Randomness. It seems to be a lifestyle choice I have embraced.
We picked up our half cow (or is it a steer?) this past week at the processor’s in Spencer. It looked really good and was quite reasonable. I know the man who raised this critter, I know where it lived. I laid eyes on the people who slaughtered it and butchered it. The invoice says it all, “God Bless” (underlined, might I point out). I just love Tennessee so much. I’m very proud pleased to trace some of my lineage to this blessed state, hardscrapping, hard-drinking, Christians I read of them in a historical book that detailed the family.
They mustabeen fun.
Had biscuits and gravy at a little family restaurant out there before picking up the meat. It was so awesome! I was full until 5:30 that night – and we ate at 9:30. It was REAL gravy. You could tell because you could taste the little bits of burnt on sausage coaxed out of the bottom of the pan. Had a deep “biscuits and gravy nap” after we got back and put the meat away.
Not an everyday food for sure.
The women who run the place had just finished putting meringue on coconut pies. The young waitress took a picture for me. They were so beautiful. I have such a love for the handmade – even my own, even when imperfect or extremely simple. It has come to the point that anything out of a box makes me want to puke – if not literally, than in my spirit. Gross.
I picked the giant Serrano pepper plants and took green and red both along with a few banana peppers that were ready. Came across two GIANT hornworms munching contentedly on their own peppers. Clipped of the branch, tossed it over the fence. A bird or two will have a good protein-rich meal I intended as their fates. Hot pepper optional.
I went from picking ferociously like a farmhand to picking trepidatiously like a housewife out of her element. I had nightmares last night that my house was wrecked – all our belongings strewn asunder – and I was picking off hornworms and white fuzzy stinging caterpillars off my bedding with a gloved hand. Weird.
Made a paste out of the peppers, topped with oil and a whole pepper and put in the freezer for easy use this winter and into the spring. I got about 10 little containers of each color. That should do.
Also made some more ferments because I love homemade hot sauce so much. I still need some cute bottles. I did all this pepper work on September 11th while listening to the Howard Stern show broadcast from that horrible day, 22 years ago. I forgot how mad we all were – people talking about taking to the streets for some feel-good-vigilante-justice-you-guys. Let’s get them towelheads. It’s time to take back our country. And so forth.
I remembered how afraid I was for my first husband, an Indian national. He was my ex-husband at that time, but I was still worried for him. There was so much anger. Righteous, yes, but even righteous anger can flame over into insanity that changes your whole world in an instant.
There are times recently that I feel rumblings of this type of anger starting to emerge. A sentiment of being a pauper in a country that has gone mad is rumbling around, one fine day we will rise again I hear. It is indeed a country gone mad. So true. And that’s how they rope you into their dastardly cults. Some truth, but more lies embedded in the truths. Sick.
Anywho….
I spied a tiny little frog sitting among my squash-bug-ravaged volunteer butternut squash. He was so teeny and cute! I think he posed for me. And I think he is the one I saw earlier in the summer, hiding under our water barrel. He was even tinier then! J said that I had made a good home for him, and he thanked the good miss Friday by posing for me. Spot, the frog. Sweetness.
I live for the sweetness. After I was sick, then Saved, the sweetness seems to be what matters most to me.
More grass hauled in – the final grass of the season – Eric raked up while a lightning-filled storm brewed in the distance. I hollered at him in my apron to come in from the open field that is our front yard, but he said nah, let me get this up before it starts rainin, woman! We hope to have a good soil pile ready for us in the Spring when the garden beds need to be topped off. The rain never did come that day.
And finally the African Violet I have had for over a year bloomed! I had given it some bloom fertilizer a few weeks ago and blammo! Blooms! Who knew? Give something the right food and it thrives. Noted.