Judith Browning

Alder Burns wrote:To any and all vegans who seem to struggle with finding filling, savory, "solid", protein packed food, I have one word.  Tempeh!  This fermented soy food (which can also be made with other beans and grains) is so nutritious and yummy and cheap (if you make it yourself) that I make and eat it frequently, and I'm not even vegetarian!  It takes a starter culture and a controlled warm-temperature incubation, similar to making yogurt or yeast bread, for about 48 hours at ~85F.  A warm spot by the stove can work, or in a cooler with a pot of hot water, or an oven with pilot light....my current answer is a small electric brooder heater in a cardboard box.

Alder, do you have a good source for starter culture? I made tempeh for years and you are so right about it.

In the beginning I bought the starter from the Mail Order Catalog from The Farm in Tennessee.  When they did not carry it anymore I was able to get it from G.E.M. on the west coast, both had wonderful very active starters...but GEM quit selling it also.

I found some on line later that seemed 'weak' so just gave up.  I would love to be making it again.

I do read that fermented is the only form of soybeans we should be eating because any others do not digest well.

Dave, I just wanted to say how fun it is for me to see some of the natural dyed yarn worked up into some things and then used for this cache....the scarf, looks like the cosmos dyed wool? and your hat some bodark, onion skin and weld I think?...great crocheting...love the stitches!

oh, enjoy...this may be your last chance to relax a little for a long long while

My friend has an old photo of me, literally barefoot and big pregnant with a fifty pound sack of goat feed on my shoulder headed up the trail to our cabin...first child.  I did not maintain that with the second and I can imagine by a third I would be needing some time off...

We've had this happen also...at our other home where the pear tree was farther from the house out of sight.  
One day full of pears and the next all gone with no trace.  We were pretty sure it was a whole family of raccoons that just stripped the tree bare.

Way back, we had some wild hazelnuts we were watching carefully to pick when they were ready...that time we guess it was mice, chipmunks? or some small critter that *knew* when to harvest them just ahead of us...sometimes that happens with blueberries too...a bird peck on the 'almost' ripe ones.

...such a disappointment...raccoons don't understand the meaning of 'sharing'

Marco, yes, just absolutely amazing!
Here's a couple more pictures that I'm lifting from my fb feed so they may disappear in awhile?
Moray - Peru photo by Kenneth Moore.


Rice terraces in Sapa, Vietnam.

Lately I've been reading the odd book here and there that I missed back in the sixties and seventies...the Nearings, ram das's 'be here now', 'One Straw Revolution'.

This quote jumped off the page at me in Hugh Prather's 1970 'Notes to Myself'

"If you will tell me the way you see it rather than the way it "is", this helps me discover more fully the way I see it."

Marco Banks wrote:The amount of work that this represents is pretty crazy.  They must have dug those using a machine of some sort, yes?  If those were hand dug, that's crazy.

Even with an excavator, I can't imagine how many years it took to dig all those "craters".

The article says

 vineyards on Lanzarote date from the mid-18th century, following six years of volcanic eruptions that blanketed the island in black ash.

Farmers on the arid island began to hollow out pits in the volcanic ash …

So, I think they must have been done by hand, maybe with some animal power also?
Many people and steady work...amazing what has been done around the world and has stood the test of time.
Terracing has always amazed me, especially after doing just a very few by hand.

Japan's terraced rice fields

We finally got out on one of our favorite hiking trails yesterday and because we have had so much rain and the day was overcast all of the colors and textures were more intense than usual.

Respectfully, a thumbs-down doesn't equate with a wrong answer. The pop-up label on the button indicates that it means that someone found the post less-than helpful.

In that sense, I found the post most 'helpful' because it presented yet another view.  

I can easily accept that someone else did not find it helpful.

F Agricola wrote:

Judith Browning wrote:I think it's something to help remove tight jar lids?  
It even looks like there is a space for smaller lids...

I want one

BINGO!

Someone please give the lady an Apple!

Yep, I use it regularly - it's probably the best low-tech device in the kitchen.

I've had various ones that don't work so well, including a wooden handled one with a leather strap that fits around the jar lid and can easily adjust to different sizes.  I had hopes for that one but it did not work for me.  I used to always be blaming my husband for screwing the lids back on too tight and have finally realized its all me and years of weaving wear on my joints.

I'll have to start looking for one like yours...