Forever Foods Instead of Forever Chemicals #4

 Parched Wild Rice

Manoomin.

Also unparched (raw) wild rice.   

It is super dry, easy to store (just keep it dry).   In an accidental test I checked its tolerance for extreme temperatures in storage.  This is because I live off grid and don't heat the place when I'm not home.  So, some stored wild rice in a tightly closed mason-type jar went through a few freeze thaw cycles down to well below zero (fahrenheit) and above 100degs (also fahrenheit!) multiple times.   Then, I found the jar and cooked it up.  Still fantastic.

The parched style costs more, but is also quicker to cook, easier to bust up into a flour type product without fancy grainmill, just a little mortar and pestle or a couple of rocks or a cloth bag and a hammer (put the rice in the bag, use the hammer on it....don't try to bust rice with a cloth bag alone).  

Forever Foods Instead of Forever Chemicals #3

 Chicos

These are SUPER DRY slightly smoky corn kernels from the SW of the US.  

Because they are BONE DRY and a bit shriveled and kind of pre-cooked, once I put them in a jar, they store virtually forever.

"Virtually" partly because I will never be able to test truly long term storage.  They are DELICIOUS so I end up eating them in a matter of months.   

Still, rumor and lots of actual knowledge attests that they are still good after years of dry storage.

To cook: presoak (or not if I forgot to do that and I want to eat).  Cook in water, broth, in soup you already have going.  They need MOISTURE because, as noted above, VERY DRY.   They puff up to about 3x the dry size and add a smoky flavor to whatever they are cooked with or thrown on top of.

Quite chewy and I've never had them go mushy or decompensate even after days in leftover soup or simmered for hours. 

LEONARD PELTIER IS FREE!!!!!

 https://youtu.be/4bVeoNfsYGw?si=nYaTlZ7BaDkqeVhh

I cannot believe this!

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/18/leonard-peltier-prison-release

It's Getting Better

 OK, you get real humble real fast with a back issue.

I haven't been able to lift or workout much/at-all which annoys me (I am a late bloomer as far as gym rats but I hate losing strength it took me a decade to build up). but I have been doing really light no-impact hiit workouts for the elderly and yoga daily.  And taking some aspirin.  

The aspirin works since I rarely take ANYTHING for pain.  It's not eliminating the pain, which would probably result in me overdoing things and re-injuring my back.  Aspirin takes the edge off so I can get around without cussing every time I move.

Yesterday I put my pants on without strategizing first!  And got out of the car without pushing the seat all the way back and pivoting on my butt as a solid unit.  Just stuck my leg out of the door and got up!  A MIRACLE!  Or, patience and letting things heal.

I am planning on hitting the gym for a very short, light session today mid-day.  I usually like to be  there in the wee hours of the morning when no one can see me, but for the moment, it's too cold out to drive that early...correction, too cold out to get stuck behind a wreck that early....and I want to be able to flag down a passerby or call the gym manager if I re-hurt myself and end up stuck on the floor.  It's a gym where one is usually ALONE (awesome!)

I think the back is ready for some controlled lifting of very very light weights. I could do a back bend this morning during my yoga session and that was impossible for the first week.  

things that went well during the injury:

having the 8lb NIEL logs to burn rather than having to split wood or pick up wood chunks of unknown weight.  

having enough water on hand  (have to haul it up hill during the winter for drinking purposes as the well water gets stale and gross.  And I'd have to lift the handle on the outdoor spigot which was not going to happen) to get through the first few days without hauling.

having multiple boot/show options as not all were possible to to put on.   

having enough clean clothes to make it though just one more week before hitting the laundry (more hauling and toting.  I COULD have made it work with multiple trips up and down the hill but ugh.  Those extra sox and undies meant I did not have to worry about it

having a floor-sleeping option.  Getting in and out of the loft when I had to be on hands and knees to get out of bed...there is only 6" of space beyond the camping mattress in the loft to work with.  That's FINE when I'm FINE, but not if I needed a level hard surface big enough to let me maneuver through various contortions to get on hands and knees to get out of bed.  So, camping mattress to the floor, chair blocking the door (not ideal but it's not like I could get up and run out if the place burst into flames anyway).   

having completely indoor toileting options.   People kept telling me "just pee outside!" uh...right.... 1+ times in the middle of the night every night you want me to come down from the loft, put something on my feet, find the headlamp, mosey OUTSIDE (down the stoop), find somewhere not visible on a moonlit night (and all day every day I'm home) from the highway, squat down, not pee on my ankles and then reverse those steps back into bed?  NO.  Also staying ahead of the toilet situation so i had a day or two to sort my back out before hauling the compost (which one hauls before it gets too heavy) bucket to the processing location OUTSIDE far from the homesite.

having enough food on hand.  Duh.

having first aid supplies on hand including aspirin and pain rub (arnica hippy dippy stuff)

Things that were not crashing successes...

losing my stability poles (ski poles from thrift) so I stopped at a thrift store ASAP and got another pair.  

having a leaky hot water bottle and no instant handwarmers!   so I didn't have an easy option to put heat on my back.  Still working on fixing this one.

falling down in the first place but...I fall often so this probably isn't going to change.  

OW!!!! I FELL!

 Hard.  I was walking from the wee shed to the car this morning so I could go in and get a shower at the gym before work.

I had my lunch (in jars) in a bag with an empty gallon jug to fill with water at work (unfrozen water...) to cook with tonight.  And a backpack with clean clothes to put in my gym bag which lives in the car.

I'm following some animal's tracks, trying to figure out what it is and generally just walking to the car.

THEN at the bottom of the hill like 6 feet from the car and also right next to the car, the animal tracks are all smeary like it was slipping and sliding.

THEN I'm on the ground, on my back, with a jar of lunch jammed between me and the icy path, apparently, my hat and head lamp (it was still dark out) are somewhere, my glasses, which had been in my hand are somewhere else.  The jar of lunch under my back REALLY HURT.  IT was just outside a kidney location and FORTUNATELY DID NOT BREAK.  Because, that could have been really bad.  I was wearing a pretty thick coat.  I have not idea why the jar didn't break.  I hit hard.  And there isn't much meat there.

My back is wonked on the left side now.  It took a couple of minutes to find my stuff, and get up.  And old-lady flatfoot shuffle to the car.  VERY CAREFULLY and PAINFULLY.   Once my butt was in the seat, it was better . As long as I didn't move at all.  which is awkward when you need to steer and brake, etc.

I took a 30min hot shower with the massager right on my owie mid-low-back.   I didn't see a bruise.  

The shower helped.  Getting sox on with half a stuck back was an adventure.  Compression sox.  I had to sit down  Usually don't have to.

Once at the office I walked VERY CAREFULLY across some slick sh*t into the office and got my chair reset to the most supportive option.  And cranked my belt down like it is a weight belt.  If I jam my fist into the sore spot on my back, I can walk a bit more.

FORTNATELY I had forgotten some arnica salve from a previous Santa Fe trip at the office.  That is good for strained muscles and bruises so that's on there.  I may rig up a heating pad of some sort later.  Not sure how.  I have a date with a hot water bottle once I get home.  

This was my first fall of the winter and it was full on Bugs Bunny.  I wasn't even facing the way I was walking by the time I hit the pavement.  It's like I jumped up and body slammed myself.

Forever Foods Instead of Forever Chemicals #2

 So....obviously....Honey.

I mean, they find it in tombs and it's still good.

I do keep this on hand.  I doesn't matter if it crystalizes.  Leave it.  It doesn't have huge amounts of vitamins and minerals, but some.  

It's also good for cuts and other owies so more than food!

Actually, that is true of vinegar as well.  Good for what ails you.

If you have bee hives, the raw honey with the leg bits in it is fine.  You won't die of dead bee bits.

The wax is nice to chew, make candles, whatever.  And nice for making salves. 

I cook quite a bit with honey which is different than with sugar, bit more fragile and baked goods are better on the 2nd or 3rd day as they sort of get moister.  But I am rarely able to leave a baked good untouched for that long.

I don't do industrial store bought honey anymore.   Much of it is adulterated.  Local honey costs more but supports local agriculture  The giant bee operations that migrate hundreds or thousands of hives tend to annihilate local native pollinators so I'm trying to get honey from folks who have 5 or fewer hives.   At that level hives can actually support native pollinators. Nothing is perfect so I don't eat as much.   The cost of local small producer honey serves as a good road to overconsumption.

Forever Food Pantry list so far:

Vinegar

Honey

Forever Foods Instead of Forever Chemicals

 I hear and report on "forever chemicals" quite a bit and am trying to find less negative things to think about or at least OTHER things to think about.

Also, this year I am tracking my UPF (ultra-processed foods) intake for the year.   Being conscious of it makes me a bit more aware of my food.  I still eat some UPF.  The point isn't to avoid it more than usual but to see what I'm actually eating.

ANYWAY, UPF has forever-chemicals (let's shorten that to fc's) in it and is one of the vectors of exposure for humans (rumor has it I am one of those).  So, lots of thinking about that.

And of course, I like to cook and am thinking about shelf stable foods, food preservation, and generally things I can in the future produce, store, find, grow, whatever that doesn't include forever chemicals.

Hence...forever foods stored in things that aren't  plastic.

Vinegar...I buy LOTS of it and often in gallon plastic jugs (heh heh....jugs).  Acid liquids in plastic take on fc's.  Especially from soft/flexible plastics according to some research I've been reading at various nerd links to scientific journals.  The vinegar in glass is freaking expensive.  And I do brew my own, or have in the past.  Especially when I'm trying to brew kombucha and then it goes to far and is vinegar.  Cool.

Vinegar, once fully brewed is shelf stable until it basically evaporates away.  It is a forever food (ff....?).

Pineapples were CHEAP at a discount grocery store.  1$ for an entire pineapple.  So, I got 2.  Which is a boatload of pineapple for one person with no space.   I cut one up and ate part last night, rest with breakfast.  I kept the scraps from cleaning it like the skin and core nubbins.  Those are in a jar now (glass...not plastic) with some non-chlorine water and vinegar mother from the jar of vinegar I brewed in the office pantry cupboard from some sparkling apple juice no one was drinking.  It ended up filling a quart jar and over the past few months it has pretty well filled the jar with layers of vinegar mother.

So, pineapple scraps, non-chlorine water, scraps from fresh ginger I was cutting up for other stuff, bit of vinegar from the jar with the mothers in it.  And a chunk of mother.  Yes, I am doing this at the office.  The temperature at home fluctuates too much to ferment very well.

Once this ferments fully, it should be shelf stable.  I like shelf stable.

It cost me 1$ for the pineapple.  The water is from the well so whatever the cost of that was (maybe 20000ish) split across every time I use water.  I know I am more than 20k gallons in to the use of the well for 10 years...per gallon....um,. 50cents?

The jar was 1$ about 100 uses ago so 1cent?

This is the "waste" from the pineapple (which I would normally have composted and will in fact compost after this and I mainly bought it as food so....15cents in lost nutrients to the compost though fermenting actually ADDS nutrients so I'm going to call it a wash and say 0cents for the pineapple scraps).

The start from the other vinegar and mother is from free juice (it was at work and was about to go off and get thrown out), another used jar and the mother grew from the dregs of kombucha I'd had for a while so...10cents?   

And of course, this new vinegar will start more vinegar if it works and recoup some of the "cost".

If it fails and I throw it, but of course not the jar out, it might be costing me 76cents. 

Given that I will get a pint of live vinegar from this if I don't add sugar and it works, and given that live apple cider vinegar (the closest parallel I think in retail because it is in glass and "live") is going at the lowest at $4.99 a quart.  That's $2.495 per pint minus .76.   I am saving $1.735 over having bought it and had a bottle I don't need and would need to recycle.    Nice.  Frugal.

More on forever foods to follow.