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.