Kakahead

I come from a long line of cat lovers; so it seemed quite natural to marry one when I fell in love with my beautiful girlfriend. Both of us believe with our hearts that cats deserve to go outside, so we have dealt with all the interesting antics of the small predators. For awhile, we even went as far as to install a cat door that gave them the freedom to go in and out as they pleased. Seemed easier than opening the door to let them in or out every 12 minutes. OK, maybe it wasn’t quite that often, but at times it sure seemed like it.

We love our cats and all, and we do allow them outside. We also got just a wee bit tired of uninvited “guests” showing up in various corners of the house though. “Ken!! There’s a mouse in the compost bucket again!!” My wife would always dispatch me when “the one that got away” was busy trying to score a free meal after escaping the jaws of one of our feline hunters. Then of course there were some birds… Oh, and you really haven’t lived until you’ve stepped in a pile of guts on the kitchen floor in the middle of the night.

It took several years but finally, thank God, we came to our senses and boarded up the cat door. They still go outside and hunt, but they’re not allowed to bring in any take-out items they may have scored in Mother Nature’s garden. So now we still get the occasional mouse in the house, but it’s the kind we humans love to eat. This delicacy was first introduced to us by Mrs. Spoelma.

God bless Mrs. Spoelma, the “Hollander” (Michigan term for Dutch) lady who lived next door to us when we first moved to Muskegon. She and her husband were often outside cleaning up the yard, and we’d have many a conversation across the fence. That was 35 years ago (wow!!), and one couldn’t ask for nicer neighbors.

When our daughter came into the world, she started bringing us food. Most often, she brought an odd mashed potato dish we’d never had before. “This is mouse,” she said. “It’s an old family recipe: mashed potatoes, kale, and barley. Oh and a little bit of onion, too.” It was simply wonderful. Perfect food for a couple of tree huggers with a brand new baby. Free food is pretty doggoned perfect if you ask me; especially when it’s delicious. “Mouse” is not merely wonderful as a side dish for meat and another vegetable, maybe even some gravy. It is especially yummy the following day, reheated with an over easy egg or two on top. MMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

When I sat down to write this evening, I thought I’d go on the web and try to find a recipe that resembled this remarkable dish. No such luck. After many variations of the words potato, mashed, kale, barley, and Dutch, I found several interesting cooking ideas but nothing that resembled what our dear Mrs. Spoelma made.

However, I feel it’s my duty to share the basics with you. I love to cook but I rarely follow any recipe exactly. Mouse is no exception; but without further ado here is a rudimentary description:

Mouse: Delicious Mashed Potatoes, Kale, Barley and Onion

Ingredients: ½ cup hulled barley (pearled barley is OK but not as nutritious as hulled)

Potatoes : enough to fill a 6 quart pot a bit more than halfway when diced

Kale: 3 cups chopped

Onions: one large onion or 4 or 5 small onions, diced

½ stick of salted butter

1 cup of milk

salt to taste

Place the barley and kale in separate pots.

Add more than enough water to the barley to cover, at least 2 inches higher than the barley

Boil the barley until tender, then drain, cover and set aside

Add 1 cup water to the kale, and cover. Bring to boil, remove from heat after 2 or 3 minutes boiling. Drain, then set aside

Wash and dice enough potatoes to fill a 6 quart pot a bit more than half way. (We leave the skins on.)

Fill with water till the potatoes are barely covered, and boil until tender, drain.

Add butter and mash, adding milk and a dash or so of salt along the way.

When the potatoes are creamy, add onions (raw), barley, and kale to the potatoes and mash together until mixed thoroughly.

Now, don’t just stand there, it’s time to eat!!

Very nutritious stuff this “mouse,” makes me wonder if maybe a certain famous rodent ever sampled any…

Warm weather is finally sneaking its way into beautiful West Michigan.  Before you know it we’ll all be running around naked outside.  Well OK maybe not ALL of us.  Alright, maybe very few of us will actually do that when you get right down to it.  Anyway, we won’t need to wear nearly as much clothing and we’ll certainly want to have a nice cool beverage handy when we’re enjoying the outdoors.

Babies will ask for their “baba”… you know, a bottle… when thirst tells them to get a drink.  They might also refer to water as “wawa.”  Put those together and you’d get  “baba wawa.”  I suppose that could cause someone my age to reminisce about Gilda Radner’s timeless parody of Barbara Walters on Saturday Night Live.  When my sister  was very young, water was “joosh.”  I distinctly remember this, because she also thought my name was “B.O.”  after my mother was teasing me by showing me how to wash my armpits.  “B.O., can I have a glass of joosh??” my sister would ask; so I would always oblige and get her a glass of water.

So I guess bottled water could be called baba wawa in baby talk.  No, not Barbara Walters; bottled water.  Sales of the beverage soar during the warmer months, and tree huggers like me shudder at the sight of it.  I’m sorry but it’s completely wasteful to ship water all over the place.  Of course, there are certainly exceptions, like disaster areas or other rescue situations.

However, in most civilized areas of the planet, bottled water represents a terrible waste of resources.  Think about it:  water is pumped, filtered and otherwise treated, then put into disposable containers.  Those containers are packed into cases or crates, which are loaded onto trucks and sent to various retail outlets.  Then a consumer drives to the store, buys the finished product, and drinks water which is rarely any better than what they can get at home from the tap.  Finally, the packaging and the water bottle are tossed out, hopefully in an “environmentally friendly” way.  I put that in quotes because disposal of anything always implies that it will be moved to somewhere, either a recycling center or a landfill.  All the steps in the process consume energy and resources which could be much better spent elsewhere.

Rather than use all that oil to pump, package, and transport water; let’s maybe do something silly and save a few drops of the precious petroleum for future use.  And of course I didn’t mention the trees that die to make the paper for the cases in which these bottles of water are often shipped.

Instead, buy a rugged, reusable container and put your water in it.  Personally, I prefer glass, but it does have the drawback of being somewhat fragile.  But even if it does get broken, it’s very readily recyclable.  I get my glass containers by seeking out glass juice bottles in the store.  Only need to buy one!  I’ve also been known to keep a Snapple bottle for a very long time.  There are metal containers that work well also if you prefer.  I stay away from plastic… all these stories about BHA and whatnot.

Call me a radical tree hugger if you wish but I’d like to take this opportunity to ask EVERYONE, all over the planet, to please REFRAIN FROM BUYING BOTTLED WATER!! BABA WAWA NO NO!!

Speaking of Baba Wawa and reminiscing, here’s a clip featuring Gilda Radner and Madeline Kahn, who I truly believe are out there making the angels laugh.

Did I mention I never get tired of spring?  The peepers are peeping, the crocuses are croaking, the rhubarb is rhubing and the garlic is garlicking.  Even the wild cabbage is cabbaging!  Yes… the wild cabbage survived the winter and is already feeding us.

What’s this with the wild cabbage you say?  Well, my lovely girlfriend bought a pretty good sized package of seeds several years ago that were labeled “Broccoli for Sprouting.”  They sprouted nicely but the flavor wasn’t as remarkable as we had hoped, so into the fridge they went to sleep until another day.  Month.  Year.  Long time.

So last year, I got a bit adventurous.  I wanted to see just what kind of broccoli we’d get from these “broccoli for sprouting” seeds.  This is what we got:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Brassica_oleracea0.jpg

It’s brassica oleracea or more commonly called wild cabbage.  Apparently it’s the “mother of all cabbages,” meaning it’s an ancient food plant that’s been grown for many thousands of years; and has been bred into other variations like cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower.

A tough plant!  It survived the winter just fine and is making new leaves in our garden already.  I picked several of those and also plucked some newly sprouted elephant garlic leaves.   Rinsed them off a bit, then dropped them in the pan with some shrimp, onions, a dash of thyme, parsley flakes, chili powder, and soy sauce.  The result was very delicious indeed.  We threw the shrimp in the garbage and devoured the greens in nothing flat.

OK maybe we didn’t really toss the shrimp…

Anyway, the wild cabbage is cabbaging, at least for now.  Next step in its life cycle will be to send flower spikes up and go to seed.  Very nice because I’d love to grow it again!

Last week I wrote about the peepers peeping, and a few days ago I heard a lovely ruckus coming from the back of our property.  The hooters are hooting!  OWLS you silly… barred owls I believe.  I haven’t actually seen them but I know they live in these parts.  Plus, I found a recording of their call after a search on the web.  Thanks very much to Bob Pearson, whose recordings I’m using with permission from here.

I’m certain that this is what I heard:

barred_owl_male

barred_owl_female

I’m pretty sure they were pitching woo… they were chattering pretty vigorously.   I believe they were singing the owl equivalent to “Who’s Your Little Whozit…”

I never get tired of watching spring come. The snow is pretty much gone, crocuses are croaking and the peepers are peeping!! Those little froggies simply amaze me. They go to bed in the mud in late fall / early winter. Sleep all winter long, and when the spring rains some they wake up and start singing. The noise is simply musical… Just click on the link below.

Peepers!

Oh wait… wrong sound file.  Try this one: Peepers!!!

Oy yoy yoy… this one maybe??    PEEPERS!!!!

Hmmm… ok let me tweak the audio selection variometer a bit.  Maybe I should wiggle the floaglit connections too… Oh, and reseat the Fremple memory chips. Ok… I think I have it now…

This time: PEEPERS PLEASE!!!!

Ah yes, much better.  You may have to turn your sound WAY UP to hear it well, the recording device was a cheapie… but it works pretty well really.  Of course, there’s no substitute for hearing it live and in color.  Not sure what color the sound is but I think it might be very dark purple, because the recording was made well after sunset.  A farmer friend of mine told me that the old wise farmers know that peepers have to “go to sleep 3 times before the frost is done.”  In other words, it’s warm now and the froggies wanna make babies.  So, they’re singing their little hearts out from the warm spell we’re having.  Sure as heck though, we’ll get some more cold weather before too long and they’ll go back to bed.

On the other hand, Grandpa Bunny always told me, “you got your peas in yet?? S’posed to have your peas and potatoes in the ground by Good Friday.”  Not sure how that really works because Good Friday moves around on the calendar.  This year, however it’s late in April and that might just be good reasoning.

Pretty soon it will be time to run the rototiller. I know better to run it this early in spring, because we literally live in a swamp. This time of year, our soil is squishy from all the snow melt and rain. Running the rototiller in soggy soil is very similar to tilling chocolate pudding.  Plenty of work to do outside anyway, now that the snow doesn’t hide all the firewood debris and doggie land mines anymore.

Tonight was a special treat.  Met our daughter and grandson at a local restaurant for dinner.  After dinner, she went to her house and we took Ollie to our house.  Nothing quite so magical than a young 27 month old guy marveling at the stars in the sky and the peepers in the swamp.

Spring is magical alright.

And now for something… completely different!!

Just when we thought “we’d seen it all,” yet another internet virus has been spreading like wildfire. However, the latest “computer bug” is the first known case of an organic pathogen that can actually infect humans. Infection is caused via skin contact with an internet connected computer or mobile device. Nicknamed “cyberflu,” what researchers know as the C18x virus has been propagating through e-mail servers in the eastern half of the US. The virus, although not deadly, causes great discomfort and is likely to become a worldwide pandemic if corrective measures are not quickly found.

What’s unique about the C18x virus is the recently discovered transmission method of electronic osmosis. I don’t profess to know the exact technical details of all this, but here’s a quote from the CDC’s Electrocybotics Lab in Atlanta:

“Effective immediately: we recommend issuing a precautionary warning to all computer users to wash their hands before and after using any internet-connected computing device. The C18x influenza virus has been known to travel across vast distances electronically and manifesting contagions on keyboards, computer mouse surfaces and other peripherals. Accidental ingestion of C18x virii can cause symptoms of nausea and other gastrointestinal discomfort within 37 hours of infection.”

As of this writing, the origin of the virus is not verified but researchers suspect that infected food processing plants that use artificial food coloring agents may be a likely source. According to electrocybotic researcher Dr. Javier Montenegro, “this appears to be the brainchild of a disgruntled whistleblower scientist whose warnings about artificial coloring in food went unheeded by industry executives during the late 1980s.” Dr. Montenegro refused to offer the indentity of the whistleblower, as legal actions are already being pursued and therefore cannot be discussed publicly. However, he went on to say, “after repeated warnings of adverse effects of food coloring compounds were ignored, the scientist became withdrawn and quit her job a few years ago.”

Little more was mentioned about food coloring agents until recently, when copies of a rather scathing letter arrived on the desks of several industry execs ordering them to “stop producing artificially colored foods or suffer dire consequences.”

Dr. Montenegro and his colleagues were alerted about the written threat shortly thereafter. Only eight days later, workers in various food processing plants began getting flu-like symptoms. “We believe she infected them remotely,” Dr. Montenegro stated. “She basically ‘threw the switch’ and zapped some of her least favorite factories with C18x using electronic osmosis technology. We’re guessing she genetically engineered an ordinary bird-flu strain of influenza and injected into her home computer network circuitry; then sent it via spyware infected e-mails to her former employers and their peers.”

The magnitude of the C18x is not easily downplayed. As the CDC’s Electrobiotics lab stated yesterday, “computerized manufacturing machinery in such factories could easily spread C18x throughout the factory via electronic osmosis in a very short amount of time. Since many computers in a typical factory are connected to the internet, that would also explain the rapid spread of the virus. If left unchecked this could quickly become a global pandemic.”

Recent reports have already cited artificial food coloring agents as a possible cause for behavioral problems in children. Other ill effects of artificially coloring foods have long been suspected, including damage to our immune systems. If Dr. Montenegro’s theory is proven, significant vigilance should be taken by parents of school age children. Pre-adolescent youths now spend much of their time using computers. In the US, this age group is also known to consume snack foods; many of which contain artificial colors. Consequently, our young people’s immune systems may already be compromised; leaving them even more susceptible to the hazards of a C18x infection.

“Similar susceptibility exists with elderly populations, who also may have fragile immune systems,” according to Dr. Montenegro. “One should be especially wary while visiting social networking sites,” he added. “Any doctor, nurse, or even mother knows that wherever large numbers of people congregate, the possibility of catching something increases.”

As I learn more about this nasty bug I will be happy to share it with you. In the meantime, I’ll be sanitizing my PC (and everything connected to it) on a regular basis and I would strongly advise all those I love to do the same.