Grumpa Joe's Place

Today is one of those days when I am falling asleep on my feet. My body missed an hour of sleep last night and now it takes the initiative to make up for it any way it can. Usually, it in in the middle of a sentence as I am writing or reading. If you see a string of a single character running across the screen you will know that my body just went into rest mode. The single character comes from my thumb which has stopped while in the middle of a stroke and is resting on one key.

September days can be outstanding in, Illinois and today is one of them. It is sunny bright with sparsely spaced billowy white clouds streaming across the sky. The temperature hovers around eighty mid-day and then quickly descends into the sixtes after sunset and finally bottomming out in the fifties near sunrise.

I should be out riding my bike, but that is a sport I gave up fifteen years ago and now it would take me a better part of the afternoon just to prep the machine for riding. At one point cycling was my life, I belonged to a bike club that went of regular rides several times a week, and in between I commuted to work by bike. I scare myself when I think about the number of hours I spent riding and enjoying the physicality of it all. I also realize how lucky I was to have an understanding wife who tolerated my sport. We spent many hours apart because of my selfishness in choosing to pump the pedals instead of spending time with her. That is one regret that I have which I have compensated for by abandoning the sport.

Today, I spent the afternoon cooking my supper. As I write there is a pot of beef stroganoff simmering on the stove, and next to it is a pot of water in a very slow boil ready to accept the wide noodles to compliment the dish. This is certainly not a KETO meal, but it is so very delicious that I have to forget KETO once in a while. I use a recipe from Paula Dean who showed me how to do it on the Cooking Channel. It is way too simple but tastes like a very complicated affair. It is my favorite recipe. Next to the stroganoff my next favorite is chicken parmesan cooked in home made tomato sauce. It is another a recipe downloaded from the cooking channel years ago. I learned from these two recipes that cooking can be much like chemistry. Pay attention to the details and measure the ingredients to make it taste like Emiril made it.

My plan is to chill until it is time to eat, then afterwards go for a walk. The walk will take off the edge of a big meal and allow me to enjoy the evening watching a few episodes from two series that I have become attached to: Bosch, and Downton Abbey. I have to control how much I see of the detective program because it is very explicit in showing murder scenes. A month ago I overloaded and decided to take a few weeks off to unload the depressing story and the scenes that come with it. The stories are so enthralling that It is like being hooked on a drug.

If there is any energy left in me after the walk I may forget TV and choose to descend into my wood shop to work on my bird. My latest Intarsia project is an owl in full flight going after prey. I started this project in December of 2020 and feverishly worked on it to about 75% complete in March 2021. The devil is in the details however, and after taking a break from the wood shop to concentrate on a number of other projects one being my garden, and another my wedding it was not until September that I resumed. Now I am competing with beautiful days and the regret of not spending those hours with my partner. Thankfully, my body tells me how much time I can spend in the shop just as it tells me when I need to rest.

My goal to read a book a week for the year is finally becoming real. After a non-stop reading marathon to catch up to four books a month I am at thirty-three and on track to reach thirty six by the end of September. To give myself some variety I’ve decided to mix non-fiction with fiction, male and female authors, old and new. Mostly they are stories copyrighted in 2020 and 2021 because I zero in on the large print section and they are recently published. I love historical fiction because it blends facts with characters and story’s that become real. For instance, last week I finished Kitchen Front which takes place in England during WWII and deals with the population that didn’t fight. They are the ones who contributed to the war by dealing with rationing of food and other necessities like gasoline, and tires. At the same time I have been watching Downton Abbey, a story about how an aristocratic family living in a huge manor deals with World War One. The two stories mirror each other and the difference in life between 1918 and 1940 were not very large. One thing that did change was the attitude of the people who were serving the aristocrats. The servants began to realize that maybe they had the short end of the stick and were itching to change their lives to become something better than a maid, butler, or valet.

It is time to blend the sour cream into the stroganoff and to drain the wide noodles. It has been pure pleasure staying awake throughout this report.

Filed under: Aging, Biography, Cooking, family, Movie Review | Tagged: Downton Abbey 1, Owl, Stroganoff | Leave a comment »