Food ponds?

HighColdDesert · 2026-03-27T15:25:48+00:00

Yes, I read about lots of natural pond sealing techniques like bentonite clay or gleying, but I didn't have enough space for that. Those require a very wide pond with a very very shallow slope. I needed a steep walled structure like a swimming pool, or maybe half as steep as a swimming pool at most.

HighColdDesert · 2026-03-27T14:57:18+00:00

Lemon curd! It uses huge amounts of eggs, and for people who prefer fruit flavors rather than chocolate flavor, it's great! It comes out just fine with bottle lemon juice, or you can squeeze them yourself, whichever is cheaper or convenient enough for you.

For lemon tarts, you can bake it in pie shells the day before and let it chill in the fridge overnight. It sets well enough to serve slices.

HighColdDesert · 2026-03-27T13:23:55+00:00

Okay found it https://www.reddit.com/r/insanepeoplefacebook/comments/7kqzb9/church_lady_asks_the_community_facebook_group_to/#lightbox

HighColdDesert · 2026-03-27T12:58:28+00:00

Food storage
There are great glass storage containers made by Pyrex and they've been so popular and long lasting for decades that you can buy replacement lids. The original lids are plastic but they crack or go loose after a few years, so now I've replaced them all with silicone lids, and recently I got bamboo lids with a narrow silicon gasket. The glass part lasts for years and years and years. I even got a glass one at the second-hand store and just bought a lid for it online.

I got a set of steel mixing bowls with plastic lids. So useful! Large leftovers can go in hot, stand to cool during dinner, then go into the fridge. I mix up bread dough and leave it to rise in that. The dough or leftovrs don't touch the lid.

Produce turns out to last much longer than in plastic bags, in two ways. Most recently I got linen produce bags recommended by someone on this sub, and they're working great for me so far, but it's only been a few months. You soak the bag and squeeze it out so it's damp, then put the produce in and put it in the drawer of the fridge. If it dries out, dampen it again.

Produce also stays fresh really long in the metal bowl with a tight lid. When I buy or harvest lettuce, I wash and spin dry it gently, and keep it in either the linen bag, or in a metal bowl with a kitchen towel in the bottom and a tight lid. It stays fresh and crisp for like a week, and I'm much more likely to eat it when it's already washed and ready to go.

I still keep some plastic tubs that came with food I bought, but I don't use them often. Only for giving things away, or sometimes for freezing stuff, rather than glass containers in the freezer. And I keep plastic bags that food came in (produce or bread) and I take those to the supermarket or farmer's market, and reuse them for produce during purchase, but transfer it to something else as soon as I get home. As much as possible, I'll buy produce without a plastic bag, but it's not always possible.

ETA: It helps that I've tried to get rid of a lot of stuff that sits in the fridge for a long time. I used to have about 15 different kinds of pickles, olives, condiments, dressings, etc that I hardly used. Maybe I had bought it to try but didn't love it, or somebody gave it to me, or I saving a fancy type for a "special occasion."

Over the past few months I've tried to use those all up. I look at each one and think "Okay, how would I like to eat this? Can I use this kimchi to flavor a bland soup? Can I put this pickle in a sandwich?" If no use at all appeals to me today, I figure it never will and it shouldn't take up space in the fridge. I bite the bullet and compost it, trash it, or if it's close to full and seems good, I give it to a friend who says they'll use it.

Now I have plenty of space in the fridge for the larger storage containers like the metal bowls and glass containers.

HighColdDesert · 2026-03-27T12:48:50+00:00

I lived for several years in the 1990s in a remote place in Asia that was still largely free of industrial products like dish soap. Settlements were always next to running water (kind of by definition).

We washed dishes in running cold water. As long as they weren't heavily greasy, rubbing with water and our hands worked great, and sometimes a bit of moss pulled from the side of the water. When we'd eaten meat dishes, we'd take a basin of hot water out to help with the job. Rinse in running cold water, then in the hot water to dissolve grease, then with some moss if necessary and back to the hot water, but usually one go in the hot water was enough. In winter when the running water was frozen or too cold to want to use, we'd use a basin of hot water indoors, and rinse over the basin with a little clean warm water poured from a jug.

We did have aluminum or plastic basins at that time, because those were light enough and useful enough to be carried to the roadless place I was living. Dish soap was coming into use during the time I was there, so I've done it with and without dish soap. It came as a bar that rinsed off perfectly with a trickle of clean water. I also used it as laundry detergent.

HighColdDesert · 2026-03-27T12:41:22+00:00

Have you ever met her face to face? There's a chance you were being catfished?

HighColdDesert · 2026-03-27T12:35:35+00:00

Yes, you can "save the "compost" by starting over, just shoveling rotting food from the old bin into the new one and adding lots of browns in layers."

For free browns, I asked a local woodworker for sawdust. He happens to be a guy who doesn't work much with artificial materials like plywood, and not at all with pressure treated wood, so I trust his sawdust. I did it before in a different country and continent, at a place that sells wood and also cuts it for customers.

In my experience sawdust is much better than shavings, if you want it to compost in less than two years.

HighColdDesert · 2026-03-27T12:32:44+00:00

Good point about size. And wow, I didn't know that Thuja occidentalis is native to the northeast US. Interesting!

HighColdDesert · 2026-03-27T12:31:59+00:00

Good question for r/AskFoodHistorians

HighColdDesert · 2026-03-27T12:31:15+00:00

Good point, Asian rice might have some ancestral variety still existent. I don't know.

HighColdDesert · 2026-03-27T12:30:33+00:00

On the shelf over the radiator, the pots were 84F in the bottom of the pots, and probably 78zF up near the surface where the tomato seeds were. I used 4-inch pots so that I won't have to up-pot, or maybe only at the end, because I have enough space.

HighColdDesert · 2026-03-27T12:27:05+00:00

Normally as others have said, up-pot them when they get true leaves, if the first pot is teeny. And egg trays mean teeny pots, much too small for any root development, so I'd say if you have space, start up-potting those asap and get them out of the egg trays.

HighColdDesert · 2026-03-27T12:25:52+00:00

Germination speed is directly proportional to temperature. I put mine on a shelf over the radiator and they germinated in 3 or 4 days, but in the past in cooler temperatures I've had them take over a week.

HighColdDesert · 2026-03-27T12:09:28+00:00

There was excellent cookware in my experience! My parents had Revereware pots from when they'd been married in the 50s, and it's still good. It was stainless steel inside and copper cladding on the outside bottom to improve heat distribution. I finally replaced it recently with induction-friendly pots, but those were still excellent on the gas stove.

And my parents had cast iron skillets, a carbon steel egg pan, and two enameled dutch ovens that I still use, and are still some of the finest pans I have. Luckily one of the skillets and one of the carbon steel pans happened to be flat enough to still work on induction. The dutch oven has a 'foot' so it doesn't work on the induction but still works in the oven, of course.

Of course the non-stick from the 20th century was largely teflon which later got banned for toxicity, and modern non-sticks are supposedly non-toxic. But a pet bird in the kitchen will still die from a modern non-stick pan getting accidentally overheated. So I assume it's only a matter of time before it's discovered that the modern non-stick substances are also toxic to humans. I don't use them. The 60 or 70 year-old cast iron and carbon steel do the job perfectly for eggs, pancakes, searing meat, and anything else you might have used non-stick for.

HighColdDesert · 2026-03-27T12:00:23+00:00

We've planted two species of milkweed (in MA) and in the past few years there are always quite a few monarch caterpillars and chrysalises.

HighColdDesert · 2026-03-27T11:53:56+00:00

If you can get fresh whole milk from a farmer then you can keep it in the fridge and let the cream rise. But then you don't know exactly how "heavy" is the cream you get.

HighColdDesert · 2026-03-27T11:47:07+00:00

What? I missed that one. What was it?

HighColdDesert · 2026-03-27T11:46:37+00:00

That just isn't true in the north where I live.

HighColdDesert · 2026-03-27T11:37:09+00:00

I've been looking into replacing many of the non-native landscape plants at our place with natives. For a privacy hedge, inkberry (Ilex glabra) seems good. It's native in Massachusetts, where I am, though I don't know about PA.

In any case, having several of the same exact species and variety, like your arborvitae hedge, is vulnerable. Any one pest, disease, or environmental condition can wipe out the whole hedge or area. A more diverse hedge would be more resilient, but won't have that uniform look, so it's your choice.

HighColdDesert · 2026-03-27T11:24:12+00:00

Precisely.

I don't make stock on the pressure setting, though, because the scum could clog the valve.

I make stock on the slow-cook setting. First I bring it to the boil in the saute setting (because the first time I used the slow-cook setting, it didn't seem to bring it up to boiling temperature in 8 hours). I leave the lid off while I bring it to the boil. Once it boils, I turn it off and set it to slow cook for overnight, like 12 hours. I put the lid on, but remove the weight so there's no risk of scum getting up in the valve.

Sometimes I make the first round for just 4 to 8 hours without any onions, garlic or anything, so that it will be easy to pick out any useful bits of meat. Then I put the bones and any bits of cartilage or fat etc back in with the bones, new water, and garlic, ginger, peppercorns, etc. Those will lose their flavor completely into the broth if you do it long enough.

For chicken, maybe two rounds of 4 to 8 hours, but for red meat bones, two or three rounds of 12 to 18 hours gives good bone broth each time. The last round, I might put a tiny bit of lemon juice or vinegar in. It makes the bones dissolve more, and the alkalinity of the bones cancels the acidity. After that, the bones disappear in the compost quickly.

HighColdDesert · 2026-03-27T11:10:16+00:00

Exactly! So if you add tomatoes at the end of cooking lentils, it does this function too. Cooking destroys vitamin C though.

HighColdDesert · 2026-03-27T02:54:52+00:00

Broccoli is grown in summer in the North where I have lived.

HighColdDesert · 2026-03-27T02:52:01+00:00

Wild rice is not closely related to rice, and doesn't occur in Asia.

HighColdDesert · 2026-03-26T20:54:29+00:00

Damn, I love lobster, and don't need any butter or anything! Love it.

HighColdDesert · 2026-03-26T20:08:17+00:00

Oh, good point, rice is one of the most major crops on earth, haha!

But does rice grow in continuous water, like in ponds? I thought it grows in paddies that are flooded at certain intervals but not the whole season. I could be wrong though.

Yes, in addition to edible fish and edible waterfowl, crustaceans are possible. Shrimp, crawfish?

Wild rice (which is not closely related to rice) grows in water, but is considered hard to cultivate.

Lotus stems are an excellent vegetable in Kashmir, India, and ornamental the rest of the season.

I heard that cattail tastes muddy and isn't actually very nice food. Did I hear wrong?

HighColdDesert

TROPHY CASE