Radishrain

You may not realize this, but carob powder has an amazingly long shelf-life, even when exposed to air—especially as far as the taste goes. However, since we got fresh carob powder not too long ago, I've been noticing something. It feels a lot healthier than the really old carob powder that had been exposed to air. Both of them tasted fine, but I'm guessing the old powder actually had gone stale, but didn't taste stale. Interesting.

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I tried this experimentally, today, and it was pretty good:

Ingredients:
• Carob powder
• Natural peanut butter (such as Skippy Natural; natural here doesn't mean it has few ingredients, nor that it lacks sugar; it means it lacks hydrogenated oils)
• Water
• Pancake syrup (ours is Log Cabin Original Syrup)
• Almonds (all of our almonds are raw and unsalted, but I imagine it might taste good with roasted ones, or other nuts, too)

Add a significant amount of carob powder to a bowl (I did a small ladle full). Add a little water and a little peanut butter and mix it into the powder. Maybe add a little more water. You need to be able to mix it up (but not so much water that you get clumps of carob that you can't mix up, nor so much water that it's runny; you want it very thick; the peanut butter will also help to stir it up, just like the water). Anyway, keep adding peanut butter until the carob is tolerably not-bitter (but if you add too much peanut butter, it will overpower the flavor). Add pancake syrup to taste. Mix again. Dip almonds in it and eat them.

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So, we have some really old beans from the 1980s. I've bean cooking them recently. While they can get soft and have good texture in the middle after 8 hours and 54 minutes on the stovetop, or thirteen and a half hours on high in the slow cooker (each after a soaking-type preparation), sometimes you may need to eat them when they're still kind of dry and powdery inside, because that's a really long time to cook them. Here's a great way to do that:

• Cook the beans.
• Blend them up in the blender with quite a bit of water and lots of green onions.
• Put the substance in a Dutch oven.
• Submerge pieces or slices of cheddar cheese suspended in the beans, but don't let the cheese touch the surface of the pan.
• Bake until the beans absorb enough of the fluid (at least a half an hour on 450° F. for two cups of cooked beans prior to blending; probably longer).

Anyway, it turned out great for burritos/tortillas, and it seemed more digestible than just eating the whole cooked beans for some reason (I'm guessing because the powdery bean interior didn't get cooked very well due to lack of moisture, air pockets, or some such).

If you don't use enough water or if you cook it too long, the beans may get too thick and dry. So, watch out for that.

So, now I'm trying the same thing, except with cabbage and mustard greens blended up into it, too. It smells good.

It's basically like cooked bean and green smoothies, with cheese inside, spread on burritos.

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I discovered something delicious about a minute ago, and that is turmeric toast. I wanted to take some turmeric, so I figured I would sprinkle some on some buttered toast, spread it around, and eat it. I did, and it was actually quite tasty. I recommend it.

If you're wondering how I sprinkled turmeric, I used a salt shaker.

Once upon a time, my ideal meal of peanut butter sandwiches went like this (and it still does):

Spread peanut butter on a couple slices of bread (making two sandwiches), spread honey or raspberry jam on them, put bread on each, cut them each in half, and dip them generously in milk before each and every non-soaked bite (well, maybe 96% of the bites).

I tried doing the same thing with water a few times when we were out of milk, but it just wasn't the same (of course). What I didn't try, however, was foregoing the honey or jam when dipping in water. While it's not quite as satisfying as dipping in milk, it's actually a lot better than you might think, including in the following way:

If you don't want to add extra sugary stuff to your sandwiches, dipping it in water is a good way to compensate for that. For some reason, the lack of sugar isn't as bad when dipped in water. Don't ask me why.

Part of the effect of jam or honey is that it makes the sandwich seem wetter, and easier to swallow (and faster to eat). So, texture-wise, water helps. As to why it helps compensate for the lack of sweetness, I don't know (that's what I meant when I said not to ask me earlier).

In the end, I still like it with milk and jam or honey better, but if milk or honey/jam isn't on the menu, I wouldn't ignore peanut butter sandwiches altogether. You can still get some of that satisfaction.

While the Support and Feedback forums are still visible, their posts are no longer visible from the main feed. I never wanted them to be visible there, for the record. If you're wondering how to get to those forums now, look at the bottom of any page (that was already there before).

Anyway, the reason for this change is because no one probably wants to see a bunch of support and feeback posts cluttering up the main page's feed; also, this is to prevent spam posts in the Support forum from getting featured prominently on the main page.

https://www.hymnwiki.org/Fadershjertat_st%C3%A5r_%C3%B6ppet_f%C3%B6r_dig

Listen to the MIDI file in the HymnWiki article above. Doesn't the tune sound like it has a lot in common with Home on the Range's tune?

https://www.tomatojunction.com/viewtopic.php?p=94282#p94282

Okay, I just planted some seeds. Here's what:

Tomatoes:
• Amana Orange x 1 (saved seeds from 2022)
• Brandywine Pink x 1 (saved seeds from 2022)
• Cal Ace VF x 18 (store seeds)
• Carolina Yellow x 2 (saved seeds from 2022)
• Cherokee Lime x 2 (2 sources from trades/gifts)
• Cherokee Purple x 1 (Baker Creek)
• Cilantrovaya-A x 2 (from the first-harvested fruit)
• Early Cascade x 2 (store seeds)
• Italian Gold x 4 (gift/trade)
• Jubilee x 2 (1 from gifts/trades and 1 from store seeds)
• Marmande x 3 (saved seeds)
• New Yorker V x 1 (saved seeds--the rest of them)
• Orange Jazz x 2 (saved seeds; each from a different fruit)
• Roma VF x 30 (store seeds x 12; saved seeds x 18)
• Snacker-C0 x 2
• Snacker-C x 2
• Sunray x 1 (store seeds)
• Super Marmande x 1 (SHPC)
• Tangerine x 2 (trade/gift x 1; store seeds x 1)
• Tropic x 1 (SHPC)

Note: If you can't tell by my selection of tomatoes, I'm primarily going for Verticillium resistance. Most of those are said to be resistant, but a few might not be. As for Brandywine Pink, I'm growing it as an experiment in acclimatization to it, to see if it gains more resistance; it also didn't get virus symptoms (and we had some viruses circulating). It didn't get a severe case from it last year, though, but it did have symptoms on the lower leaves. The seeds came from an extra-large fruit that set in the heat; so, that's another reason. Carolina Yellow and Amana Orange don't claim resistance, but they did pretty well last year (both against Verticillium and viruses). Orange Jazz doesn't claim resistance, but it's related to Amana Orange. Snacker-C, Snacker-C0 and Cilantrovaya-A might not be resistant, as they had some lower leaf symptoms (one of the Snacker siblings died from it last year, but the parents of these didn't), but I have hope that they'll do well. With regard to Jubilee and Tangerine, I only have a suspicion that they're resistant based on a claim about one of their ancestors or descendants. I've heard Cherokee Chocolate is supposed to be resistant (and since I think Cherokee Lime and Cherokee Chocolate are basically in a long line of sports stemming from Cherokee Purple, I'm hoping all the sports and the original are resistant).

Early Cascade, Sunray, Roma VF, Cal Ace VF, Italian Gold, Marmande, Super Marmande, Tropic, and New Yorker V are all supposed to be Verticillium-resistant.

Sweet peppers:
• Blot x 2 (Baker Creek)
• Cal Wonder Orange x 2 (store seeds)
• Canary Bell x 18 (2 different store sources and also saved seeds from 2022)
• Orange version of Golden California Wonder x 4 (store seeds)
• Purple Beauty x 4 (store seeds; I'm hoping this is a prolific orange off-type again)
• Yolo Wonder x 1 (store seeds)

Other:
• Catalogna chicory x 1
• Lovage x 1
• Zi Su shiso

I'm thinking about direct-seeding some wonderberries, mustard (several kinds), bok choy, daikon radishes, and maybe Job's tears soon. I thought my daikon radishes were spring radishes, but it turns out they're supposed to be fall-sown or something. I plan to try them as spring radishes anyway.

I ran out of the worm casting seed-starting mix that I've been using for some years. This year, I'm using a mixture of Whitney Farms organic indoor/outdoor potting soil, perlite, wood ash, Miracle Gro (24-8-16 All-purpose), and monopotassium phosphate. Some of the containers have diatomaceous earth in (I forgot to put it in the first batch).

Here's the state of my houseplants:

My Rubber fig and umbrella tree are doing much better (more and healthier growth). I think they like to be watered more often with less water at a time.

My grapefruit tree grew a bunch, and hit the ceiling. I had to prune it back for a couple reasons.

My oldest living spider plant (Chlorophytum comosum; a variegated kind) is huge and getting bigger. It has a whole bunch of spiderettes, and keeps growing more. It's multiplying in the ground, too (I didn't know spider plants did that, but they do!) The younger rooted spider plant is finally starting to get bigger leaves.

My Christmas cactuses are proving sensitive to light changes. I mean, if they don't get much sun one day (for example, if I don't keep my curtains open long enough) then they might burn if they get lots of sun the next. One of the plants at a certain angle isn't bothered, though (it has less direct light, I suppose).

My Thanksgiving cactuses are doing well. I rooted a small cutting that had grown four segments at once, so the whole plant would be growing from the four segments. It's growing really fast, and I"m pleased with it. I have another of the same kind and it's doing well. Those are both red-flowering. I have some pink-flowering ones; two of those are quite big. I've been focuing on getting them to grow bigger, rather than focusing on trying to get them to flower. Once they're big enough, then I'll probably focus on flowering.

My golden pothos plants are getting long vines. They're looking good and doing well.

The White Pearl poinsettia we got in 2021 is alive and well. It likes water. It hasn't grown new bracts, but it has grown a couple leaves with a little white on them. Most of the leaves are green.

The spider plants really improve the way I feel, I've noticed. I think what they say about them reducing depression is true. My big one has been getting thirstier. It drank up a half-gallon of water in a few days once recently.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/friend/1989/03/shepherds-of-israel?lang=eng

This article from the Friend magazine is nice.

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I was listening to an audiobook, today, at my computer, and a command-prompt was before me. As I sometimes do, I typed various characters while I listened. Then I started holding keys down and watching. I noticed that when I focused on the cursor/caret as it moved, then the details of all the letters on the screen were blurred from my peripheral vision, but if I started with a stationary one and followed pre-existing ones, even if they were close to the cursor/caret as it moved (creating new ones), they looked clearly visible in my peripheral vision, of course.

Anyway, I don't know if this has been studied, but it sounds like something people would study.