Mean Starts With Me

Andrew catches up and explains why he has not been neglecting you, his beloved readers, and why you should never ever piss off a bear...or Andrew.

I can now finally say the $400 words I've been waiting to say for 9 months (the day I bought half price backcountry skiis, boots, and bindings): I am a skiier. It only took that obscene amount of time for more than 3 inches of snow to stick on the town of Bountiful for more than 3 minutes. It was lot of fun, and a lot harder than it seems. That is, after I stopped, that mile really burned- knees, legs, and arms. Great whole body workout because you use poles to propel yourself forward, though for gliding, it sure does feel rough on those knees...now I did go skiing once last year. I drove an hour to a cool flat zone right by a ski resort, the proceeded to land on my face for 2 hours, cursing loud enough (almost) to crack the hard ice I was attempted to ski on. That's a bad idea by the way. Though I did get good in a hurry, because it takes an extreme amount of skill simply to stand in one place on skiis on ice, let alone move or stop. I perfected a perfect high-speed hockey stop too, mere inches from trees at approximately the speed of a jumbo jet trying an emergency landing over the ocean. Plus I saw a fox jump out and run from its burrow in the snice (snowy ice stuff). With more storms due now that winter has finally arrived, late like the last 3 years- which I think now signifies that December is not winter in Utah anymore- and that winter starting in January should now be considered normal, I may get to ski a lot more. We have many trails, so let's hope.

My midnight exercise made me feel better, and not just because no bored Bountiful police officers surrounded me with 5 vehicles, lights blazing, to amuse themselves or tell me about good neighbor curfews. I am still on the mend from some food poisoning or a stomach virus I picked up visiting family in Illinois. I am unwilling to say I ate bad food as it is quite possible I merely ate things I do not normally eat and that made me sick. Three straight meals at restaurants is more than I normally get in a month. Now home and making my own food, I got mostly better quickly, and am getting all better now- I hope. I lost some weight by just not eating. Then today I got so starved suddenly that I started shoveling freshly roasted and still scalding red and purple potato wedges into my mouth with both hands the way Garfield windmills lasagna into his huge wide open mouth in comic strips, which drew mocking from the roomie. Then I went at the peanut butter with a large knife and kept it moving down with whole milk. And was still hungry.

Illinois made me realize a few things: one, restaurants are not healthy or very good. I am a better cook. Two, produce is very sad in the midwest in winter. I had a tomato that made me want to hug the whole state...and the toilet bowl. It was never ripe to start- that was clear even through hollandaise sauce- but travelling 3,000 miles did not help. In Utah, we are spoiled, because out of season produce is not that terrible. Though a better solution is still just to preserve in the fall- which is a Utah custom, I am proud to say. For instance, Teresa's gung ho too young and now a bit bummed her husband goes out with the boys and ditches her with the babies he helped make friend who has probably never been out of Utah (or the county?: another Utah specialty that Mrs Ben Franklin shared hundreds of years ago...) stopped by the roadside and bartered for an entire tree worth of apricots from some amused older people who hated the danged things for being in the way of the lawnmower each August. So she canned a whole tree of them with Teresa's help and took a few jars back over as a present. Third,and lastly, what I learned is that air quality in Utah really is terrible. We have brown air when snow is not falling- another reason to pray for snow. When we do not get regular storms, the pollution thickens. I've been joking with other depressed people at work, after my brown commute (air and mountains and grass) that I was taking a vacation to Beijing so I could get some fresh air. No one laughed. They just kind of made this pained sigh type of sound, like an old car's exhaust pipe as the engine warms up. Chicago has way more people and way less pollution. No one connects their complaints with their actions though. The idea the air might be bad because people idle in their cars for 15 minutes each day or have their heaters turned up to 81 degrees F, or leave on a TV for four hours while in another room...nope. That can't be the problem.

While wrapping up my last post, the lights began to flicker and the windows rattled. I thought nothing of it as I do not watch weather reports, and went to bed. Slept great. Woke up and my panicky roomate was being panicky. So nothing new. But turns out, the whole county was devastated by a massive level 2 dry hump (no rain) hurricane, which caused 20 million in damage, shut down the schools, knocked out power for 36 hours to like 400,000 homes, and blew over several thousand trees. Most of them pines. One lesson is that if you are going to terraform an ugly salt-plain desert, you might not want to put non-native tree species on man-made hills. Those fall down and go boom. Sometimes on houses. More on this later. Another lesson is that Utahnians are pansies of the highest order. There are more emergency essential store chains out here than burger joints. People have years of food in big cans, vats of water, Dr Pepper (all the essentials), and basement shelters, bicycle-powered florescenty lights, all kinds of crap. But one little wind storm makes people hyperventilate, call in the National Guard and boo hoo like a big bunch of diabetic babies. I had great fun with the whole thing. It broke up the routine of life. A new adventure. You don't know how funny life can be until with mountains of free firewood on every corner an old woman is buying a bundle of logs at the grocery store. McDonald's being closed- not an emergency. Your blender not working for a day and a half- not an emergency. Traffic lights blown over- not an emergency! Frustrated and chainsaw-wielding postal maniac just kicked in your door screaming, "you damned butterballs! Emergency this!" - that's an emergency. Final lesson: don't piss off Andrew. I have powers. I've mentioned them before. Magical powers. I'm what you might call a real bona-fidey warlock. You make me mad, I'll cut you. Or you'll sprain your ankle, break up with your long-term significant other, have a rock crack your radiator from a strange bounce off the road, or your entire country will be leveled by an 7.9 earthquake 30 minutes after my plane takes off- the last plane to leave the country for 3 days, might I add, Peru? Remember me down there? I bet you do. Don't mess with Andrew. Mean starts with- well you probably read the title.

Teresa also invited this windstorm by mocking it on facebook. People, this is an important message: God hates Facebook. He's on there all the time, wishing He wasn't. So don't provoke him by saying the promised windstorm will be puny like last year's fake blizzard that the forecasters promised days after the economic boom from flu shots fell through because nobody got extra flu shots when the news told them they'd better. Or your 85 year old apple tree planted by your grandma (maybe) will fall onto your carport, ripping it away from the house and down onto your cars, tearing the siding away from your room, leaving you cold and scared, and blaming Andrew and his powers for tempting Heaven.

The only bright side to that story is that due to the late (correction: typical) onset of winter, which became lingering summer snow, and then a late fall, harvest, and November apples still just ripening, your attractive and awesome boyfriend will get to harvest 75 pounds or so of apples and preserve them...the modern way...with a home dehydrator. Now it took me 10 days of cheapness and indecision to whittle my options down to the right one, during which time I lost about 15 pounds of apples to rot and mealiness. Apple pudding at the bottom of the bags anyone? Put on gloves before you reach in...really. So to save you all that time, I will now present some simple reviews:

According to the internet, and Google in particular, the Excalibur dehydrator is the best one ever invented and can outfly many modern flying saucers. Do not believe this. An astute researcher knows companies can simply register their website in ways that light Google up like a Christmas tree when people enter certain terms. Excalibur is good at this. I know not because I ordered one to test it ($200 and its made of plastic?) but because I read every consumer review on large corporate websites I could find. Don't trust vegans, they are used to eating unpleasant food so they are impressed by anything awful after a while- also, mom and pop organic stores can be bribed. But the general opinion of non-bribed people seemed to be that Excalibur builds a completely adequate product. But that is costs $200 and is made of plastic! Avoid too the several super cheap plastic models you can find out there without temperature settings, dials, and so on. Now I am the man who when shopping for a blender wondered why I could not find a single speed blender (think about it now: why do you need 17 speeds? All you need is the top speed- it encompasses everything else by definition; you can't go 99 miles an hour without going 66 miles an hour, can you?), and I do not think you need a timer to tell you when your apples have been drying 10 hours. Poke them. If they're done, they're done. But you will want to be able to control temperature, because jerkey needs to be done at 150+ degrees and that temp will light a leaf of basil on fire. If you want to be cheap, the only good option is the sun. Its free. The cons are that you need a sunroom or large windows, lots of space, your food is exposed to air and will take much longer to dry, and some foods never will. Also avoid any fan on bottom unit- any drip will get in there, overheat it, clog it, or smell bad at least.

So the winner is: Nesco brand. They make basic, simple, affordable plastic round models with a charming design: a base that is just thin plastic, and a top that is a fan and heater with 5 settings for: herbs, crafts, nuts/seeds, fruit/vegetable, and meat/jerkey. Easy right? Not even an on-off switch. Its plugged in or not. You stack it like a sandwhich: 2-8 trays on my model, 2-20 on some (though the trays will be thinner and not hold as thick of items). My model is "American Harvest". It cost me $70. The best seller is "Garden Master" but I prefer mine, for the thicker trays. You get a fruit leather tray, an instruction and recipe book, and several packs of seasonings. Best of all, if it breaks, and the chances are slight as the heater is in top, then you are only out $70. You can run through 3 of these before you will regret not having an Excalibur with its 10 year warranty.

So how does it work? Adequately. But at least I'm not out $200 to learn that. I've done apple slices, banana slices, cranberries, mushrooms, peppers, strawberries, and maybe a few other things I am forgetting. Flavors really do not mix. That is, you can do a mix of different items and they will not taste like one another. This is surprising as walking into an apartment with a load of jalapeno peppers drying will make your eyes water. There is nothing more delicious than the smell of warm apples. I miss it- though not chopping all those mealy bruised windfall terror apples. I am still eating bags of these slices and they are delicious. Much more flavorful than store-bought. And without preservatives. You can throw any dried food in the freezer and it does not get freezer burn or go bad (for all intents and purposes: I suppose on a long enough time line they would). Banana chips have addicted my roomie. He just plowed through 10 pounds of bananas (wet) in one week! That's disgusting, but if I were Nesco, I'd want him on my commercial. He had such a hang dog expression today asking if he could make some more and promising to make them last. At Costco, the store of the large portion size, the cashiers teased him about having a pet monkey because he was buying so many bushels of bananas. Now he's their hero because he explained about the drying process and how much he is saving. Which is true. 3 pounds of bananas cost $1.39 out here at Costco and turn into one quart of dried chips which would sell for about $5 at a health food store. And home made are much more flavorful. Teresa is all about apple chips now and she hates dried apples. Ours are just mouth watering. If I go more than one day without eating one, the next slice I eat makes my eyes go wide every time. So its been nice not to miss apples like I thought I would. Strawberries come out chalky and flavorless. Craisins do not turn out like they do in the store. Sour, crunchy, and pointless. They take 20 hours to finish! Dried mushrooms do not rehydrate so well. I've been putting them on pizzas and they taste good, but are more like gummy mushrooms.

Our electric bill did not jump at all, which is a relief. Apples or bananas take 10 hours, so I thought it would be a disaster power-wise. But no, it seems to be pretty efficient. Though the machine does put out a lot of heat, in our apartment it puts out enough to warm the place so that the furnace does not run at all, and its a net wash. As mentioned, the smell of apples is delicious and a real plus. You'll have to decide merits for yourself. It does use power, and there is something unspeakably vulgar to me about a man sitting on the couch eating piles of banana chips he just dried himself (number 1 they are a convenience food- like you take them on a road trip, and 2; why not just eat the bananas and save the world a bit?- also they come from Brazil to begin with, so bananas are not an environmental friendly choice and there is no such thing as "in season" or "local" to warrant preserving them at all) . As an aside, did you know the first boatloads of bananas to New York couldn't be given away? Carmen Miranda was hired to do banana propoganda radio spots with Bob Hope and to sing in her charming accent about how tasty bananas were and how healthy and then Bob Hope explained banana basics, like what color they should be and why they were delicious. I also have a vintage novelty song named "Bananas have no Bones" from the 1940s that sneakily explains to you why peaches and ham stink compared with bananas (they have stones and bones). I am sure this band was compensated handsomely for writing this song. Now, back to drying: foods have more flavor when dried, apple chips are even better than apples which are even more effective than toothbrushes at cleaning your teeth, and on my coming trip to Arizona for 2 weeks, I look forward to eating very healthy for very little money, with food I can trust not to make me sick.

Sorry to take so long since my last post. Hope you aren't too upset with me. If you are, then I've got a present just for you to make it all better... or fall down and go boom. Its a bright shiny, brand spanking new... Tornado!