I don’t cook that fucking woke shit they sell at restaurants that is essentially ultra-processed made a home, but I do know how to make basic ingredients without a lot of plastic wrappers taste good while cooking at home without a lot of fat, sugar and salt.
I mean everything is good wrapped in bacon and cooked in dairy fat, 🥓 but I don’t do that kind of cooking at home even if I do love visiting For the Love of Bacon a few times a year while heading up to camp so I have bacon to cook veggies in hog fat. Don’t worry, Walmart sells hog fat in a riggid plastic container which his good for your burn barrel if you don’t tell a liberal, but in my mind that is pointless. If I’m going to eat bacon, I’m going to get the good shit and if I don’t have my own hogs, then I’ll pay somebody who actually raises good quality stuff like the Chandlers raise over in Duanesburg Churches Road. But it’s a treat a few times of year not something I would buy at Walmart.
So far this morning I’ve cooked as I don’t eat that woke packaged food …
1) Apple-carrot pancakes using whole wheat flour and oatmeal 2) Two loafs of whole-wheat bread 3) Pea soup with carrots and onions 4) Spaghetti squash
I don’t really care much for the labels and fancy packaging, 🔥 even if it makes for some bright flames and a good fire starter. I grin as I have all those buckets in the kitchen for composting, paper, plastic and metal recycling, and other things for said fire starting. But I did mix them all up this weekend in white plastic trash bag and they did make a good fire, though I probably should have dumped the compost out my parents house but I mixed it in the poop and buried it up at camp. Trust me a poop a lot with all the fiber in my diet, but it’s far better then sugar and saturated fat so many eat. It was fun weekend, and the weather wasn’t too bad but no more camping until rifle season is done now, 🦌 well except I’m heading up to the Northern Zone after Thanksgiving, maybe with a gun just for the fun of shooting shit, 🔫 but mostly for spending some time in wilderness. 🌲 Truth is I make far less trash then most, and there have been many years when I’ve just taken the few glass bottles and cans to transfer station for recycling ♻️ once a year. I do smoke too much grass at times and I like burning shit.
I really have no toleration of the welfare recipients who are too ignorant to cook their own food and drink only soda and eat hot pocket and hamburger helper. 🍔 I am no cook, but I can make stuff out of inexpensive ingredients that are loaded with fiber and other nutrients. Granted, the stuff I eat doesn’t taste like the stuff that comes in a cardboard box and plastic or promoted on the colored television, 🗑️ but it does taste good once you learn how it fuels your body and your mind. 🧠💪 People have this view that food must taste a certain way, that tangy and strong isn’t a desirable thing. Or that food should have flavors besides fatty, salty and sugary. I do admit I abuse Stevia and sugar-free maple syrup more then I should at time, so I’m hardly perfect. 🍁 But at least it doesn’t rot your teeth and has far less calories. Filling your gut with fiber and vitamins is far better then crap Americans eat, even if it does keep you pooping all of the time. 💩
We didn’t get the snow they got in Madison County ☃️ 🐮 but it’s still pretty cold looking outside, though I still haven’t turned on the heat in my apartment because I figured I have my electric blanket and I plenty of heat from all the cooking I done this morning. 🍞 I am glad I didn’t ride my mountain bike 🚲 to work yesterday, as while it was damp but not raining in the morning, ☔ it rained most of the day yesterday before turning to gloppy snow. It would have not been nice weather for camping for sure had I gone out to Madison County. 🏕️ Probably wouldn’t have gotten snowed in at Stoney Pond but with the snow coming, I’d probably retreated to the relative safety of the Brookfield Horse Camp where you aren’t far from the county highway. 🌨️ Still it wouldn’t have been fun to camp in that weather. I was able to get to Wally World and spend even more money on groceries, 💰 but at least now my pantry is well stocked and I’m eating well. 😋 I wonder how many days before I’ve eaten up all 5 lb of those carrots. 🥕 I just like using carrots in everything, as it’s a great way to boost fiber and reduce calories. Now if I only had an outhouse or composting toilet, 🚽 I could put all that poop to work.
Today – which is Veterans Day and I have it off, 🚲 I want to ride out Five Rivers if it’s not too cold plus spend a lot of time at home reading 📖 and thinking, not rushing through my day. Plus eating all that good food that cooked. 😋 I mean if I spent $105 on food yesterday at Walmart and was up at 5 AM cooking, I better take advantage of all that good eating. I got three bags of cranberries yesterday at Walmart, probably not for today, but you can guess what I plan to make later in the week – far more then just cranberry sauce. People think you need a lot of sugar with cranberries but I like the bitter taste. Remember I’m the boy who also uses cider vinegar in his water 💦 to make it taste good. I don’t know, I figure relax on this day off if they weather is crap. ☔ And I should do some cleaning of pig pen apartment, you know between watching the videos of the manure spreaders and pumpers. It’s cow shit season after all, lol. You need those 120 days or so for the shit to rot on the fields over the winter before planting and grazing come spring, as that book Managing Manure on Homestead reminds us all.
‘Rows of house that all the same, and no one seems to care.” – The Monkies, A Pleasant Valley Sunday.
I want to believe at one level that most rural people live in cabins and homesteads where they are for a large part self sufficient. But I’ve come to realize the more a study the countryside, look at what houses are out there on the market and how people actually live – that’s more of an exception then reality.
Most rural people are essentially just suburbanites with long commutes. Indeed, much of rural population lives in hamlets and villages, not remote farmsteads with goats, hogs and cattle – and gardens that feed themselves most of the year. Most rural people who have burn barrels where legal essentially produce and use them for trash like weekly suburban garbage hauling. Most have high speed internet and big televisions. Most rural houses are heated with oil or propane, with perfect climate control year round. Most rural houses are grid-tied with the only practical limitation on energy consumed being how much the rural homeowner wants to pay.
It’s not to say there ain’t homesteaders or off-gridders out there, especially on the back roads. There are places in the hills and hollows were people are a lot more self-sufficient. But my idea that rural living is profoundly different then the typical suburban life is as much a fantasy as a reality. I equate the odd ball, with how things are in my imagination. There are some real backwoods dairymen and DIYs but most have Apple iPhone and modern technology. It’s only the exceptional that do it differently.
Fuck, fuck, fuck was the words I said several years back when I ran over the pallet nail with my 35 inch tires, I recalled on the Custom Offsets post. Shitty times, hopefully today will be better as I drive to work on this rainy morning.
I want to go shopping 🛒 after work today, so I’ll drive in because not going to be a good day to ride in and it just sucks waiting for the local bus in the evening. 🚍 Even if it is cold and dark in the evening. Need more fresh and frozen fruit and also flour for baking. I have all this spaghetti squash and acorn squash to cook but I want to bake bread 🍞 at the same time in the oven. Fresh bread is so good in the morning, and I keep it simple, flour, water, yeast and maybe some salt and Stevia.
Tomorrow is Veterans Day and a State Holiday, 🪖 so I have it off. Looks kind of cold so I might just stay home and read under the covers of my electric blanket. Or maybe use the heating pad or the space heater. ♨️ It would be a good day for a big pot of soup and fresh bread. Maybe I should bring my laptop home but I rarely use it these days, and my computer monitor is in my office 🏢 though I never actually hooked it up. Mostly brought it in because the landlord was working on the windows, and I got tired of tripping over it. Might redo my work office so I can actually use it in the office.
It was a fun weekend, 🏕️ though the next two weekends as regular hunting season starts, I’m staying out of woods 🌲 with the plan for the next adventure to be in the Northern Zone in Adirondacks after Thanksgiving. I grin as I look at the empty trash cans in my apartment, all that plastic shit from the past three weeks burnt hot but don’t tell a liberal. 🔥 Regular season is still underway up north but by then things have slowed down. This weekend I might do the Pine Bush on Saturday, check out the John Wolcott sign, 🦋 visit the Salvation Army and Goodwill for more dressy work shirts, and then maybe go to Altamont Orchards 🎃 for some pie pumpkins for cooking. I spotted the big display on the way out of Shauls and I should have gone back and got one but I was already paying when the clerk yelled over to another customer about the pie pumpkins being on the other size. It would be good to cook up though right now I have a ton of spaghetti squash and acorn squash to cook up. But I’m now craving pumpkin so badly.
