Spring Onions

Our Texas sweet onions aren't ready to harvest yet, but we did need to thin them out. So here's a few Spring onions to throw on the grill with tonight's flank steak.

Turnips!

One of the best "crops" that we've planted in the garden in recent years are purple-top turnips.  Ordinarily, we plant them in the fall and they supply us with a steady stream of turnip greens throughout the winter.  Sometimes, though, I not only forget to thin them out, but I also neglect pulling them up.  So, as we've now hit Spring, it's time to clear out the planting beds and as part of this, the turnips had to go.  I threw my fist in there for reference as I had them sitting outside on top of the smoker, but it still doesn't give full weight to the almost-bowling-ball size of a couple of these giants.  Probably way too much turnip there.

Anyway, after clearing the turnips and chunking the largest ones into the trash, we picked and cleaned up several of the more moderately sized turnips.  Peeled them, then Meredith diced and boiled them to mix with some potatoes in mashers (we froze about half of them as this was still a LOT of turnips).

Onward to Spring plants and planting!  It's the best time for gardens!

Sputter Sputter

Exhaust - Public Domain from
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Exhaust.jpg 

So I have grand plans and visions... So sometimes they sputter...  So maybe it's time to get some of them back on track...

Honestly, this blog has suffered.  And by this blog, I mean my general bloggity collective of things around here.  So here's a post lamenting lack of posts.  And not apologizing for them, or making excuses.  I have some ideas for different posts, for here or there.  And they will probably come.

Just not today.  Today you get sputtering car exhaust.

And a reflection - went to the North Texas Irish Festival yesterday.  Just reminds me how much fun it is to track events in your community and attend things locally.  Oh, and how much fun people watching can be.  And how what's old to one can be new to another.

So maybe some things that I find boring, other people might want to still read about.  We will see how that plays out.

Until then.

Declutter Declutter Declutter

Still working through the clutter.  There's something obsessive about decluttering, almost as insane as the packrat mentality that had you collecting the stuff in the first place.  Some of you might remember with the advent of the Kindle, that I pledged to get out of the paper-book-collecting hobby, and, for the most part, we've stopped adding tons of paper books (and even got rid of 3-4 crates full), but we do still have several around and my nightstand has scarcely improved (mostly because I am buying new books on the Kindle and reading them and not working my way through books I've already purchased - oh well).

The latest foray has been to rid ourselves of DVDs and Blu-Rays that we have collected for years and watched once, maybe twice.  While there are definitely a handful of shows (Veronica Mars, West Wing) and movies (Star Wars, Indiana Jones) that we have watched tons and are worthwhile to keep around, along with children's DVDs (Finding Nemo, Lady and The Tramp) that will get some use in the future, we had plenty (Gosford Park, Dude, Where's my Car?, Punch Drunk Love) that were just taking up space.  So away they go, to the world's garage sale - eBay.

They say you should remove a third or more of the junk from your house before you try to sell it.  It supposedly makes it look larger than it is (ah, those mental tricks).  And while it may be a little while before we sell our house, I'm wondering if shooting for half of the junk is too ambitious. Cheers and have a nice week!

Super Bowl Sunday

It's Super Bowl Sunday, and that means that two teams that I have very little interest in are playing a football game with excellent commercials.  And it means appetizers.  Yum appetizers.

Now, you should know I like football.  Just not necessarily pro football (except for when I'm a fair-weather Cowboys fan, so not this year).  So I'll bide my time and wait for Labor Day weekend, the start of football with the hopes of exciting gridiron action to come.

Or I'll go read some of Scott Sigler's GFL series.  Which, by the way, released the MVP (the fourth book) pre-sales yesterday, so if you didn't go get one, you should (if there are any left).

Oh, and don't expect something daily over here, but I am trying to get a little more frequent all around.  Part of some sort of secret goal I have.  Talking to the void, and whatnot.  Hey, you're still reading.

Cheers!