Meanderer

We'll work on it but as we were working through the process last evening, we were interrupted by a major distraction which will require our attention for a day or two. Please have patience with us. Re the rain barrels, one is outside to catch the water from the downspout and it is linked by a short section of hose to one on the inside so both fill at the same time.

We're having some issues but the previous post shows work in progress on the greenhouse. We'll see if we can get things straightened out.

I yearn for a greenhouse ..can you show pics and tell how you built it and what is is made from? thanks in advance ←

I yearn for a greenhouse ..can you show pics and tell how you built it and what is is made from? thanks in advance ← The tell part is easy but the pics part is beyond my ken as I lack most skills necessary to use even basic technology. However, my wife is a person of many talents who covers for many of my deficiencies and I will see if she can put on the photos while I fill in a little narrative. I can't guarantee anything before the weekend, but I'll try tonight. In the meantime, I'll provide some description of the thing here. I've long wanted a greenhouse and a leaky roof on a lean-to attached to another building was the impetus to build it. We tore down the lean-to, salvaging what we could, and built the greenhouse on the same spot. We did everything ourselves except the masonry and wiring(for ventilation). The south, east, and west walls and the roof are polycarbonate and the north wall is brick. In January, when I put a thermometer in there, it reached the 70s inside without supplemental heat when it was in the 30s outside. The dimensions are 24 X 7(approximately). The floor is concrete and all of the tables inside were made from wood salvaged from the lean-to. The water supply is from rain barrels. Those are the basic details but the photos, when we get them up, will show all of this more artfully.

I've been experimenting with a greenhouse we built over the winter. So far, the only unqualified successes are the greens we have been eating on an almost daily basis for a month. This should tide us over until the spinach and lettuce in the garden are ready early in May.

Does anyone know a tomato called Wayahead? I got a free packet of seeds from Jung this year and I have one coming up(so far)out in the greenhouse. I also have some seedlings of Opalka tomatoes because they are supposed to be good for canning, whereas we normally use Roma.

As you have plenty of time to plan your garden, take a tip from someone who learned the hard way--plant your strawberries in raised beds. REALLY raised beds. Otherwise your back will become prematurely aged, not from picking, but from trying to keep the beds weed free year after year after year. Good luck.

I knew a lawyer who was fired, in part, because of his inappropriate use of profanity. He used to rail at his opponents or regale his friends with stories with a booming voice that carried everywhere, including the reception area. Ultimately, his boss, a state attorney general, got rid of him for that and other reasons. It was a shame, too, because his use of profanity was quite colorful and articulate, unlike so many people today who use the same small handful of words, whether in English or some other language. The only time I ever worked in a kitchen(decades ago), my co-workers didn't sound much different from Gordon Ramsey today.

From the western genre, there is this from Destry Rides Again, by Max Brand: Such food and such quantities he never had known. Ham spiced with cloves, fragrant to the core, and corn bread made with eggs, and brittle with shortening, and great glasses of rich milk. This was only the beginning, to be followed by apple pie from which only one section had been removed. He took one piece and hesitated. "He'p yo's'ef," said the cook. He helped himself. Assisted by another glass of milk, he gradually put himself outside that entire pie. He felt guilty, but he also felt happy; and what is more delicious than a guilty joy?

Catch a ride with someone to Roy's Place, on the edge of downtown Gaithersburg. Your hour time limit may be a problem, however, as it takes that long just to study the menu, which contains well over 100 sandwich's, most of them unlike anything you are likely to see anywhere else.

I assume that people who don't eat chicken wings because chickens don't wash under their arms also don't eat natural casing sausages.

There are two genres I can guess don't have much to say about food: Science Fiction and Westerns. I'm no expert on Sci-Fi or Oaters, I admit. Maybe because what I've read hasn't had many food descrpitions? ← My wife has long maintained that Zane Grey is an excellent writer. Perhaps now is an appropriate time to see if I concur, in the interest of research into the question you raise about westerns. As for science fiction, I'll leave that research to others. I can say that Ray Bradbury's Green Shadows, White Whale, one of his non-science fiction works, contains a great scene involving a wedding cake as well as numerous entertaining situations within a rural Irish pub.

Dickens wrote about food often, not so often appetizingly. Miss Havisham's wedding cake and Nicholas Nickleby's breakfast with Wackford Squeers at the Saracen's Head are a couple of examples to go with Oliver's pathetic request for more. As for Twain, I've always enjoyed "Cannibalism in the Cars" although some may call it a stretch to label it food writing.

I don't know about that, but in the same book there is the chapter about Cora Tull and the eggs that she manages to gather, despite the depredations of the opossums and snakes, so that she can make cakes for the rich lady in town. She then learns, after the cakes are made, that the rich lady has called off the party and won't buy the cakes.

Risotto. It works well with just about any vegetable that is in season or laying around the refrigerator and it isn't much work, particularly if your guests are willing to pitch in and stir while you do other things.

Yesterday, for no particular reason, I began to wonder whether any well-regarded authors with significant bodies of work managed to avoid, entirely, writing about food--its consumption, description, production, acquisition--in their fiction. When I say "writing about," I don't mean a passing reference to food. I mean a passage in a book where the author really focused on the food itself, the location where the food is presented, or the manner in which a character acquired the food. I looked through some books I had readily at hand and have yet to find any notable author who did not, at some time, write about food in some passage in some book. A few examples: Herman Melville--the chowder at the Try Pots Inn in Moby Dick. Marcel Proust--the abundance of fish and fowl served at St. Loup's hotel during the fair in The Guermantes Way. John Steinbeck--Ma Joad's attempt to purchase a dollar's worth of food for a family of seven at the overpriced company store in The Grapes of Wrath. Thomas Hardy--the rum laced furmity at the fair in The Mayor of Casterbridge. Selma Lagerlof--temporarily calming an angry crowd by providing a feast in The Story of Gosta Berling. Lev Tolstoy--the lavish feast at provided by the Rostovs in War and Peace. Gustave Flaubert--the enthusiastic dinnertime discussions by Monsieur Homais about recipes, cooking and preserving in Madame Bovary. Joseph Conrad--the Italian restaurant in The Secret Agent. Willa Cather--the feast gone wrong at Acoma in Death Comes for the Archbishop. V.S. Naipul--the biscuits bought by the drum in A House for Mr. Biswas. While I could go on to show other examples where food was a subject in other authors' works, can anyone come up with someone who avoided the subject altogether?

While not a first-hand recommendation because I haven't eaten there since it changed ownership a few tears ago, a friend whose judgment in these things is pretty sound likes Josephine's in Marietta(a short distance NW of Lancaster)and has gone out of his way to go there on a few occasions recently. It used to be French, but I think the new owner has gotten away from that. I imagine the menu is online.

I've always enjoyed the scene from Local Hero where Peter Riegert and Peter Capaldi discover their main course for dinner was Trudi the rabbit.

I don't care much for the word, but it got me out of a tremendous bind recently when I was composing the following limerick: A puppet named Howdy Doody Was cross and increasingly moody He looked for a sign Saw eGullet on line And now is a devoted foodie Before I thought of that word, I was trying to figure out how to work booty into the composition.

I really really really hate it when customers say they are allergic to things that do not contain proteins. "please make sure there are no mushrooms/garlic/onions/ because I am deathly allergic to them". I try to be nice. ← If you have anything to do with feeding my wife, you should be both nice and responsive to what she says about her allergy/intolerance. If not, and if you serve her mushrooms, even in a soup base, you had better have a healthy supply of toilet paper on hand.

Back in the '80s, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader had a feature called Cook of the Week which published recipes submitted by readers, many of which sounded so bad to us that we saved them to amuse us in our old age. One of them was a hamburger tater tot casserole that included the obligatory cream of this or that soup(and quick oatmeal). My favorite, however, was a dish simply called Vegetable Medley: 1 package frozen broccoli 1 package frozen Brussel sprouts 1 package frozen cauliflower 1 cup cubed cheese 1 can cream of celery soup 1/4 cup milk Cook each vegetable separately, but only half of the time(For variety, I guess, the other half of the time you can cook the vegetables all together). Combine in buttered casserole. Stir cheese through vegetables. Combine soup and milk and pour over the top. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 35 minutes. The subtle genius of this recipe was its lack of specificity regarding the type of cheese to use. You could use Velveeta one evening and Cabrales the next and have a completely different experience. Another great recipe called for a package of macaroni and cheese, a can of tuna, a can of cream of chicken, celery, or mushroom soup, butter and milk. Once again, variety. You could serve that dish on three successive days, each day using a different soup and your family would have an exciting new meal each day. Life on the northern plains was more interesting than a lot of people might have thought.

As you have plenty of space, you might want to consider planting popcorn as well. The kids can plant in the spring, harvest in late fall, strip the ears during the winter, and then pop the stuff on an inexpensive hot air popper whenever snack time rolls around.

I've been reading Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya and boy, is it sobering. Food plays a prominent role in this novel, primarily because there is so little of it. The narrator, a wife of a tenant rice farmer in India, considers herself almost prosperous at one point because she has managed to sock away a half a bag of rice, two measures of lentils, and a pound of dried chilis. The narrator values the chilis above all because "when the tongue rebels against plain boiled rice, desiring ghee and salt and spices which one cannot afford, the sharp bite of a chili renders even plain rice palatable." This book provides a good lesson in perspective.

Some of the other diners might be highly annoyed by your grandfather for another reason. While he is chatting up the server or runner, my food, drink or check is not arriving at my table because staff time is being monopolized by him. Once, I had to get up and walk over to another table to get the server's attention(her back was to us)just to get the bill because the diners at that table were so intrigued by the fact that they actually knew someone who was attending the same college as the server. That scintillating conversation, plainly audible to us, lasted a good 10 minutes.

I hope the process works well for a somewhat different reason. We don't have air-conditioning so anything that will keep a little heat and humidity out of the kitchen in July and August is welcome. On the other hand, our house is old and hard to heat, so cooking pasta in the usual manner has to help in the winter, if only psychologically.