• Tag Archives food

  • Feeling Better. Me. Dwindling. Hilo.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                                    Waxing Artemis Moon

    Ah.  It seems the nasties have journeyed on to other warm bloody creatures, leaving me in peace for now.  I hope my body now recognizes and will fend off these creatures that live only to replicate and in so doing make us feel bad.  But they don’t care.

    Groceries this morning.  Filled up the cart with fruit and vegetables and turkey burgers, soy milk and slim milk, Sharps and Diet Cherry Coke, a bit of feta cheese, some sliced turkey for the dogs, a few cheese curds, some peanut butter, oops, just realized I forgot the cereal, chicken breasts.  You know.  The stuff of daily eating.  It was church time while I shopped so I suppose we were all heathens in there, except for those righteous Catholics who went to Saturday night mass.  Grocery shopping has a soothing quality.  It combines shopping with a genuine need so the selection of items reflects not so much consumer driven behavior–though that does rear its head–as it does animal needs.

    (The Mexicans do mercado better.)

    Hilo has, as Kate says, the dwindles.  She’s becoming very thin and tentative.  We believe she’s lost the better part of her sight.  Last week she seemed frightened, wide-eyed and jittery; this week feels different.  Perhaps a resignation of sorts.  It’s sad to watch her fade away, but she still lives her life.  Napping with us this afternoon, going outside to wander around the yard.  Eating a bit now and then.  Live until you die.  That’s what I want for me and for her.

    The sewing machine is on its movable platform, the wind-up reels for the cloth are in place, we attached a high-tech stitch regulator and a laser pointer to the apparatus that allows Kate to guide the needle.  Now it’s RTFM, a couple of extension cords and she’ll be ready to practice.  No more taking pieced work out for quilting, now it happens here, right in our lower level.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Cooking Dogs Family Health 📎and tagged

  • Food and Philosophy

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                    Waxing Wild Moon

    There and back.  To the grocery store.  Where, as I wandered the aisles, I got a feeling of wanting to eat a better diet.  Again.  This is not new.  It comes and goes.  Sometimes I eat great, other times I just eat.  Today I picked up some Cara Cara Navel Oranges.  I discovered them last week by accident. Boy are they good.  They look sort of like grapefruit (big chunks in the pieces), but taste almost like sweet tangerines.

    On the way and back I listened to a lecture on Aristotle.  I know, I said I was fed up with this stuff, but, apparently not. Aristotle was hard for me when I studied him back in 1965.  He seems clearer to me now, more reachable.  His stuff makes more sense, but it isn’t as beautiful as Plato, nor as thought provoking.  At least to me.

    The US lost to Canada in the gold medal hockey game.  Good.  When we rack up too many medals in either the summer or winter olympics, I don’t think it does our international reputation any favors.  Losing a few big ones, while devastating to the individual athletes, or team in hockey’s case, perhaps, the resulting good will is better for us.  Still, I’m proud we did well.


    📂This entry was posted in Cooking Humanities Sport 📎and tagged

  • Stop in the Aisle, Say a Prayer

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    75  bar falls 29.78  2mph  SSE dew-point 52  Summer, warm and sunny

    Waxing Gibbous Thunder Moon

    These are the dog days, so called because the Romans believed that the bright Sirius, now in night sky, added its heat to the sun, magnifying Sol’s effect. (affect=verb, effect=noun most of the time.  I have trouble with this one.)

    While in the dog days, thunder storms are welcome.  They drain the heat up into the atmosphere where it cools into clouds; rain drops form and, if they get heavy enough, fall to earth.  The whole process results in cooler near earth weather.  Like today.  Yesterday in the 90’s with a dewpoint in the high 70’s; today 75 with a dew-point in the 50’s.

    During the dog days my gardening energy declines and I work on inside projects like the Twin Cities/Minnesota UU history I’m crafting right now.

    It is so easy, to walk the aisle in an American grocery store.  So easy to take the abundance and its affordability for granted.  Those of us raised in the US since WWII have not known want, at least those of us in the working class and up economically.  Mercados take the place of grocery stores in much of the world.  We visit farmer’s markets for the quaint experience of buying food from those who grow or raise it.  Most of the world knows only that or their own garden, their small chicken coop.  A few still hunt and gather, yes, but most of the world has entered some form of economy based either on barter or cash.

    Millions have no food to buy, no clean water to drink, no sanitation to stop disease, no medical services.  We have healthy water, food to put in a grocery cart, plumbing and doctors.  No, everyone does not have access to all of these, but at least here it is because the culture is too indolent or too callous; in other places the services themselves are simply not available.

    It’s worth it, now and then, to pause in the aisle of your favorite grocery and say a prayer of thanks to mother earth and to the dumb luck that put you here.


    📂This entry was posted in Politics Weather +Climate 📎and tagged

  • Mulberry Trees in Armenia

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    31  91%  26%  3mph N bar29.80 steady windchill29  Imbolc

                  Waning Crescent of the Winter Moon

    This snow has a lot of different forms: sleet, snert, wet snow, less wet snow.  At least it didn’t plug the snowblower.  As I followed the snowblower down the driveway and back up, I had these background/foreground visions:  background–I’m layered up, in swiftly falling snow and operating a loud orange machine; foreground–I’m sitting on the lanai of our oceanview room in the Westin looking out toward the western horizon of the Pacific ocean as the sun begins to set. 

    The snow makes the transition from Minnesota to Hawai’i a nice contrast. 

    Getting stuff done today and tomorrow since on Wednesday I leave for Dwelling in the Woods.  My day without the guys I plan to snowshoe and read about Taoism, prepare for my workshop.  During the retreat I plan to snowshoe at least once a day. 

    Picked up some dried mulberries today at the co-op.  Sweet, but not local.  Not hardly.  From Turkey.  It just occurred to me that I read an article this afternoon about silk scarf makers in Armenia, next to the Turkish border.  They had a historic industry, but the Armenian genocide wiped it out.  This town had just received a grant from the EU to grow, mulberry trees!


    📂This entry was posted in Travel Weather +Climate 📎and tagged