little less disposed to putting up with the ego-driven bullshit that is so sadly common when working for lawyers.
There's also the career-ladder issue. Competence tends to go with ambition, and being a legal secretary doesn't go anyplace. The best secretaries and paralegals I've worked with have been actors or dancers or potheads -- people for whom there was a sensible reason why their ambition wasn't aimed at their day job.
Which makes total sense for Frowner as well, of course, as someone who's got her not-exactly-professional-but-you-know-what-I-mean ambition/commitment tied up in activism rather than the day job.
On the stock front, AWB has good recommendations for making one on her food blog, which are in turn based on (I believe) Deborah Madison's suggestions for stock, which are pretty awesome. I suggest looking at them - there are good tips in at least two and probably more of her books, including The Greens and Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone.
AWB should take her stock tips and make a fortune.
I'm still going to try the brownie recipes from the thread that got all weird before I try to make stock. Even if I get the stock right, I still have to cook something else with the stock before I have food. Brownies don't even need frosting.
118 makes a lot of sense to me. When I've needed to be on serious austerity regimes, I found it much more effective to go all the way and say, this is a Hard Times budget and there is no room for treats. If I let myself have a treat (e.g., going out for a cup of coffee), I realize treats are nice, and then I have a very hard time not just letting the whole regime slip. Whereas if I'm hardcore about it, it's kind of fun in its own way (admittedly, the fun is inversely proportional to the duration), and I feel all Depression-era virtuous, and I can save a bundle.
On stock: I haven't made veg stock, but I'm surprised to see cloves going unmentioned, as they contribute substantially to depth of flavor. Do people not stick a whole clove or two into the onion for veg stock as for meat stock? Odd!
Also, I'm totally in love with Frowner's posts early in the thread. Hi Frowner!
WHERE ARE THE BROWNIE RECIPES. WHY ARE THEY NOT ON THE WIKI. THAT IS WHAT IT IS FOR.
125: This doesn't match my experience.
Something that has puzzled me -- are they any male legal secretaries out there?
In my experience that is the one office job that is strictly restricted to one gender.
I do not like clove flavor very much. Celery adds all I need in that direction.
I did my part.
I would like to report that I think M/tch's brownies are shown to their best advantage the next day (and beyond), fresh out of the refrigerator.
I was a legal secretary for a while.
You did, rfts, but you could go above and beyond by wikifying m/tch's recipe.
Funny, I don't like celery flavor very much. But stock made without celery is obviously incomplete.
Something that has puzzled me -- are they any male legal secretaries out there?
My mother's legal secretary is male.
How does one get access to the food wiki?
Or, no, they switched things around at her office a few years ago, so that's actually her last secretary. Her current secretary's a woman.
are they any male legal secretaries out there?
Some -- my first secretary was a man. This was troublesome because (a) he spent all his time trading Beanie Babies on eBay (or a precursor to eBay? This would have been in 2000) (and I suppose I can't attribute the Beanie Babies to his gender) and (b) I got all wrecked trying to figure out what to get him for Secretaries Day, because flowers seemed weird. I think I got him a jar of jellybeans.
136: Apparently the 'thread that got all weird' is not particularly specific.
You did, rfts, but you could go above and beyond by wikifying m/tch's recipe.
I bet you could have done it by now in the amount of time you've spent on encouragement. I was leaving it for him to do himself, if he so desired.
My posts love you too, Gabardine Bathyscaphe!
You're right, foxytail. I could have.
130: What exactly were the potheads' ambitions?
Someone shot the cow in the head above the eyes.
Not kosher! Bad Jew!
The other legal secretary in the office where I worked was male too.
I've also worked as a secretarial temp (non-legal). I think I was the only male temp they'd had in most of the places I worked, though.
153: The impression I got was that a comfortable, low-pressure life was about it.
You know, LB pushes this legal secretary thing from time to time, and maybe I should really consider it. I keep thinking, no, I can do better than that, but I think I'm fooling myself when I keep insisting I have career ambitions.
(160 to 151. I don't presume to speak for LB's former pothead legal secretaries.)
A comfortable, low-pressure life is an extremely choiceworthy ambition.
161: I don't know if the money's better or worse than other admin jobs, and you do have to deal with lawyers, so that's a negative. But if admin jobs are what you're looking for, and you're reasonably clever and can learn quickly, you'd be much better than the run of legal secretaries. And it's either fair money but 9-5, or really pretty good money with a bunch of overtime.
I don't know if the money's better or worse than other admin jobs, and you do have to deal with lawyers, so that's a negative.
Enough of a negative, for me, that the job wasn't ultimately worth it. If you're willing to deal with the lawyers, though, the money's really pretty good.
My current (mostly administrative) job is a pretty sweet little company, and I sometimes get to do interesting things, and I respect everyone I work for and with and like most of them. On the other hand, the pay is not great, there's no potential for advancement within the company, and my actual boss is frequently horrible to deal with -- other people actually value me because I am able to calm him down and keep him from bugging them. I don't know.
168: Given that, working for a law firm is unlikely to be much of an improvement, except possibly financially.
140, 144, 147: Geesh! I guess I'm just wrong.
I'd second LB's recommendations but caution that law firms have different cultures (big vs. small, profitable vs. struggling, screaming vs. polite near unto passive aggression).
Also, the legal business does have to deal with the recession somehow. Pretty much every Pittsburgh law firm big enough to rate press coverage has been laying-off this year (associates and support staff).
169: Yeah. The thing is, if I want to stay in New York long term, I need to figure out how to make a bit more money.
What exactly were the potheads' ambitions?
1 comfy couch
1 long weekend
1 very large bag of good weed
3 dozen assorted family size bags of chips
4 flats of pop
... or something roughly like that.
173: Uh, I think we came up with a pretty good plan last night.
I'm honestly not sure about the market potential. But it is probably worth a try.
near unto really unbelievable levels of passive aggression
179: No, although we came up with a way to possibly make a bit of money with that, too.
180: "Blessed Extremely lucky are they that have not seen, and yet have believed."
179: Bave has an idea that I think will sell better. (He doubts the audience reach of P&B.) I've been putting a lot of thought into it, too.
181, 183: each of you please do tell.
181, 183: each of you please do tell.
That isn't done. Remember the sanctity of off-blog communication.
183: Woeful Offal, the breakfast treat.
184: Brownies and Pi, A magazine for pothead mathematicians.
(He doubts the audience reach of P&B.)
Although I am not a hipster, I am certain of nothing more than the desire of all hipsters to purchase a pornographic/culinary magazine called Pie and Brownie.
Even better, since it would be based in brooklyn, you'd have a built-in audience of locawhores.
188: Endorsed by Inigo Abednego, the Indigo Wendigo!
||
Blume took me to a licorice store today, where you could buy authentic licorice, salted and unsalted.
Huh, I thought "salted". Wonder what that means?
HOLY SHIT REAL LICORICE IS SO WEIRD. I FELT ALL THE WATER BEING SUCKED OUT OF MY BODY BY AAAAAGH THE SALT.
I think it's an acquired taste, a little bit. I'm going to try some more now.
|>
189: Sounds more like an unholy blend of kiddie and sorority girl pr0n.
I agree, neb, but I doubt many hipsters would purchase more than one issue of such a magazine. So I suggested (and I can repeat this on-blog because it was my own communication, not AWB's) that we publish a meta-magazine, if you will, that consists of single issues of various magazines that feature ironic mismatches between written and pictorial content. A year's subscription would thus entitle your hypothetical hipster to as many as a dozen (depending on publication frequency) hipster-cred-burnishing magazines.
I would buy a subscription to 196, if the prototype was entertaining.
I think the prototype would have to be one 16 pp magazine plus six more magazine covers.
Damn, that is a good idea.
I don't undersatnd why NPH said "dammit, neb".
single issues of various magazines that feature ironic mismatches between written and pictorial content. A year's subscription would thus entitle your hypothetical hipster to as many as a dozen (depending on publication frequency) hipster-cred-burnishing magazines.
That sounds like a lot of work to produce, but it could be really fun.
On the other hand, it could end up feeling like an apolitical meta- version of adbusters.
198: he's a doctor, not a magazine publisher.
On the other hand, it could end up feeling like an apolitical meta- version of adbusters but with beaver shots.
196 isn't the idea referred to in 183. That idea will remain a secret.
196: Kind of like one of those Fruit of the Month clubs!
Would they all have a Pie and Brownies or Field and Liquor or Girdles and Ammo type title? That would be fun, although of course has the possibility of getting old.
201: Defended by hipsters as "transgressive."
Dammit, Bave!
201: wait, were they all going to be pornographic? Couldn't you have, like, a porno rag with "never thought it would happen to me"-type text and, I don't know, shots of tastefully appointed living rooms?
203: Old and Tired Magazine, coming soon.
Dammit, Bave!
He's a philosopher, not a mind reader!
Girdles and Ammo has potential.
I'm imagining a corset somehow attractively decorated with spent shells.
I know that a girdle isn't a corset, but I'm sure no one would mind.
198.2: Because 190 more or less pwned 194.
202: How are you ever going to make any money if you keep your idea a secret?
208: A corset is not a girdle. One refrains from comment regarding others' inexperience with ladies' foundation garments.
212: See also Wallpaper* and other works of Tyler Brûlé.
215: Additionally, "spent shells" are the opposite of ammo, if one thinks about it.
203: Yes, the idea would be porny pictures metaphorically related to the title, and full of affectless versions of the sort of text one would expect in an earnest version of the magazine. I.e., not sensuous porny food descriptions, but, like, somewhat mechanistic, detached, but still highly detailed descriptions.
A few years ago, I started writing short stories in this way, taking the perspective of, say, a home and garden magazine writer, but instead of filling the story with purple, luscious prose about the inside of a historic home, it's a completely affectless description of everything the reporter sees and hears while being given a tour by the homeowner. I think it wouldn't take much to reproduce this quality for, say, magazines about guns, baking, decorating, gardening, travel, cats, movies, graphic design, and even--here's the totally meta one--soft-porny lad mags.
I am not convinced by 218. One can hardly have ammunition without shells, and spent shells can fairly easily become an integral part of ammo once again.
211: It has to remain a secret because it might actually happen.
And really, ideas are a dime a dozen. It's execution that really matters.
Therefore, you might as well tell us.
220: Can become, but are not. I think we've hung enough low fruit on this one, the associations of "spent" being too obvious for anybody but Bertie Wooster's Aunt Agatha.
224: That's another good one: Aunts and Butlers.
Or maybe Better Toffs and Relatives.
226–8 are all good, but they would serve different markets, I think.
228 could redeem itself, if anyone doubts its social worth, by running a series on Aunt Fancier's Disease.
Unrelated:
Clap Fancier
Cat Financier
Hotrod & Staff
Lifekludger
224: Already been done. http://versificator.co.uk/auntsandbutlers/
231 made me cough up bits of what I was eating.
234: Oh yeah? Well I find you stomach-turning too, rob. Repulsive, even!
Village Pink Preservation Society
/sometimes I hate even myself
Fancier Cat also has a lot of promise.
17 money-saving tips to spruce up your feline!
Is your cat fancy enough? Take our quiz and find out for sure!
Fancy Feast: does it live up to the hype?
Jesus doesn't count.
He just knows how many loaves and fishes there are.
I think Hoop and Stick would be worth a read.
Also maybe Baked Illustrated and Centaur Afficianado.
Centaur Afficianado
I dunno, the number of people who are into both centaurs and misspellings is likely to be pretty small.
As I told Bave last night, I'm working from the "If You Build It" theory of pornography.
Centaurs predate orthography by the entire age of post-legend.
Also there was one centaur called Ispoples.
There was also a centaur named Maurice, but he figures in very few legends.
248:
So, architecture based porn.
That would be up the buttress, Bob.
251: Of course, there is that limerick about him.
Covert Action Hindquarterly.
/curse this filthy imagination
There once was a centaur, Marice,
Whose backside was covered with fleece.
When he spoke he said "baa"
And the farmer said, "Naw,
That's the child of my ram and my niece."
I got as far as Ispoples galloping topless and dried.
There once was a centaur, Ispoples,
Who went everwhere quite topless,
When someone complained,
She simply explained,
"I'm not human, so why should I wear clothes? It's not as if you complain about my exposed equine anatomy."
There once was a centauromachy
Provoked by a social dichotomy:
When the horse half would drink,
The human would think,
And the Athenians free-lance phlebotomy.
/don't judge me
The centaur was half-man half-beast
Rugged and fun at a feast.
He reared up and howled
And angrily prowled
But still, dude, his name was Maurice.
I think it takes at least three or four. Compare:
The pack of wolves prowled angrily.
*The wolf prowled angrily.
Two things; I have personally taken part in slaughtering and butchering a pig. As I recall, the pig clearly knew what was coming going by all the squealing, and although the short Lee Enfield killed it instantly, the noise felt like it went on.
You need a hook mounted on a lever, like a see saw, to do this well. I also remember that we flayed the hair off it with razor sharp knives in a bathtub of hot water; the mix was, I think, two buckets boiling to one cold, but I wouldn't recommend any of the Unfogged apocalypse/back to the land crowd relying on this. Not valid for navigation or flight planning, or even pork butchery. Check it before you try.
Second, it's vaguely ironic that people who are so keen on keeping anything urban or industrial out of their food are also so keen on doing so by moving rural stuff into the city. Why not get some chickens, carp, cats, snakes, and children as well as the pigs, like they do in southern China, and see if you can breed your own highly pathogenic influenza virus? Wouldn't that be kewl?
Third, AAGH. Dsquared was right, but with the other half of the sentence. These people are insufferable; all the ideology wank, wasting some perfectly decent tradesman's valuable time, and then throwing away the offal, and writing for the papers, and writing LIKE THAT for the papers? I'll take the virus, thanks.
I'm not claiming it would be the most effective way to prowl, or that I even have a good grasp on what a centaur would hope to accomplish by prowling -- what do they eat? -- but it's Maurice we're talking about here.
265: Antananarivo, capital of Madagascar, home to around four million, has rice fields extending right into the middle of the city. This is pretty, but is also great for distributing malaria.
Maurice was a centaur, erratic,
On one point he was quite emphatic:
"Lakadaemonia's dreary,
"Of Corinths, I'm weary,
"I believe I'll just stay in the Attic!"
She may well not have thrown away the offal; we don't know.
There was a centaur named Maurice,
Who got stopped one day by the police.
He said, of course I piss on the street.
Just look at the hooves on my feet.
Only an ass would ask that I cease.
Maurice, thy fetlocks are to me,
Like those equine limbs of yore,
That gently, o'er a verdant lea,
Traversed mythic Achaean moor,
And galloped into lore.
From withers merging into manly back,
Thy nether quarters of a beast,
Thy unshod hoofs that bear thee on,
Through the dreams of ancient Greece,
And statuary made in Rome.
Lo, athwart yon grassy hill,
Supreme in Venus' arts,
What need have you of human parts,
A glance above your stifle,
Thrice as large as man!
So really, three things.
What, have we switched to Robert's Rules of Order here? "The chair recognizes the gentleman from Yorkshire for two things."
No fair. I didn't know we were allowed multiple stanzas.
||
I want to post, but I don't know how to get pictures off my phone. It seems like I should be able to text them to my e-mail account? I don't have internet on my phone.
Any help?
|>
Heebie, I send them to myself as emails. I have Verizon, if that helps, and a non-smart phone. All I do is choose send as text, and then, instead of typing in a phone number, I put in an email address. So, exactly - text them to your email account.
I have T-Mobile and I used to send them to 'My Album'. This was on the menu for what to do with the picture and the actual album was on some webpage somewhere.
I have t-mobile! Okay, let me play with these ideas.
cellphone pictures -- maybe you have Bluetooth? useful if near a computer, not if trying to back up while on vacation.
Yeah, you can do that album thing with Verizon too, but I find it much easier to just email them directly and skip the middle man. (Though perhaps it is more expensive?)
I still have picture of my ass on the phone. I'll have to get that downloaded (uploaded?) soon.
Okay, I know this thread is dead and I know it had moved on anyway and I know the definition of disavowal just fine, thank you, but I have to say this: Those people on that 30 Bucks a Week blog not only eat an amazingly small amount of food but also seem to have access to much, much cheaper food than I do. (Fair Trade coffee doesn't get below $9.99 per pound here; there's no way you'd get a pack of [horrible] Yves fake meat for $1 even if you had a co-op discount; plus all their Chinatown produce is way cheaper than my giant-Chinese-grocery-store produce.) So this is totally unfair, people! New York is supposed to be expensive.
Also, how do two adults live for a week on this? It looks like wonderful food, they have amazing recipes which I'm totally going to start trying this weekend, I'm excited about this blog, but that selection of food would be pretty skimpy just for for me. (And I've looked at multiple weeks; it doesn't seem like there's a giant bag of rice or a sack of couscous purchased one week and just vegetables the next)
The high calorie foods are pretty much one avocado, half a pound of dried pasta, a dozen eggs and one pound of potatoes. This plus vegetables would literally barely keep me on my feet for a week, never mind sharing it with someone else. And I speak as one who is slowly but steadily losing weight on her current diet. Are these people elves? Do they have amazing hipster metabolisms? Do they receive subsidy bags of flour and texturized vegetable protein from a concerned blogosphere? Do they eat free food at art openings? I feel suddenly like such a failure for not eating less.
Do they have amazing hipster metabolisms?
I see no indication on the blog that they're coke addicts.
288: Having read that list, my guess is that they are either 1) getting food not listed or 2) smoking constantly and very inactive.
I estimate their heights as 5'0" and 5'5".
Yeah, huh. I see at most five light dinners' worth of food here (pasta, potatoes, tofu, and two egg-based things) plus some fruit for snacking. That's not a week of eating.
I can (and routinely did back when I was feeding only myself) eat a pound of potatoes as a single meal (with about three fingers of butter). I could stand to loose a few pounds, but, according to the government, I am not obese.
re 288: do you know that the weeks food isn't supplemented by staples purchased in previous weeks? A 10kg bag of rice or chick peas or whatever could fill out a lot of weeks.
Maybe they work at a place that supplies lunch for free. Or maybe they photosynthesize.
Let's take those fuckers down with an exposé!
It's not even close to a week's worth of food, and the food they are buying is the sort of stuff I'd buy as additions to 'staple' produce.
Aha, for one thing, their friends seem to be giving them shares in their CSAs while they're out of town, and they are also getting vegetables from people's gardens. Other weeks they do seem to buy oats or flour or lentils, presumably in quantities that last more than a week. But still.
New York is generally not crazy expensive other than real estate. But you're right, that doesn't look like nearly enough food to live on. Quantities are unclear though -- I'm not sure how much tofu they bought, or how many avocados.
Is it possible they're managing to jack up the calorie count of what they're eating with oil? Something like greens cooked in a lot of oil is a lot higher calorie than steamed, if you see what I mean, and oil's cheap -- buying a big container every couple of weeks wouldn't cost much. I still don't see enough bulk, though.
I was too lazy to deal with the Coop yesterday, so went to Jack's and got some eggs, onion rolls, blue cheese and Yves lentil veggie burgers. Cost $4.
$4!?!?!
I looked at a bunch of weeks going back and I don't really see large purchases of chickpeas or similar, plus the recipes don't suggest that this is what's going on. I diagnose extra unpurchased food. To which, hooray and I'm not one to talk, since I myself received from a friend six ears of aging but organic corn on the cob last night which I plan to cook tonight.
The whole "and we live on $30 a week for two in New York eating small gourmet meals the whole time" thing brings back a whole lot of disordered-eating stuff for me because I want self-punishingly to assume that this is all they eat because they have normal proper appetites and normal proper body sizes and thus if I weren't a galumphing cow I'd be happy with six eggs and half an avocado plus a quarter pound of pasta and some greens every week too.
I once contemplated doing that Orwell thing from the Road to Wigan Pier where he describes what you could buy with some pathetically small amount of money which would keep you for a week. I've had a couple of periods where my food budget was tiny.
But I was still buying quite a bit of calorie dense carby and fatty food. Rice, pasta, cheap bacon or pork belly offcuts, etc. My weekly grocery list would have looked like about 5 times as much food as that receipt linked above.
301: Which eating issues, I add, are not their fault.
I'm definitely going to try making my own seitan from their recipe.
New York is generally not crazy expensive other than real estate.
And eating out, which lots of people do way more than they would elsewhere, because it's there and because their kitchens are the size of postage stamps.
302: Right, the disconnect seems to be not with the $30/week, but with the actual menus.
Is the cheap end of eating out more expensive in NY than elsewhere? Prices go up as high as you like, but down pretty cheap as well.
302: How To Cook A Wolf has a recipe for a sort of grain/vegetable/meat sludge which MFK Fisher recommends in hard times. I actually used to make a meatless version inspired by her recipe which was pretty good. I used some kind of seven-grain cereal, red lentils, squash, spinach and onion plus spices.
The price quoted in 300 is also mental.
What would be interesting (and a lot of work, so I'm not going to do it) would be to plug all of their announced purchases into a calorie-counter, and figure out roughly how many calories they're buying in a week. I'm not good with calories, but 2000 a day is roughly normal for an adult? Or is that a diet number? Anyway, multiply whatever's normal in a day by 14, and see how far off they are.
Well, eating out is almost always more expensive than eating in, even at cheap places. And the cheapISH places are definitely more expensive than in (say) Cleveland, but also better and more plentiful.
re: 305
Sure. I could live on that sort of food budget. It's not been that long since I did. But I'd be eating a lot of curries, and dahl, and all kinds of richly-flavoured-but-basically-heavy-on-the-cheap-crabs-and-fat food. The shopping list would look substantial.
The price quoted in 300 is also mental.
Fact.
307: I was thinking of that recipe, and the story of the guy who lived on it until he caught himself licking his dishes clean rather than washing them, and realized he couldn't keep living that way and borrowed some money for more food. (Actually, I was kind of thinking of that story when I was intrusively urging you to spend more on food above.)
308: I wonder if they shoplift? That might be a feature--I certainly have a couple of friends who eat fairly nicely because they're good at stealing. (And I'd be lying if I said that I hadn't profited from their skills--agave syrup cupcakes, I mean you!)
What about the agave farmers? Nobody ever thinks of them.
re: 307
Yeah. I used to make a pot of pork goulash by buying cheap bacon joint offcuts or fatty rib/belly pork offcuts which UK supermarkets often sell in vacuum packed bags at a price where £2 will do you at least 2 main meals. Serve it with some boiled rice and some tomatoes, raw onion, etc. Tasty, cheap and filling. £3 or so would do two meals, easily.
But I'd be eating a lot of curries, and dahl
Yes, this works well. As does baking bread and/or a load of other timv vs. cost trade offs. You can certainly live on the sort of budget they claim (I've done it, and less), but I'd expect it too look a fair bid different.
313: The sludge (which I tend to think of as filboid studge, even though that doesn't quite fit with the Saki story) isn't really bad as a primary item; it's when you can only make studge that you start to descend to the plate-licking level.
And I add that part of the reason for my tight food budget is precisely to allow both a small weekly purchase at the co-op deli and the occasional modest meal out.
I wonder if they shoplift? That might be a feature--I certainly have a couple of friends who eat fairly nicely because they're good at stealing.
I am inclined to doubt it, just because of how public their project is. Lots of gift food, I think.
which I tend to think of as filboid studge,
There is a Bugs Bunny cartoon (the one where he's playing all the positions on a baseball team against a team of thugs) where the stadium in which the cartoon takes place has a "Filboid Studge" billboard. The kids were watching it a while back, and I hurt myself laughing and couldn't explain to their satisfaction.
One of my housemates also makes a batch of whole wheat bread from the Tassajara Zen Center cookbook--it takes something like seven cups of whole wheat flour and four risings, but it's delicious and you end up with four medium-sized loaves. (The recipe says four large, but I think those Zen people are having a bit of a laugh with that) That and some chocolate was pretty much dinner last night, and it was very good even though "and I had some bread for dinner" sounds rather sad.
On a tight budget and pressed for time, you should really get that Artisan Bread on Five Minutes A Day book from the library, or say the word and I'll email you the basic recipe. Very little work for very good bread, including a nice light all-whole-wheat loaf.
You know what's really tasty, that you wouldn't think was even edible? Ramen with Campbell's soup. Specifically beef-flavored Maruchan Ramen and Campbell's Bean with Bacon soup. Made some when I was drunk the other night and it was amazing both "fresh" and re-heated the next morning. But even if you ate that every day, and made one batch do for two meals, you'd be right at $30 at the end of the month. Maybe not if you got the soup at the scratch-and-dent supermarket.
323 would be more convincing without the word 'drunk' in it.
322: If you could email me the recipe, I'd really appreciate it--although I'm sure I'll make some kind of frivolous purchase soon on a totally ad hoc basis just because I'm that type of person, I'm trying not to buy new things right now. And I also have to get a new bike chain anyway.
Done, as soon as I get home. The email address linked from your name works, right?
It does! My identity is an open book, actually, now that I think about it. Maybe that's not so wise....
323: Serving sized canned soups are actually pretty expensive for the food value you get out of them. Pretty much all prepared foods are going to be a bit pricey on that sort of budget.
re: 328
I used to find budget tinned stuff to sometimes be economical. A tin of cheap soup or beans and a few slices of bread = a 40p lunch. Of course I'd often make a big pot of soup and just freeze some, but even the most conscientious frugal eater needs some cheap/quick options, too.
San Francisco's Chinatown has really good really cheap produce (as well as all other combinations of quality and price...), so it's plausible to me that NY's does. And some people need less food than others, for a bunch of reasons. Still, the $30/day diet does look like a canapé diet to me. (One of my grandmothers lived on no more food, into her eighties, but she was small and got lots of calories from liquor.)
I was going to recommend Fisher's sludge, sliced and fried for special occasions.
Now I'm getting really curious. How obnoxious would it be to raise the "How do you guys get enough calories" question on in their blog comments?
I think you'd better phrasing it diplomatically:
This looks like a crock of shite to me and an exercise in self-delusion and/or deception. Yes?
I'm going back a few weeks and a lot of their weekly groceries look like they'd do 2 meals, max. Maybe 3.
Well obviously they don't include the staples in these numbers. That would just be boring.
http://thirtyaweek.wordpress.com/2009/07/17/this-weeks-receipt-late/
I mean look at that. There's barely enough veg for a meal and a 1lb bag of basmati isn't going to go far with 2 people.
They also seem to buy a lot of fruit and almost no veg at all.
329: I'm not saying it can't be frugal, especially if you get a flat on sale and stick to the cheaper variants.
I'm just saying that this:
But even if you ate that every day, and made one batch do for two meals, you'd be right at $30 at the end of the month.
Isn't a particularly good estimate of minimal possible costs.
Well, it's not as though they're claiming that they have no other food except what's described on the blog or taking some kind of moral position about how awesome they are for meeting all their nutritional needs on $30/week for two, so they don't really have any particular ethical responsibility. So I suppose one could ask out of genuine curiosity (and one of them notes that she's a runner, so that makes me wonder too) but carefully avoiding any note of "gotcha".
Here's another question: I feel like I barely get my regular stuff done--maybe 3 or 4 nights of activism per week, a very little activist-related project stuff (maybe a couple of hours) additional, minimal housework, a couple of social engagements and paid work. But I read all these blogs where it seems like people do everything I do plus go to glamorous New York parties and shows, plus work in the community garden or something plus cook fancy meals every night. Is that real? I know I'm a bit lazy and don't use my time well and I have friends who work harder than me...hm, maybe the question is this: how many hours a week should one expect to put into projects/activism given a day job and household responsibilities? What is a reasonable amount?
1lb bag of basmati isn't going to go far with 2 people.
For that matter, it's bizarre to buy rice by the 1lb bag on any sort of tight budget.
re: 337.1
But if the project is to eat on $30 a week, and the bulk of their food isn't coming from their $30 budget that's dishonest.
and 337.2
People are, essentially, full of shit.
339.last to everything ever written.
Maybe their day jobs are less demanding than yours, and they don't do all those nights of activism.
337: Yeah, my guess would be that they're not actually doing nearly as much in terms of activism time as you are.
"Full of shit" in the blog context, is also ambiguous. In the composting conversations, I've brought up a community garden that I and the kids in theory volunteer in. In practice, I haven't been there for months -- we've had something going on every weekend. Someone might think that I was volunteering there regularly from the way I talked about it, and that would be be a reasonable deduction. But it wouldn't be true, and it's not actually something I ever quite said.
So if you're reading a blog, and someone refers to having done something conscientious on a Tuesday, that doesn't mean she does it every Tuesday, if you see what I mean.
339.1: Yep.
That's helpful. And 2/3 of my activist evenings are just meetings, and 3/4 of each is pretty much useless. Someday we'll figure out how to only have the useful 1/4.
"Someday we'll figure out how to only have the useful 1/4."
If you do, you'll be hounded for the rest of your life to take corporate speaking gigs.
Someday we'll figure out how to only have the useful 1/4.
No you won't, but that's okay. There's no way to do anything useful without wasting a lot of time.
Still, the $30/day diet does look like a canapé diet to me.
I'd love to be on a $30/day diet!
re: 342
Yeah, it's certainly possible to imply that sort of thing without being intentionally deceptive, but the whole raison d'etre of their blog is the $30 a week thing. That's slightly different from you incidentally giving the impression you are a keen community gardener.
328: Of course, I'll defer to your superior expertise in these matters.
My point was, really, that it's hard to come up with really cheap meals. Unless you are willing to dive right in and cook and bake from scratch using the cheapest ingredients and lots of bulk staples.
347: Oh, I was agreeing with you straight up about the $30/week blog -- if that's how it's presented, they should be reporting what they eat and how they acquire it. That was what the last line of my 342 meant to say.
The bulk of the comment was directed toward bloggers who Frowner generally finds intimidating -- they might be writing in such a way that a natural reading would make them sound superhuman, without actually being intentionally (or genuinely at all) deceptive.
Yes, all it would take to hit the spot is a second weekly post. One for a shopping list and one round up of where the other food came from. They did seem to have a lot more several-pounds-of-stodge shopping
Unless you are willing to dive right in and cook and bake from scratch using the cheapest ingredients and lots of bulk staples.
That's the most effective way, surely.
Hm, sorry, thought I deleted that last bit, but what I was getting at was that their shopping seemed somewhat denser, at least, back in January.
re: 349
Yeah, I understood what you meant. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
Also, there's a particular online milieu that is especially likely to be full of shit, and that is the whole crunchy/swipply/bourgeious thing. Almost as likely to be as full of shit as the keyboard-commando types.
at least, back in January.
When it was harder to stage successful midnight raids on neighborhood veggie gardens.
Also, there's a particular online milieu that is especially likely to be full of shit.
Is there any online milieu that is especially unlikely to be full of shit?
Just emailed the bloggers for clarification.
357: And you haven't pasted the text into a comment here yet? Bad minne!
But anyway, keep us posted.
I got an email from a commenter here, so here's their email and my response:
"Folx are wondering exactly how much free food you're getting from foraging, friends' gardens, friends' CSAs etc. Also, there's some confusion about where various staples fit into your budget. Are you buying grains in bulk on an occasional basis? Your answers will be appreciated.
Tina: So I've noticed. We're not 5' tall elves and we're happy to oblige.
If people read our posts ALL the way back from the very beginning they would see that our winter food is much different from summer in terms of staples and things and that we sometimes got free free from leftovers at work parties and stuff, but not generally. We take A LOT of time cooking. We usually make our own bread, crackers, pizza, granola, muesli and yogurt from scratch.
Foraging - I wish I did! I know there is tons of stuff in Prospect Park to eat, but I don't know what's safe. That would certainly augment our food supply!
Gardens: My mom has one. When I go to visit, she gives me zucchini and cucumbers and whatever else she has around. That happens maybe 1 every couple of weeks. It is lovely and I'm not apologizing for it. Once again, check out the winter receipts if you want more hard core just $30/week spending. Summer time has bountiful produce abounding and we're going to eat it if people give it to us.
Friend's CSAs: We have had 1 coworker let us have their share while they were away. We have two friends out for 3 weeks on their honeymoon and they have offered us their share. Next week is the last one we get, which is sad, but that's OK. We'll go back to our basics.
In terms of staples, we're able to live this way, in part, because we shop every week and generally in smaller quantities. A pound of rice really lasts us quite a while when we augment it with beans, vegetables, tofu, etc. Maybe our portions are huge, but we're certainly not going hungry. I run/workout everyday and I'm not a stick figure dying for sustenance. Small, nutritional meals that are made from scratch is how we do it. For the person inquiring about how much time it takes, bread takes time (do get Artisanal Bread in 5 Minutes a Day though, changed my life), yogurt takes time; popping rice in a rice cooker when you get home and prepping some tofu and veggies and sticking it all in the oven takes about 15 minutes. If you know how to cook or are willing to experiment, you can live cheaply too.
For calories, food, going out and all of the tizziness of Unfogged people, feel free to ask us about it on our site. We've done posts where we've posted EVERYTHING we've made/eaten during the week. Keep scrolling back in the archives - we've been doing this since September. Those bore me and are a pain to write, so we don't do them often. However, I would be happy to give a breakdown on everything I ate this week so far if it would make people happy. Do we eat out, yes. Do we eat out often, surprisingly no. When we're on vacation, that's a given, but for the most part, we pretty much stick to making things at home or going to friends' apartments for dinner parties.
Our email address is also on our about page if people are dying to know things. Like I said above, I'm happy to respond to any inquiries, but I'm not going to go crazy on this thread here.
Tina beat me to it! I was in a meeting.
||
Graffito from an early 1990s infoshop conference:
"The revolution happened. You missed it. You were in a meeting."
||>
Musta been a short-lived revolution.
They all are, neb, they all are.
337: Frowner, does it make you feel better to know that when I read about all the stuff you do it makes me feel bad for doing so little?
You think helping Frowner feel better is doing little?
363: Not especially, because then I think about all the fun I'd be having if I, like you, didn't go to ten million meetings all the goddamn time. (That is, I hope you're having fun.)
I still am amazed, honestly, that one pound of rice and so on for a week for two people even with tofu and vegetables and so on, even with a supplemental avocado and some eggs, doesn't leave people hungry. Maybe people are less hungry in New York. Maybe I really do eat too much. And again, I speak as someone who does cook from scratch, does make bread, knows her way around a chickpea, etc etc.
Others in my household are biased against rice cookers. I usually don't make rice because I can't seem to get it right without a rice cooker and my old one pretty much died.
(Amazement is not disbelief, however.)
We also eat quinoa, polenta, groats, millet, amaranth, pasta, couscous - not just rice. That helps the 1# last a bit longer ;)
Others in my household are biased against rice cookers.
ooc, why? I can understand not finding them necessary, but if it's a decent one, it does what it's supposed to, ime. I've heard some are bad at brown rice.
364, 368: Well, Eggplant almost had me feeling better about myself, but I should have known it is not so easy to cheer up Frowner.
And no, Frowner, I'm not having fun all that time that you're in meetings. Life (for peep anyway) just isn't like that.
371: you say that now, but just wait until they gain sentience and activate the killing lasers.
You say that as if it were a bad thing.
I'm still curious about the "eggs, onion rolls, blue cheese and Yves lentil veggie burgers" for only $4.
376: I am a tiny bit too, but mostly I just want a branch of this "Jack's" in my neighborhood. Preferably one that doesn't lock its dumpsters either.
Bad Brown Rice sounds like another likely niche fetish magazine title for AWB & BD.
376: That's not implausible, depending on amounts of each.
Two eggs, two onion rolls, half an ounce of blue cheese … I can see it.
Also, I'm trying hard not to evince "tizziness".
372: Okay, it cheers me up that you're miserable! But I'm keeping that under control--don't want to have to change my name to "Grinner". (Actually it doesn't cheer me up, particularly. I like to believe that for others life is full of glee and only my frowny nature prevents me from also being gleeful. A happy universe with a gloomy me is fine; a sad universe with gloomy me is awful.)
M/tch, you are the most all in a tizzy person I've ever met.
I recently discovered that I even prefer to make quinoa, that supposedly extremely easy to cook seed, in the rice cooker. It comes out better.
It's really the veggie burgers I wonder about--a pack of veggie burgers would be an absolute minimum of $3 here. I don't doubt the price, but I have to suspect some kind of sinister underworld veggie burger distribution system based out of New York.
Two onion rolls for $0.50 is plausible. 1/2 dozen eggs I'd expect to be over $2, but $2 I'd believe. $1.50 for cheese and veggie burgers, thought, seems like a heck of a deal.
380: 1/2 dozen even, if mass market (which can be less than a dollar a dozen). My local place has mix and match rolls for 25c each, if the veggie burgers are 2x instead 4x in a package, probably less than $2. You won't get much blue cheese for a dollar or so, I guess. That's the only tricky one.
385: Soylent Green... need I say more?
(which can be less than a dollar a dozen).
Huh, really? I'm actually pretty awful with prices -- for staples I don't even really look.
Frowner, you going to answer 371. Because I'm also curious.
388: soylent green is made of... vegetables?
Boring movie, Heston.
And Tina -- hi, and thanks for the response. I know this looks like a bit of a tizzy, but we actually spend this much effort picking over something random all the time -- it's a steady-state, undirected tizzy.
383: Which is why I'm trying so hard not to evince it, neb.
Was anyone else surprised that minne asked the subjects under scrutiny his question by pointing to this thread? I kind of was taken aback by that. I mean, I've never even looked at their blog, and I certainly wouldn't have called them fuckers if I knew they were likely to read this thread.
Huh, really?
Yeah, surprised me too. I had a look to see how relative expensive the free range ones ($4/dozen) I was buying were. Verdict: not much more expensive than "vegfedfreerangeorganicDFHeggs" you'd expect at a Whole Foods or whatever, but lots more than the cheap (e.g store brand) mass market ones I could get at the downmarket grocery store near work.
371, 390: This is irrational, and I'm not Frowner's roommates, but single-purpose appliances Just Seem Wrong to me. (The toaster and coffeemaker are grandfathered in.)
I certainly wouldn't have called them fuckers if I knew they were likely to read this thread.
Yes you would have. And so would I.
393: I certainly wouldn't have called them fuckers if I knew they were likely to read this thread.
Dude, it's not private space. Even without minne, we'd linked to the blog, and people were clicking through -- people come and find out why they're getting a bunch of hits from a site that's new to them. Remember The English Courtesan showing up and telling me girls wouldn't like me unless I was nicer?
Dude, I didn't call them fuckers, but if I thought they would show up and engage us, I totally would have!
Nothing wrong with calling people fuckers, of course. But you are doing it to their 'faces'.
395: I'm basically with you. But if your household eats a lot of rice and you've got a tiny kitchen, perhaps with only two burners (like say, in a certain Asian country I'm thinking of), they make a lot of sense.
People in my household allege as how rice cooked in a rice cooker never comes out right. I have not found this to be the case myself, and indeed prefer rice-cooker rice. The last two times my gifted chef friend came over to cook dinner at my house and cooked rice in pots we had total rice fail--once it was crazy soupy and once it was dry and brittle.
This is irrational, and I'm not Frowner's roommates, but single-purpose appliances Just Seem Wrong to me.
I can see this, but file it under unneeded rather than "just wrong".
If you either cook a lot of rice or have a weak range top or tend to screw it up in a pot by not being around to watch or whatever .... well, they're cheap and just work without problems. I bought one when I was briefly stuck in a place with a 110v stove (you could use any combination of 2 of the 2 heater elements on top or one in the oven), and still use one now for simplicity and freeing up burners.
I have heard people complain about cheap American made ones, but I've not had any problems.
We cook our rice in the stand mixer.
395: I understand that sentiment. We don't have a rice cooker, largely because only eat rice once a week and that isn't enough to justify the space a cooker would take.
397: I like you, LB. But maybe you've niced up since her visit, which was before I started reading the blog.
I dunno, I figured they could very well find their way here. We're swipple, they're swipple; it's a small world.
401: that's weird. I've found that it always comes out right. Are they turning it on?
You can cook red lentils in the rice cooker. It's not single purpose!
404 was too slow. But everybody I know with a rice cooker raves about how good of a job it does.
Remember The English Courtesan showing up and telling me girls wouldn't like me unless I was nicer?
And look! You didn't change your attitude and how many dates have you had since then?
People in my household allege as how rice cooked in a rice cooker never comes out right.
Crazy talk. With above caveat about (very) cheap cookers and/or brown rice. I've heard that some of the cheaper ones are too calibrated to white sushi rice and not adaptive enough, so they screw up brown rice predictable. I've never actually seen it though, and I haven't had or used any fancy ones.
People in my household allege as how rice cooked in a rice cooker never comes out right.
I see.
408 is right, there's a bunch of stuff you can do in them if you care to. Not that I ever do.
You can steam crap in a rice cooker, too.
If you want steamed crap.
Why don't we d-do it in the rice cooker?
No-one will be watching us,
Whyyyyyy don't we do it in the rice cooker?
412: People in my house are wrong, of course. So you don't actually need to see.
There's no accounting for taste, Sifu.
397: Oh, I know it's public space. And it's really not a big deal. It just seems there's a qualitative difference between someone tracking back a link that got made to their blog in a comment thread versus someone in said thread going over to their blog and saying "hey, we're discussing you, come over and talk to us". I'm not sure I've seen that happen here before, so it kind of surprised me.
You won't get much blue cheese for a dollar or so, I guess. That's the only tricky one.
The only way I can see this working is to get blue cheese at a grocery store salad bar. If the salad bar is, say, $5.49/lb., you're getting relatively cheap blue cheese. The checkout clerk will look at you funny (trust me), but if you feel badly about filling a salad bar container with nothing but a bit of blue cheese, cover it up with a bit of lettuce. For which you're paying $5.49/lb, but hey, it's camouflage.
What LB said in 397. I assume anyone who gets linked here will read what we say about them. I am surprised at her choice of a toaster, however, when a toaster oven is clearly superior. Melting cheese on toast is not optional.
For which you're paying $5.49/lb, but hey, it's camouflage.
Also, it doesn't weigh much.
You can get cheap bacon the same way.
I'm extremely anti-appliance -- no electric coffeemaker in any Blume residence in ten years -- but the rice cooker is both multipurpose and streamlined. It's basically a square! So easy to stow away!
410: Not a one. Clearly TEC was wise.
420: I have a kitchen with severely constrained counter space, and I have a broiler. The toaster oven has a larger footprint than the toaster, and cheese can be melted under the broiler.
Melting cheese on toast is not optional.
This, of course, is true.
I've done the same salad bar thing for feta (which my co-op is always running out of) and beets. I usually only want a couple of slices of beets.
420: I love toaster ovens, especially in summer when it's nice not to have to heat up the whole kitchen because you just need to toast some croutons or nuts or something.
That said, toasters actually produce far superior plain toast.
That said, toasters actually produce far superior plain toast.
Ours died, so recently I've been toasting under a broiler. Not something you want to forget to watch.
Not something you want to forget to watch.
Indeed. Flaming bread can be quite beautiful.
Bread and Fire Quarterly will be a hit, I can tell.
430: Also: Salad Bar Cheese.
That reminds me: I knew this guy in undergrad who published this little zine called Hey Hey Buffet! in which he and some companions reviewed the best all-you-can-eat and other meal deals for poor students to avail themselves of.
That said, toasters actually produce far superior plain toast.
Depending on the toaster, and whether or not you have just made other toast in it previously, which tends to stymie cheap ones.
That said, toasters actually produce far superior plain toast.
Randomly, the scene from 101 Dalmations that had the strongest impact on me (and, in fact, the only scene I can remember to this day), is the old man toasting thick slices of bread over a fire in his fireplace.
It seems like a lovely image of domestic contentment, and someday I hope to do that (if for no other reason than to satisfy a childhood longing).
433: I think the first place I encountered the idea of toasting bread before an open fire was in some book about British schoolboys (maybe by Roald Dahl?) where the lower classmen had to make toast for the upper classmen and where lashed if they burned it. The culprit faced a choice between something like 10 lashes on bare buttocks or 20 if wearing one's bathrobe. The narrator had a thickish bathrobe and so always chose the latter.
434: An equally memorable image, but not one of domestic contentment.
434: Did you read that story in The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More? It is Roald Dahl and that's where I read it. I got the book for Christmas when I was just a bit too young for it (nine? ten?) and the story about the boy and the bullies and the dead swan just messed me up for years since it seemed (except for the flying away part) so absolutely plausible and just a step or so away from my actual life. (Which wasn't exactly true; I never knew bullies who would actually have risked killing me. But it felt true.) Oh, that book is messed up.
All books about British schoolboys feature that scene.
434, 437: it's in Roald Dahl's first autobiography, Boy.
439: Which was followed by, surprisingly, Super-Boy.
418: someone in said thread going over to their blog and saying "hey, we're discussing you, come over and talk to us"
There's no such thing as "sanctity of on-blog communication". And I didn't write "come over and talk to us", I just asked some basic questions that had arisen in this discussion, and credited the source. And now I'M pretend internet friends with Tina and she hates the rest of you! Ha! (No, not really.)
I'm going to go downstairs and have a fancy sandwich.
I haven't read Boy so it must have been in the one Frowner cites. And I know what she means.
I think you should do a deconstruction of the business-magazine genre. Call it The Yield On The Ten-Year T Note. If nothing else, you'll have some advertisers.
441: Like I said, no big deal, it just surprised me a little. I guess also the "asking on our behalf" part of it, instead of just asking for yourself.
From artisinal hog slaughtering to la vice anglais, via preferred toasting methods. I love this blog!
"The Yield on the Ten-Year T-Note" sounds like the name of a short story, but I'm nost sure what it should be about.
"artisanal", minnie.
That kind of bespoke correction you don't get elsewhere, you know.
Randomly, the scene from 101 Dalmations that had the strongest impact on me (and, in fact, the only scene I can remember to this day), is the old man toasting thick slices of bread over a fire in his fireplace.
That is a lovely scene. It's a great book, much odder and more interesting than the movie. There's a sequel, too!
re: 434
My Dad had a load of boy's annuals from the 1950s which he'd been given growing up. They were full of that stuff. In retrospect they were really quite disturbing, but also, I think, the root of a lot of the Harry Potter type contemporary nostalgia.
re: 438
Yeah!
Also, fwiw, we had a coal fire growing up but it was one of the new-fangled 1950s types with a glass door. Every now and again we'd open it up and toast bread. Surprisingly hard to do well.
haha. i'm sorry i keep coming back, but this thread is highly entertaining. thanks minneapolitan, we can be internet friends.
451: Your blog is fun. I should be a much more frugal shopper than I am!!
And now, after reading today's posting, we can all know how only $4 was spent on so many yummy things. Dollar store!
i'm sorry i keep coming back
Not at all! Pull up a chair! Pretty soon you'll be offhandedly calling strangers on the internet "fuckers" along with the best of 'em!
Mind you don't burn our toast though, newbie, we're quite strict about that.
Totally late to the thread, but fuck all you haters. That urban farmer chick is awesome.
Ahem. (Insert rant here about the retention of critical skills, maintaining redundancy in our food generation/distribution system, the value in providing urban dwellers visibility to where food comes from, etc.
I really like her blog, too.
Also, Frowner, should you come back to the the thread--give me a shout if your food budget is leaving you enough fresh veg. My garden is producing enough that I can slide some beets, potatoes, salad greens, tomatoes and winter squash (not yet, but soon) your way. If you ask nice, I also have an extra jar or two of grapefruit marmalade--made with conventional sugar and pectin, but organic grapefruit, if that works for you.
455/6: Vegetables! Why, I'll take some, thanks! (Actually that's awfully nice of you--thanks very much indeed.) I'll go so far as to offer a yam/allspice cake (which is my best cake) and some of our household's good wheat bread (I know you bake your own, but I personally never mind a supplement to my own baking, so I assume you wouldn't either) as some small recompense. My email is my email is my email!
