Free Form Thur Entry
This is my 432nd entry in this blog, and rarely do I do what I'm about to do... I'm just going to post "free association" if you will. (Read that senseless rambling.) First comes our micro garden (8' by 8')...
Not bad... A little trellis and a little Monarda. Peaceful... You can see one of the feeders in the background. That's looking west. Sometime I'll break out the blueprint that we have for this property and design a proper landscape.
What else? It was cool here today... It actually managed to rain a little, but Fate couldn't summon the moxie to really give us a good soaking. Seemingly in response, the birds were exceptionally quiet (except for the crows - they'd yell through any event including the hour that the Ship comes in.) But the point might be taken - hot or cold times stress the birds, and special attention needs to be paid to food and water during those times.
Politics? Naw... I don't want to talk politics.
Muddle over TV? See above.
Boat babble? Yeah... I can do that... I'm a moderator on a couple of boat-building forums, and it's amazing the contrast between interest and active participation on those forums. Come on gang... If you've got a hankering to ply Davy Jone's Locker in something you actually built, look around. There's "Instant Boats", "CLC", "DuckWorks", ad nauseum. Get in there and ask questions. They're all good people and the hobby is a lot easier than it looks.
One last thing... I promised quick recipes for killer summer burgers and corn on the cob. Very simple... For the hamburgers, take a red onion, and dice into 1/4" pieces. Then take a handful of ground beef (enough for a patty) and mash the onion throughout the meat. Repeat the process to the point where the patty simply won't hold any more onion. Then cover and place the burger(s) in the frig to "rest". After that, get grilling. It's surprising how little onion flavor survives, and how much hamburger flavor is enhanced... Now, as for the corn... Lay out as many 14" sheets of aluminum foil as you have ears of corn. Shuck the corn, and the slather the ears in butter. And I do mean slather - only the very tops of the kernels should be visible. Next place on the foil, salt and completely wrap in the foil such that no butter can leak out. Grill those for about 20 minutes rotating every few... And be careful handling the ears during and after grilling - that hot butter wants to spill everywhere!
See you by the feeders,
CapeCodAlan
Cornell Ornithology Laboratory: Inside Birding
Cornell Ornithology Laboratory: All About Birding
Comments
Cape Cod Alan (and Mrs. CCA),
I have been a fan of your blogs for a long time and tonight my family has joined your list of admirers. Not for the bird info and videos, but also for the recipes -- especially the corn on the grill instructions. We tried it tonight and, as my husband said, we're never going to heat up the house again to cook corn on the cob -- it's grill time from now on! Thank you wholeheartedly from this much cooler wife!
Posted by: Marcia | August 16, 2009 9:32 PM
Hi Marcia,
Thanks for the kind words... Be sure to try the hamburger/red onion "melange" - the flavor is amazing.
Growing up on Cape Cod, I was exposed to so much plain cooking. (Not everyone on Cape Cod was rich!) There's herring roe and catsup, beach plum jelly, cranberry wine, fried winter flounder, dump cakes, fried eel and scup... But I keep the absolute best a secret - "jag" and "golumpkies". The Cape is such a mish mash of wash-ashores, that the recipes' origins vary from Portugal to the Cape Verde Islands to Poland to Ireland. And both of those recipes are well over 100 years old...
Stay tuned and thanks for reading,
CCA and Mrs. CCA
Posted by: CapeCodAlan | August 17, 2009 5:58 AM
And this is why I read www.ebiddseed.com. Fascinating post.
Posted by: Monique | March 10, 2010 2:28 PM