My father is 87 and still strong – especially in mind. He has clear memories back to his maternal grandfather (born 1861) and the way of life they had, and then his father through World War I, and of course what my parents went through at school, during the Depression (which hit Australia extremely hard too), World War II, and the raising of their family through the 50s and 60s boom.

He is part of the Greatest Generation, and he is not that unusual (well in some ways he is exceptional, not just through longevity) in his broad range of skills, independence, knowledge, but above all, his sense of community and a belief in a social good. He also dragged himself out of the working class, and now lives in old age quite comfortably with my mother. But they have never retreated to a individualism that is the dominant theme today – they are curious and interested in the world, and in old-fashioned values such as self-responsibility, justice, equality, and fairness.

We occasionally have long talks about the way the world has changed – at all sorts of levels. He is a total believer in Peak Oil, but equally, just about Peak Everything. The world may change incrementally, but by some measures the world has changed at lightning speed during his lifetime (1920 – ). He is a guy who can still use a wide range of beautiful hand tools, but is also quite au fait with the Internet – and everything in between.

He bemoans (as I do) the destruction of community caused by the motor car – and while he acknowledges the enormous freedom mass car ownership has afforded, he is very critical of the neglect of public transport, and the spread of suburban sprawl outwards from every city. Along with the neglect of public transport, there has been a major change in his mind – a neglect of the commonweal on just about every level.

He reserves his greatest criticisms for wars – especially resource wars. His (our) whole family has been dramatically affected by war – over many generations – and his strong anti-Vietnam stances were almost career-threatening at the time (he was a life long schoolteacher and then college lecturer). His greatest contribution to his small circle has been his long-standing resistance to mindless consumerism, and he and my mother both quietly shake their heads watching the rampant spending of their grandchildren, and all their friends.

They see the wealth these young people enjoy, but understand intuitively (and to some extent analytically) that it is simply not sustainable for very long. They are aware that the massive paradigm shifts will occur after their lifetime, but in some ways it is ironic. If the world did change dramatically while they were alive – it is in fact their generation that would clearly be best equipped to deal with it. Much better than my cohort (baby boomers), and certainly more than the iPod, plasma screen, jet-setting younger generation. Interesting – and scary – times indeed.

The APEC Summit concluded in Sydney on Sunday – and energy issues were virtually absent, despite the presence of Australia (as host), USA, China, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and so on. It is as if the whole world cannot emerge from the denial – to do so publicly would bring it all down in ways that are too unpredictable to be allowable.

Actually you only wasted two hours less of sunlight than you usually waste. Still much better than me and most of the developed world's residents. Today, American's will probably waste about 250 million days of sunlight (or person days or sunlight). Same tomorrow. This is great reminder of how society does have a huge numbers of options for more efficient use of energy resources. They just never occured to us when energy was cheap and easy.

Nate,

Your father follows an old American tradition of discovery.

Chris

I thought your key-post as initially presented (at least to me) was rather lean, and even truncated. I quite liked it - leaving it to the reader to fill in all the gaps relating to the tomato-cooking process and discussions with your father. It is now much more normal-looking of course.

I admire all your hard work!

Have you found a way to process and store tomatoes that doesn't involve using a freezer? It seems like the energy used in keeping them frozen might offset the savings from the sun cooker.

http://science.reddit.com/info/2o6by/comments

if you are so inclined...

and, erm, sorry about the ol' autopost there Nate. :)

Nice little article, and I enjoyed the photos. Although I wasn't aware that heirloom tomatoes were the cause of Furryfoot Syndrome (FS). You really should have that looked at.

Perhaps you've awakened in your father an instinct of self-sufficiency which I suspect is dormant (and deeply, in most cases) in the Baby Boom generation. Kids these days.

BTW, growing herbs is about as easy as gardening gets. Grow your own oregano, basil, and thyme for your tomato concoction. Tip: a dash of basalmic vinegar into the mix adds a great flavor (and makes non-pressure canning more comfortable).

A local TV show demonstrated how to make a year's
supply of pasta sauce
http://www21.sbs.com.au/vasilisgarden/index.php?pid=recipes&active_ancho... without vacuum sealing.

Bravo to you Mister Nate Hagens.

We really are all a bunch of whining hypocrites in this easy world of easy toil, energy, and of easier indebtful inductions of monetary solutions.

I have grown many a tomato on a smallscale humble effort of a few acres- selling 10 bushel at a time at the local stores and farmers markets every week.

In hindsight, my problems began when I green revolutionized my patch of dirt with fertilizer. I have disease problems now. Things were rotated well enough. Now I grow less tomatos and more broccoli. Tomatos transmit diseases through the ground more so than other plants it seems. I am not an ag engineer, I have just observed this with my own dirtpatch. I also suspect that G-M seeds has something to do with it.

I however doubt the oldschool needed a funny munny brandishing to observe what worked and what did not....And I doubt it will be the collective funny munny abilities of sumthin' fer nuthin' mentalities much beyond thee eventualities of physics of no other choice that remotely solves problems.

When I was about 8 years old in the early 70's, my papa had some off cambered schemery of producing a solar water heater...Pretty far out there for this po-dunk neck of the woods in that era. He built this rather large solar device with hopes of alleviating the fuel oil cost for heating the home. It was in the shape of a triangle. I would guess about 20'x 8' with a hollow center containing a hand molded fiberglass tank to store the water in. On the Southerly facing side of this triangulated structure was the business end of the operation....lolol. It was covered in used Anderson windowall sliding door panels, and underneath those panes of double walled glass panels were verticle strips of many water veins...The veins were made from aluminum downspouts flattened by the rear tires of our Simplicity garden tractor, and then painted black...( I can still vividly picture my father aligning the downspout sections on the cement while older brother backed over them with the lawnmower.

It worked quite well. On any sunny day it made 180 degree hot water in cold Michigan. In hindsight, the ratios of the holding tank were all wrong and, the engineering spark of my father left for more pressing concerns of supporting a wife and 3 kids. The middle kid used the unfunctioning north side of the long defunct wooden solar triangle structure to bounce tennis balls off from as to gain better baseball reflexes.

Ive got a newer plot of more fertile ground to try the tomato growing again, and I am kinda getting a burr in my ass to construct a windmill with solar collection on the rotating blades. :o)

Takecare TOD. The hope, and infinity of the human world is always making mistakes. And yet the persistence to carry on learns from them.

Tomatoes are weeds. Weed being defined as any plant my wife can't kill by cultivating it. We don't have a problem with too many tomatoes. My golden retriever eats them off the vine when they are ripe.

RobertInSantaBarbara

I haven`t escaped from reality. I have a daypass.

Your father sounds like a very cool man, with a perspective that could only come from living through the momentous events that have transpired during his long life so far. And I'm glad you're open to receive that message despite the frustrations he may express with you over your messages to him about the changes that peak oil will bring.

It also sounds like you could use a solar dehydrator. They are easy to construct, and could remedy your vegetable and fruit over-abundance easily, and provide you with plenty during your long winter months. I do my share of canning and freezing, but nothing beats the sun for long-term preservation. And some fruits (e.g. peppers and tomatoes) actually taste better after dehydration.

The whole discussion of home gardening brings out a bit of mixed memories for me....

My grandfather lived in what to this day would have to be viewed as the most "complete collapse" proof place I have ever seen to this date...

He had a creek behind him, a freshwater spring on the property, raised and killed pigs, cows, and chickens and of course harvested his own eggs, and he and my grandmother gardened and canned or root cellered such a variety of vegatables that it was like eating at restuarant.
At one time there was even a waterwheel on the creek that was used for grinding grain, and the county newspaper was printed on the farm in the early part of the 20th century using a hand press!

He had two mules and used them for work well into the 1960's as draft animals. He blacksmithed, and could work with iron, and was an excellent carpenter, building his own barn and chicken coop. I have not been able to this day to find anyone who had a lifestyle that was more "self sufficient".

Alas, he was also very poor. He had no health insurance, no retirement investments. Like most of the male members of my family, he suffered from hereditary hypertension, which went untreated his whole life until he suffered a disabling stroke in his '70's. His medical care was then provided by the state, and he had never even paid in the required 40 quarters to be eligable for social security.

There is a price to be paid for not being engaged in your own culture.

My fondest memories of home gardening were in the 1970's....when Rodale press published a newsletter called "The Cornucopia Project" predicting by the 1980's that the American agriculture transport and production system would collapse due to the coming collapse of energy availability. Many people I knew took up gardening, They bought the old "Foxfire" books, and tryed to learn to can and use root cellers.

In 1982 the oil price was what collapsed, and the "survival gardeners" became hobby gardeners, bought an SUV to be able to haul the garden supplies, and a Troy Built tiller that had more horsepower and used more fuel per acre than my granddads first tractor.

I have never seen stats done, but it is almost certain that the 1970's gardening boom cost the country more in fuel, fertilize, and money than it ever made, probably a net energy sink compared to buying store food.

But it got folks out in the sun! :-)

RC

Nate,

You might want to try solar canning for next year's tomatoes. I have an SOS sport and I have done lots of canning with it. It takes about 4 hours to do 2-3 quarts in the summer sun. Eleanor Shimeall's book will tell you how to do it. Cherries also are excellent canned this way.

http://solarcooking.org/canning1.htm

Some peak-oil thinkers and others (inluding, at the extreme, the survivalists among them) often express the desirability of learning to "grow your own food." This is usually framed in the context of becoming less dependent on the modern food distribution network associated with our petroleum economy. In this post, growing food is presented as beneficial to restoring social bonds that have been badly fragmented in our generation and that will become more important as the systems we take for granted come under increasing stress.

My understanding is that growing vegetables offers only an illusion of increased self-sufficiency, and social bonds could just as effectively be fostered by organizing coloring-book parties. Simply put, human beings do not need vegetables to survive. Humans evolved eating primarily animal protein and animal fat, and this is how we function over time and thrive. A diet without animal protein and animal fat leads to weakness, wasting and sickness, low birth weights, still births and, over time, bone density loss (among other ill effects).

This is why animal husbandry predates grain-based agriculture by many thousands of years - and hunting predates both by many millions (approx 6). Its based on EROEI. A vegetarian in nature would starve before he could obtain his first meal. Spending valuable calories to pick rice or grow tomatoes simply isn't worth the energy return. We moderns would be better served by learning to trap, kill and prepare birds and squirrels.

...though we would eventually succumb to "rabbit starvation" as there isn't enough fat on birds and squirrels (and rabbits) to sustain us either. Maybe we should use our grass lawns to feed goats for their milk. That might do it - if we can keep the grass growing!

Tomatoes are about all we got this year. Vine borers (getting worse over the years) took out all of our squash before they hit a reasonable size (plants and often the fruit).
I've got "boars heart" tomatoes - like San Marzano I believe ( flesh + a bit of thick jelly holding a few seeds together) - skin them, cut them in half and dry them and they're wonderful.
Our solar drier just doesn't work - our black Ford Escort Wagoon gets hotter in the sun and we keep aligning the dehydrator every hour or two to track the sun.
Our Energy Star freezer is around 50W average draw - so $45/year. Putting it into the garage would make a dent in that as it wouldn't turn on much in the fall/winter/spring.
Leeks, squash and eggplant also dry nicely and we had some great camping meals at a canoe-camping trip.
This is the best time of year to go and the time of year when the crops are flooding in.
Everbearing raspberries are just starting again.
As for canning - we're thinking of a pressure canner. The sheer amount of water/energy required for tomato canning (we usually hot-pack as that cuts the water bath time a lot - but there is much to be said for the Italian technique of draining the water and then cold-packing them in the bath; but the last thing we want in the heat of August is to have a massive pot boiling on the stove for more than an hour.
Reasonable tomatoes are available at local markets - 25lb for $8. It takes about 25lb to do a batch in a pressure canner; and that's about 3 batches in our non-pressure canner.
A pressure canner just isn't worth the money and space - but it would be great to have our co-housing community with which to share one - but the rest don't really have time the time/interest to garden much less preserve.
Are you really over the top when you wonder "my gawd - they just had a 3rd child are they freekin nuts as this world is already massively overpopulated" about friends (who then proceed to get a monster polluter to truck the family that could fit into a car)?
I think that my father would not be in the Peak Oil camp. He'd bought into the Amerikan Dream - and in a way lived it.
He had the optimism of the post WW I and II era - that we can do anything; that there are no limits ....
He came over here with nothing, started and did well with his own business and had the impression of success. Lots of trucks, cars, massive houses and toys were part of my life - along with a belief in not wasting, in growing your own and having skills to build with your own hands and have a "real" job/skill as opposed to being a paper pusher.
When I met my wife, read Your Money Or Your Life, Diet For a New Planet, Diet for a New America, Circles of Simplicity, everything came together; before I discovered Peak Oil; that consumption is destruction, that our society has been on a path downhill and that none of us really know what community is; much less it's value and that the only way forward is to live the sustainable dream - find a "good/sustainable life" that can be "exported" to all people in the world.
In my neighbourhood I can be walking to the community garden wearing a long sleeved shirt because it's cool and pass house after house with the A/C running - they're all zombies living in plastic worlds totally isolated from the real world and they're utterly, completely divorced from reality.

Here we are - the "peak" of civilization - a peak of disposable income, of power, of influence - and yet we walk a path of greed, destruction, me-first and we're sick and obese and destroying the world for our kids.
There are so many ways forward - so many small steps to start with ....

This is neat. Someone finally said it - the pollution of China is due to OUR ecological footprint!
William Rees:
http://www.tvo.org/podcasts/bi/audio/BIWilliamRees042907.mp3

I believe that there is a video online somewhere.
http://www.pluggd.com/audio/channels/big_ideas/episodes/26n95?play=1

Great post! My father, 86, has less than fond memories of gardening during the Great Depression. But it helped feed him and 7 other kids.

You were right to pick up on your father's comment. Very few Americans in any generation are aware of the natural world around them. They shut it out, turn on the television, and try to ignore it.

My garden is just getting started and I can't claim much for it yet. But I belong to a CSA, and the amount of produce coming in at this time of year forces me to pay attention to it - to process it, freeze it, deal with it. It makes me aware of the lives of my ancestresses, undoubtedly doing the same thing at the same time of year.

But I also look forward in time, to a better relationship with the natural world than they had, to valuing things (like a field of native grasses) that they saw as "waste," to enjoying the rhythms of the year rather than trying to escape them.

I read this back with some amusement. What do I know of hardship? Enthusiasts get crushed! And Peak Oil will probably overwhelm any enthusiasm. Nonetheless, I can see the way I'd like to live, and that I can start now.

Nate - at 800 words and 4 pictures, this post caught my attention. A couple of questions and points:

How do the tomatos taste without the olive oil and oregano?

The note you make up thread about your freezer is interesting. Is it possible to make a super insulated freezer that uses hardly any power? This could easily switch on and off every time there is a puff of wind.

And one parting thought - The world's endowment of oil has taken roughly 200 million years of sunshine to form and we are going to consume all of this in roughly 200 years. So each year we use / waste approximately 1 million years worth of sunshine. Each day we waste / use about 1 million days of sunshine. Each day we use / waste about 2,700 years of sunshine.

I hope I done my sums right - the numbers are boggling.

Thank you Nate, I very much enjoyed this story. I see paradigm shifts like this all around me, including within myself. I'm a pretty mainstream person but now I'm trying to eat 99 percent vegetarian, primarily because it's a more sustainable diet. The changes in myself surprise even me.

On the tomatoes, I'm intrigued by the solar cooker. But I wish I could get the kind of yields you're seeing!

Hi Nate,

I enjoyed your article. I use my solar oven during most of the year here in north-central Georgia. I have exactly the same feeling of wasting a day of sun when it's sunny out but I didn't have time to set out anything to cook before I left for work. When I wake up in the morning and see that it's sunny, I think, "It's a good cooking day!"

I have developed a policy of cooking when the sun shines, even when I don't really need to, in case I can't cook another day. Of course, with our drought, nearly every day is a good cooking day. :-(

Nice post Nate.

Your idea of getting serious is a level above mine. My goal this year was just to maintain a garden that gave us some produce. In past years, something has always happened that has caused the garden project to fail. A few year's back a small rabbit ate most of our veggies. The following year I put in a metal fence and ground barrier only to lose the plants due to late planting, bad weather, and an overabundance of weeds. Last year we left for vacation in August and lost essentially everything but the kale--something we have found we really don't like that much, although the babysitter said she did enjoy the tomatoes we left for her to harvest.

This year, given all that has occurred globally, it was my determination to get a garden up and maintained to the point where we actually ate the bounty. My 7-year-old son couldn't believe how much I worked this year and complained we didn't spend as much time together. My wife called me a fanatic, and I responded "No, just committed." (and she retorts, "Yeah, you should be.").

There were serious issues along the way. The one example I'll give was with the tomatoes. We got blossom rot pretty early on, and I had to scramble to figure out what it was. The internet was instrumental to figuring it out (there has to be a way to insure its survival post-oil) and understanding that it was a result of calcium deficiency (and fortunately not some pest, because I'm trying to do it organically). Quick action saved the day, and we are now enjoying a small but delicious harvest of tomatoes.

The blossom rot prompted me to start composting, for we consume our share of eggs, and it made sense to just use our waste as the garden input. This too brought jeers from the household, but they seem to be behind it now.

The garden has been a lot of work. My son and daughter are now both enamored of "farm fresh" produce, and my wife is behind it because the kids seem to eat the veggies that we grow in the garden and that they see and help grow. We've definitely crossed a tipping point here. Next year we intend to grow more and attempt to store the excess. The solar oven is an excellent idea. I think we may try it.

Actually you don't even have to cook tomatoes before you freeze them. When I have about a half dozen more than I can eat or give away, I rinse them, core them and pop them in a freezer bag and into the freezer (Sometimes I even throw a diced green pepper or two, an onion, jalapeno and some garlic into the bag with the tomatoes). When you want some sauce, take out a bag and put the tomatoes into a pot of boiling water for 10 seconds, take them out and slip the skins off and they're ready to cut into pieces and cook down into sauce or whatever you want to make this winter.

You can also fry or dill your green tomatoes at the end of the season. To fry them, just slice and dip them in fine cornmeal or a cornmeal batter. And you can find a great recipe for water canning dilled green tomatoes here: http://www.jewish-food.org/recipes/grtompi7.htm Yum, they are so good.

My dad was raised on a hardscrabble farm at the turn of the last century. They plowed with a mule team and even after I was born, and we lived in Wichita, he kept a big garden in the backyard until the year he died. Heirloom seeds are the best for growing anything, I think, because you can learn to save the seeds for the next year.

Happy growing.

Linda

An even more basic step before we all plow up our yards to plant a Peak Oil Victory Garden is for Americans (at least) to again learn how to cook. Refilling the grocery cart with basic ingredients instead of processed food would go a long way to offsetting rampant food inflation. Moreover, localized food production is dependent on people knowing what to do with seasonal produce. Like many elements of present day society this will take a great deal of effort to unlearn our habits and to reacquaint ourselves with the habits of just two generations back. However, cooking skills I believe are more easily learned than gardening or farming skills. They also do not require the land or physical energy as gardening/farming.

This is not to say I disagree with a focus on home food production. The grass lawn is a wasteful artifact of the English country house that exists mainly in our imagination. Edible plants must be integrated into our yards. (Widespread animal husbandry is going to be a tougher sell, at least until things really get tough.) However, the "low hanging fruit" is to subsitute highly processed foods for the more basic produce of the farm.

Like many others here, I'm getting back to learned behavior from when I was a kid, though we never did any canning. So this year my wife and I bought a bunch of tomatoes and pickling cucumbers and canned them just to see how things turned out. It was fun and very satisfying and the results are very good. While we still have a lot to learn about gardening and preserving we're getting better each year and it feels natural and normal now. As this post PO future unfolds I expect we'll be a little bit more ready and comfortable with it then we might otherwise. If nothing else, it conveys a feeling of self sufficiency which allows one to sleep a bit better.

-Don

We have found that our chickens love tomatoes. Best if we squish them enough to expose the seeds; they take over from there. I seem to recall that crushed eggshells are good for tomatoes; perhaps they're heavy calcium feeders? If so, feeding the tomatoes to the chickens closes the loop, assuming that we continue spreading crushed egg shells in the garden.

Calcium is Viagra for Tomatoes

I put in only about 18 plants (tomatos) this year and maybe I am lucky...but they are as close to weeds as I can imagine. It is a jungle of tomatoes, and I cannot keep up with the harvest.

My neighbors love it...I give away a harvest every day.

Freeze some, and make spaghetti sauce to can.

Re: solar oven got one this spring from LATOC (thanks Matt) and didn't get a chance to use it until August.

Very cool, however I learned a little more about site selection for solar apps, Large maple trees to the south...bad idea. Still I got it up to 350F and cooked a one pot chicken dinner in a couple hours...yum.

This scared me, because it made me realise how the UK, despite being so packed with human resources, has such a scarcity of what it will need in a century or so - space and sunlight. I grow nice tomatoes in north Northumberland, but they only work in my greenhouse, in which I can fit four or five plants. It cost me a grand (nice greenhouse), and might last 20 years: a pound per tomato? Maybe not quite that bad, the vine makes decent grapes and it starts off my other veg in April, but it shows that in harvesting sunlight at these latitudes the EROEI is not very favourable. And what of the land on which this sunlight falls? In some places agricultural land is now £30,000 per acre, driven upwards by hobby farmers (probably people like me with a bit more money), and nobody has a big garden when housing is so expensive. In parts of London residential property is £3000 per square foot, which as productive land might yield a cabbage a year. Basically there are too many of us, living too far from the equator, and the future without FFs is bleak. Wind-driven hydroponics, anyone?

Andy

Mission: improve the soil

Well, Leah and I wasted our day shelling and canning black-eyed peas. The jars cost more than cans with the peas already in them.

But something about this just feels right.

Thanks for sharing.

Don Henry Ford Jr.

I did inhale.

Meanwhileback in Merry_ka, I saw two sights on my commute.
One A humongous RV called Georgetown by Forest River.
with a Triton V 10? 6.8 L 9 mpg costs 100K plus
Don't they realize that this beast is hazardous to both Forest and River?
Next a delivery truck for Frito Lay Potato Chips.
Frito Lay - Food for the fun of it!

To which all I can say is Praise the Lard.

Ain't nothin' in the world that I like better
Than bacon & lettuce & homegrown tomatoes
Up in the mornin' out in the garden

Get you a ripe one don't get a hard one
Plant `em in the spring eat `em in the summer
All winter with out `em's a culinary bummer
I forget all about the sweatin' & diggin'
Everytime I go out & pick me a big one

Homegrown tomatoes homegrown tomatoes
What'd life be without homegrown tomatoes
Only two things that money can't buy
That's true love & homegrown tomatoes

You can go out to eat & that's for sure
But it's nothin' a homegrown tomato won't cure
Put `em in a salad, put `em in a stew
You can make your very own tomato juice
Eat `em with egss, eat `em with gravy
Eat `em with beans, pinto or navy
Put `em on the site put `em in the middle
Put a homegrown tomato on a hotcake griddle

If I's to change this life I lead
I'd be Johnny Tomato Seed
`Cause I know what this country needs
Homegrown tomatoes in every yard you see
When I die don't bury me
In a box in a cemetary
Out in the garden would be much better
I could be pushin' up homegrown tomatoes

Guy Clark

If there were an effient way to convert cluelessness into usable energy, the United States might become a world power again.

Michael Vickerman
RENEW Wisconsin

www.renewwisconsin.org

Hey Nate,
Great post. Thank you.

I have a question about Solar Ovens and Dryers.
First off, I grew up on a farm in northern NH but now live in DC and am trying to grow whatever I can on my little patch of land in NW. Trees shade a lot, but I still get 6 or so hrs in portions of my lot.

I also practice "vermiculture" (have a 3-shelf "farm" in my basement) and find the end result --putting it politely-- works wonders for my garden.

I too have a solar oven (a "Sun Oven" and it has reflectors, getting temperatures up to 325 F on a good day).

My garden was devastated by the drought -- good soil practices, watering be damned-- so I didn't get much this year. But there's always next year, and I'm hoping to use my solar oven as a dryer, perhaps "lifting the lid" a bit so it doesn't get quite so hot.

Any ideas about that? Hate to buy an electric-powered solar dryer when I think I should be able to get the same result with free solar heat and convection.

One last question -- why boil the tomatoes in your oven before freezing them? I'd think you could just freeze them (unless you're trying to reduce some of the water... and that's tough in a solar oven since water takes a while to heat up).

Bob in DC
~live sustainably~

My younger brother read this post and asked that I add this post script:

Could you add a post-script about how when Honey Bear wouldn’t come in when it was 95 degrees outside, you’d just leave your kitchen door open for her to make her way in eventually, and then inevitably forget it was open, thereby pumping your AC at 63 degrees for about four hours with the door wide open?

At least Dad and I have operated consistently over the years, in regards to energy efficiency. You’ve got to do a lot of solar cooking to do to bring down your lifelong KwH average to match ours….

I dont know if he really wanted that as a post script but there it is. I dont particularly remember that incident but it wouldnt surprise me. I do not profess to be the worlds energy saviour. I did what I did then out of ignorance. I am now changing my ways, little by little, more because I know, by empirical research (Easterlin) and personal experience, that 'more is not better', so Im trying to retool my lifestyle with simpler and more meaningful things.

YUM! I just finished eating dinner, but this post is making me hungry. We also have a garden, but have a hard time keeping the critters away from the tomatoes. Oh well, I can't say I blame them!

They don't seem to like the squash, eggplant and peppers, so we use them every day in our cooking. We also have six basil plants and have made several batches of pesto. The pesto pairs well with the tomatoes, so perhaps I should leave some out for the deer!

For those who are interested, here is the recipe (given to me by a gardening friend):

PESTO RECIPE

1 tightly packed quart tender young basil leaves, washed and patted dry (wet leaves makes watery pesto)

4-6 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed (I add more)
1/3 cup pine nuts, walnuts or almonds
1/2 cup olive oil (I add more when I go to use it)
1/3 cup Parmesan cheese (I add more when I go to use it)
1/2 teasp. salt
1/8 teasp. black pepper
juice of 1 lemon ( I add more when I go to use it)

Place all ingredients in a food processor with metal chopping blade and buzz to a fine paste (about 1 min.)

Either freeze in small containers or as cookie dollops on a tray and then put in plastic bag. I do both.

Note: It just occured to me as posting this that several of the ingredients are "petroleum" intensive (transported from afar). In the spirit of the OilDrum, if you have any suggestions for local alternatives, I would love to hear about them!

Nate:

Have you considered using a design like this:

http://www-podunk.com/10litmehstea.html
http://www.ezjuicers.com/mehuliisa.htm

In the solar cooker? Can the 'tomato puss' (the clear yellowish juice) as it makes a great base for soup (10 PSI - 15 PSI "burns it") or reduce by 1/2 before canning.

Use a:
http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF8&q=KitchenAid+FVSP
or a
http://www.backtobasicsproducts.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=49
to make a paste to can (or use the paste to make a tomato 'ketchup')

Tis the season of abundance! In our mild pacific northwest climate, I like to keep root crops in the ground most of the winter. Some of the best "stealth crops" are parsnips and carrots - just dig them up when you are hungry! You can also grow various greens all winter long. Swiss chard is a great overwinter crop and gets very productive very early in the spring when there is little else fresh. Winter squash keeps well for a good fraction of the year sitting on the kitchen counter. With a little planning it is possible to have fresh produce much of the year - cuts down on all the canning and freezing you would otherwise have to do if you just relied upon late summer's abundance.