Please To Meet...

the newest additon.

(No no no...  Grandbebe Next hasn't made her appearance yet.)

We took advantage of the local animal shelters offer to waive the adoption fee for adults cats through the end of the month.

After the trip to Oklahoma, which always brings with it a trip to the shelter where my SIL works, I think I was softened up.  I suggested to Wonderful Guy that 'we just go see'.

(Yeah, right.)

And there was the Kitty Boy. With no claws.  After meeting him and spending some time with him...well, it seemed the thing to do.  He needed to come home with someone, and there we were.

He's adjusting to Best Dog Ever and The Cat Who Is Still Queen (and a bit bent out of shape, I must say), but we are working on making sure everyone knows their worth and their place in the feeder people's hearts.

She is not amused...

He has found a place under a bed to hang out where he thinks he safe.  I am scooping additional stuff from the litter box, so that is good.  I don't know about eating.  It's hard to say with other critters grazing, you know, but he's a big guy, and isn't going to starve to death right away.

He likes catnip, and he is playful, too.  It's fun having a playful one around again.

Pumpkin and Piccalilli

While my ham and beans are complete with some chopped onions (apparently DSis and my upbringing diverge when it comes to onions…), Wonderful Guy’s memories include something called piccalilli on the ham and beans of his youth.

Piccalilli that his grandmother canned…

Hmmm…that’s a tough an act to follow.

Of course there's not a 'historical' recipe, so I searched the internet and found about a million ‘Grandma’s best-ever old-fashioned piccalilli recipe’ or various derivations thereof.  There seemed to be a couple running variations, and I chose with the following criteria:

• I should have most, if not all, the seasonings/spices on hand (or be able to make do).
• It should not required sitting in a stone crock with brine overnight (I have a stone crock, but it's sort of old, being an antique..).

Armed with two likely recipes, I headed to the farmer’s market and picked up the onions and peppers required.  Then I headed to the basement to assess my canning supplies.

I have canned plenty in the distant past.  I put up a lot of veggies when the girls were young. It was educational and felt good and saved lots of money at a time when there didn’t seem to be enough and also took a whole lot of energy when I hardly had any to spare.  I have toted my canner and all my jars with me in all my moves since I left Texas in 1983.  There has been a bit of putting by that has happened along the way, but not like back then.  Yet I have not been able to let these things go.

And Saturday, when I wanted to put up some pumpkin for pies, and make some piccalilli for The Guy, I didn’t have to do anything but…unpack those boxes.  Oh. MY.  I have about 12 or 14 dozen quart jars and maybe 2 dozen pints, along with a dozen jelly jars.  I found plenty of rings, and enough flats to do Saturday’s work.

I could not find my mother’s food grinder.  For the life of me, I cannot place where I have put it (and I don’t believe I would have gotten rid of it). Therefore, I was reduced to cutting and chopping all the vegetables for the piccalilli, which worked pretty well.  The pumpkin I split and baked, then put through Mom’s fruit and vegetable press (another hi-tech item that I have carried with me forevah…).  According to the USDA guidelines, it is no longer considered safe to can pumpkin puree, so after smooshing it through the press, I filled two pint jars, sealed them, let them cool, and stuck them in the freezer.

Very easy, and makes me want to do more!  But really, how many pints of pumpkin do I need per year?

I added the seasonings and spices to the piccalilli and started it cooking.  When The Guy came in from riding the motorcycle, he said it smelled like piccalilli, so I felt I might be on the right track.  Not ever having had piccalilli, though, I was sort of operating in unknown territory.  Forging ahead, I finished following the recipe and filled the jars.

There is a time in canning that the seals take, and the lids ‘pop’. When I hear that distinctive pop,  I know I have done something right.  That gives me a buzz, and when those ‘pops’ started on Saturday, I was suddenly taken back to those summer days in Texas, when my mom was visiting my family, helping with the girls, and showing me what she remembered about stocking up.

Except she never showed me piccalilli.

When The Guy came back from washing the motorcycle, he was surprised the finished result was pink.  Well, I had red cabbage on hand, and that makes everything pink!  Also, apparently Grandma used corn in hers, but other than that, mine tastes like piccalilli.

Colorful results of the day’s efforts.

Political Discourse

I am as tired of being hit over the head with the Constitution by Tea Partiers, as I was being whacked with the King James Version of the Bible by those conservatives in religious circles I have passed through in my life.

I read this earlier this week in Newsweek, in an article titled ‘America’s Holy Writ  (How Teapartier’s Got It Wrong)’.

“‘When Barack Obama took office, experts rushed to declare an end to the old battles over race, religion, and reproductive rights—whether because of Obama’s alleged healing powers, or the Great Recession, or both. But these analyses ignored an important reality: at heart, the culture wars were really never about anything as specific as abortion or gay marriage. Instead, as James Davison Hunter wrote in Culture Wars, the book that popularized the term, the conflicts of the 1990s represented something bigger: “a struggle over…who we have been...who we are now, and...who we, as a nation, will aspire” to be. Such conflicts, Hunter explained, pit “orthodox” Americans, who like the way things were, against their more “progressive” peers, who are comfortable with the way things are becoming.

For the forces of orthodoxy, the election of a black, urban, liberal Democrat with a Muslim name wasn’t a panacea at all; it was a provocation. So when the recession hit, and new economic anxieties displaced the lingering social concerns of the Clinton era, political fundamentalists sought refuge in a more relevant scripture—one that could still be made to accommodate the simpler, surer past they longed for but happened to dwell on taxes and government instead of sinning and being saved.’” [emphasis mine]

I have come to believe it’s not about the Constitution (or the Bible), because I see now, as I saw then, a certain ‘cherry picking’ going on.

Those that heaved out their Bibles to denounce women in leadership (then, and perhaps the acceptance of gays now) kindly looked over those scriptures addressing slavery, cutting of hair, and certain laws regarding how ownership of property is handled.  Also, the obligatory tithe off the top of one’s income to one’s house of worship is almost always skipped over.  Not always, but very, very often.  I know.  I was once the wife of a minister.

And now, in likewise fashion, I am being beaten about the head and shoulders by those who do not like what has happened in the past two years in Washington.  It is said that the actions of our elected leaders is not what the Founding Fathers intended, and indeed, is unconstitutional.  We need a return to the basics of that revered document.

Make no mistake.  I revere the Constitution, and believe that Adams and Madison and Jefferson and Franklin were amazing, intelligent, and visionary individuals that pulled off an incredible feat in forming this embryonic nation with farsightedness and intellectualism that humbles me.

And by necessity, I believe we have built on that document.  Less than 150 years ago, we had to spell out that slavery was against the laws of this country (Amendment 13).  And only 140 years ago, it was noted that race was not to be used as a bar to voting (Amendment 15).

It was only 90 years ago this document was changed to give women the right to vote (Amendment 19).   And less than 50 years ago, this document spelled out a law against poll taxes, leveling the playing field for ‘less than wealthy’ voters (Amendment 24).

All of these events moved this country out of a comfort zone and closer to what we aspire to be.  All of these events were met with calls of derision by those who took the change uneasily, or just plain felt the change. Mostly people don’t like change.  I sure didn’t, when the X took his leave.  My whole apple cart was upset.  I understand this reticence.

But my little recitation here begs a question.  If we are going to hearken back to the Constitution, as our founding fathers envisioned it, are we talking just going back a couple years?  I might suggest some constitutionality issues the Bush administration had with search and seizure (Amendment 4) and right to a speedy trial (Amendment 6). Those don’t seem to get much press these days.

Do the Tea Partiers wish to take the Constitution back beyond Civil Rights?  Perhaps take back my right to vote and to own property?

Or perhaps like Clarence Thomas (and we are not even going to go there, my friends…especially today…).  From the same article as I quoted above, ‘Thomas sympathizes with a radical version of originalism known as the Constitution in Exile. In his view, the Supreme Court of the 1930s unwisely discarded the 19th-century’s strict judicial limits on Federal power, and the only way to resurrect the “original” Constitution—and regain our unalienable rights—is by rolling back the welfare state, repealing regulations, and perhaps even putting an end to progressive taxation….As Cass Sunstein, a centrist legal scholar at the University of Chicago who now serves in the Obama administration, has explained, “many decisions of the Federal Communications Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and possibly the National Labor Relations Board would be [ruled] unconstitutional” if Thomas got his way. Social Security could be eliminated. Same goes for the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve. Individual states might be allowed to establish official religions. Even minimum-wage and maximum-hour laws would be jeopardized. [emphasis mine]

I am betting Tea Partiers do not wish to hearken back to a pre-social security, pre-medicare constitution.  Which is another thing…

Those that have their government provided healthcare all tied up in a nice tidy package, paid for by taxes, cannot seem to see how that is government run healthcare.  And those that are screaming about how health insurance premiums are going up this year, are not relating to the fact that the rise in health insurance premiums have effectively taken away all raises, and eaten away at our standard of living for the past decade and a half.

I think I have now completed my political discourse, inadequate as it may be.  I am a chemist, not a political scientist.  However...

Separation of church and state?  Amendment 1, people.

Unfortunate Side of Organization

There is a down side to having an organized space.  With a place for everything and everything in it’s place?

I can see exactly where I have room for something else.

D-oh!

I know exactly what I have, what I don’t have, and thereby, what else I think I need.

Okay…want…

I start to think in terms of ‘this is really great, but you know what would make it even better…’

That’s the crack talking, and it won’t stop.  Ever.

So I back off, talk myself down, look at what I have, and see that my craft room is good.  It’s very good. 

It’s a room, for pete’s sake.

That having almost every back issue of Interweave Knits (except for 4) is adequate.  More than adequate, actually.  Just one example, by the way. (edit: I think I have found 3 of those four back issues on Ravelry from someone who is de-stashing some mags...)

And I have plenty of yarn and fiber to keep me knitting and spinning and dyeing until the cows…or maybe sheep...come home.  Plenty.

Which, however, will not keep me from purchasing a bargain when one appears.  I am nothing if not honest with myself.

Nor will it keep from making a purchasing of something extra-ordinary.  Like this:

Stansborough Grey. “Stansborough Farm, in the Wairarapa district, NZ, has the only flock of Stansborough sheep in the world making this fiber truly a unique find. Stansborough Grey wool was woven to make the famous costumes for Lord of The Rings and Narnia movies.” 

And being the complete LOTR dork that I am…I will say no more.

More Spinning Lessons

I know what I was thinking.  I was thinking I wanted to finesse my spinning skills and that I wanted to take another class from Maggie Casey to do that, and I got on the ‘pre-newsletter call list’, and when I got the call, I was thinking I was going to go for it.

And go for it I did.  I signed up for the fall Spinning 201 class.  At Shuttles.  In Boulder.  On Thursday nights from 7-9:30.  Starting November 4. For four weeks, skipping Thanksgiving.

What was I thinking?  It will be cold and dark and the weather might be lousy, too.  When I get home from work, ask the Guy.  It’s like pulling teeth to get me back out, and here I have plunked down money for just that very privilege.

But just not getting out for, say, a trip to Home Depot.  Oh noooooo.  I will be…

Driving over an hour both ways.

In the dark.

In the cold.

And probably the rain…by myself…

Getting home WA-AA-AY past my getting-in-my-stretchy-pants time.

For spinning.

Well, I won’t be totally alone.  Molly, the Marvelous Matchless will be riding shotgun!

I may be certifiably bonkers.