They ate a lot of beans, but I always wondered how they cooked them. Beans have to cook for so long to soften up yet they move every morning! They must have used a straw box to put the Dutch oven hot all day while they travelled. Or maybe they soaked the beans to an almost sprouted state, before they cooked them.
Of course they always had plenty of beef to throw into the stew pot, or just fry up the steaks.... :)
howdy @smithlabs! sorry for the long reply I was held up by @glenalbrethsen reading one of his 500 page posts!
but anyway you are correct sir! they always had beans soaking. I don't know anything about a straw box, I've never heard of that, you makin another straw man argument just to muddy the waters?
No, a straw box is a tool used for slow cooking. A Dutch oven is brought to boiling, and placed inside a box of straw, and left for a day. It will still be too hot to touch that evening, and can be finished over the fire quickly.
A little prepper study of old ways; just in case, the SHTF.
:)
lol! thank you sir smithlabs! that is very interesting, and good to know just in case you have to feed a bunch of people in the Apocalypse!
Hay man, that is a secret, LOL! But it is good to know for sure.
I have considered a crock pot with hyper insulation, that runs on 24 volts; using some dump load resistors for heat.
of course you have. lol! but if you would have been back there with those guys what would you do without electricity mr. smarty pants!?
Just use the hay box, until I had time to make my own power, among other things!
:D
oh boy... now we got him to thinking how to solve chuck wagon problems from the 1800s!
Now I know you're prone to exaggeration, sir, but that there is an out and out fabrication! 500 page post. I might break four pages, at 250 words a page. Unless you're only counting 20 words per page. Then, I might make it to 500 or so. :) The Maya story I've been serializing is only 320 pages in its unfinished form and it's taken 63 installments of about 4-6 pages each to get it posted. :)
lol! I got your attention though didn't I ? I wonder if there is anyone on this platform who writes the kind of volume that you do, have you seen anyone?
If it's a giant post I usually can't get through it. I mean if it's a big one that you write I will but some of these others, I just start zoning out!
That's just it, though. Mine aren't that big. They generally fall in around 1000 words. Ideally, they would be somewhere in the 800-1200 range in order to cover a substantial topic and not overwhelm the reader with words. Beyond that, especially if it's technical, a reader will get bogged down.
I think you need to feel like you read something, though. That there was thought and care and information provided. I suppose everyone is diferent and has their own way of going about things.
Mine aren't that technical, and while I'll throw in a vocabulary word here and there, I do try to keep them readable. So no zoning out!
There are a few, though some of them aren't writing so much any more. I probably average a little higher on the word per post scale, but some people either make it up with volume, or come close to it. Anyone doing three or more posts a day that are more than just photos or short video summaries will outdo my post volume.
Comments can be another story, but there, my word count can be all over the place. :)
wow @glenalbrethsen now you make me wonder if I'd doing enough writing, like my post today about the Chuck wagon, I have no idea how many words that is, is there an app or something that tells you or does Steemit tell you somewhere?
maybe mine are too short, I thought the one today was a little short.
I think your's are about right, some people's go on forever, can I name names? I guess it doesn't matter.
your's are maximum for a redneck, lets put it that way!
No, Steemit doesn't have a word counter. That would be nice. I'm more or less eyeballing it, but there are sites on the web that you can paste your post into to see word count length. Or Word or some other text editor on your computer could do it (Word for sure).
I thought the length of the article was just fine. Really, you want to cover the subject with the information you have, and overdoing can be worse than not having any information at all, so I think you covered the subject well.
Another thing is style. If the post is compelling, people will read more. If it's not, length wouldn't matter anyway.
So, there's always more to consider, but it's not just rednecks that might have issues with attention spans. :)
ok Glen, thanks for all your help and advice!
I'm sure @janton will be along to answer, but my wife cooks up beans from scratch and does soak them for three to five hours, at a minimum, so she can cook them up for dinner. So, I'm agreeing with the idea of the soaking but not necessarily so close to the sprouting state. Still, a lot of planning and understanding of what was going to be needed went into all of this for sure, right down to the cooking of the beans. :)
Soaking is a good start. I wonder how long it takes to cook after soaking? Thanks for the reply @glenalbrethsen.
:)
Well, I don't know how long it took for them to cook the beans they had. In my wife's case, it's about an hour, hour and a half, give or take. I think she lets the water get to a decent boil and then turns down the heat so it's a little softer, but still plenty hot and then let's them go. It also depends on what else she's doing, because sometimes she cook them a little longer. Generally when she's doing this it's to go with Mexican food, so we'll eat them whole or she'll mash them and refry them. In that case, she might leave them in a little longer cooking.
I usually pressure cook beans from dry, but they did not have that option.
:)
howdy Glen..yes sir, they were very well organized and skilled at what they did. ya'll are gonna love some of the recipes tomorrow like Spotted Pup, Hoe Cake and this one's for Glen "Morman Johnnycake" lol.