13 Holiday Gifts to Support a Primal Lifestyleby
Mark Sisson Recently by Mark Sisson: 8 Ways to Reduce Your Chemical Load
Whether you plan to herald the birth of an early Jewish radical, celebrate your Pan-African heritage and tradition, stimulate the lagging economy, perform feats of strength around the Festivus pole, observe the lighting of the menorah, or participate in Saturnalia, Yule, Modranect, or any of the other winter solstice celebrations, the latter half of December is generally devoted to gift-giving and gift-receiving. Or maybe you’re not religious at all and just use the season as an excuse to let friends and loved ones know how much they mean to you. That works just as well. Whatever your motivations for giving gifts, it’s important that they be meaningful to the recipient – that they reflect an understanding of what makes them tick. And so, since Primal living tends to be infectious, I imagine you need some good gift ideas for the meat-eating, barefooted, weight-lifting, lard-rendering grain-abstainers in your life. We do this every year, and it tends to serve two purposes: help people give Primal gifts and raise awareness of products that deserve to be seen. Today, I’ll try to do the same. Frigidaire 5.0 Cu. Ft. Chest Freezer Yeah, yeah, upright freezers get higher marks, but they are more than double the price of chest freezers. I have this exact model myself and, though it can’t handle an entire steer, it’s big enough to house a whole lamb, a couple goats, half a pig, and a quarter cow (not all at once, of course) and small enough to fit even a studio apartment. If someone’s been talking about finally doing that cowpooling thing for the last year and you like them well enough to spend 150 bucks, spring for the chest freezer to help them on their way.
Hunting Courses Give the Grok in your life a real avenue toward subsistence: a hunting course. No, I’m not referring to those big game hunting expeditions where you pay money to shoot a placid, fattened kudu on some Texas acreage; I mean really learning to hunt from people who do it the right way. It looked like a blast when John Durant and Melissa McEwen did it, right? Well, chances are that your area also offers hunting courses. Just do a search for “hunting field courses [your location]” and go from there. You can even get specific by throwing in a modifier; “deer,” “boar,” and “geese” work well to narrow things down. Meat Grinder I hate relying on others to come up with good sausage. Most of the sausage I come across in the wild is bland and uninspired; having my own meat grinder allows me to make my own and play around with different spices. Bonus: meat grinders are perfect for blending in organ meats without alerting picky eaters. Bonus #2: meat grinders are perfect for making pet food patties. Electric grinders are the easiest to use and require little to no labor, but they generally can’t handle bone and gristle (unless you spring for a really expensive one); hand crank grinders are tougher to use, but they can handle just about anything you can throw at them, provided you include some elbow grease. A Food Dehydrator from Excalibur Dry your own jerky. Make your own pemmican. Ditch the store-bought, overpriced, sugar-coated berries and rancid nuts and dry your own for trail mix. Food dehydrators are incredible tools, and any Primal eater would be glad to have one. Excalibur makes the best in the business, from the top shelf 9-tray version to the starter 4-tray version. Cheaper dehydrators are out there, and you can even make your own, but we like the Excalibur for its temperature control system and reliability. I’ve used cheap dehydrators that cooked the jerky, rather than dried it, and if I was going to do that I’d just use my oven.
Fermentation Vessels A lot of people probably read my posts on fermented food and sauerkraut, thought to themselves, “Hmm, that sounds pretty cool,” and did nothing else. Fermentation is easy to do, but the hardest part is having enough suitable fermentation vessels in your kitchen. Mason jars used to be standard in kitchens (back when people actually canned things). Not anymore though. Sandor Katz recommends using devoted ceramic fermentation crocks, maybe from Harsch or from TSM, which are expensive but worth it if your giftee is serious about fermentation. Cheaper but still viable options include mason jars; Ikea has some very affordable glassware that works well. Might as well include the tome on fermentation, Sandor Katz’s Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods. Mundial’s 20-inch Chef’s Knife Mundial makes great utilitarian knives, the type that sous-chefs and kitchen staff use day in and day out. They may not be pretty, they may not be impressive, but they get the job done, well enough that Bon Appetit dubbed their chef’s knife the “best $20 chef’s knife.” If you live in the LA area, you can buy these at Surfas in Culver City, or you can just order them online. I have several (since they’re so cheap) and can vouch for them. Cuisinart SmartStick Blender Blend soups, sauces, and protein drinks without getting an extra container dirty, dealing with potholders. This stick blender is metal, so there’s no chance of leaching plastic compounds into your hot food. It may not be as powerful as a VitaMix blender, but it’s a lot less expensive. Instead of forking over the cash for a single VitaMix for one person, you can treat several to the stick blender. I love my VitaMix, but I use the stick blender about as often. December 18, 2010 Copyright © 2010 Mark's Daily Apple
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