Dandelions: An Inspiration

For someone wanting to forage wild foods, dandelion greens aren’t a bad place to start.  For one, they’re everywhere.  Some might even call them invasive.  You don’t have to go far to find them and they’re easily identifiable.  You’re looking for the young, tender leaves, best picked before the plant flowers.

They’re super easy to prepare.  While some foraged foods require repeated soaking or boiling with multiple changes of water, dandelion greens cook just like any other green.   Although they taste totally different, they can be substituted for spinach in any recipe.  I’ve seen dandelion green salad, sauteed with bacon and red onions.  I’ve never made it, but dandelion green pesto seems intriguing.  And perhaps you’ll notice my dandelion green calzone in the attached image.  I made it with Italian sausage and feta. The crust was sourdough.  You can make dandelion wine from the flowers.   Just about ready to bottle, I have a batch aging in the cellar.  With some imagination, the possibilities are endless.

Making no absolute health claims myself, dandelions are also reputed to have some medicinal benefits.  Tonics made from dandelions and burdock are made by some in the spring and are said to aid in detoxifying and promoting healthy liver function.  Again, I make no health claims.  Nutritionally, they are full of vitamin A and hold a fair amount of vitamin C.  Respectively, one cup will give you 100% and 30% of your recommended daily allowance.  In his books on Wild Fermentation and The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved,  Sandor Ellix Katz mentions dandelions a few times.  Living with AIDS, he holds food and diet as an important part in maintaining his health.  At the very least, they’re a fresh, green vegetable.  They’re something we’d all do well to eat more of.

As an Anarchist, dandelions can’t help but give you some inspiration.  People hate dandelions.  They want them gone.  They want them out of their yards.  Yet they persist.    A multitude of products have been created and marketed to try and eradicate them.  In some homeowner’s associations and in some municipalities, you will be in violation if dandelions aren’t kept in control on your property.  You will risk fines, sanctions, and could possibly lose your home.  The powers that be don’t want dandelions.  They want them gone, yet they’re still here.

It’s all because they’re so prolific.  You’ll probably remember blowing the white, puffy seeds when you were a kid, dispersing them all in one breath to obtain a wish.  You may furthermore recall how many there were, hundreds of them on each plant.  Actually blowing them all took a some lung capacity.  Now, think about it.  Each plant held the seeds for hundreds more just like it.  Their growth was literally exponential.  Hate them all you want.  Pass every law and ordinance you can think of.  Punish people as collaborators for letting them exist.  Use the full force of government to try and eradicate them.  But they’re still here.  They’re just too good at doing their thing.

Ben Stone, The Bad Quaker, talked a little about this.  He’s retired now, but some of his old podcasts are available on iTunes and on badquaker.com.  Talking about marijuana legalization, he once proposed that a strain of marijuana should be engineered that proliferated just like dandelions.  If we could accomplish that, if every pot plant put out hundreds of seeds that scattered with the wind, and if each plant in the next generation did likewise, there would be absolutely no way it could be effectively outlawed.  There just aren’t enough jails.  The drug war, already widely regarded as a failure, would effectively be done.  How can you stop something so widespread and common?

And the real value here is that this particular freedom would then be achieved completely independent of authority.  It’s not begging for freedom.  It’s achieving it.  You see, making no judgement about whether or not it’s wise to consume or smoke it, the fact that marijuana is illegal is an absolute affront to our self ownership.  If we don’t have autonomy in what we consume, we are not free.  Some do advocate going through the legal system to change this.  They say that we should be writing our congressmen and speaking up at town meetings.  We should be petitioning those in authority to reverse their unjust decision.  My lord, please reconsider.  The problem with that is that doing so acknowledges that authority.  It concedes that those in power have the right to make that decision.  People can rightly tell us what to do.  Hogwash.  Malarky.  Nuh uh.

And please don’t get hung up on pot.  How many other nonviolent and victimless crimes could this apply to?  In my state of Maine, switchblades have only recently been legalized.  In the 1950s, after seeing West Side Story and with apparent concern for the horrifying gang violence it depicted, legislators forbid possession of any knife that could be opened one handed.  The law was only repealed last year.  Really, most people didn’t even know it was a crime.  Any number of knives having knobs on the blade or other mechanisms facilitating quick opening were readily available at Walmart.  I had one and so did a lot of my friends.  Actual switchblades could occasionally be found at junk shops.  They were so widespread and innocuous that people just kinda forgot that they were illegal.  Police didn’t waste time on enforcement.  Formally legalizing them was an unnecessary afterthought.

The real way, the only ethical way, to bring about a peaceful and nonviolent society is to just live your life.  Be an example.  Demonstrate that your way is better and more fulfilling.  Be free, and maybe, just maybe, that will catch on.  Maybe others will start being free themselves.  Maybe they’ll inspire still more.  Soon enough, the people who choose violence will be powerless against this freedom.  There’ll just be too much of it.  Stamping it out just won’t be possible.  And maybe the people who fancy themselves in charge will change as well.  Maybe freedom will come, just like dandelion seeds in the wind.

An Anarchist Ponders Meat Consumption

Today, I’m going to talk a little bit about vegetarianism and veganism.  It’s a topic that I’ve frequently wrestled with, still wrestling with it from time to time.  On the one hand, I eat meat, and I don’t expect to stop soon.  Over the past few months, I’ve seen a big improvement in my health that I don’t think would be possible on a vegan diet.  But, some points are well made regarding the ethics and often make me stop a minute to think.  I believe in non aggression, yet live and thrive due to the expense of others.  It’s definitely a conundrum.  Not foreseeing any radical changes any time soon, here’s where I’m at right now.

As I said, my health lately has taken a radical change for the better.  I believe that diet is a huge part.  While I was pretty fit in my mid to late twenties, biking centuries and running five miles without thinking too hard, things turned bad in my early thirties.  Working at some stressful and sedentary jobs, raising a new kid, and going through some pretty bad depression, I quickly began putting on weight.  A few years ago, I ballooned out at 285 pounds, constantly plagued by fatigue, insomnia, and incessant heartburn.  Life wasn’t fun.  Luckily, I was able to change jobs, which helped a whole lot.  More importantly, going into fall, I started exercising, lifting weights and duking it out with a punching bag.  And with that, I’ve started eating better, mostly meat and lots of vegetables with just a smattering of carbs.  Dairy has never bothered me, so I also have a glass of milk with breakfast and a cup of cottage cheese just before bed.  Protein shakes help stave off hunger.  All told, I’ve been throwing off the fat, thirty pounds in just a few months, with hardly any loss in muscle tone, common in dieters.  Looking in the mirror, there’s a huge difference.  Feeling better than I can ever remember, I’m keeping it up.

Still, I have to pause for a moment.  Voluntarism is founded on a pretty basic principle, that interactions should be voluntary and free from force, fraud, and coercion.  We all have a right to be left alone, and nobody lives at another’s expense.  It’s not okay to make others do things that they don’t want to do.  But, is this where that concept breaks down?  I am accepting aggression in this instance on the virtue that it benefits my health?  Is that the exception?  And where does that end?  Roads and schools benefit us.  You could make that argument.  Is it now moral to collect taxes in support?  Do the ends justify the means after all?  Is Pandora’s box now open?  Coercion’s okay, if you can justify it?

Now, Murray Rothbard, one of the first to clearly articulate Voluntarism, made it pretty clear that his ethics only applied to humans.  Rights belong to moral agents, including anything that can come to understand morality and that is accountable for its actions.  That covers a pretty broad spectrum.  Unfortunately, animals just don’t qualify.  They can never fully understand rights, and won’t recognize yours.  Of an entirely different nature, they are a resource to be used wisely.

But, isn’t that distinction kind of arbitrary?  Sure, it is eloquently presented, but why is the limit there?  Why not somewhere else?  I could draw another line and be just as right.  Recognizing the value of non-aggression on at least some level, vegans extend their morality to animals.  At least on the surface, they believe that aggressing against another sentient being is wrong, period.  Consequently, they don’t eat meat or use animal products.  And they’re not even the extreme.  Gandhi, for a time, only ate fruit that had fallen from a tree.  He believed in non-aggression so much that he wouldn’t even harm a plant by plucking its leaves or harvesting its root.  To him, any talk of sentience or ability to feel pain was just another arbitrary categorization.  Plants were living things too and were deserving of respect.  Sure, it eventually landed him in the hospital.  But wasn’t he being more intellectually consistent?  Aggression is either wrong, or it isn’t, right?  It would appear then that arguing that it’s okay in some contexts, but not others, would take some mighty fine acrobatics.

This is all understanding though that the liberty movement contains definite degrees in belief.  Any philosophy claimed by Bill Maher, Glenn Beck, and Adam Kokesh clearly covers a broad spectrum.  Minarchists, for example, will allow for a certain amount of aggression.  While opposed to the system as it is, they still believe that fire departments and roads and defensive militaries are probably good things, holding their noses and accepting some coercion to make them happen.  Voluntarists, further down the spectrum, point out that inconsistency.  They believe that coercion is entirely evil and always to be avoided.  Now, I usually consider myself to be a pretty hard core anarchist.  Accepting aggression toward animals, could it be that I’m just not as radical as I’d thought?  Am I actually somewhere in the middle of that spectrum?  And am I okay with that?

When you take it to the absurd, any concept will break down.  But arguing that something applied a hundred times over will be bad doesn’t counter the actual point.  A classic logical fallacy, reducito ad absurdum doesn’t hold water.  As an anarchist, I value voluntary interactions.  But could holding that as true for just humans be enough, or is non-aggression so pure and so right that it must extend to all living things?  Do I want to go down that rabbit hole?  Do I want to drive off that cliff?   Must one who values liberty turn vegetarian?  I don’t know.  But, for dinner, I had roast pork.  It’ll be eggs and sausage for breakfast.  I’ll likely keep eating the way I’m eating.  Still, there’s no harm in pondering while I do.

 

 

Dutch Oven Pizza

Switching gears from yesterday, a guy had posted not long ago to inquire about making my dutch oven pizza.  It’s featured prominently on the blog’s Facebook page and I count it as one of my highest achievements.  Cooking it is complicated.  It requires some forethought and planning.  But, if you give it a try, I swear that you won’t be disappointed.

I first got interested in trying it when I was going through my bread baking phase.  Toward the end, I had set out to make the process as primitive and as basic as possible, forsaking all modern conveniences, cooking it on a fire.  I did some research on building a cob oven, but found the project a little overwhelming.  It seemed a lot of work for something that might not turn out.  I also wasn’t sure about building something permanent in my back yard.  Seeing those drawbacks, I turned my attention to cooking it with a dutch oven.

While complicated, I swear that the results will be the best you’ve ever tasted.  My crust, made with sourdough, achieved an absolutely perfect, bubbly, crispy chewy brown.  It was akin to a fine french loaf, picked up at a decent bakery.  It’s something like you’d get at a good brick oven pizzeria, only better since it’s homemade.  I assure you, though managing the fire and the oven certainly take some doing, the results will be well worth it.

In general, the secret to a good pizza is high heat.  In my home oven, I usually cook mine at 500F.  Commercial pizza ovens are usually set to 600.  While there’s no way to accurately gauge a campfire’s exact temperature, a hand held over it for no more than three Mississippis is a good test.  You’ll want an armload of a hot, slow burning wood.  Oak works well.  You’ll also want your fire pit lined with rocks to retain heat.  Notice in the picture how my pit is surrounded with simple a ring of rocks, flat rocks forming the floor.  As a lot of heat is absorbed into the dirt walls, I plan on lining those come spring.

Using the oven itself can be tricky.  I doubt they had pizza in mind when they designed it.  You’ll first notice that the legs are only an inch or two long.  This being the case, your pizza may sit too close to the coals and be prone to scorching.  The fix for this is either to used fewer coals or to lift the oven a few more inches with a tripod.  The top is the real issue.  Filled itself with more coals, the idea is that your food will be heated as well from the top, effectively baking it.  It works great for a loaf of bread or some biscuits, but since a pizza lays flat on the oven’s floor, the heat is a little too far away to properly do its job.  The danger is that the top won’t quite be done, and I’ve admittedly never been able to brown my cheese and toppings as I’d like.  Someone with some ingenuity could rig up something so the pizza sits in the oven’s center.  I’ve never tried it.  Lodge also makes a very short and wide dutch oven, seemingly more appropriate for the task.  But, as a standard dutch oven is more versatile, I’ve just chosen to make due.  I view any imperfections as a simple quirk of the process.

Before you cook, you’ll want to properly arrange the fire and your oven.  You want it hot and even.  Rather than lapping flames, your fire should burn down to embers.  They give off a more even heat.  You’ll also want your oven hot the moment you start cooking, so let it warm right next to the fire as it becomes ready.  Once you get your coals, use a shovel to spread them in a thin later on the fire pit’s floor.  Then place more on the oven’s lid.  As that’s the weak point, you’ll want a lot.  But remember that too many will smother and go out.  Fire needs air.  The idea is that you want a certain amount of heat from the bottom, and as much heat from the top as you can get.

And remember that actually cooking the pizza is a hands on process.  It’s not something you can just put on the fire and leave.   Ballpark, your pizza will take about ten minutes to cook.  The challenge is that your coals will never burn evenly, creating some spots that are hotter than others.  To manage that, you’ll want to turn both your dutch oven and your lid a quarter turn every three minutes or so.  That way no one spot on the pizza is in one place for too long.  Even then, a few black spots are unavoidable.  I just figure it adds to the character.

And taking the pizza out definitely deserves some foresight and planning.  Being extremely hot and without a lot of room, you can’t just lift it out.  My process requires two people, some welding gloves, a spatula, and a pizza peel.  With one person slowly and gently tipping the oven, another wiggle and finesse the spatula underneath.  I always cook my pizza on parchment, making it slide just a little easier.  Achieving that, it’s just a matter of quickly lifting the pizza and tugging it onto the peel.  If someone finds an easier method, I’m happy to hear it.  From here though, you’re ready to serve.

Talking about food and cooking is so much more pleasant than arguing about what ails the world.  Considering himself an anarchist, JRR Tolkien once noted that the world would be a better place if more people valued food and song over hoarded gold.  This is a meal that you’ll want to share with others.  Have some beer available and play some Grateful Dead.  Life is too beautiful to spend arguing and bossing others around.  Good food and good people will solve all the world’s problems.

The Myth of Cultural Appropriation

I came across this blog post just now.  It’s from Angry Asian Man at blog.angryasianman.com.  Being short, I’ll post it in it’s entirety.

People. Is this a real thing? This can’t be real.

White Girl Asian Food appears to be an actual food trailer operating in Austin, Texas. True to its branding and concept, the proprietor is a white girl serving “Asian food.” Also known as “Com Bun Yeu” (“Rice Noodle Love” in Vietnamese), they claim to “serve up deliciousness from all over Asia.”

You guys, I can’t do this today. The oblivious tone-deaf white privilege here is astounding.

Cultural appropriation is the idea that there is a certain injustice in people from one culture adopting aspects of another.  In this case, the perception is that the owner of this truck has unduly taken ideas belonging people of Asian descent and is wrongfully profiting off them.  That’s not her food.  It belongs to Asians, and she shouldn’t be serving it.

Malarky.

Like any bit of information, you can not own food as an abstract notion.  I’m sorry, but you just can’t.  Thoughts and information aren’t physical things.  And since knowledge can never be physically possessed, it can never qualify as real property.  It fails that crucial aspect of the definition.  Furthermore, since the concept of cultural appropriation relies on the notion of intellectual property, an absolutely illogical notion, cultural appropriation absolutely fails as a concept.  Ideas can’t be stolen.  They don’t belong to anyone.

And to collectivize this woman, as the author has, is an absolute act of prejudice.   This poor woman wasn’t a sailor on Commodore Perry’s fleet.  I’m sure she never fought in the Opium Wars.  I will go out on a limb and say that she, as an individual, is completely innocent of any wrongdoing in the operation of her business.  It is true that not every exchange is voluntary.  Rights can be violated in obtaining information.  But whatever was done years ago by others, she had no part in it.  She obtained her truck, her food, and all her recipes peacefully, either through her own labor or via voluntary and mutually beneficial exchange.  Yet, the author is holding her individually accountable for the actions of people like her.  That is wrong.

There’s all kinds of wrong here.  Really, what the author is calling for is censorship.  In her cooking, the truck owner is expressing some ideas.  The author has a problem with that and thinks that she shouldn’t be expressing them.  He’s also calling for a monopoly, believing that those ideas should only be expressed by an elite few.  That totally disregards our right to labor and to trade freely.  It’s all really ugly stuff.

And the woman is even saying flat out that she’s white.  You can’t even accuse her of fraud.  Her customers know exactly what they’re getting, Asian food cooked by a white girl.  If you want it cooked by an actual Asian person, go somewhere else.  She’s not misrepresenting herself in the slightest.  I’ll shout it from the rooftops, she is doing nothing wrong in operating her business.

If you really have a problem with her, the thing to do is to outcompete her.  If there are two Asian food trucks, side by side, the food is of equal quality, but one is run by an actual Asian person, I’ll go to the Asian guy every time.  That’s my preference.  I’ll even cut a little slack on the quality of the food.  And, if there are enough people like me, the white lady’s truck will eventually close.  No hard feelings.  That’s just how the market works.  But to flatly say no, you can’t sell your food, violates everything good and right.

Accusations of cultural appropriation are borne out of bigotry and seek to violate rights. You cannot morally halt expression.  You cannot morally hinder exchange.  Attempting to do either seeks to impose your will on others.  Other people are not yours to boss around.

Of Cooking Show Hosts and Great Man Fallacies.

Straight up, I learned a lot of what I know about cooking from old Frugal Gourmet books.  The gumbo recipe I posted earlier was his.  It’s Backwoods Gumbo, taken from The Frugal Gourmet Cooks American.  Likewise, my Lentils and Italian Sausage is out of The Frugal Gourmet Cooks With Wine.  Of course, as will happen in any exchange, I modified and tweaked some things.  My recipes are distinct and different from his.  They’re now my own.  But, credit where it’s due, that’s where I really got started.  Without knowing much about the phenomena that was The Frugal Gourmet or how it was all to end, his work was a really big influence.

Now, if you’ll indulge me for a moment, let me talk about The Great Man Theory.  Way, way back, people used to believe that the world as we know it is the result of the actions of Great Men.   The idea was that history and society as we know it are primarily shaped and molded in a large part by certain, influential people.  Examples might be Caesar, Jesus, Genghis Khan, Mohammad, Hitler, Roosevelt, Reagan. . .  You get the idea.  Maybe it was because they had a certain charisma.  Perhaps some were powerful military figures.  It could be anything.  But, by that theory, the world is what it is now because of certain individuals doing their thing.  Great Men made it all happen.  Consequently, looking at the world through that lens, the people who lead us become really, really important.

Of course, most serious historians today don’t subscribe to this.  They’d argue that leaders reflect the society, not the other way around.  Hitler, for example, was the result of a popular political movement.  If he hadn’t come to power, someone else just like him would have instead.  Likewise,  Jesus wasn’t preaching anything much different than others of his time.  Things happened though, and he’s the guy we remember.  The point is that it’s all so much bigger than just one individual.  Great Men are a pretty small factor.

Now, I was too young to remember, but The Frugal Gourmet ended in scandal and disgrace.  Jeff Smith had at one time hosted the number one cooking show on PBS.  He rivaled Julia Child and was on the air for over twenty years.  He was the very definition of an institution.  He was quickly pulled off the air though when he was accused by over twenty men of sexually abusing them as teenagers.  Before his civil suit went to trial, he settled out of court.  Two of his books had made the New York Times Bestseller list.  Now they can be found for a dollar apiece in a thrift store.  He used to be the cooking guy.  Now it’s all gone.

If you read his stuff though, you won’t find anything that’s radical or hateful or destructive.  He talked about simple and humble food.  He advocated sharing meals and dining with your loved ones.  He was constantly delving into anthropology, talking about the origins of different foods, where it all came from, and where we all came from.  You can’t really argue with any of that.  It’s all stuff that we’d all do well to listen to and take to heart.  Still, nobody wants to hear it from him.

I’m not trying to redeem or defend him, and whether or not he actually did it is completely irrelevant.  I won’t even get into that, either way.  The point I’m trying to make is that you had a certain ideology that was deeply based on an individual.  Once that individual was compromised, so then was the message.  Anything connected to him was forever tarnished.

And that’s the issue with putting stock in a leader.  Individuals, every one of them, are all fallible.  Somewhere, we all have some kind of weakness.  Nobody’s perfect.  That being the case, any thought or notion that’s completely founded on an individual will die with that individual.  Destroy the man and you’ve destroyed the movement.  Arguments based on authority can all be discredited.

By contrast, good ideas are as strong as the logic behind them.  Ad hominem can’t hurt them.  Sound notions hold their own.  There’s no need to appeal to authority because well founded arguments are powerful by themsleves.  Trying to give weight beyond that is superfluous, detrimental even.  When truth is present, Great Men are thoroughly unnecessary.

Skipping Sin Taxes

Taxes are immoral.  They pay for evil things.  They are the very definition of extortion.  And even if they go toward something you like, perhaps you fancy your schools or fire stations, is the violence really necessary?  Do we need to point guns at people to educate kids?  Are we somehow unable to put out fires peacefully and cooperatively?  No.  Taxes are immoral, and good people try to avoid them.

And in using your vices against you, sin taxes are the worst.  My income tax, I can’t do much about.  They’ve got me.  They’ll find me eventually if I don’t pay it.  Likewise, sales tax is unavoidable to some extent.  On some level, I need stuff and I need to buy it.  The same goes for property taxes.  Really, if I want to participate in society, I’m more or less trapped on all those things.  But sin taxes, taxes on alcohol and cigarettes and the like, take advantage of your addictions.  When you see a police checkpoint, know that the beer you bought earlier funded that.  The same goes for prisons.  They’re attacking us through our weakness in character.  They’re using our flaws against us.

Right now, trying to get in shape, I haven’t been drinking.  But I see nothing inherently wrong with the mere act.  Some of the best experiences I’ve ever had happened when I was drunk.  It’s a social lubricant.  When done right, it makes gatherings merry.  Dammit, sometimes drinking is just downright fun.  Now, some abstain for a whole lot of good reasons, and I absolutely respect that.  But I submit that it is entirely possible to nonviolently enjoy a drink while minimizing your tax footprint.

To that end, I dabble in home brewing.  And it really is a fascinating hobby.  Some people like it because it cuts costs.  $100 worth of equipment will get you started, and ingredients let you make beer for about half the price of buying.  There’s also the science, every batch bringing you back to High School Biology.  I always liked the traditions and histories, learning about old monks and pouring over various recipes from different regions.  There really is something for everyone.

And at this stage of the game, I’m mostly into meads.  To me, while it can certainly be made complicated, mead has the advantage of simplicity.  Unlike beer, where you have to boil your wort for a time and stir and fuss, mead requires nothing done on a stovetop.  Just dump 15 pounds of honey into water to make 5 gallons, pitch your yeast, and just sit and wait.  And you do have to wait.  In about three years it’ll be just about right, bulk aged, racked, and then conditioned in a bottle for a while.  It requires some patience.  But when it’s done, it will be magic.  Most important to me though, Maine State Law requires no sales tax on honey.  Once finished, I can enjoy it with my conscience clear.

Once, at the height of my brewing, I even set out to make a completely nonviolent mead.  I wanted it produced with no government involvement or coercion whatsoever.  Forsaking the use of Federal Reserve Notes, I had planned on somehow bartering for the honey.  My water comes from my own well, so I had that going for me.  I even read up on recycling the yeast from one batch to the next.  Through it all, the big hitch was going to be the roads.  How would I avoid them?  I don’t have my own bees, so I would have had to travel for the honey.  Seemed a long trek, out of the way and through the woods.  The project was eventually abandoned, but it’s still worth taking up one day.  Maybe one day I’ll try it again.

But the point is to always be trying; separate yourself from the system.  You’re not a slave.  You’re not a serf.  Understanding that you are an individual and not a drone, you owe society nothing.  Evil men want to put you down.  They will rob and they will steal.  But even worse is to be cheated.  That beer in the cooler and wine on the shelf really do look good.  But they’re a trap.  Don’t be fooled.  Don’t be tricked.  Don’t be destroyed by your vices.

My Bread Baking Phase

I used to be really into bread.  It was a big part of my life.  It was something I shared with others.  By the end, my bread baking took on an almost spiritual level.  It was part of my routine and a big part of who I was.  Past that now, it’s not a thing for me anymore.  Still, it was important for a long time, and I feel my experience is worthwhile sharing.

I started baking in my mid twenties.  I vaguely remember first seeing a recipe on the side of a King Arthur flour bag and becoming inspired to follow it.  And I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but it turned out pretty decent.  It was better than anything you could buy in the store, and it came together pretty easy too.  I was hooked.  I went on from there.

It wasn’t long then before I got into sourdough.  Now, that’s real bread.  It’s a man’s bread.  It’s the bread of the frontier, what gold miners and fur trappers baked.  Requiring expertise and knowledge, and often just a little luck, it’s bread made complicated.  A skill to master, an individual who can turn out a good loaf of sourdough is an individual with grit, knowledge and determination.  I wanted to be one of those individuals.

And it does require skill.  I talked before about how a lot of cooking is in the quality of the ingredients.  That’s not quite as true with bread.  At its most basic, its just flour, salt, and water, and the cheapest bread flour at Walmart will do.  Bread is all about how you put it together, how you work it, how you time it, and how you cook it.  It’s all in the skill of the baker.  And I sought long and hard to develop that skill.

Bread quickly became my weekly meditation.  Saturday mornings consisted of Tai Chi exercises, sifting flour, and kneading dough.  Buddhist temple music played in the background.  I didn’t use a recipe.  I went completely by feel.  It was a transcendental experience.  I was the bread.

And my friends oohed and aahhed, and it was awesome.  Post pictures of particularly good loaves always got tons of likes and comments.  The fact that I needed to open a bakery was a given.  The name Liberty Bread was thrown around, acknowledging my strong political alignment.  I was the guy you’d bring baking questions to.  I was the bread guy.

My pinnacle moment in baking came the day I baked the most magnificent boule in my dutch oven over a campfire.  It’d been a dream of mine for a while, taking the process to an almost primal level.  It was as complicated and as labor intensive as I could make it.  It was bread at its most primitive and basic.

You see, a lot of bread baking is about timing and control.  You wait until the bread has risen just the right amount, and then you let it proof, and then you heat up your oven. . .  In a kitchen, a more or less stable environment, that’s fine.  You can exercise that control.  On a campfire though, the coals are ready when they’re ready and they will only be ready for so long.  No matter what stage the bread is at, when the fire’s right, get it in the pot and get it cooking.  You can’t hope to control a situation like that.  It turns the baking experience into one of surrender and letting go.  The fire is the master.  You have to trust the bread.  I did, and it turned out beautifully.  I consider it one of my highest achievements.

And then I took up Paleo.  Now, I am not one to say that diet is the absolute direct and only cause of all of life’s suffering.  You lost your job and your dog died and now you feel depressed, so just stop eating grain? No.  That attitude belittles the real challenges and real struggles that people face.  Not everything has a quick and easy fix.  I will say though that I went a month without eating any grains, potatoes, legumes, or dairy, and I felt great.  My sleep was deeper and more restful.  I was overall in a better mood.  I was more sharp and alert in my thinking.  I lost 5 pounds, which isn’t real impressive.  But it’s still a step in the right direction.  On the whole, it was a very positive thing.

Now I don’t eat bread at all.  Anticipating society’s collapse and its unleashing the worst it can offer, I’ve been pretty dedicated to getting in shape.  Lifting weights and duking it out with a punching bag, protein is what I eat.  Bread just isn’t in the equation.  If it comes up that I eat a piece, say a friend has some that I just have to try, I actually get heartburn.  Bread today is painful for me to eat.  Otherwise, I’m fine.  I feel better than I ever have.  So,  guess it’s no bread then.

So yeah, in and out of my life.  That’s the story of me and bread.  Bittersweet?  Maybe.  But so it is with all things.  Don’t let my experience discourage you.  A good loaf of bread is still a thing of beauty.  But for me, it’s come and gone.  I bid it a heartfelt farewell.

A Good, Sharp Knife.

Many of you are probably into knives and own a really nice one.  Maybe, you’re into bushcraft and survival and have just the thing for chopping wood and butchering game.  Perhaps, you’re a martial artist and chose something more tactical.  Star Trek fans out there may have found Worf’s mek’leth too cool to pass up.  Knife geeks exist.  People are really into them.  And that’s all fine.  I have absolutely no wish to take any of that away from you.  Now, do you have a good kitchen knife?

As a knife is basic to the kitchen, I feel that a good one is important.  Anyone who has chopped an onion using a good knife alongside a bad will see an obvious difference.  The good knife will just glide on through.  The bad knife needs some muscle.  The same can be said about slicing and carving meat.  Remember how I said that thin portions are ideal in a stir fry?  A good knife will easily do that.  Meanwhile, that cheap, serrated, made in China piece of crap from the kitchen aisle at Walmart will just make a mess of things.  There’s a whole world of difference between the two.  You want a good knife.

You see, a quality blade wants to cut.  It was made for it.  It’s in its nature.  When you use a good knife, gravity and physics do most of your work for you.  Being in line with the general order of the universe, your part is merely to guide.  A bad knife, on the other hand, requires some force.  You have to make it cut.  You have to impose your will.  It’s not made for or suited to the task.

Using a bad knife is the perfect metaphor for coercion.  Having been forced, that inferior knife becomes dangerous and ineffective.  Cuts won’t go where you want them to.  The knife is apt to injure.  And through abuse, it will grow even more dull, and more dangerous, and more ineffective.  As Anarchists, we understand that force is counterproductive and immoral.  Nothing good was ever accomplished through its use.  Can you see then how a good knife is preferable?

And a good knife just goes far beyond all that.  Find a good knife and you’ll see yin and yang in action.  It’s cosmic harmony expressed and the answer to Crom’s enigma.  You see, steel that’s too soft, bends.  Steel that is too hard is brittle and breaks.  Find the spot in between, and you’ll see virtue.  This concept is seen again in the angle of the grind, once more finding that point where strength through width and keenness through narrowness meet. That point is generally accepted to be 17 degrees.  Like so much in life, a knife maker strives to avoid extremes.  It’s the Taoist concept of Wu Wei.  Good knives illustrate balance and perfection.

And this will blow your mind.  The next time you’re testing for sharpness, instead of shaving your arm or cutting some paper, just hold the blade up to the light.  When you look along the cutting edge, you should see nothing.  Both sides should join together perfectly, meeting infinity and vanishing into nothingness.  It’s like a geometric line, a series of points so infinitely small that they all but cease to exist.  Diminishing to the point of absolutely no thickness, your edge becomes nothing.  And nothing is what you’re after.  You absolutely want nothing.  Nothing is key.  When you have nothing, you really have something.  But something is absolutely nothing.  Understanding all this, it’s clear that a good knife is the very embodiment of Zen.  Meditate deeply.

Now, I have a very nice chef’s knife.  It was hand made by a craftsman named Duane Hansen, running a business called Moose River Handcrafts.  The blade is from old scrap steel, perhaps cut out from an old saw blade.  Its handle is a nice, tiger maple.  Without belaboring all the virtues of local crafts produced by skilled artisans, the thing’s one of my prized possessions.  What can I say?  It cuts.  I hope that whoever I one day leave it to appreciates it on the level that I do.  Who knows?  I may choose to be buried with it.

But there are many other options for finding yours.  I recommend a good kitchen store, walking in and telling the attendant what you’re looking for.  He should ask you some questions, determining your what your needs are and how you’ll be using it.  He should then give you options, educating you throughout the process about what he has to offer and how he can best meet your needs.  A good knife is an investment.  It’s a purchase that deserves a little thought.

Throughout this, remember always that a knife is a tool.  It’s a screwdriver.  It’s a hammer.  It serves an ideal purpose, and that purpose is simply to cut.  So many people go out and look for and buy something pretty.  That’s great.  How’s it do hacking up a squash?  Hollow beauty takes a back seat to utility.  Function always, always, always trumps appearance.

As most of your cutting chores happen in the kitchen, a good knife just makes sense.  You’re not out everyday building survival shelters.  If you are, you’re awesome.  But you’re more likely chopping a carrot.  Hell, you could take your tactical bowie and use that if it works.  A good knife is a good knife.  Just please don’t use a bad one.  Good tools foster good food.  You should acquire a good knife.

 

 

 

 

Sprouting: One Way To Reject The System

Understanding that the system is evil, the next step is to distance yourself from it.  While the task is no doubt daunting, authority is incessant, every step you take away is a step away from the inherent immorality.  Knowing something is wrong, you just can’t go on willfully participating.  You need to disassociate.  One way to start that process is to become more and more independent in what you eat.  Self reliance in food is a huge thing.  Sprouting would be a small step in that direction.

There’s a ton of information on sprouting out there.  Let me make it simple.  All you have to do is soak whatever beans or seeds you’re using overnight in a jar, drain them, and then rinse them twice a day.  They’ll grow, and you’ll be ready to eat them in a few days when the leaves sprout.  I’ll get into more detail, but that’s pretty much it.  Please don’t be intimidated by this.

And your options are pretty versatile.  The dry goods section at your health food store or your local asian grocery should give you plenty of options.  Mung beans are classic and pretty basic.  Right next to them, you should find some adzuki beans, which are good too.  I also like shoots grown from dried peas, and please try them.  Lentil sprouts are fantastic.  You could also try your basic black beans or kidney beans or what have you, but those have never been appealing to me.  Again though, there are plenty of things to try.

I used to go all crazy and have a bunch of different jars going with different varieties.  These days, I tend to just throw a mix into a jar and grow them all together.  I haven’t found enough difference in taste to warrant their separation.  Why complicate things?

For growing, most people use a glass jar with a mesh top.  I use one I picked up at a health food store that I find convenient.  You’d do just as well with a canning jar and some cheesecloth secured with a rubber band.  I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of trying it in a Nalgene bottle on a backpacking or canoe trip.  I’d run across the idea reading The Complete Walker, explaining how one could possibly enjoy some fresh greens on an extended expedition.  The point is though that the required equipment is basic and easy to come by.

There are a lot of tips for growing out there that seem to make the process needlessly complicated.  Authors caution to grow them in complete and total darkness.  I just put mine in a dark corner of my kitchen and throw a towel over the jar.  They’d also have you build contraptions to keep the jar inverted for drainage.  While you definitely don’t want the sprouts sitting in water, I’ve always been fine just putting the jar lid down for ten minutes on my dish rack after rinsing.  I’ve found it to be enough.  People also go all crazy about water quality or whether or not the water’s been chlorinated.  I’d say that if you can drink it, you’re fine.  See what works for you.

I would however recommend cleaning the hulls before eating.  They’re the little green and brown skins on the beans that pop off as the sprouts grow.  It’s more my personal preference, but I find it worth the effort to remove them since they’re kind of bitter.  To do this, I put the batch in a sink full of cold water, hold them under, and shaking them.  The hulls tend to gather together and float to the top where you can easily discard them.  Some may find it to be too much work.  I find it worth the trouble.

I’d be negligent if I didn’t give a word toward safety.  Sprouts are often championed by raw food proponents.  It’s important to remember though that they grow best in a warm, moist environment.  That’s also the perfect environment for incubating e coli.  While overcooking ruins them, some cooking is essential.  I often throw mine into a stir fry for the last few minutes.  Tossing them last thing into a piping hot soup works too.

And I’ll leave definitive health claims to other people.  Sprouts have been touted by some as a super food and the key to everlasting life.  The idea is that the enzymes in the new plant are all kinds of good for you.  Others have countered that those enzymes are destroyed in the stomach and are therefore worthless. Who knows?  I’ve also seen people claim that this is a fine alternative for those avoiding legumes, seeing that the process of sprouting makes the plant more digestible.  I’ll leave the verdict on that to other people.  In any event, you at least end up here with a fresh green vegetable.  Can I get away with saying that they’re better than cheese puffs?

In any event, this is something anyone can do.  You can do it in an apartment.  You can do it in a dorm room.  People complain all the time that they know the system is evil and they’d like to get away from it.  They just don’t have the resources.  You can do this.  Small step that it is, participating less in evil is participating less in evil.  Please give it a try.

How Liberty Fosters Flavor

On a remote camping trip last year, I caught a really decent bass.  As I got back to camp to cook it, I was horrified to find that I’d forgotten some pretty crucial items in my cook set.  I didn’t bring any spices.  The tin of old bay I’d planned to take was sitting on my counter at home.  So was the garlic and the lemon.  All I had was a ziplock bag filled with flour and some salt along with a small container of bacon grease to lube the frypan.  I’d had visions of something grand.  That particular vision wasn’t to be.

Nevertheless, it was the most delicious thing I’d ever tasted.  It was one meal I had over a year ago, and I remember it distinctly to this day.  It was bright.  It was clean.  It just tasted so vibrant and so pure.  I remember it more vividly than any steak I’ve ever had or any of the finest foods you could imagine that I’ve partaken in.  And it had nothing to do with technique or seasoning.  I didn’t do anything special in cooking it.  I just dusted it with the flour and fried it up.  It was nonetheless a memorable meal.  Will you indulge me as I explain how that was partly due to the freedom imbued within?

Whatever you want to call it, whether you prefer Fascism or Mercantilism or Corporatism, our food supply is centrally planned to a large degree.  Food is by and large produced under the direction of corporations.  They make choices, growing the most food, for the most people, to earn the most profit.  They are overseen by a government, concerned to some degree with maintaining safety, but also mindful of the danger in unduly burdening the corporations who feed us.  Lets put it all in a positive light.  And give them their due.  They feed a lot of hungry people.  These people are charged with feeding the world.  They overall get it done.  Score one for them.

But that comes with a certain amount of compromise.  Those compromises generally sacrifice taste.  To get the best yield, crops are often grown wherever the best conditions can be found.  While it cuts down on the need for pesticides and fertilizers, both which cost money, that ideal location can be half a world away.  To facilitate shipping those long distances, crops are often picked underripe and bred to be tough, never allowed to develop to their full potential.  Likely, some chemicals have been added to facilitate.  Products also need to appeal to a wide market.  That means anything that could possibly be offensive to anyone must be purged.  While a certain unique trait may give an item character and be appealing to some, it will most likely be bred out.  They’re selling to everyone, and someone may not like it.  The simple fact is that certain factors have to be considered when you’re feeding the world.  Taste takes a back seat.

My fish didn’t have any of those constraints.  It grew up in a pond, just doing what a fish does naturally.  Nobody decided what it should taste like.  Nothing special was done to get it to me.  It was an artificial lake.  I’ll give you that.  Had a dam not been built, that pond would not be there.  But it was otherwise a meal completely devoid of central planning.  That made the difference.

Anyone who’s ever planted or eaten from a garden has experienced the same thing.  The carrot you buy in the store will never compare to anything you pull out of the ground.  And I’m not even talking about the joy in producing your own food.  Sure, that’s there.  It was certainly there with the fish.  But I’m talking about a real, perceivable difference in flavor.  It’s like the difference between black and white and color TV.  Food outside the corporatist system has a whole other dimension to it.  Someone who has only ever eaten from a grocery store or restaurant just doesn’t know.

Now, free food has its own problems.  There are times when the fish just aren’t biting and I’d starve if I relied on them.  If I go to a supermarket though, there’s usually food.  And central planning has solved a lot of problems with distribution.  Any time you go to the farmer’s market, understand that every farmer needed his own truck to get there and that they all collectively use a ton of gas.  Central planning came about due to real challenges perceived in its absence.  Don’t buy wholeheartedly into any naturalistic fallacy.

But understand that managing the problem still hasn’t produced an ideal.  Authority is sold on the premise that it can solve all your problems.  Maybe.  I’m skeptical.  But it can also hold you back.  There are some who would have the state completely dictate our menu.  If I’d done that, I never would have tasted that fish.