Month: August 2014

Necessity is the Mother of Invention

My mother was a good, old-fashioned home cook.  She also never learned to drive.  Since we lived in the country much of the time, she knew how to make do with the ingredients and tools that were already on hand.

If she didn’t have spaghetti on hand, she would use flat noodles with Marinara, meat and cheese.  She flattened out chicken breasts with a frying pan (and worked off some frustration with her kids, I think).  A favorite recipe in our house is still a Chili Sauce that uses apples as well as tomatoes for a sweet and spicy addition to ground beef.  Mom usually had a pot of soup on the stove made out of oxtails, ham bones, turkey carcasses or whatever meat she had on hand.  (As kids, she didn’t dare tell us what was in the soup.  We only knew that it was good!)  She graduated eventually to be become restaurant cook but she still did her best work without the fancy gadgets that have become standard in many modern kitchens.

I don’t have my mother’s skills when it comes to cooking, but I have learned her respect for good, simple tools.

  • Knives should be kept sharp and safe.  A magnetic strip on the wall above the counter will keep metal knives safe, dry and conveniently at hand. These magnetic strips can be picked up at most hardware stores as they are commonly used for tool benches.
  • A good variety of large spoons, ladles and spatulas is a must.  Many can be picked up very reasonably at thrift stores or garage sales.  Watch for brand name items at a bargain.
  • Multiple cutting boards mean less chance of cross contamination.  Sterilize cutting boards regularly.
  • Old tools don’t need to be tossed out just because there is a new version, unless it is broken.  If there is room to store them, multiples can make prep work more fun!  It can become a contest between siblings or a chance to sit and visit with your spouse.  “Show and tell” works especially well with kids when they have their own tool that won’t be taken away if they are “too slow”.

Here are also a few favorite adaptations learned along the way:

  • Keep a clean pair of paint stirring sticks in the kitchen drawer.  When rolling out cookie dough, position the stir stick so that they raise the rolling pin and ensure the same thickness cookie with each cut. When the thickness is uniform, the cookies will bake evenly and you won’t end up with doughy middles and crispy edges.  If the paint stirrer gets grungy, toss it out and head to the hardware store.

    Paint Stirrers, Chopsticks and a Variety of Apple Peelers. I am ready for making gingerbread Christmas Ornaments.
    Paint Stirrers, Chopsticks and a Variety of Apple Peelers. I am ready for making Gingerbread Christmas Ornaments!
  • A pair of chopsticks is a great way to poke nice round holes into the tops of gingerbread (and other) cookies so they can be hung with a ribbon.
  • A 10 or 12 inch Fry Pan lid can be used as a “giant” cookie cutter for pie dough. It will create a perfectly round piece of dough for the top crust.  This will give a neat edge to turn when finishing the top crust.

As you can tell, good tools are an inexpensive way to make cooking fun, social and sustainable.  If you have other tips and or adaptations that you have tried in the kitchen, I would love to hear from you.  Please share them by adding your comment to this post or contacting John at [email protected].

 

A Little Pressure

From Left to Right: Beef, Carrots, Green Salsa, Beets, Potatoes All canned using a pressure Canner
From Left to Right: Beef, Carrots, Green Salsa, Beets, Potatoes
All canned using a pressure Canner

As I was growing up, I helped in the  kitchen quite a bit, especially during canning season.   We had several big blue (water bath) canners that were used for pints and quarts of all kinds of tomato products as well as jams and jellies.  I never saw my mom use a pressure canner.  One day I asked her—why? It turned out that before I  was born, she and her mother  were working with a pressure canner.  They went into the other room for something and forgot to check on it until they heard the pressure value and gasket blow off.  A jar had broken inside and the vegetables had clogged the pressure  valve. The content of canner spewed into the air, all over the kitchen!  Seeing this chaos—and cleaning up the mess afterward—convinced my mom never to can anything under pressure while there were kids around, just in case.

So it wasn’t until I was a young wife that I convinced my Aunt Betty to teach me about pressure canning.  After doing some research, we went together and bought a pretty expensive “All-American” brand  canner.

With a new pressure gauge and careful storing, this 30+ canner is still going strong.
With a new pressure gauge and careful storing, this 30+ canner is still going strong.

It has a metal to metal construction with 6 turn-screws to hold the lid in place.  It is extremely safe.  For the amount of food that I process, it was a wonderful investment.  I think of my Aunt Betty every time I use it.

Here are some safety tips to use if you decide to dive  into the world of pressure canning.

  • READ THE INSTRUCTIONS CAREFULLY.
  • Familiarize yourself with the equipment to make sure that you know exactly how it works before using it to process food.  Be sure you know how much water is needed (a metal yardstick works well to measure the depth of the water) and how many jars should go in a batch.
  • Follow the recipe exactly, at least the first time you are making something new.  The herbs and spices used during the canning process develop as the product cools and is stored.  After opening it, you can decide whether you want to change the recipe for next year’s harvest.
  • Invest in good equipment and treat it with respect.  You don’t necessarily need new equipment.  Garage sales and thrift stores often have sturdy equipment for sale.  Watch for breaks, holes, scorch marks or cracks in the metal.  These are sure signs that the canner has been used for something other than its original purpose.
  • Replace the rubber seals regularly, if your canner uses them.
  • Replace the pressure valve if it is showing any sign of wear. It is important that this part of the canner be accurate.
  • Stay in the kitchen while the pot is cooking. In this case, a watched pot is a good thing. The canner will build up to pressure.  The stove must be adjusted to keep it at the right  pressure throughout the whole canning time.  If the pressure is under the required amount—the food won’t cook correctly.  If the pressure goes over—there is risk of breaking jars and messes in the kitchen.
  • FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS for cooling down the canner.  Remember there are glass jars inside and they are very fragile in this state.
  • Do NOT open the canner until the pressure has naturally gone down to zero, according to the pressure gauge.  This part of the process cannot be hurried.
  • Remove the jars carefully and finish them according to the recipe.  Putting a towel on your table  or counter will keep the area drier and reduce the risk of the jars bumping together.
  • After the jars are cool, inspect them to make sure they have sealed properly.  If any fail to do so, put it in your refrigerator to use right away.
  • LABEL jars with contents and the year, before putting it into your pantry,

All in all, pressure canning is a great way to store your harvest,  You have control of exactly what is in your food.  Many recipes can be adapted for special diets. And, the jars  look so pretty in your pantry! If you have stories about your pressure canning experiences or any questions, please share them by adding your comment to this post or contacting John at [email protected].

 

Using CAPTCHA for Comments

It’s an unfortunate sort of thing, but the one percent who cause problems often dictate the restrictions on the ninety-nine percent who don’t. I had hoped when I moved to my new blog software that I might be able to get by without using a tool to ensure someone commenting actually is a human. People had complained about the previous version of my Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart (CAPTCHA) software. It was hard to see at times, even harder to work with. The bad news is that you’ll be dealing with CAPTCHA again on this blog whenever you make a comment. Several hundred spam posts every day make it clear that I really can’t avoid it, much as I might like to do so.

Now for the good news. Unlike the old blog software, I have access a whole host of CAPTCHA solutions when working with the new blog software. I’ve come up with what I hope is a less difficult means of keeping the spammers at bay. No, I won’t thwart all of them, but I’m determined to come up with a solution that makes life easier for the majority and a whole lot harder for the minority. Perhaps they’ll get the idea and go bother someone else for a while.

I do want your feedback. Does this new CAPTCHA solution seem to work for you? If so, please leave a comment to this particular post. This is one situation where I’d prefer you not contact me through e-mail. I want people to try the comment system and let me know how they feel about it. Thanks, as always, for your support of my blog.

 

Considering the Future of Processing Power

The vast majority of processors made today perform tasks as procedures. The processor looks at an instruction, performs the task specified by that instruction, and then moves onto the next instruction. It sounds like a simple way of doing things, and it is. Because a processor can perform the instructions incredibly fast—far faster than any human can even imagine—it could appear that the computer is thinking. What you’re seeing is a processor performing one instruction at a time, incredibly fast, and really clever programming. You truly aren’t seeing any sort of thought in the conventional (human) sense of the term. Even when using Artificial Intelligence (AI), the process is still a procedure that only simulates thought.

Most chips today have multiple cores. Some systems have multiple processors. The addition of cores and processors means that the system as a whole can perform more than one task at once—one task for each core or processor. However, the effect is still procedural in nature. An application can divide itself into parts and assign each core or processor a task, which allows the application to reach specific objectives faster, but the result is still a procedure.

The reason the previous two paragraphs are necessary is that even developers have started buying into their own clever programming and feel that application programming environments somehow work like magic. There is no magic involved, just incredibly fast processors guided by even more amazing programming. In order to gain a leap in the ability of processors to perform tasks, the world needs a new kind of processor, which is the topic of this post (finally). The kind of processor that holds the most promise right now is the neural processor. Interestingly enough, science fiction has already beat science fact to the punch by featuring neural processing in shows such as Star Trek and movies such as the Terminator.

Companies such as IBM are working to turn science fiction in to science fact. The first story I read on this topic was several years ago (see IBM creates learning, brain-like, synaptic CPU). This particular story points out three special features of neural processors. The first is that a neural processor relies on massive parallelism. Instead of having just four or eight or even sixteen tasks being performed at once, even a really simple neural processor has in excess of 256 tasks being done. The second is that the electronic equivalent of neurons in such a processor work cooperatively to perform tasks, so that the processing power of the chips is magnified. The third is that the chip actually remembers what it did last and forms patterns based on that memory. This third element is what really sets neural processing apart and makes it the kind of technology that is needed to advance to the next stage of computer technology.

In the three years since the original story was written, IBM (and other companies, such as Intel) have made some great forward progress. When you read IBM Develops a New Chip That Functions Like a Brain, you see that that the technology has indeed moved forward. The latest chip is actually able to react to external stimuli. It can understand, to an extremely limited extent, the changing patterns of light (for example) it receives. An action is no longer just a jumbo of pixels, but is recognized as being initiated by someone or something. The thing that amazes me about this chip is that the power consumption is so low. Most of the efforts so far seem to focus on mobile devices, which makes sense because these processors will eventually end up in devices such as robots.

The eventual goal of all this effort is a learning computer—one that can increase its knowledge based on the inputs it receives. This technology would change the role of a programmer from creating specific instructions to one of providing basic instructions and then providing the input needed for the computer to learn what it needs to know to perform specific tasks. In other words, every computer would have a completely customized set of learning experiences based on specific requirements for that computer. It’s an interesting idea and an amazing technology. Let me know your thoughts about neural processing at [email protected].

 

Lessons Learned as a Child

Jars of canned goods in the pantry.
Colorful Jars of Home Canned Vegetables

Most of what I learned about self-sufficiency was done while I was hanging around my mom, aunts and uncles.  My grandmother was one of thirteen children.  My mother had ten brothers and sisters.  I have 4 sisters and three brothers. It’s a large family, but it’s a close family.  We have always spent lots of time together. As a kid, much of it was spent gathering, gleaning, cooking and eating.  I didn’t realize I was learning self-sufficiency, I just knew that if I wanted to be in the kitchen I needed to make myself useful.

The earliest lesson that I remember happened while my mom and her sisters were canning concord grapes.  My uncle had a neighbor with an overabundance of grapes.  My mom had teenage brothers who needed something to do on a Saturday afternoon. So she sent dad with the boys off to pick the grapes while the women got ready to make jelly and jams.

Since I was only 8 years old and my sister was 11, our job was washing the jars.  There were dozens of jars that had been brought up from the cellar.  We worked in a back room of the house with two tubs.  She washed and I rinsed.  It was also the job for both of us to feel the top edge of the jars to make sure there weren’t any nicks or cracks that would prevent the canning lids from sealing.  Once the jars passed our inspection, they were taken into the kitchen where they were boiled to sterilize them and filled by the adults.  It may seem like a lot of work for an 8 year old, but I still check my canning jars this way because of the lesson I have always remembered.

Getting kids involved early is key to teaching life long lessons.  Kids are naturally curious about what the grownups are doing.  Kids WANT to be included in grownup activities. There are oodles of ways to bring your kids along on the road to self sufficiency.  It’s never too early.

  • If your kids are the kind who enjoy water, set them up washing jars to prepare for canning.  Let them help wash the dog or the car.  It may end up in a water fight, but those are great fun in the summer!
  • If they like making mud pies, teach them that making bread or pie crust dough is similar, and let them try it out. Even a preschooler can help roll cookie balls (and unlike PlayDoh, you can bake and eat the results).
  • If they like picking flowers, give them a small plot or row of their own in your garden and let them take responsibility for the tending, watering and weeding.
  • If your kids who are the kind that like to read and figure out things, introduce them to recipe books and let them choose what is going to be made for supper.  It will help them practice reading as well as teach valuable math and science skills.
  • Do you have an animal lover at your house? Let them take charge of the pet care and update you on the health of the critters – keeping records like the veterinarian.

When you include kids in your activities, at their skill level  and with ample encouragement, you are opening up a whole new way of communicating with your child. They learn that adults sometimes make mistakes or have failures and have to figure things out differently.  You are creating an environment where your kids can try, succeed (or learn that failure isn’t fatal) and grow.

As the harvest progresses and the canning/freezing season is upon us, there is an opportunity to teach the value of starting early to make a great Christmas.  By canning and collecting the summer fruits and vegetables, you can fill your cupboards full of basic things like corn, peas, beans and jelly.  You can also  try special recipes for treats like  green and red colored pears, spiced apple rings, green tomato mincemeat and peach pie filling.  Then when it comes time to put together a gift basket for a teacher or putting on a Holiday dinner, your child can proudly say “I helped to make that!”

Is there any greater feeling than “real” accomplishment?  I don’t think so!

If you have stories about your self-sufficiency lessons or any questions, please share them by adding your comment to this post or contacting John at [email protected].

 

Bletchley Park Reborn and a Social Issue Revisited

You may not have ever heard about Bletchley Park. In fact, the place was one of the best kept secrets of World War II (WWII) until just recently. Of course, like many secret places, this one fell into disuse after the war and nearly ended up in the scrap heap, but a restoration effort has been under way for quite some time now. As a computer scientist, the entire Bletchley Park project interests me because it was the first time that many computer principles were put into play. The project relied on cutting edge technology to reduce the length of the war and saved thousands of lives. A lot of other people must feel as I do because the park recently had its 100,000 visitor.

This particular historical place is receiving a lot of notice as of late. For example, there is a PBS television show called The Bletchley Circle that talks about what happened to some of the ladies who worked there after the war. The show makes good viewing and the feelings and situations presented are realistic to a point. I doubt very much that any of the people who actually worked there ended up as amateur sleuths, but it’s fun to think about anyway. The show does have the full cooperation of the restoration group and is even filmed there.

The computer systems used at Bletchley Park were immense and even the lowliest smartphone today probably has more processing power. However, WWII was the first war where computer systems played a major role and reading about their history gives insight into the directions that the technology may take in the future. The most important factor for me has been that the group working at Bletchley Park was made up of the finest minds available, regardless of gender, sex orientation, religion, age, or any other factor you can imagine. The only thing that mattered was whether you had a good mind. It’s how things should be today, could be today, but aren’t. It’s not hard to imagine the impact on the problem of global warming if we had such a group now.

All good things must apparently come to an end. At the end of the war, the group that performed so many amazing tasks was broken up, rather than being retained to work on other problems, such as reconstruction. The sheer waste of not keeping these minds working together on other problems staggers me, but it has happened more than a few times throughout history, and all over the world. No country in the world is exempt from such terrible waste. The women in the group ended up going home to be housewives and pretend that nothing ever happened. It’s the reason that The Bletchley Circle strikes such a chord with me. The show presents a kind of “what if” scenario.

If the world is to survive, it’s important that we think about the incredible waste of not using all the resources at hand for solving problems (and there are more than a few problems to solve). If this group serves as nothing else, it’s a reminder of how a few extremely talented people were able to solve a seemingly insurmountable problem. They should serve as an example today for all those who think the world’s problems can’t be solved—they resonate as a beacon of hope. Let me know your thoughts about Bletchley Park and The Bletchley Circle at [email protected].

 

Greetings and Salutations

Red Skies at Night: Sailor’s Delight! Red Skies in the morning: Sailors take warning!

Starting this blog is sort of like launching a boat on the ocean.

It’s exciting!  It’s going to be a challenge and I love that.

There will certainly be hidden obstacles, rocky shoals and safe harbors along the way.  There will be foggy weeks where the words are hidden and hard to put onto paper.

But, there will be some weeks that will be crystal clear and smooth sailing with the wind in the hair and the arms in the air!

As everyone can see, my writing style is quite a bit different than my friend, John’s.  We are very different in temperament, history, upbringing and world view.

However, being invited to ride on the waves of the Internet alongside an established author, such as John Paul is a positive thrill and huge privilege.

As we get to know each other in this blog, it is my hope that you will find the information useful; the stories endearing and my approach to self-sufficiency complimentary to John’s and Rebecca’s. They have both played an important part in the care and maintenance of my little boat of living.

I think of it as my personal “Cruise Line”.

I hope that it is not related to the Titanic.

I know that it’s a little Dinghy!

So – Crack the champagne bottle on the bow and hoist the mainsail! Let me about your self-sufficiency questions by adding your comment to this post or contacting John at [email protected].

 

Introducing Pegg Conderman

Tomorrow, you’ll meet an exciting new author in this space. Pegg Conderman will be joining me as a new voice on this blog. She has had experience with newspaper writing and definitely has a great eye for photography (so you can stop complaining about my out of focus pictures). The two of us will work together on posts in the Self-Sufficiency, Social Commentary, and Technical categories. It is my hope that her contribution to the blog will provide you with even better information and round out the kinds of information you receive here. More importantly, Pegg’s differing perspective on topics will help me provide you with alternative viewpoints on topics, which is something I’ve wanted to do for quite some time now.

Please be sure to tell Pegg hello and welcome her as you’ve welcomed me in the past. There will be a learning curve, but every new adventure in life involves a learning curve. Certainly, I’m constantly in learning mode as I navigate new technologies. I ask that you exercise patience in working with Pegg during this start-up period.

As always, thank you for your continued support for this blog and for my books. Every e-mail and comment you send is greatly appreciated and I always look forward to working with you on book-related topics.

 

Becoming Even More Self-sufficient

Those of you who have been reading my blog for a long time know that Rebecca died recently (see A Tribute to My Wife and Friend). Today would have been her birthday, so naturally it’s one of the harder days I’ve had. In looking back at our 33+ years together, everything was defined by our relationship. We did everything together. Now, I’m learning to do everything on my own, which means taking a look at the procedures and processes I’ve used in the past, as well as organizing tasks and resources around the needs of just one person. Of course, that’s the focus of today’s post. The idea of keeping things organized so that it’s possible to become as self-sufficient as possible, but in the least amount of time possible and with the least amount of effort.

I’ve read a considerable number of books and articles about self-sufficiency and most mention processes and procedures—the requirements for getting a task accomplished. Of course, this information is indispensable. You can’t do much unless you know how to do it. Learning how to do things on your own is always good, but it’s better when you can benefit from someone else’s mistakes. However, simply knowing what to do and how to do it usually isn’t enough. I’m discovering that fact as I go through this transition. I know how to accomplish a great many things, but doing them in a way that works for one person is becoming a learning process.

The organization of tasks and ensuring that you can actually accomplish them with the resources you have on hand is a significant goal in self-sufficiency. At times, it will become impossible to accomplish a task, even if you know the process, without the required organization and resources, especially the required personnel. It’s something you should consider before you attempt to perform that task. Nothing is worse that getting in the middle of something and only then discovering that you can’t finish it because you simply don’t have enough hands.

I’ve actually started using dry runs and walkthroughs as I rediscover how to perform tasks using just one person. Setting everything up and then going through the required steps is helping me understand where I might fall short if I don’t come up with a new way to do things. It’s an important thing for anyone who wants to become self-sufficient to consider. There have been times where I have seen people just standing around, waiting for something to do, when there were more people available than the person who started the task envisioned. Using skills and resources efficiently helps you complete tasks faster.

There is an important point to all this. A lot of my posts, such as Calculating Your Actual Bulk Goods Store Savings and Calculating an Hourly Wage deal with money issues. Making self-sufficiency profitable will help keep you interested in pursuing it. Of course, profit can be viewed in a lot of different ways. The Health Benefits of Self-Sufficiency and Health Benefits of Self-Sufficiency (Part 2) posts speak to this need. However, the bottom line is that getting things done quickly and efficiently improves the profit margin of self-sufficiency no matter how you look at it. Let me know your thoughts about efficient self-sufficiency at [email protected].