1. I enjoy my life more when the Deke and I are together, but, we've spent significant stretches of time apart over the last ten years or so. Our reasons for separation have been various and always admirable, almost always having to do with spending time with family members in different parts of the country. For almost three weeks, the Deke has been in Eugene, spending time with friends from her many walks of life there, whether in her many jobs of doing music with children, her work as a classroom teacher, or as a performing singer and songwriter. She's having a splendid visit and I'm very happy that it's worked out so well.
I haven't been terribly lonely, but at times I feel hints, just hints, of the pressure and the debilitating effects that accompany chronic loneliness. It's not so much a feeling of sadness. It's more a sense that, if I am not vigilant, my abilities to think, create, imagine, feel purposeful, and feel physically healthy will begin to diminish. I experience the onset of loneliness as weight on my skin and pressure in my head and, sometimes, cramps in my stomach. Even though I've given much time and effort over the years to being independent and able to rely on myself, and even though I enjoy doing a lot of things alone, like going to movies and taking pictures and cooking, I am fundamentally a social person and need to spend time with others to get outside of myself, think more clearly, have fun, and feel more fully alive.
When Mom was failing, both at home and in the nursing home, my main concern was that she'd feel lonely, and have to endure the physical weight and emotional pain of loneliness along with her other medical difficulties. Christy, Carol, Paul, Zoe and I and others did all we could to help Mom not suffer loneliness, but chronic illness is a lonely experience and I'm afraid she had some lonely and disorienting times in her house and in her room at Kindred.
So, when the Deke goes away and I'm home by myself, I try to turn her absence into a way to take advantage of having the house to myself by doing some things I might be less likely to do if the Deke were here.
2. One of those things is listen to as many different kinds of music as possible. Today, as I went through my day, I listened to the Miles Davis station on Pandora, the Emerson String Quartet's album, Bach: Art of the Fugue, thirty-six songs by the Highwaymen collected on a single album; I listened to a nearly three hour long Amazon playlist entitled, Southern Rock BBQ so I could enjoy the Allman Brothers, Lynrd Skynrd, the Marshall Tucker Band, Little Feat, the Outlaws, Pure Prairie League, Riders of the Purple Sage and a bunch of other artists. I listened to the playful jazz erotica of Michael Franks' album, The Art of Tea. I spent some time with Uncle Tupelo and the Drive-By Truckers. Music is memory. My life is pretty full of fun times as well as painful failures and all of this music had my mind wandering all over my many joys and agonies.
3. When the Deke is gone, I like to try out things in the kitchen I haven't done before so that if I cook something that turns out lousy, I'm the only one who has to suffer through eating it. I've been experimenting with different ways to use the perpetual stock that bubbles daily in the crock pot. A few days ago, I decided to see if I could succeed at braising a beef roast. Today, I decided to see what happened if I braised the whole chicken I took out a couple of days ago to thaw.
I salted, peppered, and garlic powdered and then browned the chicken and, at the same time, sauteed chunks of carrot, potato, celery, and onion along with sliced mushrooms in the Dutch oven. When the vegetables were beginning to brown and starting to get tender, I hoisted the chicken out of the cast iron skillet and placed it atop the vegetables and covered the chicken with a generous supply of tarragon sprigs. I poured the fat out of the skillet and deglazed it with red wine and put a chunk of frozen turkey stock in the skillet and melted it. I put the juice of a whole lemon in the liquid bubbling in the skillet and then poured it over the chicken and popped it all in the oven, set at 275 degrees.
Three hours later, I checked the chicken. The meat was falling off the bone and I was satisfied it was done. I gingerly lifted the chicken out of the Dutch oven onto a plate and then scooped out the vegetables with a slotted spoon. I was happy to discover that the vegetables were cooked, but not mushy. I removed the chicken from the bones and put the bones in the freezer for a future stock.
I liked the lemony and licorice-y flavors present in the liquid and poured it over both my vegetables and the chicken on my plate. I also liked that the turkey stock gave the chicken a kind of turkey-chicken hybrid flavor.
These have been good days in my food lab. I am now confident that if the Deke and I decide we'd like to have either a braised roast or a braised chicken, that I can make a meal we'll both enjoy.
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