Over the last week when I realized that our search engines are not working like they used to I’ve been on the hunt for some good books. I had some, but wanted to make sure I have a good “paper” library to access.
I found a fantastic book that covers just about everything! The Encyclopedia of Country Living
Of course, after I bought the 50th Anniversary edition, I wish I would have bought the original edition from 1977, which I may still do. Our rule of thumb here is if the FDA or some other oligarch agency has deemed something dangerous, there must be something good about it. So looking for vintage books is always a plus.
We have several herbal and foraging books as well. Lisa M. Rose is very good, along with Samual Thayer.
Anyone else out there that have some favorites on their bookshelf?
Edited to add: After I got done posting this, I ordered the 1977 edition. It will be fun to see the differences.
Kay, I’ve been trying to learn all I can about curing meats, I know there are a lot of videos , but they are not in depth start to finish with specifics on types of meats and flavoring recipes. I know there must be some old pioneer books on the lost art. If you run across one please let me know.
Funny you mentioned that!! Pat is also looking into curing meats…I will keep you posted. I know he has watched a couple videos that he liked. I will check with him on that.
do you ever get disgusted trying to get info on line when you type in a subject on planting tomatoes and ‘Bobby Tomato’s’ Harley shop comes up and shows you hpw to change a back tire on a Harley???
I didn’t forget about you on the curing meat question. Pat’s gonna find a couple videos that he liked and thought were pretty good. BUT…he did say, for seasoning, you can do pretty much what ever you like. And now that I re-read your question - you were talking about salt curing, right?
Ihave a friend who cans meats all the time - some raw, some cooked. I haven’t done that. I’ve made jerky in my dehydrator which turned out pretty good too. Next I’m going to be dehydrating some leftover chuck roast, The key with that is to cook it up like normal, freeze it and then dehydrate it. Something about the freezing makes the beef more crunchy and easier to re-hydrate for cooking with. Rain Country Homestead on youtube has some good videos on that.
I think I watched the same video Kay. That’s awesome. I think it was an older German women who lived thru WW2 What a gem. I got a lot out of that. I was thinking , 'what if my freezers failed? what if the grid goes down for long periods and you have several hundred pounds of frozen meat in warm weather? Dang good knowledge. we went through a horrible Ice storm one year. I had just just stuffed two freezers with 500 lbs of fresh beef.
Of course it was winter so there was no panic, but the power was off for 23 days while they tried to restore power to 400.000 homes. Needless to say, people with propane tanks were lined up at filling stations 24/7 for weeks. I thought what if this happened in the warm season? Winter is no problem, but if the grid failed for weeks in Summer? That is why I want to know. I got jars.
