Photosynthesis + Polenta

Monday, April 9th, 2018

The sweet sing-song notes of Froh's decadent morning alarm reached my as-of-yet unsuspecting ears; it was one of those moments where you're awake enough where, if you really wanted to, you could wake up, yet asleep enough you could roll over and go back to sleep. Since it was a Monday morning, I opted for the latter. (There is a peculiar phenomena where, whenever people use 'the former' and 'the latter' they always choose to use or refer to the latter. Poor former. One of these days I will choose you! But not today. I guess that's just how the cookie crumbles.) An hour or so later, I finally awoke a tad after 9am I believe. Right away I jumped out of bed, ran downstairs, threw a pot of water with some raisins on the range, turned on some music, and cleaned the kitchen. By the time I was done with that my oatmeal was ready, and I surfed facebook and checked my email whilst consuming it. I glanced outside: it was beautifully gorgeous, the sun was shining, all was right with the world. I smiled for joy, washed out my breakfast bowl, and grabbed a book and hopped outside. We just so happen to have a deck chair sitting out on our back patio, so I sat on it and propped my feet up on a 5-gallon bucket. I read. And I read some more. I felt like a bearded-dragon or perhaps a black snake coming out to soak up the wonderful warmth of the sun. No, better yet, I was a petunia, nay, a black eyed susan! gleefully soaking up the sun's life-giving rays. I was photosynthesizing. After many moons of snow, rain, and clouds, the sun was back and we plants could finally get a bite to eat. Boy was I hungry for some sun.

I read out there all the way until an hour after noon, at which time I went inside to craft a sandwich. (With authentic sourdough bread from Winco, mayonnaise, rice, pepperjack cheese, mushrooms, zucchini, sliced turkey, and onion.) Twas a glorious sandwich, towering a whopping... I forgot to measure it, but it was tall. Only problem was, it was so tall that when I opened my mouth to try and fit it in, I had to open my jaws soooo wide. Much wider than I usually do on your average day. So wide, in fact, that my jaw got a charlie horse and was stuck and didn't want to move. It was kind of sad, there was literally sandwich in my mouth my I couldn't close it to take a bite! A dozen excruciating seconds later I summoned the unction to clamp my jaws shut, and after that I was good again.

2:30 found me sitting in class, and an hour later Christy and Sarah and I discussed all the photosynthesis we did earlier in the day, and an hour after that Keziah and I were talking about concrete stuff and how his dad just got a fancy new contraption that'll make it loads easier. I'd have to see it to believe it, but it sounded pretty legit. After that I sat down to read in the commons, and Mandy and Rachel were there. An hour or so went by, and Rachel left to go somewhere. Then I came across some really good parts from a book I'm reading called 'Propaganda', by Jacques Ellul. I started cracking up and chuckling pretty good to myself, enough so that Mandy looked up from what she was doing to see what was so funny. Here are two of the quotes I satisfied her curiosity with: "Almost every man feels a desire to kill his neighbor, but this is forbidden, and in most cases the individual will refrain from it for fear of the consequences. But propaganda opens the door and allows him to kill the Jews, the bourgeois, the Communists, and so on, and such murder even becomes an achievement." [pg 152] And the second: "When a man obeys necessity, he wants to prove that such is not the case and that he really obeys his conscience. On the day when the draft is introduced, everybody discoers he has a fervent love for his country." [pg 157]

By and by Rachel came back, and then a chance comment from her sparked an animated conversation: she said, "So I made some hominy today." And then it all came crashing out, and I told them the story that hominy had reminded me of: How I"d been tricked into buying a gallon of polenta. See, it happened like this. I was walking through Winco the other day, and I stumbled across some polenta in the bulk food section. It looked kinda like grits, so I bought some in the wild hope that it might taste like grits if I cooked it up. I went back home, tucked it away in my pantry, and promptly forgot about it. Five or six weeks later it happened again: I rediscovered it, forgot I'd already bought some to try, and then bought some more to try and see if it was like grits. This happened one more time several weeks later. Then, probably two weeks ago, I found all my polenta. It was indeed a copious amount, enough to fill a gallon-sized icecream container to the top. And then I cooked some up like it was grits, and then happily dug into a bowl of it when it came out... but it was wrong. All wrong. It was goopy, like a useless bowl of cream of wheat. And... it tasted awful.. horribly awful.. I almost gagged. Now, anybody that knows me knows I'm not big on wasting food, but this... it almost wasn't food. I threw it in the trashcan. Yes, the entire pot of polenta went by-by, down the drain, kicked the bucket, down to sheol, maybe purgatory at best. It was so sad, and so disappointing. I was mentally prepared for grits, and what did I get? A cheap knock-off of the singularly disappointing food that is called cream of wheat. I ended up eating oatmeal that day.

Anyways, I now have a gallon of almost worthless polenta, so I asked Mandy and Rachel if they had any good polenta recipes. And so it was we spent the next 10 minutes scrolling through various polenta recipes. Some were hilariously bad, others just plain bad, and a handful were perhaps worthy enough to be tried. One of these was a recipe for polenta and mushroom pizza, so one day here soon I'll give that a try and see how it comes out. So now I am on a quest to find the best way to edibly eat polenta. If any of yall have any wonderful polenta recipes you're just dying to share with the world, feel free to comment below or send them to me: I've got enough polenta to try out any recipe you can send my way.

So that's about it for today.Once I got back from school I took Jex for a walk and then made a big fat burrito for dinner, then did some more reading a tad of writing. Pretty good day if you ask me!