The Cats and the Cucumber

21 Nov 2015 Leave a comment

by alightningbug in Kitties, Mom Stuff, NaBloPoMo, Plant Life and Balcony Gardening Tags: , , , ,

If you’ve seen this video you might be tempted to scare your cat with a cucumber. I was. I was tempted.

There are several articles out now about how scaring your cat with a cucumber can be traumatic (such as this one). Some cats are fragile. The scare may cause him or her have a permanent fear of cucumbers.

Seems to me like those cats were already afraid of cucumbers. The only way to overcome the fear is to expose a cat to more cucumbers, right? I mean, it not like he’s going to get over the fear through therapy and cucumber photos. Right?

Well, before I read the advice from vets, I tried it. More

The Garden and the Hair

05 Nov 2015 Leave a comment

by alightningbug in NaBloPoMo, Plant Life and Balcony Gardening Tags: , ,

I’m pretty happy that there’s a little life left in my balcony garden here in autumn. It makes a fun contrast to the changing trees. And means we get a few more ripe tomatoes before I pickle all the green ones that are left.



And practicing a classic Princess Leia ‘do for, ya know, an upcoming day that  I might want to wear it like this. I should try it around some kind of form to give it a bit more size. (These are much better buns than my nine-year-old self could muster, though, so I feel a sense of accomplishment.)



We visited my mom’s old house today. It will be torn down and replaced with a larger more modern house. We weren’t sure what we’d find — house or no house, trees or no trees. We held our breath as we got close. 

The house and trees are still there. One rose bush has been dug up along with most of the butterfly bush. Not sure what the builder is doing there. A white pipe is sticking up from the dirt nearby. But there’s one rose bush left, and it’s covered with roses!





And that’s it for Day 5 NaBloPoMo.

NaBloPoMo Day 4

04 Nov 2015 Leave a comment

by alightningbug in Mom Stuff, NaBloPoMo, Plant Life and Balcony Gardening, Writing Tags: , , , , ,

I’m working on several posts for the upcoming days but none are finished yet, and I’m having a hard time keeping my eyes open right now. I fear that if I close them for a short cat nap then it will be tomorrow before I open them again. I’m only four days in to NaBloPoMo and am not ready to throw in the towel. So here’s something.

Several things happened today other than all the normal stuff like food, laundry, work, and getting my daughter to school. 

I got some paperwork in that has been on my to do list. Always feels good to get something done.

I officially changed calling plan for my iPhone. Verizon has some better deals now than when I first got my phone. For $20 less per month I get 50% more data than I had plus unlimited texts and mobile hot spots. I’m still tempted to jump ship to an even less expensive carrier but giving Verizon a second chance for now.

Unlimited texts would never have mattered to me until September. We got our daughter a nice and nicely priced Andriod phone for her birthday along with a very inexpensive calling & data plan. It’s working well. Thank goodness she has unlimited texts!

I’ve reached my text limit two, yes two, months in a row. Crazy. Part of the problem is that we tend to send strings of short little messages that spread across five or so individual texts. That adds up. We could have put it all into one or two text messages but instead it’s more like this:

“Hey mom”

“I’m done with homework”

“Can we watch Back to the Future II?”

“Can I have pie?”

“R you going 2 b home soon?”

“Kk”

And I answer her in equally short messages. Now, we are both free to send mini-texts to our hearts’ content.

We

Can 

Even 

Put 

Each

Word

In

A

Single

Text

If

We

Like!

Which I probably won’t do because it’s a pain. But, hey.

And I’m excited about mobile hot spot because it means I can connect my iPad mini while I’m out and get more stuff done without trying to read the tiny symbols on my phone as my fingers type a string of typos that I have to fix. Once I figure out how to do it, I can mobile-write a lot more easily (at least I sure do hope so).

Virginia had a little earthquake early this morning. I don’t think I felt it.

Screenwriter Melissa Mathison passed away today. She wrote E.T. She was also married to Harrison Ford for many years. Hello!, a smart, talented writer married Han Solo. That counted for something back in my teen years. I was sad that they divorced, but I’m even sadder to read of her passing.

We’re having an unusually warm couple of days and more tomatoes and peppers are still growing and even ripening on our balcony! It helps that the balcony is on the sunny south side of the building. I think having plants close to the building helps extend the growing season too. It’s November! 

Made a really yummy Tortilla Soup for dinner complete with a few balcony tomatoes, peppers, and herbs. My kiddo had hers in a bread bowl (pictured below) because bread bowls are yummy.

Trying hard to keep on schedule with writing. Every day is a challenge. I like the writing it’s the schedule that’s the tricky part.

That’s about all for now. I’m typing with my phone while leaning on one arm reclined on the couch and my leanin’ arm is starting to go numb. Perfect time to shift and post.

Have a good one, folks!

Grasshopper

15 Oct 2015 3 Comments

by alightningbug in Plant Life and Balcony Gardening, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , ,

While watering my balcony plants this morning I discovered I had a visitor. A grasshopper was perched high on my Celebrity tomato plant. (That’s the name of a hybrid tomato — it isn’t that my tomato plant is famous). We’re four flights up on this side of the building, so some of our balcony visitors are quite a surprise.



My first thought was, “oh cool, aren’t grasshoppers good luck?” Then my scientific brain kicked in. It said, “don’t think of it as so much of a lucky grasshopper think of it as more of a plague of locusts.” 

Thanks science brain — always there to burst my bubble. Grasshopper on the hearth — good luck. Locust on your crops — bad.

Grasshopper or locust — those things do eat plants. I know the frost will get my container garden soon anyway, but I don’t want my few tomatoes to get chomped on in the meantime. So I decide to take a few photos (he’s really cool looking) and then relocate my little intruder. 

Thinking I can just scoop him (or her) up with my hands and fling him over the railing of the balcony, I go for it. This startles the grasshopper, who can indeed hop very forcefully. He jumps off the plant, banging right into my chest as if to say, “back off, b****, this plant is mine.” 

I scream, loudly and flail my arms at my chest in case he’s still there. He is not. He apparently bounced right off my chest and back into my tomato plant. So now he’s still there, and I need to remove him.



I know at this point that using my hands is not the way to go. So I pick up two unused drainage dishes from nearby and use them to form a sort of clamshell over and under the grasshopper. It works very nicely. The makeshift clamshell holds just long enough that I can fling him over the side of the balcony. Since we’re four flights up, I’m not sure if he’ll survive. Never fear. That’s when he sprouts big fluttery wings and uses them to glide softly down — all the while looking back at me like, “you may have won this time but I’ll be back.”

Searching a bit online, I guess they are lucky in many Asian and Native American cultures. (It might be crickets on hearths that are considered lucky though. Meh, close enough. Probably better for all of us that I didn’t try to bring him inside. The cats would go wild!.) 

My search found this: Grasshopper Totem. It was actually cool to have him visit. And it just figures that a symbol of good luck visits my plant, and I rationalized that I should throw him over the balcony. Maybe I’m okay if he has a little nibble, he may have left some good-luck grasshopper poop, but I still don’t want him to eat much of my tomatoes. There’s plenty of stuff to eat down below.

Not Done Yet, The Tomato & Pepper Edition 

11 Oct 2015 Leave a comment

by alightningbug in Plant Life and Balcony Gardening, Uncategorized Tags: ,

I picked two newly ripened Patio tomatoes yesterday morning. There are several varieties of green ones left, and about five tiny green ones that just started on my Celebrity tomato plant. So, hopefully, it’s not over yet. All the rain and cool temperatures the week before last had me worried.

There are a bunch of jalapeño peppers that just started growing too. 

I don’t know if the new little green tomatoes or peppers will fully grow and ripen — probably not. But I hope the get some size before a hard freeze hits us.

I picked some of my green tomatoes before Hurricane Joaquin hit or, more accurately, didn’t hit here.

I may fry a couple but what I did with some of them was dice them and add them to a mix of hot peppers in vinegar and spices. So, yes, I pickled them. They were a really nice surprise. They’re tart, spicy hot from the peppers, and have a nice crunch. I could see adding this mix to many types of food for a nice pop of flavor.

Also I picked most of my ripe tobasco peppers and put them in vinegar. They are beautiful colors — yellow greens to yellow orange and finally reds. This variety is so juicy it’s almost like tiny bottles of hot pepper sauce grow right on the plant. Even the stems and “caps” easily pop right off a ripe pepper. There’s no need to cut them. They pack a wollop! 







What the Storm Takes

01 Oct 2015 Leave a comment

by alightningbug in Plant Life and Balcony Gardening, Uncategorized Tags: , , , ,

Tuesday’s storm blew over one of my tomato plants. It was a little top heavy. That’s the risk of not being rooted in the earth or tied to the balcony. I’ll have to fix that. Two hard green tomatoes flung off the plant and rolled under the table & chairs on our balcony. Maybe they were ducking for cover.

I’ve been hoping the few tomatoes we have left would ripen and be yummy. Now I might have to look into green tomato recipes like pickled tomatoes or the classic fried green variety. I hope I can still coax some to ripen on vines or the windowsill if nothing else. 

Bonnie Plants just posted on their Facebook page that now is the time to pick green tomatoes still on the vines. “Nooooooo!” Where? Everywhere? Or just up North? I still want to leave some on the vines to grow and ripen, but Mother Nature may have other ideas for them. Maybe I’m a little ahead of the times with my two green tomatoes. 

We’ve had more rain here this week than most of the summer combined with the exception of early on when it seemed to rain every single afternoon. It’s like bookends.

Hurricane Joaquin may hit inland near here in the next few days. Or not. Who can say. The rain seems to be announcing it’s approach as if a red carpet were rolled out. But winds change. The scruffy superstar may not show up inland. It may only rain a lot.

I’m both a little relieved and a little worried that my mom and stepdad have moved out of their old house and into a newer house that’s farther away. The new home isn’t yet storm-tested but the old had a beautiful large oak with branches over and behind the house. It is somehow both protective and precarious.

In the meantime, I’ll need to move our table & chairs to someplace less exposed just in case part of the storm reaches us. Our balcony gets very windy. I’ll also need to move or tie down any remaining plants. The rest remains to be seen.





Catch Up Day – Still Not a Food Thing

18 Sep 2015 2 Comments

by alightningbug in Games, Laundry, Mom Stuff, Plant Life and Balcony Gardening, Time-saving, WordPress, Wordpress Writing 101 Tags: , , , , , ,

Urgh! I’m supposed to be writing stuff and somehow hardly anything has gotten done this week. I managed some reading because, with apps on my phone, I can do that just about anywhere in tiny bursts. To some extent I can do that with writing too, but it is slower. Much slower. I only got a bit of writing done. Somehow time in this past week has evaporated like the last wisps of summer sun.

For the past month I’ve been meaning to do my nails and shave my legs.  I don’t get the bug to do my nails very often, but it does show up once in a while. So nearly every day I’ve been thinking, “oh, maybe I can do them today.” Then there’s laundry. Or a cat barfs. Or something else comes up. So that didn’t happen yet. The summer color I’d planned on doing just ain’t gonna happen at this point. I’m looking at you, Autumn.

Last week I had a follow up appointment with my Physical Therapist. I reeeaally should have shaved my legs if I was going to wear shorts there. Did it happen? Nope. If I’d have remembered this little tid-bit of info then I might have worn longer pants instead.

After that I should have, at least, shaved ’em over the weekend to avoid any more mishaps. Still no. Two days ago, I managed to haul my cookies up on an exercise bike again, guess what? I could feel my leg hairs swaying in the wind as I peddled. It’s not even like I can claim “winter legs.” At least I showered. 

Earlier I managed to paint a card for my daughter for her birthday. I’m proud of the card (proud that I finished it befor her birthday was over), and I’m even more proud of her.  I think she is a very cool young teen.



We had my daughter’s birthday party last weekend so it was a busy one. Plus we got her a nice but inexpensive cell phone, and activating it took a lot longer than I was expecting. 

First I’d tried to set her up on Cricket which didn’t work at all. It should have been the correct type of GSM unlocked phone to work there, but I think something is whacky. I’ll probably need go into a Cricket store to get the SIM to work. Like I have time. I can’t even manage to shave my legs.

Walmart Family Mobile plan to the rescue! I didn’t even know this existed until a few weeks ago. I’ll even save $5 a month over Cricket (but with slightly less high-speed data). I hope the coverage works OK, but the website for the service actually makes me feel like somebody put some thought into making it family friendly. More important, it actually worked. Excellent.

I meant to bake maple or caramel apple cupcakes for her birthday party, but that didn’t get  done either. Instead I purchased not-bad-for-store-bought cupcakes in vanilla and chocolate and decorated them with pumpkin spice marshmallows. They were a hit. Especially the marshmallows. I think they’ll be good in coffee or hot chocolate this fall.

We had a lot of fun at my daughter’s Laser Tag Adventure party. She has some great friends! The laser tag games are fun and the location was nice. But they had lots of video game redemption machines there, and some of the kids went a little wild with playing those. Seriously, why does it seem like so much fun for a machine to spit out paper tickets?

You can never get much with the tickets you trade in for “prizes” there or anywhere. Put in 25 cents and if you’re lucky you’ll be able to trade your tickets for a nickle worth of goods. 

My daughter got some Now & Laters — little hard taffy bricks that I’m pretty sure are nothing but an evil ploy of evil dentists. My daughter chose banana flavor. Against my good judgement she convinced my to try one. I promptly pulled a crown off my molar. I should have known better. Taffy is pure sweet evil incarnate, and this is not the first time that that crown has come unglued. It’s a fairly shallow, flat tooth.  At least I didn’t swallow it this time. That happened. And that’s another story for another time.

My mom and stepdad are moving in these next few days. I’m excited for them but also nervous as they’ll live farther away. This will be a big change. I helped with a few things yesterday, and I’m determined to help more this weekend.

I’m also determined to get some writing done, so here’s something. It looks like I’ve actually managed a blog post. I also have a couple of Cherokee Purple tomatoes finally ripening in our balcony garden. What’s not to like? It could be a good weekend.

I’m resetting my goals for the next couple of days. I am setting aside time. Still haven’t done my nails or shaved my legs though.





Summer Remnants, Recipes

24 Aug 2015 Leave a comment

by alightningbug in Food, Foodie, Plant Life and Balcony Gardening, Recipes Tags: , ,

One thing that makes this time of year extra yummy is harvest — there are still lots of yummy fruits and veggies to be had from gardens and farmers’ markets. I’ve been seeing a lot of farmers’-market specials, many adding bulk discounts as they have lots of ripe produce and want to move it while it’s still sooo good. It’s great to stock up if you have room in your freezer or for canning. Or just make lots of yummy stuff to eat soon!

One recipe that can help:

Cowboy Caviar

Contrary to the name it doesn’t require cows, boys, fish eggs or eggs of any kind. This is basically a bean salad with corn, tomatoes, peppers, and herbs. It can be eaten like a salsa with corn chips. It can be a topping on a salad. It can be heated and spooned over rice, added raw or heated to burritos, tacos, or nachos.  

It’s fairly healthy with protein, fiber, and fresh veg. It goes quickly around here so I usually double the recipe.

Cowboy Caviar ingredients:

1 can (15 ounce) black beans, drained (or equivalent)

1 can (15 ounce) black-eyed peas, drained (or equivalent) I like the seasoned kind.

1 can (14.5 ounce) diced tomatoes, lightly drained (good using diced tomatoes with chilies) or about 1-1/2 cups of fresh, diced tomatoes. That’s what I’m talking about. 

1 can (15 ounces) corn, drained or 2 cups fresh-cut or frozen corn

1/2 red (or green) bell pepper diced (or similar amount of other sweet peppers) 

1/2 small onion, diced

2 or 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped (or 2 teaspoons garlic powder)

About a cup or half a bunch of chopped cilantro (leave out if you don’t like cilantro)

About a 1/2 cup or 1/4 of a bunch of fresh chopped parsley

1 or 2 fresh chopped jalapeño peppers (to taste) 

Salt and pepper (to taste, it doesn’t need much salt, just a couple of pinches)

2 tablespoons raw apple cider vinegar

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 cup Italian salad dressing (Paul Newman’s Lite Italian works nicely)

Mix it all in a large bowl adding the vinegar, olive oil, and Italian dressing last. We like to let it sit out of the fridge for an hour to let the flavors mix. Enjoy!  

Store covered in the fridge for up to 2 weeks. The vinegar in the apple cider vinegar and salad dressing helps to preserve it longer than if it were just fresh-diced ingredients.



What I Cooked with Our Balcony Garden Harvest

21 Aug 2015 3 Comments

by alightningbug in Food, Foodie, Plant Life and Balcony Gardening, Recipes Tags: , , , ,

Stuffed Gypsy Peppers.

With quinoa, caramelized onions & garlic, garbanzo beans (chickpeas), corn, diced tomatoes, southwest seasoned grilled chicken, salt & pepper, and the bunch of herbs in the photo from the other day (spicy oregano, flat & curly parsley, Thai basil, and maybe a sprig of mint).  Topped with a blend of mozzarella and parm and roasted in our convection toaster oven until the peppers looked a little roasted and the cheese was melty and lightly browned. For the two of us who like spicy, I topped them with sliced semi-ripe jalapeño peppers.*

It turned out really yummy! We all liked it and ate all the leftovers before they could become leftovers.

I have Julia Child to partly thank for the yum factor. We saw her kitchen at the Smithsonian the other day. When we got home I was inspired to stream the movie Julie and Julia. I’d never seen it. It was a cute movie. Julia is amazing. Then I looked up Julia Child on YouTube and watched some of her old PBS show The French Chef. One of the sections was on French Onion Soup.

I’ve never been a huge fan of onions — probably due to the fact that I think I’m partly allergic to them. Too many (cooked or raw) and I feel like I’m coming down with the flu — achy, tired, sore throat, etc. But even when I most disliked onions, earlier in my life, I still kind of liked French Onion Soup and blooming onions too. So as my daughter loves onions (how is she even related to me?) I decided to put onions in our stuffed Gypsy Peppers.

Until watching Julia Child again on YouTube, I have to admit I never properly caramelized onions. Oh, I could brown the heck out of them, but I completely missed the part about actually cooking them before browning them. It makes quite a difference.

I took the “busy mom hack” approach to cooking my onions and zapped them in the microwave until cooked. Then I put them in the frying pan on low heat with some butter and olive oil. They got beautifully caramelized! It added so much flavor to the quinoa and the overall filling for the gypsy peppers.

We had more filling than gypsy peppers, so we just served extra on the plate next to the stuffed pepper — kind of made it look like it was spilling out of the pepper onto the plate. Topped with a sliced cherry tomato and sprig of Thai basil for a garnish. I think it adds a bit of 1970s je ne sais quoi.

They gypsy peppers themselves were to die for! Letting then ripen may have meant fewer total gypsy peppers for our harvest, but the sweetness and flavor were amazing. So sweet! Beautiful color! They are really ideal for stuffing as I didn’t pre-cook them at all. The skin was perfect just filled with our stuffing mix and then cooked in our convection toaster oven.

I only hope that our remaining gypsy peppers get this good. And I hope I can duplicate this again.

*I’ll try to add actual measurements at some point. I didn’t use a recipe. But it was about a can of garbanzos (drained), 2 cups of cooked quinoa, 1/2 a medium-large sweet onion (diced and caramelized), several cloves of garlic, and 1 large diced tomato. Herbs, salt, and pepper to taste. I used all of the herbs seen in the photo here.

Balcony Garden Harvest

18 Aug 2015 1 Comment

by alightningbug in Food, Foodie, Plant Life and Balcony Gardening Tags: , , ,

Balcony garden harvest with herbs, gypsy peppers, jalapeño, and several types of tomatoes. This is part of what’s for dinner. Glad to have picked our gypsy peppers before they got nibbled by critters!

Check out what we cooked, Stuffed Gypsy Peppers.

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