Category Archives: Cooking

Cooking, Garden, GeekWorld, Woolly Mammoths

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Lughnasa                                                                  Harvest Moon

Woolly meeting tonight.  Kate baked a ground cherry pie and a raspberry pie.  Big hits.  “All hail, Kate!”  There was applause near the end for the desert.  Yin served her wonderful variations on Chinese originals, tonight a noodle and pork and vegetable dish.

Scott introduced the topic of the Singularity and we talked about technology and change for the rest of the evening.  Mark Odegard brought up a good point about advances in technology contributing to a digital divide with digital haves and digital have nots.  This divide will tend to reinforce class and racial divisions.  He said this in reaction to me saying I wasn’t particularly worried about the Singularity.  His point was that the rapid advances in technology can and will have unintended social consequences.  He’s right.

In this argument I find myself on the conservative side, that is, I believe there are so many fundamental activities that make us human from painting to poetry, music to novels, athletics and theatre.  They are not reducible to code nor products artificial intelligence can reasonably be expected to create. There are also the incredible complexities of life itself, human relationships, the intricate interlocking webs of ecology systems that will always, I believe, outstrip any technological advance.

And I love technology, gadgets, the new.  Just don’t see them hanging out with me at a Woolly meeting as full participants.  Ever.

 

Cooking, Garden

For Me and My Kate

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Lughnasa                                                                         New (Harvest) Moon

The harvest moon is traditionally the full moon closest to the fall equinox, so that’s the moon dark now but waxing soon.  Here in the 4 seasons 45th latitudes the harvest moon shines on much of the harvest, at least from the garden perspective, already long in the house and canned or dried or frozen, stored one way or another.  By Mabon, the fall equinox holiday, we will have only leeks and apples, perhaps some raspberries left.  Still, I have a curious attraction to tradition; as long as I can choose whether or not to observe it, so harvest moon it is.

Kate just came down with purple hands.  She’s processing the wild grapes I harvested this morning.  She said she looked like she’d been stomping grapes with her hands.  Now there’s an image.  Grandma doing handstands in a wine press.  The grandkids would love it.

 

 

Cooking, Family, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work, Health, Our Land and Home

Midwest Grimoires

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Lughnasa                                                                  Honey Moon

Finished spraying.  As the crops come in, the amount of spray needed diminishes.  Today I really only needed the reproductive spray because the remaining vegetables are mostly in that category:  tomatoes, ground cherries, egg plants, cucumbers, peppers, carrots. Granted there are a few beets, some chard and the leeks yet to harvest but they seem substantial already.  They also benefit from the showtime, nutrient drenches and the enthuse that I will spray on Saturday morning.

Kate roasted the broccoli and froze it.  She’s also making pickles today, cucumber and onion.  She’s in back to the land, earth mother mode and has been for several weeks.  She consults her canning, pickling, drying, freezing books like grimoires from calico clad wise women of the rural Midwest.  And does likewise, tweaking the recipes when she wants.

Cooking, Garden, Our Land and Home

Putting Food By

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Lughnasa                                                        Moon of the First Harvests

Finished turning much of our garlic crop and all of three boxes of farmer’s market garlic into thin shavings, put them in the dryer and turned it on.  We discovered last year that a very effective way to keep garlic is to dry it, thin.  The crop this year itself was thin necessitating purchase of some to get up to a quantity that we think will sustain us through the winter.  We like garlic.

Picked carrots, tomatillos and the first roma tomatoes.  Kate’s made pico de gallo and corn relish today and will make pickled carrots and daikon radish tomorrow.  This is the time when summer’s profligacy gets pickled or canned or dried or frozen since the plant world has little care for the distribution of its fruits beyond the spreading of seed.  Humans have had to overcome the plants long established plans for propagation in order to benefit optimally from the growing season.  It came in fits and starts, I’m sure, this storing of calories and nutrition, but the basics are the same now as they have been for a very long time.

When doing this work, blowing snow, howling winds and fire in the fireplace are ever present, the time when this work will make sense.  Right now it just leaves a pain in my already sore left shoulder.  That will pass.

Cooking, Family, Sport

Family Day

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Summer                                                                              Solstice Moon

Kate fixed another great meal.  The salmon was wonderful, a diced salad combined several different vegetables, and there were beets and Iowa corn relish, too.  One of Jon’s Breck friends came by, Thomas Thorpe and his wife Allison.  It was fun to see Jon with a high school friend.  He seemed lighter, younger.

The conversation was interesting and the solstice bonfire tradition got underway, though I  didn’t create a true bonfire.  We did have fire enough to make smores and the conversation around the fire pit lasted until twilight fell.

 

Tomorrow we’re going to Running Aces.  It’s family day at the track.  Free beer and a $2 bet for all the kiddies!  No, not really.

This is the real deal:

  • $20 Family Pack: 4 Hotdogs, 4 Sodas, 4 Chips, & Mini Cookies
  • $12 Snack Pack: 2 Pretzels or 2 Popcorns, 2 Sodas, & Mini Cookies
  • $3.50 Coors Light
  • $3 Malibu

Specials available 1 hour before post to 9pm at Trotters Canteen, Atrium Bar, or Outdoor Bar.

Mom’s side of the family, the Keatons, have a long track record (gee, now I know where that came from) in harness racing, dating back to my grandpa, Charlie Keaton.  He had harness horses and so did his son, my Uncle Riley, and after his death my first cousin Richard.  Richard drove for many years as well as owning harness horses, but had a terrible wreck and now handles horses and serves on some harness racing boards.

Cooking, Latin, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Beets, Romans and High Fantasy

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Beltane                                                                       Early Growth Moon

Kate has been trying to reconstruct an amazing beet pureed soup we had at Fika in the American Swedish Institute.  The chef gave us some of his or her ingredients, all of them?  I’m not sure.  But Kate’s done a good job of closing in on it.  It’s delightful, tangy and creamy with a great feel in the mouth.

I’ve spent the Sunday beginning to check my Latin translations against the commentaries and entering notes into the file I’m keeping for the commentary Greg and I may write.  This is fun work, finding better words, puzzling over the thoughts of Ovid scholars.  Once I’ve finished the recheck, I’m going to start reading the Ovid scholarship I’ve collected.

In the afternoon I’ve proceeded with the revision, rewrite of Missing.  I’m well into the first third, adding thicker description, plumping up character development, making the narrative a more coherent whole.  This is fun, too.

Even so, my mind can only take so much fun before the brain that supports its work begins to wear out the rest of my body. That’s where I am now.  Tired. Enough for the day.

 

Art and Culture, Cooking, Great Work, Latin, Third Phase, Writing

Gotta Get Out More

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Beltane                                                                              Early Growth Moon

My docent class is on a 5 day jaunt to Chicago.  Were it not for Kona’s vet visits, I’d be there, too.  This is a full week now since I sent in my resignation to the MIA.  Nada.  Silence.  Nothing.  12 years.  Almost as weird as the weather.  It’s like the Institute has organizational autism.

It’s been a full day with work outside and inside, a quiet evening reading.

Though I can see that the chained mornings and the Latin in the mid-afternoons is very productive, I’m also seeing a desire in myself to get out more.  Kate had to sort of drop kick me into it, but now that she has I realize the path I’ve chosen will increasingly isolate me and us, if we’re not very intentional about getting out.

To that end I signed up us for a fund raiser for CSA Roots, apparently the former Community Design Center with which I did a lot of work in the late 70’s and early 80’s.  This fund-raiser features a hand-crafted, all locally sourced meal at the Heartland Restaurant across from the former site of the St. Paul Farmer’s Market.  Appropriately enough the dinner is on June 21st, the Summer Solstice.

We’re also planning a trip into the American Swedish Institute this week to see the Sami exhibition and eat at the Institutes new restaurant.  Hmmm.  Do most of our activities involve food?  Which by the way is ok since I’ve lost at least 14 pounds on this lower carb diet in addition to increasing the nutrient load of my food consumption and, the point of it, lowering my blood sugar well below levels of concern.

 

 

Cinema and Television, Cooking

Salmon, Chess, Homeland

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Imbolc                                                                  Bloodroot Moon

Kate cooked salmon with a wonderful glaze, cut green beans and a salad with orange, feta cheese, cubed cucumber, lettuce.  All excellent.

We discussed the first, basic aspects of chess tonight.  How to position the board, white on the right, and line up the pieces.  Then a brief lesson in how each piece moves.  The chess set is now on the end of the dining room table.  Kate’s never played.

I like chess because after determining who gets white nothing else involves chance.  It’s complexity appeals to me, too, but because it is complexity contained in space and time, complexity of a finite duration.  It defines well time devoted to the game and time outside the game.  Plus, no tee times.  No golf carts and no slices or hooks.

And, like good video streamers of the second decade of the third millennium we binge watched Homeland, finishing the thirteenth episode tonight with Clair Danes strapped down, medicated and receiving shock treatment–just as she remembers a key clue in the case of Sgt. Brody.  The downside of binge watching current programs is that after you finish you have to wait a year or more for the continuation.

 

Cooking, Family

Putting on the Moves

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Imbolc                                                            Valentine Moon

Well, got in my hour, actually 2, of chess.  Don’t know whether I want to play actual games. The lessons are brain twisters, requiring spatial thinking and logical thinking combined with strategic planning while executing tactical decisions.  A weird sort of fun.  Similar, in fact, to translating Latin.

(Samuel Reshevsky, age 8, defeating several chess masters at once in France, 1920)

Also translated my sentence in Ovid and got post cards out to the grandkids.  Kate made a great supper with a chipolte butter on chicken breasts, our carrots from last fall and salad.  The carrots have a bright color and a sweet, earthy flavor.

Otherwise trucking along.

Cooking, Family

Well Meat, Good Sir

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Winter                                                                                Cold Moon

Back from the Butcher and Boar.  Quite the testosterone joint for a place with no televisions tuned to the game.  In fact, no televisions.  This place is about meat.  Fish, fowl and game.  I had wild boar sausage, a side of fried green tomatoes and spicy greens.  Kate and I shared a sampler of their pickled meats.

To my surprise I liked the Braunschweiger.  It came in a small glass terrine, a paste, and made me think I’d never had good Braunschweiger before.

The place, though, was noisy.  In extremis.  Even for those without impaired hearing it would have been difficult to hold a normal conversation.

The interior is dark wood, lots of mirrors, granite topped tables and sturdy forks, spoons and especially the knives.

The bar, a long one, had almost 100% business type guys sitting ordering from the gray haired bar tender who moved methodically and quietly from patron to patron.  The wait staff is young, good looking men and women in black Butcher and Boar t-shirts.

We decided in the end that it was a nice place to visit, once.  Probably not a return place for us older generation carnivores.