Day 2 Day radishes

September 29/ Financial crisis what to do

“When the world wearies and society ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden.” Let me say I have been in the garden. Now I am inside, and I guess my next move is to take up baking. I keep listening to the radio and looking online hoping for a baby ray of something positive.

What am I going to do to outlast this mess? I am going to clean closets, I am going to cut my nails to the lowest possible point. I am going to write to Nancy Pelosi and tell her to get another face lift tomorrow  and while they are at it wire her jaw shut.  I need to cut something. I could do my January rose pruning today. I could slice up all my too small clothes. No wait, if I am poor then perhaps I can starve and be able to use them. Since the beginning of my life, I have been waiting for the next depression. Therefore tomorrow I am going to go out and buy new underwear so I will have enough for the duration. I do not want to be one of those women who have not kept their underwear up. First things first.

I am going to learn to like Spam. My husband already does. All those vegetables like turnips and kale could be my new best friends. (Actually I loved the turnips that I grew this year in my garden.)

I am going to take my axe to my congressman and saw off his feet at the ankles. Take that, you jerk, this is what you did with my husband’s retirement.

I am going to take many photos. When they come to repossess my new camera that my dead mother bought for me on credit, too bad, they will never find it buried in the sack of dried beans with which I have stocked my pantry.

Oh hell, I am just going to a nearby corner with my “will work for food” sign and pout. I joke, but if I can pull it together I am going to try to pray for my enemies. Wish me luck.

September 28/ New camera

These are from my new Single Lense Reflex camera.  A Canon. Remember the one my mother gave me or my birthday.   I have a lot to learn, but here is a start.  It came as news to me that you could focus by twisting a ring.  The last five pictures were taken at a public fishing place on the Stilliguamish. 

September 26/ Down and out

This is a picture for the last post. 

September 27/ Radish musings on Economics

I have made many attempts to write something in the last days and I can not write anything of universal interest. It just does not seem the thing to do to write more recipes. And I am not good at humorous economics. To keep my spirits up I have to be serious. After all, the name of this blog is Day 2 Day Radishes. Some days are crisis’s.

Fortunately I have not asked any daughter if I could write about Economics, so they didn’t say, no. I am back in the dark ages on economics. This is a ramble on my part.

This financial crisis that we are in is very unfortunate. But there is a lot of money to be made apparently for some, mostly those who already have a lot of money, to name names Warren Buffet or George Soros. I guess it is possible if the new bail-out goes through, even the government could make money. George Soros made his nine billlion by helping the Bank of England to fail. He is a supporter of Barak Obama. Warren Buffet is the second richest man in the United States with 44 billion dollars. Bill Gates is America’s richest man. Warren Buffet is going to give 85% of his fortune to Bill Gates community work. (I think we could now call Gates a community worker with his philanthropies.) That is if he, Warren does not help out the treasury department.

I think if these three guys got together and gave, not loaned or used their money, to help this crisis it would help us out a lot. The rich many times have stabilized markets. The Rothchilds for many years lived to bail out banks.

But the aforementioned men will not give their money away. There is no gift. No, they will use their money to buy out, for example, banks, or help credit institutions and they expect to make a profit on their investment. It is risky business and for that risk, profit is expected. There is no free lunch for us.

From what I understand, the government can bail out these financial intuitions also. They can print more money. The Germans did that in the last century  and they printed so much and was so worthless that it was used for fuel. Our government hopes to do the same thing, make a profit so that it may not have cost the taxpayers too much money. But I ask you, do you think you would see that profit money, or do you think it might buy some bridges to nowhere to fill some congressman’s pocket.  Come to think of it, that is hilarious. 

September 23/ Water

Water is the new chicken broth. Mark Bittman brought this idea up in his New York Times column, and other chefs have concurred. If you do not make broth yourself, which you can cheat by adding a little bouillon, do not bother with canned or boxed chicken broth. Of course you can buy good broth by mail order, but most of us do not want to spend the money. What has changed? Water gives a clean taste! And clean is in.

September 21/Fat is back

The New York Times recently had an article on Lard. And lard is back. In places like Mexico, it never left. I remember my daughter’s maids telling me how good lard was for you. I did not exactly agree with them, but I also knew enough not to disagree. Lard has been in the diet for 10,000 years right about the time they took up cooking bacon.

Understandably lard took a turn for the worse when Upton Sinclair started writing about the pork processing plants, and it did not help that he said workers fell into the vats never to be found again. I guess that was sort of like people being reportedly put in the cement of Yankee stadium.

Then we got all uppity ,not a racial slur, about fat in our pork. So all the fat was bred out of the pork. Then we were left with all of these tough pork chops, and the only way to make them tender and tasty was to put them in a salt brine. I remember when my mother used to cook a pork roast, she would put peeled potatoes around the roast and when the fat started to melt, she would roll the potatoes in the fat perhaps with rosemary. Those were the best potatoes.

Susan Allport, author of “The Queen of Fats” (2006), (such a great title), says that in the last century, use of corn, peanut, safflower and sunflower oils, which have high levels of omega-6 fatty acids, surged in the American diet. Consumption of Omega-3s, found in leaves and some animal fats, has flattened or fallen. Totally out of whack. I guess my daughter, NoName, who hates fish should be taking up lard.

And here is the best news, Harvard School of Public Health has reviewed the body of research and found that the type of fat you eat matters more than the total amount. No wonder the Brits eat these little meat pies at soccer games. For me, I am not going to regret those tamales, and I am thinking of making a flaky lard pastry, and perceive this as a service to my body. Lard is better than butter.

The trouble is that the American’s have bred all of the fat out of the pork. So it will take a while to get fat pork back into our diet.

September 18/ The Big Picture

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/

is one of those websites that you may decide that you do not have time to look at. But give it a go because I think it is a very good photograph site. Scroll down  on the site because I particularly liked the photos in Rio of the slums.

September 17/More Political Preaching

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I have a grandson who has just turned 12. He has just started middle school along with many other new to the area 12 year old boys. His mother tells me that there are so many of them, they are running in packs. I must say how fun. But I think this will take a lot monitoring. His mother says now that he is in middle school, thinks he is in high school. Recently he came home with poor math grades and is not running with the packs until his scores improves. He is experiencing the step up that is needed when you move to a new level of education.

Mr. Radish and I discussed this at dinner last night. One of the lessons of his life was when he to UCLA as a freshman, his class professor of English 1A announced the opening day that there would be no A’s given in the class. He told students that if they needed A’s to get into graduate school, they should shop around for another professor, and he went on to explain how to do that. But if you wanted to learn, stick around. My husband got the top grade in the class and it was a B. In those days there were no plus or minuses. I was a disaster in English because ,as now, I could not write, but in those days I also did not know how to read and for what to look. Such things as themes, and metaphors, satires were for authors, not me.

When my husband started law school, he found you had to think fast, and that time restraints do matter. Tomorrow is not a good time to turn in today’s paper. Tomorrow is not good enough.

I am talking about this because I think that our nation has come to a new place; we have to step up here. Regardless if we went to college or not, there were lessons to be learned everywhere. We must use our lessons from our employment, what were our childhood lessons, what did we learn from our neighbors. What are the street smarts that we learned along the way. Street smarts are very important.  Those of us who attended college and more must remember our US History, our Economics 101, our old political science classes. What were our lessons? If you took an art class, red and yellow made orange. That implies some constants. Who can you count on? Why did you like your roommate? Charisma? No it was beyond that.

This election is not about Race, nor is it about Women, it is not about abortion or health care, and God knows I thank the Lord for Medicare. It is about capitalism, survival, and freedom. Freedom is a concept for which I am passionate. We are at a place in our country where we must step up to the plate. Start by remembering life’s lessons.

September 16/

Aside from a direct hit on the United States by a foreign country, did we think anything could top the political news? Yes. Hurricane Ike was just the beginning, and I think the potentially more potent is our financial crisis. For these latest rounds, I want to blame the people who created the mess. We are talking my money. Loaning money to people that we know they can not pay back is not honest and is ponze scam and demeaning to the people who receive the loan. I cannot tell you how many homes are vacant on my island, because there are so many. Those of us who bought homes as part of our capital, and now no one can sell anything.   No one can move to our island because they cannot afford the gas to work somewhere else. Hopefully gas prices are coming down.

My sister lives in Houston and evacuated to San Antonio. She was very shaken by this. She was lucky that she made the trip in the middle of the night as the roads were open and she made it in 3 hours, although there were trucks along the highway pulled off to the side of the road. The last time Houston evacuated, some people took 22 hours to get to San Antonio. I just spoke with her and there is no clue as to when the electricity will return to her home.  Galveston, that wonderful town ()and where I had my worst marital fight of my life stomping off from the car and screaming at my husband) will never be the same.  I am too afraid to ask about the old homes and historic buildings.  The mayor says don't come back. 

Now for the humor of the day. I ordered a Canon Rebel XSi yesterday from a big photo company in New York, before I decided to chicken out due to financial failure. I actually had held the Rebel camera in my hands at Best Buy. It is very light weight for a SLR. I read about it in my camera magazine, and it got very good reports. On line the site has a very good video giving specifications about the camera. The price seemed outstanding. $629.00 as apposed to $799.00 at Best Buy. But just to be sure I called up the sales department and discussed it with a sales person. I said, “Is $629.00 the correct price?”

“Oh yes.”

“What else will I need?”

“Oh you need a memory card. The camera comes with batteries and charger.”

“Fine, give me a 2GB card. I see here that there is kit of $689.00 for a camera and a lens. What kind of lens is this?”

“Oh that lens is not a starter lens, it is a telephoto lens.”

“Well, what lens comes with the camera?”

“No lens comes with the camera; you have to buy one. The camera is just a frame.”

I would have bought that camera only to open the box on my birthday, and the lens would not be there. I watched the camera video about 10 times and I did not gather you needed to buy a lens. After adding a starter lens, I said, “Now. . . do I have everything?”

This is equivalent to my husband buying a fishing rod without the reel. I guess it is assumed when buying a SLR that you already have lenses that you are dying to use.

September 13/ Birthday presents

Here is what I do not want for my big, big birthday.

I do not want a washing machine, and please God, keep it going before my birthday next month. If I do have to have an appliance, please let it be a dishwasher.

I did want a diamond watch. But even I could see that that was not a good choice for me. Baking bread and diamond watches do not go together. Besides what I really wanted was my mother’s diamond watch. It was a small Bulova with diamonds all around and a very elegant beveled crystal.

I also wanted a camera, a SLR, “a camera? But you already have cameras.” because my daughter’s new one takes such fantastic clear shots, but I know that SLR’s are big, bulky and heavy and . . . complicated.

What I do want for my birthday are some answers. I want to know how to copy my photos to CD’s with labels and organize the pictures better than they are. I want to learn to take better pictures, even if I never take them. I want to know why I can not get my pictures to print as I see them on the computer screen. And I want that fixed. I want to know how to get to get an icon on my toolbar of yahoo. I want to know what plants will fit together in a showy pot by my front door in the dark in the winter. I want help with my Ipod.

I want a friend to walk with me who is very slow and cannot walk too very far, and hates hills.

I want my laundry room to look like in a magazine. Perhaps a chandelier could help. I know a shelf would.

My daughter has suggested that really I want something of my mother’s to wear. I think she is right. My mother who died in 1980 and who I did not live near before that, has come into my thoughts lately, and she is just hanging out.

Yesterday it occurred to me that with a little money that she left me, I could buy myself a camera. She would love to buy me a camera. “But let’s see if we can find it on sale first”.

So the camera issue and my mother are taken care of, but I still need the help and answers. And I could also use a year's supply of pantry cleaning.