Friday, August 5th 2022

15 Wars Happening Right Now That No One Talks About

I stuck this link here last night before I quit. I actually have a few more links to pop up here in a little while. It got kind of upsetting there last night. The world was very upsetting last night.

It’s been pretty quiet here for the last couple of weeks and I have been spending a lot of time sitting around. The strange thing is that I’m not getting sick of it, I’m just getting used to it. I’m living on a very strange time schedule right now. Last year, I had a similar infection and it was lunacy trying to find some help so that I could stay off my feet as much as possible. Here I am again but with sufficient help. I guess I’m getting kind of serene.

Except that I’m not. I mean, physically I’m not particularly stressed because I have minimized the amount of physical activity that I need to do but I can’t seem to escape the general situation of the world. I can’t unknow what I know or unsee what I have seen. I can’t stop this knowledge and it’s ridiculously upsetting.

I’m coming to the end of week number 30. The plan is for 45 weeks. This is the same as it was the last 2 years. And every time I get this deeply into writing and thinking, I find myself in a place of great despair. It is the knowing that is problematic.

I knew about this. I knew about this before I started this year and even before I started 2 years ago, 3 years ago. I knew this because I’ve done significant amounts of writing and thinking before and I was aware of what happens when you become too severely conscious.

I was also aware of it from reading Jack London. Martin Eden was about a man who no longer wished  to live because of what he knew. Reading a biography of Jack London even confirmed this exact thought. All the man wanted to do was to be accepted as a writer. But when he received his note and fame, not only did it not make him happy, it made him even more miserable. Nothing he could look at would bring him happiness because of the knowing. Every interpersonal relationship, every conversation, every instance of attempted interaction fell under his jaundiced eye. In the end, he just couldn’t stand looking at the world anymore.

Yesterday, late in the day I was listening to the sound of the chicken woman chasing her grandson around. The boy’s very small and the woman revels in his innocence. She herself is not Innocent. She is a cruel woman who has no control over herself and does not care how much harm she causes. But the boy does not know who she is and so she monopolizes his consciousness for every moment of his innocence she can find. He is a drug for her. A drug of relief from her own misery.

I have seen this before many times. I’ve seen it in my own family and experienced it first hand. I’ve had quite a bit of experience with people so corrupt and miserable that they crave innocence like drugs. I’ve also seen the effect that this consuming has on the children. I’ve seen what it does to them to grow up with all of the filth that ends up in their minds because of these moments of being consumed. All of the shit that they are told. All of the lies they are forced to believe.

I have quite a few people from my past who have decided I am a bad person. They all find one reason or another to dislike me. But the crime I have always been guilty of is not being innocent. It is the only thing I have ever genuinely done that is bad. I don’t sparkle with innocence and therefore I cannot relieve people of the burden of the misery of their lives. I am terrible drugs. I am unconsumable.

I probably do this on purpose, you know. In fact, I definitely do this on purpose. When you grow up surrounded by bloodsuckers, you learn to remain poisoned in order to keep your blood from being sucked away from you. You get good at anything you practice.

I have a few relationships here that went bad because I never gave people enough innocence. I kept trying to tell them when they were pimping me for moments of interest that I was never going to be any relief to them. No matter what they were thinking, other than doing business together and remaining independent from each other, there was never going to be a satisfying moment from me. I was not looking for any satisfaction from them other than our business and they really should not look at me as being any answer to their questions otherwise.

It took longer for some people to get it than others. Some people are still mad at me. Of course it’s my fault that I’m not Innocent. It’s not my fault that I have no virgin energy for them. Even if they think I’m something new here despite my 20 years of residence, all they’re looking for is relief from the pain of a miserable life.

Perhaps this Friday serenity has something to do with the fact that my neighbors finally got it. For all of the pimping of energy that they did, there was nothing to be had from me. I never had any energy for them. I never had any innocence for them. I was never going to be free to be taken away by them. I was never going to fall in love. I was never going to be relief no matter how much they wanted me to be.

I mean, I just tell people up front. I don’t lie about it. I tell people that I do not want to go down this road. I tell them in the first meeting that I am not interested in any excitement in innocence because I don’t have any. I am not a boy, I am a grown man. I am not interested in playing with them. I’m not interested in faking It for the purposes of expanding their egos even. I’m not interested in prostituting myself or selling myself out or agreeing to be stupid just for the sake of their empty lives. I don’t agree to make myself sick for them. I don’t agree to get drunk for them or amuse them. I am not here to make anybody happy.

It’s an interesting question what good I am if I’m not drugs. I’m sure quite a few people ask themselves this. To make a good comparison, I’m sure there are quite a few women who cannot believe that they have no value in the world except for the potential of sex for men. I’m sure there are some people who studied hard to become good at a trade or to have some skills that they have acquired that are very useful who become absolutely hateful at only being seen as sex objects.

I’ll bet there are many seniors who would rather not be pitied. I’m sure there is an endless Sea of immigrants, especially those without white skin who now find themselves trying to live in White society because of the monetary difference. I drove a cab for a while in Minnesota and worked for a man who had been a doctor in his previous life. He was unable to practice medicine because there was no money in it for his family and now there he was unable to practice medicine because his medical degree did not transfer. 

Yesterday, I made a hard decision to turn the lower Fields over to perennials. In a month or so, I will start the prep work and probably even plant the garden if I can. Hopefully, I’ll have a little bit more leg for this. In this regard, my situation is exactly the same as last year. I ended up in the hospital because of trying to be a hero and plant my field.

Maybe this year I’ll do things a little differently. Maybe I’ll make sure I have some help. Maybe this year I will agree to take it easy and allow other people to do the labor.

Or maybe I will be able to do it myself. It seems I am a pretty good doctor. I understand my problem and I am taking very good care of myself right now and there is physical evidence of healing going on. Taking it easy and being very careful with the diet is what it’s all about and so far, I’m having very positive results. Not perfect, still a bit critical honestly but getting better.

It really would be better if it would just rain normally a bit here. Global warming is really messing with my life. I have to do so much more work then I would normally have to if we just had normal weather for the region.

But I guess this is all part of it. It’s all part of the knowing. I guess I’m just going to have to live with this all a little bit longer. But in the meantime, and whether it is believable or not, I’m not particularly lonely right now. I’m not lonely and I’m not in need of a lot of fussing and noise. I am very happy to be enjoying the quiet. In fact, if the world would just be so kind as to convince the chicken people to go to town to be closer to their jobs, I would be extremely happy right here where I am.

Well, except for the war. They never want anyone to be quiet. They want everybody to be as noisy and crazy as they can possibly make it. The last thing they want is anyone to have the serenity to know anything. They just want us hunting drugs. They just want us hunting relief. They just want us starving. It’s how they make their money and it’s why we have what we have.

Like I said, knowing is a bitch.

***

It’s 11:00 a.m. and I am sitting in the shade of my plum tree enjoying a ridiculously huge breakfast of cherry plums. If you’ve never had sweet, fresh from the tree Cherry plums, you’re missing something. Soft, extremely sweet and delicate. A taste a bit like a peach but a texture more like a grape. I can eat them by the handful.

One of the absolute joys of this place I have is this spot I am sitting in right now. I’m not going to give you all the details so you can create in your mind a vision of pastoral beauty. But every year at this time, this one particular cherry plum tree gives the most delicious fruit in abundance and just drops it here in the shade of my plum tree. The plum tree itself is not worth a damn and I’ve never tasted a nice fruit from it. But the Cherry plums just need to be found in the grass. Little yellow bulbs of love calling my name. Pure sweetness.

There are some technicalities to all of this. It is about water. I have two structures here at the end of my property that borders my neighbor and the roofs of these structures feed this particular cherry plum tree. Because of the additional water it gets, the fruit grows ripe and sweet and in abundance. My plum tree on the other hand does not grow sweet all by itself. I attempted to give it some water this year but apparently not enough to satisfy its needs. It has a roofing panel under it and I have made a point of coming out here to water it. It just never gets that flood that the Cherry plum tree does.

This idea is where I got my idea of building a roofing structure for my line of fruit trees. This idea comes and goes because it’s connected with spending quite a bit of money to get it done. There is also the potential for complaint either from the state or from neighbors. I don’t really care but the idea was sound. Just to create a roof that drips down to the base of those trees and exponentially increases the amount of water that they get. I’ve tried to simulate that by putting roofing panels under some of those trees and it obviously helps. I’m just not sure it will be enough to produce really nice fruit.

Technically, this is not my cherry plum tree. I have several but they also suffer from the drought. Their fruit is not as sweet or as abundant. I’m not potent, I just have several limbs that overhang my property and so this is where I am sitting. Even as I am writing this, a new plum drops at my side every now and again.

My neighbors are here, but not all of them. The kindergarten teacher is back in town and at work but her mother has come with her daughter. I am sure I mentioned it but the mother has automatically hated me because I complained about them cutting their weeds unnecessarily on a Saturday last year. I’ve heard from her daughter that it was that I made a scandal but obviously, it is that I was defending Saturday. You don’t need to think too hard to understand that.

I did my chores this morning on crutches. No particular big deal.

The first thing I did was repair the hose one more time. To accomplish this, I opened up two separate hose clamps and tied them in together. I’m pretty sure this will create enough pressure to hold the hose in shape on top of the shim I have. There are other connections available but I have to go to town to get them. So you know, Soviet is as Soviet does and I get to make my fixes however I can.

After that, I dumped my organic waste in the compost pile, cleaned up my dishes from yesterday and headed out to have a look around. I didn’t hurt anything by ignoring them yesterday. Most of the plants that I failed to get to win the hose broke are in the shade late in the afternoon and so they don’t suffer the hot days quite so much. Another positive of the tree line I have growing is that it will allow some shade to the box area. At least this is how I see things.

I noticed that my neighbors were here when I was dumping out my kitchen scraps and I offered them a hearty hello. The little girl was happy to say hello back although you can see on her face that she has already been primed with hatred and fear from her grandmother. I don’t mind. But the girl nevertheless thinks of me fondly because I showed worry last Wednesday when she was obviously staring at me as the garbage truck was bearing down on top of her. For this, I get a pass and a smile. Also, she probably enjoys pissing her grandmother off. 

But being out here alone with her granddaughter and all of that innocence to suck off of, grandma was in a jovial mood today. Possibly she even thought that she had put enough attention on me and that I would be trying to make her happy. Having a man work for her probably makes her feel as good as I do for having people help me out. She’s not humbled with leg problems, she’s just a woman.

I should say also that there are no men in this family. I don’t know whether the mother’s husband has died or was jettisoned and I’m pretty sure that the kindergarten teacher is divorced. I’m saying this because of how open and bright the kindergarten teacher is with me. She is hunting. Her mother probably understands that I would not be interested in an old woman. So we can add that on top of the anti-semitism generally.

Nevertheless, when I said my hearty hello, the both of them started marching across their grass to say hello. And the first thing I did was ask their names. I heard the grandmother say her name to Ghenna yesterday but it didn’t stick in my head. I guess there’s too much garbage in that place already and it was difficult for that seed to find purchase.

She told me her name and the girl’s name and then I asked her if I should refer to her by her ochistva. If you don’t know this, Russians use the name of their father as a middle name or a respectful title. If you are speaking to someone respectfully, you will call them by their first name and then their ochistva. This business has always been problematic for me because my official name is simply my American name and so people here call me Adam Richard for some reason. Using my father’s name, my ochistva would be Levovich. In the early years of my teaching, before the Russians and when everyone was still respectful culturally, this is how many people knew me. At that time, I was Adam Levovich.

The grandmother, I’m not writing her name here simply for continuity and privacy, told me that her first name would be fine. Actually, that was not exactly how she said it. She added one of those lessons that I simply cannot get enough of. The words she chose were exactly: We all know each other by name here.

Really, she had me with “we”. The following conversation sounded something like this with a casual but rather steep departure away from the sweetness of Innocence back into the depth of a hateful hell on her part. I know I am a problem maker but I just couldn’t help myself.

“Who is we?”

“What?”

“Who is we?” She started walking away from me hoping the conversation was over all by itself. The little girl chuckled though. I think she definitely was enjoying her grandmother’s discomfort.

“In your sentence, you said that we only use first names. Who is we?” She stared at me again as if we had been mortal enemies for several thousand years. Or at least she had been taught in the way she desperately wishes to teach her own granddaughter that hatred is the way and the truth and the light and the only way to go to heaven is to make sure that you are subservient, hateful and as stupid as humanly possible.

I am absolutely convinced this is the primary reason why there are no men in their family.

“I don’t understand.”

“You exactly said the words “we” speak to each other with our first names. I just wanted to know who we were.” She really wanted to just turn her back on me and walk away. I was gunking up the mood. The old lady was high as a kite on innocence and here I was asking her questions about pronouns. I suppose mother fucking Jews have always been pressing her about pronouns. Probably pronouns were a deficiency for her when she was in school. Or maybe hatred and innocence are a horrible cocktail. I was definitely ruining her day. I was also probably reconfirming her anti-semitism for several years to come. Good for me.

“I just want to know who we are. Are you talking about the people on this street, the people of this village, the people of the state of Belarus, the Soviet Union. What group exactly are you counting as we?”

“We are the people of this village.”

“But you don’t live here anymore.”

And that was truly the end of the conversation. She shuffled the little girl inside. She would be safe inside her walls. For sure, she had been right about me from the beginning. She knew nothing good was going to come from this not cutting Weeds on Saturday business. Weeds need to be cut flat in order to appear to be orderly. Whether we live here or not, whether we take care of our land or not and whether we have any brains left in our head or not, by God nobody is going to stop her from butchering wildlife on a Saturday. Certainly not a God damn Jewish ecologist.

Probably she fed the girl some Sala on toast and smiled knowingly at her waiting for the Innocence to kick back in.

***

I have a couple of links I want to share. None of them are very nice really. Perhaps one would be seen as humorous, but I don’t. Sorry for the lack of entertainment value. I’m just working here. 

This first one is a story about the conviction of WNBA player Brittney Griner. As to why she is being so harshly treated seems to fall under a few simple categories: She’s American, She’s black, She’s an American black woman and mostly from the regular cannabis use, an American black woman who knows what is what and is not afraid to say what she thinks. She’s also a political football for the Russians to play with. 

As for bringing race into the issue, let’s not scapegoat the Russians for being alone. Apparently, similarities between the American concervative oil parasite party (ACOPP) and another well known acronymic organization are here:

Back into the world of zombie mentality, here is a debate between a newly minted vegan and a rather portly foodie about the value of chicken. Now, people are free to choose which side of the argument they are on. But when someone claims that cultural stupidity should outweigh necessary changes for the survival of the planet, well, I vote against the drug addict every time.  

It is also kind of easy to spot the pandering populist in this argument. the word “we” just oozes from her mouth like is was floating on a thick layer of grease, 

And finally, a bit of genuine history from our friend Earthing Ed. Say what you want about Ed and his style, the guy has the energy and clarity of some who… well… probably doesn’t eat meat. Funny how not eating meat seems to equal clarity. 

Here is something you probably didn’t know and hopefully, can’t unknow:

So, this last video gives me two things. First of all, I now have some mathematics to put on a T-shirt if I even get my swag business together. 

Meat ≠ ℚ

Meat does not equal a rational number. 

The second addition is the answer to the age old question of what came first, the chicken or the egg. The answer is money.

The operative words are human intervention and capitalism. 

***

I’m just going to add one more brief interaction with the kindergarten teacher’s mother. Before I came back inside, I hobbled over to where we could see each other over the fence and tried to tell her about the cherry plum tree.

“I just wanted to tell you that the cherry plum tree that is next to my barn is the sweetest fruit and it is perfect right now.” The lady started walking slowly towards the fence. Perhaps she was having a hard time hearing me speak. She resembles her daughter quite a bit but with more of a Russian soldier’s perpetual grimace. She doesn’t have a perpetual flow of innocent children coming through her life like her daughter. She only has her misery.

“What was that you said?”

“That tall cherry plum tree is perfect right now.”

“We are not gathering fruit.”

“I understand but what I’m telling you is it is the sweetest fruit on either of our properties. Global warming is real and we have had 13 years of drought. That particular tree gets fed extra water from my barn and therefore it is the only Sweet tree bearing fruit right now. And it’s just falling off the tree waiting to be taken.”

“We have enough fruit.” She made a Russian gesture of drawing her thumb across her throat. This does not necessarily mean cutting someone’s throat, it’s how Russians say the word enough. On the night that he died, my daughter’s grandfather made that gesture to me concerning his life. Usually when people make this gesture it is with a smiling face. The grandmother was not smiling.

“I’m just saying that if you are here, you should at least enjoy something sweet for a change.” 

“I don’t understand anything that you are saying.” And with that she just turned her back and started walking away from me. There was no hope. There was no way in the world that she would allow an American to command her. There was no way in the world she would make friends with a Jew. There was no way in the world she would have any contact with me unless I was completely subservient to her and there was no price that could be paid. When I came over, she was sure I was there to kiss her ass or to want something from her. The fact that I came to make a suggestion that would lead to work on her part was the last straw. She dismissed me from her presence and walked away.

“As you like. But in the future, please refer to me as Adam Levovich. I also don’t understand your insanity but we can start with respect.” There was of course no answer.

So with that, with one stroke of the pen, I officially resigned from “we” as far as she is concerned. Not that this matters. She doesn’t even live here anymore.

***

It’s about 1:30 and I am in the office taking it easy. I just had a late breakfast or lunch. I got a little bit hungry and decided on a very small bowl of buckwheat, red lentils and some dry oatmeal. I water cooked the buckwheat and the lentils and let the residual get soaked up.

There was a little spice in it but nothing else. It’s just simple food.

Yesterday, though I don’t understand why she decided to do it, Elena brought some sunflower oil back with her. I did ask her to bring a loaf of black bread and I guess I made a mistake in not asking for more flour. I’m not going to sound self-righteous in this but I just didn’t check my pantry very well beforehand. After she came back, I made an accounting of everything I have and noticed that I have already finished my last bag of flour.

Last night as what I hoped would be a treat, I cut off a few slices of bread and used the last of my old sunflower oil. It was still okay and did not smell bad in any way. The fried cabbage and tomatoes were not horrible. I’m sure I have eaten this dish any number of times. But for some reason, the oiliness of it put me off. It wasn’t the flavor or the quality of the oil. It is that I have been eating oil free for a number of weeks now and the feeling in my mouth was not very nice.

I truly believe that the human animal is probably not supposed to be eating quite so much fat. First in line I would say that this is animal fat. I think a certain amount of nuts are very healthy. Not to have a tremendous amount of protein in them but I think there’s a limit to how many we can eat. There are also some plants that have a large amount of fat in them. I think most people would say that these are healthy fats. Certainly they are a lot healthier than pig fat.

I don’t know that I woke up feeling particularly terrible but I definitely felt off all night. It was like there is a streak of stupidity in my head. I don’t know if I’m saying this correctly or if I sound too arrogant. But I did feel as if there were some kind of a block in there. Taking what I know about diabetes into consideration, literally there was. My body runs a lot better and a lot cleaner if I limit the amount of fats I eat. This means not too many nuts and definitely means I don’t need factory oil.

Perhaps there is a difference between extra virgin olive oil and factory sunflower oil. Perhaps coconut oil is a positive. I’m not claiming any expertise. I’m just saying that the cheap sunflower cooking oil that is available at our local stores no longer appeals to me.

This lunch I had though kind of inspired me to do some thinking. Usually when I get into something, I tend to have ancillary thoughts and follow them down different paths to come up with different answers. Forgive me, I am not a subscriber to the theory that says there is just one answer. I am of the tribe that believes creativity exists in all things except Russian neighbors.

So this was how the thinking worked out. Firstly, it’s Friday and I was thinking about what kind of food I wanted to make for myself for dinner. When that bottle of oil showed up, I had a thought of simply making some fried food for a change, exactly what I had last night. But having had it, it’s not a matter of the meal being spoiled, it’s a matter of understanding that it’s not something I actually want to eat and especially not on a special day.

However, I also have very few shelled nuts lying around right now. I’m out of peanuts and I’m really down to the last few grams of shelled sunflower seeds. These are supermarket foods for me and it’s been two or three weeks since I have been to town.

This is when things started to get interesting in my head. Firstly, the traditional combination for making hummus is chickpeas and sesame seeds. They’re also needs to be a little acid in there, usually lemon juice and I think most Cooks add some oil to this. Garlic is also almost always a part of things. But knowing these ingredients does not mean I have rules to follow, it means I understand the basic scaffolding of the food. It is a protein mixed with a fat with some acid to balance the fat and you have a perfect vegetarian food. I like it.

But last year I did something that made one of the best hummus I have ever made. I was also without sunflower seeds at the time except for an entire small young sunflower head. The seeds were still small and the shells had not been dried yet. It was fresh out of the garden and I tossed the entire thing in the blender with some chickpeas and it was amazing. It was creamy and very flavorful and very fresh.

Did you know that sunflower plants are completely edible? They are. Everything is consumable about the beautiful tall sunflower plant. They all taste a bit like sunflowers but the leaves are interesting spinach replacements, the stalks can be used very similarly to celery, and this also includes being used as an aromatic along with garlic and onions for your French cooking. Even the flower petals themselves are a little bitter sweet.

So what I’m thinking of for this night’s meal is to harvest one of the sunflowers. I can make a hummus out of the flower head and some chickpeas and then I can cook the leaves and the stock as vegetation. Either I’ll steam it or if there’s too much, I’ll just water cook some in the big pot.

How does that sound?

I have some tomatoes and so I can add them in either as a fresh ingredient or to be cooked down but I think some toast, fresh veggies and a very flavorful sunflower hummus sounds like an excellent way to greet my day off. Other than the toast and the tomatoes, everything comes from my field. I like it.

It’s about 1:30 and I am in the office taking it easy. I just had a late breakfast or lunch. I got a little bit hungry and decided on a very small bowl of buckwheat, red lentils and some dry oatmeal. I water cooked the buckwheat and the lentils and let the residual get soaked up.

There was a little spice in it but nothing else. It’s just simple food.

Yesterday, though I don’t understand why she decided to do it, Elena brought some sunflower oil back with her. I did ask her to bring a loaf of black bread and I guess I made a mistake in not asking for more flour. I’m not going to sound self-righteous in this but I just didn’t check my pantry very well beforehand. After she came back, I made an accounting of everything I have and noticed that I have already finished my last bag of flour.

Last night as what I hoped would be a treat, I cut off a few slices of bread and used the last of my old sunflower oil. It was still okay and did not smell bad in any way. The fried cabbage and tomatoes were not horrible. I’m sure I have eaten this dish any number of times. But for some reason, the oiliness of it put me off. It wasn’t the flavor or the quality of the oil. It is that I have been eating oil free for a number of weeks now and the feeling in my mouth was not very nice.

I truly believe that the human animal is probably not supposed to be eating quite so much fat. First in line I would say that this is animal fat. I think a certain amount of nuts are very healthy. Not to have a tremendous amount of protein in them but I think there’s a limit to how many we can eat. There are also some plants that have a large amount of fat in them. I think most people would say that these are healthy fats. Certainly they are a lot healthier than pig fat.

I don’t know that I woke up feeling particularly terrible but I definitely felt off all night. It was like there is a streak of stupidity in my head. I don’t know if I’m saying this correctly or if I sound too arrogant. But I did feel as if there were some kind of a block in there. Taking what I know about diabetes into consideration, literally there was. My body runs a lot better and a lot cleaner if I limit the amount of fats I eat. This means not too many nuts and definitely means I don’t need factory oil.

Perhaps there is a difference between extra virgin olive oil and factory sunflower oil. Perhaps coconut oil is a positive. I’m not claiming any expertise. I’m just saying that the cheap sunflower cooking oil that is available at our local stores no longer appeals to me.

This lunch I had though kind of inspired me to do some thinking. Usually when I get into something, I tend to have ancillary thoughts and follow them down different paths to come up with different answers. Forgive me, I am not a subscriber to the theory that says there is just one answer. I am of the tribe that believes creativity exists in all things except Russian neighbors.

So this was how the thinking worked out. Firstly, it’s Friday and I was thinking about what kind of food I wanted to make for myself for dinner. When that bottle of oil showed up, I had a thought of simply making some fried food for a change, exactly what I had last night. But having had it, it’s not a matter of the meal being spoiled, it’s a matter of understanding that it’s not something I actually want to eat and especially not on a special day.

However, I also have very few shelled nuts lying around right now. I’m out of peanuts and I’m really down to the last few grams of shelled sunflower seeds. These are supermarket foods for me and it’s been two or three weeks since I have been to town.

This is when things started to get interesting in my head. Firstly, the traditional combination for making hummus is chickpeas and sesame seeds. They’re also needs to be a little acid in there, usually lemon juice and I think most Cooks add some oil to this. Garlic is also almost always a part of things. But knowing these ingredients does not mean I have rules to follow, it means I understand the basic scaffolding of the food. It is a protein mixed with a fat with some acid to balance the fat and you have a perfect vegetarian food. I like it.

But last year I did something that made one of the best hummus I have ever made. I was also without sunflower seeds at the time except for an entire small young sunflower head. The seeds were still small and the shells had not been dried yet. It was fresh out of the garden and I tossed the entire thing in the blender with some chickpeas and it was amazing. It was creamy and very flavorful and very fresh.

Did you know that sunflower plants are completely edible? They are. Everything is consumable about the beautiful tall sunflower plant. They all taste a bit like sunflowers but the leaves are interesting spinach replacements, the stalks can be used very similarly to celery, and this also includes being used as an aromatic along with garlic and onions for your French cooking. Even the flower petals themselves are a little bitter sweet.

So what I’m thinking of for this night’s meal is to harvest one of the sunflowers. I can make a hummus out of the flower head and some chickpeas and then I can cook the leaves and the stock as vegetation. Either I’ll steam it or if there’s too much, I’ll just water cook some in the big pot.

How does that sound?

I have some tomatoes and so I can add them in either as a fresh ingredient or to be cooked down but I think some toast, fresh veggies and a very flavorful sunflower hummus sounds like an excellent way to greet my day off. Other than the toast and the tomatoes, everything comes from my field. I like it.

https://petalsandmetal.com/plants/edible-parts-sunflower-plants/

***

This will be my last check in with this guy this week. If he is final summation is that nuclear weapons are foolish and impractical, if we are talking about Russia, I think he just wrote our condemnation ticket. Fuck war! And fuck this smarmy fuck for bringing normalcy to the concept.

***