More Foodie Stuff - Gelato!

One of the hits of our Hapsburg Renaissance trip was gelato - we ate it everywhere. So when we came up with the idea of having our upcoming party focus on foods of our travels naturally Wife's thoughts went to gelato.

Many, many hours of research, many hundreds of dollars, and many agonizing if it will be shipped in time later, our genuine Italian manufactured gelato machine arrived yesterday. Wife has started the experimenting on recipes today. We are pretty much eating nothing but gelato from now until the party.

THE MACHINE!

Dr. Gelatostein working her magic

IT'S ALIVE!

Really!

Introducing The Stuffing Burger - I Heart My Pressure Cooker - And Other Cooking Stuff

I have invented THE NEXT BIG THING IN FAST FOOD!

The Stuffing Burger!

The Stuffing Burger was created a couple of nights ago when looking at a rather large amount of leftover Thanksgiving stuffing and no other Thanksgiving related food I came up with the idea of using it as a binder for some kind of meat to make a patty. I had some BBQ Pork in the freezer so I used that. It came out great. I can see all kinds of opportunities - different types of stuffing/dressings as the binder with all kinds of proteins. Can you see the Cajun Crayfish version using oyster stuffing and leftover crayfish tails!  I can see chains of these across the county.

And please don't bother me with any thoughts such as people have been doing this for ages. I refuse to have my genius sullied by inconvenient truths.


In the meantime I am reminded again just how much I LOVE my pressure cooker. I used it to make my turkey stock for Thanksgiving. Just an hour of cooking and I had tons of this rich luscious stock with that I'm using for my party cooking. Just today, I was making an Austrian Goulash. Stewing/Braising meat at altitude can be a real pain because of the lower boiling point of water means you're cooking at a much lower temperature and thereby have much longer cooking times. Not with the pressure cooker. It only took an hour again in the PC to have fork tender meat and lots of rich sauce.

Wife has been baking up a storm making mini-loaves for the party.

A whole wheat bread

And a light rye bread

And while we're on the subject of baking, Wife and I are really getting the touch with making pastry dough. I do the dough assembly and she does the rolling out and assembly.

Look at those flaky layers!

Catching Up

I haven't posted in quite a while so I'm going to catch up the month in one post.

The major theme of November was illness. Right after the month began I came down with what seemed like a fairly minor viral infection over a weekend. I didn't feel too bad afterwards but I did notice issues breathing. It morphed into bronchitis. That's when I made my major error in that I should have gone to my alternative medicine folks then when that type of thing would help. But there were a number of times when it seemed like things were getting better so I held off.  Then it went down into my left lung and it was definitely NOT getting better. Just before Thanksgiving, I finally decided I needed to do something but unfortunately my doctor was out of town so we were doing consultation by phone. We tried some things but they didn't work and we made the decision I should go to Urgent Care and get a chest X-Ray. The doctor there said, "let's listen to you first because if it is obvious, there's no need to radiate you unnecessarily." This was Monday morning. He said it sounded like a classic case of pneumonia and prescribed some antibiotics that I started immediately and I can say within 48 hours I've seen a big improvement.

In spite of all this I've been doing a lot of cooking. We had a very quiet Thanksgiving with Cabinet Lady, Dr. Debbie (ret) and Dr. D's sister. The turkey I did was crazy good. I've been working on this recipe from Saveur Magazine the last 4 or 5 years that is an apple cider based brine with a very high temperature cook. Each year I seem to get it refined a bit better.  I also finally pulled the plug on the great stuffing/dressing experiment. My Mom always used Pepperidge Farms packaged stuffing in the bird and everyone loved it. I've tried so many from scratch recipes without success. So this year I just bought the package - less work, better results.

Wife and I are also putting on a party this weekend so we're doing a bunch of cooking for that. I decided a while ago that I'd had it with people coming to our place for meals and then saying something like, "Oh we should have you over but I couldn't possibly cook like you do." and then we never hear from them again. So I started this year to recruit people who could be my audience. My rules are simple:

• I like to cook and I need people who want to eat so I can cook
• If you come there is no obligation
• I don't want you to bring anything and I don't expect you to invite me back
• If you can accept those rules, you're on the list.

I had quite a few takers so we'll have a dozen folks here not counting ourselves. Our theme is FOOD FROM OUR TRAVELS. So we've been working on finding recipes for all kinds of things we've eaten and loved over the years. It is going to be a progressive buffet. I'm not sure that is a real culinary word but it should be. It means we'll have an initial amount of cold buffet and then start adding hot dishes but not take anything off of the buffet.  I will give a full report on this next week. I've already made a number of dishes and so far everything is tasting great. Hopefully I will take some pictures though I've been terrible about that lately.

We also cut the cable meaning we no longer have cable TV or satellite TV. We have a high speed internet connection, a Roku box, and an over air HDTV antenna. It really doesn't affect me as I haven't watched a lick of TV since before our last trip because I AM ADDICTED TO WRITING!

It's crazy. I've talked about it before but I would rather be writing every night than just about anything.  I finally finished Book #2, the sequel to my first book. Three people actually read the first book and the feedback was it was like drinking straight Coke syrup - too much going on, too jagged, too intense. In Book #2 the conflict between the original younger author and the current older author's voices was finally resolved. And things definitely stretched out. The subject matter of Book #2 was so much that I pushed lots of it off to yet another book. And Book #2 came in at 364 pages compared to Book #1 which was 187 pages. I should be on to Book #3 any day now. Then there is the prequel and the rewrite of Book #1.  It was funny when I was done on Monday because on the one hand I was "Yay I've finished" and on the other it was "Boo Hoo, I'm going to miss all the stuff and folks I've been living with these last 9 months".

More Semi - Less Retirement

Each new long trip that we do seems to further our understanding of how to be away for long periods enjoyably and within the energy resources we have. That in turn, at least on my part, just makes me want to travel more.

Simultaneously I find that my attitudes toward what I want to do and don't want to do in this last phase of life changes. Prior to going on this trip I was pretty good with doing some work while I was in country. Coming back this time I find that actually doing the work (helping clients) is easy but there was a distinct lack of enthusiasm for getting out there and selling - which of course is necessary if you want to have work.

Another data point is that the work that I have been doing has been very profitable so we actually ended up with a surplus compared to our budget.

So I was curious as to what it would look like if I cut out work but expanded the travel - basically reduce income and increase expenses.  We had our advisers run the numbers and (not a big surprise) it doesn't work. So it appears that if I want the extra travel I need to keep the semi-working side going.

I'm conveniently skipping the part where one of my advisers and Wife looked at me sarcastically and said, "Oh so you are going to have to work 20 hours a week for 50% of the time and get to travel out of the country twice a year for 6 weeks at a time - you poor thing you!

On The Seveth Day Wife Said, "Let There Be Waffles"

And there were waffles. And they were good.

Actually Wife said, "How about pancakes for breakfast?"

This type of carb loaded treat being almost unheard of on the Eldership, I doubled down and asked if we could have waffles instead as I much prefer them to pancakes. To my surprise she agreed.

Some background - you may remember that we here on the Eldership de-I are rather severely understaffed. Even though ElderFleet Command authorizes a crew in the hundreds for the de-I, there are only Wife and I. So we make do as we travel through elder space by swapping off roles (except for the red-shirted enlisted person on an away mission - can't afford casualties).  Most of the time I am in charge of the mess hall so to have Wife want to take on that role was a surprise.

But she was a credit to her ElderFleet Academy training. Running out for an away mission to get milk which we almost never have in the house, using a 'from scratch' recipe in the joy of cooking that requires whipping egg whites and folding them into the batter.

We had one scare in that as we were off and running on this adventure there was suddenly a thought, "Do we actually still own a waffle iron?"  Joyfully there deep in the cargo bay was an almost brand spanking new one we'd bought when our old died (gad a decade or so ago?) and has sat their faithfully awaiting the day when like a Communist Chinese cadre of old who was on the wrong side of the Cultural Revolution it would get back on the right side of the power structure.

We waffles were pretty darn good considering we hadn't tried anything like this in a decade. Definitely there was some tweaking of the use of iron required but that will come with more practice.

When Did Enjoying Life Become Evil?

On our way back from Europe, as I've mentioned, we stopped in Chicago to acclimate and spent the night at a hotel by the airport. This was a very business person's oriented hotel. They filled the restaurant next to the lobby, they were waiting for shuttle's and rides, and at the reception/check-out desk. What a grim, grim lot they were men and women. All staring at their devices -thumbs and fingers a working. Nothing showing up on a device prompted a smile. No smiles when talking to serving people or the folks at the desk, or the shuttle driver. Just grim looks saying, "I'm a worker. I'm serious. I don't have time for frivolity". Even if you tried to engage someone who was not on their device in conversation you'd only get the tersest of replies. I don't think even in my most type A days that I didn't try to enjoy myself during my work days.

But it has become a badge of honor at least among those older than the millennials that work should be grim and it should be all the time. Certain companies like Amazon have turned this into their driving culture. Work IS important. If people don't work we don't eat, we don't have clean water, we don't have roads, we don't on and on and on. Existence is built on work. But does that mean we have to take this totally artificial attitude that work must be grim and that we must sacrifice everything to it? If we lived in a subsistence economy, we'd have no choice but work all the time. But we are fortunate to live in a time and place when that is not the case. Shouldn't we honor the gift given to us by having some gratitude and joy about where we're at?

Gratitude and joy are important emotions. Without them people become fanatics. We rue all the fanatics around us who are ready to kill. Maybe we should be ruing all the fanatics around us who won't let us appreciate the blessings we have received.

Review of Travel Report

As traveling is an integral part of the semi-retired life landscape, I like to summarize the overall observations and feelings that come out of each trip.

To summarize this was a 6 week trip with a significant 'stay' component - stay meaning we stayed at one place and used it as a base rather than traveling around a lot. 'Stay' in our lexicon also implies that we are renting houses or apartments and not using hotels. For the six week period we had only 5 hotel nights, we had 8 nights at our daughter's, and the rest was either homes or apartments. We made a conscious decision to limit the amount of driving that we did. This of necessity limited the number places that we could visit. Our trip started in Vienna Austria, went for two weeks based out of Graz Austria, went for slightly over a week based out of the Euginia Hills near Padua Italy, a couple of days in Ljubljana Slovenia and just over a week in Amsterdam Netherlands.

Here are the observations and conclusions:

• Travel really agrees with us - I in particular felt that I came out of the trip more mentally acute and active than I have been for quite some time. I think this was a function not just of traveling but also some of the decisions we made to put some limits on what we do.

• It is that act of travel that is the desired outcome - I don't have a 'bucket list' of things I want to see or do. What I like is the whole process of planning, then going, then dealing with all the challenges that come from the type of travel we do. Yes the challenges can be frustrating but they are never impossible and when overcome lead to a sense of accomplishment. I think this is what is feeding the mental acuity aspect.

• I think our lifestyle is healthier when we travel - We may eat a bit more but we walk tons more! I suspect our daily exercise level when we travel is on average at least two to three times more than what we do at home. At home we have schedule exercise in. When we travel just about every day we go some where and end up walking and walking and walking.

• If we're going to stay somewhere (3 weeks or more) I want to be somewhere I can communicate - I have no problem dropping into areas where we don't know the language (keep in mind we're strictly in first world countries) and figuring things out. That's part of the challenge. But if I'm going to be somewhere for a while, I want shopping and understanding the systems to not be that much a challenge so I if you don't speak the language. So that means for our longer 'stay' type of trips and English or French speaking country.

• Driving in Europe was much less dangerous than here in the US - Navigating is a challenge because of signage differences or non-existence but the GPS has really helped us with that. But by and large people follow speed limits, stay on the right unless they are going faster than other vehicles and don't go weaving in and out of traffic.

• We have to keep acknowledging our age and declining capabilities - Even though certain children who will not be identified snarkily said that our 'slowing down' brought us back to where normal people are, we really on a number of fronts tried consciously to do things in a manner that did not beat us up so much.

• Paying attention to the quality of sleep area pays off - In making our arrangements I wanted to avoid some of the problems of the trip before this where sleeping was not as good as we would have hoped because rooms and mattresses. This time by being aware of the issues we were much happier in that regard and the result was we didn't come back exhausted.

• The type of travel we do is probably not something any of our peers are going to do - We've always dreamed of being able to share our love travel and the places we've been with friends but I've come to the conclusion that the way we do things is a product of decades of experience. There are so many things that we take for granted now like going to a grocery store in a country where you don't know the language or driving around and navigating as just some of the little challenges of travel. If you've done it in three languages, what's problem doing it in a fourth. For someone who has never done it, that's a much bigger deal. We've also fine tuned how to get the best value for the money we've spent and know what we want and what we're willing to spend for it. That has come from lots of experience. So the net is I suspect it will just be Wife and I doing our traveling.

• Finally we recognize time is running out - We are in our upper 60's and fortunately still have mobility and acuity. The odds are some time in the next 10 years that's going to change and we aren't going to be able to do what we're doing now. So anticipate more blog posts from places around the world!