Reincarnation

A couple of nights ago I finally got around to making a recipe shared by another blogger online a couple of weeks ago. It was a rice, vegetable and salmon dish, and I was really excited about making it. The only problem was, I must have done something wrong because my end result was a very bland-tasting entree. 

To add some zest and pizzaz to it, I brought out a concoction guaranteed to make any chicken or fish dish sit up and smile: 1/2 cup sour cream, 1/2 cup plain yogurt, garlic, lemon juice, salt and pepper. I mixed it into the salmon and rice and voilá. Instant deliciousness.

The fact that I know this trick is owed to nothing more than living 55 years on the planet and picking up a few tricks in the kitchen. I also know a few tricks for the garden and around the house, and some in dealing with people.

But here's the deal: What if the Buddhists are right and we reincarnate over and over? Do all those tricks I've learned over 55 years of trial and error (emphasis on error) vanish into the ether when I'm born again and I have to learn it all over again....over and over?

Oh, you say, but it's the spiritual lessons that count, really. All the other stuff is inconsequential. Well, that's easy to say until you taste a bland salmon and rice dish, or have to deal with an idiot contractor, police officer, boss or doctor, or can't figure out how to fix a busted irrigation line in your pasture.

I'll tell you what. Being able to turn a bland meal into a stunning one, use a life hack to restore a kitchen sink, or deal with demagogues and difficult people are not small and inconsequential skills. They're what makes life better all the way around and are therefore important.

I hope I don't have to come back and re-learn all this stuff. I used to think the concept of reincarnation had so much merit -- it seemed so egalitarian --  but now that I've amassed a sizable body of life hacks and knowledge, I'm wont to give up my Life Skills Toolbox and start over again.

Perhaps Heaven is the place where we show up with all our learned knowledge and find we're the same age we were when we made all the mistakes that taught us those things -- but we know everything we do now. 

Now that would be another lifetime worth living again. To arrive with one's mental toolbag intact, stuffed with all of the good knowledge and none of the neuroses that generally goes along with it all. 

Now that's a lifetime I'd love to live for sure. Groundhog Day, Version 2.0.

Where your eyes rest

One of the most immensely satisfying things about homesteading is the constant cycle of creation it offers. But the same can also be said of home remodeling, backyard landscaping, and other things which make where you live a better place. Except of course, that those projects generally require a significant outlay of cash, so they're done sparingly unless you're a lottery winner.

The thing that always amazes me is when I've completed some project -- from making bars of soap or a homemade pie all the way up to completing the back yard landscape or remodeling our kitchen is how much I look at what I've accomplished. Or rather, I realize how much I averted my gaze to something else back when it was un-lovely or not made by me.

I never realized, for instance, that before I remodeled my kitchen I not only avoided going in there as much as possible (if I had free time I would never find myself loitering in the kitchen, odd because I love to cook). Once it was completed, with colors more soothing to the eye and decor in harmony with the rest of the house, I found myself looking at it all the time...standing around in it...just letting my gaze fall on it when I was thinking about something else. It was a pleasing sight.

Before: #kitchensowhite

After: A lot easier on the eyes.

It's no different for small stuff. A beautiful crop of carrots will entice me outdoors to look at their green loveliness; I'll actually give myself time to sit among the raised beds and enjoy what's going on. Now that the backyard landscape is done I stare out the window a lot more than I used to. In summer, when the endless lawn that had been planted back there turned dry and ugly, I looked beyond the yard out to the mountains in the distance, subconsciously avoiding looking at the struggling grass. Now my focus is on the colors of the flagstone patio, or our large brick bed, or the salvia which is just starting to bloom. I still love our view, but now our close-up view is almost as good as our far-range one.

I guess it's human nature to rest our gaze on what is lovely and attractive, whether it's perfect bars of soap all in a row or something of architectural beauty. I believe we are hired wired for beauty -- to create it, gaze upon it, soak it in -- because even when we are not conscious of doing so, that is what we do. 

No matter where you live or whether you believe yourself to be a "creative" type of person, a part of you recognizes the lovely and the pleasing and responds to it. And with that being said, surely it makes sense that we would invest either money or sweat equity in making our surroundings, and all we see in our homes and yards as "gaze worthy" as possible. Just keeping America beautiful, right? So where do your eyes come to rest around your home and property when you're not paying attention?

Moving On -- Deliciously

Compared to yesterday, this smells like heaven.

So how do you get the awful smell of burned hard-boiled eggs out of, literally, the entire house?  The answer is lots of window fans and something else in the oven to stink up the joint.

I bought The Jerusalem Cookbook awhile back but had not tried any of the recipes until recently, when I saw it featured on another blog I read.  So now we are living like biblical kings and eating some unbelievably delicious, healthy and, thankfully, highly odorous food.  Yes, the hard-boiled egg smell is gradually being replaced with that of broiled onions and red peppers, feta cheese, and pastry. Yum.

Absolutely delicious: red pepper, onion, feta and egg galettes

It's also feels good to get back into the kitchen and cook again, proving to myself that I don't necessarily destroy things on a regular basis in there.  Sometimes you can really use a victory, and The Jerusalem Cookbook is allowing me to have sequential successes, dinner after dinner.  In related news, today and tomorrow is the holiday of Purim, a very silly and fun day filled with comedy, drinking and great food. And so tomorrow I will be making some special cookies to honor the event.  

Hopefully they will also smell wonderful and I can put the whole egg-burning episode behind me.  The chickens are laying again and so soon we will have a dozen eggs in the fridge, proving that you screw something up and life goes on regardless. Eventually you get back at least some of what was lost. 

I take a fair amount of comfort in that, and in comfort food as well, in whatever culture happens to be serving it.

Cookin'

Sun Oven with impossibly cute dog in background

I normally enjoy cooking, but must say that I have not really enjoyed it since moving here.  I think part of the reason is that my former kitchen was a cook's kitchen, meaning practical, and designed ergonomically for cooking -- and this kitchen is not.  Plus we have some fabulous restaurants here, featuring locally grown and raised food, which is a sore temptation any night of the week. 

Since we're remodeling our kitchen over the summer, it will be interesting to see if I fall back in love with cooking once my utensils and ingredients are in places that make sense, and once I have storage space and organization, once again.  I hope so.

Until then, I will be able to fall back in love with cooking, just a little, by using my favorite summer appliance, my solar oven.  It saves me turning on the range when it's warm outside, and cooks many things better than a conventional oven does, due to the fact that there are no fans to dry out what's being cooked.  Everything from chicken to chocolate cake comes out moist and tasty, done to perfection.

I'm also thinking it will come in mighty handy once the kitchen is ripped apart and the whole place is non-functional -- for however long that takes (I don't even want to think about how we'll function with no sink).  

We can't eat out every night, after all.

Or.....can we?

New Kitchen?

White, white and more white!  Drives me nuts.

I'm convinced that most people are clueless as to what makes a good, functional kitchen.  When we moved in here, for instance, the first problem we had in our kitchen was a propane stove that was terribly unpredictable as to whether it would over- or under-cook any item in question.  It also filled the house with propane fumes anytime we turned the oven on. Apparently the lady who lived here before us never used the stove, and pretty much microwaved everything she ate.  We replaced the unpredictable, stinky propane unit with an electric range.  And it works well enough, and is very predictable. Problem solved.

But the kitchen has other issues.  There is no pantry. As you can see in the picture above, the microwave sits above the range and, if you put a large stock pot on the cooktop there's very little room between it and the microwave.  We have white cabinets and white 4 x 4 inch white tiles which pretty much means I'm either cleaning the kitchen constantly or living with grungy tile and cabinet doors.  The cabinets are deep (good) and have what I can only describe as crawl spaces in the corners (bad), where you can't see or reach any items that happen to migrate back there.

Check out the non-existent pantry!

OK, so yes, I'm bitching.  Everyone has things about their kitchen they don't like.  But when you homestead, your kitchen becomes a place you will spend hours and hours.  So, ergonomically, it has to work.

That's why we're remodeling ours.  

Big Ag got a nice little bonus this year from work, so this week I will be talking to contractors, and finding out prices, timeframes and options to re-do this kitchen, at least the cabinets, floors and countertops.  And you get to come along with me, through the construction mess to hopefully a lovely finished and functional new kitchen.

Right now, my thoughts are leaning towards acid-stained concrete floors (no grout to clean) quartz countertops (tougher than granite, but still a solid surface -- no grout to clean here either!), a real range hood where the microwave now hangs, a built-in cabinet microwave and warming drawer (for proofing bread, among other things) and a PANTRY, even if it's just a big, double floor-to-ceiling cabinet.

I don't care how fancy it is.  I'm just tired to keeping my all my canned goods in the laundry room.

We went to Lowe's last weekend to browse and the saleslady was talking to us.  She was describing how hard she is on a kitchen, and when I asked what she did, she said proudly, "well I have six grandkids!  What can be tougher than that?"  

With all due respect, here's what can be tougher than six kids:  Boiling stock pots, placed on a countertop.  Lye spills from soapmaking. Sticky strawberry juice with pectin overflowing from jam-making. Citric acid and TSP, used for sterilization after winemaking.  The list goes on.

I'm calling the first contractor today, so we will see what can be done to make this kitchen more workable.  Because I believe the gateway to madness is a dynfunctional work space, and I intend to stay sane and reasonable in these years to come.  Well, pretty much, anyway.