Pounds and Pounds of Pleasure

The pork sausage I made is filling my life with joy.

God miraculously delivered me from gluttony. That means these days I just don’t want as much food as I used to, so I eat less. But the custom of having three meals a day is a threat. I’m not all that active, and three real meals–even if small–can be enough to prevent weight loss or cause gain. That means I have to quit eating a lot at at dinner, which is a meal I don’t particularly want to begin with. So I’m shifting the calories to earlier meals.

I’m not hungry in the morning or at night, so I think I’m going to shift the focus of my food day to lunch. That means I need to eat a respectable lunch. This is where pork sausage fits into the picture. I haven’t been able to have a good breakfast for the longest time; it just doesn’t make sense to stuff myself when I’m not hungry. But now I can have breakfast for lunch! I can use my gorgeous antique skillets, which make the best-tasting eggs imaginable! I just had two fried eggs, two sausage patties, and two pieces of toast, and I even let myself have butter!

That sausage is the bomb. It has no gamy smell, the seasoning is perfect, and it seems like the quality lard I used to bulk it up makes it fry up better than store sausage. It’s funny how simple foods can be better than fancy-shmancy dishes served at expensive restaurants. If you can make a really good cheeseburger, you won’t have the slightest interest in mastering complicated cuisine.

Maybe one reason we overeat is that our food is so unsatisfying.

Hmm…I used to overeat when I was eating really good food. Well, it was a fun theory for the ten seconds during which I entertained it.

I can’t wait to make sausage with apple juice in it. I can do that as soon as I eat the…ten and a half pounds of sausage I already have.

Argghh.

Oh…oh…turducken made with pork sausage made with apple juice instead of sugar…oh…

I need to breathe into a bag for a sec.

Your Eggs Will Thank You

I could not resist frying up a piece of the sausage I made yesterday. It turns out it’s excellent. The lard I added made it fry up properly. The seasoning is mild but balanced. I suspect that store sausage relies on heavy applications of sage to kill the gamy smell of cheap pork.

Here’s what I’d suggest, if you want to try this. I highly recommend an electric grinder, or you could have your butcher grind the meat.

INGREDIENTS

10 lbs. pork (shoot for 40% fat)
3/8 cup brown sugar
3 tsp. pepper
2 tsp. cayenne
2 tbsp. sage
1/4 cup salt
1 tbsp. paprika

You can increase any of the seasonings if you want. Test the sausage by frying test pieces after you mix it. If you can it, remove the sage and crank up the other hot seasonings.

I screwed up by underdoing the fat content, but the lard was my salvation.

Try not to get gamy cuts. Brining in a 16:1 solution of water and baking soda will fix it, but it’s a lot of work.

I really want to try this with apple juice concentrate substituted for the sugar. I think I’ll get some frozen juice and reduce it as much as possible before adding it.

Workout + Food

I learned a few things about making sausage today.

1. Sausage has sugar in it. Or at least it can.

2. If you use a hand grinder, you have to get the ring that holds the grinder together on as tightly as possible. Otherwise, the blade will fail to cut long fibers of meat as they pass through, and the grinder will clog.

3. Do not use a hand grinder unless you are a masochist or in need of bust development.

4. Picnic hams appear incredibly fatty when you grind them, but they’re actually too lean for sausage.

I took my brined hams and ground them up (nightmare), and then I used this recipe:

INGREDIENTS

10 lbs. pork
1/2 cup brown sugar
3 tsp. black pepper
2 tsp. cayenne
1 tbsp. paprika
1/4 cup salt
2 tbsp. sage
1/2 lb. El Cochinito brand lard

I added the lard because the test pieces I fried made almost no grease, and that’s unacceptable. I guess next time I’ll find a way to get more fat into the meat. Maybe I should buy pork loins at Costco and mix them with plain old fatback. Costco loins are cheap, and the quality is great. The picnic hams are okay, but they’re hard to cut up, and I suspect the meat is not as good for sausage as loins are. I’ve never had a gamy loin chop, but picnic hams are hit and miss.

The recipe I started with contained no paprika, and it only used two tbsp. of pepper. I thought the first test piece was a little bland, hence the pepper. I would cut the brown sugar to 3/8 cup next time. A little garlic wouldn’t hurt. I think powder would be better than fresh for this use.

I wonder if I could substitute frozen apple juice concentrate for the sugar. That would rock.

I ended up with 11 pounds of sausage. I intended to can it, but I couldn’t make myself make sausage without sage in it. It seemed immoral somehow. And you can’t can it if it contains sage. I shaped the sausage into 11 one-pound loaves and put them in the freezer to firm up. When they’re hard, I’ll seal ten of them in bags and freeze them. The other one is for immediate use.

This stuff will be much better than store sausage, mainly because of the paprika. When I made the first test piece, I thought it was a little sweet, and I thought it needed more pepper, and I knew there was something else missing. I concentrated hard, and then I knew the answer. I made two more test pieces, with paprika in one piece. It turned out to be exactly what was needed. This amount of sage is fairly light, but I didn’t mind that.

If I were going to can this stuff, I’d jack the cayenne and black pepper up by at least one teaspoon each, because I’d have to remove the sage, and that would make the sausage too mild.

It’s sad that the sausage is better than store sausage, because now I’m spoiled. Oh well.

I Will Adorn it With Crosses in Honor of My President

I got my Saiga-12 fixed up. I haven’t machined the receiver for the new buttstock, but I got the new trigger guard and fire control group installed. The buttstock will be very easy compared to this other stuff.

I learned a lot from the people at Saiga-12.com. They are extremely helpful and patient.

Some tips for people who do their own conversions:

1. Go to the forum at Saiga-12.com for help. Those guys are fantastic.

2. Don’t forget to take out whatever is retaining the trigger and hammer pins before trying to tap them out of the receiver.

3. Use a center drill (Google it) to start the holes when you drill out the rivets on the Hillary-style trigger guard and the old trigger group. Use a drill press or milling machine to start the holes on the trigger guard rivets, if possible.

4. When you take out the bolt hold open lever and spring, make sure you sketch the location and orientation of the parts. They make no sense, and if you look for pictures online, you’ll find stuff that’s misleading.

5. When you put the gun back together, install the safety lever first. Trust me.

6. If you have a Tromix fire control group, the big V-shaped retaining spring for the hammer and fire control group pins should be oriented with the point of the V toward the back of the gun. If it won’t click into place, open the loop at the point of the V slightly and try again.

7. When you install a Tromix fire control group, the hammer goes in backwards.

8. To reinstall the BHO lever and spring, do this. Drop the trigger in. Put the pin in it. Make a 1/8″-long (or shorter) bend in the short end of the spring, so it catches the little projection on the lever. Drop the spring into the receiver. Run the pin through it, into the far side of the receiver. Drop the BHO lever in. Make yourself a tool from a paper clip (don’t use a dental pick). Straighten the clip and make a tiny hook at one end, just big enough to hold the spring wire. Make a bigger hook at the other end, big enough to go around a screwdriver shaft. Catch the spring end in the little hook, put a screwdriver in the big hook, and use the screwdriver shaft as a handle to pull the spring end toward the muzzle of the gun. You should be able to drop the spring end onto the projection on the lever. This tip is worth its weight in gold. You don’t need the BHO lever, so you can throw it out if you want.

I find it amusing that “BHO” stands for “bolt hold open” as well as B. Hussein Obama.

9. Don’t worry about scratching the finish on the gun, because it’s no good and will need to be replaced. Use aluminum oxide 120 grit to blast the old crap off, and then coat the gun with Norrell’s moly resin or Brownell’s aerosol equivalent. You can use Norrell’s on the inside of the receiver, because it’s too thin to interfere with moving parts. Not sure about Brownell’s. Glass bead blasting will result in a finish that falls off.

That’s about it. I learned some of this stuff from experience and some by begging and Googling.

Now it’s time to relax and have a healthy dinner of ham hocks, fried apples, and mustard greens.

Pre-conversion:

Post-half-conversion:

Ham for the Holidays

I decided I needed a ham. You know how that is. So I went online to look for one.

My cousin Wade says Col. Newsom’s hams are the way to go, and the one I bought back when I was writing the cookbook was jim-dandy. That’s why I recommended Col. Newsom’s. But their prices are out of whack now. They want $89 for a ham.

I found a couple of interesting options. First, I looked at a Tennessee company. When it comes to ham, I like Tennessee, Kentucky, and North Carolina. I know Virginia is famous for ham, but I’ve never had any Virgina country ham that I thought was worth eating. Tennessee, I have no problems with.

The company is called Benton’s, and they have a very tempting offering. They sell two types of hams. First, relatively young hams. Second, hams aged until they get a little funky. This is what real country ham is. A ham aged six months or less is a fake. It won’t have the complex flavors and the acidity an old ham has. Benton’s sells hams aged 12-18 months. They run around 15 pounds, and they cost $65.

I thought I might give that a shot, but then I came across Scott Hams, in Greenville, Kentucky. Their hams keep winning prizes at the Kentucky State Fair and other festivals and what not. The fair is held in Louisville, which is practically the same as New York by ham standards, but surely there must be a few people there who have a clue. I called them up, and they told me their hams go a year. They said they would be happy to pack the ham the way I wanted it, which means sliced and bagged, with the hock in its own bag. The ham’s price is $48.50, and that’s a 16-pounder. You can’t beat that deal with a stick. I placed my order. I may try Benton’s eventually, regardless.

I just called them again. I was looking at their site, and they sell good Kentucky sorghum molasses. This stuff is nothing like the nasty molasses most people eat. And they’re selling it for $8.00 per quart, which is very reasonable. I put that on my order.

I just did some Googling, and I learned something interesting. The reason most molasses is no good is that it’s real molasses. The stuff they make in Kentucky is made from sorghum. True molasses comes from manufacturing by-products or something. Stuff they sweep off the floor at sugar mills. It comes from sugar cane and sugar beets. Okay, whatever. I guess what I like is actually “sorghum syrup,” although I have never heard anyone call it that.

Kentucky ham producers have gotten smart and started selling their own versions of prosciutto. I’ll bet it’s excellent.

In a couple of weeks I may have to make me a Kentucky breakfast, with fried ham, redeye gravy, cream gravy, scrambled eggs, bacon grease biscuits, and molasses and jelly. And a big glass of tea. And fried apples. And a portable defibrillator.

I gave up gluttony recently, so I guess I’ll have to find a way to make really tiny biscuits.

More

I unpacked my meat grinder, and it has no impeller! My sausage plans must wait until I can get to Northern Tool.

Creativity Forbidden

I’m all bummed out because I learned a sad fact about home canning.

Before I got into it, I read stuff on the web, and I got the impression that I would be able to can my own recipes. I put up seven pints of chili. Then I learned that using your own recipes is a huge canning faux pas.

I thought home canning was a technology that had been perfected in basements, by millions of mothers and grandmothers. But it turns out there are food laboratories that put recipes together. They put temperature probes into jars full of food, and they process them, and they record the results. Then they come up with approved pressure and time guidelines for the recipes they use. If you deviate substantially from those recipes, you may not heat all areas of your jars enough, and then you get botulism, which takes months to go away. Meanwhile, people tell you how much younger you look.

This means you have to find USDA-approved recipes and use them. What good is that? If I wanted other people’s bad recipes, I wouldn’t waste time putting together my own wonderful recipes. Imagine how badly food scientists cook.

I’m going to see what I can do to work around this. Sometimes it’s possibly to use an approved recipe and then add your own stuff when you open the jar. But if the approved recipes are so bad they can’t be fixed, that won’t work.

My chili has cheddar cheese melted into it, so I’m sure it has much more fat in it than the USDA recipe (which is probably boring and bland). Adding fat can throw off processing times. I have to study up on this and see what I can do.

Luckily, pork sausage is approved for canning. For some reason, they don’t tell you to cook it through. That seems odd. Maybe it cooks through when you put it in the canner.

I also read that if your canner drops below the required pressure, you have to start over. You have to raise it to the right pressure and set the time to zero again. The processing you did before you lost pressure doesn’t count.

Here’s good news. You can destroy botulin by boiling your food for ten minutes. I’ve also seen twenty minutes mentioned, so take it for what it’s worth. Never trust me when it comes to food safety.

I stuck my remaining chili in the fridge. I’ll get rid of it fast enough to avoid problems. It’s probably fine, but botulism sounds like it’s no fun at all, so I’m not ready to take a chance.

I found out what killed my pressure canner. The gasket has a tiny hole in it. I’m going to have to go to Goodman’s and get a couple of new ones. Didn’t see this coming.

Today I’ll check out my picnic shoulders, and if they smell okay, I’ll go ahead and make sausage. If not, I’ll brine them in baking soda to kill the stench. Boar taint is the thing that ruins pork sausage, and you don’t have to tolerate it.

Hmm…will this upset the canning schedule because it reduces the acidity? Probably not. I don’t think meat is acidic enough to retard the growth of anything, so treating it with baking soda probably won’t matter.

Gasket Troubles

Last night a dreadful thing happened. I had seven pints of chili in the pressure canner, and suddenly, I heard a loud hiss. The gasket wasn’t sealing right.

The pressure began to drop. Not knowing what else to do, I cranked up the heat to raise the pressure, and I kept the chili going for the required time. At the end I could tell some juice had leaked past the jar seals, but they sealed up anyway.

I can’t figure out what’s wrong. The gasket looks fine. When I bought the canner, the manual said to scrub all the oil off everything. The gasket had a lot of grease on it, so I scrubbed it, too. Maybe that was stupid. Maybe the grease helped it seal.

Now I’m experimenting with it. I oiled it with olive oil, and I’m heating the canner. I can’t get a new gasket until Monday.

This morning I heard several “poink” sounds from the kitchen. I figured my canned stuff was opening up. But when I checked all the jars, they looked fine. I really hope I don’t get botulism. I want to have a nice smile at my funeral.

Still have to make pork sausage. Even if I can’t can it, I can get it ready for frying.

Pints of Pain

In case you’re interested, my chili recipe yields a little over seven pints. I filled seven Ball jars, and I had enough left over for a tiny snack.

I hope this works. Imagine the convenience of having truly phenomenal chili in a jar.

Mike called while I was cooking. He’s all upset now, because he has no canning technology. He wants to make his grandmother’s spicy pickles. I told him about Goodmans.net.

My Ball Blue Book arrived today. It’s the Bible of canning. Well, it would be. If we canners didn’t already have real Bibles to cling to bitterly.

I made these pints mild (by my standards), so I could donate them to my dad. The next seven are MINE, and they will probably melt their own lids.

Accuse Them of Lying to Get Warranty Stuff

I ran down to Northern Tool and got a meat grinder and ordered a new pulley for my band saw. I am not sure they understand how customer relations works. The first guy I dealt with wanted me to pay for the pulley. I told him it was a warranty thing because it was defective. He said, “How do we know that?” I asked him how I could ever prove anything I bought was defective. Maybe I broke everything I ever got fixed on warranty.

Surely Northern Tool doesn’t train people to say crazy things like that. “I realize you’ve bought thousands of dollars’ worth of unneeded male toys here, but I feel entitled to question your honesty because you want a free eight-dollar part.”

“Thousands” is a bit of an exaggeration for me, but not for everyone who shops there.

They’re lucky I shop there at all. Here’s why. They charge more than the website, and if I buy over the web and I have a warranty issue, I can handle it from home. If I buy at the store, they may not have what I want, they’ll charge 20% more, I’ll definitely have to pay sales tax (I do that anyway these days), and if there’s a problem, I have to drive to the store all over again.

I’d shut up with that “how do we know that” business, if I worked there.

Here’s another reason to avoid their stores. They only keep computerized purchase records for three months. After that, you have to produce a receipt. If you don’t have a receipt, you have a problem. I don’t know how long the website keeps records, but I guarantee you, it’s at least three months, and you don’t have to wait twenty minutes while a manager pores over charge records.

Man, I would keep that “how do we know that” to myself. I really would.

I could have ordered this saw and had it shipped free of charge. No driving. Right on my porch.

Oh, boy. Seriously. Big mistake, telling the customer you think he’s a liar.

I may never shop there again, now that I’ve seen my own arguments against it. It seems like a dumb thing to do.

After Northern Tool, I hit the grocery. I got chili ingredients. I looked at chili-canning recipes online, and while I have no intention of using them, I got the information I needed. Seventy-five minutes at 11 psi. This is going to be fantastic. I hope.

Speaking of hope, I hope the grinder is okay. Some people say they’ve had great experiences with it. Others, not so much. Surely it can handle ten pounds of pork without too much trouble.

“We Could Raid the Fat Guy’s House if he Didn’t Have all Those Guns”

Is this the greatest day in the history of the world, or what? It’s 64° outside, I have nine new jars of home-canned sweet pickles, I have new tires on my diesel 4×4, and I’m sitting on what amounts to a small ammunition dump. Plus I’m enjoying big mug of decaffeinated coffee with half and half. All of the pleasure with none of the tics and irritability.

I’m trying to decide what else to can. I was really excited about pork sausage and pickles, but the pickles are done, the sausage isn’t going to be that much of a challenge, and I need to come up with other stuff.

I’m thinking beans. I bought a bunch of dried beans for SHTF purposes, but they become useless after about a year and a half, unless you know how to turn them into flour. They would be much more useful if they could be kept longer. And I just happen to make amazing bean soup. I make soup beans, black bean soup, and navy bean soup. It’s incredibly good.

If I can this stuff, I’ll have SHTF beans that will last much longer than dried beans. I think. I have to find out how long canned beans keep.

Man, this would be great. Pint jars full of tasty soup, waiting for cornbread and greens.

I guess the wet blankets will point out that beans are available in remarkable new inventions called cans. But they’re not as good, nor are they as much fun. I like Bush’s beans just fine, but it’s just plain stupid to compare them to real beans.

I wonder if I could can barbecue beans. I don’t see why not. Oh, man. Yes. What a convenience. BBQ beans plus browned smoked sausage! And I could can chili! My astounding Unauthentic White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Chili, with tons of homemade chili powder and exotic peppers. Picture it, sitting in little jars, just waiting to rip the intestines out of unsuspecting wimps. Wow, would that be great. I could can the wuss version plus the manly version, and when I wanted to serve chili to people, I’d be able to keep the versions separate.

I’m so tired of lame chili. When I make it for myself, I can ratchet the heat up, but if even one other person eats with me, I’m forced to make it weak and silly.

CANNED DORO WAT! OH, BABY! I just thought of that! Canned Ethiopian-style chicken stew! Brutal and satisfying.

Oooh…canned collard greens with salt pork.

I have to hold onto something. This is too much.

If Obama continues working his economic magic, and I’m forced to eat stored food, I’ll eat better than I do right now. I wonder if chili will keep getting better in a jar, the way it does in the fridge.

I’m Googling around, and I see cautious people recommending a 1-year storage maximum, while others say that if the food passes inspection, you can keep it much, much longer. I just read about canned goods found on a ship that sunk in 1865. They were tested in 1974 and found to be okay.

I can tell you this. My grandmother never threw anything out in her life, unless it said “whiskey” on the label.

Stand in Awe of my Cukes

I ran some vital errands.

First, I got me some new canning jars and lids. Now I have enough to make the effort worthwhile. Then I found diesel at the incredible price of $2.68 per gallon. Around here, that’s cheap. If you drive around Miami, you’ll see $2.90 fairly often. Then I got me a bunch of pickling cucumbers. After that, I loaded up with two picnic hams. These are uncured pork shoulder parts. Should be good for sausage.

My plan is to brine the pork with baking soda to kill the taint. Then tomorrow I’ll do my best to make sausage and can it. It should work out to about $1.50 per pound. I guess it would have been smart to find out what ordinary sausage costs. For all I know, it’s less than that. But I don’t care. I want my canned sausage.

I learned something important. Costco is the pork source. Winn-Dixie is supposed to have whole shoulders for 79¢ per pound, but they were out. I can get gorgeous loins for like $1.79 at Costco, so presumably their shoulders are a lot cheaper.

I’m going to put calcium chloride in my pickles to see if it makes them crunchy.

Tomorrow I have to go to Northern Tool and get a meat grinder. I got my jars at Goodmans.net (their warehouse is nearby), and they sell grinders, but they were out of stock.

That place is hilarious. Every canning item in the universe–and most other items–is available there. They have a bank of pretty young latinas who help you with your order. I think they think it’s funny that a grown man comes in and fills his diesel pickup with Ball jars.

I’ll look less silly in the post-Obama wasteland, when everyone is starving and I’m stuffing myself with delicious canned sausage and dried apple pies. I’ll be sitting on top of the world.

More

Let’s see. I bought seven packages with four cucumbers in each. I ate maybe two and a half cucumbers. Now I have about 27 cups of slices. So each cucumber makes about one cup of slices.

Good thing to know, next time I shop for pickling cucumbers. Which should be in 2013, given that I just bought 50% more than I intended. I’m going to have a dozen pint jars full of these babies.

I checked into beans for pickling. The big pole beans were incredibly expensive. Like $2.50 per pound. The smaller green beans just didn’t look suitable.

I don’t know why the cucumbers I bought were labeled “salad cucumbers,” and I don’t understand why people call them “pickling cucumbers.” They taste a lot better than the nasty, greasy, waxed jumbo cucumbers I used to buy. I am all done with those. These are superior.

I can’t stand wax on my food. Think about it. You have some dirty guy in the back of the store, picking his nose and spitting, waxing the cucumbers with a filthy rag. And the wax permanently traps the filth on the food. It’s very hard to remove. And what is wax made from? Is it petroleum? I don’t want to eat that stuff. It’s a fat, for sure. What will it do to my arteries? I can’t even guess.

This is going to be beautiful, but once it’s done, I won’t get to practice again for months. I guess that’s the point, however.

Bigger Pantry Needed

I guess people get tired of reading things like this about the food I make, but…the sweet pickles I made turned out to be the best I’ve ever had. Even better than my grandmother’s. I can’t believe pickles can be this good. After a day in the fridge, the salt and seasonings did their thing, and the result was magnificent. Now I’m worried about having these things around. Dills are virtually calorie-free, but sweet pickles are loaded with sugar. I was miraculously delivered from gluttony back in August, but that doesn’t mean I need to tempt myself.

I’d post the recipe, but it came from a cookbook, so you ought to just get the book. Besides, I’m sure there are a million similar recipes on the web. I omitted the onions from the book receipe, and I used white sugar instead of brown. Other than that, it’s exactly what you’ll find in Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes, and Honest Fried Chicken.

Church was amazing last night, and this morning, I got a startling answer to prayer. Unfortunately, I can’t describe it in any detail, because it involves another person’s private business. All I can say is this: when you know someone whose behavior is atrocious, and you want to change it, fasting and prayer will give you surprising results. People have free will; no doubt about it. But that doesn’t mean God won’t work his persuasive powers on them. Besides, some bad behavior is due to demonic oppression, and your fasting can clear that up in another person.

This morning it occurred to me that I should always attack problems spiritually before acting in my own strength. I can’t say all problems are rooted in spiritual causes, although maybe they are. I can say that all problems should be attacked via spiritual warfare before we step in and screw things up with our blind bumbling. I think maybe this was what Jesus was getting at when he talked about turning the other cheek and so on. It wasn’t so much that it’s good to be a loser. His point, I think, was that your first response to hostility or adversity should be spiritual, not fleshly. Maybe I’m wrong. Either God put this stuff in my head, or it’s wrong, and I came up with it myself.

Last night at church, I told my pastor and one other person that things are going so well for me now that I don’t have any real problems. I have relatively trivial difficulties, but nothing major. I said that these days, it’s the people around me who have problems. They’re the ones I think I need to apply the bulk of my energy to. I may have sounded arrogant when I said all that. I certainly hope not; I was trying to comment on God’s goodness to me.

Here’s a funny thing about Christianity. When you talk about the great things God is doing for you, other people may take it as boasting. We’re all trying to get our lives sorted out and walk in blessings, so when someone else does well, it may seem like that person thinks he’s a better Christian than you. That’s not what I’m trying to say. I’m just saying…this stuff is WORKING.

The Psalms say, “My soul shall make her boast in the Lord. The humble [or ‘needy’] shall hear thereof and be glad.” That seems to indicate the intelligent and constructive way to receive another person’s good news. If someone else gets something good, the smart thing is to try to find out what they did right.

I guess I was wrong to get up and do the Church Lady Superior Dance during the altar call. That, I regret.

I forgive the lady who sacked me and sat on me until the ushers arrived with the wheelbarrow. I wish I knew her name so I could return her weave. I probably shouldn’t be using it to dust my CD collection.

One of the funny problems I have right now is that my weight loss has made my skin break out. The weight loss has irritated my gall bladder, and the end result is slight skin problems. I guess I can live with that. It’s not like I have leprosy. Fifteen or twenty pounds from now, the weight loss should stop, and then I’ll be at equilibrium, so the stress to my body should go away.

Gall bladders are catch-22 organs. If you get fat, you become susceptible to gall bladder trouble. If you lose weight, during the process, you’re likely to have gall bladder flare-ups. Your gall bladder wants you to stay fat so it never gets well. Presumably, when I’m no longer fat or losing weight, I’ll be just fine.

I started taking a disgusting daily tonic of lime juice, olive oil, and oil of oregano, and I feel a whole lot better. And it gives me a use for my gigantic supply of fresh limes. Oil of oregano is loaded with terpenes, which are supposed to be hard on gallstones. It amazes me that medical science has absolutely no effective treatment for gall bladder disease. They know virtually nothing about preventing it. They don’t even try. I guess jerking gall bladders out at $5000 a pop is just too easy. Medical science has decided God made a mistake when he gave us gall bladders. They used to feel the same way about tonsils and appendices, but that’s changing. Bodies are like cars. I trust the engineers who design cars more than a slackjawed mechanic who tries to fix them.

No Bailout Money Was Used in the Writing of This Blog Post

I tried the pickles I made. I’m not sure whether they’re a success. The pickling solution is just about perfect, but the pickles themselves seem slightly off. I think they have a little too much salt in them.

The recipe I used called for 9 cups of cucumbers and 3/4 of a cup of salt. You salt the sliced cucumbers and let them sit for three hours, and then you rinse the salt off. Seems a little odd; maybe the point is to suck water out of the cucumbers. Anyway, a lot of the salt stayed in the cucumbers. I assume it will leach out over time.

The recipe may also need additional sugar, but not a whole lot. The pickles are acceptably crisp, but next time I’m using calcium chloride to improve them.

Canning is really easy. I’m surprised. There’s a certain amount of work involved, but it’s not tricky at all.

I may throw out my first efforts. The peppers, not the pickles. I am not totally sure they’re okay. And the last two jars came out a little weird. While the canner was cooling, I pulled the pressure regulator off to see what would happen. I think the stuff in the jars boiled and shot out of the jars, because the level of the liquid is considerably lower than it was when the jars went into the canner. They sealed okay, but some of the peppers are exposed to air.

I had a funny idea for dehydrating food. I was thinking I’d put trays of food in the oven and put a heat source in with them. Maybe a small space heater or a very weak blow dryer. That would blow warm air over the food, and I wouldn’t have to turn the oven on. The minimum baking temperature is 175°, and that would cook the food.

Peppers dehydrate just fine without a machine. I slice them open and thread them on strings and hang them until they dry up. Seems to work. If this pans out, making smoked peppers will be a cinch.

I’d like to make cayenne sauce and can it. My Home Depot cayennes are phenomenal. They taste like hot cherries. If you grind them up and cook them with sugar, garlic, and oil, you get a magnificent sweet paste sort of like Chinese chili paste, but it’s much better.

I could also can fermented chili sauce. The canning process should arrest the fermentation and kill the germs. This stuff is wonderful.

I should buy some store mangoes and work up a chutney recipe. Next summer, God willing, my trees will bear, and I won’t be able to eat all the fruit. Chutney is great if you make it sweet enough and hot enough.

Kim chi…that would be a gift from heaven. How can cabbage taste that good? I don’t know if it’s possible to can it. Maybe cooking ruins it.

I still have to make canned sausage. I noticed that ground pork is very cheap, as are Boston butts. The advantage of a butt is that I could brine it in baking soda before grinding it. That would kill the boar taint and result in superior sausage.

I found a cheap source of calcium chloride, so I bought a pound. I have Damprid, which is calcium chloride, but I don’t know if it’s food grade.

My goal is to be able to feed myself in grand style without ever spending money on anything, except for vacuum bags and Ball jars.

Perhaps I am a tad idealistic.

Canning Craze Continues

I don’t know what the deal is in other areas of the country, but here in Miami, pickling cucumbers are available year-round. I would assume that’s true everywhere, in the era of trucks and trains, but Ronni Lundy’s cookbook, Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes, and Honest Fried Chicken, says they’re only available in the summer. Whatever the deal is, I bought a bunch of them today in an effort to replicate the sweet pickles my granny used to make. Unfortunately, I forgot the green food coloring she used so liberally. And I suspect she used calcium chloride to keep the pickles crunchy.

Right now I’m sterilizing jars, and I have the pickles on salt, and I’ve mixed the other ingredients. The kitchen smells EXACTLY like my grandmother’s basement! It’s like having a time machine in my nose.

The recipe in Lundy’s book calls for brown sugar and onions, but I used white sugar and skipped the onions. That seems more like what Granny did.

Can’t wait to see if this works.

More

Here’s what I got. This is exactly the shade of green Granny used to get.

More Peppers

Today I went to a meeting at church. On Saturday, one of the volunteer leaders invited me. I didn’t know what it was about, but I enjoy this sort of thing, and my morning was free, so off I went.

It was a meeting of the church’s leaders. If I understand things correctly, they have a practice of meeting on Mondays, and now they’re extending invitations to people who aren’t paid employees. I may have that wrong, but I think it’s about right.

I was relieved to see that they’re trying to communicate with people and organize them. I always complain about Christians using the Holy Spirit as a parachute. Don’t plan; don’t think. Just jump, and when you get in trouble, count on God to pull you out. The church is working to put together a hierarchy of volunteers with defined responsibilities, and it ought to make things run smoother.

On the way home, I picked up a copy of God’s Armorbearer by Terry Nance. This book was recommended to me when I indicated an interest in getting into the inner circle. I also got a copy of The Torah Blessing by Larry Huch. It’s full of stuff connecting Judaism and Christianity. I go through Christian books fast, so I figured one book was not enough.

Right now I’m canning Trinidad Scorpions in lime juice. What will I do with them once they’re canned? Danged if I know. But I canned those suckers. Oh, yes. They are canned. They’re not going ANYWHERE.

I want to dry apples so I can have dried-apple pies at Christmas. Is that too much to ask from life? I think not. But I don’t know how to go about drying them. If I had a junk car, I could dry them inside it, like my aunt used to do. I hate to spring for a dehydrator, but I probably will. It would give me a use for the tons of papayas I grow. Fresh, they’re not so hot. Dried, they’re excellent.