Minestrone Soup and Other Misc Musings

On a cold day in February, what could be better than a warm bowl of soup?  I made some today for dinner and it delivered—warmth, comfort and sustenance as promised in a new cookbook I purchased to accompany my electric pressure cooker:  “Cooking Under Pressure” by Lorna Sass.  After poking around in La Conner, Washington on a rainy, winter day, we came home to the reward of this hearty soup I pulled together in just minutes.

La Conner is a one-horse town, more or less, with a variety of delightful shopping venues on either side of its main street.  The location fronts a canal between two bays on Puget Sound, and depending on the tide, its saltwater can run in either direction to or from the sea.  It is a good place for kayaking on warmer days past tethered boats, restaurant windows, and under Rainbow Bridge. 

Native American influence is strong in the Northwestern art displayed at the southern end of town where a totem pole guards a view of both the bridge and a shot straight down La Conner’s main street.  There is a kitchen shop, clothing and shoe stores and various sculptures displayed in another storefront that could keep the average person occupied for hours, but we elected to stop for coffee instead in a little café called Calico Cupboard.  Paired with a cookie from their bakery, the coffee warmed our bodies as we paused to enjoy people watching through its windows while others braved the weather to shop.

Winter in Washington

We have arrived in Mount Vernon, Washington.  This is the first winter we've experienced in the north in years.  Cold, periodically rainy and views of snow in the mountains around Mount Vernon greet us.  The air is exhilarating.  Dawns come in striking color.  Warm clothes are mandatory.  After a hot winter in Florida, the cold temperatures are welcomed and a relief.

We are in an RV park just across the Skagit River from the original main street of Mount Vernon.  Older, brick buildings and small businesses occupy either side of the street.  On a corner, the Skagit Valley Food Coop occupies an entire block with an assortment of organic produce and packaged foods that make selecting an organic diet an easy task.  The process of browsing the store's aisles is a shopping nirvana for me as I convert our eating habits in earnest to whole foods of as much organic sources as possible.  I am also becoming a believer in "shop for locally produced and sustainable" foods.  The quality is often visibly discernible.

Dreams of a Community

No idea is new it seems.  I thought I had conceived of a solution to the economics of growing old during our recent travels.  Now I see many options are already invented for living with fewer material possessions in less space.

The reality is that economics is a definite problem for the aging in many cases.  They must rely on what's left of savings after the "Great Recession" and a meager Social Security check.  What to do about a place to live?  Property values and mortgages that are only supported by a two-income, still working couple are now out of the picture as one quits that vicious cycle.  Rents are the same or worse considerations for these elderly.  Senior "living" in income assisted apartments offers the tiniest of living space down long, lonely and possibly socially restrictive hallways.  What to do?

A "tiny home" isn't a new invention.  There are RV/mobile home parks throughout Florida, Arizona and beyond that call their version of tiny homes a "Park Model" and in some cases these parks include activity centers for their "active adults" to play/socialize within.

The population of elderly literally living in RVs and calling it a "life style" are also abundantly evident along our travel stops.  All of this is wonderful to some degree.  And yet it is worrisome if this is all that our elderly can afford in the current society we elder Americans find ourselves occupying.  Even our young people at the other end of the age spectrum are finding housing to be an issue.  I've lived in versions of this concept in both Arizona, in Florida and now on the road.

Tiny Home Magazine recently had an article on front porches and the new found joy of those rediscovering the beauty of getting outdoors and talking with your neighbors.  We know the joy of these conversations traveling in an RV where often you converse with your neighbors.  Recently we met and shared coffee with two interesting gentlemen traveling over 6,000 miles round trip in only a roadster who slept on the ground in sleeping bags and they were our age!

A real Tiny Home community we saw recently is growing up in Lemon Cove Village RV Park in California.  The park is even incorporating a community garden along with a communal kitchen for their residents.  So there are advantages to Park Models and RVing that others are also seeing and combining into real life styles.

So here is my dream:  I would love to see a retired, elder community of Tiny Homes/Park Models built in circles around a common lawn with parking behind and the same gardening, activity centers, communal eating room and kitchen put in around the property's perimeter.  This concept has been used in Israel successfully with a younger generation to foster their young and provide stable homesteads.  Why not try it here with the elderly who are willing to embrace this type of lifestyle.

Maybe we could mingle in some young people too and build an intra-generational relationship as we had in generations past that my parents experienced.  Let the pendulum of life swing back a bit from the separatism we've fostered in my lifetime.  There was a recent show on television where college students were given living arrangements in a Scandinavian elder community with the stipulation that they had to interact with and help their elders for a portion of their day.  Both age groups benefitted and a bridge was created between the generations that was healthy for everyone involved.

If I win the lottery, I'll build one of these communities.  I'd love to.  Then I could say I'd left something behind for humanity-"making my mark" so to speak.

Before I Die

In the University District of San Diego there is a blackboard covering the entire length of a building with multiple lines drawn across its black expanse waiting for chalk written answers to the phrase:  “Before I die…” 

Any person who happens to be going past on foot can stop and contemplate what response would complete their personal bucket list and then write their answer there.  Many already have done so.  To me it seems like an interesting exercise.  The board has some revealing and interesting thoughts.  It is worth the read.

Whether or not you choose to write your thoughts upon this board for all to see or within a personal journal for your eyes only, have you ever thought of what is at the top of your own personal list that you could write down here given the same opportunity to answer this question?

Occasionally the proprietors of the adjacent business, who came up with this venue for eliciting soul-felt thoughts, erase the blackboard and the process starts all over again.  Young, old or somewhere in between, people are interested in this exercise and pause as they pass.  So am I.  One day I am going to stop by there and add my thoughts (after I figure out what the most relevant answer is in my journal.) 

Frozen Eggs

I don't know if you can tell from the photo to the left, but these eggs are frozen.  At first this morning I thought I had broken eggs from traveling with them in our RV refrigerator. The cracked shells were the first hint something was wrong. Then I discovered the eggs had not leaked into their storage container.  Alas, do I throw out half a dozen eggs?

No, I decided.  I will play with them and see how they cook up.  A few seconds under warm tap water and the shells came right off.  I put them into my egg poacher and set it for a little longer cooking time and let the poacher do its magic.

Amazingly, the eggs cooked up perfectly!  And they tasted great too.  So that is the lesson of frozen eggs.  You can use them!  I have not tested making anything else with eggs in this specific condition, but who knows?  Maybe there are other preparations that will work with frozen eggs.  Who knew?  The other question is:  "Is this a way to preserve eggs?"


The final product is pictured below.  Yummy breakfast on the road.

Labels

I started the day with a tirade against labels as I was doing laundry.  Purposely, I cut off every label I could find coming out of the dryer today attached to whatever item I found them on, even the towels and wash cloths!  Have you ever asked yourself, "Why do we need labels?" or "Do I really need to advertise for whomever made this garment?"

I don't know about you, but I hate labels.  Yes, I said hate!  Why, you might ask?  Well, for one thing they irritate my skin on the back of my neck.  Surely I am not the only one am I?  They scratch, and itch, and annoy consistently and constantly.

Even worse are the ironed-on, permanent, decal labels that irritate without relief after six times through the laundry when they turn into nasty, cracked versions of themselves forcing me to consider merely throwing out the offender, shirt and all!  They can't be cut off or scraped off nor ironed back into the soft, pliable messages their creators thought these decals would remain.  Or did they even care?

Even better are the shirts with two or three labels (including one along the side seam) as if we did not know how to do laundry after all these years of practice.  Most of us don't care what blend something is once we purchase it anyway.  The laundry items all go into the washer in the same batch regardless of the fabric, limited only by color if we are still into sorting our darks from our whites.  Moreover, we do still ultimately teach our offspring how to maneuver through "Laundryland" don't we?  Even if Home Economics has disappeared from school curriculums, teach we do because we want our children to take over the task of maintaining their own clothes eventually.

Have you ever really cared what brand name a shirt is or from where you acquired it once you've worn it?  You'd never find the same shirt again by the time the current one wears out and probably you wouldn't care, unless you are into uniforms.  Most of us want variety and choose the latest styles and colors off the rack when we venture out for a replacement anyway.

So I don't know when the plot was devised to create massive discontent by way of labels nor whom the plotters were.  I suspect it might have been the manufacturers from somewhere in the universe as a sort of revenge for sweatshops but I do know.  I am on a warpath to eradicate labels from my life with my trusty scissors until by popular opinion they replaced with clothes that contain only purchase tags which can be happily removed right from the get-go.  As for those ironed-on, decal labels?  I won't even buy clothing with those in place anymore.  Believe me when I say I check and that is a rule set in stone!

And that is my tirade on labels.

Little Free Library

Recently I saw a "Little Free Library" in a local public park.  What is it you might ask?  It is an adorable, small house on a pole filled with books.  It operates on a "take one/leave one" premise.  I wasn't sure what it was all about but decided to look into it further when an article came out in our local paper about five of these that are now located in our county within public parks.  Ours contain a shelf with books for adult readers and another shelf for children's books.  The most recent little free library was worked on by about 15 children who raised money for the materials to build the library and then stocked it with books.  What a cool thing for these kids to be able to say, "We made this happen."

So where did the idea come from?  There is a site that tells the story about Todd Bol of Hudson, Wisconsin who came up a way to create something that would pay tribute to this mother.  She was a school teacher who loved reading.   He built a small replica of a one room school house, mounted it on a pole in front of his house and filled it with books.  He affixed a sign that said "Free Books" and the neighbors and his friends loved it.  To read more, click here.

There are plans for making the house available online too.  To be part of the organization that started the idea, each little free library must have a steward to maintain it.  There is also a blog about the trials and rewards various libraries have endured and enjoyed respectively.

Reading about this got my mind going along the lines of these being placed near bus stops in low income areas for low income kids to benefit from and near low income elderly housing for the same reason.  Maybe a combination of these two groups of people (young and old) could become stewards together of a particular Little Free Library.  Would the young and the old learn to value each other more then?  I'd like to think so.

Here is an example of one of the libraries from the local newspaper story.