came_apart_at_Kmart

mfw im too old to roll a grenade into the command tent

the price the UK working class pays for the UK ruling class' loyalty to the US ruling class is a bargain at any price.

absolutely. we're barely into march, and with the concerns about the slowing if that North atlantic gyre due to climate change, longer winters in the british isles, moving forward, are inevitable. and we will see them begin as later and later winter storms.

Do you just use a normal oven? Like, the normal electric home oven under the stove. Or do you have something special? I feel like said ovens are too big (hence slow and a lot of air so drier too) for baking individual loaves.

yeah, totally basic appliances over here, though i also agree the standard oven is inefficient. earthen outdoor ovens for baking i think is the move if you have the space. i'd like to go in that direction and i've known people out in the country that do that. but if you're space limited, there are enhanced ovens (convection ovens) that bake faster by circulating the air inside to make it uniform in temperature and ultimately waste less heating time and energy. there are commercial convection ovens that are much smaller in footprint than a standard residential oven where you could have a lot more being baked simultaneously, but they have more significant electrical wiring requirements (i believe) and they are crazy expensive. like $2k-10k USD.

there are smaller, home sized toaster ovens that supposedly have convection oven capabilities, but i couldn't say if they actually work for real baking where the temperatures get pretty hot (above 450F).

though, you could use a kitchen gadget that is big here in the US called an "air fryer" which is basically a micro-sized convection oven. i have not used or purchased one, but apparently people do bake bread in them. (https://airfryeryummyrecipes.com/bake-bread-in-air-fryer/)

the thing about a more normal oven (or an outdoor earthen one) is you can quickly add a reservoir of water mid way through to create steam at certain points during the baking process. you don't need to do this, but the funny thing about baking your own bread is you start learning and experimenting with little tweaks to enhance the end product. allowing the dough to proof longer, adding water, shape then resting, and i don't know how adaptable the air fryer gadget is to some of these things. also, a larger oven opens the door for things besides bread that you make with dough. pizza/calzones/stromboli, not to mention all the ways you can shape bread like ciabatta for cool sandwiches, sliceable loaves for basic sandwiches, peasant loaves, bagels, croissants, etc. there are so many directions you can go with basic dough (flour, salt, water, yeast).

yeah. and those same people went bananatown when the turn came, she ended up believing her own hype, becoming just like her "BURN THEM ALL" mass murdering father. i distinctly remember some complaining loudly that the show did it on purpose to malign Hillary because the showrunners were obviously all bernie bros.

Sen. Linda Rogers, R-Granger, a proponent of eliminating the reporting requirements, said the system was too burdensome for Hoosier businesses because it saddled them with the responsibility of reporting when teens under 18 start and leave jobs. The latter can be difficult if teens take leave to focus on their studies or participate in extracurricular activities, and never return.

shut the fuck up. somehow it's easy to do paperwork about a teen leaving because you can stop paying them, but it's crazy impossible to let anyone except your payroll company know they left. and literally, this was only for organizations with more than 5 underage workers. obviously, this weak self-reporting system came from people wanting to have something for tracking the largest exploiters of child labor.

Rogers, who owns a golf course that is registered to employ minors, added that Indiana would benefit from eliminating the requirement because they would hire more teen workers.

ah yes. "indiana" would benefit from more unregistered child labor. also, golf course. once again, golf course owners doing everything they can to convince us all they should be declared enemies of the state and have their holdings seized for community development (parks, community farms, and housing).

and, in looking up her bio, she's not just a golf course owner, but the president of a national association of gold course owners AND a big deal in housing development circles. a true demon of real estate hell.

haha, for sure. it's one of those things where it's both cheaper and, in most cases, you're ending up with a higher quality product due to whole grains being more shelf stable than flour, so your just-processed flour is far superior to the expensive flour you could get in the high priced magic food rich people store.

if you're already a baker and we're talking about wheat, you're going to want to adapt your "all purpose" flour recipes to need more water, because you're effectively working with whole wheat (except even better, because nothing has degraded).

there's also lots of different strands/types of wheat which have their own flavor profiles. winter wheat vs spring wheat, common, durum, hard red, soft red, hard white, soft white, etc. certain ones have lent themselves more towards certain end products, but i wouldn't get caught up in all that. like, whatever wheat you can get, you probably want to know what it's classified as just so you know what has historically excels at, baking wise, but really, just get what you can get, and make whatever you want with it.

i legit have not used one, but i would want to confirm the size of the hopper which will be crucial for larger grains. like i would want one that holds at least 0.5 liters or more, just because it would be annoying to have to reload it frequently if you're doing a big grind of a bigger grain. you are probably going to want to leave it clamped to wherever you install it and clamp the shit out of it, so i wouldn't attach it to a "nice" countertop. probably something that is wood, like a work surface, that you don't mind putting a little clamp-sized bite into.

since i don't know that much about them, i reached out to my friend to see if there are any styles/models he recommends to consider/avoid. just searching around, there are so many options. my impulse would be to try and find one oriented towards commercial bakers, because it's probably going to be made to be servicable with a long use life. that could be overkill, but i share your distrust of cheap kitchen gadgets.

anyway, i will let you know what he says when he gets back to me.

it sounds like things are going really smooth for Operation Epstein Fury and global energy markets.

tell her yearbook club is lame and nobody cares about that crap also check out my cool camero

that is tricky, but a great question. many countries, even highly developed ones, don't necessarily have some kind of "farm registration" list, especially not a public one. even USDA farm census data leaves a lot to be desired. a larger scale grain grower... is almost certainly not going to have a website, though it's possible. that would be an outlier, basically some grain grower who is already engaged in this kind of activity. they don't necessarily want a bunch of people coming out to their property whenever to buy shit, so the tendency for "local grain" producers is to connect with those grocery co-ops where they can sell more at once and reduce on farm traffic. and while those co-ops mark up the prices, it's still usually way cheaper to get those whole berries from them than to buy already milled flour. plus, already milled isn't shelf stable.

if you're deadset on finding some grain grower to buy direct from (rather than going through a co-op) as a periodic one off transaction, you'll want to look up your state (or whatever the typical administrative unit is) for a "wheat grower" (or bean grower, or rye grower) "association". they don't typically have a public membership list (but it happens), and that would be one way to try and find nearby producers. then it's a matter of befriending them and trying to figure something out, assuming they're not set up for retail already.

the thing with dry grains is, at least in the US, the commodity system and market concentration of processors generally pushes people into regional specialization. for instance, the midwestern US... everybody is growing corn and soybeans. at the northern edge of that you will find more wheat, at the southern edge you will find softer winter wheats, and in the inland pacific northwest you will find more lentil production. so you probably have to look at some national and regional statistics to find out what the dominant grains are going to be in your area. it will be easy to find that type of grower there. where it starts to get tricky are people growing things outside of that specialization area. it absolutely happens, but they are far more difficult to find. it is rare to find someone growing a wide variety of grains/pulses at larger scale, because the mechanization infrastructure is very specialized for each species.

but, in short, i would start by finding those crunchy grocery co-ops. they tend to have a pretty serious selection of bulk dry grains/pulses. depending on how transparent they are (to members vs not), you might be able to figure out where all those are sourced from. some could be local but some are gonna be shipped through a national buying organization like UNFI. the next step would be to search for "[insert grain/pulse here] growers association [your state/region]" and see what you can find. like maybe there's a conference coming up with a trade show where you could meet people. additionally, depending on how big the association is, you could email some of the honchos and inquire about any members interested in or currently selling retail.

a hail mary, if there's no robust or responsive organization (common!), would be to just search "bulk purchase [grain/pulse] [your state/region] and see what's going on with the people trying to find that local market channel.

i've found a few weirdo bean growers in my area that sell retail that way, but they are pretty small scale and definitely trying to focus on those sales, so their prices are higher than commodity. though they do have a totally weird assortment. bean diversity is a whole thing here. north america was a site of bean domestication and it lends itself to seed saving easily, so there's more bean varieties than gods once you start looking outside the standard set (kidney, navy, black, black-eyed, etc), and their taxa is super ad-hoc/cultural. "greasy half-runners" etc.

if you just want to start experimenting with wheat/rye berries, the US has national sellers where you can order sampler packs (a collection of 1.5-3 pound bags) of a bunch of different wheats/ryes to screw around with them to see how baking is different. janie's mill is p cool for that, but the price point is significantly higher than if you find a local source. unless you want to go full doomsday and register as a wholesale buyer to get a whole pallet of something dropshipped to the end of your driveway.

oh, i thought of one other strategy for finding nearish grains/pulse growers. basically, look for your nearest "feed mill" , which might be listed as a "feed and seed" operation. ideally it would not be a national chain like Tractor Supply, and more like some total mom-and-pop or with a vague association for independents like Southern States or Ace. basically, the place where nearby growers buy feed grains and hay in bulk, and other random assorted shit like fencing supplies, muck boots, and agrichemicals. they are going to be cagey, probably, about selling you whole grains if they get the idea you're buying for your own (human) consumption, but maybe you can at least figure out what they have to offer (milo, corn, etc). they are typically a big grain storage place so if you see stuff like these white things:

you're in the right place. there are much bigger ones than that, but if you're seeing the giant ones, you're likely not looking at a retail operation.

anyway, a smaller feed and seed usually has their own smallish industrial mill. their bread and butter is purchasing and milling whole grains and mixing them for sale to farmers with livestock. like they'll have their various rations "hog grower", "laying hen", "broiler", "dairy total mixed ration" as final products they are looking to sell, so they would be trying to steer you towards these mixes of milled grains instead of whole berries. but if you can play it cool and act like you're a small hog farmer trying to pencil out a loan to scale up or experimenting with developing a "finishing" ration, you might be able to get them to tell you where some of their feed stock is coming from and how sensitive it is to transport cost increases. like maybe not the name of the guy they buy from, but maybe the area. and likely, it's all coming from way the hell elsewhere, purchased through some grain elevator, but you never know. the feed and seed option is a total longshot, but those places are super interesting to check out anyway.

and, one last final left field idea, if you want to find pretty reasonable bulk prices for things like dried beans, you might looking for restaurant supply places. that's if you don't care about local and are legit just trying to stockpile like a prepper. shipping can be brutal unless you have access to a place with a loading dock where you can receive deliveries. they do not like to ship to residential.

there are national restaurant supply places and regional. Sysco, US Foods, PFG. the local alternative to them would be to find a Food Hub, which is a nebulous, struggling conceptual enterprise/non profit usually organized around some kind of maintaining regional control over food distribution infrastructure. a Food Hub might not be in your area, or there could be multiple. it might not have anything you're looking for (they do tend to be organized around fresh produce rather than dry goods), but they do tend to be weird and aligned with this concept of relinking production and consumption in communities so they could be a resource if they have time to answer questions.

In the end the only real difference between the chef and the chief and the council is the wardrobe they wear while they all quietly decide that the people who make the fantasy possible still do not deserve a place inside it.

mfw the theory achieves supercriticality
no notes.

i used to be a farm worker at a resort community. baby bite-sized greens harvested just an hour before the lords for their post golf lunch. and as a person who likes food but abhors the conspicuous consumption aspect, the snobbery, "rich people subsidizing food for other rich people" projects, and the aristocrat-for-an-hour mummery of so-called "fine dining", the number of celebrity chefs i wouldn't deck on pure principal is very small.

to those out there that want to break free from the classist systems of the west and their approach to luxury food that has absolutely infected everything, i recommend the only-recently-well-translated (2018) alternative to the westoid Marie-Larousse (1938) / Auguste Escoffier (1903) / Marie-Antoine Carême (1815) lineage of haute-cuisine gastronome bullshit:

"Recipes from the Garden of Contentment" (1792) by Yuan Mei, a true enjoyer of simple meals of harmonious flavors made with limited ingredients and less waste/pomp/bullshit, in general. he was an extremely opinionated mid-tier civil servant who retired early to focus on writing poems, and having the most bomb ass food and parties from his large kitchen garden/pond out in the country. he regarded the elaborate/opulent meals and banquets among elites of his time to be worthy only of scorn. what mattered was what flavors compliment each other and what could be prepared without a lot of faffery and waste.

it is a completely different philosophy of food to the western classist bullshit where the profession of the modern chef emerged from the estate kitchen of landed aristocrats to set up the "restaurant" where the new petite bourgeoisie could play at being a little lord for a meal and be waited on by servants and brought the finest treats.

the forward of the recent translation, the translator notes, the bio (a free excerpt of these is here) and especially his unfiltered opinions at the start of his chapters on topics are all deeply entertaining and i think they are more important in terms of philosophical inspiration than the recipes themselves.

a bonus is, none of these absolute fucking westoid chef clowns have ever heard of this guy, because they have a total blindspot for everything that isn't eurocentric. so if you claim him as the great ancestor of food artistry, they will be at a total loss because their dogma is narrow as hell.

it should be noted, the far east had a whole sophisticated civilization back when europeans were still living in caves, hooting gibberish and throwing half-eaten turds at the sun because it hurt to look at.