Everyone knows engineers can’t write! I
is
an
engineeer!
But...
I Wish I Could Write!
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## ...do some stuff very often! ### Write It just takes too long! Maybe I don't have much to say, or just can't explain it very well. ### Bake Why all this measuring crap? I love to experiment with cooking - a little of this and a little of that. Some things turn out great, others not so great. Baking is an area where experimenting usually leads to disasters, I therefore avoid it. But I like **Rhubarb Pie**. Grocery shopping in Gadsden sucks. Can't find weird stuff, so my semi-annual rhubarb pie has been every other year or so. Then I discovered that Dole has frozen rhubarb - showed up at the soup kitchen, probably from Walmart - didn't sell, so we got it. Took a few packages home and made a Strawberry-Rhubarb pie with a no experimenting recipe - including store bought crust. Not the prettiest lattice, but I wasn't trying to sell it, just eat it! Then there is this kraut oven I bought that I absolutely hate. The recipe called for a preheated 450 degree oven for 10 minutes, then down to 350 for 30 minutes. The hated oven seemed to take forever to come up to temp, that's if I remember to hit the start button after I pick the function! It's as bad as having two buttons on a mouse - no feedback that you have to do anything other than pick a function. Then I discovered the function *fast convection* that will get the oven up to 400 in a couple of minutes. Hell I try that - works great with chicken wings! After it beeped at 450, threw in the pie and set the timer for 10 minutes. After about 5 minutes, I smelled something - my pie burning!  I guess *fast convection* turns on the broiler element and I had put the pie in the upper level of the oven. All was not lost. I do have a carbon deficiency - at least I like burned popcorn. Scraped off the really burned parts and it had just the right amount of carbon. Jan even said it was fine. ### Gardening I've hated gardening since I was a kid and Grandmother would have me weed her gardens. Actually I don't hate gardening, just weeding - and I can grow a lot more weeds than stuff you can eat. Tried tomatoes again, this time from seeds that I harvested from probably the only good tomato I ate last year. Had way too many plants and too lazy to repot. Just planted a bunch and threw the rest away (well I guess I just let them die in the potting pot). They took off great in the spring. Then came summer and the weeds. Did a couple rounds of weeding but basically concluded that this was too much work! Harvested a few tomatoes and they were good. Then the slugs decided they liked the tomatoes, so I just let the weeds take over and said I'll try it again in a few years. When I went home in June, I was talking to my Cousin Paul from San Diego. He married a hippie, sweet girl - artist - changed my cousin (probably saved him!).   Paul, Leslie and Junk art. He is also a cooker and got into growing stuff. He told me about his horseradish patch and how simple it was. I remember grinding horseradish as a kid. Now they have food processors and I like horseradish on a few things (especially really pungent stuff like wasabi). Saw a big root at the store and brought it home and threw it in the fridge after I processed part of it, figuring I'd plant the rest of the root. About a month later I found the root at the bottom of the vegetable bin growing little green sprouts. Dug a couple holes in my weed garden and planted them. In a couple days the spouts were tuning into leaves. In a week I had leaves. In another week I had **big** leaves. Hell, maybe it's something I can grow! Wondered if you could eat the greens. Chewed on one. Just like collard, mustard and other green stuff - tasteless unless you add bacon and hot pepper sauce. About a week later I go check on the horseradish and no leaves! Just stems and ribs! Something ate my leaves. Didn't see anything at first but then yesterday I found a bunch of caterpillars munching on the remaining stems. Googling pointed to cabbage caterpillars. They seemed to love it, maybe they are getting high on it since they now trying to eat the stems!. Maybe I should have dried the leaves and tried smoking them!  Horseradish  Again all is not lost. The roots don't care that much about the leaves, they'll pop out again when it decides it needs a little sun. We'll see next year. Of course I'm on my second year of asparagus. Think I had two stems in that time. Weeds and even a late tomato and some asparagus. There was even some chives and mint in there somewhere. Even some wine grapes turning into raisins.     Gardening is kind of like fishing, way too much time spend for so little reward. Coding and golf you get immediate results, but then I just waste time writing stuff that nobody wants and golf is not the same as it was with the Gaggle. Think I'll go eat worms, maybe caterpillars! .markdown
Why I don't...
September 02, 2013 13:49