Product Review Monday

This week's product review features two books.

This first book is a cookbook I've had since, I think, my college days (early 1980s) entitled "More-with-Less Cookbook." Published by a Mennonite publishing house, it features recipes that are simple, basic, easy to follow, and emphasize food as a resource that is to be treasured, not squandered.

This cookbook has been reprinted over and over since its initial publishing date in 1976, and in fact has sold more than a million copies ... with good reason. The late author, Doris Longacre, was a passionate advocate for reducing world hunger, and this cookbook is a reflection of that passion. It's an excellent resource for those who want easy recipes with wholesome, basic ingredients. The book contains hundreds of economical recipes that makes meat optional. "More-with-Less Cookbook" should be a staple in every frugal person's kitchen.

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Don's book recommendation this week is a little unorthodox, but in a great way: The "Boy Scouts Handbook," a reprint of the first edition in 1911.

Don writes:

I've had a copy of this book for years. Not an original, but a reprint like the one offered by Amazon.

If you want to see what boys were learning to do back in the early 1900s, this is for you. I don't mean to put down the young men of today's scouting, but we seem to have lost something truly important.

Anyway, this is a great book just for casual perusal. Enjoy!

(Obligatory disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Affiliate, if you purchase through those links, we earn a small commission.)

(Don't forget: A complete list of all our book and product recommendations are linked here and at the upper-right column of the blog.)

Scary videos

Recently I saw a compendium of short (perhaps ten seconds apiece) videos showing Ring camera footage of house cats chasing away bears that got too close to babies on porches. That may seem like a very specific category, but there you go. I couldn't locate the original collection I watched, but you can see a few of them in these YouTube shorts:

• Here

• Here

• Here

• Here

There were more, but you get the idea.

It wasn't until I started wondering just how many stupid parents were leaving their babies unattended on porches that I noticed the fleeting logo floating around the screen:

I wouldn't have paid attention to this logo except by chance, just the day before, Older Daughter had shown me a video with the same jumping logo and explained how "Sora" is the automatic logo placed on AI videos created by Open AI. Specifically, "Sora is an AI model that can create realistic and imaginative scenes from text instructions," according to the website. Older Daughter also mentioned how some people are trying to scrub the logo by glossing over it, so if you see a video with random blurry blotches jumping around, it's the logo that's been removed.

Keep in mind that Open AI is free. There are other AI video programs that cost money, but put out a superior product (and presumably don't have a telltale logo jumping around on the screen). But even with the free program, you must admit these videos are awesomely realistic – and in that realism, they're terrifying. What happens when the video doesn't depict a heroic cat saving a baby? What happens, instead, when kindly Mr. Smith down the road is shown shoplifting from the nearby corner store? Or worse?

"Show me the man and I'll show you the crime" was a chilling statement variously attributed to Stalin or other Soviet-era miscreants. Artificial intelligence offers tools to achieve this in a way the Stalinists could only dream of.

Those cute cat videos aren't so cute after all.

Vultures as archeologists

I saw two back-to-back articles (here and here, with the original paper published here) on the subject of bearded vulture nests being used as a source of archeological treasures. Fascinating.

It seems bearded vultures, an Old World species, have nests that go back generations. Some of these nests, in fact, go back centuries. Biologists are learning that sometimes, over the course of time, the vultures have incorporated things in the construction or reinforcement of their nests that are of archeological interest. As a result, scientists have started examining these nests with a closer eye.

In northern Spain, archeologists found over 200 human artifacts, including a  650-year-old sandal made from woven twigs and grasses. Other finds include bits of rope, a crossbow bolt with a wooden lance, a slingshot, and bits of leather. How cool is that?

For obvious reasons, the scientists are only examining nests that are no longer in use, since they must tease them apart layer by layer. Since the vultures often nest in cliff caves, the cool, dry microclimates have proven to be perfect for preserving artifacts for centuries.

Nature is amazing.

The firewood is finished

This time of year, a critical fall chore in rural areas is to get firewood put up for the winter. In the Lewis household, this chore often falls on me since I don't mind splitting and stacking, and it frees Don up to do more complicated projects.

I started by assessing our woodshed in mid-August. This space was mostly empty and had accumulated a variety of things we tucked in to keep them out of the rain over the spring and summer, including the oversized canvas umbrella I used while picking blueberries.

Also – and crucially – in the woodshed was located the manual hydraulic log splitter. Our gas-powered log splitter had been stranded on the other side of the property with a flat (actually, destroyed) tire, so through late spring we had been using the manual splitter to split firewood.

Late last fall, we had ordered a few extra cords of firewood to supplement what we already had on hand, just in case it was needed to get us over the winter. As it turned out, the firewood was fairly green (not dry) and the splits were huge, far too large to fit into our stove. In short, the entire delivery would have to be resplit, and even then the wood was too green for effective use unless the stove was already very hot.

We tried to make the best of it by stacking some of the smaller pieces in the woodshed, but soon gave up. The wood pieces were simply too large and too green  to use. So the majority of the pile sat there, tarped but unstacked, all winter long. Over the summer we untarped the pile to let the wood dry out, which it did very nicely.

Now that I was tasked with firewood, the first thing I did was examine the wood that was already in the woodshed, much of which was too large to burn (but at least it was dried out).

I used the manual log splitter to split it down to size...

...then restacked everything. I concentrated on stacking everything as tightly as possible, and up to the absolute rafters.

Meanwhile we finally got a replacement tire on the (gas-powered) log splitter, so we towed it around to the front of the house, and I settled in to resplit the cords of firewood that had been drying out for the last year.

I kept the canvas umbrella in the woodshed, since at this point (late August) I was still harvesting blueberries and needed it for shade.

The blueberries finally petered out, so I moved the umbrella back into the barn and started stacking firewood in earnest.

Once the pile of wood was resplit and all stacked up, we started moving miscellaneous wood from the barn side of the house to the front where the log splitter was. These were rounds that had been harvested from dead trees we'd taken down.

We loaded these into a box Don built to go on the back of the tractor, and pulled them around to the log splitter.

This left me with plenty more wood to split.

Some of the rounds were enormous. These were the monsters we tried to tackle with the manual log splitter without success. The gas-powered splitter conquered them with very little effort.

As the weeks went by, I split and stacked everything I could lay my hands on. It was my goal to get that woodshed stuffed to the brim.

Row by row, I built up our supply.

However when everything we had on hand was split, we were well short of that goal of having a stuffed woodshed. So ... we ordered one more cord of rounds, just to fill in the gaps.

Splitting that last cord only took two or three days of working a couple hours at a time.

Second-to-last row...

As I wound down on the splitting, I was also playing a game with how much gas was left in the log splitter. I wanted to use it all up so we wouldn't have to drain the splitter before putting it away for the winter. But it was a fine balance, because I wanted to use that gas power to split the bigger rounds. So I pulled every remaining large round out of the pile...

...and carted them over to the splitter.

As it turned out, the gas in the splitter ran out just as I finished splitting the largest rounds. So I turned to the manual splitter to finish the batch.

And that was it for splitting.

I had an enormous pile of split wood needing to be stacked. The question was how much of it would fit into the shed. All? Most? Would there still be room in the shed?

I stacked and stacked. When each row reached the top of the shed, I played Tetris to see how many wood pieces I could shove into any available opening.

Almost finished...

Success! The woodshed is filled side to side, back to front, top to bottom. Based on the dimensions, Don calculates that we have almost five cords of wood, plenty to get us through even the harshest of winters. To me, a full woodshed is a thing of beauty.

There was a fair bit of leftover firewood. It took three loads in the Gorilla cart...

...and I stacked it on the back porch. This will be the first firewood we use this winter.

Now it was time for the cleanup. I had been tossing kindling-sized pieces into a pile...

...so I gathered them up and put them in a bin on the back porch for easy access.

I raked up the bark and other debris...

...and loaded it into the Gorilla cart. I pulled the cart into the pasture to dump it in a pile to be composted down. The cows instantly came to investigate. "Is it edible?"

This left the area in front of the woodshed nice and tidy. We'll tuck the log splitter away shortly.

The very last thing we'll do is hang a tarp loosely over the front of the woodshed to discourage rain and snow from blowing onto the wood. But for now – the firewood is finished!

Freezer abundance

I needed to find something in our chest freezer the other day. As chest freezers tend to be, it was quite disorganized. I knew the item I needed was located waaaaay down at the bottom, so I was prepared for a deep dive.

But as I moved things aside, I realize just how much in the freezer came from our own efforts. I pushed aside dozens of packages of beef (cube steaks, tenderloin, ground beef), sliced strawberries, diced garlic waiting to be canned, homemade ricotta pizza sauce made from our own milk, bags of frozen green onions, bags of blueberries also waiting to be canned, and rolls of butter.

What a blessing to live on a homestead.

Product Review Monday

This week's book review is entitled "Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things" by Charles Panati.

This is a wonderful volume combining trivia and history with the fun of a treasure hunt. If you're curious about the origins of such varied things as Kleenex, Little Red Riding Hood, the bikini, or cologne, this is the book for you. Each entry ranges from one to two pages, and makes (ahem) wonderful bathroom reading. "Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things" is highly recommended.

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This week's product review is something Don and I use, literally, every day.

To back up ... over the years, we've each had favorite coffee/tea mugs that have come and gone. The biggest issue for me was keeping my tea hot enough for my taste, so as it cooled I often turned to the microwave to zap it hotter. I like BIG MUGS, so finding something big enough that was also zapable in the microwave was a challenge. I didn't especially like zapping my tea (or Don his coffee), but we couldn't think of any better alternative.

Don's not a tea drinker and I'm not a coffee drinker, so it makes no sense to have either a coffee pot or a tea pot in the house. So, for years, we just zapped our way through the mornings.

Then one day about eight years ago, a friend came to visit and he spent the night. In the morning he poured his coffee into something we'd never seen before: A French-press travel mug made by the incomparable Stanley.

Instantly Don and I knew this was the solution to our zapping woes. Stanleys are famously durable (Don still has a thermos from the 1970s in perfect condition), and here was something likely to keep our beverages piping hot far, far longer than our ceramic or plastic mugs. We each ordered one.

And. Oh. My. These mugs have surpassed every expectation and we've never looked back. Neither of us has had to zap our beverages in the microwave ever since (which is good, since the mugs are metal!).

While the mugs come with screw-on lids with a flip top for traveling, we seldom use them because we seldom travel. Don uses his French press every day...

...but over time I graduated to a tea strainer for mine, which fits just inside the mug and which I remove once the tea is steeped.

Without the lids, these mugs keep our beverages piping hot for about an hour, which is about how long it takes us to slowly drink them. With the lid on, the coffee or tea is effectively in a thermos, and so will stay hot for hours.

Folks, these French-press Stanleys were some of our best buys ever. For $36, these sturdy mugs are likely to last us the rest of our lives. Can't beat that!

(Obligatory disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Affiliate, if you purchase through those links, we earn a small commission.)

(Don't forget: A complete list of all our book and product recommendations are linked here and at the upper-right column of the blog.)

Prepping the wood cookstove for winter

As we prepare for winter, one vital task was to clean out the wood cookstove. As our primary heat source, it's essential to make sure it's operating at peak efficiency and peak safety. (We don't want any chimney fires!)

So this morning, we detached the pipe from the stove inside the house. Then Don gathered up the chimney brush and handle pieces...

...and climbed onto the roof. He removed the pipe cap and scrubbed the inside of the pipe, while I held a plastic bag at the bottom of the pipe inside the house to catch falling ash.

(Before climbing down from the roof, Don also went around and cleaned out all the gutters.)

After reconnecting the pipe to the stove, I got busy cleaning out the stove. Ash tends to build up on the various surfaces inside the unit, so that's what I was removing.

The stove comes with a cleanout hatch under the oven, secured by wingnuts.

The stove manufacturers include a custom-made long-handled tool to scrape the ash from the farthest corners of the stove guts and pull it out the hatch.

I catch the ash in a metal bucket. I'm operating blind during this procedure, groping around the interior of the stove with the scraper, so periodically I stop, shine a flashlight into the depths, and see what pockets of ash I might have missed. After about 20 minutes of scraping, however, I've removed about 95 percent.

Then I turn my attention to the wood box, where the actual firewood is placed when the stove is lit.

It's through the wood box that I can access the top of the oven box, and scrape off the ash.

Once that's done, I clean out the wood box, which all falls into the ash bucket in the compartment below. I carefully pour the ash into the metal bucket (carefully, so fine ash doesn't poof up and coat everything around me). Once that's done, I clean out the compartment that holds the ash bucket.

Dirty work!

Then I gave everything around the stove a good vacuuming, and used a damp cloth to wipe down the stove itself (top and sides). All pretty!

I ended up dumping the ash into one of our 30-gallon tubs for easier transport to the compost pile. You can see how much ash I cleaned out. (It goes without saying that I would never dump hot ash into a plastic tub. This ash is left over from last spring, so obviously it's stone-cold.)

Now the stove is all set for cold weather, though we'll repeat this cleaning process a few more times over the course of the winter.

I absolutely stinkin' love this wood cookstove. After some mid-winter power outages during the early days in our new home, when we were forced to huddle around a propane heater, we knew installing a non-electric heat source was a priority.

Besides, the wood cookstove bakes a mean pie.