About the Corn Challenge

It’s always nice to have someone to commiserate with when making even slightly painful lifestyle changes be they in the name of good. It’s great motivation. (For some reason, introducing the bad stuff always comes easily, especially with company!) Here’s an interesting look at two filmmakers and the challenge they put themselves up to after making a film about corn in the American diet, inviting others to join. And one author, Katherine Pryor, did just that. Read about her three corn-free days here.

As you can see, in today’s processed food markets, even dropping one ingredient can have far-reaching implications for your overall diet. It required from Ms. Pryor a reconsideration of her local food buying habits, and put a strain on the two filmmakers to figure out a way to eat while on the road without actually consuming any corn. If you could pick one ingredient to drop, what would it be? High fructose corn syrup? Caffeine? Processed grains? Added salt? There are so many options out there it’s hard to choose just one. But when you do make a commitment to one, even a little one you don’t encounter every day, you learn as much about the process of making choices as you may about your current diet.  I’m going to start a food database page on the blog (check the top bar for the link).  If you know of any ingredients that contain certain foods, chemicals, or byproducts, please, comment and add to the repository of information. You might never want to eat again after starting down this path to learning.  Until then, happy eating!

Here’s a link to a good article about what’s happening to our global food supplies, and why it’s translating to more at the register.

Read the full story here

As we deepen into our self-created oil and energy crisis, we can only expect more articles like this, and more future costs, not fewer. Consider planting a garden if you don’t have one already. It takes a bit of trial and error to discover how particular plants grow. If you have something you “can’t live without”, try growing it a few times. Soon, it may be the only way for you to get it!

Ahhhh. I’m finally back on my laptop, after three weeks of it acting like a teenager going through puberty. First, the wireless card broke after a week of intermittently kicking me off. So, I freecycled for another (if you don’t Freecycle, read my previous post) and received two. I tell you this entire story basically to show how even in difficult situations Freecycle can brighten your day and your esteem of others. Lovely. But no, that wasn’t good enough for the computer, which promptly sent a spark to the power cord and disabled that about ten seconds after I obtained the driver for the card. Another week and countless trips to the library since, I’m happy to be back at the helm.

Another reason I tell you all this is that over the three week period, I had a lot of time to think about the importance of technology in my life. If there’s an electrical equivalent to a nasty Coffee Bean habit, I have acquired it. Sure, if all the major cities were wiped out tomorrow, and there was no grid, I’d manage. And you won’t see me typing away on some gadget while on vacation either. But most of the time, I missed being on the box, enough so to use my friends’ computers at any opportunity (mostly to post on this blog!), and to actually use my little PDA to surf the web or (horrors!) as a notepad instead of as an expensive solitaire game. What can’t you live without? Do you have a backup plan? Do you really need it?

You see, I kept very busy without my computer, managing to finish several of the books that have been collecting dust lately, cook several great meals, not to mention making the new cooker (and scrounging for its materials!), and taking a little more time to smell the roses growing in my neighborhood. So sweet. Not that you’re probably too interested in what I did, but it goes to show that the greatest thing you might dislike is the IDEA of change should your own situation receive what Hank Williams Jr. so aptly called an “attitude adjustment”.

Now, I promised you egg jello, and egg jello you will get. Yesterday, being 100 degrees with not a cloud in the sky, was a beautiful day for cooking. I decided to break out the ingredient that foiled my cooking skills on the windshield shade oven… eggs. The books I’ve been reading make them sound so easy, but if you remember my post, they came came out lumpy, liquid, and VERY messy. Will it be a repeat, or a redemption?

Not wanting to spend too much time on the ingredients, in case things went wrong, I simply broke up six eggs, beat them in the round baking pan, dumped in a small can of sweet corn, added a little milk, and shook a little Chef’s Essence on the top. Out in the sun at 10:45, and I settled in to watch Babe. Midway through the film, I went out to check on things. The top and bottom lids had glued themselves together with the eggs, and when I pried them open, everything was still liquid. I’m seeing visions of last time in my head, so I doubtfully put everything back in, and went to finish the film.

At film’s end, heartily cheered by the cute story, I went out again. And… it was solid! No way! I took it inside for a taste test. It was nice and light, and had the consistency of… jello. Wierd. At least, that was my initial reaction, but after a bite or two, I got used to the texture and liked it quite a bit. I think it would be better to think of this as custard than as a breakfast food. My mistake. Next time, I’ll skip the spices and make a sweet pudding instead, which is pretty much how it came out anyway. Highly recommended, and here are the pics. I’m finally back on my feet with this cooking thing, and the future possibilities are dancing around on the old noggin. Until tomorrow~

How about $3.50 instead? As often as I tweaked my previously profiled windshield solar cooker, there remained a real wind problem (as it was constantly falling over in the unpredictable gusts that are SoCal’s weather), and it never seemed to get QUITE hot enough for me to trust cooking something like meat or eggs within. So rather than tinker into oblivion, when I fortuitously found a nice sized box on the side of the road, I decided to make myself a little box cooker. After locating another box to house the inner cooker, and reading the many variations on recommended construction in a few books, I promptly threw out the plans and just went at it myself.

First up, finding tin foil. I had a roll at home, but it would have costs me $1 otherwise, so that’s the running total so far. I also had a few rolls of aluminum foil tape from when they had some at the 99 cents only store, of which I used one roll (10 yards) in construction, bringing the total to $2. The cement factory down the street threw out a buch of AirPaks (the plastic air filled bubbles you use as packing material for large items), which became the insulation for my oven. Price? A trip to their dumpster. Holding it all together was a roll of duct tape, also bought for a dollar, and a nice oven “window” made of cardboard and a Reynold’s Oven Bag ($0.50). Grand total - $3.50 and about an hour’s work. Not exactly a bank-breaker.

First, I lined the smaller box with foil on the inside, taping edges down with the aluminum foil tape. When I was happy with that, I closed up the other box completely with duct tape, making sure to cover ALL cracks well with the tape to minimize heat loss. I placed the smaller box on top of the large and traced around it to create a cut line for inserting the one box in the other. There were about 3 inches on each long end of the box around the smaller one and about an inch on the two shorter sides. So I dropped in two pieces of folded up cardboard on the bottom and secured them (to support the weight of the inner box and pots, etc), and then surrounded them with the AirPaks. After dropping the inner box down into the larger one, I secured the flaps to the large box with duct or aluminum tape, depending on where, and then stood back to see what I’d created.

Not bad. It looked relatively like the ones I’d seen in the books, even though I’d been reading warnings about how these cardboard versions would “never hold up like one of wood”, it looked pretty sturdy. Now on to the lid. Given that my top surface wasn’t exactly level the whole way across (it dipped in the corners where I taped things into place), I was wondering how to trap in the heat while still providing easy access. In a moment of inspiration (or was it desperation? I can’t remember now!) I thought to build a square frame of cardboard, and then place it inside a plastic oven bag, creating my own version of double glazing which was VERY easy to construct. Then I taped this down to the cooker along one edge and found two fist sized rocks to hold down the open corners, creating, with the excess plastic I’d left a little loose around the edges from the bag, a pretty decent seal.

Next up? You guessed it, time to test her out! I went to store and got some hot dogs. Now, I never liked hot dogs much even as a kid, but hey, this is an experiment, right? (and they’re already cooked, so I don’t have to worry much about food poisoning) So I cut four of them in half, and then added a few slits along the body of each so that I could tell if it actually cooked (did you ever make “hot dog men” in your microwave before? Same idea.) and placed them in the two back pans I’ve used previously. Put in the sun at about 2:30, the hot dogs were visibly cooked by 3:05 on a pretty hot sunny day. And the plate was HOT, requiring a leather work glove to remove from the oven, which was also quite warm (didn’t use a thermometer this time). They smelled great, sort of like a sweet sausage rather than your standard picnic fare, and there was a bunch of liquid in the bottom of the pan that had cooked out. As far as I could tell, it was mostly fat, but perhaps water as well.

In the name of science, I ate a bit, and found that the sweet smell translated to taste, making them pretty good. The biggest test was when I left the room a moment and came back to find my two best taste testers (my cats) happily smacking their lips around an almost empty plate. Two cats made it through three hot dogs in a minute? It must be good! Happy, I put the cooker away and called it a day.

Today, I pulled out the oven for another test. Having fulfilled my meat-eaters’ test, I returned to something I’d actually cook for myself. I bought two zucchini and cut them up in 1/4 rounds about 1/2 inch thick. It filled the bottom of the pan completely, about two layers deep. Next, I added about three tablespoons of cheddar cheese and roasted red pepper spreadable cheese and mixed well. On the top, I added a dash of “Chef’s Essence” spice, which seems to be a mix of garlic, salt and a little chili powder. The mix went out in the sun at 12:20 on another hot sunny day as I sat down to watch Fast Food Nation (see my previous post).

At first check, they were good, but still a little firm. So I gave the mixture another twenty minutes (40 total) and brought the oven inside. Again, the plate was too hot to handle (but the oven wasn’t, which I’d worried about). This little cooker doesn’t mess around! Properly gloved, I removed the meal and opened up the pot. Wow! Perfectly cooked to a nice steamed tender with the cheese melted into everything, giving it a little kick and a lot of creaminess. It was seriously good, and very filling. My hurried picture doesn’t do it much justice. RESULT? Total success. I like this cooker already, and though I won’t scrap the windshield shade cooker, I trust this one more with foods that require a hot temperature to cook through. They are about the same size, and as you’ve read, neither costs much to make. So, since the long days of summer are approaching, what are you waiting for? You can be a gourmet slow foods cook by tomorrow!

If you’ve never read the book Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, get to the bookstore right now.  You’ll never feel the same about fast food again.  Or most other food, for that matter.  But I’m not here to review the book (which is wonderful), I’m here about the movie.  I was interested to see this film, because the book is written in an expose journalistic style, and the movie sells itself as a fictional account.  How do the two work together?

So, I put some food in my new solar cooker (more about this in my next post!) and settled in to watch.  While there are gruesome scenes that leave you depressed, the movie is not nearly so hard-hitting as the book.  It starts with a coyote leading several migrants over the border to seek a new life in America.  Predictably, one doesn’t make it (or so you assume… this is something you will have to do a lot in this film if you want any questions “answered” in your head), illustrating the risks that these hopeful workers face even before reaching their grueling factory life.  Across the country, a new VP of Marketing for the fictional Mickeys fast food chain gets an assignment to chase down rumors that there are high levels of eColi in the beef.  Basically, there’s shit in the meat, and management wants to know either why, or how that info got out there in the first place.  So he travels to small-town Cody to investigate, meeting Amber, a Mickey’s employee, when he gets into town.  She’s in high school at that coming-out-of-her-shell age, working lots of hours at the restaurant to help her mother make ends meet.  The rest of the story follows, at various points, Amber, the VP (Greg Kinnear, but I can’t remember his fictional name), and the migrant workers who are dropped off at the meat packing plant that supplies all the meat for Mickey’s burgers. 

While the information presented was factually interesting, and visually disturbing at times, I had trouble feeling like a coherent story emerged from the separate narratives.  The workers, portrayed primarily by Fez from the 70s show, his wife, and her sister, go to the factory, are disgusted by the job, but amazed by the pay, and each follow a separate path toward destruction.  The guy gets hurt and subsequently fired, the wife can’t take it and quits to go to a low-pay hotel maid job but eventually has to come back and beg for a job when her husband is fired, and the sister gets involved with the supervisor at the plant and gets hooked on speed.  All the while, Amber is learning about what it means to be a corporate cog, like her mother (Patricia Arquette) while her coworkers plan a robbery that never goes down, and her uncle (Ethan Hawke) tries valiantly to get her to follow her dreams.  She meets college students who are activists, and they plan a way to try and get back at the meat packing plants for their brutal practices.  Greg Kinnear, however, is also having an eye-opening week, talking with ranchers, factory workers, and Mickey’s employees about the rumored horrors at the plant.   Suddenly, his burgers aren’t tasting so sweet anymore.  In the end, we see a new crop of future workers making that dusty trek across the desert to replace the ones we’ve seen get used up by the system, completing the ugly circle.

It was enjoyable to watch (especially Amber’s performance), save the prolific amounts of raw meat and dead and dying animals.  Totally gross to see them get killed and chopped up, to see people mushing up pieces of bad meat to become your ground beef patties.  Like the worker’s wife, upon seeing the kill room, I cried a few tears.  And knowing that whatever was shown was likely sanitized a bit for the screen made it all the more uncomfortable.  But I never felt the same angry call to action that I felt upon reading the book.  I almost felt I’d rather have watched a documentary than a fictional account that tried to cover so much territory, albeit pretty well.  That being said, even my cooked zucchini lunch looked kind of unappetizing after all that carnage!

If you haven’t read the book, then this movie will be interesting to watch without preconceived ideas.  Watch it first, then head for the bookstore to back up the story with facts you can pull out at a cocktail party or activist meeting.  If you’ve read the book already… well, read it again!  =)  You can never know too much about the harm the fast food industry in particular but all franchise commerical low-wage industries in general do to our society. 

A little natural recipe for you… it’s not solar (unless you have ALL DAY to let the stuff get to a boil, and if you DO adapt this for solar, please share your experience!) but it’s a defacto local specialty, and looks pretty easy to make. Rather than redirect you, I’ll reprint the recipe here. Hey, you KNOW you know where some dandilions are… what are you waiting for?

How to Make Dandelion Wine

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit

Dandelions are in season during the summer and spring months, but they lend themselves deliciously to a beverage you can serve year-round. April and May are the best months to harvest dandelions for this purpose in the Northern hemisphere.[1] Try it out and taste it for yourself.

Ingredients

• 1 package (7 g) dried yeast
• 1/4 cup (60 mL) warm water
• 2 quarts (230 g) whole dandelion flowers
  • Using 2 quarts+ of just the petals can make for a less bitter wine.[2]
• 4 quarts water (3.785 L)
• 1 cup (240 mL) orange juice
• 3 tablespoons (45 g) fresh lemon juice
• 3 tablespoons (45 g) fresh lime juice
• 8 whole cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon (1.25 g) powdered ginger
• 3 tablespoons (18 g) coarsely chopped orange zest; avoid any white pith
• 1 tablespoon (6 g) coarsely chopped lemon zest; avoid any white pith
• 6 cups (1200 g) sugar

Steps

1. Wash and clean the blossoms well. Think of it as a fruit or vegetable; you don’t want bugs or dirt in your food. Remove all green material.
2. Soak flowers for two days.
3. Place the blossoms in the four quarts of water, along with the lime, orange, and lemon juices.
4. Stir in the ginger, cloves, orange peels, lemon peels, and sugar. Bring the mix to a boil for an hour.
5. Strain through filter papers (coffee filters are recommended). Let the wine cool down for a while.
6. Stir the yeast in while the wine is still warm, but below 110 degrees F.
7. Leave it alone and let it stand overnight.
8. Pour it into bottles, poke a few holes in a balloon and place over the tops of the bottles to create an airlock, and store them in a dark place for at least three weeks so that it can ferment.
9. Optional: Rack the wine several times. Racking means waiting until the wine clears, then pouring the liquid into another container, leaving the lees (sediment) at the bottom of the first container.[3]
10. After that time, cork and store the bottles in a cool place. Allow the wine time to age. Most recipes recommend waiting at least six months, preferably a year.[4]

Tips

• Pasteurization uses sixty-five degrees Celsius for half an hour to avoid changing character.
• Pick the flowers right before starting so they’re fresh. Midday is when they are fully open.[5] Alternatively, you can freeze the flowers immediately after harvesting, then pull off the petals right before preparing the wine.[6]
• It may take more than three weeks for your wine to ferment if your home is cold. Try putting the bottles on top of your water heater or behind your refrigerator for faster fermentation. Be aware though, fermentation at higher temperatures probably won’t change the taste of the wine, but can lead to higher levels of fusile alcohols, which can cause hangovers.
• This recipe will produce a light wine that mixes well with tossed salad or baked fish. To add body or strength, add a sweetener,raisins, dates, figs, apricots, or rhubarb.[7]

Warnings

• Avoid using dandelions that may have been chemically treated. Also, try to stay away from dandelions that have been graced by the presence of dogs, or that grow within 50 feet of a road.

Things You’ll Need

• Coffee filters or straining paper
• Empty, clean wine bottles
• Large beverage container to strain liquid into
• A large pot you can boil the dandelion mixture in
• A place to store the fermenting wine

Sources and Citations

• Texascooking.com - Source of information

1. ↑ http://winemakermag.com/feature/196.html
2. ↑ http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/dandelio.asp
3. ↑ http://www.thecompostbin.com/2006/05/how-to-make-dandelion-wine.html
4. ↑ http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/dandelio.asp
5. ↑ http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/dandelio.asp
6. ↑ http://www.thecompostbin.com/2006/05/how-to-make-dandelion-wine.html
7. ↑ http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/dandelio.asp

Article provided by wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world’s largest, highest quality how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Make Dandelion Wine. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

“Our finding that children with greater intelligence are more likely to report being vegetarian as adults, coupled with the evidence on the potential health benefits of a vegetarian diet, may help to explain why higher IQ in childhood or adolescence is linked with a reduced risk of coronary heart disease in adult life.”

This is news from a 2006 study done in England on many individuals, correcting for things such as social class and educational levels of attainment.  It clearly showed that people who reject meat products tend toward a higher IQ, and that this relationship can be demonstrated early in life simply by testing a child’s IQ.  Wow!  As a semi-vegetarian, but someone who does try to think about food choices, this is great news.  Be sure to read the full article here, because I’ve barely scratched the surface of their particular study, and upon hearing such good conclusions from the scientists, I’m feeling a sudden craving for a salad…

Here’s a quick nugget of information for today. 

Scientists have discovered that adding charcoal or other charred materials to soil is a much more effective fertilizer than any methods currently in use.  The main reason for this is that though land is naturally carbon-rich, over time and with increased use, retillage, etc, the carbon-rich materials break down into carbon dioxide and are released into the atmosphere.  Most fertilizers available today, even composts, break down quickly and are therefore only short-term solutions to soil depletion.  However, using charcoal in the soil adds a component that easily absorbs water, holds nutrients for thousands of years, and provides rich minerals to plants that access it.  The study, released by the American Chemical Society, must not have been music to their ears.  BioChar, or “black gold” for agriculture, as they term it, has been shown to remain in the soil for long periods of time and to retain its nutrient rich status.  Read the whole article below for more details.

I wonder myself if this is why American Indian populations used fire periodically to renew agricultiral areas.  Not only does this clear underbrush, leaving the land open for cultivation, it also provides a thick layer of BioChar available to be tilled into the soil.  If so, as is often the case, our native brothers and sisters were far ahead of the ecological curve in sustainable garden design.

Read more here: American Chemical Society (2008, April 15). Ancient Method, ‘Black Gold Agriculture’ May Revolutionize Farming, Curb Global Warming.

A broken wireless internet card has been all that’s between me and a few postings here lately. So this post will be a little down & dirty on formatting. But it’s been a busy few days nonetheless. Yesterday, I found my journal from the wilderness trip that I did in college, complete with a grocery list of the food supplies that thirteen of us carried into the woods for two weeks. For your enjoyment, I’ll reprint that list below. Besides the obvious humor in peeking back in on my newly minted adult mind (I left home for the trip on my 18th birthday), I truly enjoyed refreshing the inspiration for what eventually led me down the road to this blog. You see, even though it was a very important time in my life, it wasn’t until I read my old words that I remembered the daily excitements of it, no matter how hard I’d tried to remember. Reading ten pages of foods I wanted to eat when I got back to civilization, listed as I sat alone in a field of blueberries on my two-day “solo” at the end of the trip, was as entertaining and revealing as any life lesson I could hope to relate from the experience without aid of a book.

What does this have to do with off-grid living, you ask? By keeping a journal of my progress throughout that trip, I created a living document that I can return to multiple times in life, that others can also use, should they have the opportunity, to inspire and learn a lesson or two about the experience. Of all the myriad papers I wrote in college, this first one, the one I wrote for myself, is the most relevant and important to me. When you start your walk away from the grid, or even just a new project along the way, you have a prime opportunity to keep a journal of your activities. It’s easy to wonder why you bother when taking time from your day to write something down that already happened. This is normal. The gem of journal writing is best recognized after that journal has sat in the back of your closet a few years, and you honestly can’t remember who your inspiration was when you were (insert age here). That’s when the refresher course can save you having to make mistakes over again because you’ve wandered off your path.

Solarious is my off-grid energy journal, which doubles as a repository of great ideas and inspirations I see along the way. No doubt, I’ll be looking back at this great experiment in alternate living one day with similar emotions as to the trip in college. Of course, this is a different forum from an 18 year old’s diary, and personal details are necessarily a bit more brief here. But the point is that when you have that day (and you will, we’re all human) when you wonder, “How the heck did I get here? Why is this so important to me that I’m willing to forgo thirty minute showers, an Escalade, and Big Macs?” you’ll be able to go back and talk to yourself from a more rational mindset and check yourself back into the program. Unless you’re superman and you never have doubts or forget anything, in which case, stop reading now and start saving the world. The rest of us hapless humans need people like you on the case!

Here’s the grocery list (for 13 on a zero-impact trip of 2 weeks) from Project WILD: (1=can, mostly)

1 sweet peas
1 maple syrup
1 butter
2 tuna
1/2 bagels
Bag rice
3 blocks cheddar
1 strawberry jam
2 spaghetti
3 tomato paste
1 lima beans
2 bags prunes
1 smoked eel
1/2 bag peanuts
2 blocks monterey jack
Bag cous cous
Bag refried beans
3 boxes graham crackers
2 packs pesto sauce
4 cans tomato sauce
3 bags pita bread
Bag veggie chili mix
Bag grits
Bag animal crackers
Bag oatmeal
2 beanie weenies
11 bags cocoa mix
Bag banana chips
1 pineapple
Bag macaroni
Bag granola w/ raspberry
1 fishsteaks
2 pinto beans
1 mayo
Bag tang
1 soy sauce
Bag cream of wheat
Box rye crackers
1 english muffins
7 oranges
2 bags dates
1/2 bag raisins
bag pancake mix
1 apple butter
1 sardines
1 hot sauce
1 black beans
3 cans carrots
1 peanut butter
1 can mandarin oranges
bag jell-o
1/2 bag apple rings
1 spice kit
Bag pretzels
1 dijon mustard
1 green beans
13 pop-tarts
Bag plain granola
Bag mashed potato mix
1 onion
Bag apricots
1 marshmallow fluff
1 “mystery can”
11 packs spiced cider
1 vegetable oil
1 honey
1 honey mustard
3 slices bread
Bag powdered milk
Bag tortillas
Bag fruit punch mix
Bag lemonade mix
Bag brown sugar
2 cans corn

And iodine for water

Well, back to the presses. Out in the wilderness, I had a lot of time to think about the importance of… water. Read up about the good ole frontier days and you’ll surely come across stories of unfortunate souls who trusted their senses to mother Nature and were in turn gravely mistaken. Water is so essential to life, it quickly beats out food as a survival determining factor.

In the mountains, I packed in water this time, but in the past have relied on purification at the source, when I knew such sources to exist year-round. If you are running from the grid, or even just remotely thinking that the world might be headed in a bad direction right now, it would do you well to know a bit about consuming water from nature.

There are, of course, several methods of purification from which to choose, and many devices too. Some opt to boil water, sterilizing it. In a warm sunny climate, you can do this with your solar cooker. Studies have shown that setting water out in the sun even for a few hours can effectively purify it for drinking. So set a windowshade around it and see how fast you can achieve the same effect.

Or you can buy a filtration device that fits onto a standard bottle, designed with campers in mind. While this option is quite effective, you will need to plan ahead and buy some. So don’t wait for doomsday to hit before relying on this tactic. A nice option is the Clear Brook Portable Water Filter Bottle.

Or you could go old-school and purify your water with iodine. Again, buy ahead. The thing to remember about iodine is that you need the kind sold at camping gear stores, not the kind sold in your local drugstore with a TOXIC tag on it. The pharmacist I spoke with couldn’t remember what the difference was, but the vehemance with which he said it convinced me that using the regular kind was not good at all. If you do this, your water will taste funny, or at least a little funnier than the other options. Use orange peels, tang, gatorade powder or something of the like to tint the water and make it tastier. If you’re surviving in the desert, opt for something that replaces electrolytes so you don’t get sick from salt loss in your sweat.

While we’re on that subject, try to minimize water loss by staying in the shade, wearing hats and other protective clothing, and putting on sunscreen of some sort. You WILL get dehydrated if you get overexposed to either heat or cold. Don’t eat snow or drink saltwater, smoke cigarettes, or eat lots of sugary candy.

Where do you find water when you don’t have any? Well, if you have the luxury of a nightfall, you can collect water from the condensation in the morning. Either use a tarp or something that will channel the water into a vessel. Some places recommend dragging your legs with heavy socks on in the morning to collect dew and wringing them out. You can also take advantage of plants’ natural process of emitting water at night by tying a plastic bag around a leafy tree branch overnight. Or you can use creeks, if they are flowing. You can also dig in creek beds that have recent looking covers of algae or places that are more lush than their surroundings. Usually there will be water below. Seek out root vegetables, coconuts, melons, fruits, and other foods that have a high water content. Just be sure to do a little taste test before eating the whole thing if you don’t already know what type of plant it is.

Of course, most of the time, we aren’t running headlong from civilization, we’re inching out there by enjoying what nature has to offer on our terms. When you’re hiking and packing in, bring foods that provide both water and nutrition. I like carrots, because they withstand the beating of being in a pack, they taste good and require no prep, and they retain moisture for a long time without rotting. But other good options are oranges, small apples, fruit cocktail cups, canned meat such as tuna, and things like grapes. Try growing what you will take, if you’re able to plan in advance, or tailor your garden to include such plants.

If you are implementing a hydro collection system for your home, the same principles as above apply. You simply amplify your design to work on a large scale and plan for optimal long-term placement of devices. You’ll either dig, collect, desalinate, divert, or pump your resources. And of course you can also generate power or heat from it! Think long and hard about the quality of water that you consume. Wars are fought over this very issue, and societies have fallen or disappeared in response to changes in water conditions. It is the very building block of life, and becoming self-sufficient in this department will be an enormous step away from the powers that dictate how you occupy your space on earth.