Bachelor cooking, part one

It's been almost nine years since I left home. I'm 26 years old now, and I'm finally starting to cook regularly for myself. Part of it is because I'm dead broke and you can get a lot of food items for under $5 a piece if you can cook it yourself. Part of it is that I'm a strong individualist and I don't like not being able to provide one of the most basic human needs for myself.

So, I thought I would throw in an easy-to-fix concoction I started making a few weeks ago, and follow it from time to time with another recipe. I just got through making a batch of this and am letting it cool a bit before eating a bowl of it.

Modified Wolf Brand Chili:

Take one can of Wolf Brand Chili, no beans, and put in a cookpot. It usually helps things if you open the can and pour the contents in instead of just putting the whole thing in. (Insert rolling eyes here.) Take one can of Ranch Style brand black beans and add it in. Take one can of Ro-Tel brand chopped tomatoes and chili peppers. Add a slug of Pace Picante Sauce, to taste. Mix the whole shebang together and let it simmer until it's all nice and warm. If you haven't washed the pot since the last time you made a batch, you may want to bring it up to a boil for a few minutes to kill off any bacteria.

Yes, bachelors can be very barbaric at times.

Spoon out a bowl, add half a package (or more) of crushed Zesta brand saltine crackers, and mix so that the crackers are evenly distributed. Serve with a glass of cold milk and generous slices of "yaller cheese" as my Daddy used to say. You should be able to get at least three hearty meals out of one batch.

That is one thing about my cooking: typically it is done in a large enough quantity that you can eat for several days without having to cook again. Yet another symptom of being a bachelor.

Cheerleading

I was thinking more about my earlier comments on cheerleading. I have no issue with cheerleading. I just find it amusing. It's the same old thing. Centuries ago you tried to get your young warriors to raid the neighbor's cattle. Now you try to get them to defeat the opposing sports team. What is their motivation you ask? Well you have various degrees of money and/or fame but ultimately it all comes back to the cheerleaders. If you distinguished yourself in battle you might catch the eye of a 'cheerleader' and get a roll in the haystack; now it's the backseat of a car. Some things never change. If you doubt my logic go to a pep rally at the local highschool. Ever seen a really unattractive cheerleader? Of course not, you must be popular and attractive to be a cheerleader because they are held as the ultimate example of what one's battle renown might gain. Look at the outfits. If shouting alone were enough to inspire the troops then they could wear a lot more clothing. I do not envy my friends with daughters.

If you are observant you might get a glimpse of what I call group emotion. The generation and directing of group emotion is the second function of cheerleading. This is one of the more recent innovations. Now we take an audience to battle and if they are not stirred up enough by the sight of their warriors we have the cheerleaders to inspire them. The cheerleaders shout. The audience responds. The warriors hear and are inspired to greatness. Of course there is an ugly side to group emotion. Ever been in a crowd where they were shouting for blood? Where they wanted actual harm done to the opposing team? Of course you have. This is where the primitive aspects really show. Maybe we are not so evolved as we think.


-The Feral Man

Blowing the flames

Scavenger writes:

My friend The Feral Man had talked for a while about doing a blog, which touched me off to thinking about doing one as well. But we're both the types that can take a long time putting off a project for various reasons. Don't get me wrong: we do a lot, but we have so many interests that it can distract from focusing on one project enough to start, particularly with trying to fit in school (no longer a factor for either of us) and putting food in our bellies (a very large factor!) with working on nifty stuff. I figured that with both of us sharing a blog it would help to keep it from stagnating as we got distracted by some other aspect of our life, as well as allow us to serve as a spur to each other.

We're quiet, unassuming oddballs. He studies medieval European martial arts; I want to build a roadster pickup based around a Chrysler torsion bar subframe. Many people don't seem to know how to handle oddballs, especially when they are younger. I remember from very early on in school how my classmates reacted with incredulity and then mocking when they found I didn't give a rip about football, basketball, baseball, or sports in general. They had never experienced someone like that before. And yet, The Feral Man and I hold much the same views on high school sports as being a very primitive form of ritualized combat, not appreciably different from stick fighting in Africa or the original bungie jumping from a jungle platform with a vine tied to your ankle. We both grew up in podunk little Texas towns, separated by half the state and a span of somewhere around fifteen years.

We're going to take the kinds of things that we talk about on the phone and put them out there for the world to see, or at least however many of them wander onto this little corner of the web. Conversation that isn't a list of what team is throwing a ball back and forth at the moment, or what the schedule on TV is. Pictures of what we're working on. Philosophy on life, the universe, and everything.

So come pull up a log and share our campfire. It will be different, I can pretty much guarantee you that.

A spark in dry tinder.

My friend Scavenger and I have known each other for several years now, brought together by a common interest in blacksmithing. Over time we found that we shared many interests and values. When we lived closer together we would get together to forge and end up talking into the morning long after the forge had cooled. Now that we are separated by several hundred miles we though this would be a great way for us to share our projects and thoughts with each other and the general public.

So, what started this? I had been at my new job for about a week. I was in a local cafe with a coworker waiting for a meeting and we were looking at the posters of local high school athletic teams and cheerleaders. As we stood there a thought struck me; that cheer leading must have been around for centuries. I said I wondered how many times a clan brought out their young women to shout and dance and jump about to encourage the young men to go raid the neighbors cattle herd or some such thing. A fellow employee from another office looked at me and said, "You're not the type we usually get." On one hand I was flattered that he noticed I was not the usual type and on the other I was a little off balance. I work in AG in a small community and most farmers expect a certain type. If you don't fit the mold you often don't fit at all. I'll have to be careful.

That weekend I called my friend Scavenger and we had a good laugh over the whole thing as our minds work similarly. Around our campfire we don't have to worry about waxing philosophical. If we want to talk about books or politics or the how to heat treat a blade we are free to do so.

-The Feral Man