Tag: homelife

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Home Life Kitchen Garden

Cleaning House, Making Soup

Harvest Soup
Harvest Soup

Holiday tradition in our house includes cleaning and decorating beginning mid-December.

Dec. 18 is our wedding anniversary. This year we plan to celebrate 34 years of marriage with a meal at a local restaurant.

Our wedding anniversary is also when the Christmas tree goes up with decorating to be finished by Christmas Eve.

As we cleaned, I made soup using bits and pieces of leftover vegetables and pantry items. It was thick and savory — the way soup is supposed to taste.

The process for soup-making is simple.

Turn the heat to medium high and place a Dutch oven on the burner.

Drain the juice from a pint of canned, diced tomatoes into the Dutch oven and bring to a boil.

Add a generous amount of diced onions (2 cups or more), three or four peeled and sliced carrots, two stalks of sliced celery, and three bay leaves. Salt generously and steam-saute until the vegetables begin to soften.

Add the diced tomatoes.

Next steps depend upon what is on hand.

For this batch I put a quart of turnip broth from the pantry in the blender and added cooked Brussels sprout leaves, and fresh Swiss chard and kale, all from the ice box. I blended thoroughly and added the mixture to the Dutch oven.

Next was a can each of prepared black beans and whole corn from the grocery store.

I found an old box of marjoram in the spice rack and added what was left — about a tablespoon. They don’t sell marjoram loosely packed in boxes any more so it must have been 20 years old or more.

Peeled and diced three red potatoes from the counter and added them to the Dutch oven. I also added the thinly sliced the stalks of kale and Swiss chard.

From the pantry I took a cup of lentils, and a quarter cup each of quinoa and pearled barley and added them.

I submerged the vegetables in filtered water from the ice box.

The rest of the process was to bring to a boil, turn the heat down to a simmer, and cook until it is soup — adjusting seasonings until it tastes good, and making sure the vegetables are covered in liquid.

The effort produced enough for a meal with a gallon stored in the ice box in quart Mason jars. We’ll be eating on that until Christmas day.

Categories
Home Life

Retirement Milestone

Embers
Embers

Today is my first day on Medicare. It’s no time for rejoicing.

This category of mandatory spending by the federal government garners renewed attention with each new congress. With Republicans having majorities in the House of Representative and Senate, it will continue to be under attack from conservatives and wing nuts. There is little comfort having made it to the next milestone on the road to full retirement.

As with any health insurance, one hopes never to have to use it.

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Home Life

Budget Time in Big Grove

McCann;s Steel Cut Irish Oatmeal
McCann’s Steel Cut Irish Oatmeal

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.

Categories
Home Life Living in Society

Moon Rising

Moon Rising
Moon Rising

The moon rose behind naked deciduous trees.

Illuminated and bright white, the atmosphere blurred the view in a way vision did not.

Night is coming and with it restlessness and yearning…

For something once held in my hands… now gone.

People I know are disturbed about the election of Donald Trump as president. His transition team is a leaky bucket so we know some of what’s going on in Trumpland. His first steps don’t look good for anyone, including people who rallied around him. They will be freaking out sooner than expected as the president-elect struggles to deliver on campaign promises. It’s only five days after the election.

I live in a privileged enclave the affluence of which is driven by the largest of Iowa’s state universities and a few medium-sized businesses. Since moving to Big Grove Township in 1993 I’ve held the county seat at arms length as best I could. Iowa City is where I attended college, met my wife, got married, and witnessed the birth of our daughter. I have memories of my time there — most of them are good.

Eight of 58 precincts in Johnson County, including ours, voted for Donald Trump. Those who assert the county is monolithic in its liberalism paint with a broad brush. Their canvass looks neat — well contained within its edges. Like all products of imagination and technique such portraiture is more aspiration than reality. I’d rather live midst swing voters, small business operators, low-wage workers, and young men and women with imperfect lives. I’ve been with them so long it seems like home.

Tonight I’m drawn to the moon with its inconstant orbit outside the frame of a 24-hour day. As it sets over my shoulder this morning, giving way to sunrise, I’m reminded of this:

O blessed, blessed night! I am afeard.
Being in night, all this is but a dream,
Too flattering-sweet to be substantial.

~ Romeo and Juliet, Act Two, Scene Two in Capulet’s Orchard

Categories
Environment

Sustaining Saturday

Harvest Soup
Harvest Soup

The weekend began with a trip to the COSTCO bakery where I bought 2.2 pounds of cookies after my shift at the home, farm and auto supply store.

I am celebrating my first Saturday without a work shift since July 26 with, that’s right, cookies!

Saturday morning I made harvest soup from bits and pieces in the ice box, pantry and counter. With a sandwich it made a hearty lunch with three leftover quarts of soup for later in the week.

Hot peppers and kale
Hot peppers and kale

Gleaning the garden yielded sage, oregano, chives, kale, hot peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes.

After cleaning the vegetables there are bags of herbs and kale in the ice box, Bangkok peppers in the dehydrator, and a big bowl of Serrano and Jalapeno peppers in the ice box. More Bangkok peppers are ripening on the counter. Cucumber salad is in the works for Sunday as is an appetizer for the work dinner later in the evening. It is weird to be harvesting cucumbers and tomatoes in November.

I don’t fully understand the El Niño/La Niña cycle but the weather has been warm. Saturday’s harvest weeks after the normal first hard frost stands as evidence. Climate change is not about the weather per se but warming temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean impact Iowa.

Assorted kale leaves
Assorted kale leaves

Photos of fresh produce compliment each day and help us forget about the impacts of changing climate. There is something to be said for a warm Iowa winter. It would be welcomed by most people I know.

The hard frost is coming and with it the end of the gardening season.

In the meanwhile we harvest what we can and make a life for ourselves on the Iowa prairie.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Season’s End

Kale
Kale

Yesterday’s harvest yielded kale, some cucumbers and hot peppers.

I sent another box of kale to the library for workers. It has been filled with kale countless times in recent years. It’s better quality than what’s available at grocery stores and they use it almost every day — good use for an abundant crop.

The aroma of Bangkok peppers in the dehydrator pervaded the kitchen air as I prepared a simple dinner of spaghetti with tomato sauce made of canned tomatoes, garlic, onion, basil, olive oil and oregano. I peeled and diced cucumbers to make a salad with Kalamata olives, feta cheese, olive oil and balsamic vinegar. There was fresh apple cider from the orchard.

I tasted the pickled red onions and decided to stop at two half-gallon jars. There are plenty to last until spring. Three crates of onions remain — more than enough for our small family.

The solace of kitchen work occupies hands and mind to help us forget what seems intolerable in society. At season’s end it is welcome relief.

Categories
Home Life Writing

Last Bits of Work

Bangkok Peppers
Bangkok Peppers

Two hours before my shift at the orchard I was feeling punk. I went to work anyway.

While ringing up a dozen customers I felt light headed and a bit nauseous so my supervisor sent me home. She didn’t want whatever I had to infect other workers. Good call on her part.

After two four-hour sessions of sleep, I feel much better and am ready to head over again later this morning. Before I do, some last thoughts about this 96-hour staycation in Iowa.

I’m lucky to have worked a full career that paid our mortgage and helped put our daughter through college. There are plenty of people who work low-paid jobs like mine who don’t have that kind of financial platform for support. To make up the difference between income and operating expenses we’ve taken on some debt. We feel it’s manageable and have a plan to pay it off. Like most anyone should, we watch our cash flow. We also have been able to weather multiple challenges in recent years that would have sent others to the poor house if such a thing still exists.

Everything on my “deal-with list” has been addressed. Some things — car repairs, understanding and signing up for Medicare, writing about the Cedar River flood — came easily. Others — financial planning, longer writing projects, producing value from life as a sixty-something — present longer term challenges. What I wrote on Sept. 11 proved to be useful.

The key to dealing with this and everything else on my deal-with list is to take care of myself and not freak out. That I have this blog helps with the not freaking out part. There is solace in work.

I haven’t freaked out and am taking better care of myself as the staycation ends.

Sliced Red Zeppelin Onions
Sliced Red Zeppelin Onions

Canned goods were moved to the lower level where the storage rack is once again full. The production was less than in previous years, but focused on items we will use well over the coming months. Gardening is a perpetual process and this year produced in abundance. The trouble was August when I worked four jobs without adequate time to reap what I sowed. It was a learning point more than disaster and local farmers helped me make up for what was missed at home.

Remaining is fall yard work, home maintenance, financial planning, and most importantly writing. The reason for retiring in July 2009 was to enable my writing. I’ve gotten better at it and am ready for something longer, maybe book-length, which can be promulgated. That and ensuring our sustainability in a turbulent world remain on the deal-with deescalated to to-do list on my white board.

Better prepared to tackle today’s challenges, I’m hopeful. Hopeful about the lives of family members. Hopeful about the community of friends and acquaintances we’ve built here in Big Grove. Hopeful our country will make sound decisions during the Nov. 8 election.

Whatever the outcomes, the brief vacation this week helped get me back to who I am. I’m thankful for that and ready to engage in society again.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Vinegar Time

Apples
Apples

With the apple harvest comes an opportunity to make apple cider vinegar.

Since 2012, when I began to wake up to local food, I’ve posted about vinegar twice: Bottling Apple Cider Vinegar in 2013, and Making Vinegar in 2014.

Without a home apple crop, this year’s batch is a little different.

The continuum of vinegar making goes back a long time: it’s the mother. Mine was procured from a neighbor and has been present since I began home fermentation of apples. His mother of vinegar had been in the family since the 19th century when Iowa was first settled. Traces of vinegar have been found in Egyptian urns dated the third millennium BCE.

The recipe for vinegar is simple. Keep a container of vinegar with the mother in the pantry and add apple juice from time to time. Cover with a cotton cloth for ventilation and let it ferment. After the bacteria have converted sugars to alcohol, then alcohol to vinegar, it’s ready to bottle and use. Currently there is a gallon ready to use and a gallon just started this year. At least one jar never goes empty to preserve the mother.

My production is small compared to the orchard where I work on weekends. We both use the same mother, although he uses brewer’s yeast to hasten production of alcohol. My method, using apples from my back yard and no yeast, works as well but takes more time. Making vinegar is about time more than anything.

This year I stopped at a shop that caters to people who ferment their own beer and wine to ask about brewer’s yeast. The proprietor said I was the first customer to arrive asking about making vinegar. Not a lot of people make their own.

After studying a few things on the internet he recommended a yeast made by a major company that would produce about 14 percent alcohol. He said too much alcohol may kill the vinegar bacteria. Both of us thought the low end of alcohol production would not. The $0.99 packet I bought will ferment a lot of apple cider.

Without a crop at home, I’m using cider from where I work. It is flash pasteurized, which will allow my bacteria to drive the process. I hope it is a better result. I bought half-gallon Mason jars  for the project and have two started about 3 weeks apart.

I trimmed the mother with a pair of kitchen scissors and put part in the jar. I added a scant half gallon of cider and let it warm to room temperature. I added a 16th teaspoon of yeast which began producing alcohol within a couple of days. The liquid tastes more like hard cider today with hints of vinegar. The process appears to be working.

I organized and bottled last year’s production and am ready for winter. I’ll keep making it and making pickles and dressings with it.

Making apple cider vinegar is one way we emulate an agrarian life in a modern kitchen. It’s also how we sustain our lives in a turbulent world.

Categories
Home Life Writing

A Place To Work

Garage Selfie
Garage Selfie

Only after a couple of days away from daily routine can a person begin to be themselves.

That’s where I am this morning.

I crave a place to work.

Desire is a blessing and a curse. When we want something, we set ourselves up for disappointment. We may get it, but can’t always get what we want.

It is a difficult path to nirvana. I do my best to void consciousness of self. It persists. There are selfies.

Like Eugene Henderson we feel restless and unfulfilled, harboring a spiritual void that manifests itself as an inner voice crying out I want, I want, I want.

Work is a cure for that.

Busy hands make happy children and happy children build a new world.

That’s where I am this morning.

Childlike and craving a place to work.

Categories
Home Life

Vacation – Hour 12

Soup Ingredients
Soup Ingredients

A political meet up, dinner using orchard-fresh apples, watching the presidential political debate on my phone, and five hours of sleep highlighted the first 12 of 96 hours of vacation this week.

I need to get more rest, but not now. Not today.

Awake and writing, soon to be picking detritus from the yard, I expect to spend most of the day outside. According to my weather widget, sunrise is three hours away with zero percent chance of precipitation until after sundown.

The beginning of soup is on the stove — three jars of tomato-y liquid from the ice box and a bag of onions. I’ll add vegetables and seasonings from the garden, ice box and pantry through the day, progressing toward a peasant’s meal tonight.

In the United States we aren’t peasants and homegrown vegetables owe fealty to no one. Raising vegetables is a revolt against those who would enslave us.

I paid my taxes so the land is ours… at least for now. Property rights are an American common denominator stronger than any political party. Having dispossessed those who lived here before, we are free until someone dispossesses us.

A long list of tasks resides on my phone. I left the device on the night stand while I bask in this window of freedom before sunup. Feeling the breeze from the lake, and for a brief moment, being myself against the wind — resisting for a while, then giving way to its cool waves in the predawn darkness.