A First Stab at Ramen in Decatur

Last week, Margaret and I watched Tampopo, and well before we finished, Margaret said out loud what I had been thinking most

A Columbus Day Soup

Navy Bean Soup with Grits

The soup is somewhat of a triangulation. It lies somewhere among the bean soup my mom made when I was a kid, Heidi Swanson’s lima bean soup with chipotle broth, and posole. If I had had whole corn on hand, and time to turn it into hominy, this would have been closer to posole. Using the grits inspired me to use the pumpkin, so the recipe has the three sisters (corn, beans, squash); adding chiles makes this recipe even more appropriate to be served on what I grew up calling Columbus Day (and seems to be becoming Indigenous Peoples Day). I think this soup might be even better with baby limas; they make such a lovely silky broth on their own and cook more quickly. I also think this soup would be good with some bitter greens like arugula or kale tossed in toward the end, but I like that in anything.

Click through for the recipe

Atomic War Tips

This guy Yonatan Zunger has some stuff worth reading. The following showed up today and includes good reminders of things I read about as a child.  https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/island-tips-for-surviving-a-nuclear-attack-5708fc56fb5d

What I did on Margaret's (Sort of) Spring Break

Last week Margaret attended the CCCC in Portland, Oregon. This is a big convention under the auspices of the National Council of Teachers of English. I took three vacation days to accompany her; while she conferred, I did some sightseeing on my own and visited Gary Rogowski at his Northwest Woodworking Studio. We also visited with my old friends Chris Murray and Shannon Riley.

Here are some pictures.

How Long is Your Doughnut Hole?

My "retirement package" can be accessed at 62, and I have some "emergency savings" to live on if I ever am out of work. If my emergency savings continue growing, and my age continues to approach 62, I should have an ever-decreasing "doughnut hole," the time between when my emergency savings would run out and when I reach age 62.

I am sure I'm not alone in thinking that once the doughnut hole is gone, continuing to work is optional rather than a life-or-death necessity. And so I like to keep an eye on the size of the doughnut hole. When things are going well, I only check once a year or so. When things are miserable, I check slightly more often. Twice a day maybe. It would be nice to develop a bit of software that would display the doughnut hole "countdown" style on my smartphone. Or not. After all, that leads to a mindset of wanting "this part" of my life to be over so I can be living in "that part." Which of course is illusory thinking; the only part of my life I can ever live is THIS HERE NOW.

Still. It's nice to have something pleasant to think about, so here's an online calculator that will tell you how long your emergency savings will hold out. Add that to your current age, subtract the sum from 62, and you know the length of your doughnut hole.

You're welcome.

Doughnut Hole Length Calculation Helper

Set Your Car to Nookie Mode

Worth reading. Based on the concept: what if human nature remains about the same as "driverless cars" become commonplace?

https://medium.com/hidden-in-plain-sight/concepts-in-autonomous-mobility-80732bc4a44d#.bjjnykj1a

It's really quite simple

Just done with a weekend of teaching at Highland Woodworking. Saturday was "Surfacing Lumber in the Small Shop," and Sunday was "Tablesaw Basics." I've been doing a lot of teaching lately, and there's nothing like teaching for learning. I get reminded of things I've known all along, of course, like "Practice on Scraps!" but I also learn new things too. On Saturday I got better at flattening the second side of the board, and bringing it into parallel with the first (or face) side when I saw how David Charlesworth's "stop shavings" give a surface the shape I used to think of as "gravy lake" when I was an 8-year-old playing with my mashed potatoes.

Writing that sentence made it quite clear to me I'll need to add photos to explain this. Just now it's late at night, and I'm nowhere near my camera, or a roughsawn board, or a workbench or a scrub plane. So it will have to wait.