The food thread

For the virus lockdown I stocked up a bit, noticing I was heavy on dried beans I made soup from a great uncle's recipe.

He had done cattle drives early on in his career and later did a bit of surveying. One project he did was half of the route to irrigate Southern California from the dam at Boulder Colorado. After that a bit of mapping of the Grand Canyon and then he was officially retired and did the borders of a new nation, Israel. Really retired and stayed for us a bit and then got his own place.

Now what he taught me about surveying turned out to be quite useful

But his recipe for bean soup scaled down is about as simple as it gets.

1 Gallon water
1 Pound rinsed dry beans
1 Palm salt (tablespoon)
6 Ounces jerky bits (Or a soup bone with a bit of meat)

Bring to a boil and then simmer 12-14 hours until the beans are tender.

Don't know how the rest of you would like it, but I ate three bowls after it was finished!

I did use dried smoked lamb for the meat. Also added salt after it was finished. A varient is to use beef stock or bouillon for the base.

Clearly a meal for working on the trail in the middle of nowhere.
 
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Mark,

Onions probably don't keep on the trail. During the US surveys he had a horse and two mules to carry his gear.

He left me one of his bookcase shelves. It was a 3' box with a screwed on face board. Take of the face and stack the shelves for use. Replace the board and put one box on each side of the mule. They can carry a lot of weight but only if it was balanced.

The shelf was full of the pictures he took in California during his survey years. During one of my audits I mentioned to the auditor, I planned to sell a few of the pictures on eBay to establish the per picture value and then donate all the rest to a museum. Passed the test! Then my younger brother and his wife moved into the parents house. His wife didn't say a word and just threw out the box! Any idea what pictures of California back then would have been worth to collectors? Now with two rows of pictures three feet long, there would have been a bit less than a thousand of them! For some reason I am not very happy about the loss to history or the tax deduction!!!
 
For the virus lockdown I stocked up a bit, noticing I was heavy on dried beans I made soup from a great uncle's recipe.

He had done cattle drives early on in his career and later did a bit of surveying. One project he did was half of the route to irrigate Southern California from the dam at Boulder Colorado. After that a bit of mapping of the Grand Canyon and then he was officially retired and did the borders of a new nation, Israel. Really retired and stayed for us a bit and then got his own place.

Now what he taught me about surveying turned out to be quite useful

But his recipe for bean soup scaled down is about as simple as it gets.

1 Gallon water
1 Pound rinsed dry beans
1 Palm salt (tablespoon)
6 Ounces jerky bits (Or a soup bone with a bit of meat)

Bring to a boil and then simmer 12-14 hours until the beans are tender.

Don't know how the rest of you would like it, but I ate three bowls after it was finished!

I did use dried smoked lamb for the meat. Also added salt after it was finished. A varient is to use beef stock or bouillon for the base.

Clearly a meal for working on the trail in the middle of nowhere.

Save the salt until the beans are cooked, they get tough if cooked with salt. You might find you can shorten the cooking time considerably by adding salt at the end.
 
Which tomatoes did you plant? Me: Rutgers, Mortgage Lifter, Belgian Giant...

I planted seeds from these ones. I got them at the grocery store so I don't know what the varieties are, the package said Greenhouse grown cultivar tomatoes". I scooped out the seeds from a few of each colour, let them ferment, and planted them. They all sprouted and I have several plants in the ground and in pots. I wonder what I will get?
 

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Hah! That's how I got my plentiful tomato plants in San Diego when I used to live there. Any of the ones that were damaged/bad got thrown in the compost, which turned over crazy fast, so was about as fertile a starting point as one could ask. Had all kinds of volunteers among the weeds.
 
My experience with tomatoes is that the volunteer tomatoes end up being cherry tomatoes. I have planted either Big Boy or Rutgers every year. Every year volunteer plants come up where I had the regular tomatoes the year before and produce cherry tomatoes. I rotate the location of my tomatoes each year, so the volunteers are indeed from the ones I plant, not from the previous volunteers.

This year I started tilling earlier than usual, and tilled more often. I only have two volunteers so far.
 
Then all hell broke loose. They went and put pork shoulder on sale (buck a pound) so I thought it must be time for a sausage fest. Ahem, that's a real sausage fest, not that term that means something else.

25 lbs meat
6 lbs water
2 lbs binder
1 pkg hog casings
= 33 lbs of link heaven

Also the chicharon and pork stock still to come.
I had forgotten how much work that is. Even with an electric grinder. Not again for quite some time.
 

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My experience with tomatoes is that the volunteer tomatoes end up being cherry tomatoes. .

I had tomatoes come up in the mulch pile one year! Same thing with dahlia tubers which I thought were "goners".

The neighbors in the back asked one of my sons (decades ago): "Why does your father throw the garbage in the yard?"

When they move from New York City to the 'burbs, they never seemed to have received the benefits of viewing "Crockett's Victory Garden" on the PBS.