That was interesting, and I had to laugh when he took a trip to the ocean to make his own salt, I've never done that, at least. I've shaken butter in a mason jar, though, and made cheese from fresh raw milk, and killed more than one chicken, although I use cones and a chicken plucker. I've grown the veggies and ground the wheat and pickled the cucumbers and baked the bread.

I think he missed one step, though, I think he should have made some mayo for that sandwich!

He's right, though, there are a lot of things that go into producing food that people just never think about, dirty jobs that people don't want to do. We love fresh produce but hate hoeing/planting/weeding. Few people want to kill and pluck chickens. No one wants to stand outside when it's 20 below and thaw water dishes and there are actually some people who don't like the way cows smell, go figure. They don't want to have to milk them, or bale hay when it's 95F, or feed those bales in 4 feet of snow in January. Personally, I don't want to make my own salt, I'll just have to pass on that one for now. If I go to the ocean, it's going to be for seafood!

Annie

You're right about the mayo. That involves pressing olives, for oil, growing mustard seed and grinding it to make mustard, growing a lemon tree,

Maybe it's OK without mayo!

It is interesting. My DD teaches school and spent a few weeks teaching the 3rd graders about where their food comes from. They were fascinated and surprised.

I am fascinated and surprised myself ;)

Good point, momj47, here in MIchigan I can't grow olives or lemons, so maybe the sandwich just needs mustard. Or honey mustard, he already did the bee thing.

Of course, he'd need to grow mustard seeds, and make some vinegar, which would require the planting of apple trees or grape vines to press for juice to make the vinegar.

Good for your DD, most people don't know how their food is produced, or just don't think about it. I know kids who were astounded that eggs came from chickens or that a hamburger was once a cow. Adults too, for that matter. If they are unaware of the source of the food, you know they don't know what goes into producing it.

Annie

Yes, I've often wished there was an English-language equivalent of the French series "ç'est pas sorcier" ("It's not Magic"), an excellent children's program in France that talks about all kinds of science-related topics, but which began with a whole season about where different foods come from.

Example (sorry, but it's all in French, but the video gives you a good idea):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdajFlDZ3B4

(Before you hear this please know I am not an apologist for vegetarianism :-) )

He wouldn't have had to "commit murder" if he'd just had a cheese sandwich...

And how about the recent survey that found some rather surprising number of people--yes, adults-- think chocolate milk comes from brown cows.

I've run into people who think green and black olives come from different olive tree varieties - one variety that produces green olives and another that produces black ones.

He wouldn't have had to "commit murder" if he'd just had a cheese sandwich...

Hmm, I'm not so sure. Can you make vegetarian rennet at home? I make paneer all the time, but it's not much of a sandwich cheese, and the only relatively easy way I know to get rennet from scratch involves making veal from scratch, too.

@writersblock- I thought the "itch weed" step was making vegetarian rennet.

Ah yes, I think you're right about that, collenoz. Thanks!

All of which proves why people live in communities to divide labor. But my first thought was of Annie making it all from scratch too. ;)

And why trade was so important even in the ancient world. Goods moved hundreds and thousands of miles to get from where they were plentiful to where they were exotic. People like variety. :)

Lacyvail, I think the adults who said brown cows were kidding. Like when they did a survey of favorite aphrodisiacs (adults only) and in the top five were green M&M's. Folklore is more fun and funny than giving a serious answer.

OTOH, the green/black olives isn't an unreasonable assumption. Yellow and red cherries come from different trees. Black and red and green and yellow plums all come from different trees. So the olive thing is just uninformed, rather than silly.

smh, I felt for the poor guy when he finished. Yup, it's a lot of work, and not always worth it (especially if it is your first time making something). Coming from a farming family, I've hoe'd and tended my share of vegetables. And the "commit murder" scene brought back flashbacks of a certain childhood afternoon at my Aunt's house. As dcarch and others wrote, it's why we all learned to specialize and pursue doing certain things well. Overall, though, it was a great video.

There was a mistake, I found out, by looking at one of the other videos in the channel. He confused a recipe for fermented pickles with regular pickles (he processed them). He omitted vinegar from the processed pickles! It's one of the reasons his sandwich was disappointing in taste (per his assessment). LINK

I saw his "itchy weed" and I went "nettles!". (That was one thing I definitely learned).

Mayo would be very tough -- I suppose you could grow rapeseed or soybeans for oil in that part of the country. Did he do a natural sourdough starter for the bread?

I've been to an ancient salt farm in Sicily, and brought back bags of salt through the airport. (they use a natural sun-based method) It never dawned on me that I could be detained!

He omitted vinegar from the processed pickles!

Probably because he didn't have any way to make vinegar from scratch. The nettle cheese was another reason. Nettles are okay for rennet for fresh cheese you will eat right away, but nettle cheese can get horribly bitter if it ages much.

I don't know why he didn't plant some herbs, like basil for example. Those would have helped the flavor some.

BTW, getting back to the sub-thread about people not knowing where food comes from, I've just been re-reading Alas, Babylon, the famous apocalyptic novel written back in the late 50s about life in a small FL town post nuclear war, and even as a child I found that book kind of annoying because the author thinks he's such a wiz at survival techniques when he doesn't even know that you don't use fresh corn for corn pone, or that you don't get hearts of palm by climbing a palm tree and picking them.

So people have been pretty disconnected here for a very long time.

Yes, he intended to make self-fermenting pickles but proceeded to process them, basically making salty cucumbers. He could have used vinegar but clearly was avoiding it. Apparently making your own vinegar naturally (without a starter) can be hit or miss in terms of flavor, plus it would have added time.

Speaking of herbs, it does seem like he grew some dill.

Thanks, Gooster. Well, it still seems to me to be a good demonstration of why people who live entirely self-sufficiently don't normally eat deli-style lunches. :)

He could make vinegar, he's got most of the ingredients and he has the time. I've made apple scrap vinegar, which is "iffy", but if it doesn't become vinegar you just start again. I've had a couple of batches just get moldy and never actually ferment into vinegar, but it's easy and cheap enough to do over.

A pound of apple "scraps", a couple tablespoons of honey and 2 cups of non-chlorinated water. Mix it all together and leave it on the counter in a bowl covered with a towel for a couple of weeks, stirring every day. Strain out the apple scraps and let it sit a couple more weeks, stirring every day, until it tastes like vinegar. Do not seal the container with a lid until the vinegar is as strong as you want it to be, as the bacteria that makes it vinegar needs the oxygen.

Voila! apple scrap vinegar. I agree, he's trying to make a fermented sour pickle, but sealed up the jar, so that's not going to work, it won't ferment. Ah well, he had a lot going on there!

Annie

After watching chickens hatch from their eggs, and raising them to be about 2 weeks old before passing them to someone who actually wanted to raise them to adulthood (for more eggs and more dinner), I think every time I eat chicken. But I still eat it.

No, I'm not a chicken farmer. However, in the spring, all of our kindergarten teachers (including me) get some fertilized eggs from a local farmer, and put them in an incubator so the kids can learn where eggs and chickens come from. It's quite an experience that quite a few of them remember!

We have a 2nd grade teacher who has a real garden in our school, that the kids did all of the backbreaking work to set up. Somebody is going to school this summer periodically to tend that garden, I noticed yesterday, because the tomatoes were *almost* ripe. The kids are getting a great education and experience there, too, and the rest of us can swing our classes by to watch the progress.

Donna

Donna, a friend's kindergartener was involved with the school garden. They made soup out of the vegetables and all the little kids got turned on to homemade vegetable soup! No more, "Ewww! what's in it?" reactions.

plllog, that's amazing. All of my grandkids have worked in my garden, chosen their own seeds and things to grow and none of them will eat any vegetables willingly except glazed carrots, green beans and corn. The Princess will not eat the carrots either, but she's the only one that will eat zucchini, and only if the slices are baked with copious amounts of parmesan cheese! No cucumbers, no squash, no beets or greens, no tomatoes unless they are made into pizza, and that is 7 grandchildren. Four from my side of the family, three from Elery's.

All eat tacos with nothing on them except meat and cheese, not even salsa but a couple will have sour cream.

Annie

annie, that is amazing with all your wonderful food and items that you prepare and grow, that grand kids are such picky eaters with their veg. Growing up I know I had a few dislikes but what was grown/foraged/caught was eaten.

oh, on making vinegar, I was thinking the lengthy part is actually growing some fruit to begin with... but I suppose he could have used strawberries as an early ripening fruit.

I didn't eat vegetables as a child but when I left home and started travelling suddenly I liked them. So there is hope for your grandies yet :-)

Wow! Annie, I'm so surprised! Perhaps it's the school setting and peer pressure that makes the K kids like the soup? They do go home asking their moms to make it (kind of the whole point). Or maybe it's the farm that puts off your grandkids? Where the store is the exotic thing, not the growing food from the ground? It's hard to imagine that all the kids are allergic to all vegetables... Do they reject them at home? Is it a we can get away with it at grandmother's house thing? Or do their parents not care? Michigan is famous for good produce, so I can't imagine the veg from the store is too inferior to eat, and I'm sure your home grown must be wonderful. Is it a control thing? I'm so flummoxed!!

Though... I have a hard time eating vegetables when I'm sick or allergic, especially because I usually like them raw, or near to. That's when I resort to "wet vegetable soup" (i.e., something along the lines of minestrone that just has a bunch of veg and goes down easily because it's wet), or spaghetti sauce (my homemade has a ton of veg) or stew. Basically, if they're cooked down in a tomato base, I'll eat them even with a sore throat. ;)

Nope, they don't eat them here or at home. One on Elery's side is so opposed that she spent two days eating NOTHING because they told her she got nothing until she ate some kind of vegetable, her choice. Her choice was nothing and the evening of day two a compromise was reached by allowing her to choose an apple instead. All the kids will eat fruit, pretty much any fruit, but none of them eat vegetables. The Princess is the 2nd worst offender, she has the same texture aversions I have, so anything slimy, mushy, viscuous, gummy, etc. is out of the question. She gagged on yogurt, pudding, cheese, peanut butter, nutella and ice cream until she was 6 or 7. She will now eat raw spinach, if forced to, but not iceberg. Not that I blame her, I don't eat iceberg either.

I don't think it's school because none of them ever ate vegetables. My girls didn't either, I remember Ashley spitting pureed carrots all over the ceiling once when she was about two and the spatter pattern bled through three separate ceiling paintings. It was still visible if you looked hard when I sold that house. I kept giving them to the kids, though, and required ONE bite. Now, as adults, they will both eat pretty much any vegetable. Not as kids, though...

I also require my grandkids to take ONE bite, although I do try to provide a vegetable they'll eat. Elery's grandkids, though, aren't required, his son says if that youngest one (the two day hunger strike kid) eats one meal a day, he's satisfied. So if they are here with their parents and my grandkids are also here, mine are still required to eat the vegetables, even if the others aren't, I make no exceptions. Bud covers his with copious amounts of catsup and Makayla gags her way through it. Madi and Maci try to hide theirs or feed them to the dogs, but they always get that one bite in. And they always hate it, so I wonder if I'm actually just causing them to hate the vegetables even more than they would if I left them alone.

Annie

Naw. You're not causing the hate. I get it about the texture thing. I often eat meals with a guy who has the palate of a five year old and will not abide anything on your mushy, etc., list, and thinks tomatoes are the work of the devil. He'll deign to eat corn on the cob, if you consider sweet corn a vegetable (which I question). But the one bite thing is a good rule. They adore you and do it for your sake. One day, they may like something...

And to this day I will not eat summer squash cooked through unless served it at a dinner party, where not eating it would be an insult. UGH! Steamed but still firm is a revelation in deliciousness.

I was asking just because all these kids in a produce loving state getting farm fresh veg that you or they grew... It seems so strange that they won't eat them. I wonder if there's a genetic basis?

Truthfully, sweet corn is a grain and it's SWEET, so I think that's why they will eat it. If you think about it, most vegetables aren't sweet. I think beets are, but a lot of people think they taste like dirt, so that could put them off. I also think carrots are sweet, but maybe not sweet enough.

Since we are hardwired as humans to like the "sweet" flavor, I'm not surprised that they won't eat greens or cucumbers or okra or broccoli. Other things that I think are sweet, like sweet potatoes, still often get topped with sugar and marshmallow, etc.

That's just my theory, of course, and I can only hope that they'll get used to things with that "one bite", and eventually learn to like them.

Annie

I'm growing an olive tree, purchased it this spring. It will overwinter indoors of course.

Regards green and black olives - it is my understanding that some varieties peak in flavor when green, others are best when allowed to fully mature into black. Hence, no green Kalamatas!

The veggie hating kids... we also grew up with the taste everything once rule. In my case I grew up disliking and avoiding a lot of the standard veggies, but loved artichokes, okra, spinach, eggplant. Peas, beans, carrots, Brussels sprouts, not so much! (The last back then were always boiled, never roasted, so no wonder...)

Hehe - reminds me of the guy who made his own toaster from scratch...

https://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_thwaites_how_i_built_a_toaster_from_scratch?language=en

http://www.thomasthwaites.com/