Hard-to-kill Greens: Chickweed & Malabar Spinach

Yesterday I heard about 2 separate plants that are both edible and grow easily in my regional climate - Chickweed & Malabar Spinach. You don't need a green thumb to get these plants going or keep them producing. Having no doubt I could grow these weeds - I have extensive experience with successful weeds growing in my yard :) - I was curious about how to use these plants before trying out some as ground cover in an empty bed on the side of my house. So in a quick search, here's what I found that makes me want this stuff tonight:

Malabar Spinach - Here's a video (makes me H-U-N-G-R-Y) about malabar followed by a couple of recipes.

• Indonesian Style Malabar Spinach - Food.com
  
• Mok Toi & Mushroom Stir Fry - MeltingWok.com
  
• Salads from Rose Creek Farms
  
• Bachali Kura Pappu ~ Malabar Spinach Dal - Sailu's Kitchen
  
• Pui Charchari or Malabar Spinach from Rice-n-curry.com
  
• Tomato-Malabar Quiche - Charlotte Fresh

Chickweed - I was going to post a cool video of this stuff being used, but the really interesting videos were all hosted by folks who appeared to have accidentally used a different, less legal weed and I couldn't put them up here without laughing (nor could they stop laughing). Just do a google or youtube video search for chickweed recipes. But here is the PBS-style public service announcement version, which actually shows you what it looks like on the ground and explains how to use it.

• Chickweed Pate - Eatweeds UK
  
• Pakora & Hot Dressed Salad (+ a few more) - Carl Legge
  
• Chickweed Pesto - LearningHerbs.com
  
• Chickweed Salad - Food & Wine
  
• Chickweed Chimichurri & Tuna Poke - Fat of the Land

The last one makes my eat crazy stuff bell ring. I LOVE poke. When my little brother was stationed in Hawaii and I stayed with him during my two week Naval Reserve duty at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, we ate almost nothing else. Adding something local, prevalent, and free to something that is a lot more pricey in Mississippi (due to the large amount of saltwater fish) is a great idea to stretch it. Anyway, I'm stoked to try out the malabar this year.

Interesting Fruit Resource from Whole Foods

Via Twitter: @Cooking_Light: Great resource! RT @wholefoods From apples to strawberries, find out how to select, store and prepare favorite fruits: http://cot.ag/xP4d2p

A feature that would be a great add is how to propagate the fruits from store-bought product. I suppose that's a bit much to ask from a retailer who would lose sales for every fruit tree grown.

Gulf Coast Tourism - Driven by Staycations?

Not sure about the national market, but here in Mississippi I see a "Come Visit the Gulf Coast" commercial like this one a couple of times a night.

According to this BP-funded piece, 2011 was a heckuva year across the Gulf region of TX, LA, MS, AL, and FL. I'm curious how much of that improved tourism was due to an increase in "staycations" and how much was caused because of BP's "everything is OK" marketing campaign. You can be on the Coast from St. Louis in an easy day of driving and from Chicago in a closer to miserable but not too much worse than dealing with the airlines daylong kinda drive. The number of people within an easy/doable drive coupled with the depressed economy seems to point to more people showing up on the Coast. Don't get me wrong, there are some beautiful sites to be seen down here, like these shots from the Emerald Coast of Florida along 30A near one of my preferred destinations.
But it doesn't have the wow factor of Nevis & St Kitts or the Montserrat mystique (here's to Brian Wilson). I'm hoping for the sake of the folks who depend on the influx of cash into the region that whatever the reason, the tourism spike in the Gulf region levels out higher than in the past and has a moderate long-term growth rate instead of creating a big boom-bust cycle.
PS - I wonder how much BP paid to have that cheeseball sandcastle constructed for their spot.

Chef Georgia Pellegrini

I'm completely intrigued by Georgia Pellegrini. She's gone way beyond where I would expect most girls to go in terms of "back to nature", hunting, gathering, etc. But she seems to have proven that you can do that stuff and still stay what would be conventionally described as "girly". Not to mention having some ideas that the guys can learn from. Here's a link to Chef Pellegrini's recipes. You can navigate to the rest of her site from there. Some of the recipes are pretty adventurous - but I will try just about anything once and have found many interesting foods that way over the course of my life and travels. I certainly want to do a couple of the weirder ones on my own before I try to convince my kids that it's even in the realm of possibility to try.

The Girl Hunter - Facebook Fan Page

Finally, here's a link to her book. It looks pretty interesting, but I haven't read it yet and therefore can't endorse it. But I have added it to my wishlist.

Dr. Hansen Eats Cocoa Puffs

The video in this post over at Watts Up With That demonstrates once again that Dr. James Hansen with Nasa clearly eats Cocoa Puffs. He's said that "the ocean's will begin to boil..." Under any reasonable scenario that I'm aware of, predicted temperatures (EVEN IF YOU BELIEVE THAT WE'RE DOING IT) change only a couple of degrees. So either Columbia University teaches a different kind of thermodynamics than I learned, or he is pretty much cuckoo...



I would LOVE to see the energy balance calculations showing how the oceans boil.

Climategate 2.0 - The Crooks Skated Again

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How is it that anyone who may have valid questions about scientific data has a tough time getting more than a couple of words in edgewise in a discussion about global warming/climate change/weirding/whatever's next with some political science/history major flunkie who speaks the party line and thinks they understand statistics, but many thousands of emails between the guys who started this whole mess doesn't fully discredit them? Maybe we should have gotten some of the AGW proponents like Michael Mann or Phil Jones to comment on some of their employees height in relation to the height of their wife. Apparently that's all it takes to discredit you from a more important goal of something like running the country (see Herman Cain hackjob at Politico).

Regardless of whether their wives are a similar height to any of their coworkers, it drives be absolutely batty that we let people get away with bunk like the original climategate emails, which at least put a moment of hesitation into major policy makers and the public. But the wonks on the left who are using this as a wedge issue can't let go EVEN WHEN THE PERPS DO IT AGAIN, as evidenced by the utter lack of stories on this in the media and the continued mention of global warming (or appropriate, up-to-the-minute-fits-the-data-now alias):

• Climategate 2.0 - New Emails Rock the Global Warming Debate Forbes.com
  
• Climategate 2.0 Emails .torrent file - You’ll need a bit torrent client
  
• Original Climategate Emails .torrent file - You’ll need a bit torrent client
  

I believe, based on some data I have seen, that there are in fact strange things happening in the climate. However I don't believe that there are that many catastrophic changes going on at this point. Based on the climate's behavior in the past when concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) & hydrocarbons like methane (CH4) were higher, I do not believe that the carbon dioxide that has been put into the atmosphere by burning fuel over the last couple of hundred years has had any statistically significant measurable affect on the climate (Univ of East Anglia, Penn State, & the IPCC statistics show you can prove anything). That does not mean, by any stretch of the imagination, that I don't think we should do everything we can to smartly decrease the amount of pollution we spread around the world as well as limit the amount of damage to natural resources. Sustainability is an entirely different focus than climate science, though the two often get commingled. For resources that are finite, we should decrease their usage to extend the quality of life that we have attained. As the lifeblood of all the plant life on the planet, I do not think that CO2 qualifies as pollution. Whatever EPA wonk came up with that one... I can definitively say that they are an idiot. Updated to correct torrent link for Climategate 2.0 as well as add the original emails so they are all in one place.

Rain, Rain Go Away

As much NOT fun as it is commuting in dense fog and later rain, the after effects are certainly welcome. First, the sky does some pretty cool things right as fronts pass through. Clouds just aren't as interesting in the middle of low-gradient weather. Things liven up when the temperature/humidity differences start to show up. Second (and my favorite) is the brilliance of color, specifically the greens and browns of plant life, just seem to pop with a surrealist edge.

I accordance with the guidance purveyed in The Life of Brian, always look on the bright side of life.

Here, deer...

I'm hoping for a discount on venison today. Worst case, beautiful day in the woods.


Update: No venison. I flirted with a doe for about 45 minutes after she came running toward my antler rattling, which sounds pretty realistic if I do say so. I rattled 2 more times while she stood there and tried to figure out why she couldn't see the two studs she could hear 75 yards away. I was trying to take one with more meat so i waited. A dad and 2 kids squirrel hunting in the same woods came too near and flushed another doe, who convinced the one I had been engaged with to mosey on. I sat around and enjoyed the afternoon, trying to tease another one in with antlers and a call. No joy. To all my northern hunter friends... you should really come down here and hunt sometime. I burned up while wearing a T-shirt and BDU pants - SOOOO glad I don't live in Minnesota.

The boys went out with Papaw and their new Daisy Red Ryder BB Gun. They didn't see anything in the 15 minutes they were able to stay in the stand, but they spent some time learning what rubs and scrapes are. Then they went to the "range"... my oldest proved he will be another sharpshooter nailing coke cans from about 15 yards away while my 5-year old plinked the cans a few times and scared the bejesus out of the oak trees behind the cans.

Nerdliness is Genetic

Tonight I introduced my kids to astronomy via telescope. One (hyphenated) word... awe-inspiring.

Previously we have used a pair of 70s vintage 7x35 binoculars from Sears or just gone out with the old eyeballs. You can see a ton of objects with your eyes and even more with binoculars, but there are some advantages to the telescope that I had never considered for the kids. Namely:

1) I find interesting things and they can just walk up and look - We started with the moon via a 25mm eyepiece and worked them up to the 12mm and finally 4mm eyepiece. That gave them 3 different chances to look at the moon over the course of 30 seconds, see the same thing 3 times at increasing magnification, but feel like they were looking at 3 completely different views.

2) The increased detail makes things look "like the box" - Too often things disappoint compared to the marketing. Beginner/entry-level telescopes certainly fall into that category. Trying to head this off at the pass, my sis-in-law (who bought the scope for Christmas) and I explained that stars will still look like points of light but we can see more. We also explained that we will barely be able to see the details of the planets (Jupiter's stripes, Saturn's rings, etc.). They were stoked when they could see extreme detail in craters along the shadow terminator on the moon. They couldn't (be still enough to) resolve the stripes or red spot on Jupiter, but I saw the stripes. That will take a little practice for the boys to master.

3) They can actually see things moving in space - We often sit outside and watch satellites orbiting and figuring out which ones we are seeing during visible passes. Until the telescope, this was the peak of their observed understanding of orbits and motion in space. The 4mm eyepiece changed that tonight. I lined up the westernmost lunar horizon with the eastern edge of my field of view and let the moon traverse the field. My 5-year old asked how I was making the telescope move across the moon without touching it. But my 7-year old jumped in with "Daddy isn't moving the telescope, the moon is moving around the earth. And DADDY, YOU CAN SEE IT MOVING! LOOK!"

That was enough to brighten my night and put a smile on my face as I got more acquainted with the scope in the cold after they went to bed. It also rekindled my desire to eventually buy or construct a high-quality telescope like a Stellarvue refractor or a homebrew Dobsonian. My poor wife... my strange, completely nerdy hobbies just never end. Did I mention we tilled in some compost and planted some winter rye in one of our poorer soil beds this morning at the request of my 5-year old? :)

Note: Images via easthampshire.org & knapton.net

Help: Mushroom Identification

These mushrooms have spawned in a few places around my yard, primarily where pine trees once stood (the roots are still in the ground). They are also popping up in shady spots in 2 of my beds. I'd appreciate some help identifying them. A few more pictures are shown below.

They may be utterly inedible. But they might be a perfectly acceptable addition to a salad or other dish. I hope a roving mycologist checks in and lets me know.

Commute Update - Blue Heron

This morning I saw an absolutely stunning sight within 1/4-mile of I-55 on the Trace. I figured I needed to update my recent post. I was still driving around 30 mph due to the traffic entering/exiting in that area when a massive blue heron that looked like the one below glided past my windshield. From beak to toe it must have been 6 feet, as it's head had already passed my car before it's feet got to my right fender.

The beautiful bird helped me center myself a bit for the day. Take a few deep breaths and relax. There is a beautiful world out there if you take time to look around.

Eclipse Facts

Return of the Blood Red Moon - Eclipse Facts http://bit.ly/rDCoEi https://twitter.com/#!/SPACEdotcom/status/144804553873829888 Shared via Plume https://market.android.com/details?id=com.levelup.touiteur