Oh! I misread that label

27 September 2009 Oh, I misread that label!


The top sirloin I removed from the freezer for yesterday’s dinner turned out to be bottom round. Same animal but a lot more chewing for the same flavor. So the plan for broiled steaks with a baked potato fell by the wayside, floated down stream with the 1.45 inches of rain we received yesterday.

When I took the dog out at 2200 to drain and empty her, the rain that had been falling nearly all day had stopped. It was 62, heading to a lower number and foggy. A few bright stars were visible overhead.

Yesterday was a good day. It was filled with music, with laughter, and fun. There are many good ways to spend a rainy afternoon.

The steak was still mostly frozen when I discovered my error. Gloria suggested I make some sort of stir fry. We had rice last night with dinner’s curry. I opted for a Chinese hot pot type meal. A good Sabatier knife and some concentration resulted in very thin slices of steak. VietNamese Hanoi style Pho base gave me the primary broth flavor. Onions, bok choy, sugar snap peas, carrots, and various seasonings rounded out the broth. We both had two bowls of contents and broth, picked at it with chopsticks until only remnants of bok choy were left. Easy clean up, I tend to clean as I go. Like any other skill, cooking is much easier if the tools are good and well cared for. I am lucky to have good knives and pans. Once in a while they pay off and something edible leaves the kitchen.

I will confess to enjoying an occasional box of Kraft Mac & cheese. Having no taste for milk, most mac and cheese that people fix from scratch leaves me cold. The puddle of milk that remains in the bottom of that brought to most of the pot lucks I’ve ever attended warns me off that offering. The same applies to au gratin potatoes. I love the dish, dislike the milk. Cook it until the milk is absorbed or use less milk.

1.65 inches of rainfall makes some difference.

The creek is a bit higher, the pools fuller than yesterday. More evident in the left-hand, upstream image.

Left: This is the lower portion of the creek as it flows north, off our property. The channel is about 20 feet deep at the point on the left bank where I shot this image, 10 or so at the strainer tree downstream That is a fully grown tree lying across the creek bed. We’ve seen water up to the tree. Not a place to wade in high water. During low water the low end of the tree is about 5 feet over the creek bed.

Right: This is the portion of Cassi Creek directly behind our house, about 50 feet from the deck. It contains two pools which shelter rainbow trout approaching one foot in length and many smaller, younger, brook trout that are part of what we hope remains a native breeding population. The rocks which separate the two pools are where we believe the bear made its exit with our trash bag. It apparently hunkered down in the knotweed and dined on garbage. It left the refuse, which Gloria spotted and which I cleaned up. Note the knotweed along the right bank which helps maintain the cooler water temperature which trout require. The long tree on the left bank is 45 foot long pine which appeared there on morning last January during the high water period.



I’m defrosting ground bison for tonight’s dinner. I’ll season it up a bit, add some grated cheese and something to moisten the meat a bit, then pan sear some burgers/ground bison steak from the result. Bison has a great flavor and doesn’t need much added to it. I’ll sauté some mushrooms and deglaze with red wine and chili to provide a good pan sauce.

We talked with my mother and sister this morning. My mother will be 83 Tuesday. She drove from Jefferson City MO to Kansas City to spend her birthday with my sister Suzanne and her family. Suzie’s husband, Ernie, has two children from his first marriage. They’re both grown now but Suzie pretty much raised them from childhood.

Her stepson, Jeff, was just diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, stage 3. He’s a mechanic, married with a child of his own. He will be treated at the Truman hospital in Kansas City as he has no real income and no insurance. The hospital will deeply discount his care but that is hardly enough. He started chemotherapy Friday. He’s a good kid, wants to carry his own weight, and just got hammered by something that threatens to grind him up. He shouldn’t have to worry about how to pay for treatment that may save his life.

This is a good example of the need for health care reform in this nation. No insurance company doing business in this nation will adequately cover someone like Jeff for a disease like Hodgkin’s. And, if he’s strong enough and lucky enough to survive it, no insurance company will ever insure him for anything again. We desperately need a national health insurance along the model of France or Switzerland for our citizens. I’m willing to pay for health insurance just as we do homeowners and auto insurance. But if I do, I expect the carrier to honor its side of the deal and not renege when someone becomes ill or injured. I have no reason to trust any insurer that pays its executives exorbitant salaries and multi-million dollar bonuses while rejecting claims filed in good faith by customers/patients. That works out to a complete distrust of every health insurance company doing business in the U.S.

My mother, who has twice been treated for Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, has tried to impress upon Jeff how he will need to avoid family and friends who are sick while undergoing chemo. But that’s going to be difficult. His wife has a large family that likes to get together frequently. It is probably going to require Jeff catching something otherwise innocuous from one of her nieces or nephews before the real risk of being around people begins to sink in.

Yom Kippur begins at sunset. Gloria has Kol Nidre ready to play; both of us have Aveinu Malkeinu standing by. We aren’t attending services this year but we’ll take part in the larger cultural gestalt. Observant this year, or not, we are Jews and we have neither desire nor ability to change that.

I’ve been listening to “Who By Fire,” Leonard Cohen’s version of the U’Netaneh Tokef prayer

“And who by fire, who by water,

Who in the sunshine, who in the night time,

Who by high ordeal, who by common trial,

Who in your merry merry month of May,

Who by very slow decay,

And who shall I say is calling?

And who in her lonely slip, who by barbiturate,

Who in these realms of love, who by something blunt,

And who by avalanche, who by powder,

Who for his greed, who for his hunger,

And who shall I say is calling?

And who by brave assent, who by accident,

Who in solitude, who in this mirror,

Who by his lady’s command, who by his own hand,

Who in mortal chains, who in power,

And who shall I say is calling”

The appropriate end to this entry is to wish those of you fasting, an easy fast.

Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place – our task, and yours for the coming year.