Archive for the ‘summer’ Tag
Today begins my summer chore of making the first batch of Hot Bread & Butter Pickles. Over the course of each Summer I normally can at least four batches of pickles. Each batch is usually 14-15 pints and I make both Dill and B&B versions. All of my pickles are Hot which means slices of jalapeno and red pepper in each jar as well as a shot of ground habanero for good luck. Today I’ll walk you through the process but without giving up my secret pickling mix recipe.
The first thing this morning I prepared the jars and canning supplies by sanitizing them with boiling water.
Once the jars, lids, and rims are boiled I then wash the cucumbers thoroughly.
They are then sliced along with the red pepper and jalapenos. All are set aside until I’m ready to fill the jars.
I return to the stove to prepare the B&B syrup. It consists of my secret spice mix, 7 cups of sugar, and 7 cups of distilled white vinegar.
Packing the jars is my least favorite part of the process but still very important. The jars are carefully packed, the syrup added, and the lids and rims tightened down. The jars then take a boiling hot water bath for a full fifteen minutes.
Getting the first batch of the season completed is always a good feeling. Here’s the finished product . . . 15 pints of very hot and sweet pickles. They’ll be ready for eating after they sit for a few months to absorb all of the flavors.
MORE TO FOLLOW
The garden is once again fast becoming my top priority. As usual at this time of the season the herbs are out of control. I spent some time this week pruning the oregano and catnip for later drying. I did a general cleanup of the dehydrator in anticipation of a heavy work load this summer.
It holds a great deal of material as you can see. This week I filled it with diced jalapeños, cayenne’s, and two pounds of habaneros. After six hours the peppers were ready for grinding. Unfortunately my reliable old grinder failed to work and I was forced to make a quick trip to Walmart to purchase another. The peppers were ground into a fine powder and stored for future uses.
Hot, Hotter, and Hottest
Then it was back to trimming and photographing some of the newly blooming day lilies. These pictures are of the early bloomers with more colors and variants expected within a few weeks. I love these colors.
It was a garden and yard work day all around. I spent some time paying attention to my compost area. I needed to wet down the piles and add a compost accelerator. I’ll be needing as much of it as I can get to add to the garden this Fall.
The better-half and I also began the process of redesigning the garden for next Spring. We’ve decided to discontinue growing vegetables in one of the large frames and to devote it entirely to growing culinary herbs. It’ll be something of challenge placing the correct herbs near others that are compatible. We’ll also be placing herbs in the vegetable frames to keep out assorted pests and varmints that the herbs do naturally. Hopefully we’ll be able to agree on the final design of the garden before Spring arrives and the purchasing and planting our selection of herbs begins.
IT SHOULD BE GREAT FUN
In my last post I took you on a tour of Old Orchard Beach, Maine. You got to see the beaches full of people, a friendly bar to hangout in, and a cute bikini clad girl buried in sand. I hope you didn’t think that covered our entire visit because there was much more to it. Today I’ll take you along on our continuing tour that includes my better-half’s favorite spot. Welcome to the Amusement Park.
Doesn’t look like much from the outside but . . .
The Arcade while not my favorite place is always interesting. Tourists from just about anywhere flock to this place to throw their money away or to just drop off their kids for a few hours. Where else can you win tickets for doing just about anything and at the end of your day you’d have spent forty bucks to win enough tickets to buy a pack of gum. My better-half is for some reason a Skee Ball addict. She insists on throwing her money away, winning a fistful of tickets, that she ends up giving to some kid who happens to be standing around picking his nose. It’s always puzzled me and I fear it will continue to do so.
Who can resist all of this fine looking merchandise?
Never let it be said that I’m immune to the attractions of this park. I was once again drawn to a booth where I was permitted to spend five bucks to throw two tiny bean bags at some under inflated balloons. Being a former Little League baseball player I was stunned when I actually broke two of those stupid balloons and won my honey this glorious and somewhat ridiculous prize.
Who doesn’t love a cuddly little frog?
Once again I became a willing victim of all the hype that’s constantly spewed by this park. It seems to happen every time I visit here and stranger still, I don’t mind at all.
I’m so excited by all the hubbub in an amusement park I actually feel kind of bad that I’m not permitted to ride these stupid rides. As a young kid I was too short to ride them and now all these years later I’m too tall and plump to fit in them. There’s just no justice in this world.
FORTUNATELY . . . IT’S ALL GOOD FUN!
OUR SUMMER CONTINUES!
My better-half was able to sneak away from work a little early yesterday making it possible for us to make our first visit this summer to Old Orchard Beach, Maine, the ultimate tourist trap. The weather was sweltering at our house but when we arrived at OOB there was a beautiful ocean breeze that was grand. The beach looked beautiful and it was loaded with visiting tourists.
The only place to stay cool for a few hours.
I love just walking around and people watching when I stumbled on this young lady wearing the required bikini I always look for. It was too bad she decided to stay buried in the sand.
What’s a trip to the beach without our mandatory visit to the Surf 6 bar. It’s located directly adjacent to the beach just a hop, skip, and jump from the water. I should also mention the excellent mojitos and margaritas that are available. As always laced with some excellent Patron tequila. OLE!
We took a nice walk along the beach just as the sun was setting. The cool water felt damn good our poor overheated and sweaty feet. It was heaven.
All in all it was a lot of fun and we are planning more of these outings over the next month. The food was delicious, the water was cool, the drinks were icy cold, and the people watching was the best.
SUMMER WILL CONTINUE
I breathed a huge sigh of relief this week when we finally began harvesting a few items from the garden. By far the plants that seem to be doing the best are the zucchini’s. They are weeks ahead of the hot peppers of so it seems. Here are the first two we removed and they’ve already been made into a number of loaves of chocolate zucchini bread.
The cake was delicious as usual.
We also have five or six cucumbers ready for the table. This meal consisted of chicken tenders grilled in a tequila & lime sauce and a cucumber, tomato, and onion salad drizzled with oil and vinegar. Add to that vegetarian spring rolls and a cold glass of Chardonnay and your in heaven. It tasted way better than it sounds or looks.
One of the hazards of eating a meal on our deck are the hundreds of birds that consistently visit our feeders. Over the last few years we’ve been adopted by three generations of woodpeckers. Imagine trying to eat your meal as they zoom into the feeder just a foot or two above your head. They seem to have lost all fear of us.
I guess it’s nice to have visitors of a sort when dining but these guys are a pain at times.
WE ARE LOVING SUMMER
I just took a quick stroll around the property this morning to take a few snaps of some of the more colorful bloomers. The recent weeks of rain and warm weather have the garden growing as fast as possible. Just a few short weeks ago most of these flowers were only 6 inches high. Look at them now.
Day lilies are my favorites to photograph.
These are the first of many different colored lilies my better-half has planted in the gardens. They are beautiful, colorful, and make for some interesting screensavers I can enjoy through those long winter months.
I’m not exactly sure what this plant is but I love the look of it.
As you can see the gardens are green and lush. A great place to sit on a bench and relax. There’s nothing more calming than that. These last two photo’s are of flowers in full bloom. The white daisies are my better-half’s favorite flower. Once again I have no idea what the red ones might be but I like them regardless.
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Today will be more garden work for me. Although I use garden fabric to keep the weeds to a minimum it still requires spending some time on my hands and knees to get those few that always seem to show up in every little crack and crevice.
WE’LL SHOULD BEGIN HARVESTING SOON
I am not now or ever have been considered a religious person. I’ve read as much information as I could find on almost every major religion over the years. It was my vain attempt to convince myself one way or the other that such a thing was necessary in my life. I accomplished my goal but it left me with volumes of information on religions both interesting and some not so much. Today I’ll post some strange but true religious trivia and you can do with it what you will.
- The temple of all faiths: Birla Temple in New Delhi, India, includes separate areas for worship for every known religion.
- It was not until the fourth century that the church (Christianity) began to celebrate the feast of Christmas.
- The first Bible printed in America in 1663 was a translation into the Algonkian language.
- The word “and” appears 46,277 times in the King James version of the Bible.
- Hijmar, a holy man of Benares, India, held his left arm in the same position for 12 years.
- The first book digest: Dubash Meghji, of Zanzibar., ate one page of the Koran each day for thirty years.
- Each year Shia Muslims in Ahmadabad, India, mourn the death of Imam Husain, a descendant of the prophet Mohammad, by whipping themselves with knife-tipped chains.
- In 1993, Israel’s telephone company offered a service for people to fax messages to God, to be placed in the Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall.
- Forty nuns at a convent in Stetyl, the Netherlands, have maintained a continuous prayer in their chapel for ninety-eight years.
- The people who worship a nail: The Maria Gonds of Chandra, India, pray only to a 12 inch spike.
- In 1685 a church bell from a Protestant chapel in France was whipped and burned after being charged with “inflaming the hearts of heretics”.
- Prayer stones addressed to Egyptian god Ra and sold to worshippers in Ancient Egypt had large ears engraved on them – so Ra would be sure to hear their messages.
- In 1992 a historic church in Melle, France, installed a juke box that plays Gregorian chants, Tibetan mantras, and Jewish liturgical music.
And last but not least:
- Ancient Egyptian priests in 450 b.c. trained baboons to sweep out their temples.
CAN I GET AN AMEN?
With the better-half’s vacation coming to an end I can see the light at the end of the honey-do list tunnel. It’s been a great week for use both and to prove it I’m posting a number of miscellaneous photos taken in odd places at odd times. People may call these locations flea markets yard sales or garage sales but let me be a bit more accurate. It’s more like junk yards, piles of crap, or just plain garbage. I know I’m being a little harsh but OMG.
Just what every summer tourist needs . . . snow shoes.
Then who doesn’t need dishes and glassware at a quarter a piece?
I’ve held two garage sales in my life and I know how I prepared for the shopping public. I unloaded every piece of crap I could find onto tables, priced them for under a dollar, smiled a lot, lowered the prices when necessary, and at the end of the day I made a hundred dollars or so. Who knew my crap was so in demand.
Does this look familiar to you?
How about this.
I’m not a shopaholic like my better-half and thank god for that. I can only handle visiting a few of these places before I start to get a little crazy. It makes me itch all over with imaginary bugs and the smell at times is godawful.
Does anyone out there really need a POS boat. NO! How about a bunch of nasty looking lobster traps?
P. T. Barnum had it right all along. As far as suckers go, “There’s one born every minute.
SO TRUE . . . SO TRUE
I think I may be getting a little bit spoiled but trust me . . . I won’t tell that to anyone but you. I never thought I’d live to see the day when I’d be considered spoiled but I have and it arrived yesterday.
My better-half is on vacation this week and we’ve been going and doing anything we want and enjoying it immensely. Yesterday was an almost perfect day. It was in the low eighties, sunny, and not a cloud in the sky. We decided to take a short day trip into New Hampshire to shop for antiques and to just relax and roam around for a few hours. Sounds pretty good right? Then why was I complaining almost the entire time? Why, because I’m spoiled.
After getting home last night I sat on the deck and tried to figure out what my problem might be. I spent a great deal of time whining and complaining about New Hampshire and those endlessly boring forests, lakes, and those beautiful White Mountains. I complained about having to drive twenty miles along dozens of lakes and streams and be forced to see all of this damn beautiful scenery. I also moaned and groaned after traveling through the countryside for an hour about that one car that was tailgating me or the one truck that was in front of me going only twenty miles an hour. Truthfully they were the only other cars on the road at that time. I was also upset that I had to drive by all of those cool little campgrounds and small beaches where I was forced once again to ogle a few well tanned and bikini clad lovelies enjoying their day. Am I going insane of just horribly spoiled?
As we drove home back into Maine I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I could stop bitching about New Hampshire and return to my normal everyday bitching about Maine. More damn forests, more lakes, more good weather, and more of those damn beautiful vistas. Why me? What did I do in a previous life that I deserved all of these wonderful things.
I don’t know for sure but I’m working on it.
Well, another holiday has come and gone. Overall it was a great weekend for us here in Maine. I do realize there are problems in many parts of this country where patriotism is now frowned upon for fear of alienating all of the aliens, both legal and more likely illegal. I recently read an article where a student was sent home from school because he wore a pro-America t- shirt. If that was my son I could easily been persuaded to some sort of violence and rightly so. I realize it’s chic and liberal to trash the United States at every turn but if nothing else it’s disrespectful as hell. It disrespects every person wearing the countries uniform and I suspect it’s mostly done by people who’ve never served.
Also shame on those of you in the academic ranks who insist on turning this country into a liberal, politically correct, and impotent world power by brainwashing our children with liberal claptrap (that’s right . . . I said claptrap.). Shame on you all.
Now that I have that rant off my chest let me continue. My better-half and I did a little traveling around our state over the weekend and I couldn’t have been prouder. It seems that the people of Maine may distrust our politicians (as they should) but still love their country. We must have seen five hundred or more flags flying from buildings, businesses, and homes.
In the town of Sebago, Maine which covers a rather large area, every telephone pole that we saw for miles was flying the colors. So to all of you America haters across the country how about finding the closest airport, get on the fastest plane you can find and GET THE HELL OUT (call me if you need a ride to the airport).
HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA
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