Cooking

 I love to prepare food and cook it.  I find it satisfying to do the knifework, plan the timing, handle the food, and then eat it (and preparing food and eating it are two different pleasures).  I don't know exactly when that started, but I remember being in the kitchen as a young teenager.  Mom listened to Broadway musicals and that probably lured me in to start.  But I've always enjoyed good food.  

So when I asked "can I help?" I got a few minor jobs.  Peel potatoes and carrots.  Mash the potatoes.  Watch the timer.  Eventually, I got to actually cut some veggies.  I got better at stuff.  

It's not like I liked it better than a lot of other activities (golfing, bowling, building simple wood stuff, HO trains, Marvel comic books, reading sci-fi), but it was one.  And both Mom and I enjoyed classical and Broadway music.

I had always been the primary dish-washer (being eldest child) and baby-sat the younger siblings (being eldest child).  But one of the pleasures of baby-sitting was that I was also trusted to make a simple dinner at 12 (Chung King Chicken Chow Mein in the old double cans was my favorite, being easy to manage).

I was a Boy Scout.  And I had this idea that a guy should be able to do anything it took to get by day-to-day.  I would have taken Home Economics in school, but that was reserved for girls (guys took wood-working shop) back then (mid 60s).

I came across a funny phrase back then; "If you like bacon, you have to get down in the mud and keep the hogs happy".  Meaning, if you want something, you have to be able to do it yourself.  I liked good food.

I've probably mentioned this before (you blog long enough and you can repeat yourself) but Mom was a very average cook and seldom met a vegetable that couldn't be boiled for too long.  When I discovered stir-frying and steaming later it really opened my eyes to food.

In college, I earned money and/or free meals by cooking sweet&sour pork for other guy's cheap dates in the dorm rec room.  

There's a slight story behind that.  Male dorms never had stovetops in the rec rooms.  Female dorms did.  In 1969, the Univ of MD arranged for a coed dorm by application and approval.  I was approved.  WOW, there was a stovetop (and a bathtub in the shower room BTW).  

Well, I had nothing to cook WITH, so I took a job selling cookware.  Great stuff.  Stainless steel inside and out with a layer of copper in between for heat diffusion.  But if you sold one set, you got to keep the sales kit.  I sold one set and quit and had a full set of cookware that was worth a year's tuition!

So I was able to cook meals at the new coed dorm.  I told the other guys in the dorm that I could cook sweet&sour pork.  The cost was either $5 above ingredient cost or I would buy enough to feed "them and a date and me too.  I had dropped out of the dining hall expense and bought a mini-fridge (good for beer and cheap steaks).  Fed myself better than the dining hall did, and cheaper too.

A business major on my floor of the dorm arranged to sell cheesesteak subs for 2 hours each night for his major.  I cooked a LOT of those.  He offerred better than minimum wage and 1 free sub each night.  So, I love to cook.

Anyway, here was dinner last night.  Cubed smoked pork with smothered onions, broccoli, bicolor corn-on-the-cob, and a nice tossed salad.  With zinfandel wine and leftover cocktail.  I love variety in a meal.  

A bit of pan-frying adds taste and appearance to corn...  Well, there was oil in the pan, so why not use it?

And it makes a salad better when you have variety to choose from.

Dessert was assorted cut-up fresh fruit.

More In The Life

1.  Sometimes the silliness never ends.  I previously mentioned that the new lawn mower arrived without 2 simple bolts and 2 simple knobs (fancy screw-on nuts).  I called the company and gave them the model number and serial number they needed to send me the missing parts.  They arrived.  Well, "some" parts arrived.

They sent me one knob and a "camshaft adjuster".   So I called the company again yesterday.  20 minutes on hold with music that alternated between barely detectable and silent.  I got an agent.  I explained I had received the wrong "missing parts" and gave her the ticket number.  She got that right up on her computer and confirmed my name.

So she checked the details of the ticket and found the original person I had spoken to had mis-entered the model number.  She was very apologetic.  After checking with the technical support office, she confirmed the error and the correct parts.

As part of "customer service", they are sending me a 2nd mower blade along with correct parts (and we discussed exactly what those parts were).  I doubt the additional mower blade will be of much value.  I'm using this small electric mower for trim work, so I doubt the blade will ever need to be replaced or sharpened.  I did appreciate the offer. 

So in a week, I will have the correct bolts and screw on knobs.  I already have the handles secured with blots and nuts I bought yesterday at Home Depot.  Works fine.  But it leaves the bolt ends sticking outward where I am sure to catch myself on someday.  The knobs would cover that.

But the deal is that the bolts were missing to begin with, I had to spend 30 minutes on hold to get the initial request (with was a failure), had to call a 2nd time (20 minutes). 

2.  I have sometimes gotten leg cramps laying in bed at night.  I started eating a banana each day a month ago and taking magnesium supplements (both suggested in a vitamin book I have) and hadn't had any cramps at night since then. 

Until 4 days ago.  My right calf muscle suddenly cramped and it was worse than before.  I remembered that the muscle cream (Aspercreme - contains aspirin) said something about relieving muscle cramps and smeared some all over the area.  The cramp went away almost immediately, but the next morning the muscle was tender and painful when I walked for about an hour.  It actually felt that the muscle was ripped.

Then 2 nights ago, the left calf muscle cramped and it was worse.  The Aspercreme helped but not as well.  Walking around (which usually solves the problem) was only partially helpful.  I had to carefully sleep with that leg fully extended.  The next morning I was limping around an hour.

I feel fine again now, but that stuff is painful.  And it makes it a bit worrisome about what positions I sleep in.

3.  I had some kitchen stuff I wanted, so I went to Bed,Bath&Beyond with discount coupons in hand.  My pepper grinder had broken, a timer had failed, my corn-butterer broke, my wine bottle foil cutter wasn't cutting anymore, I wanted a small slotted spoon to get olives out of the jar, and I wanted a good wine-puller (one on those neat things that you just push on and the cork "magically" comes out).

Oh the hardships of life... 

But I discovered the BB&B prices were idiotic even with the coupons.  $25 for a good salt grinder? Or matching pepper grinder.  And even funnier, buying the 2 together as a set was MORE expensive than the 2 individual.  Those people are NUTS! 

They wanted $8 for a corn-butterer. 

So I went to Amazon and found the same stuff at half the price (but oddly, the corn-butterer at almost 2x the price.  The stuff I want doesn't meet the Amazon threshhold for free shipping, so they sit in my cart waiting for something else to add.

4.  My riding lawn mower collects grass clippings around the exposed belt drives.  Cleaning them all out is a pain.  But I have an electric blower.  I bought it to blow fallen leaves off the screened garden enclosure because last year snow collected on the fallen leaves and actually bent the metal poles supporting the top.  And then I blew all the fallen tree debris off my deck.  Sure beats sweeping.  So It occurred to me to try it on the grass clippings in the mower belts.  Worked great!

5.  I mowed my spring bulb bed.  Mowed the butterfly bed bed too.  The electric mower is impressive.  I plan to cover both to supress weeds.  This year, the weeds took over.

6.  Dug into the trailer half-full of compost.  Filled up 8 kitty litter tubs full in a yard cart.  But they were all soaked with rain in spite of a tarp covering the trailer.  So they will have to sit inside a week to dry out.  I need the compost dry so I can sift it through a 1/4" screen to mix it with peat and sand and vermiculite for seed starting soil next Spring.  The rest will go onto the butterfly bed to improve the soil.

7.  Cooked a lot yesterday.  10 chicken thighs marinated in leftover olive juice.  Baked in a roaster pan with 2 sliced lemons, 4 shallots.  Added a cup of olives and some cornstarch slurry the last 10 minutes.  Came out great!

8.  While walking off the leg cramp, I noticed my motion-activated floodlights were on.  I looked out a window and saw a deer frozen in place.  It was looking at my remaining hostas.  I finally snuck out the side door and ran at it yelling and screaming.  THAT got it moving away fast.  I should get my crossbow set up (stringing it is a pain).  Deer don't fear us these days; time to give them a reason.

9.  Need to replace the roof on the old toolshed.  25 years old, and shingles are missing, leading to rain dripping into it.  I originally just put 4'x8' sheets of interior plywood on top with shingles thinking that was good enough.  I didn't know about roofing felt then.  I can't lift whole 4x8 sheets anymore, but I can cut them in half and match the cuts on the roof.  THEN I'll add roofing felt and new shingles.  I have to remove the existing roof first though, and I'm not looking forward to that.

10.  I saved a few Sweet Flag plants from my pond renovation this Spring.  I put them in tubs of water.  One tub just died off for some unknown reason but I noticed there were tadpoles in the water.  OK, I'm a curious person so I netted as many as I could into a bowl of water and brought them inside.  It took a while the shift them from bowl to bowl until the mosquito larvae were gone.  But they are inside and I'm going to watch them develop to frogs.  I added some aquarium plants to the bowl for them to nibble on and put a pan splatter screen on the top (in case I missed a mosquito larva).

Milestones

We all have milestones in our lives.  The years depend on your culture, but they are generally when you first walk, get your first adult kiss, can drive a car, etc.  I've been through those a LONG time ago.

Today I'm 65.  I get accorded "senior status".

Whoppee...It means I get $2 off my haircuts at my usual place.

I suppose it means I'm supposed to start considering my own mortality.  But not...  Things change.  When my grandfathers were 65, they WERE old.  They looked it.  65 WAS old in their day.  They were weather-beaten, tired and wrinkled, face hanging loose under the jaws, etc.  They had harder lives.  My Dad was less "old" at 65.  He was far healthier and active.  But he still looked "older".

I've had an easier life.  As best I can tell, MY 65 is the Grampa's 45 and Dad's 55, and I might even be better off than that.  You probably recall how some guys matured early in high school.  They were the athletes, the school presidents and that sort of thing.  I wasn't one of them.

It was really irritating at the time, but I am enjoying the benefits now!   Nothing is perfect; my hair thinned out at 30 (paternal mom genes).  If you are a guy and want to know the future of your head hair, just look at your Mom's Dad, LOL! 

But otherwise, I'm the beneficiary of modern medicine and healthy food, and don't look 65 (in the terms of my ancestors).  I slipped in after good child medical care and before fast-food.  I ran (was allowed to run) wild as a child and was exposed to all the good dirt that I could get into.  If there was any microbe in the State that I didn't lick of fingers, it wasn't from lack of trying!  My immune system is outstanding.  I haven't caught the flu since I was 12 and only then because my younger brother caught it at school.  And it bothered me mildly for 2 days.  My younger more protected brother was in bed for a week.  And he is sometimes sickly to this day.

But I wasn't.  It shows.  You can't find a blue vein on my body.  I noticed a tiny wrinkle on my neck while shaving last week, but I had to look for it carefully. 

So why do I mention all this?  Because sometimes I can be really annoying LOL.  But more because I love the fact that many of us my age are literally in "middle-age at 65" and have so many years left to us.  My grandads were old at my age.  More accurately, OUR grandads were old at OUR age, and we are not.  WE are going to live to 90 in generally decent health.  And mental health matters too.  I have continued to learn all my life and learned to do new things that are challenging.  My mind might outlast my body decades from now. 

And THAT's what I am celebrating today!

Physical and mental health for decades to come... 

Mark, 65, and only 2rds through life!

Garden Enclosure, Again

Some projects just go WRONG.  And you don't realize until you are about half done.  I thought the major work would be to build the enclosure and tearing apart the old rotting frame beds would be easy.

I'm an idiot!  PPPPPPPTTTTT..............

I wish it was April again and I was just starting this.  I would do it SO differently! But I wanted to save all the good soil by moving it from the old beds to the new beds as I built them.  Seemed logical at the time, but Bad Decision.  Happens a lot.

I had a friend who decided to almost double the size of his house by having half of it demolished and then added to.  It went horribly!  He could have had the whole house demolished and rebuilt so much easier and at about the same cost faster.  Ruined a year of his life and cost me our friendship (I mentioned the renovator who built my toolshed and did some additions elsewhere). 

Don't EVER make major recommendations to friends...  He blamed me for the disaster and I wasn't sympathetic enough but that's another story (which I will tell someday soon).

But back to the garden.  I SHOULD have just busted out all the old framed beds from end to end last April, disposed of all the old wood, and spread the soil and used my rototiller to level the whole *#%@ area.  I didn't and I regret it now. 

Part of the problem is that my lot slopes from back to front and from the center to the sides.  Nothing is level here.  It isn't obvious by just looking, but even an 8' long bed is 4" higher at one end than the other.

I have 2 of the 6 beds built.  It was hard work.  I had the original beds because the soil in the last sunny areas is all rock and clay.  I should have remembered that when I planned to replace them. 

If I was starting the project again today, I would just take out all the existing rotting boards at the same time and roto-till the entire area to level it all at once.  Why not do that now?...

Because of a silly piece of twine.  It outlines the whole new enclosure area.  Silly, but I didn't want to undo the careful twine outline of the new bed.  I can be very talented and very stupid at the same time.  No laws prevent it..

But clearly, the way to go is to disassemble the 2 beds I built already (which in spite of my digging are unlevel and unsquare.  Save the wood.  Rototill the entire area and rake it flat as a pancake, THEN easily build the new framed beds on the leveled ground and add new soil.  

And THEN build the squirrel and groundhog proof chicken wire enclosure.  

My tomatoes MAY only cost me $10 each for several years...

I'm doing this because it is basically my "Last Hurrah" of gardening.  In a few years (I'm 64) I won't be able to take on this kind of project.  The new garden beds will basically last me my future years until I can't garden any more.  So it is to rebuild them now or never.

And I will do it myself, or there is no point to it.

Unclutterring

With the insulation contractor requiring me to move stuff away from all the basement walls, I had to realize how badly clutterred the entire basement had become.  It happens so gradually!

So another project is to get rid of stuff I haven't used in 10 years. 

First, that used dining table set I bought from Salvation Army when I retired,  planning to refinish it.  I'm never going to that!  I'm giving it back to them.  And as long as I was planning THAT. I decided to find everything else I could part with.  Stacking chairs I bought 20 years ago when I thought I would be throwing deck parties, wine bottle holders and kitchen stuff I never used, etc.  I'm sure there is more if I look around.

But mostly, that table and those chairs take up a lot of space in the basement and I have enough stuff down there that belongs there as it is.

There is stuff in the boxes that were in the attic that I had to haul down.  Most were Christmas decorations, and I haven't decorated a Christmas tree in 10 years.  I don't need them.  Most of those  can go.  I think I will keep the most unusual or the ornaments and little LED outside lights, I might use them again.

Some stuff from the attic I WILL keep.  I discovered several boxes of HO train stuff from my teen years that I thought were long gone.  I think I will set them up on the living room floor to see what I have.

But unclutterring is the rule of the day.

Blast From The Past

I got my old PC up and running in order to play Civilization 2 (aka Civ II), which I haven't played for about 10 years.  I knew I would be rusty at it, so I started he game at the lowest level. 

For those who are not familiar with the game, you and several players (human if online, computer bots if not) each start with  their own single barely historic settler and decide where on a random map to create a first city.  You slowly work up to modern times by learning weapons, governments, and knowledge advancements.  There are politics involved.  The goal is to be the one who launches a spaceship reaching Alpha Centuri.  It is wicked tricky and complicated.

I reached a point in my first new game where I was getting to build a spaceship.  And when I say "build" I mean you really had to construct your spaceship from parts you built/bought/stole in your own constructed cities or your opponents.  You needed some various precise combinations of "structural components", "propulsion units",  "habitation units",  "fuel",  and "energy".  Different combinations had different consequences.  Some made the spaceship fail.  Some caused the inhabitants to die.  Other combinations affected the likelihood that the ship would arrive, and others affected the years of the flight.

It is an AWESOME game!

I recalled that I had once worked out many of the best combinations of the spaceship parts, so I googled "civilization II spaceship formulas", figuring someone had posted them.

You won't BELIEVE what I got at the top of the list...

MY OWN LIST.  Still considered part of the Civ II bible after all these years...

In a site for info for Civ II players  by various categories (like how to defend a new city, when to use a spy, and when to break an alliance).  And THERE, in a page of its OWN, was a page titled "Optimum Spaceship Configurations"  by Cavebear.

I blushed...

But yup, that's me, Cavebear.  I even recognize my usual typos and unmatched parentheses.

I'm stunned. 

You don't expect to see anything you did a decade ago still meaningful, especially in a game.  It brought tears to my eyes...

I can't quite get a screenshot, but it is HERE. 

And I sure hope I get to use that decade-old info on the winning spaceship tonight.

A Blast From The Past

I used to play a complex strategic computer game called Civilization 2 (not an action/shooter game).  There would be a large map (unseen at the start) and you would slowly establish and improve cities with military, civil and science improvements.  You would discover the map as you moved slowly.  You started around 3,000 BC and very gradually moved to launching a spaceship to Alpha Centuri competing with up to 6? 8? other players.  The game took many hours to play.  I was obsessed by it.

But I quit when the new version (Civilization 3) of the game gave less and less control to the player and whole cities would switch sides to another player for no particular reason I understood ("through cultural influence").  And then I switched from Windows to Mac and my CD didn't work any more anyway.  So I moved on to blogging.

Well, I suddenly developed a great desire to play the game again.  I still had the old PC around and thought to have it cleaned and upgraded, but then decided that I liked internet multi-player competition, so I simply bought the Mac version of Civ 2.  The CD should arrive in a few days.

But I wanted to review some of the game strategies and looked at the current Civ 2 discussion board.  Its been 7-8 years since I played.

Imagine my surprise when the very first post I saw was advice FROM ME.  LOL!  And it was quoted by someone else as "from veteran player xxxxxxx", ME.

THUD!

It is going to take a while for me to get back into the details of the game.  This rejoining the game is going to be VERRRY INTERESTING...  I'm going to get KILLED at first until I remember the old strategies and catch up on the new ones.  But that's the kind of thing that keeps the brain working, you know?

I could die of many causes.  But brain boredom ISN'T going to be one of them.  LOL!

[Update:  The Civ 2 CD arrived today.  I am devastated.  The CD is too old to load on my up-to-date Mac...  My anticipated thrill at playing Civ 2 again is stomped by technology failure.  It looks like I will have to get the old Windows computer cleaned and working if I want to play Civ2.