The ramblings of an addled mind.
As a kid I was small and skinny. Too studious and too serious to be popular. So I devoted myself to learning all I could, to getting through school and getting on with life as soon as I could.
As a young man, I decided to get into business. I worked hard and applied myself so I’d move up the corporate ladder and be able to have all the things I wanted… Continue reading “My Dogography”
Michaelmas, or The Feast of Michael and All Angels, is celebrated in Europe on the 29th of September. As it falls near the equinox, the day is associated with the beginning of autumn and the shortening of days; in England, it is one of the “quarter days”.
St Michael is one of the principal angelic warriors, protector against the dark of the night and the Archangel who fought against Satan and his evil angels. Michaelmas occurs at the time when the darker nights and colder days begin – the autumnal equinox – the celebration of Michaelmas is associated with encouraging protection during these dark months. It was believed that negative forces were stronger in darkness and so families would require stronger defenses during the late fall and winter months of the year.
Around the time of the fall equinox, Michaelmas marked the end of the harvesting season with great fairs and festivals. Traditional foods for Michaelmas include goose to bring prosperity, new wine, and cakes of oats, barley, rye, and carrots.
Once the harvest was in, farmers would pay their yearly rents to the landowners. Many farmers included “a goose fit for the lord’s dinner” with their rent payments. Especially if the tenants required a delay in payment, they may have placated their landlords with gifts of geese as interest. Continue reading “Happy Michaelmas Day”
Here in the South, we have a saying that can be used in response to the small-talk prompt of “How are you?” when you are feeling especially good (or don’t really want to engage in small talk); it goes, “Fine as frog hair .” It’s kind of cute and makes you think a little. Just how fine IS frog hair I wonder?
I was in the garden watering. When I got to the strawberry bed, there was considerable movement in the leaves in one corner. I was not surprised by that: I often flush a toad from these beds. They are welcomed visitors because they eat the bugs and slugs that crawl around in the boxes. Usually they are pretty small: the size of a golf ball, or so. This was a much bigger toad. I could see flashes of the brown color through the leaves.
Then those flashes started moving in different directions. Several, much bigger toads.
Then one of them hopped out of the box and into the path through the berry house. It was HAIRY! Several big, hairy toads! Nah … can’t BE! I looked again. Continue reading “Fine as Frog Hair”
Because I work with rescue animals every day, I am quite aware of spay and neuter programs like The Big Fix and Beat the Heat, and I applaud their efforts to reduce the animal overpopulation which results in around 4 million animals being destroyed each year. These programs offer low cost, or no cost, spaying and neutering on special “clinic” days. This morning I was able to volunteer in one of these major clinics. This one was hosted by the Dr. Carol Hood Memorial Animal Clinic in Newport Tennessee.
I was to show up at 7:00 AM, and I did so. Though it was barely light outside, there was already a table set up outside the front door, manned by volunteers, and a line of folks bringing their pets in to be “fixed”. My role was to help get the animals inside, weighed, and crated to await their surgery.
The shelter’s Director and staff had everything well organized and it seemed to go smoothly. I heard several of the other volunteers comment on how well organized this clinic was. Reservations had been taken ahead of time, crates and neckbands had been labeled with each pet and owner’s names, files had been set up with all the pertinent information. As patients arrived they were ticked off a master list, neck banded, weighed, and crated. Cats went into small crates in the hallway, 
dogs in larger crates in the laundry room. Files went into the medical room so they could start drawing up drugs by each animal’s weight.
In addition to the shelter’s own medical staff: Dr. Gill Conklin DVM and vet tech Alicia Payne, working diligently in the shelter’s operating room, a mobile unit from Lowell Michigan run by Dr. Bruce Langlois arrived to help out. Continue reading “Inside a Free Spay and Neuter Clinic”
Do you have a dream? Yes, you do. You may answer in the negative because your dream has become buried under so many layers of life that you’ve lost track of it, but everyone has a dream: an aspiration, a goal of some sort. For some, the dream may be grandiose: “I want to be an NBA superstar”, for others the dream may be simply to have a stable family and a nice home where they can all be content. I have had a number of aspirations during my life; I’ve pursued several careers in different fields but through them all has been the desire – the need – to teach.
Even as a kid, I remember my sister and I setting up a play school and inviting the neighborhood kids to attend. Looking back, it boggles my mind that those youngsters chose to spend their summer vacations – at least an hour of each day – attending a pretend school! Continue reading “Pursue the Dream”
As summer winds down the tomatoes ramp up and we’ve got a bountiful harvest coming in. Some we use fresh – in fact we try to enjoy as many as we can fresh – but what to do with the rest?
Sharing is good: if you have friends and family that don’t raise their own tomatoes. A couple of Sundays ago we went to church and found a large basket of ripe, red tomatoes sitting inside the door. From the pulpit, the pastor clarified, “Those tomatoes inside the door are for taking home and eating, not for throwing at your pastor.”
Tomato season doesn’t last long so it’s a good idea to preserve what you don’t eat or give away for use later. Here are my favorite ways to preserve tomatoes to be enjoyed throughout the year.
Tomatoes freeze well and it’s easy to do. Freezing does make the skins tough, so you can blanch the tomatoes in boiling water for 30 second to get the skins to slip off easily, but I prefer not to. I remove the core, cut the tomato in half along the equator, use a plastic spoon to scoop it the seedy-goopy stuff (that does not freeze well) then cut the tomato halves into wedges. Lay the wedges skin side down on a cookie sheet and pop in the freezer. When the wedges are frozen stiff, quickly transfer them into a freezer bag and put it back into the freezer. When the bag is full, squeeze out as much air as possible and seal the bag before putting it into the deep freeze.
By freezing the wedges individually you will be able to take out and thaw just what you need and put the rest back, still frozen. If you throw a whole bunch of wet tomatoes in a bag and freeze them as a unit, the whole bag will have to be thawed to be used. This is not a problem if you have specific uses in mind and package according to your intended use. If not, versatility without waste is good.
When you thaw the wedges the skins will pull off easily.
Dried tomatoes can be enjoyed directly as a crunchy snack (tomato chips) or can be stored for long terms to be used in cooking.
Remove the core, slice the tomato in half along the equator and use a plastic spoon to remove the seeds and goop.
Tomatoes can be dried with the seedy goop left in, but it will take a lot longer and you risk scorching the tomato flesh. Slice the tomato halves into rings ¼” thick for “chips” ½” thick for storage.
Spray the tray of your dehydrator with non-stick cooking spray (or rub with olive oil). If you don’t have a dehydrator you can use cake cooling racks on cookie sheets in your oven set at its lowest temperature (and even at that you may need to crack the door). For a dehydrator, 140° works well. Be sure to rotate the drying trays (or cookie sheets) around the oven to produce even drying.
When the slices are leathery, flip them over and continue until they are dry. Store in an air-tight jar, or vacuum pack them.
To use in cooking, soak the slices in hot water to reconstitute. If you’re making soup, the liquid in the soup will do this for you.
Another angle of dehydrating is to keep the skins you remove from tomatoes you process in other ways, dry those then use a mini-food processor or grinder to pulverize the dry skins into powder. This “instant tomato” can be used as a tomato flavored thickener or can be mixed with a little water to make tomato paste.
Canning tomatoes can be a little time consuming, but it’s not hard to do. They can be pressure canned, if you have that equipment, or water bathed. You can put them up as sauce, or soup, as tomato chunks, or whole: plain or pickled. Recipes abound. My favorite way to can raw tomatoes is what’s called Raw Pack Canning.
The tedious part is preparing the tomatoes. I tend to do this when I get about a half-bushel of tomatoes – this will yield a full canner run of 10 pint jars. But that’s a lot of tomatoes to clean.
Blanch the tomatoes in boiling water for 30 seconds, then drop into icy cold water to arrest the cooking process. Core, slip the skins, and remove the seeds.
Chop the tomato into whatever size chunks you tend to use. If you want very small chunks, drop the tomatoes into a food processor and pulse just enough to chop them. Put the cut tomatoes in a colander to drain off as much water as possible (this helps reduce separating that produces a half-jar of tomatoes floating atop a half jar of clear liquid).
While you are doing this, have a canner full of jars & lids boiling up.
Some folks say that if you’re going to can something for more than 10 minutes you don’t need to boil the jars and lids to sterilize them, they’ll be sanitized in the canning process just like the contents; just wash them well and rinse. Others say always sterilize the jars. If I’m going to err, I prefer to err on the side of caution: especially if an error could make my family sick or dead. So I always boil up my jars and keep them hot in the canner.
Remove a jar from the canner with tongs or a jar lifter, dump the hot water in the jar into the sink (unless you’ve boiled your water level in the canner down, then dump a little of the hot water into the canner first). Put a tablespoon full of lemon juice in the bottom of a pint jar (2 Tbsp. for a quart – don’t use the 1½ quart jars for raw-pack) and spoon in enough tomato chunks to half-fill the jar. Use a non-reactive spoon or pestle, or something (I uses a small stainless steel whisk) to smoosh the tomatoes down. This forces out air pockets and fills gaps with juice. Air pockets are bad. Fill the jar almost full and do it again. Now inspect the jar for air bubbles that might have been missed and remove them with a plastic or bamboo utensil (I use an orange peeler). Top the jar to leave ½” of head space, wipe the rim, install a lid and band (just finger tight) and return the jar to the canner.
Repeat until all the jars are filled.
To water bath these you’ll need to boil the full jars for 85 minutes. Adjusting for altitude means I have to water bath the batch for about two hours! To me it makes a whole lot more sense to pressure can raw-pack tomatoes … especially since I DO have a good pressure canner. That means venting steam for ten minutes to purge the canner, install the 10 pound weight and process at 10 pounds for 15 minutes. Low altitudes can go 10 pounds for 10 minutes. Then turn it off and go do something else while it cools down. A half-hour instead of being stuck watching the pot boil for 2 hours.
My favorite way to put up cooked tomatoes is to make sauce out of them.
Blanch, peel, core and clean the tomatoes as above.
If you’re a purist, run them through a food mill. If not, use a food processor to pulse the tomatoes for a fine chop and transfer this to a stainless steel stock pot on medium-high heat. Simmer, stirring frequently, until the tomato mixture is reduced in volume by half. Reduce heat just to keep it hot.
For an Italian sauce add to each prepared pint jar: (double this for quarts)
By measuring the spices into each jar instead of into the stock pot you get a more consistent taste across the batch – and you can adjust or eliminate the spices if you desire to do a split batch. I also like to put up sauce with BBQ seasoning and with Chili seasonings. These make quick meals possible.
The lemon juice is required as an acidifier, anything else can be adjusted.
Ladle your cooked tomato into the hot jars, leaving 1/2” head space. Remove bubbles (recheck head space), wipe the rim, install a lid and band (finger tight) and return to the canner. Water bath the batch for 35 minutes (adjust for altitude).
By having tomatoes put up in a variety of ways we have options. By having some put up as pre-seasoned tomato sauce we have an easy open-and-go means of fixing dinner. By having the raw pack canned tomatoes we have versatility. Frozen tomatoes retain more texture. Dried tomatoes are compact and last a long time. You can transfer some from glass jars to vacuum packed bags to take along on camping trips for better-than-average meals in the wild.
Maybe you won’t be able to do BLT’s in January with your own tomatoes, but most anything else can be created from at least one of these forms of preserved tomatoes. Enjoy!
Someone has said, “The future is not what it used to be.” Although filled with fertile thought the author of this statement is unknown. Perhaps we could speculate as to the disposition of the person who would make such a comment.Calvin ended this post with “I know Who holds the future and I know Who holds my hand.” and I’m glad he knew these things because on September 10th, 2014 Calvin Metcalf took the hand of Jesus and went home. He has been a pastor, teacher, mentor and friend, and I shall miss him. But I know his soul is safe in heaven, probably playing golf with his grandson, Jonathan.
I wear a fedora. No, not a menorah, a fedora: a type of hat — a type of hat that has fallen out of favor with the stylish set among common folk. But it was once a favored hat among most folk, common or stylish. Many of the mountain men depicted on TV and movies wore fedoras. So did gangsters. I think this style of hat captured my fancy first when I saw Indiana Jones. Indy wore a fedora. In fact the brown cloth fedora I wear is an official, licensed Indiana Jones product. Did I order it from some Indiana Jones fan web site or buy it at a fan convention? No; I found it in a discount tool store. One of those Dollar General-like places that buys, at liquidation prices, stuff that regular retail stores haven’t sold and want to be rid of. They were on close-out sale, but even Tool World wasn’t having much luck moving them.
Marie and I were just browsing: we were in this town for another purpose but had some time and tool stores are fun to explore. My eyes lit up when I saw the display; I’d been looking for a brown fedora for a while now. We’d been in all the local stores that carry clothing, they had a variety of hats, some not bad, but not fedoras. Marie quipped about how many places we had searched for a fedora and here we find them in a tool store. I trotted over and started looking through the selection for one my size. Continue reading “Hat Man Do – Seeking the Fedora”
Summer is winding down and our canner is getting lots of use. This time I planned to can the apples as pie filling for quick easy pies this fall, but that went amiss.
This is the first year since we moved in here that we had a decent apple harvest. I’m pretty sure that has something to do with the 3” thick layer of wood chips I put around the base of the tree last fall.
This year I pulled a market basket full of apples off the tree. This may have been a little early, but I didn’t want to wait until they were all wormy. I put them in a big paper bag and let them finish ripening there. I canned them up yesterday.
I got nine pints from that basket of apples. Yes, I can count: one didn’t seal and it’s in the refrigerator. I probably forgot to wipe the rim. By the time I got to the canning run it was getting late and Marie would be home soon and I was rushing.
These are just plain apples, no seasoning or fancy stuff done to them. I figure they’re more versatile that way. That wasn’t my original plan, but I’ll get to that in a bit.
One of the exciting things about the Christian faith is that it challenges the best that is within us. It will never let us be satisfied with inferior living. It reaches into the depths of our inner being with disturbing implications. There is no way we can look into the face of Jesus and be content with halfhearted devotion. He calls us away from everything that would make us less than what we can be. He nudges us toward everything that focuses on our spiritual potential. He inspires us to consider the high road of what is best for us rather than the low road of what is easiest for us. Like an Olympic athlete training for perfection our Lord equips us to dream His kind of dreams. No one expects as much from us and yet comforts us when we miss the mark.