Not Bad

Rain started before dawn, or at least the dripping started. Continued all day. An interesting phone call from a builder in Utah, wanting to know where I'm gotten the lumber to build a specific staircase. I explained that the wood had come from Mississippi and had been hauled out by a friend who wanted to hunt elk. The staircase in question was mostly 3x12 white oak and I had gotten it for a couple of hundred bucks, which is what made the project possible. I gave him the name of a sawmill and advised how to cure/dry the stuff when he got it out west. With the difference in relative humidity, it's difficult to prevent warping: you have to sticker it in layers (stacking the layers with sticks between, to hold them apart) and band the stack with those awful metal bands that are bloody dangerous when you cut them. A lot of scars on a lot of carpenters and masons. Then another phone call (two in one day is almost a record) from a former student. She wanted to talk about punctuation. I told her to get the Norris book, and we talked about the serial comma for what must have been an hour. Between calls I was reading Gaddis, Carpenter's Gothic, then some McGuane short stories. The sardine on toast with mozzarella and tomato in balsamic lunch. Large slice of sweet onion. If I had any meetings, for the rest of the day, I'd have to cancel them; filthy, from working in newly exposed dirt, and a garlic/ sardine/onion breath that would stop a charging rhino. It was Mac who taught me to eat anchovy paste on crackers. Most everything I know I learned from someone else or read in a book. There's a dish in Iceland, where they ferment a shark for several years in a hole in the ground. For whatever reason, rotting fish seems to have established itself fairly early. I have no idea what makes this sterile enough to eat. Salt? The shark tastes like a very ripe cheese, it certainly doesn't taste like chicken. Garum, of course, the juice of rotted fish, was a Roman favorite. I've made this a few times, and it can be quite good, more a flavor enhancer than anything. I make another list, all the ingredients I'd need to make a few soups, some cans of navy beans and garbanzos, some dried cured smoked ham trimmings, freeze some chorizo, buy some roasted red peppers in oil. When I can't get to town I reconstitute onion flakes in wine. I can always cook a pot of something. I love rice and polenta, so I'm a cheap date. One time, trapped in several feet of snow, I fried everything, tempura as a way of life, in peanut oil. It's all about the dipping sauce. As it happens I have a sauce confit, that pushes the envelope. Baby rib juice mixed with papaya nectar. Ten years old, and the additives are now without number, green chilies, and dried mushrooms, left-over bits of wine and beer, various green herbs, shallots, smoked peppers. Light rain all night but it slacked off in the morning and I went to town to get back-up whiskey and tobacco. The hills were smoking, moisture rising out of the hollows, and cooler. I had to pull up a flannel sheet this morning, and it felt wonderful to snuggle down.