For quite some time, S.D. and I were lazily fond of grocery shopping at our local Cub foods store, as it was convenient. Sure, we had other places where we would buy many of our other groceries, but recently, our normal plan and strategy of multiple grocery stops at our other favorite shopping places. Why? We got lazy.
As some or all of you know, S.D. makes fruit wine, and often a 5 gallon batch needs about #20 of fruit. Cub had a coupon on pears, at a price (about half price) that made it worthwhile to buy enough to make a batch of pear wine. It took 4 bags of pears, as Cub maintains a consistent standard of sub-standard bags for their produce, and when we went to check out, the coupon only covered the first bag. If we couldn't get the discount on all of them, we wanted none of them. The happiness that ensued at the check out was in a word, terrific. The upshot is that we are no longer using the retail giant for our grocery needs.
So, as we walked out, and drove away, the discussion happened, centering around where and how to get our groceries that did not involve anything that even rhymes with Cub.
We looked about, and found a small. local grocer that's not really farther from us than the mega-store is, and there are some ethnic grocers nearby, and a discount food place that's also local. The set up will be a program of shopping once a week with a grocery buddy, on a circuit that fulfills a list. The best part is that the money all stays in the community, as the food places are all local, and not chain operations. This will merely take a bit more planning on our parts, and a bit less laziness.
The mega-store was losing ground with us for over a year now, and one of the nails in the coffin was when I looked up, and saw a refrigerated case, an entire aisle, over 2/3 dedicated to frozen pizzas and frozen, prepared entrees. Less than 1/4th of one side had frozen vegetables and fruits. At what point is it right to pay for that kind of retail space to items that we do not now, nor will we ever use? When we looked at the considerably smaller, local option, there were fewer choices on packaged, prepared foods, and it brought the whole concept home, how many different types of chocolate cake mixes does one really need to choose from? How many variations on frozen pizza? The small local place is perhaps 10% more expensive than the mega-store, but I know my money is going towards wages of people in my community, keeping it local.
Now, I must be honest, that the produce at small-local store leaves something to be desired, but that ought not be an issue in summer, and with planning, I can make up for it at the Asian grocer and farmer's markets. Maybe we as Americans need to know that we don't really need oranges in the middle of summer (out of season), or strawberries in the middle of winter. Maybe we need to know we can't have everything we want, when we want it, even if it is entirely unreasonable to ask for it.
It takes a bit more planning, but we'll get along. I think happiness should be the specialness of getting an orange in season, in winter, and enjoying a strawberry from our own garden in the summer.
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Friday, December 21, 2012
I Think We Wanted Something to Happen
An observation: our power actually did go out for several hours in the
wee time of the morning, and it got me thinking of the stuff I still
have left to do. I wasn't upset, because I feel pretty basically
prepared for quite a bit of nonsense.
However, I think there is a pretty big contingency that actually rather wants a cleansing apocalyptic experience to happen. Hang tight, I'll explain (if you haven't figured our where I'm coming from already):
The GOONS are ruled by corporate bastards and the large scale monopolistic companies who bought them, it is completely corrupt and untrustworthy. The GOONS would like to "take care" of us, but are entirely incapable of doing so, as taking care of us would make the American public dependent on the GOONS, thereby creating a slave nation.
Got it so far? Not just a rant, it has a point.
Our society walks on eggshells, and if an individual or corporation doesn't, or won't, it is ostracized, boycotted and shunned for not catering to the weak or stupid. If a person builds something through hard work, determination, smarts, and frequently dumb luck, that person is told they "didn't do it on their own", that no one ever built anything, it was society that built it, or at least the infrastructure that grossly assisted the building of said endeavor.
I call bullshit on the field. People have been building large and wonderful things since there has been commerce, and I will dare to say, that commerce did a lot of heavy lifting to get those roads and infrastructure built. To take away individual ambition is a furtherance of creating a slave nation.
This is why I think the populace wants a sweeping end of days. The folks that want it figure that the cleansing won't get them, and will rid us of all the other flotsam in the system. I think people are full up on corruption of governing bodies, are full up on being told to embrace all things different from themselves, while feeling guilt about the very precious and wonderful things they are in their hearts and culture. I think folks want to go back to building a healthy society that has been sickened by catering to the weak.
There isn't an easy fix to the GOONS as they stand today, there isn't an easy fix to Big Ag, Big Pharma, and privacy hacking social media, there just isn't. Perhaps that 's why, on some level, just want an apocalypse.
On a saner note, it won't be this winter, zombies are very slow and easily stopped in the dead of winter. Wait until spring, (she says with a wink)
However, I think there is a pretty big contingency that actually rather wants a cleansing apocalyptic experience to happen. Hang tight, I'll explain (if you haven't figured our where I'm coming from already):
The GOONS are ruled by corporate bastards and the large scale monopolistic companies who bought them, it is completely corrupt and untrustworthy. The GOONS would like to "take care" of us, but are entirely incapable of doing so, as taking care of us would make the American public dependent on the GOONS, thereby creating a slave nation.
Got it so far? Not just a rant, it has a point.
Our society walks on eggshells, and if an individual or corporation doesn't, or won't, it is ostracized, boycotted and shunned for not catering to the weak or stupid. If a person builds something through hard work, determination, smarts, and frequently dumb luck, that person is told they "didn't do it on their own", that no one ever built anything, it was society that built it, or at least the infrastructure that grossly assisted the building of said endeavor.
I call bullshit on the field. People have been building large and wonderful things since there has been commerce, and I will dare to say, that commerce did a lot of heavy lifting to get those roads and infrastructure built. To take away individual ambition is a furtherance of creating a slave nation.
This is why I think the populace wants a sweeping end of days. The folks that want it figure that the cleansing won't get them, and will rid us of all the other flotsam in the system. I think people are full up on corruption of governing bodies, are full up on being told to embrace all things different from themselves, while feeling guilt about the very precious and wonderful things they are in their hearts and culture. I think folks want to go back to building a healthy society that has been sickened by catering to the weak.
There isn't an easy fix to the GOONS as they stand today, there isn't an easy fix to Big Ag, Big Pharma, and privacy hacking social media, there just isn't. Perhaps that 's why, on some level, just want an apocalypse.
On a saner note, it won't be this winter, zombies are very slow and easily stopped in the dead of winter. Wait until spring, (she says with a wink)
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
The Next 30 Years
I was driving about today on a mission for wine fodder, when on the radio came a wonderful country song about “the next 30 years”, and how they were going to be his best 30 years, and all the things the artist was going to do to make his future something he could look back on with pride and happiness. Such songs, however catchy, make me reflective on my own life and what I could do better, or if I have regrets about my life, anything I would want to get done, or was not proud of, or wanted to do before I pass on. I would say, for the most part that I have lived a life worth living.
I would encourage others to embrace their own sense of eudaimonia, or a life well lived. I would encourage you do to so starting now. No, not tomorrow, NOW.
Folks forget how to be true to themselves, true to their very souls, and that doesn’t really mean being mean or greedy, but knowing oneself, and doing what needs to be done. It means not waiting until the holiday season grabs you by the throat and makes you be ‘good for goodness sake’, but to be the person you want to deal with, and be the person others would want to have dealings with. This doesn’t mean being a doormat, but for the most part, doing the honorable thing whenever possible.
It has been said that our family has its own sense of honor, and I will agree with that. Honor is not always about following laws and rules, but doing what is right for yourself, family and neighbors. It’s well known that I have no time for the GOONS, and their cohorts, but the GOONS have no honor.
The next 30 years? My best time is now, and I can’t change the past, and the future hasn’t happened yet. Make today, make now, your best time ever, and while you’re at it, help someone else realize their own best time ever.
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Tomato Sauce, the Lazy Way
It's late in the summer season, and early in the haunt season, so it is guaranteed to be a healthy dose of chaos in any home among my aquaintance. I like to get everything I possibly can get done, done at once, so come November I might be able to explore my sleeping options. One of the ways I've found to do more than one thing at once is to get several plates spinning on their sticks, and keep them there with a minimum of effort. Here is one method to do one thing while getting a slew of other stuff done.
Brace yourself, we're talking tomato sauce. Tomato sauce is probably the single most versitile canned item I know of to have on hand; it's the basis for chili, spaghetti sauce, a great component to soups, hot dish (or as we call it, red food), tomato soup... the list is pretty huge. I've never had a fondness for canned whole tomatoes, maybe it's a textural thing, maybe I've seen too many creepy canning collections that have dusty, unused canned tomatoes in them, dunno, they just don't seem to be what I care to put into jars. If you're having a not so great tomato year, head over to the farmer's market, and get a crate or two from that one ancient woman with the great produce.
In any case, get your haul into the kitchen and wash your maters. Here is the arsenal you'll need for making tomato sauce:
rectangular sheet cake pans, at least 2" deep, larger the better
slotted spoon
sharp knife
big stock pots
Kitchen Aid mixer with the grinider/juicer attachments
extra bowl
bowl to catch seeds and skins
canner, jars, rings, lids, lifter, timer, towels
Are your tomatoes washed yet? good. Preheat your oven to about 250 degrees. Now, take out your sheetcake pans, start halving or quartering your tomatoes. Make the pieces big enough to go through the feeder tube on your Kitchen Aid. Cut out any bad spots as needed. I remove the stems, but don't bother removing the stem ends. Closely stack your tomatoes into your cake pans, very close, but not squishing them. You do not want to squish your maters right now! Go ahead a heap them up a wee bit, maybe by one layer. Stick that first pan in the oven. Start on the next.
I've tried to be ambitious about getting as many maters going at once as I possibly can, but realized I have capacity to deal with about only about 2 gallons at a throw. 2 gallons is about 3 cake pans full for me.
When all your maters are in the oven, go do something else for, oh, four hours? You want to not completely dessicate them, but you do want to roast them to 1) carmelize the available sugars in the tomatoes 2) soften them considerably 3) get water out of the tomatoes.
Now, didn't it feel good to be able to do just about anything else you needed to get done finished up all while others think you were actively canning?
Alright, now that you have pans of mushy maters that have given up much of their water, set up your Kitchen Aid with bowls and everything, and pull the first pan out of the oven. Drain the water out. Now, you can keep this water and use it as liquid for vegetable stock, or you can toss it, which ever you please. Start feeding the tomatoes through the juicer. I use a slotted spoon, and I'm very careful to not tear or mush the tomatoes, so they come out of the pan as intact as possible. When my receiving bowl is full, I empty it into one of my big stockpots and keep heating the sauce while I continue on. I will send my seeds and skins through another time, just to get as many solids as I can out of them, too.
Empty your pans through the juicer. You will have a much thicker product than you are probably used to dealing with. I don't care for watery tomato sauce, so this is a good thing. When you've run everything through, your sauce is simmering away merrily on the stove, and you've cleaned up all your tomato mess, set your clean jars out, fill, lid and process in a hot water bath, 35 minutes for pints or 40 minutes for quarts. If you have questions on acidity, you can either add a TBS of lemon juice to each jar, or you can pressure can your sauce as you would for green beans or okra.
Keeping things hot during the duration is really important, drops in temperature just add a random element to your canning that you don't want or need. As it's in the oven, too, if you plan well, you might even run a couple errands while doing this job... gasp!
Good luck. As I find more to be able to do 8 things at once, I'll let you know!
Brace yourself, we're talking tomato sauce. Tomato sauce is probably the single most versitile canned item I know of to have on hand; it's the basis for chili, spaghetti sauce, a great component to soups, hot dish (or as we call it, red food), tomato soup... the list is pretty huge. I've never had a fondness for canned whole tomatoes, maybe it's a textural thing, maybe I've seen too many creepy canning collections that have dusty, unused canned tomatoes in them, dunno, they just don't seem to be what I care to put into jars. If you're having a not so great tomato year, head over to the farmer's market, and get a crate or two from that one ancient woman with the great produce.
In any case, get your haul into the kitchen and wash your maters. Here is the arsenal you'll need for making tomato sauce:
rectangular sheet cake pans, at least 2" deep, larger the better
slotted spoon
sharp knife
big stock pots
Kitchen Aid mixer with the grinider/juicer attachments
extra bowl
bowl to catch seeds and skins
canner, jars, rings, lids, lifter, timer, towels
Are your tomatoes washed yet? good. Preheat your oven to about 250 degrees. Now, take out your sheetcake pans, start halving or quartering your tomatoes. Make the pieces big enough to go through the feeder tube on your Kitchen Aid. Cut out any bad spots as needed. I remove the stems, but don't bother removing the stem ends. Closely stack your tomatoes into your cake pans, very close, but not squishing them. You do not want to squish your maters right now! Go ahead a heap them up a wee bit, maybe by one layer. Stick that first pan in the oven. Start on the next.
I've tried to be ambitious about getting as many maters going at once as I possibly can, but realized I have capacity to deal with about only about 2 gallons at a throw. 2 gallons is about 3 cake pans full for me.
When all your maters are in the oven, go do something else for, oh, four hours? You want to not completely dessicate them, but you do want to roast them to 1) carmelize the available sugars in the tomatoes 2) soften them considerably 3) get water out of the tomatoes.
Now, didn't it feel good to be able to do just about anything else you needed to get done finished up all while others think you were actively canning?
Alright, now that you have pans of mushy maters that have given up much of their water, set up your Kitchen Aid with bowls and everything, and pull the first pan out of the oven. Drain the water out. Now, you can keep this water and use it as liquid for vegetable stock, or you can toss it, which ever you please. Start feeding the tomatoes through the juicer. I use a slotted spoon, and I'm very careful to not tear or mush the tomatoes, so they come out of the pan as intact as possible. When my receiving bowl is full, I empty it into one of my big stockpots and keep heating the sauce while I continue on. I will send my seeds and skins through another time, just to get as many solids as I can out of them, too.
Empty your pans through the juicer. You will have a much thicker product than you are probably used to dealing with. I don't care for watery tomato sauce, so this is a good thing. When you've run everything through, your sauce is simmering away merrily on the stove, and you've cleaned up all your tomato mess, set your clean jars out, fill, lid and process in a hot water bath, 35 minutes for pints or 40 minutes for quarts. If you have questions on acidity, you can either add a TBS of lemon juice to each jar, or you can pressure can your sauce as you would for green beans or okra.
Keeping things hot during the duration is really important, drops in temperature just add a random element to your canning that you don't want or need. As it's in the oven, too, if you plan well, you might even run a couple errands while doing this job... gasp!
Good luck. As I find more to be able to do 8 things at once, I'll let you know!
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Picking Your Inner Monster
This will be a quick post, and mostly questions that you should answer for yourself, and know the answers. Going through this will help you be the best monster you can be.
1. What kind of monster are you?
2. If you are a dead monster, were you a good person in life? a bad person? an adventuresome person?
3. How many bad days have you had since becoming a monster?
4. Do you, as a monster, enjoy bathing?
5. Would you rather not touch soap and water, preferring to be as far away from godliness as possible?
6. Are you a girl monster? are you a boy monster? are you telling no one these days?
7. How well do you heal from wounds?
8. What happens when things hit you, like sunlight? water? fire? bears?
9. At what point in history did you become a monster?
10. At what point in your life did you become a monster?
11. Do you like being a monster? Would you rather be human?
12. Are you a happy monster?
13. What makes you happy to be a monster?
14. What, as a monster, really grates your cheese?
15. Do you hang out with other monsters like you?
16. If you are a dead monster, how did you die? If you are still alive, how did you turn into a monster?
17. How do you get around? Can you walk? Do you have a limp? Do you crawl? Or do you just run there?
18. Do you like combs, brushes and conditioner? Do you know what they are?
19. Are you mixed with any other kind of animal, making you a hybrid monster?
20. What is your natural habitat? What are you willing do to to protect it?
I'll answer these to give you an example. I've found that knowing these things has helped me figure my costume, make-up, hair, character reactions and acting when I'm out in the field. If you know your inner monster well enough, your performance will be, even though very brief, something that will give people a long lasting impression, and hopefully fuck them up until you see them next year.
Ciao!
1. What kind of monster are you?
2. If you are a dead monster, were you a good person in life? a bad person? an adventuresome person?
3. How many bad days have you had since becoming a monster?
4. Do you, as a monster, enjoy bathing?
5. Would you rather not touch soap and water, preferring to be as far away from godliness as possible?
6. Are you a girl monster? are you a boy monster? are you telling no one these days?
7. How well do you heal from wounds?
8. What happens when things hit you, like sunlight? water? fire? bears?
9. At what point in history did you become a monster?
10. At what point in your life did you become a monster?
11. Do you like being a monster? Would you rather be human?
12. Are you a happy monster?
13. What makes you happy to be a monster?
14. What, as a monster, really grates your cheese?
15. Do you hang out with other monsters like you?
16. If you are a dead monster, how did you die? If you are still alive, how did you turn into a monster?
17. How do you get around? Can you walk? Do you have a limp? Do you crawl? Or do you just run there?
18. Do you like combs, brushes and conditioner? Do you know what they are?
19. Are you mixed with any other kind of animal, making you a hybrid monster?
20. What is your natural habitat? What are you willing do to to protect it?
I'll answer these to give you an example. I've found that knowing these things has helped me figure my costume, make-up, hair, character reactions and acting when I'm out in the field. If you know your inner monster well enough, your performance will be, even though very brief, something that will give people a long lasting impression, and hopefully fuck them up until you see them next year.
Ciao!
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Counting and Using All My Random Blessings
We have been blessed with some really prolific and random squash in our gardens. Prolific. Now, these squash are what I think are parents of some hybrid squash I threw out there a couple years ago, and have been reseeding themselves each year since. The do not really cook or grill up well at all, and if they get too old, they make some kind of rind, the taste is adversely affected, and the texture becomes stringy.
So, what do I do with these questionable gifts of nature? I make them into squash pickles that are an incredible and completely unexpected hit. This recipe is very easily scalable and would work well with your spare zucchini, patty pan and crookneck. All weights on vegetation are pre-processed amounts, so, if you have 10# of squash, it is before you gut it all of seeds, your onions are all before you peel them.
The spices have the great capability to get into any cracks or cuts in your skin, and will burn like the dickens, so gloves are strongly recommended.
Squash Pickles:
10-11# Summer squash
2 large onions
1/2c non-iodized salt
Seed squash and cut into 1/2" matchsticks, about 4" long, and thin slice the onions in 1/2 rings. Mix and toss with salt. Put in non-reactive container and refrigerate for 8 hours or overnight.
The next day, bring to a boil:
1 gallon cider vinegar
1 cup white wine
5TBS mild honey
2 TBS non-iodized salt
While that heats up, wash your jars, heat your lids and wash your rings. Mix in bowl:
5 tsp cumin seeds
2 1/2 TBS mustard seeds
2 1/2 TBS red pepper
1 1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp dried scotch bonnet pepper
1 TBS garam masala
Rinse and drain your squash and onion until the water comes out very faintly tasting of salt. Drain as much as possible and toss with spice mixture, coating all the squash.
Lay out your jars, into each, put:
1 hot pepper (Thai dragon, scotch bonnet, jalapeno, it's really your choice)
1 clove garlic
Pack jars with squash mixture, add another couple garlic cloves or a pepper or two, depending on your taste. Fill with boiling vinegar mix, leaving 1/2" headspace, wipe rims and seal. Process 15 minutes in hot water bath.
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Cleaning Up After a Minor Disaster
I've opted to not share this experience on social networking sites in detail, as I'm not sure I want the head tilt and the superficial "aw!" kind of reaction. This is just the news on what happened recently and how we're dealing with it. Allow me to preface this with acknowledging that many others have had far worse experiences than we did, and I very much appreciate that, but this just did happen to us, and it sucked.
We were camping, performing and being cowboys recently at a semi-regional affair, and were blessed with much rain, first on Friday, when S.D. could not be there, but with our friends, LvG and CvG, we managed to keep things together. S.D. finally was able to join us on Friday night, and we had a fantastic dinner over the campfire of roasted tomatoes, curry chicken and spiced rice. Dinner and socializing after was a very pleasant affair, including much wine and a campfire with many of the other cowboys in attendance. We stayed up until about 1am, and toddled to bed, S.D. doing some camp tidying before he retired.
Where we were staying, it had rained all day Wednesday, then was dry-ish much of Thursday, but the ground never really dried out. Friday, there was rain, but we kept the tent and awning up, even though others lost much canvas in the wind and rain. The ground that was already saturated was even more so. We had a significant puddle in front of the tent, but as the afternoon ground on, it soaked into the soil.
As we were sitting about the campfire (already tired from the earlier storms, setting up camp the day before, and the necessity of being pleasant to many torons), we watched storms in the distance, but we were fairly certain it would not come to us, or should I say we were hopeful (but not optimistic).
We realized, about an hour after retiring, that we were, indeed, in the path of the storm, but it did not sound severe, and the wind was not terrible, so, listening to the pleasant sound of raindrops, we slept on.
Around 6am, I woke, and looked about. There was approximately 4" of water in the tent. Our tent was completely flooded! Our rugs were literally floating, and a stream was flowing through our tent! The first instinct was to get everything we could to high ground, on top of trunks was as good as we could do with that. With all the water, I realized my bladder was full, and went outside to use the loo. The loo was occupied, with a line (at 6am??), so, I had a chance to really wake up and notice what was going on. I was standing ankle deep in water, and more was coming down from the sky. At this point, S.D. came out of the tent and we both saw the larger picture.
We waded back into the tent, and the enormity of everything hit like a wall. A wet, multi-thousand dollar wall that couldn't be easily replaced. S.D. and I had our 5 minuted or so where I went into complete meltdown mode, to be honest, I have no idea what he was thinking or doing at the time. I managed to get somewhat dressed, brush teeth, and get my head together. S.D. pulled the truck up, and together (he was still in his pajamas) started to pack things up and get stuff into the trailer.
This is the point where I can honestly say we are so incredibly blessed to be associates of an organization that will truly pull together for members in time of need, and this is where I start the incredible thanking process for all the fantastic help they provided.
When our associates saw what was going on, without being asked, without prompting, they just started to help. Everything wet went into plastic garbage bags, everything still dry went into plastic garbage bags to stay dry. Camp was broken in record time, and S.D. even got to get his teeth brushed and someone found real pants for him!
I have never seen chaos in my camp gear like we now have, ever. Ever. Somehow, without a true plan, and the trunks (all wet) all empty, it all got loaded into the truck and trailer. At one point, when I was organizing the rugs in the back of the truck, I turned around, and S.D. had someone on each pole of the tent, carrying it to high ground! I hope to never see that wonder again. Not for the rest of my days.
We got on our way with no drama, and got home. Twice we skidded on the rain, about giving heart-attacks to both of us, but we got home. Once home, we got the truck unloaded, and the first of the laundry pile was in the machine, and the exposed stuff was taken care of. We had breakfast out, as neither one of us had the will or desire to cook (it was now 10am, like I said, record time, we were about 45 minutes from home, and also had unloaded part of the truck!!!), and we had whatever the hell we wanted for that breakfast.
When we got home, Miss C, an associate from our organization was there to meet us, to help with the continued unpacking, cleaning and drying process of salvaging camp. When there was nothing left to do but wait for the sun to work its magic, S.D. took the opportunity to clean the guns while Miss C took me out for some retail therapy.
The clean-up so far has been over 6 loads of laundry, there has been, and will be more, regluing of furniture pieces, drying rugs, and sanitizing them with Lysol. We are also having to oil all the leather, cleaned and dried all the guns, hand washed all the wool bedding, dried out the tent and awning, and will be restoring the furniture and polyurathaning all the feet up to 6" up the legs.
This week, LvG and CvG will be bringing our kitchen back, with all our dishes, prep tables, food baskets, and coolers. I am certain that will need the same treatment as above.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)