Allyson

Everyone in my house loves stir fry. I do all kinds of stir fry dishes, too. I make a great coconut Thai curry, and my ginger soy poke bowls aren’t bad either. Recently, I was in a mood for noodles instead of rice, though, and I went looking and found a recipe for using ramen noodles in a stir fry. This is my take on that!

Ingredients:

• 3 tbsp regular soy sauce
• 3 tbsp dark soy sauce
• 3 tbsp hoisin sauce
• 1 tbsp oyster sauce
• 1 tbsp rice wine vinegar
• 2 tsp sriracha or sweet chili sauce
• 1/4 tsp white ground pepper
• 3 packages instant ramen noodles (discard flavor packets)
• 1 lb skinless, boneless chicken breasts, diced
• 3 tbsp vegetable oil, divided (see recipe)
• 1 cup diced red bell pepper
• 1 cup sliced white button mushrooms
• 1/2 cup diced sweet yellow onion
• 1 cup broccoli florets
• 1 tbsp fresh minced garlic
• 1 tbsp fresh grated ginger
• 2 thinly sliced green onion
• 1/2 tbsp toasted sesame seeds

See those seedlings hardening off in the header image? Those are from a garden I was growing about a decade ago. They’re strong, healthy seedlings. They’re ready to be set into the ground to thrive and grow and make veggies for us.

And then there’s this specimen:

See how it’s falling over, and it only has a single set of leaves? Those aren’t even leaves, by the by. Those are called cotyledons, or “seed leaves.” They’re just there to get the plant going. By the time a seedling is as tall as this one is, it should have several sets of leaves. So why is this poor thing falling over and not growing better and stronger?

The first thing it’s lacking is probably light. Most of the time, when we’re starting seedlings indoors, we’re short on light. There are plenty of ways to fix that, of course. You can put them on a rack with a light right above them, and put a timer on it to give them 12 hours a day. That will fix the light problem, even if they’re cheap light strips. What if you don’t have a rack with light strips, though? Well, you can make do by giving your plants as much light as you can. I have a “daylight lamp” that I use in the winter to help with depression. This time of year, I no longer need it, so I give it to my plants. I move it around, so they all share in the glory of it. Any lamp put close enough to the seedlings will help.

Your seedlings also may be too cold, or alternatively, too warm. Most seeds like to germinate between 65 and 80° F, so if your home goes below that at night (or, like mine, never gets that high even in the daytime), you  may need to pick up a seed mat. The mats aren’t that expensive, and you just place your seed trays right on top of them. They keep the temperature warm but not hot, and convince your seedlings that it’s time to grow.

A third option is that you are not watering your plants enough, or that you’re over-watering them. You can tell if your plants have enough water by feeling the soil they’re in. If it’s dry and flaky, you need to water them, stat! If it’s saturated and dripping, it’s probably too wet. You need moist soil that clumps when you take a handful of it, but that isn’t dripping and sopping wet. It’s my strong opinion that the best way to water seedlings is from below. The containers your seedlings are in should have several small holes in the bottom (and if there aren’t, add some), or be made out of porous material like paper egg cartons. The containers should be sitting in a waterproof container, either one designed for the purpose or whatever you have on hand. Pour the water into the bottom of the tray, and let the soil suck it up from below. This encourages strong roots, which is important for your plant. If there’s a tiny bit of water in the tray, you’re fine. If it’s an inch deep, you need to drain it out. I also keep a mist sprayer on hand full of water, and each day I will spritz my seedlings. This helps prepare them for the rigors of a rainfall when they get outside.

The last option for helping seedlings develop strong stems and avoid them being leggy, is to blow a fan over them. This should be a VERY gentle fan, aimed above but not directly onto the seedlings. This simulates the breeze outside, which is part of what causes a plant to create thick stems and rigorous root systems. The fan, sweeping back and forth, will make your plants signal themselves to create more roots and stronger stems. Another method is to (GENTLY) brush over your seedlings with your hands each morning and evening. This need take only a couple of seconds, and should be done very carefully.  You don’t want to break or damage the plants.

If you get to the point where you need to thin out seedlings (an unfortunate thing but necessary), don’t pull them up. Pulling plants disturbs the soil and surrounding plants, possibly causing more than intended to die. Instead, cut them off at the soil line. The plant will die off and feed the soil, and you can feed the thinned plants to your chickens or bunnies (so long as they aren’t poisonous).

Not so much “behind enemy lines” today, as a mental dump.

There is a belief that the Republican and Democratic parties did an ideological flip around 1932 (with FDR). Some people claim it’s a fact, and others are less sure about that. Regardless, we know that Lyndon B. Johnson said his famous line in 1964: “I’ll have those niggers voting Democrat for the next 200 years.” He was wrong. It was less than a hundred years. Thank you, Pres. Trump.

For all I dislike Johnson, he did say a few things that really hit home right now (obviously gleaned from some MUCH less savory quotes):

• “[T]he vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.“
• “If we stand passively by while the center of each city becomes a hive of deprivation, crime and hopelessness…if we become two people, the suburban affluent and the urban poor, each filled with mistrust and fear for the other…then we shall effectively cripple each generation to come.“
• “Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men’s skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.“

These words, if they were the only words he’d said, are good words. It’s a shame that he sullied them by making so many other horrid statements.

Regardless, that brings me to today. I believe we’re seeing another shift of the party ideologies. Trump is at the helm, and many of us (still sounds odd to me to say that) are supporting him and his goals. He wants to drain the swamp, fix the financing, get us out of debt, stop us being the world’s police, and much more. They’re noble dreams, and I hope many or all of them come to fruition.

They’re also the dreams that belonged more to the Left of a decade ago. I watch some of the really old GOP folks getting their panties in a bunch over Trump’s takeover of the Republican party, and I have to smile. Being “on the inside” now, I can see more of what he’s doing. Let’s face it… Trump was considered a Dem until a little under a decade ago. There’s a reason Hilary didn’t have any issues with him running on the Republican ticket. She figured if she lost, if the Dems lost, they’d STILL have a Dem in the White House. Little did they know that Trump actually stuck to his moral guns. Shocking, I know. He took his campaign promises seriously.

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Sometimes known as American Chop Suey (no idea why), this dish has been served in American homes since the mid 1800s. It’s usually a macaroni based ground beef dish. This week, I made Orecchiette pasta with Chris last night, and we enjoyed it in my American Goulash. This is my own recipe, and I recommend it highly!

Ingredients:

• 16 oz elbow macaroni or fresh pasta
• olive oil as needed for cooking
• 1 large onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 lb ground beef
• 1 medium carrot, finely diced
• 1 stalk celery, finely diced
• dash of red wine
• 2 tbsp all purpose flour
• 28 oz (2 cans) diced tomatoes, any flavor
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup tomato juice or V8
• 1 tsp brown sugar
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 1 tsp dried basil
• 1 tbsp salt
• ½ tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp Worcestershire Sauce (optional)

Fill a large pot with water, add a dash of salt, and bring it to a boil. Cook the pasta according to package directions. If you’re using fresh, cook your pasta until it’s al dente, which can take anywhere from 3 to 7 minutes, depending on the thickness and overall size of your pasta. Drain the pasta, and set it aside.

In a heavy pot, add a bit of oil to the bottom and brown the ground beef. When the meat is thoroughly cooked and no pink remains, add the onions, carrots, and celery, and continue to cook until the onions soften and become translucent. Stir often, to make certain the mixture doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pot. If necessary, add a bit of olive oil or butter to the pot. Add in the garlic and cook for one more minute.

Drizzle in some of the red wine and deglaze the bottom of the pot. Make sure nothing is sticking to the bottom, and add more wine as necessary, but not enough to make it very wet. Sprinkle a tablespoon or two of flour over the ground beef mixture, and stir gently to incorporate it. The result should be a slightly sticky, somewhat gummy mass in the bottom of your pot.

Add in the tomatoes, sugar, Worcestershire sauce, and spices, and cook until it begins to thicken. Add in as much tomato juice or V8 as necessary to make the consistency similar to a thin gravy. Simmer for 2 minutes or so, until all the food is evenly heated. Pour in the cooked pasta, mix it in well, and add salt and pepper to taste. Let this simmer on a very low heat (or in your oven at 250°F) for about 15 to 20 minutes, checking often to be sure it isn’t sticking. If it’s too thick or dry, you can add a bit more tomato juice.

Serve this up with a bit of crusty bread or a side salad for a delicious and hearty meal.

BLUF: Miracle Gro is basically minerals salts and coloring, which can (but doesn’t always) help short term, but long term will destroy the beneficial things in your soil. It’s expensive and messy and can harm your vegetables. Free and low cost alternatives include animal manure, natural mulch, etc… all of which add to rather than depleting from the soil.

I’m not sure if any of you are aware of the demon Monsanto. Coming from the Left, as I do, I have a real hate for Monsanto. However, I also learned hate for them through local farmers who are very conservative Trump supporters. Monsanto is not a good company, for a LOT of reasons. I don’t want to write about them, so I am offering you an article to go read at your own pace (yes, the site is anti-Trump, but their information on this topic is not bad).

Now to Miracle Gro. There’s an incestuous relationship between Monsanto and Miracle Gro which makes me uneasy. Monsanto doesn’t own it Miracle Gro, nor vice versa, but there’s a lot going on between them. That alone is enough to warn me off, however, there’s more. MG was successfully sued for lying about pesticides in their bird food that they manufactured and sold, which led to the death of enough song birds to cause a lot of people to get upset. I realize one legal case by a rabid leftist isn’t enough to cause a conservative to flinch, as it could always just be one they settled out of court to get the suing party to shut up. So I present you with a tracking website keeping dibs on all the court cases MG has lost.

There are places for chemicals. I use chemicals in the garden from time to time. I use chemicals against wasps, because they’re stingy assholes and I’m allergic. There are times when it’s just right to use chemicals. But if you’re paying extra to get something free of chemicals, if you’re actively looking to avoid chemicals, and a company sells you something it says is chemical free and it is not… that’s just not right. And that’s what Miracle Gro seems to be doing.

It’s not even that it’s necessarily “bad chemicals” in their products. I believe that ever MG product has salt in it. While tiny amounts of salt can help add things to your soil that benefit your plants, at least in the short term, it destroys your soil in the long term. Ever heard of Romans “salting the earth” before leaving an area? That’s so the enemy couldn’t plant crops for 20 years or more. That’s how bad salt is for your garden.

If you want to give good fertilizer to your garden and improve your soil, pick up some bunny poop and make bunny poop tea, and use that to water your plants. Pick up some local well aged manure and shovel that in around your plants. Most of the time, if you’re dealing with local folk, it will cost you nothing or very little, because you’re saving those people from having to remove the manure themselves.

You can take that title however you like. When I first wrote it, I was thinking of the four legged kind of beastie that sneaks in and eats your broccoli while you’re sleeping. However, if we’re talking prepping, there’s a legitimate chance that the critter in your garden is two legged and armed. So let’s unpack that!

Regular Critters

The most common form of problem in your garden is likely to be pests. These include, but are not limited to, ants, roaches, moths, hornworms, tent caterpillars, aphids, and bunches of other multi-legged beasties, as well as mice, voles, moles, possums, raccoons, deer, porcupines, and other wild and domestic animals. A cat that digs up your kitchen garden in order to use it as an outdoor toilet is just as destructive as the raccoon that takes out whole plants.

Poison is one method of getting rid of pests. It’s not a method I recommend, only because I know that poison can be transferred from its intended victim (the mouse or raccoon) to unintended victims such as owls (who keep the pests down naturally and should be cared for and preserved) and local cats and dogs (who sometimes do eat pests outdoors). There’s also a possibility that vegetables covered in poison might be transferred to deer that we harvest later for our own eating pleasure, and that would be a Very Bad Thing, indeed. When it comes to mice in winter, I occasionally lift this personal ban, only because I dislike mouse poop in my kitchen more than I dislike the thought of accidentally killing an owl.

Traps are another method, and while they do work, they’re a LOT of work. You can dead-trap or live-trap, but regardless, you have to deal with what’s in the trap on a daily basis. Depending on what you’ve caught, it can be problematic. Consider the person who accidentally captures a skunk in a “have a heart” trap, and then has to figure out what to do with the stinky critter. When it comes to live traps, again, I really don’t recommend it. When you unload your traps, your victims have the ability to just wander home and do more destruction.

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I’ve had a couple of talks with Chris about the magic auto-pen. It has a history dating back almost a century (yes, WAY back in the NINETEENTH CENTURY! gah, I feel old…), and has been used by many Presidents over that time. Feel free to read up on it if you want to learn more about the historic use of it. Right now, it’s in the news because there’s concern that Joe Biden was not in control of the White House auto-pen when “he” signed several legally binding documents. This is a real concern.

The news, of course, is not reporting that concern as valid. Instead, it’s making noise that the concern Trump and others have is based on the pen itself. Since Trump doesn’t sign anything legally binding with the auto-pen, says the news, he believes it isn’t legal for anyone to use it for anything legally binding. While it is apparently true (per Fox and Karoline Leavitt) that Trump doesn’t use the auto-pen for anything important, it has historically been used for such things. When it’s done correctly, it’s not an issue. The auto-pen was created to make such things possible in a country that’s impossible to traverse in a single day (even now).

The real concern, though, is not the auto-pen itself. It’s the person behind the auto-pen. For a very long time, the very existence of the auto-pen was kept secret. Imagine enemies (foreign or domestic) getting their hands on such a thing! It’s been kept in secure space for just such reasons. The problem is, we don’t know for certain if Biden was actually cognizant of every use of the auto-pen. If he was, then it’s fine. We can be unhappy he used it to sign pardons and other important things when he could just have signed the paper, but it’s perfectly legal. On the other hand, if he wasn’t aware that his signature was being used, we have a problem. If Jill Biden, for example, “told” someone that Biden had said to use the auto-pen, that would be illegal, and the document so signed might not be legal. If Biden’s son, who apparently spent an awful lot of time in the Oval Office with his dad, were to have used it, that too would be illegal. Any documents signed under the auspices of a person NOT the President of the United States would be questionable at best, and most likely null and void.

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I’m at the Fort this weekend (if you’re in the area, come on over and visit!), presenting life in the early spring in a cold environment. I’ll be staying all weekend, with no running water (it’s turned off until all danger of frost is gone) and little electricity (the gift shop has some). I decided that the food I was going to make should reflect the environment I’ll be in, and so these meals are ones that conceivably could have been served at the Fort in the spring of 1750.

Soup Meagre

I’ve adapted this from Hannah Glasse’s recipe of 1765. I find it amusing how closely it resembles the Green Soup that I made a couple of weekends ago for a Viking reenactment I did. There’s never much food in the spring, and what you can get your hands on has to “make do” until you can plant and harvest crops. It’s a tough time of year! This is a very plain soup, but with the seasonings, would probably have been quite the treat. Early greens in New England would include ramps, asparagus, watercress, fiddleheads, dandelion greens, and things we consider weeds like stinging nettle, onion grass, and dock.

Ingredients:

• 2 tbsp butter
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 2 celery stalks, cut into 1- to 2-inch lengths (“half as long as your finger”)
• 6-8 oz mixed greens, (spinach, lettuce, arugula, etc), chopped if large
• 3 tbsp parsley, finely chopped
• 1 tbsp flour
• 2 to 4 cups broth
• 1/2 tsp salt, plus more to taste
• 1/2 tsp black pepper, plus more to taste
• 1/4 tsp ground mace and/or nutmeg

Melt the butter in a large kettle or Dutch oven over medium heat. When the bubbling has subsided, add the onions and cook for about five minutes, until transparent.

Add the celery, greens, and parsley, stir, and cook over medium heat for about 10 minutes. Sprinkle the flour over the greens and stir to blend. Add the broth, salt, pepper, and mace, and stir well. Simmer the soup over medium-low heat for about 30 minutes.

Taste and add more salt and pepper, if desired. Serve warm, with bread if you have it.

Notes from Mistress Allyson: If you want to add a bit of protein to this meal (something that would have been in high demand in the 1750s in spring), try some beans or a bit of salt pork. Beans get added right before simmering. Salt pork should go in with the butter at the beginning.

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I’m watching the snow melt outside. It’s SLOWER than watching paint dry. Ah well. It’ll be gone soon, and then I can get to work on outdoor stuff. For now, it’s time to plan the outdoor garden space, and decide which things are getting direct sowed. In other words, which things go right into the ground (or raised bed/outdoor container/plant tower/etc) versus those that get started indoors because they’re too delicate for the cooler weather?

The first seeds that I’ll be direct sowing will be radishes, beets, carrots, peas, and spinach. These are all hardy crops, and they like the cold and damp that come along with early spring and late fall. They’re also staples around here. Well, not the beets so much. I like them, but most of the rest of the family doesn’t. That’s fine; more for me.

You’ll note that the beets and carrots and radishes are all what we call “root crops.” This means the edible part is under the ground. Generally speaking, for early spring crops you want to look for ones that say, “Plant seed outdoors as soon as the soil can be worked.” This means that a late frost in the spring won’t destroy your plants, and that’s a very good thing when you live in the northern part of America, or any part of Canada. Most root crops can be planted early, but always check the seed packets (or online if you don’t have the packets).

Before you can sow seeds directly into the soil outdoors (regardless of whether it’s in the ground, in a raised bed, or in a container of some kind), you have to prepare the garden bed. This takes several stages, and is best started as soon as you can get into your garden area. I can’t yet, because we still have snow deep enough to cause issues and I’m not shoveling out the garden. You can speed this up by covering your garden beds with black plastic each fall right before the snow flies. This keeps down on weeds, and also allows the beds to warm up earlier. Once your beds are defrosted and workable, you can begin planting. This is one of the main joys of any kind of raised bed.

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I’m going through some personal stuff right now, and it’s been rough. Some of the responses I’ve gotten to my last few posts have left me feeling raw and frustrated, and unsure of what to do and say going forward. After some long talks with Chris and others, I’m writing this to try and get some general thoughts out that I hope will help you guys and me.

First and foremost, if something is labeled “From Behind Enemy Lines,” then I am doing just that – talking about the Left, FROM the Left. That is what I’ve been asked to do, when I’m posting under that banner. I’ve been asked to give a Left perspective, or at least a “more Left” perspective, so that you guys can learn and to be sure that Vine isn’t an “echo chamber.” I am going to be more obvious in it, adding FBEL at the top of posts that are “representative Left” or “explaining Left” so that they stand out.

So my last post was about the memes I’d seen floating around, and in particular, about the Trump 2028 one. From where I’m standing, there are three groups of people. First, we have the far Left. They’re going to do what they’re going to do, and nothing you or I say is going to change it. I ignore them. Second is the group of “normal Left” or what I tend to call “thinking Left.” These are people who have chosen willfully to be Left of center, but are self-consistent, thinking, and reasoning. I might not LIKE their reasoning, and I may think it’s false in the grand scheme of things or missing important points, but they’ve shown me that they give actual thought and consideration to their position. I have many friends in this group.

The third group consists of people like me. We were a little Left of Center, if you asked us. People on the Right just lumped us in with “The Left,” and the Left considered us oddities and “too far Right for comfort” but generally tolerated us. We are no longer “a little Left of Center.” We are deep state Right, at this point, because the Left has shifted so far Left that we’re not even close anymore. Some, like myself, have chosen to take the couple of steps Right to join the rest of you under the Conservative tent, albeit in our own little corner while we acclimate. Others are dithering out there on the sandbar, wondering where the hell the tide went and why it’s so fucking cold these days.

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