Filed under: Climate Change, Connections, Failure, Gardening, General Musings, Genetic Testing, Habanero, Health, Machado-Joseph, Preparedness | Tags: arthritis, ataxia, balance, blogging, gardening, genetics, Habaneros, health, jim downey, Machado-Joseph Disease, MJD, neurology, neuromuscular disease, pain, peripheral neuropathy, spinocerebellar ataxia type 3, vertigo, Wikipedia
Just harvested this year’s super-hot habanero crop, in advance of the first hard freeze of the season. Here it is:
Yup, that’s it. 29 peppers, and half of them not entirely ripe.
29.
Compare that to the 1,000+ of most years, and the 1,500+ of some years.
Now, partly this is due to a decision on my part to only plant about half the usual number of pepper plants. But still, 29? Really?
It’s been that kind of year.
We’ve had a prolonged, serious drought here. And I was busy with working on the house and managing other things, so I didn’t water or care for the garden nearly as much as I typically do. Sometime late summer I just kinda gave up on it.
Late summer. Hmm. What else was going on then?
Oh, yeah. That. I got my results back.
I didn’t think that I had that much of a response to the results of the MJD testing. But I’d be a fool to deny that this year has been a challenging one, and the confirmation of my expectations did have an impact on me. An impact that is still playing out, and that means more changes to come.
More on that soon. And don’t worry, not all of it is bad. It’s mostly just change.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Book Conservation, Brave New World, Connections, Emergency, Failure, Faith healing, Gardening, General Musings, Health, Predictions, Preparedness, Promotion, Psychic abilities, Religion, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, Travel, University of Missouri, Wales, Writing stuff | Tags: atherosclerosis, blogging, book conservation, bookbinding, Communion of Dreams, excerpt, faith healing, finance, gardening, Habaneros, health, heart attack, jim downey, Legacy Bookbindery, legal, luck, miracles, MU, myocardial infarction, predictions, psychic abilities, religion, science, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, stent, survival, teaching, technology, tomatoes, University of Missouri
The past few months have been … eventful.
* * * * * * *
A couple of weeks ago I got back to work on St Cybi’s Well. Yeah, the break since I finished Chapter 14 was much needed, as I had hinted in my last cluster of blog posts at the end of May.
Why? What happened?
Well …
… in no particular order:
- Discovery, and subsequent treatment, of a major cardiac health problem.
- Completion of a full course of cardiac rehab.
- A substantial change in our financial situation resulting from the sale of property we owned.
- A bunch of resultant legal and investment research, planning, and changes which every adult should do but few of us ever get around to actually completing. Something about almost dying tends to focus the mind on such matters.
- A couple of extended out-of-state trips.
- My starting to train someone from the MU library staff in proper conservation techniques a couple of afternoons a week.
- A complete new computer system & software upgrade, with all the fun of transferring archives and working files.
And then there’s all the usual business of living and working. Having a couple of months of my life sucked up by dealing with the cardiac problems & treatment meant a lot of changes and trade-offs … but it sure as hell beats being dead from a massive sudden heart attack.
* * * * * * *
So, a couple weeks ago I went through and re-read the entire text of SCW to date, then started working to pick up the story again and bring it to a satisfactory conclusion. Here’s an excerpt from the next section:
Darnell looked out Megan’s bedroom window, across the little lane into the large field beside the Tanat. The field, where so recently cattle peacefully grazed, was now a small village of tents and temporary structures. Most prominent among them was a large marquee someone had found and brought from a nearby town. Make-shift walls had been constructed of large plastic-wrapped round bales of hay from down the road, their tough skin making them weather and even somewhat fire-resistant. The marquee was the main recovery center, where people would be brought from the church after healing, allowed to emerge from the deep sleep at their own pace.
He turned and looked at his sister, who was sitting on the side of her bed. “There’s no reason for you to get up. We can handle it. Go back to sleep.”
There was a faint blue-white shimmer to her skin which never left her now. It wasn’t like she was glowing, exactly, but more like she had a permanent echo of the healing energy which she had used so much in the past couple of weeks. She shook her head. Darnell wasn’t sure whether it was in response to his comment, or just an effort to clear away cobwebs of sleep. “It’s better if it comes from me. I’m known as the Guardian of the Shrine. That carries some official weight with the Church.”
* * * * * * *
I got my garden in late this year. No surprise, given how things went with spring and the early summer. So my tomato plants were not as far along as they could have been when the first waves of heavy storms hit in June. Since then we’ve had fairly regular poundings of storms. And it looks like the tomatoes are almost at the end of their producing for this year — a full month or so early. But between what I harvested, and extra tomatoes picked up at the farmer’s market, I’ve put up about 60 pints of chopped tomatoes. Not quite as much as I would normally like to have, but not bad considering the situation.
And my habanero plants seem to be doing OK this year. Won’t be a bumper crop, but it ain’t nothing.
* * * * * * *
The past few months have been … eventful.
And a lot of things which normally get done, didn’t. Or were handled in a more superficial way than I would usually do.
But that’s OK.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Connections, Faith healing, Gardening, Habanero, Predictions, Science Fiction, Survival, Wales, Writing stuff | Tags: Bhut Jolokia, blogging, Carolina Reaper, Communion of Dreams, ethylene, gardening, Habaneros, hope, hot sauce, jim downey, Llangelynnin, Moruga Scorpion, predictions, Science Fiction, Sriracha, St. Cybi's Well, Wales, Wikipedia, writing
I took advantage of the cool but beautiful Spring day and did this yesterday:
That’s about 40×40. Good deep churn to about 10″ depth. The soil conditions were just about perfect. Now it’s prepped for me to plant things in a couple more weeks (it’s still a little too early here for tomatoes and Habaneros). And surprisingly, I don’t hurt nearly as much today as I expected.
Back to work on St Cybi’s Well. All that time tilling yesterday gave me a chance to think through some things.
* * *
From page 261 of Communion of Dreams:
“Who, Darnell? Who was she?”
The old man blinked, focused on Jon. “My sister, Megan. Somehow, she found th’ courage t’ step up, t’ look past th’ things that they’d always taught her about science ‘n medicine, t’ trust a small blue-white light that she could feel grow under her skin whenever she came close t’ someone with th’ flu. That light would seep out ‘n into ‘em, givin’ ‘em strength ‘n th’ ability t’ fight th’ virus.
“That was hope. That was real. Some of us were able t’ learn t’ find th’ light ourselves, ‘n she showed us how t’ allow it t’ grow, t’ become strong enough t’ reach out ‘n heal th’ others.
Guess what happens in the chapter I am currently writing.
* * *
Hope isn’t always real, or realistic. I’ve seen far too much of life to think otherwise. Likely, you have as well.
But sometimes it is. I picked these today:
That’s probably about 250 peppers. Most of them Bhut Jolokia. But a fair number of Carolina Reaper and a few Moruga Scorpion peppers. All three are recent or current “world’s hottest pepper” record-holders. And like last year, I’m going to box them up for a few days so that they can become fully ripe. I have not quite as many others I picked earlier and have frozen.
So, what does hope have to do with these?
Well, we had a *very* wet spring and early summer. Enough so that I thought that this year’s Habanero crop would be a complete loss. The plants were stunted, sickly, and very late to blossom.
But sometimes late bloomers will surprise you.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Astronomy, Babylon 5, Brave New World, Connections, Feedback, Fermi's Paradox, Gardening, Habanero, J. Michael Straczynski, Man Conquers Space, Marketing, Promotion, Science, Science Fiction, SETI, Space, Survival, Writing stuff, YouTube | Tags: Alzheimer's, Amazon, Babylon 5, Bad Astronomy, blogging, care-giving, Communion of Dreams, Dukhat, feedback, free, gardening, Glen Tickle, Habaneros, Her Final Year, hospice, jim downey, John Bourke, Kindle, Kurzgesagt, Laughing Squid, Mother's Day, promotion, science, Science Fiction, space, St. Cybi's Well, video, writing, www youtube
Via Laughing Squid, a nice little animated exploration of the Fermi Paradox:
(Does not contain spoilers for Communion of Dreams. 😉 )
* * *
Been a busy week. Part of it was putting in my garden:
(That’s just the tomato plants — the super-hot peppers will go in next week.)
Part of it was a MASSIVE job converting a 16 x 16 storage space into the beginnings of a workshop:
(There’s still lots to do, but man, what a change from being hip-high in grungy boxes and scattered junk!)
And part of it was we have a new addition to the family:
(He’s just 6 weeks old, entirely too cute, bold & adventurous, and tiny. For now. No name yet, though given his grey color I suggested perhaps we should go with Dukhat … )
* * *
I’m just now finishing up the first major revision to the working copy of St Cybi’s Well. I already have a couple of people lined up to take a look at it with fresh eyes, but if anyone else is interested also having a preview, leave a comment and I’ll get in touch with you.
Lastly: for Mother’s Day weekend, the Kindle edition of Her Final Year will be available for free. Check it out, download it, share it with others!
Jim Downey
Filed under: Gardening, Habanero, Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, gardening, Habaneros, health, hope, humor, jim downey, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, tomatoes, writing
Because I want this:
And this:
I took advantage of the cool but beautiful Spring day and did this yesterday:
That’s about 40×40. Good deep churn to about 10″ depth. The soil conditions were just about perfect. Now it’s prepped for me to plant things in a couple more weeks (it’s still a little too early here for tomatoes and Habaneros). And surprisingly, I don’t hurt nearly as much today as I expected.
Back to work on St Cybi’s Well. All that time tilling yesterday gave me a chance to think through some things.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Gardening, Habanero | Tags: blogging, Carolina Reaper, cooking, gardening, Habaneros, hot sauce, jim downey, Moruga Scorpion, Sriracha, Trinidad Scorpion
Behold this year’s Habanero experiment:
The Compote of DEATH.
What you’re looking at is pureed super-hot Habaneros. With just enough vinegar and salt to preserve them for canning.
OK, the full story …
This morning I made a batch of my Habanero Sriracha sauce. One of my standards. But I decided to do it a little bit differently this year. Rather than use a limited amount of Habaneros in it, and just blend them in, I added a full two gallons of frozen habs to the vinegar & tomato sauce mixture and cooked them until soft. Then I removed all the peppers, setting them aside to cool. There’s still plenty of heat and flavor from the habs in the Sriracha (recipe below).
But then I added some more salt and a little apple cider vinegar to the cooked Habaneros, and ran the whole lot through a food processor. And that’s in the pic above.
The idea behind this isn’t that you’d actually use this stuff directly on food, like you would a hot sauce or some of my Habanero Dust from a spice grinder. Rather, it’s intended to be used in very small amounts as the basis for some larger dish or sauce, giving you just concentrated (almost pure) Habanero flavor and heat. I’ll put it into 4 ounce jars for a very limited number of insane friends.
Just thought I’d share the idea.
Jim Downey
This year’s Sriracha recipe (variation on the theme of recipes you’ll find elsewhere):
- 5 quarts homemade tomato sauce
- 2 cups apple cider vinegar
- 2 cups dark honey
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 3 heads of garlic crushed
- .25 cup of Kosher salt
- 3 Tablespoons of Fish Sauce
- Habaneros (mix of super-hot varietals)
Add all ingredients into large pot. Heat to simmer, stirring often. Remove Habaneros. Simmer rest for half an hour or so, then allow to cool.
EDIT NOTE: After trying the Sriracha prior to canning, I decided that it was just plain too hot, so added another couple of quarts of tomato sauce and changed the total above. Everything else still seemed pretty much in balance after. I think the heat level was masking some other problems earlier.
Filed under: Fireworks, Gardening, Habanero, Humor, Music | Tags: blogging, Carolina Reaper, cooking, ethylene, gardening, Habaneros, hot sauce, jim downey, Moruga Scorpion, music, Rolling Stones, Sriracha, Trinidad Scorpion, Wikipedia
It’s Habanero season again!
I noted a few weeks back that I had harvested the first of this year’s crop, and that I thought that things looked promising, if the weather held. Well, all together I harvested about 200 fully-ripe peppers, seeding freezing them in small batches, and I’ll make some of my Habanero Sriracha with that later. But last Friday we had the first hard freeze of the season, so I picked all the rest of the remaining fruit off the plants. Here’s a the pic of that:
Now, since turning whole peppers into hot sauce is the sort of thing which can drive any sane person out of the house, I waited until today to do this year’s production. Why? Because my wife is a poll worker, and so is gone all day. Well, here’s that exact same box of peppers, which had just been closed up since Friday:
Fun, eh? Welcome to ethylene gas. Yup, the peppers are a LOT more ripe, just from being shut up for a few days. Not as ripe as last year’s end-of-season harvest, but not bad at all. And since my version of Sriracha is fairly sweet, I decided to make a less sweet batch of sauce out of the above, since it will tend to accentuate the citric qualities of the not-entirely-ripe peppers. So, here’s this year’s recipe:
- Approximately 335 peppers, crown removed and cut in half
- Not quite a gallon of natural apple cider vinegar
- 8 tablespoons of Kosher salt
- 3 heads of garlic
- 2 large yellow onions, rough chopped
Prepare all ingredients. Saute onions and garlic until soft. Add vinegar, salt and peppers to 5 gallon stock pot, simmer until soft, stirring often.
Scoop into blender, do a rough blend for 15 – 20 seconds. Then pour into Foley food mill, and crank until just seeds and skins are left. Transfer to jar, can.
Edited to add later: Total of 22.5 half pints. Which works out to about 2 habaneroes per fluid ounce, which is what my standard ‘Evil Green’ (previously my hottest sauce) runs, except that this has a much higher % of fully or mostly ripe habs.And this is clearly hotter than anything else I’ve ever made. Pic below – need a good name for it. It’s the one on the right, the reddish one is my Sriracha (about the color of tomato sauce) for comparison.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Bad Astronomy, Fireworks, Gardening, Habanero, Health, Humor, Music, Phil Plait | Tags: Bad Astronomy, blogging, Carolina Reaper, gardening, Habaneros, health, humor, jim downey, music, Phil Plait, volcano, Wikipedia
… but *do* have a very healthy respect for it.
The SMOKIN’ ED’S CAROLINA REAPER® pepper, that is. Here’s a bit about it from Wikipedia:
The Carolina Reaper is a hybrid cultivar of chili pepper of the Capsicum chinense species, originally named the “HP22B”, bred by cultivator Ed Currie, who runs PuckerButt Pepper Company in Fort Mill, South Carolina, United States. It’s the world’s hottest hybrid pepper. The original cross was a red naga pepper and a red savina pepper. [1] The “Carolina Reaper” was rated as the world’s hottest chili pepper by Guinness World Records according to 2012 tests,[2] averaging 1,569,300 on the Scoville scale with peak levels of over 2,200,000 Scoville Heat Units (SHU). The previous record-holder was the Trinidad Scorpion Butch T.[3]
There are some included in today’s harvest of peppers:
How are they? Oh, baby!
No, seriously, trying one of these peppers is sort of the equivalent of seeing a live, active volcano. Sure, it’s insanely hot (I ate the smallest little piece, about the size of an apple seed, and it did the whole ‘mouth numb, face flushed, lips melting, nose running’ thing). But it’s also insanely cool to just experience the thing … if you exercise a little respect for its power.
And they have the same flavor profile as other super-hot Habaneros, which is actually why I like them. It’s a deep, smokey, lasting peppery flavor.
I’ve only harvested about 60 peppers from my plants so far this season. For some people, that would be about 59 too many. But if the weather holds, perhaps I’ll have a total harvest along what I’ve gotten in years past.
Jim Downey
*Of course. And if you would like to order your own fresh super-hot peppers, you can do so from the same place I get my seedlings each year.
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Argentina, Ballistics, Bipolar, Book Conservation, Connections, Depression, Failure, Gardening, General Musings, Guns, Health, Italy, New Zealand, Patagonia, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, Travel, Wales, Writing stuff | Tags: Alwyn, Alzheimer's, Argentina, bipolar, blogging, book conservation, bookbinding, care-giving, Communion of Dreams, depression, direct publishing, feedback, gardening, guns, Habaneros, health, Her Final Year, hospice, Italy, jim downey, John Bourke, Legacy Bookbindery, literature, New Zealand, Patagonia, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, travel, Wales, writing
This will probably come across as a little brag-y. Sorry about that. Not my intention.
The other day I got a phone call. For Legacy Art. The gallery we closed May 31, 2004. Yeah, more than ten years ago.
And after I got through abusing the telemarketer over this point, I got to thinking about the many changes in the last decade.
First thing I should say up front: I’m at a low point in my bipolar cycle, as I’ve noted recently. That means that my self-image isn’t all that great. This isn’t a debilitating depressive episode or anything — I’ve managed to continue to work steadily, as well as enjoy the usual aspects of life. So not horrid. But it is sometimes difficult to not focus on the things which haven’t gone well, and my own failings which are often a component of that. And one of those failings is a sense of not accomplishing much, of being lazy, of wasting my time and the time of others.
Anyway. I got to thinking about the changes in the last decade. And surprisingly, more positive things came to mind than negative ones. That fed on itself, and I found myself making a mental list of the accomplishments.
In no particular order or ranking: wrote two books (one of them as co-author). Most of the way done with another. Visited Wales. And Argentina. And New Zealand. And Italy. Wrote several thousand blog posts. Became something of an authority on small caliber ballistics. Wrote several hundred articles and columns for publication. Was the full-time caregiver for someone with Alzheimer’s. Have done conservation work on something more than a thousand (that’s just a guess … may be closer to two thousand) books and documents. Made some great hot sauces. Raised, loved, and then said farewell to a great dog. Tried to be a good friend, and husband. Tried to help others when I could.
We all fail. We all have things we’ve done that haunt us in one way or another. Sometimes, those fears and demons overwhelm. Me, at least.
I may or may not be at a turning point in my bipolar cycle. But I’m glad that at least I can think of things I have accomplished. That helps.
Back to work on St. Cybi’s Well.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Art, Astronomy, Cassini, Connections, Feedback, Google, Habanero, Humor, Kindle, Marketing, NASA, Pandemic, Plague, Promotion, Publishing, Saturn, Science Fiction, Space, Titan | Tags: Amazon, art, blogging, book design, Cassini, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, Facebook, feedback, Habaneros, humor, jim downey, Kindle, NASA, pandemic, photography, post-apocalyptic, promotion, reviews, Saturn, Science Fiction, Scorpion Blood, space, Titan
So, a week or so ago I linked to a new review of Communion of Dreams which was very positive overall. But the reviewer made a comment which echoes things some other people have said:
Another item that would likely help get this book moving is a different cover. I understand the imagery now that I’ve read the book, but definitely think it will keep hard-core sci-fi fans from buying a copy (and people do judge books by their covers).
Like I said, every so often a comment to this effect will pop up in a review. And I don’t spend much time thinking about it (and I’m not going to change the cover image at this point), but now and then I wonder just what kind of a cover would appeal to ‘hard-core sci-fi fans’ and still make any kind of sense in relation to the story. Maybe some nice images of Saturn or Titan from the Cassini mission? A depiction of some of the spacecraft (which aren’t described in much detail in the book), or perhaps the Titan Prime space station? Go with a charming post-apocalyptic montage of ruined cities and microphotographs of viruses? To me, none of these would fairly represent the story, and to a certain extent would unnecessarily limit the appeal to only ‘hard-core sci-fi fans’.
But I’m curious what others think. So feel free to post a comment here or over on FB. Over even on Amazon, as a comment on an extant review or in new review of your own. In a week or so I’ll go through all the various comments I can find, and pick someone to get a jar of my latest hot sauce (or something else if they don’t want that).
Jim Downey
PS: there’s another new short review up on Amazon you might want to take a look at as well.
Communion Of Dreams 