The Broccoli Incident

I make salads. Desiree, owing to her vastly superior capabilities, covers all the other prep and cooking on either side of that.

I like to chop up all kinds of stuff to add to my salads. Nuts, sweet onion, olives, cabbage, and broccoli are commonly added to a base of kale, lettuce, spinach, and arugula.

Welp, yesterday I had a broccoli incident. Apparently, I got a little too frisky while chopping. As my buddy Kenny used to put it: “I was going at it like a one-armed man killing snakes.” Somehow, even while wearing glasses, a speck of broccoli flicked up into my right eye.

To be perfectly honest, it only sort of hurt, but if someone had been around, I would have played it up a bit. In the end, I merely rubbed my eye, and the broccoli vanished.

I would like my broccoli incident to serve as a cautionary tale. I’m not suggesting we need to start wearing safety glasses when chopping broccoli. But that particular broccoli clearly chose violence. And there may be others.

—Mitchell Hegman 

Self-Assessment

Looking back now, I realize I should have remained looking ahead.

—Mitchell Hegman

Road Closure

I will admit to being a bit “slow on the uptake,” as the saying goes. Sometimes, I need to be told directly it’s time to go. If someone is trying to explain how to construct something, a sketch or two may be required to drag me fully onboard.

While taking a drive through the mountains yesterday, we found a road closure that must have had people like me in mind. The instant I saw the road, I was pretty certain they didn’t want me driving on it.

I’m sharing a photograph of the road so you can judge for yourself.

Closed Road

—Mitchell Hegman

Ghost of the Eastern Seaboard

The Stanfields are a Canadian rock band based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. They blend a hard rock style with elements of traditional Atlantic Canadian folk music. The Stanfields released their debut album Vanguard of the Young & Reckless in 2010.

Today I am sharing Ghost of the Eastern Seaboard, a particular favorite of mine.

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8GyDzzA5j4

—Mitchell Hegman

Friendships

Literally, there have been many billions of friendships formed on this planet over the years. But when you shake it down, mine are the only ones that mattered.

—Mitchell Hegman

Softwood

You’ve likely heard that thing about using the internet to self-diagnose an ailment from which you might be suffering. You’ll find an answer alright, but it will be the worst-case scenario. You have something unpronounceable and cured only by drinking castor oil and eating lots of liver.

Unfortunately, a similar strain of bad news awaits if you search to find what you should and shouldn’t burn in your trusty woodstove. The “interweb” is going to tell you that burning softwood is bad. As the story goes, when you drill down (maybe up in this case), softwoods produce a lot of smoke and chimney-clogging creosote. Also, log per log, softwoods produce fewer BTUs than hardwoods.

Here’s the thing. All needle-bearing conifers are softwoods. This includes the pines, firs, and cedars out West where I live. I could accurately write that this effectively includes pretty much everything available in my region of the Rocky Mountains.

We don’t have oaks and walnuts proliferating at our back door. We’ve planted ourselves amongst the pines and firs and must make do. In fact, I spent considerable time this spring and summer cutting and chopping a reserve supply of lodgepole pine and fir for my stove.

Those of us who have not known better have been successfully burning softwoods for hundreds of years. A little damper control. A finely marbled steak. A well-aged single malt Scotch. And a stack of split pine. That’s all we need to laze through winter.

My Softwood Reserve for the Coming Winter

—Mitchell Hegman

Penelope and Her Purple Toenails

Penelope didn’t like daisies or oranges or button-up shirts.

She was seven and had her reasons.

Penelope was right-handed by nature, something her mother referred to as “wrong-handed.” Imagining she might please her mother, she painted her toenails purple with her left hand. And her mother might have been pleased had she looked beyond the purple smears on the floor.

How could you figure adults, she wondered. Adults used words differently.

The same words. Different meanings.

When her mother said “I’ll think about it,” it meant “no.” “Soon” meant “now.” “A little” meant “a lot.”

And before Penelope painted her nails, her mother swore purple was her favorite color and she would be happy if everything was purple.

—Mitchell Hegman