Work Related

Thank god I went in late yesterday because the buckets under the drips were full to overflowing. I put a larger trash can on the new dolly, and poured them into it, then mopped. May be able to save the ceiling, because we drilled a couple of holes to relieve the pressure and direct the drips, but all the paint and skim coat of plaster has fallen in and area maybe eight feet square. A mess. Spent most of today cleaning up. Left an hour early to get a fire started, supposed to be in the low twenties tonight. The phone was working, so I sent the log jam of paragraphs, just three, actually, but they represented four days work, and are probably rife with mistakes. When I send something at night, I read back over it fairly carefully, but if I put it into storage, not so much so. Need to work on that. The fire-box in the cookstove is 16 inches deep, and I cut most of my firewood almost exactly that long; but I have a separate stack cut to ten inches, that way, after the fire gets going, I can rake the coals toward the back, add ten inch sticks, and still have a six inch oven right in the front of the firebox, where I can cook things. I make a campfire meal in there often, bake potatoes and apples. The campfire meal I finally learned to layer in reverse. A couple of layers of foil, then a small sliced onion, then a layer of thick sliced potatoes, then a ground meat patty, preferably venison. Salt and pepper on all layers, and maybe some chilies. With a spoonful of the sauce, this is an incredibly good meal. First off, when you open the foil you're hit with this blast of smell; and it tastes so good, the way the fats have percolated down through the potato and onion. I make a breakfast version of this, with a home-made sausage patty, which involves searing the potato slices in very hot peanut oil, to give them a crust, and caramelizing the onion, which takes a ridiculous amount of time. You shoot for breakfast but you barely make brunch. Sometimes, if I make the chorizo from scratch, it's dinnertime before breakfast is ready. I fill the interval with cod, or salmon, or crab cakes that I make quickly, with left over mashed potatoes, and fry in the peanut oil which is already hot. Be a fool not to. I make a simple tartar sauce for these, mayonnaise and sweet pickle relish; minced, reconstituted, smoked, hot peppers. You need to join Sam's Club just for the crab-meat. I need to research the life-cycle of the Blue Crab, they're being farmed now, way beyond the chicken neck on a string and dip-net with a long handle I'd used to harvest them before.