The Manic Mechanic

The garden has started producing tomatoes in earnest. This evening Jeff and I gave my recently acquired Champion juicer it's first try, since I had also gotten my desired optional screen. In about 15-20 minutes we ended up with several gallons of juice! This sure beat the hell out of my old hand-cranked method by a mile. The juice itself is nice and thick but without the seeds or skins, I will begin cooking the stuff down tomorrow with the ultimate result being pasta sauce/marinara. This is only the beginning, however. The harvest of the last several days is only the tip of the tomato-y iceberg. Some of the Roma tomatoes will be frozen as they are, quite useful later on in dishes needing whole 'maters or things like soups and stews. More sauce will be made and frozen, and lots will be had in upcoming meals too. Quite a bit of the harvest will be shared with friends as well.

The smell of tomato sauce being made is one of my favorite smells, it reminds me of late summer, and, these days of course, Mom. So I am sure I'll get a little more than wistful as my olfactory senses go into overload. That's not a bad thing. One thing I know, Mom would have loved this juicer. I hope I make her memory proud.

A few years ago I needed some replacement parts for my Weber gas grill. Not finding anything local and unable to make use of universal parts I had to order from Weber. No big deal, just a bit of wait, and the prices were not outrageous. However, ordering online has, of course, set me up with a bit of bacn (spam from a business you do business with) in the form of a "Recipe of the Week." The recipes all involve some form of drilling, o'course. Most of them look quite good, ranging from basic to exotic. The one from the week before last, however, really intrigued me, and I let Cheff Jeff take a gander. Well, he decided to give this one a go tonight and we were completely blown away. It also helped that we provided some of our own fresh veggies out of our garden for this and our accompanying sides as well.



The watermelon came from our garden as well, one of the prime motivators for picking this recipe. Jeff halved the jalapeño just in case, yet it was not spicy at all. OMG it was so good, served over couscous and barley and with a side of sauteed grape tomatoes, zucchini and onions. I'm getting hungry again just thinking about it.

Jeff was in full kitchen mode today, making this along with stuff for later in the week plus four loaves of zucchini bread (can you tell what veggie we had a bumper crop of while we were away?). Soon to be on tap, or, shall we say, up to our ears in: Tomatoes and apples.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

And for those that don't normally celebrate the holiday, Happy T!

I've been lax in timely updates. Not all has been spent stumbling around like Pegleg the Pirate on ice, though. Late last week I braved the DMV/MVA for all of about 20 minutes to acquire a temporary handicap parking tag for the car. This will allow me some temporary rockstar/Doris Day parking while I get through my period of defective leggedness. It's a help, for sure.

On Friday, Jeff and I had a chance to make an across-the-coasts connection with a friend of mine I have known online for over ten years now. musklebear was in town on a teaching gig, far, far away from his Cali home. We used the fortunate time to rescue him from his boring hotel room that evening and took him out for dinner. We happened (well, I hobbled at best) upon an odd restaurant called "Ketchup" at National Harbor. Apparently they are known for their... ketchup. Make that ketchups. Maple ketchup. Chipotle ketchup. Raspberry ketchup. Ranch ketchup. Garlic ketchup. And plain, old ketchup. The food was so-so, the atmosphere very noisy, and they attempted to pile our main dishes onto our small table about a minute after receiving our entrees (we sent them back until we finished the 'apps', as has now become fashionable to call the appetizers). But our very engaging waitress and our wonderful guest more than made up for it.



This was a very welcome diversion after several weeks of work and health issues. Thanks bunches, Jim.

The weekend was fairly quiet, I managed to finish up patching the huge sinkhole and it's older, smaller cousin in the driveway on Saturday. This was a job that would have normally taken me half a day at best, but was spread over several days because I just can't do much heavy work at all being incapacitated. It's very frustrating for me. But, I manage. Slow and stead wins the race, blah blah blah and all that. This week I hope to arrange my surgery and get that taken care of. I hope to sneak in a trip to the ophthalmologist in there as well as find a dentist to take care of other minor (or not) maladies I've been putting off for a while.

Tomorrow is more rehab/treatments for the ankle and taking Kodi to the groomer. And whatever else I can manage to do.

Jeff and I have been cleaning up stuff in the basement. In one of the cabinets I use for storing non-perishable food we found a box of Kellogg's corn flakes. The box had been opened and a portion of the cereal had been used, and the bag was not even resealed. The box has a use-by date of Nov. 9, 1996. The box has been around the house for 13 years. That's not the scary part.

The scary part is that the cereal tasted like it was a freshly-opened new box.

For me, there is something always comforting about having chocolate chip cookies and a big glass of milk, even if the cookies are store bought and a bit stale. Of course, absolute nirvana in this case would be fresh, out-of-the-oven homemade cookies and milk that is near tooth-shattering cold. One of these days I am going to have to do some baking.

Question: What is your favorite "comfort snack"?