lynnspotter

& Hazer!

Baldur

Happy birthday to Ben Savage, Fiona Apple, Stella McCartney, Michael Johnson, Anne Geddes, Jean Smart, Nell Carter, Peter Cetera, Jacqueline Bisset, Miss Manners, Don Bluth, Barbara Bain, Dick Haymes, Roald Dahl, Claudette Colbert, Laura Secord and Cesare Borgia

Baldur

Jere is a birdwatching alert from Boughbreak.
A rather large a vocal brown and black woodpecker found our birdfeeders and poked around the ground beneath them scooping up bits of suet and who knows what else.
It turns out that he is our very first Northern Flicker.

Dragon

Are the woodpeckers at Boughbreak welcome guests or unwanted pests? I ask because my parents had problems with Yellow Bellied Sapsuckers. The birds killed several trees in their backyard so they were definitly classed as a pest. However, they often see the red headed woodpeckers (I'm not sure their real name, perhaps it's actually Red Headed Woodpecker?) on power poles and in tall trees. These don't cause any particular damage, or at least not enough to be bothered by, so they do not fall into the pest category at all. Sigh, it's complicated isn't it.

Baldur

I don't view them as a pest. The damage they inflict on trees is because of insects boring through the bark/
The insects are the problem in my mind.

Baldur

We have one cat, as many of you know. Her name is Heidi and she is not very friendly. She barely tolerates me and goes spastic if another cat should wander through her yard.
Unfortunately her temperment is tested by the fact that we have 4 other cats who come to the back door looking for food.
I'd mentioned Augie last year. There is an older less social orange tabby who looks much like him, a nimble black and white cat who resembles Heidi and now a new young calico cat.
This newcomer I have named 'Shakira'. She is doing her best to eat us out of house and home, Baldur suspects she is pregnant, though this is not yet certain.
She will cry at our back door if she hears noise in the kitchen.
Robert of course feeds her, and feeds her, and feeds her.
He was also putting out water for her, and table scraps and then for a while small bowls of milk.
Now he is purchasing a specially formulated cat milk for her as a way to help her through her hypothetical pregnancy.
Shakira also craves attention, she needs her ears scratched continuously.
Her coloring is wonderful, the legs and 'background' fur is white, then there are patches of black with a hint of grey striping and then patches of orange tabby coloration.
She is far too clean to be an 'outdoor' cat, her feet would never remain so white if she didn't spend plenty of time indoors.

Baldur

Happy Birthday to Tyler Perry, Sam Neill, Jon 'Bowzer' Bauman, Joey Heatherton, Walter Koenig, Mario Benedetti, Clayton Moore, Ivan Pavlov, Michael Haydn, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa and the amazing Nicol Williamson.

Dragon

Dragon wonders if the cat milk Robert uses is a kitten milk replacer or if it is simply Whiska's CatMilk. If it is the latter then he's not actually helping with the pregnancy so much as just really making 'Shakira' very happy. There's no particular nutritional value in the Whiska's stuff though it is a nice little treat to give every now and again. Either way, I suspect 'Shakira' is terribly pleased with this arrangement, (though Heidi may have different ideas )

I thought that Boughbreak's woodpecker guests were probably of the welcome variety. It seems that most things that aren't noxious weeds are well looked upon there.

Baldur

It is indeed a kitten milk replacer made by PetAg; He is following the label directions that declare that 2 Tablespoons daily are beneficial to expectant 'queens'.
The word caught me offguard but indeed it referred to Shakira as a 'queen'.
(Baldur has taken to calling her 'Shakira')

Baldur

Baldur was grocery shopping at a local grocery store that he affectionately refers to as 'Ghettomart'. It is a discount grocer that offers odd brands and doesn't advertse or have fancy displays.
Also it sells odd cuts of meat cheaply such as goat's tails, chicken faces and random innards.
One must try to remember to never shop there early in the month when the government assistance checks are received by the populace as it becomes quite crowded.
I enjoy looking through the foreign produce and at the odd canned items whilst there.
Today I noticed huge sweet potatoes on display and purchased the largest in the heap. It weighs 4.25 pounds! Heavens, it looks like an (American) football.

polenta

Chicken faces? What can you do with them. Oh, my God, eating eyes!!!!!!!!
And I thought tripe or tongue would be exotic for Americans. I like the taste these two latter have but if I cook them, I almost never eat them. The image of the raw tongue or tripe stops me from doing so...
By the way, Baldur, how's your personal self-imposed diet going? Must be hard.

polenta

My mother was a very simple cook so I never ate elaborate food at home so the first time I ate tongue vinagrette or stewed tripe, it was delicious. And they are delicious but it's true it's a little impressive if you see them raw.
I know a medical student who began anatomy this year and she is beginning to get sick pretty often. She says it must be because they study it with a body who even has a name. She says some fellow students vomited or fainted the first class. Sorry, this topic is horrible.

Dragon

I've always thought it was rather telling that pregnant dogs (well all female dogs really) are called Bitches but pregnant cats are called Queens. It's almost as if cats were the ones who got to choose those names. (Similar in that a group of dogs is a pack but a group of cats is a pride).

Dragon

I can't imagine being so hungry as to think 'Mmmm, chicken faces and random inards are going to be on sale tomorrow'. I wouldn't be averse to using goat tail in a soup perhaps, though I've never eaten any kind of goat meat, to my knowledge, so I'm not sure what it's like.

polenta, I would definitly call tripe or tongue exotic here. I've never had either. How does one prepare and serve them. Is there a sauce that is typically used on either of these or do most people eat them naked? What sort of wine might go with a meal of tongue?

Hazer

Hazer and Hubby were treated to beef tongue a couple of months ago when visiting some farm relatives in Saskatchewan. The preparation was very simple as from what I could tell our hostess had simply boiled the tongue. She served it hot, leaving us to peel our own slice. She had never prepared tongue before, so was unsure of how to serve it. ( I'm sure chelydra could give some helpful advise on this topic). I must say it was quite delicious, tasting like roast beef.

I remember as a small girl my mother cooked one up in a similar fashion only she chilled it thoroughly, peeled it, sliced it thinly and ate it with a vinegar and sugar sauce. At that age, I would have nothing to do with it. Especially if it involved vinegar in any way. The reaction of Hubby's niece and nephew was much the same. No amount of coaxing would convince them to try even a nibble.

Baldur

(Baldur was joking about the chicken faces, it seemed a funny addition to the list of odd foods at Ghettomart)

Baldur

Happy Birthday to Heidi Montag, Prince Harry, Dan Marino, Oliver Stone, Tommy Lee Jones, Jessye Norman, Merlin Olsen, Bobby Short, Nipsey Russell, Fay Wray, Roy Acuff, Agatha Christie, Robert Benchley, William Howard Taft, James Fenimore Cooper and Marco Polo.

polenta

Dragon, TONGUE VINAGRETTE.
You boil the tongue for 2 or 3 hours depending on its size. When you introduce a fork and it's tender you take it out from the water and leave it to cool down. When it's cold or from the refrigerator you peel all the "shell" or thick membrane it has outside. You get like a big piece of cold meat. You can machine-slice it or with a sharp knife.
You prepare a vinagrette with oil, vinegar, water and add parsil, chopped hard eggs, olives, grated carrots, finely chopped onion, peppers of any color, and any other vegetable you want. Then sald and pepper at will. You put the thin slices of tongue in this vinagrette and let it marinate for at least some hours or a day.
They can also sell tongue as a cold meat at the supermarket and then you only have to marinate it in a good vinagrette.
MY HUSBAND LOVES IT and I freeze the portions he doesn't eat and I can leave it up to 3 months in the freezer.

polenta

not SALD but SALT

polenta

Cats- pride and queens

Dogs- pack and BITCHES (br!!!!!)

How interesting the use of words is!!!!

Have you ever thought that we divide the world in two (at least in most modern Western languages): SINGULAR and PLURAL

We divide things if they are ONE or MORE THAN ONE, be it 2, 20, 2 million of 20,000 billion)
How have we come to reason like this?
Does this have any connection with monotheism, with the thought of an ultimate final Big Law that would cover all existing things? Or does it connect with the fact that we have become more and more individualistic or to any other thing?