Cheap, Easy Feast Guaranteed to Please

Oh, man. How good can food GET? I am starting to wonder.

I felt like I was insulting God’s gift by cooking halfheartedly, so I stepped it up. And I’m also rotating out my survival supplies, so that means I’m going through corn meal and dried beans. The result? A weekly soul food dinner. It’s whitey soul food, but it’s still soul food.

Yesterday I made white beans with ham hocks, plus cornbread and kale. I don’t know why my mother wasn’t big on kale when I was a kid. We ate a lot of collards and turnip greens. Kale is wonderful, provided you cook it right.

I used the cornbread recipe I posted yesterday. You really need to try it. You won’t be sorry. I just had two slices, and I’m borderline high.

I reheated the beans and cornbread today. Naturally, they’re better than they were yesterday. And I made fresh collards. There is a company called Glory, and they make wonderful greens, ranging from fresh to canned. I went with their bagged collards today because the price difference between bagged and bundled was so small.

Look, try it. Just trust me.

BEANS

1 big ol’ bag dried beans (I like navy, great northern, and pinto beans)
1 sliced white onion, softball-sized
1-5 cloves mashed garlic
salt and pepper to taste
2-4 ham hocks

Dump the beans in a big pot the day before you cook them. Rinse the filth out of them. Leave enough water to cover them, plus three inches or so. Cover them and let them soak overnight. I like to dissolve a Beano tablet in the water. Someone told me the gas in beans comes largely from the skins, so the Beano should be able to make a difference. I don’t know if it’s true, but I am getting wonderful results.

In the morning, drain and rinse the beans. This is also supposed to reduce gas. Bury the hocks in the beans. Chop the onion and toss it in with the garlic. Add lots of pepper. If your hocks are salty, you may want to omit the salt until later.

Simmer this stuff for several hours, and make sure you boil it down so the sauce is thick. If fat forms on the surface, scoop it out with a ladle and discard it. You won’t lose more than half a cup of bean sauce if you’re careful. Adjust the salt and pepper.

GREENS

1 pound chopped greens
2 thick slices bacon, nuked until browned, with grease
1-4 cloves mashed garlic
salt and pepper to taste
1-2 teaspoons butter
12 ounces water

I saw that Paula Deen was using butter in her greens, and I had to follow suit. I try to sneak a little butter into everything. You just plop the whole list of ingredients in your pressure cooker, get it up to temperature, and cook at 16 psi for 15 minutes. Open it up and boil the water down until it’s green and soupy. This is enough greens for two hungry people. If you don’t use a pressure cooker, you may have to cook the greens for two or more hours. You want them wilted, not crunchy. They have to totally surrender and mingle with the pork.

I nuke the bacon in a Pyrex cup covered by a saucer.

If you can stand it, refrigerate everything and don’t eat until the next day. Slice a ripe tomato and a big onion and serve them on the side.

You can’t eat this in a civilized manner. You have to let it mix up a little, and you have to make sure everything gets on the cornbread. If you don’t sop, you’re blowing it.

When you reheat the cornbread, it’s okay to use the microwave as long as you finish off with 5-10 minutes in a 350° oven.

This is just fantastic. Food doesn’t get much better. Eat the fat on the ham hocks. You can always fast tomorrow.

I have to credit God with the improvements I’m making in this stuff. It’s amazing.

Better Cornbread

I decided I was too hidebound in my approach to cornbread, so I made the changes I knew had to be made. The result is beyond wonderful, but still your basic Appalachian non-sweet, white-meal cornbread.

INGREDIENTS

2 cups self-rising white corn meal
2 eggs
1 1/3 cups milk
1/4 cup bacon grease
3 tbsp. butter
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. sugar

Heat a seasoned #6 cast iron skillet in your oven at 450. Pour the bacon grease in and give it five minutes or so. You want it hot enough to smoke. Mix all the other stuff (except the butter, which you should melt) in a heat-safe bowl.

Pour the hot grease into the batter. Pour the butter in. Stir thoroughly. Pour into the hot skillet and bake at 450 for around 22 minutes. Make sure it’s low enough in the oven to keep the bottom of the skillet hot. This will brown the bread.

Flip the pone out, right it, and eat!

This is less crumbly and more flavorful than the version with no butter and only 1 egg.

There is no reason why you can’t add even more of the good stuff (butter, grease, sugar, salt, eggs) or use different fats, but this will make you very, very happy.

Food for Faith

Thought I would write a little about my continuing dehydrator adventure.

Yesterday I dried papaya. I have some trees, but I don’t eat the fruit, because it smells a little bit like dog poop. I wondered if dehydration would change that. I suppose I’m picking the papayas too late, and that’s why they stink, but it seems odd to pick a fruit that isn’t sweet yet.

Anyway, I sliced up a papaya and tossed the chunks in lime juice and simple syrup. After about seven hours in the machine, they were dried up to nothing. I tried one, and sure enough, it doesn’t stink like it did before. So now I have a use for all the papayas that come off the trees.

Funny thing…the product is not like the dried papaya you get in stores. It really shrivels up. I’m wondering if there is a difference between “dried” and “dehydrated.” Guess I’ll have to figure that out.

I have not made jerky yet. I think I’ll get ten boliches (eye round roasts) and dry them. It would probably be best to smoke them, too, but maybe I can fake that with Liquid Smoke and avoid the aggravation.

Mike says he has a yogurt machine. Evidently you can make your own yogurt for a small fraction of the price of store yogurt. How exciting. I guess it’s a big blessing, but I’ve never been a huge yogurt fan. I always identify yogurt with the feminist/greenie/Mac/vegetarian lifestyle.

You can use a dehydrator to make yogurt, and you can even turn the yogurt into dry sheets. Weird.

Yesterday I realized I can make shucky beans in the dehydrator. Man, that would be sweet. I need to find a farmer’s market and load up on green beans. Or I could just chicken out and hit Costco. I don’t know if the beans would brown up the way they do when you dry them on strings.

I just got an idea for food storage: corned beef. I look up a recipe on the Cook’s Illustrated site, and it says corned beef is just cured beef. You stick it in a sealed bag with a salt and seasoning preparation, and you let it sit for 7 days. If that’s all it is, it’s perfect for freezing. Seal everything in a bag, refrigerate for a week, and then freeze. That should work, shouldn’t it?

I Googled flooding and crops again, to see if Perry Stone is right about his vision of upcoming food problems. Things don’t look too good. We have no corn reserves, and the weather is not great. The food situation in China is bad. I guess this year will teach me whether I should pay attention to this man’s visions in the future.

The dehydrator looks like a good investment. I still want to get out of here and put some land around me, but until that happens, I think I’ll be fine with stored eats. And I didn’t lose anything by buying a refurb unit. It looks and works like new.

Mike is jealous. Oh well. Now he has something to put on his shopping list.

Food Hoard Grows

My Excalibur food dehydrator showed up this weekend. Yesterday I fired it up, dehydrating a bunch of Granny Smith apples. I bought four dozen at Costco, and I did two dozen a week or so ago, and the aggravation was what led me to order the dehydrator.

It took seven hours to dehydrate apple slices prepared with a slicing and peeling machine. I’m sure hand-sliced apples would be different, because the thickness would vary. The machines make slices about 1/4″ thick.

The dehydrator expels wet air from the front, and water will condense on anything close to the machine. I guess there is no way to avoid that.

I didn’t dip the apples in lemon juice or sodium bisulfite or anything else that might inhibit oxidation. I wanted them to taste like the apples my grandmother used to dry. Apples that are heavily treated don’t have the same flavor. I figured my apples would come out brown, like the ones I dried in the SUV and oven, but they came out very white.

Here’s the surprising thing: the flavor is amazing. It’s almost like a green apple Jolly Rancher candy. Very strong, and extremely sweet. I can’t figure that out. I don’t know if they’ll make good dried-apple pies, but they’re great to eat as a snack.

The dehydrator has plastic shelves that slide out, and each shelf has a sheet of plastic mesh on it to hold food. You can put the trays in the dishwasher (top rack), but the mesh has to be washed by hand. This is a major pain. But if Perry Stone is right, and food gets expensive, the effort of keeping my dehydrator clean will seem trivial.

I look forward to drying some bananas in it. My trees are producing well.

This dehydrator is a refurb, but I can’t see anything wrong with it. I think I made a good choice. You can get a cheaper Chinese knockoff, but I wanted a warranty and decent customer service.

It’s too Bad Blessings Can’t be Delivered Using Restraints and an IV

Today I had a couple of experiences. One was encouraging, and the other was discouraging.

I am too tired to write much about the first. Just that I found new fire and enthusiasm for prayer and supernatural warfare, and I unleashed it here and at my sister’s house.

The other thing happened at church. I was there for a prayer meeting and to help a friend with a baby shower.

While helping with the baby shower, I had to do some work in the kitchen, where I used to make pizza. Background: I was driven out out of the kitchen by mismanagement and antagonism from coworkers, as readers may recall. I made the church a lot of money with pizza, but when I tried to increase the professionalism and the spirituality in the kitchen (as instructed by church leaders), I provoked a backlash from people who preferred the status quo, and out I went.

Since I quit cooking, a strong Christian man has taken over the cafe, and the kitchen and the serving area are doing well. But he has limited authority, because of the twisted, amorphous chain of command at the church. He has to share a back room with a bunch of other ministries, and this is the area where I used to make pizza.

Out of curiosity, I took a look at the back room today. The kitchen and serving area looked very good, so I had high hopes. But I was amazed at the chaos and filth.

Flour and sugar I left at the church when I quit were still on the counters, in plain paper bags. Near the bags, I saw a stack of unopened boxes containing glue traps for mice. I opened a couple of drawers. For some reason, the church keeps hundreds of sets of unused stainless flatware, along with unused china, and all this stuff is in cabinets and drawers. It should have been disposed of years ago.

The drawers contained so much mouse and roach poop, I was amazed. But it made sense, given the presence of the unused flour and sugar. Why they thought glue traps were the answer is a mystery, given that they put the traps next to the food supply the vermin were using, leaving the food in place.

The church serves free hot dogs and popcorn on Saturday afternoons. That’s great. But they store the cooking and service equipment in the back room, out in the open. Where the mice and roaches play. I was horrified. This is not a trivial health hazard. It’s extremely serious. Rodent feces kill people in a number of ways.

When I worked in the kitchen, I donated some Japanese cutlery I didn’t use. I didn’t like it much, but it’s very expensive, and most chefs love it. I also donated a diamond hone. I checked today, and all of this stuff was gone. Was it stolen or just put away for safety? I don’t know, but I noticed they left the cheap Chinese cleaver I donated, so whoever moved this stuff knew which pieces were valuable.

The drawer where I left the cutlery was full of poop. I had sterilized it, but the mice had returned.

The obvious conclusion is that the place is still a mess, and I would be losing my mind if I had to work there. So I had to thank my superior in the Armorbearer organization, who strongly advised me to get out of the cafe.

It’s so hard to bless people. They treat good things like trash. They show no gratitude for the good things you do. They fight improvement as though it were a fatal disease. This must be how God feels every day. And it reaffirms my conservatism. Liberals give people what they want, regardless of what they deserve, and it destroys them. Conservatives know that the best way to keep a person poor is to give him money.

I guess I better alert the pastor before someone dies.

Son of Man, Can These Dry Bananas Live?

I have given up. I hate blowing money on things I should be able to make, but drying apples in my dad’s SUV is too slow, so I bought a dehydrator. I got a refurb Excalibur. It ought to do the job.

I put a dozen sliced apples in the SUV on a sliding door screen and gave it two days, but the apples just were not dry enough. Maybe it would work in the summer, but I can’t keep fooling around, trying to get it right.

I was looking at dehydrators online, and I felt stupid, but then I thought about all the stuff I throw out. Most of my peppers and bananas end up rotting because I don’t have any place to put them. I never eat my papayas, because they smell funny, but if they were dried, I think that problem would go away.

Bananas are fantastic. They keep you regular and they taste good. But what do you do when twenty pounds of them get ripe over three days?

Ooooh…pineapples. I wonder how hard those are to grow. Dried pineapples are great, and I have a special culinary use for the fresh stuff.

I guess now I can look into jerky. I don’t even know what cuts to use. It would sure beat paying tons of money for the protein bars I eat when I work at church.

The Thing we Greatly Ignored is Come Upon Us

Now that Mike knows I’m storing up grub, he calls me with his “hoarding” questions all the time. Today he was a hippie grocery, and he wanted advice on the right kimchi to buy, in order to use the bacteria for sourdough.

As I have noted before Perry Stone says he had a vision which suggested we will have flood-related food shortages in 2011. I have never known him to make anything up or exaggerate, and he didn’t use his vision as a way to squeeze monetary “seed gifts” out of his viewers, the way about 75% of Spirit-filled TV preachers would have.

Yesterday I saw some interesting news.

1. Russia is cutting off wheat exports because of drought.

2. China now imports wheat because of drought, and they expect the situation to continue through the year.

3. There is a severe corn shortage in the United States, largely due to the idiotic ethanal program, which values politics over human beings. We all knew there was a corn shortage, but it’s getting worse. And of course, animals eat corn, so there go dairy products and meat.

I guess it looks a little funny, talking about floods when crops are failing for lack of rain, but floods have already destroyed much of Australia’s crops, and we are a month or so away from our own planting season, so the opportune time for US flood damage isn’t here yet.

Hey, guess who is the world’s biggest wheat importer. Egypt! Traders expect that country to buy heavily because of the political instability. Uh oh!

I continue to study food storage. It turns out white flour goes funny after 6 months. Even if you freeze it, you only get 8 months. That’s what I’ve read, anyway. Hard to believe. And you can’t freeze it in paper bags. Funny flavors will get inside it.

I guess you can still eat it, however, and beggars can’t be choosers.

I think I’ll vacuum-seal 50 pounds of flour and freeze it. Can’t hurt. It will cost 20 bucks. That’s cheap insurance.

Maybe you can do better if you bake bread and freeze it. Search me.

I have a nice new Kentucky ham in the dining room, along with a big jar of sorghum, some cracklings, and a jar of blackberry jam. I’ll bet I could make excellent biscuits with canned milk. Geez, if there’s a famine, I may put on a ton of weight.

In other end time news, the US suddenly has piles and piles of oil. Sounds crazy, but it appears to be true. A new drilling method has drastically increased production, to the point where it could halve imports by 2015. And North Dakota (home of the Bakken Formation) is producing too much oil to ship.

What? Weren’t we supposed to run out of oil? Someone send Al Gore flowers. He is turning out to be the Salieri of economic and climatic forecasting. And by “Salieri,” I mean the Amadeus version, not the real Salieri, who was supposedly a great guy.

If I recall correctly, we can produce all the Bakken Formation oil we want at a cost of $70 per barrel, which is affordable. So in the United States, oil problems should be self-limiting, regardless of all the hysterical squawking. I wish oil were at $70 now. I could live with $2.75 diesel.

I can’t believe I’m saying that. We used to tremble at the thought of fuel prices that high.

What this all shows me is that God can yank the rug out from under you at any second, without breaking a sweat. We think we know what the future will bring, at least in the short term, but the last decade showed us that sudden changes can be extreme and unexpected, even when they should be obvious.

Consider the Fannie Mae mess. Nobody with any common sense thought real estate values were justified, yet most people were stunned when Barney Frank’s house (or houses) of socialist cards collapsed and threw our economy into turmoil. One month we were all counting our chickens, and the next month, they were on the barbecue.

I think the same thing is happening with our debt situation. We have marched to the edge of the precipice, and there is nothing to prevent us from going over the side in a big hurry.

We’re also seeing strange plagues hitting important crops. The worldwide citrus industry is expected to shrivel because of citrus greening, and that’s just one example. Did you know bananas are in trouble? A fungus is hitting them, and they lack the genetic diversity to develop resistance to it. May not sound like a big deal, but these things add up.

Speaking of God, the Bible says, “Thou Lord, only, makest me dwell in safety.” That’s important to learn and believe. The stuff you have can disappear in a day, regardless of how it looks to you now. Tomorrow you could get a cancer diagnosis. You could be gone in two months. A sinkhole could eat your house. Your spouse could run off with a Craigslist find. Look at Job. Things like that really happen.

I suspect that the problems Perry Stone foresaw will go away for a time. I think we’ll have some problems, and then things will seem to get better. Why? Because I think God is shaking the world. You can’t shake something by pushing it in the same direction all the time. It has to go back and forth. I think he is slapping us with crises and letting us rebound, so that tractable people will wake up and get right with him. Sooner or later, the trend will go much more negative, and by then, the bulk of the people who can be reached will be on solid ground.

Makes sense to me, anyhow.

I think we’ll have food problems this year, but I don’t think it will be necessary to pile up enough food to get us through 2012. I think we are still too early in the birth-pang sequence. I don’t think God is going to leave me here in this godless city with no land around me when the real mess starts raining down. I may deserve that, but I don’t see it happening.

You don’t get what you deserve, according to your deeds. Not if your heart is right. You get what your faith, willingness, and repentance allow. I hope.

If the food predictions turn out to be wrong, at least I’ll be better able to take care of myself, and I’ll know not to pay attention to Perry Stone’s visions. In the end, it’s all good.

Plus Surprising $17 Brandy

I made a Costco mission. I needed Granny Smiths for drying. I also got some phenomenal Costco mozzarella to freeze in pizza-sized portions.

I still haven’t found another mozzarella that compares, for New York style pizza.

Sadly, the impulse buy bug bit me. I saw a huge jug of Korbel brandy for $17. Korbel champagne is excellent, and it runs $9 per bottle, so I had to see what the brandy was like. I assumed it would be pretty bad, but still useful for cooking.

I know I’m going to get comments about the champagne. If you drank Korbel many years ago, you probably got a bad impression of it, but I swear, it’s good now. I was very surprised when I tasted the improved version. It’s crisp and dry, with enough sweetness to keep it from tasting acrid, and it doesn’t seem to have the green “sappy” taste wines like Cordon Rouge have.

Anyway, the brandy is startling. I like the full flavor of Remy Martin VSOP a little better, but this stuff is very, very smooth, and the flavor, apart from a slight lack of intensity, is exactly what I look for in a brandy.

I checked out the flour while I was there. They beat Gordon Food Service to death. They charge about $17 for 50 pounds of flour. It’s Conagra bread flour. I don’t know how good it is, but fortunately, my pizza comes out great regardless of the flour. Might be problematic in rolls, however. Still, this is survival food, not party food. It will be good enough.

Edit: I checked around, and I found some info posted by a respected pizza guru. He calls Costco Conagra flour “excellent,” so it must be pretty good. Not bromated, but he seems to like the performance anyway.

Depending on the type of pizza, one bag will produce something like 40 pies. The two bags of mozzarella will produce roughly the same number of pies. I have two giant cans of sauce, which is enough for at least 60 pies. A ballpark approximation gives me a price of roughly one dollar per pie, before toppings. Ridiculous. If they were merely good, it would be a stellar bargain. For some of the best pizza in South Florida, it’s so cheap it’s insane.

The strange thing about my survival supplies is that they’ll make such fantastic food. I’m saving stuff like ham hocks, beans, pizza makings, dried apples, country ham, and pasta. That’s good chow, people. I don’t eat that well NOW.

The older I get, the more I convinced I am that you have to be an idiot to think good food is expensive. Some good things, like prime beef, cost money. But think about ham hocks, cornbread, greens, pork butts, ribs, choice rib eyes, whole chickens (for smoking or making dumplings), whole pigs, dried beans, salt pork, and rice. It’s all cheap, and it makes for very special meals.

Vegetables and fruit will take some effort. Maybe I should learn how to grow calabasas. I already have cooking bananas, which are probably high in some nutrient or other. I have some dragonfruit plants, but they haven’t produced yet. I’ve grown beans in the past, but it’s tough to keep the rust from eating them.

I should either start canning greens or look for a good price on a few cases of canned collards.

Fish…I got that covered. I’ll go to the marina where my dad docks his boat. They hate it when you fish there, because they have a bizarre attachment to the huge clouds of snapper that live under the boats, but you can fill a bucket with foot-long mangroves (grey snapper) in an hour. If things really get rough, I can cast a net for mullet. They taste great smoked, although they aren’t much fried.

Anyway, things are looking good. With this good stuff waiting to be eaten, it will almost be sad if the floods don’t come.

La Niña Knows Who’s the Man

The Holy Spirit is God’s Internet. He arranges us in order and coordinates what we do, even when one of us has no idea what the other is up to. The more Spirit-filled the church gets, the stronger and more obvious the coordination gets.

For a long time, I’ve been hearing about “preparation.” Christians all over the place are looking for rural land. They’re buying guns, tools, and nonperishable food. They’re learning how to take care of themselves. It’s spreading to people, even before they know what’s happening. It has already hit me pretty hard.

I live in a suburb where the fungi and bugs and viruses are so thick, it’s almost impossible to grow things. Citrus is dying (not just here, but worldwide). Tomatoes can’t escape the leaf wilt virus. Nonetheless, I have banana trees now, bearing like crazy. I have one magnificent mango tree and another one which is improving all the time. I have all the hot peppers I could possibly want. I have a strong, healthy lychee tree.

I also have unbelievable tools, plenty of ammunition, a good variety of weapons, and a diesel pickup. Plus two freezers.

Today I got a call from Mike. He has moved back to the DC area, near the remarkable church I wrote about last year. Now he lives in a home that has half an acre of ground. While we were talking about God, I suggested he watch Perry Stone. I mentioned Perry Stone’s vision about future crop failures due to flooding. He cut me off and started telling me how he had been buying bulk food. Mind you, he’s not even tuned into the movement yet. He just felt like it was something he needed to do.

He bought a lot of flour. He’s getting containers. He’s starting seeds for the yard. He just feels like bad times are ahead.

There has to be something to it.

I’m going to be sitting pretty, provided the food shortages aren’t prolonged. I’m stocking up. I ordered a tasty Kentucky ham, plus some sorghum and blackberry jam. I have boxes from Gordon Food Service; I’m putting away pizza sauce, pasta, flour, yeast, and other things. I plan to freeze mozzarella, so while other people are paying out the nose for bad food, I’ll be able to pop out $2 pizzas that beat anything you can buy locally. If there are problems with the power grid, I’m in trouble, but other than that, I’m cool.

I’m Googling “La Niña.” I know we’re having a La Niña year, so I wondered if La Niña causes flooding. Sure enough, it does. At least in some places. Look it up. In October, FEMA warned people in the Pacific Northwest to buy flood insurance.

They ought to quit with “La Niña” and “El Niño” and call the whole business “El Padre.” He’s the one pulling the strings.

I’ve been trying to figure out what to buy. Surely rain won’t hurt every type of food. For example, fish don’t mind rain. On the other hand, when one type of food gets scarce, people move to the others, so they get pressured, too.

God is shaking the world. He’s slapping us awake. Those who will listen will get into gear and start conforming to his principles. They’ll line themselves up with his will and get in the blessing and protection pipeline. Everyone else will have problems. They built their houses on sand, and when things shake, well, look at California. Only things built in accordance with God’s wishes will remain.

What will the result be? Persecution, probably. “My Christian wingnut neighbor bought all the meat and froze it! My Christian wingnut neighbor has a bunch of guns! Look how these hoarding parasites are living while we’re suffering!” It will be like post-Versailles Germany. And Jews are eventually going to get it, too. They are part of God’s plan, so the spirit of Antichrist will keep trying to kill them off, as it did in Germany and Austria (as it does in Gaza). Jewish names like “Madoff” and “Stearns” and “Geithner” and “Bernanke” will be persecution code words. There is a reason Jews are figuring so heavily in our economic disasters.

Some people think the Rapture will be a magical event so sudden and inexplicable, it will essentially force people to believe. They’ll see that millions of Christians are missing, and they’ll have no earthly explanation. Does that make sense to you? I have to wonder. I don’t think God would make it that easy. It would be unlike him. I think we may leave the earth in a wave of executions. I don’t know. I’m not a prophecy expert. Maybe the Bible makes it clear that we’ll just zoom up out of ourselves, instantly, but I don’t recall reading anything like that.

My guess is that the enemy’s people will eventually get the upper hand, and we’ll be murdered in large groups, just like the Jews were. After all, we’ll be “the problem.” This is how the political left will see us. It will be like Cambodia and Cuba. At least I suspect it will.

Christians like to talk about claiming victory and defeating every enemy and so on, but the Bible makes it clear that we do not always win. The spirits that hate us are extremely powerful, and God has not chosen to give us an instant or complete victory over all of them. The battle is still going on. Peter was tortured to death, and Paul was beheaded. I think a solid Christian will live in victory for the majority of his life, but that doesn’t mean you won’t die at the point of a sword somewhere down the line.

The Revelation says that even the two witnesses who are full of God’s power will by martyred. The Antichrist will succeed in murdering them. They’ll be resurrected and assumed into heaven, but no matter how you slice it, they will be killed. If they can’t hold off defeat indefinitely, why should the rest of us expect to do better?

I’ll bet the unsaved start rounding us up and slaughtering us, possibly in the name of their gay, non-judgmental, abortion-loving “god,” and they’ll celebrate over our dead bodies, using our stolen wealth. And then comes the Tribulation, and God’s wrath will make them all want to die.

I don’t know if it will happen in the US. Perry Stone talks of a prophecy about an army of interceders (“intercessors” sounds vulgar to me) who will succeed in getting God to restore America. That would be nice, but my guess is that it would come with a serving of chastisement dwarfing what we’ve seen so far.

People generally don’t turn to God out of gratitude. They don’t get everything they want and then show up in church to pass it out and praise the Lord. We turn back to the Lord after severe beatings caused by our stupidity. That’s my situation, and it’s the most common pattern for Christians. So if suffering is ahead, it will surely bring a good harvest.

I read something interesting in Perry Stone’s magazine this month. He’s a buddy of many of the prominent prosperity preachers, and while he’s not in the same category, he does teach that God will give us “shalom,” which includes having our needs met abundantly. In his magazine, he said something that flies in the face of the over-the-top prosperity gospel. He said that if God didn’t reward our offerings here on earth, it meant we were getting heavenly rewards instead. Not “as well,” mind you. Instead.

I don’t think his friends would be happy to read that. There are still a lot of people out there telling Christians they should all be rich, and that “sowing seed gifts” into the “good soil” of their embarrassing ministries will make it happen. I’m glad to see a popular minister shooting that filth down. The mindless prosperity nuts will be the Christian Madoffs, justifying our persecution in the future.

I’m here to tell you, God will not instantly reward financial gifts with “hundredfold” returns in kind. It has never happened to me. Not once. My needs are met, and I’m fine, but if the TV-evangelist, moneycentric gospel were true, I’d be as rich as…a TV evangelist. God is not an enabler, so I think he resists giving you stuff you will use to destroy yourself, and money can be as bad a poison as arsenic. If you want it so you can have a third helipad in front of your orange mansion, it’s probably not good for you. If you want it so you will have the means and the freedom to complete your mission, there is probably no limit to what will come.

I think money is like food. It’s supposed to serve its purpose and pass through you. If you hold onto too much of it, you just end up full of fat and poop. Constipation and obesity are powerful symbols of the things that go wrong with immature Christians.

Not that I know what it’s like to be one of those. Oh, no. But I have heard about them.

I’m going to run to Costco and get some apples for drying. The Bible says that in the days of famine, I will be satisfied, and I think I will be even more satisfied if I have dried apples for pie.

Hands Off my MREs

Perry Stone says he had some prophetic dreams about the food supply being damaged by excess rain. Since then, floods have caused a food shortage in Australia. He thinks the problem will become global in nature.

Accordingly, I’m refreshing my knowledge of nonperishable foods. After all, Perry Stone hasn’t been wrong yet. He went up to George Bush when he was the governor of Texas and told him the Holy Spirit said Bush would be the next President.

Let’s see what I’ve found (omitting garbage like tofu and rice cakes):

Oatmeal
Canned fish
Canned meat
Rice
Beans (only last about a year)
Dried fruit
White flour (whole wheat flour goes funny)
Corn meal
Pasta
Almonds (24 months in sealed package)
Peanut butter (18 months)
Corn oil
Sugar

I should also freeze more pork, beef, and chicken. But how can you prepare for a shortage of dairy products and eggs? I don’t think much of that stuff freezes well.

More

You can freeze butter for 8 months in the original packaging. You can preserve fresh eggs for months by storing them in a weak salt and lime solution. You can find it on the Internet.

Sunday Lunch

Made me some greens today. And bacon-grease cornbread, ham hocks, and a sliced raw Vidalia. Look:

Those are collard greens. Sometimes I get hocks that are so salty they mess up the greens, so today I started boiling the hocks separately, figuring I would get some of the salt out of them before adding them to the greens. Turned out they weren’t salty at all, so this was a total waste of time. I tossed them in with the greens and let them boil down.

I followed Paula Deen’s advice and snuck a little butter into the greens. Butter has a magical quality, as I have often said, mixing and accentuating flavors like no other fat I know.

I replaced a small amount of the bacon grease in the cornbread with butter. In retrospect, I think this was a mistake. Probably better to keep all the bacon grease and add butter anyway.

This was a magnificent lunch. It would have been better if the hocks had had some meat in them. They were almost all fat. This is not a bad thing, when you’ve learned to eat the fat, but the meat is also good.

If you’re planning to do this, it’s simple. Just boil the hocks and greens together. I add salt, a small amount of pepper, and a clove of garlic. Simmer until the hocks are soft, and make sure there isn’t much liquid left in the greens. You want it thick and tasty, especially when you sop it with the cornbread.

Very nice.

I have a nice food-related testimony.

A while back, I had to quit working at my church’s cafe. I didn’t make trouble. I just left and prayed. And I felt like something was telling me, “____ and ____ won’t be around long,” referring to a couple of people who had gotten in my way. I kept praying for God to provide a godly, humble, capable MALE servant to run the cafe.

A week or so ago I learned that a highly talented guitarist who volunteers at church was running the kitchen! This guy plays flamenco like you wouldn’t believe, and he also has some experience working in a restaurant. I finally went in and talked to him today, and he told me how he was going to get the place in line, and how he was putting and end to the slack, unprofessional things that drove me nuts. It was wonderful. I had to let him know about my prayers. I had to share my testimony, so he would know he didn’t end up there accidentally.

I’m going to help him any way I can. It looks like praying for his success is a good start.

The people who made things difficult for me no longer work there full-time. So that “voice” I thought I heard was real.

I am getting great answers to prayer these days. Our church promotes 40 days of fasting at the beginning of each year, and during this time, people who don’t fast can take up other productive things. This year I’m praying in the Spirit for 30 minutes a day, and I’m also spending 30 minutes praying and exerting faith for one particular goal. That goal changes from day to day. I find I run out of stuff to pray for, so I ask people if they have anything for me to send up.

Eight days ago, my friend Alonzo said his wife needed work. She had been out of work for 2 years. Yesterday they said she had two job offers! How about that?

I believe faith is a thing, like heat or charge or mass. The author of Hebrews called it a “substance,” using the Greek work “hupostasis,” which can mean a literal foundation, like the foundation of a house. I believe it’s the fundamental substance of which the universe, natural and supernatural, is built. I think God provides it to those who pray in the Spirit, charging them up like batteries, and I believe we release it when we pray. I think it goes back to God, and he shapes it into the things for which we pray. I feel it leaving me when I pray, like water gushing out of a fire hose. I think this is what Jesus felt leaving him when the lady with the hemorrhage touched his garment.

I also believe that the longer you pray about a thing, the more of this substance you release. Seriously. Think about the blind man Jesus healed. He didn’t just point his finger and yell, “SEE!” He had to give it several tries. God himself, in human form, had to pray for a considerable time to get this miracle done. I believe it works the same way for us. I think that’s why God included that story in the gospels. There has to be some sound reason for including a story which seems to go against the concept of a messiah so powerful he could get anything done instantly. I don’t think Jesus deliberately wasted his time. That would have been foolish and misleading.

He also prayed for a very long time in the Garden of Gethsemane, and he criticized the disciples for being too weak to pray for a solid hour. Think about it. If they had obeyed, would they have been able to go a whole hour without repeating themselves? No way. They had a very simple crisis facing them, not a long list of varying problems. I believe they were supposed to go up there and beg and thank God repeatedly, releasing faith all the while.

So I’m going half an hour at a pop.

So far, the results are consistent with my suspicions. I think the ideas I have are being given to me by God, and that he is leading me into a powerful way of praying. The correct way, probably. I sure hope so. In my own right, I am not fit to judge.

Jesus told us not to repeat ourselves like the heathens. But that doesn’t mean you can’t ask for the same thing over and over for 30 minutes. In fact, he told us to ask for the same things over and over, when he told the parable of the widow and the judge. I believe the repetition ban applied to mumbling prayers that aren’t heartfelt, such as canned prayers from prayer books.

There is no magic in a set of words. You don’t need to use church-sanctioned prayers written by super-holy priests that died decades ago. The faith that backs words up is what gets the job done. I believe that’s what Jesus was pointing out when he told us to avoid vain repetitions. So I think you can pray for the same thing repeatedly and get results. If I’m wrong, God has been remarkably consistent in reinforcing my error. If he keeps that up for the rest of my life, and I’m wrong, I’ll be better off than someone who was right. That would be odd.

I had an interesting conversation with another church member today. He came to me while I was standing in a dark area of the church, alone. He didn’t want to be heard. He started asking me my opinion of a preacher who visited recently. I didn’t know what he was getting at, but I was honest. I said I thought the guy was off course, and that a lot of his spiel was about himself and his own glory. I thought the guy was off into some totally unscriptural Copelandian stuff. “I rebuke this, and I command that, and I release angels.” That kind of weirdness. And my friend agreed completely.

We get preachers who seem completely nutty. They claim they “speak things into existence” and so on. They always talk a great deal about how a bunch of us are going to become millionaires. When they talk about Christians they consider models for us, those Christians are always wealthy people. The congregation laps it up. I think it’s wrong; I believe we’re supposed to be prosperous, but prosperity should be a side effect, not a cure. Jesus said to seek God’s kingdom and his righteousness first.

On the other hand, my friend has a negative view of preachers who talk about supernatural power a lot. I can’t agree. I’ve seen and experienced power, and I see it backed up in the Bible. I think we’re supposed to be a little bit like wizards, except that we’re under God’s authority, and we do our supernatural deeds in humility and awe, and we only do them to please and glorify God, and only at his direction. The Apostles had incredible power. Like John Bevere says, they were mistaken for gods. I think God wants us to wield his power, and I think the power is coming back into the church.

Still, it was great to learn that someone I respected had concerns similar to mine. We have both learned that churches aren’t perfect. Crooks and frauds and egomaniacs are going to show up, and often they’re going to fool people. That doesn’t mean we should leave or make trouble. We should stick around and try to fix things, unless it gets intolerable.

It seems like there are a few people in the church who are scattered around like pillars, holding the place up in maturity and faith. We run into each other by chance, and we come to recognize each other. It’s kind of disturbing that a person with my character limitations would be significantly less wacky and gullible than the bulk of the congregation, but then, God doesn’t have a lot to work with.

When my sister and I used to go to this church together, I told her that some of the best people in churches are in the pews, and now I am taking my own advice. Our pastor never says anything insane, so I think we’re on a fairly good course, and I meet a lot of phenomenal, solid people who work to keep the place running. It won’t kill me if an occasional charlatan drops by and fleeces the congregation. What am I going to do? Die? That’s the only way I’ll join a group of people who worship and serve perfectly.

I always tell people I’ll settle for an 85% church. If I think 85% of what the church teaches is right, that will do.

Stuff is definitely happening at that church and in my life. I keep meeting food people and music people. Now I’m meeting food people who are also professional musicians. What’s THAT all about? I can’t even guess. And we now have three top-flight musicians in the Armorbearers. Something is going on. This is not all coincidence. And I think Mike is going to be moving to South Florida. Another food person.

I still have 50 minutes of stuff left to do today. I’ll keep posting testimonies as they occur.

Ignorance is Always on the Menu

I keep watching Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. I can’t stop.

I don’t watch much TV, but there are usually one or two programs on the DVR. I like Breaking Bad, Pawn Stars, and Perry Stone. Now Ramsay has made the list.

Here is how the show works. A restaurant flops. Ramsay goes in and spends one week trying to turn it around. After he leaves, it almost always goes out of business, but that appears to have more to do with lack of capital than Ramsay’s advice. Once you’re in the hole deep enough, you can’t get out even if your business becomes profitable.

The show started in England (I can’t make myself type “in the UK”), on the BBC. I tape it on BBC America. It’s also on Fox now. They say the Fox version is much dumber and more sensational and less honest than the BBC original.

I’ve learned a lot from watching it. I’ve learned that there is no curse on the restaurant business. People always say 90% of restaurants go out of business, and that this makes it a bad idea to invest in a restaurant, but lots of people get filthy rich running restaurants. The people who go out of business do so because they do things wrong, and often, those mistakes should have been extremely obvious. The mistakes I’ve seen on Kitchen Nightmares are incredible. Let’s see if I can think of a few.

1. Filthy premises and spoiled food. I can’t believe anyone would sink his net worth into a business and then disgust his customers, make them ill, and risk fines and forced closures. I used to love the roast beef subs at Miami Subs, but I learned that every time I ate one, I got so sick Imodiums might as well have been Tic Tacs. My cousin, a restaurant manager, told me it was because Miami Subs cross-contaminated all their meats by slicing different things on the same machines without cleaning them in between. Whatever the reason was, I quit going, and all the local franchises are gone now, so I guess I wasn’t the only one. And who can go back to a restaurant after seeing roaches or rat poop? I can’t. I don’t care if they clean up and get five stars from Mr. Clean himself. The mental image of the former filth will prevent me from enjoying the food.

2. Poor service. There used to be a place called Jake’s Gastropub (what an unappetizing word) in South Miami. “Used to be.” The food was okay, and the location was very good, but it took forever to get served. People hate that, especially when they’re on their lunch hours. If you take half an hour to serve someone, you pretty much guarantee they’ll be late getting back to work. And it’s disrespectful. Aside from that, the wait staff seemed confused about priorities. Once while I was ordering, a waitress ran off–as I was speaking–to wait on the restaurant’s owner, who was at a nearby table. And he let her do it. I guess he showed me who was important. Now he has no restaurant. He should have known better.

3. Bad food. There is no excuse for this. People who run restaurants probably tend to think they cook better than everyone else. If so, they’re smoking crack. If you’re truly honest when you taste restaurant food, usually, you’ll realize you can do better at home. Convenience and atmosphere make restaurant food seem better than it is, and there are some dishes that are difficult to make at home, so a restaurant can get away with ordinary food. But once the food gets significantly worse than food cooked at home, no one wants it.

Ramsay has also reminded me that culinary school graduates often can’t cook. I knew this already, and so do you, if you think about it. A big percentage of restaurants have degreed chefs, and many of those restaurants serve bad food, because the chefs are poor cooks. How can that be?

I don’t know how they grade at cooking schools. You would think the taste of the food would count, but maybe it doesn’t. Maybe they only care about teaching technique. And as they say, “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” Maybe cooking school chef-instructors aren’t qualified to teach. If they were, they’d be doing something else, right? Nearly all law school professors are incompetent lawyers. I don’t see why CIA and Le Cordon Bleu wouldn’t have the same syndrome.

I envy people who’ve been to cooking school, because they don’t have to reinvent the wheel all the time, which is what I do when I cook something new. They are more likely to know which machines to use and which tricks work and which ingredients are best, so they probably don’t flounder and waste time like I do. Nonetheless, the ability to write a new recipe is a God-given talent, and if you don’t have it, cooking school will not impart it to you, and knowledge and technique won’t fill the void. You would think that trained chefs would at least be able to follow proven recipes, but judging from what I’ve seen on TV, many chefs literally can’t tell good food from bad, so when they try to cook, it’s like Stevie Wonder trying to pitch at the World Series. They can’t tell when they’ve got it right. Or wrong.

I suspect that cooking school has less to do with good food than it does with running a business and getting food plopped on plates. I know some chefs who can get edible stuff on the table in an institutional setting, yet whom I would consider unfit to cook for guests in my home. They can prep stuff in advance, and they know how to feed a lot of people, and they have a number of unoriginal, safe recipes they know will work, but on the whole, I’d rather eat at Wendy’s.

Another interesting thing: the show confirms that some people who have never gone to cooking school make fantastic chefs. One of the owners Ramsay tried to help was a self-taught cook who ended up working as the head chef at Gallagher’s, in New York. He quit to run his own place, and his business methods were bad, but he knew how to cook.

Talking about bad cooks reminds me of a sad episode involving a Mexican place. A lady who was a successful caterer built a gorgeous restaurant and served her trademark dishes, and the business failed. Ramsay went in and found she had freezers loaded with entrees cooked days or years in advance. Naturally, the food was no good. And she was amazed! How is that possible? She was like a person whose breath drives people out of the room, yet who can’t smell it herself. How can you serve food every day and never try it yourself, especially when you’re about to lose your business, home, and savings?

Ramsay told her catering was not like running a restaurant, and I guess he’s right. I’ve had a lot of catered food, and almost all of it was substandard. People think caterers are brilliant if they show up on time, get the food out, and clean up when they leave. No one really expects the food to be good. This lady probably became successful because she ran a tight ship and got things done, not because she was any kind of cook. Seriously, have you ever had really good food at a wedding or catered event? I haven’t.

This lady’s head chef was a timid little friend who had no idea what she was doing. Ramsay challenged her to come up with an original recipe, and she said she couldn’t think. She ended up serving chicken breast with salt and garlic. She should have been making salads and slicing lemons. The owner had to fire her.

Ramsay gave this lady a lot of sound advice, but her restaurant tanked anyway. On her Facebook page, she blames her location. Maybe she’s partly right, but I know this: when the food is good enough, people will climb a mountain in the snow to get to your restaurant. So ultimately, her lack of talent is probably what did her in.

It seems like you have to have two types of people to run a restaurant. You need someone who knows what good food is, and you need someone who can manage a business. If you can’t tell whether your food is good, it will be bad, because good food doesn’t happen accidentally, and word will get around. If you can’t run a business, your food will probably be bad in spite of your talent, so your talent will be nullified. And you’ll have all sorts of problems in other areas. You’ll have a staff that doesn’t get things done. You’ll waste money. Your standards will be nonexistent. You’ll anger your customers.

It’s easy to see why people prefer practicing law or medicine. You charm your customers, you do things they don’t understand well enough to criticize, and if you lose in court or fail to cure them, hopefully they’ll like you so much they’ll take your side anyway. If you’re good at customer relations, people will say you’re a great lawyer or doctor, even though they can’t possibly know what they’re talking about. In a restaurant, you have to produce something that tastes good, and you have to serve it correctly and provide a nice atmosphere. Those are things anyone can judge competently.

I disagree with Ramsay’s obsession with things that are “fresh” and “new.” Many highly successful restaurants avoid change and innovation at all costs, and it works. I find nouvelle cuisine and weird ingredients and cutesy presentations tiresome. Give me a nice steak or a great slice of pizza, any day. What you cook is less important than that you cook it correctly, and creativity is no substitute for time-tested flavors and textures. When I go to a restaurant I like, I’m always hoping it will still have the same great things it had in the past. I don’t go to restaurants to be amazed. It’s not Cirque du Soleil. It’s food.

The show may be contrived and less than totally honest, but it’s still a good way to learn how not to run a business.

Funny thing: supposedly Ramsay’s own empire is on the ropes. Maybe he needs to go on Emeril’s Kitchen Nightmares or Mario Batali’s Kitchen Nightmares. I don’t think either of those guys can cook, but their restaurants seem to make money.

Christmas Grub

This was amazing. I added this and that to the crust and topping, and it was even better than usual. I can’t believe I put this recipe in my book. The general public does not deserve this.

And here’s the prime rib. The horseradish sauce was glorious. Much better than the whipped cream version I tried last time.

Work Hard to Make Ordinary Food, or Take it Easy and be a Star

If you want a good Christmas dinner and you don’t want to work, do what I do: prime rib, baked potatoes, cheesecake.

I admit, the cheesecake takes some doing, but the other stuff is so easy, you’ll have time for it.

Right now I have a juicy prime rib roasting at 200°. I bought it about nine days ago. I salted it down and stuck it in the fridge to improve. Yesterday I greased it heavily with strong garlic butter. Today I stuck in on a roasting pan, covered it with foil, put a thermometer in it, and put it in an oven timed to crank up on its own, at the appropriate time. When the roast gets close to being done, I’ll max out the temperature and remove the foil to brown it. Very simple.

I bought some nice potatoes, washed them, salted them while they were still wet, and let them dry. Ordinarily I’d bake them at 450 for an hour, but that won’t be possible today because of the roast. I’m going to bake them at 200 for two hours and then leave them in while the roast browns. I think that ought to do it. If not, there is no law against touching them up with the microwave.

That’s the whole dinner. No pointless salad. No other sides. This is all you need. I guess shucky beans would have been a nice side dish, but the truth about steak and roasts is that almost anything you put beside the potato is a distraction.

It’s funny; it seems like every cook I respect makes prime rib in nearly the same way. Low and slow, finished off with high heat.

I don’t agree with people who say the meat should be pink all the way out to the edge. I like the contrasting flavors you get from differing degrees of doneness, so it’s fine with me if the outer inch is medium-well. That’s the juiciest, softest piece of the roast anyway. It won’t get tough if it cooks through.

I also disagree with those who cut their roasts off the bone and tie them back on. I’ve done it, but I think it’s probably better to keep the meat and bones together, for flavor. Maybe I’m wrong. Separating the meat and bones makes for easier carving, but you can separate them after the roast cooks, and then you don’t have to go through the horror of attaching twine and praying it stays on. The advantage of separating the meat early is that you can get extra seasoning close to the center of the roast.

I think I have a good system here. The kitchen is clean. The dessert is ready. The roast is taking care of itself. I have nothing to do for the next hour and a half. Sweet.

I got a funny compliment on Facebook this week. A girl I go to church with referred to my “unnatural cooking ability.” I thought that was interesting, because she’s probably right. There is nothing natural about writing down amazing recipes on the first try. I seriously believe God speaks this stuff into my ear.

Stuff is Happening

I made my pineapple upside-down banana nut cake, and I wasn’t that happy with it. A lot of the pineapple sauce leaked out, so it needed more, and I was out of pineapple stuff, so I was stuck. Also, I was not totally pleased with the way it went with rum raisin ice cream.

I thought it would be fantastic served hot, and when it wasn’t quite fantastic, I figured the sauce was the problem. Then I stuck it in the fridge, and later, I tried a cold slice. It was magnificent! Very odd. You would think hot would be better, but this cake definitely has to be served cold.

I didn’t get a chance to try it cold with ice cream. It was too good to keep. I had to throw it out. I could have given it to friends at church (in fact, I got hollered at for failing to do so), but I don’t know if I could have avoided eating it before I got a chance to deliver it.

I used a 9″ springform pan. That was a mistake. I can’t remember why I used a springform pan in the past. It’s not a bad idea, but the cake is too tall, and 9″ is the wrong diameter, because you can only fit 4 pineapple slices in it. And you have to have extra-wide foil to keep the sauce in the pan. Next time I think I’ll go to 10″ and use wider foil.

In other news, I changed my oil today. “Big deal,” right? Well, it IS. First of all, it looks like vehicle dealers have universally adopted a strategy of jamming oil plugs so they’re impossible to remove. I think they do it to force you to come back for help. I had this problem with the Harley, and today I had a tough time getting the plug out of the Dodge. An impact driver had no effect. I finally put a half-inch socket wrench on it and basically military-pressed it open. I would guess I put over a hundred pounds of force on the wrench. There is no reason for an oil plug to be that tight.

I had a lot of fun dealing with almost 3 gallons of dirty oil and removing the air inlet hose to get to the filter. The truck is so tall, I have to stand on a box to work under the hood. On the up side, there’s tons of room under it.

Anyway, by the time I was done, my arms were pretty much black from the fingers halfway to my elbow, and I had blood on my shirt from a cut I still haven’t found. It ought to be worth it, however, because I can go 37,500 miles before my next oil change.

I used Amsoil and an Amsoil filter, for the best possible performance. That meant changing the oil myself, because I couldn’t find anyone around here who would do the change and just charge for labor.

I also had fun moving my spare tire back to the storage doodad under the truck bed. I got up on the side of the truck and started to shove the tire toward the back, and I felt a horrible sensation in my side. I still don’t know what it was. Now I have a sore spot between my ribs. And to make things even more pleasant, this happened before I did the oil change, so I got to enjoy feeling the soreness increase while I was struggling to drag myself around under the truck.

Once you get past a certain age, you can hurt yourself badly enough to justify an ER visit, just by breaking wind without warming up.

I’m trying to get the garage fixed up. I threw out some of my beloved scrap items. A big box of Cat 5 wire, spools of copper wire, the steel frame from a desk, and so on. I know I’ll need all of it ten minutes after the garbage truck comes by, but I have to de-clutter. If only I had a shed…no, TWO sheds…and a barn…with a lean-to…and a blimp hangar…

I have been going nuts trying to build a Telecaster-type guitar from six slabs of walnut, and I finally decided to accept reality and order a jointer. I got my planing sled to work, and I even put feed tables on my wonderful DeWalt planer, but you know what? It still sucks. I pretty much solved the planer jointing problem, but I just don’t care. It sucks.

I watched a woodworking video last night, and the old guy doing the work grabbed a piece of wood and tossed it on the jointer, and BANG, he was done. In about seven seconds. I wanted to strangle him.

I started thinking about the horror of mounting wood on the planing sled, lifting the planer onto a table, using duct tape to cobble together a dust collection scheme, and then fighting snipe, and for a time, I went insane. I found out it was possible to use credit card points to get the price of a jointer down so low they almost paid me to take it, so I gave up and pulled the trigger.

This is one reason I need room.

I decided on a Rikon 10″ jointer/planer combo. Wait! Shut up! Don’t lecture me! I know it’s not a classic 8″ Powermatic, and I will even admit that some nutcase just sold a like-new Powermatic for $500 on the local Craigslist. But I needed something small, and I wanted to be able to joint wide stuff. The Rikon is a blatant copy of an old machine made by Inca, and people still love the Inca machines and pay high prices for them. I feel sure it will work for my needs, and it has a neat stand with wheels, and it doesn’t weigh three tons or whatever the Powermatic weighs, and it doesn’t have a forty-foot wingspan.

Sometimes you have to compromise.

Jet makes combo machines for much less, but nearly everyone who reviews them says leprosy is more fun than getting a Jet to work, so I couldn’t make myself face the risk. Seriously, the reviews are like little treatments for brief horror films.

I made myself a router fence so I could do edge-jointing on the router, but I started thinking of the geometry-based ramifications my project would involve, and I realized it would be a torment straight from hell’s pit, so there’s another reason to throw in the towel.

Making the router fence was surprisingly hard. The table saw is the tool from paradise. It does everything with microscopic precision and drug-fantasy ease, and it made the parts in no time at all. But putting them together…not fun. It turns out you can’t screw into the side of 1/2″ MDF, even with pilot holes. I had to go with all-glue construction, and I had to make the fence parts perfectly square. I don’t know if glue is strong enough to hold this thing together under stress, but there is no other way to do it. We will see.

I have an idea for combining angle iron and scrap wood to make a dynamite router fence that will slide on my Biesemeyer rails. That would be beautiful. I could just order a short Biesemeyer fence, but that would cost a pile. It’s impossible to buy a pro fence, by itself, used.

I now have a spiffy restored vintage Stanley No. 6 plane (cheap!), but I have to learn how to use it, and I don’t think I’ll regret getting the jointer. It has become clear to me that I need to learn to use a bench plane and a shoulder or rabbet plane, in order to have any type of respect for myself as a man. There are too many problems they solve quickly. You can’t witness them in action and then not lust for them mindlessly.

I may still be inept, but I continue to strive. Success, or at least the comforting illusion of success, comes incrementally. It’s sort of like socialism in the USSR before it all went down the toilet and the whole country got a reality check from the back of Reagan’s hand.

Now if I could only find my tape measure…