Medicate the Well

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Tomorrow’s morning shift changed to afternoon so no need to rush to bed tonight. Good thing too – I’m not tired and wouldn’t sleep.

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I’m going to go with Rose’s cardboard box ageing to start with. It has the advantage that I can put a batch in one box and take samples from that one batch.

Poundland sell vacuum bags for clothes – you just connect the bag to a vacuum cleaner. They’re bigger than I would like but at two for a pound I’ll give them a go. I’ll just put one small batch into the room temperature vac-pack without whisky, since Anonymong has tried it and ithe result wasn’t good.

I’ll skip the jars. Already tried it with whisky and brandy and it looks good although I haven’t yet tested them. I need to work with what I have and limit the experiment to fit.

I think the first test should be in one month. If nothing much has changed, the next will be at six months.

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I’ve been wondering why the Islamic fundamentalists aren’t furious about supermarkets selling Halal meat to just anyone without telling them. Ordinary Muslims won’t care at all, but to the fundamentalists, Halal is only for Muslims. We infidels aren’t allowed it. Those feeding it to infidels are taking a big risk.

To me, meat is meat. I don’t care if someone uttered an invocation over it, it doesn’t affect me at all. Those of other religions do care and to them, it’s spiritually tainted. The issue I care about is that in this country, we have laws about humane killing that don’t apply to Kosher or Halal meat on religious grounds. So who is in charge of the country, Law or Religion?

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That lot is not tonight’s rant. I am easily distracted…

Pre-diabetes is now a Thing. It means you don’t have diabetes but you are not living as directed so you might get it and then you’ll be inconsiderate enough to expect some of that NI you paid over the years to cover the treatment you’ll need. That money is for treating people from other countries, paying people to tell you how to live and personal parking spaces for people who wouldn’t be adversely affected by being lobotomised.  How dare you think that just because you’ve been paying for healthcare all your working life, you are entitled to it if you need it?

This particular article comes from the food industry who believe in all this crap because they see a way to a) make money (fair enough, it’s what they do) and b) get on the good side of the Puritans (they might want to ask the vapers how that one’s likely to work out).

Now, if they made healthier crisps and sweets that still tasted good, I’m all for that. Crisps are deep fried and then coated with salt. Can you make them taste like they’ve been deep fried without deep frying them? Go for it. Never mind the salt, I have plenty. The industry is always experimenting. That’s a good thing.

But this –

Yet this ‘time bomb’ may also be an opportunity for the food and drink industry, who can help to defuse the risks of progression to diabetes through lifestyle changes and the development of healthier products and ingredients.

Now hold on, private sector. You are not supposed to be forcing lifestyle changes on us. Any company that tries will never see a penny of my money again. I have no option with the public sector, they take tax by force, but I have an option with you. I, like everyone else,  can refuse to fund you. Think on, food and drink industry, think on.

This ‘pre-diabetes’ nonsense is not the end of it. Even when it gets as far as the shampoo industry siding with the Puritans to combat ‘pre-dandruff’ it will not be the end of it. There is no end.

It has to be stopped. But with so many idiots falling again and again for the ‘if we side with the Puritans they won’t come for us’ game even though they have seen what happened to all the others, the question is…

How?

36 thoughts on “Medicate the Well”

    • Pre-death is a generic syndrome, twistable and Puritan-Applicable to anything the bastards want to go for next. “If the right lifestyle-changes are forced, for example, to “help people to avoid” Morbid Teleangiectatic-Bulimia complicated by Haemorrhagic-Medicothelially-located-Apoptosis, then _4.25 lives a year_ can be saved along with the “costs to the NHS”, and “the risk of contracting it doe to bad diet can be reduced by 3.2%”….

      Liked by 1 person

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      • They haven’t actually promised immortality yet, but theimplication is there. ‘Live like this and you’ll live forever!’

        The question is, who the hell would want to? An eternity of dullness?

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    • I have irrefutable evidence that everybody is in a pre-death condition. It follows that nobody should receive medical treatment for anything; the savings will be enormous.

      Liked by 2 people

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  5. Dear Mr Leg-iron

    One of these days the puritans are going to wake up and realise that no-one gets out of life alive.

    DP

    PS Actually, puritans realising anything sane is wishful thinking

    PPS “Medicate the Well” – if you let us know which well, we can avoid drinking from it …

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    • Puritans don’t think of themselves as mortal. They think the world is theirs for all eternity. Even when one of them dies, the remaining ones still think it can’t happen to them.

      You’re right, they’ll never realise anything.

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  6. You may find that cheap vacuum bags don’t actually seal properly/leak -i’ve tried several brands over the years and the only ones that seem to work 100% of the time are the sort that do without ziplock closures and screw cap valves.

    This sort seems to work the best IME- you shove your vacuum cleaner into the ‘condom’ or ‘flappythingy’ at the end and the plastic ‘sticks’ together to form a seal after,
    http://tinyurl.com/qzthnxl

    Again IME tobacco leaves will store bone dry in a drawer or cardboard box for ages, the only downside to that being the space required and that if the box is dropped then you have snuff.

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    • If the cured leaf does dry out and becomes brittle, hold it by the midrib over the steam from a kettle for a moment or two and it becomes flexible again – but I expect you already knew that.

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      • I have an old stacked bamboo steamer set that I’ve used to liven up the dry ones.It doesn’t take long. However, if all Ihave to do is hold it over the kettle, that will save some washing up!

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    • They’ll store bone dry, but they won’t ‘age’ when dry. I have some pipe tobacco that was aged in old whisky barrels… those shouldn’t be hard to find in Scotland but I bet they’re not cheap!

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  7. As you are aware, LI, there have been two parts to my curing of this year’s crop. The first part involved the towelling of the leaves and then wadding. Unfortunately, I only realised in recent months that wadding was a step too far. It certainly caused fermentation, but too much for cigs. Inadvertently, I was making cigar or pipe backie. It was far too intense.
    For the second part, I built my curing box. Here is a pic:

    Without going into detail, hanging the leaves in the box with a slow cooker as the heat source, I was able to get the leaves from green to yellow to brown in about five days. The taste is much, much better, but still not as good as I would like. I’ll have to wait until this year’s crop is ready before I can experiment further.
    That is all just background!
    In the curing box, the leaves dried very brittle and I had to handle them carefully. I put them on trays and left them in the garage overnight where they absorbed moisture from the air. They then softened sufficiently for me to shred them and chop them into tiny pieces, but the material was still quite dry. I have it stored and sealed in plastic boxes. From time to time, I open the boxes and let the smell out. The wadded stuff smells very sweet, but the curing box stuff not very much so. Some sort of chemical reaction must still be taking place, because the smell keeps returning. Is that what ageing does? Because the stuff is so dry, I have had no trouble with mould either this year so far, or last year.

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      • Is that what ageing does?

        It’s a bit like making a Christmas Pudding, you cook it first then leave it for weeks for the flavours to blend and mature, before you cook it again.

        I grow spaghetti squashes, if you eat them when they are new, they are perfectly nice but lacking in flavour, if you store them until December or later they get a delicious winelike taste that makes them rather special.

        However looking up aging under “maturing tobacco” for a better explanation, I just found gold dust, but don’t be put off by the authors affiliation with the medical profession.

        Tobacco Leaves

        Being
        A Book of Facts For Smokers

        BY
        W. A. BRENNAN
        Department of Medical Sciences
        1915

        Fermentation of Tobacco

        “A certain amount of fermentation takes place in the curing houses during the “yellowing” of the leaf after it has been harvested, but as we have seen the main process of fermentation does not occur until it is “rehandled” by the manufacturers.

        “The general opinion held at present as the result of investigation is that the transformations which are effected in the leaf are purely the result of chemical processes. As the plant slowly dies and decomposes special ferments are produced. These ferments set up an oxidization process which splits up the complex organic compounds which still exist in the leaf cells. The starch in the plant is changed into sugar which is slowly consumed. There is a decrease in the fats and gummy substances, also in nicotine and nitrogenous compounds, and there is a formation of certain organic acids such as malic, citric and oxalic which are essential in the production of flavor. Briefly it may be said that the process is an attempt by the plant to prolong its existence by feeding on its own substance, by drawing on its own reserves and on its own structure for the food which its cells no longer receive through the natural growing process. When the struggle is over the “fermentation” is complete. The necessity for maturing tobacco has long been known but the exact nature of the changes that take place during the process were not understood”
        http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37388/37388-h/37388-h.htm#CHAPTER_VIII

        But look at this, how very different to today.

        CHAPTER XVII

        “A perusal of the vast amount of literature both for and against the use of tobacco brings out certain points very largely. First, in the case of the opponents, the most sweeping statements are made without a particle of scientific proof in support of them, by persons who are in no way qualified to make such statements. Statistics are quoted most recklessly and accepted as conclusive, although in most cases there is no logical connection between the matter of the statistics and the absolute effects of tobacco”

        CHAPTER XVIII

        THE BENEFICIAL EFFECTS OF TOBACCO

        Its disinfecting action. Protection against infectious disease.

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        • The book on growing and curing is a good find, Rose. It gives quite a good description, if short, of ageing. I quote:
          From the stemming department the books [bundles of half leaves, the mid rib having been removed] pass to the drying room where any superfluous moisture is removed by hot air currents.

          From the drying room the books pass to the ordering room where they undergo inspection for color, size, etc., and subjected to further treatment if necessary. Here they are finally packed in cases and stored for several months to allow perfect and uniform blending after which they are ready for shipment to the factory. Filler leaf for the finest cigars may stand in these cases for two or three years.

          Note that the leaves are dried before being stored for several months. That may be the reason for the continuing activity in my stored stuff, even though it is dry.

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    • “that wadding was a step too far. It certainly caused fermentation, but too much for cigs. Inadvertently, I was making cigar or pipe backie. It was far too intense.”

      Sounds to me like you were making Perique, or perhaps ‘a perique’ (a naval tradition). As far as I know all that is required for leaf to ferment is compression and moisture. The greater the compression -and a perique has a hella lot of it- the stronger the finished product.

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      • A friend’s grandfather used to grow his own pipe tobacco in the sixties. The way he described it, the dried leaves were wound up tight into a thing that looked like a cocoon and then a little bit of rum added.

        But then again, he once put dried horseshit in his grandfather’s pipe tobacco (a prank denied to today’s children since both horseshit and tobacco are things they dare not touch) and there was no sign the old devil even noticed. Everyone else did.

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