There is so much listed that I am interested in but 1 thing comes to mind since our world seems crazier by the minute and that is curing meat and fish by salting and tinning it.
I have an old tinning book but it is difficult to find supplies and a press. This is how the natives I knew in Alaska cured and stored their fish and meat was by salting, smoking, and tinning.
So when it comes to curing meat by salting it, I do have a few articles on that with specific recipes. (But I'm hoping to put out a general one this year). This is a good starter recipe: https://practicalselfreliance.com/lonzino/
For tinning meat, the tin cans aren't all that common anymore, people generally use glass canning jars since they're reusable (though you can still buy tinning equipment some places). Here's an intro to canning meat: https://practicalselfreliance.com/canning-meat/
I don't currently have anything on canning or salting fish on the site, as the instructions are different for fish. I'll add that to my list! Thank you!
Have always wanted to learn how to safely can lemon curd at home. Would love a good link or three on how to hand sew clothing (and particularly how to fit clothing to various bodies). Thank you!
As to a single good resource for hand sewing clothing, I don't have one to offer as there are so many different places where that's scattered across books and the internet. I'll keep my eye out for that one, and add it to my list to write if I can put all the resources together in one place. Great topic!
I do hope to put out a few ebooks this year, mostly based around preserving recipes as that's more manageable to tackle in a single book. With my other topics, it'd be dozens of books to fit it all. My single post on uses for wood ash (https://practicalselfreliance.com/wood-ash-uses/) is 40 pages long if printed, and if I did it as a book I'd expand each section to have actionable information for each use...so it'd be more like 150 to 200 pages...that that's just a single post of the 800+ on the site. I'm too verbose for my own good =)
Yes I second that! :) Though having just self-published a book and having to cut out over a hundred pages of material I really wanted to include in the final version (due to printing budget constraints) I can totally understand where Ashley is coming from.
Yes that is true, your articles are incredibly detailed. I totally understand wanting to make sure all the pertinent data, nuance and potential applications get into a written work. When I had to whittle down my 550 pages to just over 400 for the printing budget I was doing a lot of cringing while highlighting entire pages and hitting that delete button. Now that I have been receiving so much positive feedback with hundreds of people all over the globe having received a physical copy and writing me I am getting a little more comfortable with the end product. Nevertheless, it still really sucked having to cut out all that material. At least I will be able to re-incorporate much of that material I had cut out into a relevant format in my next book.
Well, whether you ended up cringing your way through condensing subject specific articles down to be able to fit multiple into a single book on one topic or if you ever create an encyclopedic set of 27 five hundred page volumes of your full length work, I would be one of your first customers :) Having a physical book (or many books) accessible feels so much more reliable to me than digital versions.
We are seasoned canners but cannot for the life of us can a dill pickle or green tomatoes that don’t get soggy! Suggestions?
You’re an inspiration! You are my first go to for canning ideas, I happened to come across your practical self reliance page about 1.5 yrs ago! Thank you for sharing all you do!
For dill pickles, the crispest ones I've ever made are an old fashioned one done with pickling lime. They're actually firmer than the cucumbers were before pickling, which is totally crazy. There's a pickling lime process for green tomatoes and jalapenos too, with USDA tested recipes (as safely pickling with pickling lime can be tricky). Here's a basic recipe for cucumber pickles: https://creativecanning.com/cucumber-lime-pickle/
You can change the spices to dill, and lower (or eliminate) the sugar, as the vinegar is what's preserving these here.
I'd like to learn how to fit more DIY into my day and week. One tip I have is to start a little dinner prep before I go to work (cutting up veg or starting a crock pot). I'd love to hear more ideas for fitting in scratch cooking and gardening and DIY into the day and week. Thank you for so much inspiration!
You can plan your dinners for the week, then prep everything Sunday evening, like cutting/pealing veggies etc and then seal a meal the dinners together. That way, when you get home from work, all you need to do is pull out one of the pre-prepped meals and cook it.
I forgot the most important part. If you have kids, you could sit around the dinner table and plan the weeks meals together. Maybe they could help with the veggie prepping too or emptying the bags of food into the pots so it gets them interested in cooking.
I have several soapmaking recipes coming out this year, including tallow soap and a basic cold process soap later this winter. Here's some resources that will get you started:
Excellent post!!! I definitely subscribed. I think self-reliance is very important, especially these days. I think for 2024 I will try some of these ideas.
I commented on the post but due to my sharing links I think my comment may have been blocked by a spam filter so I will re-post here.
First of all, thanks for putting together the wealth of information on growing apples from seed.
Do you guys have any malus sieversii growing on your property?
If not, given your impressive knowledge in permaculture and food forest design, I wanted to ask you if you have any interest in giving a few Malus sieversii seeds a home to set down roots?
We had our first substantial harvest of fruit from a tree we grew from seeds earlier this year ( for some pics: https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/you-can-count-the-seeds-in-a-single ) and I am tryna give those ancient resilient genetics a chance to spread their wings on Turtle Island (as the wild apple forests in Kazakhstan where the seeds came from are increasingly under threat and this species is becoming endangered).
FYI – Incase you are unfamiliar with this species I just wanted to give you a heads up that the wild apple trees Malus sieversii seeds produce have the potential to live to be 300-years-old, becoming up to 5 feet across at the base of the trunk and 60 feet tall.
That's really lovely, sure, I'd love to grow some here. The apple trees we planted from seed 10ish years ago just fruited the first time this year and there were so many good ones in there. The main local post office washed out in the flooding this summer, and they haven't setup a replacement (yet) so I'm currently without a place to get mail, but I'm hoping to set something up shortly and I'll let you know when I have an address to give you. Thank you!
(Comments on the site are manually moderated...so it's a slow process in getting through them, so it's possible it's still in the queue as there's a backlog at the moment. And yes, it's also possible it went right to spam too, as comments with links often get flagged by the system like that too. Substack is a more dependable way to actually get to me for sure.)
Awesome! I`ll set aside a few seeds for you guys and keep em' stratifying in the fridge.
Wow that is fantastic about your apple trees grown from seed! We only have room for a few trees in our little urban suburban young food forest so I feel really lucky (and blessed) that our first tree to produce fruit provided such large, delicious and visually appealing fruit. I have a couple dozen 2nd gen seedings going (they are in between 3 -6 feet tall) and I am really excited about the wide variations I am seeing in characteristics (different leaf shape and various intensities of anthocyanin expression in the leaves etc). I have my fingers crossed that one of the dark leafed ones is gonna produce some purple or pink fleshed fruit. We shall see what Mother Nature gifts us in a few years :)
How many trees do you guys have producing fruit now that you grew from seed?
I wonder if that flood you are talking about was the same one that dropped 7 inches of rain on our house in one night and totaled our finished basement. When did that flood happen exactly?
I would be happy to share a few other seed varieties when I do send those apple seeds if you like. I currently have an abundance of Hopi Black Sunflower seeds, Hopi Red Dye Amaranth, two different types of Holy Basil and Red Goji berry seeds from our garden. Do you grow any of those? If not, would you wanna give em a try? :)
I imagine you could do some really fun stuff stacking functions with those anthocyanin rich Hopi crops if you get into experimenting for a Working with Natural Fibers article ;) I am imagining deep purple milkweed fiber socks and lilac colored nettle toques.
Okay sounds good about the mailing address. You can email me at recipes4reciprocity@gmail.com if you prefer that over a public comment section.
Re: What did you learn this year? And, what do you want to learn in 2024?
As far as what did I learn in 2023... well first of all I learned what it takes to self-publish a regenerative gardening/recipe book while also simultaneously working a full time day job.
Your excellent website has been a very helpful resource throughout the year. Thanks for all that you do to empower everyday people to be able to feed and heal themselves (in a way that respects Mother Earth).
As far as what I would love to see you experiment with and write about in 2024, what a fantastic list to choose from!
My favorites from the list you provided are:
- How to Make and Use Biochar
- Beginners Guide to Medicinal Herb Gardening (Herbs to Plant for Medicine)
- Medicinal Broths
- How to Eat A Tree (Edible Trees)
I can offer a few of my own posts that may provide helpful info as you are researching for that one, including:
Wow, that is a lot accomplished in 2023! Putting a book out there into the world is a huge accomplishment, and I definitely don't have the bandwidth to tackle something like that at this point. Congratulations! (And a second one coming too, that's amazing.)
Thank you so much for those resources as well, I'll come back to them when I start writing those articles. And do let me know when your next book comes out!
Here is a link to the first installment of my 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐅𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐆𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐧, 𝐅𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐅𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐌𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐂𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐭 : 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐖𝐚𝐲 𝐅𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐒𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐓𝐨 𝐀𝐩𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐲 series (which will eventually be formatted into my next book).
I was reading a book called The Plant Medicine Protocol: Unlocking the Power of Plants for Optimal Health and Longevity Hardcover by William Siff and came across a recipe for something called Wei Qi and thought of your future writing wish list item "Medicinal Broths".
Also, for anyone that is interested in purchasing a copy of my book. I just wanted to share that I am now offering a limited time New Year’s discount on digital and physical copies of my book.
The sale includes a limited time 24% discount on digital (ebook) copies of Recipes For Reciprocity : The Regenerative Way From Seed To Table (which you can purchase here: payhip.com/b/6P5Ab )
Thanks! I know you understand what it takes given all the attention to detail and excellent photography you put into your articles.
Given all you know and have experimented with, I think you could write a fantastic book that would help empower and inspire aspiring food forest designers. I know I would throw down in a heartbeat if you ever decided to crowd fund a book that synthesizes your work into a durable physical format.
Thanks for the congrats and sharing a link to my book's website. I will certainly be adding your website to my Regenerative Resources section in the 2nd edition of Recipes For Reciprocity (and also in my next book).
Here is to a 2024 of learning, creativity, regeneration and increased community resilience!
I would be interested to know how to make my own bleach, sodium bicarbonate, and how to refine drinking alcohol into a purer form for cleaning & antisepsis. I understand that sourcing ammonia unpleasant. But I would like to know how I could make these if ever the commercial sources are unavailable or supply chain is disrupted again.
Oh my goodness, that's hardcore even for me! On my homemade basics list that I'd like to learn I have charcoal (which we already do make), gun powder, washing soda (which is made from baking soda) and hartshorn (an older type of chemical levener similar to baking soda, but made from deer antlers). I'm honestly not sure how you even go about making your own bleach and sodium bicarbonate, but I'll add it to my list and look into it (if it's possible on a home scale, as I think sodium bicarbonate is mined). I do absolutely love homemade alternatives for everything whenever possible, and those are really great suggestions.
If you're interested in this type of thing, there's a book (and website) called Caveman chemistry that goes through making a lot of basics like this at home. Here's a link: https://www.cavemanchemistry.com/
My husband is our resident chemistry Guru here, so I'll tap him for this one. Thank you!
The hartshorn may negate the need for sodium bicarbonate, as I suspect it's a calcium carbonate, which is also in limestone. I'd forgotten about hartshorn. 😊
Oooh! Thank you! I'm a chem nerd. I want to know all kinds of chem things, like how saponification happens, and does anything strange happen to soap if you acidify it after it's saponified. These are my shower thoughts. 😂
I'm a disabled senior with limited resources so I do a lot of container gardening. In particular raised beds which tend to fall apart after a few years, all sorts of containers so any tips for this would help.
Your list looks amazing! I love to research and learn. I've been making sourdough breads, muffins, etc, but just made my first Sourdough Artisan Bread with Einkorn flour! So fun and delicious!
I want to learn to make more fermented foods this year, like mayo, ketchup, mustard, saurkraut, etc.
Also butter and cheese. But the cheese looks intimidating.
I also would like to be able to recognize edible foods to forage in my area of Ohio.
Adding a Comment from Jayne received via Email:
There is so much listed that I am interested in but 1 thing comes to mind since our world seems crazier by the minute and that is curing meat and fish by salting and tinning it.
I have an old tinning book but it is difficult to find supplies and a press. This is how the natives I knew in Alaska cured and stored their fish and meat was by salting, smoking, and tinning.
So any info you might have would be awesome!!
Thank you,
Jayne
So when it comes to curing meat by salting it, I do have a few articles on that with specific recipes. (But I'm hoping to put out a general one this year). This is a good starter recipe: https://practicalselfreliance.com/lonzino/
For tinning meat, the tin cans aren't all that common anymore, people generally use glass canning jars since they're reusable (though you can still buy tinning equipment some places). Here's an intro to canning meat: https://practicalselfreliance.com/canning-meat/
I don't currently have anything on canning or salting fish on the site, as the instructions are different for fish. I'll add that to my list! Thank you!
Have always wanted to learn how to safely can lemon curd at home. Would love a good link or three on how to hand sew clothing (and particularly how to fit clothing to various bodies). Thank you!
Here's where you can find instructions for canning lemon curd (and lime curd): https://creativecanning.com/canning-lemon-curd/
As to a single good resource for hand sewing clothing, I don't have one to offer as there are so many different places where that's scattered across books and the internet. I'll keep my eye out for that one, and add it to my list to write if I can put all the resources together in one place. Great topic!
Could this all be put in book form available for purchase?
I do hope to put out a few ebooks this year, mostly based around preserving recipes as that's more manageable to tackle in a single book. With my other topics, it'd be dozens of books to fit it all. My single post on uses for wood ash (https://practicalselfreliance.com/wood-ash-uses/) is 40 pages long if printed, and if I did it as a book I'd expand each section to have actionable information for each use...so it'd be more like 150 to 200 pages...that that's just a single post of the 800+ on the site. I'm too verbose for my own good =)
I would buy the $300, multi-book, collectors edition, printed and bound version of your internet work. Just sayin' 🙂
Yes I second that! :) Though having just self-published a book and having to cut out over a hundred pages of material I really wanted to include in the final version (due to printing budget constraints) I can totally understand where Ashley is coming from.
Yes that is true, your articles are incredibly detailed. I totally understand wanting to make sure all the pertinent data, nuance and potential applications get into a written work. When I had to whittle down my 550 pages to just over 400 for the printing budget I was doing a lot of cringing while highlighting entire pages and hitting that delete button. Now that I have been receiving so much positive feedback with hundreds of people all over the globe having received a physical copy and writing me I am getting a little more comfortable with the end product. Nevertheless, it still really sucked having to cut out all that material. At least I will be able to re-incorporate much of that material I had cut out into a relevant format in my next book.
Well, whether you ended up cringing your way through condensing subject specific articles down to be able to fit multiple into a single book on one topic or if you ever create an encyclopedic set of 27 five hundred page volumes of your full length work, I would be one of your first customers :) Having a physical book (or many books) accessible feels so much more reliable to me than digital versions.
I would absolutely buy this, preferably in a heavy wire spiral-bound hardboard volume so it will lay flat but not curl/roll when carried in a bag.
We are seasoned canners but cannot for the life of us can a dill pickle or green tomatoes that don’t get soggy! Suggestions?
You’re an inspiration! You are my first go to for canning ideas, I happened to come across your practical self reliance page about 1.5 yrs ago! Thank you for sharing all you do!
For dill pickles, the crispest ones I've ever made are an old fashioned one done with pickling lime. They're actually firmer than the cucumbers were before pickling, which is totally crazy. There's a pickling lime process for green tomatoes and jalapenos too, with USDA tested recipes (as safely pickling with pickling lime can be tricky). Here's a basic recipe for cucumber pickles: https://creativecanning.com/cucumber-lime-pickle/
You can change the spices to dill, and lower (or eliminate) the sugar, as the vinegar is what's preserving these here.
It looks like the USDA green tomato recipe isn't online anywhere, but I'll see if I can pull it out of a book I have here. Here's lime pickled jalapeno rings: https://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can_06/pickled_jalapeno_rings.html
Thank you, you are an inspiration and my go to for ideas and recipes
I'd like to learn how to fit more DIY into my day and week. One tip I have is to start a little dinner prep before I go to work (cutting up veg or starting a crock pot). I'd love to hear more ideas for fitting in scratch cooking and gardening and DIY into the day and week. Thank you for so much inspiration!
That is a tricky one, and one I think a lot of people struggle with. I'll see what I can put together for you, great idea!
You can plan your dinners for the week, then prep everything Sunday evening, like cutting/pealing veggies etc and then seal a meal the dinners together. That way, when you get home from work, all you need to do is pull out one of the pre-prepped meals and cook it.
I forgot the most important part. If you have kids, you could sit around the dinner table and plan the weeks meals together. Maybe they could help with the veggie prepping too or emptying the bags of food into the pots so it gets them interested in cooking.
I would love to learn to make my own soaps.
I have several soapmaking recipes coming out this year, including tallow soap and a basic cold process soap later this winter. Here's some resources that will get you started:
Beginner's Guide to Cold Process Soapmaking (with lye): https://practicalselfreliance.com/how-to-make-soap/
How to Make Melt and Pour Soaps (No lye, great for absolute beginners): https://practicalselfreliance.com/melt-and-pour-soap/
20 Soapmaking Recipes for Beginners: https://practicalselfreliance.com/beginner-soapmaking-recipes/
Soapmaking Mistakes and How to Avoid them: https://practicalselfreliance.com/common-soap-making-mistakes/
Thank you !
Excellent post!!! I definitely subscribed. I think self-reliance is very important, especially these days. I think for 2024 I will try some of these ideas.
Thanks Kristen!
‼️ You are amazing…😳
Thank you!
I was exploring your website and came across this very informative post titled "HOW TO GROW APPLE TREES FROM SEED" https://practicalselfreliance.com/planting-apple-seeds
I commented on the post but due to my sharing links I think my comment may have been blocked by a spam filter so I will re-post here.
First of all, thanks for putting together the wealth of information on growing apples from seed.
Do you guys have any malus sieversii growing on your property?
If not, given your impressive knowledge in permaculture and food forest design, I wanted to ask you if you have any interest in giving a few Malus sieversii seeds a home to set down roots?
We had our first substantial harvest of fruit from a tree we grew from seeds earlier this year ( for some pics: https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/you-can-count-the-seeds-in-a-single ) and I am tryna give those ancient resilient genetics a chance to spread their wings on Turtle Island (as the wild apple forests in Kazakhstan where the seeds came from are increasingly under threat and this species is becoming endangered).
FYI – Incase you are unfamiliar with this species I just wanted to give you a heads up that the wild apple trees Malus sieversii seeds produce have the potential to live to be 300-years-old, becoming up to 5 feet across at the base of the trunk and 60 feet tall.
For more info on Malus sieversii : https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/the-wild-apples-of-the-tian-shan
That's really lovely, sure, I'd love to grow some here. The apple trees we planted from seed 10ish years ago just fruited the first time this year and there were so many good ones in there. The main local post office washed out in the flooding this summer, and they haven't setup a replacement (yet) so I'm currently without a place to get mail, but I'm hoping to set something up shortly and I'll let you know when I have an address to give you. Thank you!
(Comments on the site are manually moderated...so it's a slow process in getting through them, so it's possible it's still in the queue as there's a backlog at the moment. And yes, it's also possible it went right to spam too, as comments with links often get flagged by the system like that too. Substack is a more dependable way to actually get to me for sure.)
Awesome! I`ll set aside a few seeds for you guys and keep em' stratifying in the fridge.
Wow that is fantastic about your apple trees grown from seed! We only have room for a few trees in our little urban suburban young food forest so I feel really lucky (and blessed) that our first tree to produce fruit provided such large, delicious and visually appealing fruit. I have a couple dozen 2nd gen seedings going (they are in between 3 -6 feet tall) and I am really excited about the wide variations I am seeing in characteristics (different leaf shape and various intensities of anthocyanin expression in the leaves etc). I have my fingers crossed that one of the dark leafed ones is gonna produce some purple or pink fleshed fruit. We shall see what Mother Nature gifts us in a few years :)
How many trees do you guys have producing fruit now that you grew from seed?
I wonder if that flood you are talking about was the same one that dropped 7 inches of rain on our house in one night and totaled our finished basement. When did that flood happen exactly?
I would be happy to share a few other seed varieties when I do send those apple seeds if you like. I currently have an abundance of Hopi Black Sunflower seeds, Hopi Red Dye Amaranth, two different types of Holy Basil and Red Goji berry seeds from our garden. Do you grow any of those? If not, would you wanna give em a try? :)
I imagine you could do some really fun stuff stacking functions with those anthocyanin rich Hopi crops if you get into experimenting for a Working with Natural Fibers article ;) I am imagining deep purple milkweed fiber socks and lilac colored nettle toques.
Okay sounds good about the mailing address. You can email me at recipes4reciprocity@gmail.com if you prefer that over a public comment section.
Re: What did you learn this year? And, what do you want to learn in 2024?
As far as what did I learn in 2023... well first of all I learned what it takes to self-publish a regenerative gardening/recipe book while also simultaneously working a full time day job.
Secondly, I have began experimenting with building on recipes such as this https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/sacredsevensalve by adding conifer foliage extracts and herbs like Yarrow and Tusli in preparation for writing my next book that will focus on medicinal food forest design (stacking functions in the food forest and medicine cabinet). I describe more about that yet unpublished book here: https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/stacking-functions-in-the-garden-199
Your excellent website has been a very helpful resource throughout the year. Thanks for all that you do to empower everyday people to be able to feed and heal themselves (in a way that respects Mother Earth).
As far as what I would love to see you experiment with and write about in 2024, what a fantastic list to choose from!
My favorites from the list you provided are:
- How to Make and Use Biochar
- Beginners Guide to Medicinal Herb Gardening (Herbs to Plant for Medicine)
- Medicinal Broths
- How to Eat A Tree (Edible Trees)
I can offer a few of my own posts that may provide helpful info as you are researching for that one, including:
- https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/an-encounter-with-an-ancient-healer (focuses on Eastern White Pine)
- https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/befriending-the-boreal-getting-to (focusing on spruce)
- https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/befriending-the-boreal-introducing (focusing on Larch)
- https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/befriending-the-boreal-an-invitation (focusing on balsam fir)
- https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/unlocking-autumns-abundance (covers several species of tree)
- Working with Natural Fibers ~ Milkweed, Nettle, Linen, etc.
- How to Restore Knives
- How to Sharpen Knives, Axes, and Tools (whetstone)
- Pine Needle Basket Weaving
- Water sourcing, storage, purity, usability
I look forward to exploring these pathways of learning in my own neck of the woods and comparing notes with you in the future.
Keep up the great work! :)
Wow, that is a lot accomplished in 2023! Putting a book out there into the world is a huge accomplishment, and I definitely don't have the bandwidth to tackle something like that at this point. Congratulations! (And a second one coming too, that's amazing.)
In case anyone's looking for a link to Gavin's Book, here it is: https://recipesforreciprocity.com/shop/
Thank you so much for those resources as well, I'll come back to them when I start writing those articles. And do let me know when your next book comes out!
Here is a link to the first installment of my 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐅𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐆𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐧, 𝐅𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐅𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐌𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐂𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐭 : 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐖𝐚𝐲 𝐅𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐒𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐓𝐨 𝐀𝐩𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐲 series (which will eventually be formatted into my next book).
https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/ginkgo-biloba
Do you guys have any Ginkgo trees on your property?
I was reading a book called The Plant Medicine Protocol: Unlocking the Power of Plants for Optimal Health and Longevity Hardcover by William Siff and came across a recipe for something called Wei Qi and thought of your future writing wish list item "Medicinal Broths".
Here is a pic of the recipe: https://archive.org/details/imgawd-2114
I like his recipe but I would also add dulce, nettle and kombu to mine.
Also, for anyone that is interested in purchasing a copy of my book. I just wanted to share that I am now offering a limited time New Year’s discount on digital and physical copies of my book.
The sale includes a limited time 24% discount on digital (ebook) copies of Recipes For Reciprocity : The Regenerative Way From Seed To Table (which you can purchase here: payhip.com/b/6P5Ab )
The sale also includes a 10.00$ CAD discount on physical copies of my book (which you can purchase here: recipesforreciprocity.com/shop/softcover )
This sale will go from now until the end of the month (ending February 1st, 2024).
The limited time offer discount code for both is:
2024
Thanks! I know you understand what it takes given all the attention to detail and excellent photography you put into your articles.
Given all you know and have experimented with, I think you could write a fantastic book that would help empower and inspire aspiring food forest designers. I know I would throw down in a heartbeat if you ever decided to crowd fund a book that synthesizes your work into a durable physical format.
I was just reading this excellent article of yours ( https://practicalselfreliance.com/best-permaculture-books/ ) and I see that we have many of the same books in our library. I shared some of our library in this post : https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/regenerative-resources-a-recommended
Thanks for the congrats and sharing a link to my book's website. I will certainly be adding your website to my Regenerative Resources section in the 2nd edition of Recipes For Reciprocity (and also in my next book).
Here is to a 2024 of learning, creativity, regeneration and increased community resilience!
I would be interested to know how to make my own bleach, sodium bicarbonate, and how to refine drinking alcohol into a purer form for cleaning & antisepsis. I understand that sourcing ammonia unpleasant. But I would like to know how I could make these if ever the commercial sources are unavailable or supply chain is disrupted again.
Oh my goodness, that's hardcore even for me! On my homemade basics list that I'd like to learn I have charcoal (which we already do make), gun powder, washing soda (which is made from baking soda) and hartshorn (an older type of chemical levener similar to baking soda, but made from deer antlers). I'm honestly not sure how you even go about making your own bleach and sodium bicarbonate, but I'll add it to my list and look into it (if it's possible on a home scale, as I think sodium bicarbonate is mined). I do absolutely love homemade alternatives for everything whenever possible, and those are really great suggestions.
If you're interested in this type of thing, there's a book (and website) called Caveman chemistry that goes through making a lot of basics like this at home. Here's a link: https://www.cavemanchemistry.com/
My husband is our resident chemistry Guru here, so I'll tap him for this one. Thank you!
The hartshorn may negate the need for sodium bicarbonate, as I suspect it's a calcium carbonate, which is also in limestone. I'd forgotten about hartshorn. 😊
Oooh! Thank you! I'm a chem nerd. I want to know all kinds of chem things, like how saponification happens, and does anything strange happen to soap if you acidify it after it's saponified. These are my shower thoughts. 😂
From Nancy, Via Email:
I'm a disabled senior with limited resources so I do a lot of container gardening. In particular raised beds which tend to fall apart after a few years, all sorts of containers so any tips for this would help.
From Sue, via Email:
I would like to learn how to grow mushrooms and how to make sausage this year.
From Marjut, via Email:
I love your newsletters. You are a busy woman!
Do you have a recipe for a body friendly dish soap that works?
From Teresa, via Email:
Your list looks amazing! I love to research and learn. I've been making sourdough breads, muffins, etc, but just made my first Sourdough Artisan Bread with Einkorn flour! So fun and delicious!
I want to learn to make more fermented foods this year, like mayo, ketchup, mustard, saurkraut, etc.
Also butter and cheese. But the cheese looks intimidating.
I also would like to be able to recognize edible foods to forage in my area of Ohio.
From Honey, received via email:
Food preserving without refrigerator
How to set animal snares
How to build solar panels