As The Workhouse Approaches....How To Do Everything To Avoid It, the Old Style Way

Softstuff

jackieglasgow wrote: »

softstuff if you fill the hole with wire wool or glass wool then block it with expanding foam, it deters them, as they wire or galss wool will hurt their nouths and put them off trying to get through it.

Thank you, what a fantastic tip.

jackieglasgow

you are welcome, sorry about the atrocious typing though I had to look twice there at that quote :rotfl:

ceridwen

elona wrote: »

Ceridwen

Might the malted cereal be good as flapjacks, twinks or crumble?

Thanks.

I am thinking to expand on experiments with this Basics Muesli - and had wondered about flapjacks (that'll take some doing to find a recipe for me to try that with - know I've got a couple stashed away somewhere - as its so difficult to find ones not involving sugar/golden syrup). I'm presuming any recipe I work out for flapjacks involving that could be adapted by other peeps from the honey I will use to golden syrup instead.

'Fraid I cant do the Twinks recipe - cant see it translating into using honey instead of sugar...(as I very rarely have sugar in anything personally)

Hadnt thought of crumble topping - thats another possibility...

kidcat

Ceridwen re the rock salt - we usually buy a big bag to clear the drive, which lasts us all winter. This year we paid £3 for a 25kg sack, from a local builders merchants. Garden centres often sell it too but slightly more expensive.

[Deleted User]

I am thinking on my feet now re salt

salt with iodine makes preserved food dark. The cheap salt that I used for brine didn`t have any in, so thats good.

Potassium salts will not do

The commonly used anti caking agent is called sodium hexacyanoferrate II also known as E535 and contains sodium, iron and cyanide all combined together. It can react with acid to release hydrogen cyanide gas, mmmm now I am thinking that my brining beans was to encourage lacto fermentation ie the producion of lactic acid. So guess what, I will no longer use salt with anti caking agents for anything except salting paths in the snow. Salting beans or any other veg also encourages acid production, which preserves the food. Brining uses less salt, probably a total of < 2/3 tbs in a 500 ml jar

You can buy food grade unadulterated salt in 25kg bags, way too much for me. I am back to sea salt now and in 250g packages and it will brine a lot of beans so I am ok with that

I was brought up from a baby on lacto fermented foods including milk that I thought was sour but must have had the souring process initiated. It was os milk ie whole and untreated. I have to say that me and my 6 siblings were never ill and are still in good health for 60+ If you read on google then you can get info about the benefits of lacto fermentation

omg that additive is also used to anti cake road salt and is toxic so gets into water in rivers and so on, what a flipping can of worms

I have found 2 additive free salts
Maldon made in the uk and costs about £ 1.45 for 250g and geo organic atlantic sea salt produced in portugal for around £1.30. Both methods use drying of sea water, sun in portugal and other energy in uk.

ceridwen

Thanks for that info re salt Kittie.

I knew there was summat "wrong" with standard supermarket salt - but couldnae recall the details (cyanide - wonderful...:eek:). All well and good if one knowingly has a little tiny summat that has got a minute trace of cyanide in by choice (eg "lets just try a bit of apple blossom - I know its edible in tiny quantities - but be aware of the trace of cyanide in and dont have in large quantities") - but it being there in "common or garden" products a lot of us buy all the time....hmmm:cool:

Looks like the rock salt is out too - oh well...personally I'll stick to my seasalt as normal then if I have a go at that...

GreyQueen

Hmmmm, have just studied on my el-cheapo table salt and the anti-caking agent is sodium ferrocyanide aka sodium hexacyanoferrate (II) aka tetrasodium hexacyanoferrate aka Na4Fe(CN)6 aka E535.

It has far too many aliases to be up to any good.

It's added to both food and road salts as an anti-caking agent.

Despite the presence of the cyanide ligands, sodium ferrocyanide is not especially toxic (acceptable daily intake 0–0.025 mg/(kg body weight)[2]) because the cyanides are tightly bound to the metal. However, as with all ferrocyanides, it can react with acid or photodecompose to release hydrogen cyanide gas.

The blue bit is a cut-and-paste off Wikipedia btw.

Having got the bit between my teeth, I went in pursuit of vinegar info and now know that table vinegar is 4-8% acetic acid and pickling vinegar up to 18% acetic acid, acetic acid itself being a distillate of ethanol, that being.....excuse me a moment whilst I step back into the rest of the web......oooh, ethanol is pure alcohol aka ethyl alcohol and the world's oldest psycho-active drug.

Gosh, the things this thread leads me into. There'll be mention of those funny cigarettes soon, I'll be bound.:rotfl:

Ceridwen, I have read that the cyanide which naturally occurs in apples is in the pips, is it in flowers, too? Not that eating apple blossom will be something I shall be undertaking as I'd far rather wait a few more months and eat the apple. The source was a book on foods which can be eaten in foraging/ survival situations but pointed out you'd have to eat nothing but apples, pips and all, for quite some time, for cyanide poisoning to ever be a problem.

I think I can live with 0.025mg per kilo of body weight as my entire and substantial carcase is being kept vertical, non-comatose and alive by 0.0075 mg of a potentially-dangerous prescription medication. Or, as Kittie's brining recipe uses far smaller quantities of salt than the dry-salting process I was envisaging, I may buy sea salt. Thinking on.....

During the flap over the crippled Japanese nuclear reactor's plume reaching the US, there was some panic-buying of iodised table salt in USA as people mistakenly believed that it would protect them from radiation injury. It wouldn't, but iodine tablets would protect your thryoid function in event of a nuclear leak and the Russians condemned the children of Chernobyl to a lot of suffering by failing in this basic duty.

Can anyone remember that some people used to keep iodine tablets at home more than 30 years ago, in case of nuclear war? Or have I always been mixing with oddballs? Errr, probably.

Now, we OS-ers know that we can combine salt and vinegar down the plug-hole as a drain-cleaner and it fizzes a bit. Makes you wonder what else we can do in the kitchen..........

Hey, there's cyanide in almonds, isn't there? I'm giving up food for at least 5 minutes.......:rotfl:

Am pottering this morning and doing some OS bits in the background whilst I play on the web and will hit the lottie after lunch. One of my friends, a successful businesswoman, always refers to her housework as Domestic Engineering, which I like a lot. It will soon be late enough to fire up the washer as I like to consider that my neighbours may be having a wee lie-in of a Sunday.

blackandwhitebunny

Seeing as everyone is talking about preserving beans I thought I would post a recipe that I use for a type of bean pickle. Its a South African recipe called curried beans but its more a sweet and sour type taste rather than hot curry. My mum used to make it with French beans but I've used runner beans for the last few years and they've worked well. (Actually I've used a mixture of whatever beans I have)
You need:
2 lbs sliced beans (I slice runners on the slant into thinnish slivers)
1 lb sliced onions (a bit more or less doesn't matter)
2 Cups water (500ml)

1 and 3/4 cups brown malt vinegar
1 cup sugar (250ml)
1 dessertspoon (10ml) salt
1 dessertspoon curry powder (you want a mild one with turmeric in it)
1 Tablespoon cornflour (15ml)
2 -3 cloves

You boil the beans and onions in the water till just soft and then add everything else, I mix the cornflour with some of the vinegar so it doesn't form lumps, and bring back to the boil for 3 minutes.

Bottle in the usual way in sterilized bottles.
We eat these as a salad or side dish - cold, frequently with barbeque:D

kidcat

Stop - you are all scaring me silly:rotfl:cyanide:eek: in apples:eek::eek::eek::eek:

Well have been up since 7.30am, almost unheard of these days on a Sunday but DD was off on jaunt with boyfriend so needs must. Been very industrious and cleared up after party and all is now sorted. Cant say that I can ever remember having cleaned up before ten after an evening do before - just shows what you do if you try.
My plants were stars of the evening with everyone having a peek - a seasoned allomenteer said how well they were doing. The family with the problem daughter (of the massive party getting out of hand) were really impressed and were discussing if they would be able to grow some next year in bags too.

Softstuffs curry went down well too and the recipe was duly passed on! Blackberry meringue chill went down incredibly well and again the recipe went home with almost everyone.

I now have a really interesting problem in that we have acquired yet more alcohol and we ended up with alot more than we started with (which was all leftovers from new years bash!!) but storing it all is a nightmare. Can wine be stored in a shed??

TudorRose

Yes Grey Queen you are right, they still mine salt in Cheshire.I live less than a mile from the mine.
The salt they produce there is the ordinary white stuff and the rock salt for the roads comes from the rock salt mine in the neighbouring town. However during the last two severe winters we had huge queues of lorries from all over the country coming to get supplies of ordinary salt from a salt 'mountain' of surplus salt that had built up outside in the yard of the mine.You could see it from the road as you drove by but most of it has gone now.