Re: OT - why does everyone

On 2007-07-25, Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Whiskers <catwheezel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 2007-07-24, Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Whiskers <catwheezel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Whiskers <catwheezel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Whiskers <catwheezel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Whiskers <catwheezel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[...]

I've read that research has indicated that people eating mainly wild deer
seem to be pretty healthy.

Throughout most of history, the staple diet of most people seems to have
been vegetables, leaves, and grains.

That's not the evidence from prehistoric sites in Britain, from what
I've been reading. Go way back, and the diet here was pretty much meat,
meat, meat - so I've recently read, based on the evidence they've found.

Grains in particular formed quite a small part of the ancient diet
generally, so I've read, what with them being small and silly and hard
to find until mankind got going on the plant breeding. Lentils - now
*they* used to be a luxury food, way back when, so I've read.

Plenty of places in the world saw a large consumption of fish of all
kinds, shellfish included. They've found the rubbish heaps - some of
which look to have had `ritual purposes' (so-called; I've always found
that phrase to be slightly condescending).

Pre and post agriculture were very different; 'history' only goes back to
the 'iron age' in these islands, and agriculture goes back much further
than that. (So, we're both right, again).

Only the wealthy minority got much
meat at all - and were often rather malnourished as a result, apparently,
as they ate too little healthy vegetables.

It turns out that only happens if you only stick to the lean cuts. If
you eat *all* the meat, you'll actually do rather well. So lay into
that bone marrow, the brains, heart, lungs, liver - the lot.

Fruit was a luxury for anyone.

Only out of season. There is plenty of fruit in season if you've got
fruit-bearing plants, and with the low population density of ancient
times, I bet there was plenty for all. I've met blackberry thickets.

Short season - and cultivated fruit is a recent development.

It does make sense to raise grazing animals on land that can't grow crops
that humans can eat directly - such as the uplands of Britain that are
good for little but grass and such things. But it's madness to grow stuff
that humans could eat and then feed it to animals, and there's a lot of
that going on.

The entire setup is madness. All `sow your crop in a field the harvest
it' agriculture is madness - it's terrifically destructive of soil
ecology, for example, which is why we need to add fertilisers to grow
crops intensively.

Throwing artificial fertilisers around to upset the soil ecology some
more and pollute water supplies is part of the madness. Animals are a
required part of any sane crop-growing scheme: they provide fertiliser
for the plants. It's all a balance, sort of thing, and the last N
thousand years of crop-growing have screwed up the balance really badly.

What's sensible from the point of view of the ecological balance is
heavily mixed farming. But I don't see any way of doing something like
growing fields full of wheat without the job being incompatible with
good ecological practice. Mind you, I don't see any chance of feeding
the human race in such a fashion with the current planet and population
- kill 990 out of 1000 folk, and we might be in with a chance of doing
it that way, but I'm not very happy with *that* idea.

Nope, we've got madness, and we're just going to have to figure out how
to deal with it sensibly, somehow.

Organic farming methods are definitely a good thing, but you can't just
grow plants: you need input from animals (i.e., piss and ***) to keep
that soil healthy. It's all part of the ecological balance an' all.

Crop rotation works very well without having to graze cattle at any point;
wildlife is quite good at shitting all over the place ;)) But if you
have a pig and a few chickens, and possibly a milk-cow, then their
contributions won't hurt. But the main 'input' would come from whoever
was eating most of the food - which in an efficient sustainable system,
means humans. Flushing fertilizer out to sea is daft, and a very recent
practice; the night-soil men used to get paid to empty the latrines and
cess-pitts in town and then sold the stuff to the farmers. Country
dwellers had earth-closets for the same reason. Britain's agriculture
worked that way well into the 19th century.

[...]

Ale and bitter can last for a long time in the bottle;

If and only if it's live beer. If it's been killed by pasteurisation or
filtering or whatnot, it'll be dreadful after any length of time.

a stash of
forgotten bottles that had been tucked away 100 years ago turned up
recently and was still very drinkable.

Not quite the way to put it - the beers had all evolved in flavour, and
the long maturation period added quite unique character to the brews and
they were very nice, but also very different to beers of a more `normal'
age.

OK, points for precision :))

Fuller's 1845 bottle conditoned beer is well worth putting aside for
several months - it definitely gets better with time, up to a point. I
think we once kept a bottle for 18 months before drinking.

I've read that some bottle conditioned beers improve with age, with
further aging `go off a bit', and then if you leave 'em even longer,
`come back on' - but different.

(I can't find a reference to it
but I remember hearing it on the BBC news, so it could be true; I think it
was probably in Burton).

It's definitely true; I heard a lot of about it. IIRC, it was one of
the London breweries. Bass is the oldest one and is in London, but I'm
not sure it was them.

I could look it up, but right now I'm not going to.

May well have been them, but they were a Burton outfit. Youngs were the
oldest London brewer, and they shut up shop here in 2006 and moved in with
Well's in Bedford - so it could have been a Young's stash that turned up.

Had enough. Not enough sleep. Too much stress. Grr.

Hope you get some zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzs

--
-- ^^^^^^^^^^
-- Whiskers
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