Upside Down Upside

As the Times is reporting, a lot of people are walking away from their homes. As housing prices drop, they end up owing more on the house than the house is worth, so they figure there's no point, especially if they've got an interest-only loan or if they've got an adjustable rate mortgage wherein the rate is about to go (or has gone) up. And there's a part of me that's snickering at this--not at the people who are doing it, because, no matter how much assistance they're getting, it's gotta suck--but at the bank people who are getting huffy about it.

"They made a bad decision and they should pay for it" is the attitude, the "they" here ostensibly being the homebuyers.

How about: you, Mister Bank, sold them a deal that was marginal for them, at best, and great for you, because you'd make all kinds of money from them, and the deal has suddenly gotten way worse for them, so they're saying "fuck it" and moving on? And you now not only own the house--which you did all along anyway--but you have to do the vacuuming and dusting and mop the floors? Metaphorically speaking, anyway. In other words, one could argue that it was the bank that made the bad decision.

I have accomplished exactly nothing today. Friend and I had some beers last night, then watched TV at his house. This morning featured a lot of laying about doing nothing and cat-petting, followed by breakfast (venison sausage; some plum brioche from the bakery that had been in his freezer for months; and eggs with onions, apple, and cheddar), followed by more laying about. I finally got sufficiently motivated to leave around 3:30 or so (he has to play hockey tonight, else I probably would have had difficulty dislodging myself at all). The trip home is about 90 minutes (two buses and a train), and I've been sitting around since then. Which, on one hand, is too bad, because I have nearly 900 pages of copyediting sitting on my kitchen table. But doing nothing feels quite pleasant.

I won't get much done tomorrow, because Friend and I are beginning our Month O' Hockey. We're meeting for food at 11 am and the game is at 2; we also have games on Wednesday night and Friday night. After the game tomorrow, the plan is to make a stew that was in Cooks Illustrated--a chicken tagine with figs and honey (and lemons and all kinds of good spices), though we're going to use venison instead, because it cooks for an hour or so, and I think the venison will do even better with that than the chicken would, and he actually has venison.

I was lying in bed this morning, contemplating muffin recipes, and, although I probably won't get to making one until Tuesday at the earliest, I think the first batch is going to feature lemon (because I have a bag of them in the fridge) and honey and ginger (Brazen Tart could have guessed those last two), and probably dried apricots, and possibly some dates, though those may wait for another day. (They're already desiccated, so no big deal if they sit around on top of the fridge for a little longer.) And I want to add some fiber to it, too. . . . Ooooo, just found a recipe for honey bran muffins with figs. There's a place to start.

Muffins usually are not terribly healthy--lots of fat, very little fiber, often a lot of sugar. My goal is to make something that is both tasty and relatively healthy (like the recipe to which the Tart linked in a comment below, for example, or like the recipe I found), and that freezes well. So I'm thinking of doing with the lemons kind of what I did for the Tart's lemon tart, except I'll peel the lemons, remove the pith, boil the peels for a minute or two, then macerate them in honey overnight, perhaps with the ginger in there as well. I'll probably reduce the sugar (in addition to a half cup of honey, there's a cup of sugar) and use some wheat flour, and I will still probably go with apricots rather than figs. (Okay; shopping list: apricots, buttermilk, sugar, bran.)