We had our first church handbell rehearsal last Thursday, and welcomed some new players. During some after-rehearsal snacks, the conversation started on gardening. Two of the new players, a married female couple, said the rains this summer really helped with their zucchini crop, but they had too many now. We advised them to take the excess to the food pantry. Another veteran bell player told the story of moving to a small Idaho town where her husband was a Luthern pastor. They were quite solemnly warned to keep their car doors locked at all times in the summer and fall because people would stealthily deposit unwanted excess zucchini if the doors were unlocked.
We have never been the recipients of excess zucchini until last Saturday, when I found a nice big one on the front steps. I highly suspect the new bell ringers of pranking us with the zucchini. Since it is a bigger one we plan to shred it and make zucchini pancakes. Just wait until our butternuts are ripe! The new bell ringers may be in for a surprise on their front steps.
When was the last time you were pranked or you pranked someone? What would you like to leave surreptitiously on someone’s yard or front steps?
Husband and I order lots of foods on-line that are imported. We get quite a bit from a Spanish importer, such as tomato sauces, olive oil, dried beans, serrano ham, and Spanish cheeses and pancetta. We also order pasta and parmesan cheese from an Italian importer, and gallon cans of Turkish olive oil from the Syrian grocery store in Fargo. We get beans from Rancho Gordo. I like to have a well stocked larder. We are really spoiled.
I find myself in a quandary now, due to the threat and uncertainty of tariffs, the fact that we are moving soon, and the fact that this is the the time of year to stock up on dried beans and other items as it is harvest time. There is a special bean from Spain called Tolosa beans, for example, that is essential to a soup we love to make, and is hard to find in the States after autumn. We are also trying to use up as much food we have currently so we don’t have to move it.
After the threats of tariffs emerged in the new year I ordered two gallons of Turkish olive oil and two half-gallons of Spanish olive oil before the price skyrocketed. We will have a lot of olive oil to move. Yesterday I ordered eight pounds of Rancho Gordo beans as we were short on some beans we cook often. They won’t take up too much room on the moving truck. I don’t plan to order any more food on-line at this point, but I am feeling increasingly militant about not letting politics interfere with my cooking or my finances.
How might tariffs impact your budget? What imported foods do you purchase? What foods do you make sure you have on hand?
One of the challenges of sharing a kitchen with Husband is his extreme fussiness regarding the foods he cooks and prepares. He has many preconceived expectations as to what goes with what, and is unhappy if the combinations aren’t exactly the way he wants them. When he seasons a dish, he spends quite a bit of time tasting and adding this and that til it is just right in his mind. I can’t tell the difference.
The same goes for his fussiness in pairings of different foods. I can usually put up with his demands for just the right main course with just the right sides. It is a little more difficult now that we are trying to empty our freezers before we move. We have agreed, for example, that we aren’t going to buy any more sausage, brats, or ground meat until the stuff we have is gone. There are a lot of sausages to be used up.
The other day I was pretty exasperated with him for stopping at the butcher shop and buying some ring bologna and summer sausage. I reminded him of all the brats and other sausage that we had that would work just as well as bologna. He insisted that he had to have the bologna because that is always what he has with the particular side dish he was going to have that evening. I told him that we would never get through the food we already had if he keeps this up, and that he might have to change some of his expectations for meals if we are to reduce the food in the freezers. He sighed and stated in a somewhat martyred tone that he would just have to start practicing acceptance regarding our meals. Husband says he owns his culinary idealism.
I am fortunate to be married to someone who loves to cook and loves good food. I just hope he doesn’t get too distressed as he has to change his ideas, at least temporarily, regarding our meals.
What do you have to practice acceptance of? Do you have inviolable expectations for some meals and food pairings?
Last week was fraught with baking. On July 26 the peach man arrived. He is a guy from Mott, ND, about 50 miles to the southwest of us who spends his summers driving out to Washington and picking dark red and Ranier cherries, and Cling and Freestone peaches, and driving them back to towns in southeast Montana and southwest North Dakota. He sells them in the mall parking lot in our town. The Freestone peaches are the best. We bought half a crate of them. It was very important for my parents to get a crate of peaches in the late summer and gobble them as fast as we could. I continue the tradition.
The peaches went into paper grocery bags and ripened in three days, all at the same time. It was another mantra in my family that it was a sin to let food spoil, so I set to making peach crumble, peach upside-down cake, and a pasta salad with peach, corn and tomatoes. and we ate the rest on Grape Nuts and ice cream. Husband will eat the remaining four peaches on cottage cheese.
We only buy peaches from the guy from Mott. He will come around in a few weeks with cherries from the Flathead Lake area of Montana. We will get them, too. It is unfortunate that Mott has been known in the area for decades as “Mott, the spot that God forgot”. I have no idea why. I think a more apt description would be “Mott, the spot where fruit is hot”.
What were the important traditions you grew up with?What was the town you grew up in noted for?
I finished lighting the show in Chatfield last week, in time to fly out on Saturday with Kelly and our daughter. Kelly had a work conference and we got to travel along and amuse ourselves for a few days. I was under the impression that taxi drivers were always better than Uber / Lyft because they are more professional and know the roads better. But that plan falls apart if they’re all independent taxi’s and they all seem to need to enter the address in their phones anyway. And they tell me they’ve lived here multiple years, so it makes me wonder why they don’t know their way around yet? But whatever. Our first driver was crazy; drove like a maniac and told me he liked American women and big boobs! Second taxi was a nicer driver, but his car broke down and when daughter and I came out of the Butterfly Pavilion he was sitting right where he had left us. He called a friend of his to take us back to town. And the taxi back to the airport was a nice guy with sheet metal screws holding his car door together. Resourcefulness!
Daughter and I had a good time walking around downtown and there was lots to see. I took lots of photos of old buildings. The day we saw the butterflies, that only took an hour. We never got going too early in the day, because we were on vacation after all. I was surprised that I could out-walk daughter. It was as hot there as it was back in MN, but less humidity, so that was nice. I didn’t expect it to be that hot. I found it interesting so many restaurants and bars had wide open windows or garage doors and yet there was very few bugs. One bartender told us they really spray the place down at night, but she said there was less flies this year than usual.
On Wednesday Kelly gave a presentation on Laughter Yoga. I snuck in the back and watched. It was well received, the group liked it, and she had several good loud laughers, so that got the rest of the group going.
She picked up some swag for me with the catch phrase: “Wicked Smaht Pathologists” and a link to their group. It makes me laugh. If you need a pathologist, you’re gonna want one that’s Wicked Smaht.
We had a young lady staying at the house to deal with dogs overnight while we were gone, and some other friends that would take care of chickens and eggs and amuse the dogs during the day. They said, “Bailey and Humphrey make us want dogs. Luna reminds why we don’t have a dog.”
And on the way home, in the MSP airport, the gate agent was a girl I went to high school with and hadn’t seen in 40 years. We had a little reunion right there at the gate for 15 seconds. It was nice to see her again.
Last week as I was headed to Chatfield one night, I saw, walking on the side of the road, three nuns in full black habits with the veil and headpiece. I had to double take, and double take again. This was out in the country. A few days later, Facebook, of course, provided the answer. There is an old order Catholic Church in the area and they have been seen coming from there. Well that explains it. Sure did make me wonder though. And then, ten days later, I saw two more nuns in full habits. But that was outside a Catholic Church, and they were selling baked goods at a street fair. Although when I saw them, they were packing up. I saw them pulling the totes with the collapsible tents up the street. I hadn’t seen a nun in full habit for years and now here was twice!
You all had that big storm come through on Monday night with high winds… the oats got beat up. Yep, sure did. Maybe 50% of it down. We didn’t get any hail so nothing threshed out on the ground, it’s just broken off and lying down and it makes it more difficult to pick up for harvest.
The plan is to start harvesting Friday. Going to try taking it straight- meaning I don’t swath it and lay it in windrows first. A lot of guys do take it straight. When we have tried it in the past it didn’t work so well… we shall see. I have the swather ready just in case.
The soybeans are waist tall and looking good. At least some of them. They don’t all look this good, but some of them.
There’s a guy on YouTube goes by ‘Bushel Billy’, from the Ohio area and he was talking about a corn issue with a certain variety, in extreme weather conditions, having “tassel wrap” meaning the last leaf doesn’t unwrap from the tassel. So of course if the tassel can’t open up to shed pollen, it’s going to be tough to get all the kernels (silks) pollinated. It takes 90,000 kernels to make a bushel. Hence 90K pollen grains to 90K silks are needed. He pointed out how after pollination the silks turn brown and detach from the kernel after pollination. I didn’t know that and I had to check it out myself.
Notice how many silks are loose. Just a few on the tip still stuck.
HUH! Sweet corn would be so much easier if the silks would detach.
You all know I’m a little obsessed with a certain event each August. I like to be organized but normally don’t start getting going until a couple of weeks before (athough before retirement I used to request the days off several months in advance).
YA and the State Fair, on the other hand, are rarin’ to go now. In the past couple of weeks there has been a barrage of emails. Grandstand announcements and ticket offers. Highlighted fair beverages (of which there seem to be A LOT). New vendors and new foods.
YA has definitely inherited some of my love of lists; over the weekend she came into my room with a pad of paper and announced that it was time to make our food list. She started doing this a few years ago so that we remember what we want to get while we are at the fair. This list includes our favorites as well as items from the new foods email that look interesting to us. It looks like a long list but it’s spread out over several days and we don’t always get to everything. I did notice that nothing from last year’s new items have jumped to our “old favorites” list.
The floodgates are open now. I printed off all our tickets as well as my fair packing list. Can’t go off to the fair without all we need in the turtle bag. We even started a little pool of cash for the big event.
Anything you’re preparing for (or obsessing over) this summer?
I had a fun surprise yesterday morning. As I stood in my kitchen, thinking about breakfast, I got a text from one of my donut haunts, telling me that I had a reward coming – a free donut or a free coffee. So much more exciting than eggs and toast. Since I was going out for a couple of errands anyway, I decided to go the donut route for breakfast.
In order access this reward, I had to use my phone but since I didn’t have a younger person with me, I sat in my car until I got onto the right screen, or so I thought. The young man waiting on me was very patient when holding the phone to the “register” didn’t seem to work. He said he’s do it the “long way” and put my phone number in. He then said I had a $5 off, free donut or 5% discount. Which did I want? And then he said “or all three?” You all know what I said. He started punching in stuff; on my side, the screen was showing 3₵. I kept waiting for it to get to a higher number and it never did. When he confirmed the 3₵, I told him I’d have to go to the car to get a quarter since I didn’t have any cash on me. He smiled and said “let’s take it out of the penny jar” which was on the counter.
So I had my donuts and diet pop for free. And it was a gorgeous morning to boot. What could be better?
When I was down on the farm last Friday, Ben took me on a tour around the fields – it’s one of my favorite things about visiting. The corn was tall but weren’t showing any ears yet. Ben explained about where the ears start to form and we also talked about the difference between field corn and sweet corn. He commented that sweet corn is a bit ahead of field corn and in Iowa, there might be sweet corn already. I’m such a city girl – I love earning about farm stuff.
He was proved incredibly on the mark. As I was driving home, YA texted me that our former neighbors had dropped off some sweet corn for us; they had been visiting the grandparents in southern Iowa!
YA and I both love corn but for some reason the first sweet corn of the season is really special. We dragged the grill out of the garage on Saturday and roasted all the corn along with some veggie brats. Ate on our little patio in the backyard – it was perfect weather for the first corn lunch.
Yesterday, I used up the last of the ears. I was too impatient to drag out cookbooks and look for recipes so I just kind of made it up as I went along. This is what I made:
Corn Salsa
2 ears of corn, kernels removed from the cob
½ red onion, finely chopped
1 hot pepper, finely chopped (I used a pepper from our garden called “salsa pepper” – it was hotter than I anticipated, but not too hot to eat. A less hot pepper would be fine.)
3 T. chopped cilantro (also from garden)
Juice of one lime
Salt & pepper to taste
Mix it all together. Eat.ll
Elote Off the Cob
2 ears of corn, kernels removed from the cob
¾ c. cotijo cheese, crumbled
1 roma tomato, finely chopped
About 1/3 c. mayonnaise (not Miracle Whip because YA doesn’t like it)
2 T. cilantro, chopped (from garden)
2 T. chives chopped (from garden)
¼ tsp. tajin (if you don’t have tajin, you can use chili pepper & cumin)
Juice of half a lime
Salt & pepper to taste
Again, mix it all together!
Neither of these were big recipes, so I don’t expect the corn will last long. We’ll do plenty more corn this summer, but these first six ears were the best!
On the phone with my friend Pat last week, she reminded me of the following story.
This was about 20 years ago. Cell phones were a thing but not the ubiquitous kind of thing they are today. In a department meeting, Lydia’s cell phone (names changed to protect the innocent) buzzed in her pocket. When she looked at it, she got a funny look and zipped out of the meeting room. About 5 minutes later she came back in and announced to all of us that she needed to leave. I don’t know about anybody else, but all kinds of dark thoughts jumped right into my brain. Sick kids, husband in car accident, mother fallen down steps… that kind of thing.
Apparently her dog had gotten out of the yard and wandered several blocks over to a local gas/convenience store. He headed straight over to the bread section and proceeded to help himself to a couple packages of hot dog buns before anybody noticed him. Luckily Lydia and her family had a chip so the local animal control was able to get hold of them pretty quickly.
After she rushed off, the meeting broke down completely. Apparently we had all thought the same kinds of horrible scenarios and were really relieved that it was a funny story instead of a tragic one.
The next morning when Lydia showed up, her desk was covered in packages of hot dog buns. I can’t say whose idea that was, but I do remember who did the leg work with a handful of collected cash!
Last night, Husband decided he wanted to have hot dogs for supper, so we headed to the grocery store. At the checkout, we were behind another older couple sporting Methodist t-shirts, and a young Hispanic woman buying rolls and a papaya. The papaya turned out to cost more than the young woman wanted to pay, so she declined to buy it, and only got the rolls.
She used her cell phone to pay for the rolls (I have no idea how that is supposed to work), and was on her way out when the clerk called her back because her transaction had been declined. All this was transpiring while the other older couple was bagging their groceries. They and we noticed all the issues with the young woman’s purchase.
I intended to step in and buy the rolls for her, when the other older woman jumped ahead of me and paid for them. I exclaimed “I was going to do that!” Husband said he was going to do the.same thing. We all laughed except the young woman, who was deeply embarrassed and said it was just a glitch and showed us on her phone the balance in her account. There wasn’t very much in it. We told her she was sandwiched between two old couples and to enjoy the rolls.
Who have been the helpers in your life? What is your favorite sandwich?
Trail Baboon 