Harvest has been slow here between raindrops. The farms around here all received over 2.5 inches last week according to my NEXRAD Rainfall Report from Bill Northcutt's Spatial Rainfall Consulting maps.
We had a strange weather phenomenon yesterday about this time. The big orange sun was coming up in the east about the time I heard a big clap of thunder overhead. I looked outside and there was a partial rainbow to the northwest. That is very unusual and made me think of thunder snow events in the past. That could be in our future, too!
It was too wet to cut beans yesterday but a few farmers got a few cut. They were wet for sure. No one has really switched to corn yet so mostly, the combines just sat yesterday.
I just put a beef roast in the crockpot for supper(dinner.) Anyone got a favorite spice blend for it? I just used black pepper and garlic powder but I am going to look around, it needs some kind of salt but I don't like table salt or seasoning salt. I see I already took the easy way out. I wonder what Stacy would do.
Our daughter in law Stacy is a registered dietitian. She was commenting about which restaurants had the "friendliest" healthy food for children and we encouraged her to start a blog. She has and you can find it here!
I encouraged her to give WordPress a look since you can own your own space and content there and that is what she ended up choosing. I wished I had done that 3 years ago because now Google owns all my content here.
Congratulations to Stacy on her new blog and I know it will go well for her. It is amazing how many people write blogs today and it is one of my most favorite things to do and read. Lots of good information is contained in people's stories!
If you start a blog, let me know so we can share it here. I know a few of you who blog and have you on my blog favorites. I am always willing to add more.
Thanks,
Ed
Ed that weather is pretty frustrating when you have crops still in the field. Its a real relief to have the combines put away in the sheds and able to catch up on some other fall work.
ReplyDeleteOn the roast beef, I like to throw in a package of dry onion soup mix when its cooking.
I'm sure I'd prefer your roast to that horrible recipe with canned everything, dried soup and ready-made spice blends. The same recipe with real onions, mushrooms, tomatoes and herbs looks fantastic. I'd brown the onions and mushrooms separately, then add them to the browned roast and add the peeled Roma tomatoes and water, salt and spices. My grandmother inserted several peeled cloves of garlic inside the road. Use a sharp knife to make a 2 inches incision and push the clove with your finger inside. It will be melting in your mouth when it's cooked. Basic spices: 4 bay laurel leaves, 2 branches of thyme, sage, parsley all tied into a bunch with a long string (leave the end of the string out to retrieve the bouquet.) For a real treat, add a whole bottle of red wine while the wife is not watching one hour before serving. ^-^
ReplyDeleteWe usually don't put too much salt in the crockpot. Instead, we bring a saucer of coarse or rather semi coarse salt to the table and let the eaters spread some of the salt crystals directly on their slice of roast. It gives a pleasant crunchiness to the dish.
I never got used to rock salt, but I was glad to find out that Safeway carries both fine and coarse sea salt La Baleine (The Whale.) I'm usually against importing items from so far away (the Mediterranean Sea,) but it's salt, it's cheap, and it lasts a long while in these big red and blue tubes. Give it a try.
Nice article about the aberrations in water use this week: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/series/precious_waters/index.html
About Wordpress, look it up, but I'm pretty sure you can import your Blogger blog into Wordpress or export it into a format supported by Wordpress import. You should save it regularly on a local copy anyway, be it Google or Wordpress.
Chimel, you are right. There is no shortcut to good food. You picked right up on that. A browned roast, maybe rolled in flour with your favorite seasonsings beats canned anything. Too much salt in most canned goods and you really over season it in a hurry. Fresh vegetables simmered down much preferred to canned anything, too.
ReplyDeleteRalph, we got rained out harvesting double crop soybeans but were able to run 23,000 bushels of corn in one day where it was too wet to cut soybeans. Still a few hundred acres of double crops to go.
If we don't get too much rain out of this event, we might have a week to get this done and then concentrate on corn the rest of the fall.
I am afraid winter will be here before most farmers are ready. Still hoping for a nice Indian summer, the final good time to gather in the harvest.