Help me, Obi-Wan Pressurecooker. You’re my only hope.

What a ridiculous day. Six weeks, even a month ago this weather would have made sense. My satellite connection has degenerated from Glacial to Why Are You Still Sitting There? With the winter bedding, heavy clothes and all the woodstove fuel and gear stored away for summer, winter has come roaring back.

That’s a bit of an exaggeration: the outside temperature promises to struggle into the fifties. But ‘roaring’ isn’t too bad a stretch. The wind is blowing stuff all over down here in my hollow, I prefer to merely imagine what it’s doing on the ridgetops. The rain is pretty much horizontal. Maybe it’ll clear later, who knows, but for now winter has returned. Last half of May, and I’m bundled up indoors. I hate winter.

Since the firewood is all wet there’s not a lot of point even going to the trouble of breaking the woodstove out of mothballs. Doesn’t work well in the wind anyway. I could burn emergency propane, but this is really more of an inconvenience than an actual emergency. No point in being too much of a pussy about it.

Whether it’s May or I only dreamed Spring and it’s actually January, though, it is definitely a stew day.

The project started with a disappointing revelation: Cans of clear chicken broth which I acquired in 2010, and which were past their ‘use-by’ date then, have officially gone bad. And I still had two cases of it. Ah well, I’ve lots of bouillon. Friends-of-the-blog sent cans of chicken and veggies: Examples of these came out of the powershed and into the pressure cooker as soon as the first boil, to soften the dry beans, was complete.

At 6000 feet water boils at 200^o so there’s a trick to stewing with dry ingredients. It involves multiple passes with a pressure cooker. First you boil the beans, because just once won’t do it. Then come potatoes and onions and barley, and then the canned stuff. The trick is to get the dry stuff cooked enough without transforming everything else to mud.

When it works, it works well. But it results in a big pot of stew which won’t keep without refrigeration, so I only do this on days when I’m cold and depressed. Which means I don’t get enough practice to do it confidently.

An odd sort of breakfast, perhaps, but it warms your innards.

Meanwhile at least the batteries are behaving themselves.

Even on this utterly gray morning – can you get Seasonal Affective Disorder in a single morning? – the batteries are in good shape. Woke to 12.3 volts, and the panels are giving me some push even in the wan light. Probably I’ll get a full charge sometime this afternoon, but if not we’re still in good shape here.

Electricity is one reason I like sunny days, obviously, but the truth is after almost nine years in the desert I’ve just become dependent on sunny days for my own outlook. And lately it has been gray, and never grayer than this miserable morning. Maybe I should be reading something other than William Shirer? Bummed a copy of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich from Ian’s library, I’ve struggled through to the last hundred pages or so, and must confess that even though my view on the matter is utterly conventional to say the least, this morning it’s rather a more depressing read than I really need. Maybe I’ll change up with some Larry Correia.