Packing Up

Tonight, I started packing for our impending change of residence. A change which is going to be difficult if we don't find a new house pretty soon, but that is a freak-out of a different color. All practical planning aside, I started packing because I don't want this to turn into a move where shit gets shoved into partially planned boxes, occasionally but not completely labelled, and thrown on a truck because I waited until the last week to pack up all my shit.

The last major life-change move I made, I culled out a good bit of stuff and was pretty careful, but I still wasn't 100% packed when the truck showed up. That's my goal this time, we're hiring movers for the heavy lifting, but I want to be monitoring their progress, not hastily packing my last dregs of shit out of drawers. Rather, all that random crap that carries from house to house gets culled out leaving me with the useful things.

It's a lightening process for me, but it's also a walk down memory lane. Pure, self-absorbed, unabashed melancholy. Tcshotskes aren't my thing, I fail at dusting. My personal space is dotted with little piles, throw-back to my pagan ritual habits maybe? I was making little 'altars' well before that. Small items, bits of past experiences: my bottle of playa from my first Burning Man trip, a player from a foosball table that my partner, Robert, gave me ages ago, the melted glass from the neon effigy year at Alchemy, medallions from the pagan festival I ran 10 years ago. Keepsakes, memory triggers. I don't often dust them, often it will have been months between picking them up and making those memory connections. I get a little sad, smile, remember things I haven't triggered to in years and it makes me happy and sad and sated in a way nothing else does.

I listen to music that I rarely make the effort to remember and seek out, but my memory triggers come with a sound track. One happy memory makes me hum a tune and it's off to rdio to search for some song I have forgotten I know all the words to. Tonight was rapid fire between songs as I inevitably remember my melancholy is for a single song, maybe a whole album, but rarely a collection. "Mary Mac" by Carbon Leaf  and then "Killing and Arab" * by The Cure to a country ballad that I refuse to admit on the internet that I know all the words to. It's a happy way to compete a task that otherwise I would rather not do.

If I had to point out my feelings on a chart my dismembered teddy bear head would be in the "melancholy" pocket more often than not these last couple of months. Lots of massive change, culminating in this move. Going through old photos and keepsakes, accompanied by familiar packing music and remembering where I was during those moves and makes me feel whole.

My birthday was yesterday, 34, and every year I act like it doesn't phase me, but it's interesting how many moves or planning-to-move coincide with my passing a solar revolution.

First box I packed, wishing I could have been listening to The Cure on vinyl. 

* Editors Note: It saddens me to say that I hestiated a moment before typing "Killing an arab" into my favorite search engine. The lingering PC part of me momentarily feared what the results would be, the stoner conspiracy theorist in me momentarily feared that it would put me on some list. A fine example of when you know it's time to go to bed. 

12 Days In The Woods

6 years ago I got involved with some insanity called Alchemy: the Georgia Burn. Based on the Burning Man project in Nevada, Alchemy is 5 days of art, music, expression and general debauchery in the North Georgia mountains that I have been devoting myself to since the beginning.

For the last several years, I have been working with the organizational side of the event in Public Works. Our motto, "Alchemy Public Works : We Make Shit Go." We show up on site early and are some of the last to leave. It's hard work, but it's my gift to my community and it's a hell of a lot of fun. 

It's also been quite the weight loss program in the past, the really unhealthy kind. Not only am I working a lot, spending a week tent camping, drinking too much, not drinking enough water, sleeping very little, I am eating most things that are handily available from my cooler or the box of non-perishables. Beef jerky, endless cheese/meat rolls, granola bars. All sustenance, very little of it quality calories. This all mostly due to a lack of pre-planning, getting more involved in the event planning than my own personal camping planning.

This year, building on my growing compulsion with bulk cooking for home I decided that I was going to make an effort to feed myself and my partner, Robert, in some way other than from a box or a paper bag for 12 days. We will have access to a source of electricity, so my beloved crock pot and a my old dependable Oster blender will be packed away with the rest of my camp kitchen.

On the menu:

• Breakfast Cupcakes - biscuit dough, eggs, sausage, cheese baked in a muffin tin. 
• Mason Jar Smoothies - fruit and almond milk frozen in a plastic bag for later mason jar use
• Chili - Made in bulk, frozen in gallon bags
• Vegetarian Corn and Potato Chowder - base pre-cooked and canned to be frozen and watered down later in the crock pot. 
• Chicken and Noodles - my ultimate in comfort food
• Ham and Beans - simple crock pot food with happy pig meat

This is my no means enough food for two people for 12 days, but it will help keep the diet of dried meat and cheese crackers to the busiest times. 

Mason Jar Smoothies 

This might not be typical camping food, it requires a blender. But, I plan to continue to do this at home for quick breakfast that is way cheaper than the commercially offered single serving smoothies you can get at your local grocery chain. 

Ingredients:

- Frozen or fresh fruit or peanut butter (anything you would put in a smoothie)

- Bananas 

- Almond milk (or soy or rice)

Other equipment: 

- Pint freezer bags

Fruit Smoothie - Per serving is (1) cup fruit, (1/2) cup milk variety of your choice and (1) small banana (or half a really big one) 

Peanut butter and chocolate - (2) Tablespoons peanut butter, (2) Tablespoons chocolate sauce, (1/2) cup liquid of your choice. 

Take one of your pint freezer bags, add to it all the ingredients, squeeze out as much air as possible and put in the freezer. 

Left - Tropical fruit  Center - Peanut, chocolate and banana  Right - Strawberry banana

Don't make the mistake I did and forget to label the bags. These were taken out of the freezer just a couple hours after I put them in because I forgot to take photos for this post. Now, days later, it's really hard to tell the tropical fruit from the strawberry banana. You can tell the chocolate peanut butter because it looks awful in the bag. 

Taking them from bags of frozen stuff to yummy slurpable stuff requires a little more equipment. I have an old Oster blender circa the 80s whose blender blades perfectly screw on to a regular mason jar. Not all blenders will, so test the seal with some water before you make a giant sticky mess. Or, skip the mason jar altogether and just dump the contents of the bag into a blender. 

But, if your mason jar fits snugly, allow the frozen mixture to melt down until you can squish it and do just that out of the bag and into the mason jar. The mixture alone when blended will be thick. I liked it, but after the first one, I added a little orange juice (or more milk or apple juice or water) to the mixture before I blended it. I also plan to buy a bag of spinach, which I have found performs most excellent in a cooler if you put it in a watertight bag, and put a handful in the mason jar to pump up the nutrient value a little.  Enjoy! 

Where my stitches at?

I have this beautiful ball of malabrigo, shades of the lightest lavender to the deepest royal purple. Malabrigo is my knitting crack, my china white of wool. The only thing that stands between me and the lovely slide of wool between my fingers is a provisional cast on that I have frogged twice.
Look at its loveliness... On the morrow, you will bend to my will.

Tales from the Crock: Uncle Alton's Overnight Oatmeal

I am not a fussy eater. I love food, all kinds of food. I love good food and I love it more when it's easy. This, and my new found addiction to Pinterest has lead to my current obsession with all things slow cooker.

My life doesn't lend itself well to spending hours every day making tasty chow, but I don't like processed food; the slow cooker means making food while I am doing something else - multitasking for the win.

In this instance, I made oatmeal while I slept.

Alton Brown is my cooking hero. I have tried to work through his cookbooks from cover to cover, so when I found his recipe for Overnight Oatmeal I tried it. My first attempt was gross. Doing this for the second time I caught my original error. Steel cut oats. There is always a container of old fashioned oatmeal in the pantry, I love oatmeal, but you can't skip the steel cut oats for this recipe. Anything else and you end up with an unattractive crock pot of mush.

It is oatmeal, so it's still a crock pot of mush, but it smells like an oatmeal cookie and has the consistency of bread pudding (my favorite).

Tasty morning chow.

Uncle Alton's Altered Overnight Oatmeal 

1c. steel cut oats (not kidding, don't use anything else)

4 1/4c. water

1/2c. half and half 

1c. dried cranberries

1c. chopped, dried apples 

Pinch salt

Pinch cinnamon

Top-full vanilla*

3 pinches brown sugar

Toss it all in the crock pot, set to low and go take a nap. In about 8 hours, you will have warm sweet oatmeal and a kitchen that smells like oatmeal cookies. Not a bad way to wake up.  

I overslept by about 45min the morning that I made this. The total cook time was closer to 9 hours and there was some burning on the edges. To keep from having to eat the burned parts, I let the oatmeal cool and then spooned it out while it was a little more gelatin-like leaving the burned edges behind. 

Happy accident that turned out to be. I covered the first bowl in milk and stuck it in the microwave and then stirred it together. Tasted like a porridge of steel cut oats. If you are not familiar with steel cut, the consistency is different, not like instant oatmeal, much thicker and heartier. It's going to be great on cold mornings and it left me feeling full. 

I got home from work and decided that I would try some of it cold. Winner! Cold right out of the fridge, with cold milk it was oatmeal bead pudding with bits of fruit and warm vanilla. 

*"Top-full" is my own measurement. It's the amount of vanilla extract that fits in the top of the bottle. I know I am not the only baker out there who measures like this. 

Next up on Tales from the Crock.... Teriyaki Chicken and Pork

Nerd? Llama?

I'm not a llama. I am a nerd.

I am the kind of nerd who would like to have a llama farm one day so I can spend my days farming llama, making yarn and taking photos of llamas for reddit memes.

I'm a nerd like John Green sees nerds.