the big bucks. Also, fun with a melon baller and little skewers

[ritaxis]

I got a cheerful letter and a check today from the county clerk for primary election day. One hundred and twenty-five dollars for election clerk. It's actually more than I make in a day of childcare.

On another front, I had five bruises in two weeks -- all but one of them mysterious, and all painless -- and I normally don't get five bruises in five years. I mean, really, I don't bruise easily. Naturally my first thought was leukemia or some damn thing, but my second thought was that five bruises isn't much evidence. I could construct a probable cause for each one. So I called the doctor and the doctor said, "No more monkeys jumping on the bed!" No, wait, he said it was probably a benign side effect of the meloxicam I take to minimize hand pain and so on. And I should bring it on in if it got alarming.

Phenological observations: my plum tree is about to crack its buds. Yesterday I sprayed with a stupid little pump sprayer because I couldn't find the miscible oil. Today the nice fellow bought me some miscible oil. It's not supposed to rain for several days so I guess I'll do some spraying in the morning. Since the apricot tree is in almost-full bloom, I guess I have to use the lower solution that I would use in summer.

Also, from the weekend I have this information: hors d'oeuvres with the use of an 18-mm melon baller:

cut in half and hollow out kumquats with the melon baller. Pick out the seeds and smash the pulp into cream cheese (or ricotta, which is what I had since the dog seems to have eaten a three-quarter pound lump of luxury cream cheese within minutes of me bringing it home!) with large quantities of very finely cut candied lump ginger and some tiny bits of whole kumquat chopped even finer. Stuff this into the kumquats, and chill.

slice a thin bit off the top of cherry tomatoes and scoop everything out with the melon baller. Put the cherry tomatoes upside down in a sieve for a couple of hours so they drain. Chop very fine the bits of cherry tomato tops and mix them with a very large amount of chopped parsely and dill and mix that with equal parts cream cheese (see above) and hummus and maybe a little grated extra extra sharp cheddar or other pungent or piquant cheese and stuff this into the cherry tomatoes, and chill.

hollow out small red radishes with the melon baller. Also with the melon baller cut balls of extra extra sharp cheese and force them into the radish holes, and chill. You can eat the radish balls or marinate them in Japanese seasoned vinegar. I ate them. These you may call radish eyeballs, or if you are too squeamish, you may call them radish acorns.

I also stuffed dates with blue cheese, but that did not use the melon baller. I also made a mash of grated extra extra sharp cheddar, jarlsberg, blue cheese, ricotta, and lots of finely cut parsely, dill, and sage, and a little Spanish paprika (I thought I had used agridulce but it tasted like ahumado), and put little balls of this on Belgian endive leaves and pushed a candied walnut half on that. You could use the melon baller to make the amounts of cheese mash the same on each leaf, but I did not do that. I also marinated little onions, artichoke hearts, button mushrooms, and carrot balls (melon baller!), garlic cloves, and bits of sweet peppers, and threaded all that on skewers.

Everybody ate them all up. Even the radish eyeballs which I thought might be a little too weird for some people.

Also, I do love gin, but I am a wimp and I cannot finish my drink.

Comments

what is this

[dragonet2.livejournal.com]

miscable oil and why are you using it?

Is it something I should try and acquire to help out my cherry tree (we HAVE had quite enough moisture this winter, maybe more than enough for our watershed area, but unless the weather doest the same stupid thing -- get warm, making the trees flower and then freeze the f-k out of them for another 10 days -- we should have at least a good crop of cherries.

This is my only fruit tree and I am but an egg in knowing how to care for them, so any advice is appreciated even though I know I live in a wildly different climate zone.

thanks in advance for advice.

Re: what is this

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Miscible oil is a fine grade of oil that suspends well in water. You spray it on the tree using one of those garden hose mixer sprayers -- there are instructions on the container of oil and on the packaging for the sprayer, but basically you put some of the oil in the sprayer according to the dilution markings on the sprayer reservoir and run water into and through it with the garden hose and that makes the spray be of the right dilution.

I don't know if you need to do it for cherries, and I don't know if you need to do it where you live. It's not cold enough for cherries here or I would be growing them probably because cherries rock. What I use it for is to combat fungus diseases in general. I would say leaf curl especially, because it's sort of ubiquitous, but it's not especially harmful to the tree as long as it doesn't get very very severe: it's those other funguses that actually cause problems most of the time.

Sometimes the miscible oil has copper arsenic or other nastier chemicals in it. I think it's possible to avoid those

Also BTW

[dragonet2.livejournal.com]

we found a cheese that was made with the pappadum peppers. I haven't had a chance to taste it yet but will report on my LJ when i do. (I lurves the pappadums, they're sweet with a tinge of hotness in them, but mostly sweet).

[mayakda.livejournal.com]

Bruises - anemia?

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

that would be strange. I've always had high iron readings.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Maybe there should be elections every day -- a bit more money!

I get bruises all the time without knowing what they're from, although sometimes I can speculate pretty well.

Did the dog open the fridge or did you leave the cream cheese out?!

What I used to do with radishes for hors d'oeuvres was to crush them slightly so they cracked a bit and marinate them in soy sauce. That was really good.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

I think the dog got the cream cheese while I was still sorting the groceries and putting them away.

The radish and soy sauce thing sounds really good and I may add it to my radish repertoire. I am a radish person.