Degringolade

Expressionism / Johannes Sveinsson Kjarval/ The sisters of Stapi

OK:  Getting my cuppa Joe into me now, heading to work in a bit and haven’t really come up with something to write about at the moment.  

Been having some trouble getting in motion lately.  I am certain that a lot of it has to do with the weather, which has been PNW gloomy of late and the short days and long nights aren’t helping one damn bit.  Guess I can suck it up once again and gut through the winter gloom, but it is and will be tiresome.

I think that I will talk about food again, since I have a hunch that the issue, due to supply and supply chain problems might well come to the fore this year.  Trying to talk the three young men into buying a freezer, hell, I might even buy one myself.  Dry goods like beans and rice and flour and such are OK but a little bit of meat and fat go a long way to making these simple things something that you look forward to eating rather than something you eat to survive.

Chef got me ‘a thinking about sausages in his post the other day.  I am starting to consider what it takes to make these yummy little packages of awesomeness.  The answer is, not very much.  

Now, I remember back to my youth on a small farm and immigrant grandparents.  Uncle Mick was the sausage guy and my memories of the product are pretty amazing.  I’ll never get to that level of yummy again because the memory will always get in the way.  That is the trouble with things ephemeral and sense-oriented, the memory of when you were amazed by the sensation will always be an unachievable goal.  

But damn if you can’t come pretty close.  

So I am pondering a good combo grinder/stuffer from the evil-consumer-overlord.  Victoria still seems to be making the one that I remember uncle Mick using.  Hand crank manual.  I am not processing a damn deer or elk, I am making sausage for two or three people for a couple of meals.  Manual is just fine.

Impressionism / Federico Zandomeneghi/ The Moulin de la Galette

Seems to me that there is a lot of shit in the process of going down. 

Obviously I am not in any kind of position to affect the outcome, but if I am careful and keep my eyes open and my mouth shut I may well be in a position to get out of the way and not get splattered too badly by the aftermath.  

I am thinking that the financial world is ready for a pretty good sized hiccup.  We are due and that particular game appears to be very very ripe for a pretty good sized bout of weirdness.  You know, like an ‘87, or a ‘96, or a 2K or a 2008.  That kinda hiccup.

Foreign affairs looks to be equally dicey.  We are in way over our heads and we have never been really good at the game anyway.  What we do appear to be good at is to spend lots of money buying very questionable allies.  That game looks to be coming to a head and now I think that more and more folks are getting wise to our game and are not desirous of playing the game by our rules.  This could not end well.

The COVID games are looking a little sketchy.

The Election results in Arizona are reputably bad news.

Congress has no clue what to do except toss money around on questionable projects.

Jesus.  This could go real bad.  I am hoping against that result, but my hopes don’t have any particular weight in equations such as this.    

So my current important process is to develop and perfect my musabi recipe.  Good, cheap eats that provide a bit of variety to a low-cost beans and rice based diet.

That's about the limit of my effect on the world's affairs