The last day of Thanksgiving weekend found me working in the yard.
Wearing old sneakers, overalls, a sweatshirt and a stocking cap, I tended the list gardeners carry around in memory.
Empty the water hose and bring it inside, fill the bird feeder, adjust the combination windows, take the compost out, inspect the garden.
There should be more kale and Swiss chard if temperatures stay warm.
It started to drizzle so I cut things short — there is always more to do. Rain is forecast in a couple of hours.
Before going inside I harvested some of the last Bangkok peppers. The frost killed the plants. Points of red on stalks with shriveled leaves. I’ll save the seeds for spring.
Saving seeds is where aging gardeners end up. It’s not a bad life. On the contrary, it is life, as good as it gets.
There is a lot to do between now and year’s end — a lot of errands to run.
Here’s hoping to sustain our lives. Midway through life’s seventh decade it seems less about me and more about what we’ll leave behind.
“What do vegetarians have for Thanksgiving dinner?” a colleague at the home, farm and auto supply store asked this week.
The unspoken assertion was it is difficult to imagine Thanksgiving without turkey as the main course.
He noted, being positive, we could still have pumpkin pie for dessert.
We could, but won’t this year.
Our kitchen has been vegetarian since we married. A vegetarian kitchen doesn’t mean we both do without meat. I occasionally consume a meat dish while visiting with friends or at political events.
In 34 years we’ve never stopped at the butcher nor bought anything from the grocery store meat counter. Not even the popular rotisserie chicken has entered our doorway, nor the even more popular pepperoni pizza. By design we eschew meat products at home and haven’t suffered nutritionally.
That’s not to say I don’t know how to cook a chicken. During a stay at our daughter’s apartment in Colorado, I raided her ice box and cooked soup from a rotisserie chicken carcass and roasted chicken breasts with rice and a vegetable for a dinner as the sun set over Pike’s Peak.
My maternal grandmother worked as a cook both as a live-in maid and in the rectory of the Catholic Church where I was baptized. In her later years, she showed me how to bone a chicken. Without practice, it seems doubtful I could do it again without help.
What will Thanksgiving 2016 look like in Big Grove?
This year the CSA where I work offered a vegetable box for $30. That, along with items already around the house, will be the centerpiece for menu planning. Cost wise, that will be our only expense as everything else is on hand. This year’s estimate of the cost of Thanksgiving dinner is $49.87 for ten people, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation, so we will be eating well, but for much less.
If we use all of the menu ideas we came up with it will take us five hours to cook the meal and five hours to eat it. Like anyone with an abundant table, we’ll have plenty of leftovers.
The menu is not final, however, here’s what it looks like the day before the holiday:
Beverages: Wilson’s Orchard apple cider, Martinelli’s Sparkling Cider, Belgian beer, filtered water and coffee.
Salad course: Lettuce salad with fresh vegetables, purple cabbage coleslaw.
Bread: Sage-cheddar biscuits.
Main course: Frittata with organic eggs, braising greens, onions, garlic and thyme.
Side dishes: Steamed broccoli, rice pilaf with collard and Swiss chard, Roasted Brussels sprouts, Roasted vegetables (potatoes, carrots, onions, bell peppers), and Butternut squash sweet potatoes.
Dessert: Apple crisp.
No matter how dark the night, there is plenty to be thankful for this year.
Let it begin with a Happy Thanksgiving.
After Action Report Nov. 26, 2016: The actual menu varied a little from the plan and I’ve annotated the changes by crossing off dishes not prepared and added those not listed in italics. I made the red cabbage coleslaw but forgot to serve it.
Garden plot six was five varieties of tomatoes — Italian, Amish Paste, Beefsteak, Rose and Kanner Hoell.
It was an abundant crop — about 200 pounds harvested — but most of the crop went bad on the vine due to an inability to spend time harvesting.
The culprit was a busy work schedule that included four jobs during the prime tomato month of August.
Heavy rain produced large sized fruit. When rain was imminent I hurried to harvest — preventing tomatoes from bursting. I didn’t always make it in time.
Lesson learned and applied this year was to give the plants space between them to breathe. So too it is with us. We need freedom from being cloistered to thrive.
Plans for this commodity plot are up in the air until I take a pencil to the 2017 garden plan. Wherever I plant tomatoes, I will give them even more room between plants. In 2016 this paid dividends that made up for my lack of care.
I’ve heard the framing “bellwether Iowa” before and believe it is buncombe (H.L. Mencken spelling). To me the discussion should be about swing voters.
Here are my initial reactions:
The size of Trump’s win in Cedar County doesn’t matter to the operative condition of swing voting which is the culture of the electorate. The mathematical framework here seems arbitrary. As I’ve argued with prominent Democrats in Cedar County, mathematical analysis isn’t how one understands the electorate at the county level.
History matters less than the candidate or slate of candidates up for election. It is predictable that based on population, ethnicity and factors you mentioned, with the high number of no preference voters (4,586) compared to Democrats (3,173) and Republicans (3,902) Trump would do well. Many in the Clinton bubble, including me, underestimated how much people dislike Hillary and Bill Clinton. The Republican party strategy was hammer Clinton repeatedly then do it again and it worked to persuade swing voters to vote Trump in big numbers.
Cedar County voters were willing to split the ticket in 2012. To answer the bellwether question one has to understand whether they will swing back given a different set of candidates. I believe they will.
The elephant in the room is the Kaufmann family. Since Jeff ran successfully for Cedar County supervisor, and Bobby ran for state house, and their family has deep, multi-generational roots in the county, their influence is everywhere. The fact that Jeff Kaufmann was Republican Party chair this cycle mattered a lot to Trump’s high margin. Beginning with the caucuses he was able to activate voters for events in a way I believe gave Republicans a clear advantage in preparing for the general.
I don’t claim to be an expert on Cedar County, although I virtually lived there most of July – October of 2012. As long as the Kaufmanns sustain their hegemony it won’t be anything like a bellwether.
BIG GROVE TOWNSHIP — The ambient temperature outside was 20 degrees this morning. It was time to break out oatmeal for breakfast and dig into the numbers behind our dreams.
At Thanksgiving we turn inward toward family and friends to work on a plan for next year.
That means being with each other and discussing our potential. Life is on auto-pilot as next year’s activities and budget are considered, determined and planned.
I enjoy budgeting as it relates to planning how our lives will change.
2017 will be the last year before I am eligible for “full retirement” with the Social Security Administration. Mainly, this means an influx of monthly cash beginning in 2018. We need to make it to that mile marker without incurring too much debt. I plan to keep my job at the home, farm and auto supply store at least until then.
Like many baby boomers, I plan to work for income long past retirement. The time since leaving my transportation career well prepared us for cutting expenses and making do with less — the new American condition.
Dreams persist in the real world. Writing a budget is tangible evidence of such reality.
It is easier to write an expense budget than a revenue budget. There is a baseline of fixed and variable expenses that doesn’t change much. Basic costs of living change without doing anything differently. The hard part is figuring out how to pay basic expenses to support our dreams and ambitions, hopefully in sufficient quantity to enable dreams made real.
There is a lot to consider and nothing but time during the extended holiday season.
The ambient temperature dropped to 20 degrees last night — a hard frost.
This morning, while raking the remainders of grass clippings in the yard, I found Swiss chard growing in garden plot five.
Chard will be a centerpiece for tonight’s dinner, most likely in a casserole with rice, onions, chopped chard, garlic, eggs, oregano and Parmesan cheese.
While poorly planned — a place for odds and ends of cherry tomatoes, eggplant, cauliflower, hot peppers and a failed section of bell peppers — it produced early with cherry tomatoes and late with aforementioned chard. I pledge to make a better plan next year.
The section of bell peppers took up more than a third of the space. The seedlings went in fine, with protection from ground threats in the form of six-inch sections of four-inch drainage tile, and mulch. Because of working four jobs in August, it got away from me, producing not a single fruit. I can’t recall a year when my bell peppers have done well. Weeding and watering are two important aspects of growing peppers and I didn’t do either one well. But what do I know? A farmer friend gave us adequate seconds from her farm so we are okay with bell peppers for winter.
Four cherry tomato plants is enough for our household. The four different kinds produced before the main tomato crop and were great in salads until the slicers matured and ripened. The cherries were positioned at the edge of the plot for easy picking from the center path.
The eggplant and cauliflower seedlings were gifts stuck in empty rows. Fairy Tale eggplant is great because of its size and length of time producing. Four plants produced more than we could use. I’ve added Fairy Tale eggplant seeds to my December order and will put them in the indoor planting schedule.
Now that frost has come it will be easier to clear the plot. The plan is to clear it and make a burn pile. It was very windy today, so I’ll save these tasks for another day in this unseasonably warm autumn.
Your proposed legislation to claw back money from state funded schools that supported students after the general election got their attention and raised your personal national profile. Well done on self-promotion!
Your political supporters may be cheering you on, but constituents are not.
Perhaps you should have considered the November protests in Iowa City and elsewhere more thoroughly before clutching the limelight of media attention.
Your statement on FOX News that “in life there are winners and losers” may apply to elections and sporting games but our God-given lives are about much more than winning and losing. You denigrated the lives of hard-working parents by this statement.
To CBC Radio you said, “I believe the national conversation needs to take place with both sides coming to the table.”
Let me refresh your memory.
Republicans attempted to de-legitimize President Obama from his inauguration and obstructed everything they could during his administration. They pledged to do the same should the Democrat have won Nov. 8.
In 1971, I joined with others to stop traffic on Interstate 80 near Iowa City, not unlike the recent protests you found annoying. Those of us who had been tear-gassed in our dormitory rooms without provocation had a bone to pick as we intentionally tried to stop business as usual and pay attention to ending the Vietnam War. Our bonfire on I-80 didn’t last long before the Iowa Highway Patrol broke it up, pursued and arrested many among us.
When people take to the streets in protest there is little concern about one’s arrest record regardless of the penalties.
“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” Thomas Jefferson said. We’ll be vigilant during the 87th Iowa General Assembly.
I grew kale, hot peppers and Brandywine tomatoes in plot four this season.
It was a commodity plot in the 2016 rotation, one that received full sunlight most of the day.
Kale is still growing the third week in November, although it won’t be long before the plants are frosted beyond recovery.
Kale has become a reliable mainstay in my garden life. We use it fresh in a variety of dishes throughout the season. I give away more than we use to friends and library workers in town. Word from the library is many smoothies are made using the green and purple leaves. There was plenty this year.
The trouble was with hot peppers, Bangkok particularly. Because of abundant rain they grew and grew until taller than me. Pepper plants crowded out part of the kale rows reducing yield. I harvested Bangkok, Serrano and jalapeño peppers. More than I could use, but not enough to sell to local restaurants. The ice box and freezer are stocked with enough hot peppers to last until next year. I dehydrated more than enough Bangkok peppers to make red pepper flakes for friends who want them.
I settled on Brandywine tomatoes as my commodity producer, planting seven plants in plot four. They produced large, flavorful fruit in abundance. I harvested only a small portion of the crop because I couldn’t make time to get in the garden in August. Working four jobs outside home had a material impact on garden yield. What I did harvest was some of the best tomatoes ever.
Plans for next year: Plot four is a rotation plot so I won’t be sure until I make my seasonal plan toward the end of the year. Kale, peppers and tomatoes will go elsewhere next year.
The president-elect has withdrawn into Trumpworld.
“For nearly the entire week since he became president-elect, Donald Trump has been holed up in his gilded New York skyscraper,” wrote Julie Pace and Jill Colvin of Associated Press. “A steady stream of visitors has come to him, flooding through metal detectors and getting whisked up to Trump’s offices and penthouse residence.”
Reading the tea leaves after the Nov. 8 election is pointless until the new administration’s cabinet and staff is named — until the president-elect emerges.
As the procession of supplicants makes its way to the tower my advice is to hunker down and let chips fall where they will. The president-elect gets to name his own team and outsiders to may as well go piss up a rope as try to influence his decisions.
I’m keeping my powder dry and so should others who intend to resist the imminent rollback of long-established policies. This is a basic military tactic I learned as an infantry officer.
To be effective, we must be vigilant for now, and ready to resist the growing hegemony of Trumpworld.
Pumpkin Pancake Topped with Apple Butter and Caramelized Apples
The weekend was a chance to get in the kitchen again.
When memories of a god-awful general election campaign persist, work is the best antidote.
I made a lot of dishes.
First up was a big pot of chili. Onion sorting has become a weekly thing and there was a whole tub of the same white onions to dice and cook in canned tomato juice for chili. I’ve written my chili recipe so many times I won’t repeat it here.
I halved and seeded a pie pumpkin and baked it in a 360 degree oven until fork tender. It made about four cups of pumpkin pulp, half of which I used to make pumpkin bread. The bread recipe was from The King Arthur Flour Bakers Companion cookbook except I omitted the nuts and chocolate chips. A slice of pumpkin bread went well with the chili for supper. There is a second loaf to take to the home, farm and auto supply store for the break room.
Roasted pumpkin seeds are crunchy and delicious especially while still warm. I separated seeds from the pumpkin guts and baked them with a little salt. It was hard not to eat them all.
After dropping my spouse at work, I went to the orchard to spend the $50 gift certificate received during our end of season party. I bought 19 pounds of Gold Rush apples, a long keeper and plenty delicious (apple joke). To make room for them in the ice box, I took the bowl of apples already there and peeled and sliced them for a simple caramelized apple dish. When it was done I put it in a plastic tub in the ice box.
Ice Box
Not to show off or anything, but here is what our ice box looked like when I returned from the orchard and put everything away.
The end of this spate of cooking came at breakfast Sunday morning when I made pumpkin pancakes topped with home made apple butter and the apple dish from Saturday warmed in the microwave oven. I made the batter in a bowl just used to bottle ground habañero and jalapeño peppers so the pancake had a kick.
Days of kitchen cooking seem rare as life accelerates toward year’s end. My advice is two things: grind your hot peppers in the garage, and when you feel blue, get to work. You’ll be glad you did both, especially the former.
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