What Can John Frum Teach Us?

If you’re not familiar with cargo cults, check out the movie Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.  In that film, children surviving a plane crash just after the apocalypse develop a religion.  Complete with the prediction of a messiah, it’s all based on the plane’s wreckage and the few remaining fragments of society that they’re left to ponder.  Old toys and bits of junk become holy relics.

Stuff like that’s happened in real life.  Lacking information and insight, primitive societies have sometimes interpreted technologically advanced cultures as higher powers, building religions on that foundation.  Simple and childlike on their face, some of them have evolved to some really complex doctrines.  A lot of thought has gone into explaining what was for them unexplainable.  It’s fascinating, worth a little study and examination.

Of the cargo cults, The John Frum Cult is probably the most famous.  While often written off as just savages worshipping airplanes, its history and origins are actually a little more profound.  The movement was born out of the colonial era around the turn of the last century in the South Pacific Islands.  Living under the missionaries, life was pretty horrible, to say the least.  Traditional ways of living were outlawed.  Natives were more or less forced to work for the colonial authorities, enduring low wages and horrible conditions.  Life was rotten.  If you want to make parallels to biblical Hebrews, feel free.

Fast forward though to World War II.  One day, out of the blue, Allied GIs suddenly appeared on the scene.   Waging their island hopping campaign and hoping to defeat the Japanese, they needed airfields and they needed them fast.  And they were willing to pay a ton of money for labor, better jobs than the missionaries had ever even considered.  They also had spam, coca-cola, cigarettes, and steel roofing to boot.  They didn’t care how the natives practiced their religion.  They voiced no opinion on what they did on their free time.  They just wanted help building airfields.  They were friendly, generous, technologically advanced men, performing wonders and bestowing great wealth where there had once only been despair.  For the natives of Vanuatu, it was deliverance.

From that came a Christ like figure, John Frum.  After the war, the GIs went home, leaving a lot of their stuff behind.  But according to the legend, a man named John, presumably from somewhere, told the natives that he would one day return.  He instructed them to stop being led by the missionaries and to return to their traditional ways of living.  He also told them that upon his return, he would bring with him planes and cargo filled with more spam and coke and everything that they could ever want in life.  Return to your native roots.  Some day he’d be back.  They just had to remain faithful.  Since then, followers have gathered every year on February 15th, maintaining the airfields and piously mimicking the soldiers in a religious ceremony.  They hold the hope of one day again greeting their savior.

On gods and religion, I have my own opinion.  In my everyday life, I’m pretty athiest and outspoken.  The natives here have clearly fallen for some non sequitur fallacies.  Just because you can’t explain or fully comprehend something doesn’t mean it’s the work of gods.  There are logical and rational explanations for everything they experienced.  Still, I like to get past that every now and then to see exactly what I should take from this.  After all, it’s a legend, and legends are meant to inspire.  So, what exactly should we take from the John Frum legend?

On the surface, it’s a pretty simplistic doctrine.  Believe in him and he’ll give you stuff.  It’s pretty straightforward.  And there are tons and tons of religions that are just as superficial.  People pray for rain and wealth all the time.  John Frum followers aren’t alone here.  And there is something to be said for simply holding hope toward a better tomorrow.  Some people want heaven and an end to suffering.  These guys just want aluminum roofing.  For a lot of people, just having faith that things will work out for the better is enough.  I don’t want to take that away.

But remember that John Frum had primarily told his followers to stop being led by the missionaries.  That was the real meat of his doctrine.  Stop being slaves and begging for scraps.  Go off and build your own life with your own hands.  Be responsible for yourselves.  For the time being at least, stop looking to the missionaries for deliverance.  They are false prophets.  Their promises are empty.  Living for them will not improve your life.  Cut it out.  Really, that’s what John Frum was all about.  That’s the good stuff.

And some scholars have even suggested that, were John Frum to return as promised, accepting his cargo would actually be an act of heresy.  His stuff was, after all, the white man’s stuff.  Coke and Spam are of the civilized world.  Accepting these as gifts, rather than earning them of their own labor as a free individual, would be absolutely antithetical to John Frum’s doctrine.  Anticipating his return from the sky, waiting for him to benevolently bestow gifts to all the faithful, seemingly misses the entire point of his teachings.  He’s meant to lead you from oppression, not bring you presents.  Holding out for the Spam totally misses the big picture.

It’s the difference between Santa Clause and The Sermon on the Mount.  Is your god simply to give gifts, or will he lead you to ultimate freedom and higher understanding?   To me, simplistic though it may be, fallacies and all, the John Frum cult absolutely accomplishes the latter.  If you’re doing what he taught, you’re that much closer to freedom.  Liberty and fulfillment, that’s the John Frum’s path.

Squirrels

To anyone troubled by the image, relax.  They’re sleeping.  They’re laying there, perfectly content, and are going to wake up soon to do cute little squirrel things.  They’re fine.  It’d be best though if you could just click away, moving onto something else.

Squirrel hunting’s a blast.  With a little more action and much lower stakes, it’s a lot less stressful than big game.  Outside of a survival situation, if you blow a squirrel hunt, it’s no big deal.  But you still get that thrill of hearing the leaves rustle, that quick shot of alertness, and that charge knowing game is afoot.  Kids enjoy it, and it’s probably one of the best introductions to hunting.

I’m saying that with the knowledge that the skills needed for squirrel hunting are directly applicable to deer.  If you can hunt squirrels, deer are next up.  Still hunting works in both contexts, tiptoeing from cover to cover, all the while thoroughly examining your surroundings.  The only difference is that you won’t look for deer in a tree.  Stand hunting is also productive, sitting quiet and motionless in an opportune place, patiently waiting in ambush for quarry to amble along.  Oak groves, apple orchards, and the edges of corn fields are ideal, all good habitats for both.  Summing it up, squirrels make excellent practice animals.  They’re great for building up toward bigger and better things.

My weapon of choice is usually a shotgun, a pump action 20 gauge using #6 shot.  While you mostly read about people sniping them, using either a .22 or a .17HMR, they’re mostly looking for the challenge.  Popping a squirrel’s head at a distance takes skill.  But I just want the meat.  The only drawback is that I have to spend some time while cleaning picking out the pellets.  You’ll never get them all, so be careful when you eat.

Through a technique called barking, it’s even apparently possible to hunt them with a large caliber rifle.  I’ve heard about it, but admittedly never seen it done.  As the squirrel climbs, the trick is to hit a spot on the tree within four inches of it’s heart.  You want a bullet that will produce some shock, and I’ve heard common .30-’06 works.  That shock will supposedly stop the squirrel’s heart.  It will fall to the ground, dead, dead, dead.  The obvious advantage being that you don’t obliterate a small animal with a large bullet.  This seems very applicable to a survival situation.  Perhaps you’re stuck out and you only have your deer gun.  In any event, it’s a thing to try on a slow day in your deer stand.  Some day, tell me if it works.

You may see a bunch of them at your local town center or park.  Most of them are pretty fat too.  There are specific laws against hunting them in populated areas, but to an anarchist, that shouldn’t matter.  Since parks are government land, illegitimately obtained through extortion and theft, the animals in them are morally unowned and are therefore ripe for homesteading.  Just don’t get caught.  And be sure to practice good wildlife management.  I would however caution that a city squirrel has likely eaten garbage, perhaps not tasting the best  While a squirrel of the woods may have a hint of apples or acorns, it’s urban cousin will be more akin to rotten meat, coffee grounds, and cheeto dust.  Personally, I’d have to be pretty hard up to eat one.  But it’s all entirely all up to your judgement.

I hear different things on cooking them, and my experience seems different.  Commonly, I see people either breaking them down to bread and pan fry, like chicken, or roasting them whole over a campfire.  It looks delicious, but every squirrel I’ve ever cooked as such has been tough and chewy, coming out like rubber.  Squirrels didn’t live life crammed in a cage.  They’re wild animals, and have muscle tone.  I’m told that you can tenderize them. An acidic marinade does a lot.  But I’ve never even found that to work real well.  The best results I get involve a slow braise in a dutch oven with either red or white wine.  A mirpoix adds some depth.  I thicken the juices for gravy.  I’ve also made a simple soup along the lines of a Vietnamese pho.  That turned out okay, but the flavor seemed lost, indistinguishable from common chicken.  On recipes, I’m happy to hear more thoughts.  Pass them along, if you would.

When you hunt, you are keenly aware of your interconnectedness to the world.  You shot it yourself, you watched it die, and you turned it into a meal.  There’s no getting around that fact that you live at another’s expense.  I therefore know very few hunters unaware of life’s value.  Every living thing evolved to live and pass on its genes, and everything that lives takes that away from something else.  There’s no getting out of that web.  The trick then is to honor all life, knowing that some things must die so that you can carry on.

 

My Thoughts on Jerky

In this installment, I’m going to pass on everything I’ve learned with regards to making beef jerky.  I’m going to talk a little about my thoughts on preparation.  Then I’m going to move on to recipes for marinades and seasoning.  If you’re a hiker or backpacker, a hunter or other outdoor enthusiast, or maybe just looking for a tasty, low carb snack, you might find something here of value.  Beef jerky done well is a very special thing, indeed.

When you read most recipes for jerky, a whole lot seems to be sacrificed to food safety.  I get it.  It’s raw meat, and raw meat harbors bacteria.  With some research, you’ll see that E coli dies at 160F and salmonella dies at 150F.  That being the case, the recommendation across the board on every recipe I’ve seen is to crank the heat on whatever you’re using to at least 180F.  You might notice that that’s as high as most jerky makers and dehydrators go.  The thought is to kill the germs, all of them.  Die bugs, die.

Forgiving anyone who would err on the side of caution, to me, that advice brings up a few problem.  As it dries, high heat like that tends to cook the meat, turning it hard and brittle.  To my mind, jerky is better when it’s chewy and flexible.  Additionally, heat destroys nutrients.  Really, it’s not much different than when you’d cook normally, or even what would happen naturally as your food digests in your stomach.  But, since it’s a food that may be eaten in an extreme situation, common in backpacking trips or stored for survival situations, I’d think that any nutrients would be worth preserving.  Seeing those two drawbacks, alternate methods are at least worth looking at.

And while most recipes advocate for high heat, it’s important to remember that heat itself isn’t really necessary for the actual process of drying.  Some Tibetans dry yak meat.  All they do is cut their’s into strips and hang them out at night.  The cool, dry Himalayan air does the rest.  In my experience, it’s the circulation of air that really does the trick.  Cranking up the heat isn’t necessary for that purpose.

Which leaves the challenge of the bacteria.  The thing working in your favor here is that bacteria can’t penetrate beef past the surface.  It can’t get into the flesh.  That’s why it’s perfectly safe to eat a rare steak, the outside having been properly seared.  Knowing that, the solution when working with beef, not ground beef mind you, is to somehow sanitize the surface.  That’s all you need.  Do that, and your jerky is safe to eat.  I try to accomplish this with the marinade.

You’ll want to use something acidic, alcoholic, and or salty.  I routinely use a teriyaki lime marinade, consisting of equal amounts of tamari, lime juice, and sugar.  Fresh ginger and garlic round it out nicely.  Another hit in the household was simple kosher salt and fresh ground pepper, coriander, and apple cider vinegar.  For that, I simply wet the meat in the vinegar and then sprinkled on the spices, the undried end product coated similar to a pretzel.  Although it’s very different from jerky, some may recognize those as the same seasonings used in biltong, everything working in harmony to keep away flies and germs.  In Laos, they seem to often use fish sauce, sugar, lemongrass, garlic, and ginger.  It looks as though salt is their weapon of choice for germ killing.  Look up Laotian Dried Beef. It’s good.  I also used simple beer once, and that tasted excellent.  But, while I didn’t get sick, I’m not sure if the alcohol content was really high enough for sanitation.  Finally, memorable to my wife was the time I prepared some jerky with straight tabasco.  Go ahead and try to tell me that something may have lived through that.

A good sharp knife makes slicing the meat easy.  Usually starting with a bit of flank steak, I’ll first get rid of any visible fat.  Fat goes rancid in storage.  Then, to get some good, wide strips, I cut diagonally at perhaps a 75 or 80 degree angle.  I’m told that cutting it across the grain like that also makes it more tender.  I haven’t really noticed.  But you want your strips thin, absolutely no more than a quarter of an inch thick.  failing that, your jerky case hardens, producing a mummified outside, trapping a raw inside that will spoil.  It’s just a few simple things to keep in mind.

Having done that, you’re ready to go about drying, low and slow.  I turn my dehydrator all the way down with almost no heat.  Again, simple air circulation does the trick.  Overnight is usually long enough.  If I start it in the morning, it’ll be finished when I get home.  8 to 12 hours is adequate.  Again, you’re looking for something that’s just a little bendy, not brittle. Perhaps, picture a good, stiff shoe leather.

Your next task is storage, and many people think differently than me on this.  For some reason, glass mason jars seem to be popular.  If you’re going to be eating it and finishing it over the course of a month, that’s probably fine.  Remember though that mason jars trap air and moisture and allow in light, all of which are your enemy.  Historically, Pioneers stored their jerky in burlap bags, hung in a secure, dry places.  A simple brown paper bag would probably also work, keeping out light and allowing moisture to escape.  You want it some place dark , away from pests, where it won’t mold or rehydrate.  Anything accomplishing that is fine.

One big advantage here to all of all this is the cost.  In the store, a small bag of commercial jerky costs about six bucks.  I saw some earlier today.  Even a simple Slim Jim now costs over a dollar.  Regarding the quality of ingredients, I won’t even begin to speculate.  But the good sized flank steak I used to make the jerky shown above didn’t cost much more than seven.  I’d suspect that, using high quality grass fed beef, you’d still come out ahead.  This is one of the many cases where it really does pay to do it yourself.

And again, this is all useful.  It’s protein that doesn’t need refrigeration or cooking.  If society fails, it’s a meal you can have squirreled away.  It’s a low carb, high protein snack.  All told, it’s definitely something worth making.  Please give it a try.

 

 

A Really Decent Marinade

This is good on chicken or beef.  It was phenomenal on venison, and it really shines on pork.  Vegetarians, please let me know how it works on tofu or mushrooms.  Here are the ingredients, enough for perhaps a pound of meat.  Adjust accordingly for the amount you have.

• 1/4 cup quality soy sauce or tamari
• 1/4 cup whiskey
• 1 palm full of brown sugar
• 3 cloves of chopped garlic
• 3 or 4 chopped scallions
• 1 inch of fresh ginger, shredded
• 1 tablespoon of korean chili flakes OR sambal oelek
• 1 Tablespoon Thai fish sauce (optional)
• 1 teaspoon liquid smoke (optional)

Putting it together from there is really pretty basic.  Just whisk it all together and pour it over the meat.  After that, it’s just giving it time and letting it impart its flavor.  Generally, the longer you soak things, the better.  I suppose there’s a point of diminishing returns.  Remember that, on top of giving flavor, part of a marinade’s job is also to tenderize.  Mindful of that, I’m told that excessively marinating chicken will turn it to mush.  But I’ve never had that happen to me.  I usually do mine overnight, on up to a full day.  I get good results.

You’ll see in the picture that I used it on some chicken thighs, cooking them up on a grill kebab style.  While it turned out awesome and is in my summer grilling rotation, be aware that this marinade does contain a fair amount of sugar.  If you’re not cautious, it will burn.  Be sure to carefully manage your heat and flame.  Be respectful of your fire.

I first ran across something like this recipe on the cooking and food section of a homebrew forum.  The author called it a Korean marinade.  Intrigued, I did some research.  I really couldn’t find anything much like this in Korean cuisine anywhere.  I even think that I was the one who added the Korean chili flakes.  The original recipe just called for sambal oelek.  Now, I’m not one to commit a No True Scotsman fallacy.  I’ve posted this recipe elsewhere on the internet and there may be some dude in Korea that uses it.  But I’ve stopped calling it a Korean marinade.  I figure now that it’s its own thing.  I accept it for what it is and judge it on its own terms.

But people who are familiar may see that this is really close to a Japanese Teriyaki.  Take out the hot stuff and the fish sauce, substitute the whiskey for some mirin, then swap the brown sugar for white, and there you go.  This is all just showing you that everything’s just variations on a theme.  Figure out what role each ingredient plays, then see what you can swap out and substitute.  It’s ideas building on ideas.  That’s how progress is made.

Very few deep thoughts today.  I’m not feeling like tearing down the man or trying to build the dream.  Today I’m more about just sharing some food.  I hope you find this useful.

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.

A Critter On A Spit

A few years ago, a woodchuck started hanging around the yard.  For a while he was always one step ahead, disappearing as soon as one could catch a glimpse.  He was a phantom.  He was a shadow.  One day though, he must have been feeling particularly lazy.  For whatever reason, instead of scurrying into the brush as he’d always done, he hung around.  He seemed to have no care or concern.  He hung around long enough for me to go into the house, grab my .22, go back out, and shoot him.  I was defending my garden.  Later that night, I cooked him and I ate him.

While hunting seems to be declining, most people in my experience are at least aware of it.  Dining on venison isn’t unheard of, nor is grouse.  We call them partridge around here.  Rabbit is raised domestically, and most people wouldn’t see one caught wild as much different.  Those are normal.  Some would even say that they’re special, kind of a delicacy if cooked right. For some reason though, if you deviate outside that accepted norm, you’re just some kind of odd.

Euell Gibbons once observed that food prejudices are indeed just that, a prejudice.  They are an irrational fear, based on ignorance.  You’ve heard it a million times before, but the old argument, asking how you can say you don’t like something when you’ve never tried it, is absolutely sound.  I will allow that you may have indeed tried something and not liked it.  That’s fair enough.  But without that experience?  Nuh uh.

And the world is full of foods, perfectly nutritious and palatable, that for whatever reason aren’t on the menu.  Native Americans, for example, never made use of the cattail.  Any decent forager can serve it at least a dozen ways.  Tomatoes were seen in olden days as an ornamental.  Nature is full of foods that haven’t been discovered yet, or at least haven’t caught on.  The point being is that, just because you don’t see it in the supermarket, doesn’t mean that it’s not edible.

Now, I had never eaten woodchuck before, but it seemed a waste just to throw it in the bushes.  I skinned him just like one would any small game, hanging him by his hind legs, making a few cuts, and slipping off the hide like one would a sock.  Having no tutorials for reference, I decided to just take off the legs where most of the meat seemed to be.  I now know that I should have saved the carcass for broth.  There was also a whole lot of fat that I could have used for something.  Live and learn.  I did more than most.

Taking a cue from a rabbit recipe I’d seen from Andrew Zimmern, I decided on a slow braise in wine.  It was kind of a woodchuck au vin, if you will.  I sauted a mirpoix first, of course.  Then I put it and the four legs in a dutch oven, cooking it all in a cup or so of red wine at 250F for about four hours.  Having done that,  I finished it off by browning it on my gas grill.  Serving it with grilled zucchini and a rice pilaf, it all looked pretty on a plate.

How did it taste?  Grassy.  Oily.  There were some weird bones that were tricky to work around.  And had I to do it again, I think white wine would have been more appropriate.  The red I used was kind of overpowering.  Braising was definitely a good idea though.  Just throwing it on the grill and frying it up would have turned it out too tough.  Slow cooked in a dutch oven was just about right.  I’ve found this to be true of a lot of wild game.

If you are a vegetarian, entirely opposed to eating meat, I respect your position.  To anyone else who may balk at this, how disgusting is the other stuff you eat?  How is this any worse than meat from a factory farmed cow, standing ankle deep in its own crap, made fat from GMO corn made artificially cheap from government theft/subsidies.  Have you ever seen what goes on in a pig farm.  I won’t lie.  I eat commercial meat.  It’s a regular part of  my diet But I certainly don’t feel good about it and would like to one day distance myself from it.  This is an alternative.