Well, what do you know?!

A couple of years ago, I read somewhere that the history of the First Thanksgiving was not at all what the story of the First Thanksgiving is. The argument for this claim came from someone's reading of William Bradford's history of Plymouth. Naturally, I wanted to read passages from his crappy old book myself, so I spent some time this week tracking down internet versions of The History of Plymouth Colony. I found bewtieful original texts and modern English versions.

The problem is, I'm not keen on reading books on a computer screen. I'd about decided to not bother.
~~

You may recall our recent guest from Italy-- here on your dime, by the way-- forgot to make his bed. I called housekeeping and then got distracted. I realized just today housekeeping had not come! So I took the dogs out to the bunkhouse and got to work stripping the bed and picking up the blanket that our guest left on the floor between the bed and a bookshelf.

Beautiful!

1948

UPDATE: I should take inventory.

Missy & I Have a New Game

I throw a stone in the pond and she "fetches" it. She's remarkably precise about the stones' locations. 

The skipping stone was especially funny. You should have seen her face!

We Are Missing a Dime

Not THE dime. A dime.

Mr. Mr. Big Food & I are engaging in some crappy old behavior: balancing the checkbook. We're off A dime.

We started off 200 dollars and A dime off. Mr. Big Food discovered an arithmetic error, and now we're off A dime. He looked for it.

A dime is Mr. Big Food's threshold. If it had been 11cents he'd still be looking.

Most Interesting Question of the Day

"What would you like us to do with the gut pile?"

Context: Chris and Nick have taken us up on our offer to come out and cull the local deer population.

I was also asked, "Is it ok that we use that pulley, cable, gambrel system in your side yard?"

Silly me. I thought it was called a 'deer cleaning thingy'.

What a Good Boy

I am teaching Rocky to guard the Front Door.

We have not completed our lessons, but I think if you are bad guy, you should target another house. Especially since we are going to teach Miss M how to aim a 20 gauge.

Trytophan

My response to Daughter C's response to my email discussing the menu responsibilities for Thanksgiving dinner (we provide turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, pies and maybe cranberries; Miss M does a vegan version of green bean casserole; others are asked to contribute):

And as always, let folks know that if the tryptophan & wine are just too much (think Seinfeld), they can overnight here at the Farm. 

Right now, we're planning on just shy of a dozen-- but there may be more Thanksgiving Orphans out there. We just don't know.

On a related note-- thanks to a brief conversation with Kat while at the Whole Foods in Memphis-- I SCORED! A vegan 'Field Roast'-- whatever that is & not that there's anything wrong with that-- that Miss M. loves. Whew. 

More on Whole Foods later. Now I am off to help Mr. Big Food prepare entrant #1 in this year's Fall Winter Soup Contest. This is a Big You-Know-Whatin'-Deal. 
 

Look Out!

There's a Vegan in the Kitchen!! [Original photo GIMP'ed courtesy of info in Kat's How-to-GIMP e-Book.]

Miss M spent all day in the kitchen. She baked non-vegan coffee cake from a recipe Mr. Big Food sent her. She cleaned. And she made Monday is Vegan Night Pot Pie.

I'm told the recipe for the pot pie is forthcoming. 

Filling.

I sat around eating bonbons. When we took a break, we discussed how many more wreathes we should ask Daughter C to make for the Farm.

Several. They are stunning.

Sunday Supper!

Fig wild turkey breast (in cooking bag)

Yams

[Now, before we go any further, let me let you know that no one-- no one-- here at the Farm thinks yams and sweet potatoes are the same thing. They are not and we know it. But apparently the author of the original recipe did not.]

What a wonderful Sunday Supper to conclude a great day! 

Frankly, I was a bit skeptical about the wild turkey breast because it was, well, wild, so I was expecting gamier. It was not at all. The glaze was one of Mr. Big Food's own devising. It was delicious. Thank you Mr. Big Food's Uncle for the turkey!

My views on sweet potatoes are, I'm sure, well know by this time. Love. Them. The recipe called for four medium (large?) sweet potatoes. Mr. Big Food used one of the gigantic potatoes that needed to be eaten sooner rather than later. Bake it until it's cooked all the way through. Peel. Cut. A good drizzle of lemon juice and a sprinkle of sugar. Reheat. Eat.

An Interesting Chart

Just sayin'

The election analysis from which this chart comes is interesting, though, as Mr. Big Food says, "certainly not conclusive."

What's more interesting to me is this:

When Ron Paul went to the Republican National Convention in August, he brought with him the youngest delegation in the history of the Republican Party.

How were they welcomed? When they arrived, their signs were confiscated and torn up before their eyes. The Maine delegation was summarily unseated and sent home because they contained too many Paul supporters. At the last minute, the Rules Committee changed the ballot access requirement from five states to eight states to prevent Ron Paul’s name from being entered into nomination. They even prevented his name from being mentioned from the podium!

That's worth remembering.

Take a minute to read the short article sent to Mr. Big Food by Young Americans for Liberty. No matter what your opinion of Paul, citizens elected delegates for Paul. Very few (none?) thought Paul could win the nomination, but what they did think is that they would have some input at the convention. They were denied the opportunity.

Bienvenue Français!

The blog has had a tremendous upsurge in traffic since Miss M began referring her facebook friends here.

See what I mean?

The last time the blog had such a huge amount of traffic (other than the times it was linked by real sites on the world wide web) it came from Romania-- so I knew it wasn't really people who were reading the blog, just robo-hits. This time?

 

Je ne crois pas qu'il!

Anyway... . As Jeff Foxworthy said, "Welcome all you danged foreigners from other nations!"

Today, Tomorrow, Whenever

I'm going to have to post about today tomorrow because there was a lot going on today. And tomorrow, I'll throw in some yesterday. 

For now, today-- in the raw:

Ear-less Fivel is still alive.

OMG, Daughter C. Don't fret about this. I'm calling Housekeeping first thing in the morning.

Meanwhile

Good night. 

Family & Friends Respond to the Italian

Some responses from Big Family members to the behavior of our Italian house guest... .

Mr. Big Food:  "He might as well have been a Greek or a Spaniard, expecting the German [me] to do all of the work."

An email from Mr. Big Food's Dad:  

Read about your problems with your Italian visitor at the farm...You should have put him up in MBFU and Aunt Bee’s room...Every body knows that the only Italians who ever stayed in a bunkhouse were the ones who were in Clint Eastwood’s old spaghetti westerns...Love from Texas,

MBFDad

And Daughter C, when she saw the mess: "What did you expect? He's Italian." 

Oh! And should you need to know what the correct etiquette is regarding guest bed-making behavior, commenter 'suek' has it covered.

November 11: Veterans' Day

Day is done, gone the sun
From the lakes, from the hills, from the sky
All is well, safely rest
God is nigh.
Fading light dims the sight
And a star gems the sky, gleaming bright
From afar, drawing near
Falls the night.
Thanks and praise for our days
Neath the sun, neath the stars, neath the sky
As we go, this we know
God is nigh.

Original lyrics to Taps, courtesy of that infallible source, Wikipedia.

A short history of Taps

And something I learned from my dad when I was little.

You Wanna Talk about Cultural Differences? | Make Your Bed When You Visit The Farm

We had overnight guests Friday. We enjoyed bourbon and conversation in the evening after supper. This morning was a glorious fall morning-- a hint of fog, just cool enough, fresh. Mr. Big Food took our guests on an early morning walk about the Farm and then whooped up some fresh veggie-laden scrambled eggs served with the biscuits Miss M baked yesterday-- topped with wild dewberry jam. 

One of our guests was from someplace and then Buffalo, NY,  and then some places, and then Florida, and now Memphis. The other was an Italian. 

Our guests don't seem like liars to me, so I took them at their word that they enjoyed their short stay on the Farm. Until I saw this:

The bed the grateful,

Italian left me to make.

To be clear, many people have visited the Farm and have not made their beds upon their exits. With certain delightful exceptions, females are better than males at making beds, Old folks better than Young, so my bed-making expectations  differ. Folks that exert force to move things around the Farm get allowances. I have found that the condition of the room in which guests find their beds correlates to the attention they pay to maintaining their rooms and beds. So if I haven't made the effort-- they take that as a sign that they needn't either. 

Fair enough. 

But the Bunkhouse was as clean and tidy as it's ever been and these were straight guys but they did no work. (I lie. The guy previously from Buffalo picked up breakfast dishes and made an 'I'm not here with my wife but I'll do the best I can'  attempt at throwing the bedspread around and clustering his towels.)

The Italian, as you can see, made no effort. He had a model. He understands models.

The Model

But he made no effort.

All is well, though! The Italian is in our United States on account of some Grant from the United States Federal Government your dime,  and so Monday morning,  I'll just call  Housekeeping.

Taps on the Extended Drill Field

I saw two things happening on the Drill Field in front of McCain* today.

1:  a bunch of young men engaged in the wholesome activity of tossing around a football

As many campuses are, the main common interior grassy area of State's campus, because it's transected by walkways, is large enough to accommodate many activities. Here, a bunch of young men have claimed a polygon of The Drill Field.

2: a pre-Veterans Day Memorial

Another polygon was claimed by some ROTC folks and other assorted flag wavers.

Several people walked out of McCain and were lingering, as I was. When Taps started-- and although we could barely hear it-- we ceased conversation and turned in the direction of the flag. 

(The Bartman said quietly to me, "Taps on the Drill Field," so I just shut up.)

And the football just kept being tossed about as if 

Day is done

Gone the Sun

meant only that there were few catches left in the day and it shouldn't squander its time thinking of those who had caught their last ball.

~~

How's that for some extended cognition? 

Bad Children! Bad!

This will teach them (via Y'all Politics):

Lafayette County Political Party Comments on Election Night Events at Ole Miss

The Democratic and Republican Executive Committees of Lafayette County collectively join Chancellor Dan Jones in condemning the inappropriate behavior displayed on campus last night. Although our organizations encourage spirited debate and engagement among University of Mississippi students on political campaigns, there is no place for divisive and disrespectful confrontations like those that occurred on campus last night. The heat of the campaign is no excuse for violent words or actions. We too encourage our students and our community to revisit the university creed we all hold dear, which calls for us to represent ourselves with dignity, civility, and integrity. As both Democrats and Republicans, we have full faith in our University leadership to continue to set a standard of tolerance, high character, and a respect for others. We expect all Ole Miss students to rise to that example, as the majority of our students already do.

Justin Cluck, Chair of the Lafayette County Democratic Committee
Geoffrey Yoste, Chair of the Lafayette County Republican Committee
11/8/12

Background here.

Grappling with the Situation

They had some trouble with it. They grappled. They tried to figure it out. And in the end, they did.

They couldn't find one, so they made one.

As best as I can recollect, the short conversation went like this:

Mr. Big Food's Uncle (MBFU): Do you have duct tape?

Me: Um, yeah. What kind of farm doesn't have duct tape?

MBFU: Not sure. Maybe the kind that doesn't have a grappling hook.

Fair point.

MBFU: What are these?

Me: They are the stakes to my cozy clotches ... hell, use them.

And then MBFU & Mr. Big Food's Dad wandered to the Lake.

And the next thing we knew, they had used the homemade grappling hook to pull up three expensive rods & reels and one cheap jon boat towel out of the lake. The tackle box is turtle food. Who Knew?

American ingenuity

I gotta make that NO SWIMMING sign bigger.

Reporting some events at TSUN*

TSUN = That School Up North, also known as Ole Miss.

From WMCTV in Oxford (via Breitbart). Keep in mind that Ole Miss has a FIRE green rating-- one of the best-- in the top ten-- schools in the country for free speech on campus.

OXFORD, MS -
(WMC-TV) – While you were sleeping, protests were forming on the Ole Miss campus in Oxford, Mississippi.

[snip]
Reports originally came into Action News 5 that "riots" were brewing on the college campus.

According to Ole Miss Chancellor Dan Jones, university police were first notified of the demonstrations when 30 to 40 students gathered at the union. Within the next 20 minutes, the group had grown to more than 400 students.

More below the fold.

Recipe: Jägerschnitzel

Pork, not veal

 

Cutlets with brown gravy and mushrooms—“hunter’s style”

JÄGERSCHNITZEL

1 lb boneless pork or veal cutlets

2 eggs, beaten

½ C bread crumbs

Oil

2 oz bacon, diced

1 medium onion, chopped

8 oz mushrooms, sliced

1 Tbsp tomato paste

½ C water

½ C dry red wine

Dash thyme (leaves)

Salt, pepper, to taste

½ tsp paprika

1 Tbsp parsley, chopped fine

2 Tbsp sour cream

Heat oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Pound cutlets with a meat tenderizer to flatten them out. Season cutlets with salt and pepper, then dredge them in beaten eggs and coat evenly with bread crumbs. Place cutlets in skillet and fry about 2 minutes per side, or until golden brown and cooked through on both sides. Remove cutlets and drain on paper towels. Keep meat warm. Saute bacon and onions until golden brown. Add tomato paste and mushrooms. Saute over low heat. Add wine, water, and seasonings. Simmer gravy for 5 minutes. Stir in sour cream. Pour over schnitzels just before serving.

Recipe: chicken à la Lousiane

Is there vegan fake chicken?

CHICKEN LA LOUISIANE

1 chicken, boiled until tender and cooled, broth retained for Sauce

Hot fat

Sauce for Chicken La Louisiane

Disjoint the chicken, drain, and fry in hot fat until golden brown. Serve with Sauce for Chicken La Louisiane.

~~

Sauce recipe below.