FedPosterman5000

Best wishes on your journey! It takes an effort for sure, good on you for trying

I don’t have a resource, but you’re not alone in this - I struggle with this too (usually while walking away and going through my mental conversation checklist realizing that I’ve forgotten to ask people about themselves…). I do genuinely care, I just want most social interactions to be over asap and have about a dozen dvd logos bouncing around the corners of my brain lol.

I echo what others have said though. For me it’s like any physical exercise, repetition and training are key. And learning my own boundaries around mental/sensory overwhelm; because if I’m overwhelmed but ask out of obligation and then someone starts talking about their issues, there’s a non-zero chance I’ll immediately glaze over.

Depends on the poorness of the people lol the continuum of saving money by making soup etc from scratch vs time saved from slopping together canned items. Only reason I can make the fuck out of a soup with whatever scraps and pantry items are on hand. I am an outlier though - I’ve long thought of opening a soup restaurant - or as these schmucks would call it a “liquid based dining experience” haha

That’s awesome. Good idea. I barely know anything, but I feel like a freeze drier would be fun to mess with for that too - just powderizing various food to put on other food lol.

I’d think some kind of paste of nooch and dried kimchi powder (maybe with some smoked paprika/saffron/annatto for color) with cashew milk/boiled cashews, might be a good base for a Mac and cheese “sauce packet”. I’ve done a similar for vegan Mac and cheese (hadn’t heard of kimchi powder at the time though) and I really like how it turned out with the cashews. Might need a stabilizer to keep things from separating - maybe mustard powder?

On a similar note - I use a dehydrator for herbs and try to make various blends - and they’re not always good - so uhhhh ymmv 😆

Edit: I also snagged a shaker of msg for the first time and it’s incredible haha I was raised with the sinophobic fear of it, but since I learned it doesn’t “automagically give me migraines”, adding just a shake makes flavors absolutely pop.

My family used to fill up jugs from an artesian spring by us, and it was incredible. So cold, so tasty, incredible for brewing. Annnnd in about my 20th year of life, they shut it down for being full of PFAs 😎 but at least now I don’t have to worry about brain plaque with how much mines scotch-garded

The ones without weapons (the only ones I was allowed….lol)

I did controlled burns for a while, and don’t really have anything to add that others haven’t already said… but I bet it’s the last time you don’t have the hose at the ready hahaha 😂. Fr though glad it turned out okay. We heard of another crew in the area that was doing a cattail burn (one of the hottest) at a retention pond and melted the siding on a bunch of homes nearby lol so at least you didn’t do that.

Brad Leone kinda looked at a similar topic on “It’s Alive” (replica Doritos maybe? or maybe I’m conflating episodes…), and one of the ingredients he used was kimchi that he dehydrated and powdered - anyway I feel like that could give good color and flavor.

FisherSci

As a later in life purchaser of my first stuffy in decades, a capybara with a gaze I also couldn’t escape, it’s drastically improved my life for the better. I mean not really, but it’s just a little one and I keep it in my work bag, and it gives me a little smile - esp. since those fuckers are insistent I can no longer wfh with my real-life kitty :(

Hell yeah. +1 for collards or basically any brassica green

Edit: can’t believe I almost forgot pak choi Edit 2: realized you said niche lol so maybe rutabaga?

The first I read on that list was Conquest of Bread, but all are good and you’ll likely read through more than once (at least I needed to in order to annotate/take in the info.

My tastes skew ecological and so I personally really like Murray Bookchin’s writings Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1971), Our Synthetic Environment (1962), The Ecology of Freedom (1982), and Urbanization Without Cities (1987).

And i always recommend HT Odum’s Environment Power and Society (1971) as a good primer on the relationship between energy, power, and societal organization.

“It uses models of systems, particularly human systems, to explain how societies are structured and how subsystems within those systems function.”

I like Arne Naess’ writing on “ecosophy”- his term for philosophy rooted in ecological knowing. I think he builds off Bookchin/Kropotkin and other anarchist analysis, albeit from a more liberal lens and I don’t recall if he cites them but the threads seem to be there. His text “‘Truth’ as Conceived by Those who are Not Professional Philosophers” (1938) lays the groundwork for his understanding of philosophy as a decentralized, individual formulation rather than a universal code. His book “Ecology, Community and Lifestyle" (1989) explores the relationship between philosophy, environmental degradation, and the rethinking of humanity's connection with nature.

I think Naess’ work is kind of a “re-skin” of the philosophies of Indigenous peoples, but that’s primarily from listening to Elders and other knowledge keepers- haven’t had much success in finding published source material (I understand it to be typically passed orally). But definitely would recommend research into Indigenous people’s viewpoints on the topic as well - I feel this is an area where there’s much to learn, and have only scraped the tip of the iceberg.

Hope you find some good recommendations