Freeze it, Dry it, Can it, Love it

It’s Labor Day! That means I should not be laboring. But I am. I am trying to get some work done on Pastor Wilkerson’s book. I also have to slice up and freeze the Costco prime rib roasts that have been aging here since last week. I still can’t believe I got prime beef for under eight bucks a pound.

It’s really shocking, how cheap food is when you put thought into it. The beans I fixed yesterday are fantastic, and they’re very good for you, and you can make a pot of them for maybe three bucks. The cornbread contains one egg, a quarter of a cup of grease (free, if you save it when you cook bacon), 12 ounces of milk, and two cups of meal. What does that cost? Let’s see. An egg runs about fifteen cents. The meal is something under a dollar. The milk is under fifty cents. It ain’t much.

I you buy whole pork loins at Costco, you get a giant loaf of meat for about 15 bucks. It’s something like 40 pork chops, and two of them will make a meal. Seventy-five cents per meal! And it’s not second-rate food. Pork chops are wonderful.

Ham hocks are a great deal, provided you’re willing to man up and eat the fat. Two hocks contain enough energy to make a meal all by themselves.

The pot of chili I made the other day ran me about 15 bucks, but that’s because I didn’t make any effort to get cheap meat. It was a spur of the moment idea. I suppose a smart person would get Costco beef and freeze it in one-pound bags. I don’t know what they charge for ground beef, but it can’t be a lot. And there’s no reason you can’t grind up a pork loin and freeze it. My chili is half pork and half beef, so I have to have ground pork. Maybe I should get a grinder. They’re cheap. I don’t know what Cuisinart ground meat looks like, but I’ll bet it’s not great.

Even though I paid too much for ingredients, 15 bucks is not bad for eight or ten huge portions of dynamite chili.

I need to start cooking the rest of my SHTF dried beans. After a year in storage, they’ll be too hard to cook. I suppose I can prepare one bag per month and freeze the results. Oh, boy. That would be pure hedonism. Bags and bags of frozen bean soup, full of pork chunks, pepper, and onions. Best not to dwell on it. I know it sounds stupid, but if you make bean soup right, it’s magnificent.

Because I live in Florida, I have to think about hurricanes. That means I should get real and start canning. Some day, a hurricane may take out my frozen food. What a horror. I would not lose canned stuff.

Home-canned food is great. Don’t let anyone tell you different. I’ve never had store-bought sweet pickles as good as the ones my grandmother used to make. And she used to can her own sausage, suspended in congealed grease. Best sausage I ever ate, and the residual grease has a thousand uses in the kitchen.

When you cook your own pork, you get to decide how it tastes. And you can take steps to make sure there is no gaminess in it. Most commercial sausage has at least a little boar taint. There is no excuse for it, but that’s how it is. A soak in water and baking soda kills it.

It just occurred to me that I can freeze bananas. They wouldn’t be worth eating out of hand, but you can cook with them. I can also dehydrate them and have chips. I’m going to have tons of bananas and plantains, so I have to do something.

I am trying to learn to think of the stuff I own as God’s property. If that’s true, I have to avoid frittering money away. I can’t say I’m a good steward if I buy food on impulse, at the highest prices, or if I throw out produce because I’m too lazy to preserve it. If you don’t take care of little things, you can’t expect to receive big ones. Check the gospels.

I don’t think everyone has to live like the Waltons, but some expenses don’t make much sense. For example, buying bread. If you own a food processor, a loaf of bread is almost no work, and the cost is minimal. It will be a lot better than store bread. The only advantage of store bread is convenience. I know people have limited time, but the actual hands-on time required to bake bread is about five minutes. And bread freezes with no damage. You can make ten loaves in a day and freeze them.

Costco’s freezer bags are not a great deal. Ebay is better.

It’s not about depriving yourself. It’s about not being an idiot. It’s about getting value for your money. Why spend twenty dollars and get one choice steak when you can spend a hundred and get over a dozen prime steaks? Why pay a restaurant to cook mediocre food when you can have better food at home? And if you arrange life so you have more money for yourself and your family, you’ll also have more money for your church and other people’s needs.

Maybe if I make an effort, I can do a better job taking care of my money. During these Forty Days of Teshuvah, my big aims are to get past laziness and irresponsibility. I’m not a basket case, but there is a lot of room for improvement.

Latest Luxury

My new Bible arrived today. I will not even try to guess how excited this makes you.

I already had three Bibles. One is my mother’s old Bible. It’s a nice but well-worn leatherbound King James. This is the one I take to church. I used to wonder why Bibles were bound in soft leather covers, but now I realize they make a big difference in a book you have to carry around. I don’t want to keep carrying this one. It has no thumb indices, it’s not an easy version to read, it doesn’t have much added material, and it came from Kenneth Copeland Ministries, which is a little creepy. I also have The Complete Jewish Bible in blue leather. It’s excellent, because it was translated by Orthodox Jews (or Orthodox ex-Jews, if Aaron objects), and there are some things Gentiles just don’t translate correctly. But it has no columns, the print is tiny, and there are virtually no annotations, so it’s a pain to use. The third book is The Spirit-Filled Life Bible, in hardcover. I really like this one. The people who compiled it are pretty close to my view of things, and it’s full of historical information, annotations, references, and spiritual guidance. But I don’t want to carry a hard book to church.

The answer? The Spirit-Filled Life Bible, in burgundy leather, with thumb indices. I even had my initials put on it. Why not? It’s the New King James Version. I like this better than versions like the NIV, because (this is what I have been led to believe) it isn’t corrupted by political or secular considerations. In other words, God isn’t a lesbian, wives are supposed to submit to their husbands, there is no First Epistle of Al Gore, and so on and so on.

The thumb things are great, because some speakers just don’t take the time to let you find a book. And I won’t even pretend I know the order of the books in the New Testament. Let’s see. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans…Revelation. I know Peter and Jude are pretty far back. That’s about all I can tell you.

The Jews put the Psalms in the wrong place. I said that just to be annoying, and I’ll bet it worked. In The Complete Jewish Bible, the Old Testament is arranged according to Jewish tradition (what a crazy idea), so the Psalms are near the end, and everything is moved around. On top of that, the books have their original names, which I can never seem to memorize. They can’t mess with the New Testament, though. The books are where they’re supposed to be. Although they renamed Hebrews.

Now I have two Spirit-Filled Life Bibles. Maybe I should give the hard one away.

I met with my pastor yesterday. I thought it went very well, although the start was a little rough. The church is a fairly confused place right now, and I apparently threw the whole joint into a panic by calling and asking about counseling. It was an innocent mistake on my part. When I joined, some of the materials listed a phone number for counseling, and my family is under stress, and I always tell other people to go to their churches for counseling, so I decided to try a dose of my own medicine. But this church is full of poor people, and evidently, when you say “counseling” to the staff, they think of rehab and foreclosure prevention and emergency housing and so on. They think of referring desperate people to county agencies. They don’t think of financially comfortable middle-aged white guys who under pressure because their sisters have cancer.

Anyway, after the fuss died down, my pastor made an appointment with me, and I went in for an hour. I took some Orinoco bananas, various hot peppers, key limes, and Persian limes. That made me happy. I think it’s a good idea to share anything you harvest with your church.

I found out there are some things I can do for the church, which was a big relief. I keep showing up, giving my offerings, and going home, and that’s not really what church should be like. You should try to do something beyond that. I helped build my last church. I worked in the music ministry. I drew a cartoon for the Sunday school program. I painted their sign. If you don’t do things like that, you remain a guest forever.

I already have a writing assignment, so I’m working on that. And they may need help with things like picking up guest speakers at the airport. The Thunderbird may not be the ideal vehicle for this, but I suppose occasionally they get someone whose luggage is small.

The church is in a huge commercial building with a lot of tenants on the upper floors. The bottom floor is full of gigantic empty spaces that are being turned into various types of facilities. All sorts of stuff for kids. He took me around and showed me what they’re doing. By the end of the year, it ought to be pretty impressive. But it would be a big help if they had more members who were not struggling financially.

From our conversation, I gathered that Miami is a tough nut for a church to crack. I think just about anyone could have told him that before he moved here, but I suppose that’s what makes Miami a good place for a preacher to go. We have voodoo, Santeria, spiritism, whatever nonsense the Brazilians worship, plus godless materialism and every type of perversion imaginable. And the racial prejudice is pretty bad. Cubans don’t mix all that well with blacks or other Hispanics, and apparently most black groups don’t get along with Haitians. Now that I think about it, ordinary white people probably have fewer problems than any other group. All the other groups hate each other too much to bother hating us. About the worst thing that happens to us is that we go to stores and can’t get the Cuban price on anything. And we’re not supposed to know that.

I got some good advice regarding my own troubles, which are not that bad to begin with. My sister’s illness dwarfs anything that might be bothering me.

I don’t know what’s up ahead. I maintain faith for her healing, but I think we are kidding ourselves about what the treatment will be like. The chemotherapy has been virtually problem-free, but radiation is on the way, and it has its own side effects, and we haven’t thought much about the wild cards. By that I mean the problems which doctors expect and lay people don’t. The chemo and radiation have high monetary costs, and we know those, and we would like to think that’s what the cancer will cost. That makes us reluctant to inquire about other issues. But cancer patients get things like thrush and pneumonia. All sorts of things we can’t foresee, even after three cancer deaths in the family. And the swine flu is here, and there is no vaccine.

Stay away from cigarettes and smokeless tobacco. Have I said that before? Sounds familiar. And if you don’t care enough about yourself to quit, care enough about your family to get insurance or save a lot of money. Live or die, your ordeal will be very expensive. And when you get sick, they’ll pay, no matter what they have to do.

I’m still using fasting to attack my family’s difficulties. It seems to change me. Since I had that breakthrough last week, I haven’t felt the same way about food, and I’ve lost two pounds. It’s not the fasting itself that made the weight drop off. It’s the way I act when I’m not fasting. I am able to control myself, even on Saturdays, when I used to gorge. I want to find out what else fasting can do for me, even though I hate doing it. I am afraid to believe it, but God may have put an end to my weight problems. That would be fantastic. I want to have one wardrobe, low blood pressure, healthy knees, snore-free sleep, and no risk of diabetes. I’m not a giant mountain of lard, but I want to drop 25 pounds and keep it off.

I think fasting was ineffective in the past because I didn’t pray much when I fasted. I felt so miserable, I just laid around suffering, waiting for the day to end. I knew that wasn’t the way to do it, but I felt horrible, and I didn’t have enough character to overcome it. If you have a problem like smoking or drinking or drugs, you might give fasting a try.

I thought this time of my life was a lull, because I wasn’t writing a book. But I’m helping my sister and looking after my business affairs, and now I have some things to do for the church, so I guess I won’t be idle. I’m very glad. That was something that concerned me.

Try not eating for a day or two. Maybe you’ll get the same kind of results I did.

Lethal

I decided to avoid canning my peppers. I am fermenting them instead.

If you’ve ever tried kim chi, you know what I’m talking about. If you ferment vegetables with lactobacillus, they develop a nice sour taste and lots of aroma. Tabasco sauce is fermented, if the label is correct. I thought this would be better than using vinegar to give the peppers flavor.

It took me nearly forever, but I seeded a big pile of Tobago seasoning peppers, and I ran them through a food processor. I added garlic, a little water, some salt, some sugar, and some yogurt with live cultures.

When all is said and done, I think the product I’ll end up with will be inferior to the stuff I’ve made with Home Depot cayennes. Those peppers are naturally sweet and full of flavor. These are hot and less sweet, and the flavor doesn’t compare. The appeal of exotic peppers is not entirely based on reason. Some are fantastic, and some are just okay. If an ordinary cayenne is better, might as well admit it.

I read a couple of interesting things today. First, I saw part of an abstract from a medical journal, and it claimed fermented peppers in very small amounts inhibited weight gain. Wonder if that’s true. In a related matter, I saw a very disturbing article that says being obese or even slightly overweight can cause serious brain damage. Like I need that.

Here’s an excerpt:

A new study finds obese people have 8 percent less brain tissue than normal-weight individuals. Their brains look 16 years older than the brains of lean individuals, researchers said today.

Those classified as overweight have 4 percent less brain tissue and their brains appear to have aged prematurely by 8 years.

I have often criticized smokers who took up the habit or refused to quit after the cancer risk became known. Now the tables are turned. Will I be better than the people I looked down on? I sure hope so. I don’t want my brain to turn into Jell-O. I hope I still have a few working cells in place.

Something to think about, if you’re overweight.

In these Days of Teshuvah leading up to Yom Kippur, I am trying to repent of irresponsibility and laziness. I realize Gentiles are not bound by the Jewish law, but that’s beside the point. You shouldn’t have to be forced to do something which is obviously intelligent and pleasing to God. I see the peppers and limes I’m harvesting, and I feel like my obligation to be a good steward extends to them. I’m trying to put them to use. I managed to give some peppers away, too.

I am starting to remind myself of the old mountain women I knew when I was younger. They gardened. They ran small businesses. They did handicrafts. They went to church. They raised kids. They were like the righteous woman of Proverbs 30. I realize the comparison is a little off, because I’m a man, but the principles are the same. I’ve known a number of women like that, but the men tended to have fewer interests, as they devoted themselves to their jobs.

I am so much better than I used to be. I have a long way to go, but I’m glad I’m not what I was.

I’ll report on the peppers when and if they ferment.

Space Needed

I’ve had a fun morning, attending to business involving my family and some property we own jointly. Acidman used to say there was no such thing as free sex. I would add that there is no such thing as passive income. Ask anyone who owns a rental house.

I am hoping to get my rotary table working. My sister is off chemo for two weeks, so things should be slow. I already popped the rotab onto my mill table, and I installed the chuck. I still have to put together a system for storing and moving it. The current fantasy involves a flat dolly made from a piece of plywood, plus a chain hoist or block and tackle above the mill. I already wrote about this. Keep the rotab and tailstock on the floor under the table. When needed, roll the dolly out under the hoist and raise the rotab to mill height. Should work.

No one will believe this, but I think I have finally acquired the bulk of the tooling that will be required to make me happy. Small purchases will never end, but I have reached a state where I have the stuff to do just about anything I want. I still need a horizontal band saw, but that’s not a big deal. Maybe I should pick one up today and get it over with. I already bought a good blade.

I still have to do something with the Tobago seasoning peppers I picked, and I have some other bushes that need to be dealt with. At least the lime trees gave me a rest today. Only one lime, and it was a little key lime.

I tried the prig ki nu mixture I made yesterday. I put garlic, salt, and vinegar in a squeeze bottle with red peppers, and within a couple of hours, the vinegar had absorbed a tremendous amount of heat. People say you should poke holes in peppers to make them soak up whatever you immerse them in, but I am not going to do that with several hundred tiny peppers. The vinegar seems to break them down a little and get inside them, so I don’t know if the holes are important.

This stuff would be much better if made with lime juice, but when I did that before, it got moldy, so forget that.

I think it’s a little too hot. I hate to say that. These aren’t my hottest peppers. Not even close. I still have Home Depot cayenne plants I bought because they were mislabeled, and those peppers are magnificent. They’re very sweet, and they taste almost like cherries, and the heat is more manageable. I should try the vinegar thing with them next time.

Looks like today will be uneventful, now that I have my business obligations behind me. I certainly hope so.

Maybe it’s a Hin

I am going to have to get a canner. I don’t know what else to do. I have read up on storing peppers, and while I think it’s okay to put them in vinegar and salt and refrigerate them for a few weeks, I can’t trust them for months or years. I just picked maybe a gallon of Tobago seasoning peppers off my tiny bush, and I left maybe 25% of the crop behind. I haven’t gone near the Trinidad Scorpions or Habanero Golds.

I never know whether to capitalize the names of fruit and vegetable varieties, so instead of taking three seconds to check, I have decided to capitalize randomly.

With any luck, I’ll also have lychees before too long, and I know they can be canned. And then there’s mango chutney.

Geez. Thank God you don’t have to can limes.

In a comment, Heather complimented me on my new gardening “abilities,” and Andrea Harris (no link due to impossibility of finding her blog) said she couldn’t believe I grew herbs in Miami. Hey, don’t fool yourselves. I have no idea what I’m doing.

I’m just glad I realized you don’t have to cut a whole bunch of bananas at once. These days I’m cutting off one hand at a time, so the rest stay fresh on the tree instead of all ripening within the same three-hour period.

Here are the Tobago peppers. Canning tips appreciated.

Can’t Keep Up

I am going through one of those times when you have to remind yourself that you will eventually be rewarded if you are treated badly.

As usual, I can’t give details. I find myself in a position where I’m being punished for trying to fix someone else’s mess. Barring divine intervention, it’s going to get much, much worse before it gets better. That’s all I can say. Remembering that someone is keeping accounts makes it a lot easier.

I am here because I wanted to put this up, regarding Heather’s mom:

Penny’s kidney function has deteriorated to 15%!
Her blood pressure has been up slightly today as well.
Please ask for her kidneys to healed.
Thanks & God Bless,
Heather

Reader Ruth says:

I have a prayer request for a friend of mine. She was just diagnosed with stage 4 lobular breast cancer. A devious one that is not seen with mammograms. It has spread to lymph glands and bones. Not a good prognosis.
I hate to lay another cancer on your prayer lists. but here it is. Her name is Sharon W. Her attitude is either denial or complete acceptance, I think the latter and she has a cheerful heart.

I didn’t want to put these up on or near a weekend. No one reads blogs on those days.

Today I’ve been putting lime juice up. The trees will not leave me alone. I put up a cup of key lime juice and over a cup of Persian lime juice. I freeze it in vacuum bags. I don’t know what to do with it.

I read something interesting last week. I forget where. Maybe Robert Morris. In the Bible, Jesus criticized certain people for tithing on things they had grown, like herbs, while forgetting things that were more important. I had not noticed that Jesus approved of the business with the herbs. He said something like, “this, you should have done.” Look it up. All I have ever noticed was the part about ignoring the weightier things. So it seems to me that it would be a good thing if I could give away some of the stuff I grow. I have given some away to the only person I know who can use it, but I am probably pulling 20 limes and a dozen key limes every week, and it piles up. I’m thinking of suggesting my church set aside a place where people can bring excess produce.

I also have enough rosemary to stuff a couch. And oregano. And thyme. And I don’t even want to talk about peppers. My banana trees are threatening to bury me in fruit over the next few months. You can only eat so many bananas without going insane.

I have to do something with the prig ki nu peppers I picked. I think I’m going to go to the store and buy a gallon of white vinegar. I have read that it prevents mold, unlike the lime juice I used to soak peppers in. Maybe I can get away with putting peppers in the fridge in vinegar and salt.

The dragonfruit is trying again. The fruit keep falling off. I hope this latest bud amounts to something. It might help if I took a shotgun and blasted the weedeater out of the yard guy’s hands.

I have papayas coming out of my ears, but they just don’t taste good. I should let the Salvadorans clean off the trees the next time they cut the grass.

Man, I miss the mangoes.

I’m off.

More

I had two bags of prig ki nu peppers. I had separated the red from the green. I just hit the grocery and brought back a jug of vinegar. I mixed it with salt, and I stuck the peppers in separate squeeze bottles and added the salted vinegar, plus some garlic. I didn’t have enough red peppers to fill a bottle, so I went outside for ten minutes and picked 0.0001% of the peppers on the prig ki nu bush. Now I have plenty.

I have a ton of Tobago seasoning peppers and habanero golds that are going to go to waste if I don’t do something, so I’m going to freeze a bunch of them.

Now all I have to remember is that I can’t put my hand anywhere near my eyes for two weeks.

Saddam Hussein was an Amateur

I decided to try to reform my pepper plants, so I went out with some Velcro tape and a pair of scissors, and I tried to prop up the Trinidad Scorpion and the prig ki nu. I met with limited success.

The Trinidad Scorpion is relatively narrow. When I got out there it was maybe four feet wide at the widest point. It narrowed on the way down, so I was able to throw some Velcro around it, tie it to the trellis, and snug it up so it was off the ground. But it was still obscuring the Tobago Seasoning Pepper beside it, so I had to cut off some limbs. Man, it feels strange, pruning a crop as if it were a tree.

I moved on to the prig ki nu, which is maybe six feet tall and five feet wide. I tried to lift it and tie Velcro around it, but it was hopeless. That bush must weigh seventy pounds. I had to cut off a big section that protruded through the trellis and over the patio, and I had to extract a bunch of branches that went through the chain link fence and menaced the Persian lime. Finally, I got a mooring line that used to be on my dad’s boat. I looped it under the bush, took it back around a fence post, and pulled. The plant lifted up, and I tied the rope.

This thing is not a bush any more. It’s a small tree. It has wood in it. I don’t think they’re supposed to do this.

When I was done I had several branches that I had removed or accidentally knocked off, and I didn’t want to waste the peppers. Now I have three fourths of a cup of green Thai peppers and half a cup of ripe red ones. I don’t know what to do with them. I’d love to put them in vinegar in a squeeze bottle. Like sport peppers. But the last time I did that, they got moldy. I don’t know why the ones in the store don’t do that. Maybe they’re boiled and treated with preservatives. Maybe I’ll freeze the silly things.

I must have three or four thousand Thai peppers out there. And the Tobago Seasoning Peppers are going nuts. I should go out and grab them and do something with them. And the habanero golds are in the same state.

Chili at my place! Bring your asbestos pants!

Bad Seeds

I just mailed some pepper seeds to Dan from Madison. I emailed him and told him to try not to touch them unless he had to. Yesterday, I used a cutting board to seed two peppers so I could dry the seeds for mailing. Later on, I felt a sharp, burning pain in my finger, and I couldn’t find any injury. I think I grazed the cutting board when I put it away. The pain lasted for hours. I’m pretty sure it was the Trinidad Scorpion. Suddenly I understand the name. It was like a really nasty insect sting.

The other day Jim from SOTW informed me that his dad had had heart surgery. I should have posted a prayer request. Don’t know where my brain was. I’m posting it now. Says he has two stents, but no heart damage. Still has lung issues. Sorry, Jim.

I’m trying to get all serious about the “good steward” business. The limes and Key limes keep piling up, and I have been giving them away and throwing them out. Finally, I decided to freeze the juice. I cranked out half a cup of key lime juice and one and a quarter cups of Persian lime juice, and I divided the Persian lime juice into two portions, and I put everything in vacuum bags. Now I’m freezing them before I suck the air out and seal them.

I better go out and cut down a hand of bananas so they’ll ripen and I can get a start on eating the bunch.

My dragonfruit has a flower on it, but it doesn’t look like the fruit part is going to make it. I can’t wait until that thing starts bearing. It would help if the Salvadorans would stop attacking it with the weedeater.

I propped the limbs of my ponkan tree up with stakes because the fruit are overwhelming it. The tree is healthy but very scrawny, and it is determined to bear lots of fruit. It looks kind of stupid right now, but I know the limbs won’t tear off.

I have to prop up the pepper bushes before they rot. I guess I’ll tie them to the trellis they grow next to. They grew too big for their own good.

This is much better than the days when everything rotted and blew away.

WTB: Hazmat Suit

Just got an update from Heather, RE her mom’s cancer:

Overwhelmed by Fruit

I am getting mixed results with the gardening.

With the increased rain, the peppers are thriving. My prig ki nu bush is nearly as big as my lime tree. I am going to have to prune it back before it kills the tree and the pepper bush next to it. The Trinidad Scorpion bush is so big it fell over. I am going to have to tie it up. I have a number of pods on my Fatalii bush. My only weak bush is the yellow habanero.

I have two bunches of Orinoco bananas going, with several big trees nearly ready to fruit. I’m going to try to manage them better, cutting off hands instead of bunches. As soon as you cut a bunch down, the bananas get ripe, and then you have a problem.

My nam wa bananas are finally nearing bearing size. I expect a bract any day now. The PHIA 21 plantains are growing well, but not as fast. The French Horn plantain is in third place, and unlike the other trees, it only has one pup.

The bigger of the two Carrie mangoes is getting huge. For a while, it had new pinkish leaves on it nearly every morning. The smaller tree is healthy but it’s about a third of the big one’s size. I am hoping for a decent harvest this time. I’m pretty sure the demented mango-cutting squirrel that terrorized the neighborhood has been called home to paradise.

My ponkans are fantastic. This little Home Depot tree looks wonderful, apart from a small spider mite problem I can’t get rid of, and it has so many fruit on it, I can’t see how it remains upright. My Sunburst tangerine has never recovered from the weedeater attacks, but it’s getting better all the time. The tangelo tree is healthier than it used to be, but I should still replace it. My cara cara tree looks swell, but it dropped its fruit. Maybe next year. The grapefruit tree looks great, but the fruit are small, so far.

My dragonfruit has two new buds. I am hoping the weedeater maniacs will manage not to gouge it again, so the fruit won’t fall off.

The lime and Key lime trees are out of control. Every day I harvest one to six limes and at least two Key limes. I have maybe three dozen fruit slowly drying up in the kitchen. I am literally throwing them out. Sometimes I try to leave them on the tree longer than I should, and they start to rot and have to be dumped.

The mamey is completely dead. Never buy a tree that doesn’t look happy at the nursery. The lychee is healthy, but I didn’t get fruit this year.

I keep seeing funny little green lizards wrapped around my fruit, waiting for bees or something. I should photograph a few.

I may as well dig up the mamey and replace it. What a gyp that was. I might plant black congo and yellow congo peppers, since they’re rare, and I happen to have seeds. I should kill the peppers I have in pots. The maintenance is too high, and they grow fine in the dirt.

I think I’m going to have to learn to love bananas, starting this fall. I sure hope so. It would be great to have a steady supply of fruit better than the stuff they sell at the store.

Fiber is my Middle Name

There is a lizard in the kitchen.

Yesterday I harvested a bunch of Orinoco bananas from the yard. I cut the stem and left the bunch outside. Banana trees are full of sap similar to latex, and I knew it would drip out of the cut and turn into glue wherever it landed. This morning I brought the bunch in and cut the hands off on the kitchen counter.

While I was cutting, I thought I saw something shoot out of the bunch and into a cluster of canisters. Big roach? I dismissed it. Probably my imagination.

As I cut, I saw movement under the bunch. I lifted it, and there on the counter I saw a lizard tail, squirming and jumping. But no lizard. Gross. I figured I had cut the lizard up with the knife, and that the rest of it would eventually fall out of the bunch. I eventually realized the lizard was not in the bunch. He must have been the mysterious moving object. I probably trapped his tail under the bananas, pulling it loose.

So now he is in the kitchen somewhere, grousing about having to grow a new tail. His old one is in the garbage disposal.

I actually got a few mangoes this year, and boy are they good. The best mangoes imaginable. It’s almost like eating ice cream.

I will never understand why people raise the big round bland varieties, like Hadens and Tommy Atkins. My trees are Carries. Infinitely superior. The mangoes never turn red; maybe that makes them less appealing to growers. The best varieties are green and yellow, but they don’t catch they eye in a produce aisle.

Last year the squirrels cut all the mangoes off, without exception, and the possums ate them. Green. We still have squirrels and possums, but the mangoes have been spared. And it looks like I’m going to have a good first-year crop of ponkans, which are loose-skinned tangerines. What a relief. I was starting to wonder if I would ever get fruit other than Persian and key limes.

I also have a big pepper crop, including a lot of Trinidad Scorpions. How many of my neighbors have those? Very few, I’ll wager. They would combine well with mangoes. And my dragonfruit cactus has several tiny fruit on it. Those things are fantastic. What kiwis would be, if they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. When they mature, they should be about the size of a navel orange.

The tool news is good. I finally have everything I need to do basic machining. Or at least it’s on the way. I went with a Parlec vise instead of a Kurt D675. The price difference is small, but the design has some improvements, including a bigger screw, a wider opening, and more clamping pressure. Machinists speak highly of them, so I don’t think it’s much of a gamble. The manufacture is Taiwanese, and the design is American.

A new Kurt is a little over $400. People said I should buy a used one, but the prices are insane. You can get one for $200, if you don’t mind holes and worn jaws and missing paint. That’s just stupid. If a product sells new for $400, a good used example should be $150, and a risky piece of junk like the ones on Ebay should cost $75. Some used tools tend to be very reasonable; I got a beautiful Jacobs Super Chuck for $50, and you can get a nice Albrecht for twice that. But used Kurt vises are generally a ripoff.

I bought fly cutters, a small set of import end mills, the chuck, an arbor for the chuck, collets, parallels, 1-2-3 blocks, edge-finding stuff, a 1/8″ corner-rounding mill, a roughing mill, some blanks for the fly cutters, a clamping set, and a few other doodads. A lot of this stuff was dirt cheap. The vise is what killed me.

I emailed the mill dealer and asked if I should go for the optional work light, but he said they’re overpriced and not as good as a light with a magnetic base.

I drove myself crazy yesterday trying to find good deals. I keep feeling guilty for buying a mill. But I know that’s stupid. It will have no effect on my financial future, and it’s something I’ve dreamed about for decades.

I have to finish insulating the garage today. Then maybe I can try to grind some turning tools. It looks like I should get a few new tool holders for the Phase II tool post. Otherwise I’ll have to switch tools all the time, which will be a pain. The post came with five tool holders, and two (the 201 and 202 holders) look exactly the same. It would be nice to have a few extras, but right now, I am equipped to use the lathe. I even have Ridgid oil for the mill.

I forgot to buy V-blocks. Guess I will put them on the list with the tool holders.

I was an idiot to buy that old lathe. If I ever get a chance to replace it, I’m going Taiwanese. Unless it surprises me and turns out to be a jewel.

The mill should arrive next week, I guess. That means moving the compressor and running 30 feet of conduit over the garage rafters. Fun. A compressor is a hard thing to move because it rests on little feet a good distance apart. You can’t shove pipes under it and push. I have a Genie Lift, but it’s not really right for a compressor. I may have to give up and scoot the compressor on the concrete.

I have an idea for a writing project. I was thinking I might write a bunch of essays explaining why I’m a Christian. I am not a bona fide teacher or leader. The Bible describes qualifications for clergymen, and it’s not me. Established married men, with good habits and so on. But anyone can give a testimony. Something to think about.

Better get in the garage and get the insulating over with.

Did I Just Feel a Sprinkle?

Am I the only person who has noticed these two inconsistent facts? 1. Since taking office, Barack Obama has consistently made stupid and obvious mistakes with regard to both major and minor issues, and one thing he has done may turn out to have catastrophic results. 2. Obama worshipers are more convinced than ever that he is The One.

Odd.

I thought I would expand a little on yesterday’s post about the real estate deal. Without bogging down in details, it goes like this. I inherited an interest in a little piece of commercial property. Some relatives with shares in the land need money; some don’t. Some really like to sell property; some don’t. There have always been conflicts regarding the disposition of pieces of property we own in common. There has never been any possibility that we would keep all the land and manage it and profit from it; it’s not even worth discussing. It would clearly be the intelligent thing to do, but you can’t herd cats.

When talk of selling this piece started, I was disturbed. It generates a little income. It’s in a great location. It’s in a place where flat land is rare and valuable, so it’ s not like there are a lot of properties like it. And I was concerned about the motivations and judgment of family members who wanted to get rid of it.

Nonetheless, I think the US is headed for a depression or deep recession, followed by a permanently lowered standard of living. We have never had the problems we face today. We have never had hungry, capable competitors like China and India, with their own vast internal markets and an endless supply of cheap, well-educated, grateful, eager labor. There is no reason why we should continue to lead the world economically. And we have aborted millions of babies, and we are getting into all sorts of disgusting religions, and we are proud and downright gross, and we are helping cut up Israel, so unless the Bible is nonsense, we should expect serious economic problems.

So while I like the idea of holding onto good land, I think unemployment is going to shoot up, businesses are going to close, commercial properties are going to be vacant, and we may continue to experience deflation. It’s hard to say, because the Fed needs to print money to cover the insane Bush/Obama Incompetence and Laziness Encouragement Plan. On the whole, however, I think cash is going to be a great thing to have over the next few years, and it’s probably a good time to sell commercial real estate, unless you have it leased to someone solvent.

There was disagreement about how to handle the sale. I thought it would be smart to divide the property. There are no comparable sales to speak of in the area where the property lies, so you can inflate the price of a piece of land by selling one part at a high price and then using the high price as leverage when you negotiate the prices of remaining pieces. But no one else in the family thought this was a good idea. They wanted to sell, period.

I was afraid that if I pushed my viewpoint, I would cause such conflict that relationships would be damaged. As a Christian, I realized this would be wrong. When you are confronted with obstinance and bad thinking, you may have to give way and trust God to fix it. For example, say your daughter wasn’t elected captain of the cheerleading squad, and the girl who got the position is a fat skeeze with no talent, not that you are judgmental or envious. You can’t firebomb the other girl’s house. You have to accept what happened and attack with prayer and faith.

So I restrained myself and did not push. I was afraid the other partners would jump at a crummy offer, just to get the cash, but I resolved to trust God rather than get in their faces. And I reminded myself that I might be wrong, and they might be right.

Well, the negotiations have taken place. We wanted X as a minimum price for the whole thing. The buyers can’t pay X. But they can pay a nice sum for part of the land, and they want an option on the rest, and if they buy it all, we’ll get about 1.6X. That’s just crazy. The most logical expectation was a miserable offer for the whole package. But the buyers are happy, and we’re happy, and unless there is some catch I don’t know about, I’m all for the deal.

So look what appears to be happening. I managed to control myself, and in the end, aren’t we getting the result I wanted in the first place?

Here’s another thing. One thing I prayed for was that my interest would be separated from everyone else’s. Why? For the same reason I would not date a non-Christian. Because partnering with people who don’t believe is a bad idea. They lead you into acts that are contrary to God’s will. They interfere with your blessings. So a sale is a good thing, because it separates my money, so I will be free to dispose of it as I see fit. I don’t have to worry about my relatives voting to rent the property to a whorehouse or something.

We’ll see if it works out. I’m assuming I understand the facts correctly.

Incidentally, some people think my gloomy assessment of the future of our country is unjustified. Some guy linked to my blog, called me “asshat,” and suggested I move to China. And his intelligent argument for the continued prosperity of America was the well-known title of a song made famous in a South Park movie featuring puppets. It’s always good to hear an opposing view which is clearly based on logic.

Some people think I’m unpatriotic for pointing out that God may be judging our nation, and that we may well be on our way to Second World status. They think pumping their fists and yelling “USA! USA!” will somehow put us back on top. But that’s exactly the attitude that put our economy in the toilet. When people said UAW workers were paid too much, and that the auto industry would fail, the autoworkers said, “USA! USA!” Now they’re saying “SOS! SOS!” and “OMG! OMG!” And soon they’ll be saying these things at the welfare office. The handouts are not going to save them. When your rowboat has a hole in it the size of a basketball, you don’t bail. You take it out of the water and patch the hole. The Big Three still have all the problems they had before two of them chose to become charity recipients, and they will continue to fail. Why would anyone expect them to succeed?

It’s just like Pajamas Media. I said it was a stupid idea, and people said I was a jerk, and they said I was too dumb to appreciate the genius of the PJs, and they quit talking to me, and they quit linking to my blog. Then PJM failed, exactly as I and the other non-sheep predicted, and Roger Simon sent all the member bloggers an email telling them they were off what he later described as “the dole”! Yes, yes, I was the enemy of conservatism. I was “the evil in the periphery”; that’s the funniest thing I was called. But who was right? Me or the cheerleaders?

Anyway, to get back to the economy…let’s get it through our heads. We didn’t become rich and powerful because we’re the master race. We are not better than foreigners. If we were, they wouldn’t come here penniless, out-compete us, and end up owning our businesses. There is nothing special about Americans. Absolutely nothing. Our educational system is second-rate. We are not the world’s hardest workers. The Bell Curve guys claim Asians are smarter than we are. We only did well because God helped us, and when he stops, we will stop doing well. That’s not unpatriotic. It’s truth. And once again, as it was in the PJ story, people like me are not the problem, any more than spots on an X-ray are the problem when you have cancer. Touch up the spots; the problem remains.

In the Bible, there were prophets who always said Israel and Judah were going to prosper. The kings and the people did all sorts of horrible things, and then the true prophets told them they were in deep trouble. So they called on the false prophets–the “patriots”–and the false prophets beat up the real prophets and said everything was going to be fine. It was after an episode like this that the king of Babylon took the king of Judah captive, murdered his sons while he watched, had him held down while his eyes were gouged out, and took him and a bunch of other Jews to Babylon in chains.

I’ll bet there were Jews listening to the false prophets, pumping their fists and yelling “JU-DAH! JU-DAH!”

As for moving to China, I don’t think it will be necessary. China is coming here. About half of it is in my garage. And I’m typing on some of it right now, while I read the words on yet another piece of it.

I wrote that without checking, and then I turned over my keyboard and looked. Sure enough: “Made in China.”

While I’m walking down this path, I’ll mention one other thing. A commenter scolded me for thinking the success of my gardening efforts was connected to my behavior as a Christian. I can’t figure that out. Open a Bible. See what it says about people who behave. Your crops will do well. Grapes, wheat, corn, whatever. “Running over.” “Abundance.” “Plenty.” It’s not figurative language, either. Not exclusively. It really does refer to things you plant. And you can look at Joel or Numbers 28 to see what happens to the things you plant, when you aren’t living right.

I bring this up because I checked on my yard today. For a long time, I could not get anywhere with fruit, and it didn’t seem to matter what I did to help things grow. Today I was shocked by what I saw. A ponkan tree which I thought I had wiped out sprouted blossoms unexpectedly, and I’m going to have tangerines. My older tangerine tree, which I nearly killed, has little fruit on it. My key limes are sprouting blossoms which I did not foresee. My cara cara has so many tiny fruit on it, I’m afraid I’ll have to cut a bunch off to keep them from killing it. My lychee is covered in blossoms. Even my pathetic tangelo tree is getting ready to bear. And get this: I found fruit on a MALE papaya tree. Is that even possible? I think my tree is gay. The other trees have produced one papaya after another, and this one has just generated doomed blossoms, but now it has fruit on it. And I have all sorts of little Persian limes on the way. My sole surviving tomato plant has no blossoms, but suddenly it’s very healthy, which is a near-impossibility here.

My lantana bushes, which I bought because they reminded me of Israel, are exploding with flowers. Even the weakest one, which I was worried about. I think it’s going to do well from now on. And my mango trees are lush and healthy, and there are a lot of little mangoes on them.

I think when you say God doesn’t affect little things like this, in effect, you’re saying God doesn’t do anything at all, which is what most Christians really believe. But if God is God, he does things, right? Isn’t that common sense? I think people develop a weird, hands-off picture of God because it enables them to keep believing in him when their prayers consistently go unanswered. You pray and pray, and nothing happens, and you say, “That’s okay, because God is really more of a big-picture guy, and he’s very busy running the world. It’s only natural that he would have no interest in my problems.”

Whatever. When I pray, I want to see some action.

Incidentally, I would be interested in knowing whether I’m the only one who has the impression that a lot of Christians are getting interested in guns, tools, and growing things. It’s crazy, but I keep running into people who have these interests. I have to wonder if we’re being prepared for something. Maybe when times get really bad, it will be good to have a bunch of tools, plenty of firearms and ammunition, and food growing on your land.

Here’s something crazy: my grandfather left me a big heavy bag of silver. He was a judge, and there was a toll road through the counties he served, and when we went off silver coins, he used his clout to get the toll collectors to save silver for him, and he bought it. Very odd thing to do; he was not a big metals investor. And now here I am, with bad times probably on the way, sitting on a hefty pile of silver coins. Is there a reason for it?

That’s all for this morning. I have to buy some steel and some welding gas, and I have a bunch of ideas for mounting tools on roller carts. Time is wasting.

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Hocks and Greens Age Better Than Sophia Loren

It looks like I am going to have to spray my peppers and fruit trees with copper about once a week in order to keep them alive. The fungus down here is as persistent and unreasonable as Bush Derangement Syndrome. I applied copper today, as well as a foliar mineral spray for the citrus. I fertilized the fruit trees, too. Now I have to go buy iron.

What do you eat when you work like a farmer? Farm food, i.e. leftover ham hocks and cornbread! I nuked a hock and a pile of collards, and I followed up with the cornbread, and I buttered the bread, sliced the second half of yesterday’s tomato, added more Vidalia slices, and I was in business. Well, okay, I was in business after I also poured myself an Inca Kola.

Miami has to be the world epicenter of weird foreign soft drink importation.

The things that happen to ham hocks and greens after a day in the fridge are marvelous. All the flavors mingle and intensify. I didn’t even need Texas Pete when I ate the fat off the hock.

I guess I’ll be ready if it turns out a socialist President can’t revive our socialism-ravaged economy with more socialism. I can eat for three days on twenty bucks.

Can I Heat the Oil to Boiling First?

Every day contains the promise of an exciting discovery, especially when you are both ignorant and curious.

Here is my latest discovery: petroleum oil.

The county where I live is literally overwhelmed with plant plagues. We have scale insects, several types of thrips, several types of whiteflies, an incurable tomato virus, fusarium, phytophthora, a ficus blight, citrus canker, citrus greening, sooty mold, red algae, aphids, carpenter ants, termites, spider mites, rust mites, citrus mites, hornworms, grubs, and a bunch of other things I am too lazy to mention. And you can forget finding a poison that kills all the bugs or a spray that fixes the diseases. One bug hates this poison. Another bug hates that poison. Some poisons actually make the bugs worse by killing their enemies.

There are lots of organic remedies. Unfortunately, they are expensive and useless. They do absolutely nothing. Most of the time.

It turns out there is a safe remedy that may actually solve a lot of my problems. It’s called petroleum oil. Scott’s sells this stuff; it says “Volck oil” on the label. It’s some sort of highly refined petroleum derivative you spray on plants. It suffocates the bugs. It kills whiteflies, so that means it may be helpful in the fight against the diseases they bring. It kills mites. It kills aphids. I have to try this stuff. So that is my mission for the day. Oil the bugs.

Whoops. Dang. You’re not supposed to apply it on windy days, and today the wind is crazy. So I guess my mission is to buy Volck oil and wait for the wind to die.

Adventures in Food

On a whim, I bought myself a cherimoya. I think it may be ripe. It’s sort of soft. I am about to try to eat it.

Here is some troubling text I found on Wikipedia: “Similar in size to a grapefruit, it has large, glossy, dark seeds that are easily removed. The seeds are poisonous if crushed open and can be used as an insecticide.[4] One should also avoid eating the skin as it may cause paralysis from 4 to 5 hours.”

If I don’t blog for five hours, you’ll know what happened.

I have checked my banana tree, and I now have nine hands of bananas, with about 12 bananas each. I thought I would never be able to grow anything except peppers and limes. God’s way of telling me to be less caustic and sour? Dunno.

Wait, I also managed to grow another fruit. On the other hand, it’s grapefruit.

Dang.