Like the Little Red Hen

I've been thinking that we ought to figure out how to start using the wheat we bought quite a while ago and have been hanging onto ever since.  Like a long time ago.  A real long time ago.  We've moved number of times and hauled it with us each time.  Several years ago we repacked most of it, taking it out of the metal cans it came in and repackaged it into vacuum packed bags.  The cans were beginning to rust and we wanted to keep it away from the rust.  At the time, food storage was a big deal in our stake and the stake had acquired a vacuum packing system and was encouraging everyone to get and store some wheat.  Well, we already had the wheat but we took the opportunity to repack it.  And then it all went back into storage.

So I've been thinking we ought to start using it.  A few years back we bought a little wheat grinder.  We went through all the gyrations of wondering whether to get a hand grinder or an electric grinder.  I have used a hand grinder before.  Its a lot of work.  But what if there's no power when you have to dip into your food storage and grind your wheat?  Yeah.  In the end we got the electric.  We used it a time or two and then it, also, went into the storeroom.

Then just in the last day or two we bought a bunch more wheat from some friends in the ward.  So today I decided to be about it and do something.

I knew where the grinder was, I had found it (Yes, the storeroom is that bad) not too long ago.  But I wasn't entirely sure where the wheat was.  I wanted to use the oldest wheat, and I kind of thought it was in the garage.  But I wasn't sure.

So I went out to that mess of a garage of ours and decided to start looking.  Winter time, when its cold and you don't want to spend any  more time out there than you have to so if you need to put anything away you just find a quick spot where it will be more or less out of the way and set it down.  Yeah, that garage.

But this time my memory was pretty good.  I started looking in the first place I thought it was and, when it wasn't there, I moved to a nearby spot and there it was.  So I cleared off the tub it was in, grabbed a bag, and brought it in the house.

I had dug out the grinder and brought it upstairs so the next step was to open the bag and see if it was still any good.

I opened it.  It looked pretty normal, like it did when we put it in the bags, as near as I remembered.

So I dug the grinder out of its box, took a quick look at the instructions, and put it together.  I started it, poured a cup of wheat it, and suddenly wheat flour was spraying across the counter.

Note to self: Next time make sure the lid is on tight before pouring the wheat into the grinder.

Fortunately, the mess wasn't too big, just on the counter, my lap, and the floor a little.

So I cleaned up my mess, rechecked all the connections on the grinder, and made sure the lid was on tight.  Then I turned it on again (the instructions said to turn it on before pouring any wheat in) and poured another cup of wheat in.

This time it went well, no flour flying around.  The plan was to grind all the wheat in the pouch so I started pouring it in as the grinder pulled it down.  The pouch held enough wheat that I had to empty the container once a little after about the half way point, and then continue.

So that left me with a little more flour than would fit in the container I had gotten.  I figured that wouldn't be too much of a problem because the bread would take most of the extra.

Next step was to dig the bread maker out from its storage place  At least it was upstairs and not down in the storeroom.  So I dug it out, cleaned it up, and put all the ingredients in.  I initially was going to just use the basic white bread recipe that I had tucked in the bread-maker but Brombeere walked in about then and saved me from myself by explaining that simply using wheat flour in a white bread recipe was not a good idea.  Well, I was already a step or two into it but I quick found a basic wheat bread recipe and started over.  The recipe was a little different, but still pretty simple.  And still called only for ingredients that I had.  So in everything went.  When it was all in there I turned it on, set the settings for wheat bread, and tucked it back on the counter while it did its thing.

All I have ever made in the bread maker before was basic white bread.  I was a little surprised that the wheat bread took a little longer to mix and cook.  But not too much.

After about three and a half hours we had a nice looking loaf of wheat bread.  Looking pretty promising, at this point.

Came out of the pan pretty good.  Sometimes that's a challenge because of the little paddle in the bottom of the pan but this time it came out quite nicely.

There's few things quite as nice as fresh, warm, home made bread.  For years, when I was a kid, my Mom made a big batch of bread every week.  I grew up on home made bread.  And one tradition that was always observed was that as soon as it came out of the oven we broke one loaf and had hot, buttered bread.  Oh, so yummy.

So we sliced off a couple pieces, let a little butter melt into it, poured on a little honey, and sat back to enjoy it.

A very nice culmination to the day's effort.  Home made bread.  There's nothing quite like it.  We might have to do this again.

Commonplace Book

A Commonplace Book. “Commonplace”, from the Latin 'locus communis', meaning “a theme or argument of general application.”  For me, it is a collection of thoughts, ideas, anecdotes, poems, observations, and quotes that stood out and caught my attention, some with comment, some without. Essentially a scrapbook, a repository of thoughts too good to just pass over and let go.

“Wisdom is free, yet it is also the most expensive thing there is, for we tend acquire it through failure or disappointment or grief. That is why we try to share our wisdom, so that others will not have to pay the price for it that we paid.”

(Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Things Judaism has Taught Me about Life, 25 January 2019) 

“So, let us not be blind to our differences - but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which these differences can be resolved.”

(John F Kennedy, Commencement Address at the American University, Washington DC, June 10, 1963) 

“We can keep the commandments and still have bad things happen. So why bother?
“Because we’ll never know what we are being protected from through our obedience. Because it helps free us from a life of self-inflicted wounds.”

(Lori Fuller Sosa, The Gospel: An Eternal Life Hack, Ensign, January 2019) 

“God’s plan includes directions for us, referred to in the scriptures as commandments. These commandments are neither a whimsical set nor an arbitrary collection of imposed rules meant only to train us to be obedient. They are linked to our developing the attributes of godliness”

(Dale G Renlund, Choose You This Day, October Conference 2018) 

“There's no growth in the comfort zone and no comfort in the growth zone.”

(Author unknown) 

“The Lord watches over you. You need not suppose for a moment the Lord's eye is not upon you, the angels round about you, and they will take care of you and you may be peaceful and contented.”

(Brigham Young, Sermon at the Funeral of Mary Fielding Smith, September 23, 1852) 

“I find that when I get casual in my relationships with divinity and when it seems that no divine ear is listening and no divine voice is speaking, that I am far, far away. If I immerse myself in the scriptures the distance narrows and the spirituality returns.”

(Spencer W Kimball, “What I Hope You Will Teach My Grandchildren …, ” address to LDS seminary and institute personnel, July 11, 1966.) 

“The word of the gospel as it is preached and learned is, for each of us, the beginning. “Knowing” alone is not always sufficient to bring the promised light. We have to live by every word.”

(Barbara B Smith, General Relief Society Pres, Application of Welfare Principles in the Home: A Key to Many Family Problems, October Conference 1982) 

“In this day and age, with all the information that is out there, you have to seek the good stuff, it doesn't find you. You have to find it.”

(Comment made during Sunday School discussion, 6 January 2019)

“He's not waiting for us to be perfect. Perfect people don't need a Savior. He came to save his people in their imperfections. He is the Lord of the living, and the living make mistakes. He's not embarrassed by us, angry at us, or shocked. He wants us in our brokenness, in our unhappiness, in our guilt and our grief."

(Chieko N. Okazaki, Lighten Up, Deseret Book, 2002)

 “[There are] three things that people need — mastery, belonging, and autonomy — I'd add a fourth, after basic necessities have been met. It’s the attitude or the worldview that you bring to life. ... I would call [it] a more abundance-oriented approach, that there's room for everybody to grow.”

(Raj Raghunathan, professor of marketing at The University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business, in his recent book, If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Happy?, quoted from an interview with Joe Pinsker published in The Atlantic April 26, 2016 titled, “Why So Many Smart People Aren’t Happy”) 

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!”
(Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967, quoted in Fearless (the biography of Navy SEAL Adam Brown, by Eric Blehm, 2018, 190) 

“All right, Heavenly Father, if I've got to be more patient, let's get it over with right now “

(Bruce C Hafen, describing Neal A Maxwell in his college years in A Disciple's Life, the Autobiography of Neal A Maxwell, Deseret Book 2002, 169) 

“My life cannot implement in action the demands of all the people to whom my heart responds.”

(Anne Morrow Lindbergh - 1906-2001, American author, aviator, and wife of Charles Lindbergh) 

Making Lemonade

The other day Brombeere went the store and brought home a bag of apples.  I was a little surprised because she has said in the past that she didn't particularly care for the apples from this store.  So I wasn't terribly surprised when, a few days later, she brought home another bag of apples from a different store, the one she usually buys apples from.  So here's this bag of apples that needed to get used.  She cut up a few of them today and put them on the table for lunch, and ate them with a dip she really likes.  But during lunch she commented that we should help her use the rest of them up so she wouldn't feel guilty eating the others while these she didn't like were still around.

Weeeeeeellllllll, I've been feeling the urge to make something the last little while so I decided to do exactly what she asked; use up some of the apples.  I have several recipes for apple crisp in my personal cookbook so I went looking through them and decided to make the one that is cooked in an instapot.  How can you lose; only eight minutes cooking time!

So I got everything out and got started.

First thing to do is peel and cut up a bunch of apples.  The recipe calls for five cups so I figured at not quite a cup each, five apples would do it.  Then I added a sixth apple because, in my estimation, each apple was not quite a cup and I needed to "fill in the gaps", as it were.  Right?  We're talking five cups of solid apples.  That's how it works, isn't it?

Anyway, That what I was thinking when I started but as the bowl began to fill up I began to wonder if that was right or not.  Anyway, I ended up with a lot of apples.

The recipe is pretty easy, actually.  Put the apples in the pot, melt the butter, mix everything else all together ...

... and then dump the mixture on top of the apples.  Except, at that point, I noticed something I had missed at first.

I hadn't got the instapot recipe, I had accidentally started with the crock pot recipe.  That meant it was going to be a little longer than eight minutes before I was going to be able to enjoy some of this yummy stuff.

But my patience was rewarded and three hours later it was ready.

Apple crisp is best served under the right kind of ice cream.  The chocolate, which could be used in the absence of something better, was actually for Himbeere, who didn't want any crisp. He's funny that way about dessert sometimes. But, then, he's still just a kid.

Brombeere and I were having caramel delight ice cream.

So, after letting the ice cream melt a few minutes, it was ready.  And it was really good!  And, I successfully used almost all of the apples that were left.  A win all around!

That Was a Cold One

During the time we've lived in this fine state there have been some pretty intense weather. That's to say nothing of the close calls we've seen from tornadoes.  That is to speak only of the winters We moved here from out west.  There was one winter, when we were living in our second home after we got married.  It was a little house, a rental, in a mountain valley that got some pretty heavy snow fall from time to time.  This one storm it was also cold and real windy.  We got up one morning and the wind had blown a neat, very straight little line of snow six or eight feet into the room from the front door.  That was the most memorable storm for me before moving here.  Since moving here we've seen cold and heavy snow fall more than we ever saw any place else we've ever lived.  But the storm we just went through takes the cake.

This week began with the biggest snow fall of the winter, so far.  That was Sunday and Monday. When it ended on Monday, the 28th, we had gotten about ten inches here at the house.  The dog struggled to get outside so we dug out a path to the foot of the stairs off the deck.

That much snow is a big one, a major storm for around here, but not the biggest we've ever gotten.  What made this one memorable was that after the snow stopped and the clouds cleared off, it got cold.  It's when the clouds clear off that it gets really cold.  But this time it got really cold.

On the evening of the 28th, at about 7:00 pm, the temperature went below zero.  And stayed there.

On the 30th we had a doctor appointment about 35 miles away we had to go to.  When we left that  morning it was -27 and the wind was blowing.  Hard.  My favorite weather app said wind-chills were down to -63.  That is very cold.

The car struggled, but it did start.  We made it to the appointment and back without incident but it took several miles longer than normal for the interior of the car to get warm.

The coldest it got was on the 29th when the official temperature reached -29.  I had to go to work but Brombeere, who is a teacher, got most of the week off because the snow and cold closed most of the schools in the whole state.  Not only were the schools closed but quite a number of business closed as well.  Our trash pick-up service was suspended which was just as well because we had elected not to put our trash out anyway.  It was just too cold to be outside that long.  I felt bad for those that had to be out in it.

In all the years I've been going in and out of this door at work I've never seen frost build up on the doors like this.  The temperature stayed below zero until about 10:10 am today, February 1st.

Anyway, that was four very cold days. The coldest I've seen since we moved here. I can't imagine living some place where its cold like that all the time. But we were blessed. Our furnace worked and kept up with it all the way through.  And our cars started every time we needed them to.  I'm just glad its over.  Right now it's 9 degrees, way better than -29.  Thirty degrees better.  And tomorrow its predicted to reach 35.  I like that, after all that cold.

A Favorite from Times Passed

When I was a kid growing up, my community had what everybody called a drug store.  But it was much more than a pharmacy.  It had a pharmacy off on one side but it also a variety section where you could get all kinds of miscellaneous stuff, mostly small stuff, household stuff, stuff you need and use around the house all the time.  This was back before every grocery store of any size also had a pharmacy.  Back before the days of big box stores like WalMart, Shopko, Kohls, Fred Meyers, or other stores like that.  So the drug store had a pharmacy and a "notions" area.  But then, off on the other side of the store was the soda fountain.  You could get all kinds of soda, or pop, as some people call it.  You could also get ice cream treats there, like malts, shakes, ice cream cones, or ice cream by the dish. At more elaborate fountains you could sometimes get limited grill items, like hot dogs, hamburgers, and fries, or sometimes desserts, like pie or cake.  But usually it was just soda drinks and ice cream stuff. The fountain was a counter that ran usually the full length of that side of the room and had seats, stools you would sit on to place and then eat your order.  At the counter was usually the only seating.  The village drug store was never very big, usually just a few aisle of stuff with the pharmacy on one side and the fountain on the other.  No cashier up front.  If you bought anything but medicine you paid at the fountain.

Anyway, at these fountains they mixed the soda right there, after you placed your order.  Served in glassware, tall and fancy.  A few squirts of flavored concentrate and some carbonated water.  Behind and under the counter were several canisters of carbonated water and above the counter were pumps, push it down for a serving of the flavor concentrate.  Sometimes fast food places now days will serve their condiments from similar pumps. At the fountain, someone behind the counter would mix it up for you and serve whatever you ordered.  Usually there were several varieties of flavors, root beer, orange, sarsaparilla, raspberry, cola, and others. The adventurous could get what was called a "suicide", a little squirt of every flavor, if you were so inclined.  I was never much of a fan of sarsaparilla but one of my favorites was a flavor called ironport.  It was something akin to root beer but a bit different.  Gradually, as soda fountains began disappearing from drug stores, and big soda companies changed the way soda was canned, bottled, and delivered to the soda consuming public, ironport became less and less common, and then harder and harder to find.  The last fountain I was ever aware of that sold it was in a very small little town in central Utah.  When that place closed I didn't know where to find it any more.  Then, years later, as the Internet began to mature, I found a place online that sold the flavored concentrate.  But that meant I had to find the carbonated water and mix it myself.  I tried it a few times with seltzer water but could never get the combination right, to what I remembered it, so I finally gave up and ironport soda went the way of several other favorite treats from my youth.  It was gone.  My experiments with the concentrate were 10 or 15 years ago, or more.

Then recently, while we were visiting Mossbeere and his family over the Christmas holidays, we took a field trip one morning into town.  We stopped at a nostalgic looking place and went inside.

They had a counter and a seating area and sodas, a large variety of soda, including ironport!

They had it at the counter or you could buy it in bottles. I was amazed!  Well, or course I had have some!

I got a couple of bottles for later and a cup for right then, along with some yummy ice cream.

It had been so long I wasn't sure what to expect. Memories fade, you know.  But it was good, and the memories came back.  Actually, it was really good.  This was something!  In recent years I have gotten away from drinking soda, I don't drink it very much at all any more. Mostly an occasional root beer float now and then, if its with good root beer.  I was glad I made an exception.

After we all had our ice cream I took a look around the store. They had all kind of nostalgic stuff, candy and toys from yesteryear, stuff that's hard to come by now days.  For what it all was, the prices really weren't that bad, I was a bit surprised.  They didn't have my all-time favorite candy bar, Almond Clusters.  Back then they were made by Peter Paul, a company since bought out by Hershey. I was amazed at their disappearance.  They were all over the place, easy to get when I went on my mission in 1972 but when I got back they were gone.  There was another candy bar I really liked that you can't get anymore, either, that they didn't have, Cherry Mash, made by Chase Candy Company.  I haven't seen either in stores for a long, long time.  Ah, well.  You can by them over the internet but they're expensive and then there's shipping, which makes them really expensive.  In any case, it was a fun store to hang out in for a while.  Brought back lots of memories.

Anyway, I tucked the two bottles away in my suitcase and brought them home with us.  When we got home I stuck them in the fridge where Himbeere saw them the next day and asked about them.  So I let him try one, expecting him to not like it.  Much to my surprise, he did like it.  Said it reminded him of root beer.  Different, but in a good way.  But if he liked it I knew I had a problem.  There might be competition for the last bottle.  Anyway, I left the other in the back of the fridge, waiting for the right time to enjoy it.  But then one morning when I got up there was a note waiting for me.  Himbeere was letting me know that he hadn't forgotten about it, that he was seeing it there in the fridge every day and being tempted.

So I decided that if I wanted it, I'd better drink it soon.  So I had it with lunch.  The same day I got the note.

It was good. And soda is best really cold.

It was really cool having Moosbeere find some and take us there so we could try some.  It was really cool getting some extra and bringing it home.  And it was really cool enjoying it then and again, several days later.  Unfortunately, its gone now.  However, Wikipedia says it was very popular in the 20th century (Ha! So long ago!) and still is in the inter-mountain west, and listed quite a few places in Utah and Idaho where it is still sold.  So, yes!  Next time we're out that way I'm going to be watching for it again!