Hubby is a big fan of granola, but not the stuff that they sell in cereal boxes at the grocery store. As is the case with so much of our food-life, he likes the stuff that I make best. So tonight, I'm making granola for him. Here's the recipe I'm using tonight. This is one of those things where I just throw together what I've got, so the recipe isn't consistent from one batch to the next. I'll let you know if this batch is a good one.
Ingredients
18 oz turbinado sugar
18 oz water
1/2 cup butter
6 cups rolled oats
4 cups rolled wheat
3 cups rolled barley
2 cups oat bran
1 1/2 cups flax seed
18 oz dried fruit, chopped small if neccessary
Combine sugar and water and heat until sugar is completely disolved. Add the butter and continue heating until the butter is melted and the mixture is bubbly.
Combine the grains in a large roasting pan. Pour the sugar mixture over the grains and stir until well blended. Bake at 350° for two hours, stirring it all up every 20 minutes.
Take out of the oven, let sit for 10 minutes or so stirring occasionally. Add the fruit.
Let cool, store in some sort of storage container. We use a big cookie jar.
I'll let you know how this particular recipe turns out and what adjustments I'll be making next time.
FT
Monday, August 31, 2009
Today in the Garden - Mon 8/31
There weren't any beans tonight. I saw a couple of blossoms, but not many. I think it's just too cold. They're not happy, so they're not reproducing.
My peppers are really unhappy. I just don't seem to do too well with peppers. Right now I've got 5 pepper plants and 3 peppers, and it looks like that's all I'm going to have. That's just not right. Although it does square with my experience with peppers. The two years prior to this that I planted peppers I got one fruit per plant.
Next year I'm going to set aside a little pepper bed and coddle the danged things, and see if I can get them to set more than one fruit per plant. If I can't, that will be the end of peppers in my garden and I'll use the space for something else. This isn't that big a loss, really. None of us would really miss them if we didn't have them. If we got a bumper crop of them we'd end up giving them away, which, while a nice thing to do, doesn't fill up the freezer for the winter. And that is my goal - to grow enough veg to feed the family year-round.
FT
More on Health Care
I was cruising the news today and found this - Until Medical Bills Do Us Part The article itself was pretty disturbing, talking about couples who divorced due to medical bills, but there was a comment on the story that shook me up a bit. Here's a chunk of the comment -
What I learned, after a colleague was diagnosed with late-stage cancer that would require aggressive, long-term treatment, was that after 90 days out of the office on sick leave, an employee is placed on long-term disability and, if he is unable to make COBRA payments, has no further health care coverage. That's right; if you get too sick to work for three months, you lose your health insurance -- right in the middle of chemotherapy, or while you are recovering from a serious accident or stroke. That's because, once you are on long-term disability, your employer has no further obligations to you, including regarding benefits, and you are consequently dropped from the employer's plan. I was made to understand that the transfer to disability and cancellation of insurance benefits are required by the disability and medical insurance policies issued to all employers, and that no state or federal law currently can prevent such cancellations.
Even if you can afford COBRA (which is very expensive), your benefits will be extended no longer than 18 months. That means that eighteen months and 90 days after you fall ill, or have an accident, you no longer have any health insurance at all. You're on your own. No "government bureaucrat" will come between you and your doctor because, unless you have the money, you won't have a doctor.
This news shocked me, and made me wonder whether all those who oppose health claim reform on the ground that they prefer their employer plans, realize that they are not covered if they become chronically ill, or have a catastrophic accident, regardless of whether they are employed when the illness or accident occurs. Nobody has health care coverage in such circumstances. We are all uninsured.
That's pretty scary stuff. I'm the primary breadwinner in our family, and our health insurance is provided by my employer. If something were to happen to me, we'd not only lose my income but both hubby and I would lose our health insurance. We couldn't afford COBRA if I was bringing home my regular paycheck, we certainly couldn't afford it if I was on disability pay. We're not (yet) old enough for Medicare, so we'd be screwed.
On the other paw, at present we have very little by way of assets, so we'd get to skip the gut-wrenching, soul-crushing step of liquidating our nest-egg and selling off everything we'd worked all our lives for in order to pay our medical expenses and be able to move right on to the humiliating process of joining the public assistance roles. Somehow, that doesn't make me feel much better...
FT
What I learned, after a colleague was diagnosed with late-stage cancer that would require aggressive, long-term treatment, was that after 90 days out of the office on sick leave, an employee is placed on long-term disability and, if he is unable to make COBRA payments, has no further health care coverage. That's right; if you get too sick to work for three months, you lose your health insurance -- right in the middle of chemotherapy, or while you are recovering from a serious accident or stroke. That's because, once you are on long-term disability, your employer has no further obligations to you, including regarding benefits, and you are consequently dropped from the employer's plan. I was made to understand that the transfer to disability and cancellation of insurance benefits are required by the disability and medical insurance policies issued to all employers, and that no state or federal law currently can prevent such cancellations.
Even if you can afford COBRA (which is very expensive), your benefits will be extended no longer than 18 months. That means that eighteen months and 90 days after you fall ill, or have an accident, you no longer have any health insurance at all. You're on your own. No "government bureaucrat" will come between you and your doctor because, unless you have the money, you won't have a doctor.
This news shocked me, and made me wonder whether all those who oppose health claim reform on the ground that they prefer their employer plans, realize that they are not covered if they become chronically ill, or have a catastrophic accident, regardless of whether they are employed when the illness or accident occurs. Nobody has health care coverage in such circumstances. We are all uninsured.
That's pretty scary stuff. I'm the primary breadwinner in our family, and our health insurance is provided by my employer. If something were to happen to me, we'd not only lose my income but both hubby and I would lose our health insurance. We couldn't afford COBRA if I was bringing home my regular paycheck, we certainly couldn't afford it if I was on disability pay. We're not (yet) old enough for Medicare, so we'd be screwed.
On the other paw, at present we have very little by way of assets, so we'd get to skip the gut-wrenching, soul-crushing step of liquidating our nest-egg and selling off everything we'd worked all our lives for in order to pay our medical expenses and be able to move right on to the humiliating process of joining the public assistance roles. Somehow, that doesn't make me feel much better...
FT
Cattail Basket Update - Day 2
They seem to be drying out nicely hanging in bundles in the work room. I'll need to unbundle and rebundle them so that the ends of the leaves will dry out. I won't be using the very bottoms of the leaves so I'm not too concerned with aesthetics there, but I don't want them to start getting moldy. There is some goo that looks very like aloe vera gel at the base of the leaves, and I probably should have wiped that off before hanging them up.
If they seem like they're not drying well, I think I'll take a big needle and some strong thread and string them together. I can hang them back over the pegs in the work room and spread them out a bit.
In case you're wondering, I won't be posting an update on the cattails every day. I'll only post when I think there's something interesting to share. I don't expect that to happen too often in the next few weeks, until the actual basket making starts.
FT
If they seem like they're not drying well, I think I'll take a big needle and some strong thread and string them together. I can hang them back over the pegs in the work room and spread them out a bit.
In case you're wondering, I won't be posting an update on the cattails every day. I'll only post when I think there's something interesting to share. I don't expect that to happen too often in the next few weeks, until the actual basket making starts.
FT
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Cattail Basket
If I find I like making cattail baskets, I will likely put together a frame of some sort so that I can dry my vegetable matter properly. I'll bet it will be a good place to dry herbs, too.
I've only collected enough cattail leaves to make one practice basket that I can learn and screw up on, then one medium-sized first real, usable basket. At least I hope it doesn't take me more than one practice. I probably ought to collect more cattail leaves, just in case...
And that's how it starts. I always have good intentions to begin with. I just want to get a little bit of stuff, just enough to try it out. But if I like it, won't I need more stuff? Shouldn't I be getting the stuff now, when the getting's good? If I don't get a full range of stuff right from the start, I won't get the complete experience, and migt not be able to figure out if I really did like it or not. I'll live my whole life not knowing whether I could have really rocked cattail baskets because I didn't really go for it. And if catails do it for me, or even if they don't, maybe rattan will be more my style. . Pretty soon I'll have to find room for a couple of big containers of basketry supplies.
So anyhoo, I have mixed feelings about starting up with basketmaking. Really, the last thing I need is a new hobby. I have a quilt that's not quite half done, a blanket on the knitting loom, a bag on the big bead loom, a project I want to do on the small bead loom, and I need to make some pants. And a new purse. On the other paw, baskets will be very useful in my world. I can use them to attractively store all of my other projects.
FT
Today in the News - Insurers Poised To Gain From Health Care Reform
I've been following the news on the health care crisis pretty closely. A story in today's Hartford Courant is a bit troubling to me. Insurers Poised To Gain From Health Care Reform
Insurers want any reform to maintain what they call a "level playing field" on which companies are able to compete based on efficiency and service — something they say a government plan would undermine.
"They would have a huge price advantage over us," said Mickey Herbert, chief executive of ConnectiCare, the Farmington-based health insurer. "And over time, you'd expect individuals and employers to migrate to lower rates."
Private insurance would be forced to compete with the public plan payment rates, Herbert said.
"In fairly short order, private insurance and our employer-sponsored health insurance system end up atrophying greatly, and we're on a slippery slope to a single-payer system," Herbert wrote recently to Congress.
The insurance companies themselves are saying that government can provide insurance at lower cost than they can. Their arguments against a public option are centered on the fact that they will lose business. Mr. Herbert fails to say why a single-payer system would be a bad thing, just beware the dreaded slippery slope. In the realm of logical fallacies, it was more an Appeal to Consequences than it was a Slippery Slope.
Reading the Building a Sustainable Health Care System document from WellPoint, it appears that a good part of their solution is for insurance companies to get more involved in the delivery end of health care - determining what is available, from whom and for how much. This sounds very much like the getting-between-you-and-your-doctor stuff that people are concerned about.
It appears they want the government to take on more responsibility for individuals with chronic conditions, as well as keeping the responsibility for the elderly and the poor. Apparently the dreaded government-paid health care is good enough for those who aren't going to make a profit for the insurance companies.
They don't start talking about reforms that are needed within the insurance industry until page 10 of the 16-page document. It seems that all we need is more government money to fund the more expensive high-risk folks, fewer regulations on insurance companies and changes to the tax code to give individuals and employers more money to pay for insurance premiums.
This just doesn't sound like any kind of solution to me. WellPoint appears to want more of a voice in care decisions. They want to take the healthiest and most profitable of us as customers and leave the rest of us to government to care for. Those of us who pay taxes would pay more to cover the increasing number of high-risk people getting government care and so that the low-income among us can afford to pay their insurance premiums. The only winner I see coming out of WellPoint's plan is WellPoint.
I don't blame WellPoint for taking the position that they're taking, but their plan is all about sustaining their business model, not creating a sustainable health care system. They're as much as telling us in their document that they can't do anyting to improve the health care situation other than point out what providers, taxpayers and consumers should be doing. I don't know that we need them to do that.
I'm pretty sure that we don't need to be paying them to do that. I think that if there needs to be some agreement on acceptable levels of service, that health care providers, patient advocates and government health officials can come up with something without help from the insurance companies. If tax dollars are to be spent on health care, I want that money to be in the control of the taxpayers, through our government. We have a lot greater chance for transparency from government than we do from the private insurance industry.
I understand that the health insurance companies want to protect their profits, but in the big picture, this really can't be our primary consideration.
FT
Insurers want any reform to maintain what they call a "level playing field" on which companies are able to compete based on efficiency and service — something they say a government plan would undermine.
"They would have a huge price advantage over us," said Mickey Herbert, chief executive of ConnectiCare, the Farmington-based health insurer. "And over time, you'd expect individuals and employers to migrate to lower rates."
Private insurance would be forced to compete with the public plan payment rates, Herbert said.
"In fairly short order, private insurance and our employer-sponsored health insurance system end up atrophying greatly, and we're on a slippery slope to a single-payer system," Herbert wrote recently to Congress.
The insurance companies themselves are saying that government can provide insurance at lower cost than they can. Their arguments against a public option are centered on the fact that they will lose business. Mr. Herbert fails to say why a single-payer system would be a bad thing, just beware the dreaded slippery slope. In the realm of logical fallacies, it was more an Appeal to Consequences than it was a Slippery Slope.
Reading the Building a Sustainable Health Care System document from WellPoint, it appears that a good part of their solution is for insurance companies to get more involved in the delivery end of health care - determining what is available, from whom and for how much. This sounds very much like the getting-between-you-and-your-doctor stuff that people are concerned about.
It appears they want the government to take on more responsibility for individuals with chronic conditions, as well as keeping the responsibility for the elderly and the poor. Apparently the dreaded government-paid health care is good enough for those who aren't going to make a profit for the insurance companies.
They don't start talking about reforms that are needed within the insurance industry until page 10 of the 16-page document. It seems that all we need is more government money to fund the more expensive high-risk folks, fewer regulations on insurance companies and changes to the tax code to give individuals and employers more money to pay for insurance premiums.
This just doesn't sound like any kind of solution to me. WellPoint appears to want more of a voice in care decisions. They want to take the healthiest and most profitable of us as customers and leave the rest of us to government to care for. Those of us who pay taxes would pay more to cover the increasing number of high-risk people getting government care and so that the low-income among us can afford to pay their insurance premiums. The only winner I see coming out of WellPoint's plan is WellPoint.
I don't blame WellPoint for taking the position that they're taking, but their plan is all about sustaining their business model, not creating a sustainable health care system. They're as much as telling us in their document that they can't do anyting to improve the health care situation other than point out what providers, taxpayers and consumers should be doing. I don't know that we need them to do that.
I'm pretty sure that we don't need to be paying them to do that. I think that if there needs to be some agreement on acceptable levels of service, that health care providers, patient advocates and government health officials can come up with something without help from the insurance companies. If tax dollars are to be spent on health care, I want that money to be in the control of the taxpayers, through our government. We have a lot greater chance for transparency from government than we do from the private insurance industry.
I understand that the health insurance companies want to protect their profits, but in the big picture, this really can't be our primary consideration.
FT
Yesterday in the Garden - Saturday, 8/29/09
It's sunny out today, but windy and a bit chilly. It's 11AM and not yet 60 degrees out. I didn't spend too long out there weeding this morning. Bucky the cat came along, as he usually does. He likes to patrol the garden. There was a hummingbird in there that wasn't too happy to be sharing the space with us, but he moved on.
I did get some nice stuff out. Here's today's load.
The cucumbers are really taking off. There has been a lot of rain recently, I imagined that helped. I really like the seedless, burpless, soft-skinned nature of these cucumbers. I don't remember what variety they are - I'm sure the nursery tag is around here somewhere. They don't have a whole lot of flavor, though. They're almost too mild. They miss a bit on the nice, fresh cucumber-y aroma, too. I think that next year I'll plant some of these and some regular cucumbers, too, and see which I prefer.
I think that I have enough Romas to make some sauce. And enough cherry tomatoes to make the family happy at Sunday dinner.
He's got to be getting close to a pound. I just have to make sure that I get to him before the bugs do.
I did get some nice stuff out. Here's today's load.
The cucumbers are really taking off. There has been a lot of rain recently, I imagined that helped. I really like the seedless, burpless, soft-skinned nature of these cucumbers. I don't remember what variety they are - I'm sure the nursery tag is around here somewhere. They don't have a whole lot of flavor, though. They're almost too mild. They miss a bit on the nice, fresh cucumber-y aroma, too. I think that next year I'll plant some of these and some regular cucumbers, too, and see which I prefer.The beans are Kentucky Wonder pole beans. They're slowing down a lot recently. I think that the cool weather isn't encouraging them to keep setting flowers. I let the vines get a little too tall. I'm going to have to get a stool out there to pick the beans or cut off the tops or I'll have some of them getting too mature up there.
Only a couple of tomatoes today, but I got a bunch yesterday.
I think that I have enough Romas to make some sauce. And enough cherry tomatoes to make the family happy at Sunday dinner.I have one big Celebrity tomato that's just about ripe -
He's got to be getting close to a pound. I just have to make sure that I get to him before the bugs do. From now on, I'm going to start my tomatoes myself instead of buying plants. This year I started some, but I was inconsistent with the grow lights and they got to be kind of spindly. I didn't think that they were going to do very well, so I bought some plants, too. The plants that I started are doing better than those I bought. Big, fat healthy stems, and they're setting lots of fruit. Next spring I'll start all my own plants, but I'm going to have a timer on the lights so my seedlings should do better.
FT
Breaking my Blogging Cherry
I've been hanging around on the internet in one place or another for a lot of years. I checked out the blogosphere when it arrived, but preferred to spend my online time participating in discussion venues and husband-hunting.
The husband hunt was a big success. We've been together for almost 10 years now, and are happy as can be. As the title of my blog would suggest, we live in a little shack on top of a hill. Technically, it's not a shack, it's an old mobile home. It's kind of a wreck, but we love it. It suits us. We're likely to do stuff like use a circular saw in the kitchen in the wintertime, and you just don't do that in a nice house.
We're out in the country on a couple of acres between the field and the woods. My daughter and her family live down the driveway, the next nearest neighbors are a quarter of a mile away and we can't see them from here. We've seen white-tailed deer, wild turkey, pheasants, red-tailed hawks, racoons, possums, and more in our backyard. I've got all the room I could ever need for a garden. It's pretty danged sweet.
The discussion participation has been less successful. Back in my early online days, I hung out mostly in soapmaker venues. You wouldn't think that would be a hotbed of controversy and drama, but apparently these are things that are present in virtually every discussion venue. There were cliques and divas and folks who knew the One True Way. It has been pretty much the same in every discussion venue I've participated in since, regardless of the topic.
These days I'm interested in current events. I listen to the news and I read the news. It's about impossible to find a place online to discuss the news that isn't just really ugly. There's little in the comments section of any media outlet that's worth reading. There's a lot of anger and blame-throwing, strawmen and ad hominem coming from both sides. A lot of heat and very little light.
But I digress...
In my blog, I'll be writing about life here on the hill. My grandkids, my garden, my hubby and our quest to turn this into our dream home. I'll share the stuff we learn along the way, and hope that folks will share their experiences with me.
I'll also be pointing out news that I think is interesting or important. I'm sure I'll be offering an opinion or three. I'd like to hear from other folks about this stuff, but I'm not interested in fighting with anyone. I'm going to try to be respectful in the way that I address other points of view, and I expect the same from those who post comments on my blog.
I think I'm going to stick more with the homestead-y stuff than the news and issues. It's more fun.
FT
The husband hunt was a big success. We've been together for almost 10 years now, and are happy as can be. As the title of my blog would suggest, we live in a little shack on top of a hill. Technically, it's not a shack, it's an old mobile home. It's kind of a wreck, but we love it. It suits us. We're likely to do stuff like use a circular saw in the kitchen in the wintertime, and you just don't do that in a nice house.
We're out in the country on a couple of acres between the field and the woods. My daughter and her family live down the driveway, the next nearest neighbors are a quarter of a mile away and we can't see them from here. We've seen white-tailed deer, wild turkey, pheasants, red-tailed hawks, racoons, possums, and more in our backyard. I've got all the room I could ever need for a garden. It's pretty danged sweet.
The discussion participation has been less successful. Back in my early online days, I hung out mostly in soapmaker venues. You wouldn't think that would be a hotbed of controversy and drama, but apparently these are things that are present in virtually every discussion venue. There were cliques and divas and folks who knew the One True Way. It has been pretty much the same in every discussion venue I've participated in since, regardless of the topic.
These days I'm interested in current events. I listen to the news and I read the news. It's about impossible to find a place online to discuss the news that isn't just really ugly. There's little in the comments section of any media outlet that's worth reading. There's a lot of anger and blame-throwing, strawmen and ad hominem coming from both sides. A lot of heat and very little light.
But I digress...
In my blog, I'll be writing about life here on the hill. My grandkids, my garden, my hubby and our quest to turn this into our dream home. I'll share the stuff we learn along the way, and hope that folks will share their experiences with me.
I'll also be pointing out news that I think is interesting or important. I'm sure I'll be offering an opinion or three. I'd like to hear from other folks about this stuff, but I'm not interested in fighting with anyone. I'm going to try to be respectful in the way that I address other points of view, and I expect the same from those who post comments on my blog.
I think I'm going to stick more with the homestead-y stuff than the news and issues. It's more fun.
FT
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