Posts Tagged ‘food’

The Best Meal Ever

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

photo

Lazy trav­el­ing blog post time, in which I reveal myself as a bit of a mama’s boy.  If I under­stand that term correctly.

Sarah’s a damned good cook, but she can’t make this (mostly because of its heavy use of eggs, to which she is deadly aller­gic).  I’m pretty sure she’s come to terms with the fact that this is the one meal I just can’t get enough of.  Specifically, my mother’s chicken and noo­dles.  I could eat this for days on end (and when I come home for a visit, I do).

Thick, lumpy egg noo­dles, chicken, and broth over mashed pota­toes.  A yeasty bread roll to sop up the extra juice is nice, but not nec­es­sary.  Add pep­per and salt to your taste. 

Weirdly, it’s almost even bet­ter the sec­ond day, after the chicken broth has had some time to con­geal.  It microwaves up quite a bit thicker, and oh so tasty.  The photo above doesn’t begin to do it justice.

Anyway, I’m here in Kansas, work­ing away on var­i­ous tasks.  My plans are loose; I’ll prob­a­bly go fish­ing tomor­row night.  I’m plan­ning to start the drive out to Columbus on Wednesday after­noon, hop­ing to shave enough time off the 12 hour drive so that I arrive at a rea­son­ably early hour on Thursday.  Half way puts me in the mid­dle of Indiana when I stop for the night, which is cool.  I’ve never been to Indiana or Columbus.  Hopefully it’ll make for some pretty scenery.

My Plan to Survive the Financial Apocalypse

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Did you know you can buy a 3500 square foot home with 20 acres, three ponds, and a fruit tree orchard in Kansas for under $200,000, and still be a short drive from Kansas City?

So here’s my ten­ta­tive plan if we see a new depres­sion.  This plan is pred­i­cated on my abil­ity to keep my own job at least for a while… but if things turn bad every­where and I’m employed, I am lean­ing towards buy­ing good prop­erty out­side Kansas City and set­ting about grow­ing all our own food.

The orchard would be edi­ble through the sum­mer and then any­thing we don’t eat, we’ll can.  We’ll plant an acre or two of veg­eta­bles.  Chicken coop for meat and eggs.  A cou­ple of pigs.  A cow for milk and a cou­ple of beef cows. To sup­ple­ment, hunt­ing and fish­ing, for as long as that can be done.

I’m a total farm nerd and I had no idea.  It’s almost excit­ing to con­tem­plate try­ing to grow my own food, or at least a good chunk of it.

Anyone I know who’s look­ing at home­less­ness, fam­ily, friends, whatever–they would be invited to stay at the Tolbert Farm.  It’s not a com­mune if there isn’t reli­gion involved, right?

In all seri­ous­ness, the events of the past few months have hit home for me the impor­tance of a local com­mu­nity that could be self-​​sufficient.  The bail out seems to have done noth­ing to the stock mar­ket.  I sup­pose those com­pa­nies are able to still make pay­roll for a while, but how much fur­ther do we have to fall?  How much higher is unem­ploy­ment going to climb?  I don’t feel like we’re through this by a long shot.  Nor do the American peo­ple to judge by the ques­tions last night.

What are your plans to sur­vive a depres­sion?  Are you think­ing about it?  Is it a ridicu­lous idea?  Am I overly para­noid? Maybe.  But I was read­ing arti­cles about this credit melt­down over a year ago and shar­ing them with friends and won­der­ing what was going to hap­pen.  Those arti­cles turned out to be true, or if any­thing, to under­es­ti­mate the problems.

Writing more than ever feels like a lux­ury.  Hell, blog­ging feels like a lux­ury.  Electricity.

Right now, I’m keep­ing my head down.  Trying to pay off our remain­ing debt as fast as pos­si­ble.   And keep­ing the above pos­si­bil­ity in the back of my head.  I’ve read too much post-​​apocalyptic SF not to look at this sit­u­a­tion and try to think about what to do if it gets worse.