2187 Lard & Currants

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Daughter has located lard (see previous post) and I have found currants. We're set.

There's no lard in the stores around here. It's ridiculous. I can't even find full-fat yogurt! It seems like all the stores here are determined to make you healthy, whether you like it or not. Everything (except the cookie aisle) is low fat and sugar free! Even the low-fat yogurt is being edged out by fat-free yogurt. Yuck. I want the real thing.

It's not how much fat is in the food, folks, it's how much of the food you eat! And how much exercise you get. My Gramma ate high fat high cholesterol foods (one of her favorites was stuffed veal heart with blood gravy), and root vegetables but very little green leafy stuff, and she was physically and mentally active into her mid-nineties. She ate what would now be considered a terrible diet. But the only time she sat was to eat. She walked everywhere. And sometimes she walked when she didn't have a where.

That was the days of no air conditioning, when everyone sat on front porches in the afternoons and evenings. Gramma would walk the North Scranton neighborhood, waving and visiting. It was the days of trolley cars into the city, when you walked to the stops, and from the stops to the stores, and carried your purchases home on your lap. Your car, if you had one, was parked in a distant garage, from which you fetched it for infrequent long-distance trips. From this, one would assume that people who live in large cities and have no need for cars would be healthy - but they breathe that air! Not the same at all. Back when, Scranton air was decent, even though home heating was anthracite coal-fired. I don't know why, but the air was clean and clear.

I have two recipes I love that call for suet. Good luck with that. One is for a bird cake that wants suet, chunky peanut butter, seeds, and other good stuff. My backyard birds love it. But there's no suet in the local stores, except in ready-made bird cakes, and the village butcher, where you could get all kinds of interesting stuff like marrow and fresh blood for gravy, is no more. The other recipe is for a real Indian (as in Native American) pudding, that calls for coarse ground yellow corn meal, suet, fruit juices, and several kinds of berries and nuts, steamed in a bag. It's wonderful, but I gave up on that one so long ago I'm not sure I can find the recipe again.

The Welsh cookies absolutely require currants. Raisins won't do.

Currants were almost impossible to find in the late '70s and through the '80s. Some government group had discovered long ago that black currant plants harbored blister rust that was killing white pines, and there was another outbreak then, so to protect the pines, most commercial black currant plants had been killed. You could still get white or red currants, but they weren't the same. No flavor. Currants are back, but some states still ban them, and I understand that even where they are allowed you still can't plant currants within X yards of any white pine stands.

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The Man is now somewhere in Ohio, doing Something Important for a Large Financial Corporation at their headquarters. His services are so unique that they have agreed to his condition that they fly him to North Carolina for a one-day visit to his parents over New Year's Eve. I don't know how long he'll be away, but what he's doing is high visibility. He's approaching 50, and hopes this will turn into a permanent position. He's tired of fighting fires. That's what they've promised him, but I don't trust any company promises unless I see them in writing, from someone in a position to make that promise.

(The Company had a line on everything they put out having to do with benefits: "...may be changed at any time for any reason". They promised me a trip to Japan if I joined the legal department. Didn't happen. They promised lifelong free medical insurance to those of us who took the buyout retirement. Didn't happen. They promised cost of living increases to the retirement checks. I haven't seen one in the ten years I've been getting the checks, and I suspect there has been significant inflation in that time. My widow's check from Social Security has had three raises over the same period. So much for promises.)

I was unsuccessful in convincing The Man to list a conjugal visit as another requirement. I guess he thought I was joking. I'm not. I am bereft. Maybe Welsh cookies will take away the pain.
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