Musings

The other day I had some lovely south Georgia freestone peaches. Right now, I’m eating my way through some tasty clingstones, grown on an in-town otherwise-ornamental peachtree.

My dad always grew freestones; although I see several places on the web claim that freestones tend to have a harder flesh, Dad’s freestones were always super-juicy. I remember coming home from school in the fall and heading out to the trees directly from the school bus, and selecting an especially huge, red specimen, then bending over to eat it so the juice dripped harmlessly off my chin into the grass instead of on my school clothes**.

Despite the fact that Georgia continues to be (proudly, in some quarters) nicknamed “The Peach State*,” the USDA statistics record that for some years the state with the biggest peach crop has been California. In 2004, CA grew 76% of the US peach crop, up from 75% in 2003.

Peaches are from China. They weren’t in the New World until the arrival of European-types. Thus, finding peach pits on an archaeological site of indeterminant age in the Southeast, for example, means it dates to the historic period.

* Sam Henry Rumph, of Macon County, developed a peach he named Elberta for his wife. Apparently, this lead to the state taking the Peach State moniker.

** Other than the obvious uniforms, do kids even have “school clothes” any more?

Posted at 10:47 AM | Comments Off on Freestone vs. Clingstone

This may be the perfect summer b-day cake*: frosted with whipped cream and decorated with strawberries, plus more berry chunks between the layers!

* I didn’t make it, so no recipe….

Posted at 10:19 PM | Comments Off on Cake de b-day

Archaeologists commonly monitor pollen types in sealed (buried) horizons—well, if the project has sufficient funding for it. From the pollen, you can discern things about the climate, the season the material was buried, etc. Only in unusual circumstances do we find seeds. Archaeologists found date palm seeds at Masada (yes, the fortress built by Herod around 35 BC and destroyed by the Romans in AD 73), and one is now three years old and more than three feet tall! (Science link, too.)

Posted at 11:52 AM | Comments Off on Dated date

I forgot to mention this particular excitement from our Michigan adventure. Honey bees that had quietly colonized a gap between the chimney and the siding several years ago decided to swarm. Right by the garage door. Fortunately, our kindly neighbor is a beekeeper. He brought over a hive loaded with a comb to make it attractive to the scout bees, and we hoped they would find it and move in. They did! Unfortunately, he says only half of the original bunch will move to the new residence, so they aren’t gone from the house.

Like many people, I have a “junque” email address that I use when I’m forced to give one to an entity I never want to receive emails from. Today when I checked one of them (yeah, I have several*; yahoo gives them out for free!), I learned that Delta is trying to entice me aboard with the following:

You can now enjoy Leinenkugel’s award-winning Sunset Wheat beer onboard Delta flights.

I can remember when Leinies had a very local distribution. And I suspect that in the bad old days they didn’t make a Sunset Wheat flavor! Actually, I’d be far more tempted by decent food, but not enough to buy a ticket.

* The name of one riffs on the word basura, Spanish for garbage….

Posted at 5:34 PM | 3 Comments »

The lettuce is just beginning to bolt. And the real heat is coming later in the week.

Must. Eat. Salad.

Posted at 10:55 PM | Comments Off on Eating local

This is the scene I now see from the kitchen window (note eerie, ghostly white banding from reflections of the slats of the blind). Moss is dying on the blacktop between the stump and the house, out of view in a foreground that’s cropped from this picture.

In other news, I’ve posted a family-favorite recipe, a well-loved potato salad I made for our weekend feast. It’s really tasty, but more time-consuming than most of my recipes (yet still less complex than many fine recipes out there!).

* Actually, all ecosystems are in reactive, adjustment mode, I think.

Posted at 7:27 PM | Comments Off on Mini-ecosystems* constantly adjust

Escape Day Number 2 Report: talking, laughing, IKEA, Trader Joe’s, walk to/in the park.

Perhaps my biggest coup today was finding this pepper mill at IKEA—on sale! For $4.99 (plus tax)!

The info said it had a ceramic grinder, which is superior to steel ones. I had no idea. I took the risk and made the buy, and wow, it does a great job with a fine grind—just what I was looking for!

Yeah, I know it’s plastic, and kinda wacky-looking, but, hey, the grind is perfect!

I have a long history of having substandard or not-quite-right pepper grinders, so I’m tickled to have found this one! I may get several more, and spread the ground-pepper-love!

I’m late posting this because of 1) poor camera management, and 2) a bit of laziness. You see, I forgot the camera downstairs—the designated iPhoto computer’s upstairs—and it sometimes feels like such an effort to go through the zipwall airlocks at the top and bottom of the staircase…. So, I decided to wait until I had an additional reason to undertake the vertical trek (bathroom, food, hot tea, cold water?). Who am I kidding: it’s really just laziness!

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on The new grind

Russian teething biscuits?

You decide.

On the shadowy shelf, I thought angry.

Here, greatly enlarged, I’m leaning toward surprised.

Posted at 2:03 PM | 1 Comment »

Sometimes you just can’t make these things up.

Yeah, you’re reading it right: Dried Anchovy Tea Bag.

And, no, I have no idea how it fits into the cuisine, or even which cuisine. Asian, maybe Chinese, Korean, or Thai, is the best I can do.

Yum.

Is it medicinal? Does one sip anchovy tea while gambling? Do you feed it to relatives you don’t like? Mad uncles perhaps? Nasty landladies?

Or do you use it to make a soup base?

Then again, maybe this stuff is not so popular (or tasty), given the roughly 25% markdown….

I confess, I did not make the investment to give anchovy tea bags a try, or maybe I’d be dragging anchovy tea along on my next cold-weather hike—although not in the near future, given our current temps!

Posted at 1:55 PM | 1 Comment »

The ten-dollar deal! Note: contains no actual wasabi.

Seriously, this much wasabi powder must affect the global climate—and there were more piles of kilo bags, in various brands, right next to these!

Flowering update

Most of the dogwoods I’ve seen around the city are full open and brilliant, and many azaleas are nearly open; however, the white azaleas in our backyard are only about 20% open. Too overcast/rainy to photo today; maybe tomorrow.

Posted at 5:02 PM | 3 Comments »