The last time I touched any of this stuff was more than a decade ago...
My parents came through Fourth of July weekend on the way up to Wyoming for their summer vacation. They brought up with them the last of my belongings that were at my childhood home. It was mostly art supplies. I don’t consider myself that creative and I certainly don’t think I have much talent. But, in my family I was always the creative one, the one with the wild ideas and the ability to convey those ideas through word or image. I took art classes through middle and high school and might have taken a quarter of figure drawing at one point in community college. Since then? I haven’t done any sort of creative work outside of the occasional writing and photography.
pencils, inks, erasers, etc...
Sadly, the one thing that my parents forgot was my old portfolio that has all the work I did in high school/college in it. That is still sitting in a closet somewhere in the desert. At least it isn’t outside where the extreme weathers would surely ruin the paper, chalks, oils, etc…
Black and white crayons, brushes, calligraphy pen, ink...
I don’t why I didn’t pursue art further. I had time in college to take classes. I must have thought that it wasn’t worth the time to practice at something I never considered myself very good at and so couldn’t do anything with later on in life. Yes, I realize how stupid that sounds coming from someone who got their BA in Classical Civilizations. I think another reason might be that I never had any interest in pursuing the craft through digital means… I like getting my hands dirty and feeling the paper beneath my fingers; and my parents didn’t have the money or processing power (this was the mid/late 90s) to get a drawing tablet or the software then in use. So, I sunk my time into other things: poetry and photography. I miss it sometimes. Now that I have all this stuff just sitting around maybe I’ll pick it up again… Who knows?
More pencils and graphites. Those might be water colors on the right?This is a surprising amount of spray paints and sealers...
If you would like to see some of my old creative work and new stuff as well you can check out my other blog: Fictive Funk. I’ll be posting up old sketches all this week and next!
As regular readers of DiMortuiSunt (now False(B)logic) -Ed) probably already know I’m a big fan of DIY. I grew up living an average suburban lifestyle: separated from the people, processes, land, and animals that make my life possible. As I’ve grown up I’ve recognized this glaring absence in my life. D and I have been trying, slowly, to become more involved. We belong to a Co-op; we garden and compost; we are learning to make our own food products; we are pickling and canning. I grew up being a consumer and I want to make sure as an adult I am a maker.
I’m not the only person who feels this way. There is an entire movement among my generation of people who are trying to get back to a more sustainable and authentic lifestyle (by authentic I mean one in which the person is making something, working with their hands, and creating tangible items). Some people are taking it farther than others. Everything they are doing, is amazing. Some of them I’m sure will change the world, like the man in the video above.
The idea of a DIY Civilization kit seems ridiculous on its face. The task of knowing how to and being able to create all the things necessary for the comforts of a modern lifestyle are just too complicated for a single person or small group of people to know. Despite that though the Open Source Ecology Project is an attempt to put all the plans, instructions, know-how, etc onto a single DVD that will allow the owner the ability to build and operate advanced technologies to jumpstart an economy and even a civilization.
I was hungry for a donut the other day but couldn’t find one anywhere near the Capitol the other day. I ended up settling for A Nestle King Sized Sandwich (only now do I realize that no where are the words Ice cream to be found on this wrapper.) As I was eating the sandwich I turned over the wrapper and looked over the nutritional information and list of ingredients, as is my want. I noticed that for the vast majority of them I had no idea what they were… Considering that monoglycerides don’t sound that appealing I decided to investigate!
For those of you who can’t make out the list in the picture above this “frozen dairy dessert” contains:
Good lord, some of those are a mouthful aren’t they? Now let’s see if I can find out what they all are? And if you didn’t know ingredients on food are listed by the quantity in the product, so the first item is the most, and the last item is the least.
The Ingredients
Ice cream:
Whey – is the liquid remaining after milk has been curdled and strained. It can be used to make ricotta or brown cheeses but is most often used as an additive in many processed foods, such as this ice cream sandwich
Sandwich wafers – see below
Sugar – this is a fairly generic term, I’m assuming that it is referring to sucrose hear, as it is the most common and popular.
Corn syrup – made from the starch of maize. Corn syrup is mostly glucose. According to Wikipedia it is used, “in foods to soften texture, add volume, prevent crystallization of sugar, and enhance flavor.”
Cream – skimmed from the top of milk; this is butterfat. This is a common ingredient in ice cream.
Tapioca maltodextrin – a modified food starch that thickens and stabilizes fatty compounds. It is produced from tapioca starch by a natural enzymatic process to give desirable fat-like and stabilizing properties. Van be used as a fat-replacer in desserts, cheese products, and ice cream. Some of the benefits include the neutral flavor which makes it an excellent flavor release with improved smooth texture. The off-white color and low application rate of 2% to 10% makes it a great substitute for fat, milk, gums and other stabilizers.
Propylene glycol monostearate (PGM) – ss a colourless, viscous, colorless liquid. It is mixable with water alcohol, and many solvents. PGM has a wide range of applications including industrial solvents, paint and coating solvents, polyester and alkyd resins, antifreeze coolants, heat transfer fluids, deicing fluids, plasticizers, detergents and surfactants, and bactericide (YUM!) Pharmaceutical grade PGM is used in foods, pharmaceutical, and personal care products. Propylene glycol monostearate can be used as a lipophilic emulsifier and emulsion stabilizer in food.
Skim milk – milk with all of its cream removed.
Guar gum – the ground endosperm of guar beans. Typically produced as a free-flowing, pale, off-white colored, coarse to fine ground powder. Guar gum has man applications from the explosives to mining industry. Most likely its use here is to help maintain the homogeneity and texture of the dessert.
Monoglycerides – a common food additive used as an emulsifier, to help blend certain ingredients together such as water and oil. When you bake or make ice cream at home you use an egg yolk.
Sodium carboxymethylcellulose (SCMC) – Commonly used in pharmaceuticals. SCMC is a gummy substance that is a sodium salt of carboxymethyl cellulose; used as a thickening or emulsifying agent. It is also used in paints, detergents, and most disturbingly the oil drilling industry (as part of the mud they use to plug wells.)
Carrageenan – derived from seaweed carrageenan gel increases viscosity.
Annatto color – derived from the achiote tree. Annatto is used to produce a yellow to orange food coloring.
Artificial flavors – through the magic of science we can create volatile (how else would you be smelling them?) compounds which mimic the complex chemicals that give flavor to the foods we eat. The flavor business is a cut-throat one which is why manufacturers don’t have to tell use what they are using.
Caramel color – another food coloring. Caramel color is one of the oldest and most widely-used food colorings, and is found in almost every kind of industrially produced food.
Salt – you should know already
Sandwich wafers:
Bleached white flour – white flour that has been chemically treated, usually with the same chemicals used to age the flour, to remove the light yellow color caused by xanthophylls, a variety of carotenoid also found in potatoes and onions.
Sugar – see above
Caramel color – see above
Dextrose – is glucose how this is different from fructose and sucrose is beyond my grasp of chemistry.
Palm oil – edible plant oil derived from the fruits of palm trees. Palm oils are high in saturated fat. Common in processed foods because of how cheap it is.
Corn flour – A powdery flour made of finely ground cornmeal. White corn flour is used as a filler, binder and thickener in cookie, pastry and meat industries.
High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) – According to Wikipedia, HFCS “comprises any of a group of corn syrups that has undergone enzymatic processing to convert some of its glucose into fructose to produce a desired sweetness. In the United States, consumer foods and products typically use high-fructose corn syrup as a sweetener.” This is because it is usually cheaper than sucrose, or table sugar.
Corn syrup – see above
Baking soda – sodium bicarbonate. Baking soda is used in baking because it facilitates the rising of dough.
Modified corn starch – created by physically, enzymatically, or chemically treating native starch, thereby changing the properties of the starch to enhance their performance in different applications. Most likely used here to prevent the wafers from dripping while they defrost.
Salt – see above
Mono and diglycerides – see monoglycerides above
Soy lecithin – a yellow-brownish fatty substances occurring in Soy beans. Its use here is probably for its emulsifying properties since it reduces fat and egg requirements. It also acts as a releasing agent to prevent sticking and simplify cleaning (important in mass production.)
Cocoa – the low-fat component of chocolate.
Thoughts
Before carrying out this exercise I had no idea what the majority of these items were (outside the ones with common household names and the various sugars) or how they were made. Now that I do know I’m only slightly perturbed (disturbed.) The idea that many of these items are produced in chemistry labs instead of grown on a farm, while alarming, doesn’t seem to indicate that they are actively harmful.
Sadly, the same cannot be said for the industry that uses and creates them. HFCS is no more harmful than common sugar but, the system that created that made HFCS viable as a substitute is quite harmful.
I enjoyed the sandwich but I don’t think I’ll make eating them a habit. I continue to follow Michael Pollan’s advice from In Defense of Food, “don’t eat anything that your great-great grandmother would not recognize as food.”
Last Friday was when I was supposed to bottle my apple crisp ale. I couldn’t though because the bottle caps had not yet arrived (either had the bottle capper.) Spoiling my plan to have this post appear here yesterday morning and why you are reading a post here on Tuesday. I received the capper on Saturday and the caps showed up on Monday. Seeing as I was already behind schedule I decided that last night had to be the night. With the help of D I sanitized all the instruments, brought the beer out from its dark hiding space and tried to move it into a pot.
This is MY beer you go make your own!
Why did it need to go into a pot? Well the pot had some honey in it which I believe is necessary to either sweeten the beer after the yeast has eaten everything or give the yeast a little more to eat, maybe both. I have no idea really this is my first time doing this and I spent more time just trying to get the procedure right without worrying too much about the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ of it all. The hardest part by far was managing the suction in the hose and getting the beer to flow into the pot and afterwards into the bottles. I also had a small problem with some of my bottles, when it came time to cap them. They were screwtops. It only took me breaking one bottle and for D to point this out to me before I figured it out though! So, not a lot of beer was lost nor any additional bottles broken.
All total the one gallon kit made nine beers. One which I couldn’t drink because it had broken glass in it. Two which might become contaminated because I couldn’t cap them all the way. All in all not the most efficient use of my time or money. Beer is cheaper just about anywhere. These cost my, not including labor, more than $4 dollars a bottle. But, the experience of brewing my own beer is priceless, right? RIGHT? Right. Next time maybe I’ll share some with you.
Everything I need to get bottling... Everything after it's been sanitized.The mysterious art of siphoning... I'm not very good at it.What's left after all the beer is gone, yum?These might not make it two weeks. They're only 'half-capped.'A bottle full of beer that I can no longer drink. *sadface is sad*
