Category Archives: Cooking

Cooking, Coronavirus, Dogs, Family, Health, Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Travel

Needed

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Summer and the Moon of Justice

Wednesday gratefuls: Mary’s recovery. Nasal polyp removal. Anitha, her bestie caring for her at home. Meeting with our financial advisor, RJ. Zoom. The health of our corpus. The three Earth countries sending visitors to Red Mars. Tianwen, Perseverance, Hope. China, USA, UAE. The night sky. Our stumpless front yard. Needing a break.

Want to set this burden down. For a bit. Need a vacation. A staycation. Something. Always on. Dogs. Kate. Cooking. House maintenance. Cleaning. Mail. Groceries. (Kate pays the bills.) Cars. Insurance. You know, all that domestic stuff. Work outs. Organizing stuff. Laundry. (Kate folds. Thank god.) My own health. Doctor visits. Imaging, hospitals, emergency rooms.

A bit whiny, maybe, but I do need a break. Of some kind. Not gonna happen either. No place to go, for one. Thanks, Covid. So even if putting the dogs at Bergen Bark Inn and Kate in respite care weren’t expensive and a hassle in itself (something more to organize), the virus makes travel unfun.

Having Seoah here was wonderful, of course. And, she did relieve the cooking and house cleaning. But not the overburden of responsibility.

Trying to figure out what I can do here on Shadow Mountain. Just crossed off workouts for a week and a half. I always go back, so that’s no danger. Problem with them is I moved them to mornings so I wouldn’t miss them so often. I used to work out around 4 pm. Too hot now. Plus cooking the evening meal. Other things. The move to mornings has worked well. I’m very regular with the exception of morning appointments out of the house.

But. Not getting any writing done, painting. Reading has shrunk to news and serious material like Art Green’s Human Narrative. Some pleasure reading in the evenings.

I want to finally finish, I’m oh so close, the loft. Then get back to writing and painting. I’ll take early morning hikes. Read some more fiction. Watch movies. I’ll buy takeout for the next week and a half, too. That should help. Ah, hell. I could take two weeks off from exercise. I might. Jump start a renewed Covid, stay-at-home life.

Yes. This sounds good. A respite. Needed.

Aging, Anoka County, Colorado, Cooking, Coronavirus, GeekWorld, Jefferson County

Imminent

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Beltane and the Moon of Sorrow

Saturday gratefuls: Our Kenmore 19 Frostless Freezer. Its good years of service. A good temporary solution to its imminent demise. Crowhill Appliance. Dave, the tech. Seoah’s help. Kate’s smile when Rigel lay down on her quilt. The gift of pleasant days. Pine pollen. Fish. Curtis Spitler Ellis. Gertrude Eliza Ellis. Judy. Raeone. Saturdays.

Symptoms of a pandemic. Remember all those folks buying toilet paper? Even though Covid doesn’t have g-i effects? Or, the whole PPE scandal with no masks for medical personnel? Out of stock items on Amazon like hand sanitizer, toilet paper? Discovered another one yesterday.

On Wednesday Seoah told me about an alarm going off in the garage. I spent my usual minutes of frustration trying to find it. Not the cars. What else could it be? Oh. The freezer. Temperature alert. Red light flashing. Uh-oh. Remember those meat bundles I bought from Tony’s? Yep. In danger.

I looked at it. Opened the door. No frost buildup. The meat might have just started to defrost. I pushed the quick freeze button, shut the door, and the alarm went off. OK. On Thursday it was beeping again.

We bought this freezer near the time we moved to Andover. That was 1994. It’s been a good mechanical servant for all those days. I even hit it with the car once and it kept on ticking. Had an incident last year when it frosted up. I removed everything, left it open for a day, and the frost melted. I loaded it back up and it continued to work. Until Wednesday.

Time for a new freezer, it seemed. I started looking first at Consumer Reports. OK. GE makes good freezers. I hunted for them online. Looked at Best Buy. Ah. They have it. $900. Reasonable. Wait. That button changed from yellow to gray. Oh, out of stock. Well, understandable. It’s a good one.

I checked Lowes. It was out of stock there, too. Appliance Factory. Out of stock. Specialty Appliances. Home Depot. All out of stock. Ok. I looked for one of the others Consumer Report recommended. Out of stock, too. Decided to check for any old freezer. Out of stock. Kate suggested I look for a chest freezer. Out of stock.

There is nowhere in Colorado that you can buy either an upright or chest freezer. I suspect that’s true everywhere. According to a salesman I talked to, only two manufactures of freezers remain, Amana and Frigidaire. They make all the other brands. Not sure what that means for all the Consumer Reports subtle gradations. Anyhow, they’ve told all their customers there will be no stock again until early to mid-fall.

That put me in a funk yesterday. I like to solve problems and when I have a problem that seems unsolvable. Not good. Hundreds of dollars of top quality meat in a dying freezer. Damn.

Went to bed for a nap. See if some sleep might refresh the circuits. While waiting to go to sleep, I remembered the freezer in our refrigerator. It’s a pull-out bottom freezer and has a fair amount of space. I imagined the packages of meat I’d bought from Tony’s. Huh. They should fit.

My funk lifted. Today Seoah and I will switch the lower value foods stored in the refrigerator with the meats in the dying Kenmore. When I asked Dave, the tech from Crowhill, how long he thought the freezer would last, he said, “A day. A month. Several months.” And shrugged.

They don’t do compressor repairs anymore. That’s because at $900 to $1,000 they’re more costly than a new unit. If, of course, you can find one. I thought briefly about going ahead, but then realized I’d have a brand new compressor in a freezer over twenty years old. Other stuff in it is old, too.

We’ll continue using the Kenmore until the compressor ceases to function. If we lose some popsicles, frozen veggies, or tater tots (yes, sue me. I like’m.), that’ll be ok. It was the thought of losing all that meat and not being able to do anything about it…

And, when Amana and Frigidaire crank back up, we’ll get ourselves a new freezer. Sometime this fall.

Cooking, Dogs, Family, Kabbalah, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Soul

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Spring and the Corona Lunacy II

Wednesday gratefuls: Garbage men and women. King Sooper pick up today. Tony’s meat bundles that I collect on May 4th. Kate’s problem solving with her sewing machine. Rigel climbing up on the bed and plopping down right between us. Her head on my pillow. The cool night. Balmy days. The pine pollen to come. The coronavirus. What has it revealed today?

In dog news. Rigel tried for a daily record, scoring three loft treats in one day. Last night I brought Mark’s stimulus check up to the loft for safe keeping. I rarely go upstairs after supper, but Rigel was there, going for a third treat, a triple dip she rarely accomplishes. As house meany, I didn’t let her in the loft. She doesn’t know how expensive those treats are. All rabbit dog treats are not cheap.

Seoah gave us a reprise of her wonderful Swedish meatballs. Not even Ikea or the Swedish Institute in Minneapolis does a better meatball. These are really, really good. May have eaten a couple too many.

We still have snow in the backyard. Less and less everyday, but a yard cleanup is getting necessary. Like Minnesota, when the snow melts, detritus slowly sinks toward the ground. When I looked out the back window this morning, I saw an orange leg with green feet. Part of a dismembered dog toy. We see now what the dogs managed to smuggle outside during our winter snows.

Today in Kabbalah we’ll discuss soul. A tough topic. Bound up with centuries, even millennia of freight. I’ve begun using the word again in the last year after decades of setting it aside as too gnostic, too three-story universe, too weird. In the moment I believe soul refers to the whole of you, the best you, your buddha nature. With Art Green I believe soul represents the link between what seems to be the individual and the one. How all that works, I still don’t know.

Art has a nice piece on it. He shares my misgivings and also puts the afterlife aside as an unknown. The soul is God’s breath which gives us life. The last breath before we die returns to the one and afterward we offer up our elements to the elements. My paraphrase.

Aging, Commentary on Religion, Commentary on the news, Cooking, Family, Feelings, Health, Judaism, Kabbalah, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Breathe in, Breathe out

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Spring and the Corona Luna

Saturday gratefuls: Murdoch jail break. Seoah’s spring rolls. Kate’s good day. Her referral to an ostomy nurse (for her feeding tube). The white, confectioner’s sugar look on Black Mountain, our lodgepoles, the solar panels. Rabbi Jamie’s Maladies and Melodies zoom session yesterday. These days of our lives. Learning new things about society, about ourselves, about our globalist reality.

Some miscellaneous things.

Cousin Diane sent out this message about how to care for groceries. Then I read that those of us over 60 should not be going to the grocery store at all. Will keep on using pickup when I can (not delivery), but Seoah may end doing up most of our in-store shopping. Anyhow, here’s the video. I found it helpful.

On the subject of resilience here’s a link to a Harvard Business Review article, “That discomfort you’re feeling is grief .” It helped me name a complex of feelings that come and go, stimulated by the virus, yes, but not exclusively about it. The more we can grasp the emotional, the psychological impacts of the pandemic, the less they will cause us unwanted and unexpected trouble.

In a soothing and, at the same time, provocative hour on Zoom Rabbi Jamie took us through a modification of Jewish morning prayers. Maladies and Melodies. Songs he’d written, psalms he’d translated. His thoughts along the way.

Two things stood out for me. He began with the idea of moving from a narrow mind, like the narrow, confined space of Egypt for the Hebrew slaves, (Passover is two weeks away.), to a broad, expansive space. From a narrow, pharaoh mind to wide vistas and open hearts. How do we move, I wondered, and I imagine he intended this, from a lock down state of mind to a broad mind even though fear and actual confinement are the norm for people around the world?

In a meditation (He’s a Buddhist, too, and spent time in Nepal on pilgrimage.) he had us focus on our breath. Breathe in, breathe out. Don’t force it. Follow it. He mentioned breath as neshama, that part of our soul most directly connected to the one. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. It’s a respiratory virus. It affects the lungs, our ability to breath. Breathe in, breath out. I thought this. I imagine others did, too.

Can anything separate us from the one? No. Not even something that blocks our breath, because our neshama remains linked to the one even if our breathing ceases. So what is there to fear? A death? Still one with the one. Breathe in, breathe out.

Cooking, Coronavirus, Family, Jefferson County, Talmud

Thanks for coming to work

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Spring and the 1% sliver of the Leap Year Moon

Monday gratefuls: A chicken! King Sooper had a chicken! I got the second to last one. Drug makers. Pharmacists. Nurses, especially nurses. All health care workers, all around the world. Politicians, in particular U.S. governors and mayors, actually confronting the crisis. Democrat senators holding the line for working people. Fear. Keeps people inside.

Grateful for Brother Mark, confronting a difficult time in Saudi Arabia, doing well. Staying in touch with his colleagues, learning new tech. So many of us have to make dramatic changes in our working lives. Those who can. Hurray!

I think about all those folks like waiters and chefs and busboys and retail store workers whose jobs have disappeared. A good time to be retired. A good time to have sold your company. Though there is that falling market thing.

I’m on daf 8b, the second side of page 8, of Shabbat, the second tractate of the Talmud, a collection of commentary on the mishnah, written legal theory from the older oral tradition. I just got daf 17 of Shabbat today, so I’m closing in on being current. I’ll get back to one a day this week for sure.

Went to the grocery store, King Sooper, yesterday. Found, 9 days after I started looking, a whole chicken. That means I can make the chicken noodle soup that Kate likes so well. After my workout this morning. No more than 3 chicken products, no more than 3 ground beef. Signs. King Sooper looked somewhat less devastated than Safeway did last week. Perhaps the panicked ones have begun to calm down, realizing this is a marathon, not a sprint.

Pharmaceuticals. I went to King Sooper because I needed to pick up an albuterol inhaler that I use for exercise. Oh, the clerk said, I have two for you. Of the same thing? Yes, I’ll take the $10 one. She laughed. The other, brand name inhaler, was $94. Same drug, same amount, same delivery method. Which one would you choose? Everybody got a good laugh.

I tell each clerk thank you for coming to work. We need you and you’re here. At the liquor store I asked the guy how business was. Slow today, but really busy last week. Well. You might have to help out the other small businesses. You’re right, he said. I might.

King Sooper was not crowded unlike my Safeway trip. In Safeway the aisles were full, people looked dazed. At King Sooper yesterday folks looked like purposeful shoppers, finding what they needed, not in OMG I gotta get to the toilet paper aisle mode. The tables were gone, but the in-story Starbucks was open.

Tried to get some takeout from Rocky Mountain Wraps, but they had closed. Sunday hours. We’re encouraged here to get takeout from restaurants and tip well, try to help the small business folks. I plan to over the next weeks. It’s nice to have some variety. Seoah made a shrimp and pasta meal last night that was very good.

Saw today that restrictions need to get tighter if we’re to control the viruses spread. OK with us.

Cooking, Dogs, GeekWorld, Jefferson County, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Broken. Replaced.

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Winter and the Future Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Hot water in San Francisco! Diane’s recommendation of “Getting Open.” Sleep. Rest. Feeling rejuvenated. The U.S. grocery store. The NYT for endorsing Amy and Elizabeth. Blizzaks. AWD on Ruby. Healing from the dog bite. Almost done.

Cooked last night. Deep fried chicken chunks from a deli chicken. Coated with bread crumbs. Surprisingly good. Broke our vegetable chopper, too. A second time. I prefer hand tools in the kitchen for food prep. Knives, choppers, dicers, zesters. We have a mandolin somewhere and I want to find it. Just ordered a Swedish chopper, made of metal. More durable.

Broke the chopper making a version of Israeli salad. It was the onions that did it in. Well, not the onion, but me, pressing down quick and hard on the onion. Little blades popped off the cutting grid. Not supposed to happen. Got the salad, diced onions (by knife), tomatoes, cucumber, and a generous sprinkling of cilantro. Some lime juice. Some Italian seasoning.

But. I was also gonna warm up the cabbage and potatoes in the microwave. Put them in the microwave at the start. Kate’s taught me to get all the ingredients out before I begin. Forgot about the potatoes and the cabbage. Still in the microwave this morning.

Oh, yeah. Finally got the microwave installed. After the first appointment, I had to have an electrician come out to create a wall socket for it, then reschedule the installation. Happened Saturday. Kate is very happy. She can reheat her coffee. Hot coffee and the crossword in the morning make Kate a happy gal. I’m indifferent to coffee temperature. Cold. Hot. Meh. Not a gourmet.

Spent time yesterday on another modern chore. Cutting up boxes. We get our dogfood through chewy.com. Great service. Reasonable prices. Free shipping. And large cardboard boxes. Bought some airtight dogfood containers, too, through Amazon. Really big boxes. As I’ve noted before, the home has become a shipping and receiving department. All those cardboard boxes that used to get cut up at the warehouse or in the back of the store are now in living rooms across America. Or, garages.

Anyone rural appreciates the chance to look things up online and order them for delivery. Beats going on a Saturday morning quest for the right pan or sheets or, say, a vegetable chopper. Especially if the stores are miles and miles away. Makes a huge difference to caregivers like me, too. It’s why Sears and Roebuck did so well with their catalog. A shame they couldn’t make the transition to an economy much like the one they introduced back in the late 19th century.

Got doggy things to do now. Tomorrow.

Aging, Cooking, Family, Holidays, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate
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Samain and the Gratitude Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Jon and Ruth skiing. It was a powder day and Ruth said, “I needed that.” Jon’s 51 years. Seoah’s vegetable pancakes. The cattle that gave us the delicious New York Strip steaks for Jon’s birthday meal. The baker that made the carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. The laughter around the table last night.

Jon’s birthday was on the 10th, but we celebrated last night since Ruth’s play was that evening. I’d post pics but I’m still struggling with downloading pictures from my host server using FTP. It’s simple, they say. Oh, yeah, I say. Someday I’ll get it.

We got a bit of snow yesterday. When it came, it came straight down like rain in the Midwest. It still amazes me since I can’t recall, though it must have happened, a no-wind snowfall in Minnesota. This type of snow is so beautiful. It comes down quietly and layers itself on roads and roofs and the land. Giving us white trees, snow covered rock, enough snow for skiing, snowballs, snowpersons.

Ruth said skiing in powder is harder physically, but way more fun. She pointed to her hip and said, “It was up to here most of the time. It’s more difficult to turn.” “All that resistance?” “Yes.”

Gabe was here while Jon and Ruth skied. Family. And friends. Family first, SeoAh says. An Asian tradition for sure. Not so sure about the U.S. Does wealth make family less “first”? That is, is family first essentially welfare in a society where there may be no other? My guess is that wealth decreases the gluons that create strong extended families. Doesn’t eliminate them, but makes them less effective. What do you think?

Today I have to finish my work on tzedek. Justice. And, do a painting about hope. Later.

Colorado, Cooking, Family, Jefferson County, Mountains, Park County, Third Phase, Travel

Platte Canyon Drive

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Samain and the Gratitude Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Seeing Kate cheered by her fellow Bailey Patchworkers at their holiday luncheon yesterday. A drive yesterday along the Platte River Canyon from Bailey to the Shaggy Sheep. The partly running, partly frozen North Fork of the South Platte River. The black squirrel that played along its banks. Finding my heart so exposed.

While Kate had lunch with the Bailey Patchworkers at the Riverbend Restaurant in Bailey, I drove out to the Shaggy Sheep, headed toward Kenosha Pass, Fairplay, and the Pacific Ocean. The Platte Canyon runs from Bailey to the Kenosha Pass which, at 10,000 feet marks the transition to the high plains of South Park, a broad expanse of relatively flat land all above 9,000 feet. The Platte Canyon is around 7,700 feet above sea level, carved out by the South Platte River’s north fork. That makes it a gorge, as well as a canyon, since Highway 285 follows the fairly straight run of the river. A gorge always has a river like most, but not all, canyons.

Sometimes the mountains on either side of the canyon floor come close to the road, gray and rocky, closing the canyon off from the sun. At other points the South Platte runs through long, but narrow fields and pastures. Glen Isle, a beloved and historic resort with a round main building, is on the canyons western side. North Fork Ranch, an Orvis approved dude ranch, features fly fishing, kicking back, horse rides. It’s just beyond the small National Historic site of Shawnee.

Not much further along 285 is the national YMCA camp, Santa Maria, with its not so obviously needed statue of Jesus on a cliff face high above the camp. I passed it looking up at the statue, wondering why it was there.

My destination was the Shaggy Sheep, a restaurant opened by New York City chef fleeing the city. It’s a quirky, but good menu. It has, however, also quirky hours since it sits 14 miles west of Bailey and nowhere near any other towns. Georgetown can be reached between, oh, say, May and November, by the Guanella Pass not far from the Shaggy Sheep, and Jefferson, a very small town in South Park, is a few miles on beyond the Kenosha Pass. Billing itself as a casual mountain cook house, the Shaggy Sheep depends on tourist traffic which slows down in the winter months. Closed Monday-Wednesday during the winter, I learned.

The drive out there was the point though so I wasn’t disappointed. I turned around, drove back to the Riverbend and had a hamburger with truffle fries followed by an excellent canoli. Since I was waiting on Kate and forgot to bring a book (a rare occurrence), I read the articles of impeachment plus commentary and other stories on the NYT.

The wonder of living here is the chance to take a trip through the Platte Canyon just because. Or, up the Guanella Pass to Georgetown. Or, over the Kenosha Pass into South Park and onto Fairplay. And still be home for supper.

Aging, Asia, Colorado, Cooking, Dogs, Family, Feelings, Jefferson County, Mountains, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Retirement, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Live Long, and Prosper

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Samain and the Gratitude Moon

Sunday gratefuls: for the poetry and philosophy contained in the world’s religions. for not having to believe in them. for the intimacy and wonder of holidays. for deep thinkers and their ability to change our minds, to see what we cannot. for the pain and struggles that teach us what’s important and what’s not.

Seoah made a bulgogi soup last night. Delicious. Each time she comes I think, “I’ll cook like that, too.” Then, she leaves. And my cooking returns to its Western, American ways. I’ve added few Korean dishes to my repertoire. Maybe, over time…

Murdoch bounces around, happy and energetic. His teeth still have the pointy sharpness of a young puppy. He discovered the loft the other day, came running in, wagging his tail, rushing around, smelling this, then that. And left. He’s come back. He may join Gertie for longer time periods if he can contain himself.

Stanford University has a recent initiative, A New Map of Life. I like it because it recognizes the three blocks of life I call first, second, third phase: education, family and work, and the third phase. Not retirement, at least not the finish line model, but a new phase of life previously unavailable due to shorter life spans. And, as a result, one without cultural guard rails or guidelines.

Their approach makes so much sense. They want to to redefine, reshape the cultural paradigms for all the phases, not just old age. “Longer lives present us with an opportunity to redesign the way we live. The greatest risk of failure is setting the bar too low.” WP article: We need a major redesign of life. Dec. 8, 2019

Will investigate in greater depth and report back. I’m going through what seems to be an annoyingly long rethink of my own life. This is the fifth year (in 12 days) of our Colorado mountain life. It has peaks and valleys (hah) and they keep on coming.

Old age doesn’t seem to be the real issue for me though it plays a role. What’s more salient is the unpredictable nature of our daily life and the difficulty of getting into a rhythm for creative work. Health span is a key issue. Kate, though much better now than six months ago, still has occasional nausea, occasional fevers and fatigue, occasional heartburn, constant weakness. I have bouts of fatigue, muscle weakness, and general uncertainty added with prostate cancer and COPD.

Not complaining, observing what’s real for us. How do we build a mutual life that reflects and respects these difficult elements without capitulating to them? There is a disparity between us, too. I am younger than Kate by three years and though I have my own serious illnesses I don’t get derailed by them as often as she does from hers.

There’s a question of mutual life and its outlines and our individual lives. I’m admitting here that our answers so far have not been satisfying. It’s a project for both of us and it continues.

Aging, Cooking, Family, Health, Memories, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Learning and Doing

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Samain and the Gratitude Moon

Friday gratefuls: The grandmother tree at Congregation Beth Evergreen which just lost a large limb. It’s a large Ponderosa. Looks like it will be fine. The mind of Rabbi Jamie. Filled with knowledge and caring. SeoAh’s energy. She cleaned our whole house yesterday afternoon.

Learned something again. That I seem to have learned again and again only to forget. Hot dogs give me gas. I’ve stopped eating bacon and hot dogs except when I’m out. Bought two CJ’s classics. Vienna all beef wienies with mustard and relish. Oh, my. Desire is often not a good match with need.

A strange and unsettling moment on Wednesday. No, not buying the hot dogs. SeoAh and I went to the post office to mail Annie’s phone back to her. The priority mail box that I chose came flat and needed to be folded. As Kate will tell you, spatial reasoning is not my long suit, not by far.

Anyhow I began to fuss with it. SeoAh’s right beside me. When I couldn’t get it, at first I laughed. Then, I began to become self-conscious. What if she thinks I’m getting senile? Made it harder. Which made me more self-conscious. Finally got it, but the momentary damage had already been done. By me to me.

We went from there to King Sooper. Got out of the car in the parking lot and went to lock it. Nope, keys not in that pocket. Or, that one. Surely… Nope, not that one either. Or, that one. In the jeans? Right side, no. Left side. No. OK. Car started when I got in it at the post office so my keys are here. Somewhere. Check all the pockets again. Nope. Nada.

These two incidents left me a bit shaken. Not because I considered them signs of anything other than my usual self. (the keys had slipped between the seat and the center console. I’ve done it before with glasses and phones.) But because they could have made me look feeble in SeoAh’s eyes. A realization for me about aging. Oh, so this happens to me, too.

Little things. Hard, though. We laughed about it.