Sanuk D

I don't know what I'm doing here, I should be someplace else.

I am an eater, and my people are eaters.  We are not epicures or gastronomes.  We’ll eat the hell out of some spam — or whatever the tofu equivalent is for me these days.  As a matter of fact, I used to eat a fair amount of olive loaf growing up.  Let’s just consider the name for a second: olive loaf.  Loaf of what?  I know, I don’t want to know.  Olive loaf was good though.  When one of my people comes to visit, it is my first inclination to feed them.

So a hippie cousin on Mama’s side was in town to drop her boy off in the Valley of Love and Delight.  That’s pretty cool because she lives up in Ken-tuck where there is a similar institution of higher learning, and it was this institution that made me think the VoL&D would be a good place to go to school.  Circle of life and all that crap.  She had to leave her baby boy and came over to our house to cry it out for a while.

I, natch, fried some okra.  One of the advantages of being married to my Sweet Lady is that she does not eat crappy food like olive loaf.  I am the one who cooks the majority of the time, so I have had to learn a few things.  Fried okra is one, as are roasted potatoes, corn on the cob, and fresh biscuits.  I’m a regular Barbara Kingsolver over here.  That’s some damn good food.  It took a while to pull all of that together.

As I cooked, we talked about their day.  Turns out, cuz done et only about 3 hours ago.  She was not so hungry.  I was well into putting this food on the table when she got a call from the boy and it was time for them to run on to Wal-Mart for some ice and an extension cord.  That was fine, actually, because I think she got what she needed from our house, that is, she was able to separate if only for a little while.  Plus there was more okra for me.

If I had fought in the Civil War, I think the hardest part for me would have been the inconsistent supply of coffee.  And maybe all the bacon they ate which would have made for rough going what with being a vegetarian at all.  Hard tack and honey is not so bad, but no coffee may well have done me in.  They solved that by the Second World War with the invention of instant coffee.  ”Invention” being somewhat loosely used in this instance.  Like Columbus “discovering” America, some WWII army dude walked into a Quonset hut where the coffee pot had been left on all day, scraped the tar off the bottom, mixed it with tap water, and said “Hey! Coffee!”

So that is how it came to be that my grandparents, and everyone in their generation, drank instant coffee that tastes like burnt coffee.  The also called all decaf coffee “Sanka.”  It was very elegant to ask if your guests would like some Sanka after dinner.  There are those for who Sanka is about as interesting as Near Beer.  Seriously, why would anyone bother?  Well, some of us are either more sensitive or more finely tuned that others.  I will choose finely tuned.

The tuning getting more fine as the days progress toward the Hell of the Highcountry this weekend.  In a concession to the tradition of tapering, I have been taking shorter runs so far this week.  Today’s was a lovely jaunt beside the trail of the Suwaree, around the River Bend pasture.  The cattle were just waking in the lee of the ridge, seeking the tender shoots of grass near the fences.  Fortunately, I did not encounter any bear on Suicide Ridge, their summer domain.  What I did encounter was a lovely, fun run.  This slightly shorter taper does seem to be doing it’s job of allowing some rest while breaking the monotony of training.

So what I do when I’m not running is as important this week as what I do when I run.  That includes making sure I have enough fluids going in as fluids going out.  Caffeine is, of course, a diuretic.  (That means it makes you pee.)  I happen to like the taste of coffee as well as its effect.  Sipping a fresh cuppa joe while watching skinny men fall on cobblestones is a rare pleasure.  Therefore, I will brew up a bit of Sanka and enjoy this hellish day on le Tour de France.  Thanks, Gramps!

It doesn’t take a true hard-core baller to appreciate the majesty of Michael Jordan.  It does not take a shaven-leg biker, nay Cyclist, to appreciate the dominance of Lance Armstrong.  It does not take a Monday Morning Quaterback to understand the wickedness of Payton Manning on Sunday night.  Nor does it take a wake-and-baking beercan-bong-making stoner to appreciate a song like “Sweet Leaf.”  Especially when the non-beercan-bong-making ex-stoner is on a treadmill trying to finish his last mile in under seven minutes.

The wheres and why-fors of that are not the issue so much as the fact that a good beat and a driving guitar is a good beat and a driving guitar whether the song is by the Faces or by Black Sabbath (as rendered by Galactic. The Venn diagram for those two intersects where? Right: pot.)  Who cares if I have not been stoned since the first Bush administration?  I can still appreciate that another’s passion for Cannabis Sativa delivers a song to me which emboldens my own passions.

Like a passion for sativa, but in my case Lactuca Sativa.  More specifically, Lactuca Sativa “Red Sails.”  Your dude with a half-acre out in Sandy Mush has nothing on my Square Foot Garden.  We have sprinkled basil and oregano from the SFG on our pizza before.  Hell, we even got a few puny tomatoes last year.  It wasn’t a great year for tomatoes.  Tonight, however, our dinner salad was radishes and red leaf lettuce from our own garden.  We’ve already got access to pretty good produce, so I can’t say that the flavor blew me away.  The fact that I cut it at 6:00 and we were eating it at 6:45 was pretty damn cool though.  I love you Sweet Leaf, though you can’t hear.

We’ve taken a break from our regularly scheduled activity to bring you this blog post.  Actually, the scheduled activity continues but there is not much to do at the moment but wait, so I might as well write a little somin’ somin’.  The scheduled activity is making dough which metaphorically is the activity most week days but is literally the activity today.  The dough is for pizza crust as well as a loaf of bread.  It might make more sense to just produce enough dough for pizza or bread, yet dough recipes always come in double and since I have been up since 5:30, I am not going to do math.

They come in double size either because we as Americans demand too much from our recipes or because bread is kind of labor intensive, so why not make two loaves while you are at it?  I’ve made enough bread by hand at this point that I don’t like bread from the bread machine.  This is a pain in the arse because it takes longer and is more work to make bread by hand.  It would be tons easier to just dump all the crap in the machine and let it work.  It is true what they say, however: once you’ve got to making bread by hand you never go back.  Something like that.  I’m not sure why they say that and not something that rhymes.  Things that rhyme are much catchier.  Modern poets don’t use rhyme.  Maybe they are the ones making bread by hand.

And don’t forget the pizza dough.  I normally do make pizza dough with the machine.  Just dump all the stuff in.  I’m convinced, however, that making the dough by hand should produce a better dough.  So far not so much.  I seem to have taken a step backwards in fact as the dough is not rising like it should.  This may have to do with the yeast not being warm enough, but at this point you are likely very much unconcerned with the cause of the failure to rise and more concerned with how to reclaim the last two minutes of life which you have spent reading this post.

I’ll tell you: kneed dough.  Especially bread dough.  Dough made solely from bread flour.  Dough with whole wheat flour is, of course, better for you.  This dough is not, however, as silky smooth to the touch.  As my hands caress the soft subtle texture of fresh dough, feeling its elasticity respond to my firm grasp, I begin to think I should apologize to my Sweet Lady for taking indecent liberties with a foodstuff.  The warm body of dough squeals as it releases small bursts of air it has been holding inside.  Every so often I rub in a bit more flour as the dough relaxes and solidifies.  All of a sudden we are done and there is nothing much to do but lie around and wait for the dough to get itself up.

Good hair, like a rose bush, flourishes with benign neglect.  At least this has been my rationalization for years of poor haircuts and itinerant stays at various barbers, salons, and beauty parlours.  It will always grow back and it is pretty much going to look good because it’s the o’fro.  So why bother?  Besides, I am a Free Spirit not to be tied down with bourgeois obligations like hair cutting appointments or stylist affiliations.  These are the concerns of a douchebag, and I am definitely not one of those. Simple, no-frills, convenient.  That is how my haircuts roll.

And the route from Tallulah’s school to my office runs right by the no-frills, old school Joe King’s Barbershop.  Joe King is, alas, no more.  It was always interesting to get a haircut from Joe, who would mumble under the sound of the clippers as he worked.  You could tell him whatever you wanted about how you would like to get your hair cut.  It did not matter.  Joe cut hair one way.  All over town there was a fraternity of men with the same hair style, courtesy Joe King.  I would have stopped in just to remain in the clan despite what it did to my look, but Joe was gone.

Betty now has the front chair, and I was not sure that going to Betty would be the same experience.  As often happens, I awoke one morning and was so miserable with the mound of hair on my head that I decided I would get it cut.  Today.  Now.  The spirit has moved and we shall make it so.  Great Clips does not open until 10:00, so I bit the bullet and stopped at Betty’s Joe King’s Barber Shop, arriving about the same time she did.  I gave her a minute to get inside and then she motioned me in because she was tired of waiting.

When I sat in the chair, the first thing she asked was, “Have you been going to Great Clips?”  I hung my head in shame.  She made me look up again so that she could thin out the top (sorry, that’s not supposed to be an arrogant statement) and we talked about her kids and my work.  The haircut was good.  And cheap enough.  She asked me if I was in love.  I said I would be up for another date.

When I came back, the hair still looked good and was not too long, but it was getting way too warm when I ran.  Betty asked me about work — she remembered who I worked for — and we talked about her kids and grand kids some more.  She gave me another great haircut that looked good when I left and looks good now.  I look in the mirror most mornings and wonder if it is long enough yet for me to go back and see Betty.  I worry that she will not get enough customers or decide to retire.  She said she had quit smoking, and I hope she has stuck with it.  I do not want her to get sick and not be able to cut hair.  I’m a wreck.  I’ve finally got a barber stylist lady.  She’s gonna make me lonesome when she goes.