Some Blog Site

There’s tab, then there’s TaB. You know alt-tab, but do you know alt-TaB?

I’ll leave it to your imagination what shift-TaB and ctrl-TaB should be.

Since things are going well in the garden, I thought I’d update everyone on what seems to be the best herbs to grow in the Midwest of the United States of America. Maybe you’re new to gardening, or maybe you’re new to the midwest; either way, if you’re not sure what to grow here, start with these for a self-sustaining garden.

First up: chives

Chives are a perennial here in zone 6. Not only do they grow well, but they also spread. Not crazy levels of spreading, but they are prolific. Like you’ll-be-pulling-them-out-of-sidewalk-cracks prolific. They also seem to be the herb we use the most, from what we have. That may be due to the fact that they have a long growing season – I’m able to cut them for months.

Next up: dill

Dill is not a perennial here in zone 6. But if you let a couple plants go to seed, you will have an endless supply of dill. I bought a packet of dill seeds the first year the raised garden beds were ready. They just keep going to seed, and the seeds get scattered, and we end up with dill plants growing all over the raised beds. We don’t use dill as much, but we’ll see about homemade pickles this year.

Third up: mint

Mint is a perennial here in zone 6. And mint does have crazy levels of spreading. Like you need to put it in a container otherwise it will take over wherever it is. It spreads via the roots that grow out instead of down – if I pull up one plant, if the root doesn’t break and I keep pulling, I end up with about 5 plants all sprouting at various places along a root about a foot long. I don’t know that we’ve ever used the mint for actual cooking purpose. My favorite use of it is to let it grow in neglected areas that I can’t reach with the riding mower, then when I’m weed whacking those areas it smells great.

Honorable mention: lettuce

Lettuce is not an herb, but it is like dill in that if you let it go to seed, you will get a lot of lettuce plants the next year. We get more of it than we can use, but the seeds are free so I keep letting them grow.

I took the younger two kids raspberry picking, as is a somewhat tradition around here.

They actually did a good job picking berries and filling up their baskets. They each got a basket, as did I. So we ended up with 3 baskets full of raspberries.

Bonus points for noticing the golden raspberry in the basket.

The boys preferred picking the golden raspberries, so their baskets were about half golden half red. Mine was the one pictured above – only one golden berry.

The kids are old enough now so that they pick well and don’t make messes. The 3 baskets were just under $40 – that’s at $5/lb, up from $3.50 about 10 years ago. With that many berries, the boys ate a bunch for lunch and dinner that day, we made jam and canned 8 small jars of it, and froze over a quart of whole berries. Eventually our own berry patch will become larger and more productive and we’ll get our berries for free.

One fun distraction the boys had while picking was a “baby mouse”.

It said it was either a full-size mouse or baby something-else, because it was too big for a baby mouse. Gamma and I thought it was too small for a baby groundhog. I think we settled on something like a mole. He just sat there kind of shaking and not doing much else.

Now on to the pro tip promised in the headline.

A lot of times when people declare something to be a pro tip, that’s just a catchy way of saying they have a method that works well. But as a former professional raspberry picker, I can say this is an actual pro tip.

Pro Tip: Look under the branches

Here’s an example from this trip. Gamma asked me how I was able to pick so many more berries than they did. So I showed him how to find berries. Most people just walk along and look for berries and stop and pick when they see some.

Here’s a shot of what the plants look like as you walk along and look at them.

How many raspberries do you see there? One, maybe two.

What do I see there? Lots of potential. I reached down and grabbed a plant at random and lifted it up and showed Gamma.

The berries like to hide out under the leaves. It’s a pretty good camouflage.

Why don’t more people do this?

1. The plants lean over due to the weight of the berries, so you must bend down in order to reach them. A lot of adults don’t like to bother their backs, so they skip this part.
2. The raspberry plants have small thorns, so they are pokey when you grab them to lift them. A lot of people don’t like to handle minor pain, so they skip this part. My advice: don’t grab the plants roughly – a gentle lift will make it so the thorns don’t puncture your skin. Also, get a leaf in between your hand and the stalk.
3. There are lots of bees about, as most fruit-growing operations have beehives to keep the plants pollinated. Many people are afraid of bees, so they skip this part. Yes, the bees are there, but you can bump into them and they don’t mind.

On that last point: I’ve taught my kids that honeybees and bumblebees are friendly – just don’t hurt them and don’t threaten the hive and you’ll be fine. I showed them how you can pet a bumblebee when it’s on a flower – we’ve each successfully done so. Not that I want them actively seeking out bees to pet, but just trying to teach them appropriate responses. No reason to freak out if a bee flies near you. Now a hornet or yellowjacket on the other hand – look down, look up, make sure there aren’t others.

In case you were wondering about my former career picking raspberries, your wait is over. In high school, a summer job I had was at a raspberry farm that offered both you-pick and pre-picked raspberries for sale. The pre-picked berries cost a little more per pint, and that was because I (and some other local students) were paid to pick them. And our pay was by the pint, not hourly, so the incentive was there to be productive.

Maybe a better term than “pre-picked” is “already-picked”, or just “picked”. I’m not a fan of the pre- prefix being attached to things that aren’t actually before. What are the berries before they’re picked? They’re still on the plant. They weren’t selling berries on the plant – they were selling picked berries. Or maybe we-picked, because it pairs better with you-pick (or U-pick if you are frugal with the letters on your sign).

My earlier post had been about a new chocolate cereal. We found another chocolate cereal that has joined the breakfast game: Chocolate Life.

Officially, it is chocolate-flavored Life. I think that sounds better than other cereals that bill themselves as chocolately, since chocolately makes it sounds like it’s fake chocolate. I think both terms (chocolate-flavored and chocolately) mean the exact same thing though, as they both have cocoa as an ingredient. Probably the best way around it is just to call your product cocoa-whatever, as that is both true and doesn’t sound fake. In this case, Quaker went with chocolate instead of cocoa.

It doesn’t really matter though.

It doesn’t taste like chocolate, or cocoa, or chocolatiness. It tastes pretty much like regular Life cereal does. Which is not a bad thing, but don’t pay extra for this just because it says chocolate.

Still, it’s better than Special K with Chocolately Chunks.

Here are some juice boxes that we bought. I think they are mislabeled.

They say they are juice boxes, made with fruit juice. But part of the package reveals otherwise.

That’s not a drink made from concentrated apple juice – it’s made from concentrated turkeys.

Our family likes Pizza Ranch. Lots of everything, and different things. The last time I went was the first time I had seen their cheeseburger pizza.

What makes their cheeseburger pizza better than other people’s cheeseburger pizzas is that theirs has the french fries on it. So it’s really a burger-and-fries pizza. One-stop shopping.

There are more and more food products being promoted as non-GMO. I don’t have a problem with the products themselves, or the idea of the products.

What bothers me is the negative in the term “non-GMO”. If you want to promote something, you can’t label it as non-whatever. You need a positive spin on it, or its own acronym or something.

Here are some suggestions:

• GUO – Genetically Unmodified Organism
• GOO – Genetically Original Organism
• GIO – Genetically Intact Organism
• GNO – Genetically Natural Organism

GUO would be a problem because the “un” in the middle term is a negative, which is what I’m trying to prevent with a new name.
GNO would be a problem because its pronunciation is too close to GMO.

I also don’t like the O being for Organism. This is all in regards to food, right? The word organism is not appetizing. So we could change the O to an F and get GIF – Genetically Intact Food.