Cooking, etc.

So I built and lit a fire, etc. I'd forgotten a long time ago how much work it is to wake up, bundle up, get a fire built and breakfast cooking, and all that. (I think even my more recent camping trips were of the granola-bar-for-breakfast kind, and it may well be that I haven't cooked breakfast over a fire since I was in the Brownies and my dad came along on a father-daughter campout.) Regardless, after some initial false starts we got a fire a'cooking, and the eggs weren't far behind.

My worries about the previous day's snow were largely unfounded, though I hadn't anticipated one technological problem: the Morningstar veggie bacon does not want to get cooked over a fire. Or cooked over any kind of heat. I'm a faux-bacon enthusiast (really), and the difference between the Smart Bacon I usually use and this stuff is the difference between night and a disgusting, awful day made out of charred, oddly colored cardboard. Really, it was pretty gross. This is the kind of problem them Handbook didn't really set out to address, of course (there is no provision for making mock bacon instead of the real stuff), so I'm still going to say it counts. Besides, it looks pretty, right?

(PS: I'm a big wimp, so given the fact that THERE WAS SNOW ON THE GROUND, OKAY GUYS?, I ate my tasty tasty breakfast indoors. I am so not Eagle Scout material.)

I apologize for the delay in posting, by the way. It's been a busy few days, returning to New York and heading to relatives' for the Seder. Additionally, I've just started reading David Grann's "The Lost City of Z," which is pretty much an H. Rider Haggard book in real life, and it is all I want to think about. Tomorrow, partially inspired by that, I have a field trip planned to investigate a very particular type of field surgery. Be prepared.

To build a fire . . .

I remember reading "To Build a Fire" in 7th grade English. Well, sort of in 7th grade English. I sat next to the window, and there was a big stack of books on the windowsill. I think we were actually doing some kind of vocabulary exercises, and I read a lot of short stories under my desk.

(Sorry, Mrs. Nogami.)

Regardless. I'm in Vermont, and tomorrow morning I'm going to be doing part 1 of the Cooking badge -- preparing bacon and eggs, in the open and without a standard kitchen. (I will assume this means I can still use things like knives, plates, etc., because otherwise things seem kind of absurd, and because the Handbook makes reference to cooking over a griddle as an acceptable practice.) For the record, I'll be making veggie bacon.

It's probably in the 30s or 40s here today, so maybe the picture makes things look a little snowier than they actually are. Still, there was a certain amount of brushing snow off of things, and tomorrow I have a certain amount of (probably groundless) concern about snowmelt extinguishing my fire. I've got a lot of dry twigs set up there, though, and a few handfulls of pine needles, so it shoudl all work out. I'll let you know tomorrow, after my delicious breakfast.

(PS: the Handbook also offers me the option to make hunter's stew (what on Earth is this? Must I actually be a hunter? I can't tell), fish, fowl, or game, as well as hoe-cakes, pancakes, or hard tack. I am passing on these, both as a vegetarian and, in the case specifically of the hard tack, as someone with no aspirations of being a quartermaster for a 19th-century whaler.)

There is no better day for this post

Before I begin, I have to say that the House's health care vote could hardly have made me happier. Having spent a large portion of childhood and adolescence on the wrong side of hard-to-insure, and having parents who've been self-employed in some capacity for the majority of their working lives, I've taken great umbrage throughout the debate at the idea that lack of health care is only an issue for the lazy and for mythical welfare queens (haven't we been done with that stereotype since like 1994?). Finally. While I know the new plan isn't perfect (what is?), the acknowledgment that 1) the protection of the people should be a primary role of government and 2) hardworking people can still be screwed over by the insurance system gives me the happiest grin this side of a icanhascheezburger. And believe me, I love a lolcat.

Now. I spent yesterday completing a major badge requirement for first aid. See? See? The promise of cheaper, more accessible health care is not making me abandon my commitment to being able to actually respond to a medical emergency. So there. (Sorry. I shouldn't check in with comments at the NY Times website while writing this.) Anyhow. As I was saying. I spent yesterday obtaining my Red Cross first aid certification.

In general, I was surprised with the brevity of the training program, though of course something is better than nothing. The real problem for me, at the training, is that I'm a wimp. I had a hard time looking at the images of amputations, objects embedded in eyeballs, that kind of thing, in the training manuals. For me, all this is straight-up nightmare fuel, though of course there's the (valid) argument that it's better to experience seeing pictures of it before I find myself walking down the street and coming upon someone whose internal organs have become external. (Despite Good Samaritan laws, I'm still not sure if I'd be able to handle that. Honestly, though, could you?) I know that this isn't a big deal for a lot of people -- at least, popular movies (of the sort I don't watch) would suggest it isn't. But still, I had a real problem with it.

There were thirteen of us in the class, and Antoine, our chipper instructor, walked us through bandaging each others' arms and legs with the least possible thought of actual gore. We spent a large portion of the morning improvising splints and making slings out of strips of gauze which, despite the certain Civil War field hospital air to it, I really enjoyed and was actually quite good at. (Witness John's bandaged arm for the show-and-tell portion of our program. They -- justifiably -- wouldn't let me take pictures at the actual training. Please note, I did not actually injure John's arm in order to wrap this bandage. I'm willing to sacrifice a certain amount of verisimilitude.)

My partner, an older gentleman taking the class in order to become a Red Cross instructor, supplied a counterpoint to Antoine's good nature. He'd done all the classes before, but he had no interest in any amount of sugar-coating. When the first-aid handbook suggested calling for EMT services, each time he'd lean over and ask me "what if we have a 9-11 situation and the infrastructure collapses?" I didn't have an answer. For a minute, I thought he was just paranoid. On the way home on the train, though, a tourist couple asked for directions to the World Trade Center site. Maybe he had a point.

One final thought, and this has more to do with my adjustment to New York than with anything actually first aid based. I'm interested, more and more, with the notion of "the country" here. I still get confused when I hear "the country" applied to places like Long Island, northern New Jersey, and all of Westchester, and a woman in my class made me think about this time and again. She explained that she was taking the class because she has a country house and, when she's there, she's scared to be so far from the hospital. How far, someone asked? Fifteen minutes by car.

I'll leave you with that one.

Just in case you know . . .

Last summer, I was pursuing the bee farming badge when I learned that honey can (allegedly) help combat seasonal allergies. As someone with dramatically (and occasionally hilariously) bad seasonal allergies -- like, I got sent home from school all the time as a kid -- I was pretty psyched. But as someone who prefers to use medical strategies that are actually proven to work, I was doubtful.

Nevertheless, I am also a person who likes to eat things that are delicious. Who isn't? So last night, I went out and bought myself some local honey (I've used up my stuff from last summer already!). On the train home, I noticed something, though. My new 1 lb jar of honey had broken inside my purse. The bee farming badge not only did not prepare me for this, not even a little.

Anyone got any tips for cleaning a pound of honey off of a very lovely camel colored leather purse?

Watch me go from "irritating" to "intolerable"

I read my first-ever anything by Proust this weekend.

Holy crap.

On the off-chance y'all can help me, does anyone have a preferred translator for "Swann's Way?"

Sylvester

I did nothing this weekend. So, so much nothing. It's in preparation for spring break, see. I need to relax in order to be able to actually, thoroughly relax. My doing nothing consisted of making two more batches of hummus, which means I am, at this point, made of nearly 75% chick pea, and of reading a whole hell of a lot of books I don't like much, then posting vitriolic reviews of them over at goodreads. Everyone needs a hobby.

Actually, I did one thing: practiced a new lifesaving technique. For the First aid badge, I need to know not only the Schaefer method of resuscitation (with which, if you'll remember, I nearly killed John in October), but also the Sylvester method. Which does not involve being an animated cat, so you know.

Sylvester's method, it seems, has a lot in common with the version you see a lot in cartoons -- setting up the victim, then working his arms like a pump while he spits out water. In this case, of course, the patient needs to be flat on his back, and some materials instruct you to bind his tongue with elastic to keep him from swallowing it. (I tried this. It hurt more than I expected and got me all spitty, plus looked creepy. Based on all three of these criteria, I would advise you not to bother with the tongue-binding portion.)

Anyway. Once your victim (well, the victim. Presumably, you are not the one who got him there) is sprawled flat-out, there's a certain amount of flipping his arms above his head to make him inhale, followed by flopping them back down for an exhalation. It sort of works, though John (who is, once again, an extraordinarily good sport) found it vastly inferior to the flat-out chest-thumping of Schaefer. It appears that Sylvester (sometimes spelled Silvester, in case you wondered) is a less-vigorous (well, yes) lifesaving method, for when you need less total resuscitation power. Maybe your victim is less-dead, or maybe he's more fragile, I'm not sure.

One week to my first aid class!

Danger!

As you guys know (I think), I'm a teacher. And while I'm justifiably coy about the name and location of my school, I take it enormously seriously. Not humorlessly. Just seriously.

This is what's pushed me towards my next badge: first aid. Once again, I'll be coy, but the subject I teach occasionally requires using sharp or hot tools and there's the potential for injury, no matter how careful I am (or how careful my students are). This isn't an issue of negligence, or of lack of safety precautions, anything like that. We wear gloves, goggles, masks, whatever's necessary. I've never had a serious injury in my classes, though at some of the schools I've taught in, I've broken up some fights. But you never know what's going to happen, and that's why I think it's time for me to, um, be prepared.

The more I've thought about it, the more convinced I've become that my next project ought to be the first aid badge. I just signed up for a Red Cross course, and in 2 weeks I will be first aid trained. Who thought the Handbook project would make me better at my job?

(Incidentally. Are other people as troubled as I am by the arrival of a movie starring the guy from Twilight that uses Sept. 11 as a twist ending? It probably says more about the age of the movie's likely audience -- for them, the WTC hardly existed except as something fated to fall -- but still.)

2010 business

Last night, I conducted an interview with a business student at a fancy school. He's asked to remain anonymous, so I will call him BSaaFS for obvious reasons. Also, I conducted this interview at a birthday party at a bar, so my notes are mostly in the form of text messages to myself. My friend Emily, girlfriend of BSaaFS, tells me that a large part of business school appears to be discussing how great business is while drinking, so I tell myself that the questionable state of my notes adds to the verisimilitude of the b-school experience.

While I took the advice of the 1911 Farmer's Business Handbook as justifying my stingy personal financial policy, and maybe even as being a little bit timeless, our future captain of industry, BSaaFS, told me differently. And I believe him, because he is way, way more qualified than I am. (Please bear in mind, I like BSaaFS very much, but that he is, as far as I can tell, extremely good at what he does, and extremely successful. He's getting flown around the world left and right, and is shaping up to be a Big Deal. I have a feeling some of what I cover here is gonna be an Omar Little-style "all in the game" sort of thing, in which we recall that BSaaFS is a delightful person but that his job is somewhat different from yours and mine.)

Upon hearing (and having read) what the Farmer's Business Handbook, our business student responded with what I might call a derisive snort. On the subject of keeping an inventory that is accurate to maintain your own records, he commented "if anything, business today is defined by keeping an inaccurate inventory -- at least for your investors. Financial success often has a lot to do with obfuscation." Yipes. More, please? Because this doesn't sound good. He clarified for me: he's not talking about companies lying to their investors, or even abut companies not being aware of their actual worth, but is specifically addressing the idea that looking profitable is often more important (to investors and to customers) than actually being profitable.

We continued in this vein for a little bit, and ultimately got along to the real core of the issue: BSaaFS is firmly in the camp of the more profitable corporations of the past few decades: that spinning the perfecption of your company is the key, and that the rest will follow. He calls it a culture of "branding and perception" (clearly, he and I are both way fun to have at a party).

Your thoughts? How have we progresses (or not) in the past 99 years? I'm not really sure where to go with this. Sadly (or fortunately) my working life is totally removed from anything of this nature, and I'm something of a babe in the woods when it comes to the inner workings of actual corporations. What am I missing? Tell me more.

Thanks, BSaaFS. You're the best!

***

Oops! I forgot! I promised a friend to post my hummus recipe. I've made 4 batches so far this week.

Ingredients:
1 16 oz can of chickpeas (not drained)
4 Tbsp lemon juice
1-2 Tbsp tahini
2 cloves minced garlic
1/2 tsp kosher salt
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 Tbsp parsley

Drain the chickpeas, reserving 1/4 cup of the liquid. Combine the drained chickpeas, the reserved liquid, and everything else in a food processor. Blend the heck out of it. Done!

1911 business

So, for the business badge, I need to explain the basics of sales. And while I considered a lemonade stand, a particularly gross encounter with a drunk dude on the train the other night has reminded me, once again, that I really don't like a lot of strangers. (Also, I'm not clear that I won't get arrested for selling things on the street. So there's that.)

I did, however, manage to turn up a copy of the Farmer's Business Handbook (Isaac Phillips Roberts, 1911), which advises me that it will rectify the gaps in my financial knowledge, which, if I've learned it at school, is "about as workable on a farm as an ox-cart would be on a railway." Let's have at it. (Bear in mind, please, that I went with the more agriculturally-oriented financial book rather than something robber baron-y because of its relevance to the overall tone of the Handbook. As I've said before, the 1911 Handbook was by no means meant for a city boy -- it's meant for the kind of young man who has access to fields in which to grow corn, poultry to raise, and cows to milk.)

Regardless, in 1911, the farmer for whom the "Business Handbook" was meant was hardly making investments, and is warned heartily against credit. He is advised to keep a careful inventory and to value his good honestly ("it is bad to deceive one's neighbor, but infintely more harmful to deceive oneself"). He shouldn't rush to buy property, but ought to consider renting, just like his urban neighbors might, until he's raised some money and, ideally, property values have declined.

There's a simple guide to keeping a 2 column'd paper ledger, with one side for income and one for expenses, and with the option of adding a daybook to keep track of hours worked by field laborers (who, in the days before much in the way of labor laws, seem subjected to some pretty long days). We're encouraged to assign the bookkeeping tasks around the farm to a child as a training device. The only real issue here appears to be the demise of the barter system -- if we're going to be keeping track of things down to the half-cent, it's important to be clear on exactly how many eggs we're swapping for ears of corn, etc. The handbook acknowledges that this is difficult, and I'm sort of interested in the effect an adoption of more careful bookkeeping on this kind of trading around the farms. Sadly, I'm at something of a loss about where to go for more info.

Thinking of shifting priorities around the farm, there's also a lot of emphasis on eliminating sources of error when it comes to animals. Dairy pails are to all have the same weight, and we are advised to measure each cow's food each day. (The sample milk report ledge includes a truly spectacular list of cow names, including, in the M's alone, Mabel, Madge, May, Meda, and Monda, as well as Tilda, Vina, and Belva. I'm not sure who the lowest-producing cow is, but we are reminded harshly to discard her!)

My particular favorite point in the book, though, is a surprisingly forward-thinking bit, advising the farmer to be sure that his wife understands the family's finances. This is put forth not just because the farmer ought to keep his wife on a tight leash, but because, Mr. Roberts recommends, the family can now work together, sharing in both profits and losses. I'm pleased to see this, nine years prior to the 19th amendment. At the end of the book, we see a sample family meeting in which the daughter, Mary, agrees to hold off on buying a new dress for the summer, and Bud, the baby of the family, is contributing money from his berry patch.

Anyway. Ignoring my book report, here's the deal: in 1911, we're living cheaply. All family members contribute, and we keep strict records. Our main knowledge of when to buy or to sell is based, simply, on our own inventory -- what takes place off our farm or in another city is almost irrelevant. We keep our debts low and avoid taking out a mortgage unless we can put down most of the money. Not bad, overall.

(As a final note, the farmer's handbook is maxim-heavy, advising us that "a man always walks more erect when his heart beats against a roll of Uncle Sam's IOU's, be it ever so small, than when he finds only keys, a pocket knife, and unpaid bills when his hand goes down in his pocket." I kind of love this, because it reinforces my pathological cheapness. Thanks.)

Now, here's the deal. We know how to buy and sell in 1911. But today? Not so much. Fortunately, my dear friend Emily (one of half-a-dozen Emilys I was friends with in college, oddly) has a boyfriend in business school. We're gonna chat, and soon. Yay!