Thanks for accepting my friendship request. Have a blessed day.
You can tell the health of a society by the health of it's members. The problems aren't gun violence or abortion. Gun violence and abortion are both forms of violence. Both satisfy narcissistic desires. Both are symptoms of a sickness that's rampant in our society.
The BLM 'movement' legitimized Burning, Looting and Murder by even the highest among the political and legal members of our society who showed their support of BLM in many ways and continue to this day. Where is justice for the shop and home owners who got burned out? Where is justice for the people who were injured and killed during the 'demonstrations'? When simple justice is perverted deliberately by such a large percentage of a society, there is a rampant and deadly sickness.
I keep remembering what Abraham Lincoln said; "What you see in your schools today, you will see in your government in 20 years." That just keeps getting scarier and scarier each year. I've seen over 60 years of change, and very little in our political and judicial systems give me much confidence. Science is advancing. Technology is advancing. But as a society, we keep regressing as narcissism grows and divisions grow.
Look at all the countries who have outlawed guns, their gun violence has dropped dramatically, just as bombings, arson, bludgeoning and other forms of deadly violence have grown. There was half serious chatter about what to do about knife violence in Great Briton not long ago.
Plug one hole in the dam against violence and another hole will form until the problems with the dam are addressed.
I'm in west-central Pennsylvania, zone 5 and in the heart of one of the most forgotten and maligned plants of North America. That would be Helianthus Tuberosus. A perennial sibling of the annual Sunflower. They're also known as Jerusalem Artichokes, Sunchokes, Sunroots, Fartichokes and numerous other names around the world.
The entire plant is edible, though the partially mature stems are way too tough and fibrous to be human food. Starting at the bottom with the tubers, I'll work my way up the plant. The tubers ... They can be white skinned, tan or red or purple. They can be smooth and look like carrots or they can be so knobby as to look more tumerous than ginger root. They can be sweet and nutty, just nutty or obnoxiously turnipy/herbal flavored. I have three varieties. One is a white skinned, terribly knobby, sweet and nutty flavored tuber. They're a bear to clean. Most knobs have to be cut or broken off to get all the dirt. The second one has reddish skin, fairly smooth, easy to clean and is a bit nuttier tasting. They look like small sweet potatoes. The third one is a white skinned, carrot sized and shaped tuber with such a nasty strong turnipy/herbal taste that just one chunked into a large pot of soup or stew leaves a bit much of it's flavor. They also stink up the kitchen when they're cooking.
The white knobbies are under a 6' top. The red skins are under an 8' top and those white nasty ones are under a 12' top.
Young stalks, up to about 12" can be cut and treated just like asparagus or other sprout greens. As I said above, the older stalks are too tough to do much with unless you have cattle, deer, goats etc. around that get into the patch.. The leaves vary from less than palm sized to larger than triple hand sized. They also have a hairy, lightly bristly texture. They can be boiled or steamed. Five minutes + and the hairy texture is gone. They taste just like squash, a dab of butter and YUM! The large variety's leaves can easily be used like grape leaves as wraps in Mediterranean cooking.
In case of a SHTF scenario and heart and blood meds become scarce or expensive, those leaves contain trace amounts of salicylic acid - raw aspirin and coumarin - raw Coumadin or Warfarin. They can be dried, steeped for tea and concentrated for those needing such meds.
The tubers contain high amounts of a soluble starch called Inulin. No, not inSulin, that's a hormone diabetics need. Inulin is a prebiotic. That means it feeds the good bacteria in your guts. For those who have 'out of whack' gut health, and who, eating our 'modern' and highly processed diet, doesn't?? That means their nickname of Fartichoke is well earned. On the plus side, regularly eating small helpings of fresh tubers can get your guts back on track. If you just can't handle the Inulin, there are four ways to deal with it; Freezing. Cooking with an acidic ingredient. Cooking for a few hours as in a slowcooker. Fermenting. These processes convert the Inulin into Fructose. That means the gas is gone and the tubers become sweeter.
There is another way to deal with the Inulin. My wife and I take a daily supplement of Inulin for our gut health. Once your gut bacteria get properly balanced, the gas issue (pardon the pun!) is history, as are some other problems you might suffer from.
Our fall harvest mostly gets canned as pickles, relishes and the like. The vinegar and the canning process converts the Inulin and we're not afraid of giving presents of 'choke pickles to others. Other tubers we roast, fry, stir-fry (they're a lot like water chestnuts!), boil, boil and mash, dehydrate and make flour in a food processor and we snack on them raw. We have to make sure though that we don't slip up and give any to friends.
The spring harvest, after a long winter freeze gives us safe tubers we can prepare for friends.
I've also made wine from flower broth, petals and all, and tuber broth. The flower wine is earthy, rich and I like it as is. My wife doesn't - More for me! It also blends very well with fruity wines. The tuber wine I have to play with. It's a bit stout for a drinking wine but it too blends well with fruit wines and is a good cooking wine. The French developed a great Liqueur from the tubers called Topinambur.
I love how professional statisticians can manipulate statistics to show their own bigotry. Note how the only comparison made is to race ratio, not actual crime ratio.
https://themarkup.org/predicti....on-bias/2021/12/02/c
Anyone remember the opening salvos in the fight against the US spraying DDT to control mosquitoes, gypsy moths and other pests? The US govt used the now familiar "science deniers" argument against the citizens who brought suit against the US govt to stop spraying DDT in the Long Island area. The govt legal team and the govt scientists agreed that DDT could be found in the fatty tissue of many Americans but they also said that DDT was harmless to humans. Those who disagreed were, of course, science deniers.
https://lithub.com/how-a-group....-of-concerned-citize
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