Frugal Friday

[ecosophia]

Welcome back to Frugal Friday! This is a weekly forum post to encourage people to share tips on saving money, especially but not only by doing stuff yourself. A new post will be going up every Friday, and will remain active until the next one goes up. Contributions will be moderated, of course, and I have some simple rules to offer, which may change further as we proceed.

Rule #1:  this is a place for polite, friendly conversations about how to save money in difficult times. It's not a place to post news, views, rants, or emotional outbursts about the reasons why the times are difficult and saving money is necessary. Nor is it a place to use a money saving tip to smuggle in news, views, etc.  I have a delete button and I'm not afraid to use it.

Rule #2:  this is not a place for you to sell goods or services, period. Here again, I have a delete button and I'm not afraid to use it.

Rule #3:  please give your tip a heading that explains briefly what it's about.  Homemade Chicken Soup, Garden Containers, Cheap Attic Insulation, and Vinegar Cleans Windows are good examples of headings. That way people can find the things that are relevant for them. If you don't put a heading on your tip it will be deleted.

Rule #4: don't post anything that would amount to advocating criminal activity. Any such suggestions will not be put through.

With that said, have at it!  

***Please note that since I will be on hiatus for the first half of June, this post will remain open until Friday, June 13. I'll put through comments when I have the chance. -- JMG***

Comments

Re: botulism

[emily07]

...and another interesting story you already might be aware of, again: just for the fun of sharing it and also from memory:
Northern Native Americans (not sure if they be Innuits or other tribes, if memory serves it was east-coast Native Americans, but dunno. I think the source was GEO, a magazin over here covering ancient treasures, new insights and human interst stories) have a way of storing fish (in leaves I think) buried in the earth for some time to have it ...cured/fermeneted/something. It reliably gave a nourishing food. If instead of leaves the "container" was a plastic bucket it ALWAYS turned into something inedible because of botulism. Apparentely the researchers found that the leaves/earth combo ACTIVELY disabled botulism.
Which makes me wonder if a certain kind of leaves only work or just leaves work. Hmmm.

Re: botulism

[prayergardens]

I'm an ethnobotany nerd from the East Coast so I took the challenge and went down this rabbit hole while drinking my coffee. It caught my eye because we don't have any leaves I can think of big enough to store fish.

From my 8 minutes of research I think they may be talking about birch bark. This is what the Norwegian's use to make gravlax from salmon and we have a heck of a lot of birch trees in the Northeast and they buried it in sand which we also have our fair share of. But we don't have salmon...would it work on cod and such?

Here are some interesting links I found:
https://traditionalpreserves.com/traditional-salt-curing-techniques-for-salmon/#Traditional_Birch_Bark_Techniques

https://www.nativetech.org/ >> very detailed and sourced descriptions of technologies at use North America, there was some mention of using baskets from specific species for foods storage but not the burial component.