Video- how to use a soil block pot-maker

I'm going to have to try this next spring...

Got the Can't Eat Food Blues...

So, it looks like I'm going pretty much paleo, with some 'cheating' with the occasional bit of refined sugar.

At this juncture, the list of what I can't eat is getting as long as the list of what I can- no tomatoes, or acidic foods (including apple cider vinegar, lemons, oranges, and cut fruit dipped in ascorbic acid to keep it fresher on the shelf- discovered that when a package of pre-cut fruit from Sobeys stripped a layer of skin off the inside of my mouth), dairy (including goat... I tried... nope), all grains (but I can cheat with a couple of the gluten free varieties as long as I don't binge or do it too often), and I can eat a bit of potato as long as I don't eat it too often or in large quantities (sharing a large NY Fries every couple of months doesn't seem to harm me in any way).

*sigh*

There goes my home made cheese and yoghurt-making. I already had to give up making my own bread a few years back.

Not cool, body. Not cool.

Radical Roots to the Roots of Oppression- How the carrot became symbolic of religious hegemony

In the 16^th the Low Countries (corresponding roughly to the modern day countries of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg) were struggling to become a country of their own, and win freedom of religion. Calvinism had begun to spread, and Charles V, the King of Spain, who owned the title to the lands, called down the Inquisition on the region to try and halt the spread of the ‘heresy’. Most cities in the Low Countries were governed by guilds and councils, which elected a ruler, known as the ‘Steward’ or ‘Stadtholder’. Many provinces would elect one person to be their Steward jointly, but the position was not initially hereditary.  Charles’s son, Philip II, tried to centralize the government of the region, which was opposed as well. In 1566 he had to send the Duke of Alva into the region to put down rebellion in the country. The United Provinces of the Low Countries elected Prince William of Orange as their leader, and thus began the 40 Years War. He was assassinated in 1584, and his second son, Maurice, took over the fight. He was 17 at the time.

England came to the aid of the Low Countries, and then France. By 1609 a truce had been established. In 1648 the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands was recognized as their own country as part of the Treaty of Westphalia. The Dutch struggle for independence had lasted eighty years.

In a northern city called Hoorn, in the Netherlands, they found a subtle way of protesting the interference from the Kings of Spain... by growing carrots. Orange carrots. Only orange carrots. This protest ‘took root’ and spread all over the region, but so subtly that there isn’t any record stating explicitly why. Everywhere else people were growing yellow, red, white and purple varieties as well. The 'Horn' variety of carrots comes from there.

So, why did orange become the only colour for carrots in the modern, Western world?

The Reformed Church (a version of Calvinist Protestantism) became the de-facto church in the new Republic. Catholicism was banned, or at least taxed heavily, depending on the different policies of the individual provinces. 

In 1654 England went to war with the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands over trade, only six years after they helped to ratify the agreement that established the country. England still had reduced trade with Spain, while the Republic, ever-pragmatic, started up full trade relations with Spain. Plus, the English had just suffered through a bitter civil war, and every facet of life in that country had been disrupted. The Republic lost the First Anglo-Dutch War, and as part of the negotiations, Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector of England, had a secret annexe put on the treaty which forbade the Republic from ever electing a representative of the House of Orange to the position of Stadtholder ever again.

First William, then his sons Maurice and Frederick Henry, and then William II and his son William III of the house of Orange, were seen as defenders and upholders of Protestantism.  All of them were extremely competent generals and statesmen as well.

After what the Dutch call the ‘Year of Disaster’, 1672, when Louis XIV invaded the Republic and forced them to cede land, the collective provinces decided that the treaty they had signed with Oliver Cromwell was defunct as he wasn’t around to enforce it anymore.  They elected William III as Stadtholder, who had already made himself King of England, Scotland and Ireland through marriage to Mary II (the daughter of James II, king of England, and his first cousin on his mother’s side), a shrewd military mind (see The Battle of the Boyne), and some deft political negotiations (the Glorious Revolution of 1688).

What this meant was that Protestantism remained the dominant form of Christianity in all of these countries, and the Republic remained free to conduct trade throughout Europe and all of the colonies. The House of Orange was at the head of the richest and most powerful trading and military empire in Europe.

Religious factions remained bitterly opposed in England, and in Ireland, the northern part of the island had just been recently entirely depopulated of Catholics (by killing, selling into slavery, and those who saw it coming running away) and then re-populated with the ‘troublesome’ Border Scots, who happened to be extremely Protestant. Also, in Ireland, most of the land was owned by Protestant lords, both in the North and South. In England, Catholics were denied the right to vote and sit in the Wesminister Parliament, and they could not hold commissions in the army for over a century. The ban on the British Monarch from being a Catholic or marrying one was only repealed in 2013.

In Northern Ireland, the ‘Orange Order’ continues to this day as a Protestant fraternal organization, which once had branches all over North America. It’s not as popular in these times, when Protestant and Catholic aren’t at each other’s throats as much anymore, at least, outside of Ireland. 

Humans are well-known to engage in symbolic eating, whether consciously or subconsciously. In the Netherlands the orange carrot remained a symbol well into the late 18^th Century, when it was against the law to display the roots at market ‘too prominently’, as it was a symbolic gesture of support for the monarchy… The House of Orange.

Everywhere else, the Horn carrot and its progeny were sweet, of good quality, and a very homogenous colour, even if the symbolic origins were forgotten over time. And Dutch farming was synonymous with quality products.

http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/1581dutch.asp

http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/royal-history-carrot

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/obesely-speaking/201311/symbolic-eating

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Orange-Nassau

http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/jam.html

Making yoghurt the right way, or, don't do what I did

So, I bought a yoghurt-maker. It cost $45. The product was inedible and acidic, and I gave it to my neighbours after only three uses. Complete waste of time and money, and I felt like a dope afterwards.

Don't do what I did.

You can make yoghurt with stuff you already have in the house (for tools- although you might want some butter muslin if you want to drain the whey from your yoghurt, which makes it more lactose-intolerant-friendly), and you can re-use the same batch a couple of times, but make sure you get a new starter culture every couple of batches for optimal flavour.

Here are some good online instructions-

New England Cheesemaking Company- Yoghurt info page

Make yoghurt in your oven

There's a lot more to it than was covered in the info booklet that came from the yoghurt-making-machine. Which I had to download and print because the company was too cheap to include it.

That thing about hindsight is so true.

Something else you can do in the fall

How to prune a berry bush at the end of the season.

Battening down the hatches

It went down to -6 C last night... Winter arriveth. (Yes, I know I made that word up, but it does follow the rules for Old English ;)

This winter I'm going to make sure that all the windows have proper, heavy-duty curtains on them. I got a pair of blackout curtains from Canadian Tire (on sale, woot!) this past summer, and they made a world of difference keeping out the heat. I'm also noticing that they trap the cold air nicely against the glass. I get the feeling that if I put them in the basement (walkout basement with acres of glass thanks to a passive solar design) that it will make the temperature much more habitable down there this year. Things might heat up okay during the day, but at night it's downright cold. Also, it's time for the yearly trip to the hardware store for large plastic sheets packaged up as 'winterizing kits', and attaching them to my big windows. It's a bit of a job, but it works great.

This year I'm buying myself an electric heater that looks like a small wood stove. Since I'm never going to get a real one, I guess I can use my imagination and pretend... There's only so many wool socks you can put on and still fit inside your shearling slippers, and fingerless gloves are nice and all, but they're hard to type in and my fingers *still* get cold.

That basement room is going to be comfy, darn it. I'm tired of freezing my buns off.

Ban single use plastic...

This is a great video I just saw on Upworthy:

Sharing around to help raise awareness...