Baked Beans

I eat one of those 15 ounce cans of baked beans every week, that's three servings on toast; I consider it a fine breakfast or lunch, I often serve it with a fried egg on top, right now, with a vine ripened tomato on the side, sliced, with several twists of black pepper and a piece of bread, held in reserve, to sop up the juices, it's a mainstay of my diet. I hadn't eaten any red meat in a very long time, so I went to Kroger, yesterday, and bought a couple of thin strip steaks from the remaindered bin; grilled one of them over the coals from a few hickory sticks, made a mac-and-cheese to die for, and sliced another tomato. So good I felt guilty. I'm not proud of this, but for the most part I'd rather eat alone, drink alone, and spend most of my time staring into space. It's not arrogance either, it's just an actual desire to know what's going on. I don't keep track of that other stuff, I'm watching butterflies, reviewing my options, considering a move to Patagonia. Great night's sleep and I harvested enough rainwater to take care of some cleaning chores. Did the few dishes, took the dish-drainer and set it out on the deck, and cleaned the lovely old cast iron kitchen sink that I picked up at a plumbing junk-yard in Atlanta visiting my friend Joel (The Wittgenstein Plumber), who, I knew, would know where such a place was. It's quite large, quite thick, a few minor chips and evidence of mortar on some of the edges. It's cast with a channeled drain-board on the right side and an eight inch high back (so you can get a five gallon pot under the gooseneck facet. The enamel is worn thin and it stains. I only clean it a couple of times a year, but when I do it fairly sparkles To the left of it is a two foot by four foot sandstone counter: microwave, toaster-oven, and espresso maker. I cleaned that counter too, then the appliances. I hadn't worked on the sauce for a while, and I needed to boil it and sterilize the jars; dumped the jars into my 6 quart stainless steel pot, swished out the jars with cranberry juice, and added some of the new Serrano pepper sauce from Andy. Ended up with two quarts of sauce. I always keep the sauce in two jars, after the disaster of 2003, but it's usually just a quart and a pint, then I remembered that the last time I worked on it, I had added an onion and a large can of green chilies, run through the blender, so there were solids and added volume. It's very good, and I want to try a London Broil, rolled in the mixture of ground nuts, chilies, and spices that I now prefer, with potatoes of some sort, and a coleslaw. Then I heat another batch of water, shave, wash my hair, take a sponge bath, it feels so good to get clean. We so seldom are, in the modern world, despite all the immersions, actually clean.