Eat the Bread, Drink the Wine

I read that most people don't cook much and I saw on a local morning news program that few sit down to table for meals. I know I'm old, but I wasn't always. Yes, I've had my food sitting on the sofa in front of the tv, but generally we sat at the table. Even when it was just the boy and I. We still do. It is a time to come together, even if it's just for half an hour. I wonder, if life is too busy for that, perhaps a rethink is in order? I often think about setting the dining table with china and crystal at least once a week. We never use it anymore. My son has gone off on his own way, so holidays have been Mark and I the past couple of years. I think about the dining room  table but never seem to get beyond the thinking. The kitchen table is so convenient.

I had a sausage to use and an acorn squash. With pappardelle it made a good dinner for two. I love making bread, it is an uplifting experience for me. This was yesterday's loaf. Fifty-fifty King Arthur bread flour and white whole wheat.

It's another cold and windy day. Winter is hanging on, which is normal. March is a teaser, we get a day or two in the 60s and then we go back to winter. I have plenty of wood for the fireplace, we live where a softwood forest wants to grow, so I get to enjoy my fires, eat my food and drink my wine. Not bad. 

 

Lasagna, Philosophy and Imperfection

The young trainer I had working Zing, a philosophy major, once said to me as I was realizing Barack Obama wasn't who I wanted him to be "It's hard to be a thinker, Sandra". I couldn't have found a better match for spending countless hours with than Kristina. This old barn philosopher had many an interesting hour with her. She is right, it is hard being a thinker. Which is a round about way of getting to my unimpressive lasagna. I misjudged the amount of filling I had, therefore using a too large casserole dish. Result: skimpy lasagna. 

 How does this align with Kristina and philosophical thinking you might reasonably ask? Well, first of all I thought I'd let posting go today, not much to say. Then for some reason I began to think about imperfection. I may have been looking in the mirror. I have admired imperfection. I've tended to buy the worst house in the neighborhood. I drive old vehicles. I used to rescue dogs. I never found them to be imperfect, but someone did. Back to lasagna. I have an internet friend of several years. He lives in Iowa, has Arabian horses, is a preservationist breeder and a collector of old things. Hmmm, I may be one of those old things.... He also enjoys cooking, so we exchange recipes and photos of what we make. I took this photo last night and then decided not to send it because it isn't perfect. The thing is, this vegetable lasagna was excellent in flavor, just lacking in layers. My friend wouldn't have cared it was skinny. He would have asked me about ingredients. 

There's some philosophical underpinnings in this, but I think I'll leave it with lasagna. I have bread to put in the oven.

Horses, of Courses

Horses have been in my family always. This is my Uncle Jim, married to my maternal aunt, Kathrine. He was calvary during WWI when they still used horses. I didn't know them well, but I heard the stories. My maternal grandfather (great-grandfather) was a teamster, starting at a time when the word meant driving a team. I have only vague memories of him since he died when I was four. 

 I don't know who this is, I'm going to assume from my father's side, he came from a family more likely to own Saddlebreds. It's difficult to tell the decade, my guess would be 1930s. The mare's name is on the back of the photo but no date nor name of the man. I will guess he was a Hurd, my paternal grandmother's name.

 My dad loved horses and owned a Saddlebred when he was in high school. They lived in the house that had belonged to my grandmother's parents and it had a small stable on the property. It's because of my father that I was able to have my first horse as a kid. He intervened and I got one. I'm inclined to believe it is genetic, I am more my father than my mother, for which I am very thankful. He had plenty of faults, he pacified and covered for and enabled a sociopathic personality until he died. He had a deep self-centeredness which simply could not allow disruption in his life. So, his son walked out on him as well as her and he never really overcame it. I got the horse gene, his son did not. Which means he probably has a large retirement account! 

My only child has no interest in horses. He wasn't raised with them, my childhood horse died right after he was born and I boarded the horse I got when he was a teenager. So he didn't have exposure. I'm inclined toward the belief he wouldn't have interest in them if he'd had exposure. Ah, well. I more than make up for it. I still have fifteen of the hay gobbling beasts. They are getting old, but doing it better than I am. The thirty year old mare died in December, leaving two twenty-seven year olds the title of oldest. The youngster of the group is a sixteen year old mare. Most are in the twenties. Some people have large families. I have horses. 

Musing

 I had a brain injury eleven years ago last month. I've learned not to talk about it, they really are not at all understood. Unless one shows some physical sign of damage, people tend to dismiss the brain injured who can walk and talk. Even doctors don't seem to get it. 

I have realized in the last few years I've always been depressed, but it was so normal, the way I felt, I didn't know it was depression. My brain injury ramped it up, in the couple of years afterward I wasn't functioning well at all. I finally understood I needed help and went on Prozac. The deeply depressed should not be in charge of their depression treatment, but no one can tell them (me) that. The drug stopped working about four years later. I tried a couple of others, I couldn't tolerate the side effects, so I fumbled along for another couple of years. Through a book a friend recommended, written by a local psychiatrist, I found an over-the-counter medication which is a prescription in Europe. It has helped me, I am still often low, but not always. And my lows don't take me to the darkness.

What is a common theme with TBI, from what I experience and read on a brain injury group, is depression and a loss of who you were. There's the loss of balance and memory along with various other symptoms, but the one that seems to cause such a feeling of loss is the loss of self. For those who haven't lived it it's impossible, or so it seems, to understand living in your body, seeing yourself in the mirror, interacting with people...and not feeling like yourself. I'm not me, not the me I was. I work at accepting this, I understand grieving the loss of something which will never return becomes a fools errand. And yet, I and all the many others I know, do it anyway. I don't know how not to. Yes, I know it's not time well spent, but there it is. 

The pandemic has not helped, as it hasn't for so many. Isolation is the last thing someone like me needs, it's too easy to slip into the cocoon of solitude. I have never had many friends and that is more the case now than ever. Two I knew for decades I let go over the past two years. One, a much younger woman, without meaning to was sucking the life out of me and I broke. The other, also younger, went through some life changing events in her life which either changed her or made her more confident in showing something I didn't understand was there. I had to move away from that, as well. Living rural is an easy path to isolation.

Coming back to this abandoned blog strangely gives me some comfort. I have good memories here. It also allows me to say whatever I want, no like button or emojis. Putting my food photos, my animals, my history, it feels better here than on Instagram. For a few minutes I forget about the noise in my head and make something someone may look at and smile. That's pretty good.

Brat Cat

Go away

She blends in, she wants to believe I can't see her. 

Reset

Yesterday I made bread, a crusty boule.

Today I made soup, paired with the bread. Quite good, I say. A fine way to use a pork roast bone and the leftover meat.

 

I have one more winter under my belt. This being Minnesota winter may have another swing at us, but it will be fleeting. I overall enjoy winter, I like the dark, the coziness it holds, the fires blazing, the baking and cooking soups, braises and casseroles. The white landscape, the horses in the paddocks, contentedly chomping down the round bales of hay. It's a reset period. Unfortunately the last days of this winter have had a jolt of horror, an unsettling of how we view reality. An unexpected reset. Reality has become an insecure state of being, a shock that what happened 84 years ago is possible again. I, we have a sense of foreboding not shaken. So, as I told a friend....I make my bread, my soup. I live the life I have the best I know how. It's all I have control of. Yet, the grey cloud hovers and probably will, maybe always. In the meantime, bake some bread. Make some soup.

Tortie

Where's Breakfast?

 I'm so happy she knocked at the door.

Real

I gave up pretending. No one was buying it

 Happy Friday Junior

Tenuous

Because They Are Pretty

 We are entering spring in Minnesota. At least for the moment, one can never tell here. I've spent some time the last week or so thinking about the state of the world, about how one day in Ukraine life was as it had been the day before and the day before and before. Then it collapsed. Just like that. There is no anticipation of spring for them. 

Who's a Good Dog?

Keetah is!

 She's been with us almost two years and is a very good dog. She was a year old rescue when someone decided adopting her to my old mother was a good idea. It is a testament to her very good nature that she remained a good dog. She loves people, which is appreciated as she is about 110 pounds of large German Shepherd that had no training or socializing. After my Bassets died I didn't want anymore dogs, the pain of losing my dogs finally caught up to me. I knew I'd likely end up with my mother's dogs and did. Emma lived for eight months, dying just short of 17 years old. German Shepherd shedding is on a whole other level, one I could do without but it comes with Keetah so I guess that's that. After all.....she's a good dog.