DIY winter food because Weather stops at the borders

Don, 

Congrates on your 40th! And I think your family has good taste to send to you New Orleans – I know you'll have a blast! Love the picture of your pantry! Looks like you and your better half will make it through the winter with no problems even if you can't get out and about!

My grandmother was a late pioneer from the Ozark Mountains in lower Missouri. After she came to live with us here in Colorado, there was always a lot of canning going on in the fall. That fact that we lived in the mountains when I was a child made it even more necessary to can and preserve food. There were several winters when I was small that the mountain passes were closed off and the towns I lived in were isolated from the rest of the world. We had food thanks to Grandma.

Locally, foods are also ripening quickly. It's like everything is suddenly realizing fall is coming and the plants just have to give their final effort to produce. Instead of canning, I freeze. I'm hoping that we don't lose electricity. I've been able to freeze lots of squash and beets, got beans put up last week. Want to do another couple of bags of beans next week along with more beets. We're not much into fruits – I've thought about jams and preserves but haven't taken the time to learn how to do it.

A gentleman that I work with is deep into canning and preserves. He even makes cucumber jelly ... don't think I'll go that far.

I'm amazed at my students when I tell them I've been freezing for the winter – their remarks remind me of the grasshopper and the ant. I don't like being compared to an ant, but I do like being able to eat what I want to eat any time. Is that the independent hippie in me?

In case you missed it, we are NOT on a collision course with an asteroid. Through the various renditions of the story, the asteroid kept getting bigger and the title print got bigger too. But, NASA has assured the world that this collision will not happen in September. Puerto Rico is saved along with everyone else.

What did strike my attention was an article by Tia Ghose about a wormhole created in a lab using magnets. By creating a 3 layer object, with the inner most layer a spiral-cylinder covered with yttrium barium copper oxide to bend the magnetic field, the wormhole is able to deliver information energy impulses from one place to another. Right now the thought is medical applications based around the MRI machines that already exist. What do you think will happen in less than 10 years?

So my better half and I are watching the weather last night; observing the path of the cold fronts that are sweeping down from the north and colliding with the usual warm air coming up from the Gulf of Mexico and we noticed that according to the weather maps, weather stops at the north and south borders of the United States. ... I'm not sure what you get instead, but according to the maps, it isn't "weather".

Only two weeks left to buy Transports! These are delightful 2 – 3 story e-zines available through Amazon filled with short stories that Wormhole writers have penned through the last 5 years. Some of the stories are serials that take place over several Transports; others are individual stand-alone stories. Both Tammy and Jeff put together short story transports this spring which are still available. Take advantage of the low price! These quick reads should not be missed!

Have a great week!

Carolyn 

 Images downloaded from Google Images

Fig 1 – Silverton Winter retrieved from Blizzard buries Silverton - The Denver Postwww.denverpost.com

Fig. 2 – Canning; retrieved from Canning Fruit Royalty Free Stock Images - Image: 34678789www.dreamstime.com

Fig 3 – Freezing food retrieved from How to Freeze and Store Food | Epicurious.comwww.epicurious.com

Fig 4 – Ant Grasshopper retrieved from MORAL OF THE STORY: THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER | PORTABLE LIFE ...eagleman6788.wordpress.com

Fig 5 – AsteroidEarth retrieved from What happens if you try to land a Hull E fully laden? - RSI Community Forumsforums.robertsspaceindustries.com

Fig 6 – Magnetic Wormhole retrieved from Scientists builds the first magnetic wormhole - Tech Enticewww.techentice.com

Pickled, stoned and all jazzed up.

Hi Carolyn,

These are busy and interesting times 'round here lately.

First, however, I gotta congratulate you on being adoptive grandparents. I had heard from my good friend who taught with Zack, and who is presently over in Hungary still doing the same teaching abroad  thing, that they were adopting.  It's one thing to have a child from the very beginning. But it is surely a different and exponentially more generous, courageous and selfless thing to take on a child from another - wow !






Your brothers  " resume of experiences " take on  the passage of time and our perception thereof as we age is smack  on, as I see it.

 For me,  as a youngster, "wait til next year" was like saying " never" . Now "next year" might as well be next month. It's sure easy to see why so much art, literature and music has been inspired by and devoted to the simple but inexorable passage of time.






The last while has been, as noted above, quite a whirlwind. First off, there's been a good deal of self-preservation, shall we say, going on. Each year we've gotten more and more into pickling, preserving and " putting up" as the elder folk call it. This year it seems everything came to market ripe and ready at the same time. So we've been madly pickling and blanching and making jams and relishes and a whole wackload of stuff. I now have a small but highly empathetic understanding of how pioneer folk must have felt once the harvest was over and they could look into their fruit cellars and see a wall of preserved fruits and veggies that would help see them through the coming winter. That is what our fruit cellar looks like now and there have been lotsa days where the kitchen has been awash in the compelling smells of dills and bread and butter pickles and various relishes and all manner of fruit jams and pickled veggies.  









So, in the midst of all of this alchemy we find ourselves celebrating our 40th wedding anniversary and find that family members who we've not seen for awhile have decided to make this the summer that they come and spend time with us here. One of them hadn't been here to see us for close to two decades. As well as these visits we discovered that our offspring had masterminded a scheme whereby the whole extended family will be sending us to a most funky and magical city to help us celebrate this four decade event.

And where might that be, you may be asking?  Lemme give ya a hint or two - the birthplace of Louis " Satchmo" Armstrong, at one time the southern terminus of the good ship Robert E. Lee and it's ilk, and affectionately known as " The Big Easy"   Yup, we are off to New Orleans sometime in the near future. Can't think of too many better choices to see than " Nawlins". So many treats for the eyes, ears, nose and taste buds.









 

We've always had a soft spot for Quebec City and have been there about a dozen times over the decades and I'm thinking that the whole French/Acadian ambiance will make us feel  at home there, as well










Got a real kick out of an item that appeared in various places online in the last little bit having to do with a serious academic study/inquiry into whether or not Shakespeare had been using marijuana while penning his timeless works. A number of the articles had a definite " holier than thou" ambiance about them. That was the most off-putting aspect, I think. Frankly, I could care less whether Hamlet was written as a " joint effort" or not  ( pun certainly intended ) It certainly doesn't diminish it's impact one atom. Actually, considering that the Bard was, in his early years, a struggling writer with deadlines and such - who could blame him for enlisting some assistance.  

While I was nosing about in cyberspace about this topic I did come upon a huge trove of info about writers who were, as Monty Python put it, " a bugger for the bottle ". There were, of course, the names we all know Faulkner, Poe, Hemingway, Joyce, Behan, Fitzgerald, and Dylan Thomas. But there were also some names that I was surprised to see as writers who employed the bottle as their muse. Among them were James Thurber, Jack Kerouac, Jack London, Raymond Chandler and O. Henry. Hmmmmm 



Anyhow, it sure has been a busy bunch of days. I'm gonna leave you with a Twainism that, I think, helps, in a small way, to explain just why my lsbh and I have the good fortune to be celebrating a forty-year collaboration:

A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away.

 He must have time to modify his shape.

 

 

Continue having fun.........


Don




All images sourced from Google Images:

Fig. 1 - en.wikipedia.org
Fig.2 - urbanadamah.org
Fig. 3 - movieweb.com
Fig. 4 - terribleminds.com
Fig. 5 - c-mw.net
Fig. 6 - eil.com
Fig. 7 - btmagazine.n
Fig. 8 - quebecityhotels.com




 

 

Time and Whimsy

Good afternoon, Don. Sorry I've been slacking here - taking a couple of days with my son and his family before they leave for home in China. It is hard to believe that they've been here 5 weeks... not the full time with us, but here in the States for 5 weeks. And now they go away for a year, again.

I think this time it is harder because they brought with them our new adopted grandson, Thomas. Adults don't change that much from year to year, but kids do. Thomas will be a whole different person when we visit with him next year. That will be exciting, to see how he's changed and grown.

We had a family/friend summer get-together picnic last weekend. 40 some odd folks came to see the new grandson, see how the new Papa and Momma were holding up. It has to be hard to be parents for only 4 months to a 2 year old. Most other parents get to break into the instant movement, screaming, demanding, loving life of a child from the beginning. I noticed that both my son and daughter-in-law seem to be rather preoccupied and tired. We gave them a night out last night - all by themselves - they went to a movie and came home early to sleep. I remember - I wouldn't do young kids again unless there was absolutely no other choice. I have grown use to the silence of the house.

My bother was a bit whimsical last weekend at the picnic. He addressed the concept of time - how when we're younger, a year seems to drag on and on. But as we mature, time picks up and speeds by. He thought it might have to do with the resume of experiences that you build as you grown older. When you're 10, you don't have much to "look forward to" - you are living day by day. When you're older, you plan and look forward and work toward a goal or objective of some kind so day to day living doesn't drag you down as much. We notice time in relation to what we have accomplished. Interesting thought -

Are you sure the grass would grow 60% slower on Kepler 452b? Maybe it would be 60% faster - and can you imagine the lawnmower you'd have to have? If humans would evolve into a stocker body mass, can you imagine what the grasses would be like? They'd have to be stronger to stand up. I thought I read that Kepler 452b was in an egg shaped orbit around that sun - which means it is only in the "goldy locks zone" for about half of it's orbit. What would you do for the half that was out of the "zone?"

Speaking for space, I ran across a NASA site that gives the times you can see the space station. It is called Spot the Station  - Sighing Location Lookup. We have several times this coming week that will enable us to see it for 3 - 5 minutes before 10 pm. We'll have to go to an open field as the trees in our yard will keep us from seeing it on the horizon.

We tried hard to get to Mr. Holmes with Ian McKellen as Mr. Holmes. As prolific as he is, it is hard to believe that McKellen has never played Holmes. I polled friends who went to see it - most said nice but wait for the DVD. The latest Fantastic 4 is a remake of the older version and most thought it was "okay"... maybe we'll take a chance and see Mission Impossible.

I'm not sure that Benedict Cumberbatch knows how to do "average, mediocre" - I don't think it is in his vocabulary.  His voice over for Smaug was chilling! and when coupled with the animation, it became the source of nightmares! I don't think Tolkien had any idea what could or would be done to his Trilogy when he wrote it. I've found Hugo Weaving to be versatile enough that no one particular role has influenced me. I find him entertaining and solid as an actor. I also admit that I didn't like Matrix so I didn't follow the series.

Nap time is over - time for music and snacks.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Carolyn