Tag: homelife

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Home Life

Turning to Food

Vegetarian Stew
Vegetarian Stew

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.

That’s why tough times have us turning to food.

Categories
Living in Society Social Commentary

On Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley
Morning Coffee with Elvis Presley

Elvis Aaron Presley would have been 80 today. He remains a presence despite his premature death on Aug. 16, 1977. He was one of the most celebrated musicians of the 20th century, and part of my life before and after his death.

I watched Elvis films at my first sergeant’s on-base apartment in Mainz, Germany with other members of our S-1 unit. We were cognizant of Presley’s military service in nearby Friedberg. It was just out of the the valley leading to the Fulda Gap where we went on maneuvers. We could connect to the King as a real person.

Elvis Presley Debut AlbumToday I realize that Presley’s military service was carefully planned by his producers at RCA records, who didn’t miss a beat releasing new records while he served. Presley died during the first year I was stationed in Germany and the “Aloha from Hawaii” version of Presley wasn’t my favorite. His southern roots resonated with our family history reaching back to the hills of Appalachia. I felt he was one of us.

Besides my USPS coffee mug, I have no Elvis memorabilia in the house, nor do I seek any. There are no plans to visit Graceland, or the birthplace in Tupelo, Mississippi, or anyplace else Elvis walked the earth. From time to time, I remember his work and God willing and the creek don’t rise I might watch Blue Hawaii one more time.

We don’t pick the times in which we live, yet we control our own destiny. Elvis Presley is an example of someone who made something unique of his life. While I won’t be impersonating him, I am glad to have lived part of my life when he lived his.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Scent of an Apple

Last Apple Crisp
Last Apple Crisp

LAKE MACBRIDE— New Year’s Day was for rest and household chores. The bed sheets were laundered, along with work clothes. As the washer and dryer ran, I rearranged the ice box and cooked chili and apple crisp—two dishes that have long been part of our cuisine.

People who complain about Red Delicious apples have likely never tasted one directly from a tree. At the end of the season a bowl remained to make one last apple crisp.

As I cut and peeled, the apples were ambrosial. They yielded sweet, almost divine fragrance with each cut. Not the crisp freshness of new apples, but the mature, aromatic drift of delicious.

There were bad spots, but plenty of good slices for the bowl—just enough.

The issue with local food is a lack of citrus fruit in Iowa, impossible to live without. It may be possible to re-create a greenhouse environment—carefully modulating soil, moisture, temperature and light—to grow citrus in Iowa. Why would we want to?

In winter I use imported lemon juice: Italian Volcano organic lemon juice, and there are few better things in the kitchen. A couple of tablespoons in the apple crisp and the flavor turns from tasty to insanely pleasurable. Combined with the apple aromatics, it makes a dessert fit for kings and queens. Since there are no American royalty, we’ll have to eat it ourselves.

Over many years I have tinkered with the chili recipe and have it about right. At one point I read every chili recipe I could find, especially those produced in the neighborhoods where I grew up, including my mother and grandmother’s recipes. We are solid on this dish.

That said, even if there is a recipe, the cooking of each instance of it is always a little different. The ingredients are simple: onions, kidney beans, Morningstar Farms® Recipe Crumbles, tomatoes, tomato paste, cumin, chili powder and salt are the main ones. There are a couple of key elements to preparation.

Don’t use oil for this vegetarian chili. Instead, drain the tomatoes and use the liquid to cook the onions until translucent. When they are finished, add tomato paste until the liquid is the desired thickness. Pile in the rest of the ingredients and cover with tomato juice. When there is time to simmer the chili for 6-8 hours, use it. Don’t be afraid to add lots of beans.

While these aren’t really recipes, the dishes are common enough for cooks to find and modify their own. To learn how they taste, you’ll have to visit, unless you are royalty. In which case, nuts! Have your staff make your own.

Categories
Home Life

Toward 2015

Island in the Lake
Island in the Lake

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.

I expect to keep writing.

Categories
Home Life

Food and Sundries

Bits and Pieces
Bits and Pieces

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.

Categories
Home Life

Book Reading

Book Shelf
Book Shelf

LAKE MACBRIDE— Long form reading was slight in 2014. A daily hour or two of reading articles from screens displaced reading books, and my reaction is mixed.

Part of me wants there to be more long-form reading, and part of me understands the new dynamic of staying in tune with what is going on in the world through reading many articles on multiple topics. It is unsettling.

I keep close track of the books I read. If there are less of them, each one played a role in daily affairs. No real clinkers made it to the following list of the twelve books I read this year:

Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit by Barry Estabrook

Hard Choices by Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The Home Place by Carrie La Seur

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Wrong David by Christa WoJo.

Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Incident, and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser.

Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing by Anya von Bremzen

The Pruning Book by Gustave L. Wittrock

Gardening with the Experts: Pruning by Moira Ryan

Miracle Fair: Selected Poems of Wisława Szymborska translated by Joanna Trzeciak.

The Men Who United the States: America’s Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics, and Mavericks, and the Creation of One Nation, Indivisible by Simon Winchester.

My Life by Bill Clinton.

Two of these are the result of being on social media, The Home Place and The Wrong David. They would not likely have been read if I hadn’t been on twitter. I know Carrie La Seur from before she returned to Montana, and reviewed her book on Amazon.com. Christa WoJo is an Internet marketer and writer living in Panama. WoJo describes her book as about “drunken Americans behaving badly in France.” Both were quick and engaging reads primarily for diversion.

In a way, all of the books were read for diversion from a life too full of low paying jobs. The most practical reading was Hillary Clinton’s secretary of state memoir. If she will be running for president, I felt it important to know what she did in that role with more detail than may be found in a single article. Besides, like her husband, she is an interesting person.

Suffice it to say that I want to read more in long form. My new year’s resolution is to work toward that end.

Categories
Home Life

Christmas Miscellany

Baked falafel and Kalamata olive sauce
Baked falafel and Kalamata olive sauce

LAKE MACBRIDE— It has been a quiet Christmas holiday and that’s okay.

Our family has never been very big, even when nieces and nephews from both sides are considered. There are shirt-tail relatives, of course. If we connect the threads, that could include all of humanity, something that may be wondrous, but is not practical for a holiday gathering.

Our daughter came home for Christmas the weekend of Dec. 12, so the holiday decorations have been up since then. In past years we started decorating on our wedding anniversary, and continued until Christmas Eve. With decorating done early, there was one less thing to do on the actual holiday.

Christmas day I visited my mother and we talked for two and a half hours—more than we have in a long time. After that, I came home where there was not much action because of illness. I made baked falafel and Kalamata olive sauce for what turned out to be my Christmas dinner. Like with the quiet, I was okay with that. I took the first photos in my new project.

We don’t exchange gifts any longer, but I bought a couple of books which arrived Dec. 23. I’m halfway through Barry Estabrook’s Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit. It will be a quick read and I won’t be buying any winter tomatoes in the foreseeable future. In queue is Selected Letters of Norman Mailer. Mailer was prolific, and the new tome already has been a valuable research tool on contemporary writers.

We went to the New Pioneer Food Cooperative in Coralville together. Going to NewPi is a couple of times a year trip for me. I placed some rolls from the bakery, vegan sausage for gumbo, and some fair trade organic cocoa mix in the wagon. I can’t help but price compare with the warehouse where I work, and the coop is sky high with brands both places carry.

The benefit of NewPi is the wide variety of organic and local foods. They even have bottles of vinegar made with the same mother as the jars we have in our pantry. I don’t know how they manage a diverse inventory when the grocery business is going the opposite direction, but I am glad to be able to visit them once in a while.

I wrote 61 newspaper articles for three papers in 2014, with the last one making yesterday’s front page. It has been a learning experience to freelance, and a different kind of writing. Some editors have been better than others, and each has provided solid lessons in the craft of writing. I am thankful for the opportunity our local paper provided to get me started, but glad I moved on to the Iowa City Press Citizen. More articles are planned in 2015.

 The holidays are in full gear. With my work at the warehouse, I’ll stay busy until Jan. 1 as we want to end the year with zero carry-over product demonstrations. That means I’ll be working almost every day until we are finished. For a while, the warehouse work is my only job—the first time since I can remember there has only been one. And that’s okay for a while.

Categories
Home Life

Budgeting

Final Planting Schematic
Final Planting Schematic

LAKE MACBRIDE— Budgeting. We think of spreadsheets and calculations that determine our balance sheet— and ensuring there is enough action in the works to produce enough income to pay expenses. In December, it’s about considering this year and preparing for the next, and it is not all about finances.

What shall we do next year? Once some answers are framed, the budget process begins. Two things are clear this holiday season. Our household is in better shape this year than last, and there are opportunities beyond basic survival.

Our household relies upon a mix of part-time jobs to fund expenses. I outlined my approach in 2013, and the basic framework is unchanged. Where the financial budget is lacking will be made up by new adventures in part-time work.

This year’s challenge is how to use time.

As readers will recognize, my time has been spent gardening, writing, cooking and in part-time paid work. This won’t change. However, there are some new things on the horizon.

We need to downsize, and there is a full-time job just doing that. Next year will partly be about that.

I want a book to sell at speaking events. Framing topics, writing and editing one is high on the list. Most likely it will be a collection of past writing, which fits in with downsizing.

We moved to Big Grove in 1993, and our house is showing wear. It is time to make a list of projects and work on some of them.

While this isn’t much of a plan, it is a framework of how to spend a year. That is a beginning to proper budgeting.

Categories
Home Life Work Life

Waiting in Winter

Waiting Room
Waiting Room

LAKE MACBRIDE— Part of writing a newspaper article is waiting for people to get back.

Phone calls are a mixed bag. I prefer email or text message responses because they allow me to consider my questions—and the subject to consider answers—before hitting the send button.

My stories are somewhat uncoupled from time so I like to get solid quotes which shine the best possible light on people interviewed.

I have half a dozen queries out, and it’s as far as I can go. I wait.

This year’s holiday season is already unlike any previous. Mom went in for surgery last week, and our daughter was here over the weekend because of her work schedule. It’s still eight days until Christmas.

Our decorations are up ahead of schedule, and that’s a good thing. With all of the family visits more regimented and some finished, there will be time to do other positive things.

My first order for garden seeds shipped on Monday. The Winterbor kale is back ordered, which is better than last year, when it wasn’t even available. The garden will get a good start, as I already have the starter soil and trays.

My first two responses have arrived via email, so I had better get back to my newspaper article.

Categories
Sustainability

Reinventing Weekend

Le WeekendLAKE MACBRIDE— The idea of a forty hour work week and regular, scheduled workdays, including a Friday until Sunday weekend, was blown up a long time ago.

Beyond reason, I continue to long for le weekend, as elusive as it has become. Longing overcoming reality in a way common in the consumer enclaves where life often finds us.

Any more, I work every day, and enjoy almost all of it.

The unfinished work of my generation has been reducing and eliminating nuclear weapons. What has changed is the weapons systems have aged, support structures have become calcified, and each year we understand new ways nuclear weapons could be the end of everything we know about life on Earth. Whether by design, by accident, or madness, a nuclear explosion would have devastating consequences for humanity and must be avoided at all costs.

“There have been two conferences on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons in the last year and a half, in Oslo, Norway, and in Nayarit, Mexico,” Gunnar Westberg wrote on the IPPNW Peace and Health Blog. “At the latter 146 states participated. The conclusion was that any use of nuclear weapons would have such severe humanitarian consequences that they must be abolished completely.”

There will be a third conference in Vienna Dec. 8-9. The good news is two of the nine nuclear states will be in attendance for the first time, the U.S. and U.K. The rest of the news is the U.S. is committed to a methodology for arms control based upon enforcement of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Therefore, besides many chats over Viennese pastry and coffee, only limited work toward abolition seems possible.

In my early sixties, I can still work on nuclear abolition. But what about after I am gone? When living memory of the dawn of the nuclear age and its aftermath recedes, what then?

Our descendants will be left with an aging nuclear complex, the purpose of which has been in doubt for decades already. If current government operations continue, it will continue to be five minutes until midnight.

Considering the doomsday threat, talk about le weekend seems futile. Better get back to work.