Thursday, June 25, 2009

Lots to do for the move...

Kind of overwhelmed with the move. I need to keep track of all the bills coming due and get them paid on time since we will be on the road back and forth about ten days and we have several residences so this is difficult. We probably won't get settled and know our new temporary address until the middle of July.
We plan to drive back and forth about 4,000 miles. Will it be possible to visit Mark and Alice or Jay and Julie along the way? Probably not, but we will try.
I'm going to pack a food suitcase with tins of sardines in olive oil, some good cheeses, Bragg's vinegar, some raw olive oil, mason jars of pecans, walnuts, sunflower seeds, and I will buy fresh mixed greens along the way and make salads.
Today I hope to pack up some books we bought at the big annual library book sale and media mail them to Jami, Gabi, Mark and Roger.
Excited and busy, busy, busy.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Packing, cutting off services; Turkey & Dressing

Exciting to move to Kentucky, I've never been there. I plan to call the Salvation Army and Goodwill and schedule pick-ups to donate furniture. I made a list of subscriptions, clubs, insurers, banks, credit cards, many businesses to notify to stop service or to change addresses when I get my new address. It's a long list.
I'll be using my cell phone after about July 6 or so when the 325# is disconnected, so email me if you need the mobile number.
Abilene has been a truly nice town and I would recommend it to anyone. The people are exceptional. I think a lot has to do with the population of maybe 115,000. It is the most sophisticated city I have ever seen for its size.
Chicken or turkey with cornbread dressing
Recipe:
First -make cornbread, second -make dressing, third -stuff chicken and bake.
The cornbread is best if it is a day or two old. Get non-GMO cornmeal or make your own cornmeal by dehydrating organic corn and grinding it in a blender. Make cornbread: oven 350.
  • Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a cast iron skillet or other baking pan.
  • Large bowl: sift together 1/4 cup flour, 1 1/2 cups cornmeal, 1 teaspoon of baking soda, 1 teaspoon salt.
  • Medium bowl:Beat 2-3 eggs until foamy, add 2 cups of liquid (milk or buttermilk or water or any combination). Stir the wet egg mix quickly into the dry cornmeal mix.
  • Pour batter into skillet and bake until you smell it and it looks done, about 50 minutes.
Dressing: (amount for turkey, halve the amounts for chicken or other smaller fowl)
  • --4 cups of crumbled cornbread (may substitute 1-2 cups with crumbled toast)
  • --1 - 2 cups of chopped onion
  • --1 - 2 cups of chopped celery
  • --all the chopped giblets: liver, gizzards
  • --lots of sage, a spoon or more of salt, a spoon or more of freshly ground pepper
  • --1 cup of raisins (or chopped prunes or any chopped dried fruit)
  • --a chopped apple (or any other fruit in any combination)
  • --Use just enough water (or any soup or liquid) to make the mix moist. It is optional to beat 1, 2 or 3 eggs with a little water and stir them in the dressing to bind it. I prefer it crumbly without the eggs.
Turkey or Chicken (or duck or pigeon or any fowl or any flesh): It has already been plucked and soaked in salt and rinsed. Turn on the oven. I prefer a low temperature with a long bake. So I might bake several hours at 250 or less. One might bake about an hour or two at 350.
Separate the breast skin from the flesh and stuff dressing between the flesh and skin. Stuff dressing inside the body cavity as well. Place dressing all around the chicken or turkey and put any extra dressing into a separate baking dish.
Bake until wonderful odors waft around the kitchen and then you will know it is done. Or cut into it and see if it is still bleeding.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Moving On; WAPF meeting; Bible Wine Recipe

Yesterday afternoon, June 22, Charlie just got the news he is to report on July 8 to Fort Campbell, Kentucky to work on CH-47 helicopters. When that contract is completed, the team moves on to Fort Drum, New York, then on to Willow Grove, Pennslyvania, and next ??? Each job lasts as long as it takes to fix however many helicopters at that location and no one knows how long each job lasts. Time is uncertain and no one can make an estimate since there are too many factors and too many organizations involved. For example, an air force contract may say they can bring in a certain number of helicopters and the job lasts as long as it takes to get the repair done right. Time is never an element since people later die in plane crashes when repairs are based on time. So the criteria is a perfect repair no matter how long it takes.
Yesterday evening, we went to a meeting of the Weston A. Price chapter and heard Dr. Ken O'Neil speak about enzymes. He was quite knowledgable. He recommended a book "Enzymes: Fountain of Life" by Lopez, Williams and Miehlke and he recommended writings by Dr. William Wong for further research.
Really ridiculous that fresh milk is against the law in Texas. I have to own a cow to get unprocessed milk. I notice that I can no longer buy merely pasteurized cream, but now it is all ultra-pasteurized which will destroy even more nutrients and any surviving enzymes.
Enzymes are necessary to all the metabolic processes of the body. They are catalysts which set off chain reactions. If one gets a high fever, such as 105 degrees Fahrenheit, the enzymes begin to get cooked, the proteins are precipitated, just like frying an egg. This is why people die from a sustained high fever.
Enzymes are especially critical to digestion. They are in all raw foods, and in the amount needed to digest that food. We and the plants have evolved millions of years for digestion to occur. A fresh, raw, non-GMO pear has all the enzymes in the right amount for our bodies to digest it properly. Fresh, unprocessed milk has the enzymes in it to digest it. Pasteurized, homogenized has had its enzymes and other nutrients destroyed or warped. This is why people are lactose intolerant with store milk, but have no problem with raw milk. (Gluten intolerance is because of all the foreign DNA containing pesticides, herbicides, foreign microbial DNA, in the GMO grains' DNA. Our bodies have not developed enzymes to digest GMO garbage so more and more people cannot eat commercial grains' gluten without a problem.)
Bible Wine - a recipe for home-made wine: Three things needed: 1-grapes, 2-whey, 3-a glass jug. Obtain a glass or ceramic container with a lid. Obtain the darkest PURPLE GRAPES you can find, and the grapes must have SEEDS. Smash the grapes very well, seeds and skins included. Option: strain the juice, but not mandatory. Place about 2 quarts of the juice in the glass container. Add 5 ounces of WHEY from fresh, unprocessed milk from a pastured bovine.
The way to make WHEY is to let the milk set out at room temperature for a few days until it sours and separates. The liquid is whey and the curds are further strained to get cottage cheese, this is the curds and whey little Miss Muffet was eating.
Mix the whey and grape juice and let stand in the covered glass container at room temperature for about 4, 5, or 6 days. Drink your Bible Wine with its resveratrol and pycnogenol and other nutrients.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Pasta

Yesterday I made lasagna, it came out most wonderful. Three basic ingredients: pasta, cheese, and a sauce. One may use a slow cooker and let the sauce cook overnight.
The most important thing is to only use fresh, wild local ingredients and to avoid GMO's and processed ingredients. Try to make your own pasta, your own sauce, pick your own herbs, get your cheese directly from the cheesemaker who does not use enzymes, GMO's and other shortcuts to cheese-making. It's easy to make your own soft cheese but one must start with raw milk, cheese cannot be made from the processed, homogenized, pasteurized store milk which is like buying your eggs already fried.
The sauce can be made of any fresh pureed vegetable cooked in water. People usually use tomatoes, but one may use any vegetable. Add any herbs, good ones are oregano, parsley, thyme. Very good to add minced fennel, onion and especially garlic. One may add flesh as desired, and it can be any flesh: beef, lamb, fowl, or fish. While the sauce cooks a long time, add more water or buttermilk or any juice or any other liquid.
When ready to assemble, select a pan that will hold the lasagna pasta layered with sauce and cheese. Set the oven to medium high, 300 degrees maybe. Boil water, add a pinch of salt and a spoon of good oil (olive, walnut, avocado, sesame, coconut) and add the lasagna pasta and cook it at least halfway.
Grate some hard cheese (without GMO's which are how most are made nowadays, European cheeses seem best).
Have ready some soft cheese such as cottage cheese, ricotta, or any soft cheese.
Now for the assembly: Oil the pan, add a layer of pasta, add soft cheese, cover with sauce, add a layer of hard cheese. Repeat: pasta, soft cheese, sauce, hard cheese. Keep repeating until your pan is full. Bake. When you smell it, it will be ready to eat.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

"Nutrition and Physical Degeneration"- WA Price

I'm eading Rubin's book (The Maker's Diet") which is good. He lays out eating based on biblical quotes such as Genesis 1:29 which says "every seed-bearing plant..." and wouldn't this knock out hybrids? I do not eat seedless grapes or seedless watermelons, for example, because they don't seem natural. GMO plants are not made from natural seed either, but rather from foreign DNA shot-gunned into the plant food DNA. I try to avoid them, but they are not labelled and are surely in all processed food. I agree with Rubin's conclusions because the bible is based on thousands of years of human culture which are passed on to us from the ancestors' nutritional do's and don'ts.
Then he talks about avoiding flesh from scavenger fish, fowl and animals. I believe this, and try to avoid all farmed fish such as tilapia and try to buy only wild or at least free-range pastured meats. It's interesting to go into a restaurant and see "fish" on the menu and when I ask what kind of fish, the waitstaff goes blank and stutters and one never can get a straight answer from their superiors. It's a cover-up!
Then he discusses Dr. Weston A. Price's nine+ -year expedition to 14 countries on five continents to research nutrition, and Dr. Price's strongly supported conclusions that health was based on unprocessed foods. In every case, when modernized foods were introduced, within one generation degenerative diseases previously unknown got a stronghold.
Rubin goes into the science of food digestion and includes the neural part which is often omitted. The mind is vitally important to eating and nutrition and he discusses this. He also includes sunlight, cleansing, exercise, sleep, clothing, plastics, plane travel, vaccines, sugar, fresh milk and many other ideas relating to nutritional health.
I especially like his quote from Proverbs 17:22 "A merry heart brings good health".
The next section presents his 21 most healing herbs and then 14 essential oils.
After the plant medicine section, he has a large and excellent recipe section. He presents some recipes from my favorite cookbook by Sally Fallon: "Nourishing Tradions". Some recipes are from "The Lazy Person's Whole Food Cookbook" by Stephen Byrnes which my local library does not have and I have not seen but I intend to look into it.
I think one will get a lot out of this book in many ways.

Friday, June 12, 2009

Two Troubling Thoughts

The first troubling thought:
Here the city has a monthly evening downtown street festival with a theme. June's theme was cars. Yesterday we went to Carwalk. The city blocked off a downtown street for about four blocks and special cars (antique, muscle cars, unusual cars) were parked up and down the blocks in the street. Street vendors and displays were located all along the sidewalks and some of the stores had special sales or gifts. The contemporary art museum and other businesses were open. The Grace Museum was free. A band was performing at Minter Park which is a charming tiny memorial park with a lovely fountain one story high dedicated to the private citizen who Willed it. It was a nice event and the featured cars were interesting.
Then Charlie saw a doppelganger, someone who looked like a very nice man, Mike,a machininst Charlie had worked with for years in North Carolina. Charlie told him "You look like Mike, a man I used to work with" and the man looked at him blankly and said "No". But the woman with him said to Charlie "His name IS Mike". They started talking and it turned out that he WAS Mike but that he had lost his mind organically through the solvent metal-cleaning chemicals he had used daily in his work. His wife, Beth, said that he had been forced into early disability retirement and then she started naming off other men in the machinist department who had lost kidneys, developed cancer, and died from various causes attributable to the same solvent. Charlie was shocked. He had worked in another department which interacted daily with the machinists and knew them all. We said goodby, but the rest of the day Charlie kept coming back to Mike, he was just haunted by the shocking deterioration of Mike and that he could not even recognize Charlie. I know he will keep mentioning it from time to time and what a shame it is.
The second troubling thought:
We went to a congregation meeting and the topic was remodelling. The temple is beautiful and looks like it was done yesterday. It is immaculate, not one smudge or fingerprint or blemish anywhere. The congregation has retained contractors to advise them and the contractors have advised getting rid of the antique embossed wallpaper, getting rid of the antique wainscotting, getting rid of the old but excellent quality antique molding and panelling that cannot be purchased today, getting rid of it all and painting everything for a fresh, new look. They said the decorating is dated and needs to be replaced.
Well, I disagree! Would they redecorate Buckingham Palace or the beautiful buildings in Paris and throughout Europe just because they are dated??? I think not!!! I think the charm of the building is in its dating. I mentioned this privately to the congregation president and he replied "It's been this way over fifty years, and I guess I am just tired of it". Well, it's their call, I will restrain myself and keep silent. "Silence is Wisdom" , a yiddish proverb from the Talmud Mas. Yoma 4 b.
Today we will attend a 5:30 pm dinner at the Szechwan Restaurant with those of the congregation who choose to attend, and at 7:00 we plan to go to the Friday evening service. Tomorrow from 7 am to 11 am is the farmers' market and all day is the week-long high school rodeo at the fairgrounds. And tomorrow evening at 5:30 is dinner theatre with the play, the Fantasticks at 7:00.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

"Bird the Hyena", June 11, 2009

HYENAS: Crocuta crocuta, named for their yellow crocus flower color, spotted hyena, cape wolf. The females are significantly larger than the males and are the leaders of the pack. An alpha female will be at the top of the clan, her daughters next, then the young sons, and last of all the mature, small, passive adult males at the bottom of the clan social order.
The females have large, long (sometimes seven inches), stretchy phalluses, larger than the males, and they use them to urinate, copulate and to give birth. Can you imagine giving birth through a penis? Their vulva are fused into their penises. The females have scrotal bags full of fat instead of testicles. Hyenas are sneaky, vicious scavengers and the females are the aggressors in eating and in sex and in all aspects of the pack life. Females in heat mount the least aggressive males and thus choose their inseminators.

I've been kind of oblivious to the constant clandestine social flirting that seems to go on constantly. Since I've been with Charlie, it is unavoidable. Almost every time we go out in public, the women flirt at him. Charlie does nothing to encourage this, au contraire, it is obvious he is with me, attentive and holding my hand or with his arm around me. Even so, the women act like I am not even there and just blatantly smile at him and start handling him, batting their lashes, preening and showing the backs of their wrists, smiling, raising their eyebrows, flipping their hair, fondling their earrings, exhibiting all the classic body language of a sexual advance. Sometimes this clandestine behaviour becomes overt.
One recent occasion: Last Friday we went to dinner at Little Italy and an older blonde woman came up to Charlie and started talking to him about how many people were in the restaurant. When she left, he said she had been rubbing her breasts against his shoulder. I could not believe it! She did have shoulder-length bleached blonde hair and heavy make-up but she had to be in her eighties! So Charlie said "She'll be back. If you don't believe it put your arm there and see". Sure enough, she did return and started another brief chat and left. Charlie said "She did it again and she'll be back". This time I did put my arm on Charlie's shoulder and sure enough a third time she came up and pushed her breasts hard into my arm and started rubbing them back and forth and up and down and around and around while telling Charlie the restaurant would be much busier later. So I stated "You're rubbing your titties on my husband's shoulder" and she kept right on rubbing them on my arm until she finally realized it was my arm. Even then she had no shame and kept on talking. I had to physically block her. I told her she should go talk to the piano player who was sitting by himself nearby alone on a break.
Another recent occasion: June 4, we went to the Grace Museum for a fancy reception. We were sitting at a table enjoying our wine and brie and hors d'ouevres. An older blonde woman quickly came up to Charlie and snapped his picture and then put her arm around him and asked if it was OK, and could she take another? Charlie looked startled and looked at me and I said "No! Stand by the buffet and I'll take a picture of you over there". But then I reconsidered and said "Oh, OK, stand behind Charlie and I will take one of you". Wouldn't you know she leaned over pushing into him closely! I took the photo and then she took one of me. I asked her name and she said "Bird" and spelled it. She took my email on a napkin to email me the photos. Then she leaned over right into Charlie's face and said to him "You're cute!!" and went running away up the stairs.
An older occasion: On my very first date with Charlie at our high school reunion, two blonde women actually crowded up to him competing for his attention, forcing me into the background, until he was forced to tell them outright "I'm with her" to make them back off.
I'm going to have to think about a proper response since this keeps happening. It is rude and disrespectful to me while inferentially flattering Charlie.