Short on...? Carry On: Part Three, The Food Hamper Gourmet (Archives Post)

First posted January 2007. Edited somewhat.

In the mid-1990's, I trained to be a Community Nutrition Worker. CNWs are “peer support workers” (rather than professionals). They’re usually hired by community centres or outreach programs to run co-op kitchens, do supermarket nutrition tours, and lead healthy-cooking classes. My career as a CNW was fairly short-lived, but I did learn quite a bit—not so much from the nutritionist who taught the course, but from the other women taking the training. Which is probably the way it should be.

One of the training assignments was to take the contents of an emergency food hamper and explain how it might feed two adults and two children for three or four days. (I think the original assigment was three days, but I wrote menus for four.) 2020 Update: It tells you something about changing attitudes that, at the time I did the assignment, it was assumed that food hamper recipients would just take whatever they were given. I know that (at least under normal circumstances) our local food bank now operates on a "shop the shelves" system, allowing users to choose the foods they want.

Most of the recipes I used for that assignment came from a 1975 book called The One-Burner Gourmet, by Harriett Barker. (You can borrow it here.) I don’t know whether, years later, I’d produce the same menus I did then. I wasn’t allowing for what I think of as the “ick factor,” meaning that some people would not care for the idea of mixing things together the way I did. Even in an emergency, I’m not sure I’d be able to eat canned peas straight up, knowing how relatively little nutrition they have for the amount of stomach-clutching it takes to swallow them. But this is what I came up with, plus my notes from then and now. 

Contents of a Basic Food Hamper 
[The goal would be to have all these things in each box, but that would depend on the food bank's supply at any time.]

Pork and Beans, 2 [cans] per person
Vegetables (Green and Yellow), 2 per person
Mac and cheese, 2 per person
Jam/Honey, 1 per hamper
Soup, 2 (cans?) per person
Juice (48 oz), 1 per hamper
Peanut butter, 1 per hamper (size unspecified)
Cookies, ½ (1/2 of what?) when available
Crackers, ½ (ditto?) when available (I guess they broke open the packages)
Fruit, canned, 1 [can?] per person, (fresh when available)
Potatoes, 5 lb.
Powdered milk, “1 per hamper” (size unspecified, I assume a supermarket-sized bag or box)
Margarine, “1 per hamper” (size unspecified, I assume a pound container)
Pasta/sauce “when available”
Cereal, “1 when available” (size unspecified)
Meat, “3 lunches, 3 suppers, when available” (kind of meat is unspecified—Spam? Tuna? Something not canned?)
Bread, “1 per person” (1 loaf?)
Donuts, when available
Buns, when available

Baby needs on request.

There were rules about including three out of four food groups in the breakfasts, and all food groups in the other meals. I don’t remember whether we were allowed to assume that there was any food already on hand or whether there was some cash allowed to buy a few groceries; but I did end up including a few other things which I noted.

Grocery list: peppers or celery, onions (or dried onion), rice or pasta if they weren’t in the box, and tomato sauce if it wasn’t in the box. [I think a dozen eggs would have been a good addition as well, but I was trying for bare necessities.] 

Food on hand: Mayonnaise-type salad dressing, salt and pepper.

We were supposed to suggest snacks, but there wasn’t a lot to work with beyond the obvious bread, crackers and cookies in the box. I said that if honey was provided, they could use it with the dried milk and peanut butter to make peanut butter balls.

Wednesday

Breakfast: 4 oz. juice (per person), cereal with milk, toast and jam or peanut butter

Lunch: Macaroni and cheese (2 or 3 boxes), with 1 can meat (Spam, tuna etc.) chopped in; 2 cans peas. (The One-Burner Gourmet suggests browning the Spam or similar product in margarine first, with fresh or dried onion if you have it, and then adding it to the cooked macaroni.)

Supper: Bean Chowder, made of 2 cans of pork-and-beans, 1 can of tomatoes or tomato sauce, a green pepper or celery, an onion, some margarine (to saute the vegetables first), and salt. Serve with bread (or toast) and milk.

Thursday

Breakfast: 4 oz. juice; toasted peanut butter and jam sandwiches; milk

Lunch: 2 cans soup with crackers; sandwiches made with a can of fish or other meat plus mayonnaise

Supper: “Lunch Meat and Noodles,” a recipe from the One-Burner Gourmet. You cook these things together: 1 can cream soup, ½ cup milk, 1 can of luncheon meat (cut in strips), ½ a green pepper, chopped (or celery), 1 tsp. dried onion (or some fresh), 1 can peas (use the liquid to add to the dry milk), and 1 tsp. salt. Simmer all this while you cook some noodles or other pasta (you could save out some of the boxed macaroni), and add this to the pot as well. Rice could be substituted. 2 cans of fruit for dessert.

Friday

Breakfast: Fried lunch meat and potatoes; toast; milk

Lunch: 2 cans pork and beans; boiled potatoes; bread, milk, cookies.

Supper: “Soup and Vegetable Chowder,” another One-Burner Gourmet recipe. The success of this would depend on what cans were in the hamper. The recipe calls for 2 cans cream soup, 2 cans chicken soup (like chicken noodle, chicken with rice, etc.), 2 cans corn, 1 can lima beans, 1 can milk (or dry substitute), salt and pepper. You are supposed to add everything together except the milk, simmer for 10-15 minutes, and then add the milk just before serving but don’t boil it. Dessert is something I used to make when I was younger; you cut the crusts off bread, [update: flatten each piece with a rolling pin or something similar], roll them up with jam or peanut butter, secure with a toothpick, and spread a bit of margarine on the outside. Bake them in the oven for a few minutes until they’re toasty. Not fancy, but little kids like them. (Think jam burritos.)

Saturday 

Breakfast: 4 oz. juice; cereal with milk; toast and jam or peanut butter

Lunch: Tuna and Green Bean mixup: A can of cream soup, a can of tuna, a can of vegetables, and enough milk to moisten; doubled if enough food is left in the box. Serve with toast and cookies.

Supper: Whatever’s left: could be potatoes, pork and beans, canned vegetables, and bread. Milk if there’s still some left.

Short On...? Carry On, Part Two: Breaking the Soup Rules

The best soups in the world may be made with bones and the ends of vegetables, but not all of us have those things all the time. You too can make soup, which as others before me have pointed out, is just wet food.

But even wet food tastes better with some stuff in it to give it a) ballast and b) flavour. These are some soups created and eaten by the Treehouse squirrels over the past many years. I've chosen the ones with the shortest and/or most flexible ingredient lists.

It Appears to Be Soup

Ingredients: 4 cups of chicken stock, 2 cups of water, 1/2 cup green lentils simmered in the stock/water, then some cooked rice, leftover chopped potato, and frozen mixed vegetables added and cooked until it was soup. 

Directions: Simmer it all together. You know it's soup when it stops looking like a potful of water with vegetables and lentils floating in it.


"We Are Never Going to Use This Coleslaw Mix" Soup

Ingredients: 1 bag pre-shredded cabbage, carrots, barley, canned pinto beans, sloppy joe seasoning (homemade mixture), and a few lentils (since we had them)

Directions: Simmer it all together.


Freezer Minestrone

Ingredients: Several small containers of leftover pasta sauce and beans that had accumulated in the freezer, along with a box of chicken broth, a bit of frozen spinach, a bit of pasta, and a few mushrooms.

Directions: Simmer it all together.


Sort of Mexican Soup

Ingredients: Leftovers from the Hillbilly Housewife's Lentil-Rice Taco Stuffing; enough water or broth to make it soupy; one can pinto beans, drained; some frozen corn, half a cup or so of salsa. 

Directions: Simmer it all together. Add corn and salsa near the end of cooking.


Lentil Soup Isn't So Bad 

Ingredients: 3 cups chicken broth plus an equal amount water; Some green lentils--maybe half to two-thirds of a cup dry; 2 carrots, sliced; 1/2 bunch celery, including some leaves, sliced; salsa 

Directions: Rinse the lentils and check for pebbles. Bring the broth and water to a boil, and add the lentils and vegetables. Turn down the heat and simmer until the lentils are soft enough to eat and the vegetables are cooked. I poured in some mild salsa partway through--maybe half a cup, just enough to season it up and add a bit of onion and tomato.  Add more water if it needs it as it's cooking.


Dead-easy Navy Bean Soup (slow cooker) (Adapted from Saving Dinner by Leanne Ely)

Directions: Soak one pound navy beans (half a 900 gram bag) overnight.

When you get up in the morning, discard the soaking water.  Throw some frozen chopped onion, the beans, a couple of bay leaves, and 1 litre (quart) chicken or vegetable broth into the slow cooker, and turn it on high.
Later, when you're feeling more awake, add in sliced carrots and/or celery.  I didn't have celery so I put in some celery seed.  Keep the soup cooking all day, on high for part of the time if your day is getting short.  When the beans seem like they're pretty soft, add in salt and pepper; I also added a bit of cumin. Add a little water if it seems to need it, but don't add TOO much.

You can turn it off and let it sit for awhile before you eat, to let it thicken and cool a bit.


Slow Cooker Split Pea Soup We've Been Making Forever

Adapted from a recipe in The Perfect Basket, by Diane Phillips. Can be halved and cooked in a smaller slower cooker. If you don't have fresh vegetables, you can substitute frozen "spaghetti mix" vegetables (a mixture of onion, celery, and pepper).

Ingredients:

2 cups yellow split peas (one of the little bags from the grocery store)
1/2 cup brown rice (optional)
1 bay leaf
2 tsp. dried marjoram
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. white pepper (I didn't have any so I used black pepper)
1 quart chicken or vegetable broth plus more water as needed
Some chopped frozen onion
A couple of carrots, peeled and chopped
Three stalks of celery, chopped

If you weren't going to do this in the slow cooker, you could start by sauteing the vegetables in a bit of butter or oil, then adding the split peas, broth, and seasonings. I just put everything into the 3 1/2 quart slow cooker, adding water to fill it maybe three-quarters full. I set it on High for a few hours, then turned it to Low partway through the afternoon when it was bubbling hard. I think it would work fine to leave it on Low all day.

Hamburger Soup #1 

This is what I did: browned a pound of ground beef, drained off most of the fat, added in some chopped onion and celery and let them cook a few minutes.  Added a can of pasta sauce and several cans of water; when it boiled, I added a cupful of what the grocery store packaged as "soup mix." That is, a mixture of lentils, grains, and small beans.  I let that simmer for a couple of hours, stirring it to keep from sticking, adding water if it needed it.  You could probably do it in the slow cooker too. Later I added chopped zucchini, a few mushrooms, and pasta bowties, along with extra basil, oregano, garlic powder, salt and pepper.  That's it, and it made a lot. 


Hamburger Soup #2

This recipe is descriptive, not prescriptive: don't go cooking one potato to copy this.

Ingredients: 1 lb. extra-lean ground beef; splash of olive oil for flavour; salt, pepper; lots of sliced celery (or part onions); 3 fat, ripe tomatoes; 1 cup leftover pasta sauce and half a can tomato paste (plus maybe a cupful of water, or two cupfuls--depends on whether you want it to be more like stew or more like soup); 1 cooked potato and about a cupful of cooked yellow beans; 1 cupful frozen peas (add at the end)

Directions: In a large pot (I used a Dutch oven), brown the ground beef; drain if necessary but I didn't because there was almost no fat left in the pan. Add a little oil if necessary and add in the celery; cook until softened a bit. Add salt and pepper whenever you want. Add in tomato ingredients plus as much water as seems right, plus cut-up leftover vegetables. Mama Squirrel left the beans in nice long bean-sized pieces.

Bring it all to a boil, turn down and let simmer for about an hour. (Low enough so it doesn't burn, but just enough to bubble a bit.) Add the peas right at the end.

This doesn't have much seasoning in it (other than the salt, pepper, and what's in the pasta sauce) and you might think it's too bland; feel free to doctor it as you like.

Short On...? Carry On: Part One (Archives Post)

First posted 2007, edited slightly

Sometimes, it’s easy to get caught up in thinking of frugality only in terms of getting good bargains. What is important to remember is that often we can save the most money by not spending at all.--Crystal in "Saturday Savings Smorgasbord" at Frugal Hacks 

Sometimes, frugal as we Squirrels are, it's hard to wrap my brain around that. I have a hard time understanding how those pioneer families managed on their infrequent trips to a store for sugar, salt and shot...or how people concerned with simplicity (who haven't engineered the whole thing ahead of time, stocking up on every possible thing they might run out of) manage to go on one of those no-buying-anything-at-all shopping unbinges.

I mean, some things are obvious to me: if you need to wrap a present and haven't saved up all the bags everybody else has given you presents in, you find some creative wrapping, even the thoroughly-clichéd colour comics. If you're short on baking powder, you can combine baking soda and cream of tartar, assuming that you do have cream of tartar. It makes more sense to use up the getting-dusty bag of split peas to make soup than it does to complain that the canned stuff hasn't gone on sale lately. If you don't have a crib, you can use a playpen (we did). And the list of ways to amuse children and improvise free toys and games can and does go on for pages. That, I get.

But it isn't a toy famine that we're usually experiencing here, nor a lack of furniture. We have more than enough kitchen equipment, lots of books to read, and a flip of the switch provides us with free radio entertainment and edification. What we run out of are the small things. Socks that fit growing feet. Tape. Printer paper. Working ballpoint pens; and I don't think the backyard crows would lend me any quills. Flour (and therefore all the things we make with flour). Toilet paper; and I have no burning desire to start substituting catalogue pages in that regard. Baking powder when there isn't any cream of tartar around. Foil. A VCR that quit working and that Mr. Fixit can't resuscitate. How do you manage without spending at all when life today seems like one big pile of little receipts?

"'What do we need to get in town, Caroline?'

"Ma said they did not need anything. They had eaten so many fish and potatoes that the flour was still holding out, and the sugar, and even the tea. Only the salt was low, and it would last several days."--On the Banks of Plum Creek

Could I actually go any length of time without buying anything? I know there are so many things you can improvise, and many more that you can just do without. But then there's the really good candy corn for Thanksgiving from the Bulk Barn...and some classical CDs from Dollarama that will make great stocking stuffers and Secret Sister gifts...and the purple sweater I found at a rummage sale Friday night (I do need sweaters). And the Turkish Cookbook I got there for a quarter, and a spool knitting set as well. (Crayons thought those were both awesome.) And dancing-class shoes for the younger Squirrelings, because their last-years' pairs are worn out (call them the 2 Dancing Princesses); those cost more than a couple of dollars, but we didn't want them to have to dance in their bare feet.

And that aseptically-packaged apple juice from Giant Tiger for 77 cents a box (amazing deal)...and, if you don't think we should be eating candy and drinking juice (too much sugar), how about the pumpkins and apples and squash and broccoli and the most excellent popcorn that will be gone all too soon when the farm stand closes up for the season? And we just bought a hot-air popper at a yard sale for $2...and a couple of VCRs for about the same price, no kidding. I said VCRs, not videos. See, you have to admit, sometimes spending is just fun. And smart; check the big box stores, VCRs are quickly disappearing from the shelves, and then how are you going to watch all your Star Trek videos?

So while my preferred way of dealing with don't-have-that problems is trying to see another way around it, I'm not going to stress out with guilt over the things we do buy. 

"And in the lean-to they found a boughten broom! There seemed no end to the wonders in this house."--On the Banks of Plum Creek

How Homeschoolers Do It (Archives Post): More Than a Checklist

First posted January 2015 

The province of Ontario has had a common-to-all-schools curriculum for about twenty years now. The guidelines for each grade, each subject area are available online. Some homeschoolers make use of them, some of the time. Occasionally they have been useful: a few years ago when I was trying to get our Apprentice approved for grade 10 mathematics, I could see how far the grade 9 content went. When we created a few of our own high school courses (grade 10 Canadian history, grade 11 philosophy), I used the basic questions and themes of the courses, but chose our own materials and methods. So yes, sometimes it has been helpful, usually when an outside party (the public school) is involved.

But why would you want to base a whole education on something so nebulous? The outlines are either so general and vague that you don't have a clue as to what to do with them; or they are so super-comprehensive that, again, you don't even know where to start. It's like looking at a restaurant menu with too many options but nothing to eat. Paper Pizza, if you like.

But I don't like. I don't like complicated where things could be simple. And I don't like lack of substance, even if the substance takes pages and pages to lack.

This past week, my eighth grader and I worked on a short section from How to Read a Book, which pertained not only to reading but to all communication: how do you say "I understand what you said, but I disagree," without prejudice or undue emotion, but with enough specific details to support your position? And how do you deal with the fact that some people will, no matter what, resent the fact that you're disagreeing, because nice people shouldn't be disagreeable? Adler points out the difference between disagreeing with someone because they are underinformed, misinformed, or haven't analyzed the case logically or thoroughly enough, and just being contentious. How many adults do you know that don't seem ever to have learned this? But instead of making it a checkmarkable lesson, wouldn't it be simpler to say "every eighth grader should read and discuss (non-contentiously) chapter 11 of How to Read a Book?"

We read the first two chapters from C.S. Lewis's second Space Trilogy book, Perelandra (Voyage to Venus). The book begins with the narrator's walk from a train station to a friend's house, on an errand that he is anticipating about as much as a root canal. It's getting dark. He imagines voices, or are they imagined? Maybe he should just go back...and then he gets to the house, his friend isn't there, and in the darkness he falls over something like...a coffin. Is the hair standing up on your neck yet? Should we go on to the next chapter, or would you rather fill out a vocabulary worksheet, or do a lesson on Lewis's use of descriptive adjectives? No?

We read about a journey through Tanzania. We read about Jessica's elopement with Lorenzo, and the opening of the three caskets. We looked at Albrecht Dürer's series of self-portraits. What did it mean when he painted himself as a "dude?" Why, another time, did he seem to pose as Jesus Christ? How do we create and re-create ourselves, showing ourselves first one way, then another?

Lydia finished reading 13 Things That Don't Make Sense (science). She worked on graphing equations. She wrote a summary of the return of Odysseus, from her reading of Edith Hamilton's Mythology. She wrote a business-like email describing herself briefly and requesting information about auditions for a play (real life, not a school exercise). She also knit like crazy all week, ran out of things to knit, went out Thursday night to buy more yarn (consumer education and estimation skills), and had a Lollipop Doll finished by the end of the next day (perseverance).

We read Tennyson's poem "Ulysses." "I am a part of all that I have met; / Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough / Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades / Forever and forever when I move." Isn't that a good description of a lifelong passion for adventure...and learning?

But...those things we did this week don't all fit on a neat matrix, a checklist. I don't know if I can find them in the Ontario Grade Eight Common Curriculum.

□ Identify a variety of reading comprehension strategies and use them before, during, and after reading to understand increasingly complex or difficult texts
□ Demonstrate understanding of increasingly complex and difficult texts by summarizing important ideas and citing a variety of details that support the main idea
□ Develop and explain interpretations of increasingly complex or difficult texts using stated and implied ideas from the texts to support their interpretations
□ Extend understanding of texts, including increasingly complex or difficult texts, by connecting the ideas in them to their own knowledge, experience, and insights, to other familiar texts, and to the world around them
□ Analyse a variety of texts, both simple and complex, and explain how the various elements in them contribute to meaning and influence the reader’s reaction
□ Evaluate the effectiveness of a text based on evidence from that text
□ Identify the point of view presented in texts, including increasingly complex or difficult texts; give evidence of any biases they may contain; and suggest other possible perspectives

I think that all means...read the book.

"Come, my friends.
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
the sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew... " -- Tennyson 

How Homeschoolers Do It (Archives Post): A Piece of Coal

Five-lesson meander through underground history, created in 2013 for Lydia's Grade Six year. Adapted from "The History of A Piece of Coal" in The Fairy-Land of Science, by Arabella B. Buckley. The links have NOT all been re-checked, so click at your own risk.

THE HISTORY OF A PIECE OF COAL

WEEK ONE

You might not think you know very much about this subject.  You may never even have seen a piece of coal.

Arabella Buckley would have found that amazing, because in the late 1800's, coal was something most children were familiar with.  Burning coal created the steam that powered ships, trains, and all kinds of machines.  It heated homes, in fireplaces and stoves, and, later, in furnaces.  The mining industry provided jobs for people wherever coal could be taken out of the ground.

Here's a quiz to see how many stories you might have read that involve coal.  Ready?

1. What Biblical prophet had a burning coal touched to his lips?
2. Who fell through the window of the library cellar and landed on a coal pile?
3. What family was saved by its barking dog when the coal furnace malfunctioned?
4. (This is an old book)  In which book did a character say he was "mining" coal, when he was actually stealing it from a nearby railway yard?
5. Who had two eyes made out of coal?
6. Who wrote a picture book called The Lump of Coal?
7. Whose boss was too mean to let him put any more coal on the fire?
8. Which movie father said some very bad words upon discovering a clinker in his furnace?
9. Why do people say that doing something superfluous or useless is like carrying coals to Newcastle?
10. Finish the name of this fairy tale:  "The Straw, the Coal, and the ?"

(Answers are at the end of everything.)


Now we'll hear from Arabella Buckley.

I have here a piece of coal, which, though it has been cut with some care so as to have a smooth face, is really in no other way different from any ordinary lump which you can pick for yourself out of the coal-scuttle. Our work to-day is to relate the history of this black lump; to learn what it is, what it has been, and what it will be.

It looks uninteresting enough at first sight, and yet if we examine it closely we shall find some questions to ask even about its appearance. Look at the smooth face of this specimen and see if you can explain those fine lines which run across so close together as to look like the edges of the leaves of a book.

Try to break a piece of coal, and you will find that it will split much more easily along those lines than across the other way of the lump; and if you wish to light a fire quickly you should always put this lined face downwards so that the heat can force its way up through these cracks and gradually split up the block. Then again if you break the coal carefully along one of these lines you will find a fine film of charcoal lying in the crack, and you will begin to suspect that this black coal must have been built up in very thin layers, with a kind of black dust between them.

The next thing you will call to mind is that this coal burns and gives flame and heat, and that this means that in some way sunbeams--heat, energy--are imprisoned in it; lastly, this will lead you to think of plants, and how they work up the strength of the sunbeams into their leaves, and hide black carbon in even the purest and whitest substance they contain.

Is coal made of burnt plants, then? Not burnt ones, for if so it would not burn again; but you may have read how the makers of charcoal take wood and bake it without letting it burn; and then it turns black and will afterwards make a very good fire; and so you will see that it is probable that our piece of coal is made of plants which have been baked and altered, but which have still much sunbeam strength bottled up in them, which can be set free as they burn.

Narration:  describe a piece of coal.  For further examination: look online for a view of coal under a microscope.

So where does coal come from?  From underground; from coal mines.  At the time this book was written, coal mining was an extremely important business in Great Britain, North America, and other places where coal had been discovered; and it was becoming even more valuable then as coal was being burned to create electrical power.  Coal-cutting machines were invented in the 1880s; before that, coal was mined from underground with a pick and shovel. Coal is now mined commercially in over 50 countries, and the top producers are China, the United States, and India.  Production has actually increased over the past 25 years; but with new technology, there are far fewer people employed in coal mining.  Coal has always been a controversial business, for several reasons:  the frequency of accidents, the longterm effects on workers' health, and the impact of burning coal and the mines themselves on the environment.

(Most of Canada's coal mining occurs in the West.  British Columbia operates 10 coal mines, Alberta 9, Saskatchewan 3 and New Brunswick one. Nova Scotia operates several small-scale mines, Westray having closed following the 1992 disaster there.)

WEEK TWO:  Clues Underground

But what we want to find is some evidence of where coal came from, or what it is made of.  If you will take an imaginary journey with me to a coal-pit near Newcastle (photo from that link), which I visited many years ago, you will see that we have very good evidence that coal is made of plants, for in all coal-mines we find remains of them at every step we take.

Let us imagine that we have put on old clothes which will not spoil, and have stepped into the iron basket called by the miners a cage, and are being let down the shaft to the gallery where the miners are at work. Most of them will probably be in the gallery, because a great deal of the coal has been already taken out. But we will stop because there we can see a great deal of the roof and the floor. When we land on the floor of the gallery we shall find ourselves in a kind of tunnel with railway lines laid along it and trucks laden with coal coming towards the cage to be drawn up, while empty ones are running back to be loaded where the miners are at work. Taking lamps in our hands and keeping out of the way of the trucks, we will first throw the light on the roof, which is made of shale or hardened clay. We shall not have gone many yards before we see impressions of plants in the shale [look for an online image].  Can you see leaf shapes that look like ferns, or long thin marks like reeds? You will find plenty of these impressions of plants as you go along the gallery and look up at the roof, and with them there will be others with spotted stems, or with stems having a curious diamond pattern upon them, and many ferns of various kinds.

STIGMARIA

Next look down at your feet and examine the floor. You will not have to search long before you will almost certainly find a piece of stone like that represented, which has also come from Neath Colliery. But this curious pitted stone is a piece of fossil root, or rather underground stem, like that which we found in the primrose, and that the little pits or dents in it are scars where the rootlets once were given off.

Stigmaria—root or underground stems of Sigillaria.

Whole masses of these root-stems, with ribbon-like roots lying scattered near them, are found buried in the layer of clay called the underclay which makes the floor of the coal, and they prove to us that this underclay must have been once the ground in which the roots of the coal-plants grew.

(UNDERCLAY:  a stratum (layer) of clay lying beneath a coal bed, often containing the roots of coal plants, especially the Stigmaria.)

(Drawing of mine galleries found here)

You will feel still more sure of this when you find that there is not only one straight gallery of coal, but that galleries branch out right and left, and that everywhere you find the coal lying like a sandwich between the floor and the roof, showing that quite a large piece of country must be covered by these remains of plants all rooted in the underclay.

But what of the coal itself? It seems likely, when we find roots below, and leaves and stems above, that the middle is made of plants, but can we prove it? We shall see presently that it has been so crushed and altered by being buried deep in the ground that the traces of leaves have almost been destroyed, though people who are used to examining with the microscope can see the crushed remains of plants in thin slices of coal.

But fortunately for us, perfect pieces of plants have been preserved even in the coal bed itself. Do you remember our learning previously that water with lime in it petrifies things, that is, leaves carbonate of lime (calcium carbonate) to fill up, grain by grain, the fibres of an animal or plant as the living matter decays, and so keeps an exact representation of the object?

Photograph:  time to call a plumber!

Now, it so happens that in a coal-bed at South Ouram, near Halifax (that is, Halifax in England), as well as in some other places, carbonate of lime (lime deposits) trickled in before the plants were turned into coal, and made some round nodules in the plant-bed, which look like cannon-balls.

(Photo found here)

Afterwards, when all the rest of the bed was turned into coal, these round balls remained crystallized, and by cutting thin transparent slices across the nodule we can distinctly see the leaves and stems and curious little round bodies which make up the coal. Several such sections may be seen at the British Museum, and when we compare these fragments of plants with those which we find above and below the coal-bed, we find that they agree, thus proving that coal is made of plants, and of those plants whose roots grew in the clay floor, while their heads reached up far above where the roof now is.

The next question is, what kind of plants were these? Have we anything like them living in the world now?

You might perhaps think that it would be impossible to decide this question from mere petrified pieces of plants. But many men have spent their whole lives in deciphering all the fragments that could be found, and though the section may look to you quite incomprehensible, yet a botanist can read it as we read a book.

For example, where stems are cut across, he can learn exactly how they were built up inside, and compare them with the stems of living plants, while the fruits and the little round spores lying near them, tell him their history as well as if he had gathered them from the tree. In this way we have learned to know very fairly what the plants of the coal were like, and you will be surprised when I tell you that the huge trees of the coal-forests, of which we sometimes find trunks in the coal-mines from ten to fifty feet long, are only represented on the earth now by small insignificant plants, scarcely ever more than two feet, and often not many inches high.

Have you ever seen the little club moss or Lycopodium which grows all over England, but chiefly in the north, on heaths and mountains? At the end of each of its branches it bears a cone made of scaly leaves; and fixed to the inside of each of these leaves is a case called a sporangium, full of little spores or moss-seeds, as we may call them, though they are not exactly like true seeds.

In one of these club-mosses called Selaginella, the cases near the bottom of the cone contain large spores, while those near the top contain a powdery dust. These spores are full of resin, and they are collected on the Continent for making artificial lightning in the theatres, because they flare when lighted. (Some people still use "powdered rosin" for special effects.)

Now this little Selaginella is of all living plants the one most like some of the gigantic trees of the coal-forests. If you look at this picture of a coal-forest, you will find it difficult perhaps to believe that those great trees, with diamond markings all up the trunk, could be in any way relations of the little Selaginella; yet we find branches of them in the beds above the coal, bearing cones larger, but just like Selaginella cones; and what is most curious, the spores in these cones are of exactly the same kind and not any larger than those of the club-mosses.

WEEK THREE

(Photo found here)

These trees are called by botanists Lepidodendrons, or scaly trees; there are numbers of them in all coal-mines, and one trunk has been found 49 feet long (the size of 8 tall men). Their branches were divided in a curious forked manner and bore cones at the ends. The spores which fell from these cones are found flattened in the coal, and they may be seen scattered about in the coal-ball.

Another famous tree which grew in the coal-forests was the one whose roots we found in the floor or underclay of the coal. It has been called Sigillaria, because it has marks like seals (sigillum, a seal) all up the trunk, due to the scars left by the leaves when they fell from the tree. You will see the Sigillarias on the left-hand side of the coal-forest picture, having those curious tufts of leaves springing out of them at the top. Their stems make up a great deal of the coal, and the bark of their trunks is often found in the clays above, squeezed flat in lengths of 30, 60, or 70 feet.

(Photo found here)

These great trees, the Lepidodendrons, the Sigillarias, and the Calamites, together with large tree-ferns and smaller ferns, are the chief plants that we know of in the coal-forests. It seems very strange at first that they should have been so large when their descendants are now so small, but if you look at our chief plants and trees now, you will find that nearly all of them bear flowers, and this is a great advantage to them, because it tempts the insects to bring them the pollen-dust, as we saw in the lessons on the primrose. Now the Lepidodendrons and their companions had no true flowers, but only these seed-cases which we have mentioned; but as there were no flowering plants in their time (no competition), and they had the ground all to themselves, they grew fine and large. By-and-by, however, when the flowering plants came in, these began to crowd out the old giants of the coal-forests, so that they dwindled and dwindled from century to century till their great-great-grandchildren, thousands of generations after, only lift up their tiny heads in marshes and on heaths, and tell us that they were big...once upon a time.

And indeed they must have been magnificent in those olden days, when they grew thick and tall in the lonely marshes where plants and trees were the chief inhabitants. We find no traces in the clay-beds of the coal to lead us to suppose that men lived in those days, nor lions, nor tigers, nor even birds to fly among the trees; but these grand forests were almost silent, except when a huge animal something like a gigantic newt or frog went croaking through the marsh, or a kind of grasshopper chirruped on the land.

But these forms of life were few and far between, compared to the huge trees and tangled masses of ferns and reeds which covered the whole ground, or were reflected in the bosom of the large pools and lakes round about which they grew.

SECRETS OF THE SWAMP

And now, if you have some idea of the plants and trees of the coal, it is time to ask how these plants became buried in the earth and made pure coal, instead of decaying away and leaving behind only a mixture of earth and leaves? When we put plant material in a compost bin, it rots away, doesn't it?  Why didn't that happen in this case?

To answer this question, I must ask you to take another journey with me to Norfolk, Virginia, because there we can see a state of things something like the marshes of the coal-forests. All round about Norfolk the land is low, flat, and marshy, and to the south of the town, stretching far away into North Carolina, is a large, desolate swamp, no less than forty miles long and twenty-five broad.  The whole place is one enormous quagmire, overgrown with water-plants and trees. The soil is as black as ink from the old, dead leaves, grasses, roots, and stems which lie in it; and so soft, that everything would sink into it, if it were not for the matted roots of the mosses, ferns, and other plants which bind it together. You may dig down for ten or fifteen feet, and find nothing but peat made of the remains of plants which have lived and died there in succession for ages and ages, while the black trunks of the fallen trees lie here and there, gradually being covered up by the dead plants.

The whole place is so still, gloomy, and desolate, that it goes by the name of the Great Dismal Swamp, and you see we have here what might well be the beginning of a bed of coal; for we know that peat when dried becomes firm and makes an excellent fire...

...and that if it were pressed till it was hard and solid it would not be unlike coal.

If, then, we can explain how this peaty bed has been kept pure from earth, we shall be able to understand how a coal-bed may have been formed, even though the plants and trees which grow in this swamp are different from those which grew in the coal-forests.

The explanation is not difficult; streams flow constantly, or rather ooze into the Great Dismal Swamp from the land that lies to the west, but instead of bringing mud in with them as rivers bring to the sea, they bring only clear, pure water, because, as they filter for miles through the dense jungle of reeds, ferns, and shrubs which grow round the marsh, all the earth is sifted out and left behind.

With me so far?  The water comes in, but the mud gets filtered out.

In this way the spongy mass of dead plants remains free from earthy grains, while the water and the shade of the thick forest of trees prevent the leaves, stems, etc., from being decomposed by the air and sun. And so year after year as the plants die they leave their remains for other plants to take root in, and the peaty mass grows thicker and thicker, while tall cedar trees and evergreens live and die in these vast, swampy forests, and being in loose ground are easily blown down by the wind, and leave their trunks to be covered up by the growing moss and weeds.

Now we know that there were plenty of ferns and of large Calamites growing thickly together in the coal-forests, for we find their remains everywhere in the clay, so we can easily picture to ourselves how the dense jungle formed by these plants would fringe the coal-swamp, as the present plants do the Great Dismal Swamp, and would keep out all earthy matter, so that year after year the plants would die and form a thick bed of peat, afterwards to become coal.

The next thing we have to account for is the bed of shale or hardened clay covering over the coal.

Now we know that from time to time land has gone slowly up and down on our globe so as in some places to carry the dry ground under the sea, and in others to raise the sea-bed above the water. Let us suppose, then, that the great Dismal Swamp was gradually to sink down so that the sea washed over it and killed the reeds and shrubs. Then the streams from the west would not be sifted any longer but would bring down mud, and leave it, as in the delta of the Nile or Mississippi, to make a layer over the dead plants. You will easily understand that this mud would have many pieces of dead trees and plants in it, which were stifled and died as it covered them over; and thus the remains would be preserved like those which we find now in the roof of the coal-galleries.

WEEK FOUR

But still there are the thick sandstones in the coal-mine to be explained. (See the "sandstone roof" in this Kentucky coal mine?)

To explain the sandstone, we must suppose that the ground went on sinking till the sea covered the whole place where once the swamp had been, and then sea-sand would be thrown down over the clay and gradually pressed down by the weight of new sand above, till it formed solid sandstone and our coal-bed became buried deeper and deeper in the earth.

At last, after long ages, when the thick mass of sandstones above the bed had been laid down, the sinking must have stopped and the land have risen a little, so that the sea was driven back; and then the rivers would bring down earth again and make another clay-bed. Then a new forest would spring up, the ferns, Calamites, Lepidodendrons, and Sigillarias would gradually form another jungle, and many hundreds of feet above the buried coal-bed, a second bed of peat and vegetable matter would begin to accumulate to form the coal-bed.

Such is the history of how the coal which we now dig out of the depths of the earth once grew as beautiful plants on the surface.

Try and picture to yourselves a coal-mining area, where all is now black with coal-dust, and grimy with the smoke of furnaces; and where the noise of hammers and steam-engines, and of carts and trucks hurrying to and fro, makes the country re-echo with the sound of labor; there ages ago in the silent swamp shaded with monster trees, one thin layer of plants after another was formed, year after year, to become the coal we now value so much.

But what is it that has changed these beds of dead plants into hard, stony coal? In the first place you must remember they have been pressed down under an enormous weight of rocks above them. We can learn something about this even from our common lead pencils. At one time the graphite or pure carbon, of which the lead  (as we wrongly call it) of our pencils is made, was dug solid out of the earth. But so much has now been used that they are obliged to collect the graphite dust, and press it under a heavy weight (or mix it with other ingredients), and this makes such solid pieces that they can cut them into leads for ordinary pencils.

Now the pressure which we can exert by machinery is absolutely nothing compared to the weight of all those hundreds of feet of solid rock which lie over the coal-beds, and which has pressed them down for thousands and perhaps millions of years; and besides this, we know that parts of the inside of the earth are very hot, and many of the rocks in which coal is found are altered by heat.

WEEK FIVE

OIL, GAS, and TAR

So we can picture to ourselves that the coal was not only squeezed into a solid mass, but often much of the oil and gas which were in the leaves of the plants was driven out by heat, and the whole baked, as it were, into one substance. The difference between coal which flames and coal which burns only with a red heat, is chiefly that one has been baked and crushed more than the other. Coal which flames has still got in it the tar and the gas and the oils which the plant stored up in its leaves, and these when they escape again give back the sunbeams in a bright flame. The hard stone coal, on the contrary, has lost a great part of these oils, and only carbon remains, which seizes hold of the oxygen of the air and burns without flame.

Interlude: On Curiosity and Finding Things Out

Uncle Henry...said, peaceably: "Well, Mother, you never saw anybody laying asphalt pavement, I'll warrant you! And I suppose Betsy knows all about that."

Elizabeth Ann's spirits rose. She felt very superior indeed. "Oh, yes," she assured them, "I know all about that! Didn't you ever see anybody doing that? Why, I've seen them hundreds of times! Every day as we went to school they were doing over the whole pavement for blocks along there."

Aunt Abigail and Uncle Henry looked at her with interest, and Aunt Abigail said: "Well, now, think of that! Tell us all about it!"

"Why, there's a big black sort of wagon," began Elizabeth Ann, "and they run it up and down and pour out the black stuff on the road. And that's all there is to it." She stopped, rather abruptly, looking uneasy. Uncle Henry inquired: "Now, there's one thing I've always wanted to know. How do they keep that stuff from hardening on them? How do they keep it hot?"

The little girl looked blank. "Why, a fire, I suppose," she faltered, searching her memory desperately and finding there only a dim recollection of a red glow somewhere connected with the familiar scene at which she had so often looked with unseeing eyes.

"Of course a fire," agreed Uncle Henry. "But what do they burn in it , coke or coal or wood or charcoal? And how do they get any draft to keep it going?"

Elizabeth Ann shook her head. "I never noticed," she said. 

Aunt Abigail asked her now, "What do they do to the road before they pour it on?"

"Do?" said Elizabeth Ann. "I didn't know they did anything."

"Well, they can't pour it right on a dirt road, can they?" asked Aunt Abigail. "Don't they put down cracked stone or something?"

Elizabeth Ann looked down at her toes. "I never noticed," she said.

"I wonder how long it takes for it to harden?" said Uncle Henry.

"I never noticed," said Elizabeth Ann, in a small voice.

Uncle Henry said, "Oh!" and stopped asking questions. (Understood Betsy, by Dorothy Canfield Fisher.)

Coke is pure carbon, which we make artificially by driving out the oils and gases from coal, and the gas we burn is part of what is driven out.

You will find it difficult at first to understand how coal can be so full of oil and tar and gases, until you have tried to think over how much of all these there is in plants, and especially in seeds—think of the oils of almonds, of lavender, of cloves, and of caraways; and the oils of turpentine which we get from the pines, and out of which tar is made. When you remember these and many more, and also how the seeds of the club-moss now are largely charged with oil, you will easily imagine that the large masses of coal-plants which have been pressed together and broken and crushed, would give out a great deal of oil which, when made very hot, rises up as gas. You may often yourself see tar oozing out of the lumps of coal in a fire, and making little black bubbles which burst and burn. It is from this tar that James Young first made the paraffin oil we burn in our lamps, and the spirit benzoline comes from the same source.

From benzoline, again, we get a liquid called aniline, from which are made so many of our beautiful dyes—mauve, magenta, and violet; and coal-tar has been used for food colourings and flavourings.

At this point, Arabella Buckley gets a bit poetic about the uses and benefits of coal.  As we have said before, many now would argue with this praise of the coal industry.  Yes, coal mining provided employment; coal-produced steam powered factories, trains, and ships; coal heated homes; coal oil provided light.  At the same time we need to consider what coal mining and coal burning has done to the environment; and what the cost has been to human workers (including children) who were often injured or became sick because of their work. Is there still a need for coal in today's world?  There are many good questions to ask about the energy we consume and the places we get it.  However, the point of this chapter has been more about where coal came from in the first place, so let's focus on that as we wind up.

Think, then, how much we owe to these plants which lived and died so long ago! If they had been able to reason, perhaps they might have said that they did not seem of much use in the world... they lived and died all on one spot, generation after generation, without seeming to do much good to anything or anybody. Then they were covered up and put out of sight, and down in the dark earth they were pressed all out of shape and lost their beauty and became only black, hard coal. There they lay for centuries and centuries, and thousands and thousands of years, and still no one seemed to want them.

At last, one day, long, long after man had been living on the earth, and had been burning wood for fires, and so gradually using up the trees in the forests, it was discovered that this black stone would burn, and from that time coal has been becoming every day more and more useful. ... In fact, almost everything we use could only have been made with difficulty and in small quantities; and even if we could have made them it would have been impossible to have sent them so quickly all over the world without coal, for we could have had no railways or steamships, but must have carried all goods along canals, and by slow sailing vessels.

All this then, those plants and trees of the far-off ages, which seemed to lead such useless lives, have done and are doing for us. Tennyson wrote:

"That nothing walks with aimless feet

That not one life shall be destroyed,

Or cast as rubbish to the void,

When God hath made the pile complete."

(In Memoriam)

Quiz Answers

1. What Biblical prophet had a burning coal touched to his lips? Isaiah
2. Who fell through the window of the library cellar and landed on a coal pile? Rufus Moffat, in Rufus M. by Eleanor Estes
3. What family was saved by its barking dog when the coal furnace malfunctioned? The Melendy family, in The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright
4. In which book did a character say he was "mining" coal, when he was actually stealing it from a nearby railway yard? The Railway Children, by Edith Nesbit
5. Who had two eyes made out of coal? Frosty the Snowman
6. Who wrote a picture book called The Lump of Coal? Lemony Snicket
7. Whose boss was too mean to let him put any more coal on the fire? Bob Cratchit, in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
8. Which movie father said some very bad words upon discovering a clinker in his furnace? The Old Man (Ralphie's father) in A Christmas Story
9. Why do people say that doing something superfluous or useless is like carrying coals to Newcastle? Because Newcastle upon Tyne was the center of the coal industry in Great Britain.
10. Finish the name of this fairy tale:  "The Straw, the Coal, and the ?" "Bean."

Wednesday Hodgepodge: Springing Up

Why not join the Wednesday Hodgepodge? Answer the questions on your own blog, then hop back to From This Side of the Pond (click on the graphic) to share answers with the universe. See you there!

1. Has spring sprung in your part of the world? How can you tell? Did March come in like a lion where you live? Going out like a lamb or something more ferocious?

It took awhile to warm up, but things are starting to turn green now.

2. The last thing that caused you to spring to your feet?

Probably the stove timer reminding me that the banana bread was done. I could not live without a timer, I'd burn everything

3. Do you have a spring clean to-do list? What's one chore on the list you've already managed to accomplish? What spring clean chore do you most dread?

Short answer: we just clean as we go.

4. Tell us something you've learned about yourself or the wider world as a result of social distancing/the virus crisis.

In the worst crisis scenario I could think of, I never thought I'd have to include "No thrift stores."

5. Something you love that's the color pink?

The pink things in my Shopping My Closet post yesterday.

6. Insert your own random thought here.

I included this quote in a recent post, but it also seems appropriate for this week's theme.

"We do not stir. It is a hard lesson...Of course YOU know how to keep still, for you are children. And so perhaps you do not need to take lessons of teacher Toad. But I do, for I am grown up...with a world of things to do, a great many of which I do not need to do at all--if only I would let the toad teach me all he knows." Dallas Lore Sharp, The Spring of the Year

Linked from the Wednesday Hodgepodge: Springing Back Into the Hodgepodge at From This Side of the Pond.