Musings

We departed from air fryer cuisine and used the cast iron skillet to sear a slab of tuna, plus “stir fry” some veg. Tasty. BTW, the golden veg is “orange” cauliflower.

Posted at 9:59 PM | No Comments »

I see, at minimum, DQ and St__bux are both already vending pumpkin-flavored beverages. These used to be timed with October, even late October, leveraging Halloween symbolism. No longer.

Here’s another tidbit…in the last two weeks, The Hubby received six (SIX!) anti-Kamala oversized postcards. Me: nothing. We’re both registered voters, both with very gendered first names. I’m going with clear gender bias.

Posted at 9:06 PM | No Comments »

I like mint, spearmint much better than peppermint, and this is spearmint. It’s easy to grow and I have flourishing plants here and in the UP, yet I manage to forget to pick it and use it…in salads and beverages and more….

Posted at 9:24 PM | No Comments »

The other day I came across a discussion of perhaps the most common protein on earth, rubisco, technically styled RuBisCO. Its long version is Ribulose-1,5 bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase. I have no recollection of encountering mention of RuBisCO before.

RuBisCO is an enzyme, and it is critical for plants in extracting CO2 from air as part of the photosynthetic process. One key aspect of RuBisCO is that is extremely slow-acting, for an enzyme.

The utility of RuBisCO for human dietary needs is still under development, although I don’t know what the holdup has been…maybe it’s all chemistry? 🤣 Anyway, it has to be extracted from plant matter, then purified, etc., all without altering its protein properties.

My perspective is merely from trying to manage the onslaught of vegetative summer growth, without consideration of its potential RuBisCO content. Think: mowing, walking, cutting, and the like…. How would these chores be different if I could dump the plant-matter into an extractor…and, pfft, there’s dinner.

Posted at 9:28 PM | Comments Off on Lost in the weeds?

We social-butterflied again this weekend, hosting dear friends who live nearby. We discussed sequoias, caribou/reindeer, BBQ, and the recipe for maple syrup—and why homemade is incomparably better than the supermarket version.

Posted at 10:06 PM | Comments Off on Wide-ranging discussions

I did salmon again tonight in the air fryer. For the last two minutes, I threw in quartered grape tomatoes and some green onion shreds. The green paste on the fish is a kale pesto mixture that TJ’s sells that tastes pretty much like “regular” pesto. After extricating the salmon and veg from the deep cooker-bin, I put it on spinach that had cycled through the microwave, and added cauliflower steam-fried in a separate pan. I added more pesto and wah-lah.

Posted at 10:03 PM | Comments Off on Tasty, also yum

We are three meals in on our air fryer experiments…two of salmon filets, and one of tofu. We are (I am) trying to incorporate more fish/other meals in our diet, instead of terrestrial critter protein (including dairy).

One advantage of the air fryer, and I don’t understand how this happens, but there’s no fishy odor. Amazing.

Posted at 10:19 PM | Comments Off on Coneflower and menus

How can you not love a fruit tart? DMK’s masterpiece was a fabulous and very tasty example.

Posted at 10:13 PM | Comments Off on Yum!

I got up before the sun (thank you, flicker, busy at 5:45am), and found the ground fog posing elegantly in the field, pierced by lupins.

Mid-morning, this phalanx of Canada geese flew over, right over, so I got to watch their shadows pass by on the grass around me.

Mid-afternoon, I picked rhubarb, then processed it to make what the old cookbooks call rhubarb sauce. Simmer ½ inch (or so) chunks of rhubarb in a bit of water until they break up (ten-ish minutes). Let the mixture cool some, then stir in enough sugar (or honey) to cut the tartness to the desired level. The heat will melt the sugar. Cool all the way and enjoy, plain or over ice cream (for example).

Lakeview dining, with the best company. Isn’t that the most colorful rhubarb sauce you’ve ever seen?

Posted at 7:58 PM | 1 Comment »

These fisher-folk trolling on the lake reminded me of many paintings, like a Winslow Homer piece, although I think he did sea settings, not a lake like this.

This apple was just so beautiful I had to include a shot of it. Friends kept it through the winter wrapped in newspaper in a crate with many other apples in a cool spot. Some made it, some didn’t. This one is spectacular, and as firm and luscious as it was when it was put into storage.

Posted at 7:55 PM | Comments Off on Evocative