Showing posts with label cooking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cooking. Show all posts

Friday, March 25, 2011


Previously I drew attention to the fact that our good intentions, our desire to improve the quality of life for everyone, can end up having the opposite effect. If we decrease mortality rates, for instance, then we'll stretch our limited resources even further, and this will likely end in more war over those very resources.

I also promised more of my crazy solutions to this problem. On the docket for today? Cannibalism.

Now, most people who are not practicing cannibals (which I presume is all of us) commit the fallacy of conflating cannibalism with murder. This is not inherently the case. Sure, there are sociopaths out there, but there have also been cultures which have eaten their deceased relatives in order to symbolize that, because of a spiritual belief that, or purely because of the nutritional reality that, in some way, if we eat someone they will live on through us. People can die of natural causes before we eat them.

So, the kind of cannibalism I'm arguing for is the "why don't we eat them instead of wasting all of that perfectly good flesh?"

Now, before you drop a "what the fuck" or two, hear me out. Matt hasn't completely gone off the deep end--only nearly.

People donate organs, don't they? Good. So I hope we agree that the general premise--that is, donating parts of our body--is not an entirely strange or screwed up concept.

So let's look at the why behind my suggesting cannibalism as part of a total system of sustainability.

We feed 70% of our corn crop to livestock. There are similar percentages for soy and other grains. All livestock suck at turning vegetable matter into meat. Cows are the worst offenders, and also one of the most popular. For every 30 calories we put into a cow, we get 1 calorie out as beef.

Now, imagine we reclaimed the 70% land that goes to growing crops for livestock. Reclaim the land that's going to raise that livestock. Reclaim the land that goes to graveyards. Our living spaces will literally double as farms if we are the meat we eat.

Additionally, we'd be cutting back on the oil, pesticides, and fertilizer used to raise crops, the antibiotics and fuel used to raise and transport livestock, and reducing water usage all around.

I know what you're thinking. At least, I know what I hope you're thinking. "Eating people is gross." I get it. That's the feeling I have toward factory farmed meat these days. But we generally have that reaction to most new foods that we try. Have I mentioned my reaction to eating insects? Butchering any animal takes a strong stomach, and I think that part of it is what grosses people out the most; pre-packaged ground human probably wouldn't make you think twice if you didn't know it wasn't some other animal, though.

Of course, I'm sure there will be spiritual arguments against what I'm suggesting. We can't defile these bodies, right? We already donate organs, and many people are horribly maimed before they die; if anything, I think it would be an honorable use of our bodies after we no longer need them. And the soul? If there is something called the soul, I don't think it cares much about the state of the body in death. We all rot eventually.

I'm not sold on cannibalism. I mean, theoretically I am. In practice though, I have the same reticence I have about any other new thing I encounter. It makes sense for us to do this, but can we overcome our bias against it?

Photo by Paul-W

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Saturday, March 19, 2011

I won't make any promises about how I'm going to start writing regularly. I already (sort of) made that mistake in an effort to keep myself motivated to write through these gloomy winter months, and all I did was crash and burn.

Winter is always tough. Everything is dead and I'm stuck in a cramped apartment where every day I feel more and more disconnected from the things I love and the things I love to write about. Perhaps next year, being a year older and wiser, I won't try to force things that won't happen naturally. If that's at the core of how I want to interact with the world, then I should be able to respect that with my writing.

But, spring is already peeking through. I'm not a big fan of Wordsworth, but as I took a walk tonight and saw the daffodils' cheery faces, I could grasp at what he was trying to teach me. I want to make as much of the sun while I have it these few short months.

Also, I've been eating bugs.

I've written about entomphagy--the act of eating bugs--before. There were mixed results with that experiment. For starters, my ineptitude at preparing insects for consumption resulted in bugs exploding all over my kitchen. And while the taste was actually quite pleasant, there were definitely psychological hang ups. I was eating bugs, after all.

I wanted to expand my experience, though, to see what other culinary options were available and to see if I could get over my bias, as a Westerner, against eating creepy crawlies. This time I allowed someone more competent to prepare my selection of edible critters. Through the thailandunique.com website, I placed an order for their sampler of "mixed bugs". This included bamboo worms, silkworm larva, mole crickets, big crickets, and dung beetles. Given that these bugs made a bit of a trip, and were already cooked, I ended up with more bug parts than whole bugs. For the most part I was guessing which ones I was actually eating.

They were cooked, as I mentioned, and dehydrated for preservation. They were also lightly spiced. And you know what? They weren't bad.

The bamboo worms weren't my favorite. Lucky me, they sent an extra pack of bamboo worms as a "free gift". The problem wasn't with flavor or texture, rather it was because I found them cold to the bite. It was a weird experience. Even sitting at room temperature like all of the other bugs, they emanated a coolness when I bit into them. They struck me as something I would much prefer to have warm. Perhaps freshly cooked and served hot they would be quite enjoyable.

Not all of my finds were duds, however. I loved the crickets. They were crunchy and nutty and more than I could ever have hoped they would be. The mole crickets really do resemble moles (or, perhaps, moles resemble mole crickets). We have bred crickets before when we were keeping reptiles as pets, and I would seriously consider keeping some and incorporating them into my diet. Crickets aren't difficult to keep, and it would certainly be more cost-effective than buying them, live or prepared, whenever I fancied a bite. This could be a real winner.

Unfortunately, I couldn't really make a judgment on either the beetles or the silkworm larva. Both ended up being pretty mangled by the time they got to me, and there weren't really a lot of parts that were identifiable as one or the other. With the exception of the bamboo worms, though, I didn't find anything I tasted to be disagreeable, so I imagine that as distinct entities they would be quite enjoyable.

As I struggle to align apartment living with my desire to live self-sufficiently, I think I will be drawn more and more to raising insects for food. They have a small footprint and relatively few needs, and the benefits they provide to our diets are innumerable.

To this same end, I'm starting to think about renewing my indoor herb garden and perhaps trying my hand at growing an indoor lemon tree. It would be really cool if I could sell lemons on consignment at the farmers market, and I find I'm happiest when my cooking includes fresh herbs. Salt and dried spices just aren't enough for most dishes.

I've been inspired lately and I have lots of things I'd like to share with you. Hopefully I will soon. But for now, I'm taking it day by day as I try to balance a forty hour work week with all of my other passions. No more grandiose promises from me. You'll get as much as I can afford to give, which goes hand in hand with how much time I'm willing to spend in front of a computer during my downtime. Blogging, as with all things in life, is about balance.

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Thursday, March 25, 2010


I'm literally weeks away from graduating and I'm grinding to a halt--physically, mentally, emotionally, etc. At this point it's just a mad dash for the finish line that isn't accomplishing much of anything. It isn't teaching me any new skills or ideologies. It isn't preparing me for any job I will likely have. It isn't pushing me toward the future life I wish to live or the future world I wish to live in. It's all for a piece of paper that says I survived 4 years.

Whoop.
Dee.
Doo.

I'm not being the change I want to see in the world, as Gandhi famously suggested. I'm bending to the will of a world that I see as broken, a world where everything we eat is corn, where my generation may have a lower life-expectancy than my parents', where sea-levels are rising and islands are being consumed, and where people are forced to stay inside to protect themselves from man-made smog.

I don't want to be here. Do you?

Add to that a lack of community, a lack of connection to food and people. I'm supposed to be on "break" but instead I'm spending hours a day at a computer dreading a thesis I don't want to write. I get nary a text message, email, phone call, or knock at the door (except for a couple of Mormons who meant to convert me, and who I later regretted shoeing away in such a hurry).

Too much time inside. Too much time apart from people. It's frustrating.

TribeNot to mention that I watched The Tribe a few days ago. Certainly it was far from a perfect situation, but I connected with the situation: a modern group of people all depending on each other for their survival while living largely independent of the larger social structures.

Lets face it, we've created a system where it's easy to feel stuck.

If I don't go to school I won't get a good job. If I don't get a good job I won't make good money. If I don't make good money I won't be able to buy any land. If I don't buy any land I won't be able to grow my own food. If I don't grow my own food I won't be able to be self-sufficient. If I'm not self-sufficient I'll never be able to get out of this system which I detest.


We've made it even easier to get stuck by pouring concrete over land that was once abundant with food and by making it illegal to hunt or fish without the proper licenses. Our survival, our very instincts, are regulated.

But what if we worked together? What if we unstuck ourselves? What if we started a New American Tribe?

If this sounds like something you'd be interested in, you should fill out this form.

Basically, I want to put together a group of 10-20 people from the Pacific Northwest with a diverse set of survival skills (foraging, hunting, fishing, trapping, shelter construction, first aid, etc.) and head south. And then north. And then south.

Our goal would be to cover all 48 contiguous United States on foot, moving with the seasons to avoid the most extreme weather. We'd forage, hunt, and fish for our meals and trade manual labor (like farm work or yard work) for shelter and food. When necessary, we'd sell handmade trinkets (perhaps you're a jeweler?) to earn money for food. Ideally we'd be eating 100% local food (wild or from local farms) and in turn avoiding additives like high fructose corn syrup which have become seemingly necessary components of processed food. We'd be getting back to our heritage as wholly as is possible in this broken landscape.

So often we're ground down by overwhelming abundance. We don't have to work for food. Surviving becomes trivial. Life becomes boring because we don't have to try in order to survive, but instead we worry about created stresses like phone bills and rent.

This experiment would allow us to be energized by the act of surviving. It would allow us to see the country in an environmentally friendly way. It would allow us to have a community amongst ourselves and to connect with our fellow Americans. Our interactions with different farmers and people with diverse backgrounds will help us develop a diverse skill set in a world where we're forgetting how to do many wonderful things.

Yes, this is a crazy idea. But I'm sick of worrying about what job I'm going to get when I graduate, and about how I'm going to be perpetuating a broken system. I need a break to do something crazy. I think you should do it with me.

If you're between jobs, just graduated from school, or are otherwise unsettled, this might be right for you. If you want to do something crazy, refreshing, educational,  and rewarding, this might be for you. If you want to see the country in an environmentally friendly way, connect with others, and be a part of something big, this might be for you. If you have the necessary hunting, foraging, and wilderness survival skills, this might be for you.


If you're interested, fill out this form and subscribe to the blog. If I get enough interest in the project I'll contact people to start discussing details.

Thanks for reading and your continued support. This crazy kid is now off for some shut eye.

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Monday, January 25, 2010

Wow. I underestimated how much less stressful life would be with a simple menu. The hardest part was deciding what to put on it. But now that I have, I'm saving time, saving money, and eating healthier.

Why did I decide to create a menu? In reality, it stems from an earlier failure to make my living arrangements work. My roommate makes considerably more money than I do, and so he has agreed to do the grocery shopping in exchange for my doing the cleaning and cooking. Since that plays into both of our strengths, I was more than happy to agree. The problem was, he would only go shopping once a month, or even further apart than that. We could go weeks at a time without fresh produce, or in an attempt to plan ahead, I would pick up more produce just to have it go bad before I could use it. I felt horrible to have all of that food go to waste. So, I devised a plan. If I developed a menu, and if I knew exactly how much of what ingredients I needed in a given week, I could convince him to go shopping weekly. And, because I knew exactly what I needed, I would waste less food, spend less time shopping and cooking, I would eat healthier, and save money on the ol' grocery bill.

Now, anything I put on the menu needed to have a few qualities. First, it had to perform well as leftovers. Second, the recipe had to double easily. Third, it needed to be nutritious enough to warrant having for two meals close together. The ideal is to double a recipe, and then serve it for dinner, and for lunch the following day. You're cooking half as much, and probably eating healthier as a result (fewer rushed meals and convenience foods). I also favored things like casseroles or stir fries or anything that could be made in one big pot. Less cleanup that way.

Here's what a week's menu looks like:


I added a calendar to my Google Calendar called "menu" and I just create a all day event for each recipe. I paste the recipe into the description of the event, and on that day I click on the event to pull up the recipe.

I've got a different recipe for every day of the month, and I'm not afraid to switch things out if there's something I really want and it's not on the menu. I just make sure to have a recipe and double it so that there's enough for dinner and lunch the following day.

When it comes to making a shopping trip, I sit down and look at the menu for the week. I figure out what I need for the recipes, and what I already have. Then I get to making a shopping list. The important thing with this step is to list the amount of you need of a particular item. You can do this in a couple of ways. Either use recipes that list ingredients in terms of number of items (i.e. 6 medium carrots or 2 cans of water chestnuts), or list the measurement and guesstimate when you get to the store. This week, I listed 4 cups of mushrooms as one of the things I needed to pick up. I guessed that one handful of button mushrooms, or about 3-4 mushrooms, was a cup. The great thing about most types of cooking is that exact measurements aren't necessary. I didn't measure out my mushrooms cup by cup when I actually got around to cooking, I just used all of the mushrooms I bought. You'll get better with practice, and you'll learn that a lemon has about 4 tablespoons of juice in it, and that 4 tablespoons is equal to 1/4 cup, etc. And, because you already have the approximate amount of the ingredients you need, you really don't have to do any measuring, just chop, mince, etc. and add them to the pot.

And the best part is, I know I'm going to get at least 2 meals out of each time I cook, sometimes 3 if I'm lucky. This also means I have better portion control, which is hard for me this time of year; I don't get outside a lot on account of the gloomy weather, so I spend most of my time cooking and eating the food I cook, and don't pay much attention to how much I'm eating. I serve myself and my roommate each 1/6 to 1/4 of the total food, and then immediately move the rest of it to a storage container and put it in the fridge. Then I force myself to clean my pot before the food gets burned or dried on, which means I spend less time trying to scrape off caked on food at a later time.

Overall, a success. I've lost about 4 pounds already because I'm eating better food and more reasonable portions. I'm wasting less food because I'm only buying a week's worth at a time, and I'm buying the exact amounts I need for the specific foods I'm making. And I'm saving time and money on both shopping and cooking.

For now I've got a menu of 31 items that I rotate through each month. The next step is the develop a seasonal menu which relies on ingredients that are available locally at any given time of year. I'm not at that step yet, but it's on the to do list. The benefits of using the local, seasonal produce are: 1) fewer farm to fork miles, which means you have fresher food that's easier on the planet, and 2) you're saving even more money on your grocery bill, because in season produce is always cheaper than out of season produce which has to be imported from places with warmer climates, like Mexico, Chile, Ecuador, etc. I hate that I'm using as many fresh tomatoes this time of year as I am... they're ungodly expensive, and have to come from halfway across the world. Soon I'll have those kind of kinks out of my menu, but until then, I'm already enjoying the benefits I've gained from my new menu.

Oh, and I'm also formatting my recipes for use with the Digital Recipe Sidekick for Android phones. It's a nifty little hands-free application that will read the ingredients and directions to you while you cook. I only have some of the recipes done so far, but here's what I have:

Chili
Lasagna
Pad Thai
Spaghetti
Waffles

These recipes are all completely vegan, though not all of them have been tested. When you click them, they should show up as styled XML, which is human readable. If you have an older browser, it might not work right. In any case, you can save them and import them into DRS on your Android-powered phone. And note that some of these make more than 4 servings. The lasagna recipe, for example, makes two casseroles: one for now, and one to freeze for next month. Then all you have to do is pop the lasagna in the oven to cook without having to go through all of the prep work again.

And really, don't feel too constrained by your menu. I buy seven recipes worth of ingredients, but I don't necessarily make them on the nights that they're scheduled. For instance, tonight is supposed to be chow mein night, but I did chow mein on Friday night. Instead, I'm doing mac and cheeze tonight, which was on the menu for Saturday night. Be all loosey goosey with it. Just have your recipes and ingredients ready to keep life as uncomplicated as possible. Also, I do keep around some convenience foods just in case. Namely ramen. If a particular dish doesn't end up being enough food for lunch the next day, I have an exit strategy. And even if the convenience food is unhealthy, at least I know I'm going to be following it up with a nutritious dinner. It all balances out in the end.

Until next time, happy eating...

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Thursday, January 21, 2010

Since I've been on a "what you eat matters" kick, and since I won't be able to post anything long and involved until after Monday, I thought I'd post this recording of the Tyra Banks Show which stars David "the bug man" Gracer of Small Stock Foods, and someone named Jean (no last name is given), who is a dumpster diver. I know some dumpster divers, but haven't done much myself, and never for food. Maybe dumpster diving will be on my list of things to do, and then I'll be able to post something more informed on the subject (although, ultimately, I'd like to be pushing people away from a society where there's so much waste that dumpster diving is practical). Who knows. I can say that John Hoffman's Dumpster Diving: The Advanced Course was a pretty informative read, but it's been a few years now and I don't remember many of the details.

But, without further ado, I'll give you the video:




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Tuesday, July 01, 2008

So, it's that time of year again, time for snow peas and clichés like "it's that time of year again."And I don't just mean a few snow peas. I'm talking about 2 hundred-foot rows of snow peas. I picked nearly a full 5 gallon bucket of the little suckers last week and then was informed that the second row was getting tilled up. The peas had shared the bed with radishes and 2 foot tall thistles, and they just weren't doing as well as the other row. So, I had the pleasure of pulling up the entire row and picking all of the peas off. Luckily for me this row wasn't doing as well, otherwise I would have had more peas than I knew what to do with.


It took me several hours to get these bad boys cleaned up and packed away in the freezer all by myself, but it'll be worth it when the school year rolls around and I have lots of yummy organic peas to eat.

The first thing you have to do is get them nice and clean. I dumped them all in my sink and ran the sink full of cold water. On my counter I set out my cutting board and a small paring knife with some large bowls to the left of the cutting board. I gave the peas a little scrub and placed them on the counter on the opposite side of the cutting board from where I'd be sitting. You might want to lay down some towels, otherwise you'll get a good puddle going (I just mopped it up after I was done). Once I got a good pile I sat at my cutting board and started trimming the ends off and tossing the pea pods in the bowls. After you master this fine art, you'll find that you can cut the ends off of two or three peas at a time. And remember, this is for sugar snap or snow peas only! The pods on other peas aren't edible, so you'll have to shell them.

When you've got all of your peas trimmed up get a big pot of water boiling on the stove. You'll need to blanch the pea pods for 2-3 minutes. A blanching basket would be nice, but I'm poor so I just removed the peas from the boiling water with a slotted spoon and plunged them into a sink full of ice cold water. This stops the cooking process.

After they're good and cool, just let them drain. I usually put a colander inside a large bowl and let the peas sit inside there for a while. From there, pack them into gallon freezer bags and load them into the freezer. I have five bags full and they're taking up most of my freezer and a portion of the community freezer in the res hall. Oh well, it's summer so nobody else is here.

If you find any good recipes, send them my way. I usually make soups or stir-fry with mine. This mint and pea soup is looking really good, but I'd have to substitute for the dairy.


(Have you noticed that I've been using a bunch of Flickr photos? My camera finally died after surviving several years of my abuse, including all of those backpacking trips. R.I.P.)

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Monday, June 30, 2008

I was checking out reviews for pressure canners earlier today, and one thing that people kept saying was to get the pressure gauges checked by the county extension office. I'd never heard of such a thing, so I decided to look into it.

The USDA website provides you with a nifty little map for finding your local extension office. Here's what the USDA has to say about extension services:

The Cooperative Extension System is a nationwide, non-credit educational network. Each U.S. state and territory has a state office at its land-grant university and a network of local or regional offices. These offices are staffed by one or more experts who provide useful, practical, and research-based information to agricultural producers, small business owners, youth, consumers, and others in rural areas and communities of all sizes.

The website for my local office is loaded with information on preparing and preserving local fruits and vegetable, etc. And guess what I found there? Oregon grape jelly. I always thought our good ol' state flower was useless for anything more than looking at, but apparently with enough sugar these little berries make an awesome jelly. All kinds of places use these things in landscaping including, you guessed it, my very own university. On top of that, they're getting ripe. One of these nights I'll go out and pick the bushes clean and then I'll make me some jelly.


It really is simple. You just boil the berries in water and then let them drip through a jelly bag. After that you add 3 parts sugar to 4 parts juice and boil again. Put this concoction in jars and then can it and voila, Oregon grape jelly. I'll let you know how my experiment goes.

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I've been working out at the university's farm for over a month now, and things are starting to come along. Since I'm getting back into the swing of things, I thought I'd share what I've been up to.

The window garden has taken on a new look this season. The new apartment isn't as Topsy Turvy friendly as the old dorm room, so I'm sticking with just the window boxes this time. I have loose-leaf lettuce growing in one of my four boxes and I pick it off as I need it for tacos, sandwiches, wraps, and burgers. I've had one basil plant going for a few months now, and it's been producing more basil than I can use. Ignoring that fact--and anticipating a good tomato harvest--I planted my remaining window boxes with basil. I hope to make lots of pasta sauce this year since pasta is probably the number one staple of this college student.

That means I'll be canning! Since I get all of the free produce I can stand from the farm where I work (and since so much of it went to waste last year because no one used it), I've been getting really excited about preserving the stuff that I harvest.

First, the research. Even though we helped our grandparents can vegetables every summer, I hadn't paid much attention to the details. We canned lots of pickles (both beet and cucumber), but it turns out that canning and pickling are two separate things. Who knew? Pickling typically uses salt and vinegar to preserve food. Canning heats the food in question and seals the jar that contains it. The things that I've read say that pickling will preserve your food for "several weeks" (and that's the best estimate I've seen so far). I go to CanningUSA.com for canning recipes and instructions, and they suggest using your canned food within a year to keep it from losing its nutritional value.

Additionally, I've found more than one way to pickle. You can drench your cucumbers in vinegar and various spices as I grew up doing, or you can pickle them in a more traditional sense by leaving them to ferment in a jar. People refer to these as "live" or "living" pickles. I stocked up on cucumbers at the cafeteria's salad bar and used Lynn's Favorite Fermented Pickles recipe as the basis for my own concoction. I didn't have the pepper flakes or the green onion so I just omitted them. I also guessed on the number of cucumbers I had since they were already sliced. I love garlic, so I added way more than the recipe called for. End result: I overestimated the amount of cucumber I had so these turned out a little saltier than I would have preferred. And did I mention that I went overboard on the garlic? It was a bit much, even for a garlic-lover like me. After just one slice you could have cleared a room of an army of vampires. They were still edible though, so I finished them off one-by-one. The next time I try these I'll make sure I'm using the proper proportions of ingredients.

Since then I've pickled beets, for which I found no recipe for living pickles. I roasted the beets at 400 degrees in the oven in about a 1/2 " of water for an hour or so (trim off all but an inch of the greens, but leave the ends otherwise intact). After you pull them out and they have a chance to cool, cut off the ends and peel off the skins. I actually sliced the beets 1/8-1/4" thick and then peeled the skins off and found that this was much easier. This is very messy and beet juice will stain like mad. Wear clothes you're willing to sacrifice! Pickle recipes I've seen haven't been as anal about sterilizing jars as canning recipes, so I grabbed an old pickle jar (the big ones you buy whole pickles in at the store) and packed the beet slices in. In a sauce pan I heated three cups of sugar and three cups of vinegar until the sugar melted and then stirred in cinamon to taste. Add this to the jar of beets until they're covered. The directions say to let them sit a few days, but that didn't keep me from getting into them the next day. Try to limit yourself to about 4 or 5 slices a day otherwise your bodily wastes will be dyed a purplish-red. This isn't any cause for alarm as far as I know, I just find it unnerving to have strangely colored fluids coming out of me.

That's it for now. I've done a little other preserving, but I haven't canned anything yet. I did, however, pick up jars, a water bath canner, and all of the necessary accessories when I picked up vinegar for the beets. The next batch of beets I pick will probably be canned whole or in quarters, and I'm looking forward to all of those tomatoes.

More next time.

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Saturday, January 19, 2008

I mentioned in a previous post that one of the things I'm interested in doing is building an earth oven. I first got excited about the topic when I read Build Your Own Earth Oven for an Eco-Art class that I took here at the university. Unfortunately, we couldn't get the go ahead from the administration to actually build the oven on the university-owned organic farm. It's still something I want to do on my own time, and an earth oven is certainly something I would constantly use in my self-sufficient life.


A quick image search uncovers some of the amazing artistry that can go into building an earth oven. I think that's part of what intrigues me: not only is it something practical, but it's something you can also get crazy with artistically.

The book I mentioned is a great resource. It covers the science behind both constructing and cooking in an earth oven, explains different types of earth ovens, and then gives instructions for building an earth oven for yourself. Basically, you create a form out of sand or some material you can burn out of the oven, and then you cover it with a mixture of sand, clay, and straw. But it can get way more complex as you add insulation and surface area for trapping heat, chimneys, storage for wood, a little chute for disposing of ashes, etc. And the book is fully illustrated to boot.

Even if you have no intention of building your own oven, the section on making your own bread with natural yeasts is superb. It covers making the dough, and then how to cook it to get pita, pizza dough, and artisan breads. This section alone is worth it, and I'm constantly using the information I gained to make bread in my conventional oven here in my apartment.

Keep your eyes peeled for any other books you see on the subject... I'm certainly interested in reading them. Also, if you find any good pictures, I love to see how artistic people get with their ovens (or innovative for that matter, as I've seen people use waste heat from earth ovens to heat water pipes).

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