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the old fashioned way

My job is done in as good as the same way as it was back in the 16th century bar a few improvements.
 
I do pretty much everything mentioned in the OP except for the dictionary thing. I use dictionary.com atleast 1500 times a day. Im also a sucker for Pop-Secret Homestyle but I usually make stovetop popcorn in a pot.

I have a large collection of vinyl records but I no longer have a record player so I cant really listen to them anymore. (But Im still proud of my collection :) )

Before I moved to Florida I lived in Michigan and used a wood-stove as a source of heat. Its ridiculously cheaper and even more effective than climate control imo.

I'm also fairly well mannered, I show respect towards older people and always open doors for others. Seems like this is becoming more and more rare among young people.
 
I bought a nook, but only for papers. Printouts suck. For actual books, nothing beats a hardcover.
 
I make applesauce with a food mill. I like making food shtuffs the old fashioned way. Might have something to do with growing up near the Amish but I like to have my hand on the whole process.
 
-i take the stairs, rather than the elevator, if im going up only one floor
-i use my blinker whenever i change lanes
-i refrain from smoking cigarettes when i pump gas

....but thats just me
 
voxmystic said:
YES! on respecting elders!! i say "sir" and "ma'am", and address them as "mr." or "ms."
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definitely! though i was raised in the Southern US and manners were pretty normal practice; kind of sad to consider them "old fashioned". :\

Dave said:
I bought a nook, but only for papers. Printouts suck. For actual books, nothing beats a hardcover.
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agreed!! i love being able display my book collection for me, and all, to see. :)
 
I don't mind if guys hold doors for me or say "ladies first." I think its very nice and polite and I thank them. I don't understand women who get furious and go off on a rant when a guy holds the door. Cmon, he is just trying to be nice, he isn't doing it because he thinks you are weak or pathetic. The feminists will rant about equality even though a guy holding open a door isn't going to set back the entire feminist movement.

I like to read plain paper books. It seems like the teenagers of today barely read books, if at all. And since books aren't flashy or bright or capable of WiFi, Apple new reader made reading more exciting for the people who are drawn to shiny objects.
 
^ i'd even go a step further and say that i prefer more or less traditional roles for men and women. i LIKE keeping house and cooking for my man, staying home to raise my own children, and letting him provide the majority of the income (i still work, but part-time, and mostly from home), and carry the heaviest stuff. i spent 15 years doing it all myself, so it's not like i don't know how to be self-sufficient; i just like it this way.
 
I love to bake from scratch! I only use the crap in a box if I'm in a hurry. :) And I NEVER use canned spaghetti sauce. Eew. I make it in a huge stock pot and it takes 8 hours to make, but damn is it delicious. Yay for having a Sicilian grandma!!! :D
 
occasionally, when the rain barrels freeze up or run dry, we use the outhouse. it's a good one, too. it's built right over a seep, which keeps the hole about half full of water, and rinses it out every time it rains. it's been commented several times that it's the un-stinkiest outhouse people have ever used.
 
Belisarius said:
I won't buy a Kindle or similar e-reader until it becomes impossible to buy new print books. Give me my rows and rows of heavy, space-hogging paper albatrosses any day. And I don't want to hear that that's equivalent to sticking with clay tablets instead of switching to papyrus. ;)
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I've never even heard of this e-reader thing you speak of; I thought books were pieces of paper bound together with a cover on each side; at least that's what I will always see as a book.

voxmystic said:
occasionally, when the rain barrels freeze up or run dry, we use the outhouse. it's a good one, too. it's built right over a seep, which keeps the hole about half full of water, and rinses it out every time it rains. it's been commented several times that it's the un-stinkiest outhouse people have ever used.
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Holy smokes' rain barells and outhouses as your regular receive and release?

We have things like that at our cabin but my family members haven't had to do that for the last 60 years.

Whereabouts are you that you're doing that stuff yet seem to have a computer with internet connection?
 
PepperSocks said:
I've never even heard of this e-reader thing you speak of; I thought books were pieces of paper bound together with a cover on each side; at least that's what I will always see as a book.



Holy smokes' rain barells and outhouses as your regular receive and release?

We have things like that at our cabin but my family members haven't had to do that for the last 60 years.

Whereabouts are you that you're doing that stuff yet seem to have a computer with internet connection?
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heh! i'm in beautiful southeast alaska, off the grid, and under the radar. no municipal utilities. i do have a computer, but with out internet. my net is all mobile, and that is really recent. before at&t activated a tower that got us signal last october, we didn't even get cell phone service. we were completely incommunicado for 7 years.
 
^^ To stop the rain barrels from freezing, try putting a ping-pong ball (or tennis ball, or anything small that will float) in the water. My neighbor has rain barrels (only uses 'em for watering the plants tho--Do you actually DRINK that water?) and in the winter throws a floating ball/object into 'em.

I boil beans from their dry state instead of using canned. Not only do we lack aluminum recycling here, it's just cheaper. And they taste better.

Gave up the use of the microwave for Lent this past year (no, I'm not religious... Just somethin' to do with my grandma who is) and have used it twice since then--Asparagus tasted like SHIT. And the microwave popcorn I made last tasted like radiation. It was disgusting. I'm never going back to using that thing. So, since I don't use the microwave, everything I need to heat gets heated up on the stove or in the toaster oven--Though in the summer I eat most foods cold.

I don't eat many overly processed foods... The most processed food item I have is cereal, and even then it's an organic/natural one. I do get instant brown rice, but I'm gonna give the non-instant another go.
 
Microwaves have their uses, but they are few. There is no reason why they should be used to actually cook anything; re-heating or defrosing is fine, melting chocolate/butterscotch/caramel is okay, and making plasmas for shits and giggles is always good. My grandmother uses her microwave to cook most of her food, and it grosses me the hell out. But then again, she grew up having to cook, and hating it, so for her it's a convenient means to an end. Still, microwaving fresh greens just seems like a crime to me.

Speaking of rice, I haven't used a rice cooker in probably six or seven years. Once I figured out how to get great rice in a pot it just seemed pointless, and it never seemed to do brown rice properly. Yes, I know that rice cookers can be used to cook all kinds of stuff, but I don't have tons of space in my kitchen and there are few tools as versatile as a good-quality pot with a tight-fitting lid. Oh, and it's harder to find (at least here), but if you can get a nice short grain brown rice it is both more forgiving than longer grain rice as well as more delicious.
 
^ Microwaves will have no place in my kitchen. :P Maybe it's cause I grew up with my grandma (born in 1921, so she was learning to cook during the Great Depression) who always cooks from scratch and would make side comments about my mom's microwave use. I dunno. My mom cooks fresh greens in the micro.--She taught me how to steam fresh/frozen veggies that way when I asked her to show me how to cook greens.

I don't want to bump an old thread, but I made a thread awhile back on microwaves--Figured it may interest you: http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/showthread.php?t=498417

And I'm going to have to try the short grain brown rice. I *think* the non-instant variety I got once before was long grain.

Edit: BTW, that plasma video? So freakin' cool! Never seen or heard of anything like that--Thanks for sharing!
 
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addictivepersona said:
^^ To stop the rain barrels from freezing, try putting a ping-pong ball (or tennis ball, or anything small that will float) in the water. My neighbor has rain barrels (only uses 'em for watering the plants tho--Do you actually DRINK that water?) and in the winter throws a floating ball/object into 'em.

I boil beans from their dry state instead of using canned. Not only do we lack aluminum recycling here, it's just cheaper. And they taste better.
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i prefer to drink water from the nearby mountain spring -- i like the minerally tast -- but i drink the rainwater, too. nothing wrong with it. tastes better than the chlorinated stuff in town, fo' sho'!

i'll try the ping-pong ball thing, but i don't understand why it would work....

2/3 cup dry beans
1/2 tsp. salt (optional)

per pint jar. fill jar with water up to the bottom of the threads. adjust caps and process in a pressure canner at 10 lbs for 1 hr and 15 minutes.

this is so easy! and now you have a case or more of ready-to-eat beans in a convenient size jar!
 
^ I'm sure it does taste better, but don't the buckets get gross after awhile? My neighbor's barrels have stuff growing on the inside.

I have no clue why/how the ping-pong ball thing works, but that's what my neighbor does.

That way of canning beans sounds like such a good idea--If I had a pressure canner. No room for more appliances atm, but maybe once I move out I'll invest in one. Thanks for telling me about it.
 
^ we empty and swab down the drinking barrels (we don't scrub the toilet barrels)during the heavy rains every fall. no growing stuff. also, they are covered, so there's no light to grow algae, and mosquitoes can't lay eggs in it or anything. the way it works is we catch water off the roof, it runs into the gutter, into a down-spout, through a screen, and into the barrels through a hole cut in the lid just big enough for the spout. some people throw a capful of clorox in the tank every couple of months, but i don't. been drinking it off and on since 2002, and i'm not dead yet!.
 
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