Following Tracks

There's a place on the old logging road that never gets any sun, so the snow stays there long after it's gone elsewhere. It's a palimpsest of overlapping tales. One story, and I've seen it several times, is when a set of rabbit tracks simply end. No blood, no disturbance. An owl took it away for dinner. The food chain. Read an interesting piece yesterday, I can't remember where, about eating rabbit ears; second hand, and not enough actual information. But I was intrigued and wondered if you skinned them (what would be left?) or just burned off the fur. I like pig's ears, sliced and fried in butter they have a wonderful texture, and I suppose rabbit ears would be similar. I can't find any recipes, except for a Roman reference that assumes you know how to prep them. B's brother, Ronnie, and his son, Bear, hunt rabbits, so I make a note to remember to ask them to save me some ears. I can't imagine they have any food value, but I enjoy using the normally discarded. Rabbit ears, cock's combs, humming-bird tongues. I don't like aspic or Jello, they freak me out, but I do like thymus glands and tripe. Go figure. Sleeping in the basement of a de-sanctified church is not that different from not believing. Another interesting place, speaking of tracks, is where the power easement tops the ridge. They cleared the easement this year (once every four or so years) and it doesn't get much sun, so it's a large field of snow. A couple of days after a snowstorm there are multiple stories writ in track and blood. I fabricate narratives to fit the physical record. The fox seems to score a mole or vole about once in every 6 to 8 tries. I definitely have a resident owl but I've neither heard nor seen it. The days are getting longer but the sun is feeble. It's the wobble on our axis that adds or subtracts more minutes in either the morning or evening at different rates. All the animals are out, it's the time of year when you eat when you can, squirrels, turkeys, deer, are all out, at the same time; and the sumac seeds litter the ground where the smaller birds are feeding. It's a Nature Channel newsreel the entire day. I walked over to the top of the driveway again, and it's still terrible, I could get down, but I'd never get back up. The only thing I'll run out of is cigaret papers, a stupid oversight, but I have a pipe and a tamper and kitchen matches, so I'll survive. I'll be eating canned and dried things for a few days, I'm looking forward to it, actually, some of these prepared meals are pretty tasty, instant Idaho Reds are damned good, and those Mexican tamales are fantastic. I had been studying tracks for a couple of hours when I realized my feet were frozen, went home and dealt with that. I had hot water on the stove so I soaked one foot at a time, they were fine, put on clean socks, collected my kit and settled in at my desk. Wrapped my feet in a Goodwill fleece stadium blanket, rolled a smoke, a sip of Irish, and settled into my other world, where I'm cross-referencing what a particular word means in a certain context. The outside world, mediated with soaking the feet, becomes the inside world. With no exterior stimulation, there isn't much transition. Watching a woodpecker, or cooking at the stove, later, thinking about watching a woodpecker. Getting a handle on things (what a great phrase that is) generally involves understanding the subtext. I have to admit I usually don't get the subtext. The ridge is up front, no hesitation, slaps me when I get out of line. Read more...

On Manners

Falling-snow slides are always surprising. The thaw. Temps right at freezing, but with full sun and heat escaping the house (heat always escapes) there are a few drips off the roof and no icicles. I clean out ashes and the smoke-chase on the stove, start another fire. Enough wood inside for today and tonight, but I need to go out and get a couple of armloads for tomorrow. Sardines on toast, with a large slice of onion, and it's wonderful, thank god I don't have to speak to anyone in person. Start out the day reading about table manners, then some interesting essays on cannibalism. Last of yesterday's cornbread and a bowl of soup for dinner. Stoke the fire with the largest log that will fit, damp it down, read some fiction (Lescroart), and thought for a while about civil liberties. By the time I got out to the woodshed the snow was settled and rotten. Tomorrow should be a mess. It doesn't matter much to me, as I have no intention of going far, just put up a sign, "Closed For The Season" and hunker down. Sometime after midnight it starts raining, and that wakes me, because it's been so quiet. It's nice, the rain on the roof, dampened, off the beat. I get a drink and roll a smoke, sit in the dark. I was thinking about eating with your hands, baby-back ribs or a crab boil, table manners generally, the way they take us a step remove. I can eat a quail with a knife and fork, I know which implement to use. Usually I dine alone and it's fairly casual, I eat with my right hand and hold a book in my left. The mud returns, warm enough that I let the fire go out, surprised that most of the snow is gone. Walked over to the driveway and it's still quite bad, everything is slick, and where the mud is exposed it's a soupy mess. But I don't have to be out in it, I don't have to be anywhere, I don't have to do anything. A great relief to not be caring for twenty or thirty animals, or having to commute to work, or compromising my time in any way. Make a cup of tea, listen to the news, read what I was working on last night, delete a few things, which involves changing some commas, which pretty much always engages my attention. Hash and a cheese omelet, with toasted cornbread for dinner. I can't complain. Read more...

Snow Bound

Lovely morning, and I never did lose power. Just over a foot of snow. My sleep schedule is severely tangled, so after an early lunch (bean soup and grilled cheese), I have to take a nap. Good fire, damped down, and I read a commentary on slave and Creole cooking until I nodded off, dreaming of dirty rice. Missed my oysters this week, and I'll miss the big feed down at B's because I just don't feel like slogging through a foot of snow. I highly recommend buying a smoked jowl and turning the entire thing into cracklings and rendered salty, smokey pork fat. Excellent stuff. I crave animal fat in the winter. When the sun came out, the shadows of the trees on the snow was striking. Extremely high contrast. Before the day is over I need to dump hot ashes again, and I need to make one trip to the woodpile, sweep drifted snow off the wood and bring an armload inside. It's supposed to get into the forties tomorrow and we'll have another round of freeze/thaw, but I should be able to get into town early one morning. The library opens at nine, so if I do everything else first I can be home by nine-thirty, before the driveway thaws. Critical issues. I melt a couple of gallons of top snow, that I can strain and boil for drinking water, then melt another couple of gallons of wash water, put the bean soup back on to heat and make a pone of cornbread. Pretty much takes up my day. The birds are in the sumac and puffed against the cold. I'm puffed up myself, wearing several layers, but comfortable, reading, listening to a little Sunday NPR. The usual celebrity crap, and I pay no interest to that, but the occasional human interest story, like the piece about censorship today, attracts my attention. The very best advertising is being banned, consider the spread of printing, in other countries, when the Catholic Church banned certain books. There were three popes and the chain of command was somewhat muddled. They're all assholes, in it for the money, and that ring that everyone has to kiss. I have no idea how this kind of crap became the norm. I subscribe to a more basic notion, Robert Johnson, Come Into My Kitchen. Read more...

Zero Sum

Nothing to be gained. Napped, got back up about midnight to tend the fire, went outside to pee and it smelled like snow. Also, the deer moved through the yard this afternoon, eating ferns under the leaves, and the birds were all stuffing themselves with sumac seeds. Myself, I finished the last pone of cornbread, toasted, with marmalade, put the beans on to soak. These are old beans, five years or more, and they'll need to cook for hours. I'm prepared to offer that service, move my entire office to the island (a legal pad, a pen, and my drink) so that I can occasionally stir the beans and smell them. I might listen to a cello suite, some delta blues. Another nap, up to stoke the fire, bring in more large pieces of wood, starts snowing for real about ten. Lovely and quiet. I don't mind tracking in snow because the house needs the moisture, but it certainly is a mess. A last trip outside, walk the driveway. It's fairly brutal. I have to stop at the print shop on the way home and knock off the snow. I got the beans started, caramelized some onions, drained off the soaking water, chicken stock, the diced jowl, roasted peppers, brought it to a boil and pulled it off direct heat. Simmer all day, then skim off the pork dice, which floats to the top, and cook them down to cracklings, add them back and reserve enough fat to cook eggs for a week. By early afternoon I can no longer see the other side of the hollow, then it starts snowing harder, someplace between a blizzard and a white-out. Stoke up the stove and try to build some heat. Curl up with a book. My back-up position is to move my writing chair over next to the stove, read there, retreat to the mummy bag on the sofa for the occasional nap. The pot of beans are outside on the porch, under an over-turned milk crate, with a cast iron brick on top. Considering the six inches of new snow, I don't expect to be interrupted. As I still have electricity, I listen to some early blues, start another paragraph, drink smoked black tea. We're already at a Class Two Snow Emergency, don't drive unless you have to, and a Class Three certainly by tomorrow morning, when they shoot you on sight. I just dig in, no reason to go anywhere. The Latin word for hearth is focus. The word companion, is "to share bread with". I amuse myself with words. A cheap date. There's an extremely subtle sound of snow falling, it's difficult to describe, it most resembles the sound of fat on a griddle. Very fragile snowflakes dissolving. A blanket of snow already, I'd opened the back door, to go out and pee, but it was just too beautiful to disturb, so I peed in a coffee can. It's supposed to snow all night, not quite as cold, still, I wake to stoke the stove, and get up for a while. Surprised to have power, but there was very little wind; when I went to sleep the snow was falling straight down. The muffled sound seems like a hearing disorder. Acute Silence. Trip the breaker for the refrigerator and sit in the dark. Think about memory and the nature of reality for an hour or two, then decide to make a cup of coffee, make the transition from yesterday into today. Barely getting light and everything is blue, the blanket of snow, the rim of sky. I bring in the pot of beans and put them on the coolest part of the stove, make my foray outdoors, split a little kindling, rake out hot ashes. A great pot of beans, the jowl cracklings are wonderful. I actually found a French recipe that cooks beans the same way. I spent several hours reading about cooking large cuts of meat. South American recipes, festivals, weddings, and mostly simple directions: impale a large piece of meat on something, plant it in front of a fire, leaning away, collect the drippings and baste with them. Pretty basic cooking, I'm sure we were doing this 10,000 years ago. I want to get down to B's for the great pot roast feed tomorrow, but I dread the walk back up the hill just at dusk. Rule of thumb is that if I don't walk down the hill, I don't have to walk back up. I'd love the company, the conversation, the food; but returning to a cold house, after dark, does not appeal. I could spend the night at B's, hike up the morning after. If I stayed home, I could stay warm, but I lean toward conversation. Read more...

Incoming

Break in the snow, the precursor storm, just a couple of inches, Winter Storm Warning for Friday and Saturday. Two trips to the woodshed and I replace the kindling and starter sticks on the warming rack. Very dry pre-heated kindling is a real boon in the fire starting business. I let the fire go out again, not on purpose, and it takes until noon to get the house warmish again. I read my weekly Elmore Leonard and eat left-overs over by the stove, then tidy up a bit. The house is a mess. Picked up another Margaret Visser book on dining habits at the Goodwill, she's an academic, but it's interesting stuff. Most things were formalized at table, because there were knives present and an underlying sense of violence. Jana sent a couple of interesting recipes for the huge hunk of beef, but I'm leaning toward cooking it in the smoker with a fatty pork roast on the shelf above; still, I think I'll use the mole sauce she recommends, and several pounds of chilies. One of the great things about freezing and refrigeration is that you don't have to brine everything. A partial cure and a light smoke, and you can cut out a lot of the salt. Think about salt and history. I have to get this paragraph off today as they've warned, on the radio, that those of us out in the county WILL lose power and phone service. Which means they're expecting wet snow. Forecast now is for 18 to 24 inches, but as the ridge is 1,000 feet higher than town, I could expect more than that. Every hour I go outside and bring in another armload of the largest pieces of wood that will fit in the stove. I have to turn the radio off when they start talking about Sarah Palin in Donald Trump's cabinet. I still have left-overs, but I'm going to cook the pot of beans tomorrow. I've managed to forget to buy batteries but my headlamp is still working, I have candles, and an oil lamp with tricked-out mirrors. The power people must be expecting havoc, because they've brought in hundreds of extra repair men. It's twenty degrees now, but it's supposed to climb to thirty tomorrow, and they fear the mother of all ice-storms. I don't see how I could be any better prepared. I have a sink full of dirty dishes, that I plan to wash tomorrow, when I'll want to be near the stove anyway, and I need to wash out some underwear. Get out the winter boots, insulated Red-Wings, and water-proof the seams, make sure there's a walking stick by the door, oil my work-gloves. Haul water, chop wood; it's exhausting, to stay alive. Last night I ate dinner twice, crawled into my mummy bag but still woke up to stoke the fire, then again just at dawn. I needed to dump the ash bucket, which meant composting, so I made my morning coffee, and planned my strategy. I planned to curl up, in my bathrobe, with a wee dram and a good book. What makes a pearl? A piece of crap, every snowflake or raindrop. There's only so much water and it re-condenses as needed. Fog, and such. Read more...

Getting Started

Feeling stupid because of the cold. Got up in the night to stoke the stove, then over-slept this morning and had to start a new fire. Under ten degrees and everything takes forever. While the fire is starting I go outside for an armload of wood and it almost hurts to breathe, I split out the lay for tomorrow's fire and put the pieces on the warming rack of the stove. Hash and eggs for breakfast, then another trip to the woodshed. When I finish my minimal chores, I stop for a cup of tea and it's already after noon. Reading more food books, Wynkn de Word's Boke Of Kervynge (Book Of Carving), and Jim Harrison's essays on food. Move over to the island and start cooking. It takes me and hour and a half to make my comfort food casserole. Noodles, ground beef, roasted tomatoes, green chili's, and cheese. A pone of cornbread. Excellent and filling. Several tangents later, it's after dark and I needed to stir, wrapped in a blanket and reading all afternoon, so I dared a little walk. Even with a facemask my eyes were watering within a hundred yards, and the ground was frozen so hard that footing was awkward. I went back home and thought about a flashing problem that had been bothering me: how do you take a stovepipe through a sod roof? I doze off, and the cold wakes me, two in the morning, I catch the fire, go outside to pee. It's frigid. I need to stay up for a while, to tend the fire, so I get a wee dram and roll a smoke. My fingers don't work correctly, and rolling a smoke becomes a task, but I'm an old hand at this. I can roll a cigaret with one hand on horseback. You might screen your interns. Some potential bombers don't necessarily wear headgear. I only wear a fishing vest because it has a lot of pockets. It doesn't mean I'm a bad person. Not to mention that I rant about the ridge in my bathrobe. Forecast for serious snow, one to two feet, the driveway is clear, frozen solid, so I run into town, get a back-up, back-up bottle of whiskey and some fresh chilies. I'm planning a pot of beans, and I'd decided to mince the smoked jowl, cook the beans with that, onions, and the chilies, then lift out the jowl pieces, fry down to cracklings, and add them back to the beans. Well supplied, even if I can't get out for a couple of weeks. Stopped at the library, then the Goodwill Bookstore (several John D. McDonald) and then a book hanging from the mailbox when I got home, a history of flatware. About the Carvers Guild, I have to say, I knew little or nothing. The first fork was a serving fork, two tines, and it was used for holding a large chunk of meat, in the air, while carving into thin slices. It was very bad form to drop the piece of meat. Two tines were better than the point of a knife. The rest is history. Or fiction. Sometimes fiction is closer to the truth. Read more...

Realism

Felt like a character in a movie all day. Warm enough in the house to let the fire go out. Last time for days, projected highs in the teens, nights dipping to zero, so I wanted to get the stove cleaned out. Nice walk, identifying tracks and imagining scenarios. Just below freezing, so I walked with my mop-handle staff, and I had my small pack, with water, some trail-mix, magnifying glass, and the all important etha-foam pad that allows me to sit on frozen stumps without freezing my ass. I had my dozen oysters (16) and they were all large, so I steamed them in clam juice to open, chopped them, added some minced onion and bread crumbs, dampened them with strained cooking liquid, topped with just a bit of grated cheese, and ran them through a very hot oven. I had these with sweet gherkins, black olives, and saltine crackers, and let the record show that they were very good. I need to make the casserole and split kindling tomorrow. Spitting snow, temps are falling. The woods are bleak. If I wasn't in such a good mood I'd be depressed. Linda and Glenn call, after two weeks in Mexico, back in Minnesota where it was ten below. Thermal shock. I read another Lescroart novel, they're long, complex, and well written, then checked some facts in a piece I was editing, because they seemed suspect. The facts were correct, I try to stay close to the truth. I couldn't care more than I do. In the movie, our character, bent and withered like a Japanese poet, starts a small fire, to heat water for tea. Dung actually burns very hot, though quickly. Buffalo-chip fired pizza ovens don't seem like an alternative. Basho: usually hateful / yet the crow too / in this dawn snow. Elmore Leonard, George V. Higgens, where dialog drives the action. Read more...

Onion Powder

I think it was John Thorne, my reading tends to overlap. The stove was hot and I was reading at the island and decided to make an onion soup. What I remembered was cooking onions beyond being merely caramelized. In my largest cast iron skillet, over medium heat, a mixture of olive oil and butter, I do the standard onion treatment, which takes about forty minutes, then pull that skillet slightly off the heat, keep stirring until the moisture is completely gone. You end up, this takes a long time, with onions that dissolve on contact. Incredibly rich in sweetness. I use it to thicken the chicken broth for the second batch of caramelized onions that make up the body of the soup. On toast, in a bowl, with lots of shredded Gruyere. I think about doing this with mushrooms, the combination. In India, where it's more difficult to store root vegetables, this onion powder is made and stored in jars. I end up spending an entire afternoon making a bowl of soup. Got to town as soon as I could, and the driveway was fine going down, but I could tell it was going to be squirrely getting back up. Still I needed the trip, library and Kroger because serious cold and snowy weather coming Sunday. Back-up the back-ups. Got everything to make a noodle and ground meat casserole, onions, roasted tomatoes. With a pone of cornbread it'll will last for three days. Stopped at the museum, to use their heated bathroom, arranged lunch with TR, met him at the pub and had a beer. Kroger was packed, because of the coming weather, but I got in and out quickly since I just had a few items and everyone shoved me to the front of the line. Saw B (eventually you see everyone at Kroger) and said I'd stop by on my way home, which I did and we talked about how we might cure and cook the other very large pot roast; Scott's cooking the larger of the two a week from Sunday and I look forward to that, but B wants to do something different with the other one. I tell him I'll look into it, there must be some recipes/cures from Argentina. The driveway was a nightmare, I got two-thirds of the way up and got bogged down, back up and then power through a soft spot. I'm so relieved to get back on the ridge, with supplies, with whiskey and tobacco, that I almost broke into song. I got another smoked jowl, because they've proved so useful, and several 'bunches' of greens, a bunch is a mess, meaning a meal but I don't have any idea how this is actually quantified. I strip off the leaves, then slice the stems and braise them in butter, add some onions and celery, cook this for a hour, then broil cod fillets on top of it. I smear them with a mild mustard sauce. Read more...

Taking Care

When it gets this cold, below ten degrees, everything takes more time. I slept through the night, so the house was cold and I had to seriously work the stove to get back up to speed. Moving slowly and with great care. It's after two before I eat a bowl of stew. I need to get to town again before Sunday, when more snow (much) is forecast, so I spend some time compiling a list. Temps are supposed to rise through the night, so I might be able to get out and back in on Friday morning, when the driveway might be clear and frozen. One more trip to the woodshed should see me through the night. At four in the afternoon the house is decently warm and I have a great fire going. Finally settle down with a drink and read the latest Lee Child, which is fine reading. What I accomplished today was staying alive. The phone went out, it makes a little half-ring when it dies, so I don't know when I'll be able to send a paragraph. TR had called from the museum, before the phone died, wondering if I was still alive. Now that the phone is out and the driveway is impassable, I'm guaranteed complete solitude. Getting warmer all day, up to 25 by dark, and I can feel it in the house. Leftover beans and a grilled cheese for dinner. I'm tired, even though I haven't done anything, burning lots of calories and BTU's just to keep from freezing to death; I actually sleep more in winter than any other time of year. Semi-hibernation. Climb into my down bag with a headlamp and a decent novel. Tunnel out the next morning and start another fire. But it's not endless, it's only sixty days or less. I listen to some music from Africa, then some stuff from Japan. From my history with opera, I'm used to not understanding the text. I'd gotten up, to check the fire, went outside to pee, just at dawn, and it was above freezing, first time in days. I had left the radio on, which I don't often do, to listen to the late night NPR programming: "Afro-Pop", "Crossing Boundaries". I'm kind of interested, it's an amusement, a folly; I don't care about popular music, or popular culture for that matter. My major concern is entering this first of many freeze/thaw cycles and trying to time a trip to town. Mud is a fact of life. I have what I think of as The Mud Protocol, which is a very sensible approach to dealing with the shit you track in on your boots. Despite my best intentions I still track mud inside. I let it dry and sweep it up, then wipe the spot with a wet paper towel. 24 hours ago it was 8 degrees, at noon today it was 42, the snow all gone, and when I go out for a walk the world is a sloppy mess. Over at the head of the driveway I can see that Ryan and Kinsey have gotten in and out, so I figure I can do the same tomorrow. The phone was still out but in the late afternoon it burps, which means I'm on line again, so wherever I get with this paragraph I'll send it tonight. My boots were so caked with mud I had to clean the tread with a stick, then bring them next to the stove so they'll dry and I can bang off most of the detritus, clean them and give them a new coat of waterproofing. Next time I'm in town I'm going to the Payless Shoe Store and get a pair of L.L. Bean/Sorel knock-off, slip-on, felt lined, rubber bottomed boots. Eliminate that entire taking off your gloves to untie the shoelaces step. I have to double knot my shoelaces, and about one in ten times I can't untie them with my frozen fingers, so I end up walking inside anyway, to get the ice-pick, which is the weapon of choice for untying very tight laces. In survival mode, it's this mundane stuff that fills your time. It takes me ten minutes to get out of my boots, and by then there's a pool of water, and I'm irritated, because I hadn't bought the slip-on boots earlier. I have a couple of towels I use for cleaning up these messes, Goodwill towels, I use them a few times, dry them on a line behind the stove (this adds a great ambiance to the general 'feel' of the house) and then recycle them back to Goodwill. Read more...

Zero Visibility

White on white. Could tell from the nature of the stillness, when I woke before dawn, that it was snowing. When it gets light I still can't see. I'd let the fire go out (it was only 25 degrees and the house was warm) so I could dump ashes, but I had a new fire all set. The stove was still warm. Grits and eggs, a second cup of coffee. Can't see across the hollow. Decide to make a camper's beef stew, from reconstituted jerky, dried and canned vegetables. I'll make a pone of cornbread. Dry snow, the slightest breeze and it blows off branches in cascades. If a stronger wind comes along, the ground snow swirls into white-outs where you can't see ten feet. My goal for the day is to make two trips to the woodshed, beyond that, I'll read, and if the electricity holds, do some writing. I discover one last batch of dried mushrooms and add half of them to the stew, add a couple of reconstituted peppers, pull it over to the coolest part of the stove top and put it on a metal trivet to simmer for a couple of hours. Almost breaking light, which means the cloud cover isn't very thick, but it's supposed to move in again tonight, very cold and more snow. The woods become a strange place when every branch is snow covered, depth of field fails completely, and it's all so black and white. A tangle of sharp contrasts. Mid-afternoon and I still haven't gotten out to the woodshed. Sample the stew and smash some of the vegetables to thicken it, make a pone of cornbread in the eight inch skillet, my one cup of cornmeal recipe, which makes a thinner cake in a larger pan. It's snowing harder and the wind has kicked up, another complete white-out. There's a large pile of off-prints, I think B gave these to me, because of his paper problem, a large pile, maybe a thousand pages. When he's at the college, B prints out anything interesting, plate tectonics to recently translated fragments of Greek poems; high speed inter-net and free printing is one of the few perks of being an instructor. I reap benefit, second hand, and it's all news to me. The stew is quite good, in that simple, cold weather way, and I spend a pleasant evening, amused over a treatise I imagined, while reading off-prints and stoking the stove. "Gerunds Generally", which was essentially a fake academic paper and quite funny. A mental construct. I have files of useless information and I can put them together any way I want. A right you earn living close to the bone, left to your own devices. There is no nun left to rap my knuckles with a ruler. There should be, probably, but they couldn't get up the driveway. The last batch, frozen in disbelief, reported to their rector that I was beyond hope. I'm flattered. Later, a wee dram, a smoke, and I was thinking about mediation. The pope, a southern Baptist preacher, none of whom ever haul firewood, seem to operate on a different level. It's cold. Down bag and skull cap. We'll see about tomorrow. Read more...

Snow Day

Cold. Get a good fire going and leave the small oil-filled radiator in the back entry, then outside to get my blood flowing. Right about freezing at dawn then a steady decline, supposed to be ten degrees tomorrow morning so I'll need to get up in the night. Another phone call about the disappeared petty thief. The owner of the house which the thief family trashed called from Montreal. Wanted me to go down and take a look, but I told him I couldn't get out right now and that I wasn't going to walk. I had another long, convoluted, legal thriller by Lescroart to read, and yet another book on eating utensils. The bean soup is excellent, and I'll have to make another pone of cornbread later. Spitting snow when I go back outside, for the last time today, and select a couple of night-time logs. I have everything laid out, to build another fire, in case I sleep through. Muffled and quiet. It was the silence that woke me this morning. The power was out and it had snowed. I was in my down bag, so I was comfortable, but I knew I needed to build a fire. I laid there for an hour because it was so quiet. In survival mode sleep is episodic. I was extremely careful in my forays outside. Hostile territory. Even for a trip to the woodshed, I carry a bottle of water, a nip of single-malt, a power-bar, trail-mix, and some jerky. You never know. Safely back inside, I stoke up a big fire, with a gnarly hunk I have to load from the top. Should hold me for most of the night. Force of habit, I triple check everything before I settle in, get a drink, roll a smoke, wrap my feet in a stadium blanket. Survival is exhausting. Once I have my kit around me, I'm reasonably secure. And I'm good with this, settling into my lair. Kept a good fire going all night.10 degrees, colder and more snow tomorrow. Had to go out and get an armload of wood just at dawn and it was quite beautiful. Hoarfrost, snow; and the walking was incredibly loud. When I got back inside I couldn't stand listening to the news, so I put on some Miles Davis while I made hash and eggs, a toasted piece of cornbread with red-onion jam. Heated some water and washed a sink full of dishes, put away a few books as the piles had become dangerous, paid two of my four bills (can't actually mail them until I get off the ridge again), balanced my checkbook, and considered my next meal. Beans on toast with left-over hash probably. I've eaten so well, the last few days. Next time I get to town I'll collect the ingredients for a simple fish stew, and for that chorizo/kale soup. I need to get to the laundromat one more time, make sure I have paper towels and toilet paper. The wind picks up. Winter, bare trees, ridge-top, the wind can blow. I wish I'd built underground. I still might. I probably won't, but I could. If I could live underground, I could cut my expenses in half. I turn a profit now, just not going to town. If I lived under ground I could heat my house with a candle. Read more...

Know How

Having a mug of tea, lost in thought. Thinking about raising shallots next year because they've gotten so damned expensive. B and I passed on Mackletree, the last time I went out; I was coming in and he was going out, so, of course, we backed up and rolled down our windows. Scott and Jenny want to host the great pot roast dinner two weeks from Sunday, which is fine with me. I'd check my calendar but I don't have one. As long as I don't have to walk in and out. The final meal off the tenderloin, the hash, was very good. I start making a pocket before I flip it, then poach an egg in the center, with a few drops of sherry and a lid. I serve this with hot sauce, a piece of country toast and marmalade. It's very nice when the edges are crispy. This week's oysters are fantastic, the pick of the litter, and sixteen of them. An oyster stew tomorrow, then maybe a stuffing for veal birds. Might be the last fresh meal of the season, I could be eating canned or dried foodstuffs for six or eight weeks. I make a mac and cheese, with powered milk, that is quite good, especially if you're wet and cold. I save all of the liquid for cooking beans. I have to laugh, I'm so simple, merely a cigar, not even that, a can of snuff, a plug of tobacco might pull me astray. Looking for a place to spit. We hadn't had this conversation, probably because we don't talk about most things. We're so private. Even in the sanctuary. Mac mentioned Mad Tom and I had to reread some things, my namesakes. Mad, peeping, and terrific. Pthom. The Egyptian god of distraction. Almost went back to town, to talk with TR, but I didn't need anything, so I just called him at the museum, Saturday desk; ate left-overs, read an Elmore Leonard novel, read an interesting article about art conservation, made a late snack (an egg on polenta), and dozed off. Supposed to get cold again, with snow, so I need to spend an hour in the woodshed tomorrow, and dump the ashes from the stove. Bring in a couple of armloads of wood, start thinking in terms of beans on toast. Rain starts in again, sooner than I thought, and the temps are going straight down. Still, rain tomorrow morning, then changing over. Will certainly be a mess for a few days. Perfect conditions for mud, and the house is already a mess. I'd be ashamed but I'm not actually accountable, it's merely a life. Sawdust in the wind. I wouldn't trade it for anything. Read more...

Making Cracklings

I did get another smoked jowl, so I took off the skin, in prep for cooking a pot of beans, cut it into a dice and rendered the pieces. Cracklings for the next pone of cornbread. The pork fat is for cooking potatoes. The jowl is so lean, I'll eat it with the beans, so I lightly fry it, to render off some of the fat. Playing in the kitchen, made a nice wine/butter sauce for the left-overs. Barely saved enough for a breakfast hash. Need to replace several back-up items, eggs, whiskey, tobacco, and I need some fiction. Haven't been to town this week, so I need to go tomorrow, chance of snow Friday. When I get a favorable forecast, anytime in the next couple of weeks (favorable meaning that the house won't freeze completely) I'm going to get a night in a motel. Shower, bathe, watch TV and eat pizza. I was taking a sponge-bath, over by the stove, and realized I needed to scrub every inch of my body with an abrasive sponge and grow a new exterior layer, get a haircut, so it's easier to wash and uses less water, trim my beard down to something less than 'Wild Tom', and stop swearing so much in public. But the truth is, I only run into these motherfucking assholes when I go off the ridge, so that's when I swear mostly. I do swear at inanimate objects when I stub my toe, or when I damage some part of my body splitting wood. I'm terrible to my hands. I wear gloves, I'm careful, but I still smash fingers, get weird puncture wounds and scrapes. The injury on my right thumb, I have no idea where it came from. It's particularly awkward because I use that digit quite often. I often refer to myself as "that stupid son-of-a-bitch" in the kindest possible way. I can go for weeks not making a single mistake, then the hatchet I'm using to split kindling bounces off a hard spot and hits my hand, nothing broken, a bruise, the cost of doing business. But it hurts and it only happened because I diverted my attention. I don't even remember what I was thinking about, a particular bed of mussels, some oysters I'd seeded, something to do with the sea. I hit the back of my left thumb. I do this maybe once a year. Other favorite injuries include biting my tongue, and that pulled muscle in the lower back. If they still have Sea Scallops at Kroger, and they usually do, I'm going to saute them in butter and serve on a bed of endive and apples. The recipe sounded good. I'd never cooked endive before but it's wonderful. A great bed for whatever meat or fish. Egg noodles as a side, which are so easy to make and so damn good. I don't make desserts, except for a couple of Key-Lime pies a year, but I had to laugh, reading some dessert recipes in this new book. Some of them called for eight to fifteen egg yolks. Folded whipped egg whites. Spare me. A piece of cornbread and sorghum molasses is good enough. I just don't have a sweet tooth. I do admire the southern pecan pie, because it's such a caloric overload, and there was a pudding/cake thing I used to enjoy for breakfast in Boston. Opera, don't get me started. Got to town, spent some time at the library, then a beer at the pub, wandered around Kroger like a demented idiot, because they'd changed things again, and the things on my list weren't where they used to be. I got everything, I think, but it was a pain in the ass. I base my list on a clockwise rotation of the store and I'm easily confused. I can't find the crackers. Why would they hide the crackers? I had the guys in the liquor section laughing hysterically, and one of them, Jesse, walked out to my Jeep with me, a smoke break, so I rolled one and we talked about the addition he was adding to his home. One product of having no building inspector, is that anybody can build anything, and a lot of them don't know what they're doing. Jesse had some good questions about load-bearing walls and I told him I'd drop by and have a look. He'll buy me a bottle of whiskey, and even walk it in if necessary, in token payment for my advice. It's cool that I'm thrown these curve balls occasionally because I genuinely enjoy solving problems, I'm good at it, I love sitting with a drink and a cigaret thinking about a loading problem. Again, it's the ability to visualize, I don't know where it came from, it's just a thing I can do, see things in three-space. A latent ability honed by working with great designers of stage sets. Herbert and Helen, god, I worked with them for ten or twelve years, and they were both geniuses: Herbert could design anything and Helen could paint a peach you would reach for. Herbert was the only person I've ever known that could draw a perfect circle in a single stroke. I mean very close to perfect. This is a difficult thing to do. I tend to draw oblate spheroids. Read more...

At It

Interesting day. I started off thinking about zip codes. My mailing address is Blue Creek, Ohio, but I don't even remotely live in Blue Creek, it's a post office distinction, my mail comes out of Blue Creek. Zip (zone improvement plan) codes designate what the mail service dictates. I was pretty deep into thinking about this, how it was affected by various factors, when I heard a car. I could tell right away it was police, unmarked car, but those whip antennas. B had said he was surprised the constabulary hadn't talked with me about the petty thief down the road that's wanted for several different things, including selling some logs from the State Forest. It was a detective from the State Police, a nice guy, Alex, and while I made us a cup of coffee he looked around. He looked at the stairs for about ten minutes, and I told him that yes, I'd built them and Froggy Taylor had cut the wood. Then he said he'd never seen so many books in his life, he admired the cookstove, actually, he seemed to notice everything. Down to business, he sat on the sofa and I sat in my desk chair. He wanted to know what I knew about John and family, so I told him what I knew, which was not much except that he'd probably robbed me, among his other minor felonies. Petty thieves that steal from the poor are in the innermost circle of hell. Alex wanted to know what I did, or had done, so I gave him the short version. We had a wee dram and talked about crime out in the country. He said he'd like to come out socially and bring his wife. I invited them to dinner, bring a bottle of Irish, give me a call first, Sundays are good for me. I've had the stove cranking and I'll need to let it cool down a bit, to dump ashes and coals. I have a procedure for this, then I stoke the fire again and start another cycle. Below ten degrees I drop any pretense of doing anything other than tending the fire, eating, and sleeping in shifts. I read, of course, and write when I have electricity. When I read and write, I don't feel the cold, it just doesn't matter, later, my toes and fingers are frozen, but I might have two perfectly fine sentences with one questionable comma. My kind of town. Cold, seriously frigid. I went out just before dark and got another armload of wood. Figure to nap early and get up around two to stoke the fire. I nuked a large russet potato, then fried slices in butter. I dampened the tenderloin with a molasses and balsamic glaze and rolled it in crushed peppers. The oven is very hot and I have to open the door a bit to keep it at 450 degrees. Cast iron skillet with peanut oil (high smoke point) and I have the pan of potatoes, topped with Gorgonzola and chopped black olives ready to go. Twenty minutes for the meat, and while it rests melt the cheese on the potatoes. A simple pan gravy, wine, drippings, butter at the end. Excellent. The potatoes are amazing. Surprisingly warm near the stove, where I eat at the island. Reading an interesting book, the history of timekeeping. Keeping track. I know I want to cook the tenderloin for twenty minutes (a completely artificial construct) and I can use sand in an hour-glass or a digital timer to remind me of duration,, so I don't burn the roast; but the bastion of my time-factoring is sun-rise and sun-set, both of which change every day. At some point (it was train schedules) we became compulsive about this. Plugging a 'regular' work-day into what was actually an ever-changing field. Sidebar into Daylight Savings Time. My beach ball globe has time zones. New Year's Eve, I had the radio on for a while, and it was already then, now. There are places in the world where you could live in one day and work in another. I'm sure someone is making money off that. I'll get another great meal out of this, then a hash, which will certainly be fine. The charred crust of this, molasses, balsamic, and peppers, is incredible. Read more...

Cooking Plans

Just batch it tonight, a can of soup and a grilled cheese, but I'm going to cook tomorrow as it's supposed to get down to ten degrees, so the stove will be hot. Ruled by my lifestyle. I went through a great many pork recipes, in the book from Barnhart's mother, but I'd already decided to cook the whole tenderloin so I could have the left-overs with beans. Fried potato rounds finished in the hot oven with Gorgonzola cheese. Hot tea, curled up with a book (Lescroart), the stove making small noises. Drift zone. I have the large new book opened at the island, and whenever I go over to feed the stove I stop and look at a few pages, read the prep. Most of them are too complex for my rustic abilities, but a wealth of information about combinations. I pretty much spent the entire day thinking about combinations. The word itself, and then the connotations. I didn't write anything, didn't edit anything, until late in the afternoon; I'd spent the day rubbing small quantities of dried herbs between my fingers, and smelling them. I could taste them, paired with the tenderloin, which I actually plan to cook in a green chili sauce, with rosemary. Good timing on the fire, as it is pumping maximum heat just when it needs to. I've got a couple of gnarly pieces of wood for overnight, and I've set out a complete kit to start another fire if I should happen to sleep through the night. Quite cold and getting colder so I suited-up and went out for a wheel-barrow load of firewood. When I got back inside, it was so warm, the air perfumed with wood-smoke and bacon fat, that I immediately made a pone of cornbread. In my experience it's never a mistake to make hot bread. In the interest of which, I'd read several different places about cooking cornbread on a bayonet over an open fire. Civil War journals. Decided I needed to try that, but I didn't have a bayonet. I did have a garden trowel, a good one, thick steel, missing its handle, which I tricked out with a green hickory stick, and, in fact, if you make a thick batter and smear it on with a wooden spatula, on a pre-heated and oiled trowel, you can make an acceptable corn cake. They were probably cooking left-over grits on their bayonets. It's pretty much the same thing. I put on a batch of grits, in the baby crock pot, for breakfast tomorrow; coldest night of the season, and the house is warm, listening to Miles Davis, crumbled cornbread with cracklings in a mug of warm milk. Life is good. Right on time, having drunk a glass of water before I napped, I woke up at two in the morning, peed off the deck, and it is frigid cold, a little less than ten degrees, I catch the fire and put on a couple of logs. Life is so much nicer if your cave is warm. I stay up for a while, get a wee dram and roll a smoke; the silence is like a blanket. I have a list, I'll get out, sometime soon, it's a dry wind now, sublimating the snow; I'm so comfortable I beg the question, whatever the question was. Read more...

To Scale

Ten degrees of frost and falling. When I go out to pee the ground is solid, which is a good thing, because I'd been tracking mud inside for several days. The house is dry (and quite warm) so I bring in some wood to give off surface moisture, then mop the entry. I always have a pot of water on the stove, a three gallon soup pot, so I have hot water on demand, which I consider a great luxury, and eventually, even on the coolest surface of the cookstove, it begins to steam. No mold on the books, which is my ultimate test. I'd brought home a couple of firewood rounds, a red maple that's adapted to what we might call a Water Maple, it's not great wood, it makes a lot of ash, but it warms one of those border-line nights, when you might just be reading a book. In my recent Goodwill haul there is a Coca Cola cookbook that I find absolutely hysterical. I seem to remember my Mom glazing a baked ham with it. Also it's very good for getting dead bugs off a windshield. I refrain from running out and buying a can, having gone years without drinking a soda. The recipe for brisket is telling: a pouch of Lipton Onion Soup, a jar of chili sauce, a can of coke, cook at 325 degrees for three hours. Is that not elegant? Glad I picked up the tenderloin as there's snow in the forecast, late tonight and tomorrow, with temps down into the teens. I need to carry in a few arm-loads of wood. Forgot to buy a snow-shovel. For years I've used a square of marine plywood bolted to an old scythe handle, but it died last March, and I keep forgetting to buy a replacement. I could trick something out, with a piece of metal roofing and a mop handle, but Chuck, at the hardware store, swears by the new, light-weight, durable plastic model. I'm tough on tools, but he says this one would last for several years, even with abuse. Found my circuit tester quite by accident today. I'd been looking for it the past year and today I was rummaging through some tools, looking for my speed-square, and there it was. Maybe now I can repair the back porch light. I've got a great new fixture, a double spot, and I can direct one of them on the compost pile. Stage lighting, in effect. Enough watts to disorient any intruder, so I could beat them with a stick of firewood, or a bronze fire-hose nozzle, or the self-handled stone hammer I keep close at hand. I was laughing out loud about some of the Coca-Cola recipes, and caught myself having too much fun, as a quasi-academic I should be above clapping my hands and shouting 'Jesus', my team in a bar-game, but I'm actually only good on stuff that happened before 1911. Light snow and cold. I've got a piss-pot inside, but I like to go outside, taste the air, breathe deep, at least until everything gets slick with ice. Low-land flooding; the bottoms, will be sheets of ice. The Mississippi flooding means the Ohio slows down and it floods. The normal floods are usually in the spring, floods are normal, but the big floods are usually winter events, when the ground is frozen and there's no place for the water to go. I'm letting the fire go out, so I can clean ashes and the smoke chase; and I'll bring in some more wood. I have a lot of food, coffee and tea, whiskey and tobacco, I just have to watch my step. Read more...

Not That

Bobcat screech just before midnight so I got up and stoked the fire. I might have gone back to sleep, but the dog and cat routine at the compost pile had gotten loud. Put on an over-shirt and got a couple of marbles out of the jar. All I can see is eyes in the night, but you can estimate the contour of a body. I don't want of oversell myself, but at thirty feet I'm deadly accurate with a Wrist-Rocket. I found a steel ball-bearing in my pocket that I'd found in the parking lot at Kroger and decided to shoot the alpha male of the dog-pack on the ass. I can reload and shoot a marble from my pocket in under five seconds, so I might well, in the confusion, get off another shot. They don't stand a chance. The cat has seen me in operation before, she backs off a few feet and stays attentive, and when the dogs are gone, goes back to rooting around in the compost. In the meantime the new year rolls over, just a way of marking time, to know when the elk ford the river or when the salmon struggle upstream. Make a note on your cave-wall. I don't remember a single argument in the past year. I just walk away. I used to argue, I don't anymore. Rather than start a fire right away, as soon as it's light I go out and work on fire wood, then go for a walk, still examining oak galls, which seem to come in an almost infinite number of forms. I need to read up on oak galls. Cut my thumb, splitting one, and have to go home to flush the wound and tape it up. My hands are generally quite dirty. Perfect timing on starting a fire, it didn't get above freezing all day and then the temps starting dropping, by which time I had a nice fire, burning odds and ends from the woodshed. I didn't want nor need to max out the stove, I just needed to cook a pone of cornbread. A hoe-cake, on top of the stove, because I didn't need to heat the oven to 450 degrees, the house is warm enough. Veal is not veal anymore, but quite a lot of young beef hits the market at this time of year sold as veal. Better profit margin to sell and not winter-over. Same with lamb. A veal or lamb stew would be good. Some new potatoes and baby carrots. Smash some of the vegetables to thicken the broth. When stew gets thick enough, I have it on toast, or on a toasted slice of cornbread. I'm blessed, actually, because I don't need much. Smoked meat I hang from the ceiling and dried beans. A few cheap books from the Goodwill. The smell of neat's foot oil (where does the word 'neat' come from?) either tack or a baseball mitt, leather, the smell of that. I promised myself some clear sailing. I had to go get the mail, expecting my bills, so I went to town, the library and Kroger, bought more Irish whiskey and a pork tenderloin. I plan to pound out rounds and stuff them with crab-cakes. I bought several pounds of greens and another smoked jowl, meals ahead. Hard freeze last night so I went to town early and got back home before the driveway had completely thawed. Turned on the radio and started a fire, had to turn the radio off because they were doing all of that year end crap, and once the fire was secure, settled in my chair with a mug of tea and a John Lescroart novel. A good fire, a glass of whiskey, a decent novel, really, is heaven to me. Hours later I cook a veal loin chop and steam a sweet potato, with a butter sauce, salt and pepper, high on the hog. Read more...