No Kidding

Later it all makes sense. You and the pack of dogs that might have been coyotes. It doesn't matter if they were or not, whether or not they had ripped out your throat. Just the threat was enough. I have to say, I love that train, over in Kentucky, the way it sounds both far away and in my own back yard. Fumble some worry beads and have left to say almost nothing. What's left behind is merely compost. The future is always more interesting than the past. Pluto is no longer a planet, just a bit of crap that hangs around. Last night, I think it was, it could have been the night before, I don't trust my own memory any more, I thought about the fragile connection between memory and event. The Marina Dairy Bar is closing Sunday, so I stopped by for a footer and an order of jalapeno poppers. I keep a running list of supplies I might need, when you break into the back-up coffee, 27.8 ounces (where does that number come from? 788 grams?) you get another one, another half-gallon of juice. I'm drowning in food and books right now, and it feels fine. No motion, no time. Another night disappeared, I sat and read, then wrote for a few hours, then I couldn't help but notice a lovely dawn. Started a small, what I think of as a breakfast fire, and went for a chilly walk. Lots of birds kicking around in the leaf-litter, a couple of red-headed woodpeckers, my crows lead me down the logging road. I'd picked up a package of pig's ears in the discounted bin at Kroger. The thing about packaged ears in the super market, as opposed to fresh ones, is that they're already quite clean. I bring them to a boil in herbed chicken broth last thing at night, then pull them over to the coolest part of the stove and put them on a trivet. In the morning skin them, cut into several pieces, dredge them in a highly seasoned masa, and fry them in bacon fat. It's mostly a mouth-feel thing, they don't actually taste like much, but the texture is divine. This is a very cheap meal ($1.49) but only if you cook on a wood cookstove. As my cooking has evolved over the years, the last 15 cooking on my beloved Stanley Waterford, I've tended toward things that needed to cook a long time, the stove's going anyway, might as well keep something cooking. When it's cold I have a very hot oven, and I can do some things with that, biscuits, cornbread, tandoori chicken; I can bake root vegetables, wrapped in foil, right in the firebox, and I can always have a soup or pot of beans simmering on top. I've been reading a great many food essays, the last week or so, and several things have piqued my interest. I don't want to get into any feminist aspect of this, but most of the serious cooks I know are men. I'm not sure that means anything, it probably has more to do with the company I keep, vigorous Basque goatherds surviving another winter on the slopes of Mount Doubt. An Airstream Trailer, buffeted by winds. A real place, somewhere in Utah, where animals free-ranged and no one talked very much.