After filing eight stories for the newspaper this week, and a freelance job, I’m ready to work on the garden. Before I do, a few bits and pieces from Big Grove.
Breakfast this morning began with my new favorite—home blended yogurt. We buy a large tub of plain yogurt at the warehouse and I mix it in a stainless steel bowl with spoonfuls of homemade jam or apple butter, dried fruits and nuts. It’s a simple pleasure and a boost of protein.
I decided to read 1381 next, for those who follow this blog. Just closing the loop on that.
At a fund raiser for Ed Fallon, I secured some horse manure for the garden. A friend keeps horses fed organically raised hay and he has plenty. As soon as I get my schedule from the warehouse, I’m planning to take some big black tubs over to their farm in the western part of the county to fill them up.
Speaking of filling things up, I began my street sweeping project to collect sand in buckets to use next winter. The first was filled yesterday and I hope to finish the project today. Some of that sand has been spread on the driveway multiple years.
Finally, with the warmer weather, I hope to built this spring’s burn pile on a garden plot. There was some damage over the winter, and with what’s left from the fall, it should make a big pyre, returning some minerals to the soil.
David Rhodes is one of my favorite fiction writers because he writes about my world, literally and figuratively. When he describes Highway 151 near Dubuque in Jewelweed, it resonates because I’ve been there. That kind of literary experience occurred in the three of his five books I’ve read.
It’s hardly a way of making a reading list, but when I seek respite in words, Rhodes is the go-to author. He’s only written five books, so I dole them out slowly, with only two more to go.
Reading any book-length work is a bigger commitment than it was when I vowed to read every book in the Iowa City Public Library. At that time, the library was located in the Carnegie building, and used the Dewey Decimal System. I started with zero and worked my way through a pittance of the collection before abandoning the project. I learned a lot about religion.
Last year I read twelve books and it is not enough. Nonetheless, even if I make it to two dozen books, each one makes a bigger impact. One has to choose carefully and that’s where I am today.
Among the choices are one of a dozen books given to me by friends. I owe it to each of them to read the volume sent, but am stalled.
I recently bought the Robert Gates and Leon Panetta memoirs, but that purchase was more for reference than actual reading. They gather dust and are not even on a shelf yet.
Most likely on my list is 1381: The Year of the Peasants’ Revolt by Juliet Barker. One of our more questionable ancestry links takes my family back to England and this seminal event. As I recall, the rebellion was squashed. If I seek to use the peasants’ revolt as a metaphor, I should know more about it, and reading 1381 is the plan.
Then there is the collection of books about Iowa, books written in Iowa and books written by residents of the area past and present. Too many for this lifetime, but I should begin chipping away at them.
Not sure which book will be next opened, I’ll relish today’s process of selecting one. Let’s hope I choose well.
Both of us had commitments in town, so the foot of snow had to be dealt with. I was outside digging at 4 a.m., illuminated by a full moon and clear sky. It took two hours.
After our daughter moved to Colorado, I would run on the lake trail by moonlight. It was a bit crazy, but I never turned an ankle or fell. It seemed necessary to get five miles in before work at the office, just as snow removal by moonlight was necessary yesterday. Moonlight activities have turned from recreation to mandates in the life we now live.
Not that the scooping was without therapy. Yet an unwelcome tick tock accompanied me as the deadline to depart for the warehouse approached.
The moon set as I finished the second third of the 80-foot driveway. Turning the car around, headlights replaced inconstant moon while spreading sand on the snow-packed gravel that connects our property to the rest of society. Didn’t want either of us to get stuck there.
During my Climate Reality training in Chicago, Al Gore that pointed out something that should have been obvious: in the morning, people pick up their mobile phones and catch a few swipes before turning on the lights. While doing so this morning, I found this:
“Apps, gadgets, hearts, likes. Taps, clicks, swipes, screens. These numb us with comfortable titillation. They thwart us from dreaming the unimaginable. They make us altogether too sensible to ever pursue of the unreasonable.”
While living by moonlight may be necessary, we should do it less sensibly from time to time. There is a chance to transcend la vie quotidian to effect change in a turbulent world. In fact, that may be why we are here.
We had a brief, light snowfall this month, and that’s it. With four days left in January, it seems unlikely winter as we know it will come.
We have had the scenic vistas, frozen lakes and automobile crashes associated with Iowa winter, but the temperatures have been nowhere near cold enough to kill off pests we want dead come spring.
I’m not an entomologist, however, it’s a problem if bugs over-winter.
On the other hand, even with warmer temperatures, most of life at home is indoors. Drawing down the pantry, preparing to file taxes, reading, writing, budgeting and planning take up much of the desk time. It’s okay, but not as much fun as it may seem.
It is time for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to enter the tax filing scene. Businesses utilizing part time workers in their operations are expected to have a reckoning with the Internal Revenue Service. Depending on what time period is audited, businesses with part time employees with more than 780 hours in six months, or 1,560 hours in 12 months, will be required to pay full benefits. My 2014 totals for the job where this is relevant were 694/1,249, so my employer is in the clear.
This has been a complaint about the ACA It is said to limit how much money part time no benefits people can earn and make it more expensive for employers to add employees. IMHO, those are bad arguments against the law. If the government had provided Medicare for all instead of the ACA, the financial burden would have been much less for everyone.
As it is, the cost of health insurance premiums went up post ACA. I’m not sure this was caused by the law, or by insurance companies using it as an excuse to improve margins.
From a cost standpoint, the ACA made health insurance less expensive only in the framework of what certain lower income people pay for health insurance. There were more dollars, just shifted around with government subsidizing many newly insured people.
What matters more about the ACA is how employers manage their business.Employee costs are always a concern and a key part of any business model. Let’s face it. Small and mid-sized businesses would like to get away with all employees being independent contractors without benefits from the company. The problem is the wages paid are comparable to what used to be offered in the form of wages plus benefits, only without the benefits or the amount of money it takes to provide them.
I’ve heard I will have a reckoning with the IRS in the form of a question on my tax return about health insurance. For 2014, the answer is we had it.
As the sun rises it’s time to turn to other work. Working on newspaper articles, planting seeds and cooking will figure prominently as we work through January hoping winter actually comes.
The sky was colorful and glorious. Then dawn came.
January is waning. To what it will yield is uncertain. We haven’t had winter yet— the killing of pests, stopped flow of sap and soil moisture protection. Whether winter will come at all is also uncertain in these days of extreme weather. Many wouldn’t miss winter. However, I would.
As a vegetarian household, we have never had a rotisserie chicken within our walls. In fact, if we brought home chicken of any kind, I can’t remember it. As an omnivore, my chicken eating takes place elsewhere, and even so, I recall eating exactly zero rotisserie chickens in my lifetime, although I made soup out of the carcass of one a single time in Colorado.
Rotisserie chickens are so not us.
Yet I see them everywhere. In arguably the most liberal county in Iowa—the only county that did not vote for the Branstad-Reynolds ticket last year—one would think this cultural phenomenon would have long ago surrendered to home-grown poultry, self-cooked. It persists.
I posted this on Facebook over the weekend:
I see all these people toting around rotisserie chickens and wonder what they do with them. Not just a few. A lot. Do they tear off the legs and eat them first like a poor man’s version of King Henry VIII? Do they cut them up with a knife to make another dish? Will the carcass become soup or stock? Do they extract the breast and throw the rest away? Do they eat them in the car and throw the bones out the window? I don’t know, but I do see a lot of these chickens when I’m out in society. I had thought with Ron Popeil’s device no one would ever buy a rotisserie chicken again. The answer is probably simple, but I don’t get it.
The Facebook friends who responded confirmed my beliefs about what people do with these cooked birds with surprising uniformity. A couple talked about the economics of chickenry, but that is really not at issue. Chicken is and has been a poor person’s protein, and for those leaning vegetarian, not a choice at all. Why kill the chicken that lays the eggs for ovo-lacto vegetarians?
What I wondered most, and was confirmed, was that people make soup and stock of the rotisserie remains—at least they said as much. Soup is life more than bread is the staff of life. Although the anti-gluten craze has reduced bread eaters to secretly coveting and eating their loaves, or making ersatz bread from barley and rice flours, it is fitting that bread and soup go together to make a meal. Chicken soup is tasty and satisfying to most omnivores.
So what’s my point?
Don’t you ever wonder what goes on behind external appearances? One sees the device that cooks the chicken and the warming display case. One sees people choosing and toting rotisserie chickens into the parking lot. There are testimonies about what people do with chickens, recipes and more. In the end, though, rotisserie chicken is not about chickens. It is about life.
Finding meaning in society is challenging and some find it in carrying a rotisserie chicken home. It is easy to make something of what everyone can observe. What is hard is to understand the motivation for life in society in its many manifestations. In the end the motivations and designs people have are more important than any chickeny artifacts.
Rotisserie chickens help us see into a deep well of life in society and forgo the question of the chicken or the egg. A better question is what shall we do with our lives today?
And that’s the meaning of this post about rotisserie chickens.
When the budget is tight we turn to meals from the pantry, cupboard and refrigerator. We cook.
It reduces the need to shop for anything but essentials. It enables dollars in the checking account to go to utility bills, fuel, interest and insurance. Cooking from the pantry produces great meals from forgotten times and ingredients.
From memory come preparations for roux, sauces, reductions, soups and stews that are filling and fill in the financial gap for those who live on part-time work without the regular big paycheck of a career.
Energy remains inexpensive in the U.S. kitchen, so there is no endless searching for firewood for the cook stove as there is in other countries. Just turn on the stove and there it is. Turning to food is turning to the source of our memory and being.
When I was young there was a mom and pop grocery store on the corner. Mother would send me the block and a half to pick up a forgotten ingredient for dinner. If there was a question when I arrived, they would call her for clarification. I mostly remembered, so it wasn’t a problem.
I remember the cost of 10-ounce bottles of soda pop at the store. Depending upon the brand, a six pack was either 54 or 60 cents. The idea of buying the sugary treat was present long before sodas became ubiquitous. One of the bottling works was on Washington Street, and we would watch the process through the large plate glass window on the sidewalk. I looked forward to earning enough money on my paper route to buy a whole six pack in varied types.
While in Colorado Springs helping our daughter move, I checked the pantry for dinner ingredients while she was at work. There was a lot to clear out before moving day. Some frozen chicken breasts, brown rice and vegetables made a delicious dinner for the two of us when she returned home. I used a meat thermometer to make sure the chicken was done and instructed her in how to use it. I remember the sun setting over Pike’s Peak as viewed from her front doorstep.
On Thursday, I sought ingredients for stew. I had a bag of steak tips vegetarian-style, and used organic carrots, the last of the summer potatoes, turnips and celery from the garden, and a big onion. After learning to make a roux, stews became an easy way to use up old vegetables and make several meals. I’m thinking about having some leftovers for lunch before my shift at the warehouse.
More than anything, maintaining a well-stocked pantry is a source of food security. If income slows down, we can draw the provisions down, ensuring we won’t go hungry while working toward better times.
LAKE MACBRIDE— After a shift at the warehouse, The plan is settling in to mark my 64th new year. Bottles of prosecco and Sutliff hard cider chill in the ice box. There is plenty of food to make something celebratory.
Prediction: falling asleep before midnight.
One thing seems certain about the coming year—getting wiser before older. That and work more in the garage, yard, garden and kitchen.
LAKE MACBRIDE— Food and sundries are the second highest cash output in our budget and December has been a doozy. Suffice it that we have plenty of food in the house.
The phrase “food and sundries” is indicative of the fact that things like water softening salt, facial tissues, cleaning supplies hygiene products and other household consumables get lumped into this budget category. When we lived in Indiana, it was too much work to segregate the two expenses since mostly they were purchased at the grocery store.
That has changed a bit with growing and bartering for more of our food. I am loathe to change something that has been a basic part of our budget process for decades.
Is there budgetary savings by living off the refrigerator, freezer and pantry? Hope so. That means cooking more and I look forward to a few traditional dishes.
January will be a month of main courses designed from beans, chick peas, grains, nuts, rice, eggs, tomatoes, frozen vegetables, pickles, sauerkraut, soups, and bits and pieces from the pantry. Real cooking, and real downsizing. It should mostly be good.
As for the budget, I haven’t quite adjusted to buying at the warehouse club, so for now, a curtailment of intake is in the cards. That too should be good.
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