Weekly Roundup - Living On Nothing Edition [Survival Today

Did you hear about the guy that lives on nothing? No seriously, he lives on zero dollars a day. Meet Daniel Suelo, who lives in a cave outside Moab, Utah. Suelo has no mortgage, no car payment, no debt of any kind. He also has no home, no car, no television, and absolutely no “creature comforts.” But he does have a lot of creatures, as in the mice and bugs that scurry about the cave floor he’s called home for the last three years.

To us, Suelo probably sounds a little extreme. Actually, he probably sounds very extreme. After all, I suspect most of you reading this are doing so under the protection of some sort of man-made shelter, and with some amount of money on your person, and probably a few needs for money, too. And who doesn’t need money unless they have completely unplugged from the grid? Still, it’s an amusing story about a guy who rejects all forms of consumerism as we know it.

How to Brew Your Own Beer and Maybe Save Some Money. A fantastic introduction to home brewing, something I’ve never done myself, but always been interested in trying. (@Generation X Finance)

Contentment: A Great Financial Principle. If I had to name one required emotion for living a frugal lifestyle it would be contentment. Once you are content with your belongings and your lot in life you can ignore forces attempting to separate you from your money. (@Personal Finance by the Book)

Use Energy Star Appliances to Save On Utility Costs. I enjoyed this post because it included actual numbers, and actual total savings, from someone who upgraded to new, energy star appliances. (@The Digerati Life)

Over-Saving for Retirement? Is it possible to “over-save” for retirement? Yes, I think so. At some point I like the idea of putting some money aside in taxable investments outside of retirement funds, to be accessed prior to traditional retirement age. (@The Simple Dollar)

40 Things to Teach My Kids Before They Leave Home. A great list of both practical and philosophical lessons to teach your kids before they reach the age where they know everything. I think that now happens around 13 years-old. (@My Supercharged Life)

Index Fund Investing Overview. If you are looking for a place to invest with high diversification and relatively low fees (for broader index funds with low turnover), index funds are a great place to start. (@Money Smart Life)

5 Reasons To Line Dry Your Laundry. My wife and I may soon be installing a clothesline in our backyard. In many neighborhoods they are frowned upon - one of the reasons I don’t like living in a neighborhood. I digress. One of our neighbors recently put up a clothesline, and we might just follow his lead. (@Simple Mom)

* 4 Quick Tips for Getting Out of a Rut * Young and Cash Rich * Embracing Simple Style * First Trading Experience With OptionsHouse * The Exponential Power of Delayed Consumption * How Much Emergency Fund is Enough? * 50 Questions that Will Free Your Mind * Save Money On Car Insurance

1. Red Hot Chicken Bits
Posted by: “Richard

Red Hot Chicken Bits

3 pound boned chicken breasts
1/8 teaspoon garlic salt
2 tablespoons red pepper
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 cup flour
Vegetable oil

Cut chicken breasts lengthwise into 1-inch pieces. Sprinkle garlic
salt freely over chicken, turning pieces so each is coated. Continue
with red, then black pepper. Set aside for 1 hour to let chicken
absorb flavor. Dust chicken with flour, then deep fry in oil at 375
degrees F for 3 minutes. Drain on paper towels.
Serve warm or cold.

Source : The recipe-riot mailer on cooking-lists.com

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2. Spicy Mustard Greens With Cumin
Posted by: “~*Piper*~”

Spicy Mustard Greens With Cumin

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 medium onions, coarsely chopped
6 garlic cloves, chopped
1 tablespoon cumin seeds
1/2 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper
2 large bunche mustard greens, coarsely chopped
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

Heat oil in large wide pot over medium-high heat. Add onions and sauté until soft, about 7 minutes. Stir in garlic, cumin seeds, and crushed red pepper; sauté 3 minutes. Add mustard greens to pot in batches (about 1/3 at a time) and stir until each batch begins to wilt before adding next, about 3 minutes per batch.
Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and cook until greens are very tender, stirring frequently, about 30 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Mix in vinegar. (Can be made 3 hours ahead.) Transfer to bowl and serve hot or at room temperature.
Makes 8 servings.

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3. Citrus Barbecue Sauce
Posted by: “~*Piper*~”

Citrus Barbecue Sauce

1 onion, large, finely chopped
1 tablespoon ground red chilies
1/4 teaspoon ground red pepper
1 ancho chile, seeded and finely chopped
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 cup orange juice
1/2 cup lime juice
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon fresh cilantro; snipped
1 teaspoon salt

Cook onion, ground red chilies, red pepper and ancho chile in oil, stirring frequently, until onion is tender.
Stir in remaining ingredients.
Heat to boiling, reduce heat to low.
Simmer uncovered, about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Makes about 2 1/3 cups.

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4. Pinto Bean Sloppy Joe Sandwiches
Posted by: “~*Piper*~”

Pinto Bean Sloppy Joe Sandwiches

1 cup diced onion
1/2 cup diced seeded green pepper
2 tablespoons diced seeded jalapeño pepper
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 15 oz. can pinto beans, rinsed, drained
1 6 oz. can tomato paste
1/2 cup water
1/3 cup wheat germ
4 teaspoons blackstrap molasses
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 tablespoon paprika
1 tablespoon dried basil
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
hot pepper sauce or Tabasco sauce to taste
6 hamburger buns or large rolls, split or slices of whole-grain bread

In a large non-stick skillet, saute the onion, green, and jalapeño peppers in the olive oil, for 5 minutes to soften. Add the garlic and saute for an additional 1 minute.
Add remaining ingredients, season the mixture with hot pepper sauce, to taste, and simmer an additional 5 minutes. Using a fork or the back of a spoon, coarsely mash the simmering mixture, and then simmer an additional 5 minutes.
Serve the mixture on hamburger buns or large rolls, or on slices of whole grain bread. The pinto bean sloppy joe mixture can also be used as a sauce on pasta, grains, or vegetables.
Makes 6 sandwiches.

To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Simply-Spicy/

1a. Sweet Potato Pancakes
Posted by: “Rhonda

This is from the That’s My Home website...

~~~~~~

Sweet Potato Pancakes

3/4 pound sweet potatoes
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 cups milk
1/4 cup butter, melted

Place sweet potatoes in a medium saucepan of boiling water, and cook until tender but firm, about 15 minutes. Drain, and immediately immerse in cold water to loosen skins. Drain, remove skins, chop, and mash.

In a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, salt, and nutmeg. Mix mashed sweet potatoes, eggs, milk and butter in a separate medium bowl. Blend sweet potato mixture into the flour mixture to form a batter.

Preheat a lightly greased griddle over medium-high heat. Drop batter mixture onto the prepared griddle by heaping tablespoonfuls, and cook until golden brown, turning once with a spatula when the surface begins to bubble.

Makes 8 servings

~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~

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2. Seafood Kabobs with Spicy Pimiento Sauce
Posted by: “Rhonda

This is from the That’s My Home website...

~~~~~

Seafood Kabobs with Spicy Pimiento Sauce

Spicy Pimiento Sauce:
1 cup mayonnaise
2 4 ounce jars sliced pimientos, drained
2 small garlic cloves, minced
1/2 to 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

Kabobs:
1/4 cup olive oil or vegetable oil
4 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
48 uncooked fresh medium shrimp, shelled, tails left on, deveined
48 uncooked fresh sea scallops

Grill Directions: Heat grill. In food processor bowl with metal blade or blender container, combine all sauce ingredients. Blend at high speed until smooth. Set aside.
In small bowl, combine oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper; mix well. Alternately thread shrimp and scallops onto sixteen 12 to 14 inch metal skewers; brush with lemon mixture.
When ready to grill, oil grill rack.
Place kabobs on gas grill over medium heat or on charcoal grill 4 to 6 inches from medium coals.
Cook 3 to 4 minutes or until shrimp turn pink and scallops turn opaque, turning once. Serve with spicy pimiento sauce. 8 servings

NOTE: This recipe can be broiled. Prepare recipe as directed above; place food on broiler pan. Broil 4 to 6 inches from heat using times provided in recipe as a guideline.

~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~

Rhonda

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3. Salted Lassi
Posted by: “Lynnda”

Salted Lassi

1 1/2 cups ice cubes, about 6 large cubes
2 cups cold plain yogurt, whole or lowfat, 16 oz
1/2 t. salt or to taste
1/2 t. ground cumin, or to taste
finely ground black pepper or to taste, optional
1 1/2 t. minced fresh jalapeno, with or without seeds as desired

Put the ice, yogurt, salt, cumin, black pepper if using and jalapeno in blender. Blend until well blended and mixture moves easily in blender, roughly 45 seconds. Taste the lassi and correct the seasoning with additional salt and black pepper if desired. Pour into chilled glass or glasses and serve at once.
Minted Version: Follow the above recipe adding 3 T.. of chopped fresh mint to the blender along with other ingredients. Dried red chile flakes are often used to give salted lassi some spicy heat. Minced fresh jalapeno is good, too, and you can add a few seeds for extra thrust. You can use other hot chiles in place of jalapeño, adjusting quantity for the heat and your taste. You can also substitute and equal mount of cold water for the ice, in which case you can simply whisk the ingredient in a pitcher or bowl and forgo the blender.
Makes about 3 cups or 24 oz.
Source: Thoroughly Modern Milkshakes

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4. SPECIAL DARK Chocolate Chip Scones
Posted by: “Rhonda

This is from the Hershey’s website...

~~~~~

SPECIAL DARK Chocolate Chip Scones

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 17 min
Skill Level: Intermediate

Ingredients:
* 3-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
* 1/2 cup granulated sugar
* 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon baking powder
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 2 cups (12-oz. pkg.) HERSHEY’S SPECIAL DARK Chocolate Chips
* 1/2 cup chopped nuts(optional)
* 2 cups chilled whipping cream
* 2 tablespoons butter, melted
* Additional granulated sugar
* Powdered sugar(optional)

Directions:1. Heat oven to 375°F. Lightly grease 2 baking sheets.

2. Stir together flour, 1/2 cup granulated sugar, baking powder and salt in large bowl. Stir in chocolate chips and nuts, if desired.

3. Stir whipping cream into flour mixture, stirring just until ingredients are moistened.

4. Turn mixture out onto lightly floured surface. Knead gently until soft dough forms (about 2 minutes). Divide dough into three equal balls. One ball at a time, flatten into 7-inch circle; cut into 8 triangles. Transfer triangles to prepared baking sheets, spacing 2 inches apart. Brush with melted butter and sprinkle with additional granulated sugar.

5. Bake 15 to 20 minutes or until lightly browned. Serve warm, sprinkled with powdered sugar, if desired. 24 scones.
~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~

Rhonda

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5. Sloppy Dawg Sauce
Posted by: “Rhonda

This is from the Hershey’s website...

~~~~~

Sloppy Dawg Sauce

Prep Time: 10 min
Skill Level: Beginner

Ingredients:
* 3 tablespoons butter or margarine
* 1 cup finely chopped onion
* 3/4 cup ketchup
* 1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
* 3 tablespoons HERSHEY’S Cocoa
* 3 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
* 1 tablespoon tomato paste
* 1 tablespoon white vinegar
* 1/4 teaspoon dry mustard
* 1/4 teaspoon hot pepper sauce

Directions:1. Melt butter in heavy medium saucepan over medium heat; add onion. Cook until tender. Stir in ketchup, brown sugar, cocoa, Worcestershire sauce, tomato paste, vinegar, mustard and hot pepper sauce.

2. Heat to boiling, stirring occasionally; remove from heat. Serve warm as topping for grilled hot dogs, burgers, chicken or steak. If sauce starts to become too thick, add water 1 tablespoon at a time. Refrigerate leftovers. About 2 cups sauce.
~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~

Rhonda
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6. Sausage Au Gratin
Posted by: “Bella”

SAUSAGE AU GRATIN
Korvgratäng

I don’t know if you can get wiener (no, not THAT word ... :-D) sausages there, but you can use franks or some other neutral sausage as well.

Serves 4

6 to 8 potatoes
1/2 to 1 tsp salt
dash black pepper
1 1/4 cups meat bouillon
scant 1/4 cup mustard
good 1/3 cup chopped parsley
8 sausages, see above
good 1/3 cup mayonnaise
2 to 3 tbsp mustard
1 to 2 tbsp grated horseradish
good 3/4 cup grated cheese, rather strong

Peel the potatoes and cut in strips. Put them in a greased, ovenproof dish. Sprinkle with salt and black pepper between the layers.

Mix bouillon, mustard and half of the parsley. Pour this over the potatoes and bake in the middle of the oven at 425F for about 25 minutes.

Cut the sausages in half lengthwise and place them on the potato bed, cut side up. Mix mayonnaise, mustard, grated horseradish and remaining parsley. Spread this over the sausage and sprinkle with grated cheese. Bake in the middle of the oven for about 20 minutes.

Sprinkle with chopped parsley and serve.

Enjoy!

Bella

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7a. Mexican coffee
Posted by: “Lynnda”

Mexican coffee

1 cup hot, stronger coffee
1 tablespoon grated semi sweet chocolate
3 tablespoons coffee liqueur
whipped cream
cinnamon stick for garnish

mix first three ingredients in a large cup warm-up; stir in chocolate melts. Dollop with whipped cream; garnish, if desired. Makes about 1 1/4 cups.

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8a. Garden fresh salsa
Posted by: “Lynnda”

Garden fresh salsa

14.5 ounce can diced tomatoes, drained
three-quarter cup green pepper, diced
1/3 cup black olives, sliced
1/3 cup Spanish onion, diced
1/3 cup red onion, diced
2 tablespoons fresh parsley, finely chopped
2 tablespoons garlic minced
1 tablespoon fresh cilantro, finely chopped
1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon lime juice
two plum tomatoes, diced
two green onions, sliced
one jalapeno pepper, diced
salt and pepper to taste

Mix all ingredients in a large bowl; refrigerate until ready to serve. Makes 4 cups.
Source: Staci Myers

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9a. Italian stuffed chicken
Posted by: “Lynnda”

Italian stuffed chicken

8 ounce package sliced mushrooms
2 tablespoons butter
1 cup ricotta cheese
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup dried parsley
1/4 cup Italian seasoned dry bread crumbs
four bone in chicken breasts
paprika

Sauté mushrooms in butter in a skillet over medium heat until tender; set aside. Combine cheeses, parsley and breadcrumbs; mix well. Stir into mushroom mixture. Loosen skin from chicken breasts without detaching it. Spoon mixture underneath skins; sprinkle with paprika. Arrange chicken in a lightly greased 13 x 9” baking dish. Bake at 350 for one hour and seven minutes or until chicken is done. Serves four
source: Kathy

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10. Sofrito
Posted by: “Lynnda”

Sofrito

1 T. olive oil
1 onion, diced
1 green bell pepper, seeded and diced
1 red bell pepper, seeded and diced
1/2 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced
3 cloves garlic, minced

Add the olive oil to sauté pan an place over medium heat. When hot, add onion and cook 4 to 6 minutes or until onion turns clear. Add peppers and garlic. Cook for another 4 to 6 minutes or until soft. This aromatic is used for soup, sauces, rubs for meats and poultry and also for frying rice.
Source: Unknown

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11. Brine for Chicken
Posted by: “Lynnda”

Brine for Chicken

1 cup kosher salt
1/4 cup sugar
5 cloves garlic
2 bay leaves
1 T. black peppercorns

Place salt, sugar, garlic, bay leaves, peppercorns, and 2 cups cold water into pan over medium high heat. Stir constantly until sugar and salt dissolve. Remove from heat and cool to room temperature. When brining chicken use a nonreactive pot or a plastic container. Completely submerge poultry in cold water and weigh it down with a plate. Add the brine and cover. Let chicken sit in brine for at least 2 hours, preferably overnight. It may seem strange to brine chicken for frying but the results are amazing. Kentucky Fried Chicken brines all of their chicken. They call it “marinating”. Brining produces moist, succulent chicken.
Makes 1 1/4 cups brine
Source: Unknown

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12a. Baked Onion Dip
Posted by: “Lynnda”

Baked Onion Dip

1 T. margarine
1 large sweet onion, finely chopped
1/3 cup light mayonnaise
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 T. chopped fresh parsley
1/2 t. hot pepper sauce
Triscuit thin crisps

Heat oven to 350. Melt margarine in large skillet on medium heat. Add onions; cook 5 to 7 minutes or until golden brown, stirring occasionally. Cool slightly. Mix mayonnaise, cheeses, parsley and pepper sauce. Stir in onions. Spoon into baking dish. Bake 25 minutes or until heated through. Serve with crackers. Makes 1 cup dip or 8 servings. Make ahead: Mix dip ingredients as directed; refrigerate up to 24 hours. When ready to serve, bake as directed increasing baking time as needed until dip is heated through.
Source: Unknown

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13. Alarm Bell Pepper
Posted by: “Lynnda”

Alarm Bell Peppers

6 lg. bell pepper
1 lb. hamburger
1/2 lb. sausage
1 cup chopped onions
1 cup cooked rice
3 cups tomato sauce
2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
1 t. pepper

Cut off top of Pepper and clean out membrane, removing all seeds. Rinse peppers thoroughly. Cook rice as pkg. directs and set aside. Cook hamburger, onions and sausage until brown. Stir occasionally. Stir in rice. Add black pepper and 2 cups of tomato sauce. Stuff each pepper with mixture. Put upright in baking dish. Pour remaining 2 cups tomato sauce over peppers and sprinkle cheese on top. Cover and cook for 30 minutes at 350. Note: This recipe calls for 4 cups of tomato sauce, but the ingredients only state 3 cups. I guess it’s 4 cups total.
Source: Orange County Fire, Station #22

To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SimpleMeals/

Boost Your Body and Mind with Magnesium
_http://www.tbyil.com/magnesium_boost.htm_
(http://www.tbyil.com/magnesium_boost.htm)
by Tony Isaacs

After oxygen, water, and basic food, magnesium may be the most important
element needed by our bodies. It is vital for heart health, bone health,
mental function and the overall body - yet 80% or more of us are deficient in
this vital mineral.

Magnesium is more important than calcium, potassium or sodium and
regulates all three of them. It also activates over 300 different biochemical
reactions necessary for the body to function properly. Contrary to popular
misconceptions, it is magnesium that is actually most important in building
strong bones and preventing bone loss. Recent research has revealed that this
lack of magnesium may put your heart and your overall health at significant
risk and that magnesium deficiency may be linked to cognitive dysfunction
and mental decline.

Called the “The Forgotten Mineral” and the “5-Cent Miracle Tablet” by
medical researchers, magnesium is a muscle relaxant and low magnesium intake is
associated with muscle spasm, tremors and convulsions. Magnesium protects
against heart disease and heart attacks, high blood pressure and stroke,
type II diabetes and much, much more.

Numerous researchers have reported that adequate amounts of this mineral
in the population at large would greatly diminish the incidence of kidney
stones (1 in 11 Americans), calcified mitral heart valve (1 in 12
Americans), premenstrual tension, constipation, miscarriages, stillbirths, strokes,
diabetes, thyroid failure, asthma, chronic eyelid twitch (blepharospasm),
brittle bones, chronic migraines, muscle spasms and anxiety reactions.

An increasing number of medical scientists also believe that additional
magnesium and other minerals missing from today’s diet might prevent
cognitive disorders such as ADD, ADHD and bipolar and help prevent Alzheimer’s and
mental decline as we age. That’s a lot of health benefits for a nickel.
Sufficient magnesium intake by the American population would likely reduce
health care costs by billions of dollars.

In addition to the problems listed above, magnesium deficiency has been
associated with:

• Insomnia and other sleep-disorders
• Fatigue and low energy
• Body-tension
• Muscle tension, muscle cramps and spasms
• Headaches
• Irregular-heartbeat
• High blood Pressure
• Other heart-disorders
• PMS
• Backaches
• Constipation
• Kidney stones
• Osteoporosis
• Accelerated aging
• Depression
• Anxiety and irritability

Since the turn of last century, our depleted soils, processed foods and
fast food diet lifestyles have led to a steady increase in mineral
deficiencies. Nowhere is this more true than with magnesium. The U.S. minimum RDA for
magnesium is about 320 mg per day for women and more than 400 mg per day
for men, while optimum daily amounts are closer to 500 to 700 mg per day -
yet studies show that after over a century of steadily decreasing magnesium
intake, today over 8 out of 10 people do not take enough daily magnesium for
even the minimum daily amounts recommended.

Progressive decline of dietary magnesium consumption since 1900:

Years Studied Magnesium intake in mg/day

1900-08 475-500
1909-13 415-435
1925-29 385-398
1935-39 360-375
1947-49 358-370
1957-59 340-360
1965-76 300-340
1978-85 225-318
1990-2002 175-225

(Magnesium Trace Elements 10: 162-28)

Following is a list of some of the most magnesium rich dietary foods,
including normal serving sizes and calories:

— Pumpkin and squash seed kernels, roasted - 1 oz contains 151 mg of
magnesium and 148 calories
— Brazil nuts - 1 oz contains 107 mg of magnesium and 186 calories
— Bran ready-to-eat cereal (100%), - ~1 oz contains 103 mg of magnesium
and 74 calories .
— Halibut, cooked - 3 oz contains 151 mg of magnesium and 148 calories
— Quinoa, dry - 1/4 cup contains 89 mg of magnesium and 159 calories
— Spinach, canned - 1/2 cup contains 81 mg of magnesium and 25 calories
— Almonds - 1 oz contains 78 mg of magnesium and 164 calories
— Spinach, cooked from fresh - 1/2 cup contains 78 mg of magnesium and 20
calories
— Buckwheat flour - 1/4 cup contains 75 mg of magnesium and 101 calories
— Soybeans, mature, cooked - 1/2 cup contains 74 mg of magnesium and 149
calories
— Pine nuts, dried - 1 oz contains 71 mg of magnesium and 191 calories
— Mixed nuts, oil roasted, with peanuts - 1 oz contains 67 mg of
magnesium and 175 calories
— White beans, canned - 1/2 cup contains 67 mg of magnesium and 154
calories
— Pollock, walleye, cooked - 3 oz contains 62 mg of magnesium and 96
calories
— Black beans, cooked - 1/2 cup contains 60 mg of magnesium and 114
calories
— Bulgur, dry - 1/4 cup contains 57 mg of magnesium and 120 calories
— Oat bran, raw - 1/4 cup contains 55 mg of magnesium and 58 calories

Source: _http://www.hoptechno.com/bookfoodsourcemg.htm_
(http://www.hoptechno.com/bookfoodsourcemg.htm)

Note: It is healthier to consume as many of the items on the list as
possible in raw form. Soy products are not recommended due to the widespread use
of GMO soy and other health concerns related to soy.

The list of dietary magnesium sources shows that it might be possible for
a person to obtain optimum, or at least minimum, amounts of magnesium from
the diet, doing so on a daily basis would take very careful planning. When
processed food is part of the diet, it becomes even more unlikely for the
general public to consume enough magnesium through dietary sources alone on
a daily basis.

Only supplementation is likely to make up for such a widespread magnesium
deficiency for most people. Since the same problems with soil depletion and
diet causes deficiencies in many other vital minerals, it would be a good
idea to supplement for magnesium and to also supplement with a wide range
of other minerals. The very mineral supplements are those derived from whole
food and plant sources because they are more readily absorbed than mined
rock minerals.

Until recently, it was believed that the best forms of supplemental
magnesium were the ones chelated to an amino acid (magnesium glycinate, magnesium
taurate) or a krebs cycle intermediate (magnesium malate, magnesium
citrate, magnesium fumarate). Now magnesium orotate is considered to be a
superior form of oral magnesium and we also have magnesium oil. Magnesium oil
contains magnesium chloride and is applied directly to the skin so dosage
levels can be brought up safely to high levels without diarrhea and problems
with absorption. The only side effect of too much magnesium is loose stool.
Reducing the dosage or dividing daily doses into smaller amounts resolves the
problem.

Blood tests for magnesium are notoriously inaccurate since only about 1
percent of the total body magnesium pool exists outside of living cells.
Thus, blood serum levels are notoriously inaccurate and your doctor can`t
easily tell you by a blood test if your magnesium levels are low.

For optimum health, magnesium and calcium intake needs to be at about a 1
to 2 ratio. So, if you supplement with 500 mg of magnesium, you should
supplement with 1000 mg of calcium (or less if you get plenty of dietary
calcium and little dietary magnesium).

Other sources included:

Jenny Thompson, Health Sciences Institute
_http://www.omeonet.info/en/articles/magnesium.htm_
(http://www.omeonet.info/en/articles/magnesium.htm)
Journal of Internal Medicine (Blackwell
Publishing)10.1111/j.1365-2796.2007.01840.x
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2002; 75:550-554
The Robert Cathey Research Source by Roger Scott Cathey
_http://www.navi.net/~rsc/mgcl2_txt.html_ (http://www.navi.net/~rsc/mgcl2_txt.html) Updated
June 17, 2003
Pediatric Asthma, Allergy Immunology 5: 273-79
Journal Bone Mineral Research 13: 749-58, 1998
Magnesium 5: 1-8, 1986
Medical Hypotheses 43: 187-92, 1994
Clin Chem Lab Med 37: 1011-33, 1999

Re: Boost Your Body and Mind with Magnesium
Posted by: “Shan”

That is interesting about the stool - I have not heard/read that before. However constipation is a symptom of magnesium deficiency.

Magnesium has to be in your digestive system for 12 hours before it can be absorbed, according to Dr Shealy

“Dr. Shealy indicates in his book Holy Water, Sacred Oil: The Fountain of Youth, there is reliable evidence to indicate that absorption relies heavily on magnesium’s staying power in the intestine at minimum 12 hours. If transit time is reduced to less than 12 hours, the percentage of magnesium absorbed may be drastically impaired. “

And generally oral magnesium supplements are not well absorbed at all. Personally I feel that if anybody is serious about getting their magnesium levels up , that they would be best off using transdermal magnesium chloride. However if somebody just wants to take daily supplements, then Spirulina is good - it has every nutrient except vitamin C, I think. And magnesium is well absorbed if it is in food and there is lots of magnesium in Spirulina.

I will have to check my magnesium books as to the deal about magnesium citrate. I will get back to you about that.
If the magnesium causes diarrehea, the person is not going to benefit from any magnesium - in other words, if a supplememt causes diarrehea it is a waste of time and money to take it - unless a person is constipated, that is.

Oral magnesium can be rather individual too - each person should try a few different compounds and see which works best for them. I have found that for most people magnesium chloride, magnesium taurate, and magnesium glycinate are the best absorbed. But have heard of some people whom feel neuseated by many magnesium supplements but are okay with magnesium chelates......

For me, magnesium glycinate seems to work best orally - and the one I take tells me how much elemental magnesium it contains. The elemental magnesium is the only magnesium that is available to be absorbed. For example, the magnesium glycinate which I take is 600mg - but it has only 120 mg of elemental magnesium in it. In other words, at most only 120 mg is available to be absorbed from a capsule of 600mg of magnesium glycinate.

blessings
Shan

To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/soilandhealth/

Cheese Popcorn
Posted by: “Leslie

Hi Folks,

A while ago I was asking around for ideas on how to make cheese
popcorn along the lines of the stuff sold in bags pre-popped. My
attempts using regular shredded cheese were okay, but gooey gobs of
cheese wasn’t really what I had in mind. I was able to find tiny jars
of “Kernel Season’s” popcorn flavorings, including cheddar and nacho
cheese which were closer to what I wanted, but far too expensive for
the quantities that I wanted.

I finally located a source of cheddar cheese powder for a very
reasonable price at Barry Farm in Ohio:
http://www.barryfarm.com/nutri_info/milk/cheddarpowder.html

I did a side-by-side taste test of the Barry Farm with Kernel
Season’s. The latter has more onion powder and salt, where Barry’s is
much closer to pure cheese (though they have other ingredients too). I
usually add things like chili powder and onion powder to my popcorn
anyway, so I’m happy to adjust those to my own taste. And at $4.17 a
pound, it’s an absolute bargain. I ordered two pounds, and the
shipping was actually more than the price of the product. Each one
pound bag was about the size of a 12 oz. bag of ground coffee.

After transferring the powder to an air-tight container, I tried
making some popcorn, first with a little melted butter and then
without. I sprinkled on about two tablespoons of the cheese powder,
some chili powder, onion powder and finely powdered salt and mixed it
up in a large bowl. I’m very pleased with the results. Nearly all of
the cheese powder stayed on the popcorn, with and without butter. The
flavor was great, and my wife remarked that her fingers looked much
like they do after eating Cheetos, so we had plenty of good cheesy
flavor without too many calories.

BTW, I used to buy special “popcorn salt” until one day I tried
putting some kosher salt in my spice grinder (which is actually a
cheap coffee grinder that I use only for spices). After a quick few
seconds of whirring, the result is a fine powder that clings to
popcorn like magic.

Lastly, I’m very happy with Barry Farm’s customer service. I screwed
up the address of my shipping (parcel post) and they had to resend my
package after it was returned to them, which they did quickly and
without complaint or extra charges. I’d be happy to order from them
again.

- Les

________________________________________________________________________
1b. Re: Cheese Popcorn
Posted by: “ElaineTM”

I use Barry Farm a lot. I love their dried
vegetables, potatoes, diced zucchini and cukes. I
have the cheddar powder, but haven’t tried it yet,
I had intended making cheese sauces with it.

Elaine

http://www.barryfarm.com/nutri_info/milk/cheddarpowder.html

Get recipes and money-saving tips at http://www.CheapCooking.com. Free newsletter, recipes, and much more.

Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cheapcooking/

[I use powdered cheese from waltonfeed.com and it is good.

I do not know the above company, thought the information was interesting.
granny]

Slow Cooker Puffy Pizza Casserole Recipe

Who’s ready for pizza? While I was doing my year-long slow cooking challenge, I got a few cheeky comments from people who were certain that my family was missing out on eating pizza because I was preparing a slow cooker meal everyday. Since we’re gluten free, we don’t actually eat all that much pizza anymore anyway, but the comments still got my brain buzzing, and I wondered if I COULD make pizza in a crockpot.

I can now say: yup.

It’s not the same, but it’s close enough to a deep-dish style pizza to satisfy any and all pizza cravings, and it comes right out of your crockpot.

Life is good.

The Ingredients.
serves 8

1 pound lean ground beef
1 small onion, diced
1 garlic clove, minced
1 (1.5) ounce packet of spaghetti mix (if using store-bought, look out for hidden gluten. I like the McCormick brand. You can also make your own using the recipe below)
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1 (15-ounce) can tomato sauce
1/2 cup water

for puffy topping:

1 cup all-purpose flour (I use Pamela’s Baking Mix as my AP flour)
1 cup milk
2 eggs
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
20 pepperoni slices
1/2 cup sliced olives, optional

Homemade Spaghetti Sauce Mix
yields 1 packet

1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 tablespoon dried minced onion
1 tablespoon parsley flakes
1 teaspoon granulated white sugar
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
2 teaspoons green pepper flakes
3/4 teaspoon Italian seasoning

The Directions.

Use a 4 quart slow cooker (if you only have a 6, that’s okay, it will just cook faster. Check it after 3 hours on high.)

In a very large skillet, brown beef, onion, and garlic on the stove top. Drain fat, and add spaghetti sauce mix, oregano, tomato sauce, and water. Stir over low heat until tiny bubbles appear. Remove from heat and scoop into the slow cooker (you might want to spray it with cooking spray).

In a mixing bowl, combine the ingredients for your puffy topping: flour, milk, eggs, and cheese. Pour evenly over the top. Place pepperoni slices and olives on top of the topping.

Cover and cook on high for 4 hours, or until the topping has turned golden brown, puffed up, and pulled away from the sides.
I have not tried to cook this yet on low. I’d check it after 6 hours (in a 4-quart, 4 hours in a 6-quart).
If you do opt to cook it on low, I’d love to hear your timing results!

The Verdict.

I was given this recipe from a good friend of mine (who is rather shy and doesn’t want her name on the internet!), and was so eager to give it a try. She usually cooks it in the oven, but said that sometimes it puffs over the side of her baking dish, and makes a huge mess in the bottom of her oven.

I loved the way it worked in the crock. I didn’t vent the lid at all-—it puffs up beautifully and completely satisfied my family’s cravings without needing to worry about gluten or tipping the delivery guy!

more pizza stuff:
pizza soup
pizza fondue

http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/2010/05/slow-cooker-puffy-pizza-casserole.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AYearOfCrockPotting+%28A+Year+of+Slow+Cooking%29&utm_content=Yahoo!+Mail

http://www.coldtruth.com/2010/05/10/heists-of-meds-and-costly-baby-formula-soar-and-feds-worry-about-dangers-to-consumers/

Heists of meds and costly baby formula soar and feds worry about dangers to consumers.
Posted on May 10, 2010, 15:00, by schneider.

Some well-organized gangs are showing the sort of criminal skill and chutzpa usually found only on the big screen as they thwart elaborate alarm systems, drop through warehouse roofs and empty shelves. They aren’t stealing electronics or jewels. These nervy types are making off with millions of dollars worth of prescription drugs, baby formula and over-the-counter medications.
Phto by Pharma

Phto by Pharma

No one knows the precise number of these brazen thefts because shippers of the goods are not required to report the crimes, but experts say the crimes have been increasing every year, especially over the past three years. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration thinks it’s a major issue and has sounded alerts to all players who manufacture, ship, store or sell these regulated items.

It’s not just the cash value of the larceny that’s at issue. Security experts from FDA, insurance investigators and state health departments are worried about the contraband being contaminated by mishandling; or mixed and sold with counterfeit drugs.

“There have been several cases where patients experienced adverse reactions from stolen drugs, reactions that were most likely due to improper storage and handling. We do not want to see this increase in thefts continue,” Michael Chappell, FDA’s acting Assistant Commissioner for Regulatory Affairs wrote in a letter to manufacturers, wholesalers and trade associations last week.

He reminded those whose shipments of FDA-regulated items were targeted by the thieves that these crimes threaten the public health because a product that has been taken from the “legitimate supply chain poses potential safety risks to consumers.”

In March alone, FDA reported several major thefts:

* On March 14, Eli Lilly and Company reported one of the largest known drugs thefts. Cases of antidepressants and anti-psychotics were stolen from a Lilly distribution center located in Enfield, Conn., when thieves cut through a warehouse roof and rappelled down, deactivated a sophisticated alarm, picked up drugs valued at about $75 million and fled.
* The day before, 5,000 cases of Mead Johnson Nutrition’s infant formula products were stolen from a truck stop in Richwood, Ky.
* On March 3, generic over-the-counter products worth $400,000 were stolen from a truck near Dallas.

It is not just the cargo movers and warehouse that are targeted.

Last year, Orlando, Fla., police busted 21 people for stealing millions of dollars of baby formula – worth $25 to $46 a can – off the shelves of grocery, drug, big-box and discount stores in four counties. What’s worse, according to police statements at the time, the thieves changed the expiration dates on many of the cans before selling them at flea markets and on eBay.FDA_pharma

Some of the stolen loot is intercepted by Customs agents and major U.S. ports, but more frequently nefarious brokers will offer the bogus goods on the internet.

The biggest worry is that these stolen products, once reintroduced into the legitimate supply chain, are often accompanied by counterfeit products or products with improperly extended expiration dates.

It’s a frequent occurrence, says Benjamin England, a former FDA special agent and FDA lawyer, who now runs a consulting group called FDAimports.

He explains how the con is run: “Say I steal 250 bottles of an AIDS drug, but sell 500 bottles into the market, with the additional bottles being counterfeit or relabeled with an extended expiration date,” says England. “The stolen product acts as cover for the counterfeit or expired product.” (England said he saw this quite frequently when he was a federal investigator in Miami.)

Many of the criminal gangs in this line of work have concluded that it’s safer than pushing heroin and cocaine.

http://www.thesimpledollar.com

The Simple Dollar: “The Myth of the Tax Deduction” plus 1 more

The Myth of the Tax Deduction

Posted: 11 May 2010 01:00 PM PDT

Most of the time, when I talk about the implications of various debt repayment options on The Simple Dollar, I utterly ignore tax deductions.

This is not an oversight. Usually, it just makes a situation needlessly more complicated and takes the “simple” out of The Simple Dollar.

As is often the case, astute readers email me about this. John, for instance:

Your advice about ordering debts is really way out of line. You should pay off your home mortgage last so you can take advantage of the tax deduction.

Yes, tax deductions can be useful in some situations. Most of the time, though, they’re not much of a help and if you overvalue them, they’ll end up costing you in the long run.

First of all, most people don’t do deductions at all. 70% of tax filers simply use 1040EZ or 1040A for their tax returns, which means that they’re simply taking the standard deduction on their taxes.

If you’re doing that – and 70% of you are – then you’re not claiming a tax deduction for your mortgage or for a lot of other things. The tax implications of whether to pay your mortgage off first or another debt off first means nothing at all.

Beyond that, some of the 30% who do file the full 1040 do so for self-employment reasons and still claim the standard deduction, putting them in that group that is unaffected by deductions.

In a nutshell, if you take the standard deduction, you’re not counting your home mortgage as a deduction, and most Americans are taking the standard deduction.

Second, even if you do claim the deduction, it’s not as enormous as it’s often made out to be. Let’s look at the projected income tax brackets for 2010 and also assume that we’re talking about the average American family, bringing in $66,000 this year with two adults and two children in the household.

This income level puts that family in the 15% tax bracket. This means that if the family were to file long form and itemize their deductions, they would only deduct 15% of their annual mortgage interest from their taxes. In other words, the effective interest rate on their mortgage drops by only 15% when you take this into consideration. A 6% mortgage effectively becomes a 5.1% mortgage, in other words.

But it’s even worse than that.

To actually get that full 15%, you have to actually have other itemized claims that add up to more than the standard deduction for your family. The standard deduction for that family is $11,400. So, to get the full value of that 15%, a family filing with itemized deductions has to top $11,400 in deductions before including their home mortgage at all.

Let me show you what I mean. A couple filing jointly has a standard deduction of $11,400. They have $3,000 in various deductions and $10,000 in mortgage interest, so they’re going to file long form and itemize.

In the end, though, they’re only deducting $1,600 more than they would have with the standard deduction ($13,000 vs. $11,400). Even if you’re generous and say all of that money came from the mortgage, that’s still only a small deduction. If they’re in the 15% tax bracket mentioned above, they’re only saving $240 by filing long form. That’s the equivalent of dropping their 6% mortgage rate down to only 5.856%.

Here’s the truth. For almost all families, cash flow is much more of a day-to-day concern than tax deductions. It’s much more important that you have a low monthly debt load than it is to maximize your tax saving. With a high monthly debt load, you run the risk of going into more debt because of emergencies, and even a little bit of consumer debt taken on to handle those emergencies can quickly devour your “savings” from your deductions (and a lot more).

So, unless you’re very well off and have a strong monthly income, worrying about tax deductions and their impact on your day-to-day life is a bit of a moot point. It doesn’t save you all that much even if you do everything perfectly, and if doing everything “perfectly” means having a lot of monthly debt payments, you’re introducing a lot of risk into your life for relatively little reward.

Of course, credit card and mortgage marketers prefer that you’re in the latter situation. The more debt you’re in that you can handle and keep making the payments, the better off those big banks are because they’re just sitting back and collecting the interest off of you. Thus, they’ll talk up the tax advantages of various debts as much as they can, trying to make them sound like the greatest thing in the world.

You’re far better off having a small debt load and perhaps missing a deduction or two than having a high debt load and getting those deductions. The latter situation puts your whole financial house at risk because if an emergency occurs, you’ll have a very hard time meeting the monthly bills.

If you have a strong income, and are in a situation where you’re claiming lots of deductions anyway, it does become a factor, but if you’re in that situation, you’re in a very lucky and rather small minority of the American public.

Never Cosign a Loan Unless You Want to Pay It Yourself

Posted: 11 May 2010 07:00 AM PDT

One of the most common questions I get is whether or not a person should cosign on someone else’s loan – a car loan, a student loan, or so on.

I have a single response that I always give to this type of question:

You should only co-sign a loan that you’re perfectly happy paying off yourself.

If you would be unhappy with being forced to pay for the loan yourself, then you should not be cosigning that loan.

Here’s why.

First, the reason a lender wants a cosigner on a loan is because they believe that the person they’re lending to has a high likelihood of not paying back the loan. Usually, a person that needs a co-signer is a person with poor credit or, in some cases, a person with no credit history at all. This means that either they’ve never dealt with the ins and outs of paying a loan back before or they’ve attempted it and failed to pay back their obligations.

Second, if that person who the bank has deemed untrustworthy proves the bank to be correct, you’re left holding the bag. Co-signing isn’t just a way to help a friend. It essentially means that you’re hung with the debt if the primary signer decides not to go through with actually repaying the debt.

Third, when you turn a personal relationship into a financial one, you introduce a lot of strain in the personal relationship. If they default on this loan, what will that do to your relationship? It will be very, very hard for the two of you to be as close as you once were.

These three things together make for a dangerous mix. They put your finances at significant risk without any direct benefit to you. You’re betting that someone is reliable when someone else who is not involved has looked at the evidence without emotions clouding their judgment and came to the opposite conclusion.

To put it simply, you’re saying, “Sure, I’ll take on more risk than the bank.” You know, those paragons of financial stability who were quite willing to hand out adjustable rate mortgages like candy and almost tanked the United States economy.

“But I really want to help!” This is often the reason that people use to talk themselves into such large amounts of risk. The person asking for their help is someone who they genuinely want to help and so they let their emotions cloud their judgment and sign away.

Here’s the thing: you can usually help quite a lot without signing on the dotted line.

Offer resources that you can give them. If you want to financially help someone, don’t do it in a way that puts you at risk and don’t enter into a financial arrangement with them that could damage your relationship. Instead, make it a gift. Give them some cash to buy a beater to get back and forth to work or to put a deposit on an apartment. Let them live in your spare room for a few months. If they want to pay you back, let them, but make it clear that you don’t expect repayment.

Offer intangibles. Invest your time in them by driving them to job interviews or taking them around to buy a car. Invest your contacts in them by calling someone you know who can help them get a job. Listen to what they’re talking about and going through and offer your advice and whatever else you can offer.

In other words, offer all the help you can without introducing unnecessary risk into your life. Don’t co-sign, but offer help in every other way you can.

From my perspective, there is one exception to this. I think that the intangibles related to a parent co-signing on a student loan for their freshly graduated child likely add up to more than the risk of signing such loans. In that case, a parent is often a fairly good judge of the situation and if they view the risk of co-signing in this situation as acceptable, it seems to me to simply be an extension of the risks of parenthood.

Chicken-Mushroom Deluxe

1 1/2 cups sliced fresh mushroom
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chopped green pepper
2 tablespoons butter or margarine
1 can (10 3/4 oz) condensed cream of chicken soup, undiluted
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup chopped pimientos
3/4 teaspoon dried basil
1 package (8 oz) rotini pasta, cooked and drained
2 cups ricotta cheese
1 egg
1 1/2 cups (6 oz) shredded Cheddar cheese
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese, divided
3 cups cubed cooked chicken

In a skillet, saute mushrooms, onion and green pepper in butter
until tender. Add soup, milk, pimientos and basil; mix well and
heat through. Place pasta in the bottom of a greased 13x9x2 inch
baking dish. Combine ricotta cheese, egg, cheddar and 1/4 cup Parmesan; spread
over pasta. Top with chicken. Pour sauce over chicken. Sprinkle with remaining
Parmesan. Cover and bake at 350 for 50-55 minutes or until bubbly.

Recipe source: ALIA Cooking Corner yahoo group, submitted by Jackie Austin.

________________________________________________________________________
3. TNT Recipe -— Pork Chops with Parmesan Sauce
Posted by: “Starkoski
Oh my, this was a great recipe! I served it with a baked sweet potato and some applesauce. Yummy! ....and took less than thirty minutes from start to finish!
hugs,
peg

“Moist and tender chops make a speedy and comforting weeknight meal. They’re dressed with a smooth, creamy sauce seasoned with Parmesan, onion and a hint of nutmeg, parsley and thyme. Here’s the new family favorite!”

Pork Chops with Parmesan Sauce
4 Servings Prep/Total Time: 20 min.
Ingredients

4 boneless pork loin chops (4 ounces each)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 cup fat-free milk
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons grated onion
3 teaspoons minced fresh parsley
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
Directions

Sprinkle pork chops with salt and pepper. In a large nonstick skillet
coated with cooking spray, cook chops in butter over medium heat
until meat juices run clear; remove and keep warm.
Combine flour and milk until smooth; stir into pan. Bring to a boil;
cook and stir for 2 minutes or until thickened. Stir in remaining
ingredients; heat through. Serve with chops. Yield: 4 servings.
Nutrition Facts: 1 pork chop with 3 tablespoons sauce equals 244 calories, 11 g fat (5 g saturated fat), 69 mg cholesterol, 475 mg sodium, 7 g carbohydrate, trace fiber, 27 g protein. Diabetic Exchanges: 4 lean meat, 1/2 starch

Recipe source: Taste of Home’s Healthy Cooking Magazine, April/May, 2010, submitted by Healthy Cooking test kitchen.
http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/Pork-Chops-with-Parmesan-Sauce

________________________________________________________________________
4. TNT Recipe -— Lemon Blueberry Muffins
Posted by: “Starkoski

Lemon Blueberry muffins

Ingredients
2 eggs, beaten to blend
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 cup vegetable oil
3 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
1-1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup fresh blueberries

Directions

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Line 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners. Using electric mixer, beat eggs and sugar until pale and thick, about 2 minutes. Add oil in thin stream. Stir in lemon juice and peel.

Sift together 1 cup flour, baking soda, nutmeg, ginger and salt. Mix into
batter. Dredge blueberries in remaining ¼ cup flour. Fold into batter. Pour into prepared tin. Bake until lightly browned, about 25 minutes. Transfer muffins to rack. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Makes 12 muffins.

Recipe source: Cooking with Terry yahoo group, submitted by Terry.

________________________________________________________________________
5. TNT Recipe -— Apricot Nut Bars
Posted by: “Starkoski

Apricot Nut Bars
Gooseberry Patch - Joan White

1 1/2 cups flour
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1/2 cup plus 1 tbsp butter, softened and divided
1/4 cup shortening
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup apricot preserves
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 cup sliced almonds
Combine the flour, powdered sugar, 1/2 cup butter, and the shortening. In a large bowl, beat until well blended. Pat into an ungreased 13x 9 inch baking dish. Bake at 350 F for 18 to 20 minutes or until golden. In a small bowl, beat the egg, sugar, preserves, the remaining butter and the vanilla until smooth. Spread over the hot crust. Sprinkle with the almonds. Bake at 350 F for 15 to 20 minutes. Cool and cut into bars.
Makes between 2 1/2 to 3 dozen bars.

Recipe source: Exchanging Recipes yahoo group, submitted by Jennifer.

________________________________________________________________________
6. TNT Recipe -— Chocolate Chip Carmel Drop Cookies
Posted by: “Starkoski

Chocolate Chip Carmel Drop Cookies

1 c. brown sugar
1 c. oleo or Crisco
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1 c. white sugar
2 eggs
2 3/4 c. flour
1/2 tsp. salt
12 oz. chocolate chips

Mix together all ingredients; add chocolate chips. Bake 375 for 10-12 minutes.

Recipe source: ALIA Cooking Corner yahoo group, submitted by Jackie Austin

________________________________________________________________________
7. Chocolate Puddin’ Pie
Posted by: “GardenFay

Chocolate Puddin’ Pie

from the back of a box of graham crackers

crust:
9 whole Honey Grahams, crushed to 1 1/4 cups crumbs
1/4 cup Sugar
1/4 cup Baking Cocoa powder
6 Tablespoons butter, melted

Filling:
1 1/2 cups Milk
1 package Instant Chocolate pudding mix
1 cup Sour Cream

To Prepare Crust: Butter a 9 inch pie plate. Combine crushed graham
crachers, sugar and cocoa powder. Add belted butter; mix well. Press onto bottom
and sides of the prepared pie place, set aside

To Prepare Filling: Combine milk and pudding mix. Beat one minute or
until thickened. Blend in sour cream then pour into the crust. Chill 2 to 3
hours, or until set Makes 6 to 8 servings.

________________________________________________________________________
8. TNT Recipe -— Snickedoodle Muffins
Posted by: “Starkoski

Snickerdoodle Muffins

2 cups flour
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. cream of tartar
1 tsp. baking soda
1 stick butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
1 Tbs. sugar + 1 tsp. cinnamon for topping
In a bowl, stir together the flour, salt, cream of tartar and baking soda.
In a mixer bowl, cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs. Add the milk and vanilla and mix until well combined. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, just until moistened. Fill muffin cups 2/3 of the way full of batter. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. I just pinched some between my fingers and sprinkled the top of each muffin. Bake at 400 degrees for 15-20 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Recipe source: Michele
http://eatathomecooks.com/2010/05/snickerdoodle-muffins.html
(Check out site for pictures of these muffins)

________________________________________________________________________
9. Crispy Baked Chicken
Posted by: “GardenFay

Crispy Baked Chicken
from the back of a instant potatoes box.

4 boneless, skinless, Chicken Breast
1 cup Instant Mashed potatoes (not made up)
1 1/4 teaspoon Seasoned Salt
6 Tablespoon Butter or Margarine, melted
Cooking spray
Gallon sized plastic Bag

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Rinse chicken in cold water, drain but do
not pat dry. Spray a 15 x 10 x 1 inch baking pan with the cooking spray. In
the plastic bag, combine potato flakes and seasoned salt. Shake to blend.
Pour the melted butter into a small bowl. Coat the Chicken with butter,
Place one piece of chicken in the bag with the seasoned potatoe flakes and
shake well until coated. Place chicken in the baking dish. Repeat with the
remaining chicken pieces. Bake for 30 minutes or until chicken is no longer
pink.

________________________________________________________________________
10. TNT Recipe -— Pecan Cookie Mix in a Jar
Posted by: “Starkoski
Hi....
These cookies are delicious. I wanted to try out the recipe to see if I could put them in my Christmas show....Well....they made the taste test and will be in my Mistletoe Marketplace this year.. I will also make up some jars to put in some of my Christmas baskets!

I do have a few suggestions though..
These cookies do spread out a lot while baking (makes a nice lacey type cookie). I used less batter/cookie (only about a teaspoonful instead of the walnut size ball). I also baked them for about 8-10 minutes instead of the 10-12 minutes. If you do make these up, just be sure to keep your eye on them as they spread very thin and bake quickly.
Enjoy!
hugs,
peg

Pecan Cookie Mix In A Jar

1/2 c sugar
1/2 c firmly packed brown sugar
3/4 c finely chopped pecans
1 c crisp rice cereal
3/4 c flour mixed with 1/2 t baking soda
Layer ingredients; (Makes 3 1/2 cups) in order

Include the following recipe:

Pecan Cookies

Empty contents of the jar into a large mixing bowl. Use your hands to
thoroughly mix. Add: 1 stick soft butter, 1 egg slightly beaten and 1
teaspoon of vanilla. Mix until ingredients are completely blended. You will
need to finish mixing with your hands. Shape the dough into balls the size
of walnuts. Place 2” apart on sprayed cookies sheets. Bake at 350 degrees
for 10-12 minutes, until the edges are lightly browned. Cool for 5 minutes
on a baking sheet. Remove the cookies to racks and allow to cool
completely. (Makes 3 dozen.)

Recipe source: GiftsInAJar yahoo group, submitted by carolsrecipes77.

PEG’S NOTES:
These cookies do spread out a lot while baking (makes a nice lacey type cookie). I used less batter/cookie (only about a teaspoonful instead of the walnut size ball). I also baked them for about 8-10 minutes instead of the 10-12 minutes. If you do make these up, just be sure to keep your eye on them as they spread very thin and bake quickly.

This is another great group owned by *Beth*

To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/all-simple-recipes/

1. Bisquick Heart Smart Easy Garden Bake
Posted by: “violet4622002”

Easy Garden Bake

Bisquick Heart Smart recipe! Fat-free egg product makes an egg bake extra inviting!

Prep Time: 15 min
Total Time: 55 min
Makes: 4 servings

1 cup chopped zucchini
1 large tomato, chopped (1 cup)
1 medium onion, chopped (1/2 cup)
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup Bisquick Heart Smart mix
1 cup fat-free (skim) milk
1/2 cup fat-free egg product or 2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper

Heat oven to 400F. Lightly spray 8-inch square baking dish or 9-inch pie plate with cooking spray. Sprinkle zucchini, tomato, onion and cheese in baking dish.

In medium bowl, stir remaining ingredients until blended. Pour over vegetables and cheese.

Bake uncovered about 35 minutes or until knife inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 5 minutes.

High Altitude (3500-6500 ft): Increase Bisquick mix to 3/4 cup and bake time to 35 to 40 minutes.

Nutrition Information:
1 Serving: Calories 150 (Calories from Fat 30); Total Fat 3 1/2g (Saturated Fat 1 1/2g, Trans Fat 0g); Cholesterol 10mg; Sodium 640mg; Total Carbohydrate 20g (Dietary Fiber 1g, Sugars 7g); Protein 11g Percent Daily Value*: Vitamin A 20%; Vitamin C 8%; Calcium 25%; Iron 8% Exchanges: 1 Starch; 0 Other Carbohydrate; 1 Vegetable; 1 Lean Meat Carbohydrate

________________________________________________________________________
2. Bisquick Nacho Pinwheels
Posted by: “violet4622002”

Nacho Pinwheels
Makes: 6 servings (3 pinwheels each)

3 cups Original Bisquick® mix
3/4 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano leaves
2/3 cup water
2 tablespoons butter or margarine, melted
1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese (4 oz)
Salsa, if desired
Sour cream, if desired

Heat oven to 425°F. Grease cookie sheet with shortening or cooking spray. In large bowl, stir Bisquick mix, chili powder, oregano and water until soft dough forms. Place dough on surface sprinkled with Bisquick mix; gently roll in Bisquick mix to coat. Shape into a ball; knead 10 times.
Roll dough into 18x10-inch rectangle. Brush butter over dough. Sprinkle with cheese. Roll up rectangle tightly, beginning at 18-inch side. Pinch edge into roll to seal. Cut into 18 slices. Place on cookie sheet.
Bake 11 to 13 minutes or until golden brown. Serve warm with salsa and sour cream.

High Altitude (3500-6500 ft): No change.

My other yahoo groups: BisquickRecipes, CookingandBakingMixes, and FavoriteFamilyRecipes

——————————————————————————————————— To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BakingMixes/

http://www.patternliteracy.com/selfreliancemyth.html

The Myth of Self Reliance

Toby Hemenway
posted 1-15-10

A mass emailing went out a while back from a prominent permaculturist looking for “projects where people are fully self sufficient in providing for their own food, clothing, shelter, energy and community needs. . .” There it was, the myth of “fully self sufficient,” coming from one of the best-known permaculturists in the world. In most US permaculture circles, the idea that anyone could be self sufficient at anything past a very primitive level was abandoned a while ago, and the softer term “self reliant” replaced it. But even self-reliance is barely possible, and, other than as way of expressing a desire to throw off the shackles of corporate consumerism, I don’t think it’s desirable.

I took a Googling cruise around the internet and found that “self sufficient” shows up as a desirable goal on several top permaculture websites. I’d like to hammer a few coffin nails into that phrase. My dictionary says that self sufficient means being “able to maintain oneself without outside aid.” Who lives without outside aid? No one. Let’s unpack that a bit further. The meaning of “self sufficient in food” is something most of us can agree on: supplying 100% of your food needs from your own land and efforts. I have never met anyone who has done this. I’m sure there are a few people doing it, but even subsistence farmers usually raise, alongside their food, a cash crop to buy the foods that are impractical for them to grow.

I hear people say they are growing 30%, 50%, even 70% of their own food. What they usually mean is that they are growing fruits and vegetables that make up some percentage of the total cost or weight—but not calories—of their food. Vegetables are high in wet weight, but low in calories. If you are growing 100% of your own vegetables, they provide about 15-20% of your daily calories, unless you are living mostly on potatoes or other starchy veggies. Most daily calories come from grains, meat, or dairy products. So if you’re not raising large-scale grains or animals, it’s unlikely that you are growing more than one-quarter of your own food, measured honestly by nutritional content. In that case, it’s not accurate to claim you are “70% food self sufficient.” If you are getting most of your calories from your land, you’re almost certainly a full-time farmer, and I salute you for your hard work. Now we begin to see how difficult, and even undesirable, self sufficiency is. You won’t have time for much else if you are truly food self sufficient, even in a permaculture system.

But even if you grow all your own food, can you claim you are self sufficient if you don’t grow all your own seeds? Provide all your fertility? Where do your farm tools and fuel come from? Permaculturists understand as well as anyone how interconnected life is. At what point do you claim to be disconnected from the broad human community in anything? Is there really a way to be “fully self sufficient” in food?

Let’s take a quick pass at clothing, shelter and energy. Even if you sew all your clothes, do you grow the cotton, raise the sheep? If you milled all the lumber or dug the stone for your home, did you forge the glass, fabricate the wiring? In the off-the-grid house, what complex community of engineers and factories assembled the solar panels? We’re reliant on all of that.

Claiming self sufficiency in almost anything insults and ignores the mountain of shoulders we all stand on. US permaculturists are a pretty politically correct crew, and it became obvious to some of us that “self sufficient” was not just impossible, but was a slap in the face to all those whose sweat provides for us, and was another perpetuation of the cowboy ethic that puts the individual at the center of the universe. So the term morphed into “self reliance,” to show that we know we are interdependent, but are choosing to be less reliant on others. At its best, self reliance means developing skills to provide for basic needs, so we can stop supporting unethical and destructive industries. But I see much less need for self-reliant people who can do everything themselves, and much more need for self-reliant communities, where not everyone knows how to weave or farm, but there is clothing and food for all.

There is still a deep prejudice in permaculture, as websites and emails show, that doing it all ourselves, and on our own land, is the most noble path. And insofar as our skills make us less dependent on corporate monopolies, developing the abilities that we think of as self-reliant is worth doing. However, the more we limit our lives to what we can do ourselves, the fewer our opportunities are. Each connection outside ourselves enriches us. When we create a web of interdependencies, we grow richer, stronger, safer, and wiser. Why would you not want to rely on others? To fully probe that would take us down a psychological rabbit-hole, but some of it is grounded in a belief that others are unreliable or unethical, and that we weaken ourselves by interdependencies. But the old saying “if you want a job done well, do it yourself” simply shows poor management skills.

If you’re still skeptical, I’ll resort to scripture: a quote from the Book of Mollison, Introduction to Permaculture, page two: “We can also begin to take some part in food production. This doesn’t mean that we all need to grow our own potatoes, but it may mean that we will buy them directly from a person who is already growing potatoes responsibly. In fact, one would probably do better to organize a farmer-purchasing group in the neighborhood than to grow potatoes.”

As veteran permaculture designer Larry Santoyo says, go to the highest generalization to fill your needs. Thinking “I must grow my food” is painfully limited. Thinking “I must satisfy food needs responsibly” opens up a vast array of possibilities, from which you can choose the most stable and appropriate. Individual efforts are often less stable and resilient than community enterprises. And they’re bad design: self-reliance means that a critical function is supported in only one way. If you grow all your food and get hurt, you are now injured, hungry, and watching your crops wither from your wheelchair. That won’t happen in a community farm. And for those worried about an impending collapse of society, the roving turnip-bandits are much more likely to raid your lonely plot while you sleep exhausted from a hard day of spadework, and less likely to attack a garden protected by a crew of strong, pitchfork-wielding farmers who can guard it round the clock.

Creating community reliance gives us yet another application of permacultural zones: Zone zero in this sense is our home and land. Zone one is our connection to other individuals and families, zone two to local commerce and activities in our neighborhood, zone three to regional businesses and organizations, zone four to larger and more distant enterprises. Why would we limit ourselves to staying only in zone zero? We can organize our lives so that our need for zone-four excursions—say, to buy petroleum or metal products—is very limited, while our interactions with the local farmers’ market and restaurants are frequent. This builds a strong community.

Self reliance fails to grow social capital, a truly regenerative resource that can only increase by being used. Why would I not want to connect to my community in every way that I can? If we don’t help fill our community’s needs, there’s more chance that our neighbors will shop at big box stores. An unexamined belief in self reliance is a destructive myth that hands opportunity to those who are taking our community away from us.

If you love being a farmer, then yes, grow all your own food. And sell the rest for the other things you need, in a way that supports your community. But is there really a difference between a farmer exchanging the product of her labor—food—for goods and money, and me selling the product of my labor—education—for goods and money? We both are trading our life energy within a system that supports us, and I’d like to think that we are both making wise ethical choices.

A good permaculture design is one that provides for the inhabitants’ needs in a responsible and ecologically sound manner. But there’s nothing in permaculture that says that it’s important for all yields to come from the owner’s site! If I can accomplish one thing in this essay, it is to smash that myth. Permaculture design simply says that our needs and products need to be taken care of responsibly in our design, not on our own land. That design can—and must—include off-site connections. If you are an acupuncturist whose income is provided by your community and you are getting most of your needs met from mostly local sources you believe to be ethical, then that’s excellent permaculture design. Your design will be stronger if your needs and products are connected to many off-site elements and systems.

It’s very permacultural to develop skills that will connect you more deeply to land, home, and community. And sometimes the skills that we gained in search of self reliance are the same ones we need to be more community-reliant. But self reliance, as a goal in itself, is a tired old myth that needs to die. It’s unpermacultural.

http://www.patternliteracy.com/beyondwilderness.html

Seeing the Garden in the Jungle

Beyond Wilderness

(Published in Permaculture Activist No. 51)

Lately I’ve been lucky enough to teach permaculture courses on the Big Island of Hawai’i at La’akea Gardens. And at each course an odd thing happens. First, let me point out that La’akea generates all its own solar electricity, collects its water from rooftop catchment, uses composting toilets, recycles greywater, sheet mulches copiously, and has a mature food forest (intercropped with nitrogen-fixing trees, of course) hung so heavily with fruit that in five minutes I can fill a five-gallon bucket, in season, with avocados, citrus, abiu, papayas, or spike-skinned rolinias. And don’t get me started on all the different varieties of bananas and timber bamboo.

But regularly I hear new students or visitors say, “I’m disappointed that La’akea isn’t doing much permaculture.” The first few times that happened, I just stood there with my jaw hanging open, wondering how someone could miss something so obvious. However, I’ve finally figured out why people feel that way. It’s because La’akea doesn’t have many garden beds full of vegetables. And food is at the center of most people’s concept of permaculture. An obvious garden bursting with tomatoes, lettuce, and other favorite veggies screams “food production!” in a recognizable, comforting way. To the untrained eye, even one in the middle of an off-the-grid, food-forest paradise, no vegetables equals no permaculture. It’s a preconception so firmly ingrained that it takes the first few days of a tropical design course to shake it loose. But vegetables—especially familiar temperate ones like broccoli, lettuce, and peas—can be difficult to raise in the tropics. Other foods, such as tubers and tree crops, are much easier and more appropriate to grow.

Novice permaculturists aren’t the first to visit the tropics and mistake a lack of garden beds for a lack of food production. Until the late 20th century, western anthropologists studying both ancient and current tropical cultures viewed equatorial agriculture as primitive and inefficient. Archeologists thought the methods were incapable of supporting many people, and so believed Central and South America before Columbus—outside of the major civilizations like the Aztec, Maya, and Inca—held only small, scattered villages. Modern anthropologists scouted tropical settlements for crop fields—the supposed hallmark of a sophisticated culture—and, noting them largely absent, pronounced the societies “hunter gatherer, with primitive agriculture.” How ironic that these scientists were making their disdainful judgements while shaded by brilliantly complex food forests crammed with several hundred carefully tended species of multifunctional plants, a system perfectly adapted to permanent settlement in the tropics. It just looks like jungle to the naive eye.

Even those westerners who recognized the fantastic productivity of these tropical homegardens still had nothing good to say about the underlying rotational pattern that maintained fertility in tropical soils, the much maligned slash-and-burn system. I remember, as a grade-schooler, being taught this concept in words that soured my mouth: Ignorant villagers burn a patch of beautiful tropical forest, plant some annual crops, ruin the soil in just a few years of brutish scratching, and then are forced by their own stupidity to move to another section of virgin rain forest and burn it down in turn. The image combined the worst aspects of nomadic rootlessness, plundering of nature, and subhuman consciousness. Oh, the stupid savages!

As is often the case, the truth is far different. Slash-and-burn, technically referred to as swidden-fallow, has undergone a rehabilitation comparable to that of Stalin’s discredited dissidents when perestroika swept Russia. For swidden-fallow agriculture turns out to be a model for sustainable living in both tropical and temperate lands. Far from being a system of burning, depleting the soil, and walking away, it is a careful and complex form of high-yield permanent husbandry that yields diverse resources from a single patch for decades. Few anthropologists had the mindset, the patience, or a grant cycle lengthy enough to notice that the supposedly abandoned plots were anything but.

The word fallow—to rest a piece of land from cultivation—is familiar to most of us. Swidden, a less-encountered word, means a plot temporarily cleared of cover by burning. The details of the system vary across the tropics, so let’s look at a few examples.

Beyond the Three Sisters

The Lacandon, Ketchi, Huastec, and other Maya of Central American practice an intricate sequential agroforestry on plots called milpas that includes the famed trio of corn, beans, and squash. Since the process is a cycle, I must pick an arbitrary beginning point. We’ll start with the clearing of a fallowed plot. The farmers cut down most of the trees on a site, but spare many nitrogen fixers, timber trees, and good firewood species. Then they fire the remaining brush. The burning coats the soil with nutrient-rich ash, and cures the firewood trees, which are cut and later carried home on the return leg of planting visits.

Corn, beans, and squash fill much of the milpa the first two years or more, but after the first harvest, the farmers dig in seedlings of bananas, papayas, guavas, and other fruit trees, and interplant them with manioc, tomatoes, chiles, herbs, spices, other favorite food and fiber plants, and some native forest seedlings. Nitrogen-fixing and firewood tree seedlings (such as Gliricidia, which is both) weave a border around the plot. The three sisters and other annuals cover the remaining ground for a few more seasons, but over the next five to eight years, the fruit-tree canopy closes in, and the farmers stop planting annuals. That activity shifts to a new plot, but meanwhile, back at the milpa . . . new cycles begin. By now most anthropologists have gone home and are missing the rest of the picture.

In some spots, farmers pull out a few non-flowering trees and bring in beehives. They also coppice trees known to stump-sprout (often leguminous) and begin growing firewood or craftwood. The tree fruits attract game animals, which supply meat, skins, and feathers. Cattle, tied to large trees, forage amid the greenery. Some of the other originally spared trees become trellises for vanilla beans and other vines, which yield for 10 to 12 years. Fruit rains down.

About this time, when the canopy is furiously spreading to complete closure, the farmers begin directing the milpa toward its final stage in the cycle, the managed forest. Sometimes they’ll choose a particular set of tree species to spare: palms, or timber trees, or certain fruits, and develop a plantation or orchard. But more often they’ll nudge the milpa toward a heterogeneous and seemingly haphazard assortment of lightly cultivated trees enriched with useful understory species. This is what is usually called “fallow,” although these managed forests are yielding plenty.

The managed forests of the Huastec Maya in northeastern Mexico are packed with up to 300 plant species, including 81 species for food, 33 for construction materials, 200 with medicinal value, and 65 with other uses (the numbers add up to more than 300 since these are multifunctional plants). In these forests, Maya farmers often create different subpatches that concentrate specific guilds of domestic species (such as coffee guilds) amid a background of natives. And all the while, they are tucking small gardens of bananas, chiles, manioc, and other edibles into any clearings. The managed-forest stage may last for 10 to 30 years. Then the cycle begins anew. Since the whole process is rotational, any given area will hold swiddens and fallows at all different phases. This complexity would understandably delude a cornfield-programmed anthropologist into thinking he was looking at raw jungle.

Food Forests of the Bora

This sort of farming is widespread throughout the tropics. I’ll briefly give another example from the Bora Indians of eastern Peru in the Amazon Basin. The Bora clear small plots of forest, one-half to two acres in size, with axes and machetes. Again, they spare valuable timber and other useful trees such as palm and cedar. After drying for a couple of weeks, the fallen plants are burned. Next, the crops go in. The staple is manioc—the Bora cultivate 22 varieties of sweet and bitter manioc. Among the manioc they plant pineapple, corn, rice, peppers, cowpeas, bananas, peanuts, coca, and medicinal herbs. Clustered on higher ground are guava, avocados, cashews, peach palm, breadfruit, and many other fruit trees less familiar to us. Manioc and other annuals are replanted for several years, but by three years, the canopy cover reaches 30% and the annuals slow down. The fruit trees are beginning to yield.

By the time the swidden is six years old, the trees are crowded, so some are thinned out for timber or firewood. Others are coppiced. A few patches of coca and peanuts remain in deliberate small clearings, but elsewhere the canopy is completely closed. Over the next few years, the swidden is tweaked toward the orchard-fallow phase by selective cutting. For the next decade or two, food comes mostly from large breadfruit, palm, and macambo trees, while other species are used for thatch and timber. The Bora also take game and edible grubs from the maturing forest. Twenty to 40 years after the first clearing, the Bora begin the cycle again.

Both of these systems, and other similar techniques in Indonesia, the Philippines, Africa, and other tropic locales, show an intelligent blending of human stewardship with natural succession. After all, clearing a forest is hard work—why replant annuals every year when you can plant trees and be rewarded over twenty years instead of one? Combined with intensely cultivated dooryard gardens and occasional permanent cropland, the swidden-fallow system offers renewable resources over the long term. It’s not time-consuming work, either: People using these practices spend no more than two hours a day tending their plants. With food taken care of, only a couple more hours a day need be spent obtaining life’s other necessities, leaving plenty of time for leisure and art. Not a bad life.

Discovery of these immensely productive food forests has forced anthropologists to revise upward their guesses of how densely populated the Americas were before Columbus. And with their eyes now opened, they overturned another myth. We’ve all been told how terrible the Amazonian soil is: cut down the trees and you’re left with nothing. But at least 10%—possibly much more—of the Amazon Basin (an area the size of France) is covered with a rich black earth called terra preta. Terra preta soils hold their nutrients even in tropical downpours, and are rich with soil life. They seem to regenerate themselves, and were used by Amazonian Indians to inoculate less fertile soils, kick-starting nutrient cycles. They also last for many centuries. And terra preta, scientists have finally agreed, is human-made. Using nitrogen-fixing trees, permanent crop cover, deep mulching, manure, and other techniques so familiar to permaculture, the Amazonians built feet-thick soil over much of the basin.

Earth as a Garden

As researchers examine the Amazon more carefully, it appears that huge areas contain not only wild plants, but have been stocked with people-friendly cultivars of useful species. More and more, it looks as if the Amazon, like much of the Americas, was a carefully cultivated garden before the Europeans showed up and abused it into a thicketed wilderness. It appears that our idea of wilderness—black forest so dense you can barely walk, where people “take only photographs and leave only footprints”—is a notion burned into our psyches during an anomalous blip: the first two centuries following the Mayflower, in which the gardeners who had tended the Americas for millennia were exterminated, leaving the hemisphere to descend into an neglected tangle of “primeval forest.” It’s likely that this so-called intact forest had never existed before, since humans arrived here as soon as the glaciers receded and began tending the entire landmass with fire and digging stick. The first white explorers describe North America’s forests as open enough to drive wagons through. Two centuries later these agroforests had deteriorated to the black tangles immortalized by Whitman and Thoreau.

Wilderness may be merely a European concept imposed on a depopulated and abandoned landscape. The indigenous people of the Americas were master terraformers, using a hard-learned understanding of ecological processes to preserve the fundamental integrity of natural systems while utterly transforming the land into a place where humans belonged and could thrive. They were truly a part of nature, and likely did not make a distinction, as environmentalists do, between land where people belong and land where we do not. I’ll certainly agree that people carrying chainsaws and riding bulldozers don’t belong everywhere. But I’m beginning to think that gardeners, with gentle tools and sensitive spirits, have been and might again be the best planetary land managers the Earth can have.

Bibliography

Alcorn, JB, 1990. Indigenous Agroforestry Systems in the Latin American Tropics, in Agroecology and Small Farm Development, Altieri M, and Hecht, SB eds.

Denevan, WM et al, 1984. Indigenous Agroforestry in the Peruvian Amazon. Interciencia 9:346-355.

Mann, CC, 2002. 1491. Atlantic Monthly, March 2002:41-54.

www.patternliteracy.com

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