Foodstuffs

Rain all day. Not many, but a few leaves drift down. I collect water, read various accounts of the supplies stocked on expeditions. Always a couple of staples, beans and rice, beans and corn, nearly always beans; Sir Francis was a vegetarian which complicated his larder, he raised sprouts and baked his own whole wheat bread. Everyone carried chocolate, dried or tinned fruit, sea biscuits or crackers of some type. Now that I know I can keep a couple of cured jowls for the entire winter, I know I can always have a good pot of pintos and corn bread. Ten cans of baked beans, ten cans of tuna (in oil, I need the fat), ten cans of sardines, and ten cans of corned beef hash, all of which I like just fine on a left-over piece of cornbread. In the small freezer, over the small fridge, I keep a couple of pork tenderloins, several pounds of bacon, and some oddment, frog legs or tripe, and I have the stew that I can make from canned vegetables and jerky, and I do cook fresh meals, fish and shellfish, when I can get out. As I make a list, it looks pretty good to me. I have ten volumes of Thoreau to read, and I'll stock a case of whiskey and a case of wine. I'd like to get a printer before winter, if I can find one that'll work with Old Black Dell. I like to read hard copy. I was reading back in a file I keep, actually AOL keeps it, A Year In Paragraphs, but I need to see the 365 pages, sans headers and footers, printed on paper. Since I write single-spaced it might go on a bit beyond that. Also I'd like to see the Janitor College stuff printed out. It's funny work, I never would have imagined I'd write that, I'd be much more likely to write a history of the banded earthworm, or cracklings, or the very idea that there could be left-over oysters. The Peterson Oyster bed was an out-wash channel from the last glaciation, all that melting water, a Vineyard Fiord, and I could collect a bushel of oysters in 15 minutes. I collected four bushels and slow cooked ribs, Marilyn made bread and cooked a vast array of vegetables, for a large crowd, twenty maybe. I have no idea where anyone slept, the next morning I remember making vats of coffee and soft-scrambled eggs and sending people back, to make their ferry. The bread we were making then could serve as a model, nut meats and whole wheat and enough potato to hold things together, it didn't rise much, but it kept very well. Two loaves a week, and cornbread every other night. What I think of as the good life.