Friday Clearance On Pics & Links

Greetings, my friends!  Once again I'm devoting Friday's post to clearing out my photo archive and Favorites list.  Here's one for my good friend Lili, who posts over on FEARLESS NESTING.  (Hey the pic reminds me of her white pumpkins!)  It's the 10 in 10 Diet.

The 10 in 10 Diet is a total system that makes it easy to transition off meat and cook healthy food conveniently while keeping your grocery bill under $150 a month per person, and reducing our contribution to climate change – think 10% reduction by remembering these 10 key points. It's a way to fast track to a simpler, more peaceful life. It's totally possible to really enjoy food while eating more like the majority of people in the world.

Too many people live just the way the Fat Cats & Corporations want them to live.  To live they way you want, you have to be as self-reliant as possible.  Check out Adventures In Self Reliance for some neat do-it-yourself projects, especially the food.  She has a recipe for Homemade Survival Bars that sounds pretty good, plus fruit leather and such.

You can see what nature thinks of fences.  Robert Frost's poem said "good fences make good neighbors" but he seemed not to agree with his own poem's character who said it.  I feel the same.  I haven't really been all that fond of neighbors since I moved out of Mom & Dad's place next door to Nanny & Grandy, and there was no fence betwixt.  Now, I've been called all kinds of hippy and anarchist for my views on property but my old pal George Carlin reminds us that we all need a place for our stuff.  He says if we didn't have so much stuff we could just walk around.  I got too much stuff - do you need any of it?

Did you ever feel that life was sending you coded message?  Ones and zeroes?  Just me, huh?  It figures.  If your Adobe Flash Player app seems hard to decipher you can get help, and make sure to protect your privacy and security.  You can also get lots of help with your Bleeping Computer.  Vigilant Citizen deciphers the occult symbols in modern buildings, songs, videos, and movies.

I'm not sure what my little friend here is up to but you can Enhance Beneficial Insects With Native Plants, highly recommended by my bee-keeping friend, Dr. Dan.  Maybe I can identify the little guy with Discover Life, a tool that has over a million and a quarter species pages.  There is also a huge amount of material at Encyclopedia Of Life.

Meet my friend Horace Wyche.  When I first met him he was a pretty skinny dude, then he made the decision to get fit.  He can help you do the same with his Hoss Innovative Fitness Training.

No More Tiers

So this is our grand-daughter, Logan.  It's our first time watching her for more than a few minutes for a run to the store.  She's a good baby, so I taught her to stick out her tongue.  She's not quite 4 weeks old.

Mommy's out doing foxy boxing tonight and it looks like Logan is, too.  Dynamite comes in small packages!

That's my size 10+ foot next to the biggest mushrooms I have ever seen.  Wish I was better educated in whether they are edible.  Too risky.

I spent a lot of time on the phone yesterday with different branches of Ohio Job & Family Services.  The first call I made was to unemployment.  Actually I had tried them on Monday and their outgoing message said that people with names that start with "P" should only call on Wednesday,  so being obedient and orderly and a former call-center drone, I called on Wednesday.  Sometimes the outgoing message says that call volume is too high, please call back at another time, this call is now ended, but I managed to get through.  The menu choices didn't fit what I wanted so I punched # and 0 until I got that sickeningly peppy light jazz hold music and I waited a very long time.

Finally a human answered the phone and I was able to ask my question.  I said that I had not received a benefit payment for several weeks and could not even file a weekly claim online so I assumed that I was one of that new class of people in today's economy called a 99er.  I had even logged in to the unemployment website and counted payments and it looked like I had used up my legally allotted 99 benefit weeks.  The reason for my call was that I had just received a direct-deposit payment after that gap of several weeks, and I wanted to make sure it was legitimate before I spent it, because I would not be able to repay it if it was a mistake.  The call center agent told me that it was indeed legit, that it was my 99th payment which just happened to get held up by that tug-of-war that had been going on in Congress.  So unless Congress passes a Tier V, it's the end of the line for my unemployment benefits.  I'm still applying for jobs though, so any phony statistic from the government or media that says that I have given up is just baloney.  There is a growing number of people like me who can now be left out of the official unemployment numbers and ignored, like a shadow army growing increasingly frustrated and desperate.

That bottle in the picture is a little experiment we're trying for the first time.  It's homemade blackberry wine!  And it turns out that blackberry wine is kind of a family tradition from back before my Mom was born, and it created repercussions with the Patriot Act, but that's a story for another post.

In Bleak Midwinter

Forget for the moment that the thermometer in the hall reads 87 degrees.  Forget, in fact that it's digital.  Forget that it's the middle of July.  Time ain't nothing.  I just sneaked over to the neighbors' yard and plucked a single holly leaf for inspiration, came back and put on one of my favorite recordings of "Christmas" music:  The Chieftains piece called "The Bells Of Dublin."

(The Holly and the Ivy, when they are both full grown

Of all the trees that are in the wood, the Holly bears the Crown)

Wolfie loves it!

Chillin'

Forgot to wrap the hose

Asian Food Fest 2010

Last Saturday morning we were "getting ready to get ready," sipping strong Kroger French Roast coffee (it's a dollar cheaper on the can than Columbian) and watching Fox19 on TV.  We had no plans for the day other than stopping at the bank before 5 o'clock. Our ears perked up at the report of the day's events:  Asian Food Fest 2010, free admission, free parking, free entertainment, food from all over Asia, and just a few miles away at Kolping Center.  The plan is set:  bank first, then swing by the festival.

We headed out around 2 p.m., travelling along a residential street called Niagara to avoid the congestion typical of Colerain Ave.  Suddenly a Colerain Township police car came flying down the narrow street with sirens & lights going.  Hmm, wonder what's up?  There is always some kind of drama within earshot, but we found out later that this turned out to be 4 people shot, two of them dead.  Our kids know that you can't walk to Northgate Mall without getting jumped.  And Northgate Mall is going through foreclosure.  Welcome to slum-burbia!  But at that moment the biggest threat to us was the sky.  A silent stroke of lightning etched the horizon as I exited the bank after appeasing the bank with another monthly mortgage payment.  The atmosphere is muggy and heavy for so early in the season.

Minutes later we pulled in to the spacious parking lot of Kolping Center, cruised past an ongoing softball game, and parked in one of the many handicap slots near the shelter/building.  The paved walkways were wheelchair-friendly; the grassy area that held the various food booths was not to hard for me to push over.  There were a few known restaurants represented but most of the booths seemed to represent countries or regions of Asia.  We selected a chicken paad thai and a Korean meal and found a table under the spacious shelter.  Oh, I forgot to mention there was a light drizzle going, so much for a good hair day.

Under the shelter a demonstration of a martial art called akkido was beginning.  According to the old sensei, the main feature of akkido is to use your opponents momentum against him.  Not much striking or kicking, lots of spinning and flipping.  Check out the pics.

After the akkido demo, there was a group of kids that did the dragon dance.

Apparently dragons eat dollars.  After all, this festival is helping to raise money for Haiti.

Do you still have all your fingers, Marcy?

Dragons also go for peaches on a red plate.  Good luck?

The dragon crew posed for photos with anyone who wanted.  This young lady was one of the volunteers who made sure we had fun.  In fact, several people asked us if we were having fun.  The answer was yes!  We're already looking forward to the 2nd annual Asian Food Festival.

Wild Greens For Dinner

This is broadleaf dock, a weed that I let grow all over my back yard.  We'll take the larger leaves that aren't too beat-up or bug-bit and we'll base our dish on that.

A few leaves of Garlic Mustard in the mix will make the flavor more interesting.

I've got so much lemon balm it actually serves as ground cover in parts of the yard.  Might as well add some to the greens pot.  It should balance the garlic mustard nicely.

We'll leave the dandelions out this time.  Been there already.  I might go back and dig out the taproot next time.

Chives are another flavor boost in the greens pot.  I actually pulled several wild onions from the middle of the yard, cut off the little fibrous root and chopped up the rest into the mix.  Yum!

I got caught up in foraging and forgot to take pics of the Poke and Long Lettuce that I also found.  Gotta eat that Poke when it's young or it will poison you.  I only plucked a few partially open leaves on some shoots only about 6 inches tall.  It's taller than me when it's grown.  I don't take chances.

Here's how you cook this bunch of yard trimmings:  After you wash the greens, roll them all up like a big cigar on your cutting board and cut slices about 1/4 inch wide.  Get your (cast iron) skillet medium hot with some extra virgin olive oil covering the bottom.  Toss those strips of greens around in there so it all gets a little oil and then stir occaisionally as the heat collapses it all down.  No salt, no pepper, no vinegar.  Just wild plants and a little olive oil.  We ate it with beef tenderized with an overnight marinade of wine and onions, slow-baked in the juice.  So there were some big strong flavors jumping up and saying howdy to each other but they complemented well.

Cheap Dinner - Souvlaki & Peppers with Couscous or Rice

Derek is 17, a growing boy, and he craves meat.  And having a big Greek component in his heritage, he asked for gyros & souvlaki to be on the grocery list.  Well, gyro meat is kind of a specialty item but souvlaki is very easy and very affordable.  The secret is to keep an eye on Kroger's meat markdowns and grab all the "City Chicken" they have.  It's really pork cut into nice chunks and put on a stick.  Kroger cuts the price in half when it's near expiration.  No problem, just freeze it until you need it.

To make souvlaki, marinate the city chicken in lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, and oregano.  Poke a bunch of holes with a fork so the flavor penetrates.  You don't need to marinate too long, no more than 2 hours in the fridge or the lemon juice will tenderize the meat to mush.  In good weather, it's so much better to cook your souvlaki on a charcoal grill.  However, a little over an hour in the oven preheated to 325 will make you happy.

Our dinner tonight was souvlaki made with Kroger's half-price city chicken, a big serving of Kroger quick cook rice, some stir-fried multi-colored pepper strips from the freezer (given to us by a friend).  We also tried for the first time couscous, a mediterranean side dish made with cracked wheat.  The box of Hodgson Mill Parmesan Couscous that we had was marked down under a buck as a discontinued item by Kroger.  Couscous cooks in about 5 minutes pretty much like the quick rice.  It wasn't real exciting but drenched with the souvlaki drippins it was mighty tasty.  In all the excitement I forgot to serve the bag of Fresh Selection salad bought - you guessed it - marked down to $1.49 at Kroger.