instead of Uggs, mukluk boots

Heh. See, sweet corn is the one thing I won't even eat if I didn't grow it myself. The sugars start to convert to starches within 90 minutes of picking. Even at the farmers' market, sweet corn picked earlier the same day just tastes like cardboard to me.

I'm breakfasting right now on frozen blueberries I picked this July (at a farm, I don't have bushes of my own). :)

Of course I know that any home food preservation - freezing, canning, drying in non-arid climates - has substantial energy costs. There, far more than in transportation IMO, is where economies of scale really come into play. But I wasn't talking about personal choices ...

I LOVE blueberries, but for some reason I just don't care for frozen. To me they taste like cardboard...I do need to get more berries in my diet. It is interesting to see how this discussion has morphed, and I am enjoying the different perspectives.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OakLeaf

Of course I know that any home food preservation - freezing, canning, drying in non-arid climates - has substantial energy costs. There, far more than in transportation IMO, is where economies of scale really come into play. But I wasn't talking about personal choices ...

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Oh, I know :-) It's just interesting to discuss. Because even with stiffer prices for overseas vegetables and fruit, they're still affordable here, especially compared to meat - which is locally produced, and highly subsidized to keep the rural districts alive. But then, I don't live in the high Arctic.

I am eating less and less meat. I could easily be a vegetarian, but I like the increased choices I get when I add a little meat and chicken into my diet. I love beans, but they don't love me. I still eat them, though, in small amounts.
I guess the good thing is, is that we are all aware of this, in some way. It all adds up. Ten years ago, I didn't really think about any of this. I think my current job, where I have to drive so much, over longer distances, really made me start thinking about how much energy I am wasting. Sure, I am helping people, some of whom would not be getting therapy, but it started bothering me a lot in the past year.

I'm all in favor of not eating any food that tastes like cardboard in pretty much the same way that I also reject wearing any fake fur that becomes a sticky cold soggy mess when it gets wet.

So am I, but... cardboard? That bad? I can't really think of any food, frozen, fresh or dried, that I would describe that way.

With the notable exception of rice crackers. :eek:

Some of the widely available grocery store frozen veggies are pretty bad. Circa 1973 my dad compared some frozen veg. on our plates to the green paper napkins we were using at the dinner table, but that was a long time ago.

I am quite a fan of frozen blueberries. As for the rest, Brewer does almost all the cooking and makes it taste fabulous, so I don't care how it got here.

As for rice crackers, aren't they more like packing peanuts?

Ever tasted those cornstarch packing peanuts? They're better than rice cakes. Especially with a little salt. :p

Picking bits from what others have posted. . .

In northern Minnesota black bears are common and I see them frequently. Even when I lived in the city come spring bears were everywhere. I had one friend who had a black bear come right into his screened porch when he was in the house. We have to be really careful with birdseed and garbage in all but the winter months. My understanding is that the farther north you go the more carnivorous the black bears become, because of lack of plant life.

One of my neighbors had a run in with a black bear over a deer she had killed. She and her husband ran off the bear. We have had a couple of black bear attacks on people, but no one has been killed.

I grew up eating venison and I still eat venison. I just had it in chili last weekend. My relatives all hunt. Our major deer predator besides humans is the timber wolf. Our deer hunt was down this year. One speculation is the high wolf population. Timber wolves are now a common sight. Our wolf population is high enough that locals who keep cattle or sheep now keep llamas to deter and fight off timber wolves and brush wolves. Our neighbor has not lost any sheep to wolves since he began keeping a couple of llamas. Not that it is a 100% solution, but it beats defenseless cattle or sheep. Data on success though is pretty good.

On the mukluk topic, I've worn mukluks for years. They are moose hide. I eat meat but I try to eat meat killed by those I know who kill animals as humanly as possible. I won't eat factory farmed animals.

My family home has a root cellar. Current temperature, 46 degrees. Good for keeping root vegetables and squash. This year, four wagons of squash:

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/QO...w140-h187-p-no

FWIW

Llamas fight wolves?!

Cool, who knew?

I don't know my bears, but wild bears in city of North Vancouver and some of the suburbs do get a bear roaming near backyards. I know at the construction site where I worked, there was a bear spotted by construction workers about 5 km. away or less. This is out in the suburbs, but within 30 km. of a regional wilderness park. We were also located near salmon spawning river areas.

Bear warnings are taken seriously in any of the protected wilderness parks in British Columbia and Alberta. They are much more ie. plentiful than in Europe.. because Canada has huge tracts of wilderness.. it continues to amaze one how daunting our distances are and very much uninhabited just going north less than 300 km. of huge Canadian cities.

2 days ago while we were heading to the mountains in B.C., Greyhound bus had 2 suddenly slow down twice: 1. for a herd of bighorn sheep on the road 2. for a freshly hit deer lying on the road. I could see it twitching still on the road. I am certain that animal might get run over again by cars in other direction in the dark on this high speed highway.

In southern Ontario where I grew up, you never heard about bears..but when I moved out to B.C. and Alberta yes, of course.

This afternoon we went snowshoeing in a mountain area, where several skiers told us they saw a moose and her calf today. Unfortunately we didn't see them. There is an area in this marked x-country skiing area named "Moose Meadows".

I have encountered bears twice in the wild..both times in national parks --continental divide in Banff National Park and another one roaming through a parking lot at Waterton National Park. Latter was only less than 10 ft. away.

Llamas are awesome creatures in the first place, and they just gained another ten points of awesomeness.

We don't have that many wolves, but some, and they cause a great deal of conflict, especially in rural sheep-farming areas. We now have a pair of wolves with pups in our next-door forest area, which is right outside Oslo. They've already had som run-ins with dogs, and have killed one, but so far the sentiment is still wolf-friendly.

Geez, I have never seen a wolf...
I *did* see a moose when we were in the Maine Wilderness about 3 years ago. We were mountain biking back to Little Lyford Pond on a dirt road and one crossed right in front of us. It was scary and almost unreal, like peering down at the Grand Canyon and it looking like a picture.

lol, I was wondering how long before Wolves entered the conversation. lph, I find your post interesting because in US North America, the reintroduction of wolves and the delisting of them from the endangered species list is a Really Big Deal and very controversial. We never hear much about what is going on in other countries in regards to this issue.

Shooting star, it might be beneficial to clarify the differences between black/ bears, and grizzlies. They can live in the same ecosystems, but they fill different niches and have different behaviors. Grizzlies are huge and very dangerous. They can be extremely aggressive and fill more of a predator role than its cousin the black bear. Black bears are much more numerous, smaller, less predatory and less aggressive. While you never want to provoke any bear, with black bears you can get away with scaring them off by throwing sticks and banging pots where you would never ever want to attempt this in the vicinity of a grizzly bear.

Were the Oslo suburban forest wolves (re)introduced by humans?