Why I Oughta...

This year, I decided to go a slightly different route for the tomato plants in our garden than last year.  Variety was the calling card of our garden last year.  We had big and small.  We had heirlooms and hybrids.  Greens and yellows.  This year, I decided to focus on one core tomato:  the plum.  The reason for this is because I want to can a bunch of them (whole/peeled) in preparation for next spring's completion of the wood-burning pizza oven in our backyard.  What's that you say?  Pizza oven?  Yes.  I think I'm going to push ahead - against some folk's best recommendation.  (more on that later this fall as the pieces come together).  To satisfy my wife (the real tomato eater in our house), I'm going to out and get a few more heirloom plants that are NOT plums, but thus far, I have 9 plants in the ground and 8 of them are plum varieties.  The first of which is called an Amish Paste Tomato.  My mother-in-law found these at a garden center out by her and she

In both an attempt to diversify the variety of vegetables that we grow as well as following a best practice of rotating crop locations, I decided that this year we'd try a few new things that I haven't had in either my '09 or '10 gardens. The first of those are these Jade Cross E Brussel Sprouts.  They're a recommended variety from the University of Illinois Extension Office for our Zone and take 90 days from seed to harvest and have larger heads than normal.   The only issue is that it appears that Sprouts don't like warm summers and based on the past week, it appears that we're in for a warm one.   It seems that they're fairly frost tolerant, so they probably should have gone in a month ago....or...sometime later in the summer so we can harvest in October.  Plant and learn, right?

Tonight at the Elmhurst Public Library, our two Alderman - Dannee Polomsky and Michael Bram are hosting their first (of what they say will be a series) of joint Townhall meetings.  They're taking this pretty seriously and even walked flyers around door-to-door to drum up attendees.  That's the flyer (above) that was on our front door this morning.  Good idea. Alderman Bram has hosted one of these before, but with the recent election of Alderman Polomsky (yeah!), they're teamed up together.  That partnership is a great thing for our Ward - and they both have different tools they bring to us residents and will complement each other. Polomsky aims to be the 'Great Communicator' and will make sure every resident feels more plugged into their local government than ever before.  She's perfectly suited for this role and has made communication the hallmark of her term.  With City government being the "closest" form of government to us residents, the comm

It is with mixed emotions that I can report that we caught a skunk in our raccoon trap overnight.  The raccoon hasn't been using my garden as his toilet for more than 10 days, so I moved the trap out front to where I last saw the raccoon - in an attempt to catch him. Instead of the raccoon, I found Mr. Stinky in the trap.  As most of you know, I'm Mr. Anti-Skunk so this is kind of a feather in my cap, but seeing him in the trap makes me kind of sad.  The grass around the cage is all torn up, so he fought like heck to get out and when I found him in the morning, he was mostly just laying there, tired.  One less skunk on the streets of Elmhurst is a good thing, but now that the trap has been taken away, I'm almost certain that the raccoon will show back up again, won't he?

On Alan Richman's big GQ list of the Top pizza joints in the country , Buddy's in Detroit came in at #15.  I had NOT been to any of the places on the list despite the top choice being in Chicago (Great Lake), so a visit to Buddy's was going to be my first rare-air experience in the world of pizza. A few weeks back, I was set to have a meeting with a Google Exec and an editor up in Detroit - and I made the executive decision to have the meeting over lunch at Buddy's.  Everyone agreed to meet there and I have to say: this was the best pizza I've ever had in my entire life.  Seriously.  It was that good. *UPDATE on Feb 3, 2012*  I recently decided to try my hand at making Buddy's pizza at home.  To that end,  bought 2  Detroit-style Blue Steel Pizza Pans  and changed my recipe a bit. The GQ list isn't the first time Buddy's has been recognized, but being a high-brow list, it is great to see a place like this able to make it.  That photo is the side t

With a HUGE assist from my father-in-law, this swingset is finally assembled.  Without his help, the slide most likely wouldn't be installed because both my limited skill set AND I would have likely used the wrong bit in the drill.  Nat bought a special baby swing - which I put up on the right - and I installed just one of the 'normal' swings.  Next up is leveling of the ground, the installation of some timbers and then piling on a bunch of mulch to make the play area nice and safe. 

I was able to haul both roofs up the ladder by myself and secured them into place - not without a bit of a struggle.  The cupola looks great up top, but turns out to be purely ornamental as it is completely closed in.  My Dad tells me that cupolas are meant to vent out the accumulated heat in roofs, but in this case, I have a feeling the the Babe isn't going to notice the heat up there. I also was able to get the door on the clubhouse, the sunburst details in the gables and the bay window (facing the backside, unfortunately) installed.  Tomorrow, Nat's Dad is coming over to give me a hand and we'll get going on the swing bar assembly, the crowsnest and the slide.  3 hours First Day 8 hours Second Day 8 hours Third Day Total so far: 19 Hours by myself

Look at what just arrived via USPS Mailman on our frontdoor?!?  Two and a half pounds of extract-grade vanilla beans.  Yes..that's what is in that photo below.  Kind of strange looking, but they're oh-so-sweet smelling. I'm about a month behind my schedule from last year so I have to get going fast.  With school ending this week, it shouldn't be difficult to get my nieces and nephews over here to slice and scrape beans and get production ramped up.  There's nothing quite like under-aged, low-priced labor is there?   After that, all it takes is a mere six months of steeping and we should be in great shape for the holidays.

I went out this morning to check the trap - like I've become accustomed to do and found what I expected:  an empty trap.  This is day 10 of the raccoon hunt and I'm not quite sure what has happened to him.  He hasn't been around for the better part of the week and hasn't left any turds in the yard during that same time, too.  So, I guess that's a positive, right? The trap is a pre-pay, so I've already laid out the money trying to catch this bugger, so I'm going to leave the trap in play - but maybe I'll move it to a different part of the yard - and replace the rotten tuna fish inside of it!  I have been waiting to get my garden in full gear out of mostly fear of this critter, but the time for fear is over.  I need to get my tomato plants in the ground.

I put in 8.5 hours today and got through step 23.  Total of 12 hours and here's the progress: We moved the clubhouse portion into place - and yes - we've re-configured things a bit.  In order to make everything fit, we rotated the clubhouse 90 degrees and made some other changes to the swing bar and the entrance.   I'm back at work tomorrow, so the entire project will have to sit for a few days until I can find some extra time.