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.

Cucumber salad recipe

I made this for a family reunion party, and people flipped out over it. I thought it was pretty good, but was surprised to see it actually become a topic of conversation. So here's the recipe, which I came up with on the fly using whatever I could find to put together:

1 or 2 cucumbers, chopped into little pieces (I removed the seeds)

1 cup chopped fresh peas, pods and all

1 can artichoke hearts, chopped (just plain, not marinated in dressing)

1 can garbanzo beans, rinsed

handful snipped fresh cilantro

1 cup (or more) cooked little pasta noodles, like anellini (little circles), tiny shells or orzo

1 tsp celery salt (I would have put snipped celery leaves in it if I had any)

salt and pepper

about 3 tbs lemon juice

1 tsp basalmic vinegar (it has to be a pretty good, sweet vinegar; if you don't have a good one leave it out rather than substitute red wine vinegar)

about 3 tbs. olive oil
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And here are the other things I put on chopped cucumbers in the summer:

1. Lemon juice, pepper, salt and mint
2. Lemon juice, pepper, salt, chives and dill
3. White vinegar, a little apple cider vinegar, salt, tbs. sugar, sliced onion (Masher's recipe)

EG likes all these. He eats up the lemony ones and then drinks the juice left in his bowl, which he says looks like pee. Then he goes around saying he drinks pee and laughs hysterically. I should probably explain this to his teachers in case he says it at school, lest they think he's so dehydrated at home he has to drink urine to survive.

Just cute pics

I wonder if anyone else posts cute little kid pics on their blogs? Probably not. I'm probably the first.

Ganging up on Mommy

What were they thinking when they gave me a piece this size? That I wouldn't finish it?

That garnet-colored melon we scored on a recent trip to Iowa. You just can't grow a watermelon like that here.

Evil Genius's recipe

EG was out in the garden with me this morning and picked a cucumber and a carrot. He said he wanted to make soup with it because he wanted me to get out the stick blender. So this is his recipe:

Carrot, steamed, including the water it was steamed with
Cucumber, peeled
Fresh dill
Salt, pepper

I blended it all in the mini food processor because it was too small a batch for the stick blender. It wasn't too bad. I ate some and EG did too. It looked like baby food, a little.

Kind of a crappy pic I took with my phone.  His next suggestion: peanut butter eggs. I don't know how we're going to pull that off.

Unrelated, but I feel like documenting some EG quotes before I forget them. Here are a few lines he uses to charm girls:

To a little girl at Chili's: "I have a fire truck at my house."
To a plumber's daughter: "Hey girl, show me some tools."

Not everyone is going vegetarian anytime soon.

The most common weakness I hear former vegetarians or lacto-ovo vegetarians admit to is cheese. I understand. It's tasty, it's satisfying and it's ubiquitous. Masher and EG still eat it; they get a pizza with cheese on their half and none on mine. I didn't really have any issues giving it up, but I probably would face a challenge if I had nut allergies. I eat seeds and nuts every day. I also buy Vegan Gourmet brand "cheese" sometimes, but not to fill a void left by the real thing. It's a closer to being a garnish than a main ingredient. Overcheesing is an easy trap for converts, but if I were asked for guidance in transitioning to a plant-based diet I'd rather see them eat a tiny bit of meat occasionally and sever their relationships with dairy.

Many cheeses aren't actually vegetarian unless they contain vegetable rennet. Enzymes used to turn milk into cheese are often sourced from sheep stomachs, so if you get technical about your definition of lacto-ovo you'll only get the vegetable rennet kind. Even so, the only way to get cow cheese is create a calf who will become a by-product and go to slaughter as either a calf, a steer or a cow. I've talked to dairy farmers and there's no way around it. It just doesn't seem worth using all the resources needed to create cheese. According to Mark Bittman's review of "The Meat Eater's Guide to Climate Change and Health" by the Environmental Working Group, " Of 20 common proteins and vegetables analyzed, cheese has the third highest greenhouse gas emissions." We just don't make that association, because it isn't made out of the cow herself, even if it is made *by* the cow. Bittman is a meat eater who chooses to investigate the sources of his food. It's not as fun as it sounds, as he also discusses in his attempts to visit some of the larger farms in the Midwestern U.S.  But that's another topic.

I still don't understand what bottle calves drink. If it's formula or milk replacer, isn't it made out of cow's milk?

Here's a futuristic option, which fascinates me: make meat in a lab. We're talking about any meat, any kind of muscle, which means even human steak would be possible.  I'm not interested in eating meat anymore no matter how it's made, but it's an option that would (gasp!) eliminate ranching while providing beef. I wonder what other scientific or medical side effects could be beneficial from making muscle. A lot of people reacted with disgust at the idea, which is bizarre considering how nauseating a slaughterhouse is. I want to give the guy credit who pursued this with little support and whose interview first made me aware of it, but I can't find or remember his name. Masher read the interview with him on a flight several years ago.

I've read or heard the phrase "Animals aren't people" many times, which is sort of true in that non-human animals aren't people, but let's remember people are animals. We're in the taxonomy. Pigs aren't people as fish aren't birds. We're complicated but we're not that much more special.

Sources:
More weight on less meat:  http://bit.ly/o25e9R
Follow Mark Bittman on Twitter: @bittman

Will lab-grown meat save the planet? http://www.slate.com/id/2191705/

More toddler logic

Poor EG was sick recently, but not for long. After he puked a couple times and scored an hour of watching Fireman Sam from the couch he declared himself all better and resumed normal overactivity. He was thirsty and hungry but we only gave him a little rice and water, so he announced a plan to get himself a little almond milk ("nutty milk") and got the box off the shelf. Before he could open it I warned him a little milk might make him sick. He grinned and said, "How about a whole lot of milk then?"