This Is Awesome!

Broke af?

But still interested in feeding yourself? What if I told you that there’s a woman with a blog who had to feed both herself and her young son…on 10 British pounds ($15/14 Euro) per week?

Let me tell you a thing.

This woman saved my life last year. Actually saved my life. I had a piggy bank full of change and that’s it. Many people in my fandom might remember that dark time as when I had to hock my writing skills in exchange for donations. I cried a lot then. 

This is real talk, people: I marked down exactly what I needed to buy, totaled it, counted out that exact change, and then went to three different stores to buy what I needed so I didn’t have to dump a load of change on just one person. I was already embarrassed, but to feel people staring? Utter shame suffused me. The reasons behind that are another post all together. 

AgirlcalledJack.com is run by a British woman who was on benefits for years. Things got desperate. She had to find a way to feed herself and her son using just the basics that could be found at the supermarket. But the recipes she came up with are amazing. 

You have to consider the differing costs of things between countries, but if you just have three ingredients in your cupboard, this woman will tell you what to do with it. Check what you already have. Chances are you have the basics of a filling meal already. 

Here’s her list of kitchen basics. 

Bake your own bread. It’s easier than you think. Here’s a list of many recipes, each using some variation of just plain flour, yeast, some oil, maybe water or lemon juice. And kneading bread is therapeutic. 

Make your own pasta–gluten free. 

She gets it. She really does. This is the article that started it all. It’s called “Hunger Hurts”.

She has vegan recipes.

A carrot, a can of kidney beans, and some cumin will get you a really filling soup…or throw in some flour for binding and you’ve got yourself a burger. 

Don’t have an oven or the stove isn’t available? She covers that in her Microwave Cooking section. 

She has a book, but many recipes can be found on her blog for free. She prices her recipes down to the cent, and every year she participates in a project called “Living Below the Line” where she has to live on 1 BP per day of food for five days. 

Things improved for me a little, but her website is my go to. I learned how to bake bread (using my crockpot, but that was my own twist), and I have a little cart full of things that saved me back then, just in case I need them again. She gives you the tools to feed yourself, for very little money, and that’s a fabulous feeling. 

Tip: Whenever you have a little extra money, buy a 10 dollar/pound/euro giftcard from your discount grocer. Stash it. That’s your super emergency money. Make sure they don’t charge by the month for lack of use, though.

I don’t care if it sounds like an advertisement–you won’t be buying anything from the site. What I DO care about is your mental, emotional, and physical health–and dammit, food’s right in the center of that. 

If you don’t need this now, pass it on to someone who does. Pass it on anyway, because do you REALLY know which of the people in your life is in need? Which follower might be staring at their own piggy bank? Trust me: someone out there needs to see this. 

Watching the “you will excel at what you measure” trap devour basic moral practice in real time is fascinating in a terrible kind of way

i made a character sheet. free to use as you wish, feel free to change whatever you want XD open source ass thing. spent all of ~maybe an hour on it.

Credit: the text in the insert-image box comes from this video, and the text for the top three lines (intense, complex, fruity) comes from this post. The actual image was made with the free NBOS character sheet creator, which is a sort of dated but free and solid text-layout sheet maker intended for ttrpg style character sheet creation.

December 26-29, 2024

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Everything is interconnected in ways that are unimaginably complex. I see this in my reading and in my observations of nature. Because of this I am starting to think that plant sameness both contributes to and is contributed to by animal sameness, especially birds.

Lots of invasive plant species in my area are spread by birds. But which kinds of birds? I'm not sure if we know.

But the species of birds which feed upon the berries of the invasive species, are likely to be highly abundant in the areas overtaken by the invasive species, spreading a larger number of seeds of invasive species into the other areas those birds go. When the high density of invasive plants excludes other birds, it causes even greater density and exclusionary capacity of the invasive species, and even more favorable conditions to the birds that feed upon them.

So basically, when plant sameness reduces the number of animal species (and fungus species) that can survive, and when this plant sameness is repeatedly reinforced through management of the landscape, it can start to perpetuate itself through the animal sameness that was created

What this suggests to me, is that there may be a critical threshold of fragmentation and destruction of habitat where invasive species removal by itself is pointless or worse, because the larger-scale landscape has too much plant sameness and animal sameness for native species to come back.

What to do...? Maybe choose plantings for the restored area specifically for vigorous dispersal and high seed and fruit production?

Native, quasi-native and cultivated food plants could all be appropriate, because the goal is to attract the dispersers that cannot survive in the invasive species monoculture environment and redirect dispersers that previously relied on invasive species for food.

This facilitates dispersal of plants between the newly planted restoration and other habitat fragments that can support non-monocultured wildlife.

This dad wins Halloween! 🎃💀

I feel like folks talking like Tumblr is the last bastion of reason on the Internet are forgetting that the owner of Tumblr is demonstrably cut from the same cloth as Zuckerberg and Musk. Tumblr's moderation polices aren't less bigoted, they're just less competently implemented.