first frost tonight

Crap!

marauders!

A few days ago:

Today:

Look at this mess!


I noticed this as i was leaving for work this morning, and when i came back in the afternoon i thought i would take a picture of the damage and spend some time speculating as to the culprit. However, when i went back there to take the picture, the identity of the culprit was immediately clear.

The damned things don't even run away anymore when they see me coming. They just saunter, slowly, because their bellies are so full that they can't actually move fast. It is really irrirating. I am going to have to break the squirrel trap out again, and trap them all before the cold weather comes and they take refuge in the attic. Yuck, what a chore. And sorry, Catherine, i was going to send you some sunflower seeds but i think they ate them all.

Perhaps i will take up my neighbor on his offer and just borrow his pellet gun...

a recipie

I did mention earlier that i would be putting up some recipies, so without further ado i present for you

Kate's twice-burnt yellow tomato sauce

for 4 people

Ingredients:
-about a dozen yellow plum tomatoes
-some leftover red onion (about half an onion)
-6 garlic cloves, minced
-thyme
-fresh basil
-salt
-parmesian cheese
-juice of one dessicated lime

1. Saute onion & garlic in some olive oil until soft.

2. Here i thought i would be clever. I hate blanching tomatoes to peel them, so i thought i would just throw them in with the onions, turn the heat up to high, and wait a very short time. Thus, there would be enough heat to peel off the skins without having to go through that blanching routine. In theory.

3. Answer ringing phone and immediately find yourself deep in a conversation with a friend

4. Strong smell of burning onions wafts through the apartment. Uh, oh, strike one. Burning onions are not pleasant, but i thought -- hmm, maybe they will lend some flavor of caramelization to the sauce, i'll go with it.

5. Peel tomatoes, using tongs and fingers. This worked fairly well, though the blanching thing does work better. When the tomatoes are peeled, turn the burner on to low and cover the pot -- they need to stew and become sauce.

6. Check your email.

7. Recieve email you have been waiting for for 2 weeks!!! (in my case it was a file from my colleague which hopefully will enable me to finish up our joint paper. So i immediately launched myself into doing some math....)

8. 45 minutes later, strong smell of burning tomatoes wafts through the apartment.

9. Oh shit!

10. Gently scrape what looks like a scant handful of smashed yellow tomato pulp off of the thick black burnt layer on the bottom of the pot, and put it into another pot.

11. Desperately attempt to salvage the situation by throwing anything and everything available in this new pot. This includes, but is not limited to -- water, olive oil, parmesian cheese, thyme, basil (fresh), and a little juice that i managed to squeeze out of an extremely old lime that was on the bottom of the fruit bowl. (the yellow tomatoes are very sweet so the sauce needed a touch of acidity).

12. Serve on top of angel hair pasta, with a sprig of basil for decoration, and when they ask what it is, don't tell them.

My dh ate three servings.

hyacinth beans

These are purely ornamental, i think you can actually eat the beans if you want but they don't taste good. I planted them in the middle of the garden and they are finally starting to do something. Next year, i will start them inside or something, because they took too damned long. Anyway, the flowers are pretty.

melon picture

[photo removed]

Here is A with one of our melons. I let them ripen more and they are good now. They still sound the same to me, but they seem to be nice and yellow inside. I have one left, when we cut that last one open i will take a picture of it for you. A was very disappointed that they were yellow -- 'YELLOW watermelons? Can't you grow anything NORMAL?'

Uh no...why would i grow it if i can buy it at the store....duh.