Canned Ham

First solid freeze of the year, and a couple of more nights down to twenty. The ground stays white with frost until nearly noon. I just stay indoors and read another Elmore Leonard novel. I get one every time at the library, and hope to read them all this winter. Raylan this morning and it was a very good read. If I had a TV I would have watched that series. I understand Leonard was a script advisor. He's good, his dialog is superb. When it finally warms a bit, I go out and split some wood. This time of year I start a lot of fires. Science Friday, my favorite radio show, they were talking about clocks today, and trying to measure very small increments of time. I completely spaced out, thinking about time. Keeping time, making time, marching in time; mostly what I use is duration, how long do you cook this, how long before it gets too dark to see where you're going, is the cornbread done? If I need to be someplace at a certain time (which doesn't happen that often any more) I listen to the radio, and I have a couple of friends I can call to ask what day it is. There's a good blues show on the radio, Friday night, so sometimes I leave the radio on, so I don't forget. Usually I turn it off and forget, but I remembered tonight and got this great Australian blues singer and guitarist for a solid hour. He does a cover of Lennon's "Come Together" that's fantastic. Electrified acoustic; then a drummer, mostly with brushes, a bass, and a muted keyboard to do a few more numbers. I love the shouted band-leader moments. The key-board player is fantastic. But this dude, the guitarist, references everyone. I wish I'd made popcorn. Jeff something, I never did get the name, I couldn't actually understand what they were saying, they went from a Hammond organ to a grand piano. "Messing With The Kid" was terrific. I kill the radio (I have a remote) and sit in the dark for a while, still hearing the music. Takes a while for the quiet to settle. Put on my headlamp so I could get a drink and roll a smoke, think about the blues, all the miles between here and there, dead dogs and dead pick-up trucks. It's amazing how visceral the effect. The real world comes knocking. It's not depressing or anything, just gut-wrenching. Out of my daze, the house is cold, so I build a fire: a single butter wrapper to start some fat pine then some small oak splits then serious stove wood. It takes an hour. I'd bought a canned ham, I hadn't bought one of these since I was in college, I was in the canned meat aisle at Kroger and saw them. A perfect solution, for the ham and bean soup, when you found yourself snowed-in. I have canned and dried beans, onions and peppers, with a canned ham and cornbread I'd be good to go, also there's a lot of fat, which would be good for cooking potatoes. The weather forecast is good, so I can get another canned ham, and decide to do a trial-run. First I fry a couple of slices with eggs for breakfast, then I scrape off the surface fat into a skillet for later use, then put together a soup that can simmer as the stove cools down. Beans and rice, a few roasted greens, just a twist of sea salt. When it gets more solid, you serve it on toast. Spam and a bagel, two bits. Right.