Warm and Dry Weather

After a protracted Spring of cool and wet weather, summer returned to more normal weather in North Dakota, hot and humid.  Maybe even more humid than normal.  The precipitation was also perfectly spaced throughout the summer growing season, and didn't come all at once.  Just a nice quarter to half an inch of rain every two or three days.  It's been a pretty good gardening season for sure.

This week has been warm (mid 80's) and dry, great for the farmers to harvest everything from grain to sugar beets (sugar beet pre-piling started this week).  The warm weather is expected through the weekend and has a "last gasp of summer so you better get your ass out and enjoy it" quality to it.  So enjoy it I have been with meanderings through the garden and wanderings through the shady park with the pups. 

We have a big pumpkin, two watermelons, onions, potatoes, tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, eggplant, and a bumper crop of cucumbers still coming in.  Alycia has been running the food dehydrator almost non-stop making zucchini chips with the bounty from our garden and donated stuff from her parents garden.

This is a pretty typical daily haul from the garden, lots of various kinds of cucumbers, some eggplant, some tomatoes and a few peas.  Good stuff.

Wordless Wednesday

Bread and Butter Pickles

We've got three different kinds of cucumbers going right now (regular, pickling, Armenian) and they're all kicking into high production.  What better to do with cucumbers than make delicious sweet pickles, also known as bread and butter pickles.  Special thanks to Mama Bear since this is her recipe.

These are refrigerator pickles, they live in your refrigerator, so you don't even need to know how to can to make them.  It's super duper easy.  Just boil up some stuff, chop the cukes (and a few other things), and combine it all in a big glass jar. 

You will need:

• 10 to 14 medium sized cucumbers
• 1 onion sliced
• 1 pepper chopped
• 2 1/2 tsp mustard seed
• 2 1/2 tsp dill seed

In a large pot, bring to a boil the following (stirring occasionally):

• 1 pint water
• 1 quart vinegar
• 4 cups sugar
• 1/3 cup pickling salt (regular salt will work too)

In a large glass 5 quart jar add the mustard seed and dill seed and a few of the onion slices.  Then add the cucumbers, pepper, and remaining onions.  Pour the boiling liquid into the jar (please do this carefully) and allow to set in the refrigerator for 7 days. 

My first jar of pickles.  Though when I made this batch I didn't have enough cucumbers to fill the jar, but no worries.  A few days later there were more ripe cucumbers in the garden and I just sliced them up and added them to the jar, and kept going until the jar was properly packed with pickles.

Stella the Stegosaurus

I usually make many promises here on the old Deaf Dogs and Benevolent Gnomes blog, but I feel I only occasionally follow through on them.  Promises of fabulous posts go unwritten and great ideas shrivel on the vine of John's brain. But in keeping with the previous promise to review many of my favorite items I present the Stella the giant purple Stegosaurus dinosaur review. 

Many of you probably can't imagine paying $31 for a dog toy, but a) this toy is huge - 19 x 6 x 15, b) it really is tough.  I've had a few of these allegedly "tough" toys before and been pretty disappointed, even going so far as writing an angry letter to the toy maker (to no avail).  Sure they last longer than other toys, but never long enough to warrant the price you pay.  This toy?  It's probably worth every penny, but since we got it as a Christmas gift from my sister, I can't really say it's worth every penny since we didn't pay for it.

This toy has withstood 8 months of daily use from the puppy.  And not just use, but at least an hour a day of destruction, thrashing, tug-of-war, chewing, and deliberate disemboweling attempts.  Stella the Stegosaurus has stood firm, despite losing a bit of purple fur on her undercarriage (there's still at least one more layer of fabric between Stella's innards and the puppy's gnashing teeth), she carries on. 

More Troubling Signs

First the trouble with the law (see the aptly named Trouble With The Law post), now this.  My nephew has started wearing....sigh...floppy hats.

Just about any psychologist, psychiatrist, or criminal expert can tell you that the wearing of a floppy hat is a sure sign of societal deviance and a determining factor for the potential for criminal behavior.  You start wearing a floppy hat or two, and end up like this...

 Never trust a fellow in a floppy hat, no matter how harmless they may look.

The Corner on First - Update

A little update on the marigolds that we planted along the corner of our lot around a power pole.  You can see the original post - The Corner on First. 

The area went from this:

To this:

And now it looks like this:

A very successful experiment, one that we'll probably repeat again next year.  The bummer is that the marigolds are annuals and we'll have to replant them every year, but it's not a whole lot of effort, and well worth the splash of color all summer.  

Remain Calm, All is Well

We're toying around with some format changes here at Deaf Dogs and Benevolent Gnomes, but don't be frightened, we're not going anywhere.  The blog may look a bit different (I decided recently that a format update was LONG overdue), and we may try a few things before we settle one one new format, so don't be scared. 

And please feel free to chime in with particular things you like or don't like, we'll do our best to accommodate our loyal readers.  

Summertime Iced Coffee

Anyone who knows me is aware of my love for coffee.  Actually to be honest, it's more than a love for coffee, it's a combination of obsession, addiction, and morning routine.  In the summer though, with the heat and humidity, drinking hot coffee can leave my in a tacky, sweaty mess, thus sort-of ruining my coffee experience.  

When I visited Costa Rica several years ago there was delicious coffee everywhere, with every breakfast.  And even though it was 90 degrees with oppressive tropical humidity, I drank as much coffee as my nerves could withstand.  Sure this often led to minor heart palpitations by late morning but it was worth it.  But sweating through your humid summer morning caffeine fix is one thing when you're in a tropical paradise, with a breakfast of scrambled eggs, black beans, rice, and fried plantains and an entirely different thing when you're sitting at your dining room table at home, having breakfast, and wondering why the dog won't stop licking his butt, it's two different worlds. 

The solution?  Curbing coffee consumption was not an option, so how to ingest my coffee in a manner that does not cause perspiration?  Iced coffee?  Well the couple of times I tried to make iced coffee resulted in very poor tasting beverages.  Unfortunately my previous attempts at making iced coffee have consisted of: take regular brewed hot coffee, pour over ice, sip, wonder why this tastes like crap.

So here's how you really make iced coffee.

1) Grind fresh beans (use the same amount as you would for your normal brew) and place in glass container.
2) Fill with water.  About half as much as would fit in a normal pot/brewing session. 
3) Place in refrigerator at least overnight, preferably for 24 hours (I also shake it occasionally a few times to stir up all the goodness).

Sorry about the crappy picture.  The camera and I weren't getting along today. 

4) Filter.  I just pour it through my coffee machine and let it filter through.
5) Empty coffee grounds into the blueberry bushes (coffee grounds are not only great fertilizer, but they make the soil a bit acidic which blueberries love) and rinse glass container.
6) Pour back into glass container and keep refrigerated.  Not sure how long it's good for, but I'd use within a week.

I fill a glass half full with ice and pour two parts coffee and one part milk, or if I'm feeling particularly festive, two parts coffee and one part chocolate milk for a tasty iced mocha.  Delicious.