Must be a theme

Blue skies everywhere!

Double Nickel Farm, New Mexico

Framboise Manor, Nova Scotia

Just when you think it's safe enough to stay inside...

this happens.

That's one of the buckets the Girls gave me for Mother's Day a few years ago. It's coming in handy. It sits about... two feet from me. There's another bucket just under the ceiling vent up there in front of me. When the sky is falling and I leave the house, I move all of my electronic gizmos into the breakfast room.

So it rained today. A guy came out yesterday to assess the situation. He called today. You just can't do what he needs to do in the rain.

The other day, A. Leland asked if it was always like this-- one thing and then another. I replied that this winter was exceptional with respect to the sheer number of things that had gone wrong.

• We ran out of propane. This never happens.
• The furnace stopped woking.
• Turns out we had a bad regulator.
• We got that fixed.
• Next day, A.L. & I smell gas everywhere. 
• A gas leak explains everything.

Did I mention the busted/frozen pipes so keep the water dripping all night water bill? 

And the dryer that quit? And the dishwasher that would not drain?

And the tomatoes that are desperate to go into the ground but cannot on account of the fact that it's gonna be freaking freezing tomorrow night? 

It's not even safe to go outside!

[Shelter in place.]

"So you think *you* can stack wood?"

Subject line of an email Mr. Big Food's Dad passed along.

Here's a sampling of the attached images. Hoping American Grouch will enjoy them.

Pecan Math

We had a very satisfying dinner cooked in a clay pot this evening.

Tender & moist

A whole clove of garlic roasts in the clay pot, then is combined with butter to top the veggies.

succulent

After dinner chit chat, Daughter C and I got down to shelling pecans.

We had been given, by Mr. Big Foods Mom, a 5# bag (that's 5 pounds) of Texas Pecans, cracked. Mr. Big Food's Mom paid $22.50 for this bag of cracked pecans.

We got about 2.5 pounds of pecan halves.

Here's where it gets interesting. 

A 4-6 ounce package of pecan halves at the Piglet goes for about $4.00. How many ounces are  in 2.5 pounds?

About $160 worth. 

"Wealth" is a concept that is underappreciated.

It doesn't take much

to amuse us.

These are mockernuts.

Mockernuts are a species of hickory: Carya tomentosa. I got that from the infallible source, Wikipedia. It confirms what my Plant Book [1] and several tree identification books [2] say.

Mockernuts are A. Leland's gig. He's been collecting, removing the husks, and shelling them. He reports the nut meat is sweet and buttery with a hint of banana.

If he keeps up his current pace of collecting, removing and shelling, we should have at least four or five cups of nut meat by next Spring. That is, if he isn't distracted by the walnuts. 

A. Leland observed that it was cool that we could just walk outside and gather food to eat. He's not one, but it's good to be reminded that some folks think delicate nuts come from Whole Foods. 

[1] The Plant Book: The World of Plants in a Single Volume. Random House Austrailia Pty Ltd. 2001

[2] Trees of North America: A Field Guide to the Major Native and Introduced Species North of Mexico. Frank Brockman. Golden Press, New York. 1979.

UPDATED | You Know What This Means, Don't You?

It means I can't sit around eating bonbons and watching my stories this afternoon. That's what it means. Dang.

UPDATE! Like magic the lights came on seconds after I called to inquire about when the lights would come back on. 

Now this should be fun. In lieu of watching my stories, I mopped the kitchen floor-- using a mop, not the fancy runs-on-Electricity floor cleaner-- in the dark. Wonder what it looks like?

Custom Made at No Additional Charge

I am pleased to report that thanks to Mr. Big Food's unrelenting efforts in a small space of 50 square feet and wall heights ranging from 8-10 feet the prison-striped wall paper is history!

As you may recall, there is no law (Yet? That I'm aware of?) forbidding home owners from affixing wall paper to sheet rock which has not first been primed or painted. And I'll not be painting over wall paper. Daughter C. recommended steam-- and hey!-- if you have a now-previously very nice garment/drape/upholstery steamer you might as well put it to good use. Steam works remarkably better than diluted Downy Fabric Softener [insert trademark thingy]. There is one small problem, though.

No caption needed if you know what bare naked sheet rock looks like.

The original plan was to paint. There's still paint involved in the revised plan, but it comes after the walls are textured

because when you texture walls, you don't have to sand after you fix the gouges in the sheet rock.

After I'd sanded the bare naked wood door frames and mouldings, I was sort of tired of sanding. (Don't forget, I just sanded all the bare naked wood in the half-bath.) Texturing it is!

Steam also works remarkably well to loosen Joint tape. [Let me remark here that if it sounds like I know what I'm talking about it's due in large part to Bro. Mike.] Turns out that before I knew what Joint tape was, I'd managed to scrape away a whole Joint's worth in the worst of all possible Joints--

that crazy Joint at the Corner of Door Frame & Wall.

Happy New Year!

May 2013 bring you and yours ever closer to Happiness, Excellence, and Self-Reliance.

~~
And speaking of Self-Reliance, New Hope Seed Company is having a sale! Plus, free shipping on order $25 or more.

This should be interesting.

Oh look. A senator. Someone from the UN & Mozambique. And Korea!

Thank you Marica ______ , you have been successfully registered for the Technology Implementation at the Local Level: Food Security for the Future Conference. For additional information about the conference, please contact Benjy Mikel, director of the Mississippi State University International Institute, at ________. Also, be sure to check the agenda.

This is a generated email. Please do not respond to this email.

[my edits; I don't like publishing email addresses.]

This could turn out to be quite educational. Or it could be a lot of gibberish. We shall see. 

From This ... To This ... To Stewed Tomatoes

From fresh tomatoes

To blanched and peeled Roma tomatoes & fresh peppers & onion & fresh basil & fresh oregano

To stewed tomatoes

As God as my Witness, we will never buy a tomato product ever again (except tomato paste and tomato juice). And I'm here to testify that we haven't. Last year was not a good tomato year. Nevertheless, we made it. As we have for the past five years.

Three batches of stewed tomatoes are still cooling. Our kitchen smells really good! And Mr. Big Food hasn't even started cooking supper yet.

I have a wringer.

More crappy old stuff

In the developed world, we forget that there was once a time when washday meant “day” rather than “toss it in the machine and come back in 20 minutes.” In many parts of the world without access to electricity and clean water, that time is still now. Design students Alex Cabunoc and Ji A You of the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles visited the the slums of Cerro Verde, Peru. There they saw women spending days on end hauling water and washing clothes by hand and they came up with a solution. They created the GiraDora, a foot-pedal washing machine that’s inexpensive and portable.

More on the pedal-powered washing machine here.

h/t Instapundit

Speaking of which,

I did win something a few weeks ago!

The Piglet-- what we call the little Piggly Wiggly Super Market in our little town-- has a weekly raffle premium distribution.

Non-winning tickets

Every time you make a purchase at The Piglet, you get a ticket(s). The number of tickets you get per purchase correlates roughly with 1) purchase amount (positive correlation); 2) cashier (D.C. is very generous); 3) amount of chit-chat between you and cashier (positive correlation; we enjoy chatting with D.C.). The drawing is held every Monday morning. Once, I was asked to pull out the winning ticket!

The prize is a gift certificate. Prize amount begins at $50 and, if no one claims to win, increases by $50 each week.

I won $50! There have been a couple of $300 winners!

Odds are I'll win again assuming I don't get hit by a bus any time soon (there are none in my little county) or fall into the Mississippi River when we head to NOLA in a few days.

I've been pondering for weeks what to splurge on. I've come to think corn products with long shelf-lives might be the way to go. Corn meal (freeze it). Frozen corn (I've a good crop but not enough to last all winter). Corn starch (freeze it). Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix (TM). Canned corn. Hominy... .

Any other suggestions?

A Nice Little Chat

Not my Post Office. Mine's way bigger! (haha)

I happened to be out front today as my mail-lady drove up. Say what you will about the United States Postal Service (why in the world would you need to follow USPS on twitter?) but the ladies at my little post* office are very friendly and helpful. Anyway, my mail-lady and I had a nice little chat about:

Our gardens. Her beans did better than mine, but I had more blackeyes. We both love baked sweet potatoes.

Food prices. And it's not going to get any better. Good thing we have gardens and know how to put stuff up. But those city folk are gonna have a hard time.

Preppers. I don't watch that show; her son and husband love it, although she's less enthusiastic.  But tornadoes and hurricanes do happen. Poor city folk.

Ammo. Her son and husband were buying more the other day. See above.

Guns. Her son just bought an AK47.** He loves guns. Me, too! Guns made America great!

Super Talk Mississippi, where we both learned this morning that the AK47 is the weapon of choice for the United States military. I found out from Paul Gallo's morning show. She found out from JT. She's afraid he might have a heart attack on the air one day if this sort of thing keeps up.

Mississippi. We are both glad we live in rural Mississippi because no one really cares about Mississippi.

We left it at that since neither of us knows what's going to happen. 
~~

* Tip: If you are in a rush, do not go into my little post office to conduct business. Go to town. Nancy is the only one in there and she loves to catch up/catch you up on local happenings.

** No. We don't sell guns to minors in Mississippi. 

Cooler Corn & Cardboard Cookin' / Let's Play Redneck

Two great ideas for when the lights go out, or when you just want to play like a Redneck. 

The first, Cooler Corn, comes via an email from Mr. Big Food's Dad who I think gets more emails each day than Mr. Big Food (who gets a lot). The second, Cardboard Box Solar Oven, comes from Anita Evangelista's Backwoods Home Magazine article, "How do you live without electricity?" (issue 73: Jan/Feb 2002).

Just add boiling water!

Public Service Announcement: Check Your Computer!

I heard about this a while back and checked my computer-- because Lord knows I don't need any more computer problems-- a few days ago. I checked Mr. Big Food's computers this afternoon. We're good to go, I hope.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, Jazz Shaw at Hot Air has a very brief summary of the mal-ware problem that, should your computer be infected, will cause you to be unable to connect to the internet beginning at midnight, eastern time. And he has the link to a site that will test your connection NOW, before midnight eastern when it will be too late. Takes 30 seconds, tops.

Missy is a Prepper

She's stockpiling. (What an interesting word.) She's hoarding. She awaits The End Times.

I won't fault her.

She is a very messy housekeeper. Pretty much everything on the right side was piled on the food on the left side.

Seeing how much of her food Rocky eats, I don't blame her one bit for wanting to put some away.

She's out now, alone in The Den. Suzy just barked at her. Good for Suzy. Missy's all full of herself because she had a feast. She'll need to replenish her bowl tomorrow.

What do you make of this?

We think we have an idea. (How's that for certainty?)

But we're not sure.

Water, walkie-talkies, etc.

The tornado room is provisioned.

The walkie-talkies are set to weather radio, but because redundancy is a good thing, there's also a battery operated radio. I've changed out the phone cords so the land-line phone now reaches the tornado room, a.k.a., the laundry room.

All of the prep work means we will not have a tornado here. That's the way it works.