Food Archives - Page 3 of 20 - Living Off the Grid: Free Yourself

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Root cellars

With spring in the air, summer right around the corner, many of our gardens are booming with lots of produce, much of it we eat right away, but it’s nice to be able to save some for later in the year, that’s where root cellars come in handy, they keep the temperatures moderated (not too hot, not too cold) and keep the humidity consistent so our fruits and veg stay fresh longer.

Root cellars, as the name indicates are dug into the ground, if you have a hill or slope you can incorporate that into your design making it unnecessary to dig a hole but rather tunnel into the hill. You can also place a structure on top of the ground and pile dirt around the sides, even over the top if it’s strong enough.

There are many ways to create a root cellar, from creating a large walk in space to burying an old fridge or freezer in the ground. Here are a couple of ways to do it. Do you have a root cellar? If so, how do you use it and how do you like it?

https://youtu.be/C32MqyE26w4

https://youtu.be/9FElJ1PLzoQ

https://youtu.be/aLM6rWmQxic

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May 19, 2016 No Comments

Community

Strawbale gardening dangerous?

I have always loved the idea of using straw or hay, lots of it in my garden as a thick mulch, I follow the Ruth Stout methods of gardening. Then came strawbale gardening, planting directly in the strawbale itself, I witnessed one of these gardens planted by a neighbor who had very rocky soil and couldn’t grow anything before, her tiny strawbale garden exploded with veg, it was very happy there.

Now I discover that with all the pesticides and poisons that are being sprayed, it’s now a problem for those of us who just want to garden using straw or hay. I was under the assumption that if you got something that was used for animal food and bedding that it must be safe, turns out I was making huge and incorrect assumptions.

It seems that it is common practice for the farmers to spray their fields with weed killer and pesticides, it’s apparently not a major issue for the animals eating it, though honestly I can’t see how it can be good for them. But once these contaminated bales hit your soil, they can and do affect how your are able (or not) to grow your food. What you thought was safe and organic is not so safe to use.

What can you do? You must find out the history behind that bale of hay or straw before purchase, find an organic grower and stick with them, yes it may cost you more, but how much is your health worth? You might even be able to get a better price on “old” or spoiled hay or straw from an organic grower.

You can learn more about this here:
https://thegrownetwork.com/hidden-dangers-straw-bale-gardening/

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May 8, 2016 1 Comment

Off-Grid crock pot

I love the idea of cooking low and slow, but being off-grid means I don’t have the electricity to spare to run an electric crock pot, nor do I want to cook on my propane stove for hours and hours even on a low flame, I do use a pressure cooker to make things such as soup, stew and the such.

Today I ran across this video showing how you can use tea lights (small candles) to create an off-grid crock pot or slow cooker. I was intrigued and watched, I can see how it can be a really good thing, I can also see where some improvements can be made to make it safer, I would use metal to line where the candles touch the base, that way there would be little chance of the wood there getting hot enough to combust and if the candle wax were to escape, it would be less likely to catch anything on fire. I would perhaps want to line the entire thing with metal to keep things safer.

He said the meal took about 2 hours to cook, different tea lights last different amounts of time, from 2 hours up to 4 hours, you would have to check it as time went by to know if you would need to add fresh tea lights.

Watch and let me know what you think?
https://youtu.be/3aVKYFT14Ro

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January 26, 2016 1 Comment

Community

What’s your backup plan?

backup
It used to be that big storms caught us by surprise, now it seems that more and more we have several days up to a week’s warning, but even with these longer lead times, it’s still a good idea to have a backup plan, a way to survive, at least for the short term while the emergency plays itself out.

It has to be very disheartening to be greeted with empty shelves at the stores when weather emergencies happen, whether local or regional or even statewide. Most, if not all grocery stores have, on average, a 3 day supply of food & stock, that is if there isn’t a run on food, when that happens, the shelves will be stripped in hours, not days.

If you were stuck in your home right now, if you couldn’t leave, how long would you be able to survive with the food you have in your home now? How many days before you are in real trouble? Most of us are living paycheck to paycheck, some of us live in small apartments with not much storage space for extra food.

It’s possible to put up extra food on even the tightest of budgets, you might have to give up some “extras” for a while, but it’s possible to have some extra money to spend on buying foods for emergency backup. What do you do that costs money you don’t have to spend? Maybe downgrade your entertainment bills, things like your TV (cable & satellite), your internet, save that money you would spend on eating out or going to Starbucks… Drop your gym membership for a couple of months and sock that money into extra food to put back.

Curtail your driving, that is money you are putting into the gas tank, only drive when you absolutely have to, combine trips and stop joyriding, carpool to work if you can.

Now that you have a few extra dollars put aside, what kinds of food should you get? That all depends on what you will eat, there is no point in buying cans of baked beans if you hate baked beans. Buy what you will eat, but make sure it’s food that will last, especially without refrigeration, a freezer full of food is of no use if the power goes out. Buy dry foods, canned foods, you can get those foil packs of food like tuna, rice, chicken, even milk that doesn’t need refrigeration.

Your ability to cook may be curtailed because of the power going out, if you are really thinking ahead, you will have alternative ways to cook, propane is good for that. You can get food that doesn’t need to be cooked or needs very little in the way of cooking. Recently I saw quick cooking dry rice in the dollar store, it’s precooked and only needs to have water added to it, …

January 24, 2016 No Comments

Living in a greenhouse

I’m sure I’m not the only person who ever wondered how it would be to build a greenhouse around your house, these folk in Stockholm Sweden did just that. It looks quite ingenious, and even pretty. I love the plants they have growing, the fig tree for example, there is no way they could grow that without it being inside a greenhouse, and the tomatoes look fabulous! Most people don’t know this, but tomatoes can be an perennial plant if the weather is mild enough in the winter.

The area where they live is normally just a summer getaway for most, but with the greenhouse around their home, they can stay there year round in comfort. I imagine it was not a cheap venture, but the money they save on heating in the winter will eventually pay for itself, and the fact that they are more self sufficient with growing food (plants) year round, it must all add up.

Here is a video showing this home, enjoy!

https://youtu.be/30ghnDOFbNQ
https://faircompanies.com/videos/view/family-wraps-home-in-greenhouse-to-warm-up-stockholm-weather/

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January 18, 2016 No Comments

Food

Foraging gifts for the family

Foraging for food sounds difficult but with these tips you will get an easy start – and soon become an expert forager.

Introducing foraging into your lifestyle will benefit your family, your diet and your bank balance. It’s another step to becoming more sustainable — working with the environment, whether you live off-grid or you’re looking to eat ethically sourced food.

Foraging is a great family activity. For younger children it’s their first lesson in eco-living – a way of teaching them about how to depend on and respect their environment. It’s also a great way to keep the kids entertained on a hike.

Set them a challenge to see who can collect the most and you’ll soon have enough wild vegetables for dinner. It saves you time and adds nutrients to your diet which is so important in the winter months. We think you should buy this book introduce your family to foraging – buy it on Amazon.com because it covers all types of edible vegetation from fruit to vegetables.

But it in the UK

Buy it in Canada

When you’re out there this set of organic vegetable bags – buy it on Amazon is perfect for storing different types of vegetables that you may not want to store together.

Buy it in the UK

Buy it in Canada

Foraging is free food – one of the most important elements of off-grid living is trying to save money wherever you can. All it costs is a few hours of your time, a few hours that you’ll no doubt enjoy. You’ll be able to cut down on your shopping bill, causing you to do a mini-fist-pump at the checkout. Not only is foraging free, it can also bring a new zest of life to your cooking. You’ll be using new ingredients that you can integrate into recipes you’re familiar with or you can create completely new dishes, such as a wild mushroom risotto. We’d suggest this book – buy it from Amazon about mushroom picking as it’s by highly respected forager, Peter Jordan.

Buy it in the UK

Buy it in Canada

A great thing about foraging is that you can work it into your schedule. For example, you can forage when you happen to be walking to work or when you’re looking for firewood in the surrounding woodland. You may even come across some edible vegetation when you’re hanging washing out to dry, your food may be hiding in plain sight, you won’t know until you’ve learnt how to identify the correct plants. When you come across some wild vegetables you’ll need to delicately excavate without damaging the vegetable, this set – buy it from Amazon is recommended to us by someone with extremely green fingers and they can be carried compactly in your rucksack:

Foraging is a great skill to pass on to other people in your community. …

December 1, 2015 No Comments

Thankful

https://www.off-grid

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November 21, 2015 1 Comment

Community

Improvements on the rotisserie

The chicken rotisserie has really been a hit around the SkyCastle, PB has been working on it, tweaking it, improving it, making it work better and better. We cooked the best chicken to date on it the other evening, I didn’t have to work that day, I brined the chicken overnight in salt water, it cooked for about 2 hours, I added 6 small baking potatoes wrapped in foil for the last hour of cooking. We have been discussing all the other things we could cook on this, I’m thinking corn on the cob, smaller chickens (Cornish game hens) and the such.

Here is what PB had to say about it in his own words:

The professor strikes again!

I (lol, get ready) re-engineered the rotisserie mechanism, trying to add some ‘run time’! Took me all day, runs good, and because I got a gear ratio assembled backwards, lol, I did nothing but add another shining tutorial on my fb page for yall! ——- I’m feelin’ like an ‘Einstein’, lol.

I’m going to get the gears corrected and make a fresh chicken for Wretha as she did not participate in the first two test chickens for obvious reasons! (mainly, so I could be credited with saving her life!) Today she’ll be here all day, home form work, waiting, tick, toc, for the best chicken so far. Actually, she’s preparing and starting the chicken, and I’ll babysit the machine.

Last night she breined, bryned (however), the chicken,,, and she’s gonna be in charge of this one! I’m lettin’ her ‘chef prowess’ shine. Fixin’ that chicken all up with it’s own zip code and everything! She’s gonna have a blast. I guarantee it!

I’ll still act as, ‘spit boy’ because,,,, I like being ‘spit boy’! Just sittin’ there with the weather, tic-toc-ing past… Makes me feel, primitive! Like a million years old! — and that’s worth something!

and

Chicken #3. The Majik Chicken

This was a fresh chicken that Wretha fixed up and it turned out so juicy and with so much flavor! It put me in an instant 9 hour coma! Thank you Wretha, Executive Chef at SkyCastle! Best meal so far.

The heating section is working fine in the rotisserie. I increased the gas flow and added more ‘breathing’ holes. The flame is blue, contrary to the video, as I had bumped the cooker just prior to the video, thereby disturbing some rust (iron oxide) and causing red colored flames. I ran the burner at about 2/3d’s of ‘wide open’ and saved some fuel. Plus, getting things too hot seems to cause a smoke, from the spattering of chicken fat, that imparts bad taste. I’ll make a suitable knob for the gas valve soon.

The rotisserie mechanism ran much better than expected this time. After swapping the chain driven gears and getting the ratios correct, it ran dependably, for an

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September 10, 2015 No Comments

Community

Low-energy rotisserie made from scrap

The chicken cooker went live, this is something PB has been working on for a few months now, I might have thought it wouldn’t be finished, but I stopped doubting PB a long time ago.

He wanted a dedicated chicken rotisserie cooker and needed a way to make the chicken turn on a spit, we considered buying an electric motor to achieve this, but in good PB fashion, we call it Bobbage, he used miscellaneous parts found on the property and manufactured a clock works pendulum and weight that would turn the chicken over the heat.

He spent the most time working on and tweaking the clockwork mechanism, going through several different iterations, he finally settled on this design. The body of the cooker used to be the main body of a Lehman’s manual washing machine, we received that many years ago from a neighbor, PB fixed her chainsaw that is no longer made and parts aren’t available, she really liked that chainsaw and didn’t want to have to buy a new one, she had this manual washing machine but never used it. I didn’t like it much once I tried it, but the wringer on it was worth its weight in gold.

So PB took the stainless steel body and made that be the body of the chicken cooker. He used a lightweight sink for the lid. The main part of the clockwork mechanism is an old circular saw blade, the chain and sprockets came from an old trash compactor that someone gave us years ago.

This is propane fired, but it can be made to use wood or charcoal.

The rest of the materials were scavenged from here and there. I purchased a chicken from the grocery store a few days ago, I am shocked at how expensive chicken is now, they were running near $10 for a medium-small chicken! When I got home, PB had the chicken turning on the spit.

It still needs to be tweaked, but for the first test run, it was pretty tasty :)

https://youtu.be/xtkgOgu45wY

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August 23, 2015 No Comments

Community

Do what you love, love what you do

What is your passion? If money were no object (and just what does that actually mean anyhow???) what would you be doing right now? Now, how can you turn this passion into your living?

Something I enjoy doing is taking pictures, I fully intend on turning this passion into a living. The first thing that makes this possible is I have to take better pictures than the average person, my photos have to be of a quality that someone will want to part with their money to posses one of my photos.

Most EVERYONE has the ability to take pictures with little trouble, nearly everyone has a smartphone and some of the those phones can take some great pictures. But not everyone knows how to take really good pictures, look on most phones and you will find dozens of selfies and mediocre shots.

I did not go to school to learn how to take pictures, what I did was I looked at other photographers to see how they take fantastic pictures, I looked at how they framed their shots, I have learned about lighting (morning and evening tend to be the best times to take outdoor pictures), framing and lighting are the 2 biggies, being in the right place at the right time, I am always making note of a particular place that would make a good shot, but knowing I’ll come back at a time of day when the lighting would make for a great shot.

I have also learned about filters, color enhancing, basically taking a good picture and making it fantastic, something special. This requires a LOT of experimenting, taking lots of pictures, lots and lots. I would say that if I would take 1 picture of a scene, I actually take 20 or more shots of that same scene, using different filters, different angles, sometimes the difference between a mediocre shot and a prizewinning shot is just a matter of a slight angle change.

I also know that some days I may come home with a memory stick full of duds, and that’s OK too. I am not at a point where I can just go out merely to snap pictures, but since the job I do requires me to drive all over west Texas in some very scenic areas, and since I have a very flexible schedule, I have the opportunity to get some wonderful pictures. Honestly I would be taking these pictures anyhow, I love doing it, it’s my passion and in the year I’ve been doing this, my skills have improved greatly.

So now I have all of these pictures, how do I get money for these images? I plan on turning my photos into postcards and such for the tourists that pass through our towns. Living in such a scenic area, much of the income that comes into these towns come directly …

July 30, 2015 No Comments

And the pressure is on

Pressure cookers that is, yesterday while surfing the internet, I ran across an article on Mother Earth News about cooking with pressure cookers. It reminded me of how much I love mine, I have a 6 quart stainless steel Presto pressure cooker. Some of my favorite meals to cook in it are pinto beans, potatoes (baked potatoes), chicken soup, other soups, stews, rice, veggies… lots of different foods.

One of the benefits of using a pressure cooker, is it takes so much less time and fuel to cook with, the fuel factor is big with me since we have limited fuel (propane), I just can’t afford to let something simmer on the stovetop all day. Foods cook faster, retain more nutrients and just flat out taste better.

Some folks are afraid of pressure cookers, who hasn’t heard the horror stories of someone’s grandmother (or aunt, or neighbor, you fill in the blank) who was cooking in a pressure cooker and it exploded, beans all over the ceiling? Well I’m here to tell you the pressure cookers you buy today have many safety features built in, you’d have to try pretty hard to get one to actually blow on you. I had a “worst case scenario” happen to me when using a friend’s older aluminum pressure cooker. I was cooking chicken and didn’t put in enough water, it wouldn’t come up to pressure, then it made a loud BANG! Sounded like someone shot a gun off in the kitchen, I went over to it, the seal had blown out. No big deal, the pressure was relieved, so I opened it, reseated the seal, added more water, put the lid back on and continued cooking, lesson learned, make sure you add sufficient liquid for the time you will be cooking.

The other things you can do is make sure the vent hold is clear-not clogged, make sure the rubber parts are in good shape and properly placed, make sure you add enough liquid, don’t overload your pot, just use common sense and you will be perfectly safe using a pressure cooker.

One dish I love making in my pressure cooker is chicken soup, here is my (more or less) recipe…

2-4 raw chicken breasts
enough water to come up at least an inch or two in the pan
2-4 carrots, chopped
2-4 celery stalks, chopped
1 onion, chopped
seasoning

I put the chicken in the pot, add enough water to bring it up at least one or two inches, I bring it up to pressure then time it for about 15 minutes. I let the pressure off, remove the chicken, shred it and place it back into the pot, then I add the veggies, you add what you like, I put in enough water to bring it to the top of the veggies, replace the lid, bring it back to pressure …

June 29, 2015 2 Comments

Community

Filing cabinet smoker

I’ve seen some ingenious peeps on FaceBook and YouTube, this has to be in the top 10 of cool DIY, have you seen the filing cabinet smoker? This is a first for me, not sure if it’s something I would tackle, I would just have PB make me a smoker (the wheels are turning now), but this is still a great idea.

Of course it would take some work to get the cabinet ready, but once everything is together and you have burned off the paint a couple of times, then you would be good to go. Let me know if you have tried this or seen it done….

I grew up in a BBQ shop in north central Texas, my dad and uncle owned it and I did my tour at working there, I admit to being a bit of a BBQ snob, especially when it comes to smoked meat, after watching this, the wheels really are turning, I’m going to have to hit PB up for a DIY smoker, or find one around here somewhere, I love smoked meat, beef, chicken, pork, veggies, I love it all!

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June 5, 2015 No Comments

Food

Root cellars

Strawbale gardening dangerous?

Off-Grid crock pot

What’s your backup plan?

Living in a greenhouse

Foraging gifts for the family

Thankful

Improvements on the rotisserie

Low-energy rotisserie made from scrap

Do what you love, love what you do

And the pressure is on

Filing cabinet smoker

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