Ambergris

Big Red Hen made her debut in a soup for lunch, very rich and full-flavored, but I'm under the weather and didn't enjoy it much.

I didn't buy one either.  Where I am now, they hand-build them.

Not exactly canning, but we are crystalizing a few pounds of ginger today and tomorrow.

Robbing Peter to pay Paul--Exactly the words that came to my mind.

Sigh.  The red hen got egg bound yet again.  This has been averaging more than once a week, poor thing.  She's basically been in a constant state of egg-constipation or recovery from egg constipation for a couple of months now.  So today we put her out of her misery.  To me, she was verging on a pet, and letting her go was as far as I thought.  I was sad to see her go.  To H, she is several pounds of good, solid meat. 

She's been plucked out already.  

Sigh.  Only one of my three baby dinosaurs from a year ago is left now.  She's the matriarch and egg-laying queen of the yard, but H's father sent a giant cream-colored beast to be the god-baby's pet a couple of weeks ago, and that one is residing in my yard now too.  I don't know if the beast is male or female, but it's not crowing nor laying.  I also have three dainty little white silkie retirees (one a rooster) who among them put out an egg every other day or so. and three black creole egg-layers about their size who are half-grown, and five babies who have now entered the looks-like-a-dinosaur stage.

Edit:  She had some broken ribs that had healed wrong, as it turns out, and was grossly over-fat.

If you keep dehydrating past the leather stage, until it goes glassy, you can make powder.  Be careful of busting it up, though, as the glassy shards are sharp.

My kid went through two Vitamixes making chocolate shakes...

Oh, the $9 hen was a $7 hen this time.

Our standard gas, ecopais they call it, is up to $2.40 a gallon, having been down to $2.10 per gallon.  Big difference.  Diesel hovers between $1.70 and $1.75 per gallon. The trucks have to roll.

I paid $3.80 at the market yesterday for a couple of pounds of small potatoes, half a dozen camote/sweet potatoes, half a head of small-garden broccoli, some plantains, a couple of soup carrots, a big zucchini for soup, and two bananas that we ate while waiting for the owner of the stall to come back from wherever she was.  Yes, we go through a lot of soup vegetables here.  Also paid $2 for a little over five pounds of market scrap beef for the puppy, some of which was human-grade but much of which was a little too interesting to be interesting.  This morning, a $9 hen was delivered.  Asked for it yesterday afternoon, but the meat-chicken lady in the village didn't have one ready and was in the middle of dealing with life, so she brought it right after 8 this morning.  We could buy chicken more conveniently at the market, but I am advised the village lady's meat is likely cleaner/fresher.  Also, I like to keep my dollars close to home.  (The vegetable lady at the town's market is a village person.)

Puerto Rico declares flu epidemic as cases spike. 42 dead and more than 900 hospitalized since July
Associated Press
Thu, November 9, 2023 at 12:49 PM GMT-5

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Puerto Rico health officials on Thursday declared an influenza epidemic

.

At least 25,900 cases have been reported since July, with 42 deaths and more than 900 hospitalizations on the island of 3.2 million people, Health Secretary Carlos Mellado said.

Epidemiologist Melissa Marzán noted that officials have seen nearly six times more cases so far this year compared with the same period last year.Those who are 0 to 19 years old have been most affected, with more than 13,600 cases reported in that population, Mellado said.

Health officials said there were plenty of vaccines, tests and treatments available on the island.

A record 53,708 influenza cases were reported in 2015 in Puerto Rico.

I've been doing the closed captions for years.  Being able to see what people are saying is really important.

Supper was sauteed chicken slice, camote (purple-skinned/orange-fleshed sweet potato, not candy-sweet), and vegetable soup with cheese in it.  Lunch was fish, same sweet potato, cauliflower, avocado.  Usually the soup is for lunch, but today was up-ended by fridge cleanout. 

Tea and coffee to drink.

Snack was Greek yogurt with cocoa powder stirred in.

I'm sick.

You can waste all the energy you want on Bill Gates, or you can actually do something.  Learn what grows where you are.  Plan how to get it and care for it.  Plant.  Take notes.  Someone once said that without notes, you can have a first year's garden experience ten times when you could--with notes--have a ten year garden experience.  If you move or are moved, take something of it with you, whether root or seed or simple knowledge of how you most succeeded as well as how you didn't.  Plant again.    

Wow.  Glad you got through that.

  Welcome home!  

Getting ready for my god-child's baptism on Saturday!

I'm talking about the zucchini

They dehydrate better after you have frozen them, you know.

Hanging out to rest today.  The new onions and herbs are in the ground and getting sprinklered.  It's a good day to move the sprinkler around here and there.

Yesterday scraped and cut (or watched H scrape and cut once she figured out what I was doing and decided the work was too taxing for me) and boiled a couple of pounds of ginger pieces for a couple of hours to tenderize them.  Today will be adding sugar and cooking again to crystalize the pieces.  Wish me luck.  Last time this project turned out a gloppy, sticky mess.  I pureed that candied ginger and still used it, but it was not what I had worked so hard to produce.

Disney is really aggressive about take-down notices for any video with its music.

We had someone send in a google maps photo of the chairman's house and  a written demand names and addresses of all other employees.  I was notified at a meeting that my name, address, home phone number, birth date, and other information had been provided pursuant to Chapter 160 as requested.  The phone number is still technically mine, but is not used except for various records.  I certainly don't answer it anymore.  

You'd think that violating the privacy of a person (especially a minor) in that manner, would be a violation of some law or other, and that such a violation would be actionable.  The law enforcement officer who facilitated this violation should be retrained.  Most likely, the persons providing the services in that office know about the privacy rules, ordinances, statutes, codes, and laws, and thus would be best able to articulate them in order to formulate an action.

Something needs to be done.  Otherwise you become a soft target.  Doesn't the softest target become the repeated, favorite target?

Also, do something about the jerks targeting you.

I have tried a few different pre-made dish and shop towels, and those are about the right size, all things considered.  Some are much better touch-wise and absorbency-wise than others. 

How well does your flannel wash, bleach, and line-dry? 

Most kidney and liver issues can be headed off or lessened by drinking more clean, unadulterated water.

Except water poisoning.  Even water in excess is bad for you.

Article:

Transmission

Nipah virus (NiV) can spread to people from:

*Direct contact with infected animals, such as bats or pigs, or their body fluids (such as blood, urine or saliva)
*Consuming food products that have been contaminated by body fluids of infected animals (such as palm sap or fruit contaminated by an infected bat)
*Close contact with a person infected with NiV or their body fluids (including nasal or respiratory droplets, urine, or blood)

In the first known NiV outbreak, people were probably infected through close contact with infected pigs. The NiV strain identified in that outbreak appeared to have been transmitted initially from bats to pigs, with subsequent spread within pig populations. Then people who worked closely with infected pigs began falling ill. No person-to-person transmission was reported in that outbreak.

However, person-to-person spread of NiV is regularly reported in Bangladesh and India. This is most commonly seen in the families and caregivers of NiV-infected patients, and in healthcare settings. Transmission also occurs from exposure to food products that have been contaminated by infected animals, including consumption of raw date palm sap or fruit that has been contaminated with saliva or urine from infected bats. Some cases of NiV infection have also been reported among people who climb trees where bats often roost.

+++++

So...if it comes here, wash your fruit, including dried fruit, even if you grew it yourself, watch out for palm sugar and the equivalent, whatever that turns out to be here, and be careful around animals and sick people.  And hope the sick people are wearing masks so they don't sneeze nipah snot on you, on your groceries, on your kid's burger, or on the surface you are about to touch.

I know I am not the only person who got raised hair upon reading that headline.  Nipah has a one in three kill ratio, but nobody knows much about dealing with it.