Suncoast Gun Show Craziness

Well, Barack Obama set out to fix the economy and he's definitely done a good job of stimulating a sector that he'd rather shut down than help out. So much so we had to deviate from our plans today because of it. See, the plan for today was to make it to the Suncoast Gun Show to take the Concealed Weapons Permit course. After talking to my friend that was already up there, he was in line for 45 minutes JUST TO GET IN. He missed the class, and we expected the same to happen to us. Instead we took what may have been our first afternoon without our daughter to enjoy lunch at Lee Roy Selmon's, and do a bit of shopping. Fortunately, we did make it to Knight Shooting Sports in Clearwater and signed up for their all day CWP class. It was a bit costlier than the course at the gun show, but for double the money you get 4 times the course. I'm hoping to do my part to stimulate the economy by buying a handgun (had my eye on a Glock 19 for a while now) in the near future. Class is at the end of the month, wish us luck!

State Moving to Deregulate Development

Originally posted by Mariella on Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog:

Florida State Legislators (just like some Hillsborough County Commissioners) are working to “streamline” — i.e. deregulate — the development industry. State lawmakers want to make it cheaper & easier for developers to build more subdivisions and strip malls, apparently ignorant of the widely reported fact that Florida has 300,000 vacant homes for sale — a housing glut that is slashing property values for all of us and contributing to the economic crisis. The Times reports:

Florida legislative leaders want to make it easier to get permits to destroy wetlands, tap the water supply and wipe out endangered species habitat, all in the interest of building houses, stores and offices. They say streamlining the permitting process will get the economy moving again.

Affecting several counties & cities, including all the urban & rural areas in Hillsborough County, Senate Bill 360, (euphemistically named the “Community Renewal Act”) would:

• eliminate state review of supersized “Developments of Regional Impact” (DRIs)
• eliminate state review of Comprehensive Plan Amendments
• reduce public hearings for development projects
• lower Level of Service (LOS) standards for roads
• eliminate “Transportation Concurrency” requirements

Transportation Concurrency requires developers to ensure that there is adequate capacity on the roads to accommodate the traffic generated by their developments. If the local roads are already full of traffic, then concurrency requires developers to provide the additional capacity needed for their projects by paying for measures like road-widening or turn lanes and traffic lights. Without concurrency, they wouldn’t pay, so WE would have to pay to bail ourselves out of the traffic-jam-hell their development creates, while they pocket all the profits without any responsibility.

Some argue that eliminating transportation concurrency would reduce sprawl by making it easier for developers to build in the urban area where concurrency requirements are most burdensome because the roads have already reached capacity. Of course, this would allow development to overwhelm those already-full roads with additional traffic, condemning the urban areas to traffic nightmares, which is not an acceptable trade-off even if it could prevent sprawl. However, it cannot prevent sprawl. With or without concurrency, developers will always prefer to build in the rural area because rural land is cheaper, and available in large “clean & green” parcels. The only way to prevent sprawl is for local leaders to stop approving it.

Another bill, Senate Bill 630, would put a moratorium on impact fees — the fees developers pay to partially defray the costs of infrastructure required to support their projects. Even with those fees in place, each new house costs us taxpayers $13,515 for roads, schools and other infrastructure. Without impact fees, our costs would roughly double, while developers would be able to make more money selling cheaper housing, further lowering our home values — enriching developers at our expense.

Meanwhile, developers’ lobbyist Frank Matthews is up to his old tricks, pushing also for the elimination of local environmental protections like our EPC provides. (Sticks readers may remember Matthews’ role in our local battle over wetland regulations.)

Let’s pay attention to which of our elected officials are pushing to shift more of the costs of development from developers to taxpayers, while paving the way for more sprawl that will only destroy more natural resources and worsen our housing glut.

Both bill 360 & 630 were introduced by Sen. Mike Bennett, of Bradenton. These bills are barreling through committees which include all four Hillsborough Senators: Ronda Storms & Arthenia Joyner have both voted “yes” to 360 in committees; Victor Crist, Charlie Justice, and Ronda Storms will soon review 630 in committees. All our lawmakers will eventually weigh in on all this so tell your representatives what you think now. The Lt. Gov. sidestepped Wayne Garcia’s questioning on this topic, so we had better help educate him and our Governor as well.

I’ve drafted a sample letter with contact information you can use to send your thoughts to Tallahassee. You can also ask your county commissioners to lobby the state against deregulation, and let them know we don’t want county growth controls & environmental protections weakened either. 1000 Friends of Florida has posted an informative alert calling on citizens to oppose SB 360.

Unless we can persuade our legislators to work for the public good, we might as well skip these middle-men and pay developers directly. Hey, maybe we could just pay developers NOT to ruin our communities, our economy and our environment.

Instead of passing all this legislation to toss out our development controls, which will end up costing us all a fortune anyway, it might actually be better for each taxpayer to just write a check directly to every Florida developer, bypassing the part where they destroy our natural resources and dump a bunch of cheap housing in our neighborhoods that (if it ever sells) would only clog our roads with too much traffic until we handed over the money to pay for more road lanes.

My Libertarian tendencies are all for privatization and deregulation of businesses and commerce and what have you, but not at the cost of the tax payers. On top of it all, I can't believe that the legislators feel that building more homes is a good thing when we currently have 300,000 vacant homes across the state. I've sent off my letters already, fight the power!

Recovering from drinking around the world at EPCOT on my birthday

Yesterday was my birthday, and I wanted to drink around the world in EPCOT. The challenge was 11 drinks starting at 11 am. Come to find out, there's an additional "outpost" bringing the number up to 12. That's for next year though, I only made it to 10, and I'm attempting to recap from memory, which is fairly fuzzy as of mid-afternoon yesterday:

1. Canada: Skipped, too early for Moosehead
2. United Kingdom: Boddington's on tap, 20oz (this was a mistake later on, as my stomach can only hold so much liquid)
3. France: Kronenbourg 1664 (12oz)
4. Morocco: Casa Beer (12oz) with lunch at Marrakech
5. Japan: Aged Sake, can't remember the name (2-3oz)
6. America: Seasonal Budweiser Brew, draft, not sure of the size
   
7. Italy: Lemon slushie thing
8. Germany: Red Wine (2-3oz) and a picture with the guy in lederhosen (mistake, should have had beer in Germany, but was seriously good wine)
9. Outpost Pavilion (Walt apparently didn't feel that Africa should be properly represented in the World Showcase) I was going to get a drink here, but it was taking too long, I was way too drunk to be waiting in line. On a side note, the entire Sherman tribe rocked out on the drums...
   
10. China: Very full at this point, went for a smaller portion in the Plum wine (2-3oz)
11. Norway: Beer of some sort, not sure what size
    
12. Mexico: Dos Equis, not sure what size.

Needless to say, my birthday rocked. We ended up on a drunken shopping spree in downtown Disney after I tried to sober up with some yummy McDonald's cheese burgers (always better when you're drunk). My wife was very accommodating to say the least. No one was hurt, except my wallet and I'm still surprised that I didn't need to purge at all. Granted I did end up needing to pee at just about every country past Japan.

In hindsight, this attempt at drinking around the world wasn't very planned. I mean, we knew where we were going, but it would have been better served by planning out what to drink along the way and not getting anything too large. There's already talks or trying it again on my wife's birthday (her this time, not me) and I'm already planning for February 23rd, 2010 when I will be drinking around the world, and then some (+1 for the Outpost Pavilion). I'll just have to keep training until then ;)

The Sprout Adventure - 5 days later

It's absolutely astonishing at how fast these little buggers grew. They grew so much that they were pushing the sprouter open after only a few days. I'm not entirely sure I agree with the seed measurements that the Sprout People recommended as the containers were overflowing so early. Perhaps I read the directions wrong, I re-read them a few times because I wasn't so sure about it, live and learn.

After soaking the seeds in water overnight on Monday, the seeds were placed in the sprouter Tuesday morning. Since then I have been punctually rinsing and draining the seeds 3 times a day (morning before work, evening when I get home from work, and night time before bed). It's definitely paid off as of Thursday I was already harvesting a small amount of alfalfa and clover sprouts (perhaps prematurely) and a small amount of the mixed batch of beans (even more-so prematurely). The biggest reason for early harvesting of the alfalfa and clover sprouts is that they were the main offender for pushing the lid off of the sprouter.

Thus far, we've been pretty inventive with integrating the sprouts into most of our meals (mostly as a salad topper), and there have been some epic failures as well (specifically the PB&Sprouts I made for lunch). Unfortunately, we haven't made Phở in a while, so the bean sprouts weren't utilized to their full potential. When I finally detox from all these sprouts and decide to grow some mung beans, I'm planning on making sure Phở is on the menu at least a couple of times.

I'm curious to see how well the sprouts hold in the fridge, I made sure they were dry before packing them (as per the directions). Not sure we'll be able to eat them all up before they go south, worst case scenario the compost bin should be happy with the bit of variety :)

Day 1:

Forgot to take a photo of the seeder

Day 2:


Day 3:


Day 4:


Day 5:

Recipe: Carpaccio with Sprout Salad

Thought I'd share a recipe from Alton Brown's Good Eats for Beef Capaccio. I've made it a few times now and it doesn't disappoint (even though the butcher's mangling of our tenderloin did). The original recipe can be found here.

One thing this recipe doesn't mention is quickly pan searing the roast before placing it in the freezer. Yeah I know, Carpaccio's supposed to be raw, but with the paranoia of today's consumer, it's better safe than sorry. Quickly pan searing all sides helps to kill off any bacteria that may be on the outside of the meat (surface area is typically where all the buggers are). I also find that after pounding it out, the meat has a more dynamic aesthetic with small ring of cooked meat around the edge (it's like the pink ring found on smoked meats). You can omit the searing if you'd like, if not, get out a heavy (preferably cast iron) pan, and heat up a bit of extra virgin olive oil (medium-high). Salt and pepper the meat on all sides (I'm pretty liberal with the salt on this particular dish). Quickly sear all sides (a minute or less on each side, even the ends). It shouldn't take much time to cool, and you proceed with the plastic wrap as per the original recipe.

Because we've had an over abundance of sprouts this week, I opted for a alfalfa salad instead of arugala, and because we had some left over aged provolone that was used instead of Parmesan. In addition to the sprouts, I added some carrots and green beans. I tried something different with the green beans, I used the vegetable peeler to create thin slices (ribbons?). It turned out surprisingly well.

My wife topped hers with a drizzle of olive oil, and I used a drizzle of Balsamic vinegar. We don't make 4 servings the way the recipe suggests, in fact, I just wing it when it comes to the amount of meat. It was about 3-4 inches of the tenderloin this last time. Keep in mind the sliced pre-pounded beef rounds were very small considering the crap cleaning job the "butcher" did. Still bitter, I suppose. From now on we're cleaning the meat at the house, at least if we mess it up we can learn from the experience.

The Great Urban Race and the Value of the Grocery Store

So we decided to hit up the Ybor Farmer's Market up the road from our house instead of driving all the way to St. Petersburg this weekend. Everything was great until we got closer to our destination. People dressed up like it was Halloween. Folks running around with no regard of the fact that folks were trying to commute while they blindly jaywalked. No parking near the market. So after walking 5 blocks from the parking garage I finally took notice to what was going on, the Great Urban Race. It's some sort of urban scavenger hunt it seems. No harm, I suppose, but it did add a level of craziness that I was hoping to avoid by staying local for our produce today.

Speaking of scavenger hunts, I came across something that could have been completely fantastic, but was completely quashed by my wife. So the produce vendor was selling cleaned pineapples, and over by the garbage can was a box full of pineapple tops. I already have one pineapple plant in a pot, and another that is soaking in water until it's root's form (which hasn't been going that well). I thought, "holy crap, that's a lot of free pineapple tops!" My wife's reaction was "I don't think it's right to dig through the trash take them". Well first and foremost, the tops were next to the garbage can in a box. Additionally, they were obviously garbage, and were obviously going to end up in a landfill with the cardboard boxes. Sadly, no free pineapple tops for me. If anyone else out there is looking to start a bunch of pineapple plants, I do recommend hitting up the Ybor Farmer's Market for the hook up.

After the farmer's market we ended up at El International Meat Market on MLK Blvd. Now I've been here a few times before to get beef tenderloins, and I've never been let down. Well until today, I suppose. The tenderloin we purchased was fairly small (15$ at 5.99$ per lb) which was fine, we're not the biggest folks. The sad part was how mangled it was, most of the meat ended up going towards sandwich meat since it was sliced open and not really capable of being used for fillets. I was able to salvage enough for a small carppachio dish and 3 steaks. Again, very disappointed. But hey, we can vote with our wallet and never set foot in that establishment again.

After that we ended up at Publix for what was going to be a short trip for a few staple items. Now here's a testament to the grocery store. Even though we've been shopping at the farmer's markets for produce and specialty markets for just about everything else, we were still able to spend 100$ at the Publix. Granted, part of that was dog food and charcoal, but those are still items that you can't find at the smaller markets. This experience has made me re-think my "no more chain stores" kick I've been on. Perhaps we can start making our own dog food?

Recipe: Cucumber Salad with Alfalfa Sprouts

So we've had more sprouts than we've known what to do with this week, so I've been getting inventive. Peanut butter and sprouts was a pretty significant failure, but I felt my cucumber salad turned out exceptional. It's a take on a recipe that my mother used to make, with the addition of sprouts and some fresh herbs (something I don't remember too much of growing up):

Ingredients:

• 1/5 peeled cucumber, thinly sliced
• 2-3 green onions, chopped
• A small handful (6 or so) of cherry tomatoes, chopped
• A small bunch of alfalfa sprouts (1/4 cup-ish)
• A sprig of fresh basil, rough chopped
• 2-3 sprigs of fresh dill, chopped
• 2-3 Tbsp of sour cream
• Salt & pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Combine ingredients in a bowl
2. Cover and refrigerate
3. Enjoy!

It's a pretty single recipe that packs a lot of fresh / cool flavor.

The Sprout Adventure - Unpacking and Setup

My package from Sprout People arrived yesterday, very exciting times. I documented unpacking it and setting it up with the first 2 batches of seeds. They had to soak overnight, so this is basically day one and day two.

Day 1 - Unpacking:

1. The goods arrived in a cardboard box with a bunch of non-biodegradable packing material, the contents included the Kid's Sprout Kit, 1 pound of mung beans and documentation on growing and care of the sprouts:
   
   


2. The Kid's Sprout Kit contained some kid friendly documentation, 4 pre-measured sprout mixes, a magnifying glass and 2 tiered sprouter.
   
   
   
   


3. After deciding what two packets to start with (Moo Mix and Beanie's Mix) I gathered two bowls and a measuring cup.
   
   


4. Emptied the contents into the bowls
   



5. And added 1 cup of cold water to each bowl and stirred up the mix gently
   
   

The beans soaked over night on the counter...

Day 2 - Setting up the Sprouter:

1. I forgot to mention that I covered the bowls with plastic wrap the night before
   
   


2. The next morning revealed that the larger beans soaked up almost all of the water
   
   


3. I proceeded with washing out the entire sprouter with warm soapy water and hand drying it
   
   


4. Next came loading the trays with the seeds and rinsing them. The seeds need to be rinsed 2-3 times a day and all of the excess water removed by shaking and tilting the tray around
   
   


5. Final step for the initial set up was to assemble the sprouter and wait...
   
   

Milk as a Fungicide?

The ornamental rosemary Christmas tree I bought for my wife last year started to show signs of powdery mildew recently. I did my internet research for both the causes and treatment / cures. I was surprised to read some of the bleak forum posts that the only way to cure it is to remove it from the dirt it's in, wash the roots and plant thoroughly and then replant in fresh dirt. Seemed a bit extreme, or maybe I'm just overreacting. After researching topical treatments, I opted not to use anything with bleach in it, as it's an herb we often use in our cooking. Baking soda was going to be my pick until I came across information about using milk. Seemed interesting enough, so I loaded up a spray bottle with 1 part skim milk and 9 parts water. I read about many different proportions, ranging from 1:3 all the way up to 1:9. Figured is 1:9 doesn't give me any results after 3-4 days I'd try a higher concentration. One ray of hope I read is that often times the plant needs to be dried out and the powdery mildew will simply go away. Considering the amount of rain we received a few weeks back, and the fact that some of my larger pots are still drying out, it made sense. Unfortunately, it looks like it's going to be cold again this week, hopefully the sun will be shining bright.

Florida State Fair and Education System

We ended up going to the Florida State Fair today. We planned to go next weekend, but the Fair ends on Monday. Our sole purpose for going was to see Florida agriculture and livestock as opposed to riding any rides or scarfing down overpriced fried goods. The weather shaped up pretty well, it was expected to rain early afternoon around 2pm but didn't start raining until after nightfall.

One of the highlights of the trip was a young [assistant?] principal of a local magnet school trying to sell us on the benefits of a public Florida education. It was cute, she seemed to really care, but was a bit surprised when we told her we were going to be pursuing home schooling. Luckily it was a family day or I would have laid into her with some Libertarian ideals about the freedom to choose and the dream of a free market education system that thrives on private, not government funds. Again, it was family day and there was no time for that.

To get on my rant about Florida education, we have billboards all over town for the Florida Lottery and their 900+ billion dollars to education. Pretty big number, huh? Now with a number like that, you wouldn't expect teacher's salaries being cut or at best staying the same (no cost of living increases). Couple that with the educational hindrance that is the "No Child Left Behind" act, public education is at it's worst. Even though so many people are anti-free market policies right now because of the current face of the economy, they are still policies that work, if willing to let themselves out. Unfortunately, big government America isn't big on riding out the waxing and waning markets, no one should ever suffer or have it bad (sic).

Not just education, but everything can benefit from healthy competition. Look at private schools, the best ones charge the most money, and have the longest waiting lists. Why? Because they are the best and people know it. The government intervention contributes to a form of "trickle-up poverty" when they try leveling the playing field so that the best stuff is available to the worst candidates. Quality decreases because there is no reason to do better than the next guy. Take universal health care in England or Canada. Google the horror stories, there are plenty of them to read.

Kinda went on a tangent there, back on topic: no public education for my child, not until conditions improve (if they ever do).

Valentines Day Craziness

Even though it was Valentine's Day, our Saturday routine didn't deviate much. Farmer's market first, then Mazzaro's Italian market, and finally the Great American Natural Products for some dried spices. Even though the routine didn't change, the company and clientele did. My wife's aunt was in town so her and my mother-in-law met us out at the farmer's market. What was astounding was that my mother-in-law knew very little about the largest farmer's market in the south east, even though she lived in the vicinity. We live all the way in Tampa, so it's a 20 mile hike to get there (worth it for the selection). The other thing that astounded me was that she treated it more like a carnival than a place to get vegetables. Nothing wrong with that, but now my sister-in-law wants to make it out as well, and I'm assuming she's going to treat it the same way. It's just astonishing that people can have a great place to get produce right in their backyard, and they opt to be taken in by arts and crafts and not even pick up a couple of carrots or onions or something. Just seems like the whole point was lost.

Next came Mazzaro's Italian market. I love this place, but every week I find myself growing less and less in love with it based on the crowd. The crowd is beyond insane on Saturday's (and apparently Friday's as well). Valentine's day was a bit more over the top considering everybody that doesn't celebrate love all year round had decided to make a meal with "fancy" ingredients. Speaking of the Hallmark holiday, I did get my wife flowers delivered a day early on Friday the 13th. A conversation with a co-worker about the matter really put the holiday into perspective for me. He said, "I don't do the whole getting flowers thing, because it's so cliché. We're going to celebrate the holiday the way it's supposed to be treated by making a nice meal together and enjoying each other's company." Just peachy if you ask me, except there's a slip in that story. So you're only cooking the meal together because it's Valentine's day? The Hallmark holiday will continue to have relevance while people still have the desire to do something that they usually wouldn't do on that day. Albeit getting flowers, or spending time with a loved one, or what not. I do that year round for the most part, maybe not the flowers part, but we cook meals together and spend time with each other and as a family. So back around, the Italian market was a bit too hectic and started me thinking that we should try out the Tampa Bay Steak Company or one of the Italian / Spanish / Organic food store's in Tampa instead of Mazzaro's in St. Pete. The other alternative would be to have my wife hit Mazzaro's during the week, but that's an extra trip over the bridge I'd rather us not be making. Come summer time the Saturday Morning Market will be closed, so setting up an alternative now would be smart, and save some gas!

Recipe: Black Beans and Rice

One of my favorite dishes and quite possibly one of the best things I make are black beans. For the past 5 years or so I've followed just about the same recipe every time with little tweaks here and there to satisfy my palette. Unfortunately, all this time I've been using canned black beans, typically Goya brand and most recently Bush's brand (they seem to be firmer). That all changed recently with the usage of dried black beans from the Whole Foods Market. Now I always make my lima beans from dried beans and they always turn out excellent. The last time I used a smaller bean was when I made BBQ backed beans 3 years ago. They turned out awful and I've stayed away from smaller beans until now.

Ingredients:

• 1/2-3/4 lb. dried black beans
• 1/2 of a red pepper
• 1/2 of a poblano pepper
• 1 onion
• 1 clove of garlic
• 2 packets of Sazon
• 1 tsp dried oregano or Italian herb blend
• 1 Tbsp vinegar (cider or malt work well)
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste
• chicken stock or water

Directions:

1. The night before I make the beans, I wash them and spot check for rocks and debris
2. Place the beans into a large pot and cover with chicken stock or water, add in a packet of Sazon and bring to a boil
3. Boil for 10 minutes and then remove them from the heat
4. Once cooled, place the beans in the fridge until the next day
5. Now the next day, I like to cook the beans for a good couple of hours if not more, so plan accordingly. Also, some folks would recommend draining off the liquid the beans have been soaking in. I typically do that for lima beans, but find the black beans to not be as grainy tasting so I leave the liquid in the pot
6. Finely chop your vegetables (peppers, onion and garlic)
7. In a skillet, heat your oil and sauté your veggies for 10 minutes or until tender
8. Dump the veggies into your pot of beans and add some more water or stock to make sure everything is covered and throw in the second packet of Sazon
9. Bring to a boil, cover and reduce to a light simmer
10. I let it simmer for a couple of hours (the longer the better with beans IMHO) checking and stirring periodically, adding water as necessary. Add salt & pepper to taste as well
11. 10 minutes or so before serving I add in the oregano and vinegar and turn the heat up a bit

You can pull off the same recipe with canned beans, just omit the longer cooking times, and prep work for the beans. The poblano can be omitted if you're scared of any heat at all (I find the poblano imparts more flavor than actual heat, which works for my wife and daughter) or hotter peppers can be substituted as well. It's like chili, play with it until you're happy with it.

Serve over a bed of rice. I occasionally top with chopped white onion and sometimes some Louisiana hot sauce. Last night I pulled a habanero out of my pickle jar and enjoyed that for some added heat. My wife likes the beans with cheese, not my cup of tea, but you may try it and like it!

Planning meals around leftover ingredients

Something we've been trying really hard to do is use any and all ingredients we've bought at the store and not throwing any of them away. From our pizza night we were able to make a Chicken Cordon Bleu dish to use some more of the Fontina and the rest of the prosciutto. After that my wife made fried chicken with a little bit of the Fontina on top. Tomorrow night is black beans (first time from dried beans and not doctored up from the can). There's still a bit of Fontina left and that's been rationed out as a topping for my wife on the beans (I'm not a fan of the cheese on the beans myself). So yeah, we've been coming up with some new and interesting ideas by just using what we have. Thus far nothing's been horrible (been too much cheese for me, personally) and with some further tweaking we may end up with some brand new dishes in our repertoire!

They finally dried out!

After about 10 days or so of not watering my plants, the tomatoes finally dried out. I waited a bit longer than I wanted to and some did start to wilt. I know that's frowned upon by some, but I figured I need to experience truly dry plants to make sure I understand when I need to water them. The peppers and pomegranates are still pretty moist, I'm expecting the peppers to need watering in another day or so. Back to watering, I did get a meter last weekend to test the amount of light, wetness and pH balance of the soil. best 8 bucks I could have spent. I took some wetness readings from the plants and can test the next couple of weeks until I finally have a grasp of when to water without using the crutch. Tomatoes are looking perking now, but I did find a beetle near one of my tomato plants. I don't think he was on the plant per se, and there was no sign of damage. Later this evening I'll be going out and inspecting to see if any critters decide to sneak in after sundown.

Thanks for being “green” in your daily routine.

E-mail I received today:

Good afternoon,

I have submitted the request for the recycling box to be delivered to the afore-mentioned location. Please allow up to 7 business days from this date to be delivered.

The City of Tampa Solid Waste Department allows 2 recycling boxes per residence.

Thanks for being “green” in your daily routine.

Have a pleasant day.

A way better response than the one I got yesterday concerning putting a privacy fence on my second lot down to the property line (where there is already a chain-link fence). They were cordial in the response, but the response was that I can't do that :(

Why am I not allowed to eat peanut butter?

So today at lunch I was toasting my PB&J in the toaster oven (my wife's recommendation, and a damn fine one at that). Well when I went to pull it out of the oven this lady saw what I had and said "is that peanut butter? you're not supposed to be eating that". Well it didn't dawn on me that she was referring to the Salmonella outbreak, so my response was "why can't I eat peanut butter? I'm not allergic". She then informed me about the Salmonella outbreak and confirmed my suspicions that people drastically overreact to things and hide behind a veil of paranoia. Just to remind everyone, not all peanut butter / peanuty products are involved in the recent recall. In fact, I couldn't find any major brands of peanut butter (available in my area) on the recall list. Unfortunately, the current fiasco is going to result in a lot of folks not eating peanut butter for a long time, same thing happened with spinach and tomatoes not too long ago if you remember. Educate yourself folks and check the recall list to put your mind at ease. And please, remember something very important... if you've already eaten half of a jar of peanut butter sitting in your pantry, it's probably safe ;) All of this has sparked my interest in growing peanuts and making my own peanut butter (seems easy enough based on this wikiHow entry.

Recipe: Chicken Sorta Cordon Bleu

Even though our pizza's were a bit excessive in price due to the ingredients, we were able to disperse the costs over a few meals. One of which was my wife's take on Chicken Cordon Bleu using prosciutto instead of ham, Fontina instead of Swiss cheese and brushing some pesto inside the chicken. Come to find out, Tyler Florence has a similar recipe that my wife used as a guide. His recipe used Gruyere instead of both Swiss and Fontina. Experimenting with ingredients can yield excellent results (unless you're swapping peanut butter for anchovies or something like that).

Tyler Florence's Chicken Cordon Bleu Recipe

Sprouts, Sprouts, Sprouts

I ordered the Kid's Sprout Kit from SproutPeople.com. It appears to be the same kit I saw on GardensAlive.com today, but it comes with 4 packets of seeds for just about the same price (61 cents different, pfft). If you're wondering why I selected the kid's kit as a 27 year old "adult", it's because I didn't want to completely inundated with sprouts at all times. It's two tiered and we should be able to grow a single tier at a time if need be, and the size of each tray seems to be a decent size to have sprouts available for a couple of meals and not be wasteful. I also ordered a 1 pound sack of mung beans (your most common bean sprout) because the Sprout People discourage single item purchases unless they come off of a certain list. I didn't inquire why that is, but I'm assuming it's to help keep their own costs down in some way. At any rate, the kit should be here next Monday, and we should be enjoying sprouts by my birthday (the Monday after)! After that, I'm hoping to have a post documenting the process from the initial set up to harvest time.

Eclectic mix of planters

In an attempt to not throw away all the random containers that have been hiding in the yard, I've decided to have my wife use them to plant flowers in. It really wasn't a great many containers, there was an old rusty pot that I used to use to soak wood chips in it for use on the grill, and a casserole dish that made a semi-permanent home in my outdoor sink. The rusted pot was trashed, but the casserole dish had some charm to it with some French scribbling on the side. The dish is now home to some flower seeds and hopefully they will contribute to what seems like a growing bee population in our area. I'll post pictures once we have something other than dirt to show off :)

Recipe: Fiery Death Pickles

A few years ago I started dabbling with refrigerator pickles after seeing an episode of Good Eats on the Food Network. Fridge pickles aren't fermented, the juice is brought to a boil and then poured over the unsuspecting cukes, then refrigerated for a week or so (assuming you can wait that long). Since then I've dabbled a lot with Alton Brown's recipe to get the flavors that I prefer, and funny enough, got some ideas from Bobby Flay's spicy pickle recipe as well. I like a very very sour or just slightly sweet dill pickle, and as of the last few batches, I've taken a fancy to spicier pickles by using habaneros. Now the last batch of pickles I made was over 2 years ago, my reasoning is that I simply haven't been happy with the cucumbers at the grocery store. Since we've started buying our vegetables nearly exclusively at the local farmer's markets, that's all changed. Just to warn everyone, I don't measure any of the dry ingredients out and I do end up with some extra juice. The following recipe is for my "Fiery Death Pickles" but can be altered to taste (e.g. 86 the habaneros if you don't like it hot).

Ingredients:

• 2 Regular Cucumbers, I stay away from the pickling variety (no real reason except availability). 2 should be enough for 1 mason jar if sliced into rounds, you may have a little left over for salads or what not.
• Vinegar, 1 cup Apple Cider and 1/2 cup White. I've used white wine vinegar instead of white before, can't say I can tell a difference.
• 1/4 cup Onion, any kind really.
• Couple cloves of garlic
• Habaneros, I use 3 per mason jar, it's hot but not unbearable. I cut the top off, seed it, and then flower it to be fancy ;)
• 1 cup Water, tap is fine
• 3 Tbsp Fresh Dill (rough chop)
• 3 Tbsp Fresh Cilantro (rough chop, thanks Bobby Flay!)
• 1 Tbsp Pickling Seasoning (I may start omitting this to cut some of the sweetness)
• 1 tsp each Celery Seed, Coriander Seed, Cumin Seed, Dill Seed, Mustard Seed, Tumeric
• 2 Tbsp Kosher Salt
• and 2 Tbsp Sugar

Directions:

1. I start by cleaning my mason jar out and prepping my veggies
2. Chopped onion, garlic, dill and cilantro go in the bottom of the jar
3. Next I add the cucumbers, skin on, sliced into rounds and throw in a habanero every couple of layers. You can really pack them in there if you put your mind to it
4. Once the jar is prepped I combine all the wet ingredients (water and vinegars) and all of the dry spices into a pot on the stove and bring it to a boil
5. You only need to boil the mixture for a few minutes (5 or so) to excite the dry ingredients.
6. At this point, I transfer the mixture to a measuring cup with a spout so I don't make a total mess. From there I slowly pour the mixture into the jar.
7. Once it's filled up, let it sit for a few minutes. Check up on it, and it should need some more liquid as it will settle in better. Add more and repeat until it stops settling.
8. Since I love to hear the pop of a fresh jar of pickles, I put the top on while it's still hot and let it cool on the counter, and then in the fridge. This cooling process will typically depress the button.
9. Give it 5 to 7 days and then enjoy yourself a pickle! My typical routine is to "test" them every day to see how they are progressing, and because I have a hard time waiting

Like I said before, adjust the recipe accordingly and you'll have yourself a perfect recipe for yourself in no time! I must warn everyone though, I wouldn't share your pickles, we had guests over last night and I made that mistake. The rest of the night I kept being asked if we could "try" some more pickles. As a good host I was willing... but seriously, I don't like giving up my pickles!

Next batch of pickles I make, I plan to switch gears from refrigerator pickles to actual fermented dill pickles. Should be interesting!

Recipe: Pizza with Pesto, Fontina, Prosciutto and Spinach

I'd like to start off by saying that I'm not a baker, nor do I care for working with dough. But, for some reason, I am always the one that ends up getting my fingers dirty (soda bread, pizza dough, et cetera). Tonight was no exception with a family pizza night (my wife calls it artisan pizza night). The choice of pizza toppings came from an Emeril Live episode where he made Pizza with prosciutto, arugula and Fontina cheese. My recipe is close but I also swapped out marinara for pesto. All of our ingredients were purchased at the local farmer's and Italian markets.

Ingredients:

• Pizza Dough (you can make it, we opted to buy it fresh)
• Herb (Basil) Pesto
• Prosciutto
• Fresh Spinach
• Fontina Cheese (if you grate yourself, you may need to pop it in the freezer to firm it up first)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. I started with the ingredients by cutting my dough into smaller pieces, and rolling it out. I'm not much for making round pizza so any ol' shape will do as long as it's to the thickness you like.
3. I hit the bottom of a large cookie sheet with some corn meal and laid out the dough.
4. Drizzle the dough with some olive oil and bake for about 8 minutes. Just enough to firm it up a bit.
5. Once you pull the pizza from the oven, it's time to dress them up. Pesto on the bottom, Fontina next, then some spinach leaves and all topped off with some pieces of prosciutto.
6. Back in the oven for another 10 minutes or so until the cheese is melted, the spinach is wilted and the prosciutto is crisp.

Overall the meal was in moderation when it came to the portions, but overall the price was a little high (not nearly as excessive as California Pizza Kitchen's prices). We paid for convenience with the pesto and the Fontina and prosciutto both were a bit high compared to say Mozzarella and pepperoni. It did make for damn good pizzas though.

Temperature <= 32 degrees, Day #2

Yeah, I know, "boo hoo, Florida's having it's 3rd cold night this winter, big whoop". It is what it is, I suppose. The thermometer is set to dip into the 20s tonight, it was 32 degrees when I woke up at 8am this morning, not quite sure if it went any lower than that. The sun flowers are covered with cups again, I'm hoping this will be out last cold night for the winter. Predictions have us back into the 40s over night by Friday evening. Guess that's why I love Florida so much, we get just enough cold weather to remember that it's there, but it barely lasts a day or so, and then we're back to normal.

The couple of cold nights forced me to bring all my plants inside to stay warm. This ended up being more of a blessing than anything else. Remember when I talked about how we got 1.5 inches of rain in a day last week or so? Well everyone's finally drying out and looking much much better. My only fear now is that the damage is already done, and the roots have rot. From my research, that's probably not the case as the plants have perked up considerably since yesterday when a few of them appeared droopy. All of my seed trays are doing well though, and funny enough are suffering the opposite effect from the extra heat. They were drying out in a bad way, and a few of them ended up drying up and dying. This morning I was proactive and added some water to the bottom of the trays. This seemed to work nicely as when I came home from work, most of the water had either evaporated or absorbed into the peat pots.

Recipe: Candied Ginger

I'm a bit down by the fact that some of my tomato plants appear to be succumbing too the over watering by nature recently (although I watered one plant thinking that perhaps my recent lack of watering to help them dry out is the issue). At any rate, I decided to take the left over ginger in the fridge and candy it. I found a pretty easy recipe online on about.com but I'll regurgitate it here for convenience, and I didn't follow the recipe exact, so sue me.

First and foremost, this candy recipe doesn't require a thermometer, how cool is that?

Ingredients:

• Fresh ginger (any amount will due, I used the left overs from a 4 oz. package)
• Sugar (the amount will vary based on the ginger used, see below)
• Water

Directions:

1. Peel and cut the ginger into thin slices
2. Place the ginger in a pot, and cover with water
3. Lightly boil the ginger until tender, took about 45 minutes for me to be pleased with the tenderness
4. Drain and dry (lightly pat, I placed mine in a paper towel and squeezed lightly)
5. Weigh the ginger
6. Add the ginger and an equal weight of sugar back to the pot (mine was just over an ounce)
7. Add a few tablespoons of water (the original recipe said 3, and that's what I did, but it seemed like a bit much considering the recipe was for 16 ounces of fresh ginger)
8. Bring the pot back to a point stirring every once in a while. Keep boiling until most of the water is evaporated
9. Reduce heat and keep stirring, the mixture will eventually get very dry
10. Dump the ginger out and separate (I used wax paper)
11. The original recipe said to toss the cooled ginger in sugar. I skipped this step as there was a good amount of excess sugar in the pot / stuck to the ginger
12. Let it cool and enjoy!

Super simple and very yummy, sweetness paired with the spice / bite of the ginger. I may end up eating it all before my wife gets home from the book store ;)

Cold Chillin' in Central Florida

Freeze warnings in effect for the area tonight. It's 43 degrees currently. Most of my plants are potted and were pulled in last night due to previous frost warnings. Unfortunately, I left a tray of seedings (assorted hot peppers and grape tomatoes) too close to a heat vent. A few weeks back that wouldn't have been an issue, but now with the new A/C they were dried out a bit. I watered them and am hoping for the best. Yesterday we suffered another loss with one of the recently transplanted roma tomato plants. Seems the Florida wind decided to help with the gardening and the stem gave. My wife suggested that I just put some supports under it before giving up on it. We shall see. Currently in the ground I have 8 dwarf sun flowers which I've covered with plastic cups. No big deal if we lose them as they are quick to grow, and we have 2 more varieties already going in the house. I'm hoping this is going to be the last frost of the year, but you never know (the Tampa average last frost is around February 25th).

Recipe: Berries and Goat Cheese

My wife and I put a very simple snack together last night, fresh berries with goat cheese. The berries we used were raspberries (like 8-10) and strawberries (3 diced) along with about an inch of plain goat cheese. A sprinkle of gray salt on the cheese and you're ready to go. Best part is, even with the cheese, it's still a fairly low in calories, something I've been attempting to lower as a means of "dieting".

A rough calorie breakdown is as follows:

Strawberries x3 = 18*
Raspberries x10 = 10*
Goat cheese 1 inch = 90**

* As per thecaloriecounter.com
** As per fitday.com

118 calories split across two people, so <60 calories each! Oh and it tasted good too.

Recipe: Homemade Bread Crumbs

In an attempt to make the most of all of our food, I've adjusted the way I do things in the kitchen. I love a good sandwich on a sub roll. I also love the boat cut (remember the way Subway used to do it?) when making a sandwich. As of recently, I've been modifying the boat cut and dredging part of the inner bread out to make room for yummy yummy meat. Well last night I made what is quite possibly the last modification. Instead of cutting the bread close to the middle, I cut it closer to the top, about 25% of the way down. From that, I dredged out the middle leaving about a half inch of bread. Like any red blooded American, I love bread, so guess where all the refuse goes? Right, in my belly. Well this time around, I opted to save all the refuse to make bread crumbs. The sandwiches were spectacular (roast beef and provolone) and nothing went to waste. My wife actually made the bread crumbs, it was inspired by her new favorite celebrity chef Nathan Lyon (A Lyon in the Kitchen on Discovery Health). The bread crumbs will be used this week for a dish that was already planned out (some sort of scalloped potato type dish with squash and zucchini).

Ingredients List:

• Fresh bread, sans the crust, broken apart a bit (use your hands)
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• Salt
• Pepper
• Any ol' fresh herbs you have laying around (we used rosemary from the garden)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
2. Place the bread on a cookie sheet and drizzle with oil
3. Salt and pepper to taste
4. Add the herbs to the pan (to impart their flavor(s))
5. Bake for 15 minutes or so
6. Once they cool, crush them up
7. Enjoy!

Funny enough, some of the pieces of bread still ended up back in my stomach straight from the cookie sheet.