Tuesday, April 14, 2015

consuming to invest 21


CONSUMING TO INVEST 21

Coffee French Press

We just talked about thermos coffee, and the only reason I now include a similar product is because I can read the future of 99% of my readers, their palm bespeaking of angst and denial.  “Ain’t no damn way I’m having some trashy looking piece of crap thermos in my beautiful kitchen, no sir no how”.  How am I doing?  Five bucks and I’ll guess your year of death.  Look, I’m not judging.  If you want to put most of your treasure into good looking dust catchers, who am I to say anything?  You want good looking, go with the French press to make your coffee.  They are all fancy and bespeak of elegance and all that rot.  And why would you want one?  Less energy to brew the elixir of life, coffee.  Coffee is like the adults version of mothers milk to an infant. A gift from the gods.  And, a very good reason to NOT hate the Arabs.  Sure, a few of them are disagreeable when it comes to beheading infidels and what not, but those mother humpers domesticated the coffee bean!  That is like why you have to love the French-mayonnaise.  To you city slicker grid sucklers, coffee brewing might seem a very small deal.  But for those of us off-grid, the sad fact is that besides the refrigerator, very few things use as much electricity as a coffee brewer ( if you said clothes dryer, Wrong Answer.  Your clothes dryer is a piece of rope out back ).  When in the future every watt counts because of brown-outs or rate hikes, you will be pleased as punch you listened to me and de-electrified your elixir brewing.

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You still need gas or wood to bring water to a boil, but flame to water is much more efficient than flame to boiler to electric line to transformer to electric brewer.  Every step of the way, energy is lost.  And that is even before you waste electricity keeping the hot plate under the carafe going.  A french press coffee maker is to a brewer as a moped is to modern US Army tank ( something like twelve hundred feet to the gallon ).  You might think $30-$50 bucks for a coffee maker is silly, but how many people do you know that bought a $120 maker to brew single serving eighty cent cups of specialty coffee?  Buy the all metal press, not the glass one.  They break too easy, and you both don’t want the replacement cost nor do you want your flesh close to broken glass.  I had a wonderfully generous minion send me a metal one after I’d broken my second or third glass unit, but you don’t write like Baby Jesus’ personal scribe like I do, so you will have to spend a bit extra.  It will be worth it, as it is almost a lifetime tool ( try to send away to the company for the internal replacement parts if possible, just in case ).

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CONSUMING TO INVEST 22

Pressure Cooker

A pressure cooker is just like a pressure canner, except it is for quick cooking raw foods, not to seal foods in canning jars.  For instance, cut potatoes cook in five minutes.  All it is is a steamer, really, but highly efficient.  Just like a coffee brewer that does not use electricity, a pressure cooker is there to really shave off the energy you need.  It claims to tenderize meat, so in theory you could buy really crappy cuts of cheap meat and not be offended by them, but I was doing something wrong and had little luck.  Perhaps it works best for thick, large chunks.  Just Wiki the darn things if you need convincing.  The potato cook time sold me on them ( of course, I could also use the thermos to basically almost do the same thing, but a cooker is cheap enough to be good insurance.  The thermos won’t do meat, or at least it won’t do portions above bachelor size-if I ever find myself needing to cook for more than two, I’d feel stupid only having the thermos.  Each tool is practical even if they sometimes overlap  ).

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14 comments:

  1. To tenderize meat, you'll need to cook it longer than 5 minutes.

    Most stew size meat will be ready in 25-30 minutes. While a large roast could take up to an hour.

    It will be nice to have tender meat when all your teeth fall out due to lack of dental care when TSHTF.

    Christine

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    1. Or, soaked wheat berry gruel. HMMMMM! ( you know I'm kidding, right? )

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    2. That actually sounds like a good idea. Learn to make the Pemmican.

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  2. Supposedly pressure cookers are also good for older beans. I know they wont restore beans that are little more than rocks - at least not completely- and soaking to get the gas causing stuff out is still recommended, but the actual cook time goes way down.
    Using old beans is a concern of mine since the family has a couple medical conditions best treated by having high protein diets. PODA this means eggs, fish, trapping, and of course BEANS- beans are CHEAP now, but keeping them fresh for years? not so easy, but a grinder and pressure cooker should allow even the oldest beans to be consumable (and NEVER forget to soak, an extra hour and rinse per year stored is our rule of thumb). Heavy duty Pressure cookers also work well as slow cookers with solar and wood heat (put insulation around the sides not receiving heat). PODA put on your gruel w/ beans in a pressure cooker (beans that you rinsed the day before) in a solar cooker or on wood stove, on low heat, work in the field all day, and come back to a warm filling cooked meal. Add meat eggs vegetables as you have them. It works, I have done it (well the field work was only 6 hours not the 12 hour work day that the PODA will bring).

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    1. I worry grinding would lead to quick taste fatigue. So the pressure cook is a nice variety. Plus a back-up. Cause you know how I sneer at taste fatigue whiners.

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    2. Once you make your beans into paste or flour you can turn it into 'crackers' or crunchy bits to put on your sprout salad. With a side of different flavored beans, a couple other veggies in season and seasoning you should be able to avoid 'taste fatigue' pretty easily. Cravings for other specific foods might happen, but what is new there.

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    3. Good point. Paste gets old quick

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  3. Our son gave us for christmas an expensive device called InstantPot, in part, a computerized pressure cooker. I'm not impressed. I wanted to like it but found out it only performs worthwhile if you are preparing enormous amounts of food. It's just me and the wife so we never prepare gargantuan feasts, the thing never gets used.

    If we want baked potatoes, as it were, I wash them, poke a few holes in em, wrap em with a wet paper towel then into the microwave for 5:55 they're ready to consume. In that much time the pressure cooker would still be building up pressure. For 1 or 2 people that eat like normal bipodal carbon units, I see no advantage to using a pressure cooker for meal prep. I can see where it would be advantageous for hippo's that veg on the couch all day and long into the night as it would be a grazing trough.

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    Replies
    1. After having to wash the pressure cooker, I found it easier to bring potatoes to a boil, boil five minutes, turn off stove and cover, wait an hour. Just as soft. Great for single serve meal.

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  4. Of course you could just keep the basket and the carafe (glass pot) that came with your old coffee maker and just heat some extra water in the morning. Put what you don't drink in a thermos.

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    Replies
    1. I tried it that way and thought it was gross. Too weak. Of course, I used bottom of barrel generic coffee.

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    2. Well, you can run the weak coffee back through the grounds a 2nd time, that oughta light yer candle. :-)

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    3. I save $5 a can buying generic. The proper equipment is paid for with that savings.

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  5. That's what I also say as well...
    "Thank you Arabs for coffee! Thank you American Indians for tobacco!"
    Keep up the good work.

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