Pickled green tomatoes

After I picked all those green tomatoes on Saturday, I had to do something with them. Pickling seemed the easiest option. First, I scrubbed them all with a soft brush and dunked them in light bleach solution to remove any possible mouse residue.

In two 1-quart jars, I placed dill seeds, peppers, garlic, bay leaves, celery seed, salt, sugar, black peppercorns and sichuan peppercorns. I was riffing off of Homesick Texan's recipe, sort of.
Then I chopped up the tomatoes and packed the jars, filling them to the top with brine.
I dunno. They look pretty, anyway! I hope they taste OK.

I took the opportunity to fry up one of the larger tomatoes for dinner. You dredge thick, seasoned tomato slices in flour, eggs and bread crumbs (I used Italian-style panko). Just about anything tastes good fried, and green tomatoes are no exception.

I've still got a passel of them, though. I'm thinking I might try a green tomato relish recipe next. It involves salting the pickles overnight, then cooking them down.

Unless you have any better ideas?

Hot hot hot

The first batch of hot spicy pickles I made were great, but not hot enough, the Sergeant said. The next batch even less so (I used cayennes instead of jalapeños).

So this time I packed six sliced peppers (cayenne, Thai and cherry peppers) in the bottom of a two-quart jar, topped with twelve sliced cukes and three whole Anaheims.

The jar is now ensconced in the back of the fridge with a note saying, "Do not open until Nov. 10."

They should be pretty darn hot by then.

On the go

Nothing to make you feel lazy like cheering on marathon runners at Mile 22. The athletes ran the gamut (so to speak): Young, old, some chugging along at a good clip, others walking. In this group, a blind, diabetic runner surround by guides, tethered to the gal in front of him.

The Denver Rock 'n' Roll marathon wended its way through our neighborhood Sunday morning, cheered on by small groups and individuals who set up chairs in front of their houses, ringing bells, clapping and shouting. An assortment of bands also played at different locations, including Smash Mouth at the finish.

I walked the poodles along part of the route. Jackson would have loved to give someone a tow. Lucy was happy just to spectate. As was I.

Late harvest

Saturday stayed cold and rainy most of the day, and early reports called for a freeze at night. I decided to bite the bullet and harvest the rest of the green tomatoes, the cucumbers, the peppers.

I got thoroughly soaked despite wearing rainpants and a raincoat, but I was well bundled up underneath, so it wasn't too bad. Every time I thought I'd gotten the last of the tomatoes, I'd look again and find one or two more.

I made fried green tomatoes for dinner and made two big jars of green tomato pickles. I still have a ton to process. There's basil outside and I need to make pesto, but my get-up-and-go has gone for the day.

I'm going to bed with crossed fingers.

A good day for the kitchen

After a week of warmth and sun, I woke up to winter today. A cold rain is falling and there are reports of snow around town, including several inches in the foothills. Classic Halloween weather.

The Sergeant brought some goodies home from work to serve as ghoulish decor. The label says "Keep out of reach of children," which strikes me as silly. "Keep out of reach of zombies and dogs" would be more apt.

What is it? No. 35

Here's an interesting item whose use you may find hard to guess. To find out what it is, click on the photo and you'll see the answer.

No spoilers in the comments, please!

Something to chew on

When you've spent as much time at the dog park as I have, you notice when things have changed. Just like the bee tree that fell, another broken limb caught my eye yesterday.
This tree is next to a popular "swimming beach" close to one of the parking lots, so it sees a lot of traffic. At first I thought some dumb-ass of a dog owner had broken the limb trying to get sticks to throw. (I've seen that happen.)

But then we took a closer look:
Hey, someone tried to cut it down! Wait, no, someone tried to chew it down!

Yes, there's an industrious beaver living at the dog park. Which is a section of a quite large state park, so I shouldn't be that surprised. But I have never seen beaver sign in the park before. I didn't know we had them there.

I had to read up, of course, to find out that beavers do most of their gnawing at night, and they will fell trees for food, not just for building. They eat the tender underbark.
That must be the case here, since there's no running water nearby to dam, unless you count the South Platte River. Which would would make it a very delusional beaver indeed. But I guess it probably lives in the pond and got hungry for bark. Next time I'm there I'll go look for its lodge.

(P.S. I found an article about a very interesting woman who crusades to save beavers in Colorado. To read it, click here.)

New fashioned

It's good to have a decent bar within stumbling distance of home that stays open late. The Sergeant and I occasionally meander over on a Thursday night (my Friday) for a drink. The staff from the nearby fancy restaurants hang out there, too. When we come in, they don't yell "Kitt!" or "Sarge!" but they know our drinks. Mine used to be an old fashioned with extra cherries. Now it's a "Wisconsin old fashioned." With extra cherries.

This was how I saw the bartender make it in the Green Bay airport: whiskey, dash of cherry juice, dash of bitters, then fill the glass with 7-Up. No futzing with sugar from packets, which muddles poorly anyway.

Yeah, it looks kind of lurid under the neon, but it's tasty.

Lunch at Thai Pot Cafe

The Sergeant and I needed to run some errands on Colorado Boulevard, so we popped into Thai Pot Cafe for lunch (it's on the east side, between Iowa and Florida). We've been there once before. There's another Asian place in the same strip mall (Saigon Terrace?) that we accidentally ordered takeout from once. Don't go there. Thai Pot's the place you want. We got the soup with our lunch specials. Kao tom, or rice soup. A clear but flavorful broth, rice and chicken. Surprisingly delicious, because it I thought it was going to be watery and bland.

The Sergeant ordered masaman curry. The restaurant has a formula for spiciness, from 1 to 5, with 5 being "Thai spicy." That strikes me as a sensible way of dealing with people's nebulous descriptions of how hot they want their food. He said his tofu curry was tasty, but could have been still hotter than the level 4 he ordered. Next time, "Thai spicy" it is.

I ordered the chicken pad see-ewe, which is stir-fried wide noodles with chicken, eggs and broccoli. I ordered it spice level 2, because I'm a wimp. It was pretty mild but I really liked it. I wished I'd ordered a dinner-sized portion so I could have some later.Thai Pot is not a cheap lunch ($8 for the lunch specials we ordered) but worth it. Nice friendly service, too.

Thai Pot Cafe
1550 S. Colorado Blvd. #113
Denver, CO 80222
303-639-6200

A new tree

So here's why I was under the gun to get that stump ground out.
Denver has an awesome program that sells street trees and yard trees for $25 a couple times a year. You have to apply for the program and it's first come, first served on your choice of tree. I asked for a linden on the very first day they were taking applications, and Saturday was the pickup day. I just adore lindens. I would have preferred the little-leaf variety, but this will be nice, too.

I'm glad that they're careful to match people up with the trees ordered so I didn't have to be there at the crack of dawn. Any trees left unclaimed after 10:30 a.m. are sold off. I got there at 10:15 and there weren't many trees left at all. I didn't get more pictures because they were trying to hustle people through pretty quickly. It was a small parking lot.

My tree is about 7 feet tall, with a 1-inch-diameter trunk. I had to go to work after I picked it up, and I worked Sunday, so I'll try to get it planted this morning. It came with a big bag of mulch, too. It looks a little wretched right now because it's going into dormancy for the winter, but it should perk right up in the spring.

I'm very excited to have a lovely tree that the bees will enjoy, too.

Stumped

It's such a bummer to lose a mature tree. First the silver maple in the front, now the birch in the back. It was already dying when I moved in, dropping branches each year, and last winter it finally gave up the ghost. Finding someone to take it down wasn't hard; I've used Rushton Tree Service before. They're quite affordable. (If I were trying to save a tree, I might shop around more for an arborist, but cutting one down is not rocket surgery.)

Getting rid of the stump was another story. (Yes, it's the one where I photographed the giant wasp.) Rushton's grinder is the size of a golf cart, on treads. It would destroy all the ground cover I'd recently planted along the path, and is too heavy for the patio flagstones. I needed a smaller grinder.

The first guy said he'd do it when he had a bunch of orders together. Well, more than a month later, I finally got ahold of him again. "Oh, I forgot. But I can come today!" Then he didn't show up. (That was Tom at All Area Tree Care, if you're shopping around. Don't call him.)

The next company, ArborScape, had an estimator out, scheduled for a week later, and when the guys showed up, they said, "Uh, our small grinder broke, so we have to use the big one." Oh no you don't.
The third place had a picture of a small grinder on their website, but didn't actually own one. They referred me at last to Stump Removal & Daughter, who came out and did the job the day after I called.
It seems kind of crazy in this economy that it's so hard to find someone to take your money for a job that took less than an hour. In the end, the stump removal cost us less than any of the previous estimates, and the service was spot-on.
So if you're looking for stump removal in the Denver area, we heartily recommend:

Stump Removal & Daughter
Michael Rios
720-495-1124

Tomorrow: A new tree

Forgot to mention ...

It's National Blog Writing Month (NaBloWriMo). Not to be confused with NaNoWriMo, which is National Novel Writing Month.

NaBloWriMo (at least the incarnation I participate in) was started by the multi-talented (and possibly insane) Amy a.k.a. GroovyGrrl a.k.a. Soap Crone.

The idea is that you blog every day in October. Which can be a challenge. I used to blog every day (see: 757 posts in 2008), but then Facebook came along and sucked up a lot of my online posting energy.

I've been trying to post more frequently, and NaBloWriMo has prizes. Prizes! So.

You can do it, too, if you want. Click here.

Can you hear me now?

Whoa. It's October! Not sure how that happened.

The problem with getting older is not just that you lose the energy, strength and flexibility of youth but that you gain the knowledge of and worries about all the different ways your body can betray you. Headaches, coughs, memory lapses, leg pain could all be harbingers of much worse things, which I won't detail lest I jinx myself. But you know what I'm talking about.

That said, I've been pretty damn lucky, a point that reasserted itself yesterday as I filled out my health form for the audiologist. No history of anything serious, no symptoms of concern.

So why go to the audiologist at all? Mostly because of hearing loss on my mom's side of the family, particularly due to Menier's Disease, which can be genetic. When I had a regular checkup and asked about whether I should have my hearing checked, the doc said, "If you're asking about it, then yes. And if your hearing is fine, then you'll have a baseline."

So yesterday I sat in a soundproof booth with headphones on, pressing a button when I heard the beeps. Some of them were so faint, I couldn't tell if I was imagining them. Another test conducted the sound through the bones behind my ears, testing the nerves. Finally they put air pressure in ear canal and watched my eardrums to check for holes (!).

As it turns out, my hearing is just fine. And the doctor said, "If you get Menier's, you'll know it; you'll be dizzy and miserable. But there's nothing that says you will, even with your family history."

So that's some good news to hear.

A few bricks shy

At 117 years old, this house has seen a lot of modifications and upgrades, some of them welcome, some dubious. I really should see what permits were pulled over the years. I'd like to know when the aluminum siding was added, for example.

The previous owners removed that siding and painted the bricks, but left some remnants, such as around the downstairs bathroom window. Problem is, they also left some pretty large gaps where the wind can get into the walls. That would explain the frozen pipe issues I've had.

The neighbors hired a mason to do some tuckpointing, so I commandeered him to patch up the most glaring gap – this missing lintel brick –and a couple of other spots. We'll just paint over it and no one will be the wiser. He also pointed out several places where foaming insulation would go a long way toward reducing the wind in the walls.

Winter's just around the corner, after all.

Biological pest control

There aren't a lot of loose cats around the neighborhood, but we do see a few. They come into the yard for the big pot of catnip the Sergeant cultivates for our two felines. I suspect they stay for the mice.

While I was photographing the little rat bastard the other day, in fact, the dogs found this pretty creature up in a tree that overhangs the yard. We've had one previous encounter; he or she is very skittish and might be a genuine stray.

Next year, maybe we'll put pots of catnip in the vegetable garden. I know people try very hard to keep cats out, but we'd rather have cats than mice.