The Frost is On the Newly Purchased Pumpkin

Pumpkins are gold-plated this fall, having to do with the wet summer, I hear. Anyway, a nice big one set us back $10.00 at the supermarket. Walmart didn't even get them.

I made Paula's (food network) Mexican style chicken turnovers, and being cheap really paid off. Instead of using the store-bought pie crust ($3.49), I decided to make my own. Browsing thru recipes, in Elena's Mexican Cookery, she recommended putting chili powder in the crust. Yowsa! Did that even rock!

I made more or less Paula's filling except for adding half a chopped plum tomato, and substituting Adobo spice for cummin. I also used pepper jack cheese which gave it extra kick. Didn't remove ALL the seeds from the jalapeno. Yum, yum, yum. We baked, rather than deep-fried, and they were so good, served with salsa.

My pie crust recipe is from a food processor cookbook (Abby Mandel's) and the pie crust almost comes out to be amazingly good and it takes all of 5 minutes from measuring to fridge to chill. Rolls out like a dream. Man, I remember times I had to heave the whole mess in the garbage and start over, but this never fails.

Frost forecast tonight. I dug up my geraniums and put them in smaller pots (they spent the summer outside in a whiskey barrell) and brought inside. Big messy job, but won't I be happy come may when they can be moved back outside and I don't have to go out and buy 10 new geraniums. In this economy, one can take frugal measures.

Feeling smug because I saved $40.00 at the grocery this week and wrote some more of my book, did the estimated taxes and so on. Doing the estimate was not as hard as I had feared. There's something about those IRS forms that intimidates. Yup. I sucked it up and actually did it, and didn't take all day either.

So. . . off to watch the Red Sox game. Wore my shirt today for good luck. Being part of Red Sox Nation is not for the faint of heart. Onward.

Grapeshot

We visit the Bass Pro Shop

Today we made the trek to Foxboro Stadium and the Bass Pro Shop.

Lots of animals, stuffed and bronzed, live fish, guns, tackle, clothes, food, target shooting, even toys and all manner of sporting goods. If you want to go into the woods in total camoflage, this is the place, and you can even bring a camoflaged cooler. How suave is that?

Significant Other, Adult Male Relative, and Small House Guest were wowed by different aspects. SHG liked the toys: tiny tents, coolers, action figures, all the stuff that her Polly Pockets may need including male action figures.

AMR was just short of "sharpshooter" with the guns. Don't know how they do that. Must be lasers. Lots of fun. The outhouse door flew open, bear came out, crow jumped up and down, all becaue of the rifle.

AMR found cool shorts on sale. I browsed but refuse to wear horizontal stripes. Makes plump look downright fat, and fat fatter, and even skinny becomes round. SHG doesn't like tank tops.

I see adult influences, but not being a tank top gal myself, I don't push her into such attire.

We leave with purchases, but without dropping a bundle. Discovered Bass Pro Shops has cheap suet, just like Ocean State used to have but doesn't, for the same price. Suet is hard to get in the supermarkets in summer (the birds stop eating? Why hadn't I noticed?) but the woodpeckers and other suet eaters, never mind the squirrels and the ugly blackbirds and the catbirds and even the chipmunks, are still ravenous, with babies to feed after all. Except for the cat bird who lets others do her chick raising. Bad bird.

After all the rain the garden is so luxuriant and the astilbe are blooming proud and straight, and every flower is in its glory. Even the indoor geranium has decided it's high time to put forth a few blossoms. Yay!

Tonight we're grilling pork chops and SHG can eat the pasta leftovers, and yummy they are with farfalle, asparagus, Italian cream cheese (mascarpone), chives and parmesan flakes. Topped with toasted hazelnuts. Yum! Sometimes vegetarian is fab.

I need to write something before tonight. This book is still speaking to me.

Grapeshot

More Signs of Spring

Peewees in the woods, calling and answering each other. Robin scrounging for nest materials--taking time to gather up a bunch.

We've had chives in the scrambled eggs twice. My secret for the best scrambled eggs--sneak a fit bits of cream cheese into the eggs. It will melt and make them totally scrumptious.

I saw two hawks scoping out the woods. Don't know if they have romance or dinner on their minds.

My little sparrow friend came again and I identified him/her, and now I can't remember which kind it is. One of the more common ones that hangs about at the edge of the woods. Nice song, and saucy bird

Did a few garden chores today. The Solomon's seal is coming up, and the bleeding heart has blooms. One columbine is among the missing. I take plants dying very personally.

In the living room window, the Geraniums are growing and the Christmas cactus has one lone bloom. Go figure.

I've send out a few more email queries and need to get busy on more. And I have to give a speech on Burning Man. What to say? How can you describe an experience so unique?
Dunno.

Onward,

Grapeshot

Least, least favorite thing

Computer problems. S.O. upgraded to Leopard Friday night and again, the wireless connection didn't work, so now we have wires strung thru the home office until Apple can get back with a fix. Had this problem before, and purchased a Westel wireless modem to solve the problem, instead of using Apple's wireless network, whose name eludes me now because I am still a PC person. These things (5 hours on the phone, digging up old records and passwords, tense staring at the screne) drive me batshit!

Maybe it was 20+ years in IT that did it. I was the problem-solver, the analyst, the go-to girl, but I almost always knew what I was doing and maybe it is having to rely on others who keep passing the buck to a more and more knowledgeable person. How did everything get so complicated?

End of rant.

Yesterday, in a moist 70 degree sunless day, I tackled the Bringing In of the Geraniums. Now there are five in pots waiting for a trip to the house before a possible frost this evening. The tuberous begonia has been fantastic this year--it's still fantastic. Rest of garden going downhill, except the sage. Picked all the tomatoes, and this p.m. I'll grab parseley, sage, thyme and oregano along with a little mint and the tiny cilantro plants that reseeded themselves.

We're celebrating the cool weather by grilling a pork tenderloin tonight. So many tempting recipes. Cooler weather causes an urge to cook hearty food. Gourmet has a turkey and dumplings recipe that looks exceedingly tasty. I dug out "Breast Budapest", a fantastic recipe from Purdue that came out about the same time as chicken cutlets. I mix parts sweet paprika, hot paprika, and smoked paprika to give the a really interesting reasonance to the flavoring. I use chicken tenders, and serve up noodles and a green veggie.

So: pet peeves, garden, cooking, what is left? How about those Red Sox? Man, they are killing my sleep patterns. Have you noticed how clean cut the Denver team looks and we have this sort of ragtag bunch of players who pound out the hits. And how about the rookies? This is a team you've got to love. So tonight may be the night, but I'd like the final game to be in Boston--the sox victory, of course.

A trip to the grocery is on the schedule, due to yesterday's computer problems, that sucked up time like a Hoover. Did you know that "hoover" is a verb now? Pretty cool. Off to Roche Brothers.

Go Sox!

Northern Exposure - Part III

A woo-woo moment: computer crashed last May and I lost my "favorites." Since then, I've been gradually building them up again. This morning, ye gods, my old favorites were back. And of course the new, somewhat better organized were gone. This is too weird.

Meanwhile, back in colorful Colorado: Look at the wild flowers! Apparently in the spring up north in the grasslands the wild flowers are tremendous. My garden is good now. Clemantis has been a little iffy this year, and the black-eyed susan vine needs way to much TLC to leave for even a long weekend, so scratch that for next year. The basil, which was so water-logged this spring is going crazy, as are the bedding plants. All the geraniums I carried over the winter are big healthy blooming specimens. Good dill for cucumber salad. Italian and curly parsley both surging. Moss rose and nasturtiums abloom like crazy. One cleome has shown up which reseeded itself from last year.

Birds have adjusted to the new thistle seed feeder. Baby sparrows and titmice are gobbling down the seed in the feeder at the front of the house. Doves, cardinals, squirrels and chipmunks feeding on what gets spilled which is plenty.

Cool this morning. We drove to the Cape (Woods Hole) last night for a seafood dinner which couldn't be beat. I had my annual swordfish, cajun style. So tasty. Perfectly cooked, perfectly seasoned.

More later.

Grapeshot