Summer rituals

Ryan Mooney

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The Gorge Area, Oregon
Another one hit today. The nice folks down at the local farm stand called to let us know our pickling cukes were in today so we swung down and grabbed them at lunch.

After work I ran over to a buddies house who has some grape leaves and picked a bunch of those. The tannin in them helps the fermented dills stay crispier.

25lbs of cukes, 2 heads of garlic, a whole lot of dill and a bunch of grape leaves later we have ~4+ gallons of pickles pickling (oh and plus some lacto culture - I've had better luck using a culture than relying strickly on luck.. This time I'm using a commercial culture from a friends tank, but have made my own from a sourdough culture as well).

The "extra" (muhahaha loml accused me of planning, she might even be right) grape leaves went into a batch of dolma's which are stewing away on the stove in their olive oil and lemon juice bath and will be dinner tomorrow (and probably the next day and the next day.. if you're making them.. make them :D).

We don't do the pickles every year, probably more every other year on average.. but we do do the dolmas from fresh leaves at least once a year.

What's your crazy summer project you do somewhat regularly?
 
Why tanning by the pool of course...
i-cf6bd77eef03c5ff011ead2030e2a162-BadTanFarrell.jpg

Actually, my wife's grandparents used to make a living growing pickle cucumbers, my wife can't stand them as it was their summer snack almost every day when she visited. Me and my daughter love them though.
 
Nothing specific, but the general gardening, and BLT sandwich craze that hits when the tomaters come on line.

But I do like the sounds of getting a big batch of pickling cukes.

We've made the dolmas before. I wish we had a big ole batch of fresh grape leaves to use...

You really know how to live!
 
Why tanning by the pool of course...

:rofl:

Got to indulge in one of my summer pastimes tonight...watching nature's light show. These are shots taken around midnight by a friend of mine, John Cline, and posted on Facebook. I was out driving around in it wishing I had a good camera with me. :doh: I'm using links so you can see the pics in their larger size.

http://tg3k.com/images/John Cline 26072013 A.jpg

http://tg3k.com/images/John Cline 26072013 B.jpg

http://tg3k.com/images/John Cline 26072013 C.jpg

http://tg3k.com/images/John Cline 26072013 D.jpg

http://tg3k.com/images/John Cline 26072013 E.jpg
 
:rofl:

Got to indulge in one of my summer pastimes tonight...watching nature's light show. These are shots taken around midnight by a friend of mine, John Cline, and posted on Facebook. I was out driving around in it wishing I had a good camera with me. :doh: I'm using links so you can see the pics in their larger size.

http://tg3k.com/images/John Cline 26072013 A.jpg

http://tg3k.com/images/John Cline 26072013 B.jpg

http://tg3k.com/images/John Cline 26072013 C.jpg

http://tg3k.com/images/John Cline 26072013 D.jpg

http://tg3k.com/images/John Cline 26072013 E.jpg

O man, I remember sitting out in the middle of the night at the monkey farm ( NM research facility) at white sands, watching these storms. Nature sure puts on a great show.:thumb:
 
Well this is a real interesting thread. I had never heard the word cuke before had to look it up. :) Whats wrong with using cucumber???

Anyhow i know a store in Little Britain where the owner sells pickles on a stick from the roadside in summer. She makes a killing out of them. Nothing more than putting a pickle on a stick thats it.

The only summer only thing that happens in our house is Linda makes a batch of blueberry jam from wild blueberries most years. Funny thing is we talked about it this morning before i saw this thread. It started when we first came to Canada and each year drove up north to go camping in August and on the way home bought the wild blueberries. Pretty nice Jam and it goes quickly.

If i had my way we would do a whole lot more of this kind of thing but i aint the boss in that dept. :)
 
O man, I remember sitting out in the middle of the night at the monkey farm ( NM research facility) at white sands, watching these storms. Nature sure puts on a great show.:thumb:

We use to hurry and get the Airplane work done and then open up the hanger doors and turn all the lights off and watch the storms when I live in Roswell NM Some great shows and sunrises
 
That is some seriously good audio... Sounds better than the live stuff I heard last night!

John has been a top-notch audio/video pro for years. It doesn't surprise me that he's got good gear at home. ;) He mentioned on FB that he's been trying to get a good recording of thunder since he was a kid...and this one might finally be it. :thumb:
 
I love pickling cukes. I grew a bunch this year, but they didn't taste or look quite right. Got an e-mail from my seed supplier last week notifying me of a mix-up in the seeds and offering a refund. Their supplier had mistakenly put slicing cuke seeds in the pickling packages .....so no pickling cucumbers this year:( . We try to grow organic and our entire crop will probably get wiped out by the cucumber beetles soon. I need to study up on how to beat those critters.
 
Ted, There are predators you can introduce to target the beetle's eggs. Ladybugs and lacewigs are suitable for this purpose. If you want to, you could also build a bat habitat because they also prey on cucumber beetles.
 
Red tomatoes yech! Who wastes a great green tomatoe letting it ripen to red????????? Green fried tomatoes is where the flavor is!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

:rofl: I admit a fondness for both. I must say however that there is more to green tomatoes than frying them (not that that is bad.. but you can only eat so many pounds of tomatoes that way per day.. trust me I've tried :rolleyes: :D). A few other favorites are green tomato jam (essentially a marmalade the way we made it) and green tomato mincemeat (which has no meat but is a tasty sweet treat). I have a few jars of both I should use up...

I had never heard the word cuke before had to look it up. :) Whats wrong with using cucumber???

Heh, no reason, I always called eating cucumbers.. cucumbers and pickling ones.. cukes (maybe because they're small so abbreviating them sounds right? dunno) - must be some regional or familial thing I picked up.

Got to indulge in one of my summer pastimes tonight...watching nature's light show.

:eek: :clap: We don't get those as much here as I remember in B.C. as a kid and certainly not like when I lived in AZ. Nice shots!

We try to grow organic and our entire crop will probably get wiped out by the cucumber beetles soon. I need to study up on how to beat those critters.

Wow those look annoying!! Luckily never had to deal with them, squash bugs on the other hand.. Grrr... These look worse, the squash bugs at least didn't fly away (they scurry into the undergrowth but don't fly much). If you like full sized cucumbers try the "snake melons" or "armenian cucumbers" (best as I can they're the same thingish). Not actually a cucumber but they grow really well and you get a lot of cucumber like (maybe a smidge sweeter) fruit off of them. We tried growing true gerkins as well one year (also not a true cucumber) - man those are spiny little fellows amusing but probably not real practical.
 
We where out in the painted desert one afternoon watching a storm. I tried several times to catch a pic of the lightning with a then new Cannon rebel 35mm with no luck. We stopped at a store on the way out and I got to chatting with a lady that had been doing the same thing. Only she was using a video camera with no luck.:rofl::rofl::rofl:
 
:rofl:

Got to indulge in one of my summer pastimes tonight...watching nature's light show. These are shots taken around midnight by a friend of mine, John Cline, and posted on Facebook. I was out driving around in it wishing I had a good camera with me. :doh: I'm using links so you can see the pics in their larger size.

My son the truck driver is an avid photographer and I'm pretty sure he would kill for a chance to get some of those shots... his brother just gave him a new camera and he's having the time of his life with it... He just got a Nikon D7000 to go along with D50 and D80... even though he drives for a national company, he'll often plan his stops around weather and when/if he can get particular shots...
you can see some of his work at: http://www.tellicoimages.com
 
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