Up at 5 AM to boil down the coffee and shred the carrots for the pancakes. I’m already through a bag and half of cranberries since I bought the four 12-oz bags on Friday evening for 97 cents a piece. I do like cranberries, but I like bitter shit like that as I’m kind of bitter son of a bitch.
Continuing to read that book 📙 about butchering, 🗡️ smoked some weed last night and listened to more of the Fairport Convention along with Ian and Sylvia. Eventually I did ride my bike out to Five Rivers, thinking about it again today, but it’s pretty windy and cold out. At first when I woke up and it was still and cold, I was thinking how I wish I had done an overnight last night as I watch as next weekend fades to crap, but certainly I want to get out at least on Christmas Day 🎄 to the woods to have a fire and be away from all that Christmas crap. 🎁
Made a big pot of black beans yesterday 🍲 making sure to wash them and put extra salt on them to keep them from getting stinky or making me stinky from farting after eating too many. Fried them up with onions and corn for lunch. 🧅 I often prefer pinto beans as their somewhat cheaper and more flexible, but both are good and probably black beans are somewhat healthier. I froze the remaining pea soup I had from earlier in the week, to avoid it starting to get tangy in fridgerator. I have some acorn squash I want to cook when I’m baking bread 🍞 on Monday morning. I also might make up some brown rice and have rice and beans this week too. I don’t plan to go to the grocery store again until after I get my truck inspected 🔎 on Wednesday. I was going to work from home that day, but honestly, I have the time, and I think I’d rather just drop my truck off and ride and hang out most of the day I don’t know at various parks or seeing the country on my bike if it’s not cold and gray. 🌥️ If I was honest with myself, I’ll probably spend it home reading as it will be cold and nasty.
Ran into an old colleague at Five Rivers, 🐸 catching up on the happenings at the Capitol and soon it was getting dark, but honestly I didn’t expect to spend much time walking around there, I mostly went out there to get some exercise riding out there, 🚲 and past by Meads’ Cows 🐮 out there. Kind of a cold, dark gray day yesterday too. Wouldn’t have been real great in Rennselaerville for sure. Also started reading another book on working with custom builders, not that I’m sure that’s the route I want to go, but I just hate those grid-tied, plastic houses with weekly 96-gallkon trash service in the suburbs, not that I’m necessarily embracing a stinky smoldering load of plastic fires every other day. 🔥 Though, some thing stink when you burn them, so their best kept downwind just like your hog pens. 🐽 I’ve been mostly staying off Facebook, really trying to instead read more on Libby and Hoopla, 📰 along with keeping up better with the various magazines but not getting too much into the depth of swamp of the Love the Cops and Government Workers 👮 that the press really wants to you to be ever so scared of.
Heading out to visit the parents later today and empty out the compost bucket which is mostly full at this point. 🪣 Not of spoiled food but apple cores, carrot tops and banana peals and other similar things. I really try to avoid wasting food, 🥕 as unlike many people, I don’t have unlimited money as I don’t want one of those woke suburban houses with vinyl siding. It is amazing how rich and wasteful the poor people are. And I was bitching about my $95 electric and gas bill last month, but I’ve done a lot of cooking and hiding under the electric blanket, and probably taken too long of hot showers but I also keep my heat at 48 degrees except for that real cold day this winter. 🔌 Of course, I’m saying that, sitting next to my space heater which has been basically off except for this morning but I like being warm.
On Facebook I follow Love in the Dumpster, one of the many pages that celebrates a culture of dumpster diving – digging through the trash bins behind businesses to score usable materials before their smashed and heaped into the landfills on the outskirts of town. There is quite a bit of useful material, especially for a homestead, that can be secured from dumpsters. You know, if I had land, a place to sort and process collected materials, I think I would take this up as a hobby, out there searching for free stuff I can find out along side roads and in dumpsters.
Pallets left curbside and in dumpsters are one of the most used resources I see used on homesteads – they not only provide wood for bonfires and starting woodstoves – they are used for animal shelters, fences and many other uses. They can be taken apart, their wood used in building structures and many other purposes. And if all else fails, they burn and make warmth and light. There are often pallets left along the road for the taking on Erie Boulevard which I often ride and drive by on my way to work.
I’ve been interested for some time in starting a coffee ground and composting collection in the office. I see this as a great source of nutrients when I have a homestead just currently going to the landfill. Or looking through dumpsters for food that could be taken home and fed to livestock, especially once I have hogs. I also look at all the shredded paper and other paper trash the data division produces, and can’t help to think what good bedding it would make, not to mention as a source of carbon mixed with in all the manure.
There really is a lot of possibilities those days when I own my own land.
I think replacing that bed sheet with the holes that were getting twisted up in my foot really helped. I didn’t know what size my bed was – full-size – but Googling my blog I was able to find out that important info.
Yesterday was the Holiday Party at work, 🍪 and I eat way too many cookies and spent most of the days in sugar-trance. It was fine, I didn’t end up needing my truck as we all ended up fitting in the shuttle, 🚀 and then I spent the rest of the day kind of slunched over my desk. In the evening, I went to Walmart and got four bags of cranberries – 97 cents each and I like cranberries – along with a windshield wiper and that bed sheet. I have my state inspection on Wednesday, and while the tied on with a wire wiper blade works, honestly it doesn’t clear the windshield well and I don’t want to get shit for it during the inspection. 🛠️ It will be good to know my truck is mostly good once when it’s inspected, though honestly I don’t expect any issues. 🔎
Been plunging through the book about butchering, namely Phil Hindleberg’s Complete Guide to Butchering, 🗡️ which is kind of odd in the sense it starts out with cattle and bisons, then works it way smaller to hogs, goats, chickens, and rabbits. 🐰 I think I’d rather start on rabbits and chicken first. You need some serious equipment to process the amount of meat on a cow, as their big. 🐮
It’s been a cloudy and cool Saturday, 🌥️ and with my family holiday get-together postponed for now, I decided to stay home. For a while I thought a bit about a quick overnight in Rensselearville but I’d rather do that end of week or maybe Schoharie. The thing is next Sunday, I’ll need to be home early on Sunday morning as my niece’s performance in Nutcracker is that afternoon. 🎄 Then the next time to get away probably ain’t until after Christmas Eve, 🎅 though I’m still hoping to get out to Madison County for a long-weekend starting then if there ain’t too much snow or cold. Changes are improving for above normal temperatures during the second half the month.
This afternoon, I’ll probably ride out to Five Rivers for a while, 🚲 just for some exercise and then maybe around some of the suburban sprawl neighborhoods to see Christmas Trees. I really feel like I should get some exercise as I didn’t get a lot of steps in yesterday, 👣 and with the cold and snow I’ve not been riding in nearly as much lately. But first I’ll probably read and take a nap, bed, as it’s warm under he heated blanket – and honestly I like catching up on sleep a bit on weekends even if I do get up at 5 AM even on Saturdays.
Let us consider what chitlins are – they are hog intestines or guts
Some people turn up their noses at the mention of chitlins; other leave the house while they are cooking, driven away by their odor. They are a food that you either love or hate!
However, the volume sold for New Year’s dinners, with Christmas and Thanksgiving not far behind, attests to chitlins popularity in the United States. Chitterlings is the more formal name, but most people call them chitlins. They are usually part of a larger meal that includes collard greens, fried chicken, and other traditional Southern foods. Chitlins are not for the faint of palate or smell, which is why traditionally they were cooked outdoors at backyard hog killings in winter.
I moved into my apartment 18 years ago after graduating college. Over those years I have never owned a television, except for a brief while a decade ago – maybe a year – when I had a cheap TV tuner that I could use with my HDMI monitor but then that tuner broke and I tossed it into a fire somewheres in a wilderness. Stunk of chemicals, glad I was in real remote country.
Never had much interest in television, honestly. It always struck me as a lot of people yelling at you, selling crime and promoting violence by the government workers against the people. And Honest Abe’s Used Cars. I often confuse Billy Fuscillo and Donald Trump, though I’ve heard the prior is long dead now. And who needs that now when we have YouTube?
Originally I saw little purpose in having home internet when I could just walk down to the library and later the town park for free Wi-Fi. I wrote scripts I could download Youtube for home watching. Then my phone plan started to include hotspot data, which was good during the pandemic compared to working in the cold in my truck at the library.
But as time marched on, smartphones came more powerful and data limits lifted and ultimately became essentially unlimited, even that seemed unnecessary. And I found there was less that I needed my laptop for, when my phone was smaller, more portable and could be used from where ever including the comfort under my sheets on a cold winters day.
Now I see basically no reason for Wi-Fi at home and it’s rare I ever even bring my now old and falling apart laptop home. I just do everything on my phone. Mostly just reading and writing at this point – I plug in an ordinary USB keyboard to my phone. And recently, I’ve moved away from social media, in favor of doing more reading of E-books and E-Magazines from the library. All perfectly able to be enjoyed from my phone.
According to Google AI, it’s mostly the very poor and elderly who choose to not have home internet or Wi-Fi. And that’s like like 2 or 3 percent of the population. It is seen as a form of poverty, almost like those who did not live with electricity in America. And those odd balls, the privacy paranoid. But I just think television and Internet is kind of a harmful medium.
I would be loathe to be completely cut off from the world of smartphones and connection over them to the Internet, but I also see less and less of a purpose for having a laptop and are no rush to replace my own when it breaks though for the occasional blog coding and map making, it sure is good to have.
But I’m not sure if I’d embrace home internet, even when I do some day have a house and homestead. Smartphone yes, and maybe a basic Linux laptop that I could connect to internet from the library or light hot spot use, but not the monthly unlimited high speed internet common in most homes these days. But it’s been months since I had my laptop home or gone down to the library to connect over the Wi-Fi.
Nothing having home internet, according to the AIs and various Internet sources is a form of impoverishment that holds people back from the ability to apply to job opportunities. Maybe I haven’t had to look for a job in years now, but also I think I could do that just fine at the library Wi-Fi if needed. Hell, I remote worked for nearly two years sitting out in parking lots eight hour days in my pickup.
Honestly, if anything, I find home internet to be more impoverishing and not just in the sense of money spent and electricity wasted. Not having the internet or television at home, forces you to do other things.
