Valancy's Place

I'm a skinflint. I admit it. Truth is, I'm not even as strict as I'd like to be; my natural inclination is to starve and save every dime (or at least pay off my college loans), as I did my first year after college. (Though looking back I should have at least bought some better food, for heaven's sake.) So it's a surprise to no one that I live for magazines like Real Simple, read blogs like Home Ec 101, and search the internet for cheap recipes regularly.

So I was charmed at first when I came across the food blog posted on Gourmet's website, Extreme Frugality by W. Harding Carter. Ah, supermiling, a little vegetable garden, no more expensive goodies. I nodded rather amused at each of his discoveries, nodding along with each wise decision he made to cut back on expenses and live within his means.

Then he went nuts.

Okay, so that's a little harsh. But seriously: I love my little vegetable garden - but I am aware it is elitist. I can afford a house with a garden where I can grow expensive vegetables like Black Krim tomatoes and Shishito peppers because I find it fun and these are otherwise almost impossible to find vegetables. I think it was when he described his wife's daily efforts - "backbreaking" is how he described it - I began to cringe. Then there was the cut-rate 90% off supermarket; sure, glad you have one, but how many of us do? Same goes with his maple syrup-gathering efforts. Then he decided he had to get a cow. And as he began to describe more and more the excruciating labor he demanded from himself, his children, and his wife, all I could think was: are you kidding me?

Farming is a serious, great, and difficult profession. It requires an understanding of complex agricultural science. If you want to be a farmer, that's fine. But to tell me in one sentence you're a writer and your wife is a lawyer, and the next to be talking about the hours wasted on beetles on your plants, without which you won't be eating tomatoes, and baking bread and selling eggs and never turning on the dryer for your poor overworked wife - this is a serious waste of resources. And completely unrealistic for 99% of the population.

[Edit: rinue notes I'm thinking of comparative advantage. And she's right, but I also think it's something else. On thinking on it, I think it may be a certain amount of sexism or ageism here. He decided this was the course for the family, and suddenly they all suffer. At times it seemed downright cruel.]

Maybe I'm foolish to think the author in any way means to say this is a workable solution for most people. But I find on reading this for the first time I'm leaning towards rinue's side. Division of labor is a good thing, people. Mass farming is a good thing (though I still think they could do a better job of crop rotation/integration/variation). Realism, i.e., not everyone lives in a farmable area with plenty of land available is also good. And frankly, not everyone wants to BE a farmer.

So Carter, I wish you the best. But I hope you take it a little easier on your family soon. And go buy your kids some mozzarella, okay? They deserve it.

Went back to Dallas for a wake, and while it should've been sad, the truth was it was a lovely few days. The first evening I was back I went walking in the heat, and I loved it; it felt like a sauna. In New Mexico, the heat is dry, brutal; you can feel the ultraviolet rays pouring through the atmosphere, thin as a meniscus, burning into you. In Dallas it's a warm, muggy, comfortable heat, a heat that holds you up while you're standing and lavishes the oleander, the crape myrtles, and the roses of shannon with love.

Back in New Mexico, I have to laugh at what Dallas calls dry. The air is smoky again, leaving me lethargic and inclined to coughing. We are banned from the forests and even some parks; I no longer read the newspaper. I don't want to read about any more places I love disappearing into a field of charcoal. I wonder if it's raining again in Dallas.

Today is going to be a great day, because I say so. This will be the first weekend I have actually not worked through (after putting in two hours at work this morning, anyhow) since the house flooded; it's only the third night I've slept more than 6 hours this past month. At first it was pulling up the water, then the screaming fans, tarping our furniture, moving everything we own into the back part of the house. Next it was contractors and paper work, and moving back into the house, then cleaning up as best we could around the remaining rubble. Now it's supposedly calmed down, but my dog is on the edge of a nervous breakdown, and the to-do list is enough to make me cry. (It's literally pages of things to fix, buy, fax, do.)

But it is my husband's birthday weekend - which I never did get to finish preparing for - and I refuse to let it be anything but good.

Mission HappyHusband, GO.

My days are a strange mixture lately. I've got times when I laugh about all this, compare what I have to folks who face real tragedy, and generally feel pretty lucky. I smile sunnily at everyone and they're surprised at how well I'm doing.

Unfortunately, there are also the simply difficult days, and today is one of them. Nothing but discovered mold and chargrilled walls (yes, the plumbers burned the wall) and construction delays today. I'm working on bringing in a little sunshine to our world, and cleaning the room and making the best of it with C has helped. I was thinking of finishing up a book summary, and I'll probably try to organize our financial situation a little better. But I just really wish I could go home. Only it's not there right now.

Though we've returned from our little weekend away and celebrated our third anniversary (hip hip hooray!), I'm taking the rest of the week off trying to get caught up on life in general. It's a little overwhelming at times, though also very satisfactory, working on the enormous list of Things I Put Off Over the Past Six Years When I Was Running a Magazine, trying to knock them out one at a time. Every day I've worked from about 8am to 8pm, and the list only seems to grow longer. A few extra days off? Hah. I need a year. (Though who doesn't?)

Today I finally accomplished one of our biggest to-do's, at least: buying a truckload of compost and working it in to our now hugely expanded vegetable bed. It took hours to buy it, unload it (with the help of a very helpful friend), spread it, and turn the soil. The rest of the day will be spent on paperwork, but tomorrow morning I'll buy the peat and mulch to top it off, Sunday get all the seedlings, maybe Monday the patch of grass I've been wanting to put in for over a year. It's really nice to see it coming together finally, even if I'm two weeks late doing it.

Amusingly, Koko was dancing in the dirt almost the whole time, but somehow I managed to end up dirtier than he was! I looked like a coal miner. Even my teeth had dirt on them, as the husband noted, and now the shower needs scrubbing from all the dirt that came off me. Hilarious.

I've been, as I've jokingly said, either a narrow-minded carnivore or a hypocritical vegetarian for over 10 years now. I eat fowl and fish and eggs and some milk products, but nothing mammalian - no bunny, no beef, no pork, etc. Generally nothing that could originally be described as cute or intelligent.

As a result, I've had a tendency to offend or confuse people for 10 years. Either I'm not vegetarian enough, or I'm just weird. (Especially in Texas. My family has had a brisket for every holiday, even Thanksgiving, as far back as I can remember. Beef: it's what's for Texas.) Yet my transition to a no-mammals diet was almost seamless; one day I just woke up and decided to casually try it out. I had one last chicken fried steak (which was terrible), and then it just wasn't a big deal. Once every year or two I break the rules to try something outlandishly good - a bit of blood sausage, a little pancetta, a bite of steak to make sure I had cooked it correctly for my husband - but that's about it. I vaguely tried the same approach with vegetarianism, but that transition, unlike the former one, just never seemed to kick in.

But when you live with someone, and most especially, when you're in charge of food every night, you begin to notice all you're missing. Between my husband's gluten intolerance, my own no-mammals rule, my inability to eat acidic foods or beverages more than sparingly, and my allergy to peanuts, there's a lot that gets skipped. (New addition: C may be allergic to eggs after all. He's going in for testing soon.) Most of the time, I can tear through a recipe book and find only two or three items we can eat between the two of us. We've gotten used to substitutions, but still; some things are just meant to be as they are. It's wearying.

Perhaps more confusing, C's become increasingly interested in becoming a fisher and hunter. There's a lot I agree with about this: pursuing food that's living a free life out in the open, (added) hormone- and antibiotic-free animals, and the ability, the real understanding, of how to procure and handle your own meat. Then there's the possibility of getting a hunting dog - a standard Poodle, perhaps, that would both have a limited affect on our allergies and get to do its true, originally bred-for work of hunting dog. (And no, they most definitely do NOT have to have a silly poodle haircut.See amusing variety of haircuts here.) I admit I'm inclined to go with him bird hunting: I've always been fascinated with traditional survival methods, and I don't mind handling carcasses.

Thing is, he's not just thinking birds. He's also considering deer, elk, and antelope. A single animal could provide us and a friend with meat for a whole winter - and as a Texan, I can't help but find the concept of wild game cooking intriguing, thinking of my inherited family recipe book, filled to the brim with how to treat wild game. And then I wonder: why did I stop eating meat? Was it because of environmental effects? Animal treatment? Animal intelligence? I usually reference all three, but the last is often the most important to me. Yet: I find myself considering eating these things, and I realize there's something I clearly don't understand.

Am I really considering making an exception because I feel this is a better way of meat procurement? Am I underestimating my own concerns, as it lingers in the back of my mind that my husband's doctor has told him he must, must eat more protein with his condition? Or am I simply becoming lazy? I just don't know. All I do know is that millions of years of omnivorous eating habits are leaning hard on my shoulders this month, and I don't know whether to fold or lean in.

So yesterday I went to a new book club. I am awful at meeting new groups; fine in one-on-one situations, decent in organization, structure, but miserable in a party atmosphere. I was hot and flushed, nervous and twitchy; but for all that I had a good time.

Having been a Spanish-English double major, with a focus in modern Spanish literature and Victorian English, growing up in a house dominated by westerns, science fiction, and mystery, having developed a taste for classics and fantasy, then running a small magazine for six years, I have to my own great surprise become something of a decently knowledgeable person in terms of literature. But it was still tremendously strange that every time someone mentioned an author, I could say, "oh, yes, the incomparable X, the delightful Z, the scandalous Q." I felt the oddest sensation of being (ever so slightly) impressive for something I really know, something I care about. To be complimented for something you actually care about is a strange and marvelous thing.

And who doesn't love winning goldfish (the edible cracker kind) for knowing how old Hemingway was when he wrote The Old Man and the Sea?

1. Bones.

Bones, why are you so terrible? You went from this clever, dark, romantic show with occasional conspiracy cannibal masonic leagues that I now look back on fondly to this heartbreakingly formulaic non-comedy that's posing itself as a comedy. I hate every episode I have watched this year and most of last year, to the point that I'm no longer watching at airtime because it's somehow less sad to watch truly horrible episodes on Hulu.

2. Friday Night Lights

Why do you have to be so good? When you're not making me cry over your clever angst, you make me cry because I miss Texas so much. You are so beautiful to me...that you make me type in lyrics.

3. Bank accounts

Why must you charge my OLD ABOUT TO BE CLOSED bank account when you have had the new account information for two months thereby giving me an overdraft fee?!!! RAWR!

4. Sleep

Where are you?

Today was the first day cold enough to need to wear footie socks.

Fall is here!!!!!!

After my initial hysteria, C calmed me down and explained the reason why the fancy backup/restore system wasn't working was because, honey, there was no consistently functioning hard drive to restore it to. Sure, the computer would start, things would happen, but when the hard drive keeps failing a few seconds in, you can't restore anything in that time. In other words, I hadn't lost a thing. The backed up data just couldn't be accessed until we fixed the hardware. Once he patiently explained this concept in small words a few times, I was no longer frothing at the mouth.

Long story short, I have a fully functioning computer again and I didn't lose a keystroke. You would never believe I'm considered somewhat of a techie at work. Point is I understand software - or at least the software I work with. Hardware is completely a mystery to me.

I'll be blushing furiously under my desk now. And thanks.