Balsamic Government

I could drink it!

Just typed, "how to make your own white balsamic vinegar" into that magic, invisible university known as Google and discovered there are some things that cannot be easily DIY'd...white balsamic vinegar being one of them. Unless, of course you have access to grapes from the Modena region of Italy, along with master-level winemaking skills.

While I do have the winemaking equipment and posses a novice-level skill at making it, I don't have the grapes or the time. And one out of three ain't good enough in this case.

Daunting to think, however (referencing my previous post) that in the wake of the Collapse of Everything we may have to do without our beloved white balsamic vinegar. How will we eat our post-apocalyptic homegrown watermelons and salads? That alone seems a good enough reason to keep our democracy and basic infrastructure going. So back off, Doomers.

Who would best support continued importing of white balsamic vinegar?

I do make my own laundry detergent, soap, cleaning products and a fair amount of "basics" kind of food, such as tomato paste. But other things are just not worth the time, equipment cost and skill level they take to produce on an individual basis, for one household.

So I probably can't make white balsamic...But I can start using my copious supply of eggs to make my own mayonnaise (very easy) and making ketchup from a jar or two from the store of canned tomatoes (also easy) I have put aside, so those will be projects in the weeks to come.

I'm always looking for ways to make things from scratch using basic ingredients, but the key to success is sometimes to know what do make yourself and what to buy.

And of course support the infrastructure that supports the products you can't live without. I'm willing to put up with a lot of political and governmental crap in order to keep my First World need for chocolate, white balsamic vinegar, bananas and the occasional bar of Halvah coming into the nation.

My vote goes to whomever supports that. And universal healthcare, of course.

The small things

Mega-drought.

Living during a time of mega-drought, you have to learn to hang on to hope.  The world is finally waking up to the reality of climate change, after many, many years of angry denial and turning the issue into a political football.  Is there anyone left out there who still doesn't believe? Probably, but it no longer matters any more.  Just like the "theory" of gravity, climate change is not something you have to believe in for its effects be felt.

Last night I was driving through some vineyards with Big Ag and looking at the 1000-foot wells, the giant uncovered reservoirs, and the acres and acres of grapes we grow here.  And I thought of another place we used to live, which had nothing but almond orchards, as far as the eye could see.

And I asked my man, who is proficient in All Things Agricultural, if all of this was sustainable, long-term.  He thought about it for a minute -- actually so long I thought he might have forgotten the question -- before answering, "probably not, long term."  And what was long-term in his books, I asked? 20 years until it first gets ugly, he said, and 100 years before most of it is finally gone.

He said that our great-grandchildren would see ghost orchards and ghost vineyards, which brought to my mind how local hikers sometimes stumble upon ghost towns up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains -- the empty, decaying remnants of the boom towns from the Great California Gold Rush of 1849. Maybe our days will be known as the century of the Great California Agricultural Rush, from 1950 - 2050, give or take a few years.  Who knows?

But I will tell you something.  If you focus on those things, particularly if you are a sensitive person who tries to live a "do no harm" kind of lifestyle, you will find yourself enormously depressed at what the future holds.  So my advice is this: Be aware, but don't dwell on it. Here is the one and only thing you can do to make a difference: You can do what you can, where you are. And that's about it, so you might as well stop worrying.

Local, small production vineyard!

The only place you can really change things is what goes on in and around your own dwelling. You can set good limits and you can set a good example, and that is about it.

In an era of decline, you can learn to use less and make do with less, and just go on with your life in that way. Because, realistically, that is all you can do.  You are not going to convince the almond growers to uproot their trees and bankrupt their very profitable imports to China, all in the name of future generations. Not gonna happen. You are not going to convince anyone that there is probably a limit to how deep a well can be dug, and that aquifers that have been around since the glaciers last retreated are not a renewable resource.

So be mindful and do what makes you happy. Yesterday, for instance, I was thrilled to find a nice picnic basket and a used salad spinner at the thrift store, because neither of those things need to be new for me to use and enjoy them.

New acquisitions.

That picnic basket and salad spinner made me happy because I know nothing new -- not the plastic or the wood -- was culled or made for me to buy it second-hand.  And they cost a total of six bucks between the two. Plus it was a sunny day and while a sunny day means no rain, well, that doesn't mean I should feel guilty and not enjoy it.  I'm not in charge of when it rains.

Part of this state of being -- the peace of mind before The Great Decline -- comes because, to some extent, I realize we are all being swept along in a human current that we can only swim against so much.  So ultimately the descendants of the  homesteaders, the off-gridders and the preppers will more than likely share the same future as those of the SUV-gas guzzling, Keurig-cup using, styrofoam plate dining and everything-new demographic, with not much to be done about it.

Your only job is to do what you can, and what will leave you with a clean conscience, knowing you did everything you could.  So use less water, but enjoy the sunshine, and, although it seems strange, enjoy being the last generation for whom everything was once possible.

How long could you survive on your stored food?

A very (unintentionally) funny blogger whose name I will not mention apparently caused quite a kerfuffle last week when she stated she was going to spend a week eating from her food storage and larder on a week-long "staycation," and the following day declared herself short on supplies, hit the road and went into town for some good old-fashioned grocery shopping and a store-bought ham sandwich for lunch.  

I only heard about this second hand, so I'm not sure how true it is. But I did like the idea of exploring just how prepared we are here at the homestead to live off our stored food as well as what's in our garden in the case of emergency.

Could we do it?  Would it be painful?  If I'm brutally honest the answer to those questions is 1) yes, and 2) quite possibly. 

We absolutely have enough food to last us at least a couple of months, assuming the grid was still up, our freezer was working and our garden had something in it.  Without refrigeration, I would guess we'd be OK for a month or six weeks. But it would be painful, mainly for the same reason the aforementioned blogger ended up fleeing her home in search of a professionally made ham sandwich: We "first world" types like things the way we like them, and that's nowhere more apparent than when it comes to the food we consume.

The basics of any long-term non-refrigerated food storage plan should ideally have an abundance of two items which will sit in the back of the pantry almost indefinitely, and feed an army when needed.  Those two things are rice and beans (with an emphasis on beans, which in addition to providing necessary carbs, are also high in protein). Some flour couldn't hurt either, but unfortunately flour does not have the same shelf-life as the other two dry goods and turns rancid within a few months unless stored frozen.

Of course, in a normal week we don't eat rice or beans more than once or twice -- at most -- as a side dish, and in some kind of emergency those might be staples, seen on the menu daily (or worse, several times daily).

The drudgery of this might be mitigated slightly based on what else we have put up in our pantry, which at this time of year is quite a lot -- things like tomatoes, canned tuna, preserved pie-fillings, jams, pickles and other goodies could definitely increase the variety in our meals.  Spices can also make a huge difference in making a boring menu seem fresh and different, and those can be kept in abundance, year-round.

But there's no question, even with all those other ingredients, it would probably not be all deliciousness and fun after the novelty of the first few days wore off, and the very modern urge to skip into town for some sushi took over -- even if an earthquake had already  taken out out most of the town and the sushi place along with it. The heart wants what the heart wants, you know? Beans and rice are no substitute for fresh sashimi and California Roll. We westerners are pretty much accustomed to getting our cravings met, but a natural or un-natural disaster could change all that in the blink of an eye.

One thing I do know is that sometimes, it's a good idea to challenge yourself to make dinner based only on what's available in your pantry -- sometimes for several days in a row. It's not only a way to rotate your stores by eating older food, but it also forces you to try out new recipes and new food combinations.

Since moving to the country, I have done this fairly regularly, since I don't like to make an hour's round-trip drive to the grocery store in search of just one or two missing ingredients for something I am jonesing for.  Instead, I make something I'm not craving, and live with it. We should all do that more, if just for the practice of doing it as well as a nod to the realization that much of the world lives like that all the time.

I also like to think it's good preparation for a time, perhaps post-natural disaster, when we'll be on our own for several days to weeks and will have to make do with what we have.  Because when that happens, there will be no getting fed up and heading into town in search of someone to make you a sammie or some ahi.  It's going to be up to you to provide for yourself, based on what you've put by. 

It will be you and your pantry against the fates, and if there's a ham sandwich you've got your heart set on, you'd better already have all the ingredients on hand, including the recently butchered hog. 

Because things like your town and your local store may not be available, at least for awhile. How about some canned tomatoes with rice and beans? Anyone? Anyone?

I am disgusted

A little bit.  Yesterday, I was extremely disgusted.  But with any luck, by tomorrow I'll feel better.  In no particular order, I am disgusted with myself, with my household, and with western society in general.  And it's over such a stupid little thing:  fake plastic greenery. But I'll tell you, if seen the right way, fake plastic greenery is the canary in the coal mine in the collapse of western civilization.


Let me explain. As part of our de-cluttering operation here on the old homestead, one of the things I needed to do was to bring a ladder into the house, climb up, and remove all the decorative stuff from our plant shelves, which sit about 12 feet up.  They run across our living room and bedroom, as they do in most of the tract houses built after 1980 in the United States.  These shelves are ridiculous and have gotten more so with the advent of so-called "cathedral" ceilings popular in houses being built today.  You'll spend hundreds, if not thousands of dollars heating up the extra 2,000 square feet of living space, which in any other house would comprise a SECOND FLOOR, where people could live.  Instead we heat and cool the air near 15 feet up just because...we can?  That's disgusting too, but I digress.   Today's rant is about the fake plastic greenery which inhabits the space no one lives in, 12 feet up. 


My personal and household disgust comes from what I found up there when I climbed up to retrieve and remove everything.  It was absolutely filthy.  And the worst filth (which I was actually forced to move, blowing up huge clouds of dust whenever I did it) was on the stupid plastic plants I had up there, in their decorative wicker baskets.  


Let me tell you something I realized at that moment:  Good design never includes plastic plants.  Carrying those plants down and hosing the dirt and dust off them out in the backyard made me realize that.  They don't look real, in fact they look tacky.  But when someone's built your house with approximately 60 square feet of flat space 12 feet up, you have little choice than to find things to fill in that space, if only that there's not an echo in your house when you speak.


And so I'm disgusted with myself for letting things get that bad up there (especially the plastic plants), and disgusted with my family because I also found about 40 rubber bands up there in various stages of decomposition. (Did you know rubber bands actually do decompose?  I do now!)  Of course they were shot up there by the kids, and were never retrieved because who in the hell is going to climb up to do that?


But I'm also disgusted with western civilization, because we have so much excess that we've actually constructed high-up shelving -- not to store goods or even make a sleeping space which is warm in winter -- but simply to hold useless objects we don't love, don't use, and don't ever need to retrieve.  And if there was ever a useless object no one loves, no one uses, and no one wants to retrieve and clean, it's fake plastic greenery.


A fake plant or two in a spot where you'd like a houseplant but know the light's not good enough for growth and health?  OK.  I get that.  But  a wasted 60 square feet of space up against the ceiling which needs filling in with something that looks alive, but isn't, just is not for me anymore.


Give me lower ceilings and bare shelves, if necessary.  The green plastic is heading to the thrift store.  I feel freer already, and as soon as my lungs clear out from all the plastic-plant spore dust I inhaled, I'm sure I'll stop coughing, too.