Next week my little one will go to her center for two days since my husband has to be at school anyway. I will be able to get my work done, although just barely. And I will finish the culinary post eventually. I will start eating again, don't worry.  9:13:48 PM    

Speaking of culinary (or rather the absence thereof), I have decided to go on a fast. There were just too many little aches and pains, nothing "serious" but I felt my system needed a good cleaning. I had done a fast, a long long time ago, when I was in my 20s, and it was great. I did it for 12 days. This time I am only aiming at 5. This is my first day, I did two days of easing into it, eating only fresh vegetables and fruit. So far I feel great. It will be interesting since I still have to deal with food preparation. However, I can see the benefits already: today at breakfast, since I wasn't eating anything, I could use the time to read the paper!  10:17:57 AM    

I am in between visits from in-laws. Visit was good, I think. It is good for grandparents to spend time with their grandchildren, especially in view of health problems.

I focused the last week on my garden(s) (what am I talking about??? I have a postage stamp and three window boxes ...). In the back, I put the Japanese Maple in. It looks gorgeous. I still need to thin out the canopy a bit. I put in Sweet Autumn Clematis to keep the other Clematis company. They can mingle and we will have some nice bloom in the fall. General cleaning-up, put in some Impatients to brighten things up a bit. And I moved the Bleeding heart that had gotten so enormous it was crowding everything else.
I took the pansies and primrose out of the window boxes and planted them under the blueberry bushes. You never know, we might still get some mileage out of them. For me geraniums are the quintessential window box flower but since they don't get enough sun here, they actually never look really good. So this year I did something drastically different (and ironically, this was the first year I managed to overwinter my Geraniums). I assembled some houseplants that can't stop multiplying and added some colorful coleus. (I will post a picture once they have filled in a bit). Basically, there is Sweet Potatoe Vine and Wandering Jew trailing down the front, two different types of coleus and a polka-dot plant in the middle, along with a white Impatients (some flowers, I figured), and in the back there is a spider plant and a fern. It looks pretty good with unusual contrast of foilage.
I put my tomatoes and peppers on the roof and a few herbs and other things. Sounds easy, doesn't it? Well, I worked for five hours climbing up and down that ladder with my backpack loaded up with plants and compost. I thought my back would break. The potting soil I had used last year had not drained very well so I really needed to refresh the pots with lots of Perlite and compost.

And speaking of compost, I had to move that around too, because my bins were full. Again. I wish I had room for a third bin.

So much for was my gardening craziness. I also repotted most of the houseplants and put the geraniums in pots on the steps. I will post pictures eventually. The bizarre thing is that while I dig around in the little dirt I have, all around me neighbors are putting in paving and building walls and covering up that last bit of dirt as if it were the evil enemy. Oh well.

I still have to do the tree-pit in the front. That's the toughest habitat. Dogs, people, cars, salt in the winter. Whenever I have an extra plant that looks tough I put it in there. Last fall I put in a hosta and it came up this spring. Then someone actually dug it up and took off with it. I hope it found a good home.

Culinary Stuff

I delegated most of the cooking this week to my spouse. Being cooked for is nice. I could get used to it. We went out once to Little Giant again. I had wild asparagus for the first time. It was amazing. Pencil-thin with relatively large tips. Very green and fresh tasting. Apparently some guy from Vermont drives around and sells it to people in the know. I don't think he will be coming by my house, though. The other noteworthy thing I had there was a Mojito with rum they had spiced themselves. I managed to coax the ingredients out of the waitress. Speaking of drinks we were at a BBQ today and I had excellent home-made beer. It was seriously good beer. Almost makes we want to start brewing. But my neighbor said he had been tinkering around for four years and pouring a lot down the drain. Hmm, maybe I can trade some canned goods? Or some spiced rum?  11:05:17 PM    

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Good news in the New York Times today, and I get to try out my RSS feed! Apparently one drink a day does not only not hurt you it may even help you stay healthy.

"Alcohol appears to raise levels of H.D.L. cholesterol, the so-called "good cholesterol," and to lower levels of blood clotting agents like fibrinogen.

This may help prevent not only heart attacks, but also the small, subclinical strokes that cause vascular damage in the brain and lead to mental deterioration."

Like with everything else, moderation is the key. Now I can feel better about indulging in a shoot of vodka while making dinner, and there is one more thing to look forward in the "third phase" in life.  12:08:20 PM    

It has gotten really cold here. This morning the temperature was 12 degrees. Because my husband is out of town I had to take the First-Grader to school. Brrr. The almost four-year old was in the stroller with the plastic bubble around it. Definitely long-underwear weather. After the drop-off at school we were so cold we had to stop by the "French" patisserie. The "French" patisserie is actually West-African. Their pastries very nice and the pain au chocolat is as I remember it from France.

My almost four-year old likes to sit there, nibbling and sipping daintily, and never gets bored, people watching and flirting. I see in her future many hours whiled away in coffee shops and tea salons.

In this kind of weather, calories appear desirable. And when it's just us girls we like to take it easy. Yesterday we had Pasta with Pesto (from our stash in the freezer), a simple green salad, and for desert fruit salad, sprinkled with almonds. Today it was lentil soup (also from the freezer) with baguette with mustard and Munster cheese for them (their idea) and toast for me. We also had our favorite salad: Romaine with mustard-parmesan vinaigrette. The almost four-year old wants just the greens though, and I like to add some dried cherry tomatoes, yum! I wish I had dried more cherry tomatoes, but it the process was so tedious in my little counter-top convection oven.

For desert we had orange juice popsicles and gummy-bears. During the day we consumed at least three pounds of oranges and numerous cups of Ovaltine, the imported variety which is more malty and much less sweet than the American version. It is sold at some specialty stores at a ridiculously high price. We get it at Asian or African markets for much less.  10:49:19 PM    

Here is interesting information from the University of Arkansas on why some carrots are bitter. In sum, there are three factors that can cause bitterness in carrots:

1) The presence of a particular mold or yeast in the soil.

2) Rough handling during shipment.

3) Storage in proximity to other foods that release ethylene gas, such as apples in particular.

As a consumer, I cannot know whether the soil the carrots grew in was affected by mold. However, if I find sweet carrots, I would do well buying from the same farm again as there is a lesser likelihood of the soil being infected. Bags shipped from the other end of the continent and thrown around in the supermarket are more likely to have been subjected to rough treatment. And if the carrots are relatively fresh and have not sat around in a warehouse or a shipping container with other food there is a smaller chance of bitterness as well.

I think I will go right back to the stall where I bought the sweet carrots. I bet that farmer knows how to prevent bitterness in carrots.

***************** Here is the excerpt from http://www.uark.edu/depts/foodsci/mystery/manual/07_goodapplebad.html):

The Bad Apple

In addition to beneficial elements, plants may produce detrimental compounds as well. Isocoumarin from carrots is one example. Isocoumarin is a bitter tasting compound produced in carrots during times of stress. Isocoumarin has antifungal properties. Another compound of interest is ethylene gas, which is released by most fruits and vegetables during the ripening process. Rapidly ripening fruits, like apples and tomatoes, release greater amounts of ethylene. Bruising or damage to a fruit or vegetable increases the amount of ethylene released and speeds the ripening process. A chain reaction of ripening is why "one bad apple spoils the bunch."

When mold attacks a carrot growing in a field, the carrot begins to produce isocoumarin. This antifungal agent will stop the spread of the mold, but will cause the carrot to become impalatable to humans. Thus, it is very important for farmers to keep molds and yeast out of their field during a wet spell. They must also handle the carrots carefully during shipment. Rough treatment and scarring also triggers the formation of isocoumarin and the carrots will be bitter.

The production of isocoumarin in carrots is of special interest to baby food manufacturers. Babies will quickly reject a bitter product and the company loses profits and customers. Manufacturers like Gerber's have turned to the University of Arkansas Food Science Department to help solve a bitter carrot dilemma.

Problems caused during growth and transportation were solved and the carrots arrived at Gerber's sweet and crunchy. However, after storage in large walk-in coolers, the carrots became bitter. The coolers were being used to store a variety of other fruits and vegetables to be used in baby food products. Do you know what was happening to the carrots?

A third mechanism for the production of isocoumarin in carrots was soon discovered - the presence of ethylene gas. Rapidly ripening fruits, like apples, being stored in the same cooler were releasing ethylene and triggering the production of isocoumarin in the carrots. The company was losing a great deal of profits (up to $250,000/year in retail value) over a storage problem! Thereafter, the carrots were stored separately. This solution greatly reduced the bitter carrot dilemma.

A surprising aside to this problem is that even after separate storage, the carrots were slowly developing a bitter flavor. The carrot cooler and the apple cooler were located across the hall from each other. The process of opening and closing the cooler doors allowed passage of enough ethylene to measurably speed the production of isocoumarin. A level of 1 ppm of ethylene in the air is enough to stimulate the production of isocoumarin! [1 ppm (part per million) can be described as 1 tablespoon of salt dissolved in an Olympic sized swimming pool.] ********  10:54:26 PM    

The proper term for the white part of the peel, commonly called "pith," is albedo. I learned this fact (and many more interesting details) from the website cited below.

The external, orange, part of the peel is called flavedo. It contains the essential oils.

I already knew that the "pith" has a lot of pectin in it. Yesterday as I was shaving it off, I kept thinking, what a shame that I will throw this out. After all commercial pectin is made from citrus pectin. But I don't think I will start my home-based pectin production. The albedo will go to my compost heap.

I do, however, like to spend my time tracking down arcane information.

(picture from: http://www.contentotrade.com/Terpene/eng/l'agrume.htm)

9:16:34 AM