Is it a grape?

The other day while I was in the grocery store, I spied a clear plastic container of what appeared to be teeny tiny grapes. Of course I just had to have them. 

It’s no secret that I don’t have much of a green thumb and it seems that every time I plant a vegetable or fruit they always grow stunted.  Once I actually harvested a fully ripe Barbie sized cantaloupe—a one-bite wonder.  But putting all my agricultural failures aside, what were these amazing wee grapes?  Were these grapes some happy accident?  Were they the result of someone’s poor abilities in farming? 

These little jewels of fruit sometimes called champagne grapes (another advertising moniker) are actually Black Corinth grapes.  Have you ever had any baked goods with currants in them?  If so you have tasted Black Corinth grapes. (Gee, I never knew what a currant was) Yes, the dried miniscule raisins called currants are actually an ancient Greek variety of grape.  In their natural state they don’t produce fruit any larger than pinheads and take a lot of finagling to encourage them to an edible size. They must girdle them and shoot them full of hormones.  Sounds like someone whose going through menopause, don’t you think?

All I know is Black Corinth grapes are yummy!  So if you see some in our local grocery store you better pick them up.

Oh baby!

The other night while dining at my favorite Chinese restaurant I noticed that one of the veggies in my stir-fry was a tiny ear of corn. Even as I ate the teeny ear whole my mind wandered to visions of Ton Hanks in the movie “Big” as he tried to eat the kernels off of the mini ear.  I wondered-- what do these itty-bitty little ears look like while they are still growing?  Being of an inquisitive nature, I just had to Google it.

I discovered the “baby” sometimes called candle corn (it does sort of resemble a candle doesn’t it?) really is “baby corn.  It’s the same corn that you eat at backyard Bar-B-Q's in steaming bowls of butter.  And you can even grow it yourself.  As soon as the silk forms and the ear is fertilized you pick it! Believe it or not at this point the corn stalk is about 4 feet high!  Let it stay on the mamma stalk too long and oh baby it turns into a real ear of corn!!!  Bet you didn’t know that.

My inquiring mind (and honestly I don’t work at Enquirer) wasn’t satisfied with baby corn because when I got home and opened my fridge, what was right there in the veggie bin to greet me but baby carrots?  So back to my good friend Google to discover that baby carrots are not really babies at all.  Technically they are baby-cut carrots.  Yuppers! An enterprising California carrot grower got a bit tired of discarding carrots because of slight imperfections and figured out how to use an industrial bean cutter to cut regular old adult carrots into lengths and then peel them!  Voila, baby carrots!

Now, what can explain this?  Stay tuned!!!

 

The back is back

I’m not going to lie.  This summer for me has not been one of my best.  First it was the hand surgery, then a power outage lasting 5 days in record-breaking heat, followed by a 3-week bout of bronchitis.  I thought the worst was over and then last Thursday—I decided to polish my toenails.  I bent over, not really very far and I felt something snap. 

For two days I was unable to bend, stoop, or sit comfortably without grimacing from pain. The pain in my back steadily got worse and almost had me in tears, so Saturday I visited the doctor, who prescribed muscle relaxers and pain meds. 

Unfortunately, demands do not stop when one is in pain.  Since I am the first one awake every day and cannot sleep past a certain time, mornings were a difficult.  Everyone knows that I don’t operate that well without that first cup of coffee, but that must wait while I attend to four legged demands. That is when I have to feed the dog and cat and attach the dog’s leash and take her out to do her business.  Ever try and attach a leash to a squirming, hyper, and super excited Jack Russell terrier?  It can be daunting even with a healthy back!

Additionally, since the dog eats the cat’s food if it’s on the floor, I feed her on top of a shelf in my laundry room.  And while she doesn’t have a problem jumping up there, in the mornings she expects me to place her daintily in front of her bowl.  She twists around my legs and meows waiting for her human domestic to do her duty.

I sink to my knees, gritting my teeth at the knives stabbing in my back from each and every slight movement. In a robotic and ungraceful way I manage.  These simple chores, take much longer than usual.  I eye my aromatic cup of coffee that is sitting un-sipped on the counter as I finish the tasks at hand.  Finally I am through and I greedily swallow a few gulps of the semi-warm brew.

The next day and the day after that it is more of the same. And then on Tuesday, five days later, just as quickly and mysteriously as what I like to call the back attack occurred, it was gone.

From now on, however, lion tamers will tame lions, trained athletes will run marathons, and in my house at least, professionals will do pedicures. 

Are you Chaos, or are you Order?

The other day I noticed that my son was eating each item on his plate one at a time.  So that is when I took a look at my own method of eating and I realized that I take turns.  I eat one item and then go on to another.  (Not at the same time of course, we’ve already discussed that)  There is an order to the way I eat.  I work around my plate in a clockwise motion.  My son, on the other hand, while still in an orderly fashion, will completely finish an item before he takes a bite of the anything else.  And he saves his favorite for last.  Now what do you think both our styles of eating say about us?

While we are talking about eating styles, how do you eat your corn on the cob?  Do you eat across like a typewriter?  Or do you work completely around starting at one end and finishing at the other?  Or…. are you like me, a haphazard corn gobbler, biting from wherever the mood hits? 

Hey Mr. Summer are we done yet?

Who’s tired of summer?  Do you see me raising my hand?  I read in the paper that this summer in Va.  Was the hottest on record—even hotter than the previous record of the 1930’s dust bowl.  We sweltered in our homes with no electricity after the effects of a derecho.  (What, you’ve never heard of a derecho? Mr. Webster didn’t   either)

I know all of your beach lovers are having a blast, but who can spend the entire summer at the beach?  Most of us have to trudge through the thick, humid days without so much as a wisp of a sea breeze while we slather on the aloe Vera for our sunburns. 

On a personal level, summer has not been fun for me.  I had an operation on my hand the beginning of June, and then spent 3 weeks in July with the worst cold I’ve had in years.  And I’m still not 100%.  There goes my mother’s theory about catching a cold from getting a chill.

I admit it.  I am not really a fan of summer.  I much prefer the cool and sometimes brisk nights in autumn.  The leaves start to turn orange, reds, yellow and burgundy.  Football is in full swing.  Kids are back in school and holidays are looming.  Come on down Mr. Autumn…I’m waiting with baited breath.

Online Art Show

The First Mate

Stop by the online art show to view all the amazing animal art!

Online Animal Art Exhibition

Cover art

I'm so excited!  My art is featured on the cover of Equine marketer magazine in the August 2012 issue. Just had to show it off!  

Does it all go in the same place?

“It all goes in the same place.”

I know you’ve heard it before.  You sat there when you were five or six, arms folded with a determined look on your face and your lips pursed shut so tight you’d of thought it was cough medicine instead of dinner.  Your broccoli was dangerously encroaching upon your mashed potatoes and you wouldn't eat it no matter what. 

Then you went to school and you discovered the greatest invention since sliced bread—the divided dish.  Even though the food wasn’t exactly four-star fare, they sure knew how to feed a kid! It was so much better than building moats and canals around your food like you did at home.

I’ve grown up now and I’m not so worried anymore about food borders.  Although I still don’t like my spinach to get up close and personal with my meatloaf.  And after all I do have plenty of dishes and a dishwasher. 

What about you, is your food touchy feely or touch me not?

Lock out #2

I hate to disappoint all of you readers who had visions of me locked in a trashcan but unfortunately I must.  I know I’ve done some silly things in the past (and my husband swears he is going to write a book) but none of them include trash receptacles.

This is more of a fable then a story.  You see it has a moral and if you continue to read you will discover the moral to the story.

The squirrel and the safe

Crystal squirrel had worked very hard gathering acorns for months. She told her husband that she needed some time to relax.  So they decided to go to the beach.  Crystal squirrel got ready, packed her things and her reading glasses.  Husband squirrel always scolded her for not seeing the best acorns when she didn’t wear them, but they had a glare and she was always misplacing them.  Oh well, she took them anyway and grabbed her heavy purse, yes it was full and heavy but she really needed everything in there.  Crystal squirrel had an idea.  She took along a little purse with her so that she could keep her heavy stuff in the big one.  Then she could put a comb, some lip gloss, and one acorn in the little one.  That way she could leave her heavy purse in the tree-house hotel.

So Crystal squirrel put her heavy purse in the tree safe and set the numerical code.  She knew she would never forget the numbers because it was the date she married Husband squirrel.  ((Smile))

The squirrels had a great time at the beach and when evening rolled around they got very tired so they returned to the tree-house hotel.  Crystal squirrel went to the tree safe and punched in the numbers.  It didn’t open.  She punched them in again.  It still didn't open.  Husband squirrel tried and it didn’t open for him either.  So Crystal squirrel called the desk in the tree-house hotel but and they told her they had to call a squirrel locksmith. Oh no, they would have to wake him up from a sound sleep!

“Oh come on now you mean there is no way to open this safe.” Crystal whined?

“Nope.” Came the reply.  But you can try again in 25 minutes.  

She sat and watched the digital countdown ticking down the minutes feeling very foolish waiting for the moment when she could try the numbers again.

Her squirrelly asthma inhaler was in the purse and she needed it.  Husband squirrel (although usually very patient) was a little tired and bit cranky.  So when the 25 minutes ended he decided to try the numbers himself.  His idea was to punch the numbers NEAR the ones Crystal squirrel had punched.  He punched one number…nothing.  He punched another, still nothing.  He still had one more try so he punched a number right above the one Crystal Squirrel had supposedly punched, and….

IT OPENED.  Crystal had only thought she had punched those numbers because she didn’t have her reading glasses on!

The offender

The moral of the story:  WHEN SETTING A NUMERICAL CODE, WEAR YOUR READING GLASSES!

If you haven’t guessed already, I am that ditzy squirrel.  Honestly, my purse is really quite heavy.  And who would expect a hotel to not be able to open a digitally locked safe without the help of a locksmith?  Fortunately, the locksmith was able to get on with his snoring and alls well that ends well. 

If you would like to learn more about the black hole I call my usual purse…

http://charrisart.blogspot.com/2011/04/black-hole.html

It’s a lock out!

Locked trashcans

I just got back from a short beach vacation.  Did you know that on some beaches the boardwalk association locks the trashcans inside metal cages? And did you also know that when the cage door opens it is automatically spring loaded so when it closes you need a key to re-open it?

You may wonder why they lock them. Well, there are so many panhandlers that loiter around beach areas (and I’m not talking about the gulls) they lock the cans to keep them from going through the trash.  This solution works very well, unless of course some negligent trash man forgets to put a can back in and close the cage door.

While strolling the boardwalk we noticed police cars and fire engines and a crowd gathering around one of those cans.  We wondered and also hoped that there wasn’t any serious problem.  As we approached we saw him, the small boy who had seen the open cage and thought,

“This will make an ideal hiding place!” 

This time the fire department wasn’t getting a cat out of a tree, but a very red faced little boy out of a cage.

Lock out number two coming soon…and this one involved…you guessed it—Crystal (No I didn’t get in a trash can cage so stop your giggling)