Is it 'end game' time yet?

It seems pretty clear that ConspiracyWatch.net with their investigator Tom Retterbush seem to think the apparent rise in gun purchases in the USA is cause for concern. If they didn't, why would they title their story thusly.

"Record Gun Sales as Americans Prepare for Financial Collapse"

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They even mentioned people stockpiling non-perishables, petrol, and water. Seems pretty end-gamey to me.

Powdered Egg Whites: The first experiment.

Well finally, as promised nearly a year ago, I have had a crack at a powdered egg whites dish. All the ingredients are either from my pantry or our little herb garden.

This was the end result. Delicate and very tasty corn cake ramekins topped with a grilled red pepper and Italian herb salad. I gave these to the girls from Stag who were recording in my house mate's home studio, and sweating it out to lay some new tracks on his valve driven reel to reel. I explained this blog to them and asked if they would appreciate a small meal like this if they found themselves in a war time situation. They said absolutely!

I learned a great deal from the process. According to Pace Farms who sell massive amounts of powdered egg whites for commercial use in Australia, powdered egg whites should be mixed at a rate of  7:1 water to egg white powder. I made a huge oversight and failed to consider just how little I needed for my purposes. I used 100grams of egg white powder when I only really needed 25grams which is the equivalent to 6 medium egg whites. This meant I had to continually move up to a larger mixing bowl and ended up wasting loads of egg white mix. 

While I did achieve soft peaks after lots of hand beating with my Swift Whip. I feel I haven't fully demonstrated the ability of powdered egg whites to adequately substitute for fresh egg whites. I feel I really do need to make a souffle or macaroons to prove the point though I feel access to a temperature controlled oven during The Age of Warlords would be limited. 

It was my hope to make fluffy corn cakes in a heavy based pan as a single burner is likely to be what most families will possess or afford to run. I will have another go at corn cakes and try fluffy pancakes as well. I'll need to get myself one of those dope dealers scales and some baggies to measure quantities.  

Corn Cake Ramekins topped with a Grilled Red Pepper and Italian Herb Salad

Corn cakes

300grams corn kernels

300grams creamed corn

25grams powdered egg white (equivalent to 6 medium egg whites)

powdered garlic

dried onions

chilli flakes

water

salt

Red pepper and herb salad

fire roasted red peppers

aged balsamic

extra virgin olive oil

fresh parsley, oregano, basil, and thyme 

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This is what I've been talking about! Terra Vivos

Holy crap! This is more than survivalism lite. This is the ultimate corporate expression of fear of The Age of Warlords.

While I would have hours of fun exploring the Vivos underground hotel style bunker website. I'm going to let you go there and explore it for yourself. I will tell you that they have 11 threat scenarios, one of them called Planet x - Nibiru where a rogue planet passes by causing the earths poles to shift.

I'd like to thank The Colbert Report 28/06/10 for bringing it to my attention.

Finacial Times refuses to publish Niger delta anti Shell ad

This is the ad that the Financial Times would not run on 18th May 2010 highlighting the effects of Shell's practices on the Niger delta. The ad, which was timed to coincide with the Shell AGM and capitalise on the public disgust at the BP leak in the Gulf of Mexico deserves as much exposure as possible. Shell have a lot to answer for in Nigeria.

This article about the Niger delta coincided with the release of a book in 2008 by Michael Watts entitled "The curse of black gold". It gives a vivid description of the levels of destruction and profound ecological and social corruption caused by Shell and it's friends. This article by Guardian blogger Roy Greenslade outlines just how flimsy the Financial Times reasoning for pulling the ad was.

The problem of Shell and oil in the Niger delta has been visited and revisited over and over. The saga of the Ogoni people and their spokesman Ken Sarowiwa has brought the actions of Shell out into plain site many times. Fela Kuti regularly critiqued the destructive power of greed and wealth and decried the fact that it was many of his own country men who brought such destruction and corruption to his country while holding hands with the Europeans.

I recently watched the documentary "Music is the weapon" where Fela Kuti outlines the conditions of his city Lagos, that was 1975. Even now artists like Daddy Showkey explain how the ghettos of Lagos are a killing field where bodies lie untouched in the street.

How little the world seems to care. The Financial Times stymied a rare and timely opportunity to prick the collective conscience of 'the west'.

The Road, some thoughts and a list of meals

Last night I finished reading Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road' and then went and saw the movie. This was the right thing to do because in my mind the both are part of one experience.
While I have some issues with the screen play and it's adherence to the detail of the novel and the subsequent effects on the narrative development and certain key themes, I think the movie was effective.
My great point of difference with 'The Road' is in the nature of the special world created by the writer. By this I refer to Joseph Campbell's notion of the hero/protagonist and the rules governing the special world where the hero and the audience finds themselves and makes their journey. In 'The Road' we find that the world is a place where almost all but a few humans and possibly a pet dog have survived some sort of cataclysm. It is but one of many scenarios of human destruction that may precipitate the Age of Warlords.
The choice of the destruction of most life is a device that places the focus on preserved food. There are no opportunities to hunt or farm and the world is seemingly heading towards sterility. This is a clever device that allows the writer to focus on many of the fears of 'preppers' and survivalists. It is the most dramatic of Age of Warlords scenarios as desolation, personal violence, and cannibalism are a day to day issue.
I have made the most of Cormac McCarthy's dramatic focus and made a list of all meals (eating events) in 'The Road' (the book). The list bears out the true nature of the foods we are likely to rely on at the most desperate stages of the Age of Warlords.

Pg 3 corn meal cakes and syrup
Pg 8 a poor meal, cold
Pg 16 smokehouse ham and tin of beans
Pg 26 a can of coke from a vending machine
Pg 29 cold rice and cold beans
Pg 31 last of the cocoa
Pg 34 crackers and a tin of sausage, last half packet of cocoa
Pg 40 colony of dried morels
Pg 41 morels and fat pork, can of beans, tea and tinned pears
Pg 49 last of the morels and a can of spinach
Pg 72 a can of white beans
Pg 76 a can of sausages and a can of corn
Pg 79 a can of beets
Pg 80 last tin of food, pork and beans
Pg 88 corn cakes-sans rat turds
Pg 91 two corn cakes each
Pg 92 a handful of raisins
Pg 94 grain and dust from a hopper
Pg 107 handfuls of dirty snow
Pg 125 dusty hayseeds
Pg 127 dried up apples with seeds
Pg 131 dried up apples, grape flavoured drink
Pg 133 dried up apples, water
Pg 141 a can of pears, a can of peaches
Pg 151 a bar of chocolate
Pg 153 ham, eggs, beans, coffee, biscuits
Pg 162 ham, green beans, mashed potato, gravy, peaches and cream, coffee
Pg 165 canned ham and crackers with mustard and apple sauce, tea
Pg 174 with the old man-tin of fruit cocktail
Pg 178 with the old man-beef, crackers, coffee
Pg 185 a cold lunch
Pg 187 corn bread, beans, franks from a tin
Pg 193 curbside crackers
Pg 204 leftover skillett bread. last can of tuna fish, a can of prunes
-205
Pg 212 the last of their provisions
Pg 224 preserved green beans and potatos
Pg 254 a can of peaches alone
Pg 269 a can of apple juice for the boy
Pg 278 cans warmed over the burner
Pg 296 half tin of peaches for the boy

But not this stuff!

I said I loved canned food but this stuff won't be going into my pantry! There's been a bit of an ad campaign for this stuff and another brand called "Chop chop chicken" lately and I have always wondered about chicken in a can. Why is it that they're trying to sell a product like this to us now?

Blech! Noted Culinary Anthropologist Margaret Visser tells of how in Europe and North America the eating of a fowl on occasion was deemed a luxury to which everyone had a right. A roasted bird as the centre piece of a special meal would be quite a luxury in the age of warlords.

Joan Gussow's dark vision of a future chicken fed by pipes and harvested for flesh seems a little closer. It says shredded chicken breast on the can but I wonder where they get the bits from?

I wasn't impressed when I opened the can.


And even less impressed when I checked the texture, disappointing! The shred was too fine with no real 'meaty' shreds (so to speak).

Shortly after this photo I spat my first mouth full in the bin and chucked the rest of the can away!

I like canned food!

The other night I admitted something in conversation that kind of surprised me. We were discussing organic certification and food miles when I said "I like canned food!". I wasn't just espousing an intellectual value, and it's wasn't a retro thing or some attachment from childhood or a reaction against trendy packaged pasta sauces or vege stock in a sachet. It's not a 'warholesque' visual thing either. I was expressing a kind of 'romantic' aesthetic sense about canned goods.
What informs this aesthetic sense? It's the integrity of the design of the product, that it achieves it purpose humbly and consistently in a way that is unmatched. It's the idea that towns have grown around canneries and that many canneries grew from farmers cooperatives. It's that canneries are such a poignant example of value adding technology, like smoking fish it is preserving but with industrial age technology.
When human societies developed food preserving techniques they were able to take greater advantage of abundance and survive the hard times. Pickles, preserves, brewing of alcoholic beverages, smoking and drying all played a significant part in the growth of civilisation. These are important food technologies that we will need to appreciate and be knowledgeable about in the coming dark age.


I'm a bit of a stickler for cooking food from scratch. I have been cooking dried beans from scratch for a long time and feel that I have finally able to make them as tender and delicious as canned or fresh beans. I like dried beans because they are convenient, and they store well and keep for a long time but I have learned that it takes a lot of water to soak, boil, rinse, and cool dried beans.
In the age of warlords we will be thankful for canned beans. I'm certain that access to water will be severely limited for most of us in 'The West'. Canned food in general will reduce our need for water use in the kitchen as the hard work has already been done.
We have become accustomed to free flowing potable water straight from the tap anytime. Unlike many places in the developing world we don't spend a large portion of our time just getting access to water. But as society crumbles and the infrastructure that delivers our water to us in such a convenient way becomes impossible to maintain we will have to adapt!

Check out this site RawFoodExplained.com it has great tips for reducing water consumption in the kitchen and elsewhere. Now is probably a good time to start practicing some of these methods. It also may be a good time to pick up a good second hand pressure cooker.

Powdered egg

When I think of The Age of Warlords Cook Book my meandering thoughts often end with powdered egg. Why? Because the egg is at the heart of so many western delicacies and when eggs are scarce there is very little to use as an alternative. As an amateur baker of 22 years I've found that nothing quite matches up to egg for fluffiness in a sponge, meringue, or macaroon.
But it's also because when we run out of eggs and chickens, and corn flour just isn't cutting it, and we've tried all the alternatives, and just want a delicate cake, powdered egg will be the only substitute.

I am one of many who have scorned powdered egg. I have in my ignorance, disregarded it because it imitates something that is in abundance. But not any more. I vow to learn to cook with powdered egg! I will report back and share with you some of the challenges and limitations. The first and greatest challenge will be creating stiff peaks with powdered egg white and water.

Check out this link to WW2 recipes with dried egg "they are just as good as fresh eggs", from the British Ministry for Food.
Also check out this faux-blog trying to steer gym junkies away from powdered egg with their liquid egg supplement "It’s an excellent product, whether you’re slamming a protein shake between meals or making a breakfast omelet — it’s a much better alternative to egg white powder".
And lastly have a look at these powdered egg recipes from this rapture inspired site that also features Ark Prep 101. Ark Prep 101 is a preparedness program that uses a fun family game with coloured lists of monthly preparedness tasks that sit in a colourful wall mounted ark. "Thanks for sharing Alisa!"