List of stuff in the Twilight universe

[Targan]

Originally Posted by raketenjagdpanzer

Although I myself don't know how, if you live near the sea there's all the salt you need...

Good call. Keeping it really simple, you could make a strong brine solution by evaporating sea water down.

[HorseSoldier]

I'd guess by 2000 most farms that had 20th century cooking appliances would have had to add a separate cookhouse or add on an additional room to serve that purpose. Even those lucky enough to salvage pre-gas/electric stoves and such, it's probably much easier to put them in a new room/building versus gut and redo an existing kitchen. Plus even in secure areas where farms won't be mini-villages just for mutual security, the relative inefficiency of post-nuke agriculture means farm kitchens will be feeding lots of farm hands and workers.

[Graebarde]

Originally Posted by HorseSoldier

I'd guess by 2000 most farms that had 20th century cooking appliances would have had to add a separate cookhouse or add on an additional room to serve that purpose. Even those lucky enough to salvage pre-gas/electric stoves and such, it's probably much easier to put them in a new room/building versus gut and redo an existing kitchen. Plus even in secure areas where farms won't be mini-villages just for mutual security, the relative inefficiency of post-nuke agriculture means farm kitchens will be feeding lots of farm hands and workers.

ARE we talking pre-fall-of-wall eastern Europe? Even western Europe, it depends on the location of the farm. Even in the 80's many of the Bavarian farms still had wood stoves in addition to the modern. A 'summer kitchen' is nice if you're using wood stoves in summer. In addition to the wood stove, think of the clay bake ovens for bread? The kitchen on traditional farms was one of the largest rooms in the home since much of the processing is done in the kitchen, hence a summer kitchen would be large enough to cut up hogs and cattle perhaps, in addition to making cheese, butter, cutting kraut, etc etc.

And yes, going to manual/muscle labor will increase the need for extra hands. The farmer becomes the defact LAND LORD again with people working for room, board, and perhaps a share of profits if there are any.

What is the easiest and most nutritional way to prepare food? Generally speaking it is in soups and stews, meaning large pots on the stove for a long time. With this method the nurtients leached into the liquid do not escape. Compliment this with sizeable protion of heavy crusty bread from the oven to provide the bulk of the calories.

[HorseSoldier]

Originally Posted by Targan

Good call. Keeping it really simple, you could make a strong brine solution by evaporating sea water down.

I'm sure there are lots of methods for low-tech extraction of salt from sea water. The only one I can recall from college anthropology and archeology classes was used in Mesoamerica and simply consisted of putting ceramic bowls of sea water near fires or nested down in the coals to evaporate out the water. (Places with low humidity and lots of sunlight you could skip the fire.) Probably not the most fuel efficient method, where that is an issue, requires some full time labor, and has at least as big a signature as cooking alcohol fuel if stealth is an issue -- but it's caveman simple. Unfortunately, I also have no clue as to yield per unit of volume -- admittedly, most gaming situations won't hinge on how many grams of salt can be had from a liter of sea water, but it would be nice to have a reasonable feel for scale.

[Targan]

My mum's husband owns a salt field here in Australia so, following a short phone call, I now know quite a lot more about salt production!

Apparently the majority of large scale salt production around the world involves mining rock salt. Australia and Mexico are unusual in producing nearly all their salt from salt fields, where seawater is let into wide, flat salt pans and evaporated off.

Around 2.5% of seawater is salts. Around 60% of those salts is sodium chloride, the salt you want for cooking. If you evaporate the seawater in bowls or pans or whatever (using sunlight or heating it over a fire, it doesn't matter which) you'll easily get useable salt but it will be bitter because of the other, non-sodium chloride salts in it. I doubt such poorly refined, bitter salt would be as valuable a trade item as more palatable, better refined salt.

There are various methods that can be used (by those with the knowledge) to re-dissolve and re-evaporate out the salt so that you end up with purer sodium chloride. One low-tech method described to me is used on the island of Bali and involves leaving a bundle of sticks in an evaporating bowl of seawater. The salt crystals grow up the lengths of the sticks, and are then re-dissolved in fresh water and the process repeated to purify the salt.

[WallShadow]

Originally Posted by Targan

---SNIP---

Around 2.5% of seawater is salts. Around 60% of those salts is sodium chloride, the salt you want for cooking. If you evaporate the seawater in bowls or pans or whatever (using sunlight or heating it over a fire, it doesn't matter which) you'll easily get useable salt but it will be bitter because of the other, non-sodium chloride salts in it. I doubt such poorly refined, bitter salt would be as valuable a trade item as more palatable, better refined salt.

There are various methods that can be used (by those with the knowledge) to re-dissolve and re-evaporate out the salt so that you end up with purer sodium chloride. One low-tech method described to me is used on the island of Bali and involves leaving a bundle of sticks in an evaporating bowl of seawater. The salt crystals grow up the lengths of the sticks, and are then re-dissolved in fresh water and the process repeated to purify the salt.

1. Considering the additional magnesium, calcium, and potassium content of the sea salt, I'd be loudly touting those health/nutrition facts to outsell the "merely salty" white salt (use "white bread vs. whole grain bread" analogy to push the sale at MUCH higher prices--all the traffic will bear!). Oddly enough, and counter-intuitively to boot, sea salt's Iodine content is apparently generally a trace amount, so you'd have to stretch the truth to use that as a selling point.

2. As to the bundle of sticks technique, I wonder if a suspension of strings in a supersaturated seawater solution would make RockSalt "candy"?

[Graebarde]

Down around Krakow IIRC is a massive salt mine. However salt is ONE of the items the farmer will need: preserve food, process hides to leather, etc. Sea salt is the easiest and one of the old methods of obtaining salt which has been pointed out.

If sea water is ~2 % concentration, a liter of water ~ 1 kg would/should yield ~ 20 grams of salt. While that does not seem like a lot, with a 15 liter pot, you would get ~ 300 grams. Perhaps with just one pot, you would be getting 4 batches boiled down a day? That's giving you ~ 1.2 KG/day. Now since your by the sea anyways, you might be adding fish to the larder while you tend your salt boiling. If you use hardwood for the fire, you also are producing woodash, which is saved for making lye-- soap making, hide processing, etc. When you look at something, look outside the box.

Now if your doing the commercial boil, the same would apply only multiply by the batches...