Whats Cooking Mother

Recipe:    Sausage, Potatoes, Carrots and cabbage
From:      Mother
Makes:   Plenty if you leave Mom in the attic

Ingredients:
   1 Lb Smoked Turkey Sausage sliced into 1 inch pieces
   5-6 Medium Red Potatoes, Quartered
   4 Carrots cut in large chunks
   Small head of Green Cabbage cut into 12 wedges
   1/4 Lb Salted Butter
   Salt and Pepper to taste

Directions: 

Add cabbage, carrots, and potatoes to cold water. Bring to boil and then turn heat to medium. Cook until vegetables are firm but not to firm by the fork. Add turkey sausage and cook for an additional 10 minutes. Drain then add butter. Salt and pepper to your liking. Enjoy immediately.

Prep time 10 min. Cooking time approx. 35-40 min

 Every so often I get home earlier than my wife and cooking dinner is my reward. One of our favorite meals, especially on a chilly, rainy, most foul night is sausage, carrots, potatoes and cabbage. It is likidy split fast and will have its consumers screaming, more! The whole cooking process is filled with nostril pleasing enjoyment. A single trip to the ice box will have your arms full of yummy-a-plenty ingredients, except for the spuds which can be found in the pantry. To prepare the vegetables you will need a strong butcher knife, like Norman Bates uses. This part can be scary (see video and be warned: extremely graphic).

 

There’s no sense thinking here, just hack away, throw the chopped stuff in the water that’s in a pan that’s on top of the island. Carefully transport the hodgepodge to cook stove top and twist ignition knob to high. I suppose if you are a stickler for detail you could cut your veggies to the sizes listed above, but come on, live a little and improvise. Munching fresh garden fruit is your reward for cheffing and will arouse your taste buds to the looming bliss. But please be careful, too much stimulation and dinner will surely be unsatisfactory. At this point you have about 1800 seconds of downtime (I use this time to think about nuclear proliferation).  How do we know when the meatless part of our meal is ready for meat? You will need to test the doneness of the spuds. Imagine sticking a fork in your eye and sticking a fork in a peeled orange, you want orange softness. When before mentioned spuds reach almost al dente it’s time to add the crushed turkey, pork, cow, and other stuff stuffed in an intestine tube to the stew and wait  most patiently for 10 more minutes. Drain, toss in the butter, season for your buds, voila. This meal fills the house with aromas fit for Kings and roughage enough for their horses. Hey honey, what to drink, it’s time for din-din, rub-a-dub-dub thanks for the grub, its chow time!

Note: It is best to leave Mother in the attic during dinner!

Final Blog Entry

I'm not real sure how to go about this reflective piece on my blogging. I will just go about it pretty much the same way as I blogged,  say what comes to my mind. The way I picked subjects for my blogs was like this. I would sit and think for a few minutes and if something was on my mind then I would just start writing, with no particular direction in mind. If my mind was blank with ideas then I would look around my desk and pick some object or a word within my sight and create a blog from scratch. The process seemed very easy to me and subject matter was no issue. I enjoyed creating mini stories from my warped mind. One night, while at home alone, I wrote about demons that were harnessed by music playing on my radio. This may seem really twisted but it was where my mind was that night. I enjoy writing these thoughts down and then reading them back to myself. I realized that most of my writing was going to be Greek to my readers but I didn't care. It was Sam's Space I was writing in and it was going to be Sam's ideas in the blogs, period. I will write civilly on Christmas cards. When I would start to think of people reading the blogs my writing would become watered down and homogenized, not really me. I don't like thinking about critics reading my stuff because then my style changes and it becomes their stuff. People don't want to read what I think they want to read do they? I think they want bold and fresh. I'm not good at ESP anyway. When picking a name for my blog site I decided on Safe From the Storm. I wanted my space to be safe from preconceived notions and expected ideas (the storm of conformity). There are other reasons too, but they are personal. This blog project was unexpectedly fun and enabled me to go beyond the normal "copy/paste" discussion boards @ OTC.

The Storm Came Close

Well I had a very restful night last night. I love to snuggle down under the covers when a storm blows through. The thunder and lighting were terrific. My bedroom is on the second floor and the roof is just above us and this makes for some very nice sounds. Sleep like a baby! I woke and went about my daily routine, jet dressed, make a couple mugs of coffee for me and Dan, feed the cats, pack up my computer, and wait for Dan to pick me up. I strolled out to the truck thinking what a beautiful day we were in store for. I was really surprised when the first thing Dan said to me was, do you think our walls are still standing. I had no idea what he was talking about. Did you not know there was some tornadoes that went through the area last night, he said. Nope! Yea, he said, one hit Buffalo and one went from Kimberling City to Branson, right over our job. Wow! our morning was starting off a little bit different then I expected. As we were traveling toward our job we received a call from the builder and he told us trees were down and the road to the job was probably closed. Me and Dan went into a steady conversation of all the things that might have happened to our job. Are the walls still standing, is there debris everywhere, has a big tree fallen on the floor, has the whole neighborhood been demolished, a million questions, but no answers. Well, our trip to Gobblers Mountain went in a giffy and at first we thought, oh my goodness there is no way the walls are standing. Trees were down everywhere and there was a lot of home damage. We eased our way through the rubble and made it safely to the job site. Low and behold we escaped unscathed. How can a storm destroy property just a few hundred feet away and not even a small branch on the sub-floor. Safe From the Storm!

Molly

She sits on top of my file cabinet totally thinking she is in complete control of me. I try my hardest to go about my business without showing any fear of her. That is really hard to do when she looks at me that way. She has a friend sitting in her lap who seems nice, at least in my mind. I am not real sure how she managed to climb onto that high file cabinet. For that matter how long has she been there. I got to be honest here she is making me very nervous. I should tell her my feelings and ask her to please stare at somewhere else in this big room. I want to do that, but being a rocket scientist, I realize this would tick her off. If she would take a break and gaze at the ceiling for a short while maybe her friend would take the message from me and tell her later (in a minute or so) when I start back to work. Come on, brother, cut me some slack here, look over there please! If I go about my important things to do surely she will get bored and start clipping her toenails won't she. She must know they need clipped, I do. How can she do that? Sitting there just scaring me for no reason, with no regards for my teetering emotional state of mind. How did she get on top of the file cabinet? Why is her friend in her lap? What is the bond between the two of them? Oh! I wonder if she (not her friend) is having a big time messing with my head. How in the world did they get on top of that high file cabinet? They may have crawled up when my head was turned.

Of bits and pieces my world is made

Life is a very complex thing. Like a well crafted quilt, with bits and pieces of fabric stitched together into one large tapestry. Each piece of the fabric was very important in its day. Nothing seemed more important than that particular kind of material on that particular day. Funny thing is the very next day you ask yourself, What was so special about that cloth from yesterday? No bother its a new day and corduroy feels good now. Tomorrow may be denim and the next day flannel but corduroy today.  Many years go by and the pile of different fabrics fill a whole closet. There is so many different pieces that you begin to wonder if they could possible be all yours. There is red, blue, green, plaid, stripes, patterned, soft, itchy, thick, thin, pretty, gross, just every texture and color combination possible. As you look at each different small insignificant pieces of fabric a story comes to mind. These stories are some sad, some funny, some happy and a couple have no story at all. With all of this hodgepodge of fabric you decide to build a quilt, no rhyme,  no reason to it, just a blanket of fabric pieces. With a spool of thread and a thimble you splice together the memories and tales of days bygone until you fashion a complete quilt, complex and complicated yet simple and simple. Such is life!

A Storms a Brewing

There is a certain smell in the air, you know the smell. The Earth has been sitting around dormant waiting for the wind to take its dust into the atmosphere. The smell of that dust is a tell tale of a bad storm closing in. I have noticed that other types of storms have precursors to the main event too! There is a perfect storm on the horizon, one that will blow us all away. You can't smell this storm but your gut churns and your head gets fuzzy/dizzy knowing there is no escape. You can't outrun it, you can't hide in a basement, you can't stick you head in the sand, can't even pretend its not coming because it is. No way your gut can be wrong on this one, it hurts to bad. Our desires and wants have created a high pressure aloft and the winds of low pressure encircle us. These winds are held back by a facade of government intervention designed to fake the wind out. You can't fake out wind, it does not respond to wishes of hopeful thinking. The best thing to do is brace yourself and say your prayers, lots of prayers. Don't even try to act smarter then your pants on this one, just plain hunker down. It amuses me, all the people looking right at this thing and acting like its going to blow off to the north. Kind of reminds me of folks watching a tsunami coming in. Man isn't that something, honey get me the camera, hey kids you might want to build a dike for that sandcastle. 

Fast Tracker

Tony is a very busy man. He goes from to to fro in just a couple of seconds. In our business we call a man like that a fast tracker. The rest of us sit around contemplating things and Tony just gets it done, or does he? I overheard him tell his boss that he could get it done no problem. Get what done? I did not hear that part but I did hear his boss say GREAT! When you put "no problem" and "GREAT" together my guess is that if not both than a least one of these men must be a fast tracker. I have heard Tony say "no problem" many times before and he says it really fast, at a minimum he is a fast tracker. But what is it he is getting done? He never ever works; he just bangs around on his phone thingamajig. I am perplexed. The next day Tony was toying with his thingamajig and also talking to a subordinate at the same time. WOW! What talent. They were a little distance from me so their voices were hard to hear. I was unable to see this subordinates face but somehow I could read his lips clearly, "no problem". Then Tony said, I was reading lips here too, "GREAT!" What is it that will give Mr. Subordinate no problem? Is it the same thing that would give Tony no problem? Both Tony and Mr. Subordinate spend the next 10 minutes playing with their thingamajigs. Mr. Subordinate then gets up and heads for the exit door. When he gets a little closer I recognize the face. Tom, I yelled in his direction, what’s up? He was a busy man but came over anyway. "What are you doing here" was the first words out of his mouth. "Get back to work". Oh yea, that's right I was suppose to have all my work done by this morning and I did tell Tom "NO PROBLEM".  Does this mean we all have a problem?

Just call me John

I always go unnoticed for the most part. That's the way I like it because by nature I'm an introvert. I do my job and keep my mouth shut. In reality I have little control over whether my mouth is shut or not. It’s when people don't hold up their end of the bargain. That is the cause for my mouth not being shut when it needs to. Sometimes the things I listen to, it would make a grown man want to puke. I listen to them bellyache and moan. How do I keep my mouth shut? I'm telling you, it’s because of the people themselves; I have no control over the matter.  I do think I am very special in some ways, I don't pass judgments, why should I? My job is not to be a judge or jury. I know the pain is there, but I don't know what caused it, how could I. I just mind my own business and listen to them. I do get a little hacked off every now and then, people dumping on me is the cause. Sometimes I feel abused and unappreciated. I take their crap time and time again and they never ever thank me for being there, listening to their really stinky problems. Is that the way you should treat your most trusted friend. How about a little gratitude, how about you show me how much you appreciate what I do, how about you taking the time to shut my mouth so that the ladies don't get mad at me. Ah, forget about all of that, how about it you just flush me. Note:(I decided to take today off from writing and pass on a story my toilet told me.)

Empty Basket

I have been married for over 33 years now and one thing seems to be a constant. The laundry basket is never empty. When Brenda and I were first married we did not have a lot of clothes but we did not have a washer and dryer either so the laundry basket always had something in it. The basket sat below our TV and just as sure as Johnny Carson was going to be on TV our basket was going to have clothes in it. After 4 years of marriage we had our first child and decided that cloth diapers was the way to go. Now we had a laundry basket and a diaper pail that were never empty. We did get a washer and dryer, that helped but the problem existed just the same. Within 4 years we had two more children and our problem grew exponentially. Our three children became teenagers and we gave up on the laundry basket completely, or I should our children did, their bedroom floor became one large laundry basket. Our washer and dryer was begging for a vacation but we could in no way indulge them. After high school our boys all went off to college and we did catch a slight break. What happens when your kids go to college, so do their clothes. The clothes basket took back its rightful position from the kids bedroom floor. If you have ever had kids in college then you will know what happens to the clothes basket during the college years. It is used as a sled when the first snow hits campus and the floor once again reigns supreme as a dirty clothes receptacle. I'm still not sure but I believe this is a status symbol of just how busy you are with your studies, or at least that's what they want parents to perceive. Back home the laundry basket looks real similar to 20 some odd years before. Just the two of us again, no Johnny Carson, but still clothes in the basket. I just brought up a big basket of clean clothes, mostly Brenda's, I hope that basket is never empty :)

Patient Itinerary

Yea, like its some big freaking fun conference so complex that directions are needed . They can take their fancy smancy itinerary and stick it where the sun isn't. Let me give you SP (Sam Pyle) Oxfords definition of pa-tient [pey-shuhnt] noun  1. A guinea pig that suffers and is under medical care and Itin-er-ary [ahy-tin-uh-rer-ee] noun 1. A detailed plan for a journey, a list of places for the guinea pig to visit. You have to excuse my sarcasm! but they sugar coat everything so that swallowing won't be so hard. If you change one word everything is completely  different. Input Bahama for patient and see if that don't fix things. Yep! Warm ocean breezes, soft white sand, green/blue ocean water, muffled sounds from waves crashing the beach, a hammock gently tossing back and forth, no watch, for that matter, no calender, just pure contentment. Wow! Long walks along the beach darting in and out with the waves looking for a perfect spiral shell. You meander back for dinner, where swordfish is the catch of the day. After a full day its time to get cozy under a down comforter. The hut has a thatched roof, perfect for the rain coming in from the ocean. The sun warmed air has turned cool, the ocean wind forces you to pull the covers up a little.

Can you do that in your sleep?

About 6 months ago I had a strange dream. A dream so scary it required me to post Psalm 91 on a wood beam next to the corner of our fireplace.I have heard it said that dreams don't come in color. I think I do dream in color but that's not what I want to tell you. I don't remember a lot but I remember the important part. Its what I did outside the dream that was weird. Our bedroom is upstairs and we have a large brick fireplace between us and the stairs that go downstairs. The corner of this large masonry structure was dilapidated  in my dream. There was family, my wife, a couple of the kids and a few others, I don't remember exactly who, but others. I lay on the ground frozen, my arms were paralyzed from fear. The growl was something to behold, there was no way I wanted to see what was around the edge of the brick. As dreams would have it, you can't control that.  If I ever needed to move it was now, move, move, please. Slowly a wolf came around that corner and eyed me. No ordinary wolf, a wolf full of demons meaning me harm. Great, a demon wolf and I can't pick my nose, hands won't move. Oh boy! My body was so weak, so weak that I knew it was a dream in my dream. With all of the strength a dreaming person can muster in a dream I reached for a small stone. I threw that stone. I awoke, I awoke myself with an arm jerkin throwing motion. I was sitting up in bed staring at the corner of our fireplace. Can you do that in your sleep?

Relations with Space

Have you ever wondered what fills the space around you? Is the stuff in that space in its proper place? How about the space not around you but kind of around you, I mean only in your mind, is that space proper? I have been drawing on a house we are building on Table rock Lake. I draw my plans in 2D but the house needs to be built in 3D. Everything in between the 2D drawing and  a 3D house needs to happen in the proper place in my mind. After all we can't afford to shingle the sub-floor or carpet the roof can we? The way we utilize this space of our mind can be mind boggling if we allow the compartments that should be filled with components of building materials to become ensnared by emotions and ideas. Let’s leave that to the architects, they are trained to cry if the cheap popular wood won't take walnut stain. I have enough problems keeping my own personal problems out of my 3D space. Carpenters like Dan and I need to get trusses, structural steel, and 2x lumber in the right compartment. This is not art; this is relations with space, spacial relations for the layman. When all of this space is correct as it should be then the foundation flows upward to floors that carry many walls. On these walls, all plumb and parallel are rafters stretching towards the border of this space, a 2x8 ridge, I repeat the border of this space. A person who has a better relation with space could add a second floor.

Potatoes and Hash

Does your dinner sum up your day? Tonight we are having potatoes and corned beef hash for dinner and I am here thinking stupid things. Could I possible figure out a way to describe my day and how it resembles what  my wife is making for dinner. I will give it a try. I think I am getting writers block and why shouldn't I, this has to be the most dimwitted idea since something. I wonder if I can fill this days blog with a bunch of crap that don't mean nothing to nobody. If I was to run real fast down a hill it would be possible to fall and knock a shoulder out of its socket. Running fast down a hill is pretty dumb isn't it. I have no idea what the price of turkeys in China has to do with iron ore production in Australia, do you? How bout this.  If you have an answer to that last question, you are just plain nuts! I suppose to be fair you might also be a commodity broker. I got to tell you that hash is smelling pretty good. Potatoes and hash? I wonder if a meal like that would have a vegetable too? I mean you already have a veggie of  sorts in the spuds. I got it, brussel sprouts, yum! My spell check is telling me I just spelled brussel wrong. There it goes again, do the spouts come from Brussels. They must because spell check worked that time. Well I think I have come to the end of what will go down in history as the best piece of writing since my last post. Whats that? Dinners ready! Thank goodness. My brain is hash!

The clown made my coffee this morning

Dan and I have been working close to Kimberling City lately. I have been putting coffee in my automatic coffee maker the night before so that it will start brewing before the alarm goes off. This works really good unless you don't put it on the night before. Last night was just such a night. Brenda has been helping me lately and both of us just didn't want to deal with it. Instead we jumped into bed and watched The Rope. Alfred Hitchcock really had a warped mind sort off. We looked for him early in the movie but I guess we missed his usual cameo appearance. I snoozed off a few times but managed to catch most of the movie. I found myself thinking of different twisted things to add. The guy that keep getting nervous was my target. In the end there was no way I could improve Hitchcock. That man was really clever. Almost as clever as the clown who made our coffee. He gets it wrong 53.6% of the time and we give his organization $2.79 every morning. Well not every morning lately. We are getting pretty frustrated with the clown. His stooges do the same thing day after day, ask us what we want, two large coffees with three creams and three sugars. What is so hard to understand. By the way brew a whole pot of Joe before pouring, such a novel idea. That way Mr. Dan's won't taste like dish water and mine like burnt dish rags. Why do we keep trading with the clown? Hope! That it will be right and I day will start out sunshiny!

Home Alone

Well I'm home alone. Brenda works tonight and I rule the roost. Got the Wind playing in the background and just kind of throwing a few ideas around. Guess I should drag my lazy bones two floors below and cram the washer in order to get my chores done in one circuit. I have some Wind in the basement too, it keeps, I shouldn't talk about that, it's kind of creepy. Besides, who would believe me! If I get some Wind in my soul then my nerves could endure that trip below. Did I forgot to put Wind on the main level, where the living room and kitchen are, great, now I have that gauntlet to deal with. I need some portable wind,  I could go anywhere, laughing . The gunk in the air would fear me instead of vice versa. Imagine wearing four dimensional glasses, yikes, five dimensional glasses, ugh! Went to Wallymart yesterday and got some cheep 1.25 reading glasses, glad for them right now. The Wind is sounding more like music, I should make a break for it while its like that. Don't get a lot of breaks and I need to take advantage of each and every one. Here goes, be back in a minute. Back! Well that wasn't terrible, a little cold if you know what I mean. With the exception of the glass door (the door with black behind it, no Wind)  my trip was uneventful. Got some Wind in the living room on my way back up here. That was genius if I must say.

World Religion is Censored

I have a world religion class this semester and my voice has been silenced. In Biology 100 we were told that we could not talk about creation because our class taught evolution. My thoughts on the subject did not matter, my voice was silenced. In Physics 100 we were told that we could not talk about the creation of our universe because our class teaches the Big Bang theory. It did not matter what I thought, my voice was silenced. Now in World Religion 110 I have recently found out that I can't talk about the Antichrist. What? Why not? Can I have a belief on anything? Are my beliefs censored by the state? I am beginning to understand why our college kids seem like zombies. They are! There are so many interesting thoughts out there in kid’s brains. The problem is they are not sure if they should be thinking them. What does my professor want me to say, I'm not sure, the tug is definitely in one direction. I don't want to, you know, brown nose them but crap I can cover that up. Don't stir waves and get the stupid A. Is that a conundrum? It seems so progressive they can't be wrong, can they? I mean it's all so stinking enlightened! Oh my, if I could only reach that level of knowledge. Wait a minute, that wouldn't work. I would be given over to my depraved mind and then I would do things I shouldn't.

God, family, me!

God, family, me!

If you keep your life in this order it will be fulfilling and you won't lack a sense of purpose. We live in a world that believes if numeral uno is not taken care of then you will be of no use to anyone. What a terrible misconception. Life has x number of minutes in it and if you are glutenous with those precious tidbits of time you will be full of self. As a family we have vacationed in many places. There is one thing in common with each trip we went on, our house was in order before we left. It's hard to enjoy yourself  when you leave things a mess. It takes a little time to clean the dishes and mow the yard but this is what makes the vacation enjoyable and the trip home easier to swallow. Life is the same way, its hard to enjoy if you don't do your chores (keep and maintain a core set of beliefs, spend quality time with your family) before you indulge in personal satisfaction. A person should use their minutes wisely!