Oh my ears and whiskers!

Well now, we had an earthquake yesterday which is an unusual thing for around here. Felt it through the floor, which is to say that the floor suddenly felt alive with rolling pins. This weekend we are supposed to get hurricane Irene buzz sawing up the coast, what in the world?!

The stock market seems to be doing it’s best Linda Blair impression and I’m getting the impression that maybe growing one’s own vegetables is a very good thing indeed.

I am left with the solace of my rediscovery of stretching. My forty-year-old frame has largely been left to harden in a crouched over position due to too many hours spent at my desk. I actually got down on the floor to do some stretches and was quite amazed by how stiff I had become, all around me my friends, co-workers, and reflection are growing lumpier and bumpier as the years go by, I cannot help but think that it is due to a lack of stretching.

Bees at the bottom of the garden

I’m thinking of adding bees to my household creatures. Alan Campion’s book is supposed to be pretty good and there are a number of apiaries around as well as a local park with a lot of good info.

I’ve put up blueberry and cherry jams already as well as pesto, and am as ever anxiously awaiting my tomato crop, the main bulk of which has yet to turn red. I should get some quarts of high quality sauce out of this given the bountiful herbage I was blessed with this year 🙂

Ode to a broken dishwasher

My Maytag, my Maytag, is broken right now

It won’t wash the dishes, it doesn’t know how

The glasses, the cups, the plates from our lunch

Lay sad and forlorn, in a congealing smelly bunch

I guess I should fix it, one-thirty-seven-plus-tax

Is the price of the part, if I have the facts

But how long that will last, has no guarantees

No promises made, and no warrantees

So maybe I’ll save, one-thirty-seven-plus-tax

And buy a KitchenAid, that has nicer racks 🙂

Balancing the News…

It occurs to me that as citizens of this county, we have a responsibility to check up on our elected and non-elected representatives. As human beings we have a responsibility to check up on our society. The problem is that there is too much to check up on, there really is no unbiased source of news, so we are left with a balancing act. It is easy enough for this effort to become a monsterous and ungainly thing, and ultimately a bad habit that one must commit oneself to a 21 day effort to change, but it is a necessary evil so it’s not a thing that you can just quit. A major pitfall that I see around me is the bad habit of allowing yourself to “like” another person that holds a particular view, and emulating the “view”  instead of studying the habits of the person in question that brought them to this particular view. Role models are great, but cultism is not. I guess, though, that advertisers would be out of luck if paid endorsements didn’t work 😉

Yes, it’s that time of year again…

…the time of year when we have to figure out what to do with all of that squash!

Side O’ Squash
(that children won’t dread!)

3-4 Medium Yellow Squash  (washed and sliced)
1 Bell Pepper, preferably Green (washed and diced)
1 Medium Yellow Onion (chopped)
2 Strips of Bacon
1 10-oz can of Diced Tomatoes and Green Chilies (undrained)
2-3 Heaping Tablespoons of Sofrito (GOYA makes a very acceptable version)
Parmesan Cheese to taste

Fry the bacon and remove, leaving the grease (yes, you read right). Saute your onions and peppers in the hot bacon grease on a medium heat. Stir until the onions become slightly translucent, dump in the yellow squash, stir and cover, turn to a medium-low heat. Return every few minutes to stir until the squash starts to give a bit. Add in the can of tomatoes and green chilies, the bacon crumbled, and the sofrito, stir and cover. Keep stirring and covering until the dish reaches the desired consistency, remove from heat and serve topped with parmesan cheese.

The Practicing Mind – Thomas M. Sterner

ISBN-10: 0977657205

It would be tempting to file this book under Stoic Philosophy, but I suspect that would be technically incorrect. Where the two coincide is in the need to step back from emotional responses and judgements of one’s situation and to correct our mistakes in a dispassionate manner. Do-Observe-Correct are the watchwords here and this book is full of good advice for life in our multitasking world. If you want to go further along these lines there are any number of editions of Arrian’s work transcribing Epictetus.

Next up:

The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson

Ode to Gurney’s “Big Beef” Tomato

Last year I grew these tomatoes and they were fantastic! One person that I gave part of my bumper crop to described them as more of a dessert than a vegetable. They were the perfect size for slicing onto burgers, they did not crack, they weren’t too acidic and they were, well, perfect!

Paperback Swap  http://www.paperbackswap.com/

Gurney’s Seed and Nursery Co.  http://gurneys.com/

Hello world!

Greetings!

I am an average divorced working mom, and I do well when I keep a journal as opposed to when I do not, keeping a blog is a bit of an experiment for me.

Currently I’m dealing with kids, a dog, cats, and a work environment full of political types that is like walking on eggshells and is turning me gray rapidly, so much of this blog will be philosophical and skill improving in nature.

At the moment I’m reading and trying to apply a book called the Practicing Mind by Thomas M. Sterner ISBN# 0977657205

This morning I pulled three homegrown tomatoes out of my garden in back and I’ll be frying them for breakfast (looked forward to this all year!) The variety I used I’m not entirely happy with, sadly my strange vegetarian cat decided to eat the ones that I had grown for the purpose and I was forced to go to Lowes to get more (and though the plants were lovely, I’m not as happy with the resulting tomatoes). The good news is that they are growing in clusters like grapes and my basil and peppers are doing well so I should still get lots of very fine tomato sauce out of this 🙂