Hello Christine!
Wednesday June 05 1996 02:54, Christine Kasupski wrote to Ian Hoare:
 >> That's a real shame. So many of the old skills are being lost
 >> nowadays.
 CK> Fortunately for myself, I was taught a lot by my grandparents, and
I hope you realise how lucky you are. I am half hungarian, and while my uncle 
taught me quite a lot of hungarian recipes, there is a whole load of stuff 
I'll never discover. I don't know if you know it, but Hungary was arguably 
THE place for sauerkraut - I've never made it, though I may try, having 
recently been sent a very interesting netmail about it. So I have recipes 
which call for a whole head of soured cabbage stuffed for example. Another 
skill I've never learnt, though I saw it once being made by my maternal 
grandmother when I was 6 years old, is retes (called strudel throughout the 
rest of the world).
 CK> on passing this knowledge down to my kids. When my husband shot a deer
 CK> this year, we let them see it in the basement, before I
 CK> dressed/skinned it and they ate it.
How right you are. without endorsing _all_ his philosophy, I think Robert 
Heinlein was absolutely right when he listed a whole bundle of things that a 
human being should be able to to do to be confident in her ability to 
urvive.
His attitude was fundamentally that humans are _the_ great generalists and 
that specialisation was for insects!
 CK> starting to teach my eldest child  some basic survival skills and
 CK> some basic knowledge on what can be found in nature. I hope she pays
 CK> attention! =+}
I learnt from the age of 10 how to lay a fire, finding my own wood, and 
lighting it (ending up with only one match and wet wood), camp fire cooking, 
how to handle axes, make tents, navigate by compass and stars. I can't 
pretend to be a great outdoorsman, in the great american pioneer mould, but I 
do feel that if catastrophe struck, I'd have a fair chance of survival. At 
least, if I had a chance to go raid a store, I'd take salt, preserving jars, 
fish hooks, seeds and items that gave me a _chance_, rather than sugar, 
flour, tins of coffee and other luxuries. Certainly here in this area, we are 
amongst a population of self sufficient people.
All the Best
Ian
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