Alecto's Ophelia

2010 - Coming Home

The last 90 minutes of 2009 frizzled out while I was sleeping. When my contacts are fogged enough I'm stabbing myself with a needle every third stitch it's time to go to bed. I left the girls in front of the television, gathered up my animals, peeled the contacts off my eyeballs (and I do hope I'm going to find them in solution) and went to bed. I wish I'd brushed my teeth. Sometime in the night a small tribe of Pygmies set up camp and decided to have a rain dance on my tongue. It was dry, dry, dry in there. This morning I staggered to the bathroom,spit them unceremoniously into the sink and proceeded to beat the hell out of my mouth until I looked into the mirror and noticed I was just South of rabid. That's usually a good indicator.

The alarm on the iPod went off at 7:30 like it does every weekday morning. I was dreaming it was something else until I woke up enough to turn it off and then climb back into bed warning the dog that it was technically still the middle of the night. Somewhere. I haven't bothered to turn that alarm off because it makes a good 15 minute warning before Little Girl needs to head out to the bus stop (which is the end of the driveway) and on weekends it doesn't go off at all although Simon will generally put his great slobbery face right up against mine (or the back of my head if I'm lucky) and breathe heavily while moaning pathetically about the fact that he's not going to be able to keep his legs crossed forever. Simon has no trouble getting my attention in the morning. He is 79 inches long snout to tail tip, 31 inches at the whithers and his head is massive. Someday I'll figure out how to weigh it. Maybe I can slide the flat digital kitchen scale under his head while he's sleeping. Remind me to try that. The drop from the top of my mattress to the floor is 36 inches and while that's five inches above his whithers we must consider the length between whithers and snout. Unless I'm sleeping in the middle of the bed there's really no escape and if I don't want St. Bernard slobber ON my sheets I need to respond fairly quickly even if it means telling him to lay the hell back down and go to sleep. If his need is not immanent he will. He's a good boy. 

Little Girl let him out this morning. I was out cold. I have no recollection of the door opening and closing again after my baby boy lumbered across the threshold, made an abrupt 90 degree right turn and galloped down the hall coming to his usual skidding stop at the top of the stairs. When he's got his bearings he tip toes down the six carpeted stairs and stands patiently at the front door followed shortly by the manic Rat Terrier. The only time the Rat Terrier is not manic is when he's overslept and slinks up the stairs from the lower level hoping I won't notice but knowing perfectly well he's been caught sleeping on the couch again. Sometimes he hides until I'm back upstairs. He's sly and has great bladder control.

I nuked a cup of yesterday's coffee and here I sit thinking about what to write while my fingers typed out three paragraphs (which I just read) while I wasn't looking. I was thinking about resolutions.

I have no resolutions. I don't do resolutions. The only time I made a resolution was in the first few minutes of the last year of the twentieth century and that was more of an invocation to the fertility gods (it worked too, I delivered Little Girl on December 11, 2000).

I have nothing to invoke this year except maybe patience, perseverance and the strength to let be the things I have no right to control. I know perfectly well what those are too I just have a really hard time not panicking and grasping a float that has no intention of being grasped. The float does like to be grasped at though. I think it makes him feel wanted and needed. I think that's poison for me.However, invoking a negative does not create a positive. So here they are, my resolutions in spite of not doing resolutions (because God forbid I don't keep them):

1. Bake more bread. We lost that in 2009.
2. Order the seeds and actually start the seedlings.
3. Repair the fence and till the garden hopefully one week after the last hard freeze (sometime in March most years).
4. Compost. Everything that ought to be composted. Lost that in 2009 too.
5. Put the seedlings in just after Mother's Day and protect the tomato plants with plastic bottle hot houses. Pay attention to the weather and don't boil them.
6. This year pull UP all the volunteers from last year. That was fun but unproductive.
7. Cultivate early and often.
8. Order more broiler chicks. Maybe even eggs if I can work out an incubator and commit to turning them every day.
9. Get back on the elliptical in the morning at least until the heavier garden work is in full swing. Bikram is not enough.
10. Walk away from 2009 and don't look back. I can't imagine turning into a pillar of salt particularly pleasant.

That's it. I'm stopping at ten because I'm an over achiever and usually bite off more than I can chew without choking. Those ten are probably a big mouthful but maybe there should be an 11th:

    11. Give myself permission to fall down and get up again. You know, permission to be a bona fide member of he human race. The expectation of perfection is a horrible conceit.

Happy New Year, peoples. I wish you joy, love, passion, strength and surrender.

Peace out - Alecto

 
Borrowed without permission from an artist who's name I can no longer locate.

I Loves me my Blasted Bluestar Range... (heh)

 
I haven't quite worked it out yet but no doubt I'll work something out and here we go again.

Bluestar the very best gas/propane range for the home kitchen; as close to commercial as you're going to get. So sayeth the ads anyway and having spent a significant amount of time in commercial kitchens I'm inclined to agree. However.

We live in an area with a lot of power surges which I guess beats the heck out of an extended power outage (see A Reed Shaken with the Wind for an exceptional example). Twenty-five years ago I lived here before moving into the Valley where you could count on extended power outages and I remember how often we lost power. So much so that it was a joke in the area and we received no less than three housewarming gifts of propane and oil lanterns. We had a kerosene heater that lived in the house during the winter in the living room where we slept if it got really bad. When my son was two or three weeks old we lost power for eleven days. I don't think we panicked much but we were young and just about anything was acceptable at that point. We cooked on the kerosene heater; it was fine. Shoveling the 1,100 foot driveway with an infant in a front carrier (or even without) was a serious nuisance.

So. In late June or July we had a power surge that took out our electric stove top. I'm pretty sure the oven was still operating but the fact that we'd lost use of the stove top was really irritating. This was the second time in about 18 months and while it didn't take all that long for parts and service it was the perfect opportunity to put in a gas range (which turned out to be propane because we don't have gas lines out here). We selected the Bluestar for a lot of reasons, price included but mostly functionality and expectation.

We lived without a stove for about a month. It was OK. It was even fun. I learned a lot about what you can actually do with a charcoal grill. And also we had a week at the beach which helped. I made bread and rice on the grill in addition to meat and veggies. I was very pleased with myself. When the Bluestar arrived and was functional I went nuts. I went so nuts that I actually ran out of propane because I used far more far faster than would have been expected and when we called the propane people they asked what on earth we'd been doing and did we maybe have a leak. No leak, just exuberance.

In June or July of 2008 we lost the door. Well, we didn't exactly lose it. It's not like it ran off or anything but right after (thank God it was right after) a rhubarb pie came out of the oven and then the door simply refused to open again. The door was getting harder and harder to open but I wasn't particularly concerned. I was too busy being smitten. It took about four weeks to get a new door installed. Again, it was summer and I learned to make pizza and naan on the grill but I was beginning to get a bit irritated. Within about six months of furious use the door started getting sticky again. We called the manufacturer and were told to use a cooking spray like Pam on the door hinges. Again, should have questioned that but I didn't want to wait for service again and we got used to it and that was that.

And then the unthinkable, unacceptable, so very much more than irritating occurred. The door got stuck again in the middle of all the Christmas baking and I'm pretty sure there was bread in the oven this time. I didn't want to actually break the door hinges and the thought of leaving bread in the oven for a month didn't scare me as much as say, a whole chicken. Bread will petrify, chicken will continue to decompose in a furious stench of rot and decay. But I needed the oven so I sprayed and I sprayed and gradually worked it open. I breathed a great sigh of relief and then nearly emptied a can of spray stuff before I stopped and actually thought about this. Alecto, I said, does this really make sense? Just look at the gunk in those hinges. I took out a can of oven cleaner and went to town on the door and the hinges. Awesome! Finally, at least four out of six cylinders firing and all that.

The very next day I started round two of furious baking. I had six little cheese bread loaves in the oven, Stollen on deck and Panetone on the second rise. I had actual Panetone paper this time and was ecstatic over the improved elasticity of both sets of Christmas bread (a serious improvement over the first round). The cheese bread was taking too long. The oven light was on. I turned it down to see where the temp was. I went down to about 250 before I opened the oven. Shit. I played with that thing for quite awhile as the almost cooked cheese bread collapsed on itself. I tried a manual light with a match. Nuthin. I turned on all four burners one at a time. No propane issues. I closed the door and wondered if I'd killed my oven with oven cleaner on the hinges. Um, seriously doubtful.

I had a fire going in the wood stove but it wasn't hot enough. I stoked it up to 400 hoping the top would be hot enough to bake bread in a covered pot. I put the Panetone in the toaster oven and took them out five minutes later with their tops on fire. I wish I'd photographed that because it was really cool. Inedible, but cool. That was Sunday. Last Sunday. I called Bluestar on Monday and got the name and number of an independent service company in, of all places, the Valley. I called the service company and was told they'd have someone out the very next day. Awesome. Cletus was home to let the guy in which meant I didn't have to ask for another work at home day. We need a new safety valve and ignition thingie. OK, I can accept that. It's nearly 2.5 years old and something was bound to go eventually. For about $180 I had that information. Cletus said they'd call with a quote. They called with a quote this morning. Must have gotten it yesterday because Bluestar is closed today and tomorrow.

I asked how long it would take to get the parts because I really do need to finish the second batch of breads. I heard the conversation in the background. Four to six weeks. Huh? For a door I kind of understand. Kind of. For a safety valve and an ignition thingie? Really? And $250? Really?. OK. I gave the man my credit card number. He called back in a little while to tell me Bluestar was closed until Monday. Sigh. OK. I am to be without an oven again and it's snowing out there. And.

I. am. excited. Really, seriously excited about this. Hot damn! Another opportunity to figure stuff out all by myself the same way I did before and kind of like I worked out how to roast the most amazing chicken on a spit over an open fire in the back yard (and somehow was not arrested for doing so which in this town is flat out amazing).

You think I'm  being facetious, don't you? If you've been around awhile, you don't think that at all. And if you haven't, stay tuned! I'll be reporting on progress and results with pictures and everything. Even if we do lose power for an extended period. I'll get the camera battery charged immediately.

How cool is this?

By the way, the photograph above are the loaves of Stollen. They were disgusting. Clearly not the result I want but I've learned a few things.

Solstice.

 

I just finished a twelve hour tour of duty in my kitchen which came on top of eight hours yesterday. This is Solstice weekend which means every cookie, tomato sauce, jelly, curd, chocolate and loaf of bread, cooked, baked, canned and packaged for the Solstice occurred in the last 36 hours. I did sleep, I watched a movie too. It was I am Legend and it was good (and I LOVE Omega Man, so there).

In the mean time a Christmas tree was acquired and lights and pretty things were hung and the stockings were located and the menorah and the candles and the latkes, sour cream and apple sauce from the last of the wrapped September apples. The Solstice and Hanukkah coincide this year, which is very, very cool.

Last year we lost Sparky on or about the Solstice and it about blew me apart tonight. I wonder how the hell his family keeps breathing sometimes because half the time I feel like I got the wind knocked right out of me and I really just want to know how long it takes to get over someone?

I make things at Solstice. You can call it whatever holiday you want, it's Solstice timewise. I don't like to buy things unless it's something I know you need and can't buy yourself otherwise I'm going to make something and if you receive something I made it's because I give a rat's ass about you.

That's lost on most people these days. A cookie's a cookie, right?

About ten years ago I made my first batch of 1,000 cookies (or whatever), packaged them up and delivered them in person. They were received or not received as a matter of course until I got to Sparky and you know, Sparky got that half assed batch you give somebody you sort of give a shit about but maybe don't know so well. So anyway, Sparky comes all the way over from building one to building two and tells me this story about making stuff for people and how much it matters and all that and how this stupid box of cookies just about blew him away.

And that story he told just about blew me away. Most of the time, really, seriously MOST of the time, we have no real idea that we matter. Not a freaking clue.

I haven't missed a Solstice since.

I love you, Sparky and it hurts a lot still. I guess the way it's meant to hurt.

Why I loves the Internet

 This is a pictorial waltz through a day in the life except it starts at 7:50 PM and ends now, at 8:36 PM. Stage is set; assume I've been working all day (I have) and that I have to drive to work and home again (I do) and that I walked in the door in my cfm boots, took the dog out, chastised one or two girls, got the fire going again, looked at homework, signed some homework, checked the roasting chicken that daughter number one put in at 6, put my coat back on, went down the back steps with a flashlight and a bowl of water, tucked the girls (chickens) in and changed their water, picked up another egg, locked the side door, kissed a chicken one more time and then went upstairs to make dinner. There was a glass of wine involved in all this as well.

And we ate dinner in the living room in front of the television and the wood burning stove inserted in what used to be a fire place (yes, I did feed my family in front of the Barry Manilow infomercial on Entertainment tonight and NO I do not want to hear about it). And when dinner was just about done and I was tired of hearing the sniveling coming from three directions (I think we were all cranky tonight) I thought I needed some nummies and of course we don't keep ready made nummies in the house.

Problem.

I do, however, keep lots of supplies on hand hidden in various and assorted locations (chocolate chips back left corner of lower shelf of the indoor freezer (there are two more freezers in the garage and while they might contain half a cow and other various and assorted frozen things they do not contain any chocolate parts)).

Here is what after dinner looks like in my kitchen:

 

Here is the Internet in my kitchen (cute, huh?):

   

In case you didn't notice, the Internet has provided a loose recipe for chocolate chip cookies which I have chopped in half, eliminated some of the butter (because I only had 3/4 stick soft) and added some vinegar because I kind of like it that way and also I had an accident with the vanilla bottle because I do not measure often and had at least half a glass of wine in me and well, I spilled). In the mean time, NoMans is being a pain in the ass because he needs the microwave which is in the kitchen to soup up his tobacco curing chamber which we have because I grew a butt load of tobacco this summer kind of by accident and he refuses to waste it despite the fact that we quit smoking over two years ago.

 

By the way, that's the box our turkey arrived in. Please do not ask me to explain that or the brick of dry ice or the carbon footprint involved in obtaining a pastured bird in the state of Connecticut where everything I want to do is illegal (J Saladin). Because my guilt is legion. Really, people, it is.

Here is little girl licking the bowl:

 

Here are the cookies right out of the oven. Notice they needed about 90 seconds more? I lost my mind and pulled them out anyway.

 

Here they are on the cooling rack. You know, I fail to see the problem here. 46 minutes start to finish from the initial desire to the sitting down to write about it.

Heh.

Don't you have chickens on your front porch?

 

I know our neighbors have struggled with the idea of our chickens. I know this because our neighbor right across the street makes her granddaughter catch and lock them up (ha ha ha, like putting them in the chicken pen keeps them in) when they cross the street and our neighbor to the left yelled at Little Girl one day (and I'm thinking she needs her meds adjusted for yelling at a little girl instead of talking to her parents) and said her dogs would eat our chickens because they cross the invisible boundaries from two acre yard to two acre yard and our neighbor diagonally across the street said, 'oh, I thought that might be you.' In reference to our birds.

And I want it noted that we have wild turkeys on the loose in this neighborhood. And I want it noted that the vet's wife two doors down feeds them morning and night too. And I want it noted that our neighbor directly across the street (the one with the granddaughter) rescues raccoons. I just want it noted that in all this wild life we raise eyebrows because we keep chickens and, gasp... eat their eggs and stuff (so dirty, apparently).

I guess the truth is I don't find it even remotely remarkable anymore. What I find remarkable is that we appear to be alone in this neighborhood.

I can't wait until the meat birds arrive in the spring.

That should have been the end of the post but I know I'm going to be too distracted next week to remember to tell you this but...

1. I waltzed about like a lunatic (I was fully clothed at the time, I swear) scattering assorted seed six weeks ago and now I have assorted greens coming up all over the place.
2. I planted many things in this one little patch back in April and May (that gave me nothing but radishes this year) and I see carrots coming up?! Now?
3. The fat chives (I don't know how else to differentiate them from the skinny chives that put themselves to bed already) are making a concerted move on the potato beds.
4. The dill has reseeded itself. Everywhere.
5. My oregano has lost it's mind and headed for the swamp. Everywhere.
6. The Romaine reseeded itself EVERYWHERE.
7. The celery is delighted with the weather and looks better than it ever did.
8. And I am glad I was late putting in the stiff neck garlic because the daffodils are coming up already (they'll duck down again shortly).

I put up no cold frames, have done nothing other than turn over a few beds and pull up the tomato and bean stakes and I just want you to know that on November 16, the garden is very much alive and well.

About those fermented bananas

OK, Cookie Crumb, here it comes:

I have a banana problem. I buy them on sale for .39 per pound and then I let them sit on my dining room table until they're so rotten and fermented they leak onto the glass (if it was a normal wood type table I would put paper down, honest). Once leaking I pick up the whole mess (careful not to disengage from the stem) and throw the entire lot into the freezer and forget about it. This can go on for YEARS before I get around to dealing with them. This year was a little over the top because I feel a bit squirrelly lately and kept buying those .39 per pound bananas and throwing them into the freezer and it was even better when we had more freezer and then that damn half a cow showed up and I had to, um, do something about it.

Before I go any further I should give some credit to the stolen and seriously bastardized recipe:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Banana-Bread-108415

(That's how it started but you'll notice they don't say jack shit about fermenting and freezing your bananas first which would explain a few things). Anyway:

Fermented banana bread:

1. Buy some bananas. You need about 7 for a full double loaf recipe.
2. Let 'em rot on the counter until the skins threaten to burst and the fruit flies gather.
3. Throw them in the freezer and walk away.
4. When the mood strikes you or the bake sale people come knocking at your door or it's Christmas and your boss happens to like banana bread and has no IDEA it doesn't have to be dry and tasteless or you're just hungry, take 7 frozen bananas out of the freezer and set them on the counter to thaw:
    
5. While your bananas are thawing have a drink. OK, maybe not. Instead throw 3 and 1/4 cups of flour in a bowl along side 2 teaspoons baking soda, half a teaspoon salt and some cinnamon. I like loads, feel free to indulge in anything else that seems nomable. Make sure you mix it up, OK? I'm not going to tell you to sift, I'm going to trust that you realize you need all the powdered parts equally distributed in the flour vehicle.
6. When your bananas have thawed to the soft and won't freeze off your fingers stage, extrude them right into a bowl making sure to squeeze out all the excess banana liquor (yep, it's probably about 150 proof at this point).
   
7. Here comes the magic part. I discovered this the first time I made brownies 30 years ago (omg) when I was working my way through the Joy of Cooking and followed my first not in a box brownie recipe (I want you to know I was TWO at the time and very precocious)and got to the egg and sugar part. See, if you beat the bejesus out of eggs and sugar this really amazing base forms that you can mix some kind of flavor (chocolate, fermented bananas, citron vodka, whatever), add in some flour and a rising agent, bake a bit and wallah! True moist, tastiness. Noms. You get my point. Anyway, take four eggs from four different chickens (OK fine, if you don't have chickens in your backyard use what you can get your hands on although I strongly suggest fresh and untouched by government hands):
    
   Throw these eggs in a standing mixer with two cups of sugar and set to high. Come back ten minutes later (you don't need the stand mixer, you can use a hand mixer but you can't walk away or you can use a whisk and then you REALLY can't walk away unless you can get the dog or kid or husband to do it). When you see magic:
    
   
8. You should add 1 cup of veggie oil, the bananas, 1/4 cup sour cream or whatever, two teaspoons vanilla or half the bottle if you really like vanilla (I do) and mix it up a bit more.
9. In the mean time, please make some bread for tomorrow so the kid has something to eat for breakfast:
    
10. Mix the dry ingredients with the wet stuff and divide into two buttered and floured loaf pans. Pop into a preheated 350 oven and walk away for another 60 minutes. You'll know when they're done when the knife you stick in the middle comes out hot but still sticky. Not cold and sticky, not hot and dry (in which case throw it the hell out and start over). Also, you'll notice I make no mention of nuts. This is really nomable banana bread. Why hose it up with nuts?
11. While you're waiting go to the monster dog rally and see if your oldest (still at home) can still dance around the kitchen with the ten week old beast which has (finally thank you god) figured out how to go up and down stairs.
     
12. When the bread is done let it sit for a minute or two in it's pan (really, JUST a minute or two, don't over cook it now, you're so close) and then turn it out onto the wires:
     
13. Package and sell at the election day bake sale. Or just eat it and don't answer the phone next time.

(Screw the fired nanny. I don't even want to talk about that little piece of Euro Trash. We're all doing much better now, thank you very much.)

Chickins and Bugs, Chickins and Bugs

I have two step sons who are being raised on high fructose corn syrup and processed white flour. They are both highly medicated and highly suspect. OK, that last part isn't true but it's funny and when it comes to coping with the reality of who they are versus who I am, I often need all the humor I can find.

In the six years I've cohabitated with their father we've come face to face in a state of abject discomfort more times than I care to think about. Many of these occasions has stopped just short of bloodshed (mine and / or their father's, not theirs (don't worry, I wouldn't (probably (but you never know))). In the last year and a half alone it got bad enough that he (Nomans) traveled South to visit but they (Thing One and Thing Two and I name them that most affectionately) did not come North at all. Last summer we had one weekend that went well enough (although there was a bit of bloodshed over some communications that I filed under the category of entitlement that nearly caused WW III yet again) and then an actual week at the beach (and no one died but oh my goodness it took super human efforts from every single one of us). After that there was nothing due to the holidays and some other such scheduling conflicts as you've got to understand that all nineteen moons (I made that up, I don't actually know how many moons are required) must be in full alignment or god help us all.

The other thing, and this is a bit of an aside, is that in the past Nomans spent a full twelve hours in the car each weekend (three down three up three down three up) on the bloody New Jersey Turnpike until he could no longer and then the trips spread further apart and the whole darn thing just broke down until something finally gave and those boys took the train to and fro.

So you can imagine that I greeted this most recent arrival with some level of trepidation because I have to tell you that when I hear a child recoil in horror from the sight of swamp dirt it just makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck and I want to drag them into the muck until they get it about not being separate. Plus dirt is good. We need to eat a lot more of it than we do. And... that might just get me started on classroom allergies.... yadda yadda yadda moving right along now...

I was worried about the chickens. I was worried about the garden. I was worried about the fact that we don't have chicken nuggets or anything even close. And I was worried about my ability to withstand the assault of constant whining without ending up back on the psyche ward and / or in divorce court. In short, I was freaking fatigued with panic. Neat visual, isn't it?

Something gave, that's all I can say. Something caved in like a sink hole in Pennsylvania except in a good way and one of those boys ran down the back stairs on Sunday morning as fast as his growing boy legs would carry him and barefoot ran through the chicken pen (with a boat load of requisite chicken poop) and into the coop to release the ladies to their breakfast buffet (called my late fall garden) and help himself to the three morning eggs. The other boy stared hard at said eggs on the table an hour later and asked if I'd added cheese. No way, no chance, no how, they just grow that color when you don't do anything to them but let them eat veggies and bugs and then he proceeded to inhale every last bite and then some.

Somehow in the magic of the frogs and the bugs and the tree houses (it's on the ground but she and nanny built it themselves)and the swamps and the dirts and the Little Girl on the swing with a chicken in her lap (oh WHY does this one chicken permit this?) Thing One and Thing Two fell down the looking glass and came out grass stained and grinning without a single smidge of processed anythings anywhere about their bodies all weekend long. (OK, nice story but we did go for Hibachi on Saturday night and it was the holy hell of bad food but nobody died and it was Thing One's fifteenth birthday and he was so very happy with it all)

And at lunch which involved a veggie lasagne that did not come out of any sort of can or box followed by a Dutch Apple pie made before their very eyes, before the ride to the train, Thing One has been thinking that if all of us just ate a little more locally and with a little bit less fosile fuel involved (well, yeah, OK, I was ranting a bit over the weekend) and took a little bit more care of the world and maybe took care to eat food that was really food that we might just be, well, um, a little bit happier and a little bit healthier and maybe, just maybe a lot less likely to blow each other up.

And we all lived happily ever after until the very next adventure which might have started three minutes after.

Sometimes you just have to wait for it.

When the world is spinning, spin yourself the other direction to unravel the tilt

OK, I think can say (write) this now. If not, I'll delete with the rest of my miserably failed attempts at sorting through my own feelings and realities (since, really, we do make it all up, every one of us).

I,we, my family and and I, stand to lose quite a bit. Maybe we already have (I'm not looking at the moment). We stand to lose our retirement funds, our jobs, our home, our four remaining minor children's college funds. We stand to lose it all. We always have, day in and day out just like anybody might lose anything. Today, just like any other day in the last few weeks, it is horribly and painfully evident.

There is no right or wrong to this. We do not live in debt (oh, wait, there's the mortgage, right?), we do not take part in manipulating the market (oh wait, we do trade, don't we?) and we have busted our proverbial asses getting to where we are today and that might be all gone now or tomorrow. It really might.

I did not support the bailout. I do not support the bailout. I firmly believe this economy, this country needs a reset, and not a free and painless reset either because we are all compliant, one way or another. I say that in the face of what I still refer to as a horrible loss. I quake in my space boots (to borrow a Cletus phrase) and cry out in the night. I am terrified. But I still don't support the bailout.

It makes you take stock of what matters though, I'll tell you that. I sit at a chair in my kitchen, head and shoulders bent over two pots on the floor. One is full of apple peelings and the other salt water and apple bits. I peel, peel, peel, core, core, core, chop, chop, chop until after no time at all half a bushel is processed and set aside for the winter. I go to the farmers market and my own garden and I buy up all the fresh produce I can store away. I take that home and can and freeze and cook and eat and feed my family one step closer to the earth. I have set aside a ridiculous quantity of flour and rice but in reality, is 300 pounds really so ridiculous?

On Mondays I go to work with tiny cuts and abrasions on my finger tips from all the peeling, cutting, processing, cooking and I type on the keyboard for enough money to keep paying the mortgage and those cuts remind me that I am far from helpless after all.

None of this changes or alters in any way the level of fear I experience on a pretty regular basis these days. However, when I turn my face away from my fear and toward that which is hopeful, real, and living, I find it far easier to breathe.

Adventures in raw food, or, I feel better now, thank you.

I'm feeling much better now, thanks.

In an effort to distract myself from the absolute panic over an impending 5 solo days I ordered up a juice fast. Actually, I think they call it a cleanse, but whatever. This is nothing I've ever done. As a matter of fact it goes against every grain in my belief systems in terms of what we should or should not put in our bodies and how. It also goes against my belief that we should have an intimate relationship with the food we consume. I am also late to Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma but I appear to have drifted in that direction anyway. 

The whole purpose of the cleanse (I thought) was to create enough physical discomfort to mask the emotional drama because I'm well known for creating physical discomfort to mask emotional drama. Or trauma. Take your pick. As it turns out I wonder if it was something else all along.

After a bit of research, and I'll be honest, it wasn't a lot of research, I eliminated all powdered mixes, cooked or processed in any way food (?) and focused on raw food. I found a very local vendor (NYC and Southern CT only and if you really want to know who and what, leave a comment and I'll send you an email and no, they don't ship) placed my order on the internet and then promptly put it out of my mind until Sunday at 3 PM when I had to drive 20 miles to pick it up. Now, if you've been reading this blog for any length of time you probably have a good idea of what goes on in my kitchen on Sundays.  All the cooking for the week. That's right, all of it. Unless Nanny's cooking something in which case I'm off the hook (she's awesome, this one).

I started early Sunday morning with a trip to the farmers market for the stuff my garden doesn't give me enough of these days. I needed to slow roast some tomatoes for paste (thanks, Kitt, worked wonderfully), make a boat load of Sunday sauce to eat and to freeze, braise some frozen (I thawed them first) lamb shanks with a ton of leftover salad turnips (they're really sweet) some potatoes about to get too starchy and a mess of other veggies needing to be consumed (plus an entire bottle of Chianti, to braise in, not to drink) and then also some red beans for rice to sit and stew in hot sauce for three days in the fridge. We had a potato leak pie for Sunday dinner so there was that too.

In the middle of all this I have to pick up my juice. I leave Cletus baby sitting the roasting tomatoes and bubbling sauce and head out to parts generally avoided. Not a bad neighborhood, per see, just a bit snootier than I tolerate easily. I'm still having trouble with the Prada Moms in Escalades. I pick up my juice at a yoga studio. I am happy about this because I keep thinking yoga might be a nice thing for me to do I've just never gotten around to working it out. When I arrive the juice has not been delivered and there are several unhappy women milling about. It is not really that late, just twenty minutes and the poor guy is stuck in traffic.

I sit down to wait. I have found a book to read and the silence of the space is working for me. Until more women show up and the atmosphere turns a bit testy. After awhile the man is still not here and the women are demanding their drinks and the poor girl at the counter is beginning to lose her cool and I bury my nose deeper into my borrowed book. By the time the delivery vehicle arrives there is a swarm on the back of the truck reminiscent of Filene's Basement in the old days. I am not a pusher. I hate confrontation so I sit and wait. After awhile I get nervous because what if they don't have enough? What if a mistake was made or someone took what wasn't hers? What will I do? I wade into the crowd in hopes of grabbing my three green bags. One of the more irate women is blocked in by the truck. She yells at him to get out of her way. He cannot move his vehicle, there are too many women stuck head and torso first inside. I am suddenly one of them; I dive, I scoop, I bolt. I run like hell for my car nearly getting myself run over by one of the hostile ladies screeching past me and out of the parking lot.

I am terrified.

I go home with my juice, unload it into the refrigerator as instructed and promptly (again) forget about it. I finish cooking and baking. I am light headed with the smells in the house. I want to eat all of it immediately if not sooner. I am beside myself in anticipation of coming meals. I sit down to write the last post and I go to bed. 

In the morning I get up and remember that I am fasting. I am not too sorry yet. I pack literally half a gallon of fluid (properly contained) into my backpack along with my computer and all the other garbage I haul back and forth every day. I get on the train and go to work. The fluids were fine, I was not.

Eventually I learned about juice fasting. I learned this because I googled everything I could find to explain the current state of my body, which was in significant upheaval. I went to bed that night and slept very badly. In the morning it was a little better and off I went again with my fluids. At this point I want solid food so bad I'm ready to chew tree bark (city tree bark even)and need I mention the effect of the re-roasting lamb shanks and lingering scent in the morning?

The next evening, which was last night, I went to bed and slept better than I can remember only waking to disturbingly loud music coming from a disturbingly lingering vehicle at five AM. I didn't go back to sleep. Apparently my body was done sleeping. I can't remember the last time this happened either. I laid there for an hour wondering what was wrong with me and then I got up, went downstairs and ran like hell on my machine (which I'd been doing since Monday anyway in an effort to sweat out as much garbage as possible). When I arrived this morning, on day three of my fast, I felt unbelievably good, nearly euphoric. It is now nearly 4 PM and while I'm looking forward to my prescribed raw fruit and lightly steamed veggies tomorrow, I am not in bad shape at all. I miss my husband, he really needs to come home now but you know, I'm OK.

I wonder about balance, I really do. I also wonder how those women feel today. Better, I hope.

And the next time I feel the need to do this I can bloody well make my own.

Passing by the open windows

It is really very easy to get yourself lost in the world and wind up serving your soul sunny side up to some cosmic parking lot attendant at the train station. I was sitting in my car at the station this morning, not feeling all that balanced, staring at the platform and thinking, what the fuck? My ears and throat hurt and I've yet to recover from the lost sleep incurred during the trip into the city Tuesday night with the big kids to see one of the final productions of Rent (I'm still crying over that one).

And then I got out of the car and approached the platform. I'm reading Jack Kerouac's On The Road from the original scroll which means it's like reading the inside of my own brains at nine thousand miles per hour minus any sort of punctuation or spell check. I rather like it a lot. The rest of you might get to feeling a bit sea sick as most people eventually out grow the desire to be hung upside down by ones feet and spun around until the world forgets the lie of linearity. After awhile I forgot about the soul sucker in the parking lot and got lost in Kerouac's version of reality (I quite like it).

None of this resolved the soul sucking and its really just a bit of a bandaid. Sometimes I need to come home and just get hit upside the head with the desires and textures of my own life. You know, the real part where I operate under the illusion that I'm making up at least a good portion of my own rules. So you know how this goes; I take off my monkey suit, pour myself a glass of wine and head out into the great and mighty jungle which calls itself my back yard.

Some of you might remember this little guy in a prior iteration when he was quite a bit smaller and I questioned Audrey's ability to keep him hanging off the deer mesh. Well, here he is and I suspect he'll hang here, slug free, for quite some time. This is food people. Through the garden walls and into the mini jungle, this is food. It's awfully hard sometimes to find a way back to something real and true in all the muck of soul suckage out there. And to reiterate an earlier point, I do actually love this thing they pay me money to do. I LOVE it. However, it is still corporate america, not my life and a bit of a soul sucker all the same. I need grounding, people, and here it is.

This is a little hard to see but it's one giant mutha of a sugar pumpkin (they are supposed to be TEENSY) resting in a bed of corn. I'm just going to wait and see what it does despite the fact that the slugs (that I thought I didn't have) have finally moved in and consumed the first of my ripening sugar babies (bastids).

When Little Girl shakes this pumpkin it sloshes.

Here is a butterfly stuck in the meshing. We freed him without contact and he flew away...

  To the tiny cupola on the roof top. You can see him, he's the little beige spec, on the peaked roof of the cupola.

  You can see the bottom of the new chicken coop behind Little Girl who is doing her own version of geeking the camera (does anybody out there besides me recall the origin of the word geek and it's relation to chickens specifically?).

  And then there's this seven nearly eight year old version of peace. Yeah, I do actually buy it.

In the light...

And finally, I know it's kind of hard to see, but this tobacco type plant I bought two of that got no more than 18 inches high at any point in time suddenly makes this gianormous offshoot that's nearly four feet tall (not that you can tell because those cone flowers are nearly eight feet tall now) and he stands up like some porn star out of the seventies and says, come 'er, babe. let me show you what I've got...

Have a great weekend. I'll be rolling about in the dirt and other such scandalous things.