Oh fuuuuuucking greeeeaaaaat.  Our current family doctor has NONE of our children's (or, presumably, mine or my husband's) previous medical records.  FTW?!?!  These records had been received by our previous family practice doctor here in town.  When she moved, I very carefully requested transfers of all records from her office to our new doctor, but they only sent the records from her practice, not anything prior.  This means that we've got to reconstruct medical records for everyone, some of these spanning multiple states.  AAARGH!  I am hopeful that the nurse will be able to secure a complete collection from our most recent doctor before moving here.  I couldn't even remember that doctor's name, either.  I had to page through 242 doctors from Auburn, Alabama until I found him.  Boy, that sucked.  But with luck, we'll be able to proceed from here. 

Did I mention that Ian's new preschool cannot accept him as a student without verification of the immunization records?  Oh, I guess I could claim a religious objection, but that would look pretty weird considering we do have records of him receiving his two-year boosters here. 

AAARRRGHH!

Where could these bloody things have gone?!  I know our previous doctor here in town had them, because she filled out the same paperwork for Alex that I now need for Ian, which required having these records.  What, did she take them with her when she moved?  Were they special to her or something?! 

I need this.

I really want to post about what a great camping trip we just had over the weekend, and all the great things we did, etc., etc.  But I have a headache, and I'm in a bad mood, and I was already in a bad mood before all of this started, and I want to go sit on the couch and read.

Oh, btw, does anyone have any suggestions for how to loosen a screw that is well-and-firmly embedded in wood?

Padre's Modern Mexican Bar in Phoenix, AZ:  Recession special--free drink with foreclosure notice!

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fsb/0807/gallery.recession_concessions.fsb/4.html

It's so painful it's funny...

Tonight I had to be gone all of the early evening at a thingy for the co-op, and when I got home Brian was to leave almost immediately for a thingy at our church (boy, we're just a go-go-go group).  So we decided that B should take the kids out somewhere to eat, and get me a to-go order for when I got home.  They went to a hole-in-the-wall place we'd not tried yet but had heard much about.  I was looking forward to trying their food.

I couldn't help but notice the conspicuous lack of conversation about dinner when I got home, especially considering we were both terribly curious about how it would be.  I saw that he got me fried chicken, corn and fried potatoes, and a slice of pie.  This was exactly what I'd been in the mood for, and I told him so.  B replied, "Well, we'll see." 

In fact, it wasn't bad.  Not super great or anything, but perfectly fine.  Even the fried chicken, which typically has only two states, "Perfect" or "Er...", was okay, and I told Brian so.  He then confesses that his dinner was terrible, and the kids' dinner was well-nigh inedible (grilled chicken = leather, actually difficult to chew).  I haven't gotten to the pie yet; B hesitates and  then says, most diplomatically, "I usually expect a bit more from homemade pie."  Well, fair enough, I would still give it a try.

I take a bit of cherry pie.  Well, okay, not exactly a light-n-flaky crust, but not bad.  Canned cherries, I think, that's a disappointment.  But really, it's not that bad and... um... well, there is a kind of... now what is that flavor?  It's not very good and... uck, no, it, UGH, oh my god it, WRETCH WRETCH OMG THAT'S CIGARETTE ASH!!! 

*reel*

No, no, that's just not possible.  I'm hallucinating.  Maybe it was just a really weird and unfortunate combination of flavors.  *At this point in the story, I actually take another bite.*  Now see, that's not so bad, it's just OH NO IT'S CIGARETTE ASH AGAIN ACK ACK ACK...

I spent several minutes trying to get that flavor out of my mouth.  My best guess for how it tasted that was was that the room it was stored in was so damned smoky it just took on the flavor.  Brian's best guess is that the cook actually ashed in the pie.

OMG, that was so gross.

EDIT:  due to popular demand, I will reveal the source of the ultra-nasty pie... Uncle Herbies, corner of 25th and Maple.

Book Review:  World Made By Hand by James Howard Kunstler, fiction, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008.

Okay, first I have to say that I love, love, love the title of this book.  I love the feel of it as it rolls around in my mind, I love the way it falls out of my mouth, I love the sense of somethingorother (would that be je ne sais quoi? *snark*) that it evokes.  A good start, no doubt.

For those who are unfamiliar, Kunstler is one of the grand high muckity-mucks of the Peak Oil movement.  He wrote the nonfiction book "The Long Emergency", the title of which is now the moniker second only to "peak oil" as most-used to describe our situation.  I must say, this guy's got a way with titles.

As for the rest of the book?  I'm still wrapping my brain around it.  This is an odd book, and no doubt about it.  Thin on plot, looooong on setting.  That's the point, though, for Kunstler, and I think he does use it to good effect.  Kunstler is very much trying to give us a glimpse of a possible future, or maybe a better way to put it would be a possible future-past.  The date is unclear, but I'd take a stab that it's somewhere around 2030-2040.  In his setting, we're well out of oil, or at least, no one in America seems to have access to oil any longer, at any cost.  The story is very obviously one of a small society ravaged by the changes wrought by a world without oil.  It's fairly lyrical.  It is well written.  And even though it doesn't have much of a plot to speak of, it doesn't want for plot, and is a compelling read.  The characters aren't particularly well developed, but they're sympathetic, and even a bit interesting in their mystery. 

The most compelling force of this book is how very easy it is to see this version of our future unfolding before your eyes.  His descriptions of burned-out old strip malls & K-Marts, empty houses, provincialism, even tribalism, are disturbing in their potential accuracy.  Biking around town, it's now like I have a film-strip running just behind my eyes, superimposing Kunstler's future over what my real eyes are taking in.  It's very disconcerting. 

I disagree in many particulars with Kunstler's vision of the future.  I think his timeline is too fast, for one thing, if I've got the estimated dates right.  Most analysts agree that there will still be oil available for decades into the future, just vastly out of range for most everyone.  There's also no compelling reason that the electrical system will fall apart so quickly (around 5 minutes of electricity per month), although certainly the regular service we've come to expect will be a distant memory.  And why we apparently no longer have antibiotics is anyone's guess, unless we've forgotten how to grow mold on bread in the prehistoric future.  Now, we won't have *good* antibiotics; they won't be carefully crafted and purity-controlled.  But someone with a petri dish, a microscope and a "My First Chemistry Set" can probably kludge together something that, while not great, is better than death.

I also disagree with Kunstler's portrayal of the people in this setting, I think largely because I disagree with his timeline.  In Kunstler's world, people went from "oil" to "no oil" very quickly apparently (I suppose on the Cuba model), with little run down.  They ruminate almost continuously about things past, things gone, things changed, no tin foil or stereos or whathaveyou.  These people are still firmly in the "suicides are common" phase of the unraveling & collapse.  But I suspect the rundown will be much slower indeed, and people living in a genuinely "no oil at any price" world will have become far more well-adjusted (or, probably, far more hanging-from-the-beams-by-a-rope).  None of this is to say that I think the upcoming two decades will be fun, or easy--far from it.  But I think Kunstler's characterization is off.  However, he could be correct if the remaining oil-producing countries in the world just decide to give us the finger and cut off our supply.  We hain't got much oil left in our corner of the world, no matter how many oil fields they open for exploration.  And there's every reason to expect that, while the mideast may not cut us off entirely, they will begin some serious stockpiling of what they have left, just as we did in the runup to the 1970's oil peak in our own country.

The book is also weirdly sexist, although in an almost purely descriptive rather than prescriptive fashion.  That is, he's not saying "and this is what the place of women should be," but something more like "Huh.  Look at what the place of women is in this world."  There's even a brief reflection on the situation by one character, although again, without either decrying or endorsing it.  I'm not sure if this descriptive mode is better or worse than a prescriptive mode--I could see a fair case being made either way.  But again, it also seems very plausible indeed.

Overall, and maybe surprisingly, I liked it.  Even though I disagree with much about it, the world he describes really is bizarrely compelling.  I found it well-written, and I find myself wanting to find out more about what happens to the people in this little New England town.  Since finishing this book, I've been wandering around in a bit of a haze--sometimes a funk, sometimes a more surreal state, as I see my town melting away before my eyes and replaced by a Kunstlerian future world.  It's odd, not really bad, but also not good.  Just, is. 

Kneel before the beauty that is my new harvest basket--thanks MIL!
1. Plant something: I dinna think I planted a damned thing this week.

2. Harvest something: lettuce, kale, chard, broccoli, green beans, fennel, tomatoes, oregano, parsley, cilantro, thyme.

3. Preserve something: cherries!  Cherry jam, frozen cherries

4. Prep/stored something:  I don't think so.

5. Cook something new:  kale paneer!

6. Manage your reserves: nothing to speak of

7. Work on local food systems: the usual, plus networked with a guy at a local County Fair, who has many connections in the Amish community--he's gonna see about enticing them to plant out some wheat!

8. Reduce Waste: nope.

9. Learn a new skill: nope.

So, erm, I didn't have any spinach for the "palak" part of "palak paneer", but my garden is overgrowing with kale right now so I thought--heck, why not?  I blanched the kale first for 7 minutes in salty water to get the bitterness out and to get the right texture, and then proceeded with the recipe.  Honest truth?  Couldn't even tell the difference.  Had that been served to me, I would have been clueless that it was kale.  Oh, and FYI, I even emailed a friend in India to ask what a good term for kale is in an Indian language, but they don't have kale in India, so "Kale Paneer" it is!



Kale Paneer
Kale:  backyard
Paneer:  homemade, cowshare milk, ~20 mi
Onion:  CSA, ~50 mi
Tomatoes:  backyard
Cream:  cowshare, ~20 mi
[not local:  ginger, garlic, shit-ton of spices]

And for dessert?  Well, I must admit that technically these cherries are not "local", in that they come in spare change over 100 miles away.  However, they are off of the cherry tree planted in honor of our first son's birth on my husband's family's ancestral farm, so I'm calling that about as local as you can really get!



Cherry Clafouti
Cherries:  family farm, just over 100 mi
Milk:  cowshare, ~20 mi
Eggs:  my friend Megan, ~10 mi
Flour:  can't remember name, nearly 100 mi
[not local:  sugar, cinnamon, and ice cream {oops}]

One:
The hot veggie sandwiches at Roly Poly:  a yummy, delightful array of inventive combinations; truly a pleasure to eat
The cold veggie sandwiches at Roly Poly:  variations on the theme of "disappointing"; think "lettuce + something"

Two:
The cheese enchiladas I made last week = swooooooon.
The beef enchiladas I made last night = meh.  The beef was too distracting from the yumminess of the cheese, onions, cilantro & enchilada sauce. 

Three:
We've recently had an offer to buy 1/4 a local cow at a very good price.  We did some figuring and discovered that this is vastly more red meat than we eat anymore, even all year.  Even splitting a 1/4 (that would be an 1/8th, eh?) is too much.  Good.  No cow-buying, as this would only inspire us to eat more of things we don't need to eat.  If & when we want red meat, I know where to get it.

Four:
I <3 seitan!  I haven't made any for awhile--need to fix that situation.

So today, just after Brian leaves for work, I notice both the kids and Calvin the Cat just going apeshit over by some boxes next to the couches in our living room.  Fine, they've found a mouse, no problem, sic Calvin on it that's what he's for after all.  Then I notice that Calvin is having trouble getting to the rodent in question, so I figure I'll release the mouse a bit so that Calvin can have his way with him.  But then I hear the sound--that is either the A-number-one most freaked out mouse I've ever heard (not hard to imagine given that angry cat death was hovering over it), or there's something else over there.  O_0  I get over to investigate and, sonofabitch, that's a bat trapped between the boxes and the couch.  Oh just great, a bat.  I mean, don't get me wrong, I like bats, they're cool.  They're especially cool when they're not in my house. 

I don't really know how to deal with this, though, so I call Brian, thinking maybe he's had a bat issue before, or maybe they covered it in the final work leading up to Eagle Scout or something.  His opinion is that the bat wants to get out, and that we need to just figure out a way to facilitate this.  So he does some checking and *screeeeeech* false, we do not want herr bat to escape, otherwise we will all (possibly by law) have to submit to fun, entertaining and expensive rabies treatments!  Woohoo!  No no no, catch the bat, get it tested.  Okay.  Spend about half an hour looking for the Animal Control number (difficult to find), call them and no, they don't do bats.  They refer me to a commercial firm.  Call commercial firm, he says that, first, there have only been two confirmed cases of rabies in America in the past 40 years, so I can probably not worry too much.  I need to catch and kill the relevant animal, take it to the County Annex, who have "bat kits" and will ship the bat to Indy for testing.  Okay, do you catch & kill bats, and how much do you charge for this service? I ask.  We do, and it starts at about a hundred and a half.  Nevermind, I can get a hammer.  Don't injure the brain, he says, that's what they have to test for rabies.  Great.  Kill it, don't damage it, and don't get bitten in the process.  Fine.  I won't go into the gory details (as if I haven't already) but I succeeded, get the dead bat into a Ball jar (which will never ever ever again be used for anything except dead bat transport), and truck it down to the County Annex. 

Whaddaya suppose happened then?  Yup. Bat kit?  What's a bat kit?  Who told you that?  Hey, what's in the jar--eeeew!  A nice man in the Health Department called someone who told him something, and he took the Ball jar with resident dead rodent, all my info, and did something with it.  One can only hope that it will involve testing for rabies.  At that point, I was done with the project.  I wanted my peppermint mocha, I wanted to be no longer in possession of a dead rodent, and I didn't even care anymore if my children have rabies or not, on the theory that it would be hard to tell the difference anyway. 

Theoretically I'll find out sometime this year if we have rabies or not. 

Oh, and probably just a scare tactic on the website B found (which was a commercial exterminator's site), they claimed that if you find a bat in your house, you most likely have a colony of bats somewhere inside.  Super.  We'll deal with this later.  Right now, I'm going to go knit.

This was my first foray into the world of enchiladas, and can I just say damn. I am sooooo making these again. And again. And again. And then, just possibly, again. And then maybe I'll make it again next week, too. This was also my second attempt at making homemade tortillas. This is actually really really easy if you have a tortilla press, which, fortunately, I do. However, I cannot get local corn flour (masa), only local corn meal. But I did just get my very own grain mill, so I put the corn meal through the mill and got corn flour--ha! I'm not sure it was quite fine enough, and it certainly hadn't been nixamatalized (sp?), but it worked well enough. The tortillas broke when I tried to roll them, but I'm not sure if that was the fault of the tortilla or my own skills at prepping them--more investigation is needed. I guess I'll just hafta make more enchiladas! Here's the breakdown:

Tortillas
Corn meal: Bridgeton Mills, ~20 mi. (ground into masa at home)
[not local: shortening, salt]

Enchilada Sauce & finished dish
Chicken broth: L&A Farms chicken, ~25 mi, then homemade
Flour: some local place, ~120 mi
Cheese: Amish farmer, ~20 mi
Onion: Good Life Farms CSA, 54 mi
Cilantro: backyard
Sour cream: homemade from cowshare cream, ~20 mi
[not local: truckload of spices, sugar]

Apple Cider Vinegar Salad
Lettuce: backyard
Honey: somewhere local, nearby?
[not local: vinegar, oil, garlic powder, salt & pepper]

And hey, all you gamers what read my blog? Guess what you're getting to eat on Thursday.... hehe

We spent a delightful weekend at my husband's family farm, picking, pitting, prepping, and eating cherries. These cherries come from the tree we planted for Alex when he was born, so they are quite literally his cherries.

I've got 5 quarts of cherries in my freezer now, and another 3 in my fridge. Cherry jam and clafouti are in our future. Thank the gods for a mild day, cause some hardcore cooking is about to ensue (I also have to make bread).

Yes, I know, I can count too, and yes, I did miss a week.  Believe it or not, I'm not actually behind in real life, just in the blogosphere.  So this week's recount will include both weeks, lest it look like I got all majorly proactive or something.

1. Plant something: half a flat of cauliflower, hyssop, winter savory, sweet woodruff, silver thyme, English thyme, cilantro, pineapple mint, oregano, dill, ginger mint (did I already do that one?), lemon balm, dill, lemon verbena.

2. Harvest something: lettuce, kale, chard, broccoli.

3. Preserve something: 2 gallons of blueberries; 10ish pints of chicken stock

4. Prep/stored something:  made and used haybox cooker to make chicken stock and a pot roast.  Rocked.  Oh yes.  Also finally got my grain mill and flaker!  Yeargh!

5. Cook something new:  Enchiladas--homemade corn tortillas, now that was a trick.  Still didn't get them just right, but it was definitely good.  I had no complaints from the peanut gallery.

6. Manage your reserves: nothing to speak of

7. Work on local food systems: more Community Garden, more Terre Foods--had a sick kid on Thursday and got lots of co-op work done.  Went on a field trip to Urbana-Champaign's co-op which was like whoa useful, I mean damn.

8. Reduce Waste: made new composting thingy out of old trashcan, so that the compost in my current compost thingy can finally finish.

9. Learn a new skill: haybox cooking, using the grain mill

You know, I'd planned on getting a better lit photo of this but... well... we ate it all. Ah well. You'll just have to make it for yourself to see how wonderful it really is. Also, please note that this recipe calls for a full QUART of blueberries. The whole purpose of the buckle is to provide a slightly sweetened suspension medium for ghastly amounts of blueberries--so many blueberries that the cake itself "buckles" in the center. All of these berries actually fit, with batter and streusel, into a 9" round pan. True story. And the streusel provides a lovely hint of cinnamon which would have been out of place in the cake itself, but which sets of the whole thing beautifully.  This can be a coffee cake by adding a cup of coffee on the side, or a dessert by, well, just eating it.

 

 

Oh great holy gods on high, this has got to be one of the most awesome-est things I have ever laid eyes upon.  Gratitude is to be heaped upon winneganfake  for showing the way.

Clicky the banner.  Watch the trailer.  Read the Master Plan.  Dude, I will be sooo glued to my computer in mid-July.  

I finally found local flour! Well, mostly local! Er, local enough. ... hm. Damnit, it's 120 miles away, I'm calling it local.

Cabbage & Cheddar Pie

[Crust]
whole wheat flour: ~120 mi (can't remember the name of the grower)
butter: cowshare ~20 mi
[not local: salt, vodka]

[Filling]
cabbage: CSA, ~30 mi
cheddar: amish farmer, ~20 mi
onion: CSA, ~30 mi
sour cream: homemade, cowshare, ~20 mi
butter: cowshare, ~20 mi
[not local: salt, pepper]

I was just finishing the ricotta cheese, getting ready to tie up the ends of the cheesecloth so that it could drain, and one side slipped out of my hand and the whole batch poured right out into the sink.  SHIT.

Oh yeah, and we've now only got one year to get our particle emissions back under 350ppm before irreversable damage is done and climate change spirals out of any chance for human intervention.  Ah well.  I guess it was nice having agriculture and stable shorelines, but that wasn't as important to us as driving big trucks and having swank clothing accessories.  For anyone on my f-list who still doesn't think that climate change is real, I am completely uninterested in discussing this with you.  Go and actually learn something about it, from reputable sites, e.g., NASA's Earth Observatory site.  DailyKos has some useful info and links to real, actual, good information here.  Not that it even matters anymore.  Ah well, I'll still hang dry my clothes on the theory that maybe we can limit the human deaths to a few million rather than a few billion.  Whatever.

This is either the funniest or stupidest headline I've ever seen:

(CNN) "Stocks struggle on oil, economy"

So what you're saying is that the stock market, which is one of our primary indicators for the health & wellbeing of our economy (nevermind how stupid a signifier that might be), is struggling because of the economy?  Is this anything like, "The dollar is struggling due to a decline in the value of the dollar"?

*headesk*

I'm gonna go make some mozzarella and pretend that we don't live in the real world now. 

Today while preparing lunch:
Ian:  "Mommy, I won't complain about the food you give me, I'll EAT it!"

Brian went to the optometrist today to see about getting contacts.  Some background here:  (1) Brian's eyes are terrible.  No, beyond terrible.  His diopter for glasses is so high it isn't listed in the automatic fields at the opthamologist office.  When we go to University medical centers, student opthamologists are called in to see his eyes.  He has some of the rarest eye disorders on record (note the plural there).  (2) Brian and doctors do not get along.  At all.  (3)  Brian and eye doctors really don't get along.  Like whoa.  (4)  Brian is phobic of anything going into his eyes.

I was nervous about this appointment.  But contacts might help Brian see a bit better (though they will not stop any degeneration), and would be all around more pleasant if he can handle them (see #4 above), so he wants to at least give them a try.

When I came to pick him up, he asked, "Well, do you want the good news, the good news, or the good news?"  Never mind that this is in regards to an eye appointment, you cannot imagine how rare a sentence like this is out of Brian's mouth.  Turns out that, among other things, they didn't even have to dilate his eyes, which meant he didn't kill an entire day for this appointment.  Contacts are indeed available for his diopter rate, even with the astygmatism (sp?), which surprised us mildly.  Further, they're even available in extended wear disposable, which is just really wonderful.  Now, sadly, Brian has a protein buildup condition in his eyes, so he probably will not be able to leave the contacts in for several weeks as other people can, but he may be able to leave them in for at least a few days, which will minimize the whole "things going into my eye" issue.  And, here's the real kicker, they are now cheap.  I cannot believe it, but disposables for his prescription are even being mass-produced now, so they cost less than the exam itself did!  Holy shit on a shingle!

So, maybe in a couple of weeks, Brian will give contacts a whirl.  I hope he likes them.  Ian has already expressed great displeasure at the idea of daddy not wearing glasses, but I think he might just have to learn to cope.

Step 1:  Tell son that the next time he complains about the food I give him (which he does all the time), that food will be immediately taken away from him, put into the trash, and not replaced by anything.
Step 2:  Give the children chocolate cake for snack (did I mention I just had a Chocolate Bliss Pampered Chef party yesterday?).
Step 3:  Place slice of cake in trash after child complains about it.
Step 4:  Listen to 1 hour of screaming, crying, begging, apologizing, cajoling, etc. out of child.
Step 5:  Wait with baited breath to see what he does at dinner.

And the conclusion?  He sat nicely, said "thank you" and "Mmmm, I like it!"

Bright child, that one.