Food, Gardening, Homestead

Catching up

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I know, I have been a tremendous slacker of late, not keeping those near and far up to date on the happenings at the homestead. Three birthdays in the span of three and a half weeks, two of which were major affairs, plus work, plus the onset of spring – well, let’s just say that things have been quite busy here at Lazy Dog Ranch. It’s also tax season here, and we won’t even discuss that at all.

Instead, we’ll go back in time a couple of weeks, to the big birthday bash for my nephew: one year, and he’s changed from an always-screaming, never-smiling, quite silent baby to a happy, talkative baby (who still has quite stinky poo).

Given that this was a rather momentous event, much like my sister’s 30th, of course it had to be a large gathering (this time, comprised mostly of people I myself didn’t know), and of course, there had to be food. We decided on no hot dogs for the party, since we really don’t like feeding hot dogs to other peoples’ kids (has no one seen Field of Dreams?). My sister specifically requested pulled pork, and we also settled on chicken tenders (both with and without barbecue sauce), and hamburgers, to round out the carnivorous side of the menu.

Some things can be made in advance. Like a double batch of sauce.

Other things must be made in advance, since they take about 19 hours to properly cook.

The rest is a matter of prep so the day of the event doesn’t absolutely kill you with all the things that need to be done. That means pulling some carrots fresh out of the ground…

…and cleaning them up to go along with the other vegetables that are prepped for the roasted vegetables to be served along with everything else.

This gathering called for a triple batch of rolls, so the beginnings of that had to be pulled out too.

Don’t forget to vacuum the dog.

Be sure to pull the rolls out of the cold room for their final proof before they go in the oven.

Some homemade hummus – very garlicky, by Mom’s request.

A bit of potato salad and some corn pudding.

The big stuff: pulled pork, chicken tenders (with and without sauce), and burgers:

Virginia Woolf said that everyone needs a room of their own, but sometimes a cake of one’s own will do. Especially if you’re one.

For some reason, I just find this photo incredibly amusing – probably because it looks like he has the candle up his nose.

Marie Antoinette suggested it. Don’t blame me.

Oh, and did I mention the focaccia?

The kid cleaned up in the gift department, of course. We cleaned up the aftermath, and declared the big party season over until Labor Day, at which point we’ll do all this all over again to close out the summer.

Cats, dogs, chickens, and other critters, Gardening, Homestead, The Challenge

Clearing

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What the back forty looked like in January (and actually, for almost the past two years):

And now:

We had every intention of leaving the back wild, but last season found that weeds had completely overtaken one berm where wild blackberries were growing (not an easy task), that dog fennel and other weeds were running rampant, making it impossible to get to the wild blackberries anyway, and that we wanted, instead, to put the orchard out in that spot instead. At the very far end, somewhat behind that tree dead center in the photo, is another berm where blackberries are still going strong, and behind that is more wild area that will stay that way. For now. We had our tractor guy come out, mow, and then take down the berms and give us some leveling of the ground back there. Thus far, we have two almonds and a peach tree. Next weekend, we’re heading to the nursery for some citrus trees. Toward the left side of the picture, between the pine trees and the neighbor’s fence, is where I envision the bee hives going at some point.

It’s all very much a work in progress, as it always is. But spring is here – finally – and that means some serious gardening. How serious? Let’s just say that today alone, I popped about 50 plants into the frames out front, in addition to what we’d already put out there. More to come…

Food, Life in general

Springing up

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I know, I know: what have you been up to lately, that you have neglected your poor handful of readers?

Beyond listening to the whining of some asshat who is going to “recommend to his client” that she change to another host – after that client has been with us for seven years, I might add – because we don’t provide the phone support he has decided is necessary, when we can read the ticket, find the account, determine the issue, report it to the actual client for their directions on proceeding, and resolve the immediate issue in the meantime in under 20 minutes while this douche would rather be on hold for that same length of time before getting to a live person….well, I’ve been working, inside and outside. And there was this 30-year birthday bash for my sister, who insists that it was actually her second anniversary of her 29th birthday.

There was food, of course. Like a spinach dip to start people off.

Crabcakes that I threw together, shaped, and put in the freezer that morning to store for the party.

These plus the other two trays were fried off in some olive oil.

By far the best batch I’ve ever made. There were none left, unfortunately, to leave uncooked in the freezer for meals or snacks later. Four pounds of crabmeat in these.

We also had some croissants with crab and artichoke spread. These were set under the broiler with a crumb topping on them and were mighty tasty.

I had smoked a couple of pork butts and roasted a chicken as well. My sister also requested tofu. I marinated it in a ginger-lime sauce.

Then seared that off in some olive oil, too.

What gathering would be complete without rolls?

Nothing like a fresh roll out of the oven.

None of these survived the day, either.

For dessert, mini angel food cakes with a warm berry sauce.

Oh, and let’s not forget the homemade whipped cream.

Not a bad way to spend a day, surrounded by friends and family, even if all the family could not be there.

Food

Faking it

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Which of these is Subway’s sweet onion sauce and which is mine?

Hard to tell, right? That’s the point of recreating something you have a taste for in your home.

The three and a half days I spent with my gastro distress a couple of weeks ago also resulted in me not eating much of anything. At the end of that week, we sent The Boy out to get some food, and I had Subway’s sweet onion chicken teriyaki. Unlike the things I had eaten thoughout the week to try to get my system on track and without immediately losing whatever I ate, this stayed down. The next day, The Boy was out again, so I had him swing by and bring me another. That one, however, was not as good – the “sandwich artist” or whatever the hell they are calling themselves these days clearly did not graduate at the top of her class: too much mayo, sauce, and leaky tomatoes resulted in the thing disintegrating in my hand. So, being me, I decided I could make my own, sauce included. And I did. And it was mighty tasty – slightly sweeter than theirs, given the taste issues I have.

For the record: the top is theirs, the bottom is mine.

Gardening, Life in general, Movies

The last round?

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Please let this be the last round of freezing temps. I have tomatoes and peppers and eggplants and flowers and all sorts of other things to get growing outside. Mother Nature: you are not helping.

On a side note, what is it with the long, long movie trailers that pretty much give you the entire movie in the extended trailer, making it unnecessary to see the movie? Number one, it hardly qualifies as a teaser, number two, it’s annoying considering how many times they play, and number three, people are going to go see the type of movies they like (Fast and Furious) or the actors they love (Clive Owen, Julia Roberts) regardless. I was so happy when those Valkyrie trailers finally stopped running, but it’s a bit like tribbles or gremlins: more have multiplied to take its place.

Life in general

Ignoring the world

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I’ve always been a news and information junkie. Like many other people, I would surf around news and aggregate sites, political blogs, and everything in between. After yet another round of yet another unbelievable goings on in the world, I decided to try ignoring the news for a day. I don’t watch news on the tv anyway, so that was simple, and the paper doesn’t deliver out here to us, which made that simple as well. The toughest part was breaking my typical routine of web surfing, to avoid the habits I’d gotten into.

That was a week and a half ago.

I’m not as aggravated by things and I have a lot more time to Get Things Done as I’ve discussed before.

This way is so much better.

I’ll probably continue it indefinitely.

Geek stuff

Spring cleaning

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When you  have hundreds of servers at a NOC somewhere, and you’ve been around for going on nine years now, there is no getting around the fact that you will end of with a bunch of dead hardware over time: servers where the motherboards have fried, the power supplies have shot themselves, disk drives that have been replaced or pulled from retired machines, miscellaneous cables, screws, and wires. If you’re smart, you take care of these things as they happen, salvage the usable parts as spares for the other equipment, and then get rid of the rest. If you’re not smart, or if you’ve been so focused on other things that this cleanup is allowed to drop down the to do list, like me, at some point you have to bite the bullet and get to the business of getting it cleaned. This was that time.  I dragged my brother over to the NOC and we gathered up about 20 or 21 dead boxes and assorted other material that was making moving around in the cage a dance. Today, I broke out anything usable from those boxes, prepped the drives for destruction, and hauled all the servers out. I should know better than to do all that on one day – but as I was feeling uberproductive, and have felt that way since my battle with the stomach bug, I just wanted to knock it out. I did. Now my back is paying for it. Multiply the number of servers time 35-40 pounds apiece, handled several times from start to finish to determine workability, and that would probably be why. Still good exercise for the upcoming gardening season.

Food, Gardening

Local dinner

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Before I was stricken with that nasty bug, I had harvested some broccoli and carrots from the garden.

We’re ready for our closeup, Mr. DeMille.

Don’t forget us!

I figure you shouldn’t leave fresh vegetables all cleaned up with nowhere to go. Einstein agrees. You can tell.

What to make? We were feeling like a little stirfry: carrots and broccoli right from the garden, and beef from the quarter cow we bought from a (local) producer.

Grass-fed beef, marinating.

The beef went in first, with various spices and a little soy.

The carrots, broccoli, water chestnuts, and bamboo shoots went in, with another round of seasonings and a little liquid.

Serve it over rice, and you have a healthy, homemade meal that didn’t take terribly long to put together. This is my plate – I skip the water chestnuts and bamboo.

Good stuff, but I think I’m having an issue with rice as a cause of heartburn for me. Both after that meal and after tonight’s (black eyed peas, rice, cornbread), a dose of pepto was definitely in order. Suppose I’ll have to test this theory, even though if it is true, it involves at least one more round of this burn. The things we do for science…

Cancer, Life in general

Getting things done

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I spent the day today Getting Things Done. This is an important and necessary kind of day, especially after being reduced to virtually nothing productive for three days in a row.

First up, the ENT who did my surgery. It’s amazing to think about it now, but this July will be the fourth year out from my surgery. I still do not have full mobility in my left arm and neck (and probably never will), the scars and lack of muscle on that side are quite clear even from a cursory glance (and always will be), and my mouth and tongue are still very sensistive to things like spicy food (whether that will change seems to depend on who I ask).  At first, I was seeing him once a month. That went to every other month, then to every four months, and after today’s visit is now at a six month spread. That’s progress! Everything looks fine, no lumps or anything else that can be seen or felt either in my mouth or in my neck.  It’s probably about time for another PET scan over with the oncology folks, since it’s been a bit since the last one.

Next stop: the accountant, to drop off the various papers and the backup file from our accounting software so they can get my taxes going. The past four years have all been extension years because of the various things that have been going on, from buying out the business partner to dealing with the medical issues. This year, though, we’re aiming for no extension. Corporate taxes are due on March 15, and I’d like to be signing off at that time to take this off the to-do list.

From there, it was off to the NOC. Here’s a tip: if you do not know how to check the amount of memory that is in your server, it’s probably not a wise idea to request that the memory be “increased to 2 gigs” unless you are absolutely sure that it doesn’t already have two gigs of memory – or, in this case, already have three gigs of memory. Because when I scrape the back of my hand and tear off a dime sized piece of skin when removing the cover from the server to have a look – as I was silly and violated the first rule of the tech world (“Never trust what the user says.”) – I’ll be cursing you up and down as I head for the first aid kit.

Finally, off to the grocery store to pick up a couple of things and my antibiotic prescription (from the dentist for the root canals, since the mouth is a festering pit of bacteria). And home once more, to finally have something to eat and get back to work. I was feeling better Thursday, but today I really did feel back to myself.

And this final item will come as a surprise to some people: I had no coffee at all from Monday afternoon to Friday morning, due to the gastro problems. My own personal detox, I suppose, although I imagine there are better ways to go about it. I’ve found that the antibiotics are not making coffee drinking a pleasant experience anyway, as they are reacting badly with one another and giving me heartburn.

Life in general

Bugs

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For the past couple of days, I’ve been laid low by some kind of viral thingy – gastro, from how it feels/felt. Tuesday morning, I finally went to bed around 1 AM or so. It took about 30 minutes to get to sleep, and then once again, I was awake, somewhere around 4 AM, feeling like I’d been run over by a truck. Since I couldn’t decide if I wanted to throw up, spend some quality time on the john, try to down some Tums for the heartburn, or just crawl out into the yard and lie there in the moonlight, I just laid there in bed for a couple of hours until I finally got back to sleep. After letting the dogs out (and in) around 7-ish, I crawled back in the bed. Up again a bit later, tried the couch. Back to bed. And so on. Nasty, vicious cycle. I don’t recommend it, or the pain in the hips and joints for those of us not accustomed to spending more than a few hours at a time sleeping (or attempting to sleep).

Still, today is much, much better, and I’m actually hungry as I type this. Might be time for the kid to go scrounge some food.

Reflections on gardening, cooking, and life