November 2020 Week 2
OklaMoni
3 years ago
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dbarron
3 years agoLarry Peugh
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November 2017 Week 2 General Garden Talk
Comments (81)Rebecca, OMG--the pie! Don't tell Tim. That cherry cheesecake pie is his absolute favorite holiday dessert and I didn't buy the stuff to make him one this year since we are trying so hard to eat in a more healthy way (we aren't getting any younger, so we are trying to make up for that by being more disciplined). I'm hoping there will be so many pies at my nephew's house that Tim won't notice that specific one is missing. It is yummy and a longtime favorite of mine too. I'm taking both a sweet potato pie and a pumpkin pie since both are at least veggie-based and somewhat less sugary and guilt-inducing that some other pies. Reading about all your veggies is making me hungry! It is hard on Thanksgiving to have room in one's tummy for all the yummy food, but I try to take small servings of everything so I don't miss out on any of it. I'm not a big eater anyway, so I get full pretty fast. I don't know how these men who go through the buffet and eat three plates full of food (before they even start out on desserts) do it. Where do they put it all? One plate full more than fills me up and makes me sleepy. Jennifer, Tim used to be that way about food, but slowly has come into agreement with me that food is an issue of quality, so he seems more willing now than ever before to select the healthier foods. I've tried to get him to focus on quality not quantity or cost. Granted, it has taken me 35 years to get him to the point that he understands that it is smarter to pay more for healthier food instead of filling up on junk, but I do think that if he were doing the grocery shopping, it still might not matter to him that he buy organic dairy or pastured meats in the same way that it matters to me. He reverts to his "thrifty Yankee" ways really quickly if I'm not with him. I always tell him I'd rather spend our money eating right to begin with than to spend it on pharmaceutical products to fix whatever is wrong as a result of eating a poor diet. He always agrees with me in principle, but then if he is doing the shopping, he may just be price-driven (which is why I do most all of the food shopping). I'll give him credit--he is trying harder to eat healthy, but I think if I went out of town for a week, he'd revert back to his old habits and just live on chili dogs, nachos and sodas or something similar. Rebecca, I wish we had a Central Market here! I'm resigned to the fact that we will, always and forever, have to drive 85 miles one way to shop at CostCo, Central Market and Whole Foods (really, Whole Foods is in Irving, so it is another 10 miles further than the CostCo in Lewisville). It takes the better part of a Saturday to make that shopping circuit on a Saturday once or twice a month, but then, on the other hand, we rarely have to go to another store in between the major shopping trips so I feel like that helps---I hate having to pop into a grocery store for 1 or 2 things because then you cannot get out of there without buying 10 or 12 things. I'd like to think that someday Denton will at least get a CostCo and maybe either a Central Market or a Whole Foods, but that's still gonna be a long drive. On the other hand, when we moved here, we had to drive to either Denton or Sherman just to go to a Lowe's or Home Depot, and now we have a HD in Gainesville and a Lowe's in Ardmore, so that's a hopeful sign of retail progress. Maybe decent grocery stores will keep migrating north towards us (eventually). Nancy, You're welcome. Four o'clocks are a very sentimental favorite for me. My dad had them in our back yard (in morning sun, afternoon shade), though he generally didn't grow a lot of flowers, so I always think of him when I see them. I agree that guys who y'all charged to come and hunt likely were more trustworthy and careful that some of the locals. You know what I mean! It drives me up the wall. As deer season approaches, we hear loud trucks going up and down the road all night long---guys spotlighting or at least hoping to. We don't hear those vehicles at all the rest of the year and it makes me sick that those so-called macho men (as they think of themselves) show so little regard for the law and no regard for personal property rights. We have, upon occasion, driven our car down to the end of our driveway and just sat and watched them, cell phone in hand, to make it clear we are watching and will report them. If they are going to break the laws, let them go somewhere else---we have people's home and animals scattered around here and don't need jerks firing indiscriminately into our pastures and woodlands. My other gripe? As soon as hunting season starts, we begin getting lots of fires in wildland areas and I blame careless hunters for starting those fires. There's 5 VFDs out on one of those now on a game reserve, a sixth VFD on stand-by (oops, we'd likely be next up after that!) and the game warden is on his way to another area in the game reserve to check reports of a second fire. If these guys are old enough to go out and camp and hunt, they are (or should be) old enough and mature enough to make sure all campfires are thoroughly extinguished. Not all of them are---hence the sudden spike each year in fires at the exact same time the deer hunting season begins. I think the toy trick could work. I do that with Pumpkin, who is more kitten than adult cat even now, and he's a lot younger than the other cats so he plays like mad. He does scatter the toys around, and I gather them back up and refill the toy box...and he removes them again. Yesterday I had a delivery that came in a large cardboard box, so after it was empty, I put the box in the cat room, and three of the six cats slugged it out for control of the box. They all three slept together in the box last night as none of them was willing to cede control of the box to anyone else. Who has to buy cat toys? Give Pumpkin and the other cats a cardboard box (even better, sprinkle it with a little dried catnip) and a couple of old socks and they can play for hours, or even days. I don't want to say they are easily amused, but sometimes they are. Pumpkin can amuse himself for hours just chasing leaves as they fall. I guess they are a substitute for chasing mice or something. Kim, I've only been in WInCo 3 or 4 times, and I do think I've seen the Aldi in that general area somewhere. With WInCo, I think it depends on what you're buying. They have had some good prices on fish and pork when we've been in there, and a friend of mine has switched a lot of shopping from Sam's to WinCo because they eat a whole lot of pork. I mostly went into WinCo this summer to get the Dixondale Farms melons whenever they had them in stock, which was for at least half the summer. Once our melons were ripening, I stopped buying theirs, so maybe they had them all summer but I didn't go in there after midsummer because we had our own. They also had a low-carb, low-sugar type sports drink that Chris likes better than Gatorade and Powerade, so I would go in there to buy a couple dozen bottles of that drink when he was still living here near us. He liked them for his CrossFit workouts. I don't think we have a long enough growing season for Cassava as it needs warm weather for 8-10 months. I also think that grinding down the roots into flour would be a ton more work than I'm willing to do----and you'd have to first grate the tough roots (might be possible to do it more easily with a very good, sturdy food processor) and then dry them out...and maybe grind them into flour after that? I'd be worried I wouldn't process it 'just so' and would end up with too high of a cyanide content in it. I have grown some of the ornamental varieties of Esculenta manihot, like 'Variegata', in containers and they are gorgeous plants but frost will kill them, so I think they only do well here outdoors, even in containers, for roughly 6 or 7 months. I cannot imagine it would be possible to grow cassava in the ground this far north, although....it might be possible with a hoophouse or high tunnel that is heated in the winter time. I wonder if cassava is grown in the parts of south Texas where they can plant onions as early as mid-October? They might have a long enough growing season for it down there. I kind of suspect all the cassava used in products we buy here may be imported, but haven't read the labels to see that...and our fire pagers are going off---gotta go. Dawn...See MoreNovember 2019, Week 2
Comments (61)I'm desperately trying to catch up quickly while also cleaning house before the grandkids arrive for the weekend. I'm taking a break from cleaning for a few minutes. Jennifer, Those old jars you got from that couple probably are thicker and more well-made than the newer ones and likely would work better in the freezer. Nancy, Sometimes cats are just slow to warm up to someone for no apparent reason I've ever found. Pumpkin was cuddly when younger, but is more fidgety now and would rather be moving around. I guess he outgrew sitting on our laps. If he is that close to us, he wants to play/fight/bite or scratch (playfully in his mind, but not that much fun for us), so I usually put him in the sunroom to bask in the sunshine and warmth which he does adore. We have a ton of leaves down, and a ton still on the trees, but then at least 10 of our 14+ acres are heavy woodland, so we never have a shortage of leaves (or squirrels). We've always had either black or white appliances and I was fine with that, but when we remodeled the kitchen a few years back we chose the stainless steel appliances to go with the gray cabinets and I'm not sorry we did. They complement one another nicely. You might remember we had no plan to replace our existing appliances at all when we were doing the kitchen, but they quickly committed suicide in unison and gave up the ghost, so since we had to replace them all, we went with stainless. I like gardening but I'm 60 years old, have been gardening since I was old enough to toddle around behind my dad in the garden, and have gardened very long and very hard all my life. The last few years I've been cutting back, and I'm okay with that. I'll never give up gardening completely, but it is not all-consuming like it once was. I wanted to have a more balanced life that didn't totally revolve around the garden and, after almost a decade of trying to slowly cut back, I feel like I've achieved the more balanced life, though I still have a ways to go. I know Tim and the rest of the family still think I work too long and too hard out there, but I'm a lot better about closing the gate and walking away than I used to be. Okmulgeeboy, lol. We all are at different stages in our lives and in our gardening. There was a time I tried to keep everything alive all winter, but that was quite some time back. I'm more content to have the winter off from outdoor gardening these days. Actually, that's when our VFD gets really busy with the winter fire season, so a lot of my cutting back on winter garden really came about because I couldn't/wouldn't be at home to cover things up on cold nights because I was out at a fire. Your life evolves over time----I know mine sure has. Between the winter fire season and weekends with the grandkids, winter gardening has fallen to the bottom of my priority list. I didn't watch the football game last night, but thought that it was a disgusting mess there at the end when I heard about what happened. Personally, I am not content with the NFL's suspension of Myles Garrett for "at least" the rest of this season without pay. I think they should have suspended him for at least a full calendar year without pay. What he did is unconscionable and he could have caused a head injury that would have forever altered people's lives as it could have resulted in a traumatic brain injury or even death. (It really hacked me off that he started talking out what a great thing it was they won the game, and that his "8 seconds of behavior" or however he worded it shouldn't detract from that. When I read that, I had steam coming out of my ears. Apparently he doesn't understand there's real consequences to his actions, and of course he detracted from his team's win. I never thought I'd see someone take a helmet and hit someone in the head with it, although there was a guy that took a swing with a helmet a few years back, but he missed his target so didn't get in the same kind of trouble. Football always has had a certain level of violence in it, and we are seeing players paying the price now with CTE and other issues, including often the early onset of Alzheimer's Disease, so I'm glad the league is trying to protect players better now than they did decades ago. Anyone who watched football in the 1960s, 70s or 80s certainly saw a lot more intentional violence than we see now....yet we never had a player try to use a helmet like it was used last night. That was appalling. If you or I hit someone walking down the street in the head with a helmet, we'd be arrested for either aggravated assault or assault with a deadly weapon, I can guarantee that, and the criminal court system would deal with us. I kinda think he ought to be arrested and charged with assault for what he did because he crossed an NFL line that never should be crossed. I have been busy with kittens. Today is their first day to eat some solid food and 3 out of 4 were impressed. The 4th just looked at me and walked away like I was trying to give them something horrible. I mixed canned kitten food with formula and tried to teach them to eat it off my fingers, and then eventually they stuck their heads down into the dish to nibble at it. Because they are starting solid food, they got their first litter box today, and an expanded living area. I set up a puppy/kitten corral that has plenty of space for eating, playing, sleeping, using a litter box, etc. and they now have tons of space to roam. There's a kitty cave they can go inside if they want darkness to sleep, and lots of toys. I'm hoping this will make them happy and more independent so they won't cry for me every time they see me---it isn't just because they are hungry---often it is because they are bored and want me to pick them up and play with them. See there, I don't need plants to nurture this winter because I'm nurturing tiny kittens. I do have plants though---a Christmas cactus I'm working to bring back into bloom and six potted amaryllis bulbs, three of which are getting ready to bloom....while the other 3 just sit there like maybe they'll grow and bloom or maybe they won't. Well, I need to get back to cleaning the house. I like to have it all nice and clean before the whirling tornado known as the grandkids enters the house. That way, I'm ahead of the game for a little while. I don't obsessively clean while they are here though, which is why it is nice to start off with it clean....then I can ignore it and focus on spending time with them. It was so cold and frosty this morning, but is almost shirt sleeve weather outside this afternoon. I'm looking forward to those highs in the 70s next week even though they won't last long. Dawn...See MoreNovember 2020 Week 3
Comments (48)I had never heard of sugar beets until I saw that anti-Monsanto video. I guess I was ignorant and thought it all came from sugar cane. We don't use a lot of sugar either except at this time of year because of baking. I need to get that started soon. I've had a couple of requests. haha. Maybe this will be the week. You know, we did use quite a bit in our jelly making this year, though. Oh, Y'all, the pepper jams are SUCH a hit. Mason and Mack came for dinner tonight and just the 6 of us nearly finished off a jar with a block of cream cheese. I used one of the jars of "plain" jalapeno jam this time. I sent Mason home with a plain one and my favorite, the strawberry jalapeno. Anyway...so we did use sugar because of the jelly making. And I'm about to start using it again in baking. Oh, and I wasn't worried about Larry buying GMO seed. I also haven't had time to keep up with all of that stuff. My garlic hasn't showed up yet. Maybe I buried it too deep. How deep do y'all bury yours? Nancy, I sorta remember your cookie making two years ago...or rather I remember you talking about it. Maybe try the open toe Oofos. I have the flipflops. No sweat. I might then the clogs and wear them with socks this winter--just around the house. Also, the Hoka One One shoes are supposed to be good as well as the Vionics. I'm about to order a pair of each. Super expensive. If you don't bread your okra before freezing it, I highly recommend doing so. It makes frying up a batch of okra so quick! I seriously finished frying a quart of it in about 12 minutes....See MoreNovember Week 2 2021: Thinking about Turkeys and Hams and stuff
Comments (47)Well, it's just prior to the changing of the week...and I've been cold pretty much all day. But the house is the same temperature on the thermostat, so it's just me probably. Next week this time, I'm sure I'll be soundly asleep after a trip to Wagoner. Larry, any chance you could re-consider, it's not as long a trip for you as for me? And a final set of images from Thursday's hike on the upper area of Wilson Lake. Always nice to remind everyone I have two dogs (including me). They clambered over and (in Rag's case) under the rocks like ground squirrels. Sure hard to believe we're mid November and 2021 is in it's final six weeks....See MoreAmyinOwasso/zone 6b
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