$75.00

With Saturday’s market came a chilly morning, followed by fabulous sunshine, warm temperatures—and a considerable line of customers to buy my products. My one helper and I did our best to keep up, slowly working through the line of mostly patient buyers. By the time I came up for air, my watch read a quarter to eleven—fifteen minutes remaining in the market. I really had no idea that the hour had gotten so late. For this day in mid-january, it was a pretty phenomenal outing.

On Thursday I worked for a few hours on the house, getting more of the porch put back together. I even made a custom cut, like the kind Big J.O. had done the other day, and it came out fine. Now the entrance to the front door has all new lumber to walk upon, and it remains only to cover the last third of the porch. This shouldn’t take a terribly long time, as all of the new supports are in place, and it only needs the fastening down of new floorboards to complete the project. I’ll turn my attention to the stairs at some later time. I plan to demolish the crude and amateurish brick and stonework that now greets visitors to the house, and replace it with a set of wooden stairs and banisters. The overall effect will be more harmonious with the material that now makes up the porch.

I drove the new market truck over to my friend’s shop to do some cosmetic work on it yesterday. Working in the heated garage, it was a pleasure to scrape and grind at the rusted areas on the rear of the truck, apply some paint and primer, and drive it away. My work was not very thorough, needing the services of a body and paint shop to do it properly, but it was better than nothing. It is much improved back there, and the rust will be held at bay—at least for a little while. This afternoon I received in the mail a photo of the rear of the truck—the very area I’d been working on. It was taken by the kind people of Baltimore City, with one of their unmanned traffic cameras. My offense: Running a red light. Total cost for crossing the intersection after the light had changed: $75.00. Seventy-five bucks would buy a lot of porch lumber. My only other regret is that they could have caught me on camera AFTER I’d fixed up the back of the truck. It would have made a much nicer photo. I may send them a new picture with my payment, so that they know my truck does not always look so shabby.

Today I went out into the afternoon chill to get a bit more accomplished on the porch. I would like to get this project mostly out of the way before going back to the other jobs awaiting me inside the house. I fitted more braces to the corners, using some of the scraps left over from the treated lumber. These were going to be discarded anyway, so I thought it better to use them to shore up the porch’s underpinnings. Using the handheld circular saw set at a forty-five degree angle, it did a fine job cutting the braces. I screwed the pieces into place, then put more of the decking down to see how things were going to look. I have almost enough wood on hand to finish up the floor.

I broke off around four o’clock to put my chili ingredients together. Rushing to cut the meat and assemble the ingredients, I didn’t do a very thorough job of it. I left out the cumin and parsley flakes—two things I did not have on hand. But I had everything else: The chuck roast, the onions, garlic, chili powder and stewed tomatoes. I sautéed the meat and onion and garlic, put the rest of the ingredients in the large iron skillet, and let it simmer for a little while. I was in a hurry, as I had to attend a market-related meeting in town this evening. I couldn’t linger over the chili. I finally dumped everything into the slow cooker, set it on low, and took off. It was now after sundown, and I’d gotten a fair amount accomplished.

I returned home around nine, having stopped at the store for some rice. I picked up a bag of some kind of quick-rice mixture, made by the folks at Lipton. It was a version of rice pilaf, with some other things added. I didn’t feel that this was an ideal choice for my chili, but decided that it was quick and easy to mix up. I also picked up some of the parsley and cumin I’d not put in the recipe. Maybe I’ll add it later, although the flavors may not mix thoroughly. While in the store I walked over to the frozen foods aisle to see what was doing with the rock-hard foods. They were offering Breyer’s ice cream—two cartons for only five bucks. They were practically giving it away. A man there was feverishly tossing aside one carton after another, unable to find the flavor he wanted. It looked to be a mission of utmost importance: No cherry vanilla, and he may as well not go home, simply unable to face his family. Being an old hand at the ice-cream game, I told him they had more of a selection at the end of the aisle, in the freezers up there. Here’s what I said:
“They have more ice-cream up at the end.”
He thanked me, tossed a few more cartons aside, and went down to look at the Turkey Hill selection. I shouted after him:
“Stick with the Breyer’s! It’s better ice cream.”
He determined that the Turkey Hill selections cost considerably more than the Breyer’s and turned his attentions back to the sale items. Truth be told, I don’t know if Breyer’s actually IS better than Turkey Hill. It’s the only ice cream I buy, so I have no basis for comparison. But I don’t like the name Turkey Hill, so there’s always that.

At home I put together the quick-rice mix and spooned my chili over it---the meat coming out nice and tender. Although I’d left out two of the main spices, the meal turned out pretty well. The recipe is unrivalled in its simplicity, so I imagine I’ll be making this often. In the future, I’ll try to put in ALL of the ingredients. I may even try some beans, depending on my mood.

A note on the spelling of chile: It seems that, in recent entries, I hit upon the spelling of chili that pertains to the country of that name. As I wrote it down, I thought, “This doesn’t look quite right. Such a simple word, but something about it doesn’t click.” The fact that I’d misspelled it is probably the source of this malaise. Thinking about chili and then about Chile, I got tired of the exercise and went to bed.