I swear I’m not doing yet another blog about hand pies, despite the header photo.
A discovery was made a couple of weeks ago that if I ask Alexa to play “You Butter My Bread” by the Divers, I will get a nice mix of songs that remind me of TLGMS. Some of the songs are actually TLGMS favorites.
Yesterday morning, while I was making something that I’ve promised I won’t mention, I made my request and one of the songs that Alexa coughed up was “Canned Goods” by Greg Brown. You all know I adore this song; this morning, looking out a the slight dusting of snow on the neighbor’s roof, I realized that it’s official that summer is over.
So going into fall/winter, this is what I’ve put up this year: strawberry jam, raspberry jam, pesto, applesauce, tomato sauce, basil/oil cubes, chive/oil cubes, mint/lime juice cubes, strawberries, raspberries and grapes. Somehow it doesn’t seem like I’m keeping up with Greg Brown’s grandmother!
This time of year I do actually work at not having too much leftover Halloween candy in the house. Luckily the number of kids that stop at the house has been remarkably consistent the last few years — even during Covid when I packed candy into little bags three weeks before and wore a mask while welcoming kids. This year, based on the number of pieces per bag, I figured I had enough to give each kid two pieces.
I always do relatively high-value candy – this year little Snickers and Reeses PB Cups. I heard a few ads on the radio the week before talking about non-candy ideas that you could implement and I just laughed. It might make adults feel virtuous but what kid ever wants some plastic bauble or deck of cards instead of candy. And while Smartees and Jolly Ranchers are infinitely cheaper, they aren’t as valued when kids are sorting out their bags of goodies at the end of the night.
In past years, I have taken any excess candy to the office – it never lasted long. The force was with me this year; I gave out the last four pieces of candy at 9 p.m. when I was getting ready to turn out the lights and bring in the luminaries. I congratulated myself on giving out all the candies.
YA has foiled my plans. She brought candy HOME – some she had found on sale and some that she picked up at the office. It is good candy – Ghiradelli caramel pumkins and Halloween-colored M&Ms. And she also bought Reeses pumpkins for herself awhile back. Turns out she bought more than one bag, so that is sitting out as well. I’m trying not to walk through the dining room too often. Out of sight, somewhat out of mind.
I’m pretty sure that not too many people see grocery-shopping as an exciting activity. Well, count YA and I as the outliers. For some reason over the years, we have cultivated grocery-shopping as an activity we like to do together.
Our favorite is Trader Joes. We especially like to go every couple of months when the new round of items hits the stores. We go through the Fearless Flyer that TJs sends out and highlight stuff that looks good. Sometimes, if I just want a couple of things, I don’t tell YA that I’m going to Trader Joes; if she comes along, it will triple the bill at the register.
The spot where Rainbow Foods used to be in the Hub Shopping Center near our house has been empty for seven years. A couple of times there were signs for temporary spots, like a Halloween store, but they never materialized. When construction started to happen almost a year ago, we were both excited to see what was happening there and then doubly excited when we found out it was going to be a Mexican market, bakery and taqueria. Unfortunately, it took WAY too long to open, so I had put my excitement on the back burner. Finally, about a month ago, it was clear from the trucks in the parking lot that progress was finally happening.
The grand opening was this past Saturday. Prizes, giveaway, samples, a bouncy house, mariachis and native dancers made it a big party. And it was CROWDED. The opening was at noon and we arrived at 1. Thank goodness for my bad knees and temporary handicap parking placard; we would have had to have parked in Iowa otherwise. And forget getting a shopping cart. Luckily YA and I didn’t have any big shopping plans so we just used a big bag that we had in the car.
Lots of nice-looking produce, a massive dairy/cheese aisle and two bakery sections, one with cakes, pies and then the self-serve bakery aisle …. I don’t even have the words
There were plenty of mainstream items alongside the Latino foodstuffs you would expect to find. A big endcap of Mary statuettes and a long row of Mary and other religious paintings above the front windows. They even have a Currency Exchange office. The taqueria was doing a bang-up business, as well as the deli. The tortillaria, where they will make fresh corn and flour tortillas is still in the works and should be open in a couple of weeks. You could see that area and the machines waiting to get set up. Since I’ve quit making my own tortillas, I can’t wait.
Anyway, YA and I had a fun time. We picked up a few items that I needed for a soup I wanted to make but didn’t partake of any on-site food – just too crowded, even for us. But my guess is that in the next few weeks, as the hoopla dies down, this will be another grocery shopping venue that YA and I will add to our events catalog!
If a tomato is a fruit, does that make ketchup a smoothie? Any good grocery shopping stories?
I have purposely chosen to not write about Halloween today, as it seems to me we have enough horror and fear around us. Instead, I wanted to let Baboons know what I am thankful for right now.
First, I am thankful to all the Baboons for putting up with all the posts I have written over the past several months about moving. I am sure they were getting pretty tedious to read. Moving is over, and now we are getting settled and organized. Not much more needs to be said about it.
I am also thankful for the increased time with our son and his family. We saw them yesterday in Sioux Falls and I got the best smiles from our 3 month old granddaughter.
Thanksgiving is four weeks away, and our son has requested a particular brined turkey ala Alton Brown, homemade French bread, and various other side dishes. Son and family, along with my best friend, will spend Thanksgiving weekend with us. I am so excited to cook in our new kitchen.
Finally, I am thankful that the court hearing Husband was to testify remotely at yesterday was settled on Wednesday afternoon. He had done a parental capacity evaluation on the parent in hot water with a central ND county. Now he is officially done working.
What are you thankful for these days. What are your Thanksgiving plans?
Being the efficient person that I am, I have been packing up any nonessentials as I have had time to do. Husband mentioned Tuesday that he wanted Fettucine Alfredo for supper. We had cream and everything else for it except fettuccine, since I had packed up all the dry pasta weeks ago. We settled for some nice fresh fettuccine from the grocery store.
I love to make my own fresh pasta and I look forward to being able to make it more often after we move. I have made tortellini, homemade lasagna, ravioli, and taggliatelle. Spaghetti is hard to make with our crank pasta maker. Grandson says that buttered noodles, which includes actual noodles as well as any kind of pasta, are his favorite things to eat. When I was his age it was a treat to have Chef Boyardee canned spaghetti. I don’t think I had spaghetti out of a box until I was in college.
I was lucky to have as a landlady in Winnipeg a woman who had immigrated to Canada from Calabria, and she helped me choose a crank pasta maker from the local Italian grocery store and taught me how to use and care for it. I remember her husband, also from Calabria, lamenting how awful the spaghetti was at a spaghetti dinner sponsored by their very English Catholic church (They had left the Italian Catholic church in Winnipeg due to a conflict with the priest). The spaghetti was really gluey and overcooked.
What are your earliest memories of spaghetti? What are your favorite pasta dishes?
At the library last week I happened upon a little hardcover book called Pizzapedia by Dan Bransfield. It says on the inside flap that it’s a “biography of pizza”. I wouldn’t go quite that far but it is a charming piece filled with marvelous illustrations.
And some humor. I found this about ¾ of the way through, right after an illustration of a pizza-making robot and how it works:
Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Pizza Robotics
First Law. A pizza robot may not burn a pizza or, through inaction, allow a pizza to come to harm.
Second Law. A pizza robot must accept orders for pizzas except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
Third Law. A pizza robot must protect its own recipes as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
If you’re not a Sci/Fi fan, here is a copy of Issac Asimov’s original Law of Robotics.
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
These laws were first introduced in Asimov’s 1942 short story “Runaround,” which is part of the collection I, Robot. They were designed to create a framework for ethical behavior in robots, ensuring that they prioritize human safety and obedience while also allowing for self-preservation.
I’m pretty sure that any pizza-making robots out in the world aren’t too worried about having to pledge allegiance to Issac Asimov, but the author made me laugh and that’s always helpful these days!
What is your favorite? Thin crust, thick-crust, stuffed crust, deep-dish? Square cut or triangles?
Sunday night I received a cryptic message from our daughter that said “Breaking News: I love sauerkraut”.
She had an out of town friend visiting a week or so ago, and the friend just whipped up some sauerkraut and left it to ferment. I like the taste but not the texture of sauerkraut, but I never had it homemade. Maybe it is crisper than the store bought variety. Husband sneaks a jar into the fridge every so often. I think that this is perhaps the only time Daughter may have eaten sauerkraut.
I stopped making pickles quite a while ago, since we always ended up with too many to eat in a year. My favorites now are cornichons from France. They come in a small jar so you aren’t left with too many. Husband occasionally teases about home brewing beer. He never has fermented anything on purpose. I wonder if Daughter’s discovery means she is going to start making her own kraut.
What are your favorite pickles? Ever done any fermentation?
I wrote on Wednesday about getting moose meat from our next door neighbor, a moose his brother-in-law had shot last year. The reason for the gift of moose was to make room in their freezer for the venison from a deer that Neighbor’s 12 year old daughter shot over the weekend.
Neighbor comes from an extended family for whom hunting is really important. Last Saturday he and his daughter drove to the sparsely inhabited grasslands south southwest of us, and she got her deer. It wasn’t a clean shot, and they had to chase it. It took a while for the deer to expire. They gutted it out, and loaded it in the truck. On the way back, the girl told her dad she didn’t want to go hunting anymore.
Neighbor spoke proudly of how courageous his daughter was for telling him how she felt about an activity so important in their family, and how he was supportive of her decision. He said they had great conversations on the way there and back about all sorts of things like boys, her plans for the future, etc. He is a good dad, an educator, who spent are least one summer in San Francicso coaching swimming for Stanford. His daughter is a lucky girl.
What family traditions have you kept or dropped? What qualities do you think make for a good father?
It’s the time of year that I start to think about hand pies. When I was a kid, Nonny would occasionally make an apple pie (no other kind that I can remember, just apple). Depending on how many scraps she had left over, she would make either cinnamon pinwheels or every now and then “mini pies” (what we called them). I didn’t realize until I was well into my adulthood that the rest of the world calls these hand pies. And they are my favorites!
In my early years of hand pies, I just cut out the hand pies using a knife – triangles, rectangles and even circles. Then several years ago I purchased a set of molds that make a rectangle shape, a “pie” shape and an apple shape. These aren’t actually any easier than just cutting the dough by hand, but they are a lot more fun.
In August I saw an ad online for a cat shape/dog shape set of molds from Sur La Table. They are incredibly cute but way too expensive for an addition to my kitchen equipment that can only be called whimsical. Now that we’re getting close to apple picking (or apple picking up, depending on my knees), I’m thinking about hand pies. So yesterday morning I looked up the cat/dog molds online to see if anyone sold them less expensively than Sur La Table. Nope.. didn’t find them. HOWEVER, thanks to my search, my online world has suddenly been flooded with ads for hand pie molds. There are a lot of different companies out there selling lots of designs.
I’m currently seriously eyeing a holiday set and have looked up some more filling recipes. The three top new contenders are Lemon Cream Cheese & Raspberry Jam, Walnut Cinnamon Sugar and Nutella Hazelnut. In an age of trying to rid myself of stuff, I’m thinking I need my head examined thinking I need more hand pie molds. We’ll see how long I last….
Kelly commented one day she didn’t know why the handle on the drawer holding the kitchen garbage can always had streaks of something on it. I knew immediately it was probably from the egg I crack every morning, but I didn’t offer that up at the time. She might read it here…
I was making daughters egg cup the other morning. The first egg cracked perfectly, opened perfectly, and I plopped the yoke right into the cup. Went to crack the second egg and the shell pretty much disintegrated, the contents splashed onto the counter and slid right off into the garbage. (Over that handle of course). At which point, as I flailed, I knocked the egg cup with the first egg onto the floor. The dogs were right there for clean up. With luck, Kelly won’t know about that either. Course it was kinda funny so I’ll probably tell her. … at some point…
A few weeks ago, I saw a postal truck dead on the side of the road. The next day I saw it being towed. A few days after that I saw another one being towed. Jeepers. Then there was the semi carrying mail that caught fire on Hwy 52 outside Rochester. I do have to say, mail service to our house seems to be getting better. We’re getting mail before noon, whereas it had been 7PM for a few years. And often now, they’ll bring the mail and a package right to the house. Those of you who’ve been to the farm know that’s not a light task; it’s a long drive out of the way to bring a parcel down to us.
And then just the other day I saw one of the new postal vehicles.
Uh… it’s…. something!
It’s called the ‘Next Generation Delivery Vehicle’. NGDV.
I did some internet searching on them. Here are various headlines and descriptions:
-U.S. POSTAL SERVICE’S UGLY DUCK MAIL TRUCK
-U.S. POSTAL SERVICE’S EV TRUCKS ARE STILL FUNNY-LOOKING, NOW HARDER TO KILL OFF
-The Postal Service’s new delivery vehicles aren’t going to win a beauty contest. They’re tall and ungainly. The windshields are vast. Their hoods resemble a duck bill. Their bumpers are enormous.
–The Oshkosh Next Generation Delivery Vehicles might look like background traffic in a Pixar film
-You can tell that [the designers] didn’t have appearance in mind
-SO MUCH FOR LOOKING COOL WHILE YOU DELIVER THE MAIL*
-It looks like a robot Beluga whale—built by the East German government.*
-Our Grumman mail trucks [The old trucks] look like they were supplied by the government of East Germany and they sound like the tortured exhalations of a hungover water buffalo—hhhhggggggggmmmmmggghhhh. Honey, the mail’s here.*
-Odd appearance aside, the first handful of Next Generation Delivery Vehicles … are getting rave reviews from letter carriers
–The side cargo door allows for direct delivery onto the curb
The drivers really like them. They have AC (Can you believe the old ones didn’t?), airbags, back up camera’s, a 360° camera, collision warning, and most importantly, the tall box allows drivers to walk through without ducking. The current vehicles, made by Grumman, came into service in 1987 and was scheduled for 25 years. They outlived that predicted life. But they are failing. And they seem to catch fire fairly often. Prior to that vehicle was the Jeep DJ-5. The USPS used them during the 1970’s and ‘80’s. I bought a used one from my friend Thom, and he had bought it used from someone else. It was dark green. I drove it for a few years in the mid 1980’s. It was standard left side drive, and I used it when I was a field reporter for the Department of Agriculture. With the sliding door, it was great for holding a measuring wheel out the door and driving around a field. It was just 2-wheel drive, so that wasn’t an option for every field, but it was still kinda cool looking (well, ‘Different’ anyway). Even with the bungee strap holding the back door shut (because if you went over a bump, the back door would pop open) and the steering was so loose you didn’t dare drive over about 55 MPH, but it was fun to drive. Thom had mounted a stereo between the seats, and bolted speakers to the back wall. The metal dash was pretty rudimentary.
Not my jeep, just a representative photo. I wonder why I never took a picture of mine?
Not too much happening around the farm. I did get the 630 carburetor back on and had it running! It’s quiet enough I could actually hear myself think! It’s not done, I have a few more things to replace. Saving up for the next ‘Old Tractor Part’s Order’.
I got a township call from a sheriff deputy about some junk that had been dumped. Turned out to be two large commercial pizza ovens. Those things are heavy! I called a couple neighbors to help load them. It was all we could do to just tip it up and tip it onto the trailer.
Pizza ovens on the trailer
The next day was a sectional couch and mattress to pick up. Just more ditch clean up. Part of the job for a township supervisor. The couch and mattress I haul to county recycling. We know them on a first name basis there. We’re regulars. The pizza ovens I added to my scrap metal trailer.
I finally hauled in the old tires I had cut off those wagons. Took them to a local auto shop and paid ___ for disposal.
Got half an inch of rain Thursday night. More predicted.
Here’s a picture of a chicken because the green shades look so pretty.
From a distance, they look black. But they have more colors than you’d think, and they are really pretty.
My summer Padawan has been out working on his car a few times. I helped him for an hour one night and rolling around underneath looking up, down, left, and right acerbated some vertigo I was beginning to get. The next day I sat very still. He’s learning a lot—I hope. He’s certainly at a disadvantage because he’s being self-taught, which is good, but it can be frustrating and it all takes longer. And he’s not quite in the right mindset for that. He’s eighteen so he knows everything already. And he gets frustrated easily with the car. I tried to tell him it’s all part of the job and if he’s gonna get frustrated, he’s in the wrong job. Monday he starts as an employee at a REAL job. A 7AM to 3PM job. We’ll see how that goes. Cross your fingers for him. I give him about a 35% chance of sticking with it. He just has no idea. And it’s going to take a few tries, and I suspect he’s gonna be one of those kids who must hit bottom to figure it out.
And some humor. I found this about ¾ of the way through, right after an illustration of a pizza-making robot and how it works:
Trail Baboon 