Happy Halloween 2010

Apple Picking and Tart Baking

If I had my druthers, I would grow apples this beautiful and perfect right in my backyard.

However, life does not always let me have what I want, exactly the way I want it.  So, since Keith and I don't have a single fruit tree in our garden, we went apple picking last weekend at a local orchard.  Other people's apples are better than no apples, right?

This orchard is located a little over 20 miles from where we live, and I have to say, I had no idea we lived so close to "country."  It's been almost two years since I've been in Indiana, and granted, I've worked out of state for more than half that time, but it still amazes me every time I see what seems like miles and miles of fields planted with corn or soy so close to "where people live."  It really is a big change from living in ultra-urban compact cities like San Francisco or the sprawling concrete jungle of suburban Los Angeles.

The orchard was beautiful.  Once I got over my initial shock and slight panic at how many apples were lying discarded due to pest damage, rotting or just accidental falling off the tree branch while you're trying to pick another one, I had a lot of fun picking apples.  I heard several parents tell their kids "don't pick up any apples off the ground!"

We ended up picking about 16 lbs of apples of three different varieties: Jonathan, Cortland and Gala.

With 2 lbs of Jonathan apples, I baked a simple apple tart with buttery pie dough made from scratch.  Well, the recipe was for apple tart, but I didn't have a tart pan, so I baked it in a regular pie pan.  It wasn't perfect, but it still made a delicious apple tart/pie. Next time, I may have to break down and get a tart pan so I can bake a proper apple tart.

This post is linked to Tuesday Garden Party.

Does Your Dog Eat Vegetables?

My sister rescued this dog from the streets of Los Angeles about a month ago.  She took him to a shelter first, where she learned that due to over-capacity issues, the shelter would most likely have to euthanize any new dogs that didn't get adopted out within a few days.  Well, that was completely unacceptable to her, so she did everything she could to try to find the dog's owner.  She put up flyers.  She put up ads.  She went door to door in her neighborhood.  When none of that worked, she then tried to find a new adoptive family for this dog.  When that also didn't work, she went back to the shelter and adopted the dog herself, intending to extend his life while she kept looking for a suitable new family for the dog.  But then she got attached to the dog.  So she named him Wilson (like the "lost" volleyball from the movie Cast Away), and she's now keeping him for herself.

Wilson is a mutt, but apparently he looks most like a Shiba Inu. Yeah, he's a cutie, and he has an adorable pink spot right above his nose.

I met Wilson for the first time while I was back in California about two weeks ago.  Compared to all the other dogs I've known well in my life, Wilson is very well behaved, quick to learn commands, and rather easy-going.  For example, my sister trained him to sit outside her kitchen while she's in there, so that he wouldn't get in the way and beg for food.  And when she brought him over to our mom's house, she taught him to do the same thing outside my mom's kitchen, which he learned to do in just one day.  If Wilson ever met Reese (one of our dogs in Indiana), Reese would ask, "but how would you ever eat anything that fell on the floor during chopping or cooking, if you're just sitting outside the kitchen?"

Speaking of eating, this dog eats VEGETABLES!

After I pulled some girthy carrots from my mom's garden, I brought one in the room to show my sister.  Wilson seemed a bit curious about the carrot, so I tore up some green carrot top and gave it to him, fully expecting him to sniff and turn his nose at it.  But to my surprise, he looked, he sniffed, he touched, and then he ate it!

He looks like he's sleeping in this picture, but he's not.  His eyes are closed because either he was straining himself to tear a bite-size piece from the carrot top, or the camera flash scared him. 

I took him with me to the backyard to harvest more vegetables, and he ate everything I gave him.  He ate some sugar snap peas, zucchini, lettuce and carrots.  His only issue was that he wanted me to cut/slice them into bite sized pieces, like he didn't want to go through the trouble of breaking down the food himself.  What a (cute) weirdo.

"I'm ignoring you."

"Oh, you have more vegetables for me?"

"I'm going back to sleep."

Butt Peas

Are you all familiar with T9, the predictive text technology for mobile phones?  Because I still don't have an iPhone, blackberry, Droid or one of those other smartphones (I know, I know, how prehistoric of me), I have my simple phone set on T9 mode for texting.  It works fine for the most part, but I do have to watch out for some common words that have the same number combination.

For example, when I press 6-3 to type me, sometimes the phone automatically types of.  Other common confusing word pairs are: them-then; sun-run; go-in.  OK, you get the idea.

Anyway, I looked up the weather for Indianapolis this morning and saw that they were forecasting HOT (aka 90+ F degrees) for the rest of the week.  This made me really worry about the fall peas that I just sowed two weekends ago.  As I learned earlier this summer, peas do not fare well in the heat!  So I texted Keith to ask about the peas, but apparently my text went through like this:

"rear doing okay?"

Fortunately, Keith is familiar with my texts often containing random T9-generated words, so he knew right away that I was in fact asking about the well-being of the peas, and not his butt.  Because that would be weird.  And because we are a couple of adults in our early thirties who still appreciate junior high humor, the remainder of the text conversation quickly degenerated into something about playing with peas in the rear.  Awesome.

In case you're wondering, the peas have germinated and are reportedly putting on some height even in this heat.  I asked Keith to take a close-up of the rear.  I mean, the peas.

Sugar Snap Peas on 8/11/10 (Day 11)

From here on out, I shall call these peas, BUTT PEAS!  That sounds better than Rear Peas, don't you think?


Related Post:

• Sugar Snap Peas in California vs. Indiana

Naughty Talk

 

Some couples indulge in phone sex - or sexting, if they are hip and young - when they are apart.  Not us.  We discuss our vegetables.

 

"My co-worker gave me another cucumber today."

 

"Another big one?"

 

"Almost as big around as last time, but this one's less than half as long.  She thinks that it hung down too low, hit the ground, and couldn't grow anymore."

 

"Ours don't hit the ground."

 

"That's good!  That means our vertical trellis is working."

 

"We can get it up and keep it up?"

 

"Oh yeah."

Flying With A Large Cucumber

"Ma'am, we're going to have to do a manual inspection of your bag."

"Okay."

"Is there anything dangerous that could poke me in your bag?"

"Just a cucumber."

The TSA inspector narrowed his eyes at me, like he thought I was kidding.  What, like he hasn't seen someone fly with a cucumber before?

Yesterday, one of my co-workers brought in these cucumbers that she grew in her home garden in Denton, Texas. I've seen cucumbers bigger than these in length before, but certainly not ones with such... girth.  I guess it's true that everything is bigger in Texas.  I won't get into the details about all the vegetable porn references that were insinuated during our group excitement of measuring and photographing.  Totally workplace inappropriate.

12-inch ruler and pad of paper for size comparison 

Another co-worker took the bigger one and I got to keep the smaller one.  The smaller one is about 10.5 inches long, 9 inches around, and weighs in at just under 2 lbs.

Every Friday after work, I fly back home to Indiana, so this cucumber had to fly home with me.  Since I didn't check any luggage, I stuffed this cucumber in my travel purse.  And they flagged me for manual screening because "something" didn't look quite right on the airport security X-ray machine.  I suppose they couldn't tell that it was a large cucumber in the bottom of my purse.  Maybe it looked like something else. Like... a large zucchini?

Anyway, the TSA inspector carefully took everything out of my purse, one by one, and finally got to the cucumber.

"I told you I had a cucumber in there."

"Um... yep.  That's a cucumber alright."

"Is it okay if I fly with it?"

"You sure can.  You're all clear, ma'am.  Have a safe flight."

So I traveled home safely with my TSA-approved cucumber.

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