Not so Atsui

Atsui means hot. Its not so hot today. Its 81'F and Dad and I have the house open, letting the breeze traipse through, gentle as you please. Its hazy out. For whatever reason, the haze is too thin to appear on radar, yet thick enough there are no shadows outside right now. This is not helping my laundry dry on the line. Oh well.

I'll be cooking Sweaty Chicken tonight. Sweaty Chicken is fun. It starts with vegetables, sweated in a pan with a lid on low heat until the juice comes out and they soften a bit. Scrape to one side, offset the pan, add oil to the clean spot and turn up the heat to fry rice. Once that browns enough add water and chicken.

I generally sweat the French Trinity of Onion, Carrot and Celery. They are excellent savory companions and do good things to meat. I'll also be making rice o roni, mostly because it tastes good and Dad and I both need to eat enough. The chicken is already defrosting with soy sauce because the soy is an appetite enhancer. Mom did not need marijuana to eat after chemotherapy. I was cooking the meals and soy sauce did the trick.

All that rice leaves a fair bit of leftovers and the sweated veggies make the rice taste better, particularly since you cook the chicken in the same pan, so it gains from the flavors too. Its a one-pan meal. And one container for the leftovers. As a home cook that's valuable to me. Cuts down on cleanup time. That plus salad and maybe some broccoli and its well covered. The best part of the above dish is once you cut up the veggies its pretty easy to do and hard to screw up even with minimal attention.

Hah! There's a slight shadow now. Looks like the sun is trying to come out after all. Doubt it will get much warmer. And I'm glad the smoke is going somewhere else. Its good to breathe.

Pumpkin Pie Mocha

I'm pretty sure that Starbucks makes a pumpkin pie spice mocha, but I don't spend $5 for a single cup of coffee these days. I spend $10 and buy a couple pounds of coffee to enjoy for a couple weeks. Its a thing.

So I was in the mood for a pumpkin pie spice mocha and opted to throw one together.

1 T caramel sauce
2 T heavy cream
1/4 tsp cinnamon
pinch nutmeg
pinch cloves

Stir until spices are floating in mix, add hot fresh strong coffee. Top with whipped cream and more cinnamon.

Obviously, there's no actual pumpkin in here, but the spices do nice things to the coffee and since their oils dissolve miscibly into the other oils, like the cream and the coffee itself, it works. The caramel provides the touch of sweetness. I don't like very sweet pies. I prefer them spicy or sour. Its a thing.

Atsui!

Its not yet 9 AM and its already 81'F. There's a downslope wind blowing from Nevada. I can't quite smell the sagebrush but there have been times when it was there in the background. The air is clean, but a little on the warm side and I find myself closing up the house. The news says there will probably be thunderstorms in the high Sierra this afternoon. Considering the heat, I agree that is possible.

A job I already applied for has another position up in Chico, so I applied to that one too. Me and 2700 other people. I wouldn't mind living in Chico. Yes, its hot up there, but its also reasonably quiet, being the northern Sacramento Valley, and hosting one of the big college campuses, famous for being a party school, but also for sports medicine and nursing. Chico is also the home of that green bottled IPA, Sierra-Nevada Brewing Company, which started as someone's hobby in the 1970's, brewing beer for the big keggers. Chico State is one of THOSE schools. Chico also has hipsters and an active scooter store. Its got a grid layout for the streets so you can actually get around there, unlike towns built on the Cul-de-sac system which is more efficient use of land and prevents through traffic, but makes cars necessary because they prevent through traffic. Grids are better for the post-oil period. I will keep studying DC electrical so if I get a call, I can pass the tests. I wouldn't mind moving to Chico. Might be more fun than here.

Salmon spawning in Lake Tahoe

I read today in a not especially good news source that more scientists are calling for global cooling as the explanation that sea ice is already covering the Arctic ocean, weeks ahead of schedule, and the lack of hurricanes this year, as well as lower solar output are clear signs of global cooling. They are reaching to claim it will last another 15 years, like the one in the 70's and 80's did, but climate is funny that way. I suppose it is possible. I'd love to see 20 feet of snow on Donner Pass every year. Great for skiing, for the water supply, for here and for Reno. Keeps the fish and boats happy in Lake Tahoe too. Ice pack on the northeastern slopes also provides crucial summer water for the plants up there, meaning there's more for critters to eat and for hikers to photograph. Maybe Azalea Lake would get some Azaleas.

Next time I go down the mountain, I want to drop by my storage space and retrieve some gizmos and hopefully find the floor jack so Dad and I can lift up his truck and fix the parking brake, as well as change our respective oil. Hell, I'd change my oil today if I could. And maybe fix the parking lot dings on Dad's little red car. Its very pretty that car, and very fast while still having all the luxuries but the MP3 player stereo and a GPS. Dad says he doesn't need it, but he didn't need the Kindle till he got one and now he uses it every day. Laying down to read a book is nice, he says. MP3 player stereo is nice because you can put in one disc of MP3s and it just plays for the next 12 hours or so. I should make a better mix, however. I'm kind of tired of the one I've got. I bet Dad would enjoy various Diana Krall tracks. He takes his Jazz seriously.

Banana Scones

I baked these a little while ago. Excellent.

Start with this recipe: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/scones/

3 c. all purpose flour (not bread or pastry)
5 tsp baking powder (not soda)
1/2 tsp salt (not kosher)
3/4 cup shortening (butter would taste better but is plenty expensive)
1 c. milk
1 egg

Then modify it.
1/2 tsp Allspice
1 tsp cinnamon
pinch each of cloves and nutmeg
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 ripe banana

Flour, sugar, baking powder and salt are all right as they are. Add spices, then stir dry ingredients with a fork BEFORE adding any wet ones. Swap butter for butter crisco, cut into mix. Add mashed banana, cut into it as well. Add wet ingredients (milk, egg, vanilla) and stir. Mix will rapidly thicken into a heavy paste. This is fine.

Instead of kneading, use two large spoons to drop plum sized lumps of batter onto greased cookie sheet, 12 to a sheet. The edges will bake together but they still separate easily. Increase cooking time to 17 minutes but keep it to 400'F, center rack.

Serve with bitter tea or coffee. If you happen to have the makings for a bitter chocolate mocha, use that, or a pumpkin pie spice mocha. The outside is crisp, the inside tender like cake. Ideal for a cold Fall morning.

Total prep time is about 25 minutes including baking.


UPDATE:
Enhance the above recipe with 1/4 cup Greek yoghurt. I used honey, but vanilla would work too.
Add: 2 T chopped dried apricots
2 T dried cranberries
2 T semi-sweet or dark chocolate chips

The end product is more flavorful than cake and has better texture, and the sour apricot and cranberries and bitter chocolate form a nice balance to the sweetness of the scone and banana. Bake time is the same.

Constitution Day

Nevada City is hosting Constitution Day events today. A parade, living history, and civil war battle with cannons and muskets. They do this every year and people drive from other states to attend. During the civil war, the twin cities of Grass Valley and Nevada City picked different sides based on where the miners living there were from, though at no time was slavery legal in California so it was mostly a matter of association and favoritism rather than marching to war. News of the war came by telegraph and there was little more than a few drunken brawls over the subject. Still, in September, Constitution Day is celebrated here with coplayers, tents, and cannons.

And everything is hand made and accurate for the period.

Why I Like Some Things

Why do I like bicycles? There's a sense of freedom as your swing left to right, balancing your body, leaning into turns. Its symmetry. The near silence of it, as you propell yourself faster than you can run, it is incredible efficiency and freedom. Motorcyclists say that motorcycles are freedom, but they're always having to stop to get gasoline. Bicycles run on your energy. If you have food and water, you have fuel. Bicycles are freedom. You just have to work for it.


Why do I like Fall weather? In Fall, the nights are chilly and you have to start layering. The air is brisk and cold, yet the sun is achingly hot wherever it touches. Its the sharpness of climate as you drift through icy shadows and back out into scorching heat, and every breeze smells like polar ice, roaring down from Alaska, across the sea and over the coastal mountains before racing across the valley and arriving here and make fleece pullovers your best friend once more. I love my longsleeve wool shirts, my down vest, and soon I'll have to find a proper winter coat since the old army jacket belongs to my ex-wife and it would be wrong to wear that.

Why do I hike? Any hike is good. Get your muscles going, your heart thumping, the blood racing through me. I've been a hiker since I realized as a child that other kids were sadistic bastards. Just because they had mercury poisoning from our community well doesn't make me feel any particular sympathy or forgiveness for their violence against me. Hiking was an escape from them. Hiking was too much like work for their tastes, so off I went, trespassing (and well past the statute of limitations so I can admit it). If I were doing that today, I'd probably take a GPS and a botany identification book so I could run a bio survey of my favorite hike. The hike I did today, while it was still cool, I did with my GPS running. Its still nifty. I then uploaded the data to my PC and found that the period of time where it zooms from your last point to the current location? Yeah, it records that so you need to remove that data point. Thankfully, Garmin software (free) lets you edit the file. I used to do that kind of thing in Pathfinder for the Trimble GPS I used 12 years ago. It wasn't quite state of the art, but it was close.

Why do I like Motorcycles? A motorcycle, and a scooter, is a noisier bicycle you don't have to pedal. Considering that the roads I grew up on killed people, and you could hear the Cafe racer motorcycles buzzing like angry bees suddenly stop from a few miles away, followed by sirens from the local fire station as paramedics went to see what could be scraped up for the closed casket funeral (once in a while there was a survivor in those wrecks but mostly not), I think I'm showing a great deal of courage and maturity to appreciate these. The roads around here, provided you're slow and very patient, likely yield some lovely scenery, ideal for a scooter or a slow moving motorcyclist. Good brakes and bike wheels are mandatory, if only because of the steep hills and bad pavement. Motorcycles are also cost effective. A Prius is around $25K or so. A commuter motorcycle is closer to $2-5K depending on the motor size and condition. A brand new 500cc or 650cc bike will set you back around $7K but it will also get you better mpg than a Prius. Its just miserable in the rain. I think, like we see in SE Asia, that motorcycles are our future, that we'll all be riding them because its that or stay stuck in one place. We can joke about electric cars but the raw materials to get everyone an electric car is simply not available. I'm sorry, it just isn't. There isn't enough Lithium for the batteries. Contrast that with motorcycles which are more fuel efficient and an infinite number of them can be built because they're steel, aluminum, and plastic. They don't require reliable electric power or solar panels. They can run on booze or used cooking oil or synthetic gasoline or a bottle of compressed natural gas. Whatever. The point is everybody can have one because we DO have enough steel for that. Its not a fantasy like a world of electric cars, currently just as impossible as a world filled with Zepplins. I've always been VERY realistic in my scifi writing. Its why I'm writing this blog, after all.

Wouldn't you like this for your Sunday driver? 

Why do I like roadsters and convertibles? Great driving is NOT about fast in the straightaways. Any fool can do that. I saw many wrecked muscle cars in the 1970's having drag raced and flipped, right in front of the paramedics at the fire station where I grew up. It was an open secret that around 10:30 PM on Saturday night, the local guys would pull the headers off their muscle cars and see how fast they could go. And many of them died doing that too. I don't hate muscle cars, but I do recognize that what killed them, besides meth and alcohol, was having a crappy suspension that couldn't keep the wheels on the road, and the cars couldn't corner, which literally killed them. I grew up appreciating how to Apex a Turn, something my niece still doesn't know how to do.

Apexing is something I'm good at and my efforts back when I first learned to drive seems to be something like riding a bicycle. I will never forget how. Figuring out how many gees your vehicle can take, and whether the suspension will hunker down and hold or try to fight you and kill you when under max load? That's a special kind of fun. Its risky, of course, but my ex couldn't apex a corner either. She THOUGHT she could, but she never managed it while we were together. Maybe her new beau has had better luck. I like Apexing. I like feeling the car engine roar as I brake before turning in, coast to the halfway point, then power out of a turn. Its a wonderful slingshot effect. Most of the time I drive like an Old Man, but in a good handling roadster? Its wonderful fun. I think in a post oil world, I'd still want an ultralight roadster for Sunday driving just so I can Apex turns. I'm rather pleased that the Monterey Shale oil means I probably can. Others will too. It will be an expensive hobby, but no worse than owning a powerboat or an RV.

In the short run, there are many joys worth embracing. In the long run, most will be around if you're willing to accept their limitations. I'm sure that people will still go to the movies when you have to get there by bicycle, just as people went to air shows and car races by horse and buggy back in 1910. We adapt. It is our good fortune that things are not so bad that we much adapt too much at once.

Chuck Norris' California

I often find myself missing the California I knew as a child. Back then, drunk driving was a ticket with a modest fine because cars were slow, handled poorly, and drunk drivers mostly ended up in the ditch solo, not head-on into a bunch of school kids in a minivan. Big accidents with lots of deaths were super rare. Drunk driving was a self-resolving problem. Same way unprotected sex leads to babies. Back in the day, California's narrow roads, uneven surfaces, no white stripe on the side... all were big clues to either slow down or die. You needed to be perceptive and very intense to live through something as trivial as driving on a country road.

The roads I grew up on were also set to state max speed limit once you got out of town: 55 mph. That sounds slow in today's nomenclature, but consider. We had heavy thick fog almost every morning. You couldn't see around the corner. You might not see the corner until you were about 100 feet from it. You'd see the glow from oncoming car headlights about 400 feet away, but not the car until it was half the distance. In the old days, the center line in the road was white dashed. We didn't even use yellow yet, and no Bots Dots. Or reflectors. We didn't have them in the roads yet. That came in the late 80's. There was also no bicycling shoulder, or shoulder at all. The country road I grew up with was two cars and 8 inches wide. If the oncoming car was wider you slowed down and both swerved, hoping your wheel off the road didn't drag you into the ditch. And sometimes it did. I saw plenty of cars in the ditch from that. The fire department was pretty busy dealing with all the wrecks, but we were less about lawyers back then, and more blase about safety. Nerf was for kids, not for grownups. Grow a pair (tits or testicles).

I miss those days. People today are so obsessed about safety, about living the longest they can, about their comfort and preserving their childishness. In the 1980's, it was like Chuck Norris was normal. Who is like that now? Everyone was a bad-ass. Housewives smoked and drove 450 hemi engines in their woody stationwagon or shag carpet lined Van. Not a Mini-Van, but full on, painted scene of the side, van, where she and their father got it on and started their family in the first place. Back then, shotgun wedding was literal. All women were like Faye Valentine. They didn't have time to get fat. Too busy with the brats. Back then women weren't ashamed to only be a housewife. Other women respected how hard it is to raise kids and run a household. It was an understood reality. We didn't have talk shows for women to brag about sloth and selfishness. It didn't exist. That was a 90's disease. In the 80's we were tougher and just got stuff done. It wasn't even interesting enough to brag about doing stuff. You just did it.

I miss that.