Sow There!

(Chicken gets into trouble at the Rainforest Cafe in San Francisco when he somehow ended up in the mouth of a fake, mechanical boa constrictor).

The garden is looking rather green right now. There are still some dianthus that have survived the summer heat, and a primrose managed to survive the summer and has produced its first bloom. Every morning I like to take a garden walk — just five minutes to survey the landscape and pull a noxious weed or two.
It's nice when there is some color.
Every time I go to one of those big-box stores I try to pick up one plant. This season it has been mums. They were beautiful the first week — blooming hopefully as if they didn't care that the temperatures were turning toward cold, cold, cold. I put the plants in the ground, one week a yellow, another week lavender, etc.
But then they just conked out. I guess I was wrong that I thought mums bloomed through the winter.
A nice helper at Fostine's nursery explained that the chrysanthemums you buy in a big-box store, and even most nurseries, are forced to bloom and are delivered at their prime. So once you get them home, they're about on their last leg of their blooming journey. I guess it's what it must be like to be a movie star and starring in your last big-budget film.
After a disappointment, the movie star is relegated to bit parts on "CSI" or commercials for prescription drugs.
The gal at Fostine's said that in this area chrysanthemums can be treated as perennials. A gardener should pinch off the dead blooms and keep the plant pinched back until July. Then, the plant should be allowed to grow up to about two feet.
I guess that's not a terrible investment to spend $1.69 on the plant and enjoy it for a few weeks in the garden. But I wish that I had left it on the coffee table inside so I could have enjoyed the bloom more before it petered out.
Right now in garden stores, the pansies and primrose are rolling out. Cyclamen is also a nice winter bloom — but again, I've had better luck just enjoying it as a bouquet indoors than being disappointed by planting it outdoors.
There's some more detailed info. about mums online at: http://wwwkingsmums.com/growinf_info.htm.
 
Chicken Fun
 The holidays were swell as usual. We went to my Auntie Jeanne and Uncle Lars' in the Bay Area. It was a bummer that mom came down with some heinous sickness and could not make the trek. My sister had a dying cat (which miraculously did not die) so it was a smaller group than usual.
I'm impressed by my relatives' consistency. They consistently provide a myriad of cheeses, Greek olives, and the usual Thanksgiving fare. They live in one of those "warm-wood" houses with dark hard-wood floors and shelves high up on the wall for which to place candles.
I highly recommend that people consider adopting a mascot. Traveling with rubber chicken has been much fun. The day after Thanksgiving we traveled to the south Bay Area and met up with Dad and Lynda.
Chicken was ready for action.

(This bench sculpture was perfect for a chicken pose. Our rubber hero practically jumped into the arms of these equally unanimated children).

It's fun to have a prop and there were many places in San Francisco to pose the plastic wingless one.
Fisherman's Wharf has many statues outside of the businesses. Outside of a seafood restaurant, two pirate sculptures were ready to grasp the cluckless wonder.
The wax museum also lured us. Tommy sauntered up in front of a rotating lazy Susan holding wax figures of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. As I yelled "home wrecker" at the "Tomb Raider" star, Dad snapped a photo of Tommy holding up the chicken.
Near Ghirardelli Square we found the Rainforest Cafe. This is a Disneyland-esque restaurant decorated in a plastic and papier mache motif. Gorillas grunt along the walkways, surrounded by ferns. Elephants wink their eyes and wag their giant ears. Chicken was well camouflaged along the way. We snapped photos of him in the arms of the chimpanzees and dangling from the flying birds.
Our favorite photo was of chicken in the mouth of a giant boa constrictor.
At Pier 39 we held up the chicken to pose with a dancing family of performers. As we joked around with chicken, Japanese tourists commented on our prop. We heard some say (something excitedly in Japanese) and then point and laugh “rubber chicken."
Maybe I'll make a coffee book of the chicken adventures. Madonna had her coffee table book where she posed naked all over the country. That's decidedly not my style, but if her book could sell, so could a book on the adventures of chicken.

(When viewing a rubber chicken in the hand of pirates, it's important to cover one eye with your hand and say "aaaarggghhhh").

(Bob Barker has nothing on chicken. Chicken picks out the best babes to hang out with. Luckily, chickens do not have to worry about sexual harassment suits from mannequins).

Posted by Heather Hacking at 05:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've been struggling to find uses for my green tomatoes. When I offered to bring some in for my coworkers, several said, "no thanks, I have a ton of them of my own."

Below are a bunch of odd recipes mined from the Internet. Some sound half baked.

Green tomato salsa
6 green tomatoes, coarsely chopped
1 jalapeño, large, seeded and finely chopped
6 green onions, finely chopped
1 1/2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice or red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon salt
freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1/4 cup sweet onion, finely chopped

Green tomato nut bread
8-10 green tomatoes
2/3 cup raisins
2/3 cups boiling water
2/3 cups butter
2 2/3 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 1/2 tsp salt
3 1/3 cups flour
2 tsps bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground cloves
2/3 cups chopped walnuts
Grease two loaf tins. Preheat overn to 180. Soak raisins in boiling water and allow to cool. Peel and core tomatoes and squeeze out seeds. Puree the tomatoes in a blender under creamy. You’re aiming for two cups pupl. Cream the butter and sugar. Add eggs, tomato pulp and raisins with the soaking lquid. Beat well. Combine flour, soda, salt, baking powder, spices and nuts. Add one cup at a time to the tomato mixture.
Cook for 70 minutes and test for readiness with a toothpick.

Hint
If you have a large batch of green tomatoes, you can freeze the puree for use later. Just freeze it in the volume for which you want to make the recipe.

Cold curry green tomato soup

1 tablespoon olive oil
3 minced garlic cloves
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 teaspoons curry powder
1 large potato, peeled and cubed
4 large green tomatoes, peeled and cubed (about 2 lbs.)
2 cups chicken or vegetable stock
3 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 cup whipping cream
salt and pepper to taste a
Additional fresh mint for garnish

Heat oil over medium-low heat in a large saucepan. Add garlic, onion and curry powder. Cook, stirring frequently, until onion is soft but not browned, about five minutes. Add tomatoes, potato, stock, cilantro, mint, and sugar. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for about 35 minutes.
Purée soup in batches in a blender or food processor. Return to saucepan and stir in cream. Let cool and season to taste with salt, pepper and additional sugar if desired.
Cover and refrigerate for at least 3 hours. Taste and adjust seasonings before serving. Garnish with mint and/or cilantro leaves if desired. Serve cold.

Spicy soup

In a relatively large pot, heat two teaspoons grated ginger, two cloves chopped garlic, one teaspoon ground coriander, two teaspoons cumin and two teaspoons curry powder. Heat and stir until it smells really yummy. Add one cup diced onions and half a teaspoon salt until the onion are soft.
Add three cups chopped green tomatoes, one diced green pepper, two cups diced potatoes, two cups vegetable broth, one tablespoon of honey and two tablespoons red pepper flakes. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat, cover and simmer for about 30 minutes.
Puree the soup with a hand mixer and stir in half a cup of coconut milk and turn off heat after it reaches a simmer.
Serve with two tablespoons of yogurt on top and some chopped peanuts.
This sounds like an incredibly bizarre way to eat green tomatoes. But I’ll give you feedback if I get around to making it.

Green pie

With a double pie tin, mix in 1 1/3 cup sugar, 6 tablespoons flour, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon cinnamon and about five sliced green tomatoes. Grate some lemon rind and use the juice of one lemon. Bake at 425 for about 40 minutes.

Posted by Heather Hacking at 06:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

As promised, here's a peek at the well-traveled rubber chicken.

Sunday we went to the Christmas preview downtown and took the 9-year-old. It’s not often that little kids get to go downtown at night. Last time Tommy and I took him to a play at Chico State and we treated him to ice cream afterwards. It was a Thursday night about 9:30 p.m. and a lot of college-aged students were out and about. After we got our ice cream we were strolling about and gave Leify all the usual warnings about staying close to us and staying out of people’s way.
It wasn’t long until he was asking to go home.
Christmas preview is different because there are so many families wandering about.
The 9-year-old disappointed me by professing that he was too old to sit on Santa’s lap this year. We had brought the rubber chicken with us to sit on Santa’s lap as well. We were going to force him, but the line was long.
We didn’t spend any time looking at gifts, but raced from place to place looking to see who had the best treats.
Then we wandered into the newly-opened City Plaza. We’ve stopped by the plaza several times since it opened.
I must admit, its very pretty at night, with the warm glow from the lights on the stage overhang and the lights shimmering up into the streams of water. I was a naysayer, like a lot of Chicoans, when we watched for more than a year as more and more concrete was trucked in.
I’m still skeptical how comfortable it will be in when its 106 degrees, but at night the place is quite romantic.
We stopped and asked a family if they would take our photograph in front of the fountain. I whipped out the rubber chicken to pose, and to my delight, one of the women said “are you the one who writes that column in the paper?�
What fun to be recognized because of a rubber chicken.
I’ll post a picture of the chicken on my blog.
In addition to the photo gallery on the Enterprise-Record Web site, my friend Jim has some cool before, during and after photographs he put on his Web page at www.Jiminchico.com.

Green gold
As much as I’ve been enjoying fall, its hard to let go of the summer garden.
The 9-year-old next door saw us the other morning trimming off the limbs of the tomato plants and harvesting the green tomatoes. He had planted a tomato in a pot at his school in spring and had us care for it. When he saw us taking out the tomatoes, he got really fussy.
“You’re not going to chop up my tomato!� he said, standing up like a tough guy.
“Yes we are.�
“No, just dig it up and I’ll put it in a pot.�
We explained that it didn’t work that way and that tomato plants just die when it gets cold and then you plant new ones next year.
For some reason, I wanted to save all the green tomatoes. We have already made corn and green tomato fritters twice and the remains of the last batch just went bad in the fridge.
When we took out the tomato plants, Tommy lopped off each long stem and I picked through them to harvest.
We ended up with two full colanders of green orbs, far too much to manage.

I imagine recipes for green tomatoes come from poor people in colder climates. They saw all that good fruit out in the yard and didn’t want to have it go to waste. Why throw away perfectly good food when it must be good for something?
Thanks to the Internet, I tracked down a few more recipes that require a lot of green tomatoes.

Posted by Heather Hacking at 05:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have a reader who every once in a while will share pictures or a story about something she thinks I will like. For example, she has send me half a dozen pictures of the deer that come right up to her front door and hang out in her yard.
This weeks she sent a note about her recent back yard plant sale.
Apparently, she’s gone a little hog-wild with her interest in gardening and propagated about 40 plants in pots. It’s easy to get so into something you don’t realize you’ve gone overboard until you can’t make it across your patio.
So she logically decided to have a plant sale. She put just a few signs up in her neighborhood and charged $1 for a 4-inch plant and $2.50 for a one-gallon pot. With prices that cheap, her neighbors flocked and she sold 30 plants within four hours.
Not only is this a way to make a handful of cash, she likely also got to know her neighbors better. Likely she will get a neighborhood moniker such as “plant lady.�
This sounds like a great project for kids. It teaches them perseverance, dedication and reward.
This sounds like a great Christmas gift idea. Tulips planted in pots right now will look like just a bowl of dirt by Christmas. Yet, they would make a great gift. Just tell the gift giver to put the pot out in the rain.
My gardening friend sent some before and after pictures of the paperwhites which are threatening to bloom on her kitchen table. I always forget about paperwhites until its too late to plant and I see them on other people’s tables at the holidays.
Oh well.
Here’s the pictures.

Posted by Heather Hacking at 05:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Heather Hacking at 04:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We really can all work together. That was the lesson from a daylong bus trip Wednesday with the Butte County Resource Conservation District. About 40 of us piled into a tour bus and were shown the types of projects that are helped by the RCD.
The name Resource Conservation Agency pretty much sums it up — an agency that strives to conserve resources. Not resources like bank accounts or stock portfolios. Rather, the basic needs of humans, plants and animals.
It was a long day and more than a dozen presenters had shared information.
We pulled into the last stop where the Butte County Association of Governments big-wigs gave a talk about vernal pools that had been created to mitigate for the construction on Highway 149.
Resource Conservation District director Pia Sevelius summed up the day’s presentations by telling us how the RCD can serve to bring together different agencies for common goals.
It was the end of the day, and we were tired.
The bus was huge and a locked fence made it difficult to whip the bus around. A county supervisor and the head of a watershed conservancy sitting behind us joked that they hoped the driver didn’t get stuck in the mud.
Of course, we got stuck in the mud.

After several futile attempts, our driver, Marlin, stopped spinning the wheels in the mud and the 40 of us piled out.
There were about 30 men and 10 women now standing on the side of the old frontage road that parallels Highway 149.
This could have been pure chaos. Any time I have had car trouble in a parking lot, it seems like men flock from all corners of the pavement to help. Everyone will have a different diagnosis and jockey to be “the leader.� I only imagined what it would be like to have 40 people trying to solve this dilemma.
Perhaps it was because Pia had just given the speech about how all of these different agencies could work together.
People scattered around the work site looking for wooden planks to place under the tires. Tommy grabbed a piece of wood and started digging out the tire. One guy from the Natural Resources Conservation District scouted around and found a jack (which later sunk into the mud under the weight of the bus). One gal found a pile of straw and she and another man tried to wedge is around the tires.
Meanwhile, no one threw a tizzy fit nor complained about the delay. There was actually a lot of camaraderie as we all cracked up about the situation.
At one point there were about 20 men at the front of the bus, rocking it back and forth. Marlin the bus driver, said they did a great job because he was sitting in the drivers’ seat and it felt like a roller coaster ride.
Meanwhile, Pia phoned her office in Oroville and had her co-worker come over in a minivan to shuttle people back to our cars.
Much later, as the cloudy sky over the valley started to glow pink as the sun set, an enormous tow truck arrived with a winch big enough to tow in a large ship.
Pia should be proud of the somewhat disappointing end to her excursion, because the people involved proved they really could work together, even if in the end what was needed was an enormous tow truck.

Posted by Heather Hacking at 01:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Monday was a gray day. It had been raining off an on and fog hung thick along the sides of the road. We were driving along Clear Lake, that winding road that passes by little towns with older-style motels and boat docks in various states of decay.
Tommy and I were both tired after spending the weekend out of suitcases.
We were on a stretch of road in between towns and saw a white car pulled over on the opposite side of the road. Tommy shook his head and said: "Why am I the type of person who has to stop?"
"Is there someone in the car," I asked.
"Yes."
"OK," I nodded.

He's like that.
A few weekends ago he stopped for a 19-year-old who had a flat tire. The kid didn't know how to change a tire. Tommy muscled under the car and found the spare, wedged up under the bottom of the trunk of the minivan. The kid had been traveling from some other state and didn't know where the spare was located. The two lay under the car until they were both red in the face and sweating. Tommy was trying to show him how to change the tire, but ended up doing it all himself. The kid was grateful.

Monday I wasn't surprised when he stopped for the old man with the broken-down car.

He likes to say: "Pay it forward."

"We don't have a cell phone, but we can call at the next town," I said.
He walked across the road, and I was proud that he is that type of man.
A man with a white beard was behind the wheel and I got out of the truck to stretch my legs. I saw the two of them talking briefly.
Tommy gave a departing gesture and the man rolled up his window to keep out the rain.
Tommy walked back across the two-lane road toward the truck and the man rolled down the window and thanked him again. Tommy, in mid-stride, looked over his shoulder to tell him "no problem."
Just then, a car whizzed around the blind corner. Tommy was two feet from the unbroken yellow line.
I yelled "Honey! No!"
Tommy stopped, just an instant before a car zipped past at about 45 miles an hour and then disappeared around the curve into the fog.
He strode quickly across the street and opened the door to the truck.
"Thank God you yelled," he said.
"I think I just saved your life."
He nodded.

"He said he had triple-A and was waiting for a tow," Tommy said, as if nothing had just almost happened.
He started up the engine and we drove for a few minutes.

I asked him to pull over at the next safe place along the road.
"I want to hug you," I said, crying.
He found a gravel area along the road and pulled the truck over as cars whipped by.
I hugged him with all of my strength, that kind of hug that likely leaves indentations on your skin. It was raining, so my tears just added to the wetness on his T-shirt.
"I can't believe how close that was," I said, hugging him.
"We'll have to tell this to Leify when we get home," he said. "Tell him how important it is to look to the left and look to right when crossing the street."
"Then look to the right again," I said.

Posted by Heather Hacking at 04:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

When we visited my mom recently, we were making chicken burritos to serve with the batch of salsa we had just whipped up. Mom was scavenging through the refrigerator to find cheese, sour cream etc. She reached into the crisper drawer and said: “I don’t know if this is any good. It’s three weeks old.�
What she had pulled out was a plastic, clamshell container filled with lettuce. The label read: “Absolutely fresh because it’s still alive.�
There’s water and a little soil in a slot at the bottom of the container and the lettuce stays alive, rather than being lopped off by machinery and starting its rapid decay.
I questioned mom as to how much this lettuce cost. I figured it must have been pretty expensive because she wouldn’t answer me. She said: “I bought it because I thought it would be fun.�
My mind wandered to those commercials where the cartoon tomato is talking to the lettuce, and everyone is crying because of the onion.

I called Safeway on East Avenue and the nice guy in produce said the butter leaf lettuce called “Live Gourmet,� sells for $2.99 a head. They have a Web site at “www.livegourmet.com.�
Vince Choate, director of marketing at Hollandia Produce in Carpinteria, said the lettuce is grown with hydroponics. This is the system of growing plants in water and a nutrient solution without soil. It’s done with grow-lights, similar to those often used for illegal indoor gardens.

The company germinates the seed in peat moss and once it sets leaves they nurture it for a while before putting it in the nutrient growing system, Vince said.
The root ball is kept in tact when the lettuce is harvested, to slowly deliver carbohydrates to the living lettuce in your crisper drawer.
The company markets the lettuce as being able to live for 15 days in the fridge.
The product fits well for people who live alone and don’t go through lettuce that quickly. Vince said he’s also heard people like it to take just a few leaves at a time to make sandwiches.
The plant will not continue to grow after part of it is plucked, because the plants are mature when harvested.
Hollandia’s sister company, North Shore Greenhouses, Inc., produces a product called Living Herbs, which can actually be planted in the ground.

Other living foods
My mother has a lot of stuff.
To say my mother has a lot of stuff is like saying prices are a little expensive at Saks Fifth Avenue.
Typically when I visit, there is an exchange of a few bags of stuff she thinks I just couldn’t live without.
Over the years I have trained her that she can’t just dump bags of stuff on my front porch when I’m not home.
Among the treasure trove this time was one of those seed sprouting kits with five plastic trays in which to grow alfalfa sprouts, mung beans, salad mix and broccoli sprouts.
I figured I’d use it once, likely like she did, and then dump it on my sister’s doorstep one day when she isn’t home.
The 9-year-old and I made the seeds one of our projects for the one night a week we hang out while his mom is at night class.
He seemed a bit bored with the process. The plastic trays didn’t fit together that well, and the place where the water was supposed to run from one tray to the next on the tower constantly got clogged by seeds.
Yet, we persevered.
You soak the seeds overnight and then let out the water. Then, the seeds need to be rinsed three times a day.
You can also do this with a mason jar and some cheese cloth on top.
This is a high maintenance project, but it was fun to have Leif come over every few days and check on the seed progress.
He even agreed that the alfalfa sprouts are tasty.
After one good crop we used in cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches, however, the seeds started to get slimy and smelly.
I think it must have been the novelty had worn out and I neglected to rinse them three times a day.

Posted by Heather Hacking at 04:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A gal named Kristina wrote in a comment about a recent blog. I had mentioned stomping around in wildlife refuges and how that's one of the best things about having a job covering water and agriculture.

"Wildlife refuges? Where?," she wrote.

I'm glad she queried because this was on my list to write about this week, maybe in the printed version of the column.

The annual trek of waterfowl in Northern California is one of the treats of living in the Sacramento Valley. Our tromping ground is an important stop on the Pacific Flyway, where migratory birds travel from South America to Alaska.

Just last night I heard the first flock honking overhead. Like the fall leaves on the Esplanade, the traveling birds are one of those familiar things that makes one really appreciate living here. If its not cloudy you can see the migratory birds in their familiar V-formations.

Driving through back country roads in the valley, it's not uncommon this time of year to come over a bluff and see hundreds of swans and/or snow geese in flooded rice fields. It's one of those moments that if I hadn't lived so long in the valley, I'd likely stop and catch my breath.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services has a series of refuges
http://www.fws.gov/sacramentovalleyrefuges/sacriver.htm

, some of them only accessible by boat. However, in recent years the service has made great progress in putting up signs where public access is allowed, and letting drivers know where to park to enjoy the outdoors.

One very accessible spot is the Llano Seco Unit. From Chico take Dayton Road south about 5 miles, turn west on Ord Ferry Road. Continue about 3 miles, turn south on Seven-mile Lane. After about 2 miles you'll see a viewing station.

You're not allowed to stray off the paths, but the birds here are amazing and the location is just plain beautiful any time of the year. It's worth the walk out to the second viewing platform where there are seldom other visitors and you feel as if you're in the middle of nowhere, just you and the birds.

Then there is Gray Lodge, near Gridley, a Fish and Game property. http://www.dfg.ca.gov/lands/wa/region2/graylodge/index.html.

Also worth noting is the Snow Goose Festival which takes place locally in January.
http://www.snowgoosefestival.org.

This offers a nice introduction to people who are new to bird watching or just want some help figuring out the best spots to go. You register for a session, and then show up in something warm and get a guided visit of what the area has to offer.

Posted by Heather Hacking at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Tuesday night wasn’t your usual night in the Enterprise-Record newsroom. Most of the reporters work regular daytime hours, with the occasional stint when there is late-breaking news or a late meeting.
Usually when I forget something at my desk (like filling out my time card) and come in late at night, the copy editors are busy putting together the paper. Occasionally one of them will look up and say hello. But generally they are feverishly working at their computer stations.
It’s hard not to feel sorry for the copy editors. All of them have pale complexions and you know it can’t be fun to work until midnight every night.
At least when I was a graveyard waitress working my way through college I had really interesting characters to share the time with. These guys have to concentrate.

That's in contrast to an action news reporter's job, which involves sitting in meetings that last hours.
I must admit though, that sometimes I get to do fun things like tramp around on wildlife refuges.
Tuesday the Bossman asked the majority of us to stick around so we could help get last minute quotes and update our Web site as the election results trickle in. Bossman bought us pizza, which was devoured by the time I could return for a second plate.
I’m not certain but I speculate it was the sports guys.
Election night is a job that is mostly hurry-up-and-wait. Results start coming in at about 8:30 p.m. after the polls close. But those early results really don’t mean diddly. So we sit at our desks and sort of arrange our coveted contact phone numbers to gear up to make a mad dash of calls once there are enough results to make an educated guess as to who won what.
In the meantime, we joked around. Our reigning computer guy even played music from the soundtrack of “Rocky,� which I’m sure is not the norm around here.
I guess he wanted us all to feel like action newspaper reporters.
Ah, the glamor that is journalism. I hope the copy editors weren’t too distracted.
This year is a little different, however, because we have been working to make our Web site more useful and decided to update the Internet info. as soon as Candace Grubbs (elections chief) got fresh results on the county’s Web site. This meant the newsroomies sitting around until new results were posted.
I guess I could have cleaned my desk while I was waiting for fresh results. But mostly I made phone calls to Tommy.
I checked out some of the other Norcal blogs, and felt sort of silly that something like an election was going on and I hadn't updated all of my fans with my every thought about how the campaign was going. So I decided to spend some time writing this important update.
As the night progressed, we got a little antsy and a little obnoxious. Our resident techie even perked us up by singing "Vos O No Vos," the Telemundo version of "Deal or No Deal."
If you haven't checked it out, the Spanish channel version is much more spicey. The tension is incredible when the Mexican version of Helga the German dominatrix comes out to tempt the players with the suitcase filled with cash.
See, newspapers bring you culture.
That’s why we get the big bucks.

Posted by Heather Hacking at 09:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

After last week's column a reader wrote in asking about the popcorn trick -- making popcorn in the microwave by simply putting kernals in a paper bag.

I knew this would be a hit because everyone I told this to me said the equivalent of "who knew?"

I love when live is so simple.

The tickling tomatoes trick was a big hit as well. Several readers said they had great success with that trick.

Decidedly there needs to be more tickling in this world. However, last time Tommy and I had a tickle fest I somehow gave him a black eye with my foot.

Contrary to what some folks think, I don't make this stuff up.

Sharon asked how much popcorn to put in the bag. She was afraid if she put too much it would dirty up her microwave. Well, first off, dry popcorn isn't dirty. It's dry. So if you put too much, so be it. Personally, I like those half-popped kernals that are very crunchy and threaten to wreck your dental work.

Answer to Sharon's question, about 1/3 of a cup for a lunch-bag sized paper bag.

Next spray with I Can't Believe It's Not Butter and salt, and dream of Fabio.

Posted by Heather Hacking at 01:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Tommy and I visited my mom last weekend. Mom and I made salsa and fried green tomato and corn fritters as per the recipe printed recently in Sow There! Meanwhile, Tommy worked on Mom’s trellis, taking down the dilapidated structure that had covered the patio for years.
Mom and I decided it’s much easier to hire someone than to have family members work on tall ladders. When it’s a worker up on the ladder, you sit inside and cringe to yourself that there is banging going on outdoors. When it is a loved one up on the ladder, you can’t help but hover. You hold the ladder from the bottom so he doesn’t lose his balance while wielding power tools.

One thing I learned at Mom’s house:
While picking up nails Tommy threw down from the lattice, Mom and I rushed around on the concrete and picked them up. Talk about a glamorous weekend!
Mom was excited when she came across an especially rusty nail and stuck it into the soil of a potted hydrangea plant. Apparently her best friend from high school, Innie, taught her that putting rusty nails in the soil of a hydrangea makes it thrive. I have no reason to doubt Innie, who has been gardening for decades.
One Web site explains that rusty nails can make the soil turn acidic, which makes hydrangeas turn from pink to blue. Limestone has the opposite effect and makes the flowers pink.

One thing I taught Mom last weekend:
We decided to watch a movie at Mom’s house and she went into the kitchen to make some popcorn.
She took out a packet of butter-free popcorn in one of those fold-up containers.
“What are you doing?� I asked her.
“Making popcorn,� she said, stating the obvious.
“Don’t you have some popcorn from the bin?� I asked.
If you already know this culinary trick, you can feel smug and think I’m stating the obvious. But apparently a lot of people don’t know that all you need to do to make popcorn is to buy popcorn in bulk and place it in a small paper bag in the microwave.
Just like the expensive packaged popcorn you buy in the little bags with fake butter flavoring, regular popcorn in a brown paper bag pops up in about 3-5 minutes.
Then you take it out and slather it in I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter and salt.
For some reason I felt compelled to do a Google search on I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter and came across their Web site at: http://hunks.tasteyoulove.com.
I’m not making this up.

Too much testosterone, too little time.

Apparently the fat-free fake butter had a contest to pick a new hunk to replace Fabio and came up with some hunky guy named Greg Vaughan.
Apparently Fabio’s funky Prince Valiant hairstyle has grown tiresome over the years and the fake butter producers needed to get a new spokes-hunk.
The Web site includes a “kitchen of love� where you can click on things and hear vital advice about romance from our fake butter leader.

Signs you’re getting old:
I had one of the best Halloweens ever this week. Tommy and I went trick-or-treating with the 9-year-old and his best friend Joseph. Also along for the walk were Leif’s mom, Bonnie, and the English setter Gandalf.
We just tootled around the avenues.
The boys were a lot more sedate than I remember my friends and I being when we were kids. They didn’t run from house to house and we had to encourage them to pick up the pace so they could hit as many houses as possible.
Apparently the etiquette nowadays is that if you’re “open for business,� you have carved pumpkins or luminaries out front. Several houses also had strobe lights, fog machines and scary music.
By the end, the kids were complaining that they wanted to go home because the pillow cases stuffed with candy were getting too heavy.
We came home and placed all the candy on the living room floor for the required inspection. This involves an adult (Auntie) going through the candy and throwing out anything that is not wrapped or in a wrapper that is broken. This also involves the adult slyly pocketing their favorite treats while the kids are trading back and forth.
Joseph went home before we could count his loot, but Leify’s stash included 31 peanut butter cups, six Milky Ways, eight Snickers (minus two in my pocket), three Sweet Tarts (minus six in my pocket), and about eight dozen other miscellaneous candies.
Not bad for a night’s work.

Posted by Heather Hacking at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)