Rob the Fiddler

The Fall garden is dying!  Well…mostly.  First frost of the year hits this weekend. The basil and arugula were bitten pretty hard last night.   After tonight, the only survivors will be some of the lettuce and the chard.

This was probably the best fall garden I have ever had.  The peppers did really well.  Arugula grew pretty well too, but a little of that seems to go a long way.  The best fairing lettuce was surprisingly some kind of six pack of lettuce that I bought at walmart of all places.

Broccoli was hit and miss.  Some plants thrived while others just never did much of anything. There is one spot that it grows like gangbusters…but I have to rotate crops.

I did let one pacman bolt to bloom.  It makes a surprisingly LARGE bloom.  The bloom in the pic below is like th size of a soccer ball. The bees loved it too…so I left it alone.  The bees loved the orange cosmos in the picture as well.  They grow like weeds in my backyard. Sweet, sweet weeds.

Another MVP (most valuable plant)  this year was  tarragon.  Very strong tasting! I thought I had one last year…but it was utterly tasteless. Unfortunately, there  is another plant that grows as a weed out here and it looks surprisingly similar.  I suspect that’s what I mistook for tarragon.   (Perhaps the real one died…and Im pretty sure I was eating junk) .

The blooms smell like the herb too.  If you look close, you can see a little Habanero in the basil.  Tarragon is supposed to be cold hardy…we will see.

Each year you garden, you learn more lessons.  Last year, I learned that I really needed more bees. To encourage this, I planted plenty of flowers.   Bees love basil, so I let the lemon basil flower rather than prune them. That worked out much better as far as yields go.  I was still swabbing cukes and zukes with Q-Tips and pollen, just in case.  Maybe I ought to look into an apiary?

Rather than doing a fall planting of tomatoes, I left the spring ones alone.  I cut them back a bit to encourage growth, but they didn’t do all that well.  They grew…had LOTS of fruits…but all are green.  Bummer. (I hate fried green tomatoes).

My Chile Piqune plant is still around.  I dug this one up from a lot in East Dallas just before it was to be turned into condos.  The stuff grows wild out in Texas.  Its getting on 3 years old and I hope it has a year left in it. Next to that is a purple tomatillo. I  grew this from seed.  It survived the summer, but the fruits never got all that big.  The problem with the fall garden is that once things start growing, the days get shorter REALLY quick.  Still, it was a beautiful plant.  I probably should have pinched the flowers back.

Some kind of wild melon grew.  Its a hybrid of a cantalope and something…I dunno. It grew from a pot that I never  put seeds into…so of course I let it be.  It finished out about the size of a baseball. I have not opened it up yet.

One of the coolest plants was a purple bell pepper. I bought this at Central Market.

This was one of the sweetest peppers ever.  I babied it to death too.  The outside is purple but the inside was green.  When cooked, it acts like purple beans.  The phytochemical that makes it purple, goes away with very little heat, so it turns green quickly.  Your best bet for visual effects are to eat them raw.

We took a different approach and turned them into tasty migas!

ummm.

So on Thanksgiving, I went into the garden and picked what I could before the first frost. This is what I found.

Habaneros, Cayennes, two bells (or poblanos..I dunno) some lemon cukes and small cucumber.

I left the beans out to dry out.

Final lesson…when stuff dies, clear it out. Overwintering pests are bad for gardens.

Seven Mart

501 West Davis

Taco Tuesday #2

This time I tried driving into OC from 35. I forget exactly where I got off…I was lost around 8th and 35.

Ultimately found myself in the Bishop arts district when 12 minutes came up. The next visible taco stand was the Seven Mart.

Tacos were a dollar and a few items that I did not recognize were on the menu.

I asked what Deshebrada meant. I was told it was beef….shreaded..and spicy.

Ok, not a lot to go with, but at the same time…enough to be in my belly.

I ordered two fajita, two pastor and one deshebrada.

Turns out I think I got one pator and two of the shredded beef.

Those were  my favorite. It was was like hot spicy, but was kinda green chili-ish. Maybe had the taste of a Chorizo-egg taco? Still, great!  The grilled onions and sides were tasty.

Certainly much greasier…by a landslide. The fajitas were a little odd. They were colored red on the edges. Almost artificial looking. It still had a grilled tasted as if it was was carne asada flame broiled….but of the three, it was my least favorite.

I bit into the Jalapeno and had to find a big gulp afterwards.

When I started working downtown, I had big plans of taking all kinds of little trips to Oak Cliff for tacos.

Dallas LOVES tacos. They are pretty much everywhere, and come in all sorts of shapes and sizes (including tortas, gorditas, and BBQ brisket on a flour tortilla) . They are easily found in the  the back corners of gas stations and mini marts. Even bars like Vickery park and Lee Harvey’s have great tacos. Even in East Plano, you can find plenty of taco places here and there.

The first time I had real tacos was when I started playing music in Deep Ellum on a regular basis. There is a taco stand called Taco Pinocho which is open until at least three. I knew enough spanish to know what  lengua meant. It was amazing. Greasy, spicy…tasty…but all you need are a few.

At the same time, there was a taco stand in an old Airstream across from the Green room in Deep Ellum. I heard that it was basically the same kitchen as the Green Room. They served al pastor tacos with a slice of pineapple! Yum.  Omegas occasionally had a little stand too.

So the plan was to do “Taco Tuesdays” where I go and try a new place and take notes. Im not particularly a good food critic, so do not expect much.  Alas, I never really got around to doing it because I was paying for parking on a daily basis.  I found a monthly lot at 40 bucks a month and have no excuses!

Turns out, there is a fairly popular website going that is doing Taco Brackets!  I might have to check that out too, but the current criteria for choosing a taco stand is based on time. Drive from work into the OC for exactly x minutes and then when that time has passed, go to the next place I see.

Since Im still not all that familiar with the streets of Oak Cliff, its been interesting.

Here is what I have so far.

Tacos King

2535 Fort Worth Ave
Dallas, TX 75211

Was not sure how even to approach this whole “drive into oc” for 12 minutes thing, so I took a horrible route. Turns out there are a lot more taco on Davis that worth…but its about the exploration right. Timer dinged and the next place I saw was Tacos King.

Not bad. Actually not greasy at all. The tortillas were not dipped in oil. A practice my mom abhors! Things were a little slow so I hopped next door to get an empanada for later.

The presentation was impressive.  Grilled Jalapeno!  Wow.  Classico! It came with two sauces too. One was a Guacish/Cream thing. Ill have to learn more about this.  Plenty of onion and cilantro.

Two Fajita and two Al Pastor.

The al pastor were far superior.  In both cases, the meats were kinda stewy. Cubed and stored in a container. Kinda average. Ill admit, part of the fun is to see them take a chunk of meat, chop it up a bit and then place it on a tortilla. Alas, I was nest door getting dessert to say how it was prepared. Im sure it was flash seared on the grill which was well cared for. I saw them grilling some sort of torta thing which looked like awesome in a bun! Im going back for that.

I only got one bite into the Jalapeno before I had to make a stop at 7-11 for a big diet coke! Turns out a few sips of sugar coke can clear the hotness before filling the cup with diet which does NOTHING to clear hot.

As part of the layoff package, we get a job placement service. I suppose its more of a career management program. Its very comprehensive. They have a resume writing class, interview classes and all kinds of tools to help you find a new job or transition to a whole new career. I can even get a new phone number with a professional answering service that says “office of Mr. Stave” to make it look like Im not really out of a job.

The downside is that its in Addison. Man that town just sucks the life outta me the moment I get west of Preston.

On Wednesday I went to the introduction meeting. I was in a room with 20 other folks that were recently laid off. The scary thing was that I felt like I was on the B ark of the Golgafrincham.

For those of you who have not read the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Golgafrincham is a planet that found a solution to middle management.

“Its people decided it was time to rid themselves of an entire useless third of their population, and so concocted a story that their planet would shortly be destroyed in a great catastrophe. (It was apparently under threat from a “mutant star goat”). The useless third of the population (consisting of hairdressers, tired TV producers, insurance salesmen, personnel officers, security guards, management consultants, telephone sanitizers and the like) were packed into the B-Ark, one of three giant Ark spaceships, and told that everyone else would follow shortly in the other two. The other two thirds of the population, of course, did not follow and “led full, rich and happy lives until they were all suddenly wiped out by a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone”.

Everybody in the room were account managers, regional sales managers or played some kind of middle management role in either the tech or loan industry. (Except me of course…and a software tester)

What the Hell Is Wrong With You People? I HAVE PEOPLE SKILLS!

Ironically, there was a guy there from Nortel who apparently ran the project that was intended to offshore all of our jobs to China.  His position became too expensive too.

Still, I dont have a problem with that. Grunt programming is just that. If a global market place means that the bar is raised for my skills…well then thats what I need to do. Even without a job, I still have it better than most of the worlds population. When I was in Beijing, I saw what those folks were struggling to achieve. They were so happy just to have a job that they were more than qualified for. Good for them!

If it ultimately brings a bit closer my and my girlfriends dream of a robotic monkey that can bring us tea when we wake up…well…hey…its all worth it. I can always grow tomatoes and give violin lessons.

Dallas has a slow food blog

http://www.slowfooddallas.blogspot.com/

I have been on the mailing list for Barking Cat Farm.

Wish I could actually drive out to Rockwall to get the food. I dont, but I do get the mailing list with ranch reports. Good stuff.

Hey folks. I realize its been a long time since I have checked in with most folks. When I get more than 5 emails in a month checking on my pulse, I guess its time to update the internets on my goings on.

Mostly, things are good. My hand is recovering. Ten years or so at “Rockfest” I jacked my hand up so bad I had to get a plate and screws. There was no drinking involved or anything interesting…in fact, the incident was flat out dumb. It was friday night of rockfest. I was looking forward to a day of music with Matchbox 20, Jewel , Bush, No Doubt, Collective Soul, Counting Crows and The Wallflowers. It never happened. About 2am I was kinda just playing street hockey with sticks and fell on my wrist….breaking it badly. Never saw the show.

Fast forward ten years. Im on my bike with Spyche and had a crash. It was a pretty bad sprain, but the good part was that a creaky wrist that I thought was normal was really pointed out to be screws rubbing on my tendons. After displaying my wrist to every resident in the building as a bad example of how to go about caring for a wrist, it was suggested (short of at gunpoint) that I had to get the hardware out. A scan of my wrist showed some damage that could be scoped too, but they were not sure if it was recent or from a while ago…not that it mattered.

When it first happened, I had to cancel some gigs. I could not play. After two weeks, I could make some noise. I ended up canceling a gig at Adairs and still played a short set at Allgood. This resulted in the Boys Named Sue getting banned from Adairs for backing out on a gig. Kinda Sucks…but well…whatever.

So I ended up with surgery on my wrist. They took out the plate and screws, debraided my tfcc and cleaned my tendons. Had my wrist in a surgical cast for two weeks and got it out two weeks ago. I can play fine….dexterity is fine, but the strength needs to be rebuilt. wrist is a bit clicky though. It was like that before surgery, but now that most of the issues have healed, thats whats left.

Got a kitten…or…well…he got me. A week before the surgery, I had reports from my neighbors that my Jeep was “Meowing”. Turns out a kitten had holed up in the engine. So the day after surgery…a weekend of presumed “rest”, spyche caught the kitten and cleaned him up.

He has been at my house ever since. Sweet fella. Mostly well behaved. Likes twine. Very curious..but I love him to death. Called him Mojo. Mojo the Dubcat!

So…