Today I noticed very pickleable-looking fruits on the mysterious vine that came up in the compost heap and grew along the plastic chain marking the boundary between our house and the public park.
After not too much DuckDuckGoing, I found a description of "wild cucumber" that matches perfectly. Alas, all references agree that the fruits are not edible: they are pods containing four large seeds. But one comment said that the very young leaves are delicious in a stir-fry.
Another description said that it is a water-loving plant usually found at the edges of ponds and streams, but in an unusually-wet summer, it took over Michigan. Which makes it a puzzle that it appeared during a drought. It's only three or four feet to the water table in that spot, but first its roots would have to penetrate the compost heap, which was quite tall when the vine came up.
I've been chiseling away at the east end of the compost, and was getting close to the vine when I dug the last wheelbarrow of dirt to put into the trench I left when digging the giant garlic.
⁂
While walking home from the bank by way of Park Avenue, I noticed a bright clear sign on the Sunday Museum, and walked on wondering whether there had been other tenants between the Remnant Trust and K21 Foundation — I remember there being some, but not their names. (Story says that it was Silveus Insurance. Quite forgettable.)
Opened the E-edition of the T-U just now, and learned that it's headline news that K21 is in there. I'm sure they occupied the building quite a while before the sign went up. Story says that from April to July, they were "renovating".
This walk was the first time I've worn a coat. I put my hand in the pocket and found a notebook I've been looking for all summer.
I did leaf through the paper looking for ads. I didn't see a Legion pork-chop ad. I did happen to notice smoke coming from the Legion hall.
This time there wasn't enough meat left over for another meal, but there are also some left-over "country style pork ribs" (a boneless chop cut in strips) that I poached in gravy. Tonight I'll make some more gravy and warm up the leftovers in it.
There isn't enough pork-chop fat to make gravy, but I can add half a strip of bacon.
⁂
Household tip: Bacon is much easier to cut into itty-bitty bits if you freeze it first.
But if you don't work *really* fast, you'll have to put it back into the freezer once or twice. Fortunately, it freezes almost as fast as it thaws.
⁂
I outdid myself on that gravy. There wasn't much left.
⁂
No church tomorrow, because they are having a picnic in the fellowship hall, where I usually hide out. I stopped on my way back from the bank to wipe the gaskets, change the ice-cube trays, and exercise on the stairs.
I also climbed all four sets of steps at the courthouse today. I did the east steps twice because there are no north steps.
I spent quite a while saying "I have a little tub of yeast, I *know* I do" before buying a jar of Red Star yeast from Martin's.
Today, while helping Dave establish that he needed to open his new bag of tea, I found the tub of yeast.
We had left-over leftovers for supper yesterday, and it was GRRRReat!
There wasn't enough Legion pork chop left for anther meal, but there were some left-over "country-style ribs" in the fridge, so, as mentioned above, I made gravy and warmed the left-overs in it.
We ate all the chop, but there was some "rib" left, so yesterday I made pork chop ala king. I cut up the meat, two boiled eggs, two slices of extra-sharp cheddar, possibly some pimento, then poured a modicum of frozen peas and frozen corn on the pile I intended to dump in a few minutes before serving. I heated some chopped celery and a little not-too-hot pepper in all the butter that was left in the dish, then left the iron skillet on a cold burner until time to cook. Added a few cranks of pepper, an envelope of ham-flavored salt, a fluid ounce of red-wheat flour, and, little-by-little, a cup of milk. Plus a can of mushrooms. I drained the mushrooms, but put some of the liquor back when the gravy turned out to be a little too thick.
And now I want the left-over leftover leftovers for lunch.
I had some for a bedtime snack tonight.
Dave and I were sitting out front when a huge orange semi went by in the direction of Stone Camp — one of those with a cab that is also a motor home, so *really* not a local delivery. Dave said "I hope he knows where he is going." There is no place where you can turn something that big around back there, and I'm not at all sure he could make the sharp turn at the end of the one-way street.
We were outside again when he came back — backing up. I wondered whether he'd have to back that huge thing all the way to the entrance, but the last I saw of it, it was parked beside the park. I think, but didn't go down to look, that it had moved over to be on the right side of the road for the direction that it was facing.
It was too dark to see when I thought of it again; it could still be there for all I know.
I didn't do anything but sew today, but somehow I don't have a new mask to wear tomorrow. I haven't even cut it out.
We got Spam! We've been ordering two cans of Spam every time, and in today's order, we got them!
Still no brownberry buns, but we did get the multi-grain bread, and our fresh hamburger was delicious on it. I had a slice of onion and an italian tomato on mine; Dave had a slice of onion and some PBL pickles.
All the other not availables were only things that I wanted to try. Except some sliced cheese, and I deliberately ordered more kinds than I wanted.
I had to dry clothes indoors — most are still on racks — and I ended up ironing a muslin mask and the hems of two sheets.
Also sewed a two-inch seam on my new mask.
And today I picked the mask apart; it didn't work very well on Saturday, so I'm redesigning it.
I bought an enormous onion on Saturday. Slices cover an entire slice of bread. Also got some more italian tomatoes.
Monday there was only one load of wash, but I took advantage of today's comparatively-dry weather to wash dish towels and two king-size sheets. The second sheet was only borderline dry when I brought the clothes in, so it's draped over the treadle sewing machine. Dave Roomba-ed and steam-mopped the entire house, except for what he did yesterday. Then I ran the steam-mop head through a rinse-and-spin cycle.
On Wednesday, I put the vegetable garden to bed for the winter. I raked off the leaves, pulled up the stakes for the cucumbers, and pushed the cultivator around one last time. (Not entirely in that order.)
I harvested some mustard leaves and a hill of winter onion to put into the chicken salad today.
The garden hasn't filled up with leaves again yet. When raking, I left the leaves that were caught in the flags anchoring the giant-garlic seed heads, partly to protect the seed heads, and partly because I left the seed heads on the surface and counted on the flags to keep them in the row. It would not have been easy to remove the leaves and leave the seed heads.
Some of the garlic and giant garlic is up. I don't expect any sign of the seeds before spring. Hence the flags.
Dave sent in an order for groceries to be picked up tomorrow at eleven. Over two hundred dollars, and we forgot the frozen pizzas. I don't recall ever spending significantly more than a hundred dollars when shopping in person.
And it's more work than shopping in person, but at least we can do it in short installments. Shopping was downright traumatic before we figured that out.
While I'm complaining, when I made an appointment for a mammogram, I noted that I'd be leaving the hospital well before noon and thought I could take a long way back — might even take along some stuff I want to abandon on Goodwill's doorstep.
The prediction says that it's going to rain exactly one day this week. You know which day.
There's a quart of peroxide in the order that Dave is going to pick up at eleven, and it is not only available, it isn't priced a whole bunch higher than the peroxide I used to buy at Kroger — probably a pre-Covid price for Martin's.
I kept one pint of peroxide in my bathroom, one in Dave's, and an unopened bottle in the laundry room, so we sat out the entire peroxide shortage. (And I do have enough left to wash my hair at least one more time.)
My habit of stocking up paid off during this emergency. We are still using nose tissue that I bought at Aldi, a box or two every time I had spare space in my panniers. I was thinking of being prepared in case demand suddenly went up just when I didn't feel up to shopping, so the stash lasted a long time after we suddenly stopped catching colds.
I'm not looking forward to the time after people stop hand-washing etc. and all the support for us who are hiding out goes away. But the assorted-contagious-disease pandemic should only last a month or two.
Preparing to search through all my cookbooks to find out how long to bake the pork ribs, I pulled out the 1941 edition of the Boston School Cookbook by Fanny Farmer, opened the front cover planning to leaf to the table of contents — and inside the front cover was a meat-roasting chart. That cut that expedition rather short. Fanny expected you to have a meat thermometer; it was decades after the book came out before I even heard of such a thing.
⁂
By George, I think I've got it!
I cut the side of ribs in half and fitted it one layer thick into my largest iron skillet. Then I poked a small sweet potato, a tiny potato, a very small turnip, a few slicese of carrot, and some snippets of onion around it, and put a cut-up mini-sweet pepper and a peeled, cored, and cut-up apple on top. Covered with a tight lid and put it into a 400° oven, turned the heat down to 350°, then after an hour, reduced it to 300°.
It was very tempting to lift the lid to see how it was doing, but I resisted. When I did lift it, the meat was spoon-cutting tender and nothing was overcooked.
I am definitely going to do this again.
But we over-ate.
The view out the west window was spectacular this morning. Our yard and the lake were in shadow, and the white houses on the other shore were in full sun.
Everything is under the overcast now.
I wrote a business letter this morning, then opened LETTERS/BUSINESS/ED.DIR to make sure I'd saved it to the correct drive — and found that I hadn't opened this file since the twenty-fifth of December 2014.
The oldest of the "new" files is a photograph of Al snuggling up to his arched brush. Why did I file that under "business letters". Was I aiming for the Banner and missed?
I left it there because I didn't know where to put it.
Last Saturday was the last day for the fairgrounds market, but the cold weather had thinned out the crowd at the courthouse market enough that I was able to go in and buy a package of pork liver. The vendor was wearing a clear plastic head cover.
But the crowd wasn't thin enough for me to check the winter-squash displays to see whether there was something I could bake stuffed with apple, brown sugar, butter, and spices.
I also took two trips up and down each of the three sets of courthouse steps.
Walked to church, listened from the kitchen. Missed the announcements.
I considered putting on my wizard gown and walking downtown yesterday, but when it was time to do it, I wasn't in the mood. I heard the pastor say that Trunk or Treat was a great success.
The mustard plants came through the freeze just fine, but I suspect that the leaves I had on my hamburger tonight will be the last harvest of mustard greens.