Fresh, homemade strawberry jam made with the best, freshest strawberries of the spring qualifies as, if not love in a jar, at least joy in a jar.

I’d write more, but this is really just an initial test to see if I can make a flickr image link work.

Walter is a truck.  A 3/4-ton Chevy long-bed pickup.  Original straight-six 216 engine.  Four on the floor with a granny gear.  Crash-box transmission from the days before syncromesh.

Top speed 50mph.

Interesting things happen when your truck is over 60 years old and your top speed is 50mph. When you have to think about every shift.  When you feel and hear the engine and the road.  You see more.  You hear more.  You listen to the engine and transmission to know when to shift.  You smell oil drips burning off the old block and you can gauge the truck’s temperature and its health.  You crank down the window (or even crank out the front windshield—the original air conditioning) and feel and smell the breeze. 

People smile at you and your slow old truck. 

You can feel the appreciation of the old timers as memories flood back.

You can see younger people’s eyes light up as they discover the visceral appeal of art deco curves and shiney chrome. 

All of a sudden there’s no destination—only a journey.

There are three rules in this household plus a few simple words of advice:
1) Don’t ride with anyone who’s drunk (or drive drunk).  Ever.  Call home and you get a free pass on the punishment you think you deserve for getting in the situation in the first place.
2) No heroin.  Ever.  (Expanded for 2008 to include no meth.  Ever.)
3) Do anything else and I’ll pretty much let it slide so long as you never get less than a B+ mid-term and an A- in any class.  Your grades go down and your ass is grass so do drugs, sneak out and party accordingly.

The advice is: drugs and/or alcohol lead to real stupid decisions about sex - don’t mix ‘em until you’re old enough to fully appreciate the importance of this advice.

That men are still closer to the monkey than women, I haven’t a doubt.  Men’s sexual impulse is triggered by the eyes, an inheritance from those simian ancestors whom the female summons when she is in heat by means of a noticeable change in her intimate parts, which turn red and take on the morbid appearanc of a ripe pomegranate.  For some reason, this works like waving a red flag at the males, should they not be paying attention.

Among humans, visual stimulus is equally irresistible, which explains the success of magazines filled with half-naked women.  Attempts have been made to exploit the same publishing market among female readers, but images of well-endowed youths unfurling their charms on full-color pages have been a fiasco; they are more often bought by homosexuals than by women.  We women have a better developed sense of the ridiculous, and besides, our sensuality is tied to our imagination and our auditory nerves.  It may be that the only way we will listen is if someone whispers in our ear.  The G spot is in the ears, and anyone who goofs around looking for it any farther down is wasting his time and ours.  Professional lovers, and I am referring not just to lotharios like Cassanova, Valentino, and Julio Iglesias, but to the quantities of men who collect amorous conuests to prove their virility with quantity—since quality is a question of luck—know that with women the best aphrodisiac is words.

Sounds like a good reason to try to hone my skills en-blog this year. 

No running water.  No electricity.  No refrigeration.  Outhouse.  Had to hike in at least half a mile through the snow in winter.  (Despite popular belief, it was uphill only one way.)

It seems about 1000 years and a million miles from my life today.

Looking at my kids, I can’t say they’re any happier than I was.  And looking at myself, I don’t think I can claim to be any happier than my parents were then.  Life’s different.  Far more complicated.  It’s full of lots more material crap.  But strangely, it’s not “better.”

[/rambling]

Tree
It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.

Even in this
one lifetime
you will have to choose.

That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books -

Already the branch-tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.
- Jane Hirshfield

-------------

There is a large 80- or 90-foot tall redwood which shades half of the back yard at my new home.  Sometimes we wish it wasn’t there so we could have more light.  Sometimes we give thanks for its cooling shade.  Always we are awed and made small and insignificant by its great calm being.

If you haven’t yet, and if you can afford to help, please go to her site and sponsor her.

You should be able to navigate from her site to the Blogathon sponsorship pages and make your commitment.

Without further ado, and with no hope whatsoever of identifying all the ... er, stuff… in that fridge, here’s Before:

During

and After (If you look carefully, you’ll see there’s plenty of room for more food in ther for a creative packrat like the esteemed Mrs.

The real story, however, involves removing cabinets to make room for the new fridge, widening the kitchen entry, since the old standard-depth fridge no longer intrudes, and moving the 700LB (700LB!!!) fridge around the house, through the patio doors and into position—which involved removing the kitchen light fixtures in order to have a higher-than-8-foot tipping radius to get the new fridge upright.  No wonder I sometimes see these monsters listed on Craigslist as “New / didn’t fit.”

All said and done, this is the best fridge ever, and since Mrs. ‘mouse is pleased and enjoying trying (unsuccessfully) to fill it up, I’m ecstatic about the change. 

P.S.: the bruises on my legs have faded to a dull yellow and my back may actually recover one of these months.

P.P.S.  Look at all that icemaking (read “margaritamaking") power there in the freezer!

Edit:  For the true voyeurs, here’s the link to Flickr where you can see the partial inventory and a picture big enough to read the labels.

The genesis of all this thinking is my new home.  I’m spending endless hours and huge amounts of mental and physical energy fixing up the place --removing overgrown shrubs, planting trees, moving the pool equipment to a better location, acquiring new furniture, thinking about remodeling, big or small.  The last few days (and the next several) will be spent using most of my free time to give a thorough cleaning and polishing to a heavy-duty stove I picked up cheap on Craigslist. 

It’s easy to say the stove is about saving money, satisfying my wife’s love for great cooking equipment, looking forward to years of future meals and family time.  At the same time, the stove owns me.  I’m the one up to my elbows in chemicals, sticky with grease, reaching into corners with a toothbrush, slicing knuckles on sharp metal corners.  I’ve got to move a gas line and re-route 220V electical for this stove. 

Stoveless, I’d have time to swim.

Poolless, I’d have time to garden.

Gardenless, I’d have time to read.

Bookless, I would be free.

Strange how truer words were never sung:  Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose. 

1.  How did you and the lovely Grud meet?

How we originally met is not so interesting a question as that of how we re-met.  We met each other through work, so nothing terribly exciting about that.  However, we met quite a number of years ago and, somehow, fell out of touch.  No bad blood - not a bit, just life, trundling along in its usual way and incidentally splitting the path of two good friends.  I had been temping at Grud’s work and when I left I guess that was, somehow, that.

However, some years later at another temp job I had to call for some help with my work and while chatting to a young man on the phone I mentioned my name which he then mentioned to a woman he said could help me.  To which she replied something along the lines of “Who?  Did you say [boot]?!  Really?!” The kind, if bemused, young man relayed this to me and I said similar things and he eventually got the two of us on the same phonecall. 

The rest is history.  Since re-uniting our friendship, we’ve both found paper trails in our homes, evidence, if you will, of how close we had felt to each other.  I’ll never understand how it is that life can do this to you (or how you can do it to yourself).  I’m just grateful, so very, very grateful, that it didn’t end in the ‘first round’.  We got a second run at being friends, truly good friends.  And what a wonderful friend she is.  What a beautiful person.

Or, to quote grudknows:

“And I love you too.” :-)

2.  Is there a food you despised in childhood that you love (or even just plain like) as an adult?

So many that I can’t count them.  I was an obnoxiously fussy child.  Probably the most amusing one is vegetables, given that I’m a vegetable-loving vegetarian nowadays. 

As a young child I found out what meat was made of (see those cows, the beautiful ones with the deep soulful eyes, yes, love, that’s dinner) and refused to eat any meat.  My poor suffering mother did her best, but any meat she couldn’t disguise well enough didn’t get eaten.  Sausage rolls and sausages made it under the radar - after all how much meat is in these things anyway - but not much else. 

Unfortunately for my mum, I also hated vegetables.  I would hide them in the clean washing, squish them underneath the gap on the bottom of the plate, use a spoon to try to force them into the drain in the kitchen or laundry sink; anything other than actually consuming them.  I pretty much survived childhood on fruit, Vegemite sandwiches and mashed potatoes.  Clearly mashed potatoes have no relation to vegetables in the mind of an eight year old.  After all, you can make sandcastles with them.

As an adult, I totally embrace vegetables in every form, excluding parboiled to a uniform shade of light grey, which is how they used to be served when I was young. 

I actually think that hating so much food as a kid turned out for the best as an adult.  It left me so much to fall in love with as I grew up.  As a teenager, I began to meet, socialise with and, sometimes, do volunteer work for people from different cultures.  I was exposed to food I’d never tried before and decided to give it a go.  A Russian woman I worked for paid me back by inviting me to the dinner table each night I was there.  She introduced me to so many new flavours that my tastebuds didn’t recognise some of the vegetables she was cooking up.  Some Italian friends showed me the most amazing concoctions and taught me the simplest, freshest principles about food. Through these and other friends I was introduced to different ways of cooking, but more importantly to the thought of exploration with food. That attitude has stayed with me ever since.

As far as individual foods go, I guess the most surprising one to me is peas.  I utterly loathed these as a kid, unless, of course, they were covered in honey and stuck on the side of a butter-knife.  All grown-up, I presumed I still wouldn’t like them, especially when you consider frozen peas cooked in the “boil until soggy” method.  It wasn’t until I bought fresh peas in the pod that I realised how delightfully delicious they are and how good they smell as you open each pod.  When I shell peas only about half ever make it into the cooking pot.  I still can’t abide frozen peas, but why would I bother when I’ve got these scrummy fresh peas ready to do my tastebuds’ bidding.

Quite some years ago, I also didn’t like olives or fresh cooked tomatoes (on their own, not in anything), but I’ve kept at them and persistently tried them again and again and now love both of them.  I definitely think you should never give up.  Even if your tastebuds revolt, just keep going back.  They’re resilient.  They’ll make it one day.  If there is a vegetable I’ve not tried before that I don’t like on first tasting, I consider it a duty to my tastebuds to learn to like it. 

3.  What would you like to do on your next trip to the U.S.?  (We know, of course, that there *will* be a next trip to the U.S. :)

I certainly hope there will be a next time, but the last trip was a complete surprise, so I truly don’t know.  Lets keep our fingers crossed.  You never know what life might throw at you. 

Obviously, I’d like to meet up with my Scrine-friends.  How we arrange this, since you’re all spread across the damn country, could be an entire adventure in itself.  What I’d love is for them to show me the heart of their home.  The places and people that make where they live a place worth staying.  The things that make it a home.  On our last trip, we covered a few of the more touristy things, but the places that I got to know better were ones where we visited friends (who showed us around) or the one city I had most time in and was able to just take my time and walk around.

I’d like to see more of the quirky and small places.  The second-hand bookshops, the favourite bars and coffee-shops.  The places that people live.  However, this is how I feel about visiting anywhere.  Any country town, any city, any country.

Specific to the US, I’d love to be able to visit Cape Canaveral.  It still astounds me that I was alive in an era that men landed on the moon.  On the moon. I don’t truly have anything specific I’d want to see there, because just being near there would be so amazing.  Obviously, once at Canaveral, I’d like to be able to visit the Kennedy Space Center.  Hell, yes, I would.  However, anywhere near it would probably keep me breathless for weeks. 

I can still clearly remember, as an adult, having my nose pressed against a piece of perspex that surrounded a moon rock.  The moon rock was temporarily visiting Australia and was housed in an exhibition in the Powerhouse museum. I can’t even remember how long ago it was, but I can remember all the detail on the surface of that little rock. It had come from the moon.  The moon!

There are also a few commemorative places for long lost authors I’d like to visit, but if they are as difficult to find as was the birthplace of Edgar Allan Poe, then I may need to drum up the help of the locals.  I did find, when looking for ‘things to do’ in the US, that it was quite hard to find the stuff that I considered of interest.  E.A Poe, you say?  Never heard of the fella.

Oh, and lots of museums.  Of course.

4.  Have you ever read a book that made you laugh out loud in public?

Absolutely!  There are so many, it would be hard to choose one.  However, anything by Terry Pratchett will often get me laughing out loud on the train, as I walk along, in a doctor’s waiting room, or in a coffee shop on my own.  Pooh has certainly caused me to smile whimsically, which garners a different reaction to outright laughter, but one nonetheless enjoyable.

I like books that make you laugh out loud in public, if only that they cause you to end up in conversation with people.  One time, when sitting in a coffee shop reading, I think, Guards! Guards! I had a woman sitting at another table come over and say “Excuse me, but I just have to know what you are reading.” I invited her to sit down, she did and we had a good old chinwag.

I particularly enjoy reading silly books when in miserable places; a hospital bed being the most obvious.  It’s much better if visitors find you cheerful when they turn up, as they’re more inclined to stay longer.  This trick doesn’t always work, but it’s worth trying.  Besides, it’s a nice anathema in those times when you have an excessively complaining patient in the bed next to you. 

The most fun in reverse I’ve had with this is a woman with vision impairment in the next bed who was playing audio books and this saved me from reading my own.  Who knew audio books could be such a useful combination of sharing, thriftiness and entertainment.

I have actually laughed out loud when walking along a footpath reading, but people are generally driving by as this happens, so that’s hardly worth mentioning.  Although, maybe it’s worth noting that a friend of mine thinks it’s weird that I can read while I walk.  I’d never thought anything of it until she pointed it out and now I don’t know if I’m a singular individual in this pursuit, or if she just finds me odd.  Possibly both.  It’s not like I walk across busy intersections with book in hand, just along nice long quiet stretches of road.  While laughing.

5.  You are at a school fundraiser where a bake sale is being held.  You have exactly enough money to buy either a pair of stickjaws or a lamington.
Which one do you buy?

This choice is amazingly easy.  Lamingtons all the way. 

Now, I do love my lammies, but the choice was easy because I’d never heard of the term ‘pair of stickjaws’ before.  I googled for references to it and one or two Australiana forums had mentioned it as sticky, chewy toffees.  Damn.  If I’d known that, I would have chosen the stickjaws.  I so love home made toffees.  One of the aforementioned forums said that they didn’t know how stickjaws were made, but I’m pretty sure there is no secret, you just undercook the toffee, possibly accidentally.  One of the best articles I found was from the UK and is noteworthy as the recipe for Mothers stickjaw toffee calls for “Aunt Auggie’s damson jam”.  Considering that it is the same Bakerina who asked me these questions that introduced me to damson jam, this is a fairly weird find.  The recipe also calls for ‘“Other ingredients various and mysterious”, so I think I’ll have to make some of this soon, just to see what mysterious ingredients I can think of to throw into the bubbling pot.

As a young girl, I think my favourite toffees were actually just the humble brown toffee in a little patty pan.  No things stuck in it or on it, no special colouring, no special shapes, just a big ol’ lump of sweetness.  I can still taste it.

Now, lamingtons, on the other hand, I know inside and out.  I would hesitate to purchase the lamingtons at this imaginary fundraiser if I felt they had merely been plucked out of a processed pre-packed plastic container.  However, if they were the real thing, I’d be in boots and all. 

The real thing, in the opinion of my eight year old’s rosey memory, should have been so vigorously soaked in chocolate sauce that it has penetrated to the very heart of the sponge square.  This same-said sponge cake had better be light, soft and, well, spongey.  There needs to be just enough desiccated coconut to coat the rectangle, leaving an even pattern of yummy, dark brown, with snowy white flecks.  Hopefully, if you’re very lucky, you’ll find a chocolate and coconut ‘clot’.  A delicious lump of excessive chocolate sauce that never escaped the sponge square, but was instead lumped together with a chewy knot of coconut.  These clots can’t be made deliberately; they’re one of nature’s bounty.  If you find a lamington like this, eat it straight away, lest small children follow you home and steal it from you.

Bakerina wrote this great write-up (click link for the full story and comments she generated>:
-----------------------------
Slow Food In A Fast World Redux
found on Atlantic Unbound
written by jenmac, edited by Humberto (Plastic) [ read unedited ]
posted Mon 2 Dec [2002] 10:28am

In Europe almost everyone has memories going back over generations of food with actual flavor, food that’s carefully raised. So Slow Food has appealed not just to rich people who like better things but to pretty much everybody who knows that there was once actually good food…
There’s a real problem with Slow Food in America, and it’s this: we don’t have that memory bred into us, so it’s still a movement of the elite. The goal is to get it to appeal much more to a grass-roots level, and that means making people taste it. Generally, once people taste eggs, cheese, barbecue, beer, bread, that has real flavor, they understand that this is something they’d like to have again, and that might be better than what they’re having every day. But you have to organize events that will reach a wide range of people and give them something for a really reasonable cost. Or else they’re not going to try it, and they’re not going to know it, and it’s going to seem like an elitist movement.

“The Atlantic’s Corby Kummer speaks with Atlantic Unbound’s Katie Bacon upon the publication of his new book, The Pleasures of Slow Food: Celebrating Authentic Traditions, Flavors and Recipes,” writes jenmac. “The book is an expansion of his exuberant 1999 essay “Doing Good by Eating Well”, celebrating the arrival to the U.S. of Slow Food, a movement that not only celebrates artisanally-produced foods, but also fights to keep such foods alive. Slow Food was founded in 1986 by Italian journalist Carlo Petrini, who was aghast at the announcement that McDonald’s was opening a restaurant in the middle of the Piazza di Spagna in Rome.”

“While Slow Food is a champion of traditional production methods and regional foodways, it does not embrace a “rare=expensive=good” ethic; in fact, it recognizes that high labor costs and lack of easy distribution contribute to the disappearance of these foods, and that the best way to keep them alive is both to create a market for them, and to help them thrive under modern constraints that otherwise may have threatened their survival. According to Kummer, ‘[Slow Food] might help cheesemakers in Italy navigate the bureaucracy of the European Union. The European Union has mandated that you can’t use wood tools in food production, but wood has bacteria that cheesemakers need for their cheeses. They can get variances, but obtaining them means filling out a lot of paperwork. So local Slow Food members will find someone with law expertise to help them out.’ However, even as Kummer celebrates the efforts of Slow Food worldwide, he acknowledges that the size and food distribution channels of the U.S. tend to stack the deck against small-scale producers and farmers, and can make artisanally-produced foods difficult to find outside of cities on the East or West Coast. Is Slow Food a pipe dream in an industrialized world? Or is it our best hope for finding high-quality, tradition-based foods without driving 100 miles or spending a day’s paycheck?”

-----------------------------------------
To which a much younger ‘mouse responded:

I Call it Bullshit
by Anonymouse Savant [ message privately ]
at Mon 2 Dec 3:37pm score of 2 compelling

While it’s great that someone came up with the “slow food” moniker to counter the “fast food” culture, I’m afraid it’s 99% bullshit and marketing hype in order to sell books and attract attention to the new “slow food” gurus.

Don’t get me wrong, I am among the most ardent lovers of good food you’ll find on Plastic. If I had to choose between giving up my taste buds or my testicles, I’d be singing soprano.

My gripe is that I suspect that a very limited number of people “come to slow food” who weren’t foodies already or heavily leaning that direction.

Also, I don’t believe it’s a sign of a successful movement that 50 people ordered $75 turkey eggs and got a farmer to raise them. Hell, this morning I saw an advertisement in the newspaper selling “Real Legal Tender” silver dollars (the kind you can get from a bank or the mint for $1) for “Just $5.95 plus postage and handling.” There’s a sucker born every minute.

Not to be too cynical, but when it’s all said and done, food is all about quality versus price and convenience. Where you come out on the spectrum is about your own time and economic situation which changes over time.

I grew up on a farm and I do know the difference between a home-grown pig versus the cut I get at the local fancy food co-op and the one I get at the mega-supermarket. Same goes for milk and eggs and every other ingredient. While it would be real nice if I could be an ingredient snob like the slow foodies, it’s obvious that I and everyone else are NOT willing to pay $5 or $10 gallon for better milk from Jersey cows delivered fresh every morning to our homes. If we were, there would be a vital dairy delivery business which wouldn’t be pumping out shitty, hormone-full Hereford milk.

I think I’m going to start a new movement called “Practical Food” which strikes a reasonable balance and which eschews coffee table books for discussions with friends over a good meal.

The main tenets of my movement will be that good fast food is available if you look for it—I can recommend a vietnamese noodle place in Milpitas, CA that has a steaming bowl of pho on your table which is to die for in less time than you can get through the drive thru at the McDonalds down the street. Yoshinoya, which actually has a drive through, is a new chain selling quite edible Japanese-inspired fast food. There’s a taqueria in Willow Glen, CA (next to the laundromat) that will convince you that you died and went to Mexico—in six minutes or less.

Also, my practical food movement will point out that a reasonably competent chef with a well stocked kitchen can make a good “slow” meal in about the same time as it takes you to drive to and from the fast food place. I can whip up the world’s best biscuits in 5 minutes (including clean-up) and 8 minutes in the oven. They go well with my orgasm-inducing clam chowder that takes an hour to make on Sunday but which provides two days of lunches and one more dinner over the course of the next week—and improves each day it ages and the flavors mix. (That’s only net 15 minutes prep time averaged over the 4 meals).

Finally, if you think food was better in the “good old days,” you’re nuts. My grandmother was fond of pointing out that she never saw much beyond cauliflower and broccoli in the stores in the 40’s and 50’s. Now she practically has to fight her way past the bok choy and seven types of lettuce to get to the brussels sprouts, and the taro root at her local Safeway. Don’t even get her started about the joys of good oyster sauce in a Chinese stir fry or she’ll go on all night.

Anyway, my point is, good food is not “dead.” It’s being prepared in kitchens all over the country/world as we speak. If it’s not being prepared in yours, skip the coffee table book—get out the Joy of Cooking and start at the beginning. Get the basics down. Then become a snob in your spare time. 

-------------------------------

The rest, as they say, is history.

Without further ado, Bunni asks:
1. Why mangoes?
The mango fetish is, of course, described here.  However, the meaning of the mango runs much deeper.  I lost my virginity to that mango.  (No, not that way, silly readers, get your mind out of the gutter.)

The mango represents the exact turning point in my life and the line between childhood and adulthood.  45 days in the summer of 1987 when I discovered, at the age of 20, that despite almost entirely supporting myself and living on my own since I was 16, I had been a timid and fear-filled child and it was holding me back.  That mango was my apple from the tree of knowledge. It poisoned me, or perhaps inoculated me, with the knowledge that outgoingness, adventure and bravery offered greater rewards than security and risk-avoidance offered.  And mangoes remain tasty and sexy as hell.

2. What is the most ridiculous event/comment you’ve observed/overheard in a professional setting?
I’ll get to that story, but first I must answer a different question:  What’s the most interesting tidbit of cellphone conversation you’ve ever overhead? 
Just last weekend, on a crowded street, “I’ll do anything, absolutely anything you ask, on the condition that you get your tubes tied.”

It took every fiber of my willpower to keep from turning around, stomping this jerk’s cellphone on the ground, screaming, “That will NEVER be an appropriate cellphone conversation and by the way, if it’s important, get a fucking vasectomy you giant dick!”

In my professional life:
“Oh shit!” stated rather astutely by the lawyer in line in front of me as the deputy at the courthouse metal detector held up the little brown vial with the spoon hanging off of it that he’d just plucked from her purse.

 
3.Would you ever consider moving to NY?
If by “move” you mean live there long term, then no.  I could happily spend a few years passing through for someone I cared about who needed to be there, but my heart is not a big city heart.
 
4. What is your philosophical stance on your choice of undergarments?
For me, depends on the outergarments—traditional briefs inside jeans to keep the stuff where it’s supposed to be.  The rest of the time boxers, since it feels kind of free and naughty.

For her?  I have a strong aversion to granny panties.  Everything else is fine as long as it’s soon-to-be-shed whenever I’m observing it.  However, when it comes to bras I am a very strong believer in the plain old rear-hooking kind.  Ever since I learned to undo those one-handed without ever breaking off kissing, that moment in the process has been an especially joyful one.  Breaking off the kiss and using both hands to undo a front hook or peel off a sports bra, not so much fun.
 
5. I know the story of how you talked your wife into going on a first date, but what is your most entertaining break up story?
To my great embarrasment, I haven’t got much in the way of memorably odd or ugly breakup stories.  Natural attrition and moving/life changes drove just about every one of my very civil and mild breakups. 

That said, and this story is always reserved for guys over a beer, so I’m not sure why I’m telling it here, there is one story where I star as the bad guy.  As I was leaving for college I had to say goodbye to the woman I had been dating for about six months.  At the urging of her best friend, I “said goodbye” and we ended things a couple days before I left town, allegedly so I’d have time to finish some projects, pack, and not deal with all the pain of “goodbye” at the very last minute.  The real reason was so that her best friend and I could have a quickie two-day fling without violating the “you don’t sleep with your best friend’s guy / don’t sleep with your girlfriend’s best friend” rule.

Come to think of it, that was probably the first definitive indication that a career in law lay in my future.