The Latest in the Tea Party Sequence

Some of you will remember Mark's first Tea Party painting from 2005.  He's produced a new version, "Part D'uh."

I can't exactly say "enjoy" with regards to this piece, but it's definitely worth a look.

Don't drink the cool aid.

Equinox Harvest

Today, it's rainy at the Edge. This week and next, Angel & I are both teaching extra yoga classes -- filling in for teachers who are out of town. By the time we got back from our respective gigs, the cold wind was whipping up the bay and rain was sprinkling. Angel and a visiting friend of hers are cooking, baking, today. It appears a rhubarb pie might be in the offing.  I've built a fire in the wood stove.

Earlier, Angel and her friend went into the garden to dig potatoes, cut the last of the rhubarb, and gather some artichokes. As you can see, even at the fall equinox, even here at the Edge, the garden continues to produce. Dinner should be a satisfying affair tonight.

Artichokes, Potatoes, and Rhubarb, Oh My!

Krugman Article

Just read a NYT article by Paul Krugman. It's an opinion piece. Of course aren't they all these days?

Man, I bet he's on a few lists...

A Tasty Dinner

Dinner!

We bought two grass-fed buffalo steaks from a local "boutique" market. I grilled the steaks and some jalapenos over charcoal on the barbecue.

Angel cut fresh potatoes (we raised over 120 pounds of potatoes this year) into wedges, brushed them with olive oil, sprinkled them with spices, and put them in the oven. While the potatoes roasted, she pulled together a salad from (mostly) things we grew: tomatoes, broccoli shoots, lettuce. We got some radishes from the co-op.

As I've written elsewhere, the jalapenos weren't at all hot, but they had a great flavor.

Now that's a dinner.

Chilies From The Greenhouse... Two Hundred And Counting

The Top Section of a Double Boiler Containing 200 Chilies

Okay, so these are little guys -- the biggest of them about the size of your pinkie finger.

While they're not in the league of NM chilies, they're reasonably spicy and have a good flavor. Angel enjoys spicy food, but she has stomach problems that preclude chili-as-a-religious-experience levels of hotness. I usually put one of these (de-seeded) in a given dish. She tolerates that well and I get to think, to drift back in time...

Here's a Close-up!

Albert Fugere sent me the URL for a place in NM that sells several variety of chilies. Maybe next year I'll try some of those. I also grew poblanos and jalapenos but these came out about as mild as bell peppers. The jalapenos were at least flavorful -- especially after I roasted them over charcoal.

The Greenhouse seems to be a requirement for growing chilies at the 48th parallel. This year, I had an aphid infestation but it was manageable (each day I'd go out and pick 'em off my plants). Once the chilies began to ripen the aphids went away. Maybe they don't like chilies?  Serve 'em right.

Two hundred of these little guys add up to a lot of chilies. Not only that, I've got fifty or so more of them on the plants that aren't quite ripe yet. Someday I'd like to build a small (tabletop) solar food dryer that could manage a tray full of these chilies, but I'd need a table saw to do a good job with it. That's not going to happen; although I do have a neighbor who owns a table saw.  Maybe I could trade him some chilies if he'd do some cuts for me?

Anyway, these are small enough so that I can freeze them. We'll certainly have plenty to last through the winter.

relative investments

China is now the biggest investor in renewable energy & energy efficiency.

According to Grist, China invested $34.6B in 2009 while the US invested about 54% of that amount.  Anyone care to guess who's going to do better in the long run?

But don't fret, folks.  Shareholders in fossil fuel conglomerates will do just fine for quite a while yet.

Clean Sweep

With the Tea Party candidate knocking out the moderate Republican in the Delaware primary, we now have an interesting situation.  Now every Republican candidate in the 2010 US Senate race denies that our country needs to take action to combat global warming.  So despite the fact that the scientific community is all but unified in its findings, the Republicans find it expedient to ignore the published, refereed, results.

Here's a link to the Grist article.

Big Oil triumphs once more.

Happy Wednesday.

Chilies!

Harvested a couple of poblanos.  That's nice.  They're tasty but very mild.  OTOH, I also  harvested a bunch o' jalapenos.  Even they could use a bit o' oomph, but they're flavorful and have a hint of a kick to them.

Chilies on a Pie Plate

On a whim, I tried roasting the jalapenos (as well as the poblanos, of course).  I broke out the barbecue and charred the chilies over the coals.  The smoke took me back thirty-five years.  For a few minutes, I drove down Fisher Ave towards School of Mines Road.  For a few minutes, I imagined the lilt of women calling to each other in Spanish.  Their laughter mixed with the scent of roasting chilies.

Chilies Roasting in the Evening at the 48th Parallel

The jalapenos roasted surprisingly well.  I put all the chilies in a paper bag and rolled up the top.  After a while, I dumped the chilies onto the cutting board and, using a couple of salad forks, peeled the skin away.  Several of the chilies went into freezer bags.

More wait on the heavy branches of the jalapeno plants in my greenhouse.

Maybe it's the wrong rock.  Maybe not.

Wild Blackberry Pie

They're not natives, these invasive Himalayan blackberries. They're not native, but they grow very well here. In open areas, you have to manage them. I mow the meadow where they and some other hardy species try to take over. When we first moved here, the entire meadow was covered in obnoxious (some say noxious) thistles, wild blackberry canes, wild roses, large amounts of random detritus, and piles of dead weeds. It was a fire waiting to happen.

That first summer, I borrowed an industrial-strength weed whacker and took that stuff down. We had the gigantic "weedstack" hauled off. Now we manage the meadow.  At the height of the growing season, I mow it every other week. It's pretty. The neighbors enjoy it. The deer enjoy it. The crows mine for bugs in it. The folks who walk past on the hiking trail enjoy it. It's no longer a fire hazard.

So the meadow is clear, but along the boundaries, along the trail, many berry vines remain.

Yes, they're not natives, but there here. They've established a niche. They grow in our neighborhood. I probably don't know what I'm talking about, but now they seem to be roughly in balance with other wild plants. In other words, their vines seem neither to grow without bound nor to be on the verge of collapse.

Himalayan blackberries grow along the nature trails. They grow at the big, nearby state park. They grow in the common area of our neighborhood. And this time of year they produce sweet fruit.

Angel went out and gathered a couple of buckets' worth. That's right: she walked around the trails between here and the nearby state park. Then she brought them back and froze some. Others, she mixed with tapioca and simmered on the stove. Later, she made a wonderful pie.

Angel's Blackberry Pie

Here's a photo of the last slice: