Something is coming....

There is a monster in the veggie garden.

It's large. It's long. It's winding. It threatens to take over.

It's coming.

It scares me.

Tune in later for photos of the creature. Until then, here is a hint:

The mysterious eggplant

Apart from my shocking forest of healthy parsley, the three varieties of eggplant in my vegetable garden are generally the healthiest and most consistent things I have going. It's funny that I planted them at all, considering that I'd never even tasted an eggplant until earlier this year. And decided that they don't taste very good. No, not very good at all.

The eggplant is a perfect example of a food that, before this year, I would have never eaten, because as I like to say, if you have to do a whole bunch of stuff to a thing to make it palatable, why even bother? I'm sure one could make balsa wood taste good, with enough seasoning. This is why I am the quintessential steak eater. Throw a slab of beef on the grill, and really, it's very difficult to go wrong. No seasoning required. Delectable.

So I never messed around with veggie dishes because you have to do all this stuff to them to make them taste like anything. All the sauces, spices and the like: what's the point? Why not leave these poor plants in the ground, to live out their lives as nature intended?

What happened was: I started tracking my food intake at fitday.com, and learned that there are whole groups of vitamins and minerals that my diet is lacking. Where on Earth does one get Vitamin K, anyway? It turned out that a lot of the nutrients I lacked (not to mention fiber) are found in vegetables. This wasn't a complete shock to me. But since for once I had the proof on paper, right there in front of me, I decided it was time to take action.

And that's when the idea for the vegetable garden took hold, and when I started bringing home things like eggplants from the store. Kind of like exercise: this seemed like yet another necessary evil that I would have to embrace if I wanted to be healthy.

And the eggplant on its own: it's not something that you want to just slice up and munch on as a snack. It's kind of spongy and not wildly flavorful. But it turns out that if you cook it, yes, with a whole bunch of other stuff and with spices and sauces, it makes for a good ingredient. A favorable part of an ensemble cast.

So today's post over at Always Order Dessert, Salting the Eggplant, was an eye-opener for me. In some of my eggplant recipes, "salting" has been indicated, but they always just give some quantity of salt to add to water, and sometimes the eggplant is only sliced in half before it is dunked and soaked. But this entry on eggplant salting is much more revealing. It is very detailed and it explains the procedure. It even makes the eggplant sexy. And possibly, salting the eggplant in this way might make the solitary eggplant taste better to me.

Coming soon: an eggplant taste test. Whopper vs. Ichiban vs. Fairy Tale. May the winner find herself in greater numbers in next year's garden.

Moody Maple

My girl Maple, pensive as usual:

We had just finished watching the Travers Stakes. She was probably feeling nostalgic for her racing days.

RIP zucchini plant

It seems that my zucchini plant is a goner. Suddenly it just kind of shriveled up. At first I thought it might just need some water, but some water did not help.

It was miraculous that the plant lived at all because the stem, very close to the ground, was always a bit broken. It had been hanging on by a thread its entire life. In the end I got one gargantuan zucchini, one perfect zucchini, and today, I harvested a questionable zucchini from the nearly-dead squash plant.

Next year: more squash plants.

Today's harvest yielded quite a few tomatoes, a whopper eggplant, two ichiban eggplants, and some banana peppers:

In addition there are four questionable tomatoes, a bowl full of not-store-worthy kale and collards (for the iguanas and tortoises), and I also have a pocketful of super chili peppers.

I have no idea what to do with all these peppers. Some good news: there are some jalapenos growing now, and I do know what to do with those. I hope I get some bell peppers someday. Snap, this reminds me: there are some ripe habanero peppers that I forgot to pick ... and I don't know what to do with those, either.

Next year: fewer pepper plants.

What do you do with hot peppers? I think it's time for me to look for hot salsa and chili recipes.

The ghosts of Facebook

Facebook is getting weird.

Well, it always was weird. But you become accustomed to it, and then it becomes normal.

But then it gets weird again.

You start off by being friends with your actual friends. Then acquaintances find you, then people from work. Then old classmates, maybe from college, maybe from high school. Even the ones you haven't seen or heard from in 18 years, even ones who you weren't friends with when you were in school together. But that's OK because, if nothing else, that's where Facebook started: among students. And then you get bold and start sending friend requests to old classmates that you became really estranged from during school because that's what happens as we mature and splinter off into our own separate, sometimes rival, cliques. All of that can be forgiven, because we were just kids.

That's how my Facebook friending experience has gone, anyway, though I know it's not been the same for everyone.

But we can all agree: "normal" now includes using "friend" as a verb.

But set aside all that newly normal stuff ... want to know what still feels weird?

Weird is when your Facebook friends start friending guys you hooked up with when you were 15 years old.

Ghosts from your past.

Names you recognize because ... why? Oh ... yeah. My parents' sofa. And my parents were upstairs. Well, that was a fun evening.

Oh dear, are my parents reading this? Well, whatever; they no longer live in that house anyway.

And now you're left wondering: is it a matter of time before one of those guys sends me a friend request? Or will I friend them first? Or will we just go on, pretending we haven't noticed each others' names in our friends' lists of friends?

And you know you're overthinking things, because you checked every bit of your he-loved-me-then-kicked-me-to-the-curb feelings at the door decades ago. Besides, you're hotter and much more interesting now than you were then. You have nothing to worry about.

And then you're struck by the realization that it's all perfectly normal. Because remember the very first guy who invited you to join Facebook? You hooked up with him, too.

Budget 1: "mandatory" monthly expenses

Initial disclaimer: This information is of interest to me, and basically, to hardly anyone else. So this is mainly a way for me to figure out, "on paper," my financial situation, and explore ways to improve it. It may be of future interest to other people like me who are searching the web for data on the expenses and budgeting methods of others, but just so we're all clear on this: I don't expect most of you (all 7 subscribers) to really care.

Month after month I marvel as my bank account balance goes to zero after a minimal percentage of my income is set aside for paying taxes, saving for retirement, and a little investing, after a set credit card debt payment is made, and after the bills are paid. It doesn't seem like I should be in this situation. So here I am beginning a series of posts on my expenses, to try to figure some things out.

I am starting this series on my personal budget by looking at my mandatory monthly expenses. This is the group of expenses that I like to say, "just cost what they cost." These are the things that I'm billed for monthly, things that I have to pay for to keep living my life the way I do, where I do. There are gray areas, such as with cable TV: I don't need it, but since it's bundled with my internet service, which I do need, I'm keeping cable TV in this "mandatory" category. Plus, cable TV is something I have to pay for to keep living my life the way I do. Cable TV is also an example of one of the items I can work on: I'm thinking of downgrading to a more basic cable package, for instance. But I can't/won't eliminate this expense completely.

Mandatory expenses do not include clothing, personal care such as haircuts, business expenses (which I write off at tax time but still cost me money), dining out (or delivery), home and gardening expenses, pet expenses, doctor visits, prescriptions, or any similar expenses that are not technically mandatory but that most people would agree are reasonable or necessary to ensure quality of life. Quicken would disagree with me on some of that. But all of that, for this exercise, still falls under discretionary income to me, and I'll address that next time.

(Disclaimers: I did include health insurance as "mandatory", because I went without it for a very long time and now that I have it, I consider it indispensable. Yet I didn't include doctor visits or prescriptions ... I guess I'm still healthy enough that the insurance is more important to me, as my doctor visits are more routine and I could actually skip them if I had to. And I included home insurance, because if you don't have your home, all you have left is your health, which is a lot harder to take care of without a home. And, even though having pets is really mandatory for me, I can not compare my "mandatory" expenses to anyone elses' if I include the thousands of dollars I spend on my pets each year. So "mandatory" vs. "discretionary" is a bit subjective. But from my point of view, for this exercise, these are my mandatory expenses.)

My averaging methods: I have saved all of this information in Quicken for several years. This is why I choose to pay for as much as I can with credit cards, because when I receive each bill, I enter each item into my Quicken file. It's much more of a pain to keep track of cash. (I should note that all the credit card debt I wrote about recently accrued before I started paying attention to my budget. Mostly. Regardless, I'm not in debt because I pay for groceries with a credit card.) So, I averaged my monthly bills (such as utilities) over the 12 months of 2007. Auto fuel and groceries, again, were averaged over the 12 months of 2007. These amounts might be different in 2008, but this is what they were last year.

Mandatory monthly expenses:
Auto insurance: $65.
Health insurance: $107.
Home insurance: $27.
Rent: $1200.
Cable TV/modem: $138.
Electricity: $92.
Gas: $132.
Cell phone: $58.
Wastewater treatment: $6.
Water: $17.
Auto fuel: $109.
Groceries*: $476.
Total mandatory monthly expenses: $2427.

*"Groceries" includes all my food and drug items. "Drug items" are the things that I buy at the drug store that is attached to my grocery store, such as toiletries and personal care items, medicine (but not prescriptions), etc. "Groceries" also includes alcohol (of every kind -- here in Illinois it's all available at the grocery store). I used to separate out all the different categories of items I purchased at the grocery store, including pet food, personal care items, liquor, human food, etc, but it was too much work. These days if I see I'm spending more money than I'd like to spend at the grocery store, I simply tone it down across the board.

My mandatory expenses, the stuff I need to pay for in order to live the way I do where I do, cost me $29,124/year. This is for one individual. And it doesn't include a single sandwich at Jimmy John's, or a concert ticket, or a pair of socks, or an oil change, or any other transportation expense other than auto fuel, or one tomato plant, and it certainly doesn't include a single pet.

I got the idea to start talking about budgeting back when I wrote that post that I referenced earlier. At the end I touched on the cost of living where I do, compared to my should-be-decent income. Back then, I wrote:

The thing is, I make a decent living. [...] And day to day, I don't live extravagantly. (I keep my cars for many years, I've never bought a diamond, etc.) [...] But the main thing that kills my budget is the cost of living where I do. So over the next few days I'm going to start talking about budgets, linking to other blogs that are doing the same, and analyzing any and every possible place I might start looking to save money that doesn't involve moving or not enjoying life.

So in the next posts on budgeting I'll continue the discussion by talking about topics such as:

1) Finding places I can save money in my "mandatory" expenses;
2) Adding up my "discretionary" expenses;
3) Finding places I can save money in my "discretionary" expenses;
4) Comparing my expenses to that of others;
5) Whether or not I need to take drastic measures (like moving).

It should be fun and entertaining. And in the end, maybe I'll move to Mexico. Join in the discussion, won't you?

Out of character

Lately, I've been finding myself wanting strange things. Things that, historically, I've held strongly negative (or strongly indifferent, which is just as bad) opinions of.

No, I do not want an iPod, or any other Apple product, but I fear that may be next. (When pigs fly. Which is looking a bit realistic at the moment, from where I'm sitting.)

1) I want a boat. Most of my life I've not wanted anything to do with water-related hobbies. No fish tank. No pool. No water skis. No boat. To me, anything water-related is so much harder to take care of (and to keep clean) than anything land-related that it destroys the hobby. Nearly by definition, a thing that is wet is already much dirtier than a thing that is dry. Water leads to slimy stuff, and to rust. At least if the thing is dry, it may be dusty, but at least it isn't a slimy, rusty mess.

Yet I find myself wanting a boat because, well, I love sitting in the harbor on the water. I imagine, if I had a boat of my own, I'd also go out into the lake with it. Having a boat gives you something to do every weekend. You don't even need friends or a significant other to go out on the boat. Ideally, I'd have a boat with enough room for the dogs. (Scratch that: my boat would be required to have room for the dogs.)

2) I want a web cam. I don't have much to say about that. I used to have one, but I gave it away. If I get a web cam again, I don't ever, ever plan to use it for work, or even chatting with people. (I don't chat on the phone; why would I chat on the computer?) It's just my exhibitionist nature, I guess, to want to have a camera on me, and my office, at all times. I don't know why this has come up again for me.

3) I find myself liking the Escalade. Or, "Excesscalade", as I call it. In that weird, pearly white color. It's a ridiculous vehicle (c'mon, it's the Tony Soprano-mobile, though I think the Tony Soprano poor taste, starting with their McMansion, kinda went over the heads of many viewers). It probably gets negative gas mileage. It's the pimpmobile of SUV's. But I like looking at cars and I keep noticing those Excesscalades in that pearly white color. I probably lust after the Excesscalade as many men lust after skanky looking ladies. You know it's wrong, but damn, they're hot. I will not get one. But it's OK to look.

OK, so you're NOT king of the world....

Future self, take note:

If you ever find yourself, three weeks after RAGBRAI ends, during which time you did not bike at all, and, to be exact, you exercised only your TiVo remote control finger because you spent much of that time sick in bed, and it should also be said, eating like a madwoman; if you ever find yourself with the sudden ability to bike to work in 1:47 (compared to previous times of 1:54, 1:57, 2:00, 2:03, and other similar times), do not take it as a sign that you have become a biking goddess. Do not presume that by watching track bike racing from Beijing all week, you have somehow improved your own biking skills through some form of osmosis.

No, no, no.

If you ever find yourself with the sudden ability to bike to work in 1:47, just wait 'til your bike ride home, where you will more than likely experience the brutal headwind that, it turns out, helped you secure that 1:47 time. And brace yourself for the frustrating, mind- and body-numbing ride through what feels like molasses, as it takes you 2:04 to get home.

(FYI, NONE of those are good times, not even 1:47. My dad used to ride the same distance/route to work fairly regularly, and when he was in shape he clocked around 1:30. I hope to get there, with regular riding.)

A Dazzle in the sun

Dazzle is an expert sun-seeker, second only to a feline.

I'm sure she comes from a long lineage of expert sun-seekers.

Oh, how I love this dog.

Recent dishes

If you're wondering what I did with yesterday's harvest, I made ratatouille:

I'd never tasted ratatouille before, much less cooked it, so I was unsure what to expect. I altered the recipe a bit, to suit my tastes and available quantities of ingredients. Verdict: delicious! Seriously, I'm stunned. Lots of good flavors. I think I'm getting the hang of this eating-vegetables-thing. Because it looked like a pile of plants, I tell you; to every fiber of my being, it looked like a pile of plants. But it actually tasted like food. I used the ichiban eggplant (long and thin), and its dark purple skin turned green while cooking. Ratatouille would be great over pasta or rice, but I enjoyed mine plain.

As for my gargantuan zucchini? Oven fried zucchini sticks, just as planned. I used the most basic recipe I could find, based on the ingredients I already had in my kitchen. This was, surprisingly, amazingly delicious. I was concerned, not being the biggest squash fan. I did not peel my zucchini because I do not discriminate against skin, but I must say, the sticks without skin were the best. But the skin did keep the sticks with skin from breaking. Mmmm:

I ate the whole plate.

Today's bounty

Today I picked one zucchini, one ichiban eggplant, one whopper eggplant, one super banana pepper, several super chili peppers, and two tomatoes from my vegetable garden:


It's always amazing to me when things I grew in my garden look just like the real ones that you buy at the store.

Tonight I plan to make one of the following:
Roasted Eggplant and Tomatoes With Parmesan Cheese
Stuffed Eggplant With Tomatoes
Baked Eggplant and Tomatoes
Ratatouille
Stuffed Eggplant with Tomatoes and Butter

This recipe is calling to me strongest, though. It appeals to my "My, that salad was good, now I need a sandwich" tendencies:


Eggplant Patties
Do you have any other ideas for things I can make with eggplants and tomatoes, and/or any of the following (ingredients I already have): zucchini, peppers (green, red, banana, hot, etc), cheese, rice, pasta?

There is also the option to just grill 'em up, of course.

A dining room of distinction

Or ... squalor no more!

Remember this? Wait, wait ... if you don't feel like linking, here's a reminder of what happened to the first floor of my house on June 24:

That situation came to be because I was having some work done on my basement, some work for which I had to empty the basement's contents. In other words, my basement exploded into the rest of my house. Specifically, my dining room became unusable, and because the dining room connects the kitchen to the living room, it's really the main thoroughfare of the house, so my most-used hallway became nearly impassable.

My house is not large. It's a good size for a single person like myself, but it really is difficult to get around corners with two greyhounds and an underfoot cat constantly in tow. There are, from time to time, collisions, resulting in barks, yelps, and lingering moans. So when I had to stack all that crap in my dining room and surrounding areas, it actually depressed me. It seriously affected me in a way that was perceptible to others for some time. It was so horrendous being anywhere on the first floor of my house that I didn't even bother to clean around the crap, stating that once I cleared out the area again I would give it a thorough cleaning. So I've lived not only in the midst of crap stacks but also mounds of dust bunnies and animal hair for the past seven weeks.

But not anymore. As of last weekend, my dining room is crap- and crud-free! Take a look and see for yourself:

I am now going to appreciate and utilize my dining room like I have never appreciated and utilized my dining room before. It really is a privilege to have a room like this in which I can sit, read, eat, relax, and gaze out the window at the tippy tops of my tomato plants. And I shall now treat it as such.

One more for the road:

Is cold fueling my cold?

So I've had this cold/flu thing for two weeks. It's not actually bad. I don't even have a fever. But it's the kind of thing that keeps you up all night coughing (and I do mean YOU, if you're anywhere near me, though to be fair there aren't that many YOUs sleeping in my house, and anyway, my main concern is ME) and keeps me tired and sluggish all day. And then there's the throat-on-fire thing. A few recent days have passed where I've gotten nothing done at all, save the bare essentials. (The bare essentials consisting mainly of feeding the dogs and letting them into the yard to potty. Because cleaning up dog pee inside is a worse thing than dragging my sluggish ass out of bed to open the back door for them.)

And so while lying in bed, waiting for the Tivo to fast forward between episodes of Law & Order, I have time to look around and think. And right now I'm thinking: should I close my windows? We've been having an unbearably gorgeous summer here in Chicago ... except for the humidity, that is ... but the temperature has been wonderful. Wonderful in that it's 80-90 degrees during the day, as a proper summer should be, but 60-70 at night. Nowhere near hot enough to cause the house to overheat. So at home, the practice is: open the windows at night, close them (and the window shades) during the day, if it's hot. You barely even need to turn on the A/C ... if it weren't for the humidity. And lately, the days have been drier and no A/C has been required at all during the day.

So, for the past couple weeks, my windows have been open all day and all night. It's constantly breezy, and at night, that breeze is blowing in air that gets down to the low 60s. Every now and then, an upper 50. Which has made me wonder: might I not be as sick if I'd just close my windows and keep the temperature constant in here?

I've long screamed from the rooftops that you don't catch a cold from being cold. But you have to admit that there is something about temperature change, about cold breezes, about breathing cold air at night. It gives you the sniffles.

But all winter long I yearn for the days when I can open up the house. When I can leave the big, heavy doors ajar and have nothing but screens between myself and the outdoors. So I hate to miss even a day of that.

Right now it's 75 in my bedroom, and 66 outside. It's 9:30 p.m. It's time for my slug of a body to get some rest. It's still cooling down outside. Inside, the heat from the lights and the computer will soon be gone. I eye the window much like, on any normal day, I'd eye the Stairmaster. Knowing that there is something I should get up and do. But tonight I don't resist a workout; I resist closing that window.

What grows in my garden?

What with my trip to Iowa, the several days of focusing on nothing but my grandfather's death, and being sick for over a week after all of that was over, I really haven't managed to turn my attention back to the vegetable garden. But every now and then I walk past it, looking to see if there is anything obvious that I should be tending to (other than the huge tomato plants falling over, and gargantuan weeds sucking up all the soil's nutrients).

Recently I finally squatted down and took a closer look at what was going on beneath the leaves.

This is what I saw:

Yipes. That would be growing on the one squash plant that survived my seedling disaster. It came from a packet of seeds called "Squash Summer Medley Hybrid Blend", from Park Seed.

This is what the squash fruits are supposed to look like:

Apparently, the surviving plant is a zucchini. According to basic-recipes.com, "The best zucchinis are the small (5 inches and under), tender ones. Most chefs agree: anything over 8 inches is fit only for stuffing."

I have a lot to learn about vegetable gardening. This, my first zucchini, is a bit larger than 5-8 inches:

I plan to make crunchy zucchini sticks with this one, many recipes for which can be found at basic-recipes.com. I imagine this dish is more about the crunch of the crust than the flavor of the fruit.

I drink a pretty flower

A new and awesome coworker, employer, twitterpal, and friend, who knows who he is, sent me this beautiful teapot that I must have had on one of my wish lists or something. (Whistles innocently)


The reason why I wanted this particular teapot is that it is clear glass. And in a clear glass teapot, you can brew "tea flowers", or "blooming tea". Actually, you could make blooming tea in any ol' teapot, but you wouldn't be able to see the tea bloom. And that would defy a tea flower's purpose. Here is a video of how it works:

(EDIT: since writing this, the video I had embedded became "no longer available" on YouTube. I had to substitute it with this one, which is much more of an advertisement, and much longer, and honestly, I haven't even finished watching it, but it does show the blooming action.)



Here is my first tea flower. Delicious green tea with jasmine:


It's hard to get a good photo of a tea flower in bloom. But trust me, it was pretty.

I've always been interested in tea ceremonies, but being ADD-wannabe, I've never taken the time to learn about it. But for me, having my once-teabag bloom into a flower before my very eyes while it steeps is a ceremony in itself. By the way, here is what my tea flower looked like at the beginning:


I love this kind of weird, neat stuff.

Now THAT'S a blog.

This is my new favorite expository blog:

Svensto

It is wonderfully written by the grandmother of my favorite photoblogger, Shreve, at:

The Daily Coyote

You should read those when there's nothing to read here, like lately.

I myself continue to struggle with scheduling my time. Not just blogging time, though clearly that's a concern. Time to clean (the place is a mess), time to mow the lawn (it's been weeks), time to read. There is something to be said for having a regular, full-time job, with a regular, day-to-day schedule. Mind-numbingly awful as it is to me, it does allow me to fall into daily routines that allow me to fit everything in without thinking about it so much.

Alas, I'll not fall into that trap any time in the immediate future. For the time being, today I'll mow the lawn, which will remove one item from my plate.

August desktop wallpaper calendar from Smashing Magazine

Zoinks. How did this happen? August already? I never fail to be surprised that I have survived to see another month arrive. Well, on to the first order of each new month's business. Rent, shment. The important stuff is:

Smashing Magazine has released their gallery of August desktop wallpaper calendars!

Alas...I'm deflated. I admit, it's a personal thing. There are, without a doubt, some gorgeous designs created by many talented individuals. But none are particularly "ME". And as we know, it's all about ME.

Meeeeeee...MEMEMEMEME! Fa-la-la-la-MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

So, it's a dilemma. What do I do? The closest design to ME would have to be the sushi monster. Here, I'll show you:


I love sushi. I love monsters. But the colors and the style (the abundance of LEVITY) really don't match my mood lately. And I think my current desktop wallpaper selection should at least partially match, or somehow complement, the way I feel. When I sit at my desk I need to feel comfortable. Sushi monster, well, he makes me feel like I'm pretending to feel comfortable. But that's not the way I feel lately. Neither like pretending nor comfortable.

How do I feel lately, you ask? Ahhhhh...I feel a bit of melancholy. A small amount of sadness. A hint of loss. A dash of hope, folded into a larger dose of reality. I distinctly detect withheld emotions. Which makes me feel missed opportunities. I feel futility. A yearning to feel each moment for what it is. But all I reach for is the big picture. Want, wish, fantasize. Self-deny, self-distort, self-destruct.

And I'm sick. And I dreamed about my grandfather last night. And the Pema Chodron disc won't play in my bedside CD player. And I broke my Ichiban eggplant.

So how can I possibly choose the sushi monster as my August mascot?

No. This month, we are not Sushi. This month, we are Night Fire. By Henrik Wissing of Moving Insect:


The design style of Night Fire is not the least bit ME. But I think it grasps the way I feel. I think if I could take a screenshot of the insides of my eyelids, it might look a bit like Night Fire.

Let's hope that I begin to feel more like me in September. God. September?