So who has the "Hemi" after all?

Cranberry bogs are a fussy sort of place, requiring a great deal of attention, yet resent overt meddling. The bountiful harvest must be coerced gently, not forced. The case of irrigation, for instance, must be approached carefully. The bog, a native wetland environment, does not want to take its weekly allowance of water in one or two large gulps. Just as you or me don’t want our weekly recommended diet of precious life sustaining water in few, large doses. We may drown in that much water, and this is precisely what happens to our diminutive cranberry plants when too much water is forced on them at once. The more intensive, daily drink is what our vines prefer, particularly during the peak of the growing season. This July appetite must be fulfilled a little bit at a time, spoon feeding so as not to drown our productive little friends. If the root systems become waterlogged, our soils become instantly unproductive, lacking the proper soil solution, and precious oxygen to enable the life sustaining cat ion exchange. This exchange of plant nutrients and H20 are essential to the productivity of our farm. This effort requires constant vigilance on the part of the farmer, me. This also requires many early morning starts, heading out of my quaint little nest, to water my bogs before the sun comes up. This is important for many reasons, reasons I will perhaps extrapolate on later, but suffice it to say, I need to leave early. This early departure has come as a disappointment to my neighbors, apparently due to my choice of a more ruggedized transport. My truck is the kindred spirit to the FedEx truck, or the UPS van, and as such, has a rattling diesel under the hood. This unfortunate side effect of my choice of vehicle was unforeseen to me at the time of its purchase. I simply stated, to the earnest salesman, that I was one of the few people to cross that dealerships threshold, who in fact needed a four wheel drive vehicle. Further, not any 4WD would suffice. I would require the service to of a truck that could withstand the abuses that are accompanied by my adventurous bog lifestyle. I was directed to what is now my trusty steed, the F-350 Lariat sporting the newly designed 6.0 liter diesel. This is indeed a truck that will go the distance, regardless of hard riding, being put away wet, etc. Particularly, this diesel engine, and diesels in general, are purported to have more longevity than their gasoline counterparts. This was part of the appeal, as I was definitely not going to be allowed, by my marital partner, to purchase another truck anytime too soon. This fact was especially true, were said truck to cost in excess of $45 grand. Herein lays the rub. My “friendly” neighbor informed me, while smiling earnestly, that I was her “new alarm clock”. Hmmm.? “You are my alarm clock when you drive by at 5:30.” She accused me of having a Hemi. I was quick to fill her in on the finer points of difference between a Ford and a Dodge, not to mention the fact that a diesel and a hemi are two entirely different animals. That is the point at which her husband interjected “It sounds like the Fedex truck.” Ok, now I’m getting the point. In spite of this being an apparently friendly exchange, there is venom just below the surface. I never seem to get the poisonous message till it is all over. These people are pissed that I am driving out of the neighborhood at O-Dark-Thirty O’clock in the morning, yet they don’t have the stones to be up front about it. Instead she intimates that we sometimes trade vehicles, my wife and I, as if we ought to take such a thing as a suggestion. Wow, isn’t life grand. Welcome to America, home of the free, land of liberty. If you don’t like the sound of my truck, I guess you better move.

Alton Brown Rules

I am a huge fan of "Good Eats", Alton Brown's Food Network cooking show. Actually, to call it a cooking show does it no justice. His show is really cooking meets chemistry and physics at the molecular level. This geeked out stuff is really up my alley. What is the difference between baking soda and baking powder? What does the protein from an egg actually do for any given recipe? These questions and much more will be answered by any given episode of "Good Eats". The protein that holds all these cool facts together in the form of entertainment is the food. The act of cooking and sharing food with my family is, at times, magic. Granted, it is often rote and hurried, but having spent many thousands of hard inherited dollars on a new kitchen, I am determined to make time spent in said kitchen have some meaning. Why not, after all? Our life is full of time consuming things. These activities, for the most part, take us away from one another. When the time we do have together lacks quality, for one reason or another, I really feel motivated to make something count. If the rest of my house weren’t such a shithole, I would invite more people to break bread with us, but alas, I am ashamed of our housekeeping. Getting back to Alton, I heard him on the Bob Edwards show on XMPR. He was being interviewed about his road food show. He pointed out the historical importance of food in the social context of society. We cannot loose it, Alton contends. Well I second that, but I fear it is too late. I think it is lost, but I invite Alton and anyone else to come over for dinner, damn the upswept floor, dirty windows, and piles of laundry. I invite the world to come to my table, and help me become a better human.