Nothing Obvious

I love the texture of morels, the mouth feel, and I like to stuff them, with crab meat and bread crumbs, enough cheese to hold things together, also a thick stew, chicken broth and caramelized onion, that I love for its extravagance, and I do a risotto with them that is sublime. Quick trip to town, a couple of perfume samples in the mail, two New Yorkers. I needed more butter. 70 degrees when it started raining again, I'd been to town and back, I'd collected enough morels for tomorrow, eaten very well, and settled in. That world, out there, doesn't interest me much. The best the new scents was Black (Bulgari) which is one of the best perfumes I've ever smelled. Later, I needed a snack, so I'd sautéed some sliced morels in salted butter, on toast, with an egg, and the smell of mushroom, browned butter and shallots. Shallots are perfect with morels, I find garlic to be too much, onions, also, too aggressive, but shallots are just right. I need to raise shallots as they are so god-damned expensive, but the smell, I thought, might be a nice masculine scent, mushrooms and a nice animalistic (civet?) top-note drying into a leathery musk. Bacon in the background. When it started raining hard, I shut down everything. All night long, with varying intensity, from patter to kettle drum. I got up, around three, made a cup of tea, sat in the dark, and remembered other storms. When the early morning news came on the radio, it was all about flooding and road closures, a Level Two flood alert, stay off the roads. Perfect. I'm prone to picking up odd books at the library sales, so I spent the day reading about killing man-eating tigers in India. These books, and there are many of them, British Service Officers always wrote their memoirs, are actually interesting to read. Bored to death, stationed in Borneo, some of them became decent observers. Identifying specific animals by their paw prints. Identifying certain plants. I love this stuff. My sister called and Mom is dying, we talk for a long time. Sis says there's no reason for me to come down, my brother and nephew are there, in from California, and she knows I deal with grief my own way. Physically, the trip would be too much for me, and I can barely imagine the emotional components, so I bite my tongue and decide to just stay on the ridge. Claim ignorance. The secret to a great macaroni salad is plain yogurt, you need that bite. Read more...

Staying Home

Rain on the roof, I don't have to be anywhere, I don't have to talk to anyone. A perfect day to examine my failures. Stare out at the middle distance and remember. It's certainly true that I'm lucky to be alive. That world, out there, is dangerous, falling debris, drunk drivers, and the occasional shifting of the earth. At the first sign of conflict, I retreat. Outside, for the air, the frogs, of course, and the bugs; there's a bird I haven't heard before, a high-pitched squeak, and a mocking bird that calls everything into question. When it starts raining again I have to go inside, the rain is so cold it sends goose-bumps up my arm. A fine day, examining the food inventory for a man-of-war, then frying some potatoes. Officers ate off plates, with proper implements; before the mast, everyone had their own wooden bowl and spoon. I took my lunch from home, during most of my schooling, a piece of cornbread, some leftovers, a couple of pieces of fried salt-pork, but I liked the crap they served in the cafeteria, I'd never had it before, chicken pot pie? tuna casserole? In Junior High, Key West, we had turtle burgers on Thursday. Decades later, I was making a nice turtle soup in Mississippi adapted from Marjorie Rawlings' recipe. There's a learning curve in there somewhere. I was thinking about a needle and thread, to stitch together the covering for a bone framed hut on the steppes of Russia. The needle was probably bone, the thread was probably gut, and the seam was probably water-proofed with pitch. Naval stores, I love that, a large and open set. Useful glues and sealants. Doping fabric. Wearing oilskins and wellies. Something I read yesterday, a quote by some movie executive saying that he knew Doris Day before she was a virgin makes he laugh again remembering it today. I needed to go to town, but I was out early and found the first morels of the year. Came immediately back indoors and had them sauteed in butter, on toast with an egg on top. I couldn't resist opening the last bottle of Frank's Family Farm's chardonnay, which, for a white wine, I found to be absolutely beautiful. Naturally, the trip to town was postponed (I need to study that word) and I went right back out and collected enough mushrooms for an omelet tomorrow. I left the rest to fill out for a day or two, praying that the damned turkeys don't find them. This year, I swear, I'll kill a turkey if they get into my patch again, and make it into a country pate with the mushrooms. It would be a magnificent pate, and costly for almost anyone other than me. A turkey, a pound of morels, half a pound of butter, pistachios, brandy, a pound of chicken livers. I don't have a decent scale, so I've never figured the numbers closely, but I end up with four or five pounds of product and I can compute what it costs me. If I added in labor, especially the clean-up, no one could afford this stuff. I can only afford it because I live in a cave and don't keep track of time, which allows some freedom of movement, also, of course, the turkey and morels are free. JC called, knowing my penchant for mushrooms, with a recipe she'd heard on the radio, Linda and Joel will call, keeping me updated on the cost of morels in Atlanta and St. Paul, prices I can only barely believe. I'm fairly obsessive, especially in the spring, coming out of hibernation: morels, wild asparagus, cat-tail shoots, and I use a lot of butter. Old house sites are almost always defined by beds of daffodils, there is almost always a feral orchard, and morels favor the roots of apple trees. Off to the traces. Read more...

Frostling

Any fruit or bud injured by the cold is a frostling. Nice word. D called, with the agriculture report, and we talked about greenhouse construction. In Mississippi I listened to the farmer's report on the radio in the morning while I had breakfast (I ate large breakfasts then), Marilyn would be out milking, and after Samara was born, I'd get her up and feed her milk her Mom had expressed for the occasion, and consider which of the chores I'd do first. More fencing, change some gates around, so that we could direct animals into certain places. Reclaiming an overgrown farm is an interesting project. We were bartering our excess for whatever we needed, and I was usually building a barn or a house for someone, to provide some cash. A satisfying and extremely physical life. I'd put on some oats to cook, in the little crock pot, and the house smelled wonderful; when I got up to pee, about 4 AM, I decided to have a bowl of the oats, with butter and maple syrup. A bit chilly, so I turn on my electric lap robe and settle in to watch the dawn. Basho:

Slowly spring
is taking shape:
moon and plum

In and out of town fairly quickly, and feeling a little flush, bought a couple of treats, pistachio nuts, some frozen egg-rolls that D had said were quite good, a bottle of zinfandel. Indulgence. Stopped at the pub for a pint and there was a new waitress. She was a bit bewildered that the entire staff knew me and stopped to chat. I caught enough ESPN, without sound, to see who was in the sweet sixteen. Took my leave and drove home the long way around. Coming up the creek, right now, is spectacular, all the various plants at slightly different stages of development. Small birds peck at the buds, to release the sugars, the bats are back. I stopped at the ford and drove back and forth through the shallow water to clean off the road-salt, a spring ritual. The ford is a beautiful place, a shelf of dark gray shale, that breaks into a couple of lovely water-falls down stream. The creek is wide and shallow, the banks are dense with undergrowth, I always stop, in the middle, and smoke a cigaret, just the sound of flowing water. The closer you listen, the more there is, bugs, birds, and the tail-end of a coal-train in Kentucky. Read more...

On Cooking

I'm not a purist but my cooking does follow a certain seasonal drift. More a product of economics and method than convenience. Case in point, I no longer raise acorn squash or pumpkins, because I get them for free from the various fall displays. They call me, to haul away vegetables before they rot; rotten fruit and vegetables are a pain in the ass. I gardened on the ridge (in raised beds) until the deer ate everything for two years in a row, now I frequent the Farmer's Market, during season, which is actually less expensive, and I get some socializing to boot. If I need to propagate a particular seed, Ronnie will plant me a row. In my current heirloom collection are two pea-beans that I've never seen anywhere. Both, I think, are African, and I've kept them for thirty years. Any given market day (they fold-up shop at noon) I'll be given enough tomatoes to eat several tomato sandwiches and make a sauce for later. And Ronnie grows sweet potatoes. The word potato comes from the Quechua (Incan) papa, more or less the staff of life, where you couldn't grow anything else. They invented freeze-drying 5,000 years ago, discovering that potatoes left out to freeze at night, then smashed and dried in the noon-day sun would keep very well, could be ground to make bread. Starch and sugar. I'd made a note to try and make sense of that. I make a nice potato bread, using the lees of fermentation as the yeast, not a loaf you'd want to take to a future mother-in-law, but a bread I find useful for sopping the corners of a skillet. I use trenchers at most of my dinners, swirling the last piece of bread to gather the last bit of goodness, and I'm sure I look like the hillbilly I actually am. Where I was raised it was perfectly acceptable to use your fingers to use the last bit of biscuit to sop the last of the gravy. I was reading about table manners and got side-tracked by an interesting article, Ketchup And The Collective Unconscious, which is mostly about flavoring bland food. Read a history of the hamburger, another essay on ketchup, some Roman recipes. Split some kindling, examined some buds. The crows were giving me a raft of shit, just being raucous for the hell of it, so I gave them a couple of mice. I wanted a break from stew, and Jerome had brought me these incredible Moroccan sardines, a six pack from Costco; fried some salt-pork, minced it, rough chop the sardines (ingredients are fish, olive oil, and salt), into the pork fat, serve on noddles. If there had been any left-over, I would have had it for breakfast tomorrow, with eggs. I need to study the whole world of egg substitutes, and dried eggs, egg preservation in general, not because I want a substitute, but because I might not be able to get out and I want/need them for cornbread and morel omelets.

New buds, Verbena,
and small birds pecking
at the sweet dark core
Read more...

Scroggy Hollows

Spring, at last, comes in with a cold rain. I can't listen to the Trump news, so between showers I sit out on the back deck and listen to the frogs fuck. I made a small casserole, from the leftover mussels, buttered a small dish, a layer of mussels, breadcrumbs, and the strained liquid, served on top of the leftover smashed potatoes. Scroggy was a pet word of Sir Walter Scott, for tangled underbrush. The local peaches and plums are all lost, D called, with an agricultural update, but the apples seem to be fine, unless we get another freeze. The pent and flow of water jumped the grader ditch and the driveway is a mess, the ruts washed out, in several places the outer rut has broken through, carrying roadbed into the hollow. Decision time, as to whether I pay for a quick fix, or pay a few thousand dollars for a serious upgrade. I have to think about that, and in the meantime I use four-wheel low more than I ever have in my life. Batty Tom was one of the nine bells in the wonderful book, The Nine Tailors, by Dorothy Sayers, and I'm feeling increasingly like Batty Tom, or Tom a' Bedlam, or Peeping Tom. In the afternoon I made a beef stew, and because I don't know how many more times I'll have a fully heated stove, I manage to take hours. Dice the meat (a flank steak) brown it in pork fat, caramelize onions and red peppers, roast potatoes and turnips and carrots, a broth of chicken stock, in which I dissolve a couple anchovies and add a dollop of tomato paste. Mix it all together, pull it off the heat, and let it simmer, over night, in the waning heat of the stove. I do this with lamb too. The daffadils and the crocuses are lovely, suddenly color after months of black and white, and the stew is a grace note. Life is good: I have dry wood inside, I have a pot of food, books, tobacco, a bottle of single-malt, the moon rising above the ridge. Who could want for anything more? Read more...

Dufus Redux

Thinking about that boundary between want and need. I have an internal argument about comfort, yes, I would like a thermostat, yes, I would like hot running water, but they aren't actually necessary. I wanted to go to town, I always enjoy talking with the staff at the pub after St. Patrick's Day. The day of the year for them, long hours and good tips, and there are always a few good stories. Too many people and the music was loud, so I just went to Kroger and got what I needed. Plus a three-pound mesh bag of mussels, a bottle of white wine, and a loaf of French bread to make garlic toast. St. Patrick, an immigrant, taught faith and love; but there are no snakes in Ireland because it was completely glaciated. Coming home, along the river, I was struck with how the hollows are outwash channels. The scale of it, the amount of water from melting glaciers. When I finally do get home, after a slow trip up the creek, I make a side dish of smashed potatoes and steam the mussels in wine. A transport of tastes. I love shellfish, and during the 12 or 13 years on the Cape and Vineyard I harvested all I wanted for free. Site-specific diet. When Marilyn and I moved to Mississippi, we traded seafood for the whole range of dairy and game, plus a world-class garden and the best pork I've ever eaten. Pigs raised on whey, peanuts, and sweet potatoes. Peanuts and sweet potatoes both make great high protein hay that we fed to the goats. Later, in Colorado, we bartered butter and cheese, and made part of our living from selling "first" milk to people raising exotic animals. Since we were the only suppliers in the area we could charge whatever we wanted, ditto with the fresh goat cheese and an ice-cream that was 24% butterfat. Sometimes I almost miss those days, but it was so much work. After the girls were born, I'd build a house a year, so we'd have some actual money, to buy flour and coffee, and work the farm or ranch, dig post holes, string wire, burn the horns off goats and castrate useless males. Read more...

Night Noise

Something four-legged walking in the frozen leaves. Probably the bob-cat. I was sitting in the dark, thinking about an attachment problem, and there was a noise outside. A finite number of critters it could be, so I listen closely for a few minutes, then flip on the outside floods and catch the cat, a deer in the head-lamps, for a couple of seconds before it slinks away. It's a male, I think, in beautiful winter coat, a female would be pendulous, this time of year. Within a couple of acres I know where he lives, that gusset of land, a triangle, between the driveway and the ridge, bordered, at its base, by the power-line easement. My wildlife refuge and ginseng farm. It's two or three acres, the boundaries are so crooked it's hard to tell, either a very large or a very small space. It's densely populated because I don't let anyone roam around in there, and it provides me with a great deal of entertainment. The last time someone asked me what I did with my time, I asked them if they'd ever watched a fox eat an apple. The natural world, books, my habit of writing, cooking and eating, take up most of my time; certainly, if I had a TV and cable (which I can't afford) I'd watch cooking shows, soccer games, the history channel; also, implication is, I'd have high-speed internet, and I could reference things more quickly. Which is handy, but not necessary. More snow, I knew this was coming, I could tell from the ring around the moon. St. Patrick's Day starts with snow, then sleet, then rain, ground fog in the trees. A quiet day with no wind. A long slow breakfast, hash, shirred eggs, and toast; coffee at my desk while I finish reading some book reviews. Late afternoon it gets dark early and rains harder, and I just retreat into my nest; a little thunder so I save everything, but I stay open in my writing program. Yesterday and today I find I'm reading about people I've never heard of, I don't even know what they do. One thing is that they make way too much money, a pristine 1938 comic, first appearance of Superman, went for 3 plus million, a Paul Revere personal bell, to call a servant, you can't imagine. It's sounding serious, I'd better go. Read more...

Just Rewards

The devil is in the contents. The moon is large, just on the wane, and quite by accident, the orientation of the house and the location of the windows allows me to see it through almost the complete swing. Reading Thoreau, and he's such an opinionated dandy, the pencil business, living on Emerson's land for free, family dinner on Sunday, and the maid did his laundry, but his absolute love of nature is a wonderful thing. Passion, I think is key, B's reading another biography of Grant, and he gave me a ten minute compressed history that was brilliant. Snow clouds move in, a haze around the sun, and the forecast is for rain (it's 35 degrees) turning to snow tonight, then again tomorrow. Pleased that I followed my own advice and went to town Saturday. I made a nice onion soup, because I needed to use up a bag of onions that were beginning to sprout. The sprouts are fine to eat, I use them like scallions in stir-fry, but I'd thought about onion soup, on toast, with grated cheese, and made a double serving, After an hour tramping around outside, it was very good, with toasted cornbread slathered in butter. A good fire in the stove, this batch of white oak split butts burn like coal, and the house is warm when the cold rains start. And it is a cold rain, almost solid, a nascent ice storm, so I gather my kit within arm's reach of my desk, and settle in with a good book, several good books, actually, stacked in a new pile, but I'm currently reading a history of the potato. There's some light fiction in the pile, Dad's collection of Nero Wolfe novels, some noir crap, a few baseball books. I finish eating the apple pie and think about what I might eat tomorrow. Sausage with peppers and onions on egg noodles. It's supposed to be cold for several days, so I think about starting a soup, or another pot of beans and rice. When the wind starts moaning and the rain has turned to sleet and snow, I close down, wrap in a blanket, and listen to ice pellets hit the metal roof. I have to get up and stoke the stove, just before dawn, and I can see there's a covering of snow. Later, as dawn progresses, the landscape is beautiful. Tree snow in waves. A small amount of green, visible against the white, and I don't know what bush it is. I tie a strip of plastic on one of them, so I can ask B next time he's up. The young leaves haven't been killed by the cold, and there are dozens of other buds in various stages. Evolved for survival. You have to admire that. I made a bean soup, leave it on a trivet, off the heat, to barely simmer all night. Read more...

Not Signed-On

The path is obvious if you look closely. One spring in Colorado there was rain and the desert erupted in flowers. The mesa behind the house, the beginning of the Uncompahgre plateau, was right out the back door, and I could achieve the top following deer trails. I have to laugh, remembering myself then. Somewhat more stupid than I am now, but I still follow game trails, just to see where they lead. The desert in flower is an amazing sight. Twice, that I remember vividly, once in western Colorado and once in Utah, I was completely overwhelmed. I got to town, though I had to overcome enormous inertia to leave the house, and I'm glad I did because the remainder bins at Kroger were full. I actually bought an apple pie because it was so lovely and cheap. I love apple pie for breakfast. Also some sausages, some potato salad, and a few more of the breakfast burritos that my daughter said were fine. On the way home I stopped at B's for a cup of coffee and conversation, he made an argument that I should just stay on the ridge, improve the driveway, upgrade the water system, hire help when needed. It's a solid argument, because I don't want to move, the ridge is sublime, all the aspects of nature. Down along the river there's a definite blush of green. Still, it's cold in the house when I get home, so I build a fire and use the electric lap-robe. JC had send a review of a new book on cannibalism that I want to read and B passed along London Reviews, plus loaned me about 150 pages of Stephen Ellis's work. Stephen is one of the finest writers in the language. Loose pages, with cover and back boards and a big paper-clamp holding them together. I read a fair number of manuscripts, my own included, and I use a shallow cardboard box that holds two piles, but I have to have my kit around me, some snacks, maybe a nip bottle of whiskey, fill the tobacco pouch and check the papers, stoke the fire, then I can get down to business. Sometimes I kill the breaker on the fridge and unplug the phone. Tonight, down in the teens, no wind, it's extremely quiet. The house is buttoned-up. I read Stephen for several hours. Read more...

Weeping Willows

Green, I swear to god, those willows on the south side of the river road. So elegant. I did the yearly rake of certain spots, just to shove aside leaves from a few places where I expect morels. Walked down the logging road, examining signs of spring. One thing I notice is the color change, the various pinks that emerge. It's surprising to examine a square yard closely. Under the leaves (it would be interesting to monitor temperatures above and below the leaves) there are dozens of shoots of various plants. They're all sweet. Sugar is the anti-freeze. A side-bar is that when I try to be completely transparent I become more opaque. A product of learning the jargon of a particular discipline, or the patois of a certain region. I had just been thinking about TR (I knew it was Spring Break) when he called. Coming out tomorrow to record. I spent a few hours reading over some things, trying to find the natural voice. It's easiest to find if I'm sitting in my chair, with a drink and a cigaret. I gave a nice reading at Penn Erie standing, but I generally read better sitting, with a drink, most places you can't smoke. Stopping for a sip or a toke is like adding punctuation. Extends the moment. A portage to the next body of water. When Ry Cooder plays Bach the devil is in retreat. I mention that because I took a nap and woke up hungry, and I usually turn on the radio to see what late night treasures I might hear, and it was Cooder, playing some blistering blues. Bless my good luck. TR arrived, loaded with freight and equipment, water, booze, fruit, and high tech recording gear. Sets up, I get a drink, roll a smoke, and we record for a few hours. First thing TR says is that he can't believe how quiet it is, perfect for his purposes. A technical wizard, he sets everything up so I can sit in my chair, have a drink and a smoke while we work. We redo a couple of things. He seems satisfied, but we arrange to do another session in Barnhart's studio. He has a fairly clear idea of what he wants (it's his Master's Degree after all) and I'm not invested, except for wanting to speak cleanly. We chat, while I roll another smoke between pieces, then I read some pages he wants me to read. I stick in a couple of pages I like. It's an enjoyable experience, being taken seriously. Heavy rain moving in, I'd better go. After TR left I ate fruit, cheese, and Wheat Thins with a dollop of French mustard for a long time. He'd brought quite a bit of fruit, plums, grapes, apples, bananas, oranges. The way I eat oranges is interesting, the way I learned in Florida. You always carried one of those specific tools, a long thin-bladed pocket knife with which you cut a smallish hole in the stem end, then wallowed around to break the membranes. You suck out all of the juice, then, when it's squashed and quite dry, you split the orange carcass open and scrape off all the pulp with your teeth. My favorite orange for this was called "Possum Brown" which was a favorite juice orange when I was a kid, those thick-skinned California oranges don't work very well, they split and make a mess. Read more...

Rolling Thunder

Rain before dawn, settling in steady, thick overcast, no light to speak of. Loki and his bowling ball, the thunder starts, then some lightning. I make a mug of tea and a pot of rice, sometimes the sheets of rain are very loud. Local flooding, they're already saying; of course there will be local flooding, look at the fucking map. Frozen ground and added water. But I am more than fine, I have a hundred books I want to reread, a hundred I've never read before and enough food to feed a small army. I'm good. I had to shut down, as the mother of all storm fronts moved in. Several hours of crazy intense rain, lightning all around, thunder shaking the house. Spectacular display. I fear the driveway is taking a hit. It's amazing how violent one of these storms can be. I got up and gathered my kit around me but never did lose power. It was difficult to read so I looked at pictures, prehistoric art, then Modigliani's last nudes, then study the Laretto Staircase again. Around six, still dark, it rains HARD; I know the drainage in my immediate area, know where there will be flooding, know that it drains quickly. Even when I do lose power, and then the phone, I still have my little camp stove, so I can make oatmeal and brew a cup of tea. 60 degrees, and I don't want to build a fire in the stove. Spent the day reading about tides, tidal bores, and nodes, where there aren't any tides. I have to resort to the headlamp often, because the overcast is so thick. Power was out for 12-15 hours, and now the phone is out, so I can't send. Snow again in the forecast, so I make a list. The driveway took a beating, and Mackletree, through the forest, was strewn with branches. Not much standing water in the hills, but Turkey Creek was running spate, and all of the low farm land is flooded. I didn't need much in town, but sampled a couple of beers and ate a bowl of potato soup. Picked up some fried potato logs and a milkshake on my way out of town and stopped at the lake. I was thinking about tremendous amplification through resonance, the failure of some bridges, the walls of Jerico, The Grateful Dead playing at Redrock. The noise of the spillway is overwhelming, you feel it in your feet, so I didn't notice a young couple, walking up to see. He was German and she was French and they were traveling about, having attended a wedding in Columbus. We hit it off, talking about various aspects of the natural world. I told them I lived only a few miles away and they should come up for a bottle of wine and some supper. Surprisingly, they agreed, and they had a rental Jeep that could handle the driveway. They were shocked by the driveway, and then by where and how I lived. Fritz said that the driveway reminded him of the goat-path to his Grandmother's house. Marie asked about the organizational system for the books. I made them a crackling and cheese omelet that would raise the dead and we drank a very good old-vines zinfandel. I wished them well, on their tour of America. Phone is still out, now in the third day, but it's only bothersome because people will think I died. Which isn't that different from that I had died. Secluded site, a recluse, who's to know? Barnhart's mother would ask him, several people might call B, I'd be found, either alive or dead. In the meantime it's gotten cold again, so I build a fire and get out the electric lap-robe; when the oven's hot I make a Key Lime pie and eat half of it. A little snow, falling slowly. It's so lovely, I have to stop what I'm doing and just watch. The phone, irritatingly, rings off and on, no dial tone, so they must be working on the various connections, I finally have to unplug the damned thing. Totally involved in a history of Ohio geology. At some point I got out the Raven map, Landforms And Drainages Of The United States, which I have to unroll on the floor and weight down with rocks, and I'm on my knees, with a magnifying glass, examining the Ohio basin. This fascination with maps goes way back, family trips when I was a kid, maps were free at gas stations. A map isn't the terrain, still, they are endlessly fascinating and often quite beautiful. And maps are text, like music is, or paintings. Tonight I was listening (again) to this Finnish Opera, wondering how music could so directly affect our emotion. It has to do with mediation, or the lack of, and expectation. The Christian church charts this drift, less and less mediation until you end up with a hermit in a cave. No pope, no Archbishop of Canterbury, not even a preacher, just a tinny voice in the back of your head arguing good and evil. I'd noticed a blush of green, not when I looked at it directly, but out of the corner of my eye. I think it's the Virginia Creeper, whatever that vine. The blackberries are beginning to stir. Daffodils, down by the river, I was shocked. The bamboo has grown a foot. Pines are shooting out their candles. It occurs to me that I should look for artichokes at Kroger. When they're cheap, I like to buy an armload, and eat them twice a day. Right now I'm enjoying avocados because they were suddenly 59 cents, the bright green ones, smallish but perfect for me. I bought the ones that were rock hard as avocados ripen after they're picked, and I've been eating the softest one every day. Mostly just lime juice and a little hot sauce, sometimes I make an open-face with cheddar and avocado. I'd been reading so much about burial ornament that I decided to make a primitive "bow drill" and try to drill a hole in something. This attempt took all of a day. I had a long leather shoestring I'd saved from a dead pair of work-boots, and a short walk produced a bow of oak branch. There are two main problems: holding the top of the drill bit, and stabilizing the piece that is being drilled. We've been drilling holes in shells and rocks for a long time, and I assumed I could learn how. You need a rock with a concavity, for the hold-down rock, not hard to find, and for holding the work any triangle will hold a piece, with a couple of pins. In just a few hours I manage a hole. A little bleep from the phone tells me it's re-connected. I'd better go send. Read more...