indigo

I have a recipe for you all to try, I make it a lot. You need

4 medium size peppers, red, orange, yellow and green finely chopped
1 celery branch, finely chopped
1/4 to half small onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3 medium potatoes, finely chopped
Your favorite broth (chicken or Veggie) 2 to 3 cups
1 tsp Fine Herbs or herbs de Provence
1 tsp marjoram
1/2 tsp thyme
1 good size bay leaf
1 tbsp dried parsley
Put about a tablespoon or so of olive oil in a pot and cook vegetables till tender but not brown. Add the herbs and broth and cook till potatoes are
tender. Put into blender and mix till smooth.. If using salt add it now.
If you have to reheat before serving, you may add some milk if you find it too thick. You can use only red peppers if you like or two red, two orange. The color of the soup depends on the peppers that you use. Enjoy!

Baldur

Ahh Robin, and I was going to be closer than you think, but I suspect you won't be in Connecticut while I am there.
Baldur is invited to a cookout in Hartford on the 4th and will be spending the night and heading home on the afternoon of the 5th.

Baldur

We are getting an amazing array of soups here suddenly

Indigo, I will need to try your soup as Baldur is rather fond of peppers and using them in a pureed soup sounds irresistable.
I will need to make a substitution however.
There is lavendar in herbes de Provence, and Baldur just cannot handle that. I make my own 'faux herbes de Provence', which is comprised of fennel, basil, savory, thyme and parsley.
To Baldur eating anything with lavendar in it just tastes soapy, even a tiny bit will ruin a meal for me.
Oddly I have the same problem with cilantro. To me it tastes like what rinsing my mouth with Clairol herbal essence shampoo would be like.
Baldur is rather odd at times.

Baldur

New Englanders have always been finicky about clam chowder.
The tradition New England Clam Chowder is cream based, as opposed to the Manhattan version which is tomato based.
There is yet another Rhode Island version that is neither, the clam broth predominates. The ingredients are salt pork, onions, clams, water, potatoes and seasonings. People in these parts get very defensive about how chowders should be prepared.

I thought it would be interesting to take corn chowder, normally a thick creamny soup and prepare it 'Manhattan style' instead.
It came out quite good.
Baldur doesn't have a measured out recipe for this so bear with me.

MANHATTAN STYLE CORN CHOWDER

Into the bottom of a good sized soup pot pour:
1/4 cup olive oil
Dice into small pieces:
2 ribs of celery
2 good sized onions
Add these to the oil and saute' them, stirring periodically with a wooden spoon until the onions are translucent but not browned, towards the end of the sauteing add:
1 clove of garlic, peeled and smashed into oblivion
1 bay leaf
When the onions are at the correct stage carefully pour in:
2 quarts of vegetable broth
Bring the broth to a low boil and add:
4 cups of frozen corn kernels (or even better the 4 ears of corn kernels scraped off the cob, Baldur makes extra corn on the cob just to have this soup the next day)
6 good sized potatoes, peels and cubed
1 can (15-16 oz)diced tomatoes with juice
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1/4 teaspoon (or more) hot red pepper flakes (optional)
Simmer until the potatoes are quite tender, season with
Salt and black pepper

Baldur

A note on tomato paste.
Baldur often finds he needs a small amount of tomato paste for a recipe.
Once opened however a can of tomato paste seems to go moldy rather quickly in my refrigerator so I devised this strategy.
Take your unused tomato paste and place it in a ziploc freezer bag.
Press out the extra air and flatten the paste into a thin layer in the bag before placing it in the freezer.
When you need a little bit for your next recipe you can break off only what you need by flexing the still frozen paste in the bag. It breaks like a chocolate bar.
It defrosts almost instantly in hot food.

Baldur

Oddly Baldur is making split pea soup for supper this evening.
It's been another cool rainy day in Primrose, RI.
It seems as if summer is just not going to happen this year.

The garden is rather water-logged.
The pumpkins and wintersquash are often further along in May than they are right now. One whole hill of Lakota squash hasn't even emerged. 'Wyatt's Wonder' pumpkin is also among the missing.

Just as Baldur was about to give up hope his okra has sprouted, The variety I planted this year ios an heirloom type called 'Star of David'.
Finally after several tries with seeds I relented and bought some basil plants. These things shouldn't be this difficult.

Baldur

-o=is

The tomato plants are far too small for this time of year also.

IamAnonymous

Anything on this channel for those of us who hate cooking?

matthew

I could dance...

IamAnonymous

yeah...and I could give you a fair asssessment of it! lol!

matthew

Brown Chicken Brown Cow...

IamAnonymous

Is that some sort of dance?

Baldur

matthew you could give us that pole dance again that ended so tragically last time.
I would recommend a non-splinterable pole this time.

Baldur

Before Baldur heads to bed for the evening I'm going to copy and paste my Augie the Cat update here for all to read.
Have a great evening.
All Baldur, All the Time'

1. Baldur wrote:
Remember Augie? the scrawny possibly stray cat that we were thinking about adopting? Here's what happened....
2. Angela wrote:
?
3. Baldur wrote:
The other day I heard a voice on the hill behind my house. The area is steep, rocky and full of thorny brambles and even bits of stubborn poison ivy. Not many people would ever be found there,
4. Baldur wrote:
I go there occasionally to try to kill the poison ivy. Robert has a couple bird feeders that he tends there as well. The only other person to venture there would be 'Hermione'.
5. lilalee wrote:
I thought you were taking him in??
6. Baldur wrote:
'Hermione' is not her actual name, but she is a rather young girl who lives on the street behind us. For whatever reason has decided that it's easier to cut across our property on her way home from school than to actually walk along the nice shady pleasan
7. Baldur wrote:
....shady pleasant lane, that would lead her right to her door.
8. Baldur wrote:
She is very polite and pleasant and indeed asked my permission to use the short-cut. I assented though I see no benefit to the route she prefers.
9. Baldur wrote:
Anyway here is the young lady, barefoot in the brambles calling out in a sotto voce way: 'Petey, Petey, get back over here!'
10. Baldur wrote:
(Baldur frequently uses the phrase 'sotto voce' in daily conversation.)
11. Baldur wrote:
As it turns out Augie is indeed Petey. Hermione shares her home with 4 cats, Petey being one of the younger.
12. Baldur wrote:
I related to Hermione that we had been considering adopting 'Petey' assuming in error that he was a stray.
13. Baldur wrote:
Why would you think he was a stray?' she asked. 'Because he looks so underfed' Baldur replies. 'He is a good size for a cat!' She now sounded a bit defensive.
14. Baldur wrote:
But that is Hermione, Baldur gets the impression that this young lady will do well in life, she is very outspoken, and in my brief conversations with her has seemed quite intelligent.
15. Baldur wrote:
I told her that Petey comes here knowing that there is cat food. 'Ahhh that makes sense, he's often gone all day long' she added.
16. Baldur wrote:
What I didn't bother to add was that Petey/Augie also does fairly well stalking whatever visits the birdfeeders. She no doubt already knows of his hunting skills.
17. lilalee wrote:
Awww! She thought you were going to kidnap Petey!!
18. Baldur wrote:
So Augie is not homeless, and that concludes that brief tale of feline intrigue.
19. Baldur wrote:
I haven't seen Petey again, the poor thing is probably locked up all day. Next time Hermione walks by I'll be sure to ask.
20. lilalee wrote:
Outside cats are so different than the inside ones!! They have to be more aware, and defensive. Petey is smart!!
21. autumn wrote:
you'll have to find another cat cuz Augie is a great name!
22. Baldur wrote:
We have 2 older cats already, who I didn't name. They were here with Robert when I moved in.
23. Baldur wrote:
He named them Heidi and Seeky, I could never do that LOL.
24. Baldur wrote:
The 2 cats that lived with me years ago were named Aja (pronounced 'Asia') and Biba.
25. Baldur wrote:
Biba was a hand me down cat that my sister dumped on me when she decided it was too vicious to keep around her children.
26. Baldur wrote:
I had seen little Adolph and Lucretia pick up the cat by it's tail so I felt obliged to take it in and spare it from them.
27. Baldur wrote:
Some people should not be allowed to keep animals. This family is forever getting a new pet and ignoring or giving away the old ones. It's sickening.
28. lilalee wrote:
I have always had cats, and only male ones, as they are more loving and humorous!! The two I adopted were abused, and I would never do that again!
29. lilalee wrote:
Fred took to us right away, but Granger, it took two years before he would even rub against my leg, as he watched feet always. So that told me he was probably kicked around.
30. lilalee wrote:
People like that shouldn't have kids or pets!! They forget they have to be trained, and cared for. Thats too much work for some!!
31. Baldur wrote:
Biba had problems, most likely caused by her horrible early homelife. She was not good at being a pet.
32. Baldur wrote:
And as it turned out, she wasn't spayed. She escaped from my house just once and got pregnant. That tiny little cat had 8 kittens LOL
33. Baldur wrote:
The kittens all lived and were adorable as kittens tend to be. I started adopting out the kittens when they were old enough.
34. Baldur wrote:
When a co-worker came to look at the last kitten, she professed it to be the most beautiful kitten she ever saw and was sad that it was the last one, she really wanted two cats
35. lilalee wrote:
Oh, that happened to me, not the eight kittens. But this small cat, had four kittens on my husbands Ohio State jacket! I thought I heard little birds in the basement, went down and there on his precious jacket
36. Baldur wrote:
So I told her about the mother and the problems she had. She asked if she could have Biba
37. lilalee wrote:
Was mamma, and four little ones. My son named then, Catsup, Mustard, Pickles, and Onions!! We never did tell him about the jacket!!
38. Baldur wrote:
so anyway Martina adopted the mother and the baby. Biba had her litter on an oriental carpet in my dining room
39. Baldur wrote:
She was on the way to have them under the couch, I found she had dragged a small towel under there and built a 'nest'
40. Baldur wrote:
I guess they started coming out before she made it to her hideaway. She left a trail of babies.
41. lilalee wrote:
Aren't they sweet?? So smart.
42. Baldur wrote:
I was at work, they were all fine. I moved them all under the couch for her.
43. Baldur wrote:
They clung to the carpet like velcro with their tiny claws
44. Baldur wrote:
eventually in trying to pick them up without inadvertently ripping out their claws I had to slide a piece of paper under each paw so it wouldn't re-attach to the carpet
45. Baldur wrote:
Once all 4 paws were free I could lift each kitten

sheftali52

Hoo boy--Channel Baldur was well worth taking a break from Atlas Shrugged today. Between corn chowder and cats, it was infotainment for sure.

Baldur

Monsoon season continues, the Southern part of RI got 5" of rain yesterday afternoon, up here in the hinterlands it was a much more modest 2".
Baldur woke up at 4am to the sound of thunder yet again, the rain was coming straight down in sheets. It didn't really let up until 8am.

IamAnonymous

Yea! Finally a topic I can understand!
Please don't start on a recipe for comfort food, when thunder stops you from sleeping! I can't take anymore!

Baldur

Iam, what do you do when you get hungry? Hop in your miniCooper and speed to the nearest fast-food drivethrough?
Baldur wonders if miniCoopers are actually compatible with take-out windows....

Baldur

Heavens here we are on the cusp of another milestone, Baldur will attempt to use it on a topic that doesn't involve poledancing, thongs, gardening, cooking, home decor or cats.
This should be challenging.....

Baldur

Baldur just finished watching a documentary on Joseph Smith and the founding of the Church of Latter Day Saints on PBS.
It was rather interesting.