January 13th, 2010 nick
As promised to a Christmas visitor, here’s the recipe for Emmet’s cornbread. We just made it again last night and it hit the spot. Whatever you do, don’t skimp on the butter.
[Celia says she often doubles or triples this recipe -- I usually just make it as is.]
Ingredients:
1/2c butter (1 stick)
1c milk
4T brown sugar
1c corn meal
1c flour [I usually do 50/50 white/whole wheat flour]
1/2t salt
2t baking powder
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 375. Melt butter in cast iron skillet in oven. Mix wet and dry ingredients separately , then together. [I sometimes add a dash of cumin and not as much sugar. Also, frozen corn, cooked sweet potato and/or diced jalapeno add a little je ne sais quoi.] Pour into pan, bake 20-30 minutes. Drizzle honey and enjoy!
And, as promised, here are a crop of photos from Christmas.
Posted in food, gardening, parenthood | No Comments »
July 24th, 2009 nick
Trying out Shashin, a highly recommended Picasa plugin for WordPress — a good excuse to put some of today’s garden photos up online.
Sill-ripened.
Sill-ripened.
This morning’s harvest.
This morning’s harvest.
Hampden grapes.
Hampden grapes.
Peppers in place of Paul.
Peppers in place of Paul.
Curly cuke.
Curly cuke.
We got all kinds of seedlings growing in the baltimore sun.
We got all kinds of seedlings growing in the baltimore sun.
Posted in books & movies, gardening, home | 2 Comments »
June 29th, 2009 nick
The prize of our garden, a large and leafy and dark green Paul Robeson tomato plant, succumbed to some kind of wilt this past week. We came back last Sunday and it was looking droopy. Thinking it might be a lack of water, we gave it a good soaking. The wilt continued and spread throughout the plant. By Wednesday, we knew it was a goner. We salvaged the five or six good-size fruits that were already set (fried green tomatoes, anyone?) and chopped it down on Saturday, cutting out losses and making way for a few new pepper plants (Portugal hots, chocolate, and Klari cheese) in the big container.
The sadness of losing “Paul” as we’d taken to calling him, was offset slightly by the resurgence of the oxalis plant in the home office. I had given up hope for this little guy, seeing as he’d been in dormancy for over 6 months. But Kip advised me to keep my hopes alive and I kept up the occasional waterings, just in case. Sure enough, on one of those hot summery days last week, out came three shoots (at the same time, but from different rooted lobes?).
We suspect a bacterial wilt although we didn’t observe any of the milky whitish seepage from the cut stems. A few photos (below) show the pith having turned brown — looks like the water just couldn’t make it out to the leaves. Two of our other tomato plants look like they might have Fusarium wilt, but, as recommended by Cheryl at Mill Valley, I sprayed lightly with a rubbing alcohol/water (1:3 ratio) mix. Hopefully that will slow down any more evil-doers out to sabotage our tomato crop.
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| By the end of the week, the entire plant looked like the branch on the left. |
A cross-section of the main stem. |
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| The stem was brown all the way through. |
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| The new oxalis shoots. |
Posted in gardening, home | 2 Comments »
March 19th, 2009 nick
Ever since acquiring a new stackable washer/dryer combo for the basement — a wondrously space- and energy-saving addition to our house, the washer must use about 1/4 the water of the old top-loader — we’ve been hard at work reclaiming more space for us to use down there. The first addition: Jojo’s workshop — a place where bookbinding, sewing, and all sorts of random arty projects are brought to fruition at the 611.
We’ve also started the spring seedlings — with new equipment this year. First, a legitimate grow light from E. B. Fluorescent lights. Second, one of those seedling warmers — a flat rubber heating pad that sits under the seedlings and keeps them warm all day long (bought from the Organic Growers Supply branch of Fedco Seeds). We also are finally putting to use an outlet timer that we got at christmas a few years back. So the grow light automatically flicks on around 6 a.m. and stays on until about 9 p.m. The heating pad stays warm all day long. I think the pad uses about 60 watts and the lights are each about 30 watts. So far the results seem good. Lots of fast germination, more sturdy growth early on than we’ve had in past years. We’re also watering the established seedlings with a diluted worm juice. Last year Celia conducted a carefully controlled experiment in her greenhouse and found that seedlings watered with worm juice did noticeably better than those given just water, so we’re following the hard-earned scientific evidence on that front.
Here is an early picture of the set up, back when we were trying to give just the sprouted seeds light. We’ve since taken to covering unsprouted seeds with tin foil — that works better than the cloth method.
This one was taken a week ago — we’re constantly repositioning the light… 
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June 5th, 2008 nick
Picked up the first set of CSA veggies today at the Mill Valley Garden Center. Some firm spinach, perky rainbow chard, full head of green-leaf lettuce and some strawberries! Also, picked up some odds and ends for the garden including a planter holder that fits on the railing of our back porch for added growing space that doesn’t involve having plants scattered across the back yard.
The rain barrel, which we installed just before the California trip, is working fine (although the over-flow isn’t quite working right) and has been getting a workout what with the reputed tornadoes that ripped through Maryland yesterday, but the water smells strongly of that icky tar stuff that they put on the roofs of all these row-houses. I guess that shouldn’t be all that surprising, but it’s still a little disappointing that it probably isn’t the best stuff to put on our vegetable plants. So, we’re probably going to use it mostly for the flowers and other non-edibles for now.
Both nests of herons that we’ve seen this year appear to have babies in them (the parents stay out of the nest and we see little puff balls occasionally) but no really clear sightings yet. Hopefully some pictures soon.
Posted in gardening | 2 Comments »
June 2nd, 2008 nick
Thanks to one particular faithful reader for encouraging me to continue to update this blog. This post’s for you!
We arrived back home today from a week out in California: Alex and Wendy’s wedding, followed by a few days with friends in Tahoe and then a sweet road trip–just me and my honey–down sweet sweet route 395 on the east side of the Sierra Nevada. It was awesome, if brief: a few hot springs stops followed by a visit to Death Valley. I put some photos up online.
Also, I don’t know what kind of BALCO concoction Mike and Jamie fed our tomatoes but we came back to some seriously ass-kicking tomatoes — dozens of flowers, a few tiny tomatoes, and lots of good cucumber plants starting to creep. We took down the wilting pea plants and fed them to the worms (who were running out of food and crawling on the side of the bin in the hunt for new fuel) after having a nice serving of them (the peas) for dinner. Hooray for a better crop (still not great–it gets too hot too quickly) this year than the last two! The dwarf pea variety that I ordered this year seemed to do better than the older variety. Also, next year we may grow them more for the edible shoots than the peas themselves (sorry, wrigglers!).
Posted in adventure, gardening, travel | No Comments »
April 24th, 2008 nick
On my way to the shuttle today, the new leaves were rustling in the trees above Stoney Run Creek. A sure sign that the nice long warm Baltimore spring is here. Yesterday a few tomato seedlings (one cherry, one slicer) found homes in two pots outside. They will hopefully benefit from soil enriched by half a 5-gallon bucket of worm compost that I harvested from the bottom tier of the composting system. In going through the “finished” compost, I noticed that some squash seeds, the woody tip of a butternut squash, and the reedy stalks of some old basil plants hadn’t made much decomposition progress. So we may have a bumper crop of squash this year. Taking my sister’s advice, I covered the soil of the tomatoes with white plastic. She says this will help keep the soil moist and will generate more light for the plants. She said that red plastic might even work better (??) but we only had some white stuff lying around.
Had a fun weekend playing in a coed tournament with Johanna (maybe our only tournament together this year) and a bunch of other Carleton grads. I hadn’t played with any of the Syzygy folks (all younger) so it was nice to get to meet them. They’re good! We did pretty well, considering we didn’t know each other at all before, only losing to established teams from last year. In my one chance to toss a nice huck to Johanna, I tossed it way too far. Need to work on my hucks, although I felt like my mid-range throws were accurate and strong.
Posted in gardening, ultimate | No Comments »
April 17th, 2008 nick
Along with the usual siege of herons along Wyman Park creek, another few couples are setting up shop above San Martin Drive right along my way to the shuttle every morning. I counted five there today, two nests. I chatted with the crossing guard who says “he’s turned into a birder” just from sitting in the little security booth a stone’s throw from the nests. Apparently there’s a hawk nest just up the road too — he says it’s a red tail. The woman on the path a few days ago said they are red-shouldered hawks.
The heron nests are literally right above the road. In the woods, the ground beneath the nest is always a nice shade of white. I can’t wait to see the schmutsky raining down on the cars.
The peas are up and are starting to crawl up the twine I’ve put up for them. They ended up coming in a little thick, so we may chop down some to eat as pea shoots. Additionally, this hedges our bets against losing the peas to the heat before we’ve gotten many peas, as has happened in the last two years. I’m planning on transplanting the cherry tomatoes outdoors pretty soon. The larger Rose de Burnes I’m going to wait on a little bit longer because they are growing less quickly (the package says it takes them 80 days vs 60 for the cherry tomatoes to bear fruit).
Posted in birds, gardening | No Comments »
March 21st, 2008 nick
make God cry, according to Colbert. But doing my state taxes this year was about as tear-free as any tax session I’ve ever had. With my federal taxes in hand, it took me less than 10 minutes to complete and submit my state taxes online. It was awesome.
The peas are up but now the tomato and basil seedlings are leggy, craning high and far towards the grow light or the sunlight, depending on which batch they are in. Can we slow down their seeming unhealthy growth? Any fellow gardeners have tips or suggestions?
Posted in gardening, miscellany | 2 Comments »
March 17th, 2008 nick
it’s been a mostly quiet weekend. Paul and I did the PoNY track workout yesterday. A fairly light pre-season set of plyos and a few hard laps around the track, but nothing too bad. This is the first time in years that I’m psyched enough about an ultimate season to be training this early. There’s buzz that a great coed team is going to come together in the DC/Baltimore area. And so far, the men’s team from NYC is still telling me that I can try out for them.
Last weekend, Becca and I hit up the Bodies exhibit. Even though she griped that the textual explanations of things weren’t good enough (they probably weren’t — I didn’t pay that much attention to them), the bodies themselves were pretty captivating. There were some where the nerves were preserved and looked like little pieces of floss hung between the muscles. Others where they’d slice away a knee-cap or a big butt muscle so you could look underneath it. The muscles themselves looked a little like big things of beef jerky. Becca thought that if you saw someone you knew that you’d be able to recognize them. I said that I disagreed except for on the ones where they leave the facial skin intact. Also, the room of fetuses and a pregnant mother were pretty amazing. They had little vials with babies that ranged from a few weeks to a few months old. Even on one of the little babies you could see these little fingers, about the width of a few hairs. Really tiny!
I’ve been starting to tense up about writing this big paper. It’s coming along all right so far (32 pages and counting…) but there’s still a lot of work to do. The first draft is due to Ron in a week. I’ve started to procrastinate by playing Scrabulous Blitz games (4 minutes long, place as many words as you can on your own board). It’s hard, but addictive.
The peas finally poked out this weekend. Looks like the newer seeds from Fedco had a better germination rate than the older ones from last year.
Posted in friends, gardening, ultimate | No Comments »
