The weeks news. A broken pickup, gardening, and thoughts on baking
It’s been a busy week up here on the mountain. My little slice of heaven in the great northwest.
The last of the snow is gone, melted off from the warmer temperatures as well as the rain we’ve been having lately. Leaves are starting to sprout from branches, growing fast as though they need to catch up with their in-town cousins which are already fully grown.
The lovely wife has started planting her garden this spring: tomatoes, bell peppers, peas, cantaloupe and a few other things (I’ve lost track). She is planting them in planters above ground, since the soil up here is mostly clay and so rocky you cannot dig in it very deep with a shovel. We will soon enjoy the bounty of her work. I do enjoy it when she plays in the dirt.
Earlier in the week, our truck was having steering issues when we went into town. I took it to the local shop, and they, when they checked it, said it was a bracket that held the idler arm (part of the steering). They ordered one, and I called my son to come get us. It turned out to be nothing more than a broken bolt holding the bracket. Two new bolts, and $95 dollars later, I was bringing the truck home again. Cheapest repair I have had at any shop in quite a while.
Last fall, before I found myself with necrotizing pneumonia and in the hospital for a week, the lovely wife and I had found some ceramic tile while wandering around Habitat for Humanity. My intention was to tile the kitchen counter during the winter, when it’s slow up here. That never happened, as I have been in recovery ever since. Well, this week, I tiled the counter. We are now one step closer to having a finished cabin. I still need to tackle the drainage from the sinks and the tub, then move on to installing gas lines so I can move the propane tanks outside where they belong. That will happen very soon.
I was making breakfast the other day, from-scratch biscuits and sausage gravy. Now, I say homemade, from scratch, but I only add water to the biscuit mix, all of the ingredients are pre-measured out for me. I add water, and knead for a bit, roll out the dough, and use a cookie cutter to cut out the biscuits. Then, they are placed on a cookie sheet and baked for a bit. I wondered as I did this, how much the housewife of a few decades ago had to measure out each ingredient before they could start. She would have had to rise early, then mix everything before she could even feed her family. How she would love the modern convenience of just cutting open a package, dumping the contents in a bowl, adding water, and before you can say baked, she would have hot biscuits for her family. What other modern things do we take for granted that our ancestors would love to have had back then? Me, I will continue to enjoy the modern world, looking forward to what comes next. I should mention that the gravy mix is easy as well, though I cook a pound of ground sausage before adding the gravy mix and water, but it’s so easy to make homemade food these days.
Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.
