pidgetposting

21 -- she/any -- :]

[voskhodart]

I'm very worried about how out-of-touch the general population is getting with food. I was talking to a friend today and mentioned how I was excited to have wild muscadines growing beside my blueberry bushes again, and (after I explained what muscadines are) they asked if they were safe to eat. Do you guys know where fruit comes from? If not, I may also have some very alarming news about my cattle.

[voskhodart]

Screw it. Welcome to my masterlist of ways to make your own food.

Your mileage may vary with some of these, but I've tried to include things that can be used across many different living situations & budgets. I promise these things are easier than you think! Your ancestors did them for thousands of years, and you're living proof that they were doing something right.

And as a reminder: There's no act too small here. All three of the pictures below contain something that has been in my belly by this point, with varying levels of investment & effort. 👇

Gardening

Outdoor

Beginner Gardening Guide 101 - A great list of links for beginning your garden, including in urban environments.

What to Plant Now - Learn what plants are best to grow in your specific climate zone.

Common Sense Gardening Advice for the Beginner

Landscaping & Gardening in Arsenic and Lead Contaminated Soil

Best Vegetables to Grow for Beginners

Growing Vegetables in Containers - EXCELLENT page to check out if you want to use pots instead of growing directly into the ground. There's a whole list of container-happy crops and their preferred sizes.

Indoor

Indoor Gardening for Beginners: An Ultimate Guide - Pretty comprehensive guide. They discuss a lot of the different options you've got when it comes to indoor gardening.

How to Grow Vegetables Indoors (Easy Beginner's Guide)

How to Grow an Indoor Survival Garden - Yeah preppers get kinda weird with it, but this guide has some great tips on grow lights, drainage, containers, etc.

(The next few bullet points are going to be specifically on hydroponics because I'm a nerd and I LOVE hydroponic gardens. They're super easy to maintain. I have one in my kitchen for growing herbs. <3)

A Beginner's Guide to Hydroponics - VERY good place to start!

DIY Hydroponic Garden - If you don't want to buy a pre-built hydroponic garden, this is also a really solid option. It's basically just a storage tub, water bubbler, and grow light.

Preserving Food

Everything here is a huge help for cutting down on food waste!

Root Cellaring for Beginners - On the pricier end of these projects, but often worth it if you plan to grow a lot of stuff. I <3 root cellars.

Quick Pickling 101 - If you want to start pickling stuff, start here. Quick pickling is your gateway. Just keep in mind that quick pickled foods have a shorter shelf life since they aren't properly canned.

Preserving Food and Canning for Beginners - Goes over water bath and pressure canning. Water bath canning in particular is pretty easy to get into.

Curing Onions for Storage

The Dos and Donts of Harvesting, Curing, and Storing Garlic

4 Simple Ways to Dry Herbs - I often just microwave mine, lol.

Salt Curing for Beginners

Simple Homemade Staples

Yes, you can make this stuff!

Farmer's Cheese - If you have milk and vinegar, you have cheese. I make this stuff all the time, especially if I've got a lot of brine leftover from a pickle jar.

Ricotta Cheese - Milk and lemon juice. Yummm.

Vanilla Extract - Also only two ingredients. My fellow Americans, please visit a Mexican grocery store for the best vanilla beans.

Beginner French Bread - I like to recommend this to people who haven't baked with yeast before. Yeast opens up a whole world of possibilities.

The Basics of Sourdough - Full honesty here, I hate sourdough. But my sister loves it, and I like watching people treat their starter like a pet. If you've ever wanted to own a slime, sourdough might be the perfect option fro you.

Homemade Pasta Dough

How to Make Vinegar from Scratch

How to make Yogurt at Home - Infinite yogurt hack.

Homemade Butter

Failproof Homemade Mayonnaise

Animal Husbandry & Meat

I'm just linking some very basic small animal stuff here, but raising your own meat animals is awesome and I strongly encourage it if you're in a position where it's possible. Just do your research and PLEASE connect with more experienced people!

Beginners' Guide to Keeping Chickens

Raising Rabbits for Meat: A Comprehensive Guide

Quail Basics for Beginners

How to Render Fat and Why

Tanning Rabbit Hides

Foraging, Hunting, & Fishing

This is the part where I beg you to please learn about your local ecosystem and laws before you try any of this. Particularly for hunting and fishing, you NEED to get licensed and learn with someone who knows what they're doing. Also idk anything about hunting laws outside the US, so I'm very sorry but this is going to be America-centric. </3

Foraging: a How-To Guide

How to Start Foraging - Really good guide for showing how to safely & ethically forage.

US State Hunting Websites - In the US, every state is a little different about its hunting rules. Know your region, and know your seasons. Most hunting seasons will have restrictions on harvest number, permitted weapons/methods, and animal size. Game wardens do not fuck around.

(I won't go over hunting methods themselves, because that's a huge category and you probably shouldn't learn how to shoot a rifle from a Tumblr post. I'm a compound bow weirdo anyway.)

Field Dressing a Deer for Beginners - Gore warning, obviously. I will note that this guide instructs you to remove the genitals from a buck. If you're in a state that requires you to keep the sex intact, don't do that.

^ If you're not good at this and you plan on eating the meat, please just keep the whole animal intact and pay a processor to do it for you. Otherwise you are going to get deer hair all over the meat.

Butchering and Preparing Wild Ducks

8 Rules of Roadkill - Good tips on the legality & safety of harvesting roadkill.

Getting Started with Fishing for Food - This is another thing I recommend learning with someone who has more experience, but this guide is a great way to get started.

Federal Fishing Rules and Regulations by Region - Fish law. Again, game wardens do not fuck around.

Composting

Now that you've done all of the above, here's what you do with the leftovers.

Composting at Home

Composting for Beginners

The Absolute Begginer's Guide to Composting

And thus the cycle begins again!

Enjoy your food hacks. If you want more suggestions or notice something stupid here, let me know.

[saucefunk]

spin

[stuckinapril]

Honestly it boils down to reparenting yourself & rewiring your own neuronal pathways & telling yourself a firm “stop” when you notice your mind slipping down negative loopholes & being present in the moment & enjoying being mid task rather than waiting for it to end & not thinking of inertia as your baseline and natural way of living

[stuckinapril]

So tempting to keep embarking on the same self destructive cycle over & over & over again . But at some point you have to put ur foot down w ur own behaviors & be the thing that truly saves u

[sashimi55]

Human bodies are so weird like the upper half consists of every single vital organ and the lower half is legs

[dambiex]

[desolationlesbian]

farcille isn't "toxic yuri." nothing remotely toxic about them, they both treat each other with a great deal of care and affection and respect. just because marcille is willing to do forbidden necromancy and arguably cannibalism for her wife doesn't make her toxic that's just what you do for a woman with broad shoulders

[shamebats]

"it's just stress" oh thank god, it's just the silent killer that slowly kills you, perfectly harmless, no need to worry

[thecryptkeeper]

i know the way people talk about their pets now is probably how we’ve been doing it for all of history. a cat owner in ancient rome saw their cat lounging on the dining pillows and commented “he thinks himself to be the senator claudius 🤣”

[owlet]

you need to get it out of your mind that psychosomatic illness is just “making up symptoms” when it’s actually much more like your body is being actively poisoned by chemicals released from your brain

[owlet]

if you’re so stressed that you’re puking your guts up every morning, are unable to eat or keep anything down, you can’t look at light without feeling infinitely worse and feel exhausted and in pain all the time (or whatever your particular stress induced symptom set is) you’re not just feeling like that because you’ve willed it into being. your body is begging for relief from the constant barrage of stress hormones and it requires the fundamental source of stress to go away, not just distracting yourself from the symptoms

just because the root is psychological doesn’t mean the result isn’t an entirely physical process.

[headspace-hotel]

This and also "your body is desperately trying to alert you to the fact that stress is killing you"

[katherynefromphilly]

Doctor, looking at my neck x-ray: “The muscles of your neck are in such spasm right now that your spine has lost its curve. No wonder you’re in such pain. What the heck did you do to yourself?”

Me: “I work on a computer all day.”

Doctor: “Ah. That will do it. Right, so here’s a script for anti-inflammatories and a muscle relaxer. Also try hot and cold on it, 15 minutes each, and then gentle movements between each round. You’ll feel better in about a week.”

Me: “In a week I’m still going to need to work on the computer.”

Doctor: “And here’s also a script for 6 months of Physical Therapy.”

Me: “In 6 months I’m still going to need to work at a computer.”

Doctor: “And take breaks and do stretches between meetings?”

Me: “They book me in back to back meetings where I work. I eat lunch at my computer. I have to excuse myself to go pee.”

Doctor: “…”

Me: “…”

Doctor: “Um… it sounds like this job is actually, literally, killing you? Can you possibly work someplace else?” *

———

*note: It wasn’t said as flippant advice, and the doctor was 100%. right. After I got a different job — which took a WHILE — it was in a different corporate culture, one that didn’t believe in filling the day with meetings. I was able to do the stretches I was supposed to do, and also walk at lunch, and my neck is much better now. Not everyone has this choice. But maybe, if your job is killing you too, start thinking about an escape plan. Your body will eventually turn you into a pretzel otherwise. Nothing psychosomatic about that.

[maemaybe]

I don't know who my intended audience is here, so whoever needs to hear this, I am begging you to learn to participate in conversations that are about things you aren't interested in.

Part of socializing and having friends is being a good listener even when you don't actually give a shit about the subject.

Your are hurting other people's feelings when you bluntly respond with "Anyway..." and then change the topic.

It can not always be about your preferred topic.

You are being rude. Yes, even if you are neurodivergent. You can be both autistic and rude.

[wonderarium]

this sewing pattern just touched me while i was in the middle of reading it

[evilvillain123456789]

step one: replace entire personality with open, festering wound

step two: contort absolutely all stimuli in my environment to relate to the my wound in some manner, ideally one which justifies random acts of unbridled aggression and vengeance

step three: marry a girl with generational wealth

[paper-mario-wiki]

in case you're wondering what the greatest AMV of all time is, it's this one from 2008.

[paper-mario-wiki]

[en-tailsgaythings]

y'all need to watch this this pride month

[ouroborosorder]

I love Solarpunk so fucking much. It’s the most late 2010s ass genre humanly possible. A genre consisting entirely of Pinterest concept art boards and a yogurt commercial. Aggressively political with no actual political stance or statement other than “climate change is bad.” genuinely incredible levels of sucking

[theweight]

this orange was pregnant. Isn’t the world amazing

[contemptible-scoundrel]

Ccan i hit?

I would parry every blow?

[texasinnersmile]

aborted bloke: i would’ve loved to do fuck all

[godkissedme]

We should hang out soon before one of us evolves or disappears