Bertram, details, tygers and gophers and poptarts

 Yesterday I advised on making poptarts, which was mainly about referring people to Jack Monroe, from Cooking on a Bootstrap. I made these a couple of times, a while back, and now someone else is excitedly baking her own junk food. 

 Then I embarked on William Bartram as he explored Georgia on his way to Florida. What a knowledge of plants he had.

I had to look up quite a few, and check on his naming. He often mentions tygers, which it turns out was the current term -- this was the early eighteenth century -- for panthers. I'm not sure the Florida panther still survives. 

He was part of the start of today's problems in damaging the natural habitat in the south, taking part in his plant  expeditions as part of surveying land for cultivation and pretty much forcing the resident indigenous people into accepting treaties which were promptly broken. He was full of admiration for a white rice farmer whose method of flooding and draining the rice fields he observed.

He also talks of gophers, not the mammals, but gopher tortoises. I wonder if they still survive, too. He writes eloquent descriptions of fish, such as the red belly, which I looked up for a picture, and really loved everything he was seeing as he went around on endless horseback treks.

He does tend to fall into endless lists, though, and you tend to glaze over, but his enthusiasm does keep you reading. I got this as a library ebook, thanks for the recommendation, Mary, I'm learning a lot.

And the detail aspect was very timely, as I sat in later on an online free writing lesson from a college professor who's unwillingly free at the moment, his writing classes having failed to meet enrollment numbers.  

Take a look at his subject! He did emphasize selecting significant details, though, not a Bartram info dump.

It was interesting to see how someone else teaches writing skills to eager beginners, and he was agreeable to having me there. The levels ranged from current playwright to just now trying this.

And you never know who'll show up in your manuscript

Yesterday my prospective income improved again, this time a bit more substantively, with the annual arrival of the Senior Freeze package, with many forms to fill out including one I take in to the tax office for Jesse the Tax Collector to attest to what I paid last year in real estate tax.  

The State will eventually send me the difference between my established baseline tax year and the increase in the  taxes I've been paying since. It's meant to keep seniors in their longtime homes as taxes rise. It will be more than $5. 

Happy day everyone, Tuesday knitting group today, last week having been snowed out. I'm taking my Tunisian crochet scarf along and I'll cast on a glove for the knitting ministry for a change, if I can't do the lace and talk at the same time. Lace work is not always a social activity.

Enjoy your day, social or not.

Curried beanzen rice, voting and helping

Sometimes food doesn't look really photogenic, but it's fine as dinner. Today it's cheap, nutritious, interesting curried beans over brown jasmine rice. The rice is fine, separate grains, but photographed oddly.

I've been following Jack Monroe for years,  brilliant brit food activist, who has known real hardship firsthand, single mom. Witness to parliamentary committees on food and poverty. Multiple cooking world prizewinner, speaker.

She's basically a civic saint. Her latest book, being crowdfunded to donate with food to UK food banks, is Tin Can Cook. It's all about interesting food made out of canned goods you're likely to get at your food bank. The food is interesting even if you can afford food, and I thought I'd try my own take.

This is not from the book, not available in the US, and I think she'd have made it look a lot better. And, it's a long story, but her preferred pronoun is they. I'm saying she here just not to hijack the point of the post.

Anyway, I used a can of kidney beans, and one of great northern, rinsed, simmered, salt, cumin, curry powder, lemon juice, bit of tamarind paste. Scooped out surplus water to freeze for soup, simmer some more. Immersion blender a few seconds.  Served over jasmine rice. A lot better than it looks. And one cup of rice, two cans of beans will make at least three meals. Beans and rice are an ancient pairing giving more complete nutrition in combination than separately.

One other issue is that recycling food cans is  much easier on the environment than frozen food plastic wrappings. This surprised me a bit, having avoided canned goods in general, but now rethinking, since the farmstand seas is almost over.

Also asking you to help your own food bank. I know people working full-time who still need help with food. Over the long run, we need to vote in the US on Tuesday, unless we already did, to put more humane people in power. Short run we can help locally.  And the US is not the only place where there's hardship. We can all do our bit, as they used to say.