I’ve got to go out there in the back and figure out why our UV filter light is blinking on and off, whether it’s badly seated or its the ballast. And I’ve got to haul out the pond vac again and get the algae out. Sigh. Yesterday no matter what I did, I got wet. I’d change clothes, something else would come up and I’d get wet again. If it wasn’t the pond it was the leak in the sprinkling system. 2 Aleve overnight and I can move without pain. Yesterday I couldn’t stay still without pain.
We found a real good sub for hamburgers: a black-bean-chipotle veggie burger from Costco. Tastes like a chili sandwich. Pickles and mayo and you’ve got supper.
Time to put on the really skungy old sneakers and go out there and battle the pond. We have had far more wind this season than ordinary…and that makes it chill.
But the temperatures are forecast to be up to, oh, 40 at night and near 70 during the day.
For those of you in areas affected by El Nino, the latest NOAA advisory says the current El Nino is ending. For the Pacific NW, an El Nino means a drought during winter, cold, but no snow, and a lingeringly cold and treacherous spring with rain coming in off the Alaskan gulf. A La Nina means a snowy winter and a lovely spring, warming decisively and behaving itself.
So I’m hoping we don’t just get a trough between El Ninos, but a switch to a La Nina event.
When it comes to Ninos and Ninas, there’s just no winning side…
Here in Florida, we’re hoping that this La Nina develops slowly and weakly, because a strong La Nina in mid-summer means no wind shear to mess with upper atmospheric winds at the height of hurricane season. Right now, our coastal waters are already warmed up to mid-summer temperatures, so without wind shear, we could be looking at another 2004 or 2005.
Of course, a good coating of oil atop the water might inhibit the hurricanes, too….
Agree. El Nino means no heavy rains in the winter, on which we depend to replenish the aquifer and keep Upcountry farmers happy. La Nina means an increased chance of hurricanes, but a wetter winter. Pick your poison.
There was much rejoicing about El Nino’s demise on the weather news here in Tucson, too. For us it means good winter rains (sometimes, and this time it came through) but a weak summer monsoon, which we had last year. So we’re hoping for a wet summer — two good rainy seasons in a row won’t undo the ten-year drought, but it helps.
Anyone have a feel for what all this seismic activity and vulcanism is going to do to the climate over the next few years?
Far as I know it’s within normal levels, just ordinary business for the earth—just happened to hit populated areas.
Of course, if ever one of the really big volcanoes blows, all bets are off re global warming. And Eyjafyjallajokul sometimes goes in sympathy with one of the larger Icelandic volcanos. One of the worst was Laki, 1783, which had a climatic impact. But there’s also Heckla, and a couple of hundred others on the island.
Also increased activity in the Yellow Stone Super Vulcano…if that goes we’re toast.
I’m so happy you two are feeling better! You worry me sometimes with all you take on.
Thanks for the Costco hint. Generally, I find veggie burgers have too little protein for my own diet, but I’ll check those out. Costco, at least in my area, also has turkey burgers–not quite the same as beef, but good and lean. Also, the salmon burgers are good (so are the salmon fillets), but then you’re not even close to a beef burger. I wish they carried buffalo.
The weather has been good to California, in general. A little too much rain in some places, but lots of snow pack for water (and skiing). I hope the weather doesn’t portend a damaging hurricane season for the Gulf states.
Question for Walt: How about elk? They were selling it at my Farmers’ Market yesterday and I was curious but didn’t buy any.
Elk is good meat, even if reindeer is even more so.
At least if you like the “wild” taste it has.
I’ve actually had reindeer, when I visited Norway. It reminded me of the ‘white-meat’ version of American bison. The fur is remarkable.
I think the world would be in better shape if we’d skipped beef cattle altogether and just gone for elk, venison, pork, and bison running loose or ‘loosely’ ranched.
Well, in Sweden cattle is generally well kept but pigs… There has been lots of controversy here over eating pork as pigs apparently are kept by people with minimal empathy for animal rights.
But I wholly agree on ‘loosely’ ranched.
It’s the way reindeer is kept.
I see buffalo at Trader Joe’s and Fuddruckers (Spooner beware!) That’s about the only game meat I see, aside from duck in Asian restaurants, which isn’t really game. I *think* CA is mainly deer country rather than elk. Really, anything would have to be farmed since if it got mildly popular, CA’s population would extinct it, like the CA salmon. (Not technically extinct, but too rare for fishing, I think.)
I’ve had some game meats. Deer (venison) can be extremely good and flavorful–or very game-y. Rabbit is great. Duck, nothing special, but a nice change.
But, I probably don’t frequent the stores most likely to offer game meat. I guess my attitude is, it would be nice if I ran into it, but I really have no idea how to cook it well myself. Bad venison can be pretty bad!
On CJ’s comment below, I think if we raised game meats the way we raise cattle–full of hormones and antibiotics, unable to exercise… –we’d end up with the same problems.
The protein veggie burgers have is generally soy derived, with all those complications, the latest of which is the presence of hexanes albeit at low levels. Unless you actually LIKE veggie burgers I’d not bother with them if protein is your goal.
Is there a good site that explains weather phenomena? When we had El Nino in the late 90’s we had warm (dahlias survived in the ground) wet winters. This time around we have had a lot of snow, HEAVY rains (this is southern RI) and the first real spring we’ve had in years. Go Figure!
I have heard that elk is more like moose than venison…..very lean and not gamey the was venison can be.
HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY !
I found this helpful: Wikipedia on El Nino
@CapnKirk…… thanks 🙂 😀 😆
Fantastic Foods makes a soy-based taco filling that is very good and spicy too with a texture so close to hamburger you don’t notice the difference. We use it in not only tacos but for topping a taco salad, enchiladas, etc. We’ve switched to turkey or buffalo for chili and burgers too. Our farmer’s market is somewhat restrictive as far as meats and milk, unfortunately, but they are finally allowing eggs, while another nearby is dictating (high) prices to the sellers, or kicking them out. It’s head scratcher.
Pigs as we raised them were ‘loosely ranched,’ too. My 60-year-old arthritic grandmother spent a day in a tree waiting for my uncle to come home and check in, with a very dangerous old sow just lurking below—she’d found a way out of the pasture, and she was out for any human she could find. The same sow put the fear in me and two of my cousins, who were crossing the pasture only to realize WHICH pasture she was in. We made it over and through the fence before she got there, but there wasn’t a tree handy, so we had to sprint for our lives. I was vastly more worried about her than any cow we had on the place.
Why wasn’t she pork chops, you ask? Because the same qualities that made her a terror also made her a ferociously good and protective mother. Farmers lose a lot of piglets because the sows are stupid and roll over on them, despite plenty of room in the pen. When you get one that doesn’t, she’s worth plenty as a breeding sow. She may pass on her brains—and her killer instinct.
I’m telling you, the bit in the Wizard of Oz where the hands caution Dorothy about the pig pen is serious stuff. Our folks treated cows, horses, rattlesnakes, and quicksand as casual hazards we could avoid, and turned us loose with firecrackers, bottle rockets and lit cigars (to light the firecrackers) in the dry summer woods: but any mention of us loitering around the pig lot would bring down the wrath of God. Pigs will not only do you in, there won’t be much of you left to bury, because they’re opportunistic omnivores.
My former husband was an East Coast city boy, and when he met my Iowa farm family was a bit…pretentious. He was terribly amused that my uncle saw fit to warn him about pigs. I assured him that street smarts would do him no good in the presence of an irate sow. (In retrospect, perhaps I should have told him that his leg was being pulled and that he should enter the pen and scratch a few ears?)
Aye, I was terrified of pigs when I was a kid – there was a farmer close to where my paternal grandparents lived, out in farmer country, and I knew to keep away. People thought it hilarious when I didn’t dare touch a pig in a zoo.
Little did they know…
Nowadays most pigs are kept indoors, in almost industrial settings, and there’e been some atrocious maltreatment going on. Got public just in time for last Yule, which traditionally is THE season for ham… 😉
Besides elk, we can buy assorted beef and pork cuts at the farmers market, presumably from humanely treated animals though I haven’t personally visited the farms (I think someone does). I don’t know about ham, but I bought a packet of bacon and some pork chops. Everything is frozen as far as I know. We have eggs. No milk, though, I don’t think it is allowed. In addition to all the usual things, we have baked goods, wine, olive oil that has local herbs added, yarn and other stuff for knitters and spinners, woodcrafts, metal sculptures, basically anything you can grow or make.
PS, if any of the group commenting on good food from ethical sources would like a recommendation, I really enjoyed Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.”
Lierre Keith’s “The Vegetarian Myth” is an incredible read. While I have never been a vegan radical feminist myself, and don’t buy everything social, I can find no disagreement with the reality that factory farming is an abomination and that humans are really not set up to live on plant foods alone. Keith was attacked with capsaicin (hot pepper oil) laced cream pies a few weeks ago by vegan activists just as she was speaking out against factory farming at the SF Anarchist Book Show.
There are cruel people of every stamp, imho: be it religious wars or wars of politics, total devotion to a cause leads the worst people to imagine the cruelest acts they can think of to frighten their fellow man and gain points with fools, which is how idealists find their organizations taken over by unsavory people. I’m not for cruelty toward any creature, including other humans; I’ll literally alter my pace to step over an ant on the sidewalk, and I’m very against factory farms and think they should be regulated, at very least. But I’m way mistrustful of self-righteousness, especially when it escalates violence to silence an opposition view, and especially when it claims tender-heartedness as its motive. I’m no vegetarian—I’m allergic to too many vegetables to make it easy, for one thing; and for another, I’m fond of bacon. But I do think any mega-business that farms animals should be state-inspected and regulated, for one thing to give a fair shake to the small farmer who has to compete with these agricultural giants, and for another, because we’re human, and ought to run this planet as well as we can.
Probably the best animal-farming industries are the fish and shrimp farms, wherein fish get to do what fish do to a goodly size; but alas, I knew a tilapia pair rather well, and I hate the taste of catfish, so my morality is in dire trouble on that account.
I do like salmon and shrimp, though.
Sadly most salmon are “farmed” in a way that endangers whole ecosystems, and when it comes to shrimps… what “giant” shrimp farming has done to parts of the world, especially the mangroves, is bad enough to not eat shrimp (not to mention the socio-economic effects when arable land gets killed by saline overdose); and the methods for catching them in the wild destroys the coral reefs and the sea bottom ecologies.
Shrimp farming in Texas is ponds dug in mostly barren land, that I have seen. But messing up mangrove swamps is not smart in the least. Katrina proved that one, with the erosion of the barrier islands, not to mention the erosion of the water-cleaning capacity mangrove has.
Most shrimp (of the “giant” variety) sold or served in Sweden is imported from southeastern Asia, were companies farm and harvest during a handful of lucrative years, then leave the damaged land and its inhabitants to their own devices… which are few, as the people are often poor farmers, left with their lands eroded or too saline for other crops to grow.
In Bangladesh companies have been reported to use armed violence to force farmers to give their land up.
Needless to say I don’t eat giant shrimp.
THat’s rotten. What we get are modest little shrimp, mostly. Shrimp from the Gulf, since the oil spill, are not going to be available: the consequences of that are going to reverberate for years—doing for family businesses, I fear. Not to mention what it’s going to do to the effort to restore the barrier islands. New Orleans was getting itself back in operation after Katrina and now this…which happened mostly, I read, because the company in charge of that oil platform didn’t do repairs as needed.
What people think of that sort of thing is not printable.
HI has a few aquaculture shrimp farms; sounds like this would be a good time to ramp up production. In an ecologically sustainable way, anyhow. I’ve always been puzzled how we produce so much of the nation’s bananas, papaya, mangoes, pineapple and other tropical fruits, but in the grocery store (NOT farmers’ markets) bananas come from Nicaragua, mangoes from Costa Rica, etc., and more expensively than they can be bought on the mainland. I can’t remember the last time bananas dropped below $1 per pound here, yet they commonly hit that in the Midwest. Produce seems to come from everywhere else, rather than locally or mainland US.
As a species most of us seem to allow other animals of predatory body plan to be predators – there are a few who insist that their dogs and cats exist on vegan food – but mostly even ethical vegetarians recognize that a cat or a dog is not a plant eater and will feed appropriately or decline to own such a pet.
When the rubber meets the road at the slaughter, humans almost always do everything they can to minimize pain and suffering. This gives me some hope.
The key to making food production sustainable and humane is, essentially, to allow the human population level to drop back to a more natural ratio of predator to prey. I’m not taking any bets on that happening, so with typical human blind eyes and good intentions in the hearts of most, feed lots and factory farms will continue and continue and continue.
Unfortunately, getting the products that are cruelty free/pasture raised and otherwise most ethical (and healthy) is expensive. I don’t think monoculture farming (also abomination) is sustainable either, and I have some anxiety about what will happen when our jerry-rigged systems start to fail.
If those who have the economic option opt for organic and free-range, we support the efforts to keep this as the desirable option; if those who don’t have that option just don’t WASTE the product they must have, they can do their bit, too. Buy what you need and figure how not to throw out good food—that’s a start.
You know, “grandmother was up in a tree” has wonderfully vivid comedic flair. Plus, now all CJ’s friends will get to tease her about how it explains much. 😉 — I don’t really have a comparable story (at least not that relatives would claim to, hahah).
A couple of comments.
Never bet against Malthus, one thing that makes biology
types nervous is the population J curve. Humans are not
exempt from this.
Elk and Deer meat has no fat in the muscle tissue, so
if you don’t add oil or fat when cooking you get burnt
meat which most describe as a gamey taste
Few city folk ever forget their first time hearing pigs
being butchered. They are far too smart of an animal but
also lack empathy for other creatures as anyone who has
got down and looked into their eyes knows.
Factory ag and monoculture is truly playing with dynamite
as a species, it demeans us to treat things badly just for
money and from my viewpoint it commits the unforgiveable
sin of stupidity when we do know better.
We have to discard the past reasonings that make us think
we are not part of this planet and its lifeweb.
I’m not a Luddite, I know at least one other here who tried
to swindle the government into building a starship…GRIN
Anyone who mistreats elk meat deserves what they get! While there may be some debate about what constitutes ‘gamey’ or ‘wild’ flavor (what my wife refers to as gaminess is to me the unique and characteristic flavor of the meat–but then, she doesn’t care for lamb, either), the key to good venison of any sort is to trim all visible fat; then either cook slowly with liquid, or cook quickly at high heat to no more than medium rare. That’s at least the case for wild elk and deer–I’ve never tried domesticated elk–and prefer game above any domesticated meat. Tyr, I’ve butchered my share of pigs and never heard a sound out of ’em, because we did them the favor first–I can’t imagine doing it any other way.
With elk you can have a portion that is not gamey at all but the steak next to it is gamey as all heck. doesn’t make any sense. Game meats don’t have the marbling associated with beef because they are not eating unnatural foods that make them fat, like grain or corn. Grass fed beef is much leaner. But, fat has always been prized (read 11/09 issue of Nat’l Geo on the Hadza) so humans have used the visceral fat, brains, marrow and other tissues in ways that modern people forget about. Most people don’t think about anything but muscle meat when they consider meats – but the organs and fats are where all the vital stuff is!
Cooking of meat should be gentle, except if it’s ground. The more cooked it is the harder it is for the stomach to break down, so for concerns about bacteria, you want the outside cooked well but the inside can be almost raw if you choose, since all the bacteria should be on the outside. With ground meat, it’s ALL outside…