Wednesday, August 4, 2010

My Busy Day -- and My Reward


Well, this ain't the Whistle Stop Cafe, but these are real Fried Green Tomatoes.  I 'spect they should have been battered with flour, not a corn meal/flour mixture, but I used what I had and it worked jus' fine.

Really, it must be in the genes.  I don't believe I've ever cooked Fried Green Tomatoes in my entire life, and I know it's been many a long year since I saw my momma cook them.  But there wasn't much doubt in my mind how to do it.  They tasted right, too.  I have this huge tomato vine out there and have yet to eat a ripe tomato from it, because by the time they're ripe, they've all been rotten and mushy.  No clue what's causing that, but I thought I'd just beat it to the punch and try them green.


Remember this?  Last week after I ripped the Morning Glory vine down.  I finally made it out there again this morning for a little more scraping, and now it looks like this....


Still plenty to do, but this is just what came off with easy scraping with the wide putty knife.  Not a lot of effort, but steady for about an hour and a half.  Once the sun began to clear the trees, I gave it up. I didn't try the wire brush because it was early morning and I didn't want to make noise.  I think that for now, until the weather cools off a bit, I'll just go out when I can and scrape, then do the wire brushing all at one time to get whatever it'll get.  Then I can prime it.


Then, I guess I hadn't had enough because I went out on the front porch where it was still cool (coolish, anyway -- never got below 76 overnight) and shady and sanded down one of the pieces of window trim.  I could have done both, I guess, but there's no rush and it wasn't cool enough. I need to fill the weight cavities with insulation before nailing these back in place.


And then.....I followed through on a brilliant idea I had a day or two ago.  This east-facing pantry window let the sun and huge amounts of heat into my kitchen, with the help of the hot water heater.  I brought a big piece of cardboard home from work yesterday, cut it to size, faced it with aluminum foil and my kitchen stayed a whole lot cooler today.  It ain't pretty, but that's OK.  It works.

But of course, in weather like this 'cool' is really relative.  Still, when I got up this morning the temp in the kitchen was about 79, and by the time I started to cook dinner it was only up to 82, and that's not half bad.  It was 95 out on my back porch.  According to NOAA, it's a mere 94 out there right now, at 7:30pm, with a heat index of 101.  Ain't it sweet?

I, fortunately, seem to be adjusting to the heat.  Can't say I love it, but day by day I can see that it's taking less out of me and that I mind being out in it less.  And speaking of heat -- the buckwheat in the two new beds is starting to flower so I'm going to need to turn it under sometime in the next few days.  I let the soaker hose sit on each bed for an hour this evening, to soften up the ground.  But now, I think tomorrow may be too soon and I won't have another chance to do it until Sunday and I bet that with all that water they'll grow like crazy now.  Maybe it'll rain between now and then and help keep the ground moist.  I can hope.

So that, and the genealogy, was my day and I have yet another free day tomorrow.  I do like having two days off in a row, but it wouldn't be practical on a routine basis, for the rhythm of work that needs to be done in Rome.

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