Messages

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General Discussion / Re: Tree sap/syrup in spring?

« on: April 07, 2021, 10:26:59 PM »

Interesting. Are you sure about those numbers? Like I said, I not an expert in this - never done it myself, only saw my neighbors do it. From what I recall, they used mostly birch and cherry sap since there was plenty of those trees around, but they tapped other trees in their garden like walnut and apple. 86:1 sounds extremely high ratio to be bothered with, so its either their syrup wasnt as sugary as the ones you can buy today in a store, or maybe other trees had much, much higher sugar content that birch (I kinda doubt that). Or maybe your numbers are off? In any case, its an interesting topic and I think that springsap was rather important, since the spring is usually the time when the stores are low and variety is rather bleak. So a source of fresh "mineral water" would've been quite welcome I think.

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General Discussion / Re: Tree sap/syrup in spring?

« on: April 07, 2021, 07:49:40 PM »

I think none of the conifers would do, nor something like an oak or any other tree with high tannin content in its bark, but yeah, I think quite a few would be fine to some point. In regards to practicality I honestly have no idea. I think the whole thing is rather impractical - you literally need buckets of raw sap in order to get anywhere. Dont know the exact proportions, but I think it might be something like 30:1, or even 40:1. So yeah, its impractical, but still very tasty

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General Discussion / Re: Tree sap/syrup in spring?

« on: April 07, 2021, 12:06:27 AM »

Try it, its very very easy, just time and fuel consuming (takes a while and you need quite a bit of raw sap). The trick is to collect it at the right time - ideally, it must be below freezing at night and above freezing at daytime. There is no real harm to the tree, as long as you do it cleanly and once finished, close the spot with tar. As kids we've drank birch sap mostly as is, but I know for a fact that some folks did boil it down to a syrup-like state. Birch or cherry are not as aromatic as maple, but its still pretty sweet and quite tasty in a pie or even on its own.

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General Discussion / Tree sap/syrup in spring?

« on: April 05, 2021, 07:43:54 AM »

Just wondering if you guys do this kind of thing in Finland? It used to be quite a bit deal back in the days since its possible to collect spring sap from almost any fruit bearing tree, maple, walnut or even birch and boil it down to a thick, sweet syrup that has a very good shell life. Given the fact that sugar in general was quite pricey and very scares resource, methinks that springsap gathering would be something most of people wouldnt miss if it could be helped.

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General Discussion / Re: crashes

« on: March 07, 2021, 09:33:30 AM »

In there.

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General Discussion / Re: crashes

« on: March 07, 2021, 01:25:12 AM »

Dude, if you really want some assistance, you might want to be as descriptive as possible - communicating in "yes" and "no" isnt gonna get you very far. I am not a dev, but as far as I recall, there were some pretty detailed logs in the game dir, so you might wanna look them up, see if there is anything amiss and post any weirdness here for devs to have a look at.

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Suggestions / Re: Fence as drying rack

« on: February 24, 2021, 07:56:32 AM »

Well... I gotta thank you for putting me up to this. If nothing else, its been a few very interesting days, full of remembering a LOT of things and connecting with some folks I havent talked in quite some time:) All in all, I did learn the recipe and the way the meat was stored long term. Here is goes:

Beat up and roll out the strips of completely fat and any membrane free meat into 2.5-3 finger's wide strips and make them as thin as possible. Try not to rip them too much - the stuff gotta be placed as flat as possible on as wide as possible area. The best meats are those that are quite lean to begin with - chiken, beef, rabbit etc. Pork is not advisable. Perfectly doable, but you really gotta know what you are doing, otherwise it may not be safe.

So far nothing new to what I said earlier. One interesting thing that was mentioned several times is this - if grandma wasnt too sure about the weather's conditions, she used to soak a woolen mitten and place it in the morning on the rack. If it was completely dry by supper, the weather was good enough for drying meat.

The interesting part is how they stored it. Once the meat was dried (strips are completely dry, snap and crumble in your hand like a potato chips would), they'd crumble the strips into a fingernail size flakes, pack them into clay jars (something like this one - http://kod-ua.com.ua/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/%D0%93%D0%9B%D0%95%D0%A7%D0%98%D0%9A-3-%D0%BB%D0%B8%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B0.jpg), leaving about two finger's space in on top of the jar. The empty space would be filled with dry hay, usually from rye, then sealed with about a finger's thick layer of tallow, covered with a cloth cap and then closed with the jar's lid. Aparently, this way the meat would sit in the earthen cellar as long as you'd like, but no one really remembered it being there for longer than about half a year. Probably would be ok longer, but everyone agreed that by mid spring, the meat that was prepared in the summer was gone, or just about gone.

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Suggestions / Re: Fence as drying rack

« on: February 21, 2021, 04:43:33 AM »

Heh, sure. I doubt that they'll tell me anything super secret since my own drying went rather well almost every time, but sure, I'll ask and see if any of them might remember something interesting.

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Suggestions / Re: Fence as drying rack

« on: February 21, 2021, 01:18:35 AM »

*Shrug* All I know that on a good day you can make a few kilos of the stuff. You'll stink of raw meat, will have to clean the kitchen and have flies crawling all over you, but its perfectly doable. Like I said, I really dont know if the stuff would last for years, as I was too young to give much of a damn and ask my grandparents how to make it 100% and when I made it voluntarily it had to go only for a few weeks max, but guess I can ask my cousins. There isnt many of the elders left in the family, but I am sure someone would remember the "proper" way. The girls were in charge of collecting and packing the dried stuff, maybe they'd remember. But yeah, the grannies used this meat pretty much on regular basis and since it can be made reliably only during summer, the recipe they used had to be good enough to last, right?

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Suggestions / Re: Fence as drying rack

« on: February 20, 2021, 10:57:58 PM »

Friend, you are missing the point. It may or may not be hotter here or there, it really doesnt matter all that much. All you need to do is to have a nice sunny day or three with temperature around mid 20s, a flat rock to accumulate the heat and some thinly beaten meat on some kind of mesh. Thats all. My grandparents used to make quite a bit of this stuff and had the youngsters slave at beating the meat - thats how I and the rest of my younger kin knows about it, as their parents did, coz their parents used to... and so on. You get the picture. There is really nothing complicated or sophisticated about it and the weather reqiroments are rather broad. You can go as simple as you like and use just a large rock, or get sophisticated and build a proper rack with a place for a small fire for added speed and flavour, but thats completely optional. I am pretty sure that in overwhelming majority of places on our dear Earth this can be done with very little resources - as long as it gets hot enough to heat up a large rock to the point of making your hand rather warm to touch and your willingness to go through the process of actually making the thing.

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Suggestions / Re: Fence as drying rack

« on: February 20, 2021, 07:39:58 PM »

I've done in in central Ukraine and southern Canada Havent been to Finland so far, but I think that Ontario's summers are somewhat compatible - its extremely humid and the temperature is somewhere between 25-30 at its max, but usually sits around 20-25. It has been getting warmer in last years, but not dramatically. Ukrainian summers are very similar, just not as humid.

I dont know exact % of weight loss and it really didnt matter all that much. The food had to last up to two, three weeks max with no fuss or special care. As long as dried product would snap and crumble instead of bend and tear - it would last long enough in a simple ziplock bag. Maybe it would last longer, but like I said - it never had to. Since it was a major pain to prepare in quantity, we never really made too much of it to see what would happen with it long term.

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Suggestions / Re: Fence as drying rack

« on: February 20, 2021, 10:39:24 AM »

If you think drying cant work in the summer, you've been doing it wrong. On occasion, I've sun dried beef and i've dried plenty of chicken with very little spicing and no preservatives like salt or vinegar. Trust me, it works just fine. its a major pain in the proverbial to properly prepare in large quantities, but it works. What you need to do is beat the slices of meat into paper thin sheets and lay them out on a hot surface to dry. I've used metal oven grills placed on a large rock coz I am lazy, but a friend of mine built an actual drying rack out of thin bamboo. In less than a day of hot weather you'll have the meat completely dried out to the point where it would snap like potato chips in your hand. Thats how we tested it if it was ready - it should crackle and snap. In this form it very bland and has not a very pleasant texture, but it would keep pretty much indefinitely if stored properly. Adding spice is generally a no-no as it would either fall right off the dried strips, or let the moisture stay in the meat. When I was in my teens and early twenties, we've used to prepare these strips for long camping trips as they are a very cheap and reliable source of camping food, extremely light (i think the meat loses about 60-70% of its initial mass) and pretty awesome in any stew. Or if the the cook feels lazy or just low on veggies - just boil them for 5-6 mins, add insta-noodles, a bit of salt and you've got a pretty filling meal.

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Suggestions / Re: Fence as drying rack

« on: February 19, 2021, 11:45:19 PM »

Kinda yes and kinda no. While it would make sense and simplify drying, the real question (IMHO) should be do we need this? If anything, I'd be more happy to see a new, buildable structure - a drying rack. I've prepared plenty of salt cured dried fish and I can guarantee you that with a proper rack it dries faster and had much fewer chances to rot. The trick is not to have any parts of the meat touching either another drying piece or any wooden parts. Moreover, this way bugs have harder time getting at it and from time to time you can start a small, smoldering fire underneath the rack to speed up the process and add a bit of smoky flavour. With the fence its possible to dry things, but the bugs get at it pretty much right away and probably spoil bits of the meat directly touching the wood, possibly even more that just bits, since in URW the mean isnt salted beforehand. But then again, in URW the drying happens only in the winder (still wonder why, IMHO it would make more sense to do it in the summer), so maybe you'd be fine.... Still, is it something worth spending time implementing?

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Off-topic / Re: Ancient Savo : A new Enormous Elk game in the making

« on: January 10, 2021, 08:20:54 PM »

I mean no offense Erkka, but I always thought that using real names for tribes in URW would've been much better choice. I understand why you guys chose to go the way you did, but still... People tend to forget history and educating the world, even in a game environment, is absolutely a good thing. We have enough (perhaps too much) fantastical goblins in our lives, while our own true history and folklore are being either forgotten, or twisted to the point of being completely unrecognizable. So for what's it worth - thank you for telling us a bit about history of your ancestors. I always thought that real historical evens can be (and often were) much more dramatic and fascinating than any sci-fi or fantasy story. We need more of that.

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General Discussion / Re: Crowdfunding : your thoughts?

« on: January 03, 2021, 06:38:46 AM »

Since a new thread will be started, I think its ok to continue for a bit with "maybe-this-way-and-what-about-that-and...". So I would like to ask if there are any other alternatives to paypal. I was never a fan and after several issues closed my account years ago and I am really NOT looking forward to opening another one. Erkka, please do not take it as yet another push at you, but I would really like to see some options. If there is absolutely no other choice, I guess I'll open another paypal account, but I would strongly prefer not to be bothered with it again.