Lehman's Country Life

Despite my eldest daughter’s assertions to the contrary- I was young once. There was awhile there when I thought about getting a signed affidavit from her Grandmother attesting that I had not been planted here by aliens. It occurred to me later that doing so was probably a bad idea as that would only introduce the possibility that Grandma was the ringleader behind the entire conspiracy. There are times when all you can do is scratch your head, tuck your antennae back under your cap, assure the kidlet that you love her, and just walk away.

This bedtime story starts in about 8 BC (Before Children) and I was spending the summer with my Grandparents in rural Tennessee. Being a young man (yes!) I was engaging in those sorts of activities that young men do when there’s no school, long hot days, nothing in need of baling, and a notable lack of parental supervision- shooting glass bottles by the burn barrel, throwing rocks at the water moccasins in the creek, driving the old Mazda pickup around on the gravel roads, tromping around in the woods with the dogs or just doing my level best to avoid being around for chores.
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It’s the dead of winter in many locales, and if you’re weary of meat-and-potato casseroles, now’s the perfect time to spice up your cooking with a touch of the exotic. For a limited time only, Lehman’s is offering Hawaii-grown macadamia nuts in the shell ($12 for 2 lb) shipped direct from sunny Hawaii to your doorstep.

Now when we say “limited time only,” we mean it. The harvesting season in Hawaii will only last another few weeks (give or take, depending upon the weather) and after that, we won’t be able to get these nuts again until next winter. We purchase the nuts from a small grower in Hawaii – not a big middleman – and he ships them right to you.

Why buy these nuts in the shell, you ask? Freshly dried and cracked macadamia nuts have an even creamier, more buttery flavor than the store-bought jarred ones. With a good nutcracker, a great novel and a wood fire, they could just make for the perfect winter evening.

And when it comes to cooking with them, a little extra effort can translate into a LOT of extra taste. Here are a couple great new recipes to try:
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What does wintertime mean to you? Is it visions of snowflakes and icicles, school closed by snow storms, or hours and hours filled with sledding and outdoor play?

Those visions seem to me more like the winters of childhood. Now as an adult it can mean harder work caring for livestock, dangerous surfaces that I risk falling on, long dark days and evenings being stuck indoors.

For some, these long winter days can set off a true state of depression, one that is triggered by the change in the amount of natural light we get in winter and in some people, the curtailment of being able to get outdoors and exercise. This depression is known in the medical field as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). As many as half a million people in the United States may have winter depression, and it is more common in women than in men. But you don’t have to dread the dawning of winter. There are many things you can do that can help to improve your symptoms. Please remember – these are only suggestions. Please consult your family physician or a specialist on any depression or other medical treatments.
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Today was the day I chose to make Swedish Meatballs but discovered I was out of noodles. So today was also noodle-making day.

Homemade egg noodles are so much better tasting (and better for you) than store noodles. Who knows what is put into the noodles in the factories? I KNOW what is in my noodles: nothing but fresh stuff!

The noodle dough is very simple. My favorite one is about one cup of flour to one egg, a plop of olive oil, a pinch of salt and water to make the dough stiff but not sticky. The eggs, of course, are farm fresh, which gives the noodles that lovely yellow color. I use organic unbleached white flour from the local Co-op. Many people use whole wheat, but I chose white as the flour of my choice. Sea salt and filtered water; good virgin olive oil – all the stuff fit for kings and peasants alike. Start with as much flour as you like, and then add the rest of the ingredients to match.
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Those of you who burn wood, please read:

This morning when I dropped my daughter off at my parents’ house for the day, my father (standing on the frosty lawn) pulled off his gloves to show me his left hand, swollen painfully to nearly twice its normal size. Yesterday morning when he was bringing in wood to start the fire, he inadvertently grabbed a log that happened to be the napping place of a large hornet which, when brought inside and sufficiently jostled, became “lively” and bit him on the hand.

Now, I’m sure many of you are seasoned woodburners (like my Dad, who’s been doing it more than 30 years), but this can happen to anyone, so I felt at least a little reminder was in order. Consider yourselves warned, and do be careful when bringing in your wood that you’re not bringing in feisty critters, too!

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I love looking through seed catalogs this time of year. Thoughts of digging in the dirt, feeling the warm sun and enjoying a bountiful harvest in January is like water to a thirsty soul in Ohio right about now. I have been having fun combining several interests by creating ‘Seed Catalog Art’. I get to feed my gardening hunger by browsing through the seed catalogs, have some fun with my art and recycle all at the same time. I am including a couple examples of my Seed Catalog Art collages using seed catalog pages, recycled and found materials such as homemade paper, old barnsiding frames, cardboard and even weeds and dried seeds. I’ve used my own artwork in my collages but seed packets and catalog pages work fine too.

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A friend told me that when he was a child, he hypnotized chickens for fun. This was a new one to me. In fact, I had to wonder if he was telling the truth.

I hate to be suckered by a tall tale, but I couldn’t help but get sucked in by this one. So, I asked him how he does it.

He told me it was easy. First, lay the chicken on its side. Next, draw a straight line in the dirt, starting at the chicken’s eyes and moving away from its head.

He claims the chicken will lay there all day, staring at the line. He said that one time he had 10 chickens laid out in a row this way.

I raised chickens for years, but my chicken tractor is empty now. Otherwise, I’d go home and try it in a minute. My grandfather raised chickens, and he never told me anything like this. True or false, you tell me?

UPDATE! Click here to see it happen!

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We have an outdoor cat. We provided a heated insulated shelter for it (small plastic insulated dog house with door, and electric pet heating pad). During the cold winter, we put its food and water inside to keep it all from freezing. However, overnight other cats seem to show up from nowhere. Where do they all live?

Along came a dominate male that sprayed the shelter and area. Our cat now does not want to go anywhere near the shelter.

I cleaned up the shelter in our bathtub, using diluted vinegar. Our cat used it for two days until the same dominate male showed up and sprayed the area again. Now, nothing we do can entice our cat to return to the shelter and provisions – even though I have re-cleaned the shelter and area.

Thus my question. How can I care for our outdoor cat without attracting the neighborhood cats? Short of making sure the dominate male has no more bad days on this earth, is there a way to keep him away?

Thanks for any suggestion.
Mike

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I am going to write several blog entries, documenting my experience with the Hitzer coal burning stove. The following is the first entry. Oh and by the way, names have been changed (sort of) to protect the innocent.

We have been very happy living in Wooster Ohio, but we quickly found that we did not move far enough south to escape winter. No bother, I like to ski anyway. Winter, however, brings the inevitable heating season. Along with the heating season comes the ritual draining of the wallet to keep warm.

We also love our house. However, it was built in the mid 70’s and its builders, having amazingly short sight, decided to endow the house with cheap electric base board heat. Anyone familiar with this form of heat knows its drawbacks all too well. The heating system heats only the air around it so you end up with warm areas of the room near the heater and colder areas further from the device. On the positive side, you can turn off/down specific heaters in areas of the house, but you freeze going into those rooms. Add to that the thin layer of insulation in the house, terrible windows and leaky doors, and you have all the pieces needed to make life miserable during a cold winter. Now tack on the worst part of it, when you go out to the side of the house, you know the side with the spinning wheel that the electric company was nice enough to install, that measures the amount of money that will be extracted from your wallet at the end of the month. You observe the aforementioned wheel spinning with a fervor of a child’s toy top. Honestly, I have no idea how people managed to afford to live in this house. The first winter we just dealt with things, but as the next winter drew near, the time for action drew close.

Needing an alternate source of heat, I explored several options including forced air, hot water, corn pellets, an outdoor heat source, heat pumps, and a wood burning stove. I talked with Alan and Sharon, stove specialists at Lehman’s, many times exploring the idea of installing some sort of stove. We talked a lot about what type of stove would suit my needs. I can cut wood but I do not have access to a steady supply of cheap wood. Besides as one other co-worker pointed out, how economical is that wood anyway, cut, haul, split, season, and constantly maintaining the fire. A winter full of hauling wood into the house does not appeal to me.

Alan and Sharon suggested a coal burner.A coal burner???I immediately thought about the classic movie, A Christmas Story, with Ralphie’s dad fighting with the coal burning furnace. The black soot coming from the basement and the black smoke coming from the chimney. No way! My youth was filled with stories of coal bins the size of a large room in the basement of my grandparents’ house. My uncle told me he had to go into the basement and shovel coal into that behemoth that heated the house and coming out covered with soot.NO NO NO! Not this lazy bum!
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HI! I AM NEW TO THE SITE. I LIVE IN A SMALL LAKE COMMUNITY THAT ONLY HAS ONE LAUNDROMAT AND IT IS FILTHY. I DECIDED TO GO BACK TO HAND-WASHING MY LAUNDRY.   i DON’T NEED A WRINGER WASHER, BUT I AM LOOKING FOR A HAND WRINGER. I USED ONE AT A PREVIOUS JOB I HAD DOING 1870′S LIVING HISTORY. I WORKED THERE FOR 12 YEARS AND I MISS THE LIFESTYLE. CAN ANYONE HELP ME?

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