unsigned podcast » Home & Garden

Daylight Savings Ends

podcaster — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 19:55:12 +0000

Goodbye, Daylight Savings. I’m going to miss you. The darkness always comes too early to suit me.

Still Grilling

podcaster — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 16:36:25 +0000

Thank God for Indian Summer. It got cold for a few days, which always gets the leaves to turn color. Then it gets warm again. So I can still grill my supper most nights. That’s what I love about the South. Almost never too cold and nasty to grill. Thos suckers up north have to deal with soups and stews in the winter. But down here we are still barbecuing and grilling steaks outside on the deck. Oh, snap!

Paper Delivery

podcaster — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 20:22:22 +0000

The days of having a daily newspaper delivered to your door are numbered. I remember as a kid we had three newspapers delivered to our house every day. In the morning we had the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal delivered to a metal box on top of a metal fence post at the end of the driveway. Every morning my dad would call to our dog, Lucky, and walk down to the paper box and get the newspaper. He read them both over his morning cup of coffee and then the breakfast that my mom cooked for him.

In the afternoons we would get the Evening Star delivered to the house. The Star brought us up to date on all the news that had happened that day, missed by the early edition of the Washington Post, which had to go to press at midnight. The Star also carried a lot more of the local news. The Lions Club meetings, the high school football games and high school events, and speeches by the Mayor or other dignitaries.

I do miss those days. The cable news and the internet give us the daily and breaking news, but it just is not the same as reading the newspaper in the easy chair with a hot cup of coffee and Lucky sitting beside you.

Blueberries

podcaster — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 19:17:52 +0000

As kids we were taken to several different places that let you “pick your own” fruits and vegetables. My parents would take us because we would save some money by picking your own, but also because it was a wholesome family activity that would keep us busy for sometimes hours at a time.

My parents believed that fresh picked not only tastes best but is healthiest for you, and I agree. We often went to a farm that grew strawberries and we would load up the freezer with fresh strawberries – my mom’s most favorite fruit in the world. We also picked other fruits and vegetables, and we patronized a lot of fresh fruit and vegetable stands that lined the Maryland highways, buying everything from fresh peaches to cantalopes to green beans to sweet corn.

When my children were young, we continued that tradition with them and they have picked many things from other’s gardens as well as our own. But our favorite has always been to pick blueberries. Not only is picking blueberries great family fun, but they freeze and keep well, and can be used in so many delicious things from the kitchen. There’s nothing like a stack of grandma’s fresh blueberry pancakes with melting real butter and warm blueberry syrup!

Life’s a Beach

podcaster — Sun, 01 May 2011 03:22:06 +0000

My folks have a cottage on the water and we try to get over there at least once each summer to most importantly spend a weekend with them and also take advantage of the boating and water sports while there.

Having grown up on and around the water, I know how hard the elements can be on wood products and even some metals. Salt water and wind are very corrosive to furniture, decks, boats, etc. and there’s a good reason why the good quality boats use teak on their decks and trim. Teak is a dense, durable wood that can hold up to the elements for years and years. Teak does not require much care or maintenance, compared to other hardwoods. And it looks great.

I thought it would be nice to get my folks something for the cottage for their anniversary and I’m thinking a pair of teak chairs for the deck would be appreciated. Let’s hope my folks don’t read my blog before I have a chance to get them ordered and delivered to the cottage for their anniversary gift. I love surprising them!

Reworking the Budget

podcaster — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 04:05:41 +0000

Next week I’m sitting down and going over the entire household budget. We need a better working plan for managing our household finances and we need to make a few more adjustments to offset the extra cost of gas, since that has gone up so much this spring and summer.

One thought that is worth exploring is to completely re-evaluate my insurance coverages and premiums. I think that there is a chance to save money by shopping around for a different homeowners policy and also possibly a new car insurance policy. My homeowners has been with the same company on automatic renewal for over 6 years. I think it is time to shop around and make sure I’m getting the best rates and the right coverage. I know I can do it all on the internet now which is easy and more convenient, and I’m sure I’ll save both time and money by getting new quotes and making some changes.

Tuna

podcaster — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 19:38:14 +0000

Tuna fish to me always meant a small round can of flaked, beige fish meat packed in oil or water that strongly resembles cat food. You used a can opener to go around the top edge and after the top clicked loose, you left it on the can so you have someplace to place your fingers and squeeze when you carry the can over to the sink and tilt it to drain off the liquid.

My mother made tuna by adding Kraft Mayonnaise, chopped white onion, chopped celery and bottled sweet pickle relish. Heap it on fresh white Wonder Bread and put a few leaf pieces from a head of iceburg lettuce. Serve with potato chips.

My stepmother had her own idea of tuna. She used Hellmans mayonnaise, if she used mayo at all. She preferred the sweet-sour taste of Miracle Whip. She chopped up one or two hard boiled eggs to add to the tuna, along with some chopped onion. I don’t recall any pickle relish or celery, but to be honest, I hated that tuna recipe and would do almost anything to avoid having to eat it, from I’m not hungry right now to I don’t want to spoil my supper when I get home (to my real mom after the Sunday child custody visitation was over).

Now I celebrate the diversity of tuna and enjoy it with a variety of add-ins, including sweet pickle salad cubes or chopped “bread and butter” pickles, a slice of American cheese of top or shredded any mix of cheeses stirred right into the tuna. Onions in or out. Add anything crunchy that you like. Put it on any kind of bread or roll you want, and put any kind of lettuce – or not – on it.

The only place I draw the line is that IF you include mayo, it MUST be Kraft real mayonnaise. Any other brand of mayo or “salad dressing” ruins it for me.

Tool Man

podcaster — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 00:23:04 +0000

Well, today the wife dropped the latest bombshell. She wants to put a guest bathroom downstairs, with the thought that we’ll be making the downstairs into an mother-in-law apartment sometime over the next few years. The downstairs runs along the entire length of the house, so there is plenty of room down there to buildout a couple of rooms for sleeping and watching TV, and if we put in a full bathroom we can plug into that plumbing and put in a tiny kitchen along the shared wall.

The perfect spot for a bathroom is adjacent to the laundry room. We can put in a walk-in tub, a toilet and still have room for a nice sink and vanity. I told the wife to start looking at fixtures and pick out the things she wants so I can get an idea of the prices and we’ll work up a budget for the remodeling project.

Turkey Day

podcaster — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 15:21:36 +0000

Last week I bought a huge frozen Butterball turkey to enjoy on Thanksgiving. We took it out of the freezer and put it into the refrigerator to defrost 3 days ago. It is still as hard as a rock and I guess we will have to soak it in the kitchen sink or figure out how to use the microwave to finish thawing it out before we pop it in the oven today. I think the turkey is too big to even fit into the microwave. This will be an interesting problem to solve, with physics and logistic coming into play.

Looks like dinner will be in the evening rather than late afternoon as originally planned. LOL

Just Brown and Gone

podcaster — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 17:30:11 +0000

Wonder why the leaves are not turning the bright fall colors that we’ve come to expect this time of year? It seems like the leaves are going straight from green to brown. The yard is already full of large brown oak leaves and smaller brown hickory leaves. I don’t mind raking these leaves in an afternoon, but when the burr balls start to fall from the hickory trees, I will be gathering them up with a vengeance. The burr balls are a nuisance and cause twisted ankles as well as puncturing the soft pads of my dog’s feet.