MAKE SOME TOMATO PRESERVES! WE DID!

Good posts should be prefaced with good introductory remarks and background. Let me try to supply same!

Back when I was a mere boy during that awful and pervasive conflict, WWII, we were not all that far out of the depression. Times were improving somewhat, economically, but a dollar was a dollar, and they were still somewhat scarce from the 30's.

In the small Eastern New Mexico town of Clovis, we lived on a corner lot. That means a little more room for a "Victory Garden" which almost everyone had then. You could raise livestock in town in those days, and we had our own cow, chickens, rabbits, and the aforementioned garden; thus we had our own milk, butter, (meet the churner: me), and vegetables.

My Mother would buy cherries, grapes, apples, and peaches in bulk and make jellies and preserves.
And Dad, who grew up on a sandy, dry, isolated, cotton farm in west Texas near Punkin'
Center (don't look for it on a map: it "ain't there"anymore), remembered his mother's biscuits, made with hog lard ("nothing like them!"), and eaten with TOMATO PRESERVES!

We grew a lot of tomatoes in that "Victory Garden" there on the corner, so Dad used to make for himself, each year, a batch of tomato preserves. Other than to taste them once or twice, I avoided them. I mean, cherry, grape, fruit jelly was fine, but tomatoes were for hamburgers and stuff like that; they were "salty" food.

The years went by and a couple of years ago my wife and I were out at Corrales at a vegetable
market and I saw and bought one jar of tomato preserves, just out of curiosity. We ate those preserves within a week-- they were good on everything. We couldn't find anymore for sale--there or anywhere locally.

In circa 2004, wanting to grow tomatoes, but having no open space, (see two previous posts on this subject), I ordered five Earth Boxes. For all this time we have had wonderful tomatoes; you know, vine ripened. The other day, it just hit me--I'll find a good recipe and we'll use up some of these extra tomatoes--I'll find a good recipe on Henry, my I Pad, and make some jam/preserves, whatever.
See what I found:

Posted by Sarah Restauri on blog: Home Grown.org/ "Canned Tomato Jam." Look up this recipe; I like her writing, and it being copyrighted, I won't give it, other than to say it uses
tomatoes, ginger, cinnamon, salt, lime juice, sugar, and crushed chili powder. She uses
exclamation marks with recipes "only if they are tops"; and she uses one with this recipe!

We, (my sous chef and I), made a half recipe, two and one half pounds of tomatoes, cut up, seasoned, and cooked for a couple of hours. There is a lot of water in tomatoes. Not to worry,
they WILL thicken. In fact they came out really nice and thick, more like jam than preserves.
Read Sarah's ideas for using them. We put cheese spread on a Ritz cracker, with a dab of tomato jam! Wow, things DO sit good on a Ritz. We put it on eggs, meat loaf planned for tonight! I guess it could be called a thick "sweet salsa," I, being a creative male chef, have discovered the ultimate:
SWEET AND SOUR FRITO DIP!"

We are wondering how, in those cold non-tomato-growing days of winter, can we make this; even wondering about buying and using canned tomatoes. Amazon has jam now, periodically. If you find it in town, please call the writer. Oh yes, a couple more things: Sarah recommends a heavy iron
enamel-coated-interior French pot, Le Creuset; also she puts up jars (canning), which I must learn, I guess. Maybe my sous chef knows how. Our medium-sized orange Le Creuset worked great and looked great!

Try a half recipe, or even less, unless you are a wimpy-experimenter cook. Did I say: It was marvelous!!! Thanks, Sarah!

By Mil
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JUST WHAT IS GUMPTION?

Hope this writer has enough GUMPTION to be able to explain it's meaning! (LOL)
A much-loved college professor of Economics used to intrigue me by saying something like this: "It doesn't matter how smart or how educated a person one is, if he doesn't have GUMPTION." I will never forget his saying that, and the seriousness with which he said it.

That was not the first time I had ever heard it, either. As a boy I heard it from time to time, and there was something a little archaic-sounding in it perhaps like the old colloquial expressions, so favored by rural Americans: "much obliged," "right smart of," "fair to middling'," "he comes from a sorry family," etc. At any rate, the word has always fascinated me, and has seemed a little bit mentally elusive.

The origin of the word is somewhat cloudy; it was first known to be used in 1719. On doing a little research, I find that it is quite a fascinating word to many people and there are many sources to explore.  At the end of one lengthy research page was the question:   "What made you want to look up 'gumption?' Please tell us where you read it or heard it." Makes one wonder if there is a "GUMPTION CLUB" out there somewhere!

Anyway, here are a number of different sources and definitions. (It seems that a lot of these are what the people perceive the word to mean. There may be duplications.)
1. Bold of enterprise
2. Guts, spunk
3. Common sense/horse sense
4. Sound practical judgment; Eg. "I can't see the sense of doing it now." "He hasn't got the sense God gave little green apples." "Fortunately, she had the sense to run away,"
5. Capacity, shrewdness, and common sense.
6. The quality of being sensible and brave enough to do the right thing in a difficult situation.
(AHA! Now I see it! Our problem in the USA is that our congress people and other leaders
lack GUMPTION!!)
7. Courage. Eg. "It took a lot of gumption to speak up for yourself like that!"
8. Synonyms given are: Common sense, levelheadedness, prudence, sense, sensibleness, wisdom, initiative, and resourcefulness.
9. I thought I saw: "an artist mixing paints." We won't go there today.

Stop and think for a moment: If you wanted to talk to someone about a matter about which you desired a wise opinion, there might be one or more people you would be comfortable talking to
and would value their input. Very likely, if you think about it, they would be persons with.......GUMPTION.

On reading this, and remembering my early impressions of the word, my own definition is:
common sense, wisdom, insight, and perceptiveness.

One merciful thing: I suspect that if you don't have it, you don't know it.
By Mil, 11-16-11

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HOW WOULD YOU LIKE SOME "DEFILED" EGGS?

I suppose "deviled eggs" have been around the South since time immemorial. Some folks even
think they were the "manna" mentioned in the Old Testament. This writer has been eating them since boyhood, and not only that but has also learned to make them--man style-- with mayo, mustard, vinegar, salt and pepper, etc. 

The trick, of course, to getting them "off the ground," is to get the darn eggs to peel properly. Accordingly I soak them in cold water and start peeling at the small end of the egg.

Now our Northern friends have a different name; they call them "stuffed" eggs. (What would you expect from folks who put oysters in crumbled-up biscuit crumbs and call it "Thanksgiving dressing;" where's the cornbread?? Just kidding, friends.)

Anyway, back to the deviled eggs.... I was writing a friend on Henry, my beloved little I Pad; (he is a great little guy, but thinks he can spell better than I.) In my note I was relating the old joke about the Methodist lady, attending as a guest, the Baptist Fourth of July picnic held at the City Park. Everyone was having a gloriously good time, noisy, happy, and exciting; the Methodist lady, referring to the Baptist schedule of wonderful meetings, said: "I always wanted to be a Baptist but I just wasn't physically able."

My story build-up included a description of the food at the picnic: mounds of country fried chicken, creamy mashed potatoes, red beans with ham hock, corn bread, fried okra, sliced cantaloupe, sliced tomatoes, and...DEVILED EGGS!   But Henry, my egotistical and over-eager little I Pad changed my spelling, and it came out:........................"DEFILED EGGS."

Now, most families have an unwritten list of sayings, private jokes, and quotes that they have accumulated over the years. We have added a new one at our house, courtesy little Henry:  "Please pass the Defiled Eggs."

By Mil

(Note: Some adjustments have been made to Mil's Place. It should be easier now for readers
to comment.)

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"OLD BLUE THREADBARE ROBES"

Why is it in literature ( or on TV) when someone is ill with the flu, sitting on the end of the couch by an inhaler, sniffing, coughing, and sneezing into a handkerchief, mumbling incoherent words, eyes watering, staring at the floor with a "why me?" look, being most miserable; that they are always wearing "an old blue threadbare robe?"

Can't any of these people afford a new robe from Macy's or maybe even...Walmart?

Yet these people present such a cozy picture of warmth, security, leisure, self-
pampering, idleness and freedom, accountable to no man, relaxed, glassy-eyed from their medicine, remote in hand, all set for the day...in spite of their abject misery.

But wait, go back with me 60 years to childhood. (Adults are grown-up children anyway, aren't they?!) The little boy has a sore throat and a cough and his mother announces: "Today you have to stay home, you're sick." And the little boy, actually somewhat of an actor, says: "Oh no, shucks, do I really have to?"

So he puts on his old blue threadbare robe, gets out his Lincoln Logs, his Tinker Toys, his dominoes, his Old Maid cards, puts them in the middle of the floor, all the while sniffling, coughing and sneezing, the smell of Vicks in his nostrils, sipping on his Delaware Punch ( a  grape soda pop in the 40's, favored by sick kids...) After a while he may get bored and look for his "Dave Dawson, RAF Spitfire Pilot" book, work some on his model airplane, or take a break and listen to "Would  You like to Be Queen for a Day? On the radio at 1 p.m.

Life is tough for sick kids...or adults...in blue threadbare...robes.


by Mil

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EXPLORING THE RIDDLE OF RHYTHM IN PROSE

My readers, being very literary, will enjoy hearing about the course I have been taking---
from The Great Courses, titled "Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer's Craft," taught by Dr. Brooks Landon, who has taught a "sentence- focused- prose- style" course for thirty years at the University of Iowa.

This course goes far beyond what we studied in English Comp. 101 or 201. Some of the lecture titles are:
"Proposition and Meaning"
"Grammar and Rhetoric"
"How Sentences Grow"
"The Rhythm of Cumulative Sentences"
"Coordinate, Subordinate, and Mixed Patterns"
and the one on which this post is based: "The Riddle of Prose Rhythm." Clearly, like old age, this course is not for "sissies."

This "rhythm" lecture particularly caught my attention and interest. Now, most of us have read quite a few books in our lifetimes, and these have been on numerous subjects. Here's a question for you: what writers and what books can you call to mind that you remember as being "rhythmical?"

Our esteemed Professor Landon says he cannot DANCE, but can detect or create rhythm in prose. He, in one illustration, hearkening back to his Boy Scout days, uses the Morse Code "dot-dot-dash-dash-dash-dash" in several variations to show the feeling of rhythm in a prose
paragraph.

This rhythm in prose is somewhat new to the writer ( though maybe not totally so) and I hate to disillusion my readers, but to me prose was prose and poetry was poetry (one I could understand, the other I couldn't! (LOL) Good, beautiful, writing I could understand, but Dr. Landon's concept of rhythm was somewhat new to me...and fascinating.

Turns out that this concept has been around for awhile. In the famous "Scholar's Edition" of Brittanica, 1875, 9th Edition, it said: "... The rhythm of nature is the rhythm of life itself. This rhythm can be caught by prose as well as poetry, high prose as well, for instance as that of the English Bible;" and continuing, "in the melody of the bird...the inscrutable harmony of a bird-chorus of a thicket, in the whisper of the leaves of the tree, and in the song or wail of wind and sea."

Ursula K Le Guinn reminds us in "Steering the Craft," "the sound of language is where it all begins and what it all comes back to. The basic elements of language are physical; the noise words make and the rhythm of their relationship. This is just as true for written prose as it is with poetry."

Virginia Woolf said: "Style is a simple matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can't
use the wrong words."

Albert C. Clark's lecture, pub. by Qxford, 1913, "Prose Rhythm in English": Clark held, "We must go to Cicero for the origin of prose rhythm. Nature, he tells us, has placed in the ears a register which tells us if a rhythm is good or bad, just as by the same means we are enabled to distinguish notes in music....THE RHYTHM OF PROSE IS BASED ON THE SAME PRINCIPLE AS THAT OF VERSE."

Aristotle even weighed in on the subject of prose, laying down a "golden mean" law that prescribed "Prose should not be metrical nor should it be WITHOUT RHYTHM."

In E.A. Sonnenscheim's 1925 study titled "What is Rhythm," he defines it: "Rhythm is that property of a sequence of events in time which produces on the mind of an observer the impression of proportion between the durations of the several events or groups of events of which the sequence is composed." ("Okay, I think I've got it now." Mil) ("Whew."--Dr. Landon)

It would be impossible to convey to you all the ideas I'm learned in this lecture #13, but hopefully
it has sparked your interest and given you some ideas and perhaps a desire to follow this idea further. Let me know if you have some interesting examples of prose "rhythm," you would like to share.

What really inspired me to write this is a quote from Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway"---
"Quiet descended on her, calm, content, as her needle, drawing the silk smoothly to it's gentle
pause, collected the green fields together and attached them, very lightly, to the belt. So on a summer's day waves collect, overbalance, and fall; collect and fall; and the whole world seems to be saying 'that is all' more and more ponderously, until even the heart in the body which lies in the sun on the beach says too, 'That is all.' 'Fear no more,' says the heart, committing its burden to some sea, which sighs collectively for all it's sorrows, and renews, begins, collects,
let's fall. And the body alone listens to the passing bee; the wave breaking; the dog barking, far away barking and barking."

Did you find rhythms in that beautiful prose passage?
"Maybe."
"I think so"
"Who cares, it was beautiful!"
by Mil
Credit to: The Great Courses, and
Dr. Brooks Landon

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DO YOU OWN A "RANDALL?"

Many of you readers will "mull this over" and think about it for a few moments and will say: "No,
mine is a Dell," or "mine is an Apple," or you might even say it is a "Blackberry" or "Raspberry"
or one of those fruits. No, we are not talking about those type things-- there is more to life than
tweeting, twittering, texting and googling. (and please don't say: blogging, LOL.)

When you get up on a cold frosty late October morning, and the leaves are turning golden, and
the compelling fall-angled-sun is shining, and you finish up three cups of coffee and your plate of biscuits and gravy, put on your red plaid Pendleton wool shirt, grab your binocs and hang them around your neck, and saunter outside for a hiking, fishing, bird-watching, or photographic trip,
what do you carry on your belt? Hope you don't say a flask of-----, or a cell phone.

What we are after here---and you seasoned outdoorsmen are right with me, I know--- is what
kind of cold steel are you wearing? You need a utility, survival, general purpose, defensive-type
knife. Now I'm not too big on that last purpose. Knife-fighting turns me off. I always say "If a .38 won't stop it, I don't want anything to do with it." But, but, if there's no .38,
a knife is better than a fingernail file. Be realistic. What about bears?

So, we arrive at the thrust (!) of this post. What you need is a "Randall," one of the toughest,
finest-crafted, and most beautiful of any knife ever made in the world. Most people, for lack of a better term would call it a "hunting knife." Actually, since the first one was made in 1938, they have been carried for all purposes such as wars, in airplanes, sporting uses, emergencies, and even space.

Average soldiers in WWII and Viet Nam carried them when they could get them. The Model 14
"Attack" had an optional sawtooth treatment on the top side which was said could cut through
the thin aluminum skin of a downed helicopter in Viet Nam. Randalls were so popular that
the GI's/Grunts ordered through the mail by simply addressing letters to the "Knife Man, Orlando."
General James Gavin of the 82nd Airborne carried one in WWII; Captain Ronald Reagan had one, General Westmoreland was seen to carry one, and Frances Gary Powers was wearing a
small Randall "Trout and Bird" model when he was shot down over Russia.

Randall-Made Knives was founded by Walter Duane "Bo" Randall, Jr. The factory and showroom (and a museum of over 7000 knives) is located in Orlando, Florida. (Your Randall
will come to you with a very cool logo etched just below the guard: "Randall-Made Knives.")
"Bo" started his knife-making by deciding that he himself would make a tough knife, and he
made his first from a piece of axle spring. From there word got around and his business grew,
as noted earlier, as WWII caused a giant surge of interest.

Now the company makes 28 models for different applications. Nearly all models are hand forged instead of factory stamped, one of the few manufacturers to do so. Randall uses a 17 step process for making knives, which usually takes over 8 hours to finish.

When you examine one, the steel seems obviously almost indestructible. One of the most
beautiful handles (I call them) is the natural antler. The Micarta, which I believe is a resin/
cloth laminate, is also tough as steel. Other handles are available in various kinds of exotic
hardwoods, and probably even ivory if you could furnish a piece. Who has ivory?

The company worked with the astronaut program and designed a survival knife for astronauts
called "The Astro" Model. When the Liberty Bell 7 Mercury space capsule was recovered from the ocean in 1999, Gus Grissom's Randall "Astro" was recovered inside. Despite 40 years of salt water at 1500 feet, the knife was still serviceable after a good cleaning. Two "Astros"
are in the Smithsonian today.

The price of a "Trout and Bird" Randall in 1965 was about 65.00. Today it would be several hundred. Various sizes and models can run from 450-750 or more. They are available though some sporting goods dealers immediately and if you want to get one a little cheaper, place your
order directly to the company and there is a five year wait.

My recommendation for us rank and file people is to get a decent size, that is, one that can be used for most general purposes and you will feel okay to wear it on Saturday, even while mowing the lawn, so to speak. Don't get carried away and order a Roman Short Sword (28")--
that won't do.

And remember you guys, one of the best side benefits of owning a Randall is that people
will say: "Isn't that tough, rugged guy... CARRYING A RANDALL?!!"

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