Four years to go

Very little about Americans is amusing these days, but I did have a good laugh this week about right-wing “preppers.” The companies that sell them guns, storage food, and survival items flourished during the Obama years. After all, right-wingers were told that President Obama was going to take their guns away, that the dollar and the economy would crash, that there would be runaway inflation, that FEMA concentration camps were being prepared for them, that Obama would wage a war on religion, etc. If President Obama is going to get all that done, he has two days left in which to do it.

But after the election of Trump, the Economic Collapse blog’s Michael Snyder reported that “it is like a nuclear bomb went off in the prepping community.” The bottom fell out of the market for survival food and survival gear, it seems. The Deplorables feel safe, now that that black family is out of the White House.

But for those of us who live in the real world, we are going to have to pay close attention to events as they unfold. With the Fed starting to raise interest rates, we appear to be approaching the unhappy part of the economic cycle. Trump’s deck is full of wild cards that he is playing into the global geopolitical situation as well as into the domestic situation. When crisis hits — and it will — Trump’s ship of fools and the right-wing radicals in Congress will pull all the wrong levers. It’s time to seriously consider buying survival food while that stuff is on sale.

I have never been terribly deluded about just how awful people can be, but I am still in a state of shock at the display of hatred and delusion that we saw last year. One of the things I’ve been thinking about is how to maintain the highest wall possible between myself and the people who bought a ticket on the Trump train. I’m tired of being told that we should reach out to them with our usual liberal compassion. Did we fail to notice the “Fuck Your Feelings” bumper stickers and T-shirts? They are simply not reachable by anything other than the right-wing media and their ugly religion. Maybe four years from now (probably sooner, actually), when their hopes are dashed and their hero billionaire has betrayed them and reminded them just how small they are, they might be in a better mood for some liberal compassion. But not now.

One resolution I’ve made is to do everything possible not to do business with people who don’t like me. Even here in a Republican county, it has been no trouble to locate a liberal hardware store, a liberal plumber, a liberal roofer, a liberal local drug store, liberal landscaping supplies, and so on. I will spend as much of my money locally as possible. We all have to do business with corporations, though, so I’ll pay close attention to the politics and track records of the corporations that I spend money with.

I also will do my best to stay away from people who don’t like me.

Simple Friday

The weather Friday was perfect (67 degrees F, quite a change from the polar vortex a week ago), so we had Simple Friday rather than Simple Saturday this week.

Why is cooking and eating outdoors so much fun? In any case, I’m starting to get the hang of cooking on the firebox. I’d kill for a brick-made outdoor range, with an oven for baking bread. Ken spent most of the day working on a second chicken house. There will be photos of that soon.

Port

When I lived in San Francisco, it was easy to buy good port, with lots of options. Much of it came from California. But, here in the provinces, the city liquor stores don’t carry port. If the grocery stores have it, it is almost always cheap brands that are not safe for septic tanks, let alone for drinking.

Trader Joe’s has come to the rescue with an Evenus port in half bottles, at $9.99. I suspect that this was bottled especially for Trader Joe’s. Evenus usually labels their ports with the type of grape (for example, syrah, or zinfandel) and a year. This port is labeled “Port Dessert Wine,” as though it’s meant for a market in which people don’t really know what port is, or even that it’s a dessert wine. No matter. It’s a superb little bottle of port.

Sometimes when I’m admiring the recipes and food photos at the New York Times web site, I marvel at how many dessert recipes there are. Do people really make, and eat, so many desserts? Here at the abbey, pies and cakes and pastries are rare. One way of cutting down on dessert consumption is to always keep a good stock of dark chocolates for after dinner. Nothing goes better with chocolate than a wee glass of port. Calories saved!

What the cat eats

I’m persnickety about what Lily the cat eats, and Lily is too. Though I know that some cat keepers and cat food authorities say that cats should not be on a diet of only dried food, cats may have their own opinions.

Lily is very opinionated, and her opinion is that nothing will suit other than the Castor & Pollux organic cat foods. Many years ago, I tried cooking for Lily according to the best homemade cat food recipe that I could find. My plan was to freeze the portions and thaw them as needed. Lily wouldn’t touch the stuff (I can’t say that I blame her) and so I put it out back for the possums. When she was still a kitten, I bought her first bag of Castor & Pollux at Whole Foods, and that has been the deal ever since.

Her bowl is kept full all the time. When it needs topping off, she lets me know. She was abandoned and hungry as a kitten, which gave her a neurotic start where food is involved. My strategy was to make sure that she always had food, hoping that that would convince her that she is never in danger of going hungry. It seems to have worked. She’s not piggy. She eats when she wants. And though she is probably a pound or so overweight, she carries it well and shows no tendency to gain beyond her current weight.

I’ve offered her tuna and salmon. She sniffs it but won’t eat it. A few years ago, Castor & Pollux changed the shape of the kibble. That made her suspicious for a day or two, but she decided that it was OK. She drinks an appropriate amount of water. She likes her water cold, filtered water from the refrigerator tap, the same as I drink. At eight years old she has never been sick, and she has a beautiful coat. She’s as rambunctious as a kitten, is rarely naughty, and scratches only where she’s permitted to scratch. She knows a lot of language because she has always been talked to, and she is the most communicative cat I’ve ever known. She’s the first cat that I ever raised from a kitten, and I have to say that I’m proud of how she turned out. I sometimes say that she has a Ph.D. in cuddling, not least because she roots under the covers with me at least a couple of times a night.

Castor & Pollux cat food is pricey stuff. But my view of it is that, if it makes a healthy cat and reduces vet bills, then it’s worth the investment.

This sounds like a Castor & Pollux ad, doesn’t it. But it’s totally unsolicited.

Another snowfall photo

Every snowfall is an excuse to shoot photos of the house. This photo is from the 10 or more inches of snow that fell on January 7.

The landscaping of the abbey is still a work in progress. There are 13 of the arbor vitae trees, most of which are about a third to half grown. The arbor vitae trees were a great choice, because they provide a lot of shelter for the birds. We finally found an old-fashioned mimosa tree. We’re thinking of starting some holly hedges. Ken is planning to start some walnut trees the old-fashioned way — by planting walnuts. We’re also thinking about a pecan tree.

Last year was a terrible growing year. Rainfall was a bit below normal — 40.5 inches for the year. The rain we had fell at the wrong times to optimize growth, and young trees were water-stressed for much of the year. Here’s hoping that the 2017 growing year is an improvement.

Luckily there are no power lines on abbey property. Power lines would subject our trees to the brutal trimming that rural electric companies do. The feed line to the house is buried. If you’re ever buying property, that’s something to keep in mind. You don’t want utility rights-of-way across your property.

Cooking from the bottom of the kitchen

One of my sayings is that I can always squeeze one more meal out of an empty kitchen. Today is a squeeze day.

It’s Tuesday morning. Starting Friday evening, snow started falling. By Saturday morning, it looked like a blizzard, with 10 to 12 inches of snow on the ground. That night, the low temperature was about 8 degrees F. On Sunday night, the low was about 5 degrees F. The kitchen was prepared for being snowed in, though fresh food was started to run low. I had not been to Whole Foods in more than two weeks. Nor am I going to Whole Foods today. The Smart car is still very much snowed in and is not going anywhere for a while. Even though the Jeep would get out perfectly well, I’d rather cook from the bottom of the kitchen than clean the snow off the Jeep and drive it on salty roads.

I call this “cooking from the bottom of the kitchen.” In the refrigerator, there are eggs, milk, plenty of wine and ale, lots of butter, and all sorts of sauces and such. In the cabinets, there is no shortage of flour or oil or things that come in cans. It’s fresh food that is always the problem. I just took an inventory. I have half an onion, a lot of celery, and a winter squash. There are lots of sweet potatoes (I had bought a bushel of sweet potatoes a few weeks ago). We are nowhere close to starving. But the objective, of course, is not to avoid starving but to make something good out of a kitchen in which supplies are dwindling. Cooking from the bottom of the kitchen is a good exercise in frugality. It gets you to use up things you’ve been ignoring but that need to be used. The beets that I had been ignoring got eaten last night.

So then, for supper I’m thinking butternut squash soup (with lots of celery), a whole wheat flatbread, and tuna salad (with lots of celery).

After supper, I’ll clean the refrigerator to get it ready to be filled up again. And tomorrow I’ll go grocery shopping.

Simple Saturdays (and other days, too)

Ken and I had said that we would pull up the drawbridge this winter and limit our exposure to the outside world, partly for our mental health and partly to get more literary labor done. Neither of us was very successful.

As the next step, we’re experimenting with “Simple Saturdays.” On Simple Saturdays, the Internet will be turned off. Though we decided that there was no particular reason to punish ourselves with excessive austerity, nevertheless it seemed like a good chance to practice being less dependent on things like electricity. I have take not taken any vow not to use the stove or ovens on Simple Saturdays. But I do enjoy cooking over fire, and I would like to do more of it.

We installed a grill out back of the type you find beside picnic tables in national parks. Ken chopped a bunch of wood for it. We used it for the first time tonight. That’s salmon cakes in the skillet. They were good!

Ken says I probably will get the delirium tremens when I try to go without news on Saturday.

Another bright spot in North Carolina


Michael Morgan at our county convention last April

Michael R. Morgan, a Democrat, was sworn in today as associate justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. In the November election, Morgan ousted a Republican incumbent on the court, which means that Democrats now have a 4-3 majority on the state supreme court. After the November election, North Carolina now has a Democratic governor and a Democratic state attorney general as well. Right-wing Republicans still hold a “super majority” in the state legislature, but Democrats are now in an unexpectedly strong position to resist the right-wing ruin of the once progressive Southern state of North Carolina.

Morgan’s election was amusing, really. The election for the state supreme court is non-partisan, so there is no (R) or (D) party indicator beside the candidates’ names. Racist Republicans simply failed to get the word out that Morgan is both black and a Democrat. But we Democrats got the word out.

Courts have stepped in again and again to block the radical and unconstitutional actions of North Carolina’s radical legislature. The only reason Republicans can hold a super majority in the legislature is because of shameless (and racist) gerrymandering of the legislative districts. A court has ordered redistricting and a new election this year. That ruling has been challenged, but Democrats are preparing for the election and salivating at the opportunity to throw still more of the right-wing radicals out of office.

One bright spot in the political gloom

Another small reward for my political work here in the sticks was an invitation to the inauguration of Roy Cooper, the new governor of North Carolina.

Those of you outside the U.S. may not know that, one bright spot during the catastrophic November election was that North Carolina voters, by a narrow margin, threw out the Republican governor and elected a Democrat.

For six years now, North Carolina has been afflicted with a radical right-wing legislature. Clearly the people of North Carolina had become sick of right-wing overreach, and they took it out on Pat McCrory, who served only one term. I think it would be a reasonably safe prediction that American voters will become similarly sick of right-wing overreach at the national level and that the Republican Party will lose the U.S. Senate if not the House of Representatives in the 2018 election. As for Donald Trump, it’s impossible to imagine him getting a second term. In fact, impeachment seems much more likely.

Woods


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As much as I’d like at times to live in a real wilderness, I can’t. The abbey is in driving distance of a Whole Foods, after all. But I do love the woods.

It’s strange, but when you want to look through the woods, winter is the time to do it. Looking through woods in winter is like looking through clear water.

On the other hand, if you want to look down on the woods, that’s best done in summer, when the trees are green. Previous satellite photos I’ve seen of the abbey have been taken in winter, but today on Google Earth I noticed that the satellite photo was taken in high summer. Trees! The abbey is in the clearing at the top center.


[Click on image for higher resolution]