mongo_jones

photoshop.

this is as close as i am ever going to come to a butter chicken recipe and so you should enjoy it while you can. chicken curry with tomatoes and yogurt

just looked at the great alaska site. those are...high prices.

yeah, i'm not saying he's building some creditable argument from that observation. quite the opposite.

also not irrelevant that no one has seen fit to update them.

well, i think it's right to point out the eurocentric nature of the sla's language. of course, he doesn't stop there...

she had a long, happy life for sure. 14 years is a long time for a dog her size--almost three of those after mast cell tumour surgery in october 2017. alu is hard of hearing and her teeth are not great (oh, the stench) but is otherwise active and healthy. we're hoping she'll get to 16 in good health next july. she has been very out of sorts since sunday--though she's spending less time walking through all the rooms in the house today. we felt very bad going on our long family walk this morning (a pandemic ritual) because it meant leaving her alone in the house for literally the first time since december 2006. (she's too old to do long walks.)

some of you "knew" our dogs before most anyone else we know did. i'm very sorry to say that gobi went off to the big squirrel chase in the sky this evening. she turned 14 in april and was diagnosed with lymphoma in june. she gave it a good fight with her usual goofy, good cheer but it became too much for her old body to handle. the good news is she didn't suffer and passed gently after a day full of head scritches and belly rubs. she was a sweetheart and we will miss her terribly. (alu just turned 15 a couple of weeks ago, in case you're wondering, and is so far hale and hearty, though almost entirely hard of hearing.)

clapton was flashier, faster etc. green had greater feeling; to my mind the far better blues guitarist.

glad you both enjoyed it; i should make it again soon too.

the fuckers are so clever it should be possible. of course, they're also too clever to fall for it.

thanks. i forgot to add that i went back on sunday to see how things were going and found the bastards had come back and eaten the few fruit they'd spared the first time. to add insult to injury, deer had also come in and mowed down the top 1-2 feet of each plant. there'd been a bit of pepper munching too but as of sunday at least those plants were mostly fine (and setting fruit like crazy). let's see how the rest of the season goes for the peppers, eggplant (planted late) and cauliflower. a friend who is very handy has offered to build us a raccoon-proof "cage" (there has to be a roof or they'll climb over). it would be a modular 8x4 enclosure made with 2x4s and chicken wire and a lighter frame over the top. assemble it every spring after planting and take it down in the fall. could probably grow a dozen plants inside it. but a few years of disappointments i'm seriously mulling cutting down on the gardening: we're usually gone for a month in the summers anyway and finding reliable people to care for the plants is almost as hard as keeping the raccoons out. maybe just doing herbs and peppers will be manageable (for both garden care and emotional investment).

the "5 best things our food critic ate in Twin Cities this week" series that's been running on the star tribune for the last few months.

major devastation discovered in our community garden plot this morning. the majority of the fruit from our tomato plants is gone, including the few that had begun to turn. leaves and stems mostly fine, the fruit gone. at first i thought it must have been a human thief but i went back again to check and found a few tomatoes lying near the bases of some plants a a few half-eaten ones around the perimeter of the plot and near the garden fence. another gardener and i found some scat that didn't seem to be produced by deer. looking very much like it was raccoons. i'm sure they'll be back soon for the few fruit they left on the plants. the tomato season seems like a near total loss now. very disappointing for me--this was shaping up to be my best gardening season ever with more sun than i've ever had. but absolutely crushing for the older boy who got into the garden in a big way this year and who, after helping plant, had been going every other day with me to weed, water, feed and trellis the plants--he'd designed the trellis "maze" for our three rows of tomato plants (27 total). hoping the deer--who also come in from time to time--will spare the peppers and eggplants and that nothing with a taste for cauliflower will show up late as well. the really bad news is that there does not seem to be any way of keeping raccoons out of a garden--as this is a community garden on public property i can't put in an electrified fence or motion lights or sound.

yes. carbon steel or cast iron best so you can get it screaming hot enough first to crisp it up.