I lopped its branches. I have yet to get the weedeater out, but I will. I recovered the Green Monster after the garbage crews had been by and filled it with iris leaves…yep, that’s one of the BIG rolling city cans, filled, and so heavy I can no longer find the strength to horse it across the sidewalk and the water hoses lying there. I topped it off with various mounds of hemlock cones from about the front garden. And declared I’d had my exercise for the day.
Jane has been rebuilding the backside of the waterfall, which includes massive pieces of basalt terracing, basalt gravel fill, then some dirt, then plants. We had to get in there last year because we had a leak, and we decided to fix it more nicely and bury the drain hose while we were at it.
We are both tired.
I went to Freddy Myers’ (discount store) to pick up a prescription, which turned into a monster shopping mission and though the lens for my glasses is here, I didn’t have the wind left after Freddy Myers to go to Walmart and fuss through the repair job…I’m tired. Jane’s tired. I needed my Aleve, which I’d forgotten.
Do you have an electric chain saw? I’d recommend getting one if you’re going to be doing any extensive “lopping” like on the gooseberry. I know it’s a real pita to try to dig them out, much less try to pull them with a heavy duty chain and a big Dodge 2500 Hemi pickup truck. But it’s easier than trying to use a bow saw, a carpenter’s saw, or a pair of loppers. Plus, if you have a lot of trimming to do, it’ll be a lot easier on your hands, too. If you have a fire ring or patio fireplace, you might be able to use the branches for “mood enhanced lighting or aromatherapy” in the back yard.
I had one once, but I broked it…
It was very sad.
Actually these bushes are our last removal jobs save one, and that one (the trunk of a defunct pine) rocks when I pull on it. Jane’s method is to excavate the root ball and then start snipping roots. Ultimately you get the thing loose.
I understand it’s considered a good bet that if one likes gooseberry pie or orange marmalade, there’s a Brit in one’s upbringing. I suppose so, Dad was Canadian, although his folks were from the USA.
I’m thinking of comitting bumper-sticker sloganing: USA does NOT mean, “Have it your way!” 😉
What if one likes Marmite? I think you probably have to grow up with it to have a chance of liking it. Now I feel inspired to have some for breakfast. 😀
I like Marmite. Although Vegemite is better and it’s easier for me to buy large jars of it mail order.
I was offered Vegemite when I was in Australia…I think it’s a taste best acquired in childhood. It’s the same concept as fish for breakfast. I’m for bacon. But I can’t even face steak and eggs…Jane can; but not me. I want nice bacon or sausage.
I can do fish for breakfast.
I’ve had both Marmite and Vegemite, and prefer Marmite. Several years back, my boss’ Australian landlord came to work for a breakfast visit. As a joke, he brought a jar of Vegemite. Most people sniffed the open jar, blanched, and passed it along; I scooped out a blob and put it on some toast, ate it, then went for seconds. His face was very funny. The standing joke is that an American can eat anything, as long as we have 2 pieces of bread to put it between. I often don’t bother with the bread.
Probably the pine trunk is only being held in by its own weight; if it rocks when you yank on it, the roots are likely rotted. I’ve had stumps like that. Do you have any friends who do mixed martial arts? A couple of good kicks would knock it over 🙂
Totally unfamiliar personally with Vegemite, so I went to Wikipedia to read-up. So other than the idiosyncracies of taste, it does appear to be a good thing. Lots of B-vitamins. Its folic acid, for pregnancies, would seem to suggest spinabifida is rare in Australia? The MSG/umami seem to suggest that it might make a good ingredient in light soups and broths? Perhaps something like a miso soup?
So how would one describe the taste?
Sort of like hyper-salted boiled carrots.
Well, then, as many a stock begins with a base of carrots, onions, and celery, i.e. the main additions when we’re rendering the holiday turkey’s “frame” for soup, your description might suggest Vegemite could become a useful/healthful ingredient. Any of our Aussie friends have an opinion?
Hyper-salted, yes. Carrots, no. More tangy and bitter, I’d say. But to my taste, Marmite is better – slightly less salty, and a taste that’s less flat than Vegemite. It also has vitamin B12, which Vegemite doesn’t have.
But the taste of either is unique and difficult to describe.
HuffPost did a taste test of both – see the comments below the article as well for more opinions.
The secret is to use small quantities. Half a teaspoon is a lot.
OK, so it might substitute for some of the salt in a stock? How about a taste from the mushroom category? (Taste-test still downloading on my dialup…)
No, tastes nothing like mushroom. It is truly hard to describe. Salty, yes, can be used as a stock, possibly if there’s nothing else available.
I like it quite thick on toast or muffins but then again I was brought up on it (Vegemite mostly but sometimes Marmite). I prefer the texture of Vegemite to that of Marmite which is sort of stickier. Can also eat it straight out of the jar.
As a kid we had Vita-Weat biscuits (crackers) with butter and Vegemite. Each biscuit-Vegemite combo was pressed up against another one making a sandwich. After sitting in a lunch bag and getting nice and warm (no A/C in those days) the combination of butter & Vegemite would ooze out of the little holes in the crackers (pin-prick size), and the resulting mess was known as “squashed ants”, which you would then lick off the outside before eating what was left.
Like a somewhat gummy beef bouillon cube.
Here are some great photos of breakfasts around the world:
50 of the World’s Best Breakfasts
Some of the breakfasts look delicious, others not so much. Some look more like lunch or dinner to me.
🙂
Is it me or the Canadians are offering traditional polish dish – pierogi for their brekkie? Unless of course our missions to colonize Canada is going so well that they serve polish food without thinking 😀 (that eggy looking section is actually perogies. Perogies are boiled, baked or fried dumplings made from unleavened dough and traditionally stuffed with potato filling, sauerkraut, ground meat, cheese, or fruit)
Canada had a huge Ukrainian element among settlers, thus the pierogies. Went to a festival somewhere near Winnipeg 40 years ago, and discovered all sorts of wonderful food and crafts; I still have some painted eggs. We went on to Hudson Bay (Churchill) by train to see the polar bears, back in those days it wasn’t the tourist attraction it is now. Rented a vehicle from a local, and were stunned that he required no identification, just some cash up front; he pointed out that we weren’t going far….there were no roads out of the area. Access was by train or plane. (Now I want to go back and see how it’s changed…but I’d probably be sorry. The isolation was so profound that a local came up to us at breakfast to let us know that the US had a new president, Nixon had resigned.)
My mother-in-law’s parents came from the Ukraine, through Ellis Island, though she was born in New Jersey. And my daughter learned to make pierogies from her great-grandmother, and still fixes them for special occasions.
Most I could get by, even the Vegemite. I have eaten reindeer: it’s a lot like buffalo, which is a lot like liver, which is not my favorite, but edible. I draw the line at Dobbin or mutton of any age, or goat if I can avoid it, and allergy excludes onions or garlic.
And while I could eat fish for breakfast, it’s at the bottom of my acceptable list, somewhere below Vegemite, especially the sort that’s been pickled into goo.
The thing about calves liver is the cook! It takes a certain skill to get it done, but not overdone. Leave it on seconds too long and it goes downhill extremely rapidly. Mom knew how (I don’t) and typically served it with a toping of caramelized onions. But not for breakfast. I agree with you, but I much prefer sausage to bacon. The thing about bacon is getting to smell it cooking–at home it’s great, but at a restaurant where it arrives anonymously, not so much.
My idea of the perfect breakfast on occasion is good and meaty, well-spiced sausage(s), a couple eggs sunny but set, and a mess of hash-browns which I immediately mix into my cut-up eggs, so the yolk becomes like a condiment in the mixture. Tea or orange juice; never have liked coffee.
Pan-fried trout, preferably in a pan that’s had bacon or cocktail sausages cooked in it first, as breakfast.
But I like just about anything for breakfast, except fried eggs.
Paul, as I dimly recall, Mom dropped the liver into boiling water until it turned grey before she started to fry it in a lidded skillet (with onions and potato, which is before I became sensitive to onions.) Toward the end of cooking the lid came off to let things brown.
Mine just fried it in a cast iron skillet until just done, when the texture was just firm. Not sure what the boiling step will do. Overcooking liver will ruin it, IMO.