Settling In

JWise Thoughts

Phoenix, Arizona sky in fall

The trees are giving up their leaves late this year; not that that means it’s true, it’s just my impression. A calm morning breeze is busy cleaning the tree in front of me, and although it’s only 13 days until the official start of winter, I’ve taken up my place on our balcony enjoying the pleasant 73-degree temperature (23c) that promises to not go above 77 (25c). It’s just beautiful out here today, with me reflecting on the calm of both the weather and the hoped-for relief from stress that accompanies the end of vacation.

The falling leaves often create two sounds: the first is the collision with other leaves on their way to Earth, and the second is their landing on it. Those sounds are preceded by the swoosh of wind in the leaves that are staying attached to the tree for an indeterminate length of time, holding fast against the air that is playing a kind of Jenga with nature. The other background sounds are the ever-present road noises from tires that roar while speeding by and the occasional songs from nearby birds. To some extent, I’m able to blur the traffic sounds into my memories of the ocean crashing onto the shore. For that moment, I have another bit of time in Oregon, next to the sea.

Punctuating the din is the passing motorcycle or the aggressive exhaust of a car that breaks the spell of meditation I am indulging in when I should be writing. Then, a dove with its distinctive whistling-while-flying sound flutters by to land for a second before taking off again, carrying its whistle along as it goes. A lone grackle bleats out its screech and then falls silent as nothing responds to its call. Similarly, my mind seems to fall silent following my call to head out here and write.

The carniceria at our corner has stoked the fires of its charcoal grill and its distinctive smell wafts over on the wind; just thinking of what might be cooking has me thinking of food and not words. I know that this is somewhat futile, but on such a beautiful day, after realizing that I could be sitting out here working, I’m determined to give it a go until I figure out how my time could be better used.

Maybe the fact of it all is that I want this time to charge my batteries by feeling the breeze on my face and arms as I listen to the little clicky sounds of the leaves dropping in on me. For the entire week after our return from vacation, I was catching up with the tasks that are required to keep life flowing at home. Today can be considered my day off. Then, just as I think I’m out here for daydreaming, Caroline lets me know it’s time for lunch and that I need to offer the kitchen my attention.

Gochugaru

JWise Food, Photo of the Day

Korean Red Chili Flakes or Gochugaru

A side effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, which I’m sure is the same for me as for others, is the amount of cooking we have been doing. We’ve always branched out of the foods we are familiar with, which over the years has brought us to eating things such as grasshopper, horse, donkey, veal nerve, duck tongue, bullfrog, javelina, pig eyes, brains, and ears, and most recently a Cajun Turducken.

Back in June, I made our first bowls of kimchi sundubu-jjigae and we fell in love with it. How in love with it? We just finished our second pound of gochugaru chili powder. At the base of this hearty Korean stew lies sundubu paste and that paste relies on a large amount of chili powder. I wasn’t very discriminating the first time I bought gochugaru; I went to a nearby Asian store and grabbed what I thought was “the real thing.” Getting back from vacation this week, I needed to make a fresh batch of sundubu paste which required me to revisit the YouTube video that got all of this going. I knew I would be finishing an opened bag of chili powder (our second bag this year), but I was prepared as I’d bought another bag at H-Mart some time ago just for this moment.

Watching the video the guy suggested going through the trouble of getting “real” Korean gochugaru. I thought I had the real thing as it had Korean writing on the package, so what else could it have been? It could be from China which was exactly what I saw on the older package and the new one I just opened. I consulted Amazon to rectify this and found out that authentic Korean chili powder is not all that easy to obtain. When I did find it the price made me think twice. The new “Korean Origin” chili powder costs $30 a pound compared to $10 a pound for the Chinese stuff. I had to remind myself that Asians pack and price spices different than the American market and on checking out my local store with the name-brand stuff on offer I discovered that a pound of regular old ground chili costs between $20 and $55 a pound when bought in those small bottles.

So, obviously, I was making sundubu paste because we were looking forward to our first bowl of kimchi and tofu stew since getting back home. For that, I needed to head out to H-Mart to get the rest of the ingredients but this time I decided to also stock up on about a month’s supply of silken tofu. The tubes are 11oz each or 312g; I bought 10 of them which will let us make 5 portions each of sundubu-jjigae. Come to think about it, we’ve eaten more than 25 pounds of tofu during this last half of the year. I needed another quart of kimchi, our 4th this year which is probably 4 times more than we’ve bought in our first 50 years on Earth. While this may sound mundane, I bought some fresh American- and Chinese-grown shiitake mushrooms; they were sold out of Korean shiitakes. My local “American” grocery stores don’t carry fresh shiitakes. If you sense a bit of incredulity in that, you’d have heard it right. Yes, my cynicism sometimes has me feeling like the local stores only sell Wonder bread, peanut butter, hamburger, chicken, frozen pizza, Ragu pasta sauce, and 94 types of sugary breakfast cereal.

Regarding the sundubu-jjigae with the “fake” chili powder: It turned out great, and now, with about a pound of paste in the freezer, it’ll be a few weeks before I can make a new batch but when I do, I’ll be using Korean-grown gochugaru. Maybe I’ll blog again about our experiences with this fantastically umami stew once the new chili powder comes in but how much can one write about this stuff?

Oh, there’s a downside to this return to blogging about normal life, each new post moves down my masterpieces of eulogistic praise regarding our recent trip to Oregon. I sure would like to recommend that you take the 2 hours to read the 32,956 words of my screed, but short of that you could also just check out the wonderful photos. I can’t emphasize how much more interesting that other stuff is compared to writing about kimchi and tofu stew.

High Value Targets

JWise Photo of the Day

Parking lot mobile security camera in Phoenix, Arizona

I had to go shopping today, not Christmas shopping, just grocery shopping. You read that right, I went grocery shopping at a regular grocery store, not Whole Foods either. When I walked in, masked-up of course, I didn’t think twice about anything other than that we are just back from vacation and need food this morning so we can eat today. Having been gone for 19 days, we came home to the empty fridge, just as we left it. I grabbed a few things moving quickly to minimize my time in-store, used the self-checkout, and had placed my bags in the car when I realized what I was looking at: a security camera.

I told myself, “Hey, wake up John, that’s a mobile security camera setup….at your grocery store!” It’s the holiday season so I remember from way back when the sheriff’s department putting cherry-pickers in mall parking lots to monitor the safety of shoppers, but back when malls were a thing people might be walking to their cars carrying hundreds or thousands of dollars of goods. If some nefarious type person wanted a good haul robbing someone, a mall would be the place to target some easy victims. BUT I’M AT THE GROCERY STORE!

I had to go take a closer look at the solar-powered D3 Edge Security Platform from LiveView. Three hundred and sixty degrees of view, infrared camera, lights, speaker, microphone array, and its own power source driving this thing wirelessly so someone in the store can have their eye on the parking lot – I was somewhat impressed. Thinking harder about it, I started questioning, why is this really here? A couple of answers became clear: 1st, during a pandemic and hoarding there are things that have greater value to those that can ill afford them such as toilet paper, diapers, sanitizers, etc. and 2nd, we have a serious unemployment problem and reduced wages that put pressure on people to acquire foodstuffs in any way possible. So instead of heading to the mall, which nobody does anymore anyway, head to the store and rob someone of their $300 in groceries because beef and eggs are expensive these days.

Now I have to stop and give some hard thought to this. I think about what we saw in the Bay Area of Northern California where some freeway offramps are appearing like trash explosions, but when you look closer you spot encampments of homeless people in ramshackle tent communities. Bizarre eye-sores have spread across hillsides, among the brush along the freeway, and are nestled in tight spaces under bridges. It really is astonishing to see the level of homelessness spread from slum areas to the edges of major highways. If these are the signs of those who are at the end of possibility, what of those who are struggling and at risk of falling to the edge? They have to pay rent; food becomes a secondary expenditure if you can find things at Dollar Stores. When those are too expensive you head to the food bank, but what happens when food banks are running short due to holiday demand? Head to the grocery store parking lot and snatch a couple of bags from someone’s cart who looks vulnerable, that’s what you do. Grocery stores must be aware of this and hence Robo-D3 Edge Security Officer is on duty and standing by.