Oxtail Sunday Night Soup

I've made my first and second oxtail soup.

Oxtail is a nice, cheap cut of meat on beef that tastes just as good as the rest of that lovely bovine. Meat is expensive so oxtail is a great way of getting protein with out breaking the bank.  This receipy was inspired by the taste of roast beef gravy.

Making this dish was a bit slap dash so the ingredients are approximate. Feel free to tweek them to your taste.

Ingredients:

Oxtail (one large piece or three to four small pieces)
1 Beef cube
6 cloves of chopped garlic
1 tsp of onion granules
1 tbsp of Herbes de Provence
1/2 cup of largely diced mushrooms
1 1/2 cups of largely diced carrots
4 washed and cubed potatoes
1 knob of butter
1 tbsp fresh parsley
1 1/2 cups of red wine
4 Cups of water


Instructions!
Brown the oxtail and garlic in butter, before adding all ingredients save carrots and potatoes.  Bring to a boil and allow to simmer for an hour. Add carrots and potatoes. Cook until potatoes and carrots until soft.

The best way to tell its ready is that the broth tastes like roast beef gravy.

More than a Myth and a Name: Thoughts

How do I feel thunder under my fingers?

How the fire, the need.

The energy, the endurance of the mind. The fire. Mountains tremble, the world rising.

A piece of writing from my first day back in Scotland.




I return, in a short time, to the weary lands of Scotland. A battle scared landscape, long and old. People tired mountains, open plains, a land grasping to hold on to what it was. A wild place.

The land makes me melancholy. The terrible carving of a place, until there was little to none left but the bones.

---

Thus in a day I have found the place where the land is not weeping. It is still as it was. Still as it should be in more places, a place so close to the terror of the tourist, to the fake, the empty.

The last of a truly ancient and mysterious world. My favourite in all of Scotland, Glen Affric.

A Letter to My Siblings

Dear Brother and Sister;

It occurred to me, at one am, that it had been sibling day in the previous twenty four hours and I missed it. My only notification were the countless scanned or photographed photos from a time before the selfie or the facebooks of wild haired toddlers covered in sticky Popsicle or damp from a recent swim in the cool lakes. 

 We have a lot of those memories, particularly the sticky Popsicle faces of my little brother. But it made me think of the now as well. I don't get to see ether of your faces very often, because I've made different geographical decisions than you, but I always think about both of you. 

We're each very different. We like different music. We like different movies, clothes and especially books, but we are still family. We are the friends who have grown together, built lives and depended on each other. Now, especially as adults, we get to reap the benefits of being different but loving each other at the same time. We are all young now. In the early stages of being adults. We have so much before us.

I want to keep being your sister. Let us not, in later years, succumb to viscous greed, contempt, or competitiveness. Let nothing make us distant and resentful. Should our world views clash, let it be brief and the day end with cold drinks at the dinner table and laughter at fart jokes. 

I want to keep being your sister. When the chips are down and you need help, don't be afraid to come and ask for that help, fearless of indebtedness or judgement. You'll come to me with out worrying you'll owe me one. I want your families to feel safe coming to their aunt for help, to trust me because I am your sister and that's just what family does. I want my family to feel the same about both of you.

I want to keep being your sister, even if you are little shits. 

Love Kelsey

Each Way

There have been some serious changes in my life in the last year. My world view has been changed, my interests have exploded, the world laid out in a huge web of wonder in a way my youth seemed oblivious too, or perhaps has been waiting for.

Yet something has been weighing on me. An odd sort of pressure I feel the urge to fix, or even to run from.

I have a husband who loves me.
I have a house to live in.
I have no University Debt.
I have good friends and family.
But...

I don't have a career. I don't have a car. There's no next step in my ladder and I'm paid, in the last couple of jobs that I've had, a little over minimum wage.

And I feel like I'm making some terrible error in front of everyone. I'm the poor one. I'm the odd one. I'm the empty of purpose one. Like there's something I've done wrong, damaged. Why hasn't she climbed the structure? Why hasn't so much money been spent on furthering her education? Why wont she do these things.

I suppose its because I've made my decisions on things that made me happy, for the long term. My job choices have often been to make me feel good. I want to be happy in the place that I work, because the thought of working in a bitter environment is something really off putting, more than anything else.

It all makes me reserved and almost ashamed and not at the same time. I am happy to work in a place where everyone comes in happy and hungry for friendly, pleasing conversation. Where those from all walks of life can mellow at equals, grow or feel comfort. I don't save lives but the things we sell them make a little light in their hearts grow. I am happy to work in a place where my employer and fellow co-workers make me feel like I am welcome, and we make each other feel valued.

Perhaps I'm worried I've made some people ashamed of their directions in life and if I ever have I am sorry. Everyone's way is different and different portions of their lives come in at different times. Children first, career first or home first. Its all different and what makes the world turn. Some things happen that we're not planning for, or feel like a better direction.

I don't like talking about my career direction right now because I feel like I'm being looked down upon, that I'm not building something. The looks and the careful phrased questions made me feel like I was wrong. But for me there are other important things. I know I can't retire on a plane ticket to another country. But that ticket led me to the best thing ever, and that best thing and I are going to build a life together our way.

I could be reading this all wrong.

We wont be rich/wealthy, but we'll be happy. I can sleep well with that feeling.

Trees.

How fine the barren
The stripped
The widowed land

Once lofty
Proud crowns
Whose kings are
Whose queens are
Gone.

Less than a memory
Less than a dream

Where are the gods now?
Grasping. Grasping.
Give them breath.
Fill them again.
With new towering life.

A Poem from a Good Book

A poem on nature, people and kindness. 

Pg 241.

dear God:

i greatly appreciated
what you were sayin
bout that little red fir
bent double
under packed snow
as i rode through
the merced grove this past
spring cause when i reached over
and shook that tree
all the snow fell off
that fir's branches, quick
to the sky the tree stood tall,
and i knew its burden woulda melted
come summer, but if you see a burden
pressin down on somethin
you just reach out then and there
cause one day it may be you
under that mountain
prayin for freedom.

-- Shelton Johnson "Gloryland" 

Water for All

I think the fluoride thing is bothering me. It has for sometime. Everytime it comes up, which is always on my facebook feed, I'm hit with suspicion. I'm often suspisious of things trending, like the juicing trend.*

Its the furor behind it. Don't get me wrong, furor is such an important thing when it comes to societal change. Passion and drive get things done before sloth or laziness.

In my home town they've just gotten rid of fluoride in the water and through out the discussion I've raised a weary eyebrow to it all. But before I let my skepticism say something foolish on facebook (heaven knows there's enough of that as it is) I wanted to do some research. I am not a scientist, I studied History.

Fluoride is an element of the periodic table. It is naturally occurring in water sources in some degree or another. This includes well water If you want more facts on fluoride, then I recommend actually reading all of this document made by the WHO World Health Organization). I know we, in our modern/smart phone facebook era, are used to out snap facts about just about anything, but it is important to read the long documents. For me it boils down to this. Fluoride/sodium fluoride is in everything. It is, in small doses beneficial to teeth. It has yet to have long term side effects on humans proven. **

Those who were involved probably thought they were doing a great thing for they're community. Get involved. Be a part of something.

Of course I would understand this all better if it was really just about the 230, 000 dollars the township will be saving on Fluoride. For some people, they want the freedom to chose. Those who do must boil and purify they're water for forever because the world is full of many more periodic table elements that are happily water soluble and don't need a township, province or country to introduce it to our drinking water.

What was made worrying about it was that two groups of people were being affected by the misinformation and the lack of equal weight of the argument

Perhaps because water is so much more immediate and visible. You MUST drink water, you must wash and rinse in water. More then food, which has become more pleasure than necessity, more than air which is something so easily forgotten because it is not in front of our eyes in a liquid or solid form for us to grasp. Perhaps it is this that creates a furvor behind it. But people must research both sides and it feels like there are forgetting so many other issues because of it.

Again, I'm not a scientist, but the blind following, the lack of questioning, critical  thinking behind the whole thing, and leading people to accept that your side is truth, without an proper explanation, without really digging in and researching the information before presenting it. Those that are worried that we are to much sheep to the system, who gather people under broad wings and say, we are the free ones who will guide you. Take the red pill.

But why? Why should I take your red pill?

But why couldn't those preaching fear be equally feared? Why shouldn't they be questions. They will say as much as the government that they are thinking of the people. They pitch their enemy as some green ghoul with long reaching hands coming for your children, like old school propaganda from an innumerable number of wars in our history.


If it were about  the corrupt villain of government who is somehow some drooling tyrant, with goblin hands, who wants everyone in the world to be stupid and full of cancer, then I wonder if we're not taking it so far in the other direction, but down the wrong path, like its a silly distraction from more important things. Those who want to be a part of a community, perhaps time would better being spent making sure that it is all sides presented, and the motives of it are genuine.

Perhaps it is there where my skepticism came from. I've seen it before. Doomed to repeat, even at such a small scale. Question everything, no just normal, but what people claim to be strange too.

Don't follow a movement because movements are the thing to do. Perhaps it is just me, but it is all something we must consider.











*juicing is great for those people who's health mandates it, either for digestion issues or serious dental work.

** there's another blog that has plenty of links and discusses the information from both sides. Click here!