December 2018, Week 3
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Recipes for New Year's Day - Week 3 December 2013
Comments (21)This is from a gardening friend. Because she is always so right on regarding food dishes, we are going to prepare this for our New YearsâÂÂs Day Dinner. BROC & GARLIC CHEESE CASSEROLE This is a great addition to any festive meal. This broc casserole is hands down the best I've ever had. The soup and Velveeta just provide a creamy matrix for the broc and garlic flavors--and the crunchy topping is perfect. Last year we used Ritz roasted vegetable crackers, and we thought that took it up another notch. This year I'm going to use garlic mushroom soup. I suppose you could use another type of cheese that melts well. I dare you to try it! 2 pkg frozen broccoli florets (20 oz total), cooked and drained 1/2 stick butter 1 can cream of mushroom soup 5 oz Velveeta cheese 1.5 oz cream cheese 1/2 medium onion, grated or finely chopped 1 clove garlic, minced garlic powder or granules to taste (start with ü tsp), optional Topping Crushed Ritz Crackers 1/4 to 1/2 C slivered almonds (I use chopped pecans--pw) Cook broccoli according to package directions. Do not under cook. Drain well. Heat butter till beginning to brown. Add onions and sauté just till soft. Add minced garlic and sauté 1 minute more. Add soup and cheeses and stir well. Heat through. Taste and add garlic granules as desired for more intense garlic flavor. Place drained broccoli in a greased casserole dish. You might want to cut the florets into smaller pieces. Cover with cheese and soup mix. Top with crushed crackers and nuts. Bake in preheated 350ð oven 20-25 minutes or until heated through and bubbling. You can prepare (but not bake) ahead and refrigerate. Do not add cracker/nut topping until ready to bake. Add baking time if starting with a cold casserole. This post was edited by walnutcreek on Thu, Dec 19, 13 at 18:35...See MoreAugust 2018, Week 3, I Made It Through The Rain
Comments (30)When an old dog who has chronic kidney disease insists he must go outdoors now, you must drop everything and take him out. If you don't, you'll find yourself mopping up the floor. There's none of that "wait a minute and I'll take you out". Nope, he is a little dictator (unwittingly, perhaps) now---one sharp bark and I drop everything and take him out because I know the consequences if I do not react quickly enough. Kim, No lady bugs around? Sometimes you can attract them to your garden (if they are in the general area) by making wheast. Or, even just by spraying a sugar-water mix on your plants. Here's some recipes for these: Recipes To Help Attract Beneficial Insects This morning I did a quick walk-thru of my garden to see how it has been doing without me and I did see some ladybugs (real American ladybugs, lol, not the Asian ones) hard at work on some of the watermelon plants. Sometimes in extreme July/August heat, the ladybugs seem to lie low---and who can blame them? I always wonder if they are up in some shadier spots just trying to survive the heat without subjecting themselves to full sun and full heat. Jennifer, It is great that Stella knows how to have a good time, but unfortunate that she chooses to have that good time in the garden. I've been leaving my garden gate open every day so the chickens can go in there now if they wish. Now that they can go into it, they no longer want to. I guess they've been excluded for so long that they've forgotten that good times can be found in the garden. Or, now that's there's no low-hanging tomatoes or melons for them to enjoy, maybe they just aren't motivated to go in there and eat grasshoppers and such. I'm glad you don't have a stress fracture because I know the time you'd need to stay off of it would drive you crazy. Still, take care and let it heal. The older I get, the more prone I am to catch the flu. I hardly ever got it in my 30s and 40s and, when I did, recovered quickly. These last 5-7 years, I seem like I get it every year and the recovery is harder every year. All my life I've heard that peoples' immune systems weaken as they age, and I see that now in my own life---at the age of only 59. By the time I'm 70, I'll have to hibernate at home during cold and flu season because I won't have any immune system left at all. On the other hand, an immune system is a funny thing. Last year, nationwide, a lot of young people in their 20s, 30s and early 40s died after they went sepsis during a case of the flu. When you go into sepsis like that, it normally is caused by your immune system over-reacting to an infection, which in these cases was the flu. What is it about the flu last year that caused young peoples' immune systems to overreact and throw them into sepsis shock? This sort of thing puzzles me. Obviously we want to have healthy immune systems but maybe not such robust immune systems that they overreact and kill you. It is such a conundrum. My garden is dry and pitiful looking, as the drought continues and no more rain has fallen here. It is what it is. August in a drought year is a tough month as it is, and the rain we got a while back was nice, but not drought-busting type rainfall. The rain made plenty of weeds sprout though. I see lots of morning glory, bindweed and foxtail grass to deal with---that will be next week as long as I don't encounter any snakes in there between now and then. Eileen, I bet it was the flu. I'm just basing that on the fact that there's low levels of flu cases being reporting across the country in August. My BIL in PA had it two weeks before I did. I did an uncommonly high amount of flu research while sick---trying to figure out if there was anything more I could learn about it that I didn't already know. One thing I learned is that it is not uncommon for the cough to persist for up to 4 weeks after you've otherwise recovered from the flu. I didn't know that, but I do remember that last year, the cough did persist for an uncommonly long time. Just take care of yourself and get your energy back. Last week I tried to do too much too soon and promptly relapsed, so this week I've been trying to take it easier on purpose so I don't do that again. Larry, I'm glad you're finally going to be able to go and get that PET scan. I hope all the news is good after it all is done. I love the deer but they sure can be destructive. What I've noticed is that when I plant stuff on purpose for them---like one of those fall and winter deer plot mixes, they ignore it. If I plant stuff for us, well, that's what they want to eat. It drives me crazy. Have y'all been watching the weather? Are some of you still getting rain? I've been out to lunch, weather-wise, not watching very carefully, while sick. Now I'm starting to pay attention again, and am not happy to realize we're back to being hot and dry, hot and dry, hot and dry. We had a couple of cool mornings earlier in the week and they sure were nice but I didn't even feel like sitting outdoors and enjoying them because of all that smoke in the air. It doesn't seem as smokey today, but then tomorrow is supposed to be really windy. I hope the wind blows away any lingering smoke, and not that it blows more smoke down to us, which I guess always is possible. Hurricane Lane has been a surprise. The last time I paid any attention to it was probably early last week and it was way out there in the Pacific as a topical depression, not expected to come within hundreds of miles of Hawaii, and not expected to do much of anything. So, fast forward a week or more, and I click on Dr. Masters Wunderground Blog maybe on Tuesday night and discover it is a Cat 4 headed towards Hawaii. By the next morning it was a Cat 5, but it now is weakening as it encounters wind shear and is back to a Cat 4 again. Still, they are going to get tons of rain if nothing else. I suppose that rain is usually good, but not when it comes in feet instead of inches. I hope everyone there stays safe and above the flood waters and out of any potential mudslides. I would joke and say why can't we ever get a hurricane here to bust our droughts, but you know, we got the remains of Hurricane Erin once, and also of Hermine, and the flooding was awful, so I won't even go there.... Have a good day everyone. Dawn...See MoreOctober 2018, Week 3, From Summer to Autumn to Winter
Comments (38)Jennifer, I'm hoping you were able to finally make it home, enjoy Wine Wednesday, and get some rest. You cannot go into this weekend too tired! Some other weekend, yes, but not this one because you are going to stay so busy. Rebecca, Hmmm, pepper bitterness generally only is a problem is you are harvesting them and using them green. They only truly shed the bitterness when allowed to ripen to their full mature color, but there are different degrees of bitterness along the time scale so that the further peppers progress away from being younger and smaller to being older and larger, though still green, the more the bitterness usually fades. I don't know of any weather or nutrient condition that makes them more bitter, but if I run across any description of something that does, I'll try to remember to come back here and tell you. When our mom told us to go out and play, it was pretty easy for me to go out, play a very short while, and then quietly slip back into the house and go into my bedroom and read. With 4 kids coming and going, if you were quiet once you were indoors, you could get away with that. With the seeds that you're sowing that won't sprout, are you surface sowing? That is what works best with me with green seeds---I broadcast sow on the surface of the growing medium and don't cover them up. I do lightly pat them down so they have good soil contact. I don't know if the seeds of greens necessarily need light to sprout, but I know they sprout better (and at a higher germination rate) for me if I don't cover them with soil. I got lower germination rates and slower germination when I covered them, even lightly, with anything---even compost or the lightest amount of peat moss. You are NOT a garden failure. It is either the seeds or the growing conditions that are failing you, so be kind to yourself and please stop feeling like a failure. If I were to allow myself to feel like a failure every time something in the garden doesn't go my way, I'd be so depressed and disheartened that I'd give up gardening. Instead, I push on relentlessly, overplanting everything, figuring if one thing doesn't work, another one will. And, on a lighter side, this is Oklahoma where the weather is cray-cray, so just blame the weather when something fails! Jennifer, You're welcome, and I agree that gardening is grounding. I feel like it surely is as good for our bodies as it is for our souls. I understand how you feel about meat, and I think you are not imagining it---you just have a soul that likely communicates with the souls of the animals. I feel that same way about people, especially native people here in the USA. When we visit a state park, for example, which is the scene of large battles between the native Americans and the European invaders who called themselves Americans, I swear I can feel the souls of the native Americans talking to me....like, I am walking in their shoes on their land, though not in a literal sense as I am not at war with anyone. I feel their pain and suffering when I walk an area like that--not in an intellectual way, but in a true emotional/intuitive way. The first few times it happened to me, I felt quite unsettled by it and then I decided to just accept it and to not try to overanalyze it or to fight it. I hope y'all enjoyed sleeping in today. Nancy, I really used to live in pepper hell because I'd grow 15 or 20 kinds of peppers and wear myself out trying to preserve them all. Now I grow only a few kinds, and only the ones we adore most, and it has made the pepper section of the garden easier to control, and has made the inevitable kitchen mess/workload more manageable too. When we first moved here and I finally had a sunny space to grow stuff (in the city, we had far too much shade so my garden was tiny), I grew far too much of everything. It was fun, but the garden and my life both are more manageable now that I have cut back and am trying to grow only enough excess beyond what we eat fresh to give us some food to preserve instead of trying to grow as much as possible and then ending up worn out from dealing with all the excess. It did take me about 15 years of growing far too much of everything before I started cutting back, and I still am trying to get the balance right so we have enough of each thing, but not too much of anything. Well, with tomatoes, I'll likely always grow too many just because I like to have a wide variety of shapes, sizes, colors and flavors. If growing too many tomatoes is my worst garden vice, then I think I'll be okay. Tiny will learn. Even Yellow Cat, who roamed our neighborhood for a good 10-12 years as a semi-feral cat before deciding to move in with us for his retirement years, still had to learn. After a lifetime of dodging wild things, he still liked to come inside and sleep all day and roam all night, which made me nervous. After a bobcat chased him up onto the roof of our house during the middle of the night, and I awakened to horrible screaming and had to quickly open a second story window to bring him in off the porch roof, he quite abruptly became an indoor cat at night, and outdoor by the day. By then he must have been 14 or 15 years old at least. He might have learned the lesson of nighttime safety a bit later than I would have liked, but he learned it, and then he lived for several more years to enjoy his retirement before he died of old age. My dad was naturally quiet by nature, and I took after him, so I never really was a chatterbox. Our oldest granddaughter? She'll talk 24/7 if you'll let her, and I never knew constant chatter could wear me out until now. We are trying to teach her that it is okay to ride in the car, for example, in companionable silence if you don't really have anything to say that isn't just mindless chatter. It is getting better, bit by bit, but we have a ways to go yet. We got drizzly, drippy, mostly misty rain most of the day yesterday, so no sunshine yet again and today is expected to be pretty much the same. The heavier rain is expected tomorrow. I miss the sunshine. The amount of mud we have is unreal. In the back where I feed the deer, the mud is just a churned up mess, so I keep moving the feeding area to grassier spots without as much bare ground showing, though the deer don't like change. The dogs and cats both are going stir-crazy from being indoors so much, and I am right there with them. Whenever I let them go out, or when I go out myself, because we are in between bands of rain/drizzle/mist and it seems wise to run outdoors while we can, it almost immediately starts to rain again. Just let me walk down to the mailbox without a raincoat or umbrella, and it will start to rain as soon as I am down there, 300' from the house. It happens every time. I'm so bored with being stuck indoors I have cleaned out the spice drawer and thrown away out-of-date spices, which meant (of course) making a list of the few that I threw out so I'd be sure to replace them this weekend. My constant cleaning out of drawers and things might be making Tim nervous. He survived the closet cleanout, but I haven't really touched his dresser drawers, nightstand drawers or anything in his office (where all the desk and printer table drawers are crammed full of stuff) and I think he might be worrying that someday when he is at work and I am bored, I might clean out the desk drawers and throw away some of his precious junk. Of course, I will not but the thought of it probably has him antsy. I am dying to get my hands on the garage/shop which is 1200 s.f. of 'stuff', some of which he actually needs and uses but much of which seems to be 'just in case we ever need it again' type clutter. I might make the garage/shop my 2019 project and work at it month by month. He'll have to be home when I do it though, so he won't worry I am throwing away too many of the things that he deems important. On the other hand, we'll never move to another place again because just the thought of packing up that garage/shop building would make him decide that moving is not going to be worth it. (grin) Seriously, when we moved here, we knew this was our forever home. However, I didn't know that "forever" applied to every piece of anything ever put in the garage. I'm really starting to get worried about the prospect of an El Nino winter. If the rain continues on through February the way it has been now, planting is going to be delayed for weeks if not months. I cannot decide whether to order my Dixondale onions for the usual early arrival date in February or to strategically order them to arrive 2 or 3 or maybe even 4 weeks later than usual in case the garden still is a mucky mud hole like it is right now. They've raised our chances of El Nino developing for winter here in the USA from 65-70% to 70-75%, so it is seeming more likely, even if it is going to be a Modiki El Nino instead of a regular one. Dawn...See MoreNovember 2018, Week 3, We Are Thankful
Comments (19)Nancy, Is it possible that the dog lives somewhat nearby, but his family might be out of town for Thanksgiving and the dog escaped from his yard and came looking for company and attention? Regardless, I bet he is enjoying all the petting and loving attention from the grandkids. I bet y'all are having lots of fun. During the last week, we had the grandkids on Friday-Saturday-Sunday and then Tuesday-Wednesday-part of Thursday, so we had lots of fun together and now Tim and I have the weekend and next week to recover before they visit next weekend. Grandkids are a ton of fun, but somewhat tiring as well. Don't get me wrong---I love every second with them, but then I do need time to rest and recover afterwards. I wish I still had the same energy level as a 4 year old and a 9 year old, but I don't. Last week was a Grinch weekend planned just for the kids. First, I already had bought a Grinch storybook planned on the 2018 movie The Grinch, and it came with a board game. I had it stashed away so I could take it out and surprise them at the appropriate time. We went to a theater in Gainesville TX to see the movie, The Grinch, on Saturday afternoon. As a bonus, a costumed Grinch character was present in the theater lobby so the kids got to do a "meet and greet" with The Grinch and have their photo taken. They were so thrilled. He also walked through the theater a couple of times which thrilled all the kids....big ones and little ones alike. Later on, at home, we read the storybook and played The Grinch board game about a billion times. The next morning we went to IHOP for breakfast and we all ate something off their The Grinch menu, including hot cocoa with minty green whipped topping and little red hearts. This was a thrill for the kids, though the food was just typical IHOP food....but somehow I guess the pancakes are tastier when they are dyed green and have whipped cream and little red heart sprinkles on them. Over the next few days, we played that board game a lot. I'm all grinched out, and if I never eat at an IHOP again, I'm cool with that. (Grin....the things you'll do for your grandchildren! lol) I'm glad you and GDW are able to have the three with you right now. Hopefully the cats will come out of hiding. Jennifer, It sounds like y'all had fun and got a lot of shopping done. Had I not been so tired after most of a week spent with the grandkids, I might have gone to ON because I did think their sale prices sounded great. It was nice to sit at home and not go out and fight the crowds though. There's no real garden news from here either. I am keeping the amaryllis bulbs watered and they are growing, so hopefully we'll have some flowers by Christmas. With amaryllis you never know---sometimes that grow and bloom quickly, and sometimes much more slowly. So, I just hope for the best. One year they all bloomed after New Year's, but another year they bloomed around Thanksgiving. Some years they bloom in succession for weeks and weeks (I have six of them) and those are my favorite years. I start them about the same time every year, but there seems to be no consistency in how long it takes them to come into bloom in any given year. We got half the Christmas lights up on the house today, but a fire and very windy conditions prevented us from getting more work done. Everything here is so dry now since all the vegetation has frozen multiple times, and the cured fine vegetation catches fire quickly....and then the fire moves rapidly in the sort of wind we had today and will have again tomorrow. Would y'all believe our high temperature hit 79 degrees today? It actually felt pretty nice, but the strong wind made it feel cooler than you'd think 79 degrees would feel. Also, the relative humidity plunged down to 15%....hence the fire this afternoon. Tomorrow is supposed to be quite a bit windier, so we will stick close to home and try to get things done while understanding, rationally, that fires are likely and our Christmas decorating plans might get pushed out into the future. A little while ago the head of our local Fire Association sent us all a reminder that one year ago today we were fighting a fast-moving, wind-driven 200-acre wildfire that was a major threat to one home in its pathway and was a more minor threat to a couple more homes. While we stopped the fire from forward advancement just a few yards from the home and barn that day, burning trees and logs kept rekindling in the strong winds over a period of several days and we kept having to go back out and extinguish hot spots. I was getting over the flu/bronchitis that week and being out in the smoke every day really was setting back my recovery. I was coughing my head off out there. It was a rough week. Tomorrow's weather will be virtually identical to what we had on that day last year, so we're all crossing our fingers and hoping for the best---we do not need a repeat of that day. I think I cooked food for the firefighters every day for several days in a row that week so I could feed them out there at the constant return trips to hit new hot spots that were flaring up. How odd is it that we get a total repeat of the weather 1 year and 1 day later if tomorrow's forecast is correct and verifies? Usually I take down the Thanksgiving decorations immediately after T-Day and put up the Christmas tree but I haven't done it yet, and I might not do it for another few days. I am tired, and I keep looking at all the pretty autumn decorations and thinking that I could be happy to keep looking at them for a while yet. Our big red oak out front has peaked and is declining, which makes me sad. I'd say that 85% of our trees are pretty much bare now, and I think a ton more leaves will come down tomorrow. There are still some big red oaks in the woods that are a brilliant red, so at least we still have that bit of autumn color. The bunny population is returning. I don't know if they are cycling up because the coyote population might be cycling down, or if it is just that coyote population has retreated to the nearby river bottom lands because deer hunters are out running around everywhere with guns, but for whatever reason, we've seen more rabbits in the last 2 or 3 days than we've had in months. Someone near us has had a guy with a Bobcat type tree cutter clearing cedar trees and fence lines for a couple of days now....and the noise from that thing is a tiny bit annoying. Mostly it upsets the dogs, who seem to think the constant banging and crashing of it hitting and taking down trees is a threat to them in some way. Thus, the dogs are not spending much time at all outdoors. I'm not complaining, though, because cleaning up the land, which is adjacent to ours, keeps all of us a bit safer if a fire breaks out. I hope they take out all the cedar trees as those things burn like torches. I cannot believe we are nearing the end of November. This month has flown by. Dawn...See Morehazelinok
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