Vitamin Soup

The Baron returned from visiting his family carrying a wicked cold he’d picked up along the way. The worst part of his sickness was a bad cough. Partly post-nasal drip and partly chest congestion. When he coughs it sounds awful!

He’s not one to take medication so he’s been toughing it out. In sympathy, I fixed him some Vitamin Soup. This is a good one for sick people.

The nice thing about this soup is that you can start from scratch or you can take advantage of left-overs. Like all good soups, it’s quite adaptable.

I’ve long since abandoned measurements in general cooking. When you’ve been on the job a long time, the idea of measuring gets in the way. Thus, any measurements you find here, you’ll know I’m just making stuff up.


Vitamin Soup

INGREDIENTS

Bacon, several slices
Cabbage, about 1/4 of a head, more or less.
Carrot, one
Potato, one medium
Water or chicken broth
Onion, one medium
Parsley, a good handful. Leaves only, chopped.
Red pepper flakes
Salt
Cream (optional)


DIRECTIONS

Fry bacon slowly until crisp.
While bacon is cooking, shred cabbage and carrot into a saucepan.
Barely cover with water or broth and bring to a boil.
While waiting for the vegetables to heat, grate the potato separately into cold water (grated potatoes turn brown so easily. If you put a pinch of vitamin C powder into the water you’re using to grate the potato, this won’t happen).
Drain potato shreds into a colander and rinse before adding to the cabbage and carrot saucepan.
Once the vegetables are boiling, add salt and red pepper flakes to taste. Reduce heat to simmer and cover saucepan.

When bacon is crisp, remove from pan and set aside.
Chop or shred an onion into the bacon fat. Cook slowly until the onion is translucent and beginning to turn golden. Don’t let it brown.
Scrape the cooked onion and rendered bacon fat into to the vegetables in saucepan.
Put cover back on and simmer the whole thing for another 20 minutes or so, until the potato shreds are very tender.

Add cream to taste and reduce the liquid a bit until it is the consistency you like.
Serve with freshly chopped parsley and crumbled bacon in each bowl.

This probably serves four people for a soup course, or two people for a meal.

As with most any soup, it’s even better the next day.


CONSIDERATIONS AND SUBSTITUTIONS:

• broccoli can be substituted for cabbage. In fact, most any cruciferous vegetable will do.
  
• if you don’t believe in bacon, use shredded chicken. Leftover chicken is fine. But add some celery seed and/or sage for flavor.
  
• Use butter to cook the onion if you’re not using bacon. Actually, ghee is even better since it doesn’t burn. Making your own ghee is easy and much less expensive than buying it.
  
• left-over mashed potatoes make a good substitute for shredded potatoes. If you riced the potatoes after cooking, then they won’t have any glutinous lumps. If you haven’t had “riced” mashed potatoes, you don’t know what you’re missing!
  
• The flavor of the slowly rendered onions is wonderful. But if you don’t have the time or inclination, to sauté them, just add dried onion to taste. It’ll do in a pinch.

Be well!

Jewelweed Really Is

The Baron and I were out doing errands today. Since the weather was lovely, warm but not really August-in-Virginia warm, we stopped at various places of remembrance. I call them that because they are either scenes he painted when he was a landscape artist, or they were spots we knew where second-bloom honeysuckle could be found for the taking. Some of them were simply old haunts that time is changing.

The second bloom is lighter than the first, and not nearly so fragrant. I picked some anyway. On the other hand, Autumn clematis is running riot over everything, smelling up the place. That is, blooming everywhere except where I planted it. Since it grows wild almost anywhere you look, I’ll be darned if I’ll actually buy a pot of the stuff. Instead, this time I’ll dig it up and pot it myself. Once the roots are over the shock, I can transplant it more successfully. Live and learn: plants, like children, do not like to be jerked around. Autumn clematis is one of those flowers you don't want too close to the house. Close enough to get the wafts of perfume, but not so close that the bees and such are chasing you.

Joe Pyeweed is in full flower. You can smell the vanilla in some of the varieties, especially the tall ones. False boneset is out but the tickseed sunflower has hardly begun and I don’t see any Ironweed. Maybe it’s late in this year of strange weather.

We saw jewelweed everywhere. It’s in full bloom now. I’ve been meaning to gather some for poison ivy treatment, but somehow each season gets by before I notice the blooms are gone. Then I'm stuck trying to identify the plant without its characteristic flower. It's a lovely small blossom but the plant itself is non-descript and tends to blend into the other foliage when not flowering.

This year I'm on it! I am going out bright and early tomorrow. Or maybe in the cool of the late afternoon is more realistic. I’ll bring home enough to make a concoction to have on hand when people run into poison ivy. It really does work like a charm.

Here’s my favorite method:

Get a bunch of the stuff, maybe four or five plants. Wash them, chop them up, flowers and all, until you have a moist mush. A blender would do fine.

Simmer that with a bit of distilled water. When it looks like the liquid is down by half, let it cool. Strain this through whatever you have handy – some cloth that you won’t mind having stained brownish green – and pour the liquid into a dark glass container.

Refrigerate this (a few days is okay) until you have time to clean out an ice cube tray. Then freeze the liquid in cubes. Don’t leave them in the tray as they’ll desiccate, or evaporate, or whatever it is that self-defrosting freezers do to liquid over time. I’d put them in a plastic freezer bag, well-sealed and especially well-marked. I’ve learned the hard way about tossing unmarked bags into a freezer and assuring yourself that you’ll remember what those cubes are. You won't.

If you have an ice cube tray with tiny compartments, that would be the best for freezing smaller cubes. Lacking one of those, just use a regular tray.

The ice cube can be applied to a poison ivy rash at any stage. Used at least twice a day, it will resolve the rash with far fewer blisters. It’s also effective on athlete’s feet.

Jewelweed is a member of the impatiens family. This makes me doubt that it would dry well, but what the heck. I’ll hang some upside down and see what happens. It probably won’t be pretty. More like a wet mess after a day or two.

Can’t hurt to try, right?

Weather is So Very Local

The Baron is always wistfully hoping to see a tornado...preferably not here in the garden, but say, following one of those in the Midwest, the ones that turn the sky green and suck up all the air, plus anything else in their way. In fact, he likes them so much he watches that tornado channel whenever he's in the proximity of a TV and has any control over the remote.

So imagine his chagrin on finding out at church today that the clamor and banging that gave us six tenths of an inch of rain the other night was at the same time busy dumping six inches on a nearby area. The place is about three or four miles away, as the crow flies. In addition to the deluge, they also had a TORNADO!

So near and yet so far. That's the problem (if one is hunting them) with tornadoes in the southeatern part of the United States. They often come at night. In addition, if they occur in the Piedmont areas, they don't get far before bumping into an obstructive land mass, say a hill, or a mountain. I don't think "Tornado Alley" in the Midwest has any hills to speak of, thus they can go further and do more damage.

There is a higher mortality in the Southeast, though. For one thing, tornadoes don't have a "season" here; they can occur any time of year. For another, they are frequently at night so there's no way to send out the kinds of warnings that they do in the Midwest. And due to the milder weather here, there are more trailer parks to demolish. Trailers, or mobile homes, are essentially tin held together with staples. There is insulation between the outside tin and the inside fiberboard walls, but they're fragile things. That's why poor people like them: cheap housing.

Many counties, wealthier than we are, don't permit new trailers. They don't meet the building codes and rich folks don't like them cluttering up their pretty scenery. With Obama's new energy attack no doubt they'll eventually be outlawed, even those that were grandfathered in to the updated building codes. In other words, poor people will have fewer places to live, but everything will be pretty...and energy efficient. No more dangerous kerosene stoves. The Salvation Army better start some kind of building program or they're going to be turning away lots of folks.

This rain gauge is just like the one our car mechanic has. That's where the Baron got the idea for one of our own. He put it up so that I can see it from my desk. Not only is that an improvement over the glass and plastic ones we've had before, but I don't have to get up from my desk to see the water level. I believe this is a year 'round model, so we'll be able to count the inches of snow when the time comes.

Meanwhile, with all this great rain, it has been interesting watching the inches climb this June. We've probably had close to 4 inches this month, if not more. The only downside is that the slugs, snails, and pill bugs like the damp and have been increasing in whatever they have to do to make more of themselves. It doesn't bear thinking about, but meanwhile, these parents and their increase have taken to munching on my plants.

Tomorrow I am going to get some Sluggo and spread it around the susceptible spots. Sluggo is just iron phosphate in pellet form. Won't hurt the plants (though they already get a lot of iron from our orange clay soil), but it will send the offending creatures elsewhere.

By the way, the bush in the back of the picture is a lilac. In looking at the photo, I just noticed the mildew. Shoot, and I thought the bush had escaped this year. The black strap hanging to the left of the gauge is a left-over from when we had our roof replaced. After more than a year, our roofer hasn't finished, though he did clamp on rubber sheeting after the leaks appeared.

Don't get me wrong, this man was a very good roofer. He's been in business since 1953. But ours turned out to be a roof too far and he's not been back to fix it properly. Plus he and his Mexican workers banged nails through the eaves. It looks like we may be headed to court...bummer.

Wormy Palace

I hate just tossing out our vegetable parings, but I don’t want to make just a compost pile that would further attract the attention of noxious deer, who are getting hungrier and less afraid. Besides, I can't toss around large piles, nor can I afford an enclosed store-boughten one so I had to think of something else.

For the first time this year, those deer ate the daylilies. Well, actually, they eat them every year, but this season they came back over and over again. Out of a hundred or so usual blooms, we have one. Their appetites may prove beneficial if it thins out a bed that I’ve wanted to dig up and separate for years. On the other hand, if all the plants die back for lack of growth, I’ll have move in bulbs from other stands. It's an herb bed, so strictly speaking daylilies don't belong there. But since the shoots, bulbs, and flowers are edible, they pass.

Obviously it’s way past time for pepper spray and blood meal. Should have done those in February, but in February I was running on one and a half cylinders. You do what you can and let the devil sort the rest.

By the way, our county is now offering a bounty on coyotes. Wish they’d do the same for deer. The latter are mighty skinny, some of them, and suicidal. They like to run into the path of oncoming cars. Yeah, I know: they’re so “cute”. I never thought much of Bambi myself and I sure can't afford the car repair bills. One unfortunate social worker in an adjoining county had a mortal encounter with a deer while driving to work. Were I a close member of her family, or if any of my family met such a fate, I'd be known as "Dymphna the Deer Slayer" for sure. Princeton New Jersey hired their own official deer slayer some time back. None of the progressives with gardens or landscaping or cars objected to this added expense.

Here is my solution for recycling house garbage… no, there wasn’t any meat involved in the process. I want to build up the soil, not attract rats.

I eat a lot of yogurt, organic when I can get it. I’m not much of a believer in the organic thing, but when it comes to animal fats, I’d rather do without all the extra added ingredients that cows are fed. Unfortunately, I can’t get away from their soy feed unless I find 100% grass-fed cows. Women who’ve survived breast cancer aren’t supposed to have soy, but it’s in everything. So the extent possible, I avoid those everythings and make my own stuff. But that's a subject for another post.

Meanwhile, I was throwing out the yogurt containers, all the while thinking “there must be a use for these”. Hey, anyone who collects dryer lint for other uses tends to think like that. It just means that if I weren't disabled, I'd be working somewhere.

Well, I found a use for them…at least some of them. I am making mini-compost bins. This low tech project requires a screwdriver or an awl and some scissors. A paper punch works for the parts that can be reached with that, and the pattern provided by the paper punch holes gives you a guide on how large to make the other holes on parts of the carton that can't be reached by the punch.

When you punch holes in the plastic yogurt carton, make sure to do the lid and the bottom, too. The holes have to be big enough and smooth enough to let earthworms get in, but not so big as to encourage voles. I use the scissors to trim the excess plastic from around the holes so as not to damage the worms as they move in and out.

To this “bucketette” you add ground up vegetable and fruit peelings and egg shells (they go through the blender effortlessly and you have a much smaller mass than you started with). This compost mass is layered between newspapers, as though you were building a strata…which you are, only for worms. Start with newspaper and alternate that with ground garbage. End with a covering of newspaper.

Now dig a hole in a part of your garden which has poor soil. In our clay soil, it’s not hard to find such spots. Make sure the hole is deep enough and wide enough to hold your yogurt carton easily. Make the hole a bit deeper than the carton so you can cover the whole thing with soil.

Wait, though. You haven’t invited your guests. Go to the part of your garden that has good soil and dig up some earthworms, along with some of the soil they’re crawling through. Pack this earthworm-laden soil around the yogurt carton, which will be shortly leaking its goodies out into the dirt. Cover up with some of the poor soil. Put a rock on top, one too heavy for a raccoon to lift. The rock also marks your spot so you can return on occasion to check its progress.

Meanwhile, you can be making new yogurt-compost containers and stacking them inside one another so they don’t take up much room. Put them in a convenient place, perhaps where you keep your plastic storage containers?

A caveat: I can’t lift a rock/boulder that would prevent a bear from getting to the goodies. If evidence of their presence appears, I’ll have to figure out what discourages those critters. I don’t need more animal company, thankyouverymuch.

Since it hurts my hands to do more than one container at a time, I make them as I need them. Meanwhile, I can store the accumulating veggie garbage in one of the un-holey containers, waiting till I have enough for another buckette of worm strata.

I like this idea of mine. Now I no longer look longingly at compost containers that cost a small fortune. This solution is much better for just two people’s accumulations, and I’ll bet the worms are happy.

For some reason, it popped into my head that what I’m making are little veggie coffins…

the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out,
The worms play pinochle on your snout…

Only in this case, they catch up on the local news while they eat. We will have well-informed invertebrates, rather like the current manifestation of the Republican Party.

Next I’ll figure out how to use coffee cans to make vole-proof tulip bulb containers. Those suckas ate 25 Cambridge yellow tulips and I haven’t planted tulips anywhere but in porch containers since.

Turning the Key, the Door Creaks Open...

It's been more than a year since I've been home.

I promised myself that when the fund-raising was over at Gates, I'd come back to the old Neighborhood.

Staying away wasn't a choice. The spirit was willing, but the flesh rebelled, big time. In fact, it is doing so even as I type. The difference now is a lowering of my fatigue level via Provigil. It works on whatever part of my brain responsible for sending messages like this:

"you.are.tired.go.to.sleep.now.just.for.a.little.while"
That is my brain not on drugs. My brain on Provigil sends quick snappy twitters. Things like, "hey, go put some manure on those tomato plants. Now!"

I like my second brain better. Too bad Provigil is three hundred dollars a month. One might as well have a coke habit. Indulging in modafinil (the generic name, though it isn't available in America as a generic) isn't possible. Cephalon has the patent and they ain't budging. Too bad, because my insurance covers only generics. Being diagnosed with hypopnea,the junior version of sleep apnea, means (theoretically) that I qualify for modafinil. But Cephalon has a death grip on that patent so no go.

Fortunately, my doctor gave me some free samples; I hoard them and use only half a dose. I now have ten days of functioning left. After that, back to a snoozy reality. I am definitely saving some Provigil for the 4th of July Tea Party. Can't miss that one!

I have gone back to the sleep patterns of my youth, a pattern that all of my children inherited, unfortunately: I'm a night owl. My best time is about 10:00 p.m. onwards. I would much rather be a lark, like the Baron, up with the dawn and enjoying the sunrise. Ah well, you go with what you get.

One of my night owl offspring sent me this comic strip. Does he know me or what?


I'll be back, y'all...there's lots of stuff piled up, but Duty Calls. A post on Gates, then I can roam the Neighborhood, annoying Those-Next-Door -- all nine choirs of 'em.

Heh.

Remembrance Day for Shelagh, 2008

Today is the fifth anniversary of my daughter’s death. Up until now, it has been a hard, gruelingly sorrowful day for me. But not this year.

The relationship between us has changed ever since I dreamed of her about 10 days ago. She looked amazingly well – serene, calm, and joyful. There was a kind of glow to her and to the younger woman who was with her.

In this dream, I was having some kind of get together and lots of people were moving about. It was reminiscent of family parties we had when Shelagh and her brothers were children: lots of kids running in and around the adults, chasing one another while the grown-ups tried to carry on adult conversations over the noise.

As I was making my way through the crowd, I came upon Shelagh. Suddenly she was just there, obviously with another woman who was shorter and younger than she was. They were both dressed in either white or pastel dresses, loose and comfortable. They both also seemed to have an inner light, a dimmed radiance surrounding the two of them as they faced me.

The sight of her was startling. “Shelagh, you can’t be here. You’re dead, remember?” She laughed, put her arm around me and assured me that all was well. “Oh, Mom, you’ll be okay. And I’m fine now.”

At that point the dream ended. The Baron had come in the front door, returning from church, and the rattle of the doorknob wakened me. The dream itself was so vivid that I was disoriented for a few minutes after I came back to the surface.

Since then, things have been the same, but different. I don’t grieve any more. Instead, I remember all the things I loved about my daughter and how fortunate I was to have been her mother – as rocky as that road was sometimes.

She has taught me to forego judgment; it’s very freeing. And knowing she’s all right brings its own unutterable peace.

Is the dream “real”? It depends on what one considers reality. I think of it as a gift, and I don’t inquire as to the source.

A fellow-blogger remembered what today was and sent me a long, comforting note. At the end of it, he said:

BTW my own view of the afterlife is that souls have work to do just as they did on Earth. They become a welcoming committee for new souls and also are guardian angels for those of
us who are left behind. I have a story from [his son]’s closest high school friend that definitely says they act as guardian angels.

Shelagh would have liked that idea. She’d have opted to be Ahnold’s guardian angel. Well, whoever gets her had better have a sense of humor. She enjoyed teasing people. After listening to the Baron and me sing while doing dishes, she remarked drily, “love isn’t blind, it’s deaf.”

She was right, but we’re still singing…no doubt, she’s singing too, wherever she is.

Salmon Cakes à la Cheap and Sneaky

I like fresh salmon, but I question the wisdom of eating much of it since the fish - like chickens, beef, etc. - are fed soy. In addition, a lot of farmed salmon has color added to the feed so they’ll look pinker.

Having had cancer, soy is on the verboten list. And the darn stuff is in nearly everything: low carb “breads”, salad dressings, cereals, etc. Even the sardines I’m supposed to eat often are packed in soybean oil.

So I’ve gone back to making salmon cakes from wild-caught canned salmon. The kind from Alaska, not China.

I used to make these years ago with cod in New England, back before you could easily get fresh salmon there. Recently I had some leftovers (unusual) and a friend liked them enough to ask for the recipe. Recently I got another request from someone on a diet.

Here they are - this serves three people if one of them is a young man with a big appetite. Otherwise, a family of two adults and two kids would find this sufficient. For more people, just double the recipe.

Open the can (duh) and drain the broth into a separate bowl.

From here you have two ways to mash the salmon: put it through the blender or mix it with your hands. There are soft bones in the fish which have been pressure-cooked so that they will crumble between your fingers and finicky people will not know about this extra addition of calcium. The blender is easier and more thorough, however. Less messy, too.

Dump into a mixing bowl and add a Tablespoon or so of dried onion. Mix well to distribute. Set aside.

Now how to make the filler? Regular carb meals would permit some mashed potatoes, or finely crushed saltines, like you were making crab cakes. Medium carbs would allow for some mashed white beans, but if you want to make it low carb, use a large zucchini, grated and wrung out in a towel. Then sauté the zuke until it really lets go of the liquid (a little salt helps) and throw that into a colander. Squeeze out the liquid again.

Add the zucchini or the potatoes or crackers to the mixing bowl with the salmon.

On top of that put in about 1 Tablespoon of mayonnaise and one or two eggs. Some people prefer to avoid yolks, but they give you the same omega oils you’re getting from the fish (well, similar, anyway), so go whole hog. Or use two egg whites and give the yolks to the dog or cat.

On top of that put a large pinch of crab boil mix. It gives a good “seafood” flavor. If you don’t want to use that, then use dill. Fresh is best, though dried is tolerable.

Mix the whole thing with your hands until it is an even mooshy mess. If it seems too liquidy add a bit of cracker crumbs or flour or even oat bran. Anything which absorbs the liquid.

If too dry, use a bit of the salmon broth.

Use a cutting board of a piece of waxed paper on which to arrange the shaped salmon cakes. I sprinkle them with high protein flour on the top side and then let them sit in the fridge for a while. They seem to hold together better that way. But you don’t have to: you can simply heat some olive oil - enough to cover the bottom of the pan - and place some of the cakes, flour-side down (they won’t all fit in) - carefully into the pan once the oil is heated. Use medium heat, not high.

Turn oven on lowest setting and get out an ovenproof platter. Mine is 170 degrees so it won’t burn the paper towels on the platter.

Cover frying partially and cook until the bottoms are crisp. Takes only a few minutes, and you can flatten the cakes a bit when you check them.

Before turning over, sprinkle a bit of flour/salt or bread crumbs on the uncooked side. Press it in a bit before turning. Again, cook them for a few minutes partially covered…if you put the cover all the way on, I think it makes them steam a bit.

When bottoms are browned on both sides, put on platter and place in oven to keep warm while you finish the others. Depending on the size of the pan and the size of the salmon cakes, this will be one or two more batches.

These things absorb oil, so don’t put too much into the pan. Just enough to make them crisp. Add extra oil for each batch and let it heat before putting in the salmon cakes. If you don’t heat it sufficiently, they really will absorb the oil.

Again, remove and place on platter in oven.

Low carbing, serve with coleslaw and another vegetable, perhaps asparagus or green beans. If you need to gain weight, have some corn on the cob instead.

My family likes seafood sauce, so I use low carb ketchup, a squirt of lemon, a pinch of celery seed and a bracing amount of horseradish. The commercial kinds are way too sweet for our tastes.