Tuesday, October 18, 2022

Turning Breakfast on its Head

 With the slight chill this morning I am sitting here having a big bowl of soup with a piece of homemade bread crumbed into it. During the unrelenting heat of this past summer (52 days of 100 plus heat.) cooking became a dirty word. Our kitchen faces west with zero shade and even with the air blasting the house would still be in the mid-eighties, the kitchen being in the nineties due to the sun beating on the wall. The food I was buying was sitting uneaten because it was too miserable to add any heat to the house. Breakfast was the only meal I really cooked so I started cooking the evening meal in the early mornings and eating it later. After several weeks of this I was making stir fry one morning, and it looked so appealing I had a bit.  At that moment it occurred to me that I am a grown ass adult and if I wanted to cook and eat 'supper' foods first thing in the morning I could. So I started cooking and eating whatever I wanted for first meal. Even with cooler weather I am still eating 'supper' foods for breakfast, and it is glorious. 

 Overturning family traditions has always been something I have done. Some things I still do because they invoke pleasant memories, like making pancakes for supper on Shrove Tuesday even though I was never a Catholic. (My mother was but no longer practicing by the time I was born.) Other than Shrove Tuesday, pancakes were strictly a weekend thing because my mother worked full time and was heavily involved in the American Legion and VFW and weekend mornings were her only free time. I was in my 20s when I decided to make pancakes on a weekday, and I still remember how decadent I felt, like I was on vacation or something. Next up was cooking holiday foods on non holidays, like turkey in June. One reason foods were eaten at certain times of the year is because back when I was young food was still mostly seasonal, so you ate what was available locally. October became pork month because fall is when pigs were slaughtered and processed. Produce was only in the stores at the time of their harvests. We got oranges in our Xmas stockings and were excited, oranges were very expensive in the winter. 

 Now that we have been eating non traditional breakfast foods for several years, we have decided we like it and will be continuing. Sometimes I want a plate of eggs and bacon, but that might be in the evening after we had pasta for breakfast. Eating what we want when we want it is awesome and I don't think I will return to adhering to societal tradition dictating my mealtimes. 

Monday, October 17, 2022

Finally some cool weather!

  The first real cold front of the year has finally come to Texas. We had a bit of rain, not near enough to really ease the years long drought, but a nice change from baking heat. That will make working around the place a little more pleasant. 

 Things are usually in flux around the Collective, we try to go with the flow of things as much as we can. Something that has been a major issue for me since the easing of Covid restrictions has been the massive increase in noise in our area. We are situated between two major north-south freeways and two railroads. Up until just a few years ago the noise was much less. There was some from rush hours, and the occasional train going by. Then the city blew up with West Coast transplants, and suddenly now we have light rail blaring horns every 30 minutes, traffic noise 24/7, massive multi floor apartment buildings going up blocks from our house, and oh yes, let's not forget the new entertainment district the city is busily developing a couple of miles away that includes a new stadium for the newly hatched Austin soccer team. Back up beepers from construction trucks start going off at 5 a.m. and don't stop until mid-evening.

 As an Aspie noise is an issue for me. Ie simply cannot deal with too much noise. I would love to move to the country, however we are tied to living in a major city due to the Husband's job, he's in IT and high speed Internet is a must have. We have looked into options, and there are none for the speeds we need, so please do not blow up the comment section trying to tout Starlink or whatever satellite system/mobile phone hotspot you have. It simply will not work for us. We also have a set of criteria, such as specialized medical services no more than 30 minutes away, access to decent grocery shopping, preferably mobile veterinarians for the animals, auto mechanics, you get the idea. 

 We are also interested in heading into retirement debt free or as close as we can get. We are unwilling to pay the redonculous amount of money it takes to get an edge of town place with acreage. The actual move would cost thousands of dollars not to mention the hassle of packing and transporting three people, four dogs (Two of which are well over a hundred pounds.) a cat and all our stuff . Our options now are to turn to noise deflecting landscaping and remodeling. Being trapped here in the house for the last two plus years has really taken a toll on my mental health as well. In a perfect world we would have a vacation house out of town. Too bad this isn't a perfect world. 

 Continuing to develop the Haven Collective is the upside to living inner city. Senior support is sparse in rural areas, and specialists non-existent. There are many adult orphans here (People with no family to help them in their later years.) and banding together Golden Girls style is the way for our group to have a better quality of life. For now the pros of staying outweigh the cons. Time for me to invest in some noise cancelling ear wear. 

Thursday, May 5, 2022

Time For A Change

 I have enjoyed writing fiction, the worldbuilding is the most fun. You get to make up an entire universe just the way you want it. I will definitely finish out the Salvage series, I have put way too much work into that storyline to let it just fizzle off. But my true loves are and always have been history, anthropology, and food. 

 When I was young, there wasn't much on TV. We had a whole three stations, and a snowy PBS station that came in a bit more clear early mornings and late night when the local stations powered off for the night. I have always been an early riser, and my parents were not. So by the time I was 6, I was getting up and feeding myself in the mornings. I discovered on the snowy PBS station The French Chef followed by The Galloping Gourmet. These two shows plus the food traditions of my own family and culture cemented my interest in where food came from and why, at the ripe of age of 6 years old. 

 Since cable wasn't a thing at that time, I read everything I could get my hands on from the two local public libraries. Some of the books made such an impression on me I later bought copies for myself. Some of my favorite fiction works have food integrated into the storyline, both fantasy and historical fiction. It was these interests that nudged me towards a degree in anthropology. It wasn't until I moved to Austin and went to work at a museum that it hit me that food anthropology/archeology was such a huge part of human culture.  

 I have worked over the years at various food jobs, working as a private chef helped support me financially in other endeavors such as my foray into the music industry. When I would move to those things full time, I would find I was bored to tears, and I would invariably return to food and my interest in its history. As I have aged, my immune disorder I have had most of my life has rendered me unable to work in the food industry any more, which is why closed my bakery and tried my hand at writing. 

 In a review of my first novel Salvage, the reviewer commented on my detail to food and eating, almost as if it were a bad thing. We spend a good chunk of our time getting food and eating it, and I feel that it should be a pretty substantial part of the story, and not just in times of crisis. (As in 'Oh look, we've crashed on a desert island/the world has ended and we're starving' kind of way.) Food is entwined with history and culture and there would not be either history or culture without food. 

 Food is my passion. It always has been from an early age. I started cooking at 6, thanks to my grandmother. She gave the the basics, and my mother (who was a good plain cook0 and other people I met along my life journey continued my education. I still love learning about new foods and how they are worked into the culture of the region they come from. Writing, while not my passion, is something I am good at. 

 I am ready to put my college and lifelong education to work again but this time instead of trying to be a museum curator, which I had zero passion for, I am going to blend my loves of history, food and anthropology and see where the road takes me. I am considering videos as well as blog and Meta/FB posts as I wind my way through the world of food, history and culture. Come along for the ride, it should be fun as well as interesting, and you may learn something new. I'm sure hoping to!

 Cruise on over to the new blog, The Why of What We Eat. 

A Long Time Coming

 


I have had multiple people I know recently lose loved ones. I have made the calls, reached out like one is supposed to. The last one was a couple of days ago.

This has brought up some major feelings for me. When my parents died, none of the people who I thought of as my friends called or offered help. I had help in the form of siblings and husband, so didn't need it. Several years later, I lost my oldest sister, who was a mother figure and my best friend as well as my sister. NO ONE locally reached out. Oh there were FB messages of condolence, but not one single person came to see if I were okay or needed anything. I was not okay. I spent two years so depressed I rarely left the house. My health began to worsen, and then I temporarily went blind in one eye due to it and got to spend 3 days alone in hospital hooked up to an IV. Exactly one couple reached out and even came to visit. Again, from everyone else, there was radio silence. When I did try recently to ask for help during a particularly bad stretch, I was ghosted so I stopped trying.

For all my life, I was the first person to be there in times of trouble with help, whether it be food, a ride, staying with someone in hospital, cleaning their house, taking care of their kids, pets and plants, holding their hand in times of trouble. I did it because I truly cared about the people and their well being. It had been made very clear to me that it was not reciprocated, I was nothing but a convenience to be taken advantage of and when I ceased to be one and began to say no and set boundaries, the 'friends' disappeared.
Because of the experiences of the last couple of years, I have stopped trying to make friends. I tried a local social group before the plague hit, but every event I went to I felt like I wasn't particularly welcome so I stopped trying to attend. Is it that I only have 'worth' when I allow people to use and abuse me? Or is this a sign that I am really a horrible person who doesn't deserve to have real friends? Maybe so. I don't think so, but then we don't see ourselves as others see us.

Sunday, March 22, 2020

Being weird is paying off!

  I had an unusual childhood. My city bred, college educated mother taught me things like finance, how to shop to get the most for your money, and interestingly enough, how to drive a stick shift. My country bred, grew up too poor to be a dirt farmer father taught me about the outdoors, guns, hunting/fishing, boating, building, and gave me a love of reading. There were no children living anywhere near our home and my siblings were all much older than me, so I spent all my time alone, reading and acting out the things I read about. We had a large yard, and an abandoned pecan orchard behind the house where I built lean-to shelters with a rope and leafy branches, pretending to be a primitive person. Sometimes I was a Native American, sometimes a Celtic warrior, a space traveller on an alien planet, or a Cimmerian from the world of Conan, it all depended on what I was reading that week. 
  My parents would take me everywhere with them, and often the older people at the various gatherings would tell me stories to keep me entertained, usually about what they did when they were my age. I was fascinated hearing about life in the country, farming or ranching, growing a garden for food, wild gathering other foodstuffs. I paid attention, and often the older person would be happy to teach me the skills they knew.
 As I grew older, I became even more interested in primitive living. I was born in the early 60s, and the hippy culture was full steam by the time I was 10 or so. In Jr. High I met a classmate who had an actual hippy for a mother, and she introduced me to the good and the bad of living with less, or as my parents called it, dirt poor. I learned much at her knee, and she was happy to pass on her knowledge to anyone who was interested in learning. 
  Freshman year of college, I was rummaging around in the magazine bins at a local used bookstore, and stumbled across a magazine called Mother Earth News. I opened it, and became hooked immediately. I dug through the bins and found the entire first 5 years, all in good condition. I think I paid something like five or ten cents each, the bookstore owner was just glad to get rid of them. I took them home and devoured them. Some of the things I had already learned over the years, and some things were totally new, or things I had read about but never tried. As time went on, I found books in the library on homesteading and other things, and began teaching myself. I learned to spin and weave from a book, hand carving a spindle from scrap wood and picking up spilled cotton bolls on the side of the road around the cotton gin. I got hides from local hunters and learned to tan leather and fur, learned how to knap flint and make tools and weapons, how to wild gather food, how to build a solar still or oven, pretty much anything I took an interest in, I was able to teach myself or learn from the area older population. 
 I was always the weird kid that no one really wanted to play with. I did find a small group of other weird kids in Jr. High, but only a handful. Even in college I was fairly isolated because I had such different interests from everyone else. As I grew older I continued learning new things, and doing a lot of homesteading practices. Even after I moved to the city I continued to read, research and learn how to do 'old fashioned' things. I would buy large amounts of food and can/dehydrate it, grow some of my own food, and raise small livestock. As time went on I met a few more people with the same interests, but it wasn't until the Internet that I really found my tribe. While it is no longer feasible for me to live in the country, thanks to others like me who have learned to adapt and overcome, a new wave of urban homesteading has sprung up, fueled by the economic uncertainties and food insecurities of the last decade.  People have always laughed and joked that when the apocalypse hit, they were heading to my house. With the current state of affairs, they have stopped joking, and started asking how to do things. Sometimes it pays to be the weird one. 

Thursday, February 27, 2020

Today is not a good day.

Yesterday was an okay day. Despite the pain of a cracked tooth, I was able to get up, do a bit of housework, ten minutes of Tai Chi, and get out to do some shopping. I ended up going to five different stores to get everything I needed. Leaving store #5, my body decided to rebel, and by the time I got home, I was crippled to the point I was barely able to make it from the car to the house. Last night's supper was a poor choice of salty prepared food yet again, as the pain made it impossible to stand, and no one else in the household cooks. Today will be spent in pain from multiple parts of my body, sad and depressed that once again, I can't do the things I need to, let alone the things I want to.

I contracted mono as a young teen, like many people. Mine didn't even come from making out (Mono was called 'The Kissing Disease' when I was in high school, with a wink and nod.) I contracted mine from an idiot in theater who knew she was sick, but didn't want to give up her starring role in the current play. We all shared drinks and smokes back then, no one thought anything about asking a friend for a sip of their Dr. Pepper. She infected the entire theater department. I was also cursed with a mother who didn't really understand illness or even want to admit it existed, and didn't take us to the doctor unless it was absolutely necessary. By the time I was finally taken to the doctor, I was very sick indeed. I remember our family doctor yelling at my mother in the hallway for not bringing me in sooner. The standard treatment for mono at that time was a massive shot of penicillin. I immediately went into anaphylactic shock, and then the fun began. I noticed as high school progressed that I seemed to feel 'off' all the time, unlike my classmates. I woke up tired and depressed many mornings, which got worse the older I got. Like most of us in the 70s and early 80s, I was on fire to get out of high school, out of my parents' house, and do Great Things, which i had been told was expected of me and everyone else. I got a job like my friends, but I didn't seem to be having as easy a time as they were. Some days I could go out after work and party, some days I was so exhausted it was all I could do to make it home to collapse into bed.

By the time I was in college, I knew something wasn't right. I didn't feel exactly good much of the time, but there wasn't any one thing I could put my finger on. Complaints about how I felt were met by my family with skepticism, when I mentioned widespread pain with no apparent cause, I was told 'It's just growing pains', and 'You're imagining it'. I finally went to a doctor at the college clinic, since it was free and I had no insurance, who listened to everything I had to say, did a thorough examination, then diagnosed me with something called Epstein-Barr Syndrome. She explained that something had happened when I was sick years before and had the reaction to the antibiotics, and it had affected my immune system, and that I would basically have chronic severe mono-like symptoms for the rest of my life, and would most likely get worse as the years went by. I wasn't happy exactly to find this out, but at least I now knew why I felt like I did. I remained active, and able to do most things most days without too much pain and fatigue.

As I grew older, things started breaking down more. When I would go to a doctor and tell them of the EBS diagnosis, I would be met with derision by the medical 'professionals' and told no such thing existed, and it was all in my head, and I needed to be in therapy, which was the hot new thing in the mid-80s. As time went on, and my German/Italian/Northman body, already 'overweight' (which I wasn't) because I didn't look like Twiggy, began to thicken, the doctors added 'lose weight and you'll be fine' to their litany, instead of actually trying to help me. So began my abuse from the medical community for the next 30 years. It took going blind in one eye on my 56th birthday for the doctors to finally admit that I had an immune disorder of some sort.

I have been handed off to no less than 7 doctors in the last 6 months. They all agree, yes, there's an issue with my immune system, but no one is willing to put a name to it. I have been tested for MS (negative), rheumatoid arthritis (negative) and endocrine disorders (negative again). They shrug, and say "Well, it's not in MY field, so off you go, and no I won't/can't help you." It's not like I'm asking for drugs or narcotics, in fact, I usually refuse them when offered, I want to save them for a time when nothing else will work. I'm now out of money, the insurance having refused to cover one of my days in the hospital, because according to them, sudden onset blindness with optic neuropathy isn't a reason for a hospital stay. And at $60 a pop, I can no longer go to specialists to continue trying to find out what is really wrong with me.

I have spent the majority of my adult life being told I was lazy, faking, and lying because I didn't 'look sick', and just 'didn't want to work' and the ever popular 'If you would just do.....'. Yeah. I just LOVE living in poverty most of my life. Really? So you think I am just living it up over here at 56 years old in a house with no hot water, walls literally crumbing, plumbing shot to the point the entire system needs to be replaced, in pain from a cracked tooth that I can't afford to get fixed because our dental insurance is a joke? (Don't EVEN get me started on the 'Well then you should just move somewhere cheaper!" assholes.) Tack on the lack of support system with the cultural loss of extended families, which terrifies me after having to put both parents in a nursing home and seeing the rampant abuses first hand. It is no surprise why so many people in my situation end up committing suicide because 'thoughts and prayers' are a bullshit cop out that we hear daily, with not one single person willing to stand up and help us.

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

No, we will no longer remain silent

 Normally I do things like this on my Facebook page, but I feel the need to share this further. Facebook has removed and blocked a photographer from their site because of a powerful photo shoot that she posted. You can see the details here

 Enough! This bullshit whiny PC crap needs to stop now! This is totally BS that a bunch of crybaby titty babies with sand in their vaginas are too busy sticking their fat fucking noses in everyone else's business. Don't want to view the pics? The learn to ducking use that little x on the upper corner TO CLOSE THE DAMN PICTURE! And if I hear one more rant about "What about the childreeeen???" I am going to go Pulp Fiction on their asses. Maybe if you educated your children instead of trying to keep them from knowing how the world works, there wouldn't be as many teen pregnancies, drug over doses, and suicides from bullying. 

 The world is a hard scary place, and while yes, children do not need to be exposed to all the horrors that it holds until they are able to understand it, it is past time to stop trying to keep our entire society in a state of extended childhood. Grow the fuck up, learn to deal with your problems instead of hiding them and drugging them away, because that solves nothing. NOTHING.