KennethT

We arrived in Ubud in the afternoon, and after settling in, it was time for dinner. I had a list of Balinese specialties that I had wanted to try, but because of timing, the first one we would try is a dish called betutu, which comes in both chicken (ayam) and duck (bebek) versions. Both are rubbed with the betutu spice mixture, wrapped in banana leaves and steamed. One place that is known for this dish is Murni's Warung - which has been around since the 70s. Murni has grown her empire which now includes an antique store, guest house, spa and is also a cookbook author. The restaurant is perched on a cliff above a gorge, and is beautiful - filled with antiques. The setting: The food: Lime squash - which would be called "lime juice" in Singapore. The glass just came with lime juice and soda water, and the simple syrup in the small pitcher so you could make it as sweet as you like it. This was a great version - it was nice to get a lime juice that was not from concentrate. Sate lilit - lilit means that the satay is of some kind of ground (minced) meat rather than whole chunks. I typically like to get the fish version, but they are also common with chicken. These were delivered on a dish filled with glowing coals to help keep them warm throughout the meal. Bebek betutu - the duck version. Both versions were served with a banana leaf filled with a mixed vegetable (on the right) - however the veggie mix for both were slightly different. Both also came with a cone of yellow rice. It is also served with a that shallot/chili sambal I like so much, and a dish of the steaming liquid, which is like concentrated duck or chicken essence. Evidently, you take some rice and meat, then dip in the liquid. Both the duck and chicken were very savory, falling off the bone tender and melted in your mouth, but I thought subtly spiced. This is the chicken version Kang kung (water spinach) They also had a very typical balinese dessert (among many): Caramel cake - the cake was light, but very moist and I think it had some banana in it.

Where do you get your head-on shrimp? I have some that I get by mail from the Florida gulf coast, but I was looking for a supply a little more local.

The next morning, we had breakfast (nasi goreng again) and checked out of the hotel to make our way to Ubud, a few hours drive south, in central Bali. We made a few stops along the way: Lake Buyan, Lake Tamblingan and together: Driving down the mountain: We then went to another Balinese Hindu temple - this one is the most photographed site in Bali (and it was crowded!!!) Before leaving the site, we decided to have lunch there, because we were still about 2 hours away from Ubud... Crispy chicken sambal matah - under the mound of ridiculously crispy breading is a chicken thigh. The sambal matah (in the left container) is a great sambal consisting mainly of shallot and chili... I love this sambal. On the right is acar. ETA: FYI, just outside this temple complex was a huge number of local food vendors, right where the tour buses were parked.... I had no idea they were there until we passed them when we were on the road, just after we had finished eating! Edit lake name spelling

Dinner that night (not that much because of our late snack/lunch and we were exhausted): amuse - sausage on a stick... very tasty Pigeon bakso again... fish of the day - barracuda. I never realized it was such a tasty fish - mild white fish, a little firm

The next day was perhaps the highlight of our trip. First, breakfast: Today's fruit plate. On a lark, I asked our server if they had any mangga (mango in bahasa)... I got a smile, and a few minutes later was presented with: Hallelujah!!! Nasi goreng.. served with shrimp chips, chicken satay and fried egg. tomato sambal (not very spicy) After breakfast, we drove for about an hour to the Sekumpul waterfalls. Before you get to the falls, at the parking lot, you pick up a guide at the hut. Evidently, this is also run by a cartel of sorts - only the guides from that local "union" can operate as a guide at the falls. We got really lucky with our guide - his English was great (he didn't think so, and had never been schooled in it, but he picked it up talking to people over the years and if he didn't know a word, later on when he got home he looked it up on google), had a great sense of humor and was just an absolute pleasure to be around. He was very good at immediately picking up on what interested us, and then altered the route to show us some really interesting things. He also taught me a bunch of Balinese. Oh, and when the trail got only slightly strenuous, he insisted on being scherpa as well, carrying both my wife's and my bag, our shoes when we had to walk through the water, and a towel. Around the area of the falls are spice orchards (mostly cloves), coffee (both arabica and robusta), cocoa, mangosteen, mango... Clove tree, with farmer in the tree harvesting buds Coffee Rice Cloves drying in the sun Cocoa It's a lot of walking downhill and stairs to get to the falls.... Waterfalls from up high Some of the stairs More waterfalls... Some of the stairs to get down On the way back up, we stopped at a trail side vendor of a typical Balinese snack where our guide got us this: These are little cakes made from rice flower and pandan, topped with a palm sugar syrup and finely grated coconut... these things were amazing. We then met our guide's friend whose family owns some of the farm area. He was a nice young man, and enjoyed practicing his English - he offered to show us around his farm to see some of their products. Among the clove, coffee and cocoa, they also grow Vanilla He then proceeded to make a sampling of all the different teas and coffees they make At the top, there are two types of Bali coffee... one is the standard, the other is the luwak coffee, which some may have heard called poop coffee. An animal called a luwak (I think it's like a civet cat) eats the ripe coffee beans, and the beans go right through it. The poop is collected, washed in a process to sterilize and get only the raw partially digested coffee bean, then roasted and turned into coffee. The locals say that the quality is better than standard coffee because the luwak only picks the best beans one by one, and that the partial digestion makes the coffee smoother. I'm not a coffee drinker, but I thought it was quite good. There has been controversy over luwak coffee as, in the interest of profit, some places in the cities will house the luwaks in a cage and basically force feed coffee beans to them all day. But the product we sampled is all wild - the family's luwak is let out to roam the coffee plantation eating what it wants to eat, and the family goes around and collects the poop off the ground every few days. This is traditionally how this coffee has been produced for a long time - many locals told us the story of how their grandmother might collect poop for a month to make enough coffee for teh family for 1 serving. A luwak You may notice that one of the teas is a mangosteen tea. Here, the rind and fruit are dried and ground to a powder and brewed into a tea. It was so good, we bought some of the tea to take home. The third from the bottom is cocoa and spice tea - basically, the cocoa nibs are ground and mixed with clove and cinnamon and are steeped like a tea. We brought some of that home too. We finished up at the falls pretty late, and got back to the hotel around 4PM... we had a light lunch: Soto ayam - chicken soup, flavored with lemongrass and turmeric. With shredded chicken, fried garlic and cellophane noodles. Very tasty. served with a crazy spicy but delicious sambal:

Menjangan island is pretty far away from everything. We arranged our trip with a local dive shop in Lovina, who picked us up at like 8AM to take us the 15 min. drive to their shop to fit masks/snorkels and fins. We then got in their van and drove about 1-1/2 hours to the spot where there are tons of boats for hire to take you to Menjangan. Some dive shops have their own boat, but most just hire one for a few hours. On the boat to Menjangan: There is a small temple on Menjangan even though very few people live on the island. The snorkeling was pretty good - visibility was the best I've seen in SE Asia, probably about 40 feet. Menjangan is surrounded by a sheer wall, which was interesting to see snorkeling, but would ahve been much better diving. Unfortunately, my wife is not certified, and even though I have dived in the Caribbean prior to being certified (when I was in high school), now, knowing what I know, I'd be very nervous about it. She'd be nervous also, which is not a good thing... so we stick to snorkeling. We did get to see a lot of fish, including one I've never seen, a unicorn surgeonfish. Our guide also picked up a sea cucumber for us to hold - I'm usually not a fan of touching things when diving - you never know what is poisonous or prickly, etc., so it was weird to hold the sea cucumber and have it move. Once back on the boat, the dive company provided a boxed lunch - of all things, it was a chicken sandwich on white toast. I was very jealous of our guide whose boxed lunch looked like rice with some kind of curry and sambal. I was strongly considering asking to pay him to switch lunches with me! On the way back, the waves in one spot were really choppy and everything in the boat got soaked. Our guide joked and called it the "boat shower". Hilarious. We got back to teh hotel in the late afternoon, with a little time to relax and freshen up. Dinner at the hotel, again: amuse - I forget what the soup was - some kind of fruit? With a blob of coconut cream that had little coconut flavor. Pigeon bakso. Bakso is a local dish of meatballs, which are made so that they are springy. Typically made with chicken or fish. These were made with local farmed pigeon, with slices of pigeon breast in the middle - nice and gamy. In the soup was shredded cabbage, fried garlic, and mung bean noodles (cellophane noodles). The bakso came with 3 garnishes: soy sauce, sweet soy sauce, and a ridiculously hot sambal... it was awesome! The menu called this roasted organic local chicken, but it seemed deep fried to me. It came with lettuces and squash grown on the property and some kind of peanut/chili/coconut jam. This may have been the best thing we had at the hotel. Local rabbit. When we asked about the prep, the server said it came with some kind of peanut sauce, so we ordered it. but later, it turned out that it really came with a beurre blanc (what?!?) but they said they could give us the peanut sauce on the side. With the seasonings, it definitely went better with the beurre blanc!

Dragonfruit come in 2 varieties that I have seen, white and purple. Blindfolded, they are identical. Sorry, but when I said that the dragonfruit were among the best I've had, I didn't mean that they were very flavorful - but they were really juicy, crisp and refreshing. When you put a little lime juice on them, they're great! I wish I had what was common in Saigon - a little dish of chili and salt!

The next day, we woke up early to go snorkeling at Menjangan island, in the far north-west tip of the island. Thankfully, breakfast at the hotel started at 6:30... Unlike practically every hotel in Asia where there is a buffet of some kind, here, there is a menu with mostly western items, but a few Indonesian ones as well. They didn't even have a fruit buffet - but instead a server sliced a few pieces to make a fruit plate for each person. Slowly. Even if there are a lot of people waiting for their fruit. But the setting was peaceful and beautiful. setting Server slicing fruit First day's fruit plate: papaya, dragonfruit (one of the best I've had) and banana. More mie goreng, with chicken.

Yes... and I even tried asking in Bahasa, thinking that maybe their logic was that we'd be uncomfortable if no one spoke English! Everyone always seemed so impressed with it too, and always asked how long I had spoken it for (about a month) and where I learned it (CDs).

No one ever explained it, and it happened over and over. Every time I asked to go to a local place, no one said a word, but then took us somewhere else - like it was a state secret or something.

I've experience overflowing toilets... also some toilets that you prayed could overflow because that would mean that there was actually water in it that could hide some of the smell.... in the past, we've expereinced some toilets that are basically just a hole in the floor with a large bucket of water and a ladle next to it.

Thanks! That's what I'm going for! Practically (the whole trip!) every local food place we passed was always empty - meaning that they looked open, but had no customers inside.

We made it through the mountainous central part of the island, driving through Singaraja (Bali's 2nd largest city) in the north, on our way to our hotel outside of the small town of Lovina. Our driver had stopped a few times to ask people for directions, but no one could help him as our hotel is in the middle of nowhere. I think their tag line is "hard to find, hard to leave". Finally, i wound up giving him directions using Google Maps on my phone. Driving through Singaraja and Lovina were educational. When I first booked the trip, I knew that the resort in the north was in the middle of nowhere (but it just looked so beautiful), but I was led to believe that we could get a taxi to take us to the town of Lovina (about 10 minutes away) or the city of Singaraja (about a half hour away) for some local experiences. Getting there, however, proved otherwise. In the north, taxis are more or less non-existent due to the small amount of tourism and the fact that everyone at least drives a motorbike, if not a car. Both the town and city are really spread out and not meant for walking - there aren't really any sidewalks to walk on either. And as we drove through, all of the local restaurants (usually specializing in one dish) were basically empty - the streets were always crowded, but it never seemed like there was anyone in any of the local restaurants - which, when without recommendations, makes it really hard to tell who has the best stuff. So, we resigned ourselves to eating in the hotel for just about every meal for the next 3 days... With that being said, the hotel food was excellent. I think they brought the chef in from somewhere in Europe, and they used a portion of the hotel grounds to grow herbs and vegetables, and purchased most of their meats from local farms in the area. While there were a lot of western dishes on the menu (risotto as one example), they did have quite a few indonesian/balinese things to choose from. One of my few complaints was that dinner started at 7PM (they encouraged people to have cocktails during the sunset time around 6-6:30), and when you're still jetlagged, 7PM feels like 3 in the morning. But persevere we must! ha! cocktails watching the sunset and their fire pit (my clothes smelled like smoke for days) quail egg and shredded banana flower amuse tomato sambal and homemade hummus (quite grainy) with the bread Coconut soup with local snails. There were like 6 TINY snails in this whole thing - very hard to find. But the ones we did find were quite tasty. This was described as a "salad of locally grown greens with cashews and pesto". It was mostly pesto with a little bit of cooked spinach and cashews. I don' tknow if I've ever eaten that much pesto in one sitting.... it was served with: Some type of fricco, supposedly infused with garlic and kaffir lime, but any scent of either would have been entirely imaginary. The hotel's "babi guling". We saw stalls for babi guling (roast suckling pig) all over the place - I can't tell you how many times I asked the driver to stop, but each time, the place was empty and the driver said, not now.... We never wound up with the real version (story for a later time), and we were underwhelmed by the hotel version - it was a little tough and dry. It was served with rice and acar (prounounced achar) which are like sweet/salty pickled veggies. They were great: Wontons of what they called langoustine - but I think it was spiny lobster tail, in a coconut broth. Very tasty. While the resort itself was not that expensive - it was maybe half the price of the airport hotel - the food there was relatively very expensive. I think our restaurant bill wound up higher than the room bill - and that's without us drinking any alcohol!!!

There was no discussion of money at breakfast! And for that matter, none basically for the rest of the trip. Whew! After breakfast, we hired a driver to take us the 3-4 hour drive to our hotel in North Bali, in the jungle-y mountain-y area about 10 minutes drive from the beach town of Lovina. We also had him make a few stops along the way. The first was to the Uluwatu temple. Like most Balinese temples, the temple itself is closed to tourists (you can peek in through the gates) but you can walk around the grounds. The Uluwatu temple is known for a few things - the spectacular scenery surrounding it - it is perched high on a cliff above the ocean, the naughty monkeys who live around there and an evening performance at sundown (which we didn't see because we were there in the morning - but we saw in on TV when Bourdain went to Bali a few years ago). Looking through the gates: The monkeys are not afraid of humans at all, and can be quite aggressive. They will take the sunglasses off your face, play with them for a minute before breaking them and then throw them away: no zoom required.... We also saw one sneak up behind a woman sitting quietly under a pavilion and start going through her backpack until we shouted at her, warning her. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a picture of that! Here, it's hard to see, but these monkeys were trying to steal the flip flops off these women's feet: In the brush surrounding the paths, you could see lots of broken, discarded flip flops.... After the temple visit, we proceeded to start driving north. I repeated asked our driver to take us to a local "warung" for lunch, but instead, he wound up taking us to a restaurant for tourists. In his defense, the place had an amazing view of Central Bali's famous terraced rice fields. Clockwise from left: Mie goreng, cap cay (pronounced chap chay - a vegetable and seitan dish), prawn crackers, satay lilit (the one with minced fish on the big stick), pork satay, peanut sauce. The restaurant is set up like a buffet with all the Indonesian hits. The food was completely mediocre, but the view was fantastic.

Breakfast was included in the rate for all 3 hotels we stayed in. This is a good thing, since the airport hotel was not within walking distance of any kind of local food or any other restaurant for that matter. But it was really nice - a typical buffet setup with lots of Asian options (dim sum, japanese, sushi/sashimi, local Indonesian/balinese) and also western options as well. Noodle soup with shredded chicken and fried garlic. Mie goreng (friend noodles) pineapple and passionfruit In addition to the buffet, servers would walk around offering various Balinese specialties: Black rice in coconut milk (a very traditional dessert) some kind of tonic made with various fruit juices including mango and passionfruit as well as spices like clove and cinnamon.

Happily though, this only happened to us in the heavily touristed south. Once we were in North Bali or in Ubud, in Central Bali, no one every mentioned money or expected tips. Alcohol is definitely allowed in Bali. Unfortunately, I only have a drink (literally A drink) once in a great while due to some of the medication I have to take which conflicts badly with it. And funnily enough, my wife, who works in the wine industry, doesn't drink at all when on vacation because she wants a break from it! All hotels have wine lists, specialty cocktail lists, and of course beer. Quite a few restaurants even had cigarettes on their drinks list.

Traveling around Bali is a pita. There is no public transportation to speak of, and once you get outside the main areas in the south, the roads are basically 1-1/2 lanes wide, which may have been fine when the only traffic was motorbikes, but now, there are a lot of cars (vans, SUVs!) and relatively large, slow moving trucks. Our first main destination was in North Bali, which is about a 3-4 hour drive from the airport even though it is less than 100km. So, we decided to stay the first night in a beach area in the south since it was only 15 min from the airport, after traveling for about 24 hours including layover, and the fact that we were up for probably about 40 hours since we had both worked a full day the day we left. Before I get to where we stayed, I will relay a short story of the airport adventure. Now, the arrival experience at airports in many SE Asian countries are really not so good, to put it mildly. The airport itself is not that bad, but once you leave the doors, you are surrounded by people desperately trying to get you to take their taxi, rather than someone else's. Evidently, in Bali, there is some kind of taxi racket. For a long time, each municipality has had its own "taxi cartel" so to speak, and to get a taxi you had to go through them. Recently, there has been a huge uproar with the ride-sharing companies like Grab (which is basically Uber in SE Asia). So much so that it has turned violent in some occasions, where members of a local taxi cartel have dragged Uber drivers out of their cars and beaten them. Note - we didn't see any violence on this trip and didn't hear of any either. We did see signs put up all over basically saying that Uber/Grab and other ride sharing cars were not allowed to stop in certain areas. So, the guidebooks say that there is a specific cartel that runs the airport taxi system - they are the only ones allowed to make pickups at the airport. That doesn't stop the throng of people awaiting you once you leave the arrivals hall. We made our way to the cartel's desk where you tell the guy where you're going, he quotes you a rate, and hands you over to one of the drivers hanging around. Also hanging around are some of their buddies, who help the driver take your bags to the car, chatting and joking all the way with each other. It seems that the first thing everyone says to tourists is "Where are you from?" We had thought it was initially a friendly gesture, but we soon felt that it was really an opening to try to extract money from you. Once they heard that we were from the US, the friendly conversation always turns to money, how poor everyone is there, how they appreciate our tourism (Americans make up very few tourists statistically - the vast majority are Australian), etc. Once we get to the car, the driver's buddy starts demanding a "tip" for helping his friend with our bags. We got the distinct impression that this wouldn't have happened if we weren't American. Unfortunately, the airport ATM only dispenses 50,000 rupiah notes (at about 14,000 rupiah to the USD), and I thought it was ridiculous to "tip" a guy that kind of money for gently steering our wheeled bag a short distance while smoking and chatting with his friend. that I would have been happy to do myself. So after a long discussion saying that I had no change and no USD (he would even accept his tip in USD evidently) he walked away. While driving to the hotel, the driver was very nice, but kept bringing up the idea of money, and how he has children who are going to school, etc. etc... ugghh. After the longest 15 minutes of our lives, we reached our hotel in Jimbaran, one of the more quiet beach areas in the south that was once a fishing village, and is now known for having a bunch of restaurants on the beach grilling seafood at sunset. The hotel was beautiful, and we would joke to ourselves that it was the "nicest airport hotel in the world", since we'd only be staying there the one night before moving on. After checking in, and cleaning up a little bit, it was getting to be sunset time, and time to get dinner on the beach as I had planned. Beach at sunset: The area where all the seafood restaurants are: This area is set up for tourists - I don't think you'll find any locals there, as I was led to believe. There are tourists from everywhere - Indonesian tourists, some from China, England, Germany, and lots from Australia. There are a bunch of restaurants all right next to each other - their menus and prices are all basically the same. As you walk past, a guy from the restaurant approaches you showing you their menu and tries to drag you to one of his tables, speaking with you the whole time, in English. We settled on one because the hawker seemed the nicest and seemingly friendliest, little did we realize initially that that is not necessarily a good thing. Typically, people get a set menu which consists of a fish, some seafood, appetizers, rice and vegetable depending on how many in the party. Everything is also available a la carte. We didn't want all the food shown in the set menu (we were exhausted) so I started asking about the size of the different fish, and he happily took us into the back of the restaurant to show them to us and weigh a bunch for us so we could pick. The charcoal grill in action Once seated, we saw a vendor grilling corn right near our table - he was mostly frequented by Chinese tourists Here's a shot of the setting - very nice and peaceful: And a few of the restaurants (and full moon!): We got: Grilled prawns Grilled fish - the waiting said this was some kind of garuppa, but I don't think it was. Served with rice, and kang kung (water spinach, morning glory, etc). It was also served with 3 different condiments (not pictured - the photos didn't come out well). There was a dish of minced garlic, one of pureed tomato, and a third of chopped chili - a sort of make-your-own-sambal type thing. The fish was nicely cooked - flaky and moist, and the prawns were cooked well as well. As we were eating and enjoying the surroundings (and trying not to pass out at the table), our waiter would routinely come by to chat us up. We noticed that he didn't do this with any other tables. As we were chatting, he casually mentioned how expensive his apartment was, how he and his wife and 3 children all lived in 1 room, and then showed us photos of his children on his phone, mentioning how expensive their schooling was. humppphhh... we started wondering if we could say that we were British or maybe German to avoid all the money talk.

OK, I'm back, by popular demand! hehe.... After being back for 2 days, I'm still struggling with crazy jetlag and exhaustion - so please bear with me! This year, for our Asian adventure, we went to Bali, which for those who don't know, is one of the islands in Indonesia. Bali is a very unique place - from its topology, to the people, language, customs, religion and food. Whereas the majority of people in Indonesia are Muslim, most people in Bali are Balinese Hindu, which from what I understand is a little like Indian Hinduism, but has more ancestor worship. Religion is very important to many people in Bali - there are temples everywhere, and at least in one area, there are religious processions through the street practically every day - but we'll get to that later. Bali has some food unique to it among its Indonesian neighbors, but like everywhere, has seen quite a bit of immigration from other Indonesian islands (many from Java, just to the west) who have brought their classic dishes with them. Basically all Indonesians speak Indonesian, or what they call Bahasa Indonesia, or just Bahasa, which, anyone who has read my prior foodblogs wouldn't be surprised to hear that I learned a little bit just before the trip. Unfortunately, I didn't get to use any of it, except a couple times which were totally unnecessary. When speaking with each other, most people in Bali speak Balinese (totally different from bahasa) - many times when I tried using my bahasa, they smiled and replied, and then tried to teach me the same phrase in Balinese! As time went on, and I used some of the Balinese, I got lots of surprised smiles and laughs - who is this white guy speaking Balinese?!? Seriously though, tourism has been in Bali for a very long time, so just about everyone we encountered spoke English to some degree. Some people spoke German as well, as they supposedly get lots of tourists from Germany. As one of our drivers was telling us, Bali is heavily dependent on tourism as they have no real industry other than agriculture, which doesn't pay nearly as well as tourism does. While there are beaches all around the island, most of the popular beach areas are in the south of the island, and those areas are the most highly touristed. We spent very little time in the south as we are not really beach people (we get really bored) and during planning, decided to stay in less touristed areas so we'd have more opportunities for local food... this didn't work out, as you'll see later. So, it wouldn't be a KennethT foodblog without photos in the Taipei airport and I-Mei Dim Sum, which we called home for about 4 hours before our connection to Bali... Beef noodle soup: The interior: This was the same as always - huge pieces of beef were meltingly tender. Good bite to the thick chewy noodles. Xie long bao (soup dumplings) and char siu bao (fluffy barbeque pork buns):

How does the Blossom Set fertilize the blossoms? I am to understand that it is a plant hormone which helps the fertilization set and not drop off. I would think any true pollination is coming from the action of the liquid spraying into the flower, dragging some of the pollen with it. Personally, if I'm going to spend the time spraying something into every flower (which are mostly hidden in the foliage), I'd rather spend the same time and use a pollinating wand and not use any chemical whatsoever.

A new show on YouTube is just coming out now, from our own @Fengyi. I had the pleasure of hanging out with her for a day on our trip to Beijing, and her great personality definitely comes out in her show. This show is all about the local foods of various areas in China and the wines that pair best with them. Fongyee travels around to all different areas, talks with chefs and shows some awesome food porn, all with tons of knowledge to boot. Here's a link to the first episode:

@TicTac Upward curl is sometimes called "leaf roll" and can be caused by a few things.... Some varieties naturally have a curl to their leaves - but it's not usually that drastic. If it is very hot and humid, tomato plants will curl their leaves in an effort to curl water loss. This is because the plant is losing more water than it can take up with its roots, so the plants roll their leaves to limit evapotranspiration. There is also a leaf roll virus which can cause this. Finally (but this is usually more of a farm problem), leaf roll can be caused by over application of certain herbicides... Based on your description, and knowing how hot it has been in the North East, I'd say the problem is being caused by the heat, in which case there's not much you can do aside from setting up some kind of misting system to lower the temps and raise humidity!

I don't think it's necessary. The plants should be producing enough hormone on their own, and as long as I can manipulate the environment (which I can) I can make sure that the plants are healthy. The only problem is the lack of pollinators (like bees) indoors, so we have to do it manually. It seems as though some of the blossoms have pollinated themselves (maybe from the circulation fan?) but I don't know how good of a job it is or how even it is. Uneven pollination results in misshapen fruit. This is why most indoor growers either hand pollinate (with a vibrating wand that resembles an electric toothbrush) or if the facility is large enough, with a hive of honeybees.

I was a little nervous leaving the strawberry plants while we went on vacation, but they're doing great! Now I'll start pollinating every day and we should be getting tons of strawberries soon.

We use Fresh Direct practically every week. The're great for bulky heavy things, but their meat/seafood is good too. I usually like to pick my own fish, but if we're strapped for time, FD is our go to. My wife gets a few pounds of red potatoes from FD every week and rarely has a problem. One graet thing about them is that if you have a problem with your delivery - anything at all - they will basically immediately credit you for it once you contact them. They're great to deal with when there's a problem.

Wow. You could take Big Blue on to the side of the road and set up a fresh juice stand! That is, if you ever want another occupation....