Food bloggers often sing the praises of the independent grocery, the farmer’s stall, the microbrand that outshines the big boys in taste, texture, and all things crucial to the palate of the discriminating gourmand.

Today, I’m going to ignore that trend completely and blog about the wonders of Wonder Bread.

Kidding.

In truth, I’m going to ignore food completely — which is easy to do at the moment, considering we’ve now got one (count it, one!) burner working on the stovetop — and blog about the wonders of small press publishing.

Or, to be more specific, I’m going to sing the praises of one particular small press publisher that’s near and dear to my heart.

And now… the sales pitch!

Why the pitch? Why now?

Because — like many of the finest microbrands in the world — Wheatland Press is deserving of wider recognition.

And, because Wheatland’s got a holiday special:

Now, I haven’t read every single story in every single volume just yet so I won’t give out any definitive recommendations, but I can tell you this: if you snag Polyphony 5, you’ll snag a story by a certain author who has been known to haunt these parts and write silly fictions about poached eggs and poultry puns.

Just sayin.’

Poach Me Deadly, a noir drama of passion and poultry, was inspired by far too many movies to count, and by Chopper’s delicious Eggs en Plastic recipe, which you’ll find at the end of this tale. Chopper’s recipe was inspired by a passage in Anthony Bourdain’s A Cook’s Tour, wherein Bourdain describes a chef using truffle oil and plastic wrap to poach an egg. For more hard boiled adventures (and more egg puns than you can shake a whisk at), visit this month’s End of Month Eggs on Toast Extravaganza over at Dispensing Happiness. Also, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that some of the most egregious jokes in Poach Me Deadly are entirely Chopper’s fault.

(more…)

Damn time machine was on the fritz this week. I gave it a few kicks in the side, it sputtered, then belched spicy, persimmon-colored steam, then at long last, it spit out the piece below, which is apparently an encyclopedia entry of some sort. Is this is from our future or from the future of an alternate present (and if so, how the heck did the machine make it back here)? Eh, no matter. After all, it’s rather hard for Gastroblogian historians to resist a good yarn.

(The following transcript is from the speeches of Jaques Rochefort Gouda, circa 4246 AD, Gastroblogia Central Archive. As much as we historians would like to believe we know the facts revolving around the birth of Cheese Sandwich Day, and the accuracy of Gouda’s elaborations, alas, we have only spotty records; myths and bedtime stories passed down from generation to generation, and we can only say that we hope every inch of it is true. Especially the parts we’re least likely to believe. )

Citizens of Gastroblogia, today on the 2240th Anniversary of Cheese Sandwich Day, it is vital that we reflect upon the humble origin of this great symbol of our freedom, and so, I offer up a brief history as precursor to our riotous and cheese-filled celebration that will begin in just a few short moments.

(crowd goes wild)

Let us travel back through the mists of time to the origin of our beloved nation and to the mighty cheese sandwich that will forever be so dear to our hearts.

(more thunderous applause)

Few of you realize that the birth of our great nation was not an easy one. Oh, no. We had a rival. An older nation, confident in its supremacy but so attached to the old ways it had grown stagnant. Yes, East Epicurikstan –

(boos and hisses throughout the crowd)

East Epicurikstan, where the average citizen, despite his professed love of cookery, did not concern himself with what he ate, or what his neighbor ate, or his second cousin for that matter –

(cries of shock from the crowd)

Yes, East Epicurikstan, a harsh regime that claimed status as a meritocracy, but was, in truth, beholden to such outdated notions as “advertisers” and “editorial boards.”

(more hisses)

Always, in East Epicurikstan, the interests of the few trumped the interests of the many, and always, they looked upon the newfangled activities of neighboring Gastroblogia with disdain, for here in Gastroblogia, it seemed, we lacked censorship. We lacked corporate overlords. And shockingly (to the East Epicurikstanians), we allowed — even encouraged — our citizenry to do anything they wanted.

(a mighty cheer from the crowd)

At the height of the Great Controversy, citizens of Gastroblogia declared their solidarity by carving their cheese sandwiches into outlandish and suggestive shapes. This particular artifact was found on the steps of the East Epicurikstanian Embassy by a writer of “glossies” whose name has long since faded into the dark recesses of forgotten history.

Now, one would think that would lead to chaos. Well did it?

(crowd responds with a resounding “NO!”)

No! Not chaos, but community!

Yes, poor East Epicurikstan, stalled in the dark ages because they clung, white-knuckled, to the archaic notion of top-down information dispersal, and yet, they still tried to impose their rigid beliefs on their neighbors, including the notion that one should not discuss what one ate for dinner, especially if one ate a cheese sandwich!

(crowd boos and hisses)

But, good citizens of Gastroblogia, we knew better. Even then, in the early days of our great nation, we knew better. We knew we did not need such impositions. We cast aside their glossies and the trappings of their so-called meritocracy and we rose up, declaring our autonomy. Who was East Epicurikstan to impose their trends upon us? We could start our own trends, peer to peer!

(crowd cheers)

And that’s exactly what our great ancestors did! But it didn’t end there. Oh no, dear people, this was only the beginning!

Shocked at Gastroblogia’s impudence, the East Epicurikstanians rattled their sabers and cried absurdities. “There are too many bad food blogs,” they said, “Some of you should just go away!”

It is believed that in Days of Legend, centuries before the Birth of Blog, Mighty Cheese Warriors carried their sandwich gifts to neighboring tribes via canoe, thus ushering in a resplendent era of universal cooperation, feasting, and cheese production

Our great Gastroblogian ancestors responded, puzzled. “What does this mean?” they asked. “You might as well say there are too many stars in the sky simply because some shine brighter than others.”

One Gastroblogian cried, “Define many!” Another cried, “Define bad!”

The East Epicurikstanians couldn’t respond. They groped at “many.” “Well… lots” one said. “So many, I can’t find the good ones,” another proclaimed.

“How long did you search?” the first Gastroblogian asked.

“About ten minutes,” the East Epicurikstanian replied and twiddled his thumbs.

“Ahah!” the second Gastroblogian exclaimed.

“But,” said the East Epicurikstanian, “you don’t follow the rules. That’s why you’re bad.”

The Gastroblogians could only look at each other and shrug. “Rules?” they cried. “We have rules? Did someone give us a rule book?”

(laughter from the crowd)

And still, despite this all, the East Epicurikstanians rattled their sabers.

Firemen who rescued errant cheese sandwiches from tree tops were held in the highest regard in Gastroblogia and days were named in their honor. It is not now known how so many cheese sandwiches found themselves in need of tree-top rescue, but if Gastroblogian myths hold any grains of truth, we suspect that herds of “sentient sammies” (brought about by human-cheese hybrid experimentation) had something to do with it.

Now, one industrious Gastroblogian, not content to leave the discussion where it stood, set out to find these supposed rules, hoping that a definitive answer would at least curb the aggressions of their irritable neighbor. She searched high and low and found many different sets of rules, yet none of them matched one another and many were composed by the same corporate paymasters the citizens of Gastroblogia so disdained.

She found manifestos, each different, each pertaining to an individual citizen’s needs and desires. At long last she happened upon a collection of statements that best summed up the philosophy of Gastroblogia. She gathered them up from their various sources, carried them home and then spoke to the citizens of both Gastroblogia and East Epicurikstan.

“A blog is a conversation,” she said. “You may have it with yourself, or with your friends, or with your family. You may have it with your community, or with all the world at once; no matter. You choose, just as others may choose to partake in that conversation or leave as they see fit.

“You may find a conversation with yourself suddenly extends to the world, or you may find that in a conversation with the world, you are the only participant. Some conversations are more interesting than others. Some punchbowls at parties contain better punch. You are not obligated to serve the best punch, nor are you obligated to drink the worst punch.

“Nor are you ever, even when you share your blog with the world, obligated to engage in conversation with anyone but yourself. The point is only to do what you want to do because you want to do it. Beyond this, there are no rules.”

Cheese sandwiches often bore likenesses of great figures of Gastroblogian culture. It is well known that the Julia Child sandwich, considered priceless, is, to this day, kept in a temperature controlled vault in the Great Hall of Cookery. Sandwiches bearing the likenesses of East Epicurikstanians were often met with a less noble fate. Others were simply consumed. One legend tells of a Gastroblogian who constructed the world’s largest cheese sandwich, only to discover it bore the image of Jeffrey Steingarten. Unable to resist its siren song, the Gastroblogian devoured the entire thing in a single sitting and was promptly sent to the hospital.

Satisfied, the Gastroblogian sat back from her podium and took a bite of her sandwich.

“But,” the East Epicurikstanians cried, “What about professionalism? Who wants to read about what you ate for dinner?”

The Gastroblogians could only roll their eyes. They looked at one another and shook their heads, fearing the worst: The East Epicurikstanians just didn’t get it. The only thing to do now was to ignore their rending of hair and gnashing of teeth.

“We need a symbol,” they cried, “An emblem to represent our autonomy and our celebration of all that is good and delicious and lacking in rules.”

Briefly, they considered such things as the three bean casserole or tuna surprise.

But then the woman who’d sought out the rules rose from her seat, stood in front of her people and, with her half-eaten meal in one hand spoke the phrase that we all know so well today: “Ich bin ein Käsesandwich!”

(wild cheers from the crowd)

And so, great citizens of the Most Delectable Autonomous Collective of Gastroblogia, let us not forget our humble beginnings. Let us not forget the mighty cheese warriors who carved a path from our dining rooms to the stars and beyond!

(crowd applauds)

Let us not forget our eccentric and irreverent ancestors of Gastroblogia!

(crowd cheers)

And most of all…. Let us…. EAT!

(crowd digs in)

It’s December now, and with the holiday season upon us, it feels like the country’s gotten complacent about disaster again. In the food blogging world we’ve kept it in the forefront with our fundraising campaign for the earthquake in Kashmir, but in the outer world — in this country anyway — the daily hue and cry about the season’s religious trappings or lack thereof has drowned out follow-up reports on the victims of Katrina, and any discussion of the potential threat of bird flu (or of any other disaster for that matter).

So, feeling delinquent (since I’d promised to finish this piece long ago), I pulled out my flu journal notes and stitched together a hypothetical day two. The more I work on this, the more I discover what I don’t know, and so I should say up front: this is not do-as-I-do writing. This is me, exploring a topic, guessing, stumbling, and occasionally hitting upon something that will be quite useful should we ever face a situation like this for real. When I’m done with the full series (or perhaps sooner, if I get to it), I’ll post a Big List of Links that’ll include all the websites and books that have helped me along the way.

Part Two: Water, Water Everywhere

February 6th, 2006

My, but the poochie looks tasty today.

Kidding.

So, we make it through the initial scramble of day one without too many casualties. A few hideous leftovers in the fridge we weren’t going to eat anyway got chucked, as did this week’s bag of spinach. (Department of so-what-else-is-new: we never seem to eat spinach before it goes bad.) I’m still figuring out what to do with the few bags of rapidly unfreezing blueberries in the ice chest, and contemplating homemade fruit leather.

The Northern Straits people were big on fruit leather and dried fruit cakes — they’d spread their berry pulp out on maple or skunk cabbage leaves set within a wooden frame to keep the juice from spilling, and then they’d lay the structure out to dry in the sun, usually near a fire to keep the yellow jackets away. Of course this was during harvest season, when the sun would dry the berries quickly, but now, in the dead of winter, we have to rely on the smoker instead.

For a moment, I think: crap! It’s the wrong season for leaves! And then I remember a most useful item from the dim sum section of our pantry: Dried lotus leaves. Damn, these things are going to be useful! Soak ‘em, cook with ‘em, rinse ‘em off, and reuse ‘em. If we didn’t have a single pan, we could still steam rice over a bed of coals with just a lotus leaf.

Meanwhile, Chopper’s moved on to the fridge contents and his latest food preservation discovery: pickled eggs. He made a couple jars of these babies back in November and they turned out quite good. Chopper tells me the eggs need to sit in a cold, dark environment for three weeks before they’re ready. After that, they can keep for quite a while — so long as the storage stays consistent. No sunlight, and 40F or less. We’ve been checking out the crawl space under the house, and it’s looking like it may make quite a good little root cellar for this time of year. I’ll be hanging a thermometer down there just to be safe (no, I don’t want botulism, thanks much), and the only light these eggs’ll be seeing is from a flashlight.

Still, even with the successes we’ve had — the smoked meats, the pickled eggs, the dried berries — we’re not out of the woods yet. This is still the beginning and there’s a chance that some day soon (if our self-imposed quarantine must continue), we’ll have to make the transition from food salvage to food sustainability. And that, even with our woods and our tiny garden, won’t be easy.

Meanwhile, we’ve more pressing issues to address, like water.

Since the power went out, we’ve been able to access and retrieve enough water to last us a little over a week. We’re figuring on a gallon a day per person, which is what the disaster manuals all say — though in a colder, damper climate like ours, half a gallon is probably sufficient. Even so, it’s best to guess high, just in case. Fortunately, we’ve got a few other liquids kicking around — some bottled juice, some beer, a little wine (alcohol to prompt further dehydration, woohoo!), and a nice supply of cartons of soy and rice milk. At long last, I have a reason to revel in my lactose intolerance: Unopened, soy and rice milk cartons can last for months!

Another useful item in this department: Powdered Gatorade. I’d never been much of a Gatorade fan, even in my college jockette days, but I learned to love it last spring when caring for Dad. His cancer made it excruciatingly hard for him to eat, so we constantly fought dehydration and electrolyte imbalances. I bought jugs of Gatorade and poured him cups on a regular basis and, on days when I needed the boost as well just to keep going in the face of such difficult duty, I added it to my regimen.

And so, in one of my rare moments of planning ahead at the grocery store, I snagged not only a few more jugs of my favorite strawberry lemonade flavored Gatorade (which will forever remind me of Dad), but a can of the powered stuff as well, thinking, if the water ever gets crappy, we’ve got something to help us manage.

And so, back to the water.

Wait. A brief sidetrack first, because well (in case you’ve been wondering), yes, what goes in must come out, and we can’t keep flushing the toilets forever when the electric pump’s out.

Thus, the second project for the second day: Digging an outhouse. Oh joy.

The good news: The ground’s not completely frozen.
The bad news: We still need to dig a pretty decent sized hole, and the soil is rocky.

Okay, so there are alternatives to this, but the ones I know are pretty short-lived. Like a five gallon plastic paint bucket with a toilet seat on top and flushable kitty litter inside (flushable so that you can flush it all down the toilet when the power comes back on). Fine and dandy for three days without power in an apartment, but for us? Nope. We need an outhouse.

I’d like to take this moment to mention that digging a hole in the ground leads to much extra consumption of Gatorade and the need for a hot shower. Uh… damn. (Note to self: next pandemic? Get one of those camping sun-shower thingies and pray for sun.)

Back to the water. They (the ubiquitous, amorphous they) say that we can survive a while without food, but after a few short days without water, we’re toast. So, solving the water problem is crucial.

Now, we’ve got propane for the camp stove, so we can always boil any water we collect, but how long will that effort last? Hell, I don’t even know how long a single propane cylinder lasts before crapping out, and we’ve only got four. (I suppose after that we could boil water over an open fire, but my previous open-fire camping experience tells me that there ain’t no way we can get a fire hot enough to keep a pan of water boiling for the required 10-12 minutes needed to really rid it of nasty microorganisms.

So, on to strategy number two — or rather, Mrs D. gets paranoid about water and comes up with a redundant system to make it as potable as possible.

First, it’s all about getting the sediment out. What’s the point of boiling if the water’s still cloudy, and if we’re collecting either pond or rain water — I’m avoiding ocean water for the moment because I don’t want to muck with the issues of desalination or boat oil — we’re going to need some amount of filtration.

Now, since we’re not prepared survivalist types, we don’t have a handy dandy pre-fab water filter. But what we do have is some activated charcoal (courtesy of the aquarium department of the local pet store) and a box of coffee filters. I’m improvising here, but hey — if it works for fish, then why not for us?

About that charcoal: I read somewhere once that it’s possible to make one’s own activated charcoal because the activation is just oxygen making it super-porous, but then I read somewhere else, that it’s a special process one can’t do at home, and then I read in a third place that you can concoct something close enough with burning coconut shells or peach pits, and well, the short of it is, I gave up trying to figure out what can or can’t be done and just bought some charcoal for the fish tank.

The important point about charcoal? Don’t use the barbecue kind. That would be, well, icky — especially if you buy matchlight charcoal and end up with water that tastes like lighter fluid.

Anyway, I staple two coffee filters together with charcoal between and then jam the whole thing into a funnel and stick the funnel into an empty, sanitized juice bottle.

Step two in Mrs. D’s Redundant Water Purification System involves setting the filled juice bottles up on the roof in the sun. Assuming we have any sun. Hah. In February. In western Washington.

Hey. It’s a thought, anyway.

Thing is, the heat of the sun and the UV rays of the sun are supposed to do a nice job of getting rid of even more little nasties in the water. Just as good as boiling, some people say, though the jury’s still out over whether it’s the heat or the UV rays doing the work. Trick is to use a nice clear bottle that doesn’t block rays (the ones labeled PETE by the recycling logo work best), and to get the thing up to 150F degrees in the sun. One way to check that is with a thermometer, but I ran across this cool alternate method (that of course we can’t do because we don’t have all the supplies for it) that involves a tube inside the bottle that contains a string, a ball of wax, and a weight to hold the tube upright. The wax must have melting point of 150F. When the wax has melted, then we know the water’s gotten hot enough.

Simple, eh? Yeah, for chemists living in the desert. Here with us? Not so much.

But still, it’s something to keep in mind if we need it in the summer, and meanwhile we can toss the bottles on the roof and hope they get hot enough and we can use some of the propane from the camp stove to boil the water just to be sure. (Hey, I said I’d be redundant…)

As Day Two draws to a close, we have a few accomplishments – the outhouse mostly done, the yummy pickled eggs, dried blueberries, water in process of purification — but it’s hard not to play a game of woulda shoulda coulda with so many things. Shoulda planted more of a winter garden. Shoulda stocked up on more water.

(And oh lordy shoulda gotten me one of those sun shower things to fill with warmed camp stove water, cuz I steeenk!)

I head to the upper deck to check the bottles. They’re warm against our metal roof, but there’s no way of knowing if they’ve gotten quite warm enough. I take them down, and as I do so, I notice smoke from a house nearby. Someone’s got a barbecue going, and I wonder about their food supply. I’d promised myself a walk today to check on the neighbors, but we never quite found the time. There’s just so much to do.

But, we can’t retreat, can we; be the ones who shut the blinds and hope the world just goes away? Where’s the sustainability in that?

–end of Part Two–

…or, busy, busy, are we done yet?

Saturday:

1. Note to self: When traveling to Seattle with a dog, one should bring an extra coat, and not leave it in the back seat of the car where the dog can puke on it. Such things can lead to Seattle in November in a T-shirt, which is not terribly pleasant and not at all conducive to much hoofing about.

2. Loft apartments above Uwajimaya? I tell ya, we would never leave home.

3. Big John’s PFI: A cheese counter with many goat and sheep cheeses. And there was much rejoicing.

4. Pike Place Market? How many blocks of walking? In a T-shirt? Curse you, pukey puppy!

5. Damn. Ran out of time for the rest of the list. Next trip…

Sunday:

1. Note to self: When one goes out of town, one ought to get more sleep.

2. An equation:
      Ferry engine trouble
    + Fog bank
    = Chopper arriving at home five minutes before he has to leave for work.

3. Note to self: When one has not gotten enough sleep on trip out of town, one should really not be talked into attending a 9:30pm showing of Goblet of Fire (Even if one is hopelessly devoted to the big screen appearances of Alan Rickman).

Monday:

1. Strange but true: purple mashed potatoes turn blue in the fridge overnight and then turn purple again when reheated in the microwave. See:

2. That, believe it or not, was the most photogenic food we ate all week.

3. Note to self: Ahem. When one has fallen behind in one’s word count for one’s novel because one has taken on another creative project with a deadline… and then one wants to catch up with one’s novel, one is not particularly inclined to write food blog posts. (Not that this would have anything to do with me. No sir.)

Tuesday:

1. Chopper’s cornbread chestnut stuffing is most excellent but not terribly photogenic.

2. Chopper’s persimmon chutney is even more excellent and even less photogenic.

3. Someday soon when Chopper has time again, he will post recipes for the above mentioned highly unphotogenic foods. Mrs. D will resist posting hideous pictures.

Wednesday:

1. Chopper spends a full day at work baking pies and pumpkin cheesecake. Mrs. D weeps uncontrollably at the pumpkin cheesecake she cannot eat and attempts to catch up on her word count. The blog glares at her from a distance.

Thursday:

1. Chopper works a 13 hour day serving a special prix-fixe Thanksgiving Dinner to over eighty hungry patrons.

2. Mrs. D has dinner with friends and is thankful. Look ma! No dishes!

Friday:

1. Chopper wows patrons and staff alike by being king of the kitchen for the night when the executive chef heads home with the flu. Mrs. D visits Chopper’s work and is offered a slice of pumpkin cheesecake while she waits. She weeps uncontrollably.

2. Note to self: When one mucks around with another creative project and falls behind in one’s blogging, one contemplates possible reasons for the falling behind, and considers that perhaps one’s blog needs mucking with as well. (Much creative note-taking ensues.)

Saturday:

1. It is cat blogging weekend. The Cat will not be participating. She is in the doghouse, as it were, for certain behaviors that are best kept restricted to flowerbeds and boxes of kitty litter.

2. It is, however, not Chopper’s weekend. Chopper is working yet another ten hour day at the restaurant. At home, much cooking from cans ensues.

Sunday:

1. It is dog blogging day. It is also a special day in the life of the puppy. Though she may not act it, being prone to much wagging and jumping, she has turned a terrible two. Here, a day late, are then and now pictures of the pooch:

2. Once again, Chopper works a full day at the restaurant. At home, all notions of cooking go out the window when Chopper returns mid-evening with take-out.

Monday:

1. At long last, Chopper has a partial day off. Mrs. D considers posting to the blog, but her novel draft snarls at her and makes threatening gestures. Chopper considers cooking, does so, but curiously refrains from anything that would involve photographs or transcribed recipes.

2. Note to self: When one has just a few words left to complete one’s monthly assignment, one should simply buckle down and do it.

3.

50,848 / 50,000 (101.7%)

(This Nanowrimo word meter brought to you by copious amounts of Ghirardelli’s bittersweet chocolate, cheap port, nag champa incense, and the soundtrack to Gladiator played repeatedly at full volume on Mrs. D’s cheap headphones.)

That twelve pack of tuna-in-water at Costco’s been calling my name for far too long…

We’ll be back on Wednesday with a Paper Chef round-up!

***
Meanwhile:

16,204 / 50,000 (32.4%)

(Today’s word meter advancement brought to you by the cheapest bottle of port I could find at the liquor store. I think the label was red.)

Poetry, even if I can’t find anything that rhymes.

Meanwhile…

6,652 / 50,000 (13.3%)

Today’s word meter advancement brought to you by Ghirardelli’s 60% Cocoa Bittersweet Chocolate Chips. On sale, so I can eat more without feeling guilty.

0 / 50,000 (0.0%)

Worm!
Yeah, what is that odd little grey thing, anyway? It looks like a Good n’ Plenty that fell under a theater seat way back when David Spade had a movie career. And what’s with those numbers? Fifty thousand? That’s a lot of donuts. Are you sure you wanna eat all that?

Nope. Fifty thousand words.

That’s right, be it known that I, Mrs D, of sound mind and body — oh wait, better strike that last part — that I, the certifiably insane Mrs D, will not only be blogging during the month of November, I will also be participating in NANOWRIMO, otherwise known as National Novel Writing Month.

I will write a 50,000 word first draft of a novel between November 1st and November 30th. No, you don’t get to read it. Not yet, anyway.

You do get to nag me. As much as you want.

See, I work well when nagged. Chopper may laugh at this (in fact, he’ll probably run in here shortly, screaming “No, no, for the love of all that’s holy, please dear god, not with the nagging!”), but trust me: public humiliation at lack of writing progress is a Very Good Thing. Especially when the resulting desperately achieved success is accompanied by pom poms and confetti. (And a nice glass of chocolate port, thank you very much.)

So, here’s the deal: I’m starting bright and early November 1st, and to get the full fifty thousand in, I’ve got to write on average 1666 words per day. Cake, right? Big chunk of Triple Chocolate Mouse Cake. (Note to self: remind Chopper to post that recipe sometime.)

Cake to some, maybe, but I, on the other hand, am a notorious slowby.

After all, it took me all last week to do this:

OHMYGODTHEKITCHENCOUNTERISCLEAN!

(And here you thought I was busy stitching the cat’s Chairman Kaga outfit. Oh, we loves the Photoshop, we do… Ahem. No, I did not Photoshop a clean kitchen counter.)

So, what’s all this rambling about?

It’s about turning this:

0 / 50,000 (0.0%)

Into this:

50,000 / 50,000 (100.0%)

And it’s about the madness that goes with. Meaning, things might get a little weird around here in November.

(Hey! I heard that! Weird already. Harrumph.)

(Inspired by Carolyn Smith-Kizer’s “Cooking the Old-Fashioned Way” blogging event at 18th Century Cuisine [for which I am woefully late], I dove into research on the subject and soon found myself imagining a scenario where we’d lost power and were struggling to get by. I’ll write up what I’ve learned, I thought, and then determined, no, I’ll write what I imagine. What follows here is a fictional account of our first day without power. It’s early February of next year, and in this fictional world, we’re in the midst of a pandemic and we shouldn’t expect the cavalry. This is just a small beginning. I hope to follow soon with later days in our scenario, and with more failures, more lessons learned, and a deeper search into life off the grid.)

Prologue

Murmurs and preparations

“Many days you have lingered
outside my cabin door,
Oh, hard times, come again no more.”
–Stephen Foster

The world, or at least most of the world, sat up and took notice last October. Well, not exactly true. A good chunk of the world took notice a heck of a lot earlier; but in October, the U.S. uttered a collective “whaaa?” and then started paying a little more attention. (The politics of this whaa are a subject for a whole separate discussion, and really, the only thing that matters now is that we got hit and we weren’t even remotely ready.)

In October, it was all about small clusters of cases in Southeast Asia, and flocks of dead birds in Greece, and then Turkey, and then Romania. We watched as this thing crept into Europe and then Africa and asked, tentatively, you don’t think it’ll mutate will it? There’s not that big of a chance it’ll mutate, right?

Well, it did. Christmas season. The clusters were now large enough that the formerly unthinkable had become undeniable. H5N1 leapt from person to person with the greatest of ease.

By mid-January, clusters appeared deep into Western Europe, and just two short weeks later, the once green “No cases reported” map of North America had bloomed an angry red. All this, it seemed, almost at the blink of an eye — much too quickly for effective containment measures, and long before anyone could cheer a functioning vaccine or a ready supply of Tamiflu.

Here, in our tiny corner of the continent, three things happened in quick succession: rumors, more rumors, and then panic. First, rumors of cases as close as Burlington. Then, rumors of a state-wide ferry service shut-down. Next day, an island-wide run on groceries, medicines, sporting goods, and liquor. In three days the shelves, at low capacity during the off-season to begin with, were empty. In three more days: quarantine.

A week after that, we lost power.

Part one: Could be worse. Could be raining.

February 5th, 2006

It was bound to happen sooner or later. They don’t call OPALCO “Occasional Power and Light” for nothing. A few years back, a garbage truck slammed into a transformer on the mainland and the entire archipelago was dark for a week.

But, here’s the thing about being without power: We’re fine if we know it’s for a short chunk of time. A couple of days; maybe a week. I remember ice storms in Portland where we’d throw all the frozen food into a cooler, save what we could, toss the rest if it thawed, light a few candles, eat canned food, and then animate the walls with evil shadow puppet mutations and sulk when the lights came back on all too soon.

Today is different, I can feel it. Mid-morning, power’s been out for an hour maybe, and we’re hunkered around the radio searching for information. The news is vague. Something about grid instability and manpower issues, and no, they’ve no idea when we can turn on our coffee makers, our electric juicers, or our bread machines again.

This is it, kids. We’re in it for the long haul and there’s no making a run to the store for pop tarts.

We immediately launch into, if not panic mode, then at least a state of moderate scramble. First things first: the food in the freezer. (Now, I don’t know if this is the right ‘first things first,’ but it’s what we do, and hey – we’re in scramble mode.)

Chopper’s been buying meat on sale and the last thing we want to do is throw it out, so instead, we implement the emergency Casa Belly Timber Meat Triage system (yeah, I just made that up).

It goes like this:
Black Sharpie – smoke it
Blue Sharpie – cure it
Red Sharpie – eat it now

Salmon — cure, beef — smoke. Pork — smoke — wait no, I wanna make smoked sausage — label that for the meat grinder. Moon fish — we’ve got more moon fish? Um, moon fish jerky? Hey, it could work. Box of Eggos, bags of home made pasta… looks like it’s carb central for the next two days. Mystery meat… I give up. Holy crap, we still have some of that stew? Yeah, baby. That’s dinner.

We get it all sorted into two camping coolers; bags of ice from the chest freezer in each. Of course halfway through the process I realize that all this moving around of food is just going to make things thaw faster, and if we’d really been smart we would have slapped triage flags on all the meat before this shit went down. (Note to self: Next pandemic? Strategize the meat ahead of time.)

Meanwhile, on the side deck, Chopper’s got the smoker going. For this, we’re lucky. We’ve got briquettes, and we’ve even got a bucket of untreated hardwood sawdust from the lumberyard to use in lieu of wood chips. And it’s not raining.

The smoker was a serious score back in October. We’re out on Roche Harbor Road, just south of the Alpaca ranch, and stop by this thrift store. More of a junkyard than a thrift store really; gravel and scrub between herds of half broken-down ranges and refrigerators. Chopper’s plan is to scavenge parts for a smoker and go the Alton Brown/McGyver route with trash can, 3 inch bolts inside to hold a grill in place, door cut in the side with a hacksaw, pie tin for water… Then we find this thing. A whole smoker. Or, almost a whole smoker. It’s missing the bottom charcoal pan, the top pan’s got a hole in it, and one of the legs is wobbly, but for seven bucks, we aren’t complaining. Especially not when we discover that the smoker fits perfectly over our Coleman charcoal grill. It’s as if the two are made for each other.

I have to think for a minute about what we’d do if we didn’t have the smoker or the grill. Dig a steam pit in the garden, I think. We’ve got rocks everywhere, kelp on the beach just a ten minute walk away, fir branches, ferns. The fire has to burn a good long time to make the coals and rocks hot enough. Kelp keeps off the dirt and adds flavor. Dad used to tell me about this — how the Northern Straits people would dig camas bulbs and bury them in steam pits for hours, sometimes even days. I imagine we could do the same with the meat and fish, or maybe thread strips of meat onto spits of ironwood and lean the wood like a prairie fence over a low, steady fire.

Back to our modern jerry-rigged smoker, coals heating up while Chopper and I are digging through supplies for the brine. Salt (and tons of it), check. Black pepper, check. Brown sugar, check. Water —

Um…

Crap, electric pump! Pipes are still full, and there’s the water tank. Yeah, but what if there’s not enough pressure? We can drain the tank, right? With what — the garden hose? Well, does the water tank need a working pump to deliver water through the pipes? No, duh, the pump’s for the well. Jeez, do I look like a plumber? So, we have to save the pipe water, which we’ve already wasted, not to mention, somebody flushed the toilet. I didn’t flush the toilet. Did you flush the toilet? No, did you? Arrgh!

Oh, the joys of imminent lack of water.

Brief pause to assess the water situation (noting that we’ve got meat everywhere, only so much ice, and outdoor temperatures that have an uncanny knack for getting unseasonably warm on short notice).

We have:
Ten gallons in the shed.
Four bags of ice from the freezer, currently keeping food cold.
Hot water tank (44 gal) that may or may not drain out easily.
Water from the downstairs toilet tank. (Yeah, ick, but hey, water’s water.)

Also, a short walk from the house: a rather skanky pond. Also, a slightly longer walk from the house: a rather salty ocean.

Ahah. I announce my plan: Water Triage. (No sharpies this time, and I’ve a feeling “triage” is going to become both my most and my least favorite word over the next while.)

Here’s the order:
1. Drinking
2. Cooking
3. Washing
4. Waste

Not much we can do about #4, I imagine, but the goal is to find ways to move #3 to #2, and #2 to #1, ideally, without making ourselves sick. I’ve got notions involving charcoal, coffee filters and juice bottles, but first, back to the meat.

Chopper needs water for the brine. We go back and forth on this. Technically, it’s cooking water, and we don’t really want to use drinking water, but without a hierarchy of potability in place, all we’ve really got is stuff to drink and stuff to avoid. We are not brining meat in the skanky pond.

“Well, since it’s brine,” I offer, “how about the ocean?”

It’s not a completely silly idea. We can add more salt, boil it first to kill any nasty pathogens, and presto — brining water without losing drinking water.

I contemplate a walk to the beach. It’s afternoon now, getting toward dusk. The day’s been cloudy and dead still. The prayer flags hang limp and I realize for the first time I’ve heard nothing from the neighbors.

If this were summer, we’d walk to the beach past a heavily-laden crabapple tree, inviting a rich harvest and weeks of Dutch oven cobblers and fresh-pressed juice. If it were spring, we’d follow the beach trail past new stands of stinging nettles, best (and carefully) picked when they’re young and tender, then steamed or sautéed. In mid-summer through early fall, first we’d find salmonberries, then thimbleberries, then, finally, those fat, juicy blackberries — so tasty that we just might forgive their vines’ invasiveness.

Now though, it’s winter, and we won’t find much. Just quiet houses full of scared people who may or may not peek out their windows at us as we walk by. We’ll go tomorrow, I think, when I’m feeling brave. I don’t want to be paranoid. Sooner or later, I know we’ll all need to reach out, share resources, barter, care for the sick.

But today — today we just muddle through and hope that we’ve done enough planning to get by. Of course we could wake up to a warm and brightly-lit house in the morning and learn this was all just a glitch. That’s the tricky part: no one knows. We could live a lifetime with our dependence on the grid — on electricity, on municipal water, on food distribution — never tested. Or, it could all go belly-up tomorrow. Or today. Time to light the lamps, dive into the old books and learn all that we should know already.

–end of part one–

Read Part Two here.

Great Moments in Divination, chapter XVII

It is a little known fact, not written in the annals of magic, that Sybil Trelawney, professor of divination, has made not two but three accurate prophecies during her sixteen years at Hogwarts. As the third prophecy was about the ingredients of Hagrid’s breakfast one Sunday morning in late September and not about He Who Must Not Be Named, most dismiss it as mere coincidence and continue to suggest that Professor Trelawney, great-great granddaughter of the illustrious Cassandra Trelawney, is a fraud.

We here at Grumblebein’s Society for the Restoration of Magical Standing believe that this is poppycock. Sybil Trelawney’s predictive powers are quite strong, and this fact is no better demonstrated than by the brief breakfast anecdote that follows.

Trelawney, as we all know, is quite an admirer of tea. Not only do the leaves serve her divination needs, but she drinks it daily by the gallon. On the particular September morning in question, however, calamity struck: she ran clean out. So, being a woman of sound mind and infinite resource, she bundled herself in scarves and sashes (it was quite breezy that day), and trundled down to Hagrid’s hut to seek out a fresh supply.

Hagrid, it turned out, hadn’t a speck of tea about him. He was, in fact, making Turkish coffee and toasting slices of bread. He invited Trelawney to join him, and so she did, nearly knocking over a jar of paprika as she took her place at the table, unaware that this acceptance would lead to yet another Great Moment in Divination.

Now, it is a little known fact (though perhaps slightly more known than Sybil Trelawney’s Third Prophecy) that the grounds of a thick cup of Turkish coffee are unsurpassed as tools of divination. And so, it came as no shock to the expert clairvoyant, when, upon setting down her empty cup next to an earthenware pot of yogurt and a basket of eggs, she had a most singular vision.

The coffee grounds, it seemed, had formed themselves into a crystal clear picture of the future, thus prompting Sybil Trelawney to proclaim:

“When the clock chimes thrice three and sleep is vanquished, four nestlings unhatched shall join with four slices of bread unburnt and two cups yogurt unspoilt, and the eating of dishes from far off lands shall be attended by the consumption of auspicious red powders and curious culinary herbs in small amounts and all will rejoice in its grand flavor. Be warned!”

Hagrid, oblivious to the significance of Trelawney’s pronouncement simply said, “Well of course I’ve got four eggs and four pieces of toast and yogurt and paprika. Harry, Ron, and Hermione are dropping by for a fine Turkish breakfast of Cilbir!”

It is regrettable that Hagrid was unable to recognize Trelawney’s Third Prophecy for what it was, for then we at Grumblebein’s Society for the Restoration of Magical Standing would have his account for the archives as well as hers, and the archives (as well as Trelawney’s reputation) would be richer for it.
One curious footnote: When Sybil Trelawney related this anecdote to us for our records she added a phrase we have yet to decipher. We include it here in the hope that some other scholar of magic might recognize its import. In fact, it may be that this Third Prophecy has much more about it than a simple prediction of breakfast. It may be that this Third Prophecy tells of the ultimate demise of the Dark Lord himself.

The phrase, which Trelawney uttered in a deep and portentous voice, was thus:

“Be warned, I say unto you. For when the days near thirty-one, it’s all to do with EoMEoTE!“

–Herophile Trelawney, Chief Council for Culinary Conduits of Clairvoyance, Grumblebein’s Society for the Restoration of Magical Standing

Cilbir — a delightful Turkish dish of poached eggs, garlic yogurt sauce and paprika butter. Serve with bread or toast.

Turkish coffee optional.