h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

how to make frybread from pinenut meal. The firt time I heard of a pinenut was when Lil was telling me she had to get back home so she could have some before they were outlawed or something like that. I looked all over and finally found this pitiful looking bottle at the grocery store, and they were good, but somehow I think Lil's experience with them was not quite like that. So many things I have missed in my life, it's really a shame. I suppose I have to settle for second hand knowledge that I can get from Lil, and you and Rita, assuming Rita ever starts talking to me again. You know her well, maybe you can give me some advice on that too? I'm just short of groveling here, cause I do think this is important. Can you guys ever accept me as the well meaning but painfully awkward white woman that I am?

I'm glad you asked. I suggested we trade recipes to that New Zealand woman but I don't think she cared anyway. It's a good way to smooth things a little.

Speaking of smoothing things, frybread is pretty simple to get smooth. For a "nuclear" type family you can probably mix a couple cups of meal or flour with a handful of baking powder and a few pinches of salt, then pour on about a cup of water and kneed the dough until it starts to smooth out. Then you roll some balls about the size of a chicken egg and pat them out into disks about as thick as your pinky and fry them in deep oil in a cast-iron skillet. If you want to put a hole the middle of each one that's okay. Makes it easier to turn them and retrieve them with a stick.

The kind of pine nuts you get in the grocery stores are pretty much for Italian cooking I think, pestos and stuff. The kind we get in the Great Basin come from pinyons and are much more nutritious because they're about half fat. They're also larger than most other pine seeds.

You can roast the cones to release the nuts and then shake them out of the cones in a big, shallow basket. Then you pick the cones out and winnow the nuts by tossing them in the air to let the wind take away the debris you don't need. The nuts then can be roasted further or just dried in the sun.

Once thoroughly dried they can be pounded with rocks to make the meal. Obviously, if you have more modern conveniences available to grind them you'll probably prefer to use those.

You should be aware that the process is rather dirty. The cones have a lot of pitch or sap on them which can get all over your hands. Traditionally you'd cover your hands with mud first to make cleaning them easier after handling the cones. Now days you can wear gloves or douse your hands with alcohol to desolve the sap.

Regarding groveling, I don't think you need to go that far. It wouldn't make any difference anyway. Nobody really wants to humiliate you no matter what you might think.

Rita's just being Lakota. Maybe if you bring her a recipe or something like that you can give over the internet it'll bring her around. She doesn't take rejection or criticism real well and because she's deaf, ignoring people is probably easier for her anyway. But she'll come around sooner or later so don't take it personal.

I don't think you're awkward at all. I think you might be just a little too sophisticated for people like us though, kind of intimidating, but you get your message across when we don't, so it's probably a good thing you act the way you do.

Your comments sort of remind me of Mr. Fulton's talk about whites not being spared by the revolution. I don't look at it that way at all really. I'm not out for blood, just some fair treatment for a change. That shouldn't be that difficult but apparently it is when you consider that somebody's probably going to have to make a few sacrifices to make things right again, or at least that's how a lot of whites perceive it I think. That coupled with the traditional fear of the wilderness and the savages who have inhabited it make things very difficult to deal with at times.

But I don't think anybody's threatened you so maybe you should try not to be so tense. What you've accomplished here already should make you proud not ashamed. But you still need to think a little more locally maybe because I don't think you'll ever convince people to organize some great injun political party to lobby and push things through.

However, if you can pursuade enough Americans to take control of their government, that might be best for everybody. None of us really needs to be playing lackeys to the fatcats anymore because they never give anything back. However in the meantime, they like to terrify people with losing their jobs and stuff like that or even worse so I can understand how hard it can get.

It's not necessarily an wholly indian problem we're dealing with here, but I'm confident whites can find ways within their own traditions and life ways to live well in this land without ruining it for everybody, but that's going to take a lot of work. I obviously don't have the answers, but I'm groping around like everybody else trying to figure things out the best I can. I'm confident you can keep me pointed in the right direction, Grandma. I'll hope you'll try at least.

One thing I forgot to mention which is kind of crucial. You need to hull the nuts before you grind them. That's kind of hard to explain in words but you sort of roll them like with something like a rolling pin to break the split the hulls but not too hard or you'll get the hulls crushed in with the meal. Then you need to winnow them again to get rid of the hulls. It's kind of labor intensive but it's worth it I think.

thank you Analiese. Can I go back to calling you Rusty now? it's a lot easier to type.

I'm gonna try that recipe, it sounds like something I could manage. And if I catch my stick on fire then I get to try out that shiny red fire extinguisher that just sits there. So I wonder if I can find any pinyons?

So here's one for you, crab dip that me and my daughter are required to make at every family gathering so it must be pretty good. Actually she does most of the labor anymore and I just supervise. Anyway you use a one pound package of imitation crab and one of those packages of cream cheese (I think they're about eight ounces) for about a dozen servings or so. We usually triple that. You soften the cream cheese and mix in mayonaise till it's very smooth and creamy. I usually just taste it a lot till it tastes like I want. Then you add a little lemon juice and some of that seasoning salt I forget the exact name right now, some salt, pepper, and a few squirts of mustard. I just add stuff till it taste right and is a nice bright yellow color. You have to chop the crab up into small cubes and then mix it in with the cream cheese mix. It goes great with club crackers.

Now I gotta find one for Rita. Maybe a old cookie recipe I have around here somewhere that has marishino cherries in the middle. They have this real sweet icing drizzled over the top and they look as good as they taste. or the one with hershey's kisses in them, they're pretty good too. what sort of food does Rita like. I guess everybody likes cookies though don't they

You can call me Rusty or anything else you like. Long as I know it's me, I won't object, at least not a lot.

I'll probably have more luck finding crabs than you'll have finding pinyons although I think it'll be hard either way. I don't think pinyons grow anywhere close to where you live. I know there's no crabs around these parts although I guess I could go to one of the Californias. That's sort of why Lil had to get home.

They won't outlaw pinyons. They'll just chain them until there aren't any left probably. They prefer range or taller timber they can farm with machines.

I think, though, that Rita would probably like cookies, whether everybody does or not.

I feel a little more comfortable around you now. I hope you feel the same and maybe Rita will too by and by. I got a date so I guess I'll leave this for another day. I hope you have a great weekend.

ooh a date! I used to have those. Now I sit here alone on Sat. night while my hubbie is in Ala. doing his guy thing with his guys. It's okay though, cause he tries to drag me along sometimes and I would rather sit here and whine about him.

I hope you lucked out and got a good one, date that is. I remember how iffy that stuff could be. But I do recall that sometimes the bad ones are more memorable than the good ones. So what do you young people do on dates these days? Considering I have given up all my vices I can't imagine what I would do on a date, or the first few anyway

what is the best way to spell Shoshone/Shonshoni? Seems like I see it more the first way, but someone in peer review has suggested I change it to the second. what do you think?

Usually if I tell older people what I do on dates, they sort of give me this look of profound look of disapproval, shake their heads sadly and say, "Well, it's your life."

Actually, I figure it's jealousy, what do you think? And I sort of wonder where you'd do all your vices if you didn't have dates?

But to my eternal credit I think, this was a 3rd or 4th date. Not that I don't put out on the first if there seems to be some reasonable gratification potential, but, well, maybe I should just drop that part of it which would entail practically all of Saturday night, oh yeah.

Sunday afternoon, we played "horse" which is two-man basketball, except that this was one man/one woman basketball and I almost beat him, except my horse didn't have the E and his did but only by a very sloppy tip in shot.

Last night he took me to a play called Sylvia. Have you ever heard of it?

If not, it's about a New York City couple with a dog who almost ruins their marriage. It was pretty funny actually, especially the guy who played three roles, two of them female, or maybe it was one and a half female roles because one was a psychotherapist who let's her/his patients determine her/his gender.

The actress who played the dog was pretty good too, very energetic. I bet she was glad they didn't have to do a matinee too. She ran the length of the theater several times cavorting with a creature called "Bowser". They "did it", more than once too. I could relate to that sort of visceral celebration of life's little wonders. When her owner asked her if she was in heat, she said, "I won't dignify that with an answer." Then she said, "Oh, look at the balls on that dalmatian!"

A lot of the action was on the floor, which makes sense when you consider it's pretty much on a dog's level. We had to stand up to see those parts.

They talked about the innate urge to get back to nature and something called "biophilia" which I'd never heard of before. I guess you need to live in New York to get it.

So that about brings you up to date on my sordid love and entertainment life. Hope you don't have to shake your head too much. Maybe you can remember when you were this young and foolish. I probably won't remember, so you can remind me when I'm your age, if you don't forget.

The best way to spell it is not at all since nobody knows what it means anyways. But if you must, just go with the flow I guess. Whichever way you spell it will be wrong in somebody's estimation. I think it's mostly a Wind River thing, and they probably spell it Shoshoni. Western Shoshone spell it just like I just did, unless they don't.

well I vaguely remember, don't recall too many weekend long dates though, this guy must be something! I guess after Sat. night you were reluctant to let him go? Well I tried to hang on to some of my vices, even after I had to limit myself to one man. I found out you just can't have both worlds though. You gotta either be old and boring or young and exciting, at least in as far as your home life goes. Or that's my excuse anyway and I almost have Jerry talked into buying it. So he's either gonna trade me in for a younger model soon or just accept that his life just ain't gonna be that exciting anymore. So I would say yeah, jealousy is just what it is. They just wish they still had the energy.

I saw that play a couple of years ago. It was wonderful. We saw it in a very small dinner theater and had a really good table so we didn't have to stand too much. It was a little mature for Jamie at the time, but not so much so that I had to do any major explaining after it was over. He sounds like a thinking sort of fella anyway, that is always a good sign, and not all that common either. I have to drag Jerry to plays and stuff. He did like Sylvia, but he fell asleep during Phantom of the Opera and Miss Siagon. After we paid a fortune for the tickets and I dressed all up and everything. I should have know when he refused to change out of his jeans and tennis shoes that he wasn't really into it.

Thanks for the opinion about the spelling thing. I think I'll just copy what you said and let the peer review folks decide how they want it spelled then. These things seem to move beyond the creators control very quickly here, but I don't mind that much, as long as someobody actually reads it sometimes.

If you decided you wanted to get something in the guide for whatever reason, I think you could pretty much copy that post about making fry bread and it would be a great one. The kind I like to read anyway, not too technical. I generally lose interest in those within a paragraph or two.

I don't know if I'll ever bother with the Guide. It seems kind of boring to me mostly. Not your stuff of course, but some of it really sucks and people act like it's the greatest thing since talking leaves.

The guy was okay, by the way. He got to put out on Sunday for what I put out on Saturday so we're even I think. "Just bring your credit cards," I tell them.

I guess romance for me is sort of like shopping. You look over the inventory, get the best deal you can, use it awhile then sell it at the flea market, all the time trying to avoid getting left with anyone or anything burdensome.

Your husband, (Dare I call him Grandpa?) sounds pretty typical I guess. I think civilization's probably wasted on guys so I don't have great expectations. I might change my mind when I'm old and chubby and still falling down in the middle of the road though. Now I can get away with it because somebody will usually pick me up but later I don't think I'll be so lucky. I'll probably get a clue that my time's up when I notice tire tracks on my belly.

Don't let the peers intimidate you. Just spell it Sosoneh and tell them it's the new authorized by Mormon linguists orthography. By the time they finish searching for that on the internet, you'll have it in the Guide.

well I hope he was more than just that. You gotta stop shopping sometime or other, and I promise you it is rarely the good deals that you really are tempted to get hooked up to.

My grandson calls Jerry Pawpaw, he doesn't seem to mind it too bad, but he doesn't act old either. more like a little boy himself. He calls me Nanny, which is okay too, better than Granny somehow.

I would think it'll be a while before you have to worry about being left in the road, but it's a little hard for me to imagine that you are not generally in charge of your own destiny. You sure can't trust a guy with that kind of stuff, past whose gonna pay the check anyway.

I can understand that about the guide, I just thought that fry bread recipe was just the kind of thing that their guide could really use. Interesting, fun, and not in the least bit pretentuous. there's not alot of that in there.

I'll keep these things in mind maybe. Please don't be offended but when I've discussed this issue with white girls my age, they talk about getting guys who won't interfer with their career options when I'm asking, "Yeah, but what do you suppose he'll do after you get pregnant?"

I haven't met any guys around this college yet who I'd trust to brand a calf let alone keep things going while I was carrying a child. And then after the babies are born what does he do? Go out drinking with his frat bros probably and watch the football game at the sportsbar while checking out the enhanced chicks with the hooters.

"Bud, you can't handle what you've got already. How you going to handle that?"

But he doesn't think about what he's got already. That's why he's here. He's trying to forget about what he's got already. Or am I just being cynical?

So I'm thinking getting left in the road is probably the least of my concerns. Getting left at the house with kids and nothing to eat is probably what I need to focus on. When they hear I'm injun you can almost see the dollar signs in their eyes popup.

Visions of wearing a realtor's gold jacket while showing clients around the future site of the 18th hole next to the "planned development" in the mild, year round climate we've all been dreaming about.

All I have to do is play along obviously, nevermind what happens to my family's stock or range in the meantime. Just think, I'll be able to pursue a career too and assemble myself just like the white chicks every morning before contacting clients on the good old cellphone, while trying to balance all the domestic stuff I'll have to hire somebody to do for me or get stressed out.

Who's paying the check? Yeah, you're right, but that's just the beginning.

What am I saying? It's me, me, me, isn't it? Well, enough of that.

Are you dug out of the snow yet, Grandma? Or did you get any of that? I heard it was pretty heavy back east.

And I'm sorry to hear you're still struggling with the nicotine. I've heard if you eat celery sticks it helps and isn't too fattening. So you carry around a little baggy of celery sticks and munch one everytime you get the urge. It'll probably take six months or more but just do it a day at a time or you'll probably get discouraged. It can be done. Just remember that.

Lil was addicted to a bunch of stuff and beat it. She said it was God's doing, that she couldn't do it all by herself. Maybe she was right. You ask God to help you out and see what happens. Maybe I should too except I don't want to quit. But if you really want to, I'll ask God to double the help since God won't need to help me with it just yet.

Ana and Nanny Paulie may I recommend a book?

It is: "I Don't Know How She Does It" by Allison Pearson.

Cheers!

hey I almost bought that tonight Kyaa, but I settled on The Lovely Bones Instead. I've been told it is very good. I'll get that one next time.

Yeah we got plenty of the snow. It was a mad house too. People in TN act unusually bizarre when it snows. I'm not sure what the deal is, they just get out of their car in the middle of the road and walk off and leave it. I think they ought to lose their car when they do that, it sure makes it harder on the rest of us who wouldn't abandon their car in the road for nothing.

And yeah nictotine withdrawal is still sressing me out a bit, not to mention Jerry, who really should consider how lucky he is just to live with someone trying to give up cigarettes and not be the one trying himself. He just can't relate though, he's never smoked. I really do want to quit. I have quit in fact, I just haven't gotten over the after shock yet. I all of a sudden found myself of an age where smoking cigarettes increases my chances of stroke and various other unpleasant ailments by an alarming amount. Not to mention the money, my teeth, the fact that nictine depletes calcium from your body (in combination with the facts that I have given up meat and tried very hard to cut down on dairy products and that when women get older their bodies are just naturally prone to calcium deficiency) and some other stuff I have listed to encourage myself when I start getting weak.

As for being left home with the kids, yeah that happens, a lot. You just gotta weed through the jerks till you find one worth keeping, who will stay home and help with the kids. My own experience tells me that takes a few goes at it. Some others might be more lucky though who knows. I imagine it would be better if you didn't have to worry about where money for food was coming from, but that's another route I didn't take myself. I did the get married young, have a kid, get divorced, get married, have more kids, get divorced, get married, then get a career route. I didn't have any kids with the last one, so he didn't get the ultimate test and I'll never know if he would have past it or not. He knows better than to leave me at home alone too long though, I tend to redecorate

Peace Nanny Paulie. I hope you enjoy reading 'the Lovely Bones'. I attended a discourse with the author. It seems a very profound but a little too melancholy read. I'm afraid I could no more than skim it afterwards; there were too many real life events too close to where I live.

I've seen animals slaughtered but could not bear to cut a jugular with my own hand. I'm one of those who avert their eyes rather than watch death and destruction even on a movie screen. There was a fantastic exhibit in the local photo museum of a photograhpers witness to the horrors so many are being subject to daily all over our world.

I did cut my son's umbillical cord upon his birth. He was delivered by a very gentle Cherokee man - yes he was an MD!

Well, now I am certain you'll really enjoy Pearson's book. May I suggest you may even wish to look forward to it after you finish with 'the Lovely Bones'.

Stick with it; it is really a good thing to quit cigarettes. I'm proud of you; it ain't easy.

Paulie,
I actually was told to quit smoking by the young lady who later became my wife. She refused to go out with me again if I didn't quit smoking, drugs, and drinking. I got her to compromise on the last one, seeing I come from a proud line of drunks. But I remember that smoking was tough, especially the after dinner cigarette. It's been six years though, and I guess as long as I don't start again I'll stay married. It's good motivation.
As far as finding a good man goes, they don't exist. We have to be molded. Find one that looks like he can follow directions and has a reasonably long attention span. Everything else is a matter of training. My wife swears by it. Of course it heps if you find a loyal one, I recommend one that has sisters he's close to. That way he's less likely to stray bacause he wouldn't want to be a bad example. Of course, we're still just men, so keep your eye on him.
Paulie, are you anywhere hear the Blue Ridge Mountains?

you were right Kyaa, it was very profound, and very morbid. If I had known how unsettling I might not have bought it. I find myself warning my daughter about the dangers of talking to your neighbors even, much less strangers. But I do think it's important to not fall into a false sense of security, like that could never happen to me. I am trying to decide whether to allow Jamie to read the book or not. She said she wants to but of course she doesn't know how scary it really is. It's a well written book though, and a very interesting story despite the horrible circumstances it involves.

I have already bought and started reading "I Don't Know How She Does It" and it seems like a much more pleasant story. Reading is one of the few things I can do that I don't seem to associate with smoking. If I'm in a really good book I am reluctant to stop reading even long enough to light a cigarette. So it's been good therapy for me lately. That and this little white plastic cylinder that I think is the best quit smoking gimmick they have come up with. It has this little tube of nicotine in it, so you can inhale and get a vapor of nicotine on the back of your thoat. It'll almost choke you. But the thing I think it provides is something to put in your mouth and the repeated hand to mouth motion. I read somewhere that the chemical part of the addiction should be over with in two weeks. After that you are just left with the life long habit of bringing your hand to your mouth millions of times a day. The inhaler is the least destrustive thing I have found to replicate that with. They do say however that you can become habitually attached to the inhaler and have to give up that habit too.