Good Book For Worrisome Times

      With the war in Ukraine, and Russia making tough talk, there's a book you need to know about, Dean Ing's Pulling Through, which contains information on coping with the aftermath of someone dropping The Bomb.

      The late Dean Ing being who he was, he presents the information first in a novella and then in a collection of factual essays and useful reprints.

      That book, along with plastic sheeting, duct tape, filter material and some odds and ends will at least get you through the months after a "wet firecracker" situation.  But I can't just put in an Amazon link, because the book is out of print.  The prices I'm seeing at the big online used book sellers are...high.  The good news is that most of the same information (and more) can be found in Ing's all-fact book The Chernobyl Syndrome...And How To Survive It, which is a little more available and at better prices.  I couldn't find my copy to verify just how much duplication there is, though, which is why I have ordered another. 

      Amazon, Alibris and ABE Books are your friends in finding out of print books.

Routine Vet Visit

      Holden Wu is off to the doctor today, which he dislikes so much that they usually prescribe a mild anti-anxiety drug.  Skipped it this time and the vet suggested we stock it for next time.  He doesn't panic, but he is made very sad by car trips; I think he worries he will be left behind.

Aging Is A Torturer

      Aging is a torturer.  We don't pay a lot of attention until it comes for us; its victims are just part of the scenery, seen but not noticed, grandparents, bosses, aunts, uncles, parents, classmates and then surprise, oh, surprise!  It comes for us.

      At first, it only takes a little at a time, the keen edge from eyesight, the ability to pick out voices in a crowd; reading vision falters and we pick up reading glasses or add bifocals with a nervous laugh.

      Then it comes with back pain, teeth that fail, broken bones that heal but are never quite right.  Hair goes to silver -- or goes away, at least on your head; elsewhere it sprouts in new and unwanted places.

      The torturer's been after my hands for awhile now.  Before the pandemic, the bottom knuckle of the, er, "social signalling" finger* of my left hand swelled up, hurt, turned hot and got glitchy.  The pain and heat faded; it's working smoothly enough.  But the swelling remains.  My right thumb has problems, a tendon issue called "trigger finger" that adds pain and a hitch in motion.  Twice it's acted up, twice a shot has freed it up.  The third time will require surgery.  Now the pinky finger of my right hand is twisting; I wake up with it curled tight and it opens with a painful pop, a little less flexible.

      Numb toes, sore knees, uncertain balance.  The torturer may disrupt our digestion, afflict us with tinnitus, take our memory.  Piece after piece after piece.

      I have to admit, I'm scared.
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* Sometimes known as the "driving finger."  You need your right hand to work the horn and steer, after all.

Just Sad

      Watching the war news and reading speculation -- it's sad.  Overwhelming.  And it's still mostly pawn moves at this point.

      If things keep on as they have, Russia -- Putin -- is going to get frustrated and do something especially ugly.  Just what, I don't know.  His options are limited.  And that's more worrying than if he did have working precision bombs suited to high-altitude drops, or significantly more and better artillery.

      Ukraine's defense has been remarkably successful, considering the lopsided numbers.  But the clock is ticking and if "war" is a given, the opposite of a "short victorious war" is a long, nasty quagmire, not a protracted peace.

War, What Is It Good For?

      War has always been terrible, especially for the people directly involved -- soldiers, civilians in the zone of conflict.

      In the 1960s and 70s, it had become fashionable to blame "the Generals," the military men at the top (and yes, they were all men), usually depicted as stupid and/or war-mongering types, echoing stereotypes from the First World War of officers heedlessly expending soldier's lives to move the battle line a few feet forward.

      But the top military brass don't decide when to wage wars; their job is to figure out how to wage them.  Modern command staff in modern countries are keenly aware of the cost in materiel and men's (and, increasingly, women's) lives and limbs.

      The culprits are those smiling bastards in nice suits, sitting in climate-controlled offices hundreds if not thousands of miles from the action, looking at colorful lines on a map.  They're never going to have actual blood on their hands, never going to drive a tank through smoking wreckage that was once a  neighborhood or huddle behind a broken wall as the other side's tanks trundle past, never going to hear artillery fire, bombs fall, advance towards the pop and crack of rifles or look over, startled, as one of their fellows is hit by a sniper.  Lines on a map, spheres of influence, regions of control, that's all they see; not scared kids with their grandmother, waiting at the station for a train to safety that may never arrive.

      Wars are started by the initiation of force.  One side or the other throws out the first bomb, fires the first shot. People bleed and scream and die.  Up to that point, it's just normal conflict and competition; it's a phase change when loaded bombers fly and tanks roll, solid to liquid, liquid to gas.

      So the next glib talker who spews lines at me about Soros and Putin, CIA, FSB and culture-wars gibberish, will be lucky if all he gets is laughed at.  While Ukraine's government and civil rights were not as shiny a model of modern wonderfulness as one might hope, Russia's is clearly, drastically worse in every way.  Don't take my word for it, look it up.  Use last year's references, or the year before, or even earlier.  Ukraine has been moving towards a more free society, away from a centrally-controlled economy and Russia is headed the other way.

      Russia's invasion of a neighboring country is indefensible.  Oh, it's not our dog in that fight now, just as it wasn't when they grabbed the Crimean peninsula seven years ago and got away with it.  Now, having had a nibble, they're after the whole hog.  It's not proving as easy as Vladimir Putin expected and he may do something drastic if it keeps getting worse.

      Making excuses for his actions is indefensible.  I don't care what kind of handwavium you're smoking.  It's time to put down the bong and grow up.

      (Title song, here.)

Cooking The Roast

      A photo-essay, told in reverse order.  (All photos by Tamara Keel.)

Ready to plate!  The apple and turnip has cooked down into a thick, dark, partially caramelized sauce, savory with a hint of sweet and a hint of heat.

Shitake mushrooms added for the last hour of cooking.  They had a little truffle salt on them.

Onion, carrot, celery and potato got about ninety minutes of cooking time.

Turnip, peeled, diced and sprinkled with dukkah spice mix and some smoked paprika.  Added about a half hour after starting the meat.

Started with a peeled tart apple, cut into rings and chunks, and put in the bottom of the pan before adding the pork, which had been soaking in a mixture of white and balsamic vinegar and soy sauce with garlic, ginger, za'atar and black pepper for a few hours.  I poured the remaining marinade over it before putting the pan on indirect heat -- no coals directly underneath -- for three hours.

Saturday Dinner

      A large pork roast ("Boston Butt") simmered for three hours in a closed pan over indirect heat on the grill, in a bed of diced apple and turnip with carrot, celery, red onion, potato and shitake mushroms added for the last hour: Delicious!

TAMARA KEEL PHOTO

Nice Weather

      It's a day for the grill.  I have a large pork roast and some ideas.

Busy Again

      Helping with the neighbor's cats.  More later, maybe.

Still Watching

      Oh, Gil Scott-Heron, you sweet summer child.  You'd laugh yourself sick over who's fighting.  The Revolutions are all over the television -- and The Man threw out the first tanks.

     And I'm finding I can neither watch for long nor look away.

Okay, Still Not Real Happy

      But here's where we are: I expect World War Three has already started.  Nobody's called it yet and we're just at the "one nation attempts expansion by warfare" stage.  It's still getting itself sorted out into teams and who knows?  It might yet fizzle.

      Past history tells me that's not the way to bet.  Leaders of violently expansionist nations don't get what Nero got as often as we might wish, if ever.

      We're in a time of choosing sides.  Readers of history would do well to remember Charles Lindbergh and the older "America First" movement he was associated with.  To be sure, "Lucky Lindy" eventually saw the light -- but he was not allowed to enlist, never permitted anywhere near the European Theater of Operations and only saw air combat in the Pacific by arriving as a consultant and doing some of his consulting from the pilot's seat.

      The Lusitania is nowhere near leaving port, let alone being sunk; there's nothing ominous droning towards Pearl Harbor.  But water runs downhill and it eventually reaches the bottom.

      I hope we're lucky this time.  Dam lucky.

Yeah, Still Not

      Just not dealing with it. Politics, pandemics, economics and European war, it totals up to more than I can bear.

      Let's talk about grease separators, instead!  I own one, a big two-cup job, that I haven't had much use for.  A lot of the time, it's easier to pour the grease off while browning and add broth or tomato sauce after, taking my chances with what residue remains.

      Over the weekend, I made a big pot of oxtail and beef shank stew.  Very tasty and I was able to let it simmer for hours.  But it's so greasy, even if you pour off the fat while browning the meat.  The grease separator caught my attention and, well, of course.

      Using the grease separator while cooking -- and cooking with much more than two cups of broth -- is an imperfect process but it still works well: ladle out a couple of cups of broth, let it settle, and either add the grease-free broth back to the pot or put it in another container while you reload the separator, and then pour the defatted broth back in.  The end result loses nothing for flavor and is far less greasy.  A couple of iterations removed sufficient grease that after freezing for the next day, there was almost no grease at the top of the frozen stew when I took it out to thaw.

      Why did I wait so long to try this?

      Oh, one more note: there are few things more satisfying than fishing a big oxtail out of the pot and having the meat fall off in shreds as it clears the surface.  Almost no trimming required.  And I started with nearly-frozen meat.