Berries, Eggs, gadZukes

Since ~solstice we've had ≥ half a pint of berries / day from our yarden.

This week we got zucchini in our CSA box ... one zucchini = funny! I didn't know what to do with just one.
   Bjorn said three times how much he liked the dish I made with it, so it's getting recorded.

♣ bacon renderings, 1 zucchini, 4.5 eggs (6 yolks 3 whites), basil leaves, ground black peppercorns to serve

I had a 14-inch saute pan thick with day-old bacon fat (my precious). I sliced the striped zucchini (very evenly, moderately thinly ... I'm sure I had the patience only because it's the first zucchini of the season) while I heated the pan til the fat was clear. I put the slices in the pan in a single layer, covering the bottom of the pan.
   I let it fry while I cracked 6 eggs, removed 3 whites, mixed the yolky mess and poured it over the fried slices after setting the heat to low. I washed and dried basil (Sacred or Thai (I'm not sure which)), separated leaves from stems, and set the leaves to wilt over the setting-but-still-wet eggs.

The key here is to add each ingredient just barely before the previous one's done cooking. Secondarily, make sure your basil is dry.
   It's kind of like a temporal lasagna, the way I cooked it in layers. It served up kind of like a pizza — in slices!

--

We've been getting eggs from my in-laws, who are in a joint chicken venture with their neighbor. Neighbor keeps the chickens, buys and prepares their feed (she ferments grains for them!); Da provided coop and capital. (He designed and built the coop in fact. Very cool.)
   Bjorn and I provide, um, empty bellies. We help eat the eggs.
   Neighbor-in-law is first on my list of where to send overflow blueberries! (We've none, yet; we're kind of having a Sal situation.)

(That reminds me. I wanted to name the baby Ursula. Bjorn said we can't unless she's born hairy with claws.)

Stuffing the Lily

Nudiustertian supper: daylilies stuffed with sardine salad (fennel bulb, pearl onions, garlic scapes, a mustard sauce, olive oil).

Going to the Doctor with Dog

EuEu was getting recurring ear infections. His ear(s) would get red, waxy, stinky — and with the last case, seemingly painful; he'd scratch his ear and whimper. Le sad!!
   The allopathic veterinary treatment we were given is a liquid "for canine otic use only", squeezed into the external auditory meatus, made of antibiotics (my enemy) and steroids (not my friend).
   Dutifully I squirted it into his ear. He didn't like it, and the only nice thing for me about the procedure was that I was supposed to massage the base of the ear immediately after administration, to squelch the liquid around, and I liked the sound.
   When Euclid got his latest ear infection, even after my not bathing him for a month and a half because I had been told it was because water got in his ears in the bath (he has flop-down ears), I was fed up.
   I believe that the recurrence indicated some internal disorder; if his system was healthy he wouldn't have chronically inflamed ears.
   Bjorn wanted to take him back to the vet, but I ... was upset at the idea of paying money to be told to do the same old thing that WOULD NOT FIX THE SAME OLD PROBLEM.
   I said I'm not willing to pay a vet unless we see one who will help us address his health, not just his ear, and try to prevent this from happening in the future. Bjorn Googled up some alternative dog docs for me to call. I selected a favorite, called to chat about her practice and — satisfied — secured an appointment, then filled out and sent in a detailed 9 page intake form.

Our appointment was at 7:30 on a Tuesday morning. We arranged with Em and En to borrow a car; En made sure to bike to work that morning so we could have one available to us.
   This vet runs a right smart set-up.
   Guess what initial treatment she gave us? A liquid "for canine otic use only", squeezed into the external auditory meatus ...
   ... the same stuff.
   BUT FIRST she actually took a swab of his ear and sent it to the in-house lab to see if we were dealing with something fungal, or bacterial, or what. She tests before treatment. She thinks that the type of infection is significant. It could, for example, suggest an etiology, or put us on the alert to certain co-morbidities.
   Is this not medicine 101?!?
   She also gave us formulae for drying his ears after a bath (involving hydrogen peroxide, or vinegar, or rubbing alcohol; all non-toxic household agents). She gave us a dropper to apply them. These liquid agents will reach where water will reach but they're dehydrators. She addresses my concerns. She freely shares information.
   She also suggested measures we can take (mostly by way of supplements Euclid can take) to boost his immune health. And her practice is right next to the local high-end pet food/care store, and she doesn't carry or sell (and thus doesn't have monetary incentive to push) certain supps or drugs. She had recommendations, but they were based on health considerations. She's not a drug lord.

Basically, she's awesome.

And it's been a month and a half since Euclid had any trouble with his little ears. This is a record.

Keeping It Real

I sometimes tell people that I make EVERYTHING my family eats.
   This isn't strictly true; I do not make, for example, the tahini we eat. The other day I was at the co-op filling up a jar with bulk tahini. A little kid in a grocery cart (who was shopping with a father figure) asked his dad "what's that?" His dad said, "it's tahini. It's ground up sesame seeds. You know the little white seeds we put in stir fries and stuff? That what they look like when you blend them all up." And the little kid said, "oh. But that's not homemade. That's co-op made." He repeated it, a note of disdain in his voice, "co-op made. Not homemade."
    [Note: it's not even made at the co-op; they just stock it there! So it's even worse than he thinks ;)]
   I thought it was so cute that this little kid's a homemade food snob .... though my dreams of this 100% homemade food family were dashed when I saw the man buy PASTA (gasp!) 30 seconds later.

I don't roast and pulverize my own sesame seeds. I don't make our own vinegar, either.

eScape

My garlic scaped! Woohoo!

On 10 June while I was out watering ... at 5:50 am ... I noticed the scapes. They were not a bit there on 3 June when I took my visiting niece and nephew out to the garden.
   I planted hardneck garlic because I wanted scapes. I like hardneck garlic better for its bulbs, too. I wondered, with hardneck's scapes and better bulbs, why would anyone plant softneck garlic?!

My most recent library-gotten Cook's Illustrated gave me an answer.

"Of the two main garlic varieties, your best bet at the supermarket is softneck, since it stores well and is heat tolerant."
     ...     
"Distinguished by a stiff center staff surrounded by large, uniform cloves, hardneck garlic yhas a more intense, complex flavor. But since it's easily damanged and doesn't store as well, wait to buy it at the farmers' market."

(It also occurred to me that some people might like garlic braids so much that they'll pick an otherwise lesser garlic just to be able to braid it.)

Germ Therapy with Dog

One-third at least of the reason I wanted a dog.
   As a bonus, this made me way less upset about the dog messing in the house as he got pottytrained.

ri¢h #3 : on my own terms

My old definition of being rich was I am able to go running outside in the light of day any day in the dead of winter.
   So how did this fail me when Roscivs died? Technically, I could still do that (at least for the first winter).

When I was a newly-married college student, I was dirt poor. If you look just at $ in the bank vs my expenses, I was perhaps the poorest I've ever been.
   But I was student poor. That's not poor poor. I didn't even feel poor. I didn't even know what it was like to feel poor. I felt like I didn't have a lot of money, but that's not the same. I wasn't expecting it to get worse; I wasn't expecting it to stay the same; I was expecting it to get better. When you're poor poor, that expectation is absent.

Last year my SIL Thea said that "Leon's poor". Bjorn said no, "he's not poor. His earning potential is heavily weighted toward the future."
   A reasonable expectation of future earnings is an important sort of rich. This has to do with how I felt poor when Roscivs died. I had a lot of expenses, with no reasonable expectation of future earnings. It got worse every day.

Now it's getting better all the time.


My old definition belonged to a universe that ceased to exist when Roscivs died. Furthermore, it had a lot of non-monetary contours mixed in with its monetary ones. There's the rub when it comes to me and riches. To me, for me, rich is about outcomes way more than it is about income.
   {What about to me, for others?}
   My current definition (I have the funds I need to pursue and support my health) has a lot of the same elements as my old one: outside time, free time, health [running], security in times of scarcity [sun in winter]. It's intertwined with (if not predicated on) Bjorn's love and support.

(I tried to make it one that wouldn't fall apart like the last one did, but that just can't be helped. When everything falls apart everything falls apart.)

So. Ok. Health funds are enough for me to be rich. I went out of my way to make my new definition money-focused. I thought it to be an important part of the exercise. But when it comes down to it I just can't seem to conceive of me feeling rich without a bright future filled with health and family. My semantic wobbling is unveiled: "rich" can involve a nebulous "happiness" as much as "money".
   I've been trying since the outset of this li'l blog series to clarify my terms. Clear terms are, after all, linguistic manifestations of clear thoughts. I don't know how successful I've been (uh oh?), but the exploration has gotten me closer to clear. If it's all still murky, at least it's an examined murkiness! 
   It would be less sloppy if I consistently used one term (say, "rich") to mean being rich (having money) and another term (say, "wealth") to mean feeling rich. And not having money ("poverty"?) and feeling poor ("destitute"?) could use their own terms too. Maybe I'll try using those clarified terms now.

I'm about to get less rich and more wealthy. I'm closing my studio; I'm going to stop teaching. It's fair call it retirement. What I say, though, is that I'm trading some income for some outcomes.

ri¢h #2

Before Roscivs died I thought that owning your privilege was an important ethic. (Still do.) I was writing a piece anent in the days before he was diagnosed. I was proud of my claims to privilege. I owned up!
   I sometimes have trouble when privileged folks want to have their cake and deny it, too.

When I moved house from BeHi after Roscivs died, a doctor friend—a medical doctor, a general care practitioner—helped heft and haul some of my larger items. After the heavy lifting was done, a little group went out to get pastries.
   I remember sitting in a tiny pastry shop hearing Mr. Dr. declare he's not rich. He spoke with deep, bitter frustration about how people think doctors are rich, but he's not: it's surgeons and specialists that make the big money.
   You can't brain someone with a croissant. I didn't even try. I just sat there.

Employment fact: (in these parts) even the lowliest GP makes 6 figures. How is six figures not rich? Seriously?! Mr. Dr. may not be the 1%, but he's the 5%.
   I would feel less chagrined hearing Jeff Bezos say I'm not one of those rich tech people: it's Bill Gates that makes the big money. Pretty much everyone (like, 99% of people) would see that that's just plain ridiculous. But move it closer to home and people put "rich" back on the horizon; people somehow don't see that Mr. Dr. is playing the same game.
   Poor schmuck.

Dirty Richie (warning: privilege ahead!)

Being poor and feeling poor don't necessarily co-occur. Being rich and feeling rich don't either.

Roscivs thought that most folks should work out a personal definition of being rich. For him, it was I can buy any food I want. He declared himself rich.
   A good "personal definition" is one that could actually apply to the person who makes it. Being rich is a location, not a horizon. Even if one's not there now, one (theoretically) could get there.
   (If you've already attained it when you define it, all the better for you!)
   I believe this outlook is key in a healthy concept of "rich". Beware of changing the goalposts: If every time your cup is about to o'erflow you make your cup bigger (SuperSize Me!) you're in for a life of ingratitude and greed. Maybe that doesn't sound so bad to you, but it sounds bad to me.

Gratitude improves quality of life more powerfully than pretty much anything else.
   I submit that greed detracts from one's capacity to enjoy and the capacity to be satisfied. And obviously(?) I value those.

While I've struggled a lot with feeling poor since Roscivs died, I've refused to be the Red Queen when it comes to being rich. I've fought to maintain the mindset that rich is a location and not a horizon.
   It was somewhere I had been.
   Maybe I could go there again.

I just wanted to say, I'm back. I'm here. I'm dirt rich!

Some Bat Time, Some Bat Channel

I love bats. If I could pick my reincarnation animal, I'd pick bat (or otter). I've held a bat (a fruit bat, wounded and in captive recovery), been licked by that bat; I've seen the bats swarm in Austin, TX. I've seen two bats mate (in captivity: zoo bats).
   Many bats nest under the bark of dead trees. One more reason to let the dead decompose naturally. One more reason to leave nature less disturbed. Many bats are being harmed by insecticides (their food having been poisoned). One more reason not to use poisons.

I've been told that my new house is under a "bat highway". During the summer there is a week where the bats zoom overhead. I wish I knew what kind of bat! I'm very excited to see it.