Quote Of The Day

This 1961 novel by Joseph Heller, and the 1970 film directed by Mike Nichols, represented one of the most important literary and film works of the 20th century.  

Published more than 60 years ago Heller's satirical work about the futility of war continues to ring-true today.

The setting is the second world war and highlights the actions of Captain John Yossarian in a fictional US Army Air Squadron.  Yossarian is a bombardier and desperately attempts to be certified insane so he can go home. 

Heller's book contains any number of thought-provoking discussions memorable quotes.  

Including this timeless gem....

 

It was miraculous.  It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism and sadism into justice.  Anybody could do it; it required no brains t all.  It merely required no character.

- Catch-22 

Update From The Oriole Ranch

I would have thought by now that by now the Baltimore orioles would have beat it out of dodge for their wintering grounds in Mexico. Central and South America.  For all I know our local birds have already made that departure.  Nevertheless, we're still getting birds coming to the feeder.   Perhaps our visitors are early morning transients from the Canadian provinces who are winging their way south.

The oriole camera on the porch doesn't lie and I recently had to put a fresh orange out.  As of Saturday it was half-eaten.  These morning photos were taken on August 26 and 27.

If you've been following Oriole Ranch series here at the blog you may have noticed that the background has continued to green-up since the birds arrived, the ash trees continue to die and the hydrangea and cone flowers are looking spectacular.  

Edit to add:

One more from yesterday.  A male visitor.  And if you look carefully a female (or juvenile) above...

Wildflower Walk

From our walk the other day the flowers of late summer and early autumn were showing-off.

Bergamot (bee balm)

Stiff goldenrod

Big bluestem (turkey foot)

And compass plant (as high as an elephant's eye)

Black-Eyed Susans

 

The Science Experiment

One of the things about sourdough baking is that maintaining your starter is akin to having another dependent.  Only you don't have to change its diaper and send it to college.  Nevertheless, once a week you have to feed it - a process of discarding half and replenishing it with equal amounts of high-protein flour and water.  Back in the fridge it goes.

On Friday morning I divided and fed my starter.  

I reserved the half I would have discarded or redirected to baking bread and used it to ferment and overnight sponge for pancakes on Saturday morning.

It is an easy recipe resulting a very good pancake.  

If you follow the recipe below cut everything in half which is plenty for a hearty breakfast for two adults.  I used-up the last of some blueberries we had and substituted skim milk which happened to be what we had.  Serve with butter and local maple syrup.

If I was making this for guests I'd amp-up the blueberries, use buttermilk as the recipe calls-for and fry-up some breakfast sausages from the local butcher.

This Lactobacillus fermentation is working rather well.  

Recipe here.

Raising a toast to Mad Scientist cooking....

Mutant

I picked this today from my cherry tomato plant.

 

A conjoined (Siamese) tomato.  Remarkably a threesome with a single common stem.

The interweb tells me that this can be caused by any number of things - mutation of developing cells, a viral or bacterial infection, or mite or insect attacks.

I ate it and it was delicious.

If I grow a third arm I'll report-back.....

Book Club

One of my pals, with knowledge of my interest in military history, recommended this book.  He cautioned that it wouldn't inspire any warm feelings about the Russians.

Based-upon hours of oral history shared by his father, Lee Trimble and British historian Jeremy Dronfield corroborated the events compiled in this true story of veteran Eighth Air Force bomber Captain Robert Trimble's efforts to save the lives of allied POWs and refugees in eastern Europe.

As the Soviet army advanced across Poland in 1945 they freed thousands of POWs, slave laborers and concentration camp survivors.  The Red army reserved a particular contempt for the allied POWs considering them cowards or spies.  Denying them shelter, food and medical care they were left to die.  Violent atrocities were committed.  From an airbase in Ukraine Trimble's task was to locate survivors sheltered by Polish and Ukrainian civilians and bring them safely home.

Working for the OSS and with virtually no covert training Trimble secretly survived by canniness, courage and perseverance, outwitting the Soviet secret police to exfiltrate an estimated thousand individuals in less than two months.

Post-Yalta the relationship between the USSR and the US was exceedingly strained.  Roosevelt understood all too clearly that when word of Russian barbarism inflicted upon their allies was revealed public sentiment would turn against them.

Lordy, I didn't need another reason to dislike the Russkies.  Then, as today, insofar as war crimes go it appears some things haven't changed.  This book was as difficult to put down as it was to read.  It is inspiring.

Friday Music

According to the interweb this popular folk song traces its lyrics to a poem written by Cuban poet José Martí.  The official writing credits have been given to Joseíto Fernández, who first popularized the song on radio as early as 1929.  

It was early in my life that the version written by the Pete Seeger-influenced American group - the Weavers and subsequently recorded and released by the Sandpipers in 1966 that really set it on the musical map.  It rose to Number Nine on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart.

I've always associated it with the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Why or how is anybody's guess.

This is a fun version performed by Cuban people all over the globe.

Guantanamera.

Enjoy.....

Wildflower Walk

From our walk recently there was this....

Joe Pye Weed taller than I am.

And the most spectacular Blue Vervain.

It is important to note that both of these native plant species arrived here without any known human help.

We didn't plant them.

Lesson:  Build native habitat and they will come....

Whitetails

Who sez an inexpensive trail camera cannot take decent photos?

These are from last weekend's check on the trail camera trap line.

A solo doe and mama and her little one.

 And an artful early morning video composition.

It's all  in the positioning.

And a wee bit of luck...

Lunch

In keeping with my Mad Scientist streak, among other things I baked a sourdough loaf yesterday.  I'm getting better at it and even signed-up for a sourdough class at the local community college.

 

Started the dough over the weekend and woke to this upon rising yesterday morning.

 

 

Lettuce and vine-ripened tomatoes from the garden, locally-sourced bacon, mayo and frilly toothpicks to hold all of this summertime goodness together.

 

 

Enough of the same for lunch again today.

 

There's another 1200g dough doing a longer cold proof in the garage fridge.

The science continues....

 

Wildflower Walk

Last Friday I was out servicing the trail cameras and had to stop to take this photo.

 

There is something on the order of a bazillion gray-headed cone flowers growing in this wildlife opening.

 

And not a single, solitary one of them directly seeded by us.

 

They established themselves completely on their own from seed that naturally ‘escaped’ from the pollinator planting.

 

Crazy nuts what nature can do all by itself…..

 

Tall Tale

Just the other day President Biden claimed in both a tweet and in a speech that the recent CHIPS bill would create one million construction jobs.

Whoa!

According to the a report issued by the Semiconductor Industry Association the government's  $50 billion expenditure is likely to create something on the order of an additional 6,000 construction jobs.

Details here.

August Night Sky

In keeping with the smorgasbord of celestial events that the month of August has had to offer I would like to introduce you to something new.  A protoplanet.

A protoplanet (Word of the Day) is basically a dwarf or normal planet in the making.  The difference is that it lacks the spherical shape of the heavenly bodies we understand to be planets as a consequence of insufficient gravity relative to their smaller mass.

I bring this subject-up because I posted a sky map a few days ago pertaining to Saturn's opposition.  The map included an object visible to the naked eye named Vesta.  Vesta is the last known protoplanet in our solar system. 

Vesta is the second most massive body in the asteroid belt surpassed only by Ceres which happens to be classified as a dwarf planet.  One of the brightest objects in the sky Vesta is visible to a determined observer from time to time.  It also happens to be the first of the four largest asteroids - Ceres, Vesta, Pallas and Hygiea) to have been explored by unmanned spacecraft.  The Dawn mission orbited Vesta in 2012 and discovered new insights into this big rock.

Discovered by the German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers in 1807 it is named for Vesta - the virgin goddess of hearth and home in Roman mythology.

This image of the asteroid was taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft and the numerous impact craters are evidence of a violent life.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

Unlike its asteroid neighbors the interior of Vesta is different.  As with other terrestrial planets it has a crust of cooled lava covering a rocky mantle and a nickle and iron core.  It is for these reasons it is classified as a protoplanet instead of an asteroid.

In any event, I shared that this object is sometimes viewed by means of the naked eye.  In the early morning hours of August 22 Vesta will be in opposition and its 326 mile-wide reflective surface may be highly visible under a waning crescent moon.  These are good viewing conditions.

If you get-up to pee in the wee hours take moment to look for this Roman virgin in the southern night sky.  If you require reading material you can learn more about Vesta via Space.com.

Locator map...

Stellarium

 

Peninsula Ball

Big baseball day here in Southern Door.

 

Kolberg Braves v Washington Islanders for the championship!

 

 

With the ball park only about a mile or so down the road, Sunday home games are a regular on our calendar.  Parking is free, admission is $4, burgers and brats are $4, hot dogs $3, frosty-cold canned beers are $2 and salted in the shell peanuts are $1.  $20 stretches pretty far for the Missus and I for an afternoon of baseball.  And a game doesn't go by without bumping-into a neighbor or friend.

 

Today's game was a duel of pitching staff and substitutions.  And was a white knuckle affair right to the bitter end.

 

Kolberg went into the 9th with a 10 to 5 lead.  Comfortable margin, right?  The Islanders rallied and closed the gap to within 1 run of Kolberg's 10 run lead.  With two outs and bases-loaded for the Islanders Kolberg held fast winning the championship 10 to 9.

 

 

More exciting (to this blogger at least) than Brewers baseball back in the Naked City.

 

The Little Ones

From the trail camera round-up last weekend there was this.

There is no way of knowing if these are the same deer.  Nevertheless, the photos were taken 34 days apart and are a good representation of how quickly the fawns advance thru their growth spurt.

Recipe of the Day

We've been experiencing an avalanche of tomatoes in the last ten days.  Three kinds of cherry tomatoes started a couple of weeks ago and recently the beefsteak, heirloom and plum tomatoes have come on-line.

To be clear, tomatoes have figured significantly in our diet lately.

Today I puttered in the garden, weeding, pruning, picking and planting.  There are radishes and spinach planted for a late harvest.  Lettuces to follow.  Picked tomatoes by the box-full.  

So I put-up four quarts of fresh from the vine tomatoes and baked a yummy tomato pie.

Recipe here.....

Tomato Pie

Ingredients

• 1 9-inch pie shell (see pie crust recipe for homemade version)

• 1/2 cup chopped yellow or red onion (about 1/3 onion)

• 3 to 4 tomatoes, cut in half horizontally, squeezed to remove excess juice, roughly chopped, to yield approximately 3 cups chopped tomatoes

• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

• 1/4 cup sliced basil (see recipe note)

• 2 cups (8 ounces/225 g) grated cheese (combination of sharp cheddar and Monterey Jack, or Gruyere or Mozzarella)

• 1/2 cup mayonnaise

• 1 teaspoon (or more to taste) Frank's Hot Sauce or Tabasco

• Freshly ground black pepper

Directions

Pre-bake the crust:

Preheat your oven to 425°F.

If you are like me and are using a store-bought pie shell, follow the directions on the package for pre-baking, or pre-bake it in the oven for about 12 minutes (a little longer for a frozen pie shell), until lightly browned.

If you are using a homemade crust, freeze the crust first, then press a sheet of aluminum foil into the crust to keep the sides of the pie crust from falling down as it cooks. Fill the pie with pie weights such as dry beans or rice to help hold the foil in place.

1. Salt and drain the tomatoes:

2. Lightly salt the chopped tomatoes and set them in a colander over a bowl to drain while you are pre-baking the crust. Squeeze as much moisture as you can out of the chopped tomatoes, using either paper towels, a clean dish towel, or a potato ricer. 

    

   

3. Layer pre-baked pie shell with onions, tomatoes, basil:

4. Sprinkle a layer of chopped onion over the bottom of your pre-baked pie crust shell.

Spread the drained chopped tomatoes over the onions. Sprinkle the sliced basil over the tomatoes.

5. Make cheese mixture, spread over tomatoes:

6. In a medium bowl, mix together the grated cheese, mayonnaise, Tabasco, a sprinkling of freshly ground black pepper.

The mixture should be the consistency of a gooey snowball. Spread the cheese mixture over the tomatoes. 

 

7. Bake:

8. Place in oven and bake at 350°F (175°C) until browned and bubbly, anywhere from 25 to 45 minutes.

    
    
   Pro Tip - If you want to take this recipe up a notch, you can caramelize the onions while prepping the other ingredients. If you do that, double the amount of onion.

*This recipe calls for slicing fresh basil using a technique called chiffonade. To do this, stack the basil leaves on top of each other, roll them up like a cigar, starting at one end slice the "cigar" crosswise in thin slices.

 

How To Make Crispy Crunchy Sweet Pickles

It has been a regular pickle avalanche around here.  I put-up a batch of dill pickles at the beginning of the week and mid-week a batch of the signature crispy-crunchy sweet pickles.  Ordinarily, everyone gets a pint of dill or sweet pickles during the holidays replete with a festive bow on the lid. There's also homemade tomato juice, salsa, pickled beets, dilled green beans and raspberry jam.  This is a medium-sized batch - 7+ pounds of pickle cukes yields a dozen pints of finished product.. 

Begin with a sink-full of freshly-picked, scrubbed and rinsed pickle-size cucumbers. 

Slice your cukes.  The use of a mandolin makes the job go fast and results in uniform slices.  I like the crinkle cut.  Take care with the fingertips as the blade is sharp! 

Toss your cuke slices into a five gallon food-grade plastic bucket filled with a couple of gallons of cold tap water.  

Everyone should have a five gallon bucket.  My recollection is hazy but there is a possibility my bucket originally held cat litter.  It also appears to be food-grade as it doesn’t stain or absorb odors I’ve used it to brine meats and fish, haul butchered venison and assist in pickle-making. I even made sauerkraut in it one year.  In a pinch you can sit on it in your deer stand and keep your thermos, lunch and toilet paper inside where it won't get wet.  Like I said - they're indispensable. The secret to really crunchy pickles is liming them.  

Combine one cup of pickling lime with the two gallons of cold water and mix thoroughly.  If required add to the bucket additional lime and water  as you want your cuke chips float freely and uncrowded in your pickle barrel. Cover the sliced cukes with a dinner plate, snap-on the lid and let it set overnight. 

 

The following morning drain your limed cuke chips in the sink.  They'll be nice and crispy but you have to soak them to remove the excess lime.  Fill the sink full of slices with cold tap water and drain.   Repeat three more times.  Leave your slices to soak in cold water until noon -  3 to 4 more hours. Next - make your brine. 

This is easy peasy. In a non-reactive pot combine equal parts of sugar and vinegar.  For a dozen pints of pickles figure on 12 cups of sugar and 12 cups of distilled white vinegar - stir until dissolved.  Add a single 1 ½ oz bottle of pickling spice and a couple of tablespoons of kosher salt.  Heat to a boil.  Add your pickles slices, cover the pot, turn-off the heat and allow to rest on the stove top for five more hours. 

Following dinner return to the stove-top and return the pot to a boil. Since this is a hot-pack method of pickle-making keep a low fire under your pot and your lids should seal just fine.  When in doubt process in a boiling water bath for an additional 10-15 minutes.  

 

Ladle slices into sterile pint jars. The use of a canning funnel will facilitate a no-mess operation. You might use a tablespoon to organize the slices in your jars but don’t cram them too tightly. Top each jar with additional brine leaving a half-inch of head space. Add a lid and a band and set aside to cool. When the lids 'pop' your jars are sealed and your cukes are officially pickles. 

These pickles are awesome. You're going to want to put these on top of almost any sandwich you make.  Particularly a crunchy peanut butter, toasted cheese, burger, hot dog or a tuna sandwich.  Want to spice them-up?  Add a pinch of crushed red pepper flakes to a jar.

__________________________________________________________________________
 * A word about the jars and lids.  Sterilize your jars by immersing them in boiling water or running them through the dishwasher on the 'sanitize' cycle.  Lids are easy - in the microwave heat a Pyrex measuring cup full of water to a boil. Drop your lids in the hot water.  Fish them out with a sterile tongs.

 

Friday Music

Written by John Fogerty this song was originally from Creedence Clearwater Revival's album Pendulum.  The following year (1971) is was released as a single and quickly rose to the number eight position on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.  This turned out to be CCR's eighth gold-selling single.  Regrettably, the band broke-up in October the following year.  

This is a fun walk down memory lane with a short and slick acoustic impromptu from the  Conan O'Brien Show (remember him?)

Have You Ever Seen The Rain...

 

August Night Sky

If you have a telescope there is still an opportunity for those of us who live in the northern hemisphere to view the summer's best comet - C/2017 K2 (PanSTARRS).

This comet made its closest approach to our planet the middle of July but it is continuing to grow brighter.  It will be closest to the sun - perihelion (word of the day) - December 19 of this year.  Not that this will do any of us any good unless traveling south of the equator.  After mid-September, K2 will be wandering thru the southern constellations and viewable only in the southern hemisphere.

Here's a locator map for August 21 and a short YouTube tutorial.  Fingers-crossed for clear viewing conditions... 

EarthSky

Quote Of The Day

There are two ways to be fooled.

One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.

- Soren Kierkegaard

How To Make Crispy, Crunchy, Dill Pickles

Back in the day I published a community blog for JSOnline.  Readers from all over North America and beyond visited WauwatosaNOW to learn about how to make crispy crunchy sweet pickles.  Lest you doubt that claim Google How To Make Crispy Crunchy Sweet Pickles.  That blog post from 2011 is still cached out there on the interweb.  Further evidence that you should never post something on social media that you don't intend to last forever.  For as long as the website was hosted I enjoyed the brief notoriety of one of the World Wide Web’s foremost authorities on crispy crunchy sweet pickles.  But I digress.

A big backyard garden, a green thumb and space in the bunker for canned and frozen vegetables means that the staff here at The Platz rarely sleeps.  Garden harvests = good summer eating and a busy time in the kitchen putting-up the fruits of my labors for future use or sharing with friends, family and visitors.  Product development, refinement and an occasional foray into a dangerous kitchen experiment is also our motto.  After years of floundering around the pickle universe with season after season of mediocre dill pickles the light went on with what might possibly be the gold standard of home-grown, home-canned, crispy crunchy dill pickles.

Just the right balance of salty brine, dill and garlic. Tangy, with a refreshing crunch!

The secret ingredient?  Ca(OH)2 – calcium hydroxide – commonly known as Pickling Lime.

Here’s the recipe -

Start with a sink full of freshly-picked, scrubbed and rinsed pickle cukes.  I grow my own organic cukes but you can purchase them at your local Farmers Market.

Fetch your pickle barrel. Everyone should own at least one five gallon bucket. They are indispensable.  My bucket might have originally held cat litter.  Nevertheless, it also appears to be food-grade since it doesn’t stain or absorb odors.  I use it to brine meats and fish, haul butchered venison and assist in pickle-making.  I even made sauerkraut in it once.  In a pinch you can sit on it in your deer stand and keep your thermos, lunch and toilet paper inside where it won't get wet.   Like I said - they're indispensable.

Slice your cukes and toss into your plastic bucket. I like to make spears and cut my cukes accordingly.   I also use a mandolin because you can make slices of a uniform thickness with cool-looking ridges on them. 

Be careful with this device and don’t do like I do and slice-off part of your thumb with the first use.

The secret to really crunchy pickles is liming them. Combine one cup of pickling lime with two gallons of cold water and mix thoroughly in your bucket.  Add your sliced cukes making certain they float freely.  Cover with a dinner plate, snap-on the lid and let it sit overnight.  

The following morning drain your limed cukes in the sink. They'll be nice and crispy because the calcium reinforces the cellular structure of the cucumber.  But you have to soak them to remove the excess lime.  This is an exceedingly important step.  Lime is alkaline and if you have residual lime in your pickles it might neutralize the acid of your brine causing your pickles to go bad.  Be diligent about the chemistry and you probably won’t die of botulism.

Fill the sink full of slices with cold tap water and let them soak for an hour.  

Repeat this step of soak and drain two to three more times. For a total of three to four hours.  Sure, this is tedious but you can waste precious bandwidth on Facebook while you're waiting.  Although I recommend reading a real book or, weather permitting, working in your garden.

Following the rinse cycle drain in a colander and start your brine.

Basic brine. In a non-reactive pot combine one quart of white vinegar with two quarts of water with ¾ cup of canning salt. (Canning salt is not iodized). This should be sufficient for a dozen quarts of pickles.

Bring your brine to a boil.

While the brine is heating pack your jars.

Into each jar place at least one peeled and sliced garlic clove.  If you really like garlic - do not skimp.

Add dried dill seed.  I am partial to Penzeys dill seed but any will do.  At least 3 t of seed for quarts and 1½ t for pints.  If you like dilliness - do not skimp.  Pack the jars with your pickles. Pack tightly but don’t force the slices. 

Fill the packed jars with the boiling brine leaving a half-inch of head space. Add your lids and bands and process in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes. Remove and allow to cool. When the lids pop your jars are seated properly.

Dill pickles are a versatile tidbit and go with just about anything from a grilled burger, brat or dog, smoked ribs or a Bloody Mary. You can even make a scrumptious dill pickle dip with them as well.

Crispy, crunchy, sweet pickle recipe to follow.

Cheers!

___________________________________________________________________________

*A word about the jars and lids. Cleanliness is next to Godliness.  Sterilize your jars by immersing them in boiling water or running them through the dishwasher on the 'sanitize' cycle. Lids are easy - heat a Pyrex measuring cup of water to a boil in the microwave and drop the lids in the hot water to sanitize them.  Fish them out with a tongs.