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. 

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. 

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.