Treading lightly on the earth continues

 I'm in the process of changing my Misfits day from Wednesday  back to Friday in the hope of better choices and delivery. 

So this means a couple of extra days before I get the next box, next week. Which I'm using to see if I can get ahead of the vegetables in the freezer,  by means of soup. 

Hence today's leeks, yay the last of them, spinach, parsley, onion, garlic soup with diced yellow potatoes added. Chicken stock cubes, Old Bay, salt. After it's blended I may add in a bit of hot sausage.

And the many times rewashed and reused self sealing bags, draining.  Enough plastic comes in uninvited that it's years since I bought containers or bags. I wash and reuse parchment paper and tinfoil, too, unless it's been around chicken or sausage. 

I've been doing this for many years, back to the first Earth Day, when people ridiculed it, with dismissive names like cheapskate. Times have changed, younger people are more aware, and it's ages since anyone made dismissive remarks. So in this way, at least, things are better.  

Take joy where you can find it! While I was writing the labels for this post, predictive text, seeing the word reuse, helpfully suggested I meant apple streusel. I might consider it. I do have apples in the freezer. Not right now though.

Power house spring soup

 I still like soup, even when the weather warms up. Here's the current one. Powerhouse Green Soup. Dandelion greens carrot greens, and pinto beans, cream of. With fresh thyme garnish.

I noticed while I was thinking about this that garnish has two really different meanings. One's like this one, some extra thing added to food, and the other's about having some of your wages taken to satisfy a debt. 

So I checked it out and it turns out there's a weird parallel. Evidently the idea of an extra part applies to garnishment. It's one of the few laws going way back in time where the subject had to be formally informed, with a document, ahead of time, before the swiping could happen. 

So the garnish was in fact the piece of paper, not the taking of wages, though over time it's been applied to the taking. But the fancy extra, the sprig of thyme, was the paper. So now we know.

Wonderful day, warm enough to sit outside and knit while listening to Mansfield park with an earbud. And for looking up and finding the neighbor has been talking to me a while, unaware that I was unaware.

Views from the lawn chair  Just lovely. And as long as I remember my mask, a minimum of sneezing.

I'm told several more days of this are expected.

Vanishing beets and other likely stories

The weather has turned cold, and there's nothing I like better than a hot bowl of soup, for making a person feel fit for whatever happens.

Today it's green soup, carrot tops, leek greens, tons of garlic, couple of red potatoes, chicken broth, basil pesto, seasoned with Bill Veach recipe curry powder, (let me know if you want me to give the recipe, it's very good, and fun to make at home) turmeric, kosher salt, and with added pumpkin water and beet juice, dash of lemon juice.  The beet juice is very fugitive, so where you see a rather lurid red here,  the color will vanish on cooking and become green. Likewise the seasonings were very golden, and they blended in to the green.  And I added in a handful of noodles.

Pumpkin muffin to go with.  Salty P. suggested it was a muffin type thing, and I agree, not to be presented as a cupcake, despite the paper case.  It's more savory.  She should know. Pumpkin is her last name.

This is a great soup.  You can feel strength flowing into you as you eat.  I did fish out a bunch of ultra fibrous remains from the carrot greens, and what's left is very manageable. 

Tomorrow my Misfits box arrives, complete with celery and lettuce, so I'm signing up for a few days of salads, too, ready for them at this point.  Misfits has certainly taken a shopping load off Handsome Son, who now has weeks with just a couple of requests, and one week with none, but an invitation to tea anyway.

The leader of my online Thursday centering prayer group got in touch, with today's link, and a question about whether we wanted to meet next Thursday, given that it's Thanksgiving.  I said no, I'd leave the Zoom traffic to people who really needed it for seeing family at a distance, since I'll be seeing Handsome Son in person.

My hidden agenda was to try to give her an evening off, by not obliging her to sign in.  However, one other person insisted they needed to meet, so she will try for it.  I wish they'd thought first, though.  Sometimes it's kind to agree to let something not happen for once. Leader Chris has family Zoom meetings, and now she'll have to juggle the prayer group as well.  I have a feeling that Zoom will be overloaded anyway, so it's possible that people may not manage to get online. Anyway, I did my tiny bit.

I'm definitely getting more absent minded.  To wit, ready to walk the other day: coat, check, hat, check, gloves, check, mask, check, phone, check.  Stepped out, ouch, this path is really hard today.  Look down.  Oh.  Shoes, check.

I'm about to go walking now, and this is in the form of reminder to self.  Shoes, Lizzie, shoes.  Always useful. Especially when the temp is about freezing.

Alice in wonderland, no, it's the power co. And cheering soup

There has been an ongoing billing thing with my power company for several months, since lockdown. I'm getting used to previously reliable folks being shorthanded, working from home, much harder to keep everything straight.  But this was a puzzle.  I have equal billing, meaning every month the same amount is charged, then once a year there's a balancing month when they either pay or bill me the difference between my usage and the monthly charges.  

And every couple of years my township gets into a contract to cover everyone unless they opt out, with a different fuel source, to get a group rate, much better than the individual householder rate.  This has worked fine, same power company, same repairs, same coverage, excellent outage remedies, etc.  Just their source is different. And more and more it involves solar and wind.  And it's cheaper.

Then this year, I got my annual notice that the monthly charge, based on usage, would be 1., a very manageable amount,   I'm saying 1.  because it's proportional, read on  They charged me that once.  Then after one month, it went to 2. which was double the amount, and stayed that way for three months, oooookay, then this month it went to 3. which is triple the amount.  And it seemed to me to have changed three times, not just one steady billing.  

So I emailed them, and after a week of anxiety, this being a lot of money from my budget, heard back from them this morning, one sentence saying I had cancelled the third party billing which was driving up my charges.  So I got back to this lady saying, but I'm billed differently, what happened to my equal billing.  Whereupon she got back, saying, you cancelled the third party that was causing the increase, you are not being billed differently (?) and from now on your bill will be for 1.  Back to the original May number. 

Translation: oops, we fixed it and we don't plan to admit we might have made a mistake...but we'll see what next month brings. It's not the service, that is excellent, great infrastructure, constant communication when there's an outage, all that is great.  They are by far the better company of the two in the state.  It's just the accounts department at the moment.

Then, it being a rainy old day, and my shoulder a bit tired from the spinning, needs a rest for a day, I made a Great Big Green Soup.  This large bowl of frisee leftovers, leek greens, asparagus, and cabbage all cooked down to a very manageable amount, although at first it looked as though I couldn't stuff it all into the pot.

I used baharat for spice, about which more below

And here's the finished product, and pretty good it is.  I used only about a teaspoonful of the baharat, which is just enough for a lovely warm spicy taste, but not heat.

This is where I learned it.  From Ottolenghi's book Jerusalem.  It's a wonderful book about the culture and history of Jerusalem, both Arab and Jew, and the food as it reflects and passes on its culture.

I also talk airily about berbere as if I'd been making it all my life, learned it a few months ago, and it's from Marcus Samuelsson, Ethiopian/Swedish food writer and cook

This is hot, and very good.  I use only a small amount and it goes a long way.  I think you can buy it ready-mixed, but I like the fresh toasted and ground effect.  Also you can decide how hot or not you want it when you make your own. And just a note on fenugreek: in Indian spices, it's known as methi. Same thing, different name.

And last, here's my kitchen friend, which came into play in the course of making the soup when I slipped and caught my finger on the hot saucepan.  Aloe vera, cure for burns.  It's saved my hands many a time. Just break off a bit, squeeze the gel right onto the burned place, and the pain vanishes, the burn subsides and there's no scar.  My neighbor saw this a few months ago, and said, why are all those bits broken off? that can't be right!  I explained the first aid idea, and how that's why it was there at all. Not a decorative plant, a working partner.

Now I'm going to goof off, reading Dodo by E.F.Benson, which I think is a forerunner of the Lucia series.  Certainly Dodo reads like a rough draft for Lucia, and it's interesting to see the development.

Saturday stream of consciousness

 This is how I start my Saturdays, with this lovely work

"Interior" by Brynhild Parker of the East London Group.

Courtesy of the East London Group Twitter account. They exhibit, document and preserve the paintings and their significance. You can learn more at Wikipedia.

 The ELG  were working class people in the East end of London, in the 1920s and 30s, who studied art after working hours, were hugely talented and developed a following. Walter sickert was one of their teachers, and some of the members made it to the Slade. A working class artist myself, I really love this group. They struggled to buy materials, some became illustrators and created commercial posters for big companies. They worked in various media, and Steggles' watercolors are just enviable. Their work documents their surroundings, many street scenes of places now gone, their occasional travels. 

The ELG account shows work daily, with a repeating work on Saturdays and another one on Sundays

This is what you can get from Twitter if you curate your timeline to suit yourself. Mine is full of art, history, medieval manuscripts, farms, pets, writers, comedians. Some political writers, some local police and library news. Like a lot of things, it's what you make it.

It also has good news, as in today's report of a kindergartner finding the lemur, stolen from the San Francisco zoo. There's video of him and his Mom crossing the street after school, suddenly seeing it and leaping around, getting the other kids to see.

Mom called police and animal  control, and the lemur was quickly found in a backyard playhouse, fed and taken home to his habitat. Smart five year old knew it wasn't just a funny looking cat. Police have also found and charged the man who broke into the lemur's habitat and stole him. The finder's family now has lifetime free passes to the zoo, and the school accepted the $$ reward.

In other news, as they say,  I have this full spectrum light on order, doctor recommended, which I'm going to use to try to avoid my December crash. I'm hopeful.

It was a friend's doctor who said this is the best at the moment, and since the maker's instructions are vague, I took notes of how to use it

Green soup, powerhouse soup, today. Broccoli, scallions, celery, carrot greens, pesto water from lemon balm pesto, red potatoes, garlic, onions. Old Bay seasoning. Good for a few days.

If I were serving this to guests, I'd do a little drawing on each bowl in cream. 

Very high end. But I have no guests and no cream. So I'll just eat it and like it.

Last note on high tech things: there's an international archaeology conference underway, and they now find their software is banning the word bone. Bit difficult to discuss important findings without mentioning it. Somebody never thought to add it to the whitelist, I guess, never dreaming it would be redflagged.

Years ago when this kind of software blocking was new, one of our unlamented NJ politicians, whose name will be partly withheld, called a press conference to show how up-to-date he was with protecting everyone's children from Awful Words. Which they probably hear all the time, but anyway.

So he has the computer fired up, press assembled, and he goes to unveil his website. Which wouldn't open. Flusterment ensues. Then one of the techies said, um, Sen. Z, your name is stopping it. Name was  Dick. Gleeful reporting happened.