Plus Ham Info

I am trying to avoid getting back into cooking, because the love of pleasure is a bad thing, and I have been gluttonous in the past. Nonetheless, I keep getting ideas whether I want them or not, and I’m glad I’ve developed a collection of my own recipes.

Today I decided to make a few biscuits. I was out of bread because of the trip, and I didn’t want to drive to McDonald’s for breakfast. I found a recipe I created a few years back, and I decided to try it.

The biscuits were very good. They’re certainly better than any homemade biscuits anyone else has made for me. I think they can be better, though. Let’s face it; McDonald’s and Chick-fil-A make really good biscuits, and the rest of us should be up to their standard. Here’s the recipe, as it stands after today:

INGREDIENTS

1 3/4 cups biscuit flour (not self-rising)
1/4 cup starch
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. sugar
4 tsp. baking powder (not soda)
3/4 cup buttermilk
2 tbsp. bacon grease
2 tbsp. butter

A little starch makes the biscuits less rubbery; biscuits shouldn’t feel like bread. The sugar isn’t there to make them sweet. It’s just enough to round out the flavor. Chick-fil-A uses a great deal of sugar in its biscuits. Too much.

The important thing is to burn and chill the butter. You can put it in the microwave in a Pyrex cup and burn it a little. You don’t need the junk that settles out. Combine 2 tablespoons of lightly burned butter with 2 tablespoons of bacon grease and chill it until it’s solid. Burning the butter a little gives it a lot of flavor. Bacon grease makes the biscuits flaky.

It’s a lot of trouble, but you have to ask yourself whether you want good biscuits or amazing biscuits.

You mix the dry ingredients and then cut the fat in until you have crumbs. Mix the buttermilk in, roll the biscuits out, and bake them at 450 for around 13 minutes.

The only thing I’m not thrilled about is the texture of the tops of the biscuits. I think I know what to do. McDonald’s brushes biscuits with melted butter. I think that’s the answer. I don’t know when I’ll make biscuits again, but when I do, this is what I’ll do.

My grandmother used to put a small amount of grease on top of her biscuits before baking. I’ve tried this, and the fat disappears into the biscuit. Sorry, Granny.

Baking at 450 seems to be important. I used to bake biscuits at 400, but it’s a mistake.

You may not need to use all of the buttermilk, because the actual amount of flour and starch you measure may vary. Truthfully, flour should always be weighed, not measured in cups. When you use a cup, you will get inconsistent results because the flour may be compacted to different degrees. You won’t know how much flour you’re getting. Weighing is the way to go. Use a gram scale. They’re cheap. I need to correct this recipe and turn the flour and buttermilk measurements into weights. It would also be helpful for the hard fat, because it’s not easy to get hard fat into a cup.

You can’t throw up your hands at grams and weighing, just because your great aunt measured everything with a coffee cup with a broken handle. Tradition is great, but being stupid is never a good thing. Your great aunt may also have used a stove heated by burning wood, and you don’t do that. I hope.

This recipe is a work in progress. I don’t know when I’ll be completely satisfied.

I’ve been Googling around, and it appears it’s possible to cure a country ham at home. You have to have a fridge where it can stay for a few months, but after that, the cure keeps it preserved, so you can hang it anywhere. I may try it, if I can get my grandmother’s recipe. There are two kinds of hams available commercially: expensive ones, and bad ones. The real thing at a decent price would be better.

She used to keep saltpeter in her kitchen, so I think that’s what she used instead of pink salt. We used to think she bought it to put in my grandfather’s food, but maybe that wasn’t the case.

Things are going very well today. I have already been used to help two people for God, and it’s not even 11 a.m. Can’t complain about that.

Yesterday a wonderful thing happened. I felt tempted to do something stupid, and God helped me. I was getting close to home on the drive south, and I kept feeling temptation. I used my supernatural tools, and it seemed like I wasn’t winning. Eventually, I spoke God’s help and victory to me, and I spoke his opposition to the people and spirits that were against me.

It was raining very hard when I approached the house. I turned into my driveway, and I pushed the button on the gate remote. Nothing happened. At the same time, I got a message from my phone, saying the power at the house was out. No power, no gate. There was no way I was getting out to climb the fence in the rain.

I reported the outage by phone, and when I checked, the online map only showed one tiny outage in the whole county.

After a while, a pickup showed up, and a man from the power company approached my car. He said he had looked at all the lines near my house, and he couldn’t see anything wrong. He said he was going to turn the power back on in a few minutes.

After another 10 minutes or so, my phone told me the power was on, and I went in. The temptation was gone, and I was fine.

This experience was neat in more than one way. First, it showed that God was really there. He came through for me, fast. Second, it showed that speaking things into existence works, when you do it in accordance with God’s will. It’s a very powerful thing. Third, God did everything for me. He was glorified. I would have failed without him.

This is the kind of Christianity I want. I don’t mind failing and having God take over and give me victory. It’s how things are supposed to be. We’re told to glorify Jesus all the time. That only makes sense if we’re glorifying him for things he does. He would not ask us to glorify him for things we do using willpower. It would be stealing.

When you say, “Glory to Jesus,” you’re really saying, “This is not my job. Jesus will have to do it, and he gets the credit.” Churches have taught us to be tough little soldiers who lift themselves by their own bootstraps, but that’s what the Jews who rejected Jesus taught. It’s pride, and God hates pride. The Bible says God will fight you if you’re proud.

I feel much closer to God today. I feel his reality more intensely, and it’s paying off.

I’m also much less stressed than I was while my dad was alive. Back then, I knew Christians were supposed to have peace, but I couldn’t hold onto it. I was in an unequal yoking I had chosen years before. I chose physics and law and my dad’s company over God, so I had to spend years being pulled out of that mess. I sleep better now. I don’t feel the worry I had to fight last month. I can’t tell you how great it is.

When you get into something God doesn’t want you to be part of, he may not deliver you quickly. You may get a sentence of many years. This is especially true when you marry or reproduce outside of God’s will. I’m lucky it was a parent who didn’t have long to live. What if I had a crazy wife with 40 more years left on her clock?

My dad was transformed at the end, and he became a wonderful father, but that amounted to about a month and a half. Before that, there was always tension.

A real Christian doesn’t get puffed up and tell everyone what he does for God and how “sold out” he is. A real Christian is like a 35-year-old man who lives by taking money from his mother’s purse. God gives us charity, not wages. We are the reason he was crucified. We haven’t earned anything good. If our work pays off, it’s only because God chose to allow it. Many people work hard and fail.

God taught me to say I’m “pleased,” not “proud.” After he taught me that, I thought of the baptism of Jesus. God spoke, and he didn’t say he was proud of Jesus. He said he was “well pleased.”

We have been taught to be self-reliant because our ancestors could not get God’s help and could not teach us how to get it, either.

I think worry will continue to wither.

I don’t know if I’ll go ahead with the ham project or not. Something to think about. I sent an email to a local grocery company to see if they sell uncured hams. If I follow through, I will write about it here.

I Begin Life on my Own

I made it back from Kentucky this afternoon. My dad’s viewing was on Friday, and he was buried on Saturday.

The first place where I had a meal outside of Florida was a Chick-fil-A in Georgia. I went to several Chick-fil-A’s on the trip. They treat customers so nicely, it made me feel better about everything. The first one I visited had fresh flowers on every table.

This, and not the food, is why Chick-fil-A dominates. People who hate Christianity will never understand that. Every employee is required to demonstrate an attitude based in Christianity.

The first place where I stayed was in Ooltewah, Tennessee. Very nice hotel, and very quiet. They had tourist brochures. I couldn’t resist taking one to read. Rock City. When I was a kid, and we drove to Kentucky or North Carolina, we passed endless mailboxes, barns, and outhouses bearing painted messages that read, “See Rock City.” My dad never stopped! I still wonder what I missed. He said it was a tourist trap. I forgive him, though.

I nearly took a side trip to another attraction, the Lost Sea, just to get a shirt. My dad actually let us see that one.

My caregiving experiences took over my life, and my blog reflects that. I don’t want to spend the next year as The Grief Blogger, trying to get sympathy from as many strangers as possible. Healthy people get over family deaths. They don’t milk them. I will try to keep that in mind as things wind down, but I still have a few things to say.

While my dad was going through his astonishing transformation, I routinely prayed for God to help him bear whatever fruit he could during his remaining days. God has been faithful to answer. Even before I left Florida, two boys who heard my dad’s story decided they wanted me to baptize them. My friend Mike, the hospice exec, sent employees to read my blog. In Kentucky, God added two more people to the list of those affected: my aunt and my cousin.

I will call my aunt Thelma and my cousin Louise in order to have names for them.

Thelma has been through a lot. She divorced young, and the aftermath was unpleasant. She has had a lot of anger and trials. Louise has also had problems. Her dad died in 2017, and it appears that she inherited very little. She says her brother and stepbrothers got what would otherwise have come to her. Her health is not good, and she has a son who has a serious heart defect. Things are not going well for her financially, and she hasn’t had a good relationship with God.

My mother’s parents had 8 grandchildren, and for some reason, two of them–Louise and my cousin JD–got much less attention than the rest of us. It’s a mysterious thing. I don’t know if they felt unwanted, but it always seemed like no one wanted to fuss over them the way they did over the rest of us.

Thelma had a stroke not long ago. I didn’t know about it. The family was blown apart by my grandparents’ failure to do proper estate planning, and by the way some people behaved after my grandparents died (If anyone I know is reading this, no, I did not get any of the good stuff), so communication is not what it used to be. That’s as much my fault as anyone else’s. She doesn’t appear to have any lingering effects from the stroke, but Louise is looking after her anyway.

Louise feels that Thelma, who was responsible for bringing her up as a Christian, focused too much on God’s anger and the end times. It turned her off and discouraged her. On my first night in Kentucky, the three of us talked until it was very late, and I told both of them as much as I could of what I had learned about God.

Louise has been hurt a lot, but she doesn’t seem bitter at all. She is very open to establishing a relationship with God. Before I left Kentucky, she let me pray for her, and we asked God to give her faith and show her he was real. I believe that was night before last. The seed was planted. Now I’m waiting to see what sprouts.

It’s a real privilege to be used to help someone in my family. Most of them won’t want my help (or anyone else’s) in the area of religion. For some reason, my relatives seem to think I’m stupid, even though I’m the most highly educated person in the family. I admit, I’m eccentric, but so are almost all of them. If my grandparents or any of their daughters had had a child that wasn’t eccentric, they probably would have taken it back to the hospital, fearing it had been switched.

You know what Jesus said. “A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.” I’m not saying I’m a prophet; I’m just citing a principal that applies to all people, in every area of life. We tend to dishonor capable people who are close to us. Oddly, we tend to honor outright fools instead.

The viewing was strange, but I thought it was great.

Including myself and the funeral director and his wife, there were 11 people. One cousin couldn’t make it because his boss wouldn’t turn him loose. One lives in Illinois and may have been busy; I haven’t heard from him, but he sent some nice flowers. My sister didn’t respond to my efforts to communicate with her. One aunt didn’t go because she was having blinds installed, and her husband stayed with her. I think everyone else is dead.

My understanding is that people from the town where my mother was born–the town where my dad was to be buried–had a gabfest about my dad’s death on Facebook, so I was afraid there might be more people than I could handle, but that didn’t pan out. I have deleted my dad’s Facebook account, so I don’t know what has been happening.

There was no church funeral. I was very tired, and I had no help, so I kept things simple. Thelma and Louise would have helped round up musicians and so on, but I figured very few people would come, and I didn’t want to put the burden on them. I decided to have a viewing and then say a few words at the grave.

I got some photos printed at Walgreen’s before I left. One showed my dad at the assisted living facility, eating brownies I made for him. The other was a photo of the life jacket God used to try to get his attention. I put these photos up beside my dad’s Amazon urn, and I hung the life jacket on a rack meant for flowers. I knew it was an eccentric thing to do, but I didn’t care. It was my show. I felt like the little red hen, eating her bread by herself.

The photos looked very good. Walgreen’s had some nice frames for $12.99 each, but they screwed up when I went to get my photos, and I had to wait a long time, so an employee gave them to me for $10.00 apiece. I intend to keep them, even though I bought them in a hurry.

I told everyone about the life jacket miracles, and I told them how God had changed my dad toward the end. I gave them as much of his testimony as I thought they would tolerate. I’m satisfied. It was a precious opportunity to share important knowledge. I suppose most of the people I talked to won’t be changed, but a few may. I’m not responsible for the way people take the things I say, but I do have an obligation to say them.

Beside the grave, I reminded everyone that God is very real, and that he is there for everyone. I tried to make them understand how important it was to get to know him. I probably offered to help; I don’t recall. I would say the whole thing lasted 6 or 7 minutes.

There were two attendees I didn’t expect to see. They’re my second cousins. One was a judge, and the other works for the courts. I’ll call them George and Ruth. Their mother was a remarkable lady. It seemed like there was nothing she couldn’t do. My grandfather was a circuit judge, and she was his right arm for years. He would have been lost without her. My mother and father took her with them on a trip to Europe, along with my Aunt Jean. I suppose their branch of the family was the closest to ours.

They couldn’t have been nicer to me, not that I should have been surprised. That’s the kind of people they are. I expected my dad’s passing to be ignored by nearly everyone, but my cousins brought food for everyone, and I’ll tell you something else they did. It may be a private matter, but I don’t care. George gave me a card, and inside the card was a check for $100.00 for burial expenses. I couldn’t believe it. I do not need the money, and I didn’t even know, or send anything, when his mother died.

I got to talk to George about God before I left. We were all sitting in the kitchen at the funeral home, eating the food he and Ruth had brought, and I tried to give him as much information as I could in a short time. I learned that he hadn’t been taught a lot about God, so I tried to steer him away from some traps. I have been praying for him. I hope for the best.

I have learned some disappointing things about other members of my family. Apparently, they worked against George when he ran for re-election. After all his mother did for my grandfather, that was disgraceful. I had heard something about it in the past, but because of my familiarity with the rumor mill and its reliability, I hadn’t been convinced, but since then I have heard more. Now I know the stories are true, and so, I suppose, does everyone in three counties.

It was magnanimous of Ruth and George to even show up this weekend, but to treat us as well as they did, well, that’s going above and beyond. They didn’t say, “Your family hurt us, but we’re here anyway.” They didn’t bring the election up.

They had a sister named Debbie. Her life ended very poorly. When she was young, she was pretty and charming, and as far as I knew, everyone loved her. Later on, she married a selfish man, and he took her daughter away when they divorced. After that, her mental state declined, and she was diagnosed with schizophrenia. She was never able to get it together, and she eventually died from lung cancer.

I always felt bad for her, and although I didn’t say much at the time, I prayed for her. I thought she was a wonderful person, and life was very cruel to her.

I should have been more involved with my relatives when I was young. I was too introverted. Also, because I grew up with so much abuse, I had a natural tendency to feel that people weren’t interested in hearing from me. I didn’t think they hated me; just that I was not someone they thought about or missed. I had the feeling that if I had called them, they would have wondered why I was doing it.

Ruth invited me to the family reunion that’s coming on Labor Day, and I might actually go. My sister stole a bunch of family photos when my grandmother died, and I have been too lazy to sort and scan them and see if I should turn any of them over to other people. I thought that if I took them to a reunion, people might be able to figure out who was in the photos and where they were taken. I can do some of that myself, but some photos are mysteries to me.

Every time I get away from that town, I feel like my family and heritage are lost to me forever, so I quit thinking about them, but when I go back for funerals, it all comes back to life.

I gave Ruth my email address. She says she’s going to make me a copy of the family cookbook. I didn’t know it existed. I thought those recipes were gone forever.

Aunt Thelma claims she has my grandmother’s recipe for country ham. I sincerely hope she does, because no one could cure a ham like my grandmother and my great Uncle Charlie.

We all talked about Eastern Kentucky and its shortcomings. The simple truth is that it’s not a good place to live because too many of the people are backward. The area is crippled by intense racial prejudice, sexual sin, a deteriorating work ethic, and a perverse love of ignorance and drunkenness. I was surprised to hear Ruth agree with my assessment. She says she advises her grown children to make lives for themselves somewhere else.

I have an aunt who defends the area, but the obvious truth is that Eastern Kentucky is like a Christmas tree with very few lights working. When my mother was a kid, the region was so backward the rest of America sent missionaries there, and for decades, bright people have been moving elsewhere. The endless flight of the best minds has taken a heavy toll.

Regarding the brain drain, Harry Caudill, author of the book Night Comes to the Cumberlands, said everyone who had any get-up-and-go got up and went. I don’t know how original that thought was, but he was correct. My second cousin Byrd was a circuit judge, and he bemoaned his loneliness as an educated person. He said, “Just once, I’d like to use a three-syllable word.”

I heard an interesting story about bigotry while I was there. My grandfather died in the 1990’s, and a black woman showed up at his funeral. In the town where he died, this was a startling event. She was an attorney. She worked in Breathitt County, which was part of his circuit. Breathitt is a very dark place.

She said my grandfather had helped her with her career when she showed up in town. This is why she came to pay her respects. It must have been very scary for her to live in that area by herself, so I suppose she was touched when anyone reached out to her.

Some time after that, someone burned her house down. I assume she got the message and moved on.

I don’t think my grandfather was terribly advanced when it came to race relations, but he wasn’t an idiot.

There are smart people in Eastern Kentucky, and there are good Christians there. The problem is that they are few and their influence is small.

After the burial, I drove around with Thelma and Louise. We went by a 120-acre farm my family sold after my grandparents died. But for the dark cloud over the area, I wish I could buy it back and live there. It’s remote, and the back portion of it drops off in sheer cliffs overlooking the Red River Gorge. I can afford to buy it, but it won’t work. Not unless I can get used to hearing the N-word and dealing with people who don’t want to grow up. I have so many black friends, and I have two black godchildren…how would people treat me after they started visiting?

Here is the gate to the farm.

Here is a view of the farm in the distance. The grey barn is on the property. The barn to the left is not. My grandfather dropped a cow on me in that grey barn. Long story.

Right now, I live in the South. My nearest neighbors are from Alabama. Backward, right? No. The husband is a math major. The wife is in some medical field or other. Wonderful Christians. Kind people. You don’t have to be a fool to be from the South, and being from the South is no excuse.

On the way back, I took a couple of detours into Tennessee. I found myself driving through the Smokies. It was wonderful. It was so much like the Gorge. Mountain laurel everywhere. A babbling creek with pools and rapids. Trees I could actually identify. Here, as wonderful as the area is, everything is either a trash oak or a palm tree.

Most of the time, I was in a national park, but I wonder if there are similar areas where I can buy land. I wonder what the people are like. I’m told they’re not too trashy. Tennessee has its bad areas, but I don’t think it has ever been as disappointing as Eastern Kentucky. As you drive from Eastern Tennessee into Kentucky, everything starts to look less shabby and unkempt. It’s as if an invisible hand had shown up and shoved the buildings to make them stand straighter.

I’m too tired to write any more. I drove 500 miles today, which is 5/6 of my personal limit. I’ll get back to this tomorrow, in all likelihood. There isn’t that much more to tell.

I never got to see Rock City, if that’s what you’re hoping. I still have time, though.

World’s Best Dad, Eating the World’s Best Brownies

Love of Food Still Suppressed

I don’t know if my spam filters are deleting legitimate comments. It’s hard to tell, because I don’t see the same things readers do. When I want to find out what’s happening, I have to log out and make comments. The system seems to be working. If it’s killing your comments, you can email me and let me know.

I’m blogging today about my baptism experience. I went to Clearwater to have my water baptism redone correctly, and it produced clear results. The problem with receiving supernatural help from God, though, is that it doesn’t always last. We are ignorant about things like miracles, healings, and deliverance, so we aren’t good about holding onto the changes God makes in us. People get healed and then relapse. Addicts get delivered and then fall back into addiction. You have to be careful not to be too quick to assume you have a lasting result.

On the day of the baptism, before I even went to the tank, I got re-delivered from the love of food. It happened before lunch, and the baptism took place later in the afternoon. My eating habits changed. I felt as though an inner voice was rising up in me to counter the drive to obtain and consume food and drink.

As of today, it’s still working. In fact, I have something interesting to report: I seem to be in danger of eating too little.

Yesterday I had breakfast and lunch, and I figured I was pretty well set for the day. Later on, though, I started to feel like lunch had not been big enough. I felt like my blood sugar was on the low side. It seemed that I needed to eat something more. I had a nearly empty container of ice cream in the freezer, so I took it out and finished it off. After that, I was fine.

I’m very happy about it. A person who had to be reminded to eat is very blessed.

Skinny people love to call fat people undisciplined, but the truth is that nearly all of them weigh less because they don’t like food as much. We all know skinny people who are irresponsible and weak. If people like that really liked food, they would be as big as houses.

Think of all the thin celebrity drug addicts and alcoholics. Here are a few: Jimi Hendrix, Amy Winehouse, Robert Downey, Whitney Houston, Keith Richards, Jim Carrey, Shia Laboeuf, James Taylor, and Jackson Browne. Not models of self-control. If these people had loved food, they would have been morbidly obese.

We know of drug addicts who also became obese. Think of David Crosby, Robin Williams, John Belushi, Jim Morrison, Oprah Winfrey, James Gandolfini, Chris Farley, Elvis Presley, and Artie Lange. John Belushi used to go to restaurants and order entire fried chickens, somewhat like his character in The Blues Brothers.

Many people simply don’t care that much for food. It’s a great thing. It’s completely positive. It doesn’t lead to starvation, because even though they don’t care much for food, their bodies drive them to take in what they need. It just keeps them healthier, more fit, and better-looking than the rest of us.

I love the idea of not loving food. It will bring me a lot of things I want. Who doesn’t want their clothes to fit better? Who doesn’t want to avoid having two sets of clothing: the fat clothes and the “real” clothes? Who doesn’t want to be able to go up a set of stairs without breathing hard afterward?

I’ve never been huge, but I don’t want to be fat at all.

Here’s something interesting: the Bible is very hard on lovers of pleasure. Take a look at this:

But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away!

Paul criticized lovers of pleasures in the same sentence with blasphemers. Wow.

The kind of pleasure he is talking about is the selfish pleasure of the flesh, not pleasures like the good feeling you get from being in God’s presence or doing good.

Let’s check the Greek.

It comes from the same root as “hedonism,” and here is what Strong’s says about the pleasure involved: “pleasure, a pleasure, especially sensuous pleasure; a strong desire, passion.”

It’s not what you feel after a good prayer session or a miraculous healing.

These days, I find that I sometimes try not to cook as well as I can. I’ll be working on a dish, and I’ll think it’s important to get the very best ingredient or use the best method, and then I’ll correct myself. Food doesn’t have to be sublime. Good is sufficient. Why should I make food that intoxicates me? I don’t need that, and it usually takes more work. I don’t need to be my own drug pusher. The food I make is so good, I may be able to overcome my deliverance if I tempt myself too much.

All the things I’m writing apply to temptations like sex, covetousness, and provocation to anger, too. In modern America, we yield to temptation as a matter of course, but we should be toning it down. You don’t need the best sex possible. You don’t need the nicest car made. You don’t need to be around people who provoke you; it’s not really necessary to have a Twitter account.

Food isn’t the only thing I resist better now.

So far, the baptism seems to have been a big success. Our ignorance about baptism may explain why Christians are so much like other people. We divorce just as much. We look at porn. Many of us are as fat as pigs; we even follow obese preachers who are clearly controlled by their flesh. The Bible says we’re not supposed to be slaves to sin, and it wouldn’t say that if God hadn’t given us the tools to get free.

In order to stay free from an addiction, I believe you have to refrain from tempting yourself with occasional plunges into self-indulgence. I believe you also have to go easy on other people with the same problem, because if you’re self-righteous about it, God may let you fall back into your old habit.

I’m about two and a half weeks into it. I can’t tell you where I’ll be a year from now. I feel very hopeful.

The outfit that baptized me is called The Last Reformation, and I found them on Youtube. I had a habit of looking up street healers and watching their videos. Here’s something strange: I found a number of healers before I found TLR, and now I’m seeing Youtube comments that indicate that they know the TLR people. Some of them have attended TLR events, and some are just friends of TLR veterans.

I think God is knitting people together outside of churches, just as I have been predicting for years. I believe God told me it would happen.

I will never join TLR. I’ve said that before. I’m all done following men and movements. I won’t join a church, either. I know TLR will eventually fall into corruption unless Jesus comes soon, and I’m sure they’re not correct about everything. I don’t want to be part of the mess if they fall. Nonetheless, they seem to be part of a very solid quasi-denomination that has arisen without much human planning.

Once you put a name on a movement and name officials, things start to go south. I suppose it defines a target for Satan and gives him a choke point to attack. It’s normal, and it should be expected. It has never failed. I don’t want to be permanently identified with anything that is likely to fail, but TLR does very good work for the time being.

I will keep reporting on my status. If you want help with your own compulsions, consider getting yourself baptized properly.

Healer’s Wife has the Claws Out for Him

The other day I wrote about the problems women cause when they do inappropriate things to get attention in church. It was a revelation to me, so I shared it. I mentioned it to two friends, and they agreed wholeheartedly; they took the topic and ran. I touched a nerve.

Today I was watching a healing video in which evangelist John Mellor healed a man who had been injured in an industrial accident. The healing was wonderful, but the video was marred by a female voice. A woman who could not be seen kept yapping at Mellor and the other men at the front of the church. She gave orders they didn’t need to hear. She interrupted. When the man got healed, she made Mellor put the man’s wife on stage, and of course, that took the attention off the healing and put it on another woman.

She was very rude.

It looks like the stage mother was Mellor’s wife. She had an Australian accent (he’s Australian), and she called him by his first name. I could be wrong, though, because she acted like she was his mom.

It was really something. There were five men at the front of the church, and I doubt any of them were under 60. They didn’t need a woman to tell them what to do. It doesn’t take a Ph.D. to run a healing.

At one point, she squawked, “You’re ruining the testimony!” Can you imagine trying to preach with someone like that humiliating you in front of the church?

Unbelievable.

Instead of stepping aside and putting her in her place, Mellor obeyed a lot of her orders. He skipped around like a poodle taking orders from a trainer in a carnival act. “Sit up!” “Do a somersault!” As soon as he turned to move one way, she yapped, and he turned and went another way.

It was very ugly to watch. He seemed completely intimidated. At times he seemed to resist her in a passive-aggressive way, while smiling and joking to simulate the retention of dignity.

I can’t respect him while he allows this to go on. What a poor example he is setting. It would be off-putting to see an unbelieving couple act this way, but it’s worse when they’re Christians teaching other people.

The Holy Spirit speaks to husbands, and husbands are supposed to pass the information on to wives and children. This is the system God has ordained. There is no other. There has never been a women’s liberation movement in heaven. When families get out of order, it causes problems.

It’s very hard to be a father and husband. You are held responsible for everything. If your family lacks, no one will hold your wife responsible, even if it’s because she lost her job. You will be blamed for being a bad provider. If your wife and kids are out of control, everyone will blame you, but if you’re out of control…everyone will blame YOU. You have to make hard decisions, and if your family rebels, you have to fight them as well as the difficulties the decisions present.

Imagine what would have happened had Paul been married to a dominating harpy.

“The Holy Spirit says we have to go to Ephesus.”

“Well, your precious friend the Holy Spirit will just have to settle for Tarsus. There are plenty of people he can save right here. I just made it into the ladies’ auxiliary, and if the Holy Spirit thinks I’m pulling up and starting over in Ephesus, he has another thing coming!”

The other day I saw a preacher talking about hard decisions he had made. He and his wife bought a house and started fixing it up, and they got into debt, which meant he had become a slave to the house. He had to keep his job and stay where he was, in order to pay bills. He felt God wanted him to be free, so they sold the house and moved into an apartment in an undesirable neighborhood. After a while, God told him to move to another town, when he and his wife had no money to make the move. Imagine what he would have gone through, with a woman who wanted to pull in another direction. He would still be in the house, helping her put up pink wallpaper.

Things can be even worse when a wife gets jealous and decides the Holy Spirit is giving orders through her instead of the husband. That’s not how God works. He won’t give you a system and then tell you to corrupt it. He won’t tell you to do something and then tell your wife to tell him to do something else. On the other hand, he MAY tell you to tell your wife to shut up.

God cursed the human race with female rebellion in Genesis 3. He told Adam his wife would desire to rule him. Look it up. It’s not a blessing.

Christians are supposed to form what is called “the body of Christ” or “the bride of Christ.” We are supposed to submit to God as a wife submits to a husband. When a man marries a spoiled hellcat, he finds out how we make God feel every day. We insist that God help us with our own bad plans.

While I was at the TLR event in Dunedin, Torben Sondergaard criticized what he called “the American gospel.” It says this: “God will help you do whatever you choose to do with your life.” Do you want to be a famous singer? God will make it happen. Do you want to be a rich businessman? God will make it happen. Torben reminded us that this is not what the Bible teaches. We are supposed to give up our plans and let God decide what we do.

Pushing God to actualize your dumb plans is manipulation, and God can’t be manipulated. He hates it. It’s like witchcraft.

Christianity is what happens after God wrecks your precious plans.

I’ve seen a terrible problem among Christians. I know people who married the wrong individuals and then turned to God and received the Holy Spirit. Because they were already chained to people who did not listen to God, they suffered a lot.

The world made them suffer, and their spouses made them suffer.

Their spouses made them suffer more than the world did.

What a curse. God told me it’s more important to get the wrong people out of your life than to put the right people in it, and how right he was. I always say cancer is better than marrying the wrong woman, and I have never had reason to backpedal. Cancer kills in a few years. A poisonous spouse does it over half a century, and he or she will also hurt your kids and grandchildren.

Cancer can only kill you once. A nasty wife will kill you 20 times a day.

Here is what Proverbs 21:9 says:

Better to dwell in a corner of a housetop, than in a house shared with a contentious woman.

Here’s Proverbs 25:24:

It is better to dwell in a corner of a housetop, than in a house shared with a contentious woman.

Yes, they’re virtually identical. God felt it was so important, he had to tell us twice.

I wouldn’t trade places with John Mellor for all the money in the world. I don’t care what his wife looks like. I don’t care how much she does for him (service and fawning can be the most powerful forms of control). The world supplies plenty of humiliation and emasculation; I don’t need a wife who will do her best to supplement it.

Speaking of burdens, I have decided I don’t like Christmas any more. I loved it when I was a kid, when other people did all the work and paid all the bills, but I’m fed up with it now. Yes, I said it. The whole holiday needs to be remodeled.

I like doing things for friends and relatives. I like having meals with them. I like buying them things. I do not like doing it all on command, as part of a secular lemming flash mob.

I’m having friends over for dinner tonight, and I look forward to it, but I’m only making four things: rib roast, potatoes, Caesar salad, and Texas trash. You can’t enjoy getting together with people if you’re working like a galley slave.

My feeling is that Christmas works best when you keep the materialism very subdued and you don’t stuff yourself. A lot of people are going to wake up on December 26 several pounds fatter and a few thousand dollars deeper in debt. That’s not merry at all. I’m pretty sure I’m spending less than three hundred dollars on gifts, I don’t plan to jam myself full of food, and I refuse to have cookies and cakes lying around all week. They’re fine to have around while we’re celebrating; after that, they go in the trash.

Christmas is like a bridezilla wedding. We get all worked up over it, trying to make it perfect. We act like it’s the greatest thing that ever happened to us. Then the day after Christmas comes, and BANG, it’s over. Life is just like it used to be, except you have a big mess to clean up.

Jesus is insignificant at Christmas. We barely mention him. I gave someone a gift card from Amazon, and I tried to find a “religious” card. They had ONE religious card. On CHRISTMAS. It was a ridiculous nativity scene with some text that seemed to come from a bored intern at Hallmark. The rest of the cards…snowmen and candy canes.

Thank goodness all those snowmen went to the peppermint cross for us.

Let’s see…Jesus allowed himself to be tortured to death so we could be healed of our diseases, freed from stress, saved from hell, and taken to heaven. Isn’t that more important than a new video game box?
We act like saying “Jesus” is the same thing as dancing and singing in blackface. He’s God! He’s the only God there is! Who cares if his name bothers people? They’re not in charge of the universe. They’re a bunch of deluded mortals we were left here to teach.

I think we pump holidays up in order to comfort ourselves because of the emptiness we feel the rest of the year. If you serve God, you should have ample opportunities to share love all year round.

You know a holiday has gotten out of hand when you look forward to getting it over with.

My roast has been in the oven since 8:30, and now I have to clean up the house and feed my dad. I hope he likes his gifts, and I hope we have no caregiver catastrophes to spoil the day. I expect this to be his last Christmas or birthday at home, so I would like things to go smoothly.

You Need an Edge

Since I spent a grand on being re-baptized (or baptized for the first time, if the original effort doesn’t count), I feel I should follow up here and write about what has happened since.

Before I got baptized, I hoped demons would leave me during the process, ridding me of compulsions and unwanted thoughts. I’m not saying I have institution-grade compulsions or that I hear voices, but like everyone reading this post, I have had drives I could not control, and I have had thoughts I didn’t like.

If you don’t think you have compulsions, ask yourself two questions. 1. Am I fat? 2. Do I want to be fat? If the answers are “yes” and “no,” you have a compulsion. Do you smoke? Do you bite your nails? Do you snap at people even though you try not to? If you look at yourself honestly, you will find your compulsions.

If you don’t find them, then you have a problem with lying.

I know a woman who brought a lot of ridicule on herself by saying, “I don’t have any bad habits.” Everyone who heard it knew how absurd it was, and they were still talking about it years later, laughing at her. You may have denied your bad habits. You may not have been perceptive enough to see your bad habits. You have still had them. I don’t care who you are.

You don’t have to be a serial killer, a junkie, or an anorexic to have bad habits. If your bad habits haven’t ruined your life, it just means you’re high-functioning.

When I was in the tank, I felt things moving around in me, but then I’m a charismatic Christian who prays in tongues for hours every day, so that was normal for me. I feel supernatural things all the time. While they were baptizing me, I couldn’t say I felt an abrupt change. I didn’t see goblins fly off through the air. I didn’t scream or start tossing the people who were helping me.

Honestly, it would have been neat had things like that happened. I’m like everyone else. I love a good supernatural experience.

As I have written previously, I did not feel good at all after the baptism. I felt oppressed, and I had a nightmare later. I woke up many times during the night. I still felt that I had done the right thing, and I knew that unpleasant experiences did not always add up to error. I knew Satan was petty, and I knew he liked to torment people who got breakthroughs, hoping to convince them nothing had changed.

Think about boxers. Sometimes when a boxer lands a nice-looking shot, his opponent will shake his head, trying to say it didn’t hurt. Like my dad once told me, that’s just a way of saying, “You hurt me.” It’s a bluff. Satan is the same way. When you score a goal, he may deny it in hopes you lose faith and give up the progress you’ve made.

I didn’t get an instantaneous improvement from baptism, but I hoped things would improve in the days that followed. That’s exactly what has happened.

I got delivered from the love of food in 2009, and for a long time, I didn’t eat much, and I lost weight. Then I screwed it up by going to an all-you-can-eat rib place, and since then, it has been on and off. The day I was baptized, I found I wanted to avoid food. This happened at lunch, which was before the baptism. I can’t explain that.

I have been very good since then, and it hasn’t taken much effort. Mainly, I have to remember how important it is to hold onto this. I have to value it. I can’t let myself sink into thoughts of cooking and good food. Sooner or later, something bad would happen. If I don’t appreciate what I have, I will lose it again.

I’m also much less angry, and I want to stay away from anger. I was looking forward to watching The Equalizer 2, which is basically an orgy of cruel revenge. I don’t want to go near it now. I don’t want to hear about other people’s suffering. Morbid curiosity, which is actually vicarious cruelty, is leaving me.

I am less worried than I was before. I woke up last night and started worrying about some things, but I shut it off quickly and went back to sleep.

I’m doing better with responsibility than I was last week. I’m very glad of that, because the weight of dealing with my dad has driven me to escape responsibility a lot, and it has caused problems. Much of the anxiety we feel in life is the consequence of letting responsibilities go.

When I think about the difference between being ruled by iniquity–by unhealthy, carnal compulsions–and being ruled by the Holy Spirit, I think about casinos. To run a successful casino, you don’t need to rig the games so people always lose. All you need is a slight edge which is permanent. People think casinos are honest, but that depends on what “honest” means to you. They will tell you the truth about the odds, but the games are all set up so they aren’t quite fair, and this is legal, because it would be impossible to run a casino that didn’t win more often than its customers.

A tiny advantage in the odds of a game adds up to millions over time. The Internet says casinos only have a 52-56% chance of winning at blackjack, for example, but blackjack makes them a great deal of money.

To overcome iniquity and avoid sin, you don’t need to be completely free from carnal desires. You just need to be a little bit less inclined to sin than to do the right thing. Without the Holy Spirit, when temptation comes, you will fight until something tips you over the edge, just barely, and then you sin. When the Holy Spirit helps you, you may get close to the edge, but you don’t go over. That’s good enough. It describes what is happening to me now, most of the time.

Is what is happening to me real? Yes. I can tell you that for a fact. I don’t have the willpower to control myself without help from God. If I did, I would not concern myself so much with things like baptism and casting out demons.

You can’t manufacture willpower. Sometimes people develop it suddenly in response to traumatic experiences. A person who has an extremely unpleasant experience after doing something stupid may be able to give it up afterward out of fear, but an average person can’t choose to become self-disciplined and do it without help. Even if there were a program to help you do it, you would need willpower to make the program work.

Is what is happening to me permanent? I don’t know the answer, since I haven’t lived my whole life yet.

If what is happening to me is related to baptism, why did it start at lunch, before I was baptized? I don’t know. Maybe a spirit that was compelling me saw that it was about to be put out of business, and it gave up. I don’t think demons always wait until they’re cast out to react. A demoniac approached Jesus, yelling and so on, because the demons were upset by Jesus’ presence, and Jesus had not yet done anything to them.

Is there anything disappointing about my post-baptism life? Yes. I want to be free of compulsions and spirits, but I know God wants to give us more than freedom. He wants to fill us with love and peace. I don’t have that yet. Sometimes God’s love flows through me for a while, but it’s not constant. I hope I get there, because the presence of love inside a person is like a healing medicine and a vaccine. It doesn’t just make you nice; it repairs you and protects you. Besides, it’s very pleasant. Much more pleasant than anger and resentment, which go hand-in-hand with fear and worry, not to mention illness.

God himself is love, so if I don’t have love flowing through me all the time, I must not have the full presence of God.

Day after tomorrow, I have to cook Christmas Eve dinner. It’s a concern, because I cook amazing food which is hard to turn down. I’m being conservative. I’m making a rib roast, potatoes, and Caesar salad with anchovies and homemade croutons. My friend Amanda is bringing a dessert; I don’t even care what it is, because I want to avoid pushing for perfection. When I suggested she bring dessert, I didn’t try to think of the best-tasting choice possible.

In addition to this simple meal, I might conceivably make Texas trash. That’s all. I thought about making cheesecake, but my cheesecake is the best I have ever had, and I think I would be pushing my luck. I don’t need that level of temptation.

Today I went to the store, and rib roasts were on sale for $4.99 per pound. Is that God blessing me or Satan tempting me?

I bought a big one and cut it off the bones. I salted it heavily, put it back together, and wrapped it in a clean towel. Tomorrow I’ll coat it with garlic butter. The garlic will sink in while it sits in the fridge. Should be great.

Breakfast today and yesterday: two slices of buttered toast and decaf. Today at lunch, I had tuna salad on a baguette, with water. Later I ate some grape tomatoes. I kept feeling I needed to stay away from the Coke and Powerade.

I don’t know what will happen in the future. I’m not going to claim baptism has changed my life permanently, until I have some evidence that this is the case. I’m just telling you what’s going on right now. If it all falls apart, I will say so.

Rethinking Holiday Gorging

I’m sitting here with Marv while he enjoys his time out of the cage. I’ve been watching Youtube, looking for videos that will be helpful in my efforts to be sanctified and corrected.

I started looking at a Derek Prince video about laziness, but since I am currently caught up in a holiday which has become a celebration of overeating, and because I am not completely happy about it, I changed my mind and started looking for material on gluttony.

I got completely delivered from gluttony in 2009. Then one day I went to Sonny’s Barbecue with my friend Mike, and we had the all-you-can-eat ribs. It seems like ever since then, the victory has been tempered.

Before my deliverance, I used to stuff myself routinely. It’s pretty unusual for me to do that now, but I do eat more than I should. When I moved to this farm, I worked outside a lot, and I lost weight no matter what I ate. Then the work slowed down, and I was in the habit of eating more than I had before, so I picked up some pounds.

I have been thinking about my strange talent for cooking, and I have been considering its negative effects. I can cook a lot of things I really enjoy eating, and that presents a problem. Because I have a long list of recipes, I can always cook something I haven’t had in a long time and tell myself it’s okay to eat it because it’s a rare treat. That might be okay if you can only cook 4 things, but when you can cook dozens, you can have a rare treat several times a week. Every dish is “special.”

I thought about that, and then I asked myself what I’m trying to do when I eat something “special.” There had to be a root iniquity that paved the way for gluttony. I realized I was trying to reward myself. “I worked all day with the chainsaw and tractor, so now it’s okay to have a pint of ice cream.” “I spent 5 hours dealing with a mess my dad made, so now it’s okay to have a big bowl of pasta.”

Why would I do that? Why would I feel like I needed a reward? The answer is self-pity. I allow myself to overeat sometimes because I’ve convinced myself I’m a victim. I feel that I’m owed.

I don’t think of myself as a self-pitying person. When I have a problem, I don’t ask God why it hit such a wonderful person. I assume I’m doing something wrong. I ask for correction. I try to attack the problem. I don’t like self-pity. Nonetheless, it looks like I have it. I may have a flavor that’s different from the ones I recognize, but it’s still self-pity.

Here’s another strange question I asked myself: I can’t do anything sinful to reward myself…so what do I do? Other people get drunk or high on Saturday night. They indulge in sexual sin. They gluttonize. I can’t think of anything I can do, as a Christian.

I don’t know if people are supposed to be able to reward themselves, but we do. Tonight I’m thinking about that, so it’s only natural that I would wonder if there are any rewards I can give myself.

I can turn off the phone and read a good book. I can go for a walk in the woods. I can watch a movie I like. Those things aren’t all that rewarding, though. Not like a pint of ice cream, a line of coke, or a night of fornication. No one ever says, “I’m going to go crazy and spoil myself tonight with a nice walk.”

This is really weird. Maybe we’re not supposed to give ourselves rewards. If not, what are we supposed to do when we’re tired or upset? Do we just take the hit and walk it off? Maybe that’s the actual answer.

It’s not a pleasant prospect. I don’t want to go through life sucking it up and enduring. It would be sort of like going through life holding your breath. Eventually you want to exhale.

Unpleasant things happen to us all the time. Life on earth is like being outdoors in a hailstorm that never stops. You keep getting whacked. One would think God would occasionally provide pleasant experiences to counterbalance the whacks. Surely there must be something.

I’ll have to ask God for the answer. Whatever the situation is, I want to know and accept it.

When you’re a worldly person, you don’t expect to deprive your flesh all the time. You look for cheat days and so on. Christianity doesn’t work like that. You never get a free day to sin. There are no vacations.

I’m always glad to find out I have a character problem, because the information is an open door to freedom. Character problems cause failure and suffering, so when you find out you have a character problem, you suddenly have a way to improve your life. Fix your character, and you will definitely be freed from certain things.

I am not a victim. I like to say that to myself. It’s a little bit like taking a bad-tasting medicine, but it’s a good thing to say. It’s true. People and spirits have done terrible things to me, but that doesn’t mean I’m a victim. My sins and iniquities more than justify every bad thing that has happened. If I admit I’m part of the problem, I claim that in the past, I’ve changed my life for the worse. If I can change it for the worse, I can also make it better. God told me that when I deny an excuse, I take my power back.

I used to drive my sister crazy by saying, “You’re not a victim.” I was angry when I said it, so maybe I should have refrained. It made her furious. It enraged her to be told she wasn’t a victim. False victimhood was a treasure to her; she built her life around it. She truly loved it. She used it as justification to treat people horribly, and she didn’t want it taken away.

I don’t get furious when I say it to myself, but it’s sobering.

When I was young, I was sure I was a victim. I was raised in a house of hatred and abuse. All sorts of misfortune came to me, for no apparent reason. People mistreated me. Maybe I had a point when I was very young, but once I became an adult, I should have knocked off the victim nonsense and taken responsibility.

Interesting stuff.

I really don’t want to stuff myself on holidays any more, and I hate the effort of cooking elaborate meals. Maybe I’ll blow off Christmas dinner entirely. I’m souring on the whole concept of feasts.

What kind of holiday is it if you have to eat yourself sick in order to feel like you celebrated?

Cooking Hints of Dubious Value

Another Thanksgiving dinner is behind me. I learned some things.

For the first time, I did exactly what I wanted to do, instead of making the cranberry sauce and gross oyster dressing my dad used to insist on. It was the right idea. The food was phenomenal, and he didn’t complain once.

When you listen to other people, your food will generally suffer badly. My big talent is not the ability to cook anything you throw at me and make it taste good; it’s the ability to write recipes. People who can’t cook have no idea how that works. It means this: if you ask me to cook for you, don’t tell me what to do, and don’t ask me to change my recipes. There is absolutely no point in letting me cook if you’re going to add your really bad ideas. You can cook your own bad food without my help. If I listen to you, you’ll moan about how bad the food is, and then you’ll tell people I can’t cook.

“Oh, can you use margarine instead of butter? Oh, have you tried turkey instead of pork?”

No; I can’t. If you want Weight Watchers food, go buy it in a Weight Watchers box like everyone else.

I made a pizza for a vegan friend once. It’s surprising she was willing to eat the cheese, since some poor cow’s teats had to suffer multiple microaggressions in the name of capitalism. I bought the plastic sausage my friend requested. It tasted like formaldehyde. And I am not using the word “formaldehyde” in order to be funny. That’s really what it tasted like.

Thank God she was used to the taste, so she didn’t run around afterward telling everyone my pizza tasted like formaldehyde.

I’ll tell you how most people approach cooking. They decide they want to cook something. They open a book or go to the web and pick a recipe. They assume the recipe is good without really knowing. They cook. They feel like their work is done. Most people have no palate, so they don’t know whether their food is good or not. They figure it must be good if they followed a recipe.

That’s not how a good cook does things. A good cook always creates his own recipes. He may start with someone else’s recipe, but that’s just a way to get the project going. He will always make changes later. A good cook isn’t satisfied with a recipe until he, himself, is stunned by the result.

If you’ve put in the time creating a great recipe, and then someone who can’t cook asks you to take out the cream and use skim milk, the correct response is, “Let’s go to Burger King instead.” If you don’t want the recipe, you don’t want the cook, even if you don’t realize it.

This year, I learned fresh turkey is the way to go when you bone your birds. If you thaw a turkey, you’ll probably run into ice when you bone it, and that makes your hands numb and causes problems. I used a fresh turkey this time, and I had no difficulties.

I sewed up the bird with dental floss, and it worked fine, but I should have used dental tape. It’s easier to work with, and it seems to be easier to pull out when the bird is done.

It’s pretty hard to over-salt a turkey. I boned my turkey, opened it up, salted it hard on the inside and outside, and then applied a seasoning mix that contained salt. In all likelihood, it had already been injected with salt at the turkey factory or whatever. It was great. Most turkeys don’t get enough salt.

Seasoning a turkey is really simple. I crushed 9 beef bouillon cubes and mixed them with melted butter, sage, Korbel brut, salt, and pepper. I could also have added garlic, but I forgot. I made around 8 ounces of this stuff, and I slathered it on the inside of the bird before I sewed it up. When the bird was stuffed and ready to go in the oven, I covered the outside with the seasoning mix. When you use what I use, the turkey will taste exactly the way a classic roasted turkey should taste but usually does not.

The stuffing was magnificent. I made cornbread with bacon grease, and I used it as the foundation. I sauteed 4 Aidell’s andouille sausages in butter and stirred them in, along with the sage, butter, eggs, beef broth, Korbel, and so on. I thought my dad would blow a gasket because of the sausage chunks, but he threw it right down and said it was excellent.

The turkey was fantastic, but I think it would have been even better had I cooked it at 200 instead of 275. Low temperature cooking makes a turkey juicier. I like to pray in the morning, so I didn’t get the turkey in the oven until almost noon. I had to jack up the temperature a little in order to have dinner in the afternoon.

There is nothing unsafe about cooking a turkey at 200. As long as you get the stuffing up to 165 at the end, you’re fine. I turned the heat up to 400 when I was getting close, to brown the skin.

I think people worry about turkey germs too much. Have you ever known anyone to get sick from Thanksgiving dinner? I haven’t. The government (famous for making great food) used to tell people to bring turkey to 185. Ridiculous. That’s at least 20 degrees past done, and it turns the turkey into rubber.

The government says to cook beef to an internal temperature of 145. Come on! That ruins it. I go 120 and call it done.

I came up with a good way to get the right amount of potato jacket in your mashed potatoes without choking your potato ricer. I peeled stripes off the potatoes before I boiled them. The remaining skin wasn’t enough to bother the ricer. After every potato chunk went through, I knocked the peel off the perforated plate and into my potatoes. Very easy.

I think potato ricers are overrated. I’ve used mine for a number of years, and it’s not noticeably better than a masher. The potatoes look really fluffy when they come out of it, but then you have to stir butter, milk or cream, salt, pepper, and garlic into them. After that, the result is a lot like what a masher provides.

I’ve had very good mashed potatoes at expensive restaurants, and they never looked like they were prepared with a ricer. Maybe I should dump that thing.

The beans were intoxicating. I found big green beans at the store. I broke them and simmered them for several hours yesterday. I seasoned them with a smoked ham hock, salt, pepper, a tiny bit of sugar, and some butter. The hock meat fell apart into the beans. I left the beans in the fridge overnight to let the flavors mingle. Today they were superb.

To get any flavor out of green beans or greens, you have to boil them until the texture starts to give way. It would be nice if you could have firm beans AND flavor, but you can forget it, because it doesn’t happen. If you’ve always eaten your green beans firm, you have no idea how good beans can taste.

Yankees criticize southerners for boiling vegetables until they turn into mush. I think they get the idea that we can’t cook from going to restaurants in the south where the food is bad. If you go to a Morrison’s cafeteria (a southern chain), and the beans are mushy and flavorless, the problem is this: you went to Morrison’s, where nearly everything is bad. If you ever tried my beans, you would understand why I cook them for three hours.

My gravy came out really well this year. I made it a little thinner and browner this time. I saved grease from the bottom of the turkey pan so I can make more later.

I learned pecan pie tastes even better if you screw up and triple the vanilla. I also added a little sorghum, because I was afraid I had left too much Karo in the bottle. I wanted to make up the difference. The sorghum improved the flavor. I also added a little whiskey, as always. I usually use Jack Daniel’s, which is a poor drinking whiskey that makes an excellent seasoning. This year, I did something awful. I had a nearly empty Knob Creek bottle, and I used it. Knob Creek is very good whiskey. Maybe I shouldn’t have done it, but JD would have cost me $19, and who knows when I would have used it again.

I think things worked out well. My dad was happy, the workload was not too bad, and I got a decent meal.

I still have a lot of food. I plan to get rid of it no later than Saturday. I don’t want this stuff sitting around tempting me. Thanksgiving is over. Time to move on. I could have a debauched weekend of reheated turkey and stuffing with gravy. All of these things get better after a day in the fridge. I’m not going to do it. It’s a sick American tradition that needs to go.

It’s kind of sad, seeing food this good go to the dump. I have never had holiday food that comes anywhere close to what I can cook for myself. I don’t care. It has to go, go, GO.

Christmas will be a lean operation. Prime rib, potatoes, salad, and maybe cheesecake. Much easier than what I just did. Then I’ll throw the leftovers out again.

I rarely cook anything good these days. It’s no longer a hobby. I try to make things that are quick and reasonably healthy. Holiday foods are aberrations.

This may be my dad’s last Thanksgiving, so I’m glad he enjoyed it. A friend congratulated me on my dad’s “first” Thanksgiving, meaning his first since he asked God for salvation. That was nice, but I’m not sure my dad is saved at the moment.

I don’t know if he understood what he was doing when he asked for salvation. I’m not even sure why he agreed to do it. Since then, he has said things indicating he doesn’t really believe.

I don’t believe in the doctrine of “eternal security.” I just learned the proper name for it a few days ago. I used to believe it. It means you can never lose your salvation. I’ve seen all sorts of testimonies from Christians who believe they went to hell, and I read a convincing book by a lady who said she was taken to hell and saw Christians there. I think at least some of these people are telling the truth.

Some people will point to verses like, “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Here’s a problem:

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’

It certainly appears that Jesus was describing Christians who had called on him.

If calling on the Lord, all by itself, will bring salvation, why can’t renouncing God later, through words or actions, remove it?

Revelation 14 says people who renounce Jesus during the tribulation will go to hell. I don’t see why things should be any different now. I believe fear of hell is one of the main reasons the martyrs of the past were willing to be tortured and killed rather than repent.

Here’s what Revelation 14 says:

And the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever; and they have no rest day or night, who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name.

You have to be careful about focusing on one verse and forgetting the rest. Peter said this:

For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the latter end is worse for them than the beginning.

Did the disciples receive salvation when they believed in Jesus before he was crucified? Many would say yes, but if that’s true, what about Judas? The Bible describes him as “lost,” and he committed suicide in a place that symbolizes hell. It sure looks like he went to hell, but if he believed before he died, and he could not lose his salvation, what’s going on?

If my dad can’t lose his salvation, then I should never have bothered talking to him about God, because he went to Sunday school when he was a kid, before becoming an atheist. If calling on God in 1938 solved all of his problems, then I have been spinning my wheels over nothing.

I hope I’m mistaken, because it would mean most people I care about would be in heaven or on their way there, but I think salvation can be lost pretty easily.

Am I worried about my dad? No, because God keeps telling me he will be saved. My expectation has always been that my dad will give up for real when death looks him in the face. That can still happen. Maybe what happened in September, when he asked for salvation the last time, was just a rehearsal.

I want to get this right. My own salvation, I mean. I don’t want to die and find out I’m on the wrong path.

Tomorrow I plan to eat normal food again. I almost dread Christmas dinner. I do not understand why I have a talent for cooking, since it causes more trouble than it’s worth. Today I wondered if it might have come from Satan instead of God. Maybe when I cook, demons are telling me how much butter to use and which spice to add. I hope not.

Derek Prince cautioned people to avoid the martial arts, because they tend to be entangled with eastern religion. He said he cast demons out of a karate expert, and afterward, the man couldn’t do a kick he used to do. Supposedly, demons had been helping him kick.

Maybe the stories about Robert Johnson are true. Maybe you really can sell your soul to Satan in exchange for the ability to play the guitar.

I would hate to get in trouble with God just so I could make coconut flan.

Anyway, Thanksgiving is over. Now I can relax.

Icebergs Ahead

I am working on Thanksgiving dinner for two.

I have a great tip for anyone who drinks eggnog. I’m too lazy to make my own, so I buy the store stuff and doctor it if necessary. Adding more vanilla and nutmeg can help. That’s not the tip.

I have put several different spirits in eggnog. Bourbon. Brandy. Probably rum. This week I tried something new, and it turned out to be better than anything else I had tried. I had to pick up some Grand Marnier for my cranberry relish, and it was sitting on the counter while I poured myself an eggnog. The wheels turned.

It’s excellent. I filled a mug halfway, added Grand Marnier, and filled it the rest of the way. I dusted the top with nutmeg. I can’t recommend it highly enough. My guess is that an XO brandy would be even better, but to spend $200 per bottle for something you put in eggnog is to meddle with the primal forces of nature.

Grand Marnier is one of those things that doesn’t fit in just everywhere. You certainly wouldn’t want to drink it straight. It’s good for things like injecting orange sections or strawberries you intend to dip in chocolate. It’s also an ingredient of crepes Suzette. Now I know of one more use for it.

I hope the relish comes out good, because I had a little incident with the pecan pies. I misread the list on the Karo bottle, and I put in three times as much vanilla as I was supposed to. I have a feeling it will be better this way, but I’m still kicking myself [Note: it was wonderful.].

In other news, I called my dad’s doctor today and said I wanted information about hospice evaluations. I also called a hospice that was recommended. My friend Mike is a hospice exec, and he told me I needed to get on this now, before things really get crazy. He kept pushing me to do it. I think he’s used to hearing about people who were in denial and kept putting it off. That’s not me. Half of my family is dead, and I accept death as part of life, so I don’t shy away from death-related responsibilities.

When you get old and need a lot of assistance, you eventually become eligible for hospice care. They have a bunch of criteria. Can you walk? Can you communicate? They look you over and make a decision. If you fail, you get hospice care, and Medicare pays for it. That’s the test I’m trying to get for my dad.

I have always thought of hospice care as something you receive in a hospice, but there is more to it than that. You can receive hospice care in your own home. That’s what I’m shooting for right now. They’ll move equipment in and send people to help you bathe and so on.

Mike thinks my dad is ready. I’m not so sure. Some sources say you can get hospice care if there is a good possibility you will die during the next 6 months. Others say you get it if you’re expected to die during that time. My dad could die during the next 6 months. I have a feeling he will. But he could make it another 5 years, and no physician has flatly stated he is likely to go within 6 months.

I called the hospice Mike recommended, and they told me they wanted a referral from my dad’s doctor, so I left a message at the doctor’s office. Maybe we can get an appointment or phone consultation next week.

Mike says doctors hate to recommend hospice care. He says they hate to talk about death. I think that’s true. I don’t think any doctor ever told my mother she was terminal.

I don’t know why they won’t talk about death. I hate to think it’s because they make so much money on futile efforts to prolong life. Maybe they just don’t want to be involved in the discussion, because they don’t want responsibility. If that’s the case, they should man up. When you get a medical license, you agree to deal with every aspect of your job.

Maybe they don’t talk about death because they’re afraid of it, and they assume everyone else is, too. Solid Christians tend to have little fear of death. Most people scared and repelled by it. Most doctors aren’t solid Christians.

It would be nice to have people come every day and deal with my dad. He doesn’t have the kind of respect for me that he has for strangers, so they would be able to get a lot more done than I can.

His mobility is not what it was two months ago. At some point within the next three months or so, I expect him to start requiring so much help getting around, sitting, and standing, that we have to come up with a new solution. Will it be new devices? Assisted living? A move to a hospice? I don’t know. I know I can’t carry him around, and I’m not going to start helping him in the shower or on the toilet. That’s too much. You do those things if you live in India or Sudan, on ten dollars a month. Here, you look for professional help.

Some people seem to think changing a parent’s diapers or washing their private parts is a beautiful bonding experience. Not me. I think an ordeal like that is an insult from Satan. I’ve already seen way more than I want to.

My friend Amanda has offered to stay with him if I need to travel to Miami. Today I realized that’s off the table. He is starting to have problems that go beyond what you can allow a friend to deal with. The next time I travel, it will have to be Visiting Angels or some other business.

The more I think about it, the more I think physical illness is better than dementia.

When a relative dies from cancer, at least you can still interact with him. You can still have conversations. The patient can help you plan and react. He can understand what’s happening to him. He can grow. He can atone.

With dementia, it’s like half of the person has departed for good, and you’re left with the other half. It’s like the executives have left the building, and you get to talk to the janitors and the answering service. Once it really sets in, you can’t discuss the problem with him in any meaningful way. That’s especially true when the patient is a master of denial, like my dad. He sees a dementia diagnosis as a slander to be vigorously refuted.

If my dad had cancer, we could still talk. He could help me with his care. Spending time with him wouldn’t be work. I wouldn’t have to get away every day and be alone in order to get over dealing with him. At the end, we would be able to say important things to each other. Vascular dementia may leave him with the mind of an infant, so when he dies, he may not be able to communicate or understand at all. That’s how his sister went.

If I get any useful results from my hospice inquiries, I’ll write about it. Maybe I can help other people prepare better than I did.

Then Just Keep Running

Yesterday I went shopping for Thanksgiving food. I’m afraid I was not as thankful as I should have been.

When I was a kid, Thanksgiving was not my problem. My mother cooked everything, or we ate at my grandparents’ house, and that meant the cooking was divided up among a bunch of relatives. Now, it’s all me. Shopping. Cleaning up before the meal. Cooking. Running around frantically during the meal to make sure my dad doesn’t defile anything and ruin it for everyone else. Dishes. Cleaning up after the meal. It’s a drag.

I was reluctant to cook at all this year. I don’t know if my dad would care. By Friday, he will be thinking of other things. In the past, he has suggested going out for Thanksgiving, but that’s depressing. I feel like I have to do something here at the house.

I decided to cut the menu down. My dad likes oyster dressing, which I find disgusting. I don’t know how to make oyster dressing, so I make cornbread dressing and shove oysters into it. It’s probably wrong, but he eats it. I’m all done with it. It won’t hurt him to eat normal dressing like everyone else. I’m thinking of stuffing the turkey with cornbread stuffing containing chunks of sauteed andouille.

He can’t smell anything, and that means his sense of taste is very limited. He doesn’t really taste oysters. He will enjoy my stuffing as much as he would the nasty oyster mess. He just wants oysters because his mother used to use them. Some traditions are well worth killing.

No yams this year. I used to make a dish which was basically yams mashed up with pineapples, brown sugar and spices, topped with pecans fried in brown sugar and butter. Forget that. Takes too much time.

There will be no pumpkin pies. I don’t particularly care for pumpkin pie. I don’t think anyone really likes it. Try comparing it to apple, cherry, or peach pie, and you have to admit, it comes in second every time. I’m making two pecan pies, using crusts from the store. Good enough.

Pecan prices have gone nuts, to use an appropriate adjective. I paid $18 for my pecans. There must be a blight.

My dad insists on cranberry sauce, which is a very weak dish. It’s cranberries, sugar, and water. I’m all done with it. This year, it will be relish alone. Everyone gets relish, and they will danged well like it. I’m tired of making sauce AND relish.

I won’t make fruit salad (or any type of salad), and there will be no rolls. No snacks. No cookies. It will be turkey, beans, potatoes, cranberry relish, and pecan pie. I think I cut four hours of work out of my life.

I have learned to love small turkeys. The store was full of birds the size of toddlers, but I dug out a 12-pounder. I am going to bone it and stuff it. It’s a lot of work, but once you’ve had a boned turkey, all other turkeys are disgusting.

You know the big, dried-out turkey cadaver you end up with every year? You struggle to fit it on a platter, and then you try to cover it with foil, but people never put the foil back correctly, so everything turns into leather? You don’t get that with a boned turkey. You get a solid loaf of pure food you can slice and put in Tupperware. The bones go in the trash on Thursday, not Monday, or you can use them for gravy.

If you don’t know how big your turkey should be, you can find the information on the web. If the raw weight in pounds is 1.5 times the number of diners, you’re good. If you want a lot of leftovers, maybe you need to go bigger. I do not want leftovers. Sharing leftover food with a dementia patient is a bad experience. You go to the fridge hoping to make a turkey sandwich, and then you see that someone else has handled the meat with his fingers. That kind of thing happens.

My dad was never a great person to share leftovers with. He would eat the best stuff right away, and the more there was, the more he ate. No one else got very much. He’s an unusual person. I take him to restaurants for big lunches, and then when he gets home, he eats ice cream out of the carton.

I’ll be throwing out any remaining leftovers on Saturday. My dad hates that, but I hate dealing with the mess. Turkey bits on the counter. Cranberry sauce on the floor. As long as I’m the sole member of the cleaning crew, I make the rules. On Saturday, out it goes.

When I finally gritted my teeth and decided to cook, I invited my friend Amanda over. She has three sons and an elderly parent (not demented). Like me, she has no help whatsoever. None. Nada. I figured things would be easier on both of us if we teamed up. Also, if she wants, she can fill in with items I refuse to cook. I am hoping both of us will do a lot less work than we would have had to do with two separate operations.

My attitude toward the whole affair is not all that positive. I suppose I should think of Amanda’s sons. Thanksgiving was a big deal to me when I was a kid. Maybe if I think of this as a chance to help patch up their childhoods, I’ll feel more motivated. I should focus on that, because feeding my dad is not all that rewarding.

I don’t see the holiday as an opportunity to give thanks. I give thanks like crazy every day. I’m not sure jamming yourself full of food is a good way to express gratitude. I’m also unexcited about the idea of going somewhere and feeding the poor. If you’re only good to other people on holidays, I suppose working at a homeless shelter two days a year is better than nothing, but I want no part of it. I’m not sure how people who do it manage to put any food on their own tables. I expect to be cooking from 9 a.m. until at least 2 p.m., not including the things I’ll do tomorrow and Wednesday. There is no conceivable way I could produce edible food AND spend three hours virtue signaling and posting selfies of myself hugging the poor while trying not to get too dirty.

If you want to freak the poor out, go feed them two weeks after Thanksgiving, and stay all day. Or feed them in March, giving up a vacation day. That will make an impression. Much better than hopping out of your Range Rover and slapping instant mashed potatoes on trays for 45 minutes.

If I cook anything at all for Christmas, it will be rib roast, baked potatoes, and cheesecake. Maybe a Caesar salad. I would fix these things on Thursday if I could get away with it. The cheesecake takes a little effort, but the other things are as easy to prepare as toast. It’s also a much better meal than turkey and dressing.

It looks like the best strategy is to think of the kids. That gives me a little enthusiasm, or at least it makes me feel some obligation. My dad and Amanda’s mom–I think Amanda will forgive me–are not the sort of seniors who make you want to cook special stuff for them in order to thank them for being so wonderful.

Who knows? Maybe I’ll get amped up and cook yams.

No pumpkin pie. No way. I hate fads, and for the last couple of years, we’ve been seeing way too much “pumpkin spice.” Pumpkin spice cookies. Pumpkin spice cappuccino. Pumpkin spice pork rinds. Pumpkin spice Preparation H. No; someone must rage against the machine, and as Dean Vernon Wormer said, that foot is me.

Try that boned turkey. You don’t know what you’re missing.

Don’t Envy Your Heroes

It’s a very slow Independence Day here at The Compound. I could have invited people for barbecue, but I have no grill, nor do I desire one, and I no longer have the old drive to cook for others.

I don’t make a big deal of holidays any more. I used to spend Christmas with my mother’s family in Kentucky. A number of my relatives are dead now, and those that remain don’t seem very interested in maintaining contact. When they travel to Florida, they keep it quiet instead of arranging for visits.

I lost a lot of friends when I left my last two churches. I can’t say I lost friends, really. What happened is this: people who only pretended to be my friends got exposed.

The same thing happened when I started going back to church 10 years ago. My backsliding friends stopped calling me. I had one friend who still called once in a while, but he only called when he wanted something. He needed to use my tools. He wanted to fish on my dad’s boat. Is that a friend? Anyway, I stopped receiving invitations to his home. Christians make people uncomfortable.

He had issues. For one thing, he was envious. If you had things he didn’t have, he was likely to “accidentally” damage them when you let him use them, and he was not the kind of person who offered to fix what he broke.

He had a wonderful neighbor who cut his grass and lent him tools. He borrowed a new power saw and left it sitting in the rain, and when the neighbor complained, instead of apologizing, he said something like, “It still works.”

Dude. That’s why you don’t have anything.

He used to invite himself on fishing trips. He would arrive at the dock late, with a hangover. Very bad form. When we got out of the bay, he would go to sleep on the couch. If a fish hit a line, he would get up so he could reel it in, because that’s the fun part of fishing. If my dad had beer in the fridge, he would drink it.

When we came back in, he wouldn’t help the other guests clean up the boat. He would come with me to the cleaning table and snicker at them while they worked in the sun. When he did that, I decided he was never going to fish with us again. He probably has no idea what the problem was.

On one trip, he drank all of my dad’s beer. He was an alcoholic, so this wasn’t hard for him. Next time he fished with us, he proudly displayed a fresh 12-pack. Which he then drank by himself. He drank my dad’s beer, replaced it, and drank the replacement beer.

People always complained about him. He was burning bridges every day, but he could never smell the smoke. These days, I only think about him when I think about former friends who treated me badly.

If you want to find out how much people like you, stop cooking big meals for them, and stop inviting them to fish on your yacht. You’ll learn more than you want to.

I have never been the kind of person who keeps score. Ordinarily, I don’t sit around adding up the things my friends and I do for each other to see if they balance. It takes me a long time to realize someone is running a big tab. When I finally do the math, the results aren’t encouraging! I know a few people who treat me well, but I’ve known a whole lot of users.

I’m off on a tangent.

Over the years, I have gotten used to doing nothing on most holidays, and the habit of doing nothing is hard to break.

Let’s see.

New Year’s Eve is only for drunks. Martin Luther King Day is only for black people, it’s only celebrated in dangerous neighborhoods, and it’s a day of crime and intoxication. Valentine’s Day is an insulting sham, and I have no one to celebrate with anyway. St. Patrick’s Day is only for drunks. Memorial Day is a barbecue day, and unless I’m doing the barbecuing, I don’t get invitations. July 4 is a barbecue day. Labor Day is a barbecue day. Halloween is a celebration of evil, and it’s also a big day for drunks. Thanksgiving and Christmas are okay.

The Fourth of July will pass without much acknowledgement. I’m grateful for America, but I’m also grateful for not having to shop and cook for people who don’t spend a dime or lift a finger.

It’s more blessed to give than to receive, but I don’t want to be TOO blessed.

Happy Steve Independence Day.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Richard Feynman and Errol Flynn this week. That’s what I sat down to write about.

Richard Feynman was a Nobel-winning American physicist. He was recruited to work on the bomb before he even got his Ph.D. He was a character. He drank and slept around, and he belonged to a Brazilian samba band in Rio. He wrote several interesting autobiographical books. I read them about 25 years ago, while I was preparing to become a physicist.

My understanding is that his books have become more popular since I read them. They have new cover designs now. That’s always a clue that a book has taken off. People seem to revere him the way they revere Einstein. They seem to think he had the answers to life’s problems, and that he would be a good role model.

Einstein was a terrible husband and father. He was a naive socialist. He spent most of his career trying to disprove quantum mechanics. Letters that were uncovered recently suggest that he was a racist. He was not perfect. It’s unfortunate that people think physicists know about anything other than physics. They generally do not.

When I was young, I liked Feynman a lot. He was funny. He seemed humble and honest. When I look at his books now, I have a different feeling. That’s because I’m growing up.

Feynman slept with lots of women, including married women. He put in a lot of time making bad drawings of nudes. He enjoyed Brazilian culture, which is pretty depraved. I don’t think he was humble, either. He loved saying he wasn’t very smart, but his work is full of anecdotes about his extraordinary mathematical accomplishments. He plays them down, but he still presents them, and the obvious intention is to impress the reader.

I now see him as a selfish, dishonest, treacherous person who loved attention. I don’t admire anything about him except for his brain. I was stupid to think highly of him when I was young. I should have thought about the husbands he humiliated.

Feynman was an atheist. I think about that a lot. I sit and read his interesting stories, and sometimes I stop and try to imagine his current circumstances. He’s almost certainly in hell, being tortured. Whatever cockiness he had in life must be long gone.

Sometimes I think about him when I’m lying on my back, and I realize hell is below me somewhere, with Feynman in it. I’m reading his book for light entertainment, but somewhere behind me, on the other side of a thick wall of rock and so forth, he is still alive, crying out in anguish and despair. If he could scream loud enough, I would hear him every day.

I’m used to having Christian heroes and secular heroes. I think of my secular heroes differently now. How many are in hell? How many people are they dragging down with them through their poisonous examples?

The things my secular heroes accomplished are, in the final analysis, excrement. When we are judged, no one will care about discoveries in quantum mechanics. God will want to know who we helped. He will want to know who we introduced to him. What can a Feynman or an Einstein say in response to those questions? “I did exactly what I wanted to do, I made a great deal of money, and I did nearly nothing for other people.” That seems accurate.

As for Errol Flynn, he has been on Turner Classic Movies a lot lately. I never really knew who he was until I started watching TCM. I started reading about him.

Flynn was utterly depraved. He had sex with as many people as humanly possible, male and female. He built a mansion full of peepholes and one-way mirrors so he could watch his guests in their private moments. He was tried for statutory rape, and during the trial, he picked up a teenager who worked in the courthouse. He used to appear at the dinner table, where his mother was seated, fully naked. He exposed himself to strangers.

Flynn had no remorse whatsoever. He wrote an autobiography called My Wicked, Wicked Ways, which was published after he died. He celebrated his sins.

Flynn fell apart, physically. His body couldn’t withstand the burden of sin. He tried to join the military in World War Two, and he was turned down because of an enlarged heart and VD. He would have been about 32.

Flynn dropped dead at the age of 50. He simply quit functioning. The coroner said he had the body of a much older man. A doctor involved with the autopsy was so impressed with Flynn’s genital warts, he sliced them off in order to preserve them for posterity.

Errol Flynn was charismatic. When you watch his movies, he seems noble. He’s inspiring. He’s brave, funny, and self-effacing. It’s astounding how well he played a type which was nothing like the real Flynn.

I decided to buy his book. Curiosity overcame me. I had to see what went on in the mind of a man who had so little regard for others and so little fear of God. I haven’t received it yet.

I think of Flynn the way I think of Feynman. He must be in hell. How could he not be? He practically filed an application. One day he was a declining matinee idol leading a carefree, lecherous life. He was admired and pampered. The next day, he was in a flaming pit surrounded by demons. What must that be like? It’s one thing to die in the electric chair and wake up in hell, expecting the worst. It has to be considerably worse when one of earth’s pampered princes or princesses dies suddenly.

People don’t really die. Their bodies stop working, but human beings continue. Every person ever born is alive somewhere, and only those who accepted salvation or whose sins couldn’t be imputed to them are in heaven. The others are burning, with maggots chewing their bones, and they will never be free.

I have two aunts who are probably in hell. I have a high school friend who probably made it when he shot himself at 25. I have lots of acquaintances who are almost surely feeling the flames right now.

We’re very nonchalant about hell, here on the surface. Many of us choose not to believe, and the rest of us don’t like to think about it. Death will be a real eye-opener for all of us. We will wonder why we weren’t more concerned about damnation.

Feynman. Flynn. Anthony Bourdain. Hunter Thompson. Prince. Michael Jackson. Hugh Hefner. Stephen Hawking. John Lennon. Hell is packed with celebrities many of us envied and emulated. It probably contains a number of popes and televangelists.

These days, I have a new feeling when I watch old movies, and it isn’t good. Hollywood has always been a mess, and I know very well I’m looking at people who have been burning for decades.

I don’t know where I’m going with this. I’m very glad my values have changed, and I hope God continues to improve them. The world is full of fool’s gold, and most of us are diehard fools.

Maybe I’ll review the book when I read it. I don’t expect to have pleasant things to say.

Tree Rat Feast

I had to fry squirrels again today. I had 5 in the fridge, and they were taking up a lot of room. I had them soaking in water mixed with salt and baking soda. The soda was there to kill any gaminess. It works.

The first time I fried squirrels, I had problems. I used shallow oil in a big pan, and it was not that easy to get the meat to brown correctly because some bits liked to stick up out of the oil. Today I did what I should always do. I used deeper oil. I put maybe 1-1/4″ of cheap olive oil in a saucepan. This allowed me to submerge the meat.

I cut the squirrels up differently. I divided them into arms, legs, and torsos. I kept the ribs on the torsos. There isn’t a lot of meat on a squirrel ribcage, but there is enough to make it worth keeping.

I didn’t soak the meat in buttermilk. I didn’t have enough. I drained the brine off with a colander, and then I tossed the meat in a small amount of buttermilk and drained it again.

I used the following seasonings: salt, pepper, paprika, chipotle powder, and garlic powder. The ratio was about a tablespoon of each per cup of flour, except for the garlic and pepper. I guess I used half a teaspoon of each per cup of flour.

I put 3 cups of biscuit flour (no leavening) in a bag with the seasonings, and I shook it like crazy to mix it all up. As I was cooking, I would throw one batch of squirrel parts in the bag, shake it to coat them, and extract them with tongs. It worked well but made a mess.

I added a tablespoon or so of bacon grease to the olive oil, and I used cheap olive oil with virtually no flavor. I would never fry anything in extra virgin oil or any oil that tasted like olives. It’s the wrong oil for high heat.

I used a thermometer and tried to keep the frying temperature around 350 degrees. This is important because if frying oil gets too cold, breading falls off.

I made buttermilk biscuits. The shortening was half butter and half bacon grease. I added a little cream to the buttermilk, and I put a teaspoon or two of sugar in the flour just for kicks.

After the last batch of squirrel came out, I used some of the oil (plus more bacon grease) to make gravy. I used the seasoned flour from the squirrels. I also added sage, more salt, and more pepper.

How did it come out? It was fantastic. The meat was cooked pretty evenly. The breading stayed on. The seasonings were right on target. The biscuits were perfect. The gravy was exceptional. I poured the gravy on the squirrel pieces as I was eating them. I had gravy all over me, but it was worth it.

The only complaint I have is that not all squirrels are tender. Some cook up like rubber bands. You can still eat them, but you have to work at it.

I can’t tell a tender squirrel from a tough one until I cook it. I don’t know what to do. My plan is to continue eating the tough ones along with the tender ones until I have a solution.

The brining is a great move. The squirrels had no gamy flavor at all. They were better than dark chicken meat. The taste is a little richer, with nutty overtones. Makes sense, considering what they eat.

The sight of squirrels doesn’t bother me the way it did between the end of the season and the day I found out I was allowed to shoot nuisance squirrels. After the season, they paraded around in front of me every time I left the house, as if they were trying to make a point. They ate my blueberries off my only producing bush. I was powerless. Then I got cleared to take them down, and that’s what I did. I took them down to Chinatown. Now I see them as opportunities for hunting practice as well as cheap meat.

I don’t think I’ll work too hard to exploit them for meat, however. They’re a pain to clean, they stink, and cooking them is a lot of work. I will try to train myself to throw their dead bodies out into the woods.

I gave Maynard and Marvin some squirrel arms. I thought they would enjoy picking the meat off the bones, and it saved me the aggravation of heating up their regular food.

The new trigger for the Marlin 60 .22 arrived. I’m going to see if I can install it now. It may turn out to be a much better gun than I had hoped.

I learned something disturbing about the Model 60. It’s hard to install a sling. The tube magazine takes up room in the stock, and that means there isn’t much wood to hold a front stud. You need to start with around 1/2″ of wood when you install a stud. I have about 3/8″. I think I solved the problem. I bought a stud with a nut about 1/4″ in height, and I ground it down to a little more than 1/8″. The screw isn’t very thick, and in order for a nut to work, its threaded height only has to equal the width of the screw that goes through it. I should be able to recess the nut into the inside of the stock and still have 1/4″ of wood below it to provide support for it.

I don’t want to ruin this stock by splitting it. The wood is beautiful for the price. Lots of figuring. Can’t figure out this wood found its way into a stock for a $170 rifle.

I need to make a hole inside the stock, wide enough and deep enough to hold the nut for the stud. The nut needs to fit tightly in it so the knurling on the outside of the nut will hold the nut still while I tighten the screw that goes through it. What I need is a counterbored hole. It has to be 1/4″ wide inside the stock, and then it has to decrease to about 0.090″ across for the screw.

I looked at various solutions for this, and I think a 1/4″ Forstner bit is the way to go. This is a wood bit that makes cylindrical holes accurately centered around a chosen point. I can drill the hole for the screw, put the point of the Forstner bit in it, and open the hole up, to a depth of around 5/32″.

They make sling studs for tube magazines. They have little rings that use the magazines for support. I don’t want that. Tube magazines are weak. They’re not made to hold slings, especially if you wrap your sling around your arm to steady your aim. I want a sling, but I’m not willing to bend the magazine in order to get it.

I’m wondering just how accurate a cheap .22 can be. I was hoping for 2 MOA, but maybe it can do better. We will see. Once the stud is installed on the stock, I’ll be able to use the gun with a bipod, and that will allow me to test its accuracy better than I can right now. It would be a hoot to have a .22 that would hunt at 100 yards.

Squirrels, pigs, and rabbits are the only animals I can hope to cook until the hunting seasons open up again. I could try armadillos, but the thought of handling and eating an animal that may be full of leprosy is not appealing. There are recipes for coyote, but I’m not Korean. I’ve read that bobcats taste surprisingly good. Could I enjoy eating a cat, even if it tasted good? It would be hard to get used to.

My grandmother ate possums. I just can’t. Maybe some day I’ll work up to it.

In the fall, deer season will start. I like venison. I’m not crazy about it, but it’s pretty good.

If I get the new .22 trigger to work, I’ll blog it. I look forward to having a trigger I can pull without wondering if I’m about to break it.

We Have to Call off the Hunt! The Cocoa is Cold!

Because the state of Florida gave me the go-ahead to kill nuisance squirrels near my house (in writing!), today I went out and sat in the blind and dispensed frontier justice. I nailed three of the mangy thieves from something like 40 yards.

This is the right way to hunt! I’m 50 feet from a house with a toilet and refrigerator. I have a nice plastic Adirondack chair under me. I have a cold beverage. I’m sitting in a shady blind under shady trees. The squirrels don’t make me chase them. The present themselves for execution.

The Marlin 60 Remington sent me as a replacement for the one that shot like a musket is wonderful. It has a nicely figured stock, and it shoots great. I used a rimfire scope today, and I popped two of the squirrels in the head. The other one got it in the shoulders. My story is that he moved. You can’t prove me wrong. I killed the only witness.

The trigger is awful. I was trying to shoot today, and for a minute, I wondered if the safety was on. No, that’s just how bad the trigger is. I ordered a trigger kit from an aftermarket company. When I get it installed, this gun should be a prizewinner.

I baited the yard with Mike-Sell’s Puffcorn Delites, which are like Cheetos, only a thousand times better. The squirrels didn’t go for them. I thought it was worth a shot.

I learned something today. You can’t hunt without learning something. I learned I really need to carry my .22 pistol when I hunt.

The third squirrel I shot did not die right away. He was scampering around, so I got up to kill him at close range. When I reached him, I remembered something important: you can’t focus on a squirrel using a rimfire scope if you’re 4 feet away. This was a bad situation. I don’t want game to suffer, and I couldn’t see to shoot this squirrel. I couldn’t use the sights because the scope blocked them. I had to wait until he held still, and then I was able to hold the gun pretty close and finish him off.

I’m sorry it happened, but I don’t feel guilty, because hunting is a good thing, and I did my best. It was a noob mistake. Next time, I’ll have the pistol.

There have been a lot of shots I wouldn’t take. I want to be sure the squirrels drop and die fast. I’m not going to take unnecessary chances on wounding them. But no one is perfect.

I ordered a holster for the pistol, and it arrived this week. Looks like a quality item. I’ll wear it next time.

When you shoot a squirrel through the head, you may think you only winged him. They kick for quite a while after they die. That surprised me.

I got to use one of my hunting knives for the first time. I used my Entrek Beaver. It was not as great as I had hoped. The knife seems like a quality item, but the factory edge doesn’t seem up to the task of slitting squirrel hide. It will do it, but you have to apply pressure and go back over cuts. I will have to see what I can do about putting a better edge on it.

I improved my squirrel-skinning technique. When you have three animals to clean, you learn more than you would if you only had one. I learned the techniques I’ve seen on Youtube won’t work on the local squirrels. The skin is too tough, and it sticks to the squirrels too hard. I wonder if the squirrels north of Florida have looser skin. When you skin a Florida squirrel, you can’t just make a cut above the anus, step on the hind feet, and yank the tail. Nothing happens. You have to make cuts down the legs, shove your thumbs under the hide, and loosen it around the thighs.

Another thing: you don’t want to gut a squirrel before you clean it, unless you have to. When you gut it, poop is likely to go everywhere, and various types of goo will coat the fur and make life difficult. You skin the squirrel first, and then you cut his head off with poultry shears. You shove the shears up the servants’ entrance and cut him all the way to the neck, and then you pull the guts out and throw them as far as possible.

Shears are even better than a cleaver for cutting away all the nasty bits in the crotch.

I plan to kill the bejeezus out of these things until I quit seeing them around the house. They’re terrible. City people think they’re cute. They’re not cute when they’re eating your fruit or ripping the insulation out of your attic. It would be lots of fun to feed them and give them names and keep track of their offspring through the years. And live in a fantasy world. Unfortunately, squirrels don’t know how to behave, so it’s breading and hot grease for the lot of them.

It’s great to learn these skills. Nothing is worse than an urban pansy who can’t do anything. And it’s terrible to live in a state of delusion about wildlife. Most people in America get their knowledge of wild animals from Pixar. You come to see animals differently when you have to fight with them all the time. Life in the country will turn a vegan into a stone-cold killer. Well. A SANE vegan.

Oxymoron?

I have to kill mice. I have to kill squirrels. I have to kill coons. I have to kill coyotes. I have to kill moles. I have to kill gophers. I may have to kill crows. I may have to kill pigs. I have to kill these things just to be considered responsible and not helpless.

Butchering warm-blooded animals is disgusting. I need to get over that. Butchering fish always made me hungry. Squirrels feel sort of like puppies, and they exude a musk which makes the whole animal smell like a huge crotch. When I cut them up, part of me wonders if what I’m doing is normal behavior. It’s irrational, but it’s hard not to feel a little bit like Hannibal Lecter. It’s healthy, though. I’m more in touch with the reality of predation. This is where all meat comes from. Animals don’t unzip big pockets in their sides and hand us steaks.

It has never bothered me to cut on raw pigs or poultry, but they always arrived cold and hairless!

I used standard velocity ammo today. The nominal speed is 1070 fps, I think. Anyway, it’s subsonic, so it’s not as loud as regular .22 ammo. I thought the neighbors might like it. I ordered some ammo which is even slower: CCI Quiet segmented ammo. These are very slow, very quiet rounds that fly apart inside squirrels and kill them fast. They’re supposed to be very accurate, although the low velocity limits the range. CCI claims you can use them without hearing protection. That would be great. We’ll see how they work. They’re twice as expensive as regular ammo, but I wouldn’t expect to use a lot of them.

If the Quiet rounds work, I will have to consider selling the air rifle. I won’t need it. It’s nice to have something that shoots 3-cent ammo, however.

I used Primos shooting sticks today. These are sticks joined at one end. You cross them and put their tips on the ground, and they form a bipod. Much more stable than a monopod. They’re also very compact when you fold them up. I like it.

I will clear the yard of squirrels, or they will reproduce so fast I will have squirrel meat all the time. Either way, I will be happy.

In my Family, we Don’t Bicker

I did a better job with McMuffins today, and I came up with a hot zero-caffeine beverage I can stand to drink.

I gave up on making three muffins at once. I settled for two. This made it possible to put Canadian bacon in with the eggs in one skillet. I also put a covered dish in the oven and got it hot before I toasted the muffins. When they came out, I buttered them and put them in the dish. The humidity in the dish took a lot of the hardness out of them. A reader suggested applying the cheese to the muffins before putting them in the warming area, and if I make McMuffins again, I’ll give that a shot. It would surely increase the humidity.

As for a beverage, I put about half a teaspoon of true cinnamon in about 1-1/2 cups of milk with a tablespoon of sugar, a little salt, and some vanilla. Nuked it until hot. It was not bad. I would say it’s 90% as good as decaf, and that will do.

I used true cinnamon even though I like Chinese cinnamon better. There is a chemical in Chinese cinnamon which can affect the liver.

Things worked out okay, and I didn’t completely wreck the kitchen.

I barely cooked the bacon. I put it in the hot pan for a minute or less. It comes pre-cooked, so you don’t have to do much.

It’s still kind of small. A decent type of ham, like Serrano, would be better.

Ordinarily I don’t get out of bed until I’ve prayed for a couple of hours, but today I decided to eat first so I don’t have kitchen conflicts with my dad. He will stroll in when I’m cooking something and start running appliances as if I weren’t there. I would blame dementia if I could, but it’s just his way. Other people have never been fully real to him.

I don’t want him emptying the dishwasher, either. I don’t like eating off of things he has handled.

I ate breakfast with Youtube healing videos. I used to go to church and watch people talk ABOUT God, saying things that weren’t true or useful. Now I watch someone exercise God’s power. I used to hobnob with people who pretended to be saints on the weekends yet who knew almost nothing and lived pretty much as they wanted as soon as they got off the property. Being alone with videos of a sincere Christian is better than being in a crowd of 1500 hypocrites and willful ignoramuses.

There are a lot of ways to find out whether someone is ignorant about God. One quick way is to say, “What’s your sign?” If they don’t tell you astrology is demonic, you’ve smoked out a superficial Christian. Another way is to ask them about their political views. Having no views isn’t all that bad, but leftist views indicate a lack of familiarity with the Holy Spirit. Leftists have been working to undo God’s work for centuries.

I went to church with a lot of leftists who loved astrology. Women were the worst. They love turning the government into a husband/sugar daddy, and women are suckers for idolatry. Satan knew what he was doing when he went after Eve. If you want to hear about astrology, tarot cards, crystals, or yoga, your best bet is to talk to a woman, because most men don’t pay much attention to such things.

It makes sense that women would be more open to temptation, because a husband or father is supposed to be a shepherd of the family. Shepherds are supposed to keep sheep from straying.

I love watching far-off Christians on Youtube confirm what God has told me. For years, I’ve been telling people, “Everyone is spirit-led. The only question is which spirit they’re following.” The other day I watched a Tom Fischer video, and he said exactly the same thing. I have never heard anyone else say it. Not once in my life. But he recited it as though he were reading my mind. Why? Because God said it to both of us. Man, it’s nice when Christians have Holy Spirit harmony. But it’s so rare.

I knew a very arrogant man at my last church. When he gave his opinions about God, which were sometimes complete foolishness, he would say, “My revelation about this is…”, and he was clearly indicating that the things he said were opinions. He thought that was acceptable.

Revelation comes from only one source: God. Does God have opinions? Does that even make sense? Imagine God saying, “I could be wrong, but…”

God doesn’t have opinions. He has the truth. Only the ignorant have opinions. Revelation isn’t opinion, and opinion isn’t revelation.

I got a neat revelation from God, about the curse of illegal immigration. The Bible clearly states that a rebellious nation will be cursed with powerful aliens. I shared this publicly, and the arrogant man I’m talking about started rebuking me. He was a former illegal. It didn’t occur to him to ask God if I was right before he got in the face of the Holy Spirit. He was an emotional person, and he was not a listener. Dealing with him was like dealing with a rebellious woman with a short fuse. Men are supposed to be stable and level-headed.

I was sharing a genuine revelation with someone who had a poor prayer life and a lot of ambition, and he got in God’s way instead of assisting. This is normal, all over the world. The problem is worse than usual in Miami, but it’s bad everywhere. We don’t hear the Holy Spirit, so we think debate is a good thing instead of the curse it really is. If the body of believers is the machine, the Holy Spirit is the oil, and when the parts aren’t oiled, they grind against each other.

Being a Christian in Miami is like trying to farm on a rock mesa with little pockets of soil. There are very few opportunities to plant or grow anything. Miamians are the smartest people on earth, regardless of what their test scores say. They know absolutely everything.

It’s wonderful to turn on Youtube and see a few Christians in agreement with each other and God. I can’t tell you how strange it is to see it.

When the Holy Spirit is behind something, and people yield, things go smoothly. I see this in the evangelism Fischer and his friends do. They go up to some of the least-promising people imaginable–Jews, Europeans, and Muslims–and the first thing you know, those people are healed, and they’re accepting Jesus. Like it’s completely normal; not extraordinary in the least. I’ve done evangelism, and I’ve seen other people do it. Almost always, it makes people uncomfortable or angry, and they take off. When the Holy Spirit is with you, he shows you which fruit are ready to drop, so you get remarkable results when common sense says you should fail.

You have to stay away from pursuits God hasn’t prepared for you. They don’t work. It’s like trying to march into a wall of briars. The other day God told me something neat: you have to stay within your anointing. God will anoint (authorize) you to do certain specific things. If you do those things, he will help you and make it work. If you do other things, you are likely to fail. Worse, you may get success from Satan so you will become arrogant, lose your connection to God’s guidance, and keep wasting your time.

When Benny Hinn and Morris Cerullo started telling people God would make people rich for tithing and donating money, they went outside their anointing. God never authorized it, and he doesn’t back it up. When you give too much money to churches, it vanishes, and God doesn’t return it to you unless you repent. You can tithe yourself poor. Satan gives prosperity preachers success, even though their followers wither and go broke. He’s fattening them up like beef calves.

My last church taught the feel-good gospel and the money gospel, and Satan got free rein to destroy it, as I predicted. The man who got in my face with opinions was the pastor’s brother-in-law. He was a huge supporter. He was ambitious for God, which is always disturbing.

He was what you might call a Kool-Aid drinker. He kept his foot on the gas no matter what happened. He and his wife went from mere relatives to top authorities in the church, fast. Then the pastor got caught up in a sex scandal, and the church dissolved.

There should have been some self-examination, as well as some examination of the pastor and his doctrine, but the brother-in-law did what conceited authorities always do: he shot the messengers and abandoned the victim. “The corrupt priests aren’t the problem; Yeshua is the problem, because he criticized them in public.” “Jeremiah is the problem.” “Isaiah is the problem.” “Micaiah is the problem.” “Elijah is the problem.”

I am not planning to go to a bricks-and-mortar church yet. I ask God about it, and the message seems very clear: “NO.” I don’t know why he says that. I would like to be among Christians, even if I have very low expectations of the teaching I would receive and plan to ignore it.

It’s not, “No,” with a small “o.” It’s two capital letters!

Thank goodness for Youtube, the solid friends I have, and God’s presence. I assume I will someday be part of a group that meets to pray. Until then, I will be taken care of.

Can’t Compete with Minimum-Wage Chefs

I have embarked on a fool’s errand. I tried to make my own Egg McMuffins. I have done this before. Guess I didn’t learn my lesson.

A long time ago, I bought myself a couple of synthetic clamshell-looking dishes. You put eggs in them and microwave them, and then you put the eggs in your fake McMuffins. You get nice round eggs. They work okay, but nuked eggs aren’t as good as fried eggs.

This week I picked up some English muffins, Canadian bacon, and cheese, and I gave it another try.

Here’s my conclusion: McDonald’s deserves more credit. These things are hard to make.

To create a McMuffin, you have to fry eggs and Canadian bacon at the same time, because they have to go on the muffins simultaneously. This means two separate pans. It does for me, anyway. I wanted three McMuffins. You also have to toast multiple muffins at the same time, and before you put the eggs and stuff on them, they have to be buttered. You have to take cheese slices out and warm them up, because if you put cold cheese on a McMuffin, it stays hard.

You also have to cut butter slices and soften them in the microwave, unless you want to mash cold butter into your muffins and ruin them.

Making round fried eggs isn’t hard. You put them in the skillet gently so they don’t spread out much, and you fold the edges in so they stay round.

I tried making McMuffins two days in a row. I am not happy with the results.

Yesterday’s batch was better than today’s. I didn’t burn anything, and everything came out more or less as it should have, but they weren’t as good as the real thing.

1. The muffins were hard on the outside. McDonald’s puts its muffins in wrappers, and the steam is confined in the paper. This, I am guessing, softens the outsides of the muffins. Because my muffins were hard, when I bit down on them, it took more pressure to bite through, so the contents of the muffins were squashed.

2. My Canadian bacon was small and tough. it was also a little dry. Somehow, McDonald’s manages to make its Canadian bacon cover nearly the same area as the egg, and when you bite through the bacon, it cuts cleanly, because it’s not tough. My Canadian bacon was considerably smaller than the eggs, and it was hard to sever. It tended to pull out of the muffins in one piece.

Today’s effort was worse. I blew a circuit breaker and interfered with the toaster cycle, and when I started it again, I got a muffin that was too dark. If McDonald’s did that to me, I would be pretty critical. It’s unusual. I also threw a buttered muffin on the kitchen floor. That was not intentional. I was handling hot food and moving as fast as I could, and it happened. I ended up with two full McMuffins and one topless McMuffin.

I fried the bacon just enough to get it hot, and I put the bacon and toasted muffins in the oven to keep them warm until the eggs were done. The bacon was still very small compared to McDonald’s. I suppose the brand at my grocery store is unusually small.

What’s the answer? It’s probably best to give up and use ham, and I need some way to take the hardness out of the muffins. Maybe I should toast them and put them in a small covered dish in the oven. And making three McMuffins is just too hard. The toaster can only cope with two muffins.

I should also quit using real cheese. Real cheddar doesn’t melt and get gooey the way McDonald’s fake cheese does.

It’s a real production, no matter how you do it. McDonald’s has an assembly line, a method, and multiple personnel, so they have a big edge.

Breakfast is a meal that requires time-management skills. Everything has to be presented nearly at once. If your toast gets cool, you can’t reheat it without ruining it, and toast gets cool fast. Eggs that aren’t cooked hard will be very hard indeed if you reheat them. Making breakfast food is very simple, but if you can’t get it to the table on time, it’s not going to be good.

I have a warming area above my range, with heat lamps. I’m going to have to learn how to use it.

Most meals aren’t as fussy. Consider a big Thanksgiving dinner. Mashed potatoes can be nuked to warm them up. So can yams. So can beans. Doesn’t hurt these foods at all. Consider steak and potatoes. A baked potato can sit for 15 minutes, waiting to be joined by the steak, after you take it out of the oven. Or you can leave in in the oven at 200 for an hour. That’s a lot of slack.

My hat is off to McDonald’s. I can make McMuffins much more cheaply, and unlike McDonald’s, I don’t serve stale decaf coffee or decaf which is really regular coffee (and stale), but I can’t make them better.

I may have to forget about decaf as well as my other coffee alternative, hot chocolate. A long time ago, God told me, “Caffeine destroys peace.” I am very sensitive to caffeine these days. I got that way after I started praying in tongues a lot. I can’t drink real coffee. Sometimes I can get away with drinking tea, if I take a Benadryl before bed. But last night I kept waking up, and all I drank yesterday was decaf.

I looked it up, and decaf has something like 20 milligrams of caffeine per cup. When I was in law school, I would have laughed at that. I started every day with a quart of coffee. Now things are different. Twenty milligrams may be too much. And chocolate has enough caffeine and theobromine in it to cause problems, too.

What am I supposed to drink at breakfast? No coffee, tea, decaf coffee, hot chocolate, or decaf tea. I don’t want sugary drinks, including fruit juice. I might have to look into chicory.

I like having something hot to drink in the morning. I’m old. It shocks my body back to life.

Today I tried a crazy idea: hot vanilla. It’s like hot chocolate, only you make it with vanilla. It’s pretty lame. Better than water, though.

Incidentally, Benadryl is not a great answer to my problem. It makes you feel funny after you wake up.

Here is what I suspect. Drugs open doorways in the spirit realm. It’s very obvious when you look at hard drugs like LSD and psilocybin. People taking things like that see demons, angels, and (they think) God himself. They have visions. There are religions in which the use of psychodelic drugs is a requirement.

Maybe you don’t need to see demons and angels to be affected adversely by a drug. Maybe boring drugs like nicotine and pseudoephedrine (Sudafed) are more dangerous than we think. One of the most popular cheap drugs is dextromethorphan, which is found in cough syrup. Take enough of it, and you will trip. There are people who trip on diarrhea pills.

Caffeine is a drug. If you don’t think it’s a drug, eat a tablespoon of instant coffee and then see if you change your mind. I suspect that God wants me to stay away from all mind-altering drugs. Sort of a Nazirite thing. Remember how he forbade Samson to cut his hair with a razor or to drink wine and strong drink? Those were special laws, just for Samson.

I don’t have any problems with alcohol. Not yet.

I think God is trying to shut my doors to the enemy. Maybe he’s giving other people the same message, but if he is, it’s not well known.

Chocolate! Can you believe it? I didn’t see that coming! I hope pizza isn’t next. I don’t care much about coffee, but chocolate is incredible.

I’m not sure about any of this, but I know what God told me about caffeine, and I know I’m having problems when I consume it.

I think it’s time to give up on McMuffins. It was a fun experiment, but I don’t want to throw food on the floor every morning.