Apostrophe abuse

This is an actual photo of an actual shirt available at an actual store. The store has a name that rhymes with Small Part. I have an inside source who works there and unpacked this item to stock on the shelves. Enjoy.

Really???

UPDATE: These have now hit the shelves. Get 'em while they're hot.

Dean the foster puppy

This Dalmatian mix puppy was in a Pueblo shelter for almost 3 months, and I couldn't stand it so I said I would foster him for Dalmatian Rescue. I thought he'd be a real project but he fits right in. Why nobody picked him up is beyond me, unless it's because his name was Houdini. So, I'm calling him Dean. He's a nice puppy with no issues. Poor guy.

Thing 1 and Thing 2

The myth of the vegetarian chicken

Here's a post about what I've learned about chickens this year. None of it is news to people with chickens, so if you have some skip the post.

You can feed chickens vegetarian scratch that's healthy for them, but unless they're confined indoors they will find a way to eat bugs. That's one of the best things about chickens, that they eat bugs and slugs. Those hens will lay the tastiest eggs. If you read a label on store-bought chicken eggs that says the hens are vegetarian fed, they are either living in a bug-free (read: unnatural) environment or sneaking in some buggy snacks. I admit I'm no expert on fowl but I have learned a lot about them this year. They're more badass then I had previously thought.

I hesitate to post this photo, because there's rice in the pan and it looks like I don't clean my pans. I was actually about to make a second helping of fried rice with these eggs and didn't see any reason to clean up the rice from the last one. Anyway, I thought it was interesting to see the difference in yolk color between these two eggs. They are from chickens that live in the same flock, but one, a New Hampshire Red, is a nice bird who stays in the coop. The other one I call Problem Chicken; she is an athletic and foolhardy Egyptian, and runs around wherever she pleases so she can eat insects, especially grasshoppers. But that's not all she eats. She nailed a tiny frog once (well, probably more than once but I just had the misfortune of witnessing it once). In the photo, her egg is the one with the deeper color yolk. The other one is still a fresh, tasty, nutritious egg, but the murderous Problem Chicken's is a little heartier.

If you tilt your head, you perv, they look like boobies

There are pros and cons to keeping backyard chickens. The pros are obvious. I won't go into the controversy about hatcheries. You can raise your own, but it looks kind of complicated, with incubators and stuff. I have been to farms with hens and roosters of heritage varieties that seem to just flock together and raise families though. But obviously they do risk their lives when they run around like PC does. The people in my neighborhood I have gotten eggs from lost half their little flock to a fox last year. They're kind of predator magnets. When I had a frail little old kitty, I remember thinking I was glad we didn't keep chickens that would attract red-tailed hawks.

Since I'm on the subject, I have to out Nest Fresh. The artwork and wordy marketing essays on the package describe a virtual chicken Shangri-La, even going so far as to say the hens are "a little spoiled." However, Nest Fresh customer service confirmed that all their farms have debeaked hens. I'm not making the connection between "spoiled" and "debeaked." That may no longer be the case at this writing, but it was last year. The lesson is that, if you have certain criteria you require from manufacturers or farms before buying their products, read the label critically.

Moussaka - not worth the effort

Of all the tasty and healthy stuff I could eat, this rates a 6 or 7 on a scale of 10, and takes forever to make. I used a recipe from Roy and Lisa Walford's book, "The Anti-aging Plan," which has other nutrient-rich recipes we like. However, there are so many steps in making any kind of moussaka that I would have to have a lot of time on my hands or a surplus of eggplant to do it again. Tonight we're going to have pumpkin soup, because that seems simpler and for some reason there is a pumpkin taking up space on the counter.

Came across this blog looking for Vegan Moussaka recipes

This East Coast family posts recipes that look like they taste really good:
The Vegan(ish) Experiment: Day 55: Vegan Moussaka!

YGWYG

Recently we were having supper and EG said his teacher had told his classmate Lucy "You get what you get and you don't throw a fit." We are not sure if Lucy is an actual classmate or EG's alter ego, because his stories about Lucy often involve her doing something slightly naughty like taking his hat or complaining about her snack. She then gets reprimanded with something like "You get what you get..." or "Y tu tiempo se acabo (...and your time is up)!"

EG's anecdote changed my life. After that, if he whined about getting water when he wanted juice, I just used "You get what you get and you don't throw a fit." and it shut him down. Then I used it on the dog. And horses: "Here's your alfalfa." "We want grass!" "YGWYGAYDTAF!" Shuts 'em right down.

It's not just a phrase, it's a new outlook. What if it's 4:30 on Friday, and the QA manager wants you to revise some code you wrote, because the marketing guy thinks you can do it in 10 minutes? Drop a YGWYGAYDTAF. Shut 'em down.

Black Walnut Raspberry Cookies (vegan)

Looks like the one on top got too much frosting. Oops. I came up with this recipe by tweaking a basic sugar cookie recipe until it no longer even faintly resembled the original, so can I take credit for it? Then again, the reviews on this aren't all in yet so I might not want to. This recipe if for 5000-6000 feet so it will be different at sea level.

Dry ingredients:

3.5 cups white whole wheat flour (or combination of white and whole wheat, or whole wheat pastry flour); at sea level, start with 3 cups

0.5 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

Wet ingredients:
0.5 cup Earth Balance Vegan Buttery Spread (1 stick)
0.5 cup ground walnuts (grind in a mini-prep or coffeegrinder until almost like peanut or almond butter)
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup agave syrup
0.5 teaspoons black walnut extract (saw this at the spice store, and that's why I came up with this - wanted an excuse to use it)
Optional: add a half cup or more of chopped walnuts; I didn't, because I wanted to be able to roll out the dough

1. Whisk together dry ingredients.
2. Cream Earth Balance and brown sugar until light tan color and fluffy, then add syrup and extract and mix thoroughly.
3. Add dry ingredients no more than a half cup at a time, or there will be flour all over the walls in your kitchen.
4. Chill dough in fridge for at least an hour, or freeze for longer storage.
5. Preheat oven to 365 F (I think this translates to 350 at sea level).
6. Roll out dough to the same thickness you would gingerbread cookies (no I did not measure) and cut whatever shapes you want; mine are fairly uniform 1.5 inch circles because I wanted to make sandwich cookies.
7. Bake for 9 minutes - or at least that's what I found was perfect for mine.
8. Cool and frost with this raspberry frosting/filling:

1 stick Earth Balance
2 teaspoons raspberry extract
Around 2 cups confectioner's sugar (if you are seriously vegan, get organic or a brand that doesn't whiten sugar with bone char)
Coconut, almond or soy milk to thin frosting if needed

Freeze in an airtight container or freezer bag for at least a day and they will soften when they thaw.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. The cookies are good and not too sweet, but the frosting is like candy. I might try a maple filling for the next batch but I was in the mood to experiment with a nut and berry flavor combination and had high hopes for it. I don't know if it's worth suggesting you buy these two extracts if you're never going to use them again, so I'll try to come up with some additional uses for raspberry and black walnut.

Biggest losers

We love to watch The Biggest Loser. We've been watching it for like 6 years and I really miss Jillian. Bob's still there though. I've often wondered how he feels about promoting products like ground turkey (Bob Harper is a vegan, as far as I know). I probably would make that compromise too, for a job like he's got. There's no getting around conflicts like this and you have to decide for yourself where to draw the line. For all the healthy habits the show promotes, however, they accept sponsors from the dark side. For example:

-Disposable diaper manufacturers: I think it's the popular brand (name rhymes with Hampers) that shows happy babies and toddlers giggling in broad daylight because they're wearing 'sposies with "TWELVE hour protection." I think we know who's being protected for 12 hours - parents. I'm hoping at least this is for nighttime use, although from the commercials it would appear it's for allowing kids and their caretakers to be in denial of elimination for an entire day. Don't tell me someone isn't tempted to do this on a long car trip, a to skip a few bathroom/diaper changing breaks because the label says the kids should be OK for 12 hours.

-Extra sugar-free gum: It's probably fairly harmless, but healthy? Would Bob chew it?

-Cheap ground turkey: sure, it's lean meat, but as the flesh of miserable, factory-farmed mutant animals I can't call it healthy. Or wholesome. Would Bob eat it? I like this article about turkeys which is written from a diner's perspective - not a vegetarian one - and even a meat eater can be disturbed by the industry and its creepy products as well as the poor Frankenbirds.

But back to Pampers or Huggies or whatever. I hate to use the phrase "slippery slope," because all slopes are somewhat slippery, but how did so many parents come to, um, depend on these? And  pullups designed to help kids as old as 5 avoid using a toilet - these will surely have serious effects on this generation. Will we have them for grownups to wear in meetings so they won't have to hear the obnoxious phrase "bio break" during a 4-hour, 800-slide presentation about Six Sigma and ROI?

Lineup

Sadly, this pic was taken through a dirty window that's never going to be clean. These house finches and house sparrows line up on the fence at sunrise while we eat breakfast and politely take turns at the bird feeder:

Tweet

 

Breakfast was leftover vegan cornbread that I de-veganized by making it into French toast. I soaked slices in a mixture of 2 eggs, 1/4 cup rice milk, cinnamon and a tablespoon of agave syrup and cooked in Earth Balance. Eggs courtesy of Bertha the white chicken.

Breakfast for EG and me

Here's a pretty lame pic from my phone of breakfast I made for EG and me - omelet, cornbread and tomato (the tomato's just for me; he doesn't like them). Why would I bother posting a photo of breakfast? Because the eggs are from the hens I help care for and they just started laying recently. These were from a New Hampshire Red hen named Little Jerry. The omelet is made from 2 eggs, about 2 tbs. almond milk, salt, pepper, and a Golden Jubilee tomato.

The cornbread recipe is adapted from the Bob's Red Mill cornmeal package. Mine has gluten but Bob's recipe doesn't - gluten free recipe can be found here .

Preheat oven to 350 F at sea level, 365 at 5000-6000 ft elevation. Grease a 9x13 pan.

Whisk together these dry ingredients:
1 1/4 cup cornmeal
1 cup white whole wheat flour or mix of WW flour and oat flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt

Mix wet ingredients at medium speed (it's ideal if they're all room temperature):
2 eggs or egg substitute
1 cup milk (I used almond milk)
1/3 cup oil (I used olive oil)
1/4 cup some kind of sugar (I used brown rice syrup)

Once wet ingredients are completely mixed, gradually add the dry stuff, beating on low speed until incorporated. Don't overmix. It will be the consistency of cake batter. Then stir in extras if you want. I used a can of sweet corn, because it was on the shelf and needed a purpose. You could use chopped up roasted chilis or other peppers, roasted corn scraped from the cob, pineapple tomatilloes (I grew a lot of these little things - they taste just like pineapple) or anything, really.

Bob's instructions say to bake for 25-30 minutes, but mine took 35.

Safety First

You see, when watching Fireman Sam, it's important to stay safe. Pants optional.

No that is not leather furniture.

How to get a workout at the barn

Just like when I was 16, I am always at someplace called The Barn, or talking about what happened at The Barn. I don't shower in the morning and go to an office anymore. There's no point in showering before 6 p.m. and when I do, hay often falls out of my bra.

I told a friend who is a personal trainer I couldn't afford to go to the rec center more than once a week to work out anymore, but still managed to work out at home and at the barn. She was impressed. Thought I was pretty hard core to squeeze in a workout at the barn. I realized then that not everyone does barn chores, not even all horse owners, so they don't know what a great opportunity it is to either get fit or get hurt. Here's how I lost 6 pounds this summer (doesn't sound like a lot, but hey - six pounds is six pounds):

1. Mucking stalls and pens. Mucking itself isn't that hard, but use the big wheelbarrow and fill it all the way. Jog while pushing it to the manure pile, and see how high up on the pile you can get. That's right, I said run up a mountain of sh!t. Then turn the wheelbarrow completely over to empty it. If your form is good and you've filled it up enough, your hamstrings and lower back will feel like you've done serious dead lifts. I need to get photos of this to demonstrate because I can't describe it well.

2. The general rule is No Running in the Barn, but you can run between the barn and turnouts. Our routine involves bringing horses in and turning some out, and the turnouts are spread about the property. So you can save a little time and burn a few calories running between them. I don't recommend running at the horse in the pasture because you'll freak him out and chase him off. And I don't usually jog with the horse in hand either because they'll get nervous, wondering what the hurry is. Although I do sometimes jog a horse in hand or ground drive him (like driving without a cart - you must walk or jog behind) as part of his training. You can score a mile or two per horse this way. However, this often means running in boots. I have no problem with it on soft ground but your mileage may vary.

3. Stacking hay. This shouldn't require explanation. Hay bales are big, awkward and weight about 40 pounds. Good form is essential or you will wind up with a herniated disk.

4. Grooming. Think Karate Kid: wax on, wax off. A mild workout for your triceps and delts.

5. Riding. A half hour lesson is usually enough to make my adductors pretty sore, because I don't ride enough. If you think riding isn't a workout, take a lesson from my instructor.

It's still summer

Never fear, Blueberry Man is here

The sun feels good

 I'm particularly happy with the way this photo turned out, and he actually was wearing pants:

This child appears completely innocent, but is probably not wearing pants

Eats

 Here's a lovely oat flour waffle that Masher makes.

Like a square foot garden, but square inches and not a garden

Children like waffles

The recipe is something like this (vegan alternatives included):
-2 cups any combination of oat and whole wheat flour
-2 cups some kind of milk (coconut, soy, rice, cow)
-2 chicken eggs or Ener-G egg substitute (or replace egg with banana at half a banana per egg); if using duck eggs 1 will do
-3 tbs melted and cooled Earth Balance or butter
-2 tsp baking powder (this is for high altitude)

 Here's my lunch: Sun Gold cherry, Stupice, Cherokee Purple, Golden Jubilee

The big ones are Golden Jubilee, Cherokee Purple and Speckled Roma. The little ones are Stupice and Sun Gold. Golden Jubilee is my favorite to grow and eat, maybe tied with Brandywine. Cherokee Purple is a good producer of large, pretty tomatoes that are sweet and mild but a little more watery and seedy than the Golden ones. Stupice plants produce like crazy and the 2-inch fruits taste decent and are bright red. Speckled Roma will impress your friends with their handsomeness and are tasty raw or cooked. They're my favorite for tomato soup.

Yield

 Here's what I picked this morning:

Lunch

 

 

 I have to pick the tomatoes when they're 80-90% ripe because the second they're perfectly ripe, a lurking grasshopper eats them. It's a very successful method of avoiding loss of what I call my "crops." However, on occasion the bugs score one:

The worm crawls in, the worm crawls out

That little caterpillar didn't do much damage. I've only seen two all summer, and since they weren't in the same room at the same time for all I know they were same one. The Speckled Roma on the left has a little blossom end rot too. I have very little trouble with BER but it seems like all Romas are prone to it and there will be one or two on a vine with BER. I would cut that off and cook the rest of the tomato though. I'm not wasting any part of a stripey Roma. They're good for eating raw or cooked, not like some other Romas I've grown. And even the cut off parts don't get wasted because chickens and goats eat them.

 Here's a dog's eye view of some of the square foot gardens:

peppers, greens and tomatoes

spinach, chard, carrots, onions, marigolds and....tomatoes

Chives, pepper and you know the rest

I highly recommend building trellises as described in Mel Bartholomew's book. The heaviest of tomatoes and cucumbers stay high and dry, and the trellises support them easily.

Stupice and cucumber about 4 feet off the ground

Everyone's dreams: grunge, zebras, extra kids

Everyone had interesting dreams last night. EG woke up cheerful and said there were little zebras that came into his room. They were toys and he played with them. He said they had instruments, like they were in a band. He was a little disappointed they were gone when he got up.

Masher dreamed he came home and there were three kids in the house: EG, another toddler, and a three month old infant. I told him that someone couldn't look after the baby anymore, and I couldn't turn him away. In the dream he was furious because I'd adopted these kids without telling him, which was funny because he said he wouldn't actually react that way if I did that. I promised I would give him at least a week's notice if I were coming home with any extra kids.

My dream was fun. We were in Seattle, stopped overnight on our way to San Francisco. I joked that I was hoping we'd run into someone from Soundgarden while we were there, so we must have gone back in time. We drove a rental car over a high bridge and I was terrified of falling off it. That part was scary. Then we went to a small venue, like a warehouse the community used for flea markets and other little events. Masher pointed to a guy and said, "There you go, Chris Cornell is over there." He was set up with only a synthesizer, amplifiers and microphone and was doing an impromptu solo gig. People started gathering. He was dressed like a grunge-era teen and his hair was shaggy like Dave Grohl's. Instead of being brooding like I expected he was cheerful, reaching out and shaking hands with people in the front of the crowd. He did some Soundgarden songs and cover songs from pop bands until something went wrong with his equipment and he called an intermission. There was free pizza during intermission so I got some from Masher and EG. I think this was brought on by surfing XM radio from the Lithium channel to the 90s channel to the classic rock channel, which was represented by our destination being San Francisco. I miss the grunge era like old people miss the 70s. I had long, frizzy hair and my laundry was either a load of blacks or a load of plaids. I deluded myself that I was sexy. Soundgarden still rocks. Alice in Chains has been successfully resurrected. I still have some plaid stuff. Maybe we should have a grunge-themed party, minus the heroin of course. That's the annoying part of the 90s - 4 out of 5 of my favorite songs are about being a miserable junkie. I can't relate. I just like plaid and don't like washing my hair every day.

Monster toddlers

I had a dream last night I came across 2 little vampire toddlers and took charge of them. I was looking for a wizard who could help cure them because they were innocent children and I didn't want an angry mob after them. Meanwhile I put little plastic things on their tiny fangs so they wouldn't bite anyone. If you gave them toys to play with they didn't bother anybody. Finally I found that Blade guy from the movie who would help transform them back to regular toddlers, which are only slightly less dangerous. I guess I got to keep them, but I don't know because it was after 5 a.m. and I had to wake up. I did not feel refreshed when I got out of bed. This probably happened because we were talking about Halloween and costumes, not because of EG's behavior.

Victor got up shortly after, ate porridge, and played with toys; he brought me a lego pizza, saying proudly that it has no cheese on half (we order ours that way so I can eat the non-dairy half). He also threw his flash cards down the stairs, but that was good because while we were picking them up I discovered he could read the numbers on them - they went up to twelve. Also he brought a load of straw into the kitchen. All this and more before 7 a.m. I really needed that window between 5 and 7:30 to work and was counting on him sleeping as late as he usually does. Well, it's good to know he doesn't have fangs and is really not evil at all.

EG's recipe suggestion this week is tomato smoothies.

 

Coconut milk instructions

I want to try this:

Homemade Coconut Milk

posted by Penniless Parenting at Penniless Parenting

For drinking or cooking I like the fortified unsweetened coconut milk in a carton, but if you make it with dessicated coconut like Penniless does you can get that rich fatty stuff off the top for vegan whipped "cream." I've made it the whipped topping and it was brilliant. 

Underwear Man

This has nothing to do with the usual blog topics of vegetables, little kids and ponies. Also, it's creepy. I don't know why my brain is working this way, but I have felt compelled to write a poem about this guy since my friend told me about him. See, my friend works in a consignment shop and one Sunday muttered that it wasn't her favorite day of the week because of Underwear Man. Apparently that's the only day she works there alone, and this creepy old guy comes in then and feels and sniffs ladies' undies. Large ones. They're not even used, but that doesn't stop him. I'm not a proper poet, so cut me some slack if you comment.

Underwear Man

Sunday's the day it's just me at the store

I show up on time and unlock the door

to open the register, sort the dresses and scan

size 40 panties for the Underwear Man.

They're not for his wife, nor his lady friend

Too many sizes for one girl's rear end

Fabric blends are his favorite, but pure cotton will do

If they're over size 30, peach, pink or blue

Underwear Man go away
The elastical waistbands are starting to fray

Put the polyester blends back on the shelf
Keep your creepy old hands to yourself

Sunday's the day I see the old fellow

Thumb and forefinger fondling yellow

satin, size 40 briefs so I must scan

Bigger the better, thinks Underwear Man.

Underwear Man go away
The elastical waistbands are starting to fray

Put the polyester blends back on the shelf
Keep your creepy old hands to yourself

A few ripe tomatoes

Left to right: Golden Jubilee, Speckled Roma, some other Roma, Stupice, and a few pineapple tomatilloes

I ate the Golden  Jubilee. All other tomatoes are green and still getting bigger. I don't believe the seed packets that tell you they're early season, mid season or late season, or that they mature in so many days. I think it depends on the microclimates in your garden. I planted everything from seed indoors in early February, put a few out under cloches in April and the rest out the first weekend in June. I never see more tomatoes than these before September no matter what I do and what variety, although there have been a handful of ripe Stupices here and there since July. The Golden and stripey ones are late season. They taste really good and in my four years of trying to learn to garden they've become a mainstay. The Golden Jubilees can show a little cracking because we've had heavy rains but are mostly plump and, um, meaty. The Speckled Romas get big for Romas and are dense with lots of flavor. Like all Romas they're more vulnerable to BER than others in the same container; the plant these came from doesn't show any, however. They are also the least resistant to fungus. I hope we're past that stage. Everything looks pretty lush and hardy (knocking wood). If you don't violate any of the Tomato Rules (don't plant too close, don't overwater, don't water from overhead, don't plant the same place you had tomatoes last year), the stripey Romas will produce lots of pretty fruit for you.

I wish I would grow tons of food and not have to buy vegetables at all, except the ones I don't want to grow because they take too much space (broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower). Mostly I get a lot of tomatoes and squash. Here's the yield or potential yield so far:

-Tomatoes: 22 remaining plants (I culled one that looked like it was developing some kind of wilt), 19 actually busting out with impressive fruit.
-Eggplant, Japanese: 4 plants and so far only one eggplant big enough to eat.
-Herbs: basils, oregano, dill and chives; plus we made an her spiral out front and bought lavender, lemon thyme, sage and tarragon plants for it.
-Carrots: small and about 40% seed carrots, and they take all spring and summer to grow. Not the big basket of orange carrots for horses and people I was hoping for. Yet. I keep planting them.
-Parsnip/parsley root: see carrots. A few, not that impressive.
-Butternut squash: I can see at least 10 on our only plant. These are awesome. One seed is all you need and they store all winter without taking up space in the fridgelator (EG's pronunciation).
-Pumpkin: EG's pumpkin plant is sprawling and there are a few good specimens on it. It's the jack o' lantern kind, not the kind you grow for pie.
-Beans: Around 10 bean plants give us enough green beans for supper weekly. I like to let the black ones and the white ones keep growing and get dried beans from them, but for it to be enough to write home about you need more than I made room for.
-Greens: Swiss chard is easy to grow and we eat in salad or cooked, plus give some to the chickens and goats at the barn, and still always have some ready to pick. Spinach is doing OK.
-Peas: I never get a lot at one time. They are good either picked young or later with fat peas in the pod. I just wish we'd get a lot instead of 1 every other day.