The Empty Cabinets of my Mind

What is Toxic and What is Not: Deadly Nightshade

When I hear the word toxic, the first thing I think of is "relationships."  It is not as though I am engaged in any toxic relationships, but so many other people seem to be.  Why some people have such a hard time just weeding those out and going on with their business it is hard to say.  Maybe it is just because not everyone grew up on a farm.

My long lost (but now recently revived) interest in plants forces me to start making some decisions regarding possible toxicity in the green things I want to grow.   When I blogged about the vinca plants we put on the porch to see if they could withstand the summer heat, I wasn't much thinking about the fact that periwinkle is supposed to be "toxic" but when bringing them indoors for some hydroponic experiments, it dawned on me that it would be a good idea to find out whether the vinca should be isolated from from my salad greens experiments.   I needed to know which of my plants were toxic and which were not. 

The crisis in my learning curve occurred when I realized that almost everyone regards the leaves and stems of the tomato plant as poisonous.  Of course, at one time, much of the civilized world considered even the fruit of the tomato to be poisonous, but really, the tender young leaves of a tomato plant smell heavenly to me and although I never actually ate one, I wondered "why not?"  The quick version of the answer seemed to be that because the tomato belongs to the deadly nightshade family, its leaves contain a concentration of tomatine, a glycoalkaloid that is supposed to be toxic. 

After completing hours, maybe days, even weeks of reading, to my amazement I had found suggestions here or there that practically ALL the plants I liked best were considered toxic by one person or another:  Amaranth, purslane, lambsquarters, potatoes, eggplant,  spinach.  Some consider them all completely safe, yet others describe them as deadly.  I'm pretty sure that in moderation none of these things would hurt the average adult human, but it seems there is no way that people are going to agree one way or another on that.  Aside from simply tabling the whole inquiry, the only choice seems to be to take one side or another.

So last night, I sauntered over to my tomato project and ate a leaf.   Having awakened alive with no discernable ill-effects, I guess I'll just have to keep reading and studying the issue until I get to the bottom of this.  Meanwhile, here is a 3D rendition of a Deadly Nightshade molecule:

Deadly Nightshade Molecule

LA Police Gear has Those Great Pants on Sale Again

I love these:

511 pants

511 Tactical Outdoors is a sister site to LA Police Gear.  I guess their high volume allows them to offer these great prices on their pants.  Check out their shorts, too:

Shorts

The items pictured in those spacious pockets are not exactly what I would be carrying, but I have to have durable shorts with roomy pockets in the right places.  Let's see, the smart phone, a zillion keys, makeup, wallet, and the list goes on.  I don't carry a handbag, so I do depend on well-designed, durable, and high-capacity pockets.  

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Promises are Not like Piecrusts

An old proverb, often wrongly attributed to various different people, famous or notorious depending on one's point of view, states that "Promises are like pie crusts, made to be broken." 

Of course, I disagree, and will keep my promise to report on whether or not the NuWave oven did a good job on our pizza.  Yes, it did:

Since then, though we had been reminiscing about our recent vacation and the night Pizza Hut's advertising finally got to us until we went out and got a P'Zone and brought it back to the hotel room.  One friend of mine is going to say "What!?" because I've told her we NEVER order food for take out, but you see, once we made up our minds we had to have a P'Zone and that we had to have it that night, we found out that we had driven to the one Pizza Hut in town that didn't have a dine-in area.  So, hey,we brought a couple bottles of FeverTree Bitter Lemon Tonic up from the ice chest and dug in.  Yes, we got just one and split it and it was just the right amount for two hungry travelers. 

I like to bake with whole grains, so I never bought refrigerated pizza dough before, but when we saw Pillsbury's thin crust pizza dough in that little tube at the store, I got an idea.  What if I put ground flax seed, fennel, and a layer of grated cheese in between two layers of the refrigerated pizza dough and then stretch it out and nuke it a little in the NuWave over, flip it over when it is lightly browned and then add the toppings and nuke it again?

Did that.  Then I spread 3-cheese Alfredo sauce on the browned side and chunks of sausage, onion, mushrooms, black olives, fresh basil and fennel leaves that we grew in our AeroGarden, topped with a generous layer of shredded Mozzarella and black pepper.  Did I forget anything?

I nuked it another 5 minutes in a rounded steel bottomed teflon pan, but when the top looked good and I took it out to test it, the bottom crust wasn't brown yet.  "P'Zone!" I thought, and folded the whole thing in half, and baked it again, once on each side, until it was nice and brown all over:

I put a little more cheese and basil and stuff on top before the last nuking.  Mmmmm.  Hubby pronounced it "excellent" and requisitioned a repeat performance very soon.  He'll get his wish, as I thought it was pretty tasty myself, and any prepared foods that allow me to sneak a little extra nutrition in are friends of mine. 

Put Your Car's Exhaust to Work!

I re-use a lot of things.  For instance, on my gardening blog, I recently discussed how I cut down plastic beverage containers to use as passive hydroponic planters. 

I like tinkering with things, too,  and used to soup up my cards a little.  It helped that my best friend was a mechanic at the local garage and used to do a little drag racing on the side.  That may seem out of character, but now you know. 

So I'm not a hot-rodder any more, but details about how cars work still interest me.  I was reading about the difference between turbochargers and superchargers on this web site:

audi turbo

This site belongs to Turbochargerpros.com and they have a link to their learning center there, so I went there to see if I could learn something.

I already knew that the turbocharger was invented by an engineer from Switzerland close to the start of the the 20th century, and that what happens in a car is that there is energy generated by the piston engine that just goes out in exhaust.  So I knew that turbochargers can make your car more efficient by turning the hot exhaust into something useful. 

What I didn't know is that if you need a turbocharger, all you have to do is go to a website, put in the year and model of your car, and they will send it out with free shipping the next day. 

Don't worry if you don't have an Audi!  They carry an extensive inventory with full warranty, as well as offering other discounted auto parts. Check it out at TurbochargerPros.

One thing about souping up your car, though.  Do remember that it is smart to change your oil more frequently with a turbo charged engine, and personally, I would use a high quality synthetic oil.   It is also recommended to let the engine idle for 10 seconds or more before turning it off because otherwise you could damage your bearings. 

A Scissors with Six Blades

Ever since I saw a fellow in the local salad shop chopping my lunch right in a big stainless steel bowl using a device that looked like a pizza wheel with multiple blades, I've been thinking there has to be a better way to cut the fussy little micro greens and herbs we like in our salads.

Apparently this device doubles as a manual paper shredder for cutting up old checks (if the power is out?!) but we bought ours from our favorite aeroponic planter place.  It looks like an ordinary scissors, but instead of one pair of blades, it has three.  It is great for cutting cilantro, chives, salad burnett, or whatever delicate greens you have that stick to everything.

Yes, they do have a tendency to want to stick between the blades on this gizmo, too, but it is still the best solution we have found so far.

It looks like this.

In a few days I'll probably blog about the pizza we made in our NuWave countertop infrared/convection oven.  We used the six-bladed scissors to chop fresh basil and fennel leaves that we grew indoors in our AeroGarden.  They were good on top of the pizza!

A Time to Save and a Time to Spend

A San Mateo company which, by the way,  made the California list of best places to work in the San Francisco Bay Area, has a website called Bills.com which provides a whole range of  interesting free services.

One of these is a forum called Ask Bill where consumers can get the opinions of graduates of Stanford Business School along with other people experienced in debt management.

They also have an interactive Bills IQ Quiz that I took just for fun.  Here are the results:

Of course, I knew that, but the next step promised answers, tips, and advice, so I clicked on it just to see what they would say.  I thought they did a pretty nice job of explaining the questions and although the information validated my own experience, I could see where someone with debt issues might benefit from their advice.

I like their advice to people to keep a written budget and to save 10% or more of their earnings.  These days, just the increase in the price of gasoline needed for a worker's commute could dramatically throw off a family's budget, but one cannot allow that kind of surprise to interfere with a sound savings plan.   Although it may seem impossible at times to keep at least enough liquid savings on hand to support one's family for a full six months, that is a realistic  goal that everyone needs to consider.  

But since the best laid plans of men and women (and even mice?) often go wrong, the folks at Bills.com also help people wade through the language needed to survive a setback and they provide pretty comprehensive information about Debt Management Programs, Debt Negotiation, Debt Settlement, and Debt Relief.  Wow, that sounds like a lot of debt!  

If I owed money, particularly in this economy, I would choose the option called Debt Acceleration, which is described in their Boot Camp for Debt Part 2: Good Credit Debt Relief Options.  I should point out as well, though, that this company also pre-screens debt consolidation lenders and shows typical rates for various kinds of consolidation loans.  If you need to consolidate debt this is a resource well worth looking into.

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A Plant in Liquid Nutrient Solution

The great ancestor of this pothos cutting has been with us through thick and thin for at least 30 years.  Whenever we moved, we cut off a few stems to root at the new place, transferring them to dirt until recently when we learned that it is possible to grow lovely plants indoors entirely dirt-free.  Why was this such a big secret?

In truth, we were familiar with the term hydroponics, and always thought it would be interesting to try, but for some reason we got bogged down in details.  Words like "culture" and "medium" and the cost of all those supplies had us going around in circles.  We just never got around to it.  But after buying our first automated planter, an AeroGarden 3, we realized that plants really do just want to grow, and it is possible to do away with most of the hype. 

So here is hydroponics at its simplest:

When the water gets down to the bottom third of the glass I refill it to the top of the clay pellets, using a weaker solution of the same liquid nutrients that we feed our Aerogarden plants.

The clay pellets are reusable Hydroton grow rocks, which if they are not available locally can be ordered online.  Between uses they can be sterilized with a weak bleach solution and/or boiled clean.

Now we are growing some of our own food indoors in containers of water, too, as described in Ann's Air Gardens.

Miles of Aisles

We have traveled through miles of kitchen gadgets in stores across the three states that we most often travel, always searching for a better fizz keeper.  Hubby and I both love plain seltzer water and the bubbliest brand we can consistently find is Safeway's store brand.  When the 6-packs of canned Seltzer go on sale for $1.25 that is us hauling a whole cart of it to the checkout. 

Why?  Because no matter what gadget we used, nothing seemed to keep the more affordable liter bottles from going flat, not even when that bottle started out being ultra bubbly.

Not any more.  We finally found something that works, and no this is not a paid post.  I just like this product so much that I want everyone to know about it and I want the company that makes this to stay in business and keep making these things in case ours ever breaks.

We found it at Kitchen Collection, and it is called Soda Dispenser by Jokari.  Forget the pump bottle cap fizz keeper manufactured by the same company.  This is the red pump with a hand grip and a flexible straw-like tube that goes into the bottle.  Amazon sells them too.  Here is their image:

What it Looks Like

Just shake the bottle a little when it stream of soda looks like it is losing its oomph.  When you get to the last 1/4 cup, just tip the bottle a little.  It kept our soda fizzy right to the end.

The Lighter Side sells one that looks like it might work too, but we haven't tried that one because it would not fit in our refrigerator.   I like my soda very bubbly and very cold.   This is what that one looks like:

Another Dispenser

To keep partially used small glass sparkling beverage bottles fresh we still use the Pump & Pour Fizz-Keeper from Innovative Solutions.  Unfortunately, though, it does not fit all bottle types.  We tried it on the larger plastic bottles and although it did a great job compared to nothing, this new one is WAY better.

Dinner

The salad bar I blogged about a few days ago is still not quite a month old yet, but it got big enough to prune back a bit, so we ate the "scraps" with our dinner:

 There it is, just waiting for bit of grated romano and some fresh ground black pepper.   The spaghetti was good, too, garnished with our AeroGrown basil.

I Need A Glossary

...but I don't know where to put it.  I'm learning so many new words so fast that it is becoming necessary to try to make a deeper sense out of them. 

The words are about growing plants in water.  Not just aquatic plants, but almost any plant can be grown in water.  Here in the United States, the  art and science of dumping out the dirt and propagating plants in a liquid nutrient solution was more or less perfected by William Gericke in 1929.    But Francis Bacon published findings on the subject in 1626, as did John Woodward in 1699.  A couple of centuries later work on perfecting nutrient solutions for growing in a soil-free manner was completed in Germany. 

But if you type the keywords "inventor of hydroponics" into an online  search engine, you are likely to come up with gibberish. 

Much of the world's food products are grown without dirt and bugs, but for some reason, this seems not to be widely known even by most of the avid gardeners hereabouts.   Why all the secrecy?

Better yet, what can I do to find and then "out" more information on this subject?

Here is a start: GLOSSARY