It was so windy outside that the poor reporter who came to write this story wound up having to interview me inside the granary. We each sat on a piece of firewood. She was not the sort of person to complain. The photographs are fun. Don’t let the smile fool ya, I don’t much care for them two roosters. Anyways, here’s the link.
At my readings I make it a regular habit to establish the point that I am hardly a rural living expert. At best, Coop is Back to the Land for Dummies. Instead I mention other writers who are having a strong influence on the current thinking regarding food and sustainability. Someone asked me to post the people I mentioned the other night. They include Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma), Barbara Kingsolver (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle), Joel Salatin (chicken tractor genius), and Gene Logsdon (in particular his blog and his book All Flesh is Grass).
Having held this opinion for decades, I will now speak: Pringles are salted on the wrong side. You place one on your tongue like a tiny saddle and the salty part is against the roof of your mouth. As delightful as these mysterious chips are (mysterious because they are less than 50% potato...!?!?), imagine the exponential flavor explosion if the salt and flavor crystals were actually facing tongue-ward.
Got hooked on Pringles early when Mom brought some home. Mom was notoriously frugal (oatmeal in 25-pound bags) so it might seem counterintuitive that she would be purchasing packaged junk food, but I recall those early canisters (or perhaps the print ads) featured comic drawings showing the chips being punched out and baked in a science-fiction sort of way. This suggests to me that they were probably offered at a low introductory rate. Also, we lived in range of a test market, so we often got cut-rate deals on new food products.
One hesitates to always default to Wikipedia, but the Pringles entry is a quick, interesting read.
Anyway. C’mon Procter & Gamble: flip those chips.
IF YOU PLAN TO SEE MIKE IN PORTLAND: The Live Wire! series held at the Alladin Theater in Portland has been placed on hiatus. As a result, I will not be appearing at the May 15 event (tonight) as previously scheduled.
On page 139 of Coop I mention shooting video essays for Wisconsin Public Television with Andy and Wendy. Right before I left on book tour, they came to the farm and we shot another one. It will air this evening as the “End Insight” portion of Here and Now (7:30 p.m. CST, “encore” presentation 10:00 a.m. Sunday) (no re-runs in public television, only “encores”).
If you’re new to Sneezing Cow world, you can click here to watch a number of the previous video essays (tagged as “The Clodhopper Report”).
Footage of my morning TV interview at KATU in Portland, Oregon can now be viewed here. Farmer friends, please note I keep trying to wedge in the fact that I am not a real farmer. Added bonus: Enjoy watching the author scramble for ways to explain that he was bitten on the butt by a coonhound in terms that won’t get him hustled out the back door.
Did this on four hours sleep, nearly curled up on the overstuffed chair for a nap. Been on the road 13 of the last 14 days, I note I am getting to where I need a haircut. Will need to locate the proper high-tone salon.
They ran some clips while I was talking. The complete chicken coop video is here, and the complete dryer episode is here.
Clearly not a good blog post title.
But I had an article about cadavers in the last issue of Men’s Health. You can read it here.
And in this month’s issue (available on newsstands now) I drew on some of the material from my previous books plus some new bits to write this essay about my Mom.
Now this fellow has riffed on both essays to create an entertaining blog post of his own (full disclosure, he says nice things about me, and me him, and although we both mean it, this is what is known in the business as logrolling, and if one overdoes it, one comes off as being all wet) (I know from logrolling, because Fred Scheer is a friend of mine).
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