LiberMentis

Internet Meanderings and the Treasures They Procure

I love following link chains on the internet...going from one blog or website to another, sometimes for hours of fascinating reading that almost inevitably leads to me getting completely derailed from the thing that I was looking up or about to order in the first place. 

The latest chain was so interesting and fruitful that I had to write about it and share it with The World (hello one reader, you are now nick-named "The World").

See, it all started with a search for lard. We are almost out, so I need to restock. Usually I get my lard from a farm in Minnesota, but I wanted to see if there was a more local source, so the shipping might not be so expensive. No luck there, but that is how I came across this wonderful article about leaf lard (and discovered what scrapple is - I'd totally eat that). It was so interesting that I had to find the source, which turned out to be a collection of writings about old-fashioned southern food and nearly-lost cooking techniques written by the owner of what sounds like an amazing restaurant in Virginia. If I ever end up in Urbanna, VA, you can bet I will be paying a visit to the Something Different Country Store and Deli. Their byline is "Righteous Ribs and Bodacious Butts", after all.

I started working my way through the Something Different articles, trying not to drool too much, and came to the one about oysters, in which he describes shucking oysters and finding a tiny little passenger called (appropriately enough) an oyster crab. Well, I had to look that up.

It was with a strange mixture of gick factor and hmmmmm that I studied the googled images of this strange little crustacean. The oyster crab is very like a parasite, albeit a mutually beneficial one, since he contributes his share of nutrition to the oyster by catching and grinding up bits that the oyster can't filter, in exchange for room and board. But still, it's a sea "bug" living inside another creature. Bleh.

And yet, according to the internets, it's considered a delicacy. This blogging couple fried the ones they found and nommed them down, then shared an article on several ways to prepare them. And this fellow made me laugh til I nearly cried with his tale of suffering, discovery, confusion, and failed attempt at nurturing Gary the Oyster Crab. Maybe he shouldn't have poked at him so much.

I still haven't decided whether I would try eating one of the little buggers...I suppose if someone served it to me I'd have to try it on principle, but I don't think I'll be out actively seeking - or shucking - them out. I will, however, be keeping a much closer eye on the oysters that I eat.

Anyway, I need to go order my lard now, and put some meat into an ancient Roman marinade. (The recipe of which is the result of a previous day's link chain.) Yes, I did just post two links from 12BottleBar. They deserve it, because it's my go-to site when I want to find a fab cocktail - the bits of fascinating history are an added bonus. Plus, they keep company with some fab folks. Ooh, one more link: BUY THIS BOOK.

Please do follow these links. Especially if you are in love with food, history, and great writing.

Paleo Lamb Bobotie

Bobotie is considered to be a difinitive dish of South Africa, although it most likely originated in Batavia (now Known as Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia). It is one of the finest of the ground meat casserole dishes (at least in my opinion), with it's savory custard-like topping, and is really a must-try.

The version below is paleo-friendly, omitting certain traditionally used ingredients like raisins and chutney (too much sugar) and bread, and adding liver. I did miss the slightly sweet contrast of raisins, and might consider adding a few next time - perhaps minced so that a little will go a long way.

If you don't like liver, I recommend mincing it or even putting it in a food processor before adding it to the dish. It blends in pretty well.

Warning: the measurements in this recipe (aside from the meat portions) are approximate. I seldom measure anything when I cook. Instead I taste and smell and add ingredients til I'm satisfied.

Ingredients:

2 lbs ground grassfed lamb

1 lb ground grassfed beef

1 lb chopped grassfed beef liver

1 large red onion, chopped

4 or 5 tbsp Green Pasture Coconut Ghee

1tbsp each whole coriander seed, mustard seed and cumin seed

3 fat cloves of garlic, pressed or finely minced

5 or 6 tbsp favorite curry powder

1/2 cup raw almonds, soaked in hot water for an hour, skinned and coarsely chopped

1 pear, peeled and chopped

8 fresh pastured eggs

1-2 cups fresh raw cream and/or raw milk

1/2 to 1 tsp garam masala spice blend

3 bay leaves

 Salt and pepper, to taste

Start by melting about about half of the coconut ghee in a frying pan. Add the coriander seeds, mustard seeds and cumin seeds, and saute til the mustard seeds start popping. Add the onion and saute on medium-low til they start to get tender, then add the garlic. Saute for another minute or two, then, before the onions start to brown too much, set aside in your baking dish. (I think the one I use is 9x13)

Add the rest of your coconut ghee and 1/2 of the curry powder. Mix well in the pan and add 1/2 of the meat and salt to taste. Cook til most of the pink is gone and add it to the baking dish, reserving the fat to cook the next batch. Proceed to do the same process with the rest of the curry powder and meat.

Mix the meat together with the onion mixture, the chopped pear, the chopped peeled almonds, and 2 of the raw eggs. Press it down pretty firmly in the baking dish, and then bake it at 350 for about 25 minutes. 

Beat the rest of the eggs with the fresh cream/milk and the garam masala. Remove the meat from the oven, lay down the bay leaves (I broke them in half first) and cover with the beaten eggs and cream. Return to the oven for about 15-20 more minutes - basically as long as it takes for the custard to set.

By now you will be drooling over the amazing aromas of lamb and curry that are filling your kitchen. I recommend sipping on a glass of red wine to pass the time.

When the custard is set, remove the Bobotie from the oven and let it sit for about 10 more minutes, if you can stand it. Then dig in.

 

Wee Drinkies

Last year I came across a very nice drinks blog called 12bottlebar.com while in search of a cocktail recipe and wound up spending several facinated hours there, the result of which was a plan to go through the recipes one at a time to broaden my tastes. I ended up getting stuck on one specific drink, the Brandy Milk Punch, (paleo version using whole raw milk and - because it was what I had on hand, and I love it - Metaxa) that I loved so much I just couldn't move on. If you try this drink, don't forget the freshly grated nutmeg.

Time, of course, passed and I did move on, and then took a hiatus from drinking in general due to gastric distress ( the result of WAY too much spicy, acidic food and too many acidic, citrusy drinks). Rice pap and water, bleh!

It's only been a couple of months now that I've returned to adult beverages, particularly rediscovering my love for the many varieties and flavors of wine, including the subtle shift in profile as the wine oxidizes in the glass, and how this will usually improve, but sometimes (rarely) ruin it. 

A few nights ago I was in the mood for a drink, but discovered we were out of wine. We had plenty of gin in the freezer, though, and *ding* out of the depths of my subconscious popped the memory of that fab website. It took another while before I could reconstruct what it could have possibly been called, but thanks to some desperate memory tracing I finally found what I was looking for! 

And the recipe I decided on trying was The Obituary Cocktail. 

Two ounces of gin coupled with a quarter ounce each dry vermouth and absinthe - it sounded like a nice departure from a typical martini.  And I liked it well enough initially, but decided that the absinthe flavor became somewhat overwhelming, cloying, even, as it warmed up. And with my slight constitution and low tolerance, this drink was definitely a slow sipper. I ended up not finishing it, but not willing to give up on the concept...there were enough intriguing flavors in the concoction that I decided to toy with it.

The next evening, I decided to reduce both the absinthe and the vermouth to mere dashes - drizzles, if you will - and to add a citrus note, which I thought would go very nicely with both the gin and the absinthe. I had two slightly shriveled Seville oranges left over from my holiday visit to my mother's house in Sunny Florida, and decided they were perfect for my experiment. The result was one of the finest cocktails I've ever enjoyed, featuring that distinctive orangey-bitter note that only a Seville can contribute, tempered by the botanical...hmmm...anise-ness of the absinthe, which itself was contained and became an enhancement to the drink, instead of a main feature.

A Bit of a Side Note About Seville Oranges

If you are not familiar, Seville, or bitter oranges are known for their amazingly fragrant, thick skins and very sour juice. They are the oranges traditionally used for marmalade.

When I was a teen growing up at my mom's, we all eschewed those bitter little oranges, convinced there was something terribly wrong, possibly even diseased, with the poor, puny orange tree growing in our back yard. They were mostly a nuisance, aside from the lovely fragrance of their blossoms and their use as an occasional garbage disposal freshener. 

And then we met some ladies who changed our minds and opened our eyes to the treasure, the great value that we had so sneeringly derided. 

I'm not even sure how the conversation started...we were at a restaurant, my mother and I, down in St. Augustine, dining with some old school pals of mine (I have always included my mom in my social interactions - she's cool like that) and these lovely ladies - also friends of my friends and who hovered somewhere between mom and I in age - somehow in the course of our dinner conversations discovered that we had an orange tree in our back yard. They started plying us with questions, a very excited, hopeful look on their faces. Once they had established, with great relish on their parts, that we most likely were in possession of a Seville orange tree, they practically begged us for some seeds, some left over peels, anything really.

My mom did them one better and told them they could come and harvest as many oranges as they liked and we'd be grateful for the favor. And they did harvest them. They also told us a bit of the history, uses, and merits of the Seville orange, and how they had searched for years for a source of seeds, so they could grow their very own trees.

After that, of course I had a new-found respect for our little tree, yet, still I was never really fond of its fruits, since their sourness rivals that of a lemon or lime. Never liked them until, that is, until I went Paleo and stopped eating anything with processed or added sugar.

Last spring my husband and I took a couple of our friends with us down to visit my mom and we made pitchers of homemade margaritas with the oranges...Outstanding! A good reposado, the luciously tart and fragrant juice of the seville, and just a bit of fresh lime. There was no need for cointreau. Triple sec? Pah! We pretty much overdosed on Seville margaritas, and I (dis)credit those oranges with my subsequent relish for sour, acidic beverages that ultimately led to my gastric downfall!

A Return to the Topic at Hand

Apologies...I tend to get a bit off track. I blame my fine art schooling in college, which taught me to work an entire canvas instead of focusing on one element at a time. In art, sure, it can mean that the entire piece is integrated, because it is treated as a whole product and flows accordingly. In writing, (and the rest of life, unfortunately) it means that I tend to digress and get sidetracked very easily, meandering and pontificating, and only through a very concerted effort of will do I ever manage to stick to something long enough to satisfactorally conclude it.

Anyway, we left off with the Seville orange addition to the Obituary Cocktail, and how lovely it was. Well, the next evening arrived and I was out of Sevilles. But I had lemons!  

Ok, so lemons don't have the range or depth of that floral, orangey flavor that worked so charmingly with the absinthe, but certainly it must have some charm of its own! So, I gave it a try, but made the error of squeezing the juice of an entire lemon into my drink. Too tart, of course, so I had to temper it with the juice of some brandied bing cherries that a friend of mine made and was so kind as to include in my Christmas bag of goodies. The flavor was just what was needed to temper the lemon, but sadly, the added alcohol from the brandy  - and the added sugar - left me wide awake in the wee hours of the morning with a pounding heart and the sweats. (Paleo peeps, be warned if you don't already know - sugar and alcohol will affect you much more strongly! And for Deity's sake, stay the F*&^ away from agave! Your poor liver is already adjusting to so much, don't thrust upon it the added burden of fructose processing when you are already pushing it through it's paces with alcohol!)

Tonight marked the most recent iteration of this drink, and I started by discovering a surprise bottle of even better absinthe in my Drinkies cabinet. (We entertain a lot, and people bring a LOT of alcohol to our house. The leftover bottles inordinately end up in our Drinkies cabinet, a dark little space filled with strange dusty bottles of things we generally don't imbibe. (The good stuff either goes in the freezer or lives on the counter where it's consumed in very little time.)

I was looking for rum, to try the Trafalgar, a fitting drink since I LOVE anything that is remotely related to Patrick O'brian and his 20-book Aubrey-Maturin historical fiction series. Sadly, there was no Pusser's in the cabinet, which is what 12bottlebar recommends, so that recipe has been shelved for now, but 'lo if there wasn't a partial bottle of Golden Absente, a 138 proof, slightly greenish tinged upgrade to the regular 110 proof Absente that I've been drinking!

I started with a modest margarita glass (the normal kind you buy at the department store, not the fish-bowl versions you find at most Mexi-themed chain restaurants) filled it with ice, then poured in one standard shot of Bombay Gin (my preference is Hendricks, and the 12bottle website recommends Leopold's, but one does what one can with what one has, doesn't one?). Then I added the juice of only 1/2 a lemon, the usual conservative drizzle each of absinthe and dry vermouth, and 3 careful dashes of Angostura Bitters.

WOW!

This drink is phenomenal! The upgrade in absinthe was very noticeable, even with all the other elements. It was smoother and more subtle. My next pursuit will be to get a bottle of Kubler Absinthe, which is the recommendation of 12bottlebar. Just to see if I can taste the difference.

I also found that the bitters, far from interfering with the flavor of the absinthe, actually deepened it, working with it in a very pleasing way. I'm not sure I even have the words to express the subtle difference, but I recommend trying the drink before  and after adding the bitters to really get a TASTE of the difference.

And that, my friends, concludes this little daliance into the realm of adult bevarages. I had intended it to be a short piece celebrating 12bottlebar, but it ended up turning into something a bit more. Hopefully this piece will be of interest to more that just me, but even if it doesn't I've had a blast writing it, and enjoyed a titillation of my taste-buds to boot. (Isn't that a fab word? Titillation. It rolls off the tongue and makes one feel...well, titillated.)

Not just a Gardening Blog - I Can Sew too!

Now that it's just way too cold to venture outside for any length of time, I'm looking forward to focusing on some of the other interests I have such as blogging and sewing. It has always been my intention for this blog to be about more than just gardening and food, and I finally feel like I'm able to start documenting my sewing adventures. I have quite a backlog what with costumes from two Dragon*Cons and several pirate parties, not to mention my love for vintage clothing and a growing collection of fab vintage patterns.

My new blue office is the result of the need to separate my sewing room from my office/computer room. For the past couple of years I had been using one room for both purposes and there were just too many things going on in that one space! It was becoming a chaotic disaster area, particularly in the aftermath of spending 2 solid months sewing 10 - 14 hours a day for Dragon*Con.

I guess I will start by going backwards...Here is the most recent dress, which I made this past Saturday.

 

It's from this 1936 evening dress pattern that I bought several years ago at Eva Dress, my favorite online vintage pattern shop. I go there and drool over the patterns, and am on her mailing list so I can know when she posts anything new. 

Now, I have to admit that this is my first shot at sewing one of these patterns, because I was initially very intimidated by them. The instructions for this dress were literally only half a page long and un-illustrated, and I often have a hard time even when the instructions are several pages long with pictures for every step. 

It's possible I learned more about sewing than I realized this summer, but this really was a simple pattern. The instructions were very clear and concise and there were only 4 pieces. I made a mock-up in cotton first, and it went together so quickly that I was able to make the official version in less than three hours. I wore it to a Christmas party that very night!

I did leave out the trim and sash made in a contrasting fabric because I didn't have anything on hand that I thought would be suitable to go with the sweater-like knit that I used for the dress. And that knit was so fuzzy and forgiving that it was very easy to finish the edges without seam binding or other tricky finishing techniques. I expect that it would take an additional 2 to 4 hours to create this dress with the trim in a different fabric - which I fully intend to do!

I've got lots more to post, but I'd like to get better photos of some of the things I've made before I put them up. I really don't have to worry about running out of things to do this winter! So many patterns, too many ideas...and let us not forget next year's Dragon*Con!

Winter Garden Update

It got to be December pretty darn fast, I must say! I've been snuggled up in my cozy new blue office so deeply that I've hardly even noticed the outside world for the most part.

Cozy New Blue Office. Yes, that IS a map of Middle-Earth on the wall.

For instance, I knew it was theoretically cold outside because someone mentioned it would be in the twenties last week, but it didn't really sink in that it was feckin' freezing out 'til I went to get some greens out of the wee greenhouses I built and found ice between the sheets of plastic!

Which reminds me! I never posted photos of the finished greenhouses!

Here is the final version, with extra sheeting for insulation on the sides.

And here they are at night! It looks like there's a party going on in there!

They have been working perfectly so far. I have been amazed at how well everything is growing, especially certain plants that have failed previously. My chard is creating beautiful, deeply shiny green leaves with brilliantly hued stalks (I got the Bright Lights variety), and everything is just lush and thriving. I even have onions re-emerging, that I must have missed before, because they were so puny.

All of this came out a few days ago...cilantro, parsley and arugula that I had to harvest because they were starting to brush against the roof and lights. I cooked some of it up with some other mexican flavors and ground beef...with bacon on the side. Because, well, Bacon.

Today is December 13th, and we've actually had a bit of snow over the past 48 hours or so. I was just out checking on the greenhouses again, and everything still seems fine.

This is how it looks outside the plastic walls - ice and bits of snow. 

It's 27 degrees outside right now, and it was still about 40 in the greenhouses. I may need to add a bit more insulation or heat somehow, because it's supposed to dip down to the teens tonight, and it appears that the lights keep everything about 15 - 20 degrees warmer.

These guys seem to have it all under control for me. Don't mess with my garden, man, or you'll have to answer to them!

In other news, the seed catalogs arrived the other day! I am already planning next year's garden. I'm going to have to expand again to fit all the things that I want to grow! I am also thinking about starting some seedlings now to add to the greenhouses later. Unfortunately, my "sun-room" is on the northern side of the house and gets no sunshine at all this time of year, so I may have to invest in some grow-lights, or invade another room in the house that gets better light.

I am also hoping to add chickens this spring! I want two or three laying hens for fresh eggs. I'm gonna try the chicken tractor method, where they are in a mobile cage that can be moved around the yard each day. This allows them to eat fresh greens and bugs, all the while fertilizing the yard. It also prevents a lot of the negative things that people associate with chickens, like flies, odor, compacted earth, mud and filth. I will also probably build a coop for them to sleep in at night, so they will be safe and cozy. I still have a lot of research to do, and plans to create, because I suspect I will have to restructure my garden a bit in order to accommodate the hens. 

Winter is yet just begun, so I have plenty of time to plan, daydream and design my perfect Garden 3.0.

 

Update to the Update: It's 8:30 pm and 21 degrees outside. The low is expected to be 13. I checked the temp inside the greenhouse and it was around 30, which just won't do. I added a couple of sheets and another piece of plastic to the main greenhouse, and now I just have to wait and see. I really don't have anymore layers to add. Even if the greenhouse fails and I lose everything, I 'm alright with that. I got an extra couple of months out of the growing season, and maybe next year I will be able to invest in a proper structure. I'll see what it all looks like in the morning!

Fall-to-Winter Garden Update

Today is November 5th and tonight it's supposed to freeze. I am partially amazed that it's getting cold so soon this year, in spite of knowing that we are going through a solar cycle of reduced sunspot activity that will mean cooler temperatures for the next 10 years or so.

As soon as I found out about the upcoming freeze, I starting planning for my winter garden. Basically I want to save the plants that are currently growing, and see if I can continue to grow some veggies well into winter. So yesterday I took apart the bean trellis that I had created out of a modular tomato cage kit (I never did get any bean vines...the bunnies conspired against me and ate all the seedlings) and started building a small greenhouse structure around my two primary garden beds.

Ye olde bean trellis before the plague of bunnies.

The greenhouse framework takes shape.

It started raining so I went to Home Depot for some supplies and continued the rest of the construction today. I have to say that I had a blast building this thing! I felt like I was playing with tinker toys! I used zip ties and string to tie the structure together, and hammered the vertical supports into the ground for extra stability.

Once I was happy with the framework it was time to improve the soil. I decided to use a lasagna gardening method of layering all the amendments around the existing plants. I layered a bit of peat moss, diatomacious earth, steer and chicken manures, vermiculite, crushed eggshells and other kitchen scraps, and topped the whole thing off with leaves from the yard. I'll continue to add leaves, peat moss and kitchen scraps throughout the winter to help keep my plants cozy. By spring, I hope that I will have happy new soil to start with.

All tucked in for winter.

Next it was time to install the heat source. I decided to use a very simple, cheap and low tech source of heat: Indoor/outdoor C9 and C7 Christmas lights! They were easy to attach with zip ties, and should keep all the plants cozy and warm (not to mention festive).

As I was working I could feel the temperature dropping. My fingers got a bit stiff and it was getting harder to tighten the zip ties. Good thing I had a cozy hat and scarf to keep the rest of me warm!

See the zip ties sticking out of my pocket? 

I had just finished stringing the lights, and was about to start creating a nice little greenhouse by carefully and attractively arranging 4mil plastic sheeting around my framework, all the while getting fab photos of each stage, when nature said "F-you very kindly, but I don't think so." 

It started raining.

I got the lights hooked up to the electricity and hastily cut lengths of sheeting and draped them over the frameworks, anchoring the bottoms with rocks, all the while getting colder and wetter.

And then the rain turned to ice pellets.

I rushed around getting all the tools and leftover bits inside, and then I remembered my tomatoes! NOOOO! I couldn't let them freeze. So I went out and picked all the tomatoes off of the vine, ice pelting down all around me. I guess I'll try pickling the greenest tomatoes, and see if the others will ripen on the window sill.

Look at all these beauties:

All summer long I think I got 3 puny, sickly tomatoes. It was just too hot for them on the deck. Then fall came along and that tomato plant became lush and thick with fruit and blossoms.

Tomato plant on 11-1.

After a while the ice stopped and I came back out to get this picture:

It looks so cozy and fun in there that I wish I could shrink myself down and wander around. And yes, I know how weird that sounds. But it would be fun!

Tomorrow should be nice and sunny, so I will be able to finish the greenhouse properly. I want to attach the plastic to the framework, making sure it's all properly sloped for water runoff and make access panels that I can open to get at the veggies and for ventilation on nice days.

But now it's time to go start supper and spend the rest of the evening snuggled up in front of the fire.

Recommitting to Paleo (the Butter Post)

I've been drifting in my paleo diet over the past 4 or 5 months. O, let me count the ways:

• eating rice or corn a few times a month to several times a week
• eating potatoes several times a week
• consuming processed foods such as chutney (my favorite way to eat eggs is fried in butter and covered in cheese, chutney and chili sauce - which is mostly paleo, except that commercial chutneys have sugar)
• eating out at Waffle House about once a week (meats and eggs are fine, but I won't lie - I go there for the hashbrowns which are fried in very bad oil) 
• eating about twice a month at a local Korean place, where I am certain there is gluten and HFCS in all the sauces, the ricecake wraps are most likely made with wheat flour, and I drink the "happy wine" - a fairly sweet rice and corn wine.
• and there have been more than a few "lost" weekends recently due to overconsumption of alcohol that makes my liver twinge just remembering.

I am starting to notice little things creeping back into my daily life that I do not want: more allergies, carb cravings, bloating after many meals - particularly meals eaten out, more gas, etc. I've also noticed that drinking raw milk, which never used to bother me, has recently started making me bloat.

There are a lot of good things that I am doing with my diet, like cooking with lard, butter or coconut oil, and eating a lot of grass fed meat and pastured eggs. Some of my veggies are even home grown. I haven't used sugar in ages. I read labels pretty religiously, choose things with the purest, simplest ingredients, and mostly make things from scratch. I cut out diet sodas about a month ago and haven't looked back. But all these good things don't counteract the damage I am doing to myself, and I've decided to get back on the plan.

I'm not quitting everything cold turkey due to financial reasons. Right now any money we spend needs to be put to good use and I am not throwing away all the groceries I just bought. That being said, when the potatoes are gone, I'll start buying sweet potatoes. When the cheese runs out, I won't be replacing it. I've already stopped drinking alcohol - that last hangover left me with plenty of resolve.

For me the hardest thing to give up is going to be dairy. I LOOOOVE my glass of milk per day (sometimes two) and I put cheese on everything. In an attempt to eat more fish, I started putting herring on rice-crackers with cream cheese, and now I still eat the cream cheese, but not so much the herring. I drink my morning coffee with about a 1/2 cup of half and half (I'd prefer heavy cream, but can't usually find any without fillers and emulsifiers, so I started drinking the half and half, which is only cream and milk). And then there is the yogurt, the goat cheese, the occasional cave-aged gruyere...Basically, a large proportion of each grocery haul is dairy.

So what am going to do? I am cutting out all soft cheeses immediately. Also gone is my milk and half and half. This morning I used coconut milk in my coffee, and it was...tolerable. Not fab, but I didn't really notice after the first few sips. As I said, when all that lovely cheddar, asiago and parmesan is gone, I won't replace it, and I suspect that we will slow down on what we still have.

I know some folks who are doing the Whole30 paleo diet, which is basically a very strict paleolithic diet for 30 days. No Neolithic foods at all. No dairy (no butter, even), no alcohol, no grains, no white potatoes, no sugars or sweeteners, no legumes. Just meats, eggs, veggies, some fruits and nuts, and healthy fats (animal and vegetable), excluding butter. I'm pretty much on board with this entire plan, including ditching the dairy, especially after reading this post on the Whole9 website. But there is one thing I'm balking at - that no butter thing.

See, I'm not convinced that the dairy factor is that simple. Here and here are a couple of articles written by doctor and paleo blogger Kurt G. Harris about dairy that make me question one particular assumption in the Whole9 post. I'm not doubting the science they cite, but they make the assumption that dairy is going to have this huge negative effect for most folks, and should just be avoided. 

I believe that if dairy is going to affect a person, it's usually exacerbated by other bad things like gluten, which causes leaky gut. I suspect that my recent bloating problem with milk is due to the crap that I am eating, and the possible gluten I've been getting at restaurants, because this is the first time since I started drinking raw milk and eating paleo that I've had a problem. I agree that I probably need to reset my baseline and so I will stop consuming dairy for at least 30 days. When the 30 days is up, I will try some milk and see what happens.

But my big question at the moment is: Does butter contain enough of these milk proteins to be a problem? That is what I have to decide.

I mostly cook with lard anyways, but I always use butter for certain things like eggs, baked things like potatoes, sweet potatoes and apples...At this point, I'm not going to stress about it. I think that butter and dairy are the least of my problems, and I'm sure that I will improve immensely by ditching all the things on my bulleted list. In addition, I'll go dairy free and quit drinking for 30 days, and maybe I'll even leave out the butter.

I have no idea what is going to happen to Stoney's Pub nights, though. Sheesh, we'll all be a bunch of tee-totalers. Maybe we should take up knitting and checkers. Hmm...geeky board games, anyone?

July Garden Update

With the increased heat of summer I haven't been out in the garden as much as I was in June...it's fecking hot out there! That being said, I have been giving my share of garden tours, as we've been doing quite a bit of entertaining these past few weeks.

I can see the garden beginning to wain all around me. The cucumber plants have almost succumbed to some sort of wilt or virus, but I'm alright with that because I am about sick of cucumbers!

 

The progression of the wilt starts with little yellow spots forming on the leaves, which spread until the whole thing wilts and dies, then turns brown. I tried cutting away the infected leaves, but it didn't seem to slow down the process. :(

 

My pepper plants have been producing some lovely peppers, although some of the bell peppers are getting rotten spots before they are fully developed. The peppers are small, too, but then so are the plants themselves.

 

The best pepper plants are ones that I can't identify, because I lost the labels for them. I know that one of them is mild and popular in Korean cooking, and the other one is small, shiny and hot as hell.

 

 
   
My tomatoes have been really dismal this year. So far, in my admittedly limited experience, I find tomatoes to be one of the hardest plants to grow. This year I have two productive plants, but one of them seems to be diseased, and both are producing a pitiful crop.

I don't even know what the disease is, but this is what happens to most of the tomatoes it produces:

Perhaps it would be best to just pull them out and try again next year.

One of the biggest problems I have with growing tomatoes is the evil, nasty, vile hornworm, as you probably know if you've read this post.

Last week I discovered two more of the buggers - really big ones. I look for them a couple of times a week, but I just never see them until they get ginormous and scary.

 

Okay, so maybe they are pretty. But only in the safety of a photograph! Face to face, I tell you that was a scary monster!

Luckily my friend Miranda was visiting, and was willing to slay (smush) them for me. She got oooged out too, but she bravely carried on. She actually picked them off the plant with her fingers. She got green slime on her and everything. **ewngah**

 

I stood by (at a safe distance) and took photos of the extraction.

 

Unfortunately it wasn't a clean extraction. Part of the ick factor with these guys is that they hang on tightly, and the process of pulling them off the branch makes them leak (or squirt?) a nasty dark green fluid. Miranda got it on her hands and clothes.

I don't think I can ever again ask her to do this favor for me, as she was pretty freaked out by the end. We were both squeaking and ewwwwing by the time she stomped on the second hornworm and kicked it off the edge of the porch. **shudder**

She's my hero.

Down don't get me wrong, it hasn't all been doom and gloom in the garden. My sunflowers finally bloomed and were glorious! The bees were happily pollinating, and afforded me some great photo ops.

 

Now that the sunflowers have pretty much fulfilled their cycle, the heads are drying out and making seeds. I've noticed one beautiful and sweet little pair of goldfinches harvesting the seeds, and I suspect that they have a nest somewhere nearby.

This is the best photo I could capture, since I can't get closer than the kitchen window, or they fly away. They are both in the photo below, but the female is hiding behind the top center leaf with the hole in it. Every time I see the male it makes me smile and revel in the beauty of his bright yellow plumage. I hope to get a better shot of him before he flies off for good.

 

Also, my bush beans are producing...I harvest them when they get about 4 inches long, and I never get more than 10 or so at a time, just enough to saute in butter as an occasional side dish.

 

 I love their color! My pole beans are still in the flowering phase, and I can't wait to see how their beans look...the flowers are such a pretty crimson!

 

Well, I was going to spend some time today writing about some of my other endeavors, such as recent sewing projects, but I think that will have to wait for another day. Supper (actually Breakfast) is in the oven and there are plenty of other tasks that are calling for my attention.

FrankenFlower: A Story of Survival

Once upon a time, in a little onion patch of a small garden, there grew a simple onion flower bud, the only onion flower bud in the entirety of the onion patch, in fact.

The kind lady gardener who tended the onion patch was very pleased to discover the little bud and became very quickly fond of it. She would come and visit the bud every day, making sure that it had enough water and fertilizing the soil around it's roots to help it grow big and strong.

The onion bud grew larger and fuller, until one day it's cone peeled away with the help of the warm, friendly wind to reveal many, many tiny white buds.

 

The lady gardener was thrilled to see the new onion blossom. Sometimes she would just sit and admire the onion blossom, even taking photos of it for her garden journal. She was really excited and could hardly wait to see how the blossom would look when all the tiny little buds opened and the onion flower was in full bloom!

One morning the lady gardener came into the garden to water all the plants, and there it was! Onion blossom was fully blooming and showing off it's newly opened buds with pride!

"Hooray for onion blossom!" said the lady gardener, and she ran to fetch her camera.

That night, a terrible, mean thunderstorm came through the area. "Look at that little garden! ARGH! I'm going to smash and rend with my big winds! I'll douse everything with my big rains! RAWRRRR!" 

The garden shivered with fright and everybody clung to each other in their patches of dirt with all their little, planty might.

But the lady gardener had been wise when she made her garden. She placed everyone close together so they could become good friends, and so that the taller, stronger plants could shade and shelter the smaller, more tender ones.

The mean old storm did it's worst that night, rampaging and having it's tantrum. No one really knows why the storm chose to take it's wrath out on the little garden...it wasn't really a very large storm, and it's possible that it got picked on a lot, and had turned into a bully because of it.

Whatever the case, the mean storm soon grew bored of it's wrath-making and fizzled off to find a bank of clouds to fall asleep in.

The next morning, the lady gardener came out to see how her plants had fared in the storm. There were a few bits of trash that had been blown into the garden, some leaves that had been torn from trees and even a few branches lying about, but the garden seemed fine. All the plants were beaming at her with relief at having made it through the night.

All the plants, that is, except for onion blossom.

"What's wrong, onion blossom? Why are you laying there on your side in the lettuces?" Lady gardener went over and gently lifted onion blossom up to see what had happened to it. "OH, NO! Your stem! It's broken and bruised!"

You see, onion blossom had been so curious to see the other plants outside of the onion patch, especially the frilly, colorful lettuces, that it's stem had grown very long.

 

Unfortunately, the blossom's stem had grown too long to be strong enough to withstand the mean storm.

And the lady gardener was so sad that the onion blossom would not get to finish out it's life (and maybe even make seeds), that she did something very drastic indeed.

She cut the blossom just above the ruined stem, and then she cut the stem way down lower to reveal the hollow tube of the onion plant's stalk. And there she gently placed the broken blossom so that it's stem was inside the tube - hopefully deep enough to get the water and nutrition it needed.

Over the next couple of days, the lady gardener saw that the tube-stem closed itself around the blossom's broken end, keeping onion blossom safe and alive.

And thus was FrankenFlower created.

 

Perhaps the onion blossom isn't as vibrant and lovely as it once was, and it is surely sad to be so far away from the lettuces that had become it's favorite companions, but yet it still blooms, and yet it still lives. And the lady gardener continues to watch over FrankenFlower and all the other plants in her garden.

The End.

Battle of Good and Evil in the Garden

The cucumbers are doing their best to cover my back deck. I may be doing a lot of pickling if all those blossoms make fruits.

Creeping tendrils of fuzzy yellow cucumber goodness:

 

 

This one is about halfway grown. Lemon cucumbers are supposed to be harvested when they are lemon-sized and just starting to turn yellow. If they are allowed to reach full maturity, they turn a bright yellow with vertical stripes. I tried one that was already mostly yellow and the skin was too thick to enjoy, so now I harvest them sooner, rather than later.

Sliced:

Here is a counter full of bounty:

 

Chamomile blossoms on the left, a jar of pickled radishes, and a bunch of cucumbers, onions, turnips and a bell pepper. All of these are pretty small, about the size of a lime or lemon. They make up for their size with fabulous flavor!

I've got sunflowers that are about to open up, and lots of blossoms and babies on my pepper plants. Some of the labels went missing, so it will be even more of a surprise to see what kinds of peppers they make. The beans are doing really well, but I am still not happy with the trellis I made for the pole beans. I think I need to do some minor carpentry.

Also, my peppers and cukes look so heat-struck every day at mid-day in this heavy heat. I think I will make a shade that I can use to cover them in the harshest hours of the day, without blocking out all of the light. I've got some weed barrier lying around, and that seems like it would be enough to take the worst of the scorching sun away.

Most of my plants only require a moderate amount of water...I supplement the frequent short rain showers with a few moments of running the low pressure irrigation and nearly everybody seems happy. However, the container plants need more water than the ones in beds, and the cucumbers are gulping water like crazy! I think they probably go through at least a gallon a day.  Sometimes I have to water them twice a day. Today I added a tiny bit of fertilizer to the water, since so much volume goes through. I'll see how it gets on over the next few days.

I've been thinking a lot about why I enjoy gardening so much...I think it engages my curiosity because there is always something new to discover. I love growing something for the first time and seeing what it will do, what sort of flowers it will make, how tall it will get, what it will smell and taste like. I had no idea that squashes and cukes were fuzzy and grew on fuzzy vines that make you itch if you brush against them. I was absolutely spellbound last year when I saw my first okra blossom, delicately beaded with water after a summer rain.

 

The harvest is so exciting. I can't wait to go outside each day and see what is ready to pick. If it's something like a root vegetable, every once in a while I'll dig down around the plant, pushing the soil away ever so gently to see if it's big enough, then carefully patting the soil back into place.

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Update: GAHHHH!!! EWWEEEE!!! OMG! Ick-factor Eleven!

I just got really freaked out...

I went outside to check on my plants and water the cukes and noticed that two of my tomatoes were half-eaten away. I pulled them off the vine and saw some type of blackened, shriveled poo-goo on the leaves below and wondered what crude, foul and mannerless critter was eating my 'maters and then adding insult to injury by emptying their bowels right there at their dining table.

It was at that moment that my eyes locked onto the most ginormous, ookiest, scaryiest green caterpillar-monster thing I've ever seen in my life - quietly pretending to be part of the tomato vine!

As soon as I saw it and realized how close I had come to touching it, my body went into immediate and uncontrollable "GET IT OFF ME" flailings and convulsions. I think I remember hearing the sound of terrified squealing, too. As I was the only one around, I'm pretty sure the noises were coming from me.

(See, I have caterpillar fear. I have suffered this fear ever since I was a little kid. It isn't rational, I know, but it really doesn't matter - caterpillars creep me out in the worst way. True Story: about 10 years ago Ian, an ex boyfriend of mine, spent a good 5 minutes coaxing me to come over and take a look at a large black and orange specimin he had discovered clinging to the screen on his porch. I was on the same side of the screen as the cater-monster, and I guess Ian just couldn't resist the temptation...he flicked the vile creature onto me, gleefully laughing at his joke until he realized that I was literally convulsing, screaming and flailing about in terror. I was even crying. He had to hold me by both arms to get me to stop flailing, and then gently flicked the caterpillar off of my shoulder, where it had been clinging the entire time. This realization of course made me start flailing about all over again.)

So there I was today, face to face with my terror. This dude was big and he was gonna have to go down. I looked frantically around me for a weapon, something that could smash and destroy, but nothing too short...I couldn't risk letting the ooky thing touch me! My eyes lit upon a large pair of pruning shears. Just the thing.

 

I poked the monster-pillar with the tip of the shears, half-squinting my eyes, my head held wayyyy back in case he tried to spray me in the face with a stream of acid-spittle or slime-venom. He reared back a bit. Gulp. I poked again.

 

He tried pretending he was just a part of the plant, but I was onto him. I wedged the shears under his belly so I could pry him off of the plant. I wanted to get him down on the deck so I could do my smashing without damaging any 'maters.

 

That's when he started shaking back and forth violently, RAWR!

 

I jumped and squealed. I retreated and went through another course of squick-tremors.

 

Deep breath. No. I had to remain strong. My 'maters were at stake here, I had to protect them!

 

I went right back in there, but this time my tactic was different. I couldn't pry the fucker off of the vine, so it was time to fight dirty. I opened the shears and - cut!

 

UNNGH!!! YUCK! The head fell to the ground in a very wet, slimy, dark-green splat of writhing guts. (**shudder**) The body still clung to the vine, dripping slimy ooze and twitching. The fear and revulsion were so strong in me that my eyes started streaming. I was shaking. I poked again and again and again until I could get the rest of the bug's carcass off of my tomato plant. I had won.

 

I left the body there as a example to any other tomato-munching interlopers, and looked at the plant for more to smash while I was still feeling strong and fierce. I found another much smaller caterpillar nearby and smushed him quickly with the shears. But I had reached my limit. No more Outside for me today.

 

Noah's been sitting with me for the last half hour while I wrote this report. He gives me a gentle lick every now and then, to reassure me. His paw squeezes my thigh gently to let me know that it's okay. I think he may be laughing at me a little, too, but I don't mind.