There's More Feel to it Than You'd Think.

I baked a cake tonight, from a box. I replaced the oil with melted butter. I put the ingredients in a particular order, like my cookie dough. I poured it into a dark pan, and I could feel it in my bones, I needed to cook it at a lower temperature than the box directed.

It came out perfect and I cooled it on the porch to frost it a little faster.

I am in possession of a Timeless Technology, Cooking Things in a Hot Enclosure. Baking Grain Into Bread.

Converting grain to bread and meal is a staple in every culture. Yucca root, sadza, corn tortillas, pita, naan, polenta, pasta, oatmeal, rice.

It takes some real magic to make grains edible. It takes will, process, structure, precision.

I am now in possession of a Timeless Technology and virtually limitless resources empowering me to make grains delectable.

This is the technology I must possess and understand in order to build and sustain the deeper layers of interdependence in a hyperlocal, decentralized fashion.

To put it simply—if you want a homestead, are you ready to make a lot of salads, to process foods, to cook, to can, to bake, to preserve, and to eat what you have made at home rather than what you have purchased at a store?

Do you know how to get creative with leftovers and use every bit of what you cook?

Do your recipes depend upon manufactured foods?

My childhood was full of home-preserved food, gardening, canning, harvesting food, cooking, and baking. It was also full of boxed food, simple, cheap, processed foods. I do not recall any one instance of learning how to doctor up and handle that cake I made tonight, and it's SO basic. Yet I knew how to do it. How did I learn?

This week I made pickles, and I bought my veggies at the farmers market and I haven't let any of them go bad. We have had beautiful simple meals from the highest quality produce, meats, butter, salt and pepper.

I'm getting back into the homemaking groove. My housemate is talking about a garden, the first in my adult life.

And I trust me with it, I know I am ready. I know what to do with the produce when it arrives, I learned it from when I was small. I know how to move about my kitchen with ease and grace. I adore all the pieces I have in my kitchen, and I have just what I need to cook all the dishes I love, to preserve food as I desire to, to feed myself and my community some regular standby bangers that are tried and true. I don't reinvent the wheel, I am not a creative cook. I make the same few things and I know how to shop for them. I know exactly how to cook them, how to move around the kitchen, which tools to use and where to find them.

I learned I was very precise about this when I tried to cook in other houses while away from home.

But I have always known I was particular. I was raised and trained to be particular, about the meaning of what is clean, about how to make a meal, make it taste good, the technique of that, the relationships within the batter, within the oven, between the pan and the temperature.

This is ALL the Timeless Technology of Right Relationship, how I fold my clothes when they are hot and it's just like ironing them.

I learned a Timeless Technology of homemaking and I don't remember being taught. This Technology is Timeless because we quietly live it, we can't not.

Someone must cook for me to eat, the way everyone grew in someone's body. We can abstract this in unprecedented ways, but it remains a simple fact.