opinion – Page 57 – Pat’s Answers Blog

Response to a question

When I published on 8/26/18, it was my intention to immediately start on Book 2.

Funny thing is I sat at the computer and stared at a blank screen with no words coming. It was as if I mentally couldn’t let go of the first story.

I was asked a question on a message board that I frequent that I believe is worth a blog post.

[quote=10-22Plinker;19077498]When is book two being published?[/quote]

First off, thank you for what I consider a compliment. I am flattered.

I gave some thought to the question and have a couple of thoughts.

“A Wake of Vultures” is a story that I lived with for over a year. There were a couple of times that I hit a wall as to where the story was going. Once was almost 8 weeks which was when I wrote “A Republic, if you can keep it” (Available as a Kindle e-book now), as a blog series. I had also outlined a number of other stories as a follow up in the series.

When I published on 8/26/18, it was my intention to immediately start on Book 2.

Funny thing is I sat at the computer and stared at a blank screen with no words coming. It was as if I mentally couldn’t let go of the first story. As of this morning, 9/29/2018, the muse is speaking to me again and I need to decide which of the remaining five stories goes into the hopper next. I have started roughing out character biographies that are currently generic enough to go into either one.

Secondly, I have found out that this book business is not like “Field of Dreams”. You can build it, but if you don’t market it, your story sits out there in the cold, lonely and ignored. So I need to figure out a better marketing plan for “A Wake of Vultures”.

So, to answer your question, hopefully, I have learned something by writing the first two books and the plan is to have book two written, polished, edited and published around 4/1/2019. Depending on which one I go with, the title will be “C. Auris” or “Chaos Warhammer”.

C Auris cover-background

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Nothing to see here…move along

…in this case, broad daylight was the setting and it seems pretty clear that this wasn’t a Department of Defense affair. Instead, it looks like a federal operation:

nothing to see here

I’m sure there is nothing to this… no connection to any of the past week’s events or anything. Nothing to see here…move along citizen.

Black Hawk Flying Around Chicago Was Just Training

Commandos fast-roped from helicopters to many Chicago rooftops this week, and some were worried, but they were just training.

It’s unclear which agency the commando team is with. Rogoway said such sightings in Chicago often the 160th Special Operations Air Regiment, or the Night Stalkers.

…in this case, broad daylight was the setting and it seems pretty clear that this wasn’t a

Department of Defense affair. Instead, it looks like a federal operation:

The UH-60M Black Hawk photographed and filmed all over Chicago does not appear to belong to the United States Army. The configuration of its antennas is unique and it does not have any Army titles or serials on it.

Over the last decade, a number of UH-60s of various sub-types have been transferred from the DoD to federal agencies like the Department of Justice. The DOJ has also bought UH-60Ms by piggybacking the Army’s buys. This appears to be one of those aircraft.

Media article

I seem to remember a training exercise was scheduled a few years ago on September 11, 2001… Nah, couldn’t be…

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A Wake of Vultures A Republic, if you can keep it

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Memo to Maxine

Threatening or intimidating public officials is a terrorist threat.

Maxine Waters

Threatening government officials of the United States is a felony under federal law.

Threatening the President of the United States is a felony under 18 U.S.C. § 871, punishable by up to 5 years of imprisonment, that is investigated by the United States Secret Service.

Threatening other officials is a Class C or D felony, usually carrying maximum penalties of 5 or 10 years under 18 U.S.C. § 875, 18 U.S.C. § 876 and other statutes, that is investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Threatening or intimidating public officials is a terrorist threat.

By definition that makes Maxine Waters a domestic terrorist.

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Cynicism

Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen – Friedrich Nietzsche

Me-Cynical

A few apropos thoughts for the day:

“We now live in a nation where doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the press destroys information, religion destroys morals, and our banks destroy the economy.” And how is this accomplished? By the global elite’s use of police that have pledged to “protect and serve” but instead “oppress and terrorize.” – Chris Hedges

Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen – Friedrich Nietzsche

Lord save us from the spineless, witless partisans destroying this nation, and smite them from the face of the land – Worrier King

Orwell Eagle

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A Wake of Vultures is available as a Kindle Download

Sherman Jacob. the owner/operator of snoopwiki.com accidentally acquires information regarding an international arms dealer doing business in his north-suburban Chicago neighborhood. Looking to make the biggest score of his life, he hatches a blackmail plot that explodes in more ways than one.
“A Wake of Vultures” – Book #1 in the series “Tales From The Deep State”.

The Kindle version of Wake of Vultures is now live on Amazon. There is a free preview option so, if you would be so kind as to click the link and leave a review I would be appreciative.

Wake of Vultures-Front

Dystopian American Society

Balkanized America will have a fundamentally tribal feel. It will recognize the Contagion Model of ideology which is implicit in all Leftist thinking: we are not just opposed to our enemies, but to anything other than what we are.

broken glass

We entered a new Dark Age some time ago when it became clear that Leftism, instead of bringing us an age of Light, was ushering us into an age of Grey, where entropy rules and greatness is extinguished. The Light was a lie; the real truth of Light is that you cannot produce it by demanding Light, only by maintaining balance between Dark and Light.

Sarah Sanders stopped at a restaurant called The Red Hen in historic Lexington, Virginia. The owner, Stephanie Wilkinson, perhaps in an attempt to get the fifteen minutes of fame one can parlay into media power in this bumbling idiocracy, asked Sanders to leave. Those are the basic facts that seem beyond dispute.

Where we connect to the Dark Age part, however, is that Wilkinson asked Sanders to leave on a moral basis: she finds Trump morally repugnant. Wilkinson argued that she excluded Sanders from service for moral reasons:

I’m honestly not sure why some people’s definition of war, in this case civil war, is defined by how many bullets fly in how many geographical locations?

Just what exactly would it look like if a group of wealthy oligarchs took over our government and used it against us?

What aspects would there be to that war? Would we perhaps quit being run as a constitutional republic and start being run as an empire?

Propaganda? What would it look like if our informational institutions were used against real Americans? What if the educational system was used against real Americans, what would that look like?

A financial/economic aspect? What would it look like if our monetary system and its debt and the ‘free trade’ agreements were used against real Americans?

A governmental aspect? What would it look like if an out of control intelligence community and justice department were used against real Americans?

A religious aspect? What would it look like if Church staffs were filled with people that didn’t believe the Bible was anything other than an opiate for the masses and used religion to lead real American believers away?

A health aspect? What would it look like if one group of oligarchs that controlled the food real Americans ate polluted it with chemicals and gmo’s? What would it look like if those real Americans sickened by the food monopolists had to go to another oligarch controlled enterprise – health care – which cared only about how many $’s it could wring out of the victims and could care less about real Americans actual health?

What about the safety of real Americans? What would it look like if the institutions we rely on for safety weren’t really about safety but control? What would that look like for real Americans?

What if the oligarchs wanted to use immigration policy against real Americans? How could that be used to wage war against real Americans?

Has the middle class of real Americans been flourishing and getting healthier and stronger over the last 40 years?

Has the government and the richest of the rich the oligarch class flourished and gotten healthier and stronger over the last 40 years?

Hmmmm…..why could that be?

Perhaps there has been a civil war raging for some time. Perhaps if we checked with the victims of violent crimes in the wreckage of the War on Poverty and War on Drugs they might have a different perspective on the violence of the civil war? Or if we checked with angel families? Or if we checked with the families of soldiers lost to the War on Terror the MIC’s oligarchs have been engaging in if there is enough violence to count as civil war?

Maybe its just me. Maybe I am just jaded. Maybe I don’t believe the above is all a comedy of errors or coincidence.

Maybe, I realize that the oligarchs want real America and real Americans dead and just simply face that reality. And call that a civil war.
“I’m not a huge fan of confrontation,” Ms. Wilkinson said. “I have a business, and I want the business to thrive. This feels like the moment in our democracy when people have to make uncomfortable actions and decisions to uphold their morals.”
Although it has not occurred to our media yet, this means that we have a parallel case to the question of whether Christian bakers should bake cakes supporting gay marriages, pedosexuality, or other Leftist darlings. They are also refusing to serve some people for moral reasons, and theirs are as important to them as Wilkinson’s are to her.

In the old age of Grey, our response would have been to defend the underdog because egalitarians always limit the powerful in order to raise up the unsuccessful. Therefore, both Wilkinson and the gay cake buyers would be underdogs because they were from marginalized groups, and Sanders and the baker would be out of luck.

In the new Dark Age, however, even though this has not occurred to Republicans yet, the correct answer is that we do not expect people to work together on a universal basis. Instead, we expect them to separate and differentiate which means that Sarah Sanders is not entitled to attend The Red Hen, nor is the gay cake buyer entitled to a gay cake.

As it turns out, trying out the new Tower of Babel that we call diversity and globalism has merely revealed why it was never created by nature. Groups of people need to be able to go their own way and differentiate themselves, so that they can try out their method of adaptation.

Some methods are better than others, and those groups rise while others fall. This irritates people because they fear the consequences in the reality of their mental fancies once put into action, so they try to make it illegal for some to succeed while others fail. That is the essence of “We Are All One” thinking.

In the new Dark Age, we are aiming for Balkanization. When you drive through America, you will no longer see a single flat mass where you have identical rights. Instead, you will see a topography of tribes where your rights will vary from nothing to full acceptance. Among your tribe, you will have privileges and duties, which are what “rights” become in the new Dark Age.

This new America will be more like the old or a futuristic space opera. Someone who goes into a Christian bakery looking for a gay cake may find himself staring down the barrels of a shotgun and possibly run out of town; he was in the wrong place, and needs to find his tribe elsewhere.

As a result, no restaurant will be for everyone just like no community will be. Sarah Sanders will never sit down in the wrong restaurant because she will know in advance who holds what territory. She will be armed, and expect to encounter armed resistance in the areas ruled by other tribes.

Just as the Tower of Babel collapsed from its own weight, the road to Hell paved with good intentions that is diversity and globalism has shattered. We are now living in the ruins, which will be determined with close quarters combat, house by house and street by street.

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A Second Civil War?

the sheep might want to consider that the sheepdog works for the shepherd and keeps the sheep safe until the shepherd decides it’s time to slaughter them.

American Civil War

From celebrities calling on citizens to take to the streets, to members of Congress calling for the public harassment of White House officials, to mob justice at restaurants — is the US heading toward a new kind of Civil War?

Well, some people think the seeds of a new Civil War have already been sown — and in a recent article, University of Tennessee Law Professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds argued in a USA Today column that this new war is indeed “well underway.”

Reynolds was echoing similar comments from political scientist Thomas Schaller who wrote in a recent Bloomberg column that America is “at the beginning of a soft civil war,” and author Tom Ricks who agreed that the country seems to be “lurching” in that direction.

‘God is on our side!’

Representative Maxine Waters (D-California) caused a huge stir when she encouraged critics of the White House’s immigration policies to go out and harass members of the Trump administration in public. Waters made an impassioned call for citizens to ensure there would be “no sleep, no peace” for White House officials.

“If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. You push back on them. Tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere,” she said.

But her comments were so extreme and incendiary that it prompted a former secret service agent to call them “dangerous” and warned they “go beyond breaking the norms” of civil discourse and criticized her for “endorsing mob-rule to satisfy a political goal.”

Not long after Waters’ comments, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders was asked to leave a restaurant in Virginia because she works for the Trump administration.

‘Surround their homes and schools in protest!’

Celebrities are getting in on the action, too, encouraging Americans to take to the streets in the millions to protest the Trump administration.

Comments by actor Peter Fonda put the secret service on alert when he suggested that Trump’s 12-year-old son Barron should be taken from his mother Melania and put “in a cage with pedophiles” and that citizens should “surround the schools” of administration officials’ children in response to the child-separation policy.

Somewhat less dramatically, other Hollywood figures have called for protests and change. Actor John Cusack accused the Trump administration of “fascism” and “torturing” children — while musician Serj Tankian wrote on Instagram that the US is in a state of “utter regression” and that it is time for a “peaceful revolution.”

Confederate monuments controversy

The fierce debate over the removal of confederate monuments and symbols across the US epitomizes the current political and social divide and the competing interpretations of American history, with one side believing the monuments revere figures who fought to maintain slavery while the other side believes they honor great patriots.

When white supremacist Dylann Roof killed nine black Americans attending a prayer service in Virginia in 2015, it prompted a movement to have Confederate monuments removed from public spaces across the country. More than 100 publicly-supported monuments and symbols have been removed since 2015 — but not without controversy and counter-protests. While monuments are being removed across the US, other groups are pushing for new ones to be erected.

Media wars, polarization of opinion

All of this social discord is playing out, magnified, on Americans’ TV screens in a way that appears to be exacerbating the problem. Eager to up their ratings, news networks invite the most polarizing of guests for daily screaming matches to be beamed into people’s homes. Traditional “News” organizations such as CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times and Washington Post as well as modern “informational” outlets on the internet like Twitter, Google and Facebook have abandoned informational reportage in favor of “fake news” and “propaganda.”

In his article, Reynolds wrote that news media which “promote shrieking outrage in pursuit of ratings and page views, are making the problem worse” and reminisced about a time when Americans could disagree with each other without hating each other.

Stratification of society

While all this is being played out on TV screens and social media, those at the fringes of society are feeling the effects of a sick system perhaps more than anyone. The socio-economic stratification of American society appears more obvious than it has at any time in recent years.

Alleged inequality and supposed police violence against African-Americans is the given “reason” that prompted the NFL kneeling protests, which turned into a nationwide controversy between Americans who are proud of their flag and national anthem and all they stand for — and those who claim true freedom and justice have not yet come to America. Manufactured crises such as an opioid crisis, child poverty rates, and a constant drumbeat to pit Black against White; poor against wealthy; labor against business, have all inflamed anger and division in America from a simmer to a boil.

Americans don’t feel social ties which transcend politics. It’s all us vs. them — and nothing in between. Churches, fraternal organizations and neighborhoods used to cross political lines, American cohesion has “shrunk and decayed” and people are increasingly finding their identity only in victimization politics.

Marriage counselors say that a relationship is doomed to fail when the couple begin to view each other with contempt — and in America today, there seems to be nothing but feelings of contempt felt on both sides of the political spectrum.

If possible, we need to step back and ask some pertinent questions;

“Who gains power or advantage from the fomented chaos?”
“Who gains wealth or influence from the fomented chaos?”
“Who would lose power, advantage, wealth or influence if the American people were to coalesce and unite once again in common purpose?

There are, unfortunately, members of our society who look upon media, political parties and government as protectors of society. Something like sheepdogs who protect the sheep. Perhaps so, but the sheep might want to consider that the sheepdog works for the shepherd and keeps the sheep safe until the shepherd decides it’s time to slaughter them.

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Gang wars and government

As the political soap-opera that is referred to as governance in the United States continues to spin crazily out of control it becomes obvious that the vast majority of our political “leaders” have less collective intellect that gerbils and the leadership instincts of lemmings.

Gang War 01

The defining feature of gang life is personal loyalty trumps all else. This is true for low level street gangs, as well as highly complex organized crime gangs. The rules are not written down or agreed to by consensus. They are imposed top-down by a group of men loyal to one man. The head of a drug cartel has lieutenants to enforce discipline on the the sub-groups down the line. The rules within those groups are similarly enforced by lieutenants loyal to the guy in charge of the group. This continues down to the street level gangsters.

The effect of this is a chaotic lawlessness. The punishment for the exact same transgression may be wildly different in two different cases. It all depends upon the relationship between the boss and the offender. While all criminal organizations have rules against betraying confidences, there’s no hard and fast rule on the punishment, despite what you see on television. Baltimore gangsters rat on one another all the time to get better prison terms, without facing a universally applied death penalty for snitching.

Consider what we are watching with our government. News brings word that the US Attorney is dropping charges against the terrorists, who went on a rampage during the inauguration last year. They announced this in a holiday week, so it would get the least amount of news coverage. Now, they certainly could have looked into who financed the riot, who helped organize it and then went after the shot callers, but they never bothered to do that. Instead, they sat on it until people forgot about it and then dropped the case.

Now, we have mountains of laws for dealing with self-defined criminal groups. The Feds could go after a Lacy MacAuley, who details her activities on-line, in order to figure out who pays her rent. Then they could go after that person or group. This is basic police work. At the very minimum, the people financing these terrorists would know they have some exposure, but that never happens. You see, everyone knows who finances Antifa and other terrorists operations and they have friends in high places.

Here’s another example. Peter Strozk is the focus of a very serious criminal conspiracy to subvert the last election. A mountain of evidence pointing to his guilt has been in the public domain for a year, yet he was just recently fired from the FBI. He has not been charged with anything and it appears he will never be charged. In fact, he is now telling Congress he has no intention of testifying. It is not that he plans to take the fifth. He is not going to show up. Their silly laws no longer apply to people in his gang.

Again, this gets to the way in which gang life operates. There may be rules, but what matters is who enforces the rules and on whom the rules are to be applied. In this case, the wide ranging criminal organization known as the Democratic Party will never let their people get punished by the Republicans. Those rules about complying with a subpoena from Congress only apply when the gangsters with power can enforce them and they will only enforce them when it suits their interests. This is gang life. This is the gangster state.

This becomes more obvious when looking at the whole criminal enterprise that is currently called the FBI. There’s no question that the people at the top engaged in a wide-ranging criminal conspiracy to spy on the Trump campaign and engineer a criminal investigation of his administration, for the purpose of removing him from office. This is the one explanation that explains the mountain of evidence piled up in the public domain. This is so obvious that no one bothers to deny it. Instead, the game is to avoid discussing it in public.

Lurking in the secret FBI files can be only three possibilities, with regards to this conspiracy. One, there is proof they cooked the whole thing to help get Hillary Clinton elected. The other is some out of left field explanation for the mountain of data, that points to an innocent motive. The final option is a massive hole in the system where the damning proof used to exists, but has now been destroyed as part of the cover-up. To date, the FBI and DOJ refuse to comply with Congressional subpoenas to answer this question.

Again, we’re back to the gangster model. The people inside these agencies have a primary loyalty to the gang, not to the laws of the country or the alleged institutions charged with promulgating and enforcing the laws. In gang life, you are first loyal to the gang and that’s what we see with this case. Rod Rosenstein was sent to Congress in order to deliver a threat to Congress, if they persisted in their interference with the gang’s business. In a prior age, Devin Nunes would have found a black palm print on his door.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley late Friday night. September 21st, granted another extension to Christine Blasey Ford to decide on whether she will testify to the committee regarding her 37 year old sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee, Bret Kavanaugh. Shame on you Senator Grassley, I have to wonder who got to you. Did you learn drawing red lines in the sand from former president Obama?

Sadly, regardless of what some of us who actually were taught US history and government before public “education” became collectivist indoctrination, our government and the bedrock document, the Constitution, have been prostituted to establishing the notion of reasonable foolishness and foolish reason as a generic principle of an old French farce.

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Tall oaks from little acorns grow

he important thing is, however, that if it’s an acorn, it’s edible, no matter what species it comes from.

acorns

DISCLAIMER: It is my belief that this information is true and accurate, however, understand that if you choose to follow what is posted here you do so at your own risk. The author of this article and the management of this website assume no responsibility for your application of this information and, specifically disavow any responsibility for any outcome therefrom.

In the United States, there are quite a few different species of oak trees, and many of them vary by climate and region. The important thing is, however, that if it’s an acorn, it’s edible, no matter what species it comes from.

In our area of the Ozarks, we seem to be dominated by white oaks, but you may find that the oaks that populate your region are quite different. Regardless, the process of collecting, processing, and eating is much the same.

The first thing to consider when foraging for acorns is the timing. Oaks have two distinct phases when they drop acorns. An early drop and then the good drop. Early in the fall, you may notice that oak trees are dripping with acorns for the first time – this is not the time to collect nuts.

If you collect from the first fall, you’ll be disappointed to find that every single one is bad. In some, inexplicable way, oak trees know what nuts aren’t developing well or are infected with insects, and so they rid themselves of the unworthy nuts as soon as they can. Many of these acorns will still have their caps firmly attached (a sure sign of a bad nut).

It’s the second drop you want to watch for, usually happening sometime in October. These nuts are the good ones! You can crack open a few acorns with a rock to test them

Now, there are some options when it comes to gathering. At the beginning hunker down under the most productive oak trees and pick up acorns by hand. It’s quite easy to sort through acorns by sight.

How to tell a good acorn from a bad one? It basically comes down to inspecting the disc on the top for dark marks, watching for weevil holes, and ignoring ones with the caps still attached.

A much faster approach is to use the Garden Weasel Nut Gatherer.

Though the collecting tool is indiscriminate in whether it’s picking up a good acorn, rotten acorn, or rock, the time it saves in not having to bend over and the speed of gathering made it totally worth using. Under a good tree, you could fill a five-gallon bucket in under an hour! Granted, there will be the odd stick and stone in your pail, but you can easily sorted those out when you get back inside and began to process the nuts.

Once you have your haul of nuts, it’s important to get them drying or processed as soon as possible. Since acorns are naturally rather moist, they can go bad really quickly when piled in a bucket.

If you can’t process them immediately, lay them out flat in a single layer somewhere where air can circulate around them.

Also, be aware that acorn weevil larvae will appear soon – even some good-looking nuts are secretly host to the little grubby nut-destroyers.

The grubs are not harmful in the least, as they can’t re-infect other acorns, and they don’t bite. Be aware that the grubs’ sole desire is to get back into the ground so that they can pupate and infect next year’s crop of acorns. It might be best to dispose of them somewhere far from your choice oak trees.

The first step to process your acorns is to wash them. Filled your kitchen sink with half full with water and dump several scoops of acorns into it. Immediately, most of the acorns dropped to the bottom. These are likely to be good.

You’ll find that the acorn caps and many bad acorns float on the surface – this makes the first step of sorting quite easy! Take note, however, that almost all dried acorns will float, so if you dry your acorns before processing them, the float test won’t be useful to you.

All the acorns that looked good should be spread out in a single layer on several cookie sheets. Toast them in the oven at 175 degrees Fahrenheit for an hour and a half. This serves to dry them off and warm them for cracking.

Now, there are several options when it comes to cracking loads of acorns. It can be as simple as smashing them open with a hammer on a flat surface or as sophisticated as buying a specialized nutcracker for the purpose.

Anysell88 Manual Heavy Duty Rocket Nut Cracker (https://www.amazon.com/Anysell88-Manual-Cracker-Nutcracker-Sheller/dp/B07GZCVCBM/ref=sr_1_1?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1537112237&sr=1-1&keywords=anysell88+manual+heavy+duty+rocket+nutcracker)

During this stage that do the bulk of your sorting. It’s inevitable that some bad acorns will ride along with the good ones, but once they’re cracked open, the good is super-easy to separate from the bad.

Any that were moldy, had clear evidence of being nibbled by bugs or were covered with dark spots go into the compost, and all the tan, waxy, nutmeats go into a large stock pot so that they can be leached.

During this stage, most of the testas (the dark brown, papery coating over the nut) also comes off. Some sources say that you must remove every trace of the testa to have tasty flour, but the odd piece here and there really doesn’t make a difference.

This next part is important. It’s possible to eat a single acorn raw with no ill effect, but I don’t know if you’d want to repeat the experience. The high amount of tannins in acorns make the raw product quite unpalatable. Leaching – soaking the acorns in water to separate the nut from its water-soluble tannins – makes them edible!

Cold leaching acorns results in a versatile end product, one that can be used as a fine flour or coarse polenta, as well as in all the ways you can use hot leached acorns. Acorn flour doesn’t have gluten in it, but it’s a versatile flour, nonetheless, especially when the tannins are leached with cold water.

Because it contains no gluten, acorn flour won’t rise on its own. That’s why you’ll often see recipes calling for half acorn flour and half regular flour. However, some baked goods, like cookies and brownies, work well with cold-leached acorn flour alone. Acorn flour adds richness and depth to anything you use it in. The starch you preserve by cold leaching helps bind the baked goods and lets you use your acorn flour in lots of different ways.

Native peoples used to let running water do the work of leaching by tethering baskets of acorns in a stream and allowing the cold water to run through the nuts for several days. I don’t have a stream, but I do have a toilet tank.

The Jar Method for cold leaching acorns.

It’s low tech, and requires only a little more effort on your part. For this method, you’ll need to grind your shelled acorns into a coarse meal before leaching. You can do this in a high quality blender, like a Vitamix, or with a hand mill, sold for grinding whole corn kernels. A hand mill produces a coarse grind, which is perfect for recipes like falafel and veggie burgers, while the Vitamix produces a finer flour, excellent for baking.

Find a large, clear glass or plastic jar with a tight-fitting lid. Fill the jar halfway with coarsely ground acorn meal, then top it off with tap water. Use a chopstick or the handle of a wooden spoon to poke out any air pockets in the acorn meal, close the lid, and give the jar a good shake. Move the jar to the refrigerator. The acorn meal will settle out of the water with time, and the water turns brown as the tannins leach from the nuts.

Let the jar sit for 24 hours in the refrigerator, then carefully pour the water off the meal. Don’t worry about getting every last drop. Refill the jar with water, and replace the jar in the refrigerator. You’ll need to do this several times, depending on how bitter the nuts were to begin with. After pouring off the water for the third time, taste the acorn meal. If it’s bitter, continue to change the water every 24 hours until no trace of bitterness remains.

Once the bitterness has been leached from the acorn meal, pour the meal out into the center of a dish towel. Gather the four corners of the towel together and twist the dish towel closed, then continue to twist until water begins to drip from the bottom of the dish towel. When no more water can be removed by twisting, squeeze the dish towel as hard as possible to remove as much water as you can.

If you’re in a big hurry for leached acorn flour, try the running water method. This is the most labor-intensive method, but is by no means difficult. Put a cup of shelled nuts in a blender and add water to four to five inches above the level of the nuts. Pulverize to create a slurry, and set aside. (If you have already ground your acorns into meal, but not yet leached them, you can also use the method described below.)

Place a large colander in the sink and line it with a dishtowel. Pour the slurry or meal into the colander, then run cool water into the colander and stir with a large spoon. After eight minutes of stirring, taste the slurry. If there is any bitter flavor, let the water run for another two or three minutes and taste again. You should be able to stir without spilling, which is why this is best done in small batches in a large colander. Once the acorn meal is not at all bitter, squeeze out as much excess water as possible, as described in the jar method, above.

If you have a dehydrator with fruit leather sheets, spread the moist acorn meal across the sheets and set the temperature to the lowest possible setting. Depending on the humidity where you live, your meal will take between 12 and 24 hours to dry. Check it after several hours and break up any large clumps to speed the drying process. An oven or warming drawer will also work, as long as the temperature is below 150F.

You can stop here, at the dried acorn meal stage, or grind it to make a fine flour for baking. The dry grains canister of a Vitamix does a great job in under a minute, but an ordinary spice grinder also does a very good job, albeit in smaller batches. I like to keep jars of both coarse meal and fine flour on hand.

Once the acorns (whole or ground) have dried, they’re ready to be measured, sealed, and stored. A vacuum sealer is a handy tool for preserving freshness, but if you don’t have a vacuum sealer you can store your leached acorns in ziplock bags. Close the bags most of the way, then suck out as much air as you can with a drinking straw before sealing them all the way.

Whole nuts will keep for several years in the freezer; the smaller amount of exposed surface area means slower oxidation. Flour and meal should be used within a year.

Available at amazon.com “A Republic, if you can keep it”

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Frankly my dear…

We’ve never stood in your way but we don’t really care if you have good neighborhoods or not.

woodpile report

The following is a Guest Post from Ol’ Remus of the late and greatly missed Woodpile Report.

With all the recent troubles we’re again being invited to an honest and open conversation about race, or said differently, the browbeatings will be resumed. Try this for honest and open: many of us, probably most of us, are tired of your whining, your so-called grievances, your violence and crime, your insults and threats, your witless blather and pornographic demeanor—all of it. You’re not quite 13% of the population yet everything has to be about you, all day, every day. With you, facts aren’t facts, everything’s a kozmik krisis, and abusive confrontations are your go-to.

Here’s the thing: some of us despise you, although fewer than you believe, but most of us plain don’t care about you or your doings. There was a time when we did care, but you betrayed our good will and played us for fools. We laugh about it now, but we actually believed you wanted equal opportunity and mutual respect and to live in harmony—all that stuff. Ain’t it a hoot? Imagine our embarrassment.

We talk among ourselves just like you do. It’s true, we have “frank and open discussions” when you’re not around. Why? Partly because it’s exhausting to tippy-toe around you. Partly because you think it’s your celestial right to tell us what we can say. And partly because you’re alarmingly aggressive or painfully dim-witted by turns. We never know which “you” will pop out of the box, or when. But mainly because you’ve revealed yourself as grasping opportunists without honor or principle. There’s your deal-breaker. There’s more.

During the recent riots you expected us to believe heisting snack food then torching the place was “standing up for justice”. When we didn’t buy it, you told us the looting and arson wasn’t done by the rioters after all, no, all the bad stuff was done by rioters from out of town. Apparently you think it makes a difference to us. And if we don’t fall for that one, you tell us you’re the real victims, you’re the ones “hit hardest” because the neighborhoods you looted and burned are, um, looted and burned.

We’ve never stood in your way but we don’t really care if you have good neighborhoods or not. The evidence says you don’t care either, unless we build and maintain them for you, what your enablers call “investments in urban communities.” They don’t mention the return on our past “investments”. Our former neighborhoods weren’t improved by your arrival. Your contempt for ordinary civility tells us no level of “investment” would make a difference. Listen up. It’s simple. Just like our neighborhoods are our responsibility, so are your neighborhoods your responsibility, not ours. Your clownish leaders will tell you otherwise but they’ve always been your responsibility and they always will be your responsibility. Accept it or don’t, you’re the ones who live in them. There’s more.

Your air conditioned, smart phone equipped, EBT-financed “poverty” doesn’t wash to begin with, yet you’d have us believe poverty causes crime. There’s no payday for assault and rape and random killing. Police say 20% of your criminal violence is related to dope-dealing, okay, business disputes of a sort, but it says the rest of it is largely pro bono. We also notice you have a working knowledge of jury nullification and take pride in not “snitching”, typical gang behavior.

We say “what you think, you do. What you do, you are.” We know what you think—we hear it every waking minute. We know what you do. How could we not know what you are? Just so it gets said, crime causes poverty. It drives away productive people, their businesses and the opportunities you said you wanted. More bad news: you’re free to accuse them of anything you wish but they’re not coming back.

Schools haven’t been educating our kids for a long time. They’re too busy conjuring up new ways to teach yours, in fact, we’re beginning to think yours are the only ones who matter. There’s always some new scheme claiming dazzling success which, in the end, amounts to handing out the answers with the tests, or taking the annoying hard stuff out of the coursework, or entering unearned grades by hand. Whatever they’re doing they’re doing it wrong. Your kids are telling us, in every way they know how, they have neither the interest nor the inclination for academics. Perhaps we should listen. If what they want is “out” it’s worth considering and probably worth encouraging.

You tell us the schools have “failed to meet their needs.” And what are their needs, pray tell? Higher standards and tougher tests? Stricter rules and a dress code? Or some alternate universe where credit is earned for putting teachers in the ER, or for a string of abortions before the tenth grade? If you’d tell us what their needs are we’d at least know what needs we’re failing to meet. Until then we’ll mark it down for what it is, another lame excuse. They’re supposed to be schools, not day care or orphanages or theme parks.

You pester us with the “civil rights movement” of fifty years ago as though it happened last week, with tedious 1960s footage and cloying voice-overs, in an endless loop, like Groundhog Day, decade after decade. It’s understandable, you haven’t met any real resistance since those days. Breaking news: none of it matters any more, it all devolved into just another swindle, an extortion racket, “pay up or we’ll make a stink—and the bad optics are on you”.

Schools now teach something called White Privilege, which claims no overt act is necessary for us to be racist, in fact, absence of such acts is said to be direct evidence. It’s the “original sin” concept in a different wrapper, meaning our putative racism is bone deep and can’t be discharged by good works. Even so, they say we must atone in perpetuity for being white. They suggest we devote our lives in selfless service to you. No. Sorry. Whatever white privilege there may be, it isn’t enough. In fact, being subjected to White Privilege prattle is worth a couple of privileges.

Speaking of privilege, 60% of your college grads—and 20% of all of you—are employed by government. The intent is to create an artificial middle class of course, hence the trivial positions with imaginative titles and weighty salaries. In the lower reaches it’s the quota hires, typically unqualified. It’s a great offer. You pretend you’re doing something useful and we pretend to believe you. The rest of your grads are largely diversity directors, window dressing, teachers of dubious “studies” and improbable “histories”, and similar warehousing schemes for the otherwise unemployable. It’s as good as it’s ever going to get, except for those on the skinny end of the bell curve—for whom we have genuine, i.e., earned respect. You’d be a fool to leave it on the table, for as long as it lasts.

So here’s the deal. If you want to know what we really think of you, the answer is we don’t, unless you’re making yourself unavoidable or we’re cleaning up your latest mess. We can safely rely on you to make astonishingly irresponsible choices and blame us for the consequences. And you’ll demand we make good on them for you. We won’t take a chance on your sincerity ever again. Take it somewhere else, you have no credibility left with us. You’re a net liability, predictable to the point of surety. So we attend to our own lives and our own problems. It’s as it should be. We recommend it. As for you, frankly my dear, we don’t give a damn.

Available at amazon.com “A Republic, if you can keep it”

Follow me on Twitter @OzarksAuthor