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Author: John
John Mueller is a freelance author and technical editor. He has writing in his blood, having produced 123 books and over 600 articles to date. The topics range from networking to artificial intelligence and from database management to heads-down programming. Some of his current offerings include topics on machine learning, AI, Python programming, Android programming, and C++ programming. His technical editing skills have helped over more than 70 authors refine the content of their manuscripts. John also provides a wealth of other services, such as writing certification exams, performing technical edits, and writing articles to custom specifications. You can reach John on the Internet at [email protected].
My hens, it seems, are now into crafting of a sort. They’ve started decorating their eggs for me. Now, I’ve seen speckled eggs aplenty and even banded/striped eggs are somewhat common. I’ve seen eggs in a multitude of colors as well. However, what I’ve never seen before are eggs with swirled lines on them like those shown here:
Blue Eggs with an Artistic Green Stripe
Just one pullet is laying these eggs and she seems to want the world to know it. Right now they weigh in at a small egg size. I keep hoping that she’ll continue to lay these incredibly unusual eggs from now on, but something tells me that she probably won’t and that I need to enjoy them while I can.
Given a chance, laying hens can prove to be quite entertaining and add interest to anyone’s life. Artistic eggs are just one of many ways in which my hens do their best to make my life happy. What sorts of unusual hen behavior have you seen? Let me know at [email protected].
Nostalgia in all its forms presents us with a colored view of the past that is both wonderful and comforting. The Last Great Halloween is a Trudy McFarlan novel by Rootie Simms that reminds the reader of what it was like to be young in the 60s and 70s. Although the book seems to be written for youngsters, anyone who reads it knows that it’s really meant to let adults remember their childhoods once again. In fact, the idea is actually presented in the book in a manner that I found quite gracious—that Halloween parties for adults let them become children again for just a little while. I’d be surprised if the adults reading the books to their children didn’t end up spending an interesting afternoon or two reminiscing in a way that children actually find attractive. The book is about building bridges, even though it hides its goal in the clothing of historical fiction.
The writing style flows quite well and I quickly found myself caring about the characters—not just Trudy, but all of the children in the story because they all had a distinct role to play. The characters are quite believable, not by today’s standards, but by the standards of children from that time. The cares, concerns, activities, ventures, and prejudices are all firmly rooted in the time. It’s the issue of prejudice that some readers might find a bit off putting, but I found it quite true of the time. There weren’t any societies of the politically correct at the time—people tended to say and act upon what they really believed, right, wrong, or indifferent. For this reason alone, the book truly is more than good fiction, it’s also good history.
A good book entertains, a great book educates—this one does both. However, I found the discussion of sex education as it was presented in the past a little out of place during my first read. I still think the author could have potentially covered some other topic because the sex education incident never appears again and doesn’t actually add anything to the plot of the book. However, the girl’s view of sex education—a ham handed attempt that usually failed to meet its objective, worked well with the boy’s view that I remember from my school days. The incident does serve to remind those of us who grew up then that education of the time wasn’t everything we keep making it out to be. Even then, some things just weren’t covered very well (and sometimes not at all).
Other than the sex education scene (which you can easily skip if you’re easily offended), the book focuses on Trudy’s party. It doesn’t seem at first that a child’s party would make good fodder for a book, but Trudy is at that age where she’s not quite a child anymore and yet, not quite a teenager either—a tween by today’s reckoning. In addition, her friends add some interesting plot twists and the adults chime in to make matters even more complicated. The book is an incredibly interesting read and I can truly say that I didn’t put it down. I can’t often say that I get quite so immersed in a book. (It also helps that this book is a relatively short read.)
By the end of the book, everything is as it should be—Trudy’s party is an amazing success. Of course, you know that before you even turn the first page. It’s the journey that makes the difference in this book. Everything from collecting and turning pop bottles in to get a little extra cash, to the kinds of puzzles that kids gave away during the time are authentic. It’s a happy book. I finished it in a truly good mood.
Is this a good book or a great book? I feel it’s a great book because it does educate as well as entertain. The author has really done her homework about issues of the time—the political forces and upheaval that people faced during the time that we’d find incomprehensible today, all viewed from the perspective of an eleven year old who isn’t sure whether she really wants a party after all. The book does have a few flaws, but they’re easy to overlook because of the entertainment value the book provides. You do need to read the book with an open mind. This is historical fiction so the characters are products of their time. You can’t judge them by today’s standards.
Harvest Festival is one of my favorite holidays of the year. What, you haven’t heard of Harvest Festival? Well, it happens each year sometime during September. The date isn’t precise because you just can’t hold Mother Nature to a specific time to make the majority of the fruits and vegetables ripe. That said, the harvest does happen every year and it’s a time to celebrate, even though it also means hard work. I’ve presented Harvest Festival in the past:
What made this Harvest Festival different is that I did the majority of the work on my own. There was lots to do, of course, and I plan to talk about some of the things I did in future posts. This year the Harvest Festival included getting some of my wood for the winter into the basement. My friend Braden helped me get the wood down there—it’s a big job even for two people. I now have five cords down there and two cords outside. Seven cords will take me through most winters, but I’ll cut another cord just in case things get extra cold. The wood you see in the picture is mostly slab wood, with about a cord of logs underneath.
Getting the firewood stacked in the basement was a big job.
This year the apples ended up as chips for the most part. I also saved some for eating. The larder already has all applesauce, juice, pie filling, and odd assorted other apple products I could use. The remaining apples ended up with friends. I did make up pickled crab apples this year and did they ever turn out nice. I also made a crab apple vinaigrette salad dressing and canned it. The result is quite nice. For once, my pears let me down. The weather just wasn’t conducive to having a good pear crop. I did get enough pears for eating and a few for sharing as well.
Every year is good for something though and it was a banner squash year. The squash vines grew everywhere. At one point, the squash was chest high on me—I’ve never seen it grow like that.
The squash grew like crazy this year!
The picture shows the squash about mid-summer. By the end of the summer they had grown into the garden (overwhelming the tomatoes) and into the grass. The squash also grew larger than normal. I ended up with a total of 700 pounds worth of squash (much of which has been preserved or distributed to friends). Here is some of the squash I harvested this year.
A cart full of squash.
The largish looking round green squash (one of which has a yellow patch on it) are a Japanese variety, the kabocha squash. So far, I’m finding that they’re a bit drier and sweeter than any of my other squash. I think I could make a really good pie with one and they’ll definitely work for cookies. Unlike most winter squash, you can eat the skin of a kabocha squash, making it a lot easier to prepare and it produces less waste. Given that I received these squash by accident, I plan to save some of the seeds for next year. The squash I was supposed to get was a buttercup squash. The two look similar, but are most definitely different (especially when it comes to the longer shelf life of the kabocha).
Canning season was busy this year. I’ve started filling in all the holes in the larder. For one thing, I was completely out of spaghetti sauce. Even though making homemade spaghetti sauce is time consuming, it’s definitely worth the effort because the result tastes so much better than what you get from the store. I also made a truly decadent toka plum and grape preserve and grape and pear juice. I’ve done hot water bath canning by myself before, but this was the first year I did pressure canning on my own. Let me just say that it all comes down to following the directions and not getting distracted. My two larder shelves are looking quite nice now (with Shelby on guard duty).
A view of the larder from the front.
The right shelving unit contains mostly fruit products of various sorts and condiments. Yes, I even make my own ketchup and mustard. Of course, some of the squash also appear on the shelves, along with my cooking equipment and supplies. Let’s just say there isn’t a lot of room to spare.
Fruit products dominate the right shelving unit.
The left shelving unit contains mostly vegetables and meats. In years past I’ve canned venison, pork, and chicken. This year I thought I might try canning some rabbit as well. Canning the meat means that it’s already cooked and ready to eat whenever I need it. The meat isn’t susceptible to power outages and it lasts a lot longer than meat stored in the freezer. Even though canning meat can be time consuming and potentially dangerous when done incorrectly, I’ve never had any problem doing so.
The left shelving unit contains mostly vegetables and meats.
Harvest Festival 2015 has been a huge success. The point is that I have a large variety of different foods to eat this winter, which will make it easier to maintain my weight and keep myself healthy. I had a great deal of fun getting everything ready. There was the usual music, special drinks, and reminiscing about times past. What makes your harvest preparations joyful? Let me know at [email protected].
A friend recently pointed me toward an article entitled, “Users who post ‘fake’ Amazon reviews could end up in court.” I’ve known for a long time that some authors do pay to get positive reviews for their books posted. In fact, some authors stoop to paying for negative reviews of competing works as well. Even though the actual technique used for cheating on reviews has changed, falsifying reviews is an age old problem. As the Romans might have said, caveat lector (let the reader beware). If there is a way to cheat at something, someone will most certainly find it and use it to gain a competitive advantage. Amazon and other online stores are quite probably fighting a losing battle, much as RIAA has in trying to get people to actually purchase their music (see Odd Fallout of Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) for a discussion of the ramifications of IP theft). The point is that some of those reviews you’ve been reading are written by people who are paid to provide either a glowing review of the owner’s product or lambaste a competitor’s product.
Of course, it’s important to understand the reasoning behind the publication of false reviews. The obvious reason is to gain endorsements that will likely result in better sales. However, that reason is actually too simple. At the bottom of everything is the use of statistics for all sorts of purposes today, including the ordering of items on sales sites. In many cases, the art of selling comes down to being the first seller on the list and having a price low enough that it’s not worth looking at the competitors. Consequently, sales often hinge on getting good statistics, rather than producing a good product. False reviews help achieve that goal.
I’ve spent a good deal of time emphasizing the true role of reviews in making a purchase. A review, any review you read, even mine, is someone’s opinion. When someone’s opinion tends to match your own, then reading the review could help you make a good buying decision. Likewise, if you know that someone’s opinion tends to run counter to your own, then a product they didn’t like may be just what you want. Reviews are useful decision making tools when viewed in the proper light. It’s important not to let a review blind you to what the reviewer is saying or to the benefits and costs of obtaining particular products.
Ferreting out false reviews can be hard, but it’s possible to weed out many of them. Reviews that seem too good or too dire to be true, probably are fakes. Few products get everything right. Likewise, even fewer products get everything wrong. Someone produces a product in the hope of making sales, so creating one that is so horrid as to be completely useless is rare (it does happen though and there are legal measures in place to deal with these incidences).
Looking for details in the review, as well as information that is likely false is also important. Some people will write a review without ever having actually used the product. You can’t review a product that you haven’t tried. When you read a review here, you can be sure that I’ve tried out every feature (unless otherwise noted). Of course, I’m also not running a test lab, so my opinion is based on my product usage—you might use the product in a different manner or in a different environment (always read the review thoroughly).
As you look for potential products to buy online, remember to take those reviews with a grain of salt. Look for reviews that are obviously false and ignore them. Make up your own mind based on experiences you’ve had with the vendor in the past or with similar products. Reviews don’t reduce your need to remain diligent in making smart purchases. Remember those Romans of old, caveat lector!
The chicks have become pullets and are laying what I would term as pullet bullets—smallish eggs that are sort of bullet shaped. I’m talked about pullet eggs before in the Pullet Eggs post. They’re quite tasty as a snack or even as a breakfast, but you don’t want to use them for baking unless you find it acceptable to weigh the eggs carefully.
I recently started experimenting a bit with pullet eggs because they’ll be a part of my life as long as I have laying hens. A large egg usually weighs between 2 and 2¼ ounces. Pullet eggs sometimes don’t even register on my scale, making them smaller than the 1 ounce peewee eggs. By using a really accurate scale, however, you can gather enough pullet eggs to work for baking purposes. For example, one of my cookie recipes calls for 5 (nominally large) eggs. What it really means is that you need between 10 ounces and 11¼ ounces of egg. In this case, that actually added up to eight pullet eggs (a total of 11 ounces). Because of the extra shell involved, you want to err on the high side of the needed weight.
Initially I was concerned that the yolk to white ratio wouldn’t hold up when working with pullet eggs. After weighing the yolks and whites for several recipes separately, I’ve found that pullet eggs provide slightly higher amounts of yolk, which may make a difference for really sensitive recipes, but hasn’t affected any of the cookies I’ve tried so far. To date, I’ve tried pullet eggs in chocolate chip, oatmeal, and peanut butter cookies, and haven’t noticed any difference. However, I’d love to hear from anyone else who has used pullet eggs for baking at [email protected].
As the chicks, now pullets, lay more eggs, the eggs slowly become larger. That’s why it’s important to keep weighing the eggs out if you need a precise amount for a recipe. Always keep the larger amount of egg shell in mind as you perform your calculations and the fact that you get slightly more yolk. The difference is really quite small (it varies) and I don’t know that it actually matters, but it could. For me, the real test will come when I make homemade tapioca pudding, which uses the whites and yolks separately.
The older hens are laying few eggs right now. In fact, three of them look downright horrid because they’re moulting. I’ve noticed that the hens require more time to recover from moulting as they grow older. They most definitely don’t lay eggs during this time. One of my older hens has taken upon herself to sit atop the pullet eggs, so she also isn’t laying eggs right now. Some hens, such as my Buff Orpingtons, are especially prone to being broody. The shorter days are also taking a toll on the egg production of the two remaining older hens that are laying. In short, most of the eggs I’m getting now are from the pullets, which is why I’m inclined to experiment a bit to find the best ways in which to use them.
Now that the pullets are mostly full sized, there is peace once again in the coop. My 13 hens and pullets will spend their first winter together soon. On warmer days they’ll go out in the run, but colder days mean a lot more time in the coop, so I’m pleased to see everyone getting along better.
The kits are moving ever closer to adulthood. At this point, they’re weened and join mom at the dinner table each day. They also don’t run and hide every time they seem me. In fact, they’re downright curious about me at times.
The young adult rabbits join mom for dinner.
It’s amazing to see how fast they’re growing. Of course, rabbits don’t grow at nearly the same rate as meat chickens do and the feed a bit more expensive. These rabbits will leave the cage soon and go to a gender segregated cage where they can grow to full size. In the meantime, they love to hop about during the day and play with each other and mom. For the most part, Moonbeam tries to ignore the playfulness, but there are times when she has had enough and does something about it. A grunt or a bit of a nip is usually all it takes to get the youngster back on its best behavior.
Meat rabbits aren’t as tame as you might think, however. Right before I took this picture, Moonbeam took a nip out of my hand. It wasn’t anything serious, but she did draw blood. She was irritated that I reached inside the cage to get the food containers. It isn’t something that happens every day, but it’s important to realize that these animals might look cuddly, can be cuddly, but they’re also animals with a set of instincts that you need to respect. Certainly, Moonbeam got mine. I usually keep the most aggressive rabbits for breeding purposes because they do make better parents and have stronger offspring. Even through several heat waves that might have caused problems for other rabbits, six out of Moonbeam’s eight kits survived without problem (and one of the two that died was a runt that had problems feeding from the outset).
After Moonbeam’s kits leave the cage, I’ll give her a little time to rest, and then breed her again for the fall season. In most years, I normally breed the rabbits twice—once in the spring and again in late summer. Because I lack a heated rabbitry, I never breed the rabbits more than twice to ensure I don’t need to overwinter them. The rabbits that are higher off the ground and have a cozy nest box to live in do just fine, but the larger cages are on the ground and don’t offer enough protection. Let me know about your hare raising experiences at [email protected].
Every summer I plant flowers to make the area around the house cheery. There are flowers in the front, in the back, and in a tire next to my clothes line. Most of the flowers are arranged and I know the names of the vast majority of them. Some of the patio favorites are princess feathers, nasturtiums, snap dragons, alyssum, and morning glories. The flowers appear at different levels and mixed with herbs (peppermint in this case) to provide interest:
The flowers are mixed in with herbs and presented at different levels.
The fairy garden, old shoes, tree trunk, and other elements all help create an interesting mix that provides a feast for the eye. The fairy garden is a gift from a friend. I add new plants to it each year. This year’s flowers are quite nice:
The tiny pink flowers of the fairy garden work well with the figurines.
One of my favorite flowers in the hanging pots in the back of the house is the morning glories (mixed with nasturtiums in this case):
Mixing the morning glories and nasturtiums provides all day color.
The front porch usually has wave petunias mixed with an assortment of other flowers in two pots (one on each side of the porch). I try to get them to match the furniture and fixtures on my front porch, including the doormat and the goose neck lights, as I like everything to tie together. The color combinations are interesting this year because one of the mixed in elements are nasturtiums (of three different colors no less):
Wave petunias mixed with other flowers can provide an interesting arrangement.
The other pot uses the same concepts, but with different colored flowers. So you see the same idea on both sides, but the contrasting flowers prove to be quite nice. Both sides actually do have all three colors of nasturtium, but it’s apparently against the rules for all three to bloom at the same time:
Color variations and textures differentiate the two front porch pots.
Organization is nice, but sometimes you need a little creative chaos, which is where my tire flowers come into play. I simply sew seeds from a mixed flower packet and enjoy whatever comes up. Sometimes I’m not sure about the names of the flowers. This year I did end up with a sunflower and something interesting called love lies bleeding (the prominent strings of flowers are the love lies bleeding).
Interesting mixes of flowers can be quite pretty.
That really long strand in the front is a single flower. Even though some flowers, like the sunflower, attempt to steal the show, it’s important to look everywhere. Some flowers shyly peek out from near the bottom of the tire:
Sometimes the smallest flowers are the prettiest.
Of course, there is a lot more to see, but these are some of the highlights of the flowers for this year. The point is that summer lends itself to some beautiful arrays of flowers to please the eye (and sometimes the palette, nasturtiums, among other flowers, are edible). Make sure you plant plenty of posies to keep your heart happy.
Cabbage is one of those items that’s hard to store for the winter months. I know of some people who wrap the cabbage up in newspaper and then store it in their root cellar. In order to make this approach work, you need a cool root cellar-around 40 degrees (or lower) is best. The cabbage can last up to five months when stored this way if the storage meets all the required conditions.
Another way to store cabbage is to pressure can it. I’ve saved the secondary cabbages that come up after you cut off the primary cabbage this way. You can prepare and store the cabbage whole in most cases and it comes out reasonably well. The minute you have to cut the cabbage up, pressure canning starts to lose its appeal because the cabbage gets quite soft (sometimes downright mushy).
It’s also possible to preserve cabbage as sauerkraut-an approach that I highly recommend. Nothing quite matches the taste of homemade sauerkraut. Certainly, nothing you buy in the store will match the fermentation approach that most homemade sauerkraut relies on. Unfortunately, you can only eat so much sauerkraut in a year, even if you love the stuff.
Freezing cabbage is another alternative, but one that is also fraught with problems. Freezing any food can be problematic if it hasn’t been prepared correctly. In order to combat this, people could always consider visiting PreparedCooks.com to learn about freezing foods. They have blog posts on a number of different foods that can be frozen, so people could learn from that. Personally, I’ve eaten more than my fair share of truly horrid cabbage that has been frozen. If you don’t prepare it right, the mush that you get out of the freezer will not only look unappealing, it’ll taste quite bitter. In fact, about the only thing you can do with it is put it in the compost-it really is quite bad. After years of experimentation, I have come up with a way to freeze cabbage that does produce a palatable result. You can defrost the cabbage made this way and use it for anything that required cooked cabbage-the cabbage will still lack the crispness of fresh, so coleslaw is out of the question. Here are the steps I follow.
Clean the cabbage carefully, removing any damaged leaves.
Cut the cabbage in four to six parts of about a pound each. Don’t cut the cabbage too small. Cut the cabbage in such a way that each piece is still attached to the core. Don’t remove the core.
Heat a pot of water to boiling. Add 2 tablespoons of salt and 1/4 cup of vinegar to the solution. The salt and vinegar improve the taste of the final product by keeping minerals from adhering to the cabbage.
Blanch the cabbage for 2 minutes (timing is critical).
Immediately cool the cabbage with copious amounts of cold water and ice.
Place the cabbage on clean, white towels to dry. Pat or otherwise handle the cabbage as little as possible, but try to get as much of the water off of the cabbage as is possible.
Freeze the cabbage overnight. Don’t wrap it. Separate pieces from each other using waxed paper or aluminum foil (the foil works better, but is a lot more expensive).
The next morning, place the cabbage in the smallest possible freezer bag or, better still, use a vacuum packer such as the Food Saver to store it. Less air is better. When using a vacuum packer, use the lowest possible setting to avoid damaging the cabbage. Using the 8″ rolls works best because you can make the bags as large as needed.
If you’re able to vacuum pack the cabbage, it can last a minimum of a year in the freezer. In fact, you can often keep it in the freezer longer without any sign of frost damage, but longer storage may reduce the quality of the cabbage and affect the nutrients you get from it. Let me know if you have any questions about this technique at [email protected].
The movie Paper Towns, like the book Paper Towns (by John Green), is geared toward the teenage market. This review is about the movie, of course, but from what I’ve read online, the book is just as interesting and I may eventually get a copy. The name of the movie comes from the practice that cartographers use to prevent copyright infringement—adding fake towns to a map so that anyone copying it will likely copy the fake town as well (making it easy to prove copyright infringement in court). The term can also refer to planned subdivisions that fail to materialize for various reasons. The idea is one of being completely fake.
The reason the movie is so interesting is that it asks a particular question that few movies bother to ask, “Who am I?” It seems like an obvious question, but many people never ask the question once in their entire lives. They seem to fly through life on autopilot and never quite realize the amazing potential they have. After Margo’s (Cara Delevingne) boyfriend proves untrue to her (and she takes the requisite revenge) she’s faced with the overwhelming sense of being fake—of being made of paper, just like the paper town she inhabits with all the other paper people who go about their daily lives never questioning anything. I’m focusing on this particular point because it’s all too easy to miss in the movie.
It’s important to remember that this is a teen movie, so it contains the splash of nudity and overwhelming concentration of drinking that these movies tend to contain. The message is lost a little because of the emphasis on teen activities that seem like both a waste of time, but also a necessary passage to adulthood. I wouldn’t say that the amount of near nudity and drinking is absurd, but it does get in the way of an otherwise meaningful movie. I think they could have easily toned things down a little and produced an even better movie as a result.
The movie does seem to avoid drugs (at least from what I could tell) and the amount of foul language is kept to a real minimum. I applaud both choices as being in good taste. If the movie had gone down this road to any significant degree, I probably couldn’t recommend it, despite being a great movie otherwise.
Of course, it wouldn’t be much of a movie if it focused on one girl’s realization that she’s going nowhere quite fast and needs to do something about it. As usual, the synopsis for the movie is misleading and the trailer is even worse. Quentin (Nat Wolff) has a major role to play, but it isn’t as Margo’s sidekick. Like Margo, Quentin is stuck in a rut and needs to ask what makes one happy in life. Again, it’s a really important question because everyone knows someone who totally abhors their occupation, lives with a spouse they detest for the kid’s sake, and generally has a really rotten life. Here is a kid who is starting to head down that road, but is intercepted by Margo who gets him to think again. The movie makes the point that life is to be enjoyed, that work really shouldn’t be, and that relationships should be fun.
Most teen movies I’ve seen are truly mind candy and not very good mind candy at that. This movie could easily fall into the mind candy category too if it didn’t ask those important life questions. It really does have something of value to offer the discerning audience. For everyone else, well, there is the semi-nudity and drunken parties to enjoy. If you haven’t seen Paper Towns and would like something to think about for a while, you really do need to see it and be prepared to watch with your mind open and your creativity in gear. I highly recommend it.
