Multiconstruct

Listening to an alt country mix John made for me a long time ago. Great stuff, late 90s. Feeling grateful and content. Last week was a veritable whirlwind and until now I have subscribed to a drama free lifestyle for a long time. But not always and even as I’ve gone about a more ordinary existence I have known a penchant for action lays. Certainly won’t have to worry about boredom anytime soon as it looks.

Fido has been sleeping all day getting up only to follow me to whatever room I’m in and crashing. After better then a week of Olive 24/7 I think he just wants rest. We did walk down to the park and he played a bit with a 6 month old Blue Sheltie. I don’t think I’d ever seen one that cute. She got Fido to chase her but she was slow and they didn’t figure out how to play anything else so we walked the trail home.

I was tired today, slept poorly and slept in for me. I lay down for a nap but didn’t go down and ended up just reading a Spider Man comic. The 70s stuff has a strong since of nostalgia for me. “Peter Parker The Spectacular Spider Man” I remember well from when I was a boy. Tarantula is the villain and I remember drawing him, even the foreshortened right leg and having to imagine the toe spike that’s imbedded in the wall. He was like if Spider Man and Zorro had a kid being Hispanic and the half mask. Some of the stuffs pretty solid but there’s a cheese factor. My next one features the “Death Dance of the Hypno Hustler!”

I forgot this song is on the CD, awesome. Whenever I hear myself its unsettling and hard not to listen to myself and yet its not entirely pleasant (and not just because  I’m such a bad singer).

Jeff and Becky and their kiddos came over for dinner. I was hoping Fido would get over his weirded out by kids thing if he had some sustained time with kids but no such luck. I had made minestrone soup yesterday. As a a base I used all my canned tomatoes (pretty much done with canned food all things being equal, I’ll pass on the skyrocketing BPA levels thank you very much).

While I got that going I took 2 local pasture raised cube steaks, floured them in whole wheat flour and browned in the cast iron skillet. Chopped them into little pieces and all the drippings and even the saucer of flour figuring it would thicken. I would later regret that move because I was going to someone who was gluten frees house for a potluck I thought but it was a chile supper and I was late so it didn’t matter anyway. Had a gluten free beer speaking of nostalgia. (Long term readers will remember I lost my papa and gluten free this and that was a frequent blog topic for awhile.)

Oh yeah, I fried the cube steaks in bacon grease, its not much meat for a giant pot of soup and the extra flavor didn’t hurt. I then added the giant kolrabi (well half of it, going to use it for chickpea potato salad with some russets for the work potluck), a couple of Michigan carrots, 3 Michigan red onions, a green pepper, half a bottle of homemade cherry wine (my sainted Mama taught me to add a little sweet to take the bite out of tomatoes), 1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley, some spinach, and purple cabbage. Whoop fresh green beans snapped real short, the black eyed peas I’d made at New Years, and a sizable amount of dried basil from the garden and Turkish oregano. At the end I added most of a can of black olives I had from Thanksgiving and some whole wheat spiral pasta.

It was yummy, pretty healthy too, and had a minestrone taste to it. Ended up adding a tsp of Better then Bullion too. Jeff and Becky are traveling and to hang out a few hours in the afternoon I thought soup and salad would be nice. I did an all local salad with market lettuce, spinach, purple cabbage, shredded carrot, heart nuts (a cross of Black and English walnuts) from the Michigan market, and Michigan apples.

I made a homemade dressing as well. I added apple cider vinegar to the last of the tahini in its own jar and some Michigan honey (boy you know local honey is cool but the honey that’s like the honey that I grew up on is just more honeyer to me), a little turmeric, a lot of freshly ground mustard (the kids enjoyed the mortar and pestle), maybe something else, I was gabbing with the guests.

Jeff brought a loaf of wheat/rye bread he’d made in the woods in a clay oven. He’s a history buff and reenactor who has a big 19th century or so camp out in Missouri every year at this time and we hang out for a bit before or after. Jeff hosted me on my first visit to Columbia and showed me the town I fell in love with. Its funny in the campaign I say “I love Columbia” and people always say “How long have you been here?”, its funny. He made it old school stretching the yeast, using only a packet for 14 pounds of flour like they would have in the olden days and stuff was expensive. They bought yeast from brewers who grew it.

Early in that paragraph I hopped over to Facebook and told a friend one of my favorite stories about my dad when she had mentioned David Bowie, here it is [One time a long time ago Dad called from the road and asked my mom to speak to me. He said, “Have you ever heard of David Bowie?” “Um, yeah Dad I’ve heard of him why.” “Well I went to get fuel last night about 3:00 in the morning and all the fuel pumps were blocked by these tour buses, so I went inside and I said ‘Hey whose buses are blocking the fuel pumps?’ and this anemic little fuck came up and said ‘They’re my buses I’m David Bowie'” Dad went on “So I said are you any relation to Jim Bowie? He had a knife that could cut his hair, you could use a knife like that.” This was 80s Bowie so his hair wasn’t that long but Dad was sensitive about stuff like that. A couple years ago I showed him The Man Who Fell to Earth and told him that’s who he’d told off.]

Well its getting late and I still have dishes to wash.