Simple Winter Fare

New Year is past; each day grows imperceptibly longer now. December was the most frigid I can recall and now that we are back to average January temperatures it feels like a spring thaw. Perhaps Old Man Winter has worn himself out or there is no more cold air on the pole or in Canada to slide down into the 48. I can hope. It did get up into the 40s today and was sunny so I worked half a day pruning fruit trees. I probably lopped off more than I should have but the increased roots to branches ratio may help the trees if there is a drought next summer. If given the choice between doing exercises or doing outdoor work on a cold but sunny day I prefer to do yard work because I can see something accomplished afterward.

After the over indulgences of the holidays I am ready for the inexpensive and simple fare of winter. We eat a lot of hot oatmeal with butter, brown sugar, chopped nuts and either applesauce or home-grown cherries or store-bought raisins. A box of store-brand oats costs a couple dollars and lasts a month for two people. It cooks in the micro wave while I make the bed. When we need variety or more protein I scramble eggs and top with salsa or make French toast. Bread and eggs are also inexpensive and nourishing foods. Coffee and skim milk are our normal beverages.

My sister bakes a wonderful heavy dark bread. I like that bread with a homemade white bean soup like white chili or senate soup. (I’ll give the recipes at the end of this; the secret to any good white or navy bean soup seems to be adding mashed or powdered potatoes for thickener.) Anyway, with hot bean soup, a big chunk of black bread and maybe a small glass of left over holiday wine I feel like some monk supping in a Middle Age abbey, fortifying myself against the winter chill. Okay so I do get carried away with my imagination; still, bean soup seems a welcome break from all the sweets and pastries of the holidays.

We make soup by the pot full and then eat micro-waved left-overs for a good while so we may also have soup for an easy evening meal if we have a taste for it. If not, our supper is usually spaghetti or tuna noodle casserole or maybe salmon loaf with cooked cabbage. I try to get some omega-3 fish into our diet in winter. We still have garden sweet potatoes and butternut squash which make good side dishes with a little added butter and brown sugar. It’s a small ego trip to still be eating from the garden in mid-winter. Everything is made in large batches and refrigerated so there is very little cooking and a lot of quick microwaving.

The holidays come with guilt for me as I pack on extra pounds. Judging by the number of people who make fitness resolutions for the New Year I think I’m not alone in this. This simple winter fare probably won’t cause me to lose any pounds but it should hold me steady until spring and summer when I can. Here are those bean soup recipes:

Senate Bean Soup

2 cups dried navy beans
12 cups water
2 pounds chopped ham
1 chopped onion
2 teaspoons salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
¼ cup instant potatoes

garlic to taste

1. Heat beans and water to boiling. Boil uncovered for 2 minutes. Cover with lid and let stand 1 hour.
2. Add ham and heat to boiling. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer 2 hours or until beans are tender.
3. Stir in remaining ingredients. Cover and simmer 1 hour.
4. If soup is too thin add ¼ cup instant potatoes, stir until thickened.


White Chicken Chili
1 medium onion, finely chopped
3 tablespoons olive oil 1 (4oz.) can chopped green chilies, drained
3 tablespoons flour
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 (15.8 oz.) cans northern beans
1 (14 ½ oz.) can chicken broth
1 ½ cups finely chopped cooked chicken breast
In a large skillet, cook onion in oil for 4 minutes or until transparent. Add chilies, flour and cumin; cook and stir for 2 minutes. Add beans and chicken broth: bring to a boil. Reduce heat: simmer for 10 minutes or until thickened. Add chicken; cook until hot.

Economic Irrationality

Most people on the face of the earth today believe that capitalism is a system of rational economic actors i.e. buyers and sellers, consumers and producers each acting rationally in their own self interest. But an argument can be made that capitalism at its very core is irrational. No, I am not a pinko commie who is going to be quoting you Karl Marx or Das Capital. On the contrary my main source is Adam Smith, the author of The Wealth of Nations and the father of capitalist economic theory.

Economics is generally considered to be a social science which deals with the allocation of scarce resources to satisfy human wants. The allocation of scarce resources, (that is to say the inputs into the products) makes good sense; these are the scarce means to an end, that end being the products or outputs which satisfy our wants. The irrational part which befuddled Smith and other early classical economists was that the ends themselves, the outputs, the products, the wants which people sought to satisfy were also based on scarcity and not necessity. An example is in order. Water and food are necessities for human life; diamonds and other “precious gems” are not; we can live fine without the shiny rocks but it is those rocks that humans give the greater value to. Scarcity trumps necessity. Likewise gold, a soft fairly useless metal is stored idly in vaults while with the much more useful metal, iron (which has been transformed into the plow, every type of useful machinery, skyscrapers, and canned food containers) we have a hard time getting people to bother to pick it up for recycling. Bottom line is that any system that values scarcity over necessity is somewhat irrational. We see this irrationality played out in movies when people lose their lives in a quest for gold or some large gem. You want to yell out, “Hey…it’s just a R O C K!”

This inherent irrationality of capitalism, (or is it an irrationality of human nature only exposed in capitalism?) could cost us greatly if we continue to trade the health of our planet for “must have” products. Eve had everything she needed in paradise but she just had to have that “other apple”.

Ecos

Environmentalist and economists (or more accurately business) always seem to be at loggerheads. Businessmen want to drill for oil in the Gulf, along the Atlantic seaboard, and the north shore of Alaska. Environmental groups say no. Big corporations want to open national forests up to clear cut logging and oil explorations. Mining companies want to flatten some of the Appalachians to get at the coal and strip mine the Midwest. Utilities want to continue to generate power from coal. Do we want the economy to prosper or not? Do we want people to have good jobs to support families or not? Environmentalist green types fear we will degrade the planet if we accept these options.

Perhaps it is good that these two mindsets oppose each other and perhaps the debate allows us to achieve the proper balance between ecology and economics. Still, it does seem strange that two words with such similar Greek root word derivations should be in such desperate contention. Economics means management of the oikos (home or habitat) while ecology means study of the oikos. From a derivation point of view these two concepts should be synonyms not opposites.

I guess I would call myself a conservationalist; that term has been around decades longer than environmentalism. Basically, don’t use more than you need. I don’t subscribe to the idea that I need to buy more in order to keep business going and my neighbor employed. If we all conserved and used less (that includes my neighbor) then we could get by on less income and have low unemployment based on a shorter workweek. Maybe the 40-hour work week could become reality. I also don’t accept that I need to buy more in order to be happy. I am smart enough to know what I need without being brainwashed by corporate commercials. If a true need exists then there would be no need for coaxing commercials to get me to buy.

Economics and ecology need to become more aligned and work in tandem to match the similarity of their root derivation.

Holidays

Twas the day before Christmas. I arose all bleary-eyed from my bed and made my way to the kitchen, where my wife stood facing me, wearing an apron, spatula in hand and with a large white chef’s hat on her head. I mumbled something to her—I don’t remember what—and she informed me the next time I spoke to her I should address her as “Madame Chef.” She was only half kidding; you don’t mess with a mother in her kitchen when she is holiday baking. I took the strong hint about the pecking order for the day and only reentered the kitchen when invited in to do KP on dirty pots and pans.


In the days leading up my name had come up in conjunction with that of one Ebenezer Scrooge several times but that is really not a fair comparison since Scrooge was rich and tight and I’m not at all rich. I only asked that when buying presents we first ascertain that there was a true need for the item by the receiver of the gift; don’t just buy to be buying. For example the bathroom scale had recently taken to giving my weight as 140 lbs; obviously something amiss there. One morning my wife took a bear paw swat at the radio alarm and knocked it off the nightstand after which it would not turnoff; so another good candidate for a present. During the holiday shopping I served only as chauffeur and napped while my wife and daughter shopped in the store—an excellent arrangement for all concerned.


When the big day arrived we had a couple inches of snow on the ground. At the church service we sang every carol known to Christendom which suits me fine since all the “joyful” lyrics on the radio are sung by someone who is crying into his martini at the bar of the later day mourners. At the two days of family get-togethers which followed someone must have thrown the naughty-or-nice scale right out the window because I made out like a bandit despite my less than sterling behavior. I only got stuff I really did need; maybe they think I’m about to kick the bucket or something. I can only hope that what we gave was also appreciated. I trust my wife’s instincts on that.


I enjoyed the family get-togethers and the day after was the best ever. I got up and had coffee and oatmeal cookies by the light of the lit Christmas tree IN THE QUIET. Later I went out for an hour-long walk in the snow and the pines and the QUIET. I took an afternoon nap. Yes Virginia, there really is Peace on Earth—times are back to normal. As usual I really get into the Christmas spirit a couple of days after the holiday is past.

The Furnace and the Wife

It was midday and frigid when the furnace went out. This tended to confirm my prejudice that our appliances are too complex and over-engineered and fail when they are most needed. I called the office of our heating man. The answering girl seemed almost afraid of my response when she told me they were overwhelmed with furnaces failing in the cold snap and could not get to me until sometime the next day. We would have to spend a night without gas heat. I reassured her that I understood and tomorrow would be fine.

As I hung up I realized I would be fine...until my wife came home at least. Afterall, we still had electricity. I put a sweater over my flannel shirt and a fleeced turtleneck sweat shirt over that. I put on three pairs of socks and a second pair of fleeced sweat pants. I was warm but still had freedom of movement. I lit a candle in the middle of the kitchen table, put a teapot of water on a low burner to shoot steam away from the cabinets and into the kitchen center and I decided to cook a pot of rice. This kept the kitchen at a fairly comfortable 50 degrees as I warmed my hands over the teapot steam or wrapped them around a mug of hot tea.

The problem my wife has with such life situations is that she suspects that I am secretly enjoying them as some sort of survivalist challenge. This is pure perversion to her. As she arrived home tired from work and physically under the weather, I was secretly ready to find a hotel room if she demanded but refrained from telling her this outright as I explained the situation and how lucky we were that the temperature was only going down into the twenties tonight and not near zero as it had the two previous nights. “Well I guess you’ll have something to blog about,” she dead panned.

After a supper of canned soup over rice and the last of her birthday cake we retired to our two living room recliners with a electric space heater between them and blankets over our torsos. We watched TV until eight then turned off the heater and retired to a bed of covers and blankets which we pulled up to our chins. I put a fleeced blanket by the headboard which we could pull down over our heads so that only our noses and mouths weren’t covered. We were warm but restless all night. Frequent trips to the bathroom made me wonder how the kids in Little House on the Prairie ever made it to their outhouse.

In the morning after a breakfast oatmeal and coffee, the space heater had managed to bring the bathroom temperature up to a balmy 55 degrees and my wife spent what seemed like an hour in a hot bath. Fortunately the repairman arrived around nine AM. He immediately did more for our marriage than any marriage counselor could have. The temperature is now up to 70 and we are back to what passes for normal around here.

Free Heats

A normal person would just install a programmable thermostat, set the nighttime setting and the workday/school day setting to 55 degrees and the breakfast rush hour and evenings to 70 degrees and be done with it. Since I am seldom described as normal, I forgo the programmable settings and instead fiddle with the thermostat through the day. Too much time on my hands? I try to recognize “free heats” and incorporate them into my 24-hour schedule. What follows is a description of what passes for a normal late November day.

The thermostat is set at 50-55 degrees while we sleep under heavy blankets at night. Two free heats are at work during the night. First is our body heat, the heat that the rest of the animal kingdom relies on. Second, is ambient heat given off by the refrigerator and the freezer. Sometimes my wife will cook something overnight in a slow cooker crock pot and this adds to ambient heat in the house. At higher thermostat settings ambient heat is not very effective in reducing utility bills but in the lower ranges it is a balancing factor which goes a long way in keeping the furnace from kicking in. A cool house is also a win for the fridge and freezer since they don’t need to work as hard. Comfort is the major concern and we do sleep better in a cool house than in a warm one.

When the alarm goes off, I get up, turn up the thermostat and start the coffee maker. The lights and heating coffee are more ambient heat. My wife gets up to take her bath (we leave the water in the tub until it cools) and uses the hair dryer to dry her hair (more ambient heat.) I make breakfast using the toaster, electric range and microwave. Even though we pay for the electricity for each of these appliances their usage was for a main purpose other that warming the house and so the extra heat produced is simply a beneficial spinoff byproduct.

When my wife heads off to her job, I turn the thermostat back down, dress in comfortable layers and go outdoors for an hour morning walk and then an hour of yard work. Exercise generated free body heat is totally underrated and underappreciated. By the time I return to the house, that same house that had felt cool when I went outside now feels uncomfortably hot until some body heat dissipates.

Once I have cooled from my morning exertion, I make a cup of hot tea and go out onto the front porch to enjoy it. The cup warms my hands while the tea warms my body core. If it is sunny the front sun porch will be quite cozy with free passive solar heat which I share begrudgingly with the cat dozing in a sunbeam on the porch swing. Once the porch heats up warmer than the house I simply open the front door and let the porch heat enter the house; the furnace won’t kick in once. On really cold cloudy days I can go to the library to read or net surf on their computers to get free public heat until it’s time for my wife to return home. Hard as it may be to believe, I am not totally averse to taking an afternoon nap on our couch if I don’t go for the free public heat.

When my wife returns from work we again turn up the thermostat but this is partially offset by the heat from the evening meal, the TV or computer, the lighting and maybe a load of laundry in the dryer. Beware, if you own a gas clothes dryer never try to vent the excess heat into the house. If you own an electric clothes dryer and really, really read up on safety issues you may be able to safely get away with venting part of excess dryer heat indoors.

Besides being aware of and utilizing the free heats (body, ambient, passive solar, and public) another concept to keep utilities down is micro space heating. Simply heat the room with the thermostat in it with a safe space heater and the stupid thermostat will think that the whole house is warm and not kick the furnace on. I spend most of my time in the living room anyway so why keep the whole house warm. Beware again; never shut or block room heating vents; it will destroy your furnace. Just fool the thermostat instead with a space heater.

In the evening we again set the heat down to 50 degrees and hit the sack. That concludes a normal day in the life of an abnormal man. Like I said, most people would just install a programmable thermostat.

Changing Seasons

Never thought I’d get old but now that Metamucil and Milk O. Magnesia are my two closest friends, I guess I have arrived. Like the seasons of my life the season of the year has changed and I am now moving into my winter retiree mode: more reading, more writing and more afternoon hibernations.

When my daughters moved out leaving us as a couple of empty nesters, my wife immediately claimed their bedroom as her Den/Yoga room. Most recently she traded the double bed that used to take up so much space in the room for a single sized bed which she has disguised as a couch with large corduroy covered pillows. The couch/bed, the computer and computer desk, a roll top desk, three file cabinets, and a potted plant stand under an east window form the perimeter of the room. The center of the room is now open space and she has put a large oval rug with a thick underpad there to be her “yoga mat.” There is a full length mirror on the closet door and for the first time in memory the room actually feels roomy and not crowded.

As bad weather has set in I have taken to going into her room when she is at work to write on the computer and check the web; I do some crunches and pushups on her yoga mat. I take off my shirt and do curls and presses in front of the mirror. At my age this is an act of humility not hubris; a sort of forcing myself to face reality. I have long ago traded my six pack for a full keg. My goal this winter is to work out an hour each day in an effort to keep what I’ve got left; use it or lose it.

When my better-half returns home from work and finds me on her computer in her inner sanctum a comic argument between two curmudgeons ensues.
“It’s not your damn den…it’s my damn den.”
“No, it’s not YOUR damn den …Now it’s MY damn den.” And so on, back and forth forever. I know it is really her room but after a day without her I am bored and need a few minutes of good verbal sparring. It’s our way of greeting each other. For verbal variety and good measure we throw in a couple: “Don’t you make me come over there!” and “NO…Don’t YOU make ME come over there!” threats. Anyway I like what she has done to make the room a studio apartment and I will sneak in when I can.

I’ve reached that point where you can remember what happened forty years ago clear as a bell but you can’t recall where you put your keys five minutes ago. On this cold rainy Thanksgiving Day as I sit musing with a cup of hot tea in my (her) den and the raindrops pelting against the window, I am reminded of the rainy season as a soldier in Southeast Asia. As the rainy season arrives the Thai people celebrate with a weeklong festival when any and everyone throws and sprays water on any and everyone. We had been warned by the brass that we were guests in the country and we were to accept and respect this local custom of welcoming the monsoons.

As we stood at stiff attention in dress uniform for weekly inspection, our captain pivoted sharply to stare at each of us nose to nose and then inform us that our sideburns were a quarter of an inch too long or that we needed to shave (even though we had shaved immediately before the inspection.) Finally he pivoted one last time and marched back a few yards to face his line of men as the sergeant dismissed us. Before sarge could dismiss us, one of our crazy barrack’s Thai momma sans came running out of nowhere with a mop bucket and soaked the captain head to toe. It is my all time favorite military memory.