Just one tomato plant... planted last year

Forget Best Boy or Early Girl or any heirloom tomato. I have named this variety of cherry tomatoes Rasputins.

The owner of our house planted this tomato last year and we just didn't have time or energy to put in any plants this spring. Tonight I decided to spend some me time outside and wanted to clean up the jumble of weeds between the patio and back porch.

Lo and behold, there was a flash of orange and I spied this cluster of beautiful tomatoes in the jumble of weeds.

This is too good to ignore and the poor tomatoes won't be happy laying on the ground. I poked around in the carriage house and found a small section of left over iron fence that goes around the back yard. A little green ribbon, some bird feeder hooks over the pergola, a little vine coaxing, and voila! My Rasputins have a mock espalier.

Would you believe this mess is just one plant?

Mmmm, next year I'll get serious about gardening and make some time to put in more plants.

Monty Python goes to school

Yesterday was Rachel's first day of school (FDOS). She's starting high school (Do I feel old? Yes.) at a new school and does not know a single person in her class. Yes, she was nervous, but I reassured her that many of the other 500+ freshmen in her school feel the same way.

On the eve of the FDOS, our dear friend Marcy gave Rachel some excellent advice: Quote Monty Python movies.

If Rachel declares "Your mother was a hamster..." and another kid chimes in with "And your father smelt of elderberries!" then she knows she has found a kindred soul to hang out with.

You can give this wise advice to your kid as well. Of course, if your kid is not a fan of Monty Python, they probably won't be able to correctly answer to "What is your favorite color?"

"Blue. No! Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed!"

Your kid will have to fill in the blank with their own personal weirdness.

Kitchen Tip: buttering a baking sheet

Do you like buttering baking sheets and cake pans? I hate it. I hate getting gunk under my (fairly short) fingernails, and I always have to stop what I’m doing so I can wash my hands. It’s a pain in the butt.
Maybe I’m just a clean freak, but if you feel the same way, I have an easy tip to share. Put your hand in a plastic baggie before you touch the butter. Swipe your bagged hand through the butter dish, then rub it on your baking sheet. When you’re done, turn the baggie inside out as you take it off and throw it away.
Ta dah! No more greasy hands or yuck under your fingernails.

Kitchen Tip: organize your baking supplies

I love to bake. Since moving into our current house, I’ve been thrilled to have just a little more space to work (we actually have countertops now) and so I’ve been going crazy baking this and that. A couple weekends a month I get all domestic and engage in “Kitchen Therapy,” turning out cakes, cookies, casseroles, crock pot successes (and disasters), and bread.
There are some ingredients and tools used more for baking than any other type of recipe. Over the past few months I have figured out that if I can keep the storage and access to these items handy, I can cut my prep and clean up times in half. It’s so simple, you could put this together in 10 minutes.
Place the following types of ingredients in a cake pan (like in the picture):
Baking soda
Baking powder
Corn starch
Cocoa powder
Vanilla
Salt
Powdered buttermilk
Yeast packets
Powdered egg whites
If you don’t have something on the list, you don’t have to go out and buy it, just gather together the ingredients you pretty much only use for baking.
Now grab your measuring spoons and add them to the cake pan as well. Oh – don’t have an extra cake pan? You can buy one for about $2 or $3. For the time you’ll save when baking, it’s worth it.
Do you have a couple of favorite recipes that you make all the time? If you use a recipe each time, write it out on a recipe card and stick that in the cake pan, too. Mine are to the right of the baking soda and cocoa.
Next time you bake, take out your cake pan and you have everything you’ll need in one place. No more hunting through the cupboards for the little boxes and cans. I don’t bother to wash the measuring spoons after each recipe if I’m only using them for baking powder/soda/salt. I just toss them back in the cake pan for the next time. There’s no cross contamination to worry about. Actually, I don’t use measuring spoons for cocoa or vanilla; I just eyeball those amounts, since those ingredients don’t affect the chemistry of baked goods like soda/powder do. Those do need to be measured for best results.
Clean up is simple. Just put the cake pan away. I keep mine in the cupboard under my stovetop.

Tortellini Ham Salad

 

I love pasta salads. Give me a bowl of tuna pea pasta and I’m a happy camper.

As far as hot pasta dishes go, one of my favorites is tortellini. There’s something very satisfying about those little round packages of parmesan. It’s one of my favorite comfort foods. Luckily, my favorite grocery store offers dried tortellini in their bulk section, so I pick up a pound to have on hand for when the mood hits. 

It hit this afternoon and I decided to try a cold tortellini pasta salad. Not bad. Here’s the recipe I made up:

Heat a large pot of salted water. When it starts to boil, add a pound of dried tortellini. Cook until the tortellini floats, about 8-10 minutes. Drain.   (I use a perforated pasta insert to keep the tortellini from breaking up as it drains.)

While the pasta cooks, dice about a pound of ham. Add the ham to the drained pasta along with about 1/4 c grated parmesan cheese. If you like your food spicy, add dried chili flakes to taste.

Add equal amounts of mayo and sour cream until the salad has the creaminess level you like. I used about 1/4 cup of each because pasta salads always taste better the next day, and the moisture from the dressing absorbs into the pasta. I discovered that if I initially make it a little too creamy, then it’s perfect on the second day.

One note – this was my first time using canned ham. Blech. Too salty and too similar to Spam. Not that Spam is bad (I admit it, I’ll eat the stuff) but this salad would be much better with natural ham.

List: Music Discovery Websites

I'm kind of a weirdo.

One of my happiest moments is when I'm driving down the road, either an unfamiliar highway or one packed with traffic zooming along just above the posted speed limit.

Blasting from the radio (or the 14-year-old's iPod) is a collection of really great music that I have never heard before. No matter what my mood before, this always makes me happy.


Lately I have been streaming music from various websites and blasting music into my kitchen while I cook or bake. Our current kitchen has a swinging door that I can close to confine most of the sound to that part of the house.

Sometimes it's hard finding new music, but over time I have collected a nice list of websites that help introduce new stuff, indie bands, unheard-of labels, and emerging artists hoping to make it big. No matter what genre you like, you'll probably find some great new stuff here, too. All legal, of course.

Here's my list:


last.fm - my current favorite. Type in a song or artist you like and get a radio station with a playlist based on that artist or song. You can also "scrobble" which means last.fm will look at what you have stored in your computer and make a playlist based on what you already have. Lately I've been playing "Groove Armada radio," "Bela Fleck and the Flecktones radio" and sometimes I'll crank up the bass and listen to "the Gorillaz radio." (I need bigger woofers, though.)

pandora - same concept as last.fm but I just prefer the radio station that last.fm creates better.

ilike - listen to 30 second samples of stuff and get free downloads of stuff you've probably never heard of (because they're new emerging artists). Shows you what's popular on their site or you can explore based on what you like.

emusic - monthly subscription for bargain downloads. We discovered a lot of good stuff here, including Pam getting hooked on Of Montreal.

Amazon - Start by looking up an artist or album you love. Then scroll down to see other music purchased by customers who bought your favorite album... browse from there. This is where I nearly wet my pants upon the discovery of Mrs. Miller, Florence Foster Jenkins, and Jonathan and Darlene Edwards.
Holy crap.
(I think this subject is a blog post all by itself.)

iTunes - I'm sure you've heard of iTunes. Honestly, this is probably the last place I go for music.

MySpace - I'm personally not a fan of MS, but this is where Rachel discovered so much fantastic music like Hot Hot Heat, The Fratellis, Hard Fi, Say Hi To Your Mom, Does It Offend You Yeah?, and a buttload of other fantastic artists. We have discovered many more artists here than at Facebook.


1227.com - You're going to hate me for this, but I love this site.

stopmotioness uncut & remasterd

Yesterday Rachel performed in an orchestra concert at her (old) middle school. It was excellent; probably the best one I've been to yet.

After the concert, one of the kids ran through the hall yelling, "It's on YouTube!" During the concert, the guy next to me on the top bleacher had a tripod set up and he filmed the entire concert, so I wasn't surprised it was posted.

Today while searching for the performance (I couldn't find it!?) I stumbled across this vid that some of her classmates made. The school offers a film class and Rachel thinks they made it for class. Pretty neat.

Mother Nature reads my blog

Three days ago, in a previous blog post, I complained about the cold weather.

I guess Mother Nature reads this blog and decided to show me who's boss:

It's ok. I love the heat.

You Oregonians might not appreciate my next comment, but I have to say it:

It's a dry heat...

Pass It On Plates has a new website!

If you are looking for our plate diaries at www.passitonplates.com, don't worry if you don't find them. Your plate diaries still exist and everything written in them is still there.

You can now find your plate diaries at our new website address: www.pass-it-on-plates.com

For more details on this change, please check out our Pass It On Plates blog post about the upgrade.
(If you want your plate to have the new website address written on the back, there is information about that as well in our Pass It On Plates blog.)

Thank you!

Summer Rant

It is July and I am cold.

Actually, I am freezing my butt off. Oh yes I'm here in Oregon, not Antarctica, where it should at least be 80 degrees by now. The windows are open and the thermostat in my house reads 64.

I reluctantly shut off the furnace for the season a couple weeks ago. If I had firewood, I'd build a fire in the fireplace because I'm so dang cold. My nose is icy and my nostrils feel frosted when I inhale. Doesn't that just sound wrong to want to build a fire or turn on the heat in July? I'm just tired of being so cold all the time.

It's just not right.

Our weather here in Oregon is usually so wonderful that I keep some weather widgets on my computer wallpaper just so I can be accurate when bragging about our weather. Hmph. It's depressing to realize that compared to Salem, Oregon: it's a little warmer on the coast, toasty warm in my Wisconsin hometown, and delightfully HOT in Rancho Mirage, CA (near Palm Springs.)
Gee, I'd like to be there right now...

Yesterday Rachel asked if we could go up the mountain to our favorite bend in the river at North Fork.

"Uh, that's a mountain stream fed by snow melt. I'm gonna have to say no."

"But mommmmmm..."

"How many days have we had over 80 degrees this year?"

"Ummm, 2? Maybe 3?"

Yah, No. Maybe by the end of August it will have warmed up enough.

Is it warm where you are? Has June delivered its June-like weather to you and your garden? Does July look like it's going to be everything you hoped it would be - as far as weather goes?

Comment here with your weather bragging and gloating. At least I can warm myself up by imagining your weather!