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culinary street urchin

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  1. Milk is pasterized to prevent certain diseases, hower, the risks are overblown nowadays. It is often sold for 'animal consumption only'. I don't mind buying unpasteurized milk from a farmer, if it is sold fresh right on the farm as it is being taken from the cows. I've made some of the best damned butter that way, using the seperated cream taken from the milk before it was chilled. Hmmm!
  2. Too many unknowns and too many shady researchers abusing the public's paranoia about 'toxins'. MSG could be the next big thing - like aspartame! Bottom line is body fat mass is a simple equation of caloric intake vs. calories burned on a day to day basis. It's physics. It takes very few 'extra' calories over a life time to gain alot of extra fat. A single can of beer every day can add up to many lbs of fat in just a few years. I would want to know how they controlled for food intake, because over eaters tend to underestimate their calorie intake. In fact, it would take just a few self deluded 'faties' consuming extra MSG to skew the entire results. Here's a thought, what if the weight gain was not fat, but increased muscle mass or bone density? When I started working out I actually gained a little weight, even though I was also burning fat. Maybe MSG speeds the repair of muscle tissue and increases bone density?
  3. Instead of digging potatoes in near the garden surface, I dig trenches to plant my potatoes, and dig the seed potatoes in at the bottom of the trenches. I leave the removed soil piled up between the rows, and as the potatoes grow I slowly backfill the trenches with that soil. Once I have backfilled all the soil so the garden is level again, I continue digging the soil from between the rows and piling that up on the potatoes creating the mounds much later in the season. This approach minimizes the need to bring in other material to mound potatoes and the potatoes grow deeper in the soil which helps with soil conditioning. I add a mulch such as lawn clippings as the final touch, in case any new potatoes poke through the soil, I don't want them exposed to sun light. Straw may work as a growing medium. You can grow potatoes in sawdust as long as the seed potatoes are placed in contact with the surface of the soil - they don't even have to be dug in to soil. I used to live near an old lumber mill and I would take home a truckload of old sawdust. I would place seed potatoes on top of the soil surface on any area of poor unused ground, even rocky ground worked, and then I just shoveled the sawdust on top until it was about 8 inches deep. The potato plant found it's nutrients through the roots growing at ground level and the new potatoes developed in the sawdust. It is not as productive as proper gardening, but if you have a large area of unused space, you can produce big harvest of very clean high quality potatoes this way. I suspect it works the same with straw if you pile up enough straw to allow for compaction. The main thing with straw is you might have a problem with mould, but that may not effect the potatoes. I would try it.
  4. My parents had a small farm and I raised and butchered a variety of animals, as well as roaming the bush, hunting wild game. It was a toss-up if I would become a butcher or a biologist. I'm a biologist. I would say that cutting the throat is the best way to kill smaller animals that can be held securely. With larger animals, a rifle is likely to still be the best option to stun or kill the animal, followed by the cut. I see now that professional operations use a stun gun applied to the animals temples to knock the animal out before the cut - probably the best method I've seen. No fuss, no muss, the animal never knew what hit it. Next comes the skinning and gutting, which is the biology part. You definitely get an idea how animals are put together. The best part is butchering - the culinary art starts here. There are many ways to butcher an animal, and it effects the type and quantity of the different cuts. If you hire a butcher, have him cut the animal according to your preferences. I had a butcher do a moose for me 2.5 years ago and I specified my cuts. The moose was large enough that it was the only red meat my family ate for two years. We are still eating it today. Almost all gone though. Time for another hunt.
  5. Worst meal ever? Not the fault of the cook but it was a dinner including smoked salmon purchased that day at a market. It tasted great except I had nausea and vomiting start the next morning while I was driving 5 hours to get home from where I was visiting. Ten times I pulled over and projectile vomited. Add severe diarhea. Ended up in a hospital for hours where they left me propped up in the waiting room shaking, vomitting and dehydrated, fingers tingling and lips numb, where I never did see a doctor or get diagnosed or treated. Nothing. Eventually, I gave up on getting any basic treatment (like IV fluids, for example) and continued to drive home and vomited some more when I got there. I called the local health authority the next day and they were extremely alarmed because it was smoked salmon and I had experienced tingling fingers and numb lips, which indicates severe dehydration or botulism - a risk with the way some smoked fish is wrapped. The health authorities team went the next day to inspect the market and their supplier. They said there was little more they could do with my complaint because the hospital didn't diagnose me or take samples to determine which bacteria it was. I haven't been able to enjoy smolked salmon since. Uhg!
  6. The trick with container gardens is that you have to fertilize them. Add slow release fertilizer to the containers about once every three weeks throughout their growth and production. Use large containers for best results. I used containers to grow tomatoes outside of my regular garden this year because we have a potato blight problem that effects tomatoes that are not well protected. I used high quality fish compost mixed with soil in my pots as a base to plant the tomatoes, and I use a low nitrogen fertilizer to feed them because the fish compost provides enough nitrogen. You can plant potatoes this way too, and they are very productive and the easy to grow. On the subject of compost, I use a compost pile for when it is not convenient to dig my garden, and I add garden soil to the compost pile to condition the soil for later use, and it keeps the smell down and the rodents out. Compost is best dug directly into a garden where plants can use the nutrients as the organics break down, and the worms work the soil. This spring I dug two long trenches in my garden, filled them with organics (grass clippings, weeds, last years corn stalks, and kitchen waste), and mixed some soil (includes micro organisms) into the organics, and then topped this mix with a 6 inch layer of the remaining soil. I planted my squash and cucumbers on top of this and mulched them. This would work well with tomatoes. Digging raw compost directly into a garden builds soil structure because micro organisms and worms work the organics with the soil building a better soil structure for plants. This is particularly useful in areas with clay soils. Also, plants can take advantage of more of the nutrients before they are lost to other organisms or as gaseous forms to the atmosphere, which is what happens as organics break down and are processed. Worms help to work compost, but they are more important in a garden as they form the soil (passed through them as feces) into small pellets that makes for loose well drained soil. This is a good reason to dig raw compost directly into a garden. A well worked compost pile, however, is an awesome planting medium, and can be used in pots. Good luck with your tomatoes.
  7. Which is more sustainable - wild salmon or farmed salmon - or a bit of both? The link below is an opinion article published in the Westcoaster by Vivian Krause who asks: "When environmental organizations urge us to avoid farmed salmon, it seems to me that the public needs to ask: is this to protect wild salmon and the environment or is this to improve the market for Alaskan wild and ranched salmon, or perhaps a bit of both." http://www.westcoaster.ca/modules/AMS/arti...hp?storyid=2671
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