@Raggedy Ann dish to wash food. Good for Andy's persistence. The coyote has not been back since the donkeys have been grazing in his/her travel pasture. February is the month pups are born so I will keep an eye out for signs for a hungry mom. Sheep are regularly kept in a night pen during spring, winter and fall.

Pet dumping very rarely provides a better life for a pet. Coyotes, hawks, cougars, dehydration and cars generally take care of the problem around here before they are rescued by a human. My barn cats are good rodent hunters but need supplemental feeding and a water supply to keep in good health.

If not using cheese (fat moisture) in an impossible pie I am more likely to add a high soluble fiber vegetable (zucchini, broccoli, onion), mushrooms or fruit (tomatoes, pears, apple. Good eating.

I used to make impossible pies when my kids still lived at home. They've been gone 20+ years. I might look into doing those again, but without meat or dairy. I'm sure it can be done. We don't eat meat and my spouse is lactose intolerant. Makes cooking a challenge!

We had a raccoon killing our chickens. Every time we shored up the coop, he'd try harder. We lost six chickens, but Raggedy Andy is not one to allow a predator to reign terror over the collective "us." He set a live trap and the raccoon has been removed from our lives. We are hoping it was a loner. Raccoons are not common around here. We're setting the trap for a couple weeks to ensure there are no more. It was neutered, so we wonder if someone got tired of their "pet," and set it free in the country. We get that a lot here. People throw out dogs here, they pack up and become a menace.

We are once again in drought. We have the bitter cold (4 degrees the last two mornings), but no moisture. I hope we have better luck in February.

Have a beautiful day, everyone!

@eyo especially fat from animal sources. It is expensive and not subsidized by USDA policy. The pasta dish in your other comment sounds delicious.

Does California allow growing a personal supply of marijuana? Oregon does and consider it an option if need pain control.

Leg cramps can sometimes be a sign of not enough potassium. magnesium or time for different shoes. Will add extra parsley or dandelions greens to dishes or drink. Also, a small amount tonic water can help relax a leg cramp.

Thanks a lot y'all saved me from deep distress the other day with the nutritional advices, and the garden talk. I cannot believe how much better I feel now, like 10x and it is an "all over" better. Even my attitude is better, and my cognitive awareness, ability, whatever you call it. I feel clear-headed, not so foggy. I can walk upright again, the muscle cramps are gone except for usual nighttime charlie horsing around.

It seems clear now what caused me to crash, not enough fat in my diet, or balanced grains/legumes, and I feel silly not realizing it because I did it to myself. Since early last year I have been on a self imposed cash-only budget, trying to "gut it out" on a low fixed income as the economy around me burns in to oblivion. The "opportunity" to become a "productive" wage earning citizen again still eludes me, and I simply go hungry with hope.

A couple of weeks ago I freaked out when it took an hour and a half to walk to the bank and back, I couldn't carry groceries, only three miles, I didn't feel able to carry anything in my backpack. The stasi is so weird in Cloverdale right now, I did not want to sit down and rest, or else the "move along" cops show up, that's how it is right now. Look too poor? Too skinny? Not your sidewalk, move along!

Now I get to face unaffordable medication, if you believe that cannabis is medicinal. It is the best thing I ever tried for PTSD and other symptoms diagnosed by the "soft science" doctors. So glad that Jimmy Dore is just a jagoff comedian, not to be taken seriously. I hope those who saw his video blathering how two ounces is "a lot of pot" know better. For casual stoners in California, Prop 64 is great I guess, it is a good thing. For patients trying to survive multiples symptoms, cannabis was a relatively cheap herbal medication but not anymore. I don't drink booze or pop pills, or take anything else but coffee, not even sugar. I am not a perfect person yet, darn it. "some days you eat the bear, some days the bear eats you"

Peace & Love
thank you c99ers

La cucaracha - Gipsy Kings

@eyo @eyo Good idea to add it to the pepper jar.

When the stiffness of winter hits I start eating a modified Kandi (Indian yogurt sauce) over rice, eggs or stove top biscuits for breakfast. Or in not hungry a couple of tablespoons straight out of the fridge.

Kandi
Make a roux

2 T oil
1/4 c flour (rice or wheat)
1 tsp tumeric (anti-inflammatory)
1 tsp fengeek (anti-inflammatory)
1 tsp ginger, powdered (cold tolerance) or mustard (traditional)

toast to light brown for flavor
add
2 Cups plain yogurt
hot chili oil to taste
simmer until thickened.

Store in fridge up to 2 weeks

Indian curries (not powdered curry spice - yuk) usually have turmeric and fengeek as ingredients and are another food alternative. Have not tried the black cherry juice.

Any name will do for the dish that helped me recover, there is no recipe but here are the ingredients:
Edited to add: leeks! Sauteed with the beef, for some reason I am off onions and garlic right now, but leeks are good.
fancy grass fed ground beef
carrot, brocolli, portabello mushroom
rice pasta shells
cream cheese
salt
pepper (and turmeric*)
worcestershire sauce
broth made from the scrap veggie ends

All in one pot on the hotplate. I hodge packed it in two days, boing! All ingredients local, organic, and expensive! Unbelievably delicious flavors, and bigly nutritious I hope. It did make apparent I was lacking fat, and probably the aminos in beef.

* Somewhere I read turmeric is anti-inflammatory and might help with joint pain, so I started adding it to my pepper jar. I use lots of black pepper, not so much salt. My finger joints are still fairly operational this winter, before they would just ache all the time. Could be cannabis CBD, but maybe turmeric is helping too. Probably both.

@Mark from Queens and comment string full of valuable advice on all stages of food preparation and storage.

Martha Pearce-Smith created three diaries for The Resilient Permaculture Kitchen Handbook

Chapter 1
We all want to eat better, eat safer, and just plain eat. Food is important to all of us for obvious reasons. Even for picky people, eating is an essential act of Life.

Chapter 2
Here, we get into some fantasies, some maybes, but honestly, if we worked at it, everything below is possible, achievable, and even affordable, no matter how fantastic it may sound.
We become locavores and domevores - the bulk of our food will be local or domestic, bought from CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) or farmer's markets or local buying coops. When we buy imported foods and spices, they will come to us through Fair Trade arrangements that improve lives across the world. Fair Trade groups can be found at UU and some Mennonite congregations, as well as stand alone stores.

Chapter 3
Several years ago, the BBC had an article with a list of the most dumped (wasted) foods: bagged salads, bread, fruit, pasta, and cheese. It made me wonder what the most dumped foods in America were, and what the comparison was between American dumped foods and British dumped foods (and German and French and Italian and Spanish and assorted Asian and Australian....). In poor countries, the largest food waste comes during the production of food, but in countries like the US and Great Britain, it comes at the consumer stage - we buy food only to throw it away!
There is a difference between "food loss" and "food waste"

Good cooking skills are more important that the quality of the equipment. Any place in the world can be partially experienced without traveling by making their local dishes.

That's pretty much my philosophy about cooking, the power of food to break down barriers, the importance of bonding over it, etc.

Back when we had a Resilience series here, a similar essay had piqued me to write something that covered some ground with respect to this topic.

If you don't mind I'll just copy and paste it here:

I'll just start with one of the themes of eating right, more consciously, being aware of ingredients and cooking with a philosophy of using fresh food/ingredients and not wasting (but while I do this I am pan roasting a variety of nuts and dealing with a four month old!).

I spend a good deal of time thinking about and encouraging friends how to when considering shopping for groceries or going out to eat, but especially to cook more (instead of just watching the Food Channel, being inspired to learn and apply tips to actually cooking) and to be able to make something out of very little, of course in the context of eating healthier and being more conscientious of the environment and the healthiness and deliciousness of one's meals.

Some basic philosophies for me are: eat less meat and remember to use it sparingly to flavor dishes, eat greens as much as possible (in addition to which every dinner we have a big green salad which varies all the time to go along with the main dish), avoid eating anything in a bag or can without having read the ingredients (esp for high fructose sugar but also with unpronounceable long laboratory names), severely limiting white flour (turns to sugar) and dairy (both are hereditary concerns), and being conscientious about using everything in the refrigerator, which leads often to great new recipes.

What this means in our kitchen is: our cupboards are mainly an open rack with lots of Ball mason jars and re-appropriated glass jars containing lots of whole grains (bought in bulk) such as brown rice, whole wheat couscous, quinoa, risotto, bulgur wheat. Plenty of beans, including garbanzo, split peas, black and red kidney beans, green and red lentils. Nuts of all kinds, including almonds, cashews, walnuts, pecans, and pumpkin and sunflower seeds. Perpendicular to that on a long shelf above the long rectangular cutting and preparing table are more jars filled with herbs and spices. Those would include thyme, rosemary, oregano and many spices, including lots of Indian, such as garam masala mix, turmeric, mustard seed, cardamom, tandoori mix, hot chili powders, corriander, cinnamon, and loads of cumin (which is essential for everything from Mexican to Middle Eastern cooking).

One of the great joys of living in NYC is the abundance of fresh and varied food. You'll never come to my place and not find at least a few if not all of these, of what I consider staples now: black and green Greek olives, capers, sundried tomatoes, cumin, smoked paprika, turmeric, hot chili powder, oregano branches, fish sauce, cardamom, mustard seed, black peppercorns, different vinegars, various mustards, Japanese soup base, Thai Massaman curry paste, Indian chutney, etc.

We also are part of our local community garden, where my girlfriend plants various herbs and vegetables. Last year was kale and tomato mania, plus some decent cucumbers and herbs.

Good to see you all.

@SnappleBC of the change in our lives. Would be interested in seeing one with general cost of living info.

My memory kept thinking about how the cost of bread was compared to wages worked to show the better standing of living that US citizens had compared to the rest of the world. The graphic showed clearly why information is no longer shown with the minimum wage comparison.

Notes:
1) Preliminary data suggests the price of a loaf of bread in 2017/18 has gone down to 22 minutes of labor. Credit where credit is due. Something under Obama's administration made things get better for bread.

2) I suspect if we added in the total cost of living including healthcare this picture would look much grimmer.

3) One cannot really look solely at the presidency. In real life other factors like wars, congress, etc. factor in.