Mullein Makes Great Toilet Paper

...that is if you have a composting or sawdust toilet. But, it might be worth trying in a flush toilet....of course they say you can't use anything but TP. who knows, i don't.

Here in Portland, Mullein grows like a weed, a biennial plant that grows low and wide at the base (like the picture) in the first year, and grows a tall shaft with flowers the 2nd year... seems like it can grow 3 to 4 ft tall that year.

It is velvety soft, like the best toilet paper and you don't have to waste paper and the energy for it to pass through a factory. Even if it's recycled, the paper originated in a forest (likely a clearcut) and could be put to other uses. The leaf looks like the 2nd picture.

Other uses for Mullein: It's supposed to be good as tea infused in water as a cough suppressant. I don't get sick often and have only tried it once and didn't notice any effect, so i can't attest to that aspect of it.

Also, you can add Mullein to a smoking blend (for fun or medicinally), and unlike most smoke-ables, it actually is supposed to help with respiratory issues.

Back to toilet paper, I've also heard that Oreogn Big Leaf Maple gets softer in the fall when it turns yellow and makes a suitable toilet paper, as well.

A Buffalo Experience: Meeting My Meat

I eat mostly vegetarian, consuming perhaps 5 lbs of meat each year. My cats on the other-hand, eat about 5lbs of meat each week combined.

It's been a few weeks now since I participated butchering and hand-processing a 1000 lb. buffalo. Being who I am today, I've known I would eventually experience killing an animal for food. I just figured it would be a chicken first.

The experience was incredible, life-affirming and not at all a gruesome task, but a real opportunity to appreciate at a different level where our food comes from. Compared to the literal nightmare of how most animals are raised, slaughtered and processed in our industrial system, this animal was respected and the killing & processing was a gentler, sacred act. There is beauty in all things, something I saw even in this animal we slaughtered. From the beautiful shapes and twists of his internal organs, to the artwork of the clean, open body cavity displaying the white inner-skin and red shadow of muscles & ribcage, he was a beautiful creature. In the end, it took 16 of us all day to process the buffalo into steak & stew quality meats, of which we each took home 14 lbs. of buffalo. As much as the animal was saved for other uses as possible (aside from the meat).

In a follow up workshop over 2 days, I learned to preserve the meat in a variety of ways. I made hard/aged smoked sausage (including smoking & cleaning the small intestines for the casing), corned buffalo, scrapple (with the organs), rendered fat into buffalo lard and learned about preserving meat with salt. Here are the recipes.

Home Fermented Ginger Beer and Homemade Yogurt

Before the holidays, the City Repair office hosted Portland FreeSkool's Fermentation Festival and it was pretty amazing... i demonstrated yogurt and ginger beer making. Others demonstrated Kimchi, Sauerkraut, Kombucha, beer & wine making, and perhaps other recipes i can't remember.

Here's my two recipes for your enjoyment:

Home fermented Ginger Beer (a strong ginger ale)

Water

4-8 inches of fresh ginger root
2 cups sugar (or honey)
2 lemons

Make a ginger starter: Put about 1 cup of water in a small mason jar, add 2 tsp of sugar and 2 tsp of fresh grated ginger root. Cover the jar with cheese cloth and a rubber band so that wild yeast can fall in, but bugs will stay out. Every day or two feed the starter: add about 2 tsps more sugar and ginger... after 2-7 days, you'll see the starter is active (tiny bubbles forming at the edges), meaning you have enough yeast to start the ginger ale. My guess is ithe longer you wait and continue to feed the starter the more and vigorous the yeast is so it will ferment/multiply quicker...and ultimately lead to quicker ginger ale.... I haven't proven this fully yet, but that seems to be the trend i'm noticing as I make ginger ale. I try to let the starter go 5-7 days.

After the starter is active, start your main ginger ale brew in a separate container...a 1gal pot or larger. Add 2 quarts (½ gallon) water, 2-6 inches of grated ginger root and 1 ½ cups sugar (or honey). To get something like the strong Reed's Ginger Beer brew, use a lot of ginger (5-6 inches)... if you want it milder, try 2-4 inches. Bring this mix to a boil and boil for ~ 15minutes. Let it cool. Add the juice of 2 lemons. Strain out the ginger from both the starter and the main ginger brew. Combine the starter with the brew and add enough water to get 1 gallon. Now you're ready to bottle it. Use a 1 gallon growler with screw on lid, or separate screw top glass bottles in ~ 750mL (5 of em) or 1L capacities (4 of em). Now, let the brew sit in the bottle for a minimum of 2 weeks (at least 4 weeks if you're using honey) in a warm spot, like on a high shelf or on top of the fridge. The longer you wait, the more bubbly it will be. Refrigerate and serve.

Using honey takes much longer to ferment than table sugar, it's also better for us, many would say. I only replace the main brew sugar (the 1 ½ cups) with honey. I still used the small amount of sugar in the starter to make sure it got going reliably and within a week. The fermentation process produces just enough CO2 to carbonate the soft drink and not an appreciable level of alcohol...so it's just a homemade, carbonated soft drink.

Reference: the book, Wild Fermentation - my addition is using honey, which I've tried. Taste's great and i'm not a huge honey fan.

Homemade Yogurt... yum!

** The only thing special you need is a small (6-pack soda size) cooler to keep the milk warm for several hours.

Milk 1-2 Qts

2 TBS of any yogurt with live active cultures
any sweetener (sugar, maple syrup, honey)(optional) other flavor ingredients like fruit, vanilla extract, etc.1 or 2 QT mason jar
small 6-pack cooler

Scald the milk (heat till bubbles form at the edges, but don't boil), let it cool to luke warm. Put 2 TBS of yogurt into a mason jar, pour the lukewarm milk over it. add any sweetener, fruit, etc. Stir it. Put the mason jar (no lid) into the cooler and add warm water to the cooler (around the mason jar) to the level of the milk. you don't want the mason jar to float. Put the lid on the cooler and wait 8-10 hours. then remove the yogurt, add a lid and refrigerate (it should be fairly thick, but will thicken further after refrigeration).

Other tips:

• the yogurt will get a little thicker after refrigeration
• don't use more than 2TBS of yogurt starter...for some reason if you use more, the culture doesn't take off well and the yogurt might not 'gel' right
• to keep making yogurt, save 2 TBS from the yogurt you make. Also, if you go away on a trip or let the yogurt go bad, you can always put 2 TBS or so of yogurt in the freezer and take it out of the freezer to make a new batch. starter still works after unfrozen. so you don't have to go back to the store for more yogurt as a starter.
• i haven't tried adding fruit...only sweetener and vanilla extract
• An easier method without the cooler: Deepak's mom mentioned that her method is like mine, but she leaves a bowl of the yogurt covered on the counter overnight and it works just fine too; and she brings the milk to a boil, not just scalding it – I haven't tried this method yet, but will soon.

Cats: The Raw Food Diet

My cats have been on a raw diet for around 7 years now. The motivation came from European travels when I was 17 and seeing an Austrian family add raw meat to their pet's commercial food diet. Feeding Ember and Skie raw certainly hasn't eliminated all their health & environmentally-induced problems, however it sure has presented them an opportunity to thrive.

Compare the commercial food cats typically eat today to an American eating out of a freezer box or canned food for every meal, every day of her life, never tasting or experiencing or benefiting from healthy, fresh, raw foods. Then take that thought down a few notches to include a bunch of grain fillers to keep it cheap and meat not fit for human consumption that is allowed in pet food (at least in the past...maybe it's changed in the past 5 yrs), such as diseased, dying, dead animals and slaughterhouse "waste"... doesn't sound too healthy, aye?

See this excerpt from the site I just pulled up in 2 seconds via google, www.rawfedcats.org/toxic.htm about the meat you might find in your wonderfully nutritious, commerical pet food:

"If you were to step inside a rendering plant, what you’d find [is a] pit [into which] carcasses, diseased bits and pieces of flesh, bone and offal, grease, rotten food, styrofoam, plastic, pesticide ear tags, dead companion animals, flea collars and other waste materials are thrown, to be slowly ground and chipped together into a foul pulp...[it's then] cooked at very high temperatures, which destroys virtually whatever limited nutritive value the stuff may have ever had to begin with. The fat and [separated] powdery grit...is known as the familiar "meat and bone meal" [typical ingredient in your pet food]...and this lifeless stuff is what you’ll find forms the basis of most all commercially manufactured pet foods."

I might add that this is, frankly, a typical and one of the worst examples of capitalism i've seen - basically this is all legal and the pet food "industry" was started in order to, you guessed it, capitalize on the waste leftover from the human meat industry. Cash for waste...sweet!

Anyway, enough soapboxing... here's the diet:

- Raw meat (muscle & organ meats)
- a mineral mix (maybe 1 tsp)
- Dream Coat (from Halo Pets) oil/vitamin blend (read instructions for amount)
- sometimes i add a little steamed chopped veggies (except onion or garlic-not good for cats)

These days, your options (in Portland, at least) are as great as your wallet. If you have more $ than time, you can get something like RadCat, which is a complete diet, including all of the above mixed up, ready to go.

Or you can do-it-yourself by purchasing "pet meat" from New Seasons Markets (mixed muscle meats and organs) at about as cheap as you could do it yourself, add a mineral mix and the oil supplement.

Mineral Mix (1)

1c wheat bran
1c bone meal*
1/8c (2TBS) kelp powder
3/4c nutritional yeast
1/2c soy lecithin granules

just mix the ingredients together and store in the fridge. Add maybe 1tsp to the cat's meal (based on 2 meals/day). A similar mineral mix is sold by www.halopets.com, if you have more $ than time.

* I substitute ground eggshells for bone meal. If you have your own chickens or a neighbor who can save you shells, great....free calcium supplement that has something like 2x the calcium as bonemeal. If you use commercial eggs, put them in the oven for about 10 minutes to remove the strange coating they put on commercial eggs. then grind 'em up in a blender.

Dream Coat provides omega fatty acids and vitamins A, D & E to the cats.

And you can toss in anything else you like from time to time... a raw egg, almond pulp (i sometimes feed a little to them after making my own almond milk), a little oatmeal, whatever. Ember and Skie absolutely love corn...they whine at me anytime it's boiling on the stove. And Ember still loves to jump up on the counter, grab a piece of cooling steamed broccoli and run down the hall with it...now that's dedication!!

There's plenty of controversy around feeding grains, wheat products/gluten, garlic (onions are still not good regardless from what i understand), bones, etc..... however the diet even as above is probably still 10X healthier than the heat treated, non-human consumable, dry/wet processed, commercial food you're feeding them... so, at least until you feel like an expert on the raw diet, who cares.

Enjoy!

References:
(1) The New Natural Cat, a 90s book by Anita Frazier - Mineral mix recipe, etc.
(2) Natural Nutrition for Dogs & Cats, Kymythy Schultze
(3) www.rawfedcats.org - one example of a site advocating for raw food diets

Spiced-wine and liqueur-making...a skillshare

I've been making hot-spiced wine for a few years now during the colder months, mostly because it's so darn easy.

Last year I decided to start making liqueurs for the holidays to give out as gifts for family and friends. I appropriated interesting-looking bottles from friends, recycle bins and and occasionally goodwill. I made a little custom card with the name and recipe of the liqueur to help pass-on the knowledge of the home-made goodness.

Yesterday, I held a skillshare to teach others how to make liqueurs and spiced wine. It went really well....6 people came out to learn. We made vanilla bean, creamy almond and coffee liqueur, plus a simple hot-spiced wine. We also tasted cranberry liqueur that I had been steeping for 2wks. I provided some recipes, bottling tips, places to get cheaper organic ingredients and an estimate of what it costs to make them. Here are some recipes & tips (some only relevant to local bizs here in Portland).

Can Mushrooms Benefit Corn, Wheat on Sub-acre Urban Farms?

Paul Stamets: "Wheat farmers benefit from the [endophytic mushroom] Piriformospora indica... this species is [an] ... endophyte that promotes growth of wheat shoots and roots and is capable of increasing leaf and seed production by more than 30% while shielding roots from infections by pathogenic microbes. Furthermore, seedlings paired with this mutualist successfully germinated 95% of the time, compared to only 57% for seedlings grown without this species. Root and shoot mass also doubled. (Varma et al. 1999)."

He goes on to say that the mushroom "demonstrates growth-enhancing properties when paired with" corn, tabacco and parsley. It's easy to cultivate in a lab and "widely coexists with many grasses".

From permaculture books, it's clear that indigenous cultures have increased diversity & yields of crops by growing them in partnership with other plants... for instance, the 3 sisters: corn, beans and squash grow better together than in isolation for a number of reasons (and traditionally a 4th "sister" was involved, i forgot which plant, in order to bring beneficial insects in...perhaps a flower).

But, now here's another possibility for increasing yields, reducing disease/crop failures and respecting the earth by partnering with mushrooms. The issue with growing grains in urban locations is how much space is required... so perhaps this mushroom mycelia is a way to grow more wheat and/or corn on even small sub-acre plots...1/4, 1/3, 1/2 acres that might be available to urban farmers, such as Kollibri, working on expanding his Staples Food Project in the next year. And, wheat can be stored somewhat indefinitely, as compared to grains like rice, which will go rancid in 6 months-ish. Having staples on hand is something we should all be thinking about in the times ahead.

My questions: is this mushroom prolific in our Willamette Valley climate? Is this mushroom easy to cultivate OUTSIDE the lab, i wonder? (the days of labs are dwindling and aren't accessible to the layperson anyway...i.e. can you do it yourself?)

Tree Tenants & Friedensreich Hundertwasser

I was first exposed to the wacky buildings of Friedensreich Hundertwasser in 1994-95 when i traveled and studied in Austria. He designed some of the funkiest, nature-inclusive buildings in Vienna and is considered to be the most famous artist of Austria.

He was an ecological artist and activist to say the least. I just began revisiting some of his art in a book Jay gave me a few Xmas's ago and discovered to my astonishment that he understood back in the 70s the notion that man could not exist separated from nature and advocated for buildings to include both human and "tree tenants"... the trees would purify the air and water and the humans would provide nutrition to plants through composting toilets.

...which leads me to a future article on homemade sawdust toilets and properly and safely recycling humanure (human manure) at home... In order to close the nutrient cycle and survive when there are no industrial inputs (oil or even do-it-yourself complete organic fertilizer), we will need to understand how to re-use/recycle all our personal wastes (externalities). This will maintain and perhaps even build precious topsoil to keeps us nourished/fed.