respublica

What's happened Olives?

This just shocks and maddens me. Been buying black olives recently? Well, for whatever reason the producers are calling tiny olives large olives. The large olives are no where near the size we used to get. They are smaller than the normal small olives.

Can we blame this on Covid too? Has there been a problem with growers? Bad year for some reason. But it hasn't been just this year, I've noticed this size reduction for some time. I'd like to know the reason and may buy a can of small olives and compare the size.

It's just darn annoying.

The Summer of 2023

This summer has been unusual in several respects. It has been really hot, more days reaching 100 or close to it. But, this has been coupled with regular rain and high humidity which has kept the grass and everything else, growing well through this August. Normally our lawns would have turned more brown than green. Not this year. We still have to cut as often as we do in spring.

Our windows are steamed over so we can't  really see out.

Just very abnormal, this summer is.

It's so often weather related

We've been in a nasty bit of very hot and very humid weather recently. I mean, it is so hot and humid it's horrible being outside. Normally if a person spends a fair amount of time outside he/she will find their body adapting to heat. The same is not true of low winter temperatures. But this year has been really really miserably hot and humid. This morning no storm came through but the power went out around here for a bit. I received a text from the power company saying things should be back up soon and it was. Overload the system I'd guess. But the short outage was just enough to stop most of our clocks.

Re-setting digital clocks are a pain for me. Some are easy, others are a mystery as to how to do this. Our stove and microwave are the hardest for me to reset. They are both digital but are set in different ways. The stove is fairly obvious, push the clock button and push in the numbers. But the microwave forces me to first push a certain number to even get to the clock change. And, every darn time I find myself looking in the manual to find what number is used tor the clock.

Not a terrible thing, but irritating just the same. Power outages remind me of just how many clocks we have which are plugged in, not battery powered.

And I can sure understand the stress the power grid must be having.

Memory enhancement

This article gives the results of a bedtime ritual given to older adults to see if it will aid in memory. Memory loss is common once a certain age is reached. It can be things like, forgetting where you put things, forgetting appointments, having trouble coming up with the right words, and etc.

So. the test group was given an essential oil diffuser by their bedside for two hours, each night, over six months. They were exposed to seven different scents throughout the experiment, such as:

• Rose
• Lemon
• Orange
• Lavender
• Eucalyptus
• Peppermint
• Rosemary.

The results were astonishing according to the testers. Something to consider if you are in this age bracket and have some of these memory signs.

Older adults exposed to nightly scents showed a 226 percent greater improvement in a word recall memory test compared to the control group.Brain imaging also revealed improved integrity in the memory-related brain pathway that typically declines with age.

A great year for flowers

We've had a fairly moderate summer with rain when things needed it. All of which brought out the best in our flowers and vegetable plantings. Across the back of our back yard is a big group of Spider plant flowers which grew from seeds which fell from last year's plants. They are in the Cleome family. We look at these flowers from up on the deck and have begun calling them a flower choir. In the past week a whole bunch of surprise lilies have popped up a few feet in front of the others. We now call them the children's choir.

Lots of color and the whole thing makes us smile. This morning's clouds and light rain have diminished the bright colors but I felt I had to get a picture in case the latest weather knocks them all apart.

Common household mistakes

I'm normally interested in articles like this since I spend most of my time around the house. Some of these pieces of advice are worthwhile, like the red multipurpose tape which seems a lot better than that gray duct tape. However, other suggestions are rather far out and one I would not do is put raised shelves under the sink to hold cleaning products. I'd have them falling over in a heartbeat.

But interesting article to read and maybe some would be helpful.

A tree which walks

This was totally a new piece of information from the plant world to both Dale and to me. I came across a photo of a Walking Palm Tree.

It was named this because it actually does walk. When it chooses a location to go towards, it grows roots in that direction and lets the trailing roots die back. This continues inch by inch, and it can travel twenty feet in a year.

This, at least, is the story told, but experts tend to poo poo it. I'd like to believe it happens, but am skeptical.

 

July was the busiest month

It's August and I'm rather thankful. This has been one major July for us. We spent time out in Washington DC, staying with our daughter who works for the senate. The initial purpose of the trip was for Dale to say the opening prayer for the start of the new Senate session. That was cool enough but even better was getting to be around our oldest grandson who was a Senate page in July. Dale prayed and we watched Christian work on the Senate floor. He also spent the week after paging interning in Katie's office. He is flying home today after the experience of a lifetime.

After getting back home we had a ton of gardening work to do which seems unending this year. pictures can be clicked to enlarge.

Dale giving prayer in the Senate while grandson Christian paging at the door. The surprising thing to us was that the senate is very strict about absolutely no cameras, phones, picture taking in the senate chamber. Ours were locked up in Katie's office. Anyone caught taking a photo was ushered out immediately. The photo I put up was taken off of CSPAN 2 by our older daughter in St. Louis.  We got it after we all returned home.

I have to say that Christian became a buddy of Katie's two Aussie-doodle pups as did Dale and I

We have quite a few pictures but this is a glimpse. 

Why mess with tried and true cookies

I came across a post this morning touting a cookie recipe. Zucchini Cookies with cream cheese frosting. Frankly, my feeling is vegetables should stay out of desserts. Maybe someone was desperate to use up an over-flowing garden of zucchini. The list of ingredients made my head swim.

All purpose flour

Baking powder

Baking soda

Salt

Cinnamon

Nutmeg

Ginger

Unsalted Butter

Granulated Sugar

Light brown sugar

1 egg

Vanilla

Fresh zucchini

Cream cheese

Powdered sugar

 

 

Picking out ripe melons

It's watermelon and cantaloupe time right now, but it is not always easy to pick ones which are ripe. They aren't known for ripening off the vine like many other fruits are. The other day I bought a cantaloupe at the grocery store and as I was cutting it i found the actual fruit was hard as a rock. It was useless. So this article on how to pick a ripe watermelon when at the store was right up my alley.

For watermelon it advises to use two finger trick. However, the finger trick only works on striped watermelons. Look for nice, even green stripes. Each green stripe should be about the width of your pointer and second fingers together. I will probably test this out in the near future.

Another way to do this is to feel the weight of the melon, it should be heavier than you would think by just looking at it. And the ground spot is probably most important for judging ripeness. 'This faded area on the bottom of the watermelon ranges from pale cream to deep butter yellow and even light orange. "choose a melon with a rich yellow spot.

Now about cantaloupes. Don't choose one that has any green on it. Look at the stem end. it should not still have any part of the stem and the stem area should not have any rough edges. It should be more open. There is also the smell test. Pick up the melon and smell the end opposite the stem end. A ripe melon will have a sweet smell. And the famous tap the melon routine. tap the cantaloupe and listen for a low sound. Also as with watermelon it should be heavier than it looks. 

I should have done one or all of these cantaloupe tricks the other day,

Yes We have No Bananas

For the last couple of days our local Schnucks has been out of bananas. This struck me as very odd the first day I saw the empty shelf. Then I noticed a sign telling shoppers there was supply issues with bananas. Bananas are a big seller I've noticed over the years, just about every third shopper is picking up bananas, including me. Today the store had the same empty shelf. I wondered if this was happening in other grocery stores or was it just Schnucks and maybe only our Schnucks.

.

Also, I needed a couple of limes and the 5 ir 6 they had were horrible looking.  Not green at all, brownish yellow. What is going on?

I bought one awful lime just in case I could not find a decent on somewhere else. The Walmart Neighborhood Market just down the way from Schnucks had lots of limes and lots and lots of bananas.

Here is a photo of the awful lime from Schnucks and the Neighborhood Market limes. It is very disappointing to see what Schnucks has and doesn't have.

 

Who's Running?

Watching the news several times a day, I've become frustrated with political discussions around the coming presidential election. This is just my opinion, but just why is it that it is taken for granted and accepted that there are only two candidates. Biden for the democrats and Trump for the Republicans. Does neither party have anyone else? Both of these men are too old and their age manifests itself in different ways, none good or promising.

By going along with this current view, our country will not have a president we can count on to do the job. Someone please step up and counter each of them.

Are you a good person?

There is now something named  The Shopping Cart Theory which tells your or others if you are a nice person.

"To return the shopping cart is an easy, convenient task and one which we all recognize as the correct, appropriate thing to do. To return the shopping cart is objectively right.”“There are no situations other than dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their cart. Simultaneously, it is not illegal to abandon your shopping cart. Therefore the shopping cart presents itself as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it.”

I rather like this because I see people in grocery/Walmart/ Home Depot etc, just leave their carts next to their parking spot and leave. Most of us have learned to get the cart to the corral, but I'm always shocked at where not so nice people will leave their cart when leaving the stores. Too often they leave it in the empty spot next to their car, or in front of the other car.  Most grocery parking lots have quite a few cart corrals and if you can walk all over the store pushing that cart you can walk it 15 feet more to where it should go.

Also, those who do go to the corral, but put their small cart in the large cart slot and vice versa, drive me crazy too. Anyhow, there is probably no changing many people, but I do push wayward carts into the corrals if I see them. I  wonder if any of the people who don''t do what they should with their cart ever wonder if the store parking lot has cameras? I bet they do.

Almonds, oh nuts

I came across an article on Almonds touting their health benefits.  We eat lot of nuts around here, I always have a couple of small bowls of mixed nuts and dry roasted peanuts on the coffee table. What irks me somewhat is the mixed nuts. I'd guess almonds make up more than half of the mix. I'm not a big fan of these nuts and although Dale claims to like them, at the end of most days almonds are what is mostly left.

I remember a few years ago there was an almond shortage due to bad weather where they are grown. It was a big deal in news stories. But I guess there is not a shortage now because they dominate cans mixed nuts.

In other nutty news, cans of the Schnucks Culinaria nuts are the best of most canned nuts. Way better than the national brands. The same is for the Schnucks brand bottled dry roasted peanuts.

We're Flying Away

Tomorrow we are heading out the Washington DC to spend a bit of time with our daughter and family. And her two cuddly dogs. Actually the main reason for this trip is that Dale was asked to say the opening prayer for the start of the Senate's new session on Thursday. He is thrilled to say the least.We will spend a bit of time around the capital and the rest at their home in Maryland.

I have not flown since the Covid shut everything down and it does not particularly thrill me but it sure beats that drive.

Weeds

We are in the process of taking down our age old back fence in order to replace it. This is hard enough work, which Dale enjoys doing, but the worst part are the weeds and vines which took over the area just inside the fence. The more slats were taken out, the more vines and weeds we saw which sat between our Lilac bushes and the fence. We can pull and yank til the cows come home but it is no fun at all.

So this article on how to kill weeds using things found in most kitchens.

Vinegar: standard white vinegar will help kill weeds in your garden without spreading harmful chemicals.  It can also help combat slugs, snails, ants, flies, and you can mix with dish soap to help it stick better.

Boiling water: One quick way to instantly rid yourself of pesky weeds is to pour boiling water on them and kill them at the root.

I'm going to try the vinegar, boiling water would be way too much trouble for the large space we have. The article also talks about insect pests and other things, but right now all I care about is getting rid of weeds and vines.

Happy Friday!

Away from the computer today because we worked and worked in our yard. Dale decided it was time to take down the old backyard fence and build new. So dthat involved not only removing sections but clearing out weeds and overgrown bushes which stood inside the fence. I helped and then emptied our third big planter of potatoes, this time the brown skinned ones. This sort of thing does not leave much time for anything else.

 But it's all good. Now that it is evening Dale is way overly thrilled that his White Sox are playing the Cardinals tonight and it's actually going to be on TV.

Obsessing about trash

I admit I am all about getting trash put into bags and out into the cart. I don't like it sitting around. Two weeks ago Republic Services completely forgot to pick up our streets. We are Tuesday pick-up and that week it did not come. We figured there must be a reason since the guys who do our street are very reliable, never miss, always early and friendly. So that week we just figured a truck was broken down and it would be picked up on Wednesday. But it was not. Thursday came and no pick up. It became obvious to the neighbors that we may well have been forgotten. On Friday we called twice, first me and then Dale later. We learned that others were calling as well. Finally a truck came at 4 Friday afternoon just as the Legion fish fry traffic was coming down the street.

I was glad to finally have what turned out to be almost two weeks of trash finally gone, but still wondered what happened.

Now today our trash is again sitting at the curb with no pick up. We realize the 4th of July holiday moved us all back one day. But today is that day and it is getting late. The fact that our drivers have always been very reliable makes this more worrying.

I'm stressed over this because of the heat and a worry they may make us wait til next week. For quite awhile I received texts from Republic if there was something new or a delay issue. I guess that is in the past.

Update. Finally got the trash picked up late in the afternoon. Thankful

Catsup Bottle on the air

Tomorrow morning at 11, KMOX radio will be doing a World's Biggest Catsup Bottle Interview. Morning hosts, Amy Marxkors and Chris Rongey will do the honors it appears. I always have KMOX on in the car and I hear these two a lot. They have energetic personalities, with maybe way too much laughing for my taste. But, I'm glad to see Collinsville and the Catsup Bottle get some air time.

Air Fryer Hacks

Many of us have an air fryer and use it for many different things so many items on this list of 35 air fryer hacks may be old news. But I was taken by the advice for making hard boiled eggs in an air fryer. Dale loves hard boiled eggs and I make a few every week which isn't difficult but means standing around the stove as the water boils and simmers and watching the clock for time.

I may try the air fryer just for fun. Preheat to 250 degrees, put in the eggs and go for 17 minutes for normal sized large eggs. We shall see.

Some of the other air fryer hacks are worth a look.