For the record

although I am a live & let live sort of human, it would not bother me in the least if red imported fire ants were eradicated from North America, where they have no natural predators. From that infallible source, Wikipedia:

In the 1930s, colonies were accidentally introduced into the United States through the seaport of Mobile, Alabama: cargo ships from Brazil docking at Mobile unloaded goods infested with the ants.[2] Biologist E.O. Wilson says that he reported the first colony, in the Mobile area, when he was 13.[3] The ants then spread from Alabama to almost every state of the American South, from Texas to Maryland and a few other Mid-Atlantic states. Since the 1990s infestations have been reported in New Mexico and parts of Arizona in the Southwest. They have also been reported in California in the West, but probably arrived via ship or truck rather than by spreading.[1] In a similar way, the ants were accidentally introduced into Australia in 2001.[4]

[my emphasis]

Oh for crying out loud. He said this in a lecture at Trinity University about two years ago. I'll bet he remembers a childhood friend named Billy Fletcher, just like Owen did (in chapter 6).

Saturday Night Supper

Sausage, sauerkraut, potatoes

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/76/76k.phtml  

Andy Kaufman doin' Elvis, "Thank you very much."

Ralph Nader making fun of Ralph Nader. Who'd have thought we'd come to characterize the Late '70's as gentler times?

Anyhoo. Back to what's important.

Creative Cooking Sausage and Sauerkraut

From This ... To This ... To Stewed Tomatoes

From fresh tomatoes

To blanched and peeled Roma tomatoes & fresh peppers & onion & fresh basil & fresh oregano

To stewed tomatoes

As God as my Witness, we will never buy a tomato product ever again (except tomato paste and tomato juice). And I'm here to testify that we haven't. Last year was not a good tomato year. Nevertheless, we made it. As we have for the past five years.

Three batches of stewed tomatoes are still cooling. Our kitchen smells really good! And Mr. Big Food hasn't even started cooking supper yet.

As God as my witness

I will never eat a store-bought pepper as long as I live.

I get a harvest like this about once every three days or so. To give a sense of scale, I'd call the purple bell pepper on the far left "very large." In addition to the purple peppers, there are jalapenos, Neapolitan (green & red), jalapenos, true Hungarians, and gazillions* of pepperoncinis. All are heirloom. Each has a unique taste, unlike store bought which, having tasted these, have no taste at all.

With respect to my claim about never eating store-bought peppers... . The 2011-2012 season-- that is, grown in 2011, froze enough to last until 2012's harvest came in-- was the first year since the 2008-2009 season that this didn't happen. (Crop failure. We just didn't make it all the way.) Oh, sure. I'm sure I ate store-bought peppers in a restaurant salad or what have you. I'm talking about having enough peppers to eat stuffed peppers (and pickled jalapenos!) and to cook with without having to buy peppers for these purposes at the store.

Food security. 
~~

* An extremely large fictitious number. 

Ryan & Guns

Offering this as a public service. If you're interested in Ryan's position on guns and the Second Amendment, Only Guns and Money has the run down here.

Spoiler. NRA & GOA both give him an 'A.'

Be sure to watch the short C-SPAN video at the end of  the linked post.

Recipe: Country Swiss Steak in Slow Cooker

Danged good food

The slow cooker-- also know as the "crockpot"-- is an under appreciated piece of cooking equipment these days. I would like to see a return to a crockpot way of life. Crockpots simmer the best of the past with the best of the present. Presently, most folks don't have time to cook. (Which is not true, but I'll set that aside.) We ate better in the past-- less fast food, less processed food, more good home cookin'. Crockpot cooking affords the opportunity to eat better while spending little time cooking. 

Here's how it work. You do have to decide on a crockpot recipe, and you do have to have the necessary ingredients, and with some-- but not all-- crockpot recipes you do have to do minimal prep cooking. For example, this morning while the coffee was peculating, Mr. Big Food fried the sausages and browned the Swiss steak. And then you do have to put it all in the crockpot. And you do have to turn it on. But that's it! (That's a lie. Mr. Big Food did have to make some rice this evening.) And then you get home and supper is waiting for you! Easy clean up, too. 

Recipe below.

Recipe: Dilled Okra

Green, white and red okra!

Recipe below.

Recipe: Escabeche

Pickled jalapeño peppers

Recipe below.

Recipe: Kosher Dill Pickles II

I'm looking forward to trying these.

Recipe below.

Recipe: Chunk Pickles

A sweet bread & butter type

Recipe below.

"A Recipe for a Day"

Take a dash of water cold
And a leven of prayer
A little bit of sunshine gold
Dissolved in the morning air,
Add to your meal some merriment
And a thought of kith and kin
And the prime ingredients 
A plenty of work thrown in.
But spice it all with the essence of love
Ans a little whiff of play
Let a wise old Book and a look above
Complete a well spent day.

Author unknown

From The Administrative Management Society's "First Lady's Recipe Round-Up" (1964/65)

It is not clear to me what The Administrative Management Society is. The preface, by Ethlyn Greenwood, suggests that the recipes in this crappy old cookbook were collected from members' wives. Each recipe notes the contributor's name and location. 

And now that I think it through, shouldn't it be "First Ladies'?" It's the first cookbook from the ladies of the Society. 

In any case, this lady has a plenty of work to do today.

Pascal Meets Pickling

Mr. Big Food and I put up 12 pints and three quarts of four different kinds of pickled things this afternoon. It took about four hours-- we are experienced and efficient picklers. Music was playing in the background and we seldom run out of extraneous things to chat about, e.g., poor Randy. We guess he's not even going to be playing at State Fairs any more. It's one thing to be drunk, but quite another to be publicly drunk and publicly naked all at the same time. I have no sympathy.

That said, we'd sort of reached the end of the line. We fell one ring/lid rig short. 

Recipe: Pork, Taters and Corn Bake

Top with homegrown tomatoes

Pickling Day supper

Recipe below

This is how it begins

Assemble ingredients for the various pickles types. Take a photo. Later, play with photo.

Wash okra for Dilled Okra

Saute jalapenos, carrots, onions, oregano and other things for Escabeche

"I'm a good dog. I know better than to go into the kitchen on pickling day."

To-do on a rainy day / UPDATES in red

All with Mr. Big Food... .

1. Read, comment, edit a little something Mr. Big Food & Kari have written ✓

2. Stew tomatoes

3. Pickle okra ✓

4. Pickle pickles ✓

5. Pickle another kind of pickles ✓

6. Pickle jalapenos, carrots, onions, herbs ✓

7. Work on post about Fact & Fiction

8. Manage dogs (on-going)

Homeward Bound

George Harrison & Paul Simon. Saturday Night Season 2, Episode 8 (the Thanksgiving episode)

Paul Simon hosted; George Harrison was Simon's musical guest. Chevy Chase was-- thankfully-- already gone. Jane Curtain was hitting her stride anchoring Weekend Update. Belushi was riotously funny as Kissinger. Gilda Radner as Baba Wawa interviewing Kissinger... . Good stuff. And let's not forget Dan Aykroyd as Carter. He's Canadian. Aykroyd. Not Carter.

~~

We are working our way through Season 2. It didn't begin well.

I feel so isolated out here on the Farm

where it's raining like crazy.

I swear, they just make this stuff up as they go along. None of the four weather forecasting sites I look at-- for fun more than forecast-- were predicting rain today. Some still aren't! Barring something utterly predictable, what they ought to forecast for Mississippi in early August is, 

Hot. Chance of isolated morning/afternoon/evening/overnight rain/thunderstorms. High humidity.

They'd get it 100% right 100% of the time!

Something a little different

I was looking for a home for one of my crappy old overpriced book purchases (I need more shelf space) and took a walk down memory lane.

The book is a 1911 edition of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám,  a Persian poet of the eleventh and early twelfth century, translated to English around 1858 by Edward Fitzgerald. I already have this book-- an earlier leather bound edition I picked up for $2 at a yard sale years and years ago. But it's fragile, to say the least, and although I rarely spend over $5 on a crappy old book, I thought it worth $7 to have a volume of the Rubáiyát I could thumb through from time to time.

Some years ago, I read this to Mr. Big Food:

LXXIII

Ah Love! could thou and I 
with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme
of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits
-- and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's
Desire?

 He responded by comparing me to a Summer's Day.

~~

So we have Re-moulded the sorry Scheme of Things entire such that we now enjoy Mississippi Summer Days! BIG Life!

Non! Absenter!

My name, Barbour, is an old French Huguenot name, and my great-great-great-great grandfather Louis LeFleur, a Frenchman, founded a trading post around 1800 that developed into Mississippi's capitol, Jackson, a quarter century later.

I wonder if we Barbour boys ought to set up a business to attract wealthy Frenchmen and successful businesses from France to Mississippi. As a low tax, pro-business state with a regime of rational regulation, we could roll out the red carpet and run up the tri-color over Fort Maurepas. Bienvenue, mes amis!

Says Haley Barbour in "Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor French Millionaires." 

Says I, "No! Stay away!"

h/t Yall Politics

Put up

or shut up.

Corn on the cob

Sliced okra

Whole okra

Cucumbers soaking overnight in salt water. I'll rinse and chunk them tomorrow, and they'll soak tomorrow over night in fresh water. And then they will be packed in jars with some seasoned vinegar, and hot water bathed. And then, come winter, we'll have some pickles!

Having been blanched, the corn & okra are now in the freezer. As are two baking sheets of peppers. We'll pickle on Thursday. I hear we'll also be making escapeche (sp? pickled jalapenos and carrots and onions and such). 

Just FYI, in the coming days, I am going to have no sympathy for folks who can't find escapeche (sp), or a decent ear of corn, on the shelf.

I have a wringer.

More crappy old stuff

In the developed world, we forget that there was once a time when washday meant “day” rather than “toss it in the machine and come back in 20 minutes.” In many parts of the world without access to electricity and clean water, that time is still now. Design students Alex Cabunoc and Ji A You of the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles visited the the slums of Cerro Verde, Peru. There they saw women spending days on end hauling water and washing clothes by hand and they came up with a solution. They created the GiraDora, a foot-pedal washing machine that’s inexpensive and portable.

More on the pedal-powered washing machine here.

h/t Instapundit

Moo

 

I forgive cows' stupidity because they give me milk and are tasty when grilled properly.

Folks have asked why we don't have cows here at the Farm. Simple. I'd get too attached. Stupid critters.

Inside the Life of Your T-Shirt

A cotton flower

in a cotton field;

A cotton boll

in a cotton field

regulated by the Food and Drug Administration because cotton seed oil comes from cotton.

From that infallible source, Wikipedia (which is now back on line):

Cottonseed oil is a cooking oil extracted from the seeds of cotton plant of various species, mainly Gossypium hirsutum and Gossypium herbaceum. Cotton grown for oil extraction is one of the big four genetically modified crops grown around the world, next to soy, corn, and rapeseed (canola), mostly Monsanto products.[1][2]

Ahh. Monsanto.

Mooooving on... .

Recipe: Cajun Stewed Okra

From Justin Wilson; Why it's called stewed is a good question

CAJUN STEWED OKRA

Okra, sliced

Eggs, beaten, equal in volume to amount of okra

Shredded cheeses (use your imagination)

Heat oven to 350^o. Put okra in a greased casserole dish and pour beaten eggs over. Top with cheeses to cover. Bake until set and cheese has melted.

~~

I'd have called it Oven Baked Okra Omelet.

We have so much okra. Tomorrow we freeze okra.

Recipe: Corn Stuffed Bell Peppers

Fresh!

Unit for unit, peppers have more vitamin C than citrus. And there ain't nothing like fresh corn.

Recipe below.

Stuff it!

Peppers and tomatoes picked this morning. Corn picked about 10 minutes before Mr. Big Food scraped the kernels from the cobs. 

Recipe shortly!

Red Roma

tomatoes

AFTERTHOUGHT: This is not what it looks like to my eye! Fun with color.

Picture this & that

This

That

This more closely resembles what the book looks like to my eye than that-- although this  still needs work. (I'm learning.)

I corrected the photo using GIMP, a free photo editing program for PC and MAC, and following Kat's video instruction at How-to-gimp.com. Kat blogs about photography at Pare and Focus. (Links to all stuff GIMP at at Pare and Focus.) Here's a taste

You can make great pictures with almost any camera. There, I said it.

Here’s the thing… Every time I say that, I can hear people thinking “Oh yeah? Says you with the fancy pants camera…” or “Sure you can with a NEW camera, but not my old camera…”

So last week, I gave myself a challenge. I thought I would put my money where my mouth is by taking some pictures with my husband's 4 year old, 7 Megapixel point and shoot camera instead of my fancy pants DSLR and macro lens. I wanted to make a picture with the point and shoot that I might confuse for a DSLR picture. And I have to say… I think I got close!

I used a little in camera technique, and some tricks in GIMP to turn that point and shoot picture into a photo that almost looks like it was taken with my fancy pants DSLR!

Keep reading Kat's Getting Great Point and Shoot Pictures… The Set Up.

By the way, I've seen Kat's fancy pants camera and if she can get close to the quality of her camera with a four year old point and shoot... I have a lot to learn.

I paid ninetyeight pennies (+ a few more for state tax)

but it's worth one hundred times that.

Edited by Bradley V. Smith; Published by Bantam Books (New York/Toronto/London); 1964

Powers -- Roots -- Reciprocals

Ha. 

Sort of makes my point, doesn't it?

See also Anthem, available in full online here. (See, you don't really need Wikipedia & you don't need the World Wide Web if you own the book!)

Chapter Ten

After hiking deep into a mountain range, Equality 7-2521 and the Golden One discover a house, left over from the Unmentionable Times. It seems exceptionally small to them, and when they find the bedroom, they realize that only two people lived there. They are amazed that two people would live by themselves. They claim the house as their own. Tomorrow, Equality 7-2521 will begin to read the strange books from the house's library.

[my emphasis]

NOLA: Final Thought

The trip home was uneventful. Turns out, when you are anxious to return home, 46 miles of causeway, give or take, turns into just 46 miles at 76mph, or about 2/3 hour, give or take, of road over water. I'm cured. 

After doing all of the getting back home stuff, I sat down to catch up and found that folks at one of my go-to site were discussing Lost Children.

I look at so many of the really nice kids that I meet in our neighborhood and in our church and they are, to put it simply, utterly, totally, hopelessly lost! Many of them have college degrees and still have no idea of what they want to do. They have no idea of how the world works. They are college graduates and they live at home. They wait for someone to help guide them (i.e., parents). Many of them are hopelessly in debt. I would have to conclude that our generation’s parents have failed them.

I purged my thoughts about the kids and parents in the comments. 

RELATED: I wish the dogs could talk b/c I'm curious about what Daughter C's 46 guests cooked here this weekend. 

Back where we belong!

And none too soon!

I bought three crappy old books at the bookstore that kept me from loosing my mind. Two were over priced by my standards-- $7 & $10-- but were definitely worth it. The one that was 98¢ is worth about 9800¢ to me. Funny what folks value, isn't it?

As it turns out

there is a God. He plopped this down in front of me just when I thought I was going to lose my mind this afternoon. It's not that The French Quarter is different than it was 15 years ago-- or is it? Or that the people are different-- or are they? Or that there are more children, or it's hideously more expensive and more vulgar. What was bothering me when I stumbled upon the book store was that I couldn't even list the relevant factors for a poorly framed question. It's so chaotic that it's hard to latch onto a coherent question. 

In the past, New Orleans-- The French Quarter-- had been a place where I tested for, and found,  order.

A store with some over priced crappy old books

The food has been great. For starters tonight, we had an oyster taster platter. Followed by red beans & rice & sausage. Good stuff.

But I do not understand why parents are holding their children's hands outside a strip club on Bourbon Street at 7pm. Wait. I do understand why parents are holding kids' hands. I just don't understand what the parents and kids are doing there in the first place. 

But hey. I'm a Libertarian, not a Victorian. Do what ever the hell you want.

Panorama

Pirates Alley

Color me skeptical

Psychic: a person who is allegedly sensitive to psychic influences or forces; medium.

because I would have thought she'd have seen these wrinkles in her future and have acted in her past to prevent them in her present.

40,000

That's how many men flew helicopters in Vietnam. I've been told by a fellow I chatted with that there are about 1000 here at the reunion, not counting spouses. They are a friendly lot, but they don't seem to be venturing too far from the hotel or planned activities. It would appear they are enjoying eachother's company. 

The first thing the fellow said me after he'd told me the number of pilots was, "of course, a lot of them died, or have since died."

War related: Did you know the National WWII Museum is in New Orleans?

VHPA / For somone my age, it wasn't all *that* long ago

Reunion

The Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association is holding its 2012 reunion at the hotel in which we are staying. Some first thoughts after a few hours of lobby/elevator/(rarely) street interaction.

These are some old guys. Some look older than others.

It is low budget. See the screen shot from VHPA's web site page about the reunion-- that little white box really doesn't load. Almost all of the signs to sign in, reconnect, etc. are hand written. (I wasn't comfortable taking pictures today. Maybe tomorrow.) It's August in NOLA. Cheaper hotel rates. 

I saw a number of kids-- grandkids, I presume. Not a lot. But enough to notice. It looked like some were on holiday that just happened to coincide with Grandpa's reunion but in one instance, I saw a Grandpa introduce a Grandboy to another Old Guy. The Boy and the Old Guy shook hands and then all three were off to talk war stories. I guess.

Both the Pilots and their spouses have very nice name tags-- as hang tags around their necks-- printed with their first names in very LARGE LETTERS. Can't miss 'em if you try. 

I'll pay more attention to this tomorrow but it looks like a number of the former pilots sport metals on their caps. 

Scheduling problems

Typically, when we travel I pen a few posts in advance and schedule them to appear later. As you can clearly see, I did not do that this time. Sorry 'bout that.

But... . 

There was the crossing of Lake Pontchartrain on over 40 miles of causeway.  

There is a meeting-- a big meeting-- here at the hotel of United States Veterans who flew Helicopters in Viet Nam.

There is really nothing quite like the aroma of the French Quarter on a warm August afternoon.

There's Mr. B's Bistro for dinner tonight. 

There's all day tomorrow to wander around.

So stay tuned.

Well, ex-c-use me.

I eat good food.

Daughter C.-- who's officially moved to Starkvegas-- has come back to the Farm for a few days to tend to the Farm and the Dogs in our absence.

Just look at those windows! Filthy, filthy, filthy. Excuse me.

Mr. Big Food grilled a couple of ribeyes on the occasion of Daughter C's return to the Farm.

BIG FOOD.

We watched some crappy old second season SNL and-- in SNL context-- talked about ancient history.

Does this make sense?

Fewer Americans than ever say they are going out to eat less often than they were six months ago.

I saw a headline at Newsalert.com which read: 

41% Dining Out Less Often Than They Were Six Months Ago

It linked to a Rasmussen poll. I took a look and that (above) is the lead sentence, followed by this:

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 41% of American Adults say they are dining out at a restaurant less often compared to six months ago.  Only five percent (5%) say they are going out to eat more often, while a majority (53%) is dining out about the same as they were six months ago.

I just checked with Mr. Big Food and he agrees that the first sentence says the opposite of the reported results. 

Geeze. And they think we can't talk no good English.

A Spirited Discussion / UPDATED

The scene  across the street from where I pick Mr. Big Food up from his car pool to & from Starkvegas.

There is a storm looming in the distance.

As we-- that would be we well behaved humans, Rocky the instigator, and Missy the dog with energy to spare-- retired to the Den, Mr. Big Food and I had a spirited discussion about Life in These United States, ca. August 1, 2012.

UPDATE: Just to be clear... . There's no storm looming for Mr. Big Food and me!

"... some things are worth fighting for... "

You can just imagine how the Chick-fl-A business is playing out in a state with a lot of churches. Via  Y'all Politics, here's Ron Williams', Libertarian candidate for US House District 4, take on the matter:

Let me make it clear, the CEO is being punished by government officials because he exercised his First Amendment right of free speech. The Constitution is very clear. When government restricts and punishes the people for exercising their First Amendment rights, then we are to default to the Second Amendment (right to keep and bear arms). These two mayors need to be introduced to the Second Amendment ASAP.

He later clarified:

I don't want anybody to go shoot anybody, but I want people to understand what a slippery slope we can be on and what the purpose of the Second Amendment is.

From the Sun Herald story:

Williams said his letter was meant to remind people that "some things are worth fighting for, if they cannot be remedied by any other measure."

Fewer than 20 minutes

Must have been something interesting!

They are slowing down a lot faster than they were when it didn't feel like 94° at 8:30am.