General Discussion Thread

[Jitter]

Ooh wow midwestmutt! Did you get it via the kickstarter or is it available from Hiveworks now?

[midwestmutt]

The kickstarter release. The set looks very nice together in my bookshelf.

[Jitter]

I’m sure of it! Despite everything, I am going to get it from Hiveworks when it is available there.

[wavewright62]

I've received notif a couple of days ago that mine was finally shipped, but haven't bothered to check the timeline just yet.  Shipping to NZ usually takes a wee while.

[dmeck7755]

I just read this.  Apparently the British Royals own the most land on earth...


https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/worlds-largest-landowners-strange-maps?utm_source=Atlas+Obscura+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=c8b64ba21b-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_08_18&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-c8b64ba21b-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D&mc_cid=c8b64ba21b&mc_eid=76db88f14c

But hey have a link to the rest of the top 25 and most of them own huge parcels of Australia. 
https://www.madisontrust.com/information-center/worlds-largest-landowners/

[Yastreb]

I went interstate yesterday with my sister, making a round trip from Melbourne to Launceston in Tasmania and back to attend a funeral; maybe a hour by Airbus A-320 and Boeing 737 respectively. My sister wore a mask on both flights, being very conscientious about such safeguards; I did wear my mask on the outward journey, but took it off for some reason when I was dozing on the way back.

And guess what? I have a cold (tested myself on the off-chance, it was negative). I should have known better.

[Keep Looking]

Oh, no - I hope you recover well!

I've been really lucky this year and haven't gotten sick at all so far, but my girlfriend's had the opposite fortune - she's gotten sick every month for the last three months. She had a really nasty case of tonsillitis in June, had another bad cold in July and this month in August is just recovering from a (thankfully) quite mild sore throat. Her house is very cold and she doesn't handle temperature changes too well so I feel that might be part of the issue.

[lwise]

Apropos of nothing ... today I was looking at Amazon, and it helpfully recommended a jug of honey: 6.6 lbs (3 kg).  I don't believe I've consumed 6.6 pounds of honey in my entire life.  Over to the other side of the screen, it recommended "Raw, Unfiltered, Unpasteurized Texas Honey by Desert Creek Honey 5 Gallon (60 lbs) Bulk Bucket Non-GMO, Kosher".  60 pounds of honey.

I looked up the shelf life of honey, and so long as it is protected from water, even if it's been opened, it has an indefinite shelf life.  "Indefinite" as in at least two thousand years!  So I think scavengers going through ruined pre-Rash kitchens and restaurants might find plenty of edible honey.

[Jitter]

We buy honey usually in jars of 500 g and we definitely go through more than 6 jars a year. Perhaps something like 12 jars, more in the winter when we have tea more often. Not counting the more liquid variety that is used in cooking, that’s probably around another 1 - 2 kg a year. We are four people. So, 3 kg doesn’t seem that much although the 5 gallons does seem like quite a lot. We would get through it, but it would be hard to place the tank

[lwise]

When I was a child, the mere thought of honey would make me gag.  Something about the texture affected me that way.  I'm all grown up now, and I can stand it, but it's not something I seek out.

[thorny]

I used to routinely buy honey in 5 lb jars, and would use at least one a year, sometimes more. I use honey in baking, and in tea. These days I try to reduce the amount used in baking, and often drink my tea black, though not always; I'm probably still going through at least a couple of pounds a year, which makes buying a 5 or 6 lb size still quite plausible, though I think what I've got in the house right now is a 2 lb jar and a couple of smaller ones, some of which were given to me.

[lwise]

I used to routinely buy honey in 5 lb jars ... I think what I've got in the house right now is a 2 lb jar and a couple of smaller ones, some of which were given to me.

That's the sort of thing I think post-Rash scavengers could find in a pre-Rash kitchen: a 2 lb jar here, maybe a 5 lb jar over there ... And I suppose a restaurant might have a 5 gallon bucket.

[wavewright62]

*busily looks up mead recipes*

[Róisín]

As someone who regularly makes mead, my own small beehive doesn’t produce nearly enough. So once or twice a year I buy 5 gallon buckets of honey. Fortunately the larger beekeeper from whom I buy them likes to receive about half of the cost in apples, quinces and plants, of which I have good plenty. I hope to enter the mead I made two years ago into our local agricultural show next year, since I have in the last twenty years won several first and second prizes for my mead, melomel and liqueurs but haven’t entered since 2020 because Covid. It will be fun to try again!

Would you like a mead recipe? I can put one up in the recipes thread, if I have not done so already.

And honey does last for a long time. Decades ago I was a volunteer on a modern-archaeology project excavating a ruined outback pub, in the cellar of which we found some amazing stuff, ranging from a knife sharpening machine from the mid 1800s to the landlord’s stash of mead and honey. Of course we tried tiny samples of both, and they were excellent.

[JoB]

I looked up the shelf life of honey, and so long as it is protected from water, even if it's been opened, it has an indefinite shelf life.  "Indefinite" as in at least two thousand years!  So I think scavengers going through ruined pre-Rash kitchens and restaurants might find plenty of edible honey.

Well, as long as the container it is in can stand that test of time, that is. As in, put it into glass jars or maybe metal containers (or pottery of the kind we find in archeological excavations ...). Mineral water comes with a best-before date not because the water itself tends to deteriorate, but because chemicals can get leached out of the plastic it is often bottled in these days.