For me, living in a small town (which isn't quite right since we live in the country) is a good thing. While some may find it claustrophobic, I like it. There is more to this than is for this post, but, in essence, I find it freeing.
But first, I think we need a food update. Tonight, after a nice day at the store (thank you to all who stopped by), Jen and I got home thirsty and hungry. I took care of chores while Jen took some Tylenol and sat still for a while. We then attacked one of the most basic dinners in the world. I diced a red pepper, nibbled at some blue cheese and a few pieces of a really good summer sausage from Marchants (the same folk from whom I got the brisket), and Jen made a pasta sauce from tofu, diced tomatoes, tomato paste, red beans, Italian seasoning, pepper, balsamic vinegar, and the red pepper. We also made some orzo over which to ladle the sauce.
The first bowl was OK. For the second serving, I spiced it up a little. I added a squirt of both olive paste and red chili paste, added a little more pepper, and grated Parmesan cheese on top. By the way, please don't use any sort of pre-grated Parmeson; you can get a wedge of perfectly decent Parmesan at any good grocery store and it will be tremendously more satisfying.
I liked the pop of flavors. Nothing all that fancy but it followed the rule established; good quality ingredients, simply but properly prepared. Also, with the sweetness of the fruit (tomato) based sauce, it went well with a Clifford Bay Sauvignon Blanc (2009). Whites don't usually match with pastas, but this was fun. I recommend this wine by the way. Modestly priced and really amazing floral presence. Not expensive and I think it received 91 points.
Anyway, for some reason I was struck by the humor of living in a small community today. We had, until recently, 7 horses including 2 Belgians. They eat a lot of hay. By extension, or perhaps expulsion, they poop a lot too. After a couple of years in the same basic large paddock, there was a large amount of manure I needed moved. This was particularly true as is was on thinner soil on a bit of a slope and I was worried about runoff and saturation.
By the way, we had fun with our horses. For a look at my favorite, Jill (one of the Belgians), you can use this link to see a video of her under saddle.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9r-zCLVJ6Y
For years we had gotten hay from Eric Bovier. At our peak we would buy a full 900# round bale every 5 days. The blew through a lot of hay and left a lot behind.
After we sold some and moved the rest to a different paddock, I wanted the old cleaned up both so I could use the space otherwise and for the environmental reasons. I asked around for a while and found that Greg Pease could come with his dump truck and backhoe and clear out the entire paddock and about 110 cubic yards of dirt left over from digging out our house foundation. He, in turn, would haul it to a guy who had Harbor Excavating come over with their front end loader and screener. He would mix it with other dirt from other construction jobs and with manure from his cows. After mixing all this together and letting it sit for a year or so, he would sell is by the cubic yard as a very high grade top soil.
After making arrangements with Greg to do the hauling, I found out that the person to whom he was delivering was Eric. And, after mentioning this to Eric, I found that Greg owed Eric a favor anyway. So, by the time all was said and done, Greg picked up the manure and soil from me, delivered all of it to Eric, Eric gave me credit for future hay bales, and Greg satisfied his favor to Eric. That is a small community.
The only problem is that no one kept track of exactly how many cubic yards were hauled and, by extension, how much credit was due each person. Good thing I live in a small community.
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