Half a Bushel

Half a bushel of tomatoes. Yup, that's what I bought. First time I've ever purchased anything in an increment of a bushel, or fractional part of a bushel. I'm not gonna lie, it felt good. And since it's prime tomato harvesting time, half a bushel of beautiful, ripe tomatoes was only $15. To give you an idea of how many tomatoes that it, the box they gave me was an old beer box, case size. That's a lot of tomatoes.

My plan was to cook up a big ole batch of pasta sauce, and instead of canning it, I'd honor the sauce by making it the first item inside our newest basement inhabitant - the chest freezer.

It took me a couple of hours to process all the tomatoes, and another hour or so to pick some fresh basil, oregano, and chives from our backyard herb garden to add to the sauce. I also purchased five pounds of onions for $3, so I chopped those up as well and threw them in the pot. The sauce took a while to cook down (the tomatoes were quite juicy), and I actually left them on low to cook down overnight.

I ended up with 11 jars (quart size) of pasta sauce, which are all happily hibernating in the basement freezer. From a cost benefit analysis, I only spent $18 on 11 jars of pasta sauce, which is still a savings over what I would have paid at the grocery store, but the joy is not in saving money, but having tasty homemade sauce waiting for me in the freezer.

Poll Results

So the poll results are in, and it seems that the readers overwhelmingly want to hear more funny stories about North Dakota. I've got to be careful not to make the stories of a "look at these bumbling hicks" types, since a) that's not really the case of the folks here, and b) I don't want a mob of angry villagers knocking politely at the front door whilst brandishing torches and pitchforks.

For the most part, there's no malice or judgment in my observations, nor do I think there is much City Mouse vs. Country Mouse attitude. My earlier post today about the neighborhood smelling like potatoes was the truth, the place smells like potatoes. Plus it gave me the opportunity to investigate and discover some information about my new hometown, mainly that there's a large potato processing plant a few miles down the street.

If I'm reading my audience correctly (and I know I am), I think what you truly want to see are unique perspectives on an otherwise unknown land. And I think the majority of you want to hear humorous tales of me getting into awkward or emabrassing situations due to my presuppositions, Southern California mindset, or lack of knowledge about local customs.

Please note that I will endeavor to place myself in as many situations that can produce these humorous results. This hopefully may include some or all of the following activities: snowmobiling, snow blowing, any other activity that deals with snow, eating lutefisk, clog dancing, pheasant/deer/elk hunting, decking myself out in Chargers gear to visit the local saloon for Sunday football viewing, attending the annual craft show (IT'S THIS WEEKEND!!!!), and ice fishing. I will try as to my best abilities to take pictures and share them, even if they're embarrassing.

Thanks for participating in the poll, it was fun. I think I'll try and come up with new polls every week or so. I'm also pleased to offer a full guarantee for anyone taking the poll. If you're not fully satisfied with your experience, your money will be refunded to you in full. That's right, a 100% money back guarantee if you're not happy. Beat that....

Potato Aroma

Alycia and I noticed this morning as we were walking the dogs that there is a noticeable baked potato aroma all about the neighborhood. Over the past few days there has also been a noticeable large plume of steam from the big plant several miles east from our house. Related events? For shizzle.

The plant is the JR Simplot Potato Processing Plant, one of the largest producers of frozen french fries in the country (they supply McDonald's with french fries). And now that it's prime potato harvesting time the plant is running at full tilt turning delicious Red River Valley potatoes into golden delicious, ready-to-be-fried-for-you-yummy-goodness french fries. The facility is huge and now that the weather has turned cooler, the steam plume is visible for some distance, and the breeze carries the potato smells further.

The rush to process all these taters is also to ensure that the town is ready, ramped, and geared up for POTATO BOWL USA 2009!!! You can see all the Potato Bowl USA 2009 information on their aforementioned website. Every year as part of the festivities they try to set the record for the worlds largest french fry feed, free french fries to anyone and everyone. You gotta be ready for an event like this.

It's actually sort of a pleasant smell, comforting, but at 6:00 in the morning, I don't know if it was the proper time to arouse a hankering for baked potatoes. I'll keep you up to date with how much longer the potato aroma continues. Maybe in another few days/weeks I'll be sick of it, we'll see.

In weather news, today is chilly and rainy. A big front is quickly moving through and was preceded by strong winds yesterday that made for a beautiful blustery fall day. I'm comning to realize what a big factor the wind is here. 50 degrees is quite pleasant. 50 degrees and 40 mph wind gusts can be chilly.

A Backyard Visitor

We had our first backyard visitor the other day. Yes, the fuzzy tailed rodent menace found us and pranced right into our very own backyard.

Shaak Ti saw the squirrel from her perch on the second story window and flew downstairs like she was shot out of a cannon. She hoped that at long last she could have her very own squirrel pet. Sadly it was not to be.




After 20 minutes or so of circling the tree, whining relentlessly, and barking like the crazy dog that she is, she finally gave up. I did go outside myself, proud that my firstborn had finally done something productive and treed her first squirrel. Truth be told, I also wanted visual confirmation that there was actually a squirrel in the tree and she wasn't barking at specters, a phantom squirrel from the great beyond....





There was also some concern that she would hurt her neck from craning it skyward for so long, though I'm sure that would have been fine with her if she could have reached the squirrel prize up there in it's leafy Cracker Jack box. She was OK though. Two minutes after coming back in the house she had forgotten all about her almost squirrel prize and set to destroying her new favorite toy.



This final picture is my favorite, she looks like a tiny Lipizzaner Stallion, perched up against the tree. You may be asking yourself - What the hell is a Lipizzaner Stallion? and how the hell does John know that that is? Well I'll tell you faithful reader.

The Lipizzaner Stallions are some special kind of white horse from Spain (or Portugal or some place like that). The tour around, and for a fee you can sit there and watch them trot and prance around. I saw this as a small child. My sister went through a horse phase and demanded to see the Lipizzaner Stallion show when it rolled into town.

I can't emphasize to you, dear reader how brutally painful and boring this was a small child, to sit for hours and watch these pretentious horses trot around in circles. It made synchronized swimming look like a monster truck rally.

Officially North Dakotans

We officially became North Dakotans yesterday. How so? you may ask. Did we get North Dakota drivers licenses? Nope. UND Fighting Sioux tattoos? Not quite. A big 4 Wheel Drive Pickup with mud flaps and a sweet Hemi engine? Maybe later. No we finally indulged and purchased a chest freezer.

You see, pretty much everyone has one or more chest freezers in their garage or basement for long term food storage. They're useful for when you need to lay in provisions for a blizzard, prefer to freeze your garden bounty instead of can it, if you purchase a whole cow (yes people actually do this - you pay to have your cow processed and they deliver hundreds of pounds of various cuts of meet and ground beef), or if you drop a cap one of God's creatures while hunting and have a fatty grip of wild meat on your hands.

We bought our chest freezer from Lowe's Hardware and selected the 9.0 cubic foot (this is a measure of internal storage space) model, which is the medium sized one. We wanted to make sure it fit down the stairs and into our basement, so we couldn't get the large 15 cubic foot model. There was also a smaller 7.0 cubic foot model, but we decided it was too small. When I told the salesperson that I wanted to purchase the medium sized freezer, he made an incredulous face and asked "You only want one?" Yes I replied, we're chest freezer newbies and we only want one.

Congratulations - It's a bouncing baby Frigidaire

Check out all that sweet, sweet storage space, and the hanging baskets. You know you're jealous.

Sigg Company Shamefully Admits Its Aluminum Sigg Bottles Contain BPA

So if you've been living in a cave with no wireless Internet, you may have missed the announcement (though you've probably been quite cool and comfortable in your cave) that Sigg bottles have BPA, a cancer causing plastic, in the lining of their aluminum drinking containers.

I have two Sigg bottles, both of which were purchased for the express purpose of NOT leaching chemicals into my body. My choices are to abandon them and buy something else, like a stainless steel Kleen Kanteen, or send them back to the company to be replaced free of charge (though I have to pay for shipping) and believe the company that their "new and improved liner" doesn't have chemicals.

Should I believe a company that already lied to me? Or cut my losses and move on? Or should I believe that there's "little risk of chemical leaching" as the company website tells me? It's probably no worse than drinking out of plastic dispoable water bottles and microwaving my leftover casserole in plastic tupperware. What to do...

I'm pretty bummed about this development, and not just because Sigg lied/conveniently omitted facts about their containers. I'm bummed because my two Sigg bottles had become my friends, I even named them - Schmitty and Blue Lou. They were like my sidekicks, helping me to defeat the dehydration demons, which for anyone who knows my and my perspiration proclivities knows this is no easy task.

Instead of a Sigg bottle I'd highly recommend a Klean Kanteen.

Motorcycles and Such

One thing that still throws me for a loop about North Dakota is that there are no helmet laws like there are in California (and other states). I'll always do a double take when I see people cruising down the street on their motorcycle with no helmet on. Granted I can't understand the allure and joy of riding a motorcycle and have the wind whipping through my hair since I never have, and never will ride a motorcycle.

Most of my lack of desire to ride one stems from my childhood riding my bicycle everywhere, and having a paper route for a few years. With only human power and gravity on my side, I sustained injuries and had multiple accidents, and am terrified to think of what would happen with the advent of much horsepower to the equation.

One of my former co-workers who had ridden motorcycles since he was a child, on the farm and around the city, and who commuted every day on a bike told me once - "there are two kinds of riders, those who have fallen, and those who are going to fall." I'm not sure how true this is, but he seemed to believe it. And it certainly made it seem like a pretty dangerous thing to ride a motorcycle.

So anyways, back to North Dakota. I'm not sure that the anti-helmet sentiment is an expression of personal liberty, of anti government, or something else. Knowing what happens when there are motorcycle accidents, and knowing what happens without a helmet makes me cringe a bit every time I see a helmet-less person on a bike. I guess natural selection expresses itself in different ways.

Cast Your Vote

Since I don't want you, faithful readers, to feel as though you're at the whim of a tyrannical blog-master, I've decided to add a generous srpinkling of democracy to our little blog. For the first time ever on this blog, you can now be part of the solution, not just part of the problem, and can cast your vote on what blog topics you'd like to see more, or less of.

You have one week.....