sparrowgrass

I don't eat cold cereal at all, but my dad ate cereal for a night time snack all the time. He preferred ice cream, but cereal was second.

I love popcorn. I hate artificial butter flavoring. So--I mostly hate microwave popcorn smell. Some microwave popcorn is natural, without the gaggy "butter" smell. I pop my corn in the microwave--Orville's brand in a Presto popper, with a little olive oil. THAT smells good.

Ahh, rachel, thanks again. I never heard of "meat and three" til recently. The phrase I heard was "Plate Lunch"--an entree and a couple of sides. And it was lunch, because all decent folks had supper at home.

Cold, cold, cold here, snow predicted tonight. I have hyssop and anise hyssop started indoors under lights, and I will transplant them tomorrow to bigger containers. I think I have some broccoli and cabbage seeds here somewhere--maybe I will do a flat of those tomorrow. I just got back from a trip to the Alabama coast (where it wasn't much warmer than here!) and when we went into Walmart for supplies, I bought a dozen little tomato plants. Just couldn't resist, even though it will be 2 and a half months before I can even think of putting them outdoors. Every time I walk by those little fellas I have to lift them up and suck in that wonderful green smell of summer. That alone is worth the $2.97 I paid for them.

You need to come on down here to Missouri, my friend. The Kozy Korner Cafe (thank god they didn't go with Kafe) serves chicken and dumplings every Wednesday for their special. You get two sides, too, so you can add some corn or slaw or hush puppies or green beans cooked with hamhocks. And 'bout every week some group of church ladies or another is having a chicken and dumplings supper to raise money to send missionaries off to annoy the heathens. Chicken and dumplings are not dead. We do make the noodly ones here, not the puffy biscuity ones. Those might be dead.

Me too. No sticky towels for me, and only one bowl to wash.

Ahh, ms rachel, the girl in the picture is my Pittsburgh grandma, standing beside Grandpa's motorbike. She used to ride in the sidecar. Grandpa had a Model A, too, which she never learned to drive. The first time she tried, she backed into a "telly pole". The picture was taken in the early 20's. If anybody knows what kind of bike that is, let me know. To bring the post back around to food, by the time I came along, Grandma had thoroughly adopted convenience food, and eating at her house was an adventure of instant mashed potatoes, TV dinners in foil trays and Boil-in-bag miracle meals. She did teach me to make noodles, which I made for my Dad every chance I got, because he loved them so. With a sprinkle of nutmeg on top, of course. If she had pickles in her house, they came from Krogers. I do on occasion make pickles--dilly beans and pickled okra--but I don't have a "sour tooth". Or sweet tooth, for that matter. I'd rather have a quart of that gravy and a mess of cat-head biscuits.

Ahhh, racheld. :wub: And I don't even like pickles.

I don't understand why anyone would think that rinsing with water cleans anything. You don't consider your hands clean if you just run cold water over them, do you? At least I hope you don't. Rinsing to get scales or bone chips or other stuff off is fine, but unless you are using disinfectant or soap on your meat you are just spreading bacteria around.

"Ingredients. . . .that I would rarely use otherwise" -- that is why I use curry powder. Unless I could buy all the ingredients in 1 tablespoon packets, I would be wasting my money (and time). I live alone, I make curry maybe once a month. I have trouble even using up the small packet of blended curry powder before it is a year old. I know my curry is not authentic, but I like it.

Persimmon pudding. There is an annual Persimmon Festival in Mitchell, Indiana, home of Gus Grissom, and a persimmon pudding contest.

Spices often have bug eggs in them, just a fact of life--the USDA has limits for how many bug eggs and bug parts can be found in spices. I put all spices into the freezer for at least 48 hours (or until I need them) before transferring them to sealed jars. I keep the jars in the drawer, and never have bug problems. The 48 hours in the freezer kills the bug eggs. This technique also works for flour bugs. I am particularly careful to do this with anything that I buy from bulk bins--popcorn, rice, beans.

I used to walk the fields in Indiana looking for Indian artifacts. On my windowsill right now sits a worked piece of flint that exactly fits my hand. Hundreds of years ago, some woman probably used it to break marrowbones or crack hickory nuts. I use it to smash garlic cloves, and I think of her every time I do.

How bout this? A windup microwave carousel, from Amazon.

My chickens, when they are roaming free, love to scratch in any freshly turned dirt, with devasting impact on any plants nearby. They roll in any dusty areas, making holes quite similar to those dug by medium sized dogs. They also see any type of mulch as a gift from heaven sent down to chickens, and scratch it ALL out of the perennial beds and onto the lawn or walkways. All. Every bit. I couldn't do as well with a rake. They peck holes in each and every tomato or strawberry, blackberry or pepper. Even in the winter, when the garden is put to bed, they uproot the garlic and scratch the straw off the strawberry bed. And they poop on the porch. So, even if the eggs taste better and the yolks are as orange as a clementine when they roam free, my chickens must make do with the area inside their pen. Mukki, I have on occasion had one or two escape and spend the day out--one or two chickens can do a lot of damage. I know people, however, who treat their chickens like pets, and "babysit" them when they are outdoors. You can do that, as long as you don't get distracted.

The pork shoulder is good for pulled pork, among other things. I am not too good with the search function, but I know there is a whole thread called "behold my butt".

My girls are outside all day, unless the weather is really bad. I guess technically they are free range, because they have a 30 by 30 pen, but the eggs taste better and are brighter orange when the girls are allowed the run of the place. But, you can either have chickens running loose, or you can have flowerbeds and vegetables. Not both.

Eureka!! I have discovered the formula for making yeast flavored bubble gum. Gack. Flat, rubbery, with a weird metallic taste. 5 day fermentation is just a bit too long. But the dogs enjoyed their share--the chickens will get the rest.

IF the power ever comes back on, I will. I am not scared. Way it looks right now, could be a 10 day proof. All the Ameren UE trucks are in St. Louis, not here. What a whiner I am. At least I have heat and running water--lots of local residents don't have either. (For you city folks--if you don't have electricity, your well pump won't work, so the water doesn't run.) I do have a gas stove--but I don't know how to light the oven with a match, and would really hate to burn my eyebrows off. If the power is still off tonight, maybe I will take the dough over to the Baptist church, where they have a warming shelter, and bake it there. Bet they would like it, however it turns out.

Thursday evening, I mixed up a batch to bake on Friday. Bad move, because the ice storm hit, and I have had no power for four days now. The kitchen has been very, very cold--40 to maybe 50 degrees. On Saturday, thinking that the power would soon come back on, I took the dough and mixed it with a second batch, without adding any more yeast. It rose nicely, smelled good, but no power yesterday, so I couldn't bake. Should I just throw it away? Divide it into small packages, freeze it, and add a little to other batches of bread? Bake it and see what happens? (please remember, I probably have a total of $.45 in ingredients involved. And if I bake it, and it is no good, the dogs and chickens will like it.)

I was at a conference last month that was sooo not about the food, a long week of barely warmed entrees, limp salads and NO DESSERT. Not once, all week. Not that it would have been edible, but still. One meal was a fried chicken nugget salad, which can be good, if the chicken is hot and crunchy and the greens fresh and various, but nooooo. Brown iceberg and the chicken came directly out of the big bag, and still had the chill of the freezer on it. The last meal of the conference was the worst. I think they had been working towards that goal all week. Canned sweet corn, no salt, no butter. Instant mashed potatoes, ditto. And, the piece de resistance, meat loaf. It was a strange, uniform texture--kinda like braunschweiger--very fine and pasty while still managing to be heavy and grey. It was warmish to the touch--I poked it--but no way that stuff was going in my mouth. I have a mental block about meat loaf, anyhow, a worry about what exactly gets ground up into the mix, and this was a real gagger.

My pig is made of glazed ceramic, so that is not it. I think it is a miracle, just like that whole electricity thing.

I made some this summer, for the first time. What can I do with it, besides the cream cheese and crackers thing?

I have. The meat is moist, the skin is pretty flabby.

Rachel, I will be sure to drive up to Indy to that deli the very next time I visit my son in Bloomington. I lived for 5 years near Bedford, IN, and I can vouch for the "Southern-ness" of the area. When your choices at a "meat and three" or buffet include hominy, ham and beans and fried cabbage, you are closer to Atlanta than to Chicago.