Why I Oughta...

Last fall, Nat came home from Trader Joe's with an odd-shaped, flat, soft-orange colored pumpkin.  If you look carefully at the photo below (from my scarecrow blog post last fall), you can spot the pumpkin on our front porch, at the top of the stairs. After doing a bit of web research, I figured out that saving the seeds from this beauty and attempting to get them to re-grow was pretty easy .  You scoop them out - just like you would if you were going to eat them - rinse them off, then let them dry on a piece of newspaper for a week or so.  Once fully dry, you can pop them in an envelope and keep them in a cool/dark place.  With Elmhurst winter's, finding a cool/dark place is pretty easy.  I stuck them inside a drawer in my office. I had about a dozen seeds, so I put one seed in each compartment of one section of my non-peat greenhouse and crossed my fingers. So far, I haven't had a ton of luck with them, but there *is* hope:  one seed germinated and up has popped a v

Last week, I planted a few different varieties of seeds in my little non-peat greenhouse including what I hope to be one of the most important pizza-related plants:  my San Marzano Tomato seeds . I woke up this morning to some good news:  they've started to sprout. The seed package explains that I need to "thin" them out, so as they sprout, I've begun to pull out the smaller seedlings in the hopes that the one remaining will thrive.  If all goes as planned, by the time spring comes around, we'll have 9 healthy San Marzano plants that can head into our garden (and maybe  one or two to share with family, too.). Now, all I need to do is to start to collect some ash from the fireplace to add to the soil.

Last week, Google announced a new tool called Oscar Trends - which is the second vertical-ized view of our trend data with the first being Flu Trends . Granted, I "drink the Google Kool-Aid" and think that Google data is compelling on any subject, but by combining the geek/chic pieces of Google+Oscars, I think we have a winner.  For a full sense of the project, let take a look at the research - which is based on past year's trends and eventual winners.  Check out this interesting set of examples from the past three years.  Each winner saw a surge in queries BOTH when they were announced as a finalist and leading up to the actual ceremony. Each year, as you would expect, Google sees a flood of searches around the movies, actors, and film industry as the Oscar broadcast comes closer.  People want to see the movies in person, they want to learn more about them, and they also want to see what their friends and others are saying about them.  They turn to Google for all of

Speaking of Home Run Inn, you are eating their frozen pizzas at home, right?  According to their billboards on the expressway, they're the number 1 frozen pizza in Chicago !  Pretty neat stuff from a family-run business.  I usually root for the little guy, so when a operation like Home Run Inn beats back the behemoths at places like Kraft, it reinforces my ideas about entrepreneurs and success! The company has recently rolled out a line of "Ultra Thin" frozen pizzas (at least...I think it is "recent"!  I've just started to spot them in 'my grocer's freezer'!) and for those of you who are like me - watching their waistline - this new 'Ultra Thin' pie carries with it some great news:  the 6" cheese personal ones ONLY HAVE 280 calories! That makes these things like the Michelob Ultra of frozen pizzas! You can barely eat a handful of preztels without getting to 280 calories, right?  Home Run Inn has always boasted about using "a

It was just  late March of 2010 that I crossed the 1000th Tweet mark , but here we are: less than a year later and I've just hit my 2000th Tweet.  Joining Twitter in early 2007, it took me 3 years to get to 1,000 messages on the network, but less than a year to double that number.  The rough math says that I'm averaging right around 3ish Tweets per day.  One comes from this blog via the FeedBurner Socialize service, but the other twoish ones per day, I'm manually generating.  Yikes.  Perhaps there's a better way to spend my time.

Look what else is popping through?  Butternut Squash seedlings!  Officially named Waltham Butternut Winter Squash, these beauties ripen in late summer and if this year was any indication, Nat will be serving them to the Babe with regularity.    The broccoli, carrots, and one of the pumpkin varieties are also doing well.  Stay tuned for updates on those soon. The broccoli can be seen in the back of the photo with the squash seedlings up front (pardon the flash!).

A few weeks ago, my mother-in-law came home from Trader Joe's with this package of Kumatos.  They're brown tomatoes that claim to "taste good" all year around.  I think she said that the good folks at TJ billed it as a "winter tomato".  I didn't eat any of them and haven't seen them since - either at our house or my in-laws.  Maybe they weren't a hit.  Anyone had these?  Any good?  The YumSugar ladies sure seem like them !