Raw Honey & Animal Psychology

I forget what raw honey is good for, but I have lately been eating more honey than chocolate. There is a new brand I like and it's by Y.S. Organic Bee Farms (U.S. & Canada) and it's very good! It's labled "Raw Honey" U.S. Grade A. It's good by the spoonful and also in tea.

I did a small amount of cooking the other day. I was given a pot of white beans and told to "doctor" them up. So I split them into 3 parts and did something different with each part. I'm not sure all of it was great, but it wasn't bad for winging it. I didn't use a cookbook until the end, I checked something.

Then, I overcooked a few tortillas (I was making chips) and one went into this pile outside as a whole tortilla and I walked out the door later to find the mother deer standing there with her mouth around a whole disc of tortilla. "She's part-Mexican" I thought. Then, as she stood there with her mouth around the disc, staring at me she crunched in and starting eating it. It was the mother with the twins.

I started thinking again I might be okay with animals because then the next day the mother and twins walked torwards me and got very close. And the cat that was stand-offish let me pet it and I discovered the dog knew the difference between my asking about one toy or the other toy. I said, "Where is your new toy?" and the only thing to differentiate from toys was the word "new" and he started looking for it. He bypassed the old toys, searching for the new one. Which I got for him and then he was happy.

He also, I noticed, is calmed by his "baby" which is a stuffed bear that is his same color. If I played with him using just his toy rope, he was energetic and aggressive and happy. If I then took his "baby" and had the "baby" on the other end of the rope, as if the baby was holding it, he wasn't as aggressive or playful and calmed down. I thought, "How interesting. He is calmed by his baby just like a human might be," and he couldn't get as aggressive with the rope tug when he had this conflict of his baby on the other end, which he sort of nurtures like it's a puppy.

I found out there is a branch of psychology that looks at the behavior of animals or living things in contrast with humans and it's called comparative psychology.

Of course, I had this in mind when I looked up Kim Kardashian's comment that sometimes she feels like a zoo animal. I thought, before reading the article, "Now if she were an animal, what kind of animal would she be?" The only animal that came to my mind was some kind of monkey, because of the focus there is on the butts of some of those monkeys. Like the ones that have hair all over except for on their butts. It came to mind bc of all the media attention on this. But then I clicked on the article and read how some people would put a camera right in her face without even saying hello and thought, no, that really is like being a zoo animal--of any kind. I haven't had that experience yet, thankfully. From a distance, yes, but not in my face.

So anyway, I split the beans into 3 parts, having no plan and not knowing what I was going to do with it. I started throwing things in without even knowing what I was making. For the first batch, I decided to do something sort of Asian, but using beans as the starch instead of brown rice.

1. So I added minced onion, a little tomato, shitake mushrooms, and some of the sweet hot pepper chili sauce. It was okay. Oh, I added coriander and lots of poppy seeds. It was some kind of soup? I don't know. The flavors were not bad and the poppy seeds really weren't annoying. I think I put in coriander and poppy seeds and then thought, add mushrooms and then the mushrooms called for some kind of asian sauce for a base flavor and then I threw in a little sesame oil at the top.

2. Vegetarian bean soup sans water. I didn't want to use water, to spare us from radioactive contamination, so I considered the other options I had at hand for a soup stock or liquid. We had apple juice, milk, grape juice, and that was about it. So I've used apple juice in chicken soup before and don't like how it blanches out some of the flavor so I thought to use grape juice and that cooking it might get rid of the tart flavor and be more of a red-wine kind of thing. So I put beans, fresh corn (cut off of the cob), tomato, onion, green chili powder, a little less red chili powder, jalepenos, and then added 5 cheeses (grated) and the grape juice and put it on the stove. I wasn't sure what the cheese would do with the grape juice, and thought it might not mix well, but it worked out. It worked out much better than I thought it would, with the cheese just melting and blending in and giving the broth a slightly creamier or thicker texture. There was some cheese scuz on the bottom of the pan, but the main broth incorporated everything without any odd look or flavor. It was really good actually, and I then put tortillas in the oven to broil and then break up into chips.

3. The last thing I made was "chutney without realizing I was making chutney". First I had something going with a lot of minced garlic, beans, and fuji apple zest. My favorite new find for a kitchen tool is this lemon zester and it's long like a ruler and when I used the apple on it, it made a zest or mush so fine it was like the finest applesauce and fully uses even the peel and makes it fine. I love this tool! So when I put this on the stove, it had a very nice balance of flavors and I knew I was doing something wrong when I added pineapple. Pineapple and apple there, I don't know...all of a sudden there was this TWANG. It was good pineapple (fresh) but still, sort of ruined something going on with the apple. I think The Pineapple and The Apple compete with eachother at times. It was a rambunctious mixture of flavor. So to balance it again I added a little BBQ sauce. It helped but still twangy. I zested in more apple. Then I realized cumin was going to save it. So I threw in some cumin. And salt. All of a sudden, it felt grounded. It tasted grounded and balanced. Oh, and in the beginning, with the garlic, bean, apple mix I had added a couple tbsps of brown sugar. (had to mention I had added a little sugar). So it was grounded but it needed some kind of green revival, like a spring kick in the pants so I thought, "What can I add that's greenish?" And I thought, "the fresh cilantro" so I got some fresh cilantro, minced it up and tossed it in and it tasted good for once.

And then the most random thing happened. I was wondering what I had just made, and had changed the radio station from secular pop music to christian radio and the announcer said, "And that was Mrs. Chootey," and it clicked. Chootey-Chutney. I had just made a form of chutney! aha.

I was deliberating about adding in a pinch of cayenne pepper but that's when I wondered and picked up the cookbook to look up chutneys. I looked it up in the Old Fashioned Joy of Cooking and found variations of chutneys that had all the ingredients my dish had! I really had made some kind of chutney. So I saw yes, cayenne was listed as an ingredient to add so I went with it and it was even better.

I decided to skip adding vinegar and ginger, but I'm sure this makes it more authentic. However, I was satisfied with what I had.

The deer LOVED my cooking! I tossed samples out and the next day, after crunching through a tortilla and some beans, the mother and the 2 fawns approached me inquisitively. "Who IS she?" they said to themselves. "She looks Russian" said Bambi. Bimbo said, "She doesn't dress Russian." The mother said, "She's a Mexican! Did you try the tortilla?" Bambi said, "A Mexi-Indi-Asian Albino?"

I have to stay away though because I'm hearing stories of mother fawn hooves cracking skulls and how taming them makes them vulnerable to others who are not good. What was really weird, was that yesterday, I saw them at a distance and it was like something from Bambi because I saw this THING jumping and bounding through the grass with the deer playing with it and I SWEAR it had a long striped tail and I stared and said out loud, "Is that a SKUNK?!" I don't know what it was, but it looked like Flower was romping through the grass with Bambi and Bimbo. I thought later, no, had to have been a cat. So I'm thinking it was a cat but it really looked like a skunk so I have no way of knowing.

This morning I had a small amount of a bloody nose. I think I get minor hemorraging in the head when I'm getting induced headaches. Long story, but nothing major, just a noticing. I'm taking Vit. K for better blood coagulation. And I told my mother she needs to increase her DHA over the EPA and ALA quotients for optimum benefits. We talked vitamin shop.

I turned on t.v. which I rarely do now, except to catch up on watching movies, and saw some news and then at the announcement of Kate and William on another carriage (I thought, another one? are they back in the UK?) and then finding out it was going to be California Carriage news, I switched. Sometimes I feel it's almost a responsibility to watch and pay attention but I didn't feel like it today and I'm not keeping up right now really, so I switched to Babar. Thinking of my son and cartoons. So then I realized the Babar people/animals all have crowns. Egad. Even His Rhinous. I turned to hear a monkey exclaiming, "ARTHUR! But we have a plan!" and then Arthur, the elephant saying, "Yes, we have a plan." and they're talking about their invention of the Lead Blimp and how they're going to get the Lead Blimp off the ground. And then it really does fly. Because he follows through with his plan when all hope is lost and the competition is over.

Which is only slightly strange to me, since last night I was singing to the deer (mother and twins), well, I hummed and then then sang out, "You can fly, you can fly!" from Peter Pan. And then I was picked up to go to a birthday party and sat inbetween table number 7 and 47 which made me think of a 747 airplane. Don't ask me. I have no clue. And then the next morning, the flying blimp.

I think I'm turning into a blimp because I gained 2 lbs already.

So I watched the end of Babar and then turned to X-files which I have watched before. I didn't even know, until today, that it's about the FBI. ? It was playing on BBC America and I watched an episode about twins, one of whom says someone was killed off a bridge and then I was in the kitchen making tea and missed the rest and then caught Part 2 about Muldour leaving Scully to find an alien bountyhunter that's been killing doctors, and trying to find his kidnapped sister.

I didn't dream last night except for maybe before I fell asleep, but not right before I woke up. I dreamed something about getting a supply pack from the military and it included glycolic acid. It was just a supplies dream and meant nothing at all to me.

I wish I could write about more but I can't now. I'm also trying to be prudent. I will probably check out a book today and that's about it. And clean.

I was going to say too, it is a good idea to mix things up if you think about someone named Sarah, for example, and don't want others to know which one, meet and talk to other Sarahs to confuse it. I am thinking I would like to learn more offensive shield approaches myself, to guarding and protecting my thoughts and ideas, whatever form they come in, written, verbal, whatever. You know. Guard the gift stuff and guard your heart.
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I took a nap and started thinking of more recipes. It was white beans, apples, garlic and brown sugar with some kind of cream sauce poured over this and the pork or lamb and then with a mint or other green garnish and some kind of other white cream swirled around for design on top of the sauce.

I kept thinking of sauces poured over things.

I'm getting Brothers Karamazov to read.