Perspective

I missed this-- from The American Patriot's Almanac (Bennett, 2008)-- at the end of May, but it's worth sharing.

page 180; click to enlarge

I'll do the math for you.

1% of the (estimated) population of the Colonies in 1776 died fighting the Revolutionary War.

1.9% of the population of all states in 1861 died fighting the Civil War.

0.1% of the population of the United States in 1917 died fighting in WWI.

0.3% of the population of the United States in 1941 died fighting in WWII.

[Population estimates and data from 1776-present (2010) here.]

Recipe: Grilled Vegetables with Herb Marinade

Recipe from Healthy Home Cooking: Fresh Ways with Vegetables (Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, 1986)

Preparation and grilling photos here: Big Food!

GRILLED VEGETABLES WITH HERB MARINADE

Serves 12
Working (and total) time: about 45 minutes
Calories 88; Protein 3g; Cholesterol 0mg; Total fat 5g; Saturated fat 1g; Sodium 52mg

6 medium zucchini, each sliced in half crosswise with a diagonal cut through the middle, each half cut into a fan by making lengthwise slices ¼ inch apart, leaving the slices attached at the uncut end

3 medium onions, each cut lengthwise into quarters

12 large mushroom caps, wiped clean

4 red sweet peppers, each cut lengthwise into thirds, seeded, deribbed

6 ripe plum or small tomatoes, cut in half

3 limes, each cut into 8 wedges

Herb Marinade (below)

(If using bamboo skewers, soak for 1 hour before threading on vegetables and grilling.) Prepare coals for grilling about 30 minutes before you plan to grill vegetables. Thread onions onto one or two skewers. Thread mushroom caps on one skewer. Thread pepper strips onto one or two skewers. Thread tomatoes on skewers. When grill is ready, lightly brush all vegetables with Herb Marinade. Cook vegetables, staggering cooking times so that all vegetables will be done at the same time. Put zucchini fans on oiled grill first; they require about 10 minutes grilling. After 2 minutes add onions. After 2 minutes longer add mushrooms. Add peppers and tomatoes for the last 4 minutes of grilling time. Baste vegetables with any remaining marinade as they cook, and turn them as they brown. Remove vegetables from skewers and arrange on a platter. Serve hot, accompanied by lime wedges.

HERB MARINADE

¼ C virgin olive oil

1 Tbsp fresh rosemary or 1 tsp dried leaves

1 tsp fresh thyme or ½ tsp dried leaves

¼ tsp crushed hot red pepper

¼ tsp salt

Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan and warm mixture over medium heat until it begins to bubble gently, then cook 4 minutes longer. Remove from heat to cool.

Recipe: Sweet and Spicey Barbecued Chicken

Why, yes! We eat like this every night.

SWEET AND SPICY BARBECUED GRILLED CHICKEN

Serves 4

2 ½ -3 lb frying chicken, cut up

2 Tbsp butter

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 C onion, chopped

8 oz tomato sauce (preferably homemade—see recipes in Basics section)

¼ C chili sauce (preferably homemade—see recipes in Basics section)

2 Tbsp brown sugar, packed firm

1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce

½ tsp salt

½ tsp chili powder (or more, to taste, and preferably Pure—see instructions in Basics section)

¼ tsp pepper

Melt butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add garlic and onion, and cook, stirring, until onion is tender. Stir in tomato sauce, chili sauce, brown sugar, Worcestershire sauce, salt, chili powder, and pepper, and simmer 5 minutes to blend flavors. Prepare charcoal grill (soak 2 hickory or pecan chunks for 1 hour prior to grilling, if smoky flavor is desired). Place chicken skin-side down on grill 6 inches from coals and cook covered 20 minutes, turning occasionally to grill evenly on all sides. Brush chicken with sauce and grill covered 15-20 minutes longer or until chicken is done, turning several times and brushing often with sauce.

Recipe: Creative Cooking Grilled Hamburgers Delux

One of Life's simple pleasures

As Mr. Big Food notes over there to your right, this is "real people’s food—fresh, simply prepared, and delicious." This particular recipe does not come from a spiral bound crappy old cookbook. It's from The Creative Cooking Course: A Complete Course in the Art of Cooking with 1200 Recipes and 2500 Color Photos by Charlotte Turgeon (Weathervane Books, New York, 1975). I think it took Mr. Big Food nearly a year to cull through this book, but it was worth it. Turgeon's editorials are fine reading.

Here's what she has to say about burgers:

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“Hamburgers are a very popular all-American food, perhaps because they are pleasing both to the taste and to the budget. When cooked properly, grilled hamburgers particularly appeal to our palates and can be a delicious part of any meal. …”

“These hamburgers are sizzling in a large oval iron pan supported by a homemade grill made of scrap iron rods. (We have found that neither the elaborateness nor simplicity of a grill affects the delicious flavor of hamburgers.) You’ll find recipes for Barbecue Sauces in the [Grillin’ … section].”—The Creative Cooking Course (1982)

Recipe below. (We had these with Coleslaw with Cooked Dressing.)

Recipe: Coleslaw with Cooked Dressing

One of the best claws I've ever had.

“This tasty dish comes from the lovely old town of Tarboro, North Carolina. Served with barbecue or Brunswick stew, it is a combination hard to beat and ideal for picnics or church suppers.”—Winifred Green Cheney, The Southern Hospitality Cookbook (1976)

COLESLAW WITH COOKED DRESSING

Makes 16 ½-cup servings

 1 head green cabbage, 7 inches in diameter, to make about 8 C finely shredded leaves

1 large onion, shredded fine

1 bell pepper, shredded fine

½ to 1 C sugar

1 C cider vinegar

¾ C olive oil or salad oil

1 tsp prepared mustard (preferably homemade—see recipes in Basics section)

1 tsp celery seeds

1 tsp salt

Combine shredded cabbage, onion, and bell pepper in a large glass or stainless steel bowl, sprinkle with sugar, but do not stir. Blend together vinegar, oil, mustard, celery seeds, and salt in a saucepan, bring to a boil, and pour mixture over vegetables. Do not stir. Refrigerate mixture overnight “This will keep for a week or more if refrigerated.”

Recipe: Apple Tart

“Delicious!”

APPLE TART

Serves 8

1 stick butter, softened

½ tsp vanilla

1/3 C sugar

1 C flour

Preheat oven to 450^o. Cream together butter and sugar, stir in vanilla, add flour, and mix well. Spread batter in bottom and 2 inches up sides of a greased springform pan.

CREAM CHEESE FILLING

8 oz cream cheese, softened to room temperature

¼ C sugar

Mix together well and spread over batter in pan.

TOPPING

2 C thinly sliced apples, peeled, cored

½ tsp cinnamon

1/3 C sugar

½ C pecans, chopped

Sprinkle cinnamon and sugar over apple slices, and toss to coat well. Sprinkle apple mixture over cream cheese layer in pan. Sprinkle pecans over top. Bake 10 minutes, then reduce oven temperature to 400^o and bake 15 minutes longer. Cool completely before removing pan sides.

Chicken

BIG LIFE

I let one of the broccoli raab plants go to seeds.

And I harvested the seeds.

Each and every one of these seeds has the potential to be a broccoli raab plant and to produce not only broccoli raab, but broccoli raab seeds.  

Scary!

BIG GARDEN

BIG FOOD

Apple tart. This week's snack.

Big Life!

The Last Few Days: Top to Bottom, Left to Right

Testify!

The contents of the picnic table chronicle Life here on the Farm.

So, top to bottom, left to right, here's what's been going on. And I note that several of these bullet points will become posts.

• Deep Woods Off [TM]: The deer ticks are bad this year.
• Citronella Candle: The flies are bad. Mostly they come to eat the dead milipedes.
• No. A soda that's left out on the table over night can not be drank-- drunk-- today. It has attracted flies. 
• Hard to see, but, yes, that is a crescent wrench and a washcloth. See WD40 below.
• Fake Frisbee and squishy football. Early evening energy burn for Rocky & Missy. You should see them! Rocky has gotten so good about "drop it." He grows as he drops it! Vicious Pit Bull. And Missy is just a big galoot. 
• Broccoli raab seeds in the plastic container. Enough to last a life time or two.
• Pot holders. Mr. Big Food needed them to flip the veggie skewers.
• WD40. There's nothing it can't do. In conjunction with the crescent wrench (above), I managed to get the stringy thing off of the gas-powered edger. 
• Scissors.
• Veggies.
• Cooking spray. Mr. Big Food delights in hosing down his grill with cooking spray. "Don't do this at home!"
• Platter for chicken
• Gas-powered weed wacker.
• Chemicals. There are some "earth friendly" things in there. You just can't see them.

A Few Red Onions

We had burgers tonight. And slaw.

And once again, I think of the poor fool who's tasked, on my dime, with following this little blog.

Dude. These burgers were off the hook. I had mine with a slice of red onion and some chili sauce.

300: Is That All?

If you've been following along, you may have noticed that I've been thinking a bit about those guys who, "with a firm reliance on divine Providence" mutually pledged to each other their Lives, their Fortunes, and their sacred Honor. I even asked, "Who were these guys?"  And so, you can imagine my delight when I learned that today in 1776 John Witherspoon was elected to represent New Jersey in the Continental Congress. (1)

And you can imagine my further delight to learn that Witherspoon, a Scotsman, arrived in the Colonies in August 1768 with his family and 300 crappy old books for the New Jersey College Library! (2) 

Witherspoon was a Presbyterian clergyman and President of New Jersey College-- later to be called Princeton. He had ten children, five of whom died in early childhood. (2) His three sons all fought in the Revolution. One was killed at the battle of Germantown. (1, 3)

Witherspoon was the only active clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence. (3, 4)

From Bennett, I learn that Witherspoon said

There is not a single instance in history in which civil liberty was lost, and religious liberty preserved entire.

It's taken from the final paragraph of a sermon Witherspoon preached in May, 1776. (5)

If your cause is just, you may look with confidence to the Lord, and intreat him to plead it as his own. You are all my witnesses, that this is the first time of my introducing any political subject into the pulpit. At this season, however, it is not only lawful but necessary, and I willingly embrace the opportunity of declaring my opinion without any hesitation, that the cause in which America is now in arms, is the cause of justice, of liberty, and of human nature. So far as we have hitherto proceeded, I am satisfied that the confederacy of the colonies has not been the effect of pride, resentment, or sedition, but of a deep and general conviction that our civil and religious liberties, and consequently in a great measure the temporal and eternal happiness of us and our posterity, depended on the issue. The knowledge of God and his truths have from the beginning of the world been chiefly, if not entirely confined to those parts of the earth where some degree of liberty and political justice were to be seen, and great were the difficulties with which they had to struggle, from the imperfection of human society, and the unjust decisions of unsurped authority. There is not a single instance in history, in which civil liberty was lost, and religious liberty preserved entire. If therefore we yield up our temporal property, we at the same time deliver the conscience into bondage.

[my emphases]

More on "minutemen and ministers" here.

References below the fold

Thinking Hurts Bad

Ouch

Let's make a game of it! How many stupidly wrong things do you see?

Help Wanted

Is it me, or are you, too, seeing random text across that photo? This is the third post to which this mysterious phenomena has happened.

Are you seeing it, too? Let me know in the comments. 

Thanks!

"They're moving a house. ... Be careful!"

As I mentioned, Mr. Big Food and I traveled to Oxford, in Lafayette Co., Mississippi, home of That School Up North (TSUN) today. We left the Farm a little after 9am. (Sorry. We don't have GPS in the truck and I turned it off on my phone, so if you're listening in, you'll just have to take my word for it.) We'd planned a delightful day-- and in the end it was delightful, but not at all what we had planned.

I was paying attention to folks' crops and gardens as we drove, and Mr. Big Food was listening to sports radio, and we were chatting, too. And I remarked that I couldn't for the life of me understand how folks would not want to live out here. (You don't. STAY AWAY.) And we got to talking about demographics and such. And then I saw the flashing blue lights of the sheriff's car.

Ahead. Not behind.

I slowed way down, rolled down the window, and and paused.

"They're movin' a house up ahead. It's takin' up the whole road. Be careful!" she said.

"Thank you!"

This exchange factored into our conversation. Have you ever had this exchange with a sheriff's deputy?

A few miles on, I see a pickup in the middle of the road. A woman jumps out. I again roll down my window-- by this time it's about 83-85°F-- and in the weirdest motions I've ever seen, she does a television-version of a tarmac dude motioning us to the side of the road yelling, "Get off the road. Pull over." It was confusing.

But we got the gist, and pulled into someone's private driveway. The truck behind us pulled in behind us.

 And we waited for this house to come down the road.

At the time, it was not at all clear what role this 18-wheeler was playing

and it still isn't clear.

Meanwhile, all of the available driveways were filled and the tarmac lady moved on down the road to guide folks in to other driveways.

And then...

"Really? We couldn't have gotten around that?" Is what Mr. Big Food asked.

Let's look at this together.

My gut instinct is that is a house of about 500-700 square feet. But what we need is a unit of measure. Here are the obvious choices: shingle tabs; door/window frames; proportion of standard state highway that the house occupies; mailbox dimensions.

Based on my extensive research, I'm going with 15 x 30.  450 square feet.

How much does it cost to tote a 15 x 30 house down the road? On a tractor?

STAY AWAY.

There's no explaining what goes on here.

Photo Post with No Captions

because I'm at a loss for words. Background: we traveled to That School Up North today.

'Morning!

I posted a little ditty last evening. It previewed just fine. But when I viewed the post, it was wonkers-- random text floating around & whatnot-- and a good night's sleep didn't fix it. It might have just been me, but I took it down anyway.

Later! Have a nice day.

Place Your Bets!

What are the odds that it will be a reasonably interesting day here on the Farm?

June 19

Blaise Pascal. 1623-1662. French philosopher and mathematician.

In less than five minutes, Mr. Big Food schooled me on 1) a rational argument for the existence of God; 2) the axioms of probability theory; 3) the correlation between being a brilliant mathematician and being "certifiably nuts"; 4) and for good measure, the state of mathematics in England-- nearly 100 years before Pascal-- after the plague.

We country mice sure are a boring lot, don't ya know?

So I walk into the kitchen, see the purple basil on the table, and ask,

"Did you pick this basil yourself?"

"No. I asked Miss M to get me some. I went out and looked and told her specifically which kind I wanted."

"Okay, then!"

A few minutes later, "Hey, Marica!"

"Yes?"

"Can you go get me some thyme?"

"Sure. How much do you need?"

"About as much as the basil."

So I pick up Herbert-- what we've named the herb cutting scissors-- and walk out and pick some thyme.

I sowed seed directly in the herb garden along the sidewalk for a thyme 'hedge." It's creeping along nicely.

Parts of the herb garden are a pure-T mess. What with the rain and the warm weather, the weeds have gone crazy. The sage is over-run, but sage is a real trooper. Some cucumbers volunteered in the asparagus patch. I allowed them to stay. I'm laissez faire with respect to volunteers. I pulled the red onions the other day. They're curing. That opened up some space, which is good.

Oh! Because I wanted some perennial flowers in the herb garden, I sowed some Texas Bluebonnet seeds Mr. Big Food's Mom brought from Texas. They are about to flower!

We are making an effort to weed the herb garden. As bad as the weeds are, weeding an herb garden is a delightful task. We're careful, but we are rewarded for our mistakes! Dang. That smells good!