Calibrated to cities

Don, as you may recall, suffers from a malady we dubbed "Poliphobia" – namely, a "fear" of cities.

This is not a real phobia (an irrational fear), of course, but rather an intense dislike bordering on hatred of urban areas. "I didn't used to be this way," he says. Like me, he's spent many years living in – and even enjoying – urban environments; but the older he gets, the less tolerance he has for such settings.

For those not afflicted, this aversion is difficult to understand. But from the Eaton Rapids Joe blog comes this gem:

One of the reasons I dislike visiting cities is that I am no longer calibrated to them. I don't have a solid baseline of what is normal and what is not-normal.

YES!!! He gets it! It's not just us!

Drowning in tankards

Sorry for the silence, dear readers. Don and I have been drowning in tankards for the last few days.

To update our disastrous New Year's Eve and New Year's Day incidents: My mother continues to remain stable after rallying from what we all thought were her final moments. She's back at the nursing home, though she's in isolation (doubtless because of the pneumonia) and my dad is required to suit up in PPE before visiting her. The consensus is if her bouts of abrupt pneumonia continue, the family will turn to hospice.

Older Daughter's finger is on the mend, but she's severely limited in what she can do ... and that includes completing a massive 350+ piece order of tankards that must reach their destination within two weeks. Therefore Don and I have taken over the production run.

Don has been spending hours in the shop on the power tools. At various stages in the assembly process, he brings batches to the house, where I take over assembly. Right now the house is overrun with mugs.

Nearly every surface is covered in various style tankards in various stages of completion.

As an example, yesterday evening Older Daughter and I sat at the kitchen table to work on the smallest-size tankards in the repertoire, the coffee-sized mugs. These have solid, rather than multi-colored, sides. Older Daughter assembled the side pieces into groups of six, which I then taped and stacked for gluing.

These are the groups of six sides which will get taped.

Stacks of taped tankards. Altogether there were about 90 tankards to glue in this particular batch.

While I glued, Older Daughter sat opposite and entertained me by reading out loud various dramas posted on Reddit.

By the time of evening chores, I had worked my way through a bit over half of the three stacks.

The freshly glued tankards were left to dry for several hours (overnight, in this case).

Today Don will be working on another batch of the production run in the shop, which he'll then bring into the house for me to glue up.

Older Daughter is antsy and bored and apologetic for the need for us to finish the production run, but such is life. We're just very grateful her injury wasn't worse.

Anyway, that accounts for my blog silence over the last few days. Our deepest thanks for all of your prayers during our difficulties.

A really, really rough New Year's Eve

We are now two days into the New Year, and now I feel I can write about what our New Year's Eve was like. In a nutshell, it was very, very rough.

My mother (who, as you remember, is now in a nursing home) was hospitalized on Dec. 30 with pneumonia and a blood infection. It didn't sound good. Then on Dec. 31, the doctor (not her regular doctor, but the one on call over the holiday weekend) said she wasn't responding to treatments. He summoned the immediate family (my dad and all my brothers; I'm too far away) for a meeting on New Year's Day.

Doctors don't summon immediate family for no reason. We were braced for the worst. When I talked to my youngest brother (who lives geographically closest to my parents and has been a rock for them), he said he fully expected Mom to go into hospice. He's a big strong man, my brother, but he was crying as he told me this.

Since I couldn't physically be present at the meeting, my brother asked me to stay by the phone on New Year's Day in case my input was needed for whatever decisions were being made about my mother's care.

Needless to say we were a gloomy household on New Year's Eve. Younger Daughter (stationed in Europe) was traveling, and my brother urged me not to ruin her trip because she couldn't do anything anyway. Older Daughter was very upset about the news and buried herself in work, since she has a large wholesale order going out shortly.

On the evening of New Year's Eve, Don and I decided to call our pastor and explain the situation, and ask for prayers. This good man was – literally – in the middle of a prayer on the phone when Older Daughter came crashing into house from the shop, holding up a bloody and mangled finger. While working on the router, a piece of wood snapped and her finger connected with the router blade. She was in terrible pain, covered in blood and sawdust.

We yelled to our pastor that we had to go, and immediately embarked on a hasty first-aid for Older Daughter. We bundled her into the car and Don drove her to the emergency room, a half-hour drive away.

After they left, I called our pastor back and explained what happened, noting grimly that this was a helluva way to end the year. He finished the prayer he had started earlier, and then – without asking – went to meet Don and Older Daughter at the emergency room. (Apparently he does this a lot with congregants. They know him there in the emergency room.)

Don and Older Daughter were back within a couple of hours. OD's finger is swathed in gauze, of course, but it will mend. The router had chewed off the tip, but the injury didn't reach the bone and she should recover full use after it heals. Heavens above, it could have been way worse.

So New Year's Day dawned, and Don went out to the shop to take over the production run of tankards for Older Daughter's wholesale order. I, meanwhile, stayed inside by the phone, waiting for word on my mom. I took down the Christmas tree and cleaned the house as a sort of occupational therapy. Older Daughter slept much of the day, exhausted.

It wasn't until evening that my brother called with surprising news: My mother had rallied!

This took, literally, all of us by surprise. The entire family was braced for the worst. My brother said Mom looked terrible, was mostly comatose, and hadn't eaten in days (she had a feeding tube). My dad had tried to wake her up several times to no avail.

My dad tried to wake her up one last time. She actually woke up, but was terribly groggy. But then, miraculously, she kind of blinked herself awake over the span of about five minutes and became much more alert. She was responsive and cognizant and talking (as best she could; her speech was badly impacted by the stroke). Her vitals stabilized. The doctor was just as surprised as the rest of us by her rapid improvement, and decided to belay any recommendations for hospice.

My brother said Dad went from the darkest gloom to incandescent happiness in the span of an hour.

Mom is still hospitalized and she is by no means out of danger, but the likelihood of her imminent departure seems to have passed.

Phew. It's been a roller-coaster of emotions over the last couple of days, let me tell you. 

On a more positive note, something interesting and even amusing happened to Older Daughter while being treated in the emergency room, which I'll explain later in another blog post.

In the meantime, prayers for my parents would be deeply appreciated.

Making Parmesan cheese

A few days ago, I mentioned in passing that I made my first batch of Parmesan cheese over Christmas. A reader asked for more details. I don't have a lot of photos to accompany the process, in part because so many steps are similar to making cheddar (review this post to get an idea).

When I first got into cheesemaking many years ago, I had extremely spotty success because I was trying to follow advice on the internet. Then I purchased a book that proved to be a game-changer: Home Cheesemaking by Ricki Carroll (full disclosure: this is an Amazon affiliates link). If anyone is serious about making cheese, this is THE reference book to get, with extremely easy-to-follow directions as well as a wealth of information on cultures, starters, rennet, techniques, etc. The New England Cheesemaking Supply Company (founded by the author of the book) is also the place to go for cultures, cheese molds, rennet, etc.

In years past, I've made lots of cheddar, mozzarella, and cream cheese, which we use all the time. For whatever reason, however, I never delved into either Parmesan or Swiss cheeses (two of our favorites). I haven't tried Swiss yet (I need to obtain a special bacterial culture), but that will be my next conquest.

Before getting started on Parmesan, I needed to culture some thermophilic culture. I did this by heating about a gallon and a half of skim milk in a double boiler arrangement (critical!) to 180F, then letting it cool to 110F. I added the culture, then needed to keep the milk at 110F for six to eight hours, until the milk achieves a thick yogurt-like consistency.

To maintain the temperature for this long, I kept the pots on the stove burner, covered with layers of towels, and checked the temperature frequently. If the culture needed a bit of heat, I removed the towels and turned on the burner for a minute or two, then turned off the heat and covered the pots with the towels again.

The water jacket provided by nesting two pots together as a double boiler makes all the difference in being able to control and maintain temperature. This is just as important while cultivating the starter culture as it is for making cheese.

After the culture was ripe, I used a half-cup (four-ounce) measuring cup...

...to scoop it into muffin tins, which I then froze.

Four ounces of culture is the standard amount to add to a two-gallon batch of cheese, so it's handy to have it frozen in these increments.

For making Parmesan cheese, here are the necessary supplies and equipment:

• Two large pots, nested to make a double boiler

• 2 gallons of low-fat milk (I goofed the first batch by using regular-fat milk)

• 4 ounces of thermophilic starter

• 1/2-teaspoon liquid animal rennet diluted in 1/4-cup cool unchlorinated water

• A cheese press and 2-pound cheese mold

• 2 lbs. cheese salt + 1 gallon water for a brine

Here are the directions:

• Heat milk to 90F. Add thermophilic starter and mix well. Cover and let ripen for 30 minutes.

• Making sure the milk is still at 90F, add the rennet and mix well. Cover and let set for 30 minutes.

• Cut the curds into 1/4-inch cubes.

• Heat the curds to 100F, raising the temperature two degrees every five minutes. Stir often.

• Raise the temperature of the curds three degrees every five minutes until the temperature reaches 124F. Stir often. The curds should be very small and squeak when chewed. Allow the curds to set for five minutes.

• Pour off the whey (I use a mesh bag so as not to lose any of the curds). In the photo below, Don is holding the mesh bag around a wide-mouth funnel while I scoop out the curds and whey from the large pot.

• Line a two-pound cheese mold with a thin cloth (cheesecloth or, in my case, a piece of clean muslin). Pack the curds into the mold and press at 5 lbs. of pressure for 15 minutes.

• Turn the cheese, then press at 10 lbs. of pressure for 30 minutes.

• Turn the cheese, then press at 15 lbs. of pressure for 2 hours.

• Turn the cheese, then press at 20 lbs. of pressure for 12 hours.

• In a non-corrosive container (I use a plastic bucket), mix 2 lbs. cheese salt or non-iodized salt into 1 gallon of water to make a brine. Soak the cheese in the brine for 24 hrs. at room temperature. In the photo below, since the cheese wanted to float...

...we anchored it down with a cup filled with coins. Weird solution, but it worked.

• Remove the cheese from the brine and pat dry. (Reserve the brine for future uses.) Age the cheese at 55F and 85 percent humidity for at least 10 months. Turn the cheese over daily for the first several weeks, then weekly thereafter. Remove any mold with a cloth dampened with vinegar.

• After the cheese has aged for two months, rub the surface with olive oil to keep the rind and cheese from drying out.

Here are the two batches of Parmesan I've made so far. The larger one came from the full-fat milk I (mistakenly) used; the smaller one came from low-fat milk.

This, so far, is my experience making Parmesan. The next step is ageing, so it will be interesting to see what kind of cheese these two types of milk produce.

First of spring or last of winter?

It's been cold here. Not nearly as bitter as the weather in the northeast, but we've had lows in the teens and high in the low 30s for the last couple of days. The ground is frozen hard, but we have no snow. (It's typical around here not to get snow until January.)

Yesterday afternoon, I finished cleaning the barn and was coming back into the house when I heard an unexpected sound: A robin's call. I looked up and saw the culprit in one of our yard trees under a gibbous moon.

Robins in winter are rare, but not unheard of. It was puffed up against the cold, and its red breast caught the glow of the afternoon sun.

Was this the last robin of winter or the first robin of spring?

No idea. Maybe this bird knows something we don't.

How was your Christmas?

Last Christmas, if you recall, we managed to celebrate the day by smashing up our car after hitting an invisible patch of black ice.

This Christmas, thankfully, things were a lot more peaceful and less exciting.

We started by wrapping our gifts to each other. A few years ago, I abandoned wrapping paper altogether and embraced the Japanese practice of furoshiki, or wrapping gifts in colorful fabric. Honestly, this was one of those "Where have you been all my life?" moments. Fabric wrap is infinitely reusable and creates no waste.

I keep a bag of festive fabric bits (some large, some small) in our Christmas tote, and we use them for wrapping gifts.

On Christmas Eve, we attended our church's evening "Lessons and Carols" service and sang our hearts out.

The next morning was the Christmas Day service. I took this photo from the choir loft before anyone had arrived.

We opened presents, spent the day lounging around, and watched George C. Scott's "A Christmas Carol" in the evening.

(Also, I made my first batch of Parmesan cheese, which now has to age for ten months, so I have no idea how it turned out.)

How was your Christmas?

The orphan party

For the last few years, since she's been at her European duty station, Younger Daughter has been throwing what she calls "Orphan Parties" at Christmas.

These are Christmas Eve gatherings of as many service people as want to celebrate together, since so many are far away from their families. She has a spacious apartment, and the party starts on Christmas Eve evening and lasts past midnight. She is arranging car pools and designated drivers, and is also offering floor and couch space for those who just want to crash overnight rather than navigate their way home (especially helpful for those who overindulge).

Although adult beverages will be available (brought by guests, since she doesn't supply either food or alcohol), the entire party is wholesome and family-friendly. This year she is expecting 20 adults and six kids, including three babies ranging in age from seven months to eighteen months. She has gifts for each party attendee, including stockings for the older children. (She decided on just stuffed animals for the babies.)

When we last spoke a couple days ago, she said she was working on games and prizes. 

• People are encouraged to wear (modest) pajamas, so she'll have a prize for the "best dressed" nightwear.

• She plans a "hide the pickle" game, in which a pickle-shaped ornament is hidden somewhere in the apartment. The extra rule is the finder must visibly hold the pickle at all times, and others can steal it if they want.

Gifts and prizes are equally fun or goofy. She has four anonymous gifts, wrapped up, but they can only be given if the gift is identified through a series of clues.

• One of the prizes is a coupon for a free painting (she's very artistic, and apparently people hound her for artwork).

• Another prize is a very large bottle of hot sauce shaped like the Grinch’s head.

• Because (as she puts it) so many party attendees are immature, one of the prizes is a Nerf gun, which is apparently very popular among sailors.

• For caffeine addicts, she found a vintage mocha coffee set at a thrift store. She said it was a little pricey, but very handsome.

I love the idea of an Orphan Party! It's tough on military personnel to be so far away from loved ones, but she is helping forge both ties and memories by offering a place to safely celebrate.

America's hope

Last night, Don and I were invited to attend the Christmas pageant of some local Mennonite schoolchildren singing carols and reciting some religious poetry. The event was held in the newish barn of a member of the nearby Mennonite church, a man whom Don knows through their mutual involvement in a professional project. The barn is multipurpose and is often used for community gatherings.

Aside from a few people, Don and I didn't know a soul. And yet – everyone went out of his (or in my case, her) way to introduce him/herself and welcome us to the event. It was absolutely lovely to feel so embraced by this group of strangers.

There were children everywhere, ranging from infants in arms to teens. Kids dashed around engaging in spontaneous games of ring-around-the-rosey and hide-and-seek. Adults ranged from young parents to elderly grandparents and great-grandparents. I'm guessing there were maybe 100 people in attendance.

The pageant opened with a prayer, and then a couple of community carols in which everyone in the audience belted out holiday favorites (we all had hymnbooks on our chairs). Then the school children, ranging in age from about five through fourteen, stepped up and sang their hearts out. And here's the thing – these kids had practiced. They knew every word and line, and they sang it acapella with impressive harmony. They recited some poetry that even the five-year-old knew flawlessly. It was terrific.

Then a group of nine adults took the stage, and they also sang a number of pieces acapella, and they were (in my opinion) polished enough to be professionally recorded. Just beautiful.

After this, the whole audience was invited to pick some favorite Christmas hymns to sing, after which the program closed with a prayer. Everyone mingled to socialize, then lined up for a potluck meal.

I came away deeply impressed by the whole thing. In some ways, it was a snapshot of America's hope. Here was a group of God-fearing, hard-working, community-minded, family-oriented people, young and old, children and elderly, gathering to celebrate Christmas ... and welcoming strangers into their midst.

As I said, Don has been working with this one man on a community project, and he's come to appreciate the Mennonite church and its members for their enthusiastic community involvement and genuinely pious lifestyle.

For the last several years, in our last location and now here in our current home, we've noticed a large influx of Mennonites from other parts of the country. I, for one, welcome them with open arms. We simply couldn't ask for better neighbors.

Gathering Christmas boughs

Last week, Older Daughter wanted to collect some Christmas boughs for decorating the house. Usually she and I drive into the mountains with Darcy to do this, and this time we decided to move fast since we were trying to beat a spike of rain moving in.

We haven't had any snow yet this winter (which is typical; generally we get a massive whomp of the white stuff after New Year's), but as we climbed in elevation there was a modest and festive amount on the ground.

Darcy, needless to say, was thrilled by the excursion, which supplanted his usual morning walk. As I told Older Daughter, I was giving him at most thirty seconds before that excitement translated into taking a dump once he was released from the car.

As it turns out, it was closer to forty seconds...

...and then he unleashed not one, but two enormous loads. Good thing I brought bags.

After that he felt much better and happily romped along the road.

While Older Daughter carefully selected cedar branches (taking no more than one per tree)...

...I observed snowberries, something we had everywhere in our last location but don't have near our current home.

Here's Older Daughter's car, parked among the trees.

Cedar branches are beautiful, perfect for draping.

Because the road we were on is a maintained logging road winding deep into the mountains, much of it had a steep dropoff on one side.

We had to select branches that overhung the road.

We filled a tub with branches and came home, ready to decorate the house.

I like being so close to the mountains that we can take a short jaunt into the higher elevations. So, apparently, does Mr. Darcy.

Another seating area

There is a YouTube real estate enthusiast named Enes Yilmazer who makes videos (filmed by his son) in which he tours mansions, yachts, and other high-end facilities of the Rich and Famous. Many of the properties he films are on the market, and he works with the realtors representing the properties to showcase the amenities. We're talking homes worth tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars.

Once in a while I'll watch one of his videos to catch a glimpse of how the upper crust lives. The vast majority of the time, Mr. Yilmazer is showcasing some sleek and modern monstrosity that doesn't appeal to me at all. Still, it's interesting brain candy to view during down time.

A random moment from one such video (I can't remember which one) stuck in my head. In the clip, Mr. Yilmazer walked from one wing of a house to another, and he passed by a large area that held an expensive sectional couch but was otherwise empty. He waved casually toward the couch and said, "And another seating area..." in passing as he made his way toward the other wing.

It was the way he said "And another seating area..." that stuck in my head, because I remember thinking, "Seating area for whom?" The house he was showcasing was so massive, and it already had so many other "seating areas," that I'm certain no one would ever frequent this remote and forgotten sectional couch at all. It just needed some sort of furniture to fill an otherwise vacant space.

And here's the thing: The room/corridor through which Mr. Yilmazer was passing easily surpassed in size the footprint of our own home.

I thought about this recently because our house is currently in chaos, cluttered with the detritus that comes from living, working, and engaging in projects within the confines of 1,000 square feet.

In the living room, there was a pile of towels on the coffee table, burying a pot of heated milk to make cheese culture.

In the library, I was drying flannel sheets on racks (I have to dry everything indoors during the winter, of course).

Next to the clothes-drying racks are crates of ripening spaghetti squash. The ones in the top-most crate will be going to church with us to pass out to interested congregants (hence the sign, which reads "Spaghetti squash – help yourself).

As usual, the kitchen was the most active room of all. Older Daughter was engaged in a large production run of tankards, and in winter many steps involving glue must be done indoors.

On the stove, she was cooking a meal.

In one corner, we had put aside a few gallons of drinking water in preparation for the anticipated power outages from last week's wind storm.

In another corner, washed and cleaned milking buckets, milk containers, and a fresh block of cheddar cheese air drying before I wax it.

Anyway, you get the idea. The house was a mess.

But here's the thing: It's a mess because we use it. We live here. We work here. Once in a while, we even entertain here (at which point, of course, we clean it up). We have no interest in, or space for, a distant unused "seating area."

We've known people with large homes. Some friends who were in the potluck rotation at our last place had a massive and gorgeous home that easily held dozens of people, during which time their seating areas were in constant use.

For those whose focus is entertaining (and not homesteading, like us), there seems to be a breaking point in home size. Up to a point, a large home's square footage is an advantage, with space enough for gracious hosting. Beyond that point, however, you get lost and distant seating areas forever unused, but which must still be furnished, cleaned, and heated.

Our home is small and sometimes chaotic, but at least I can honestly say we use every square inch of it.