Nice Weather In Kansas

In the Caribbean where our boat is today hopefully safe setting at a dock there it’s still really hot. They are still in lock down, down there in Guatemala and you can’t travel around the country. Traveling around the country to experience what is so different there is the reason we travel about the world and the reason we went there. Not to just set there in the hot sun eating beans and rice on our boat with the other boaters calling it paradise. We finely made it back to the US four weeks ago. I have already put in our blog how hard and expensive it was flying back this time. In all our blogs about us getting back I talk about food and how I’m over eating with food being so good here in the US and not so good down there. Pam and I were raised in South Carolina on Farms and Southern cooking. If we travel to far and it not there anymore I start messing good Southern food. Over the years we have carried on that tradition even as we travel around. Cooking a whole pigs sometime for a party somewhere. One 4th of July we had a party out where we were building our boat in Southport NC and cooked a hold Emu a friend had he wanted to kill to get it away from the other setting emu hens he had. We didn’t know how to cook an emu so we used the old southern way of cooking it over a open fire. A friend lent us a large commercial open flame gas grill. One thing we have learned is never uses any fat if your cooking wild or game meat. We treated it as game meat, skinned it and took off any fat we saw. Well feed US beef or pork the fat makes the meat taste better. Not game meat. When we buy hamburger meat in the US we go for the high fat stuff. This drives Yuppies crazy. We had other stuff cooking but there was nothing left of the emu. How did my people in the old South cook over a fire. It’s simple. There was no famous chefs that I knew of coming up but there was a lot of old women stirring a pot of something and you just knew it was going to be good. As I said It’s simple the way I cook large peaces of mostly pork on a grill the old way. We were in a marina in the sounds of NC on News Years day and the night before we were at a party bringing in the New Year. We were ask to bring something and I said I would cook some pork. A women there said bring something else. I’m bringing Jones barbecue and no one will eat your pork with it there. The marina owner said, “Put some pork on the grill. I have ate your pork before.” I went to the Piggly Wiggly supper market and bought a quarter of a pig, cheap. The shoulder, back and rib part. There was none of it left before midnight and the women was caring her barbecue back to her boat mostly untouched. I was ask what the recipe was and, I lied to them. I told them it was a secret family recipe and I could not tell. They tried to guess and came up with all kinds of stuff they said they could taste on the pork. I never told them the truth. I just place a whole, half or quarter pig over the fire and pour brine water over it as it cooks. Nothing else. Cook it very slow and keep pouring brine water over it. That’s all I do to it. To make brine water, pour salt in a water container and stir, adding salt until the salt won’t dissolve any more and you can see it in the bottom. Stir the brine water good. We can tell a lot of stories about cooking in a lot of places we have been but we didn’t come out here to just eat good food. We hoped to be doing things. Being here it’s not shut down like Central America but things are just not happening ether. No dirt car races. No rodeos. We were to be in several art shows with my art. “All canceled” Had a specking engagement about living and traveling on boats, canceled. Pam and I were to help this year with the Labor Day celebration FIRE WORKS in the little town nearest to us, twenty miles away, “CANCELED”. We have plenty to do here with projects, painting and writing. The weather is great. Lows have been in the 50s and most days highs in the mid 80s If nothing happens today we will just ride our old motor bike cross this beautiful open country to the store and get something to put on the grill. Set out in the back yard and en enjoy the cool night air. The wild life is enormous out here on the prairie with very few people and we really enjoy that.                                                                               The Adventure goes on.

Found a snake skin in the basement

This week we got some fresh corn given to us so we put some of it in the freezer.

Our son’s happy goat. She just stays in the yard with no fence.

 

More Kansas Life

We have been in the US and back in Kansas a little over two weeks now and the over eating continues. No more black beans and rice every meal with corn tortillas. We are back to our little house on the prairie leaving our boat in the Caribbean. When we bought this little house it was furnished inside with the big stuff but you need other stuff when you own a house like lawn mowers and of coarse a bird feeder. I built our boat we live on “Pamela Ann” we have traveled on over twenty years now. Building mostly with what we couldn’t afford with what other people have thrown away and I gathered it up and fixed. So far out here we have reworked a free riding mower, a push mower, an air compressor, a very old rot-trey tiller and a snow blower. All sad but free. All working a little to okay now. We have our old motor bike out here a 87 Honda Rebel buts it’s hard to go grocery shopping caring a five gallon water jug on an old motor bike with the wind blowing 40 MPH. Water is a problem out here and we just buy our drinking water. There are very few trees out here, the land is flat and the wind is always there. Our son lives just 3 miles away and we have his old 1972 Chevy utility truck that is tired but still runs. When we first bought this little house just four rooms with a basement with the basement walls giving trouble. That is how we could afford this little house. Every one out here is afraid this little house is going to fall in to the basement at anytime. I think I can fix it. I have it braced up and the braces are doing good. At least no more movement we can see. The old Chevy truck our son lets us drive as I was saying was sad when we came out here. No muffler, no brakes and the driver door screwed shut. If you open it the door would fall off. Now we can make it all the way to town and back to the little house in this old truck with no trouble but go no father with out oiling it up again. One trip to town and back it’s out of oil. I have the gas gauge working a little now but we still carry a gas can with a couple of gallons no ethanol gas just in case. The gas is stored in the side-bed of the truck for the lawn mowers and stuff but I like knowing it’s there because the gas gauge stops working as it gets close to empty. Why would any normal person spend a life time living like this. I guess I might be the last person on earth that would know. I only finished the 8 grade in school so you can guess how smart I am. To make all this adventure with finding the stuff we need more crazy add being marred to Pam for 56 years. When ever we find something we need she will be saying. “Can we get it and can fix it?” Even this has turned against me at times. We found and old VW convertible and I fixed it up in Southport, NC where we built the boat. It looked really good and ran okay after we worked on it . She wouldn’t let me drive it with out her with me. She said I would be hauling ladders or maybe plywood on top of her car. It was hers now and a convertible is a girl car. I took some old bicycles and made a rickshaw. You can not believe what you can haul on a rickshaw made from old bicycle parts. I made a second one for her and we went to work making a little money hauling people around the water front in the evening. Out here we need a few more things so I’m gathering up parts to build me something. Being born not so smart I have tried to learn from the smart people that has been in my life. One was a very smart man that ran a news paper. He said never tell what you want to do. Only what you have done. We are out here in Kansas eating well and building a new project. We will put it in the blog later if it goes well. The Adventure goes on.

lots of long dirt roads out here

Tractor at rest in the field

Grain silo near our house