Glens Falls (NY) Online Book Discussion Group discussion
What are U doing today?
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What are U doing today? (Ongoing thread)
message 6351:
by
Nina
(last edited Oct 06, 2016 06:23PM)
(new)
Oct 06, 2016 02:35PM
Jim. My daughter's horse has a bad leg/foot problem and she is barely able to ride him although he is not very old. They have tried various treatments and so far nothing has improved and then her other horse had to be put down. Now she is boarding a friend's horse so the other one won't be so lonely. Not easy with our loved ones.
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No hoof, no horse. It's not uncommon. Thanks.
I am sorry about Chip. I enjoyed seeing the pictures of you riding him. I hope for the ten years ahead he is doing as well as can be expected.
Since today is Friday, I am off to my Cardiac Therapy session.........................................................................I've done nine weeks and have only three weeks left and I am finished
Mary JL wrote: "Since today is Friday, I am off to my Cardiac Therapy session.........................................................................I've done nine weeks and have only three weeks left and I am f..."
That's great, MaryJL! So glad to hear that things are going well for you! Hugs!
Our Internet is too slow for videos, Joy. What is it?
Jim wrote: "Our Internet is too slow for videos, Joy. What is it?"This article tells about it:
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-...
As of this minute, the video has had 2,680 views. When I posted Message #6357 above, about it, there were only about 300 views. That was only about a couple of hours ago),
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We've been seeing mushrooms in the woods. I have a friend, an ecologist, who is into picking wild mushrooms & posts pictures on FB fairly often. I thought one type my daughter found on a walk was edible. They were - if she had picked them then. She didn't. None of us know enough. I hate being so ignorant of the wonders around me, so I decided to try to learn more about them. I have The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms. It's about 20 years old & isn't particularly easy to use since I need to pick up a lot of descriptive words I've never run across before, but we tried. I took pictures & posted them for my friend to double check.
We found 3 edible mushrooms in our woods:
(Laetiporus) Chicken of the Woods or Sulphur Shelf is the one Erin first found. They're not good when they get older, so we didn't eat them. We know where they are & what they look like now, though.
(Polyporus squamosus) Dryad's Saddle was probably still edible, but we couldn't find it in the guide & only took a sample for a spore print. It was getting old, but I'll check it out & might get it for dinner tonight.
(Calvatia Gigantea) Giant Puffball was right in the middle of one of our paths very close to the Chicken of the Woods mushrooms. It was good, so I brought about half home & sauteed it up in butter with a bit of salt. While it went well with the steak we had, it didn't have much flavor.
The fall isn't a bad time to look for mushrooms, but the spring is better. Still, we found a lot & are making spore prints (Put the mushroom down on white paper & wrap in wax paper to see how the spores come out. This makes a print that is important in identification.) to help identify them. We had a little magnifying glass, but I intend to put them under my microscope this morning, too. (I have a cheap one ($75) for kids that hooks to the PC. It does 10x, 60x, & 200x views which show on the monitor.)
The The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms is as thick as any of its cousins (We have them on birds, trees, & flowers, too.) but only covers 3 of the families of mushrooms. It's missing several different ones that I'm sure aren't edible (too hard & woody) that we found on other trees.
Wow, do I have a lot to learn! Fun!!!
Jim.We once grew mushrooms in our basement. Had a great crop. We used to have an Italian dinner using them and then I would give small bags of them for our guests to take home. We also had a mushroom hunting slumber party at our lake house and woods. My husband is truly an expert and he guided everyone on what to pick. I then cooked them as a side dish for dinner. As I said, it was a slumber party and fortunately everyone woke up the next morning.
I love mushrooms! They're great in pepper steak!
I bet they are. Forgot to mention once on my birthday/last of April lo and behold under our deck were morels growing. Nice present.
I wish I knew a local mushroom expert. I'll have to ask around at the Extension Office & see if they know or have a class on it. I was hoping to ask some when they came & got the gourds I've grown, but so far no one has shown up to get them. I hope they do soon. I picked just the gourds that were on dead vines inside the back yard today & filled up my wheelbarrow. I don't think that was 1/4 of them, though. I got about half of those I picked wiped down with bleach & on drying racks (I hung some old bread racks from the rafters of the overhang of my shop & almost filled them already.) when Marg called me in. Had to take her to dinner & a movie.
The Accountant was good. Affleck played a really good character.
I got rid of about 200 gourds! JR, Erin's Ag Ed teacher, just came by & took 14 - 50lb feedbags each filled with them. At least another 100 are left. Seems my count was off. More keep becoming visible as the vines die back & we cut off other gourds. He had his wife & kids with him, so we had fun giving the horses & goats treats. I got a jar of sorghum syrup one of his class made up last week.
I love sorghum. My grandfather loved it on biscuits.
I've heard the word, sorghum, but I didn't know what it was until now.Gourds are certainly interesting, given the variety of shapes they come in. I suppose the most common gourd is the pumpkin. I just put out our plastic pumpkin today. Also our scarecrow. Gotta get in the spirit of October and Halloween!
These are bird house gourds & were amazingly similar in shape. I guess I grew about 300 of them & only 3 were just round with another 3 that had wrinkled tops. Otherwise, they were extremely uniform in their proportions once fully grown. They vary a little as they grow.Here's a picture of some. (Not mine, but just like them.)
I think I've had sorghum before, but it was years ago. I don't recall liking it much & I classed it in with molasses, although it doesn't taste the same. I have more experience with molasses & blackstrap since it's often used to make pills & such palatable for the horses & is a main ingredient in sweet feed. Here's a good explanation of sorghum & molasses types:
http://grandmaspantryva.com/mm5/graph...
I'm looking forward to trying this since it's locally made by a young farmer (a senior in high school) & my tastes have changed over the years. I may well like it now. I just have to find something to try it on & remember about it. I'm awful about that. I tend to eat whatever they give me & don't go looking for more. Erin got Yoohoo the other day & I thought that sounded good. I haven't had one in ages (5 or 10 years?) but it took me over a week to remember to drink one.
Sorghum is good on pancakes or waffles or hot biscuits. My grandfather as I said earlier liked in on biscuits but what he really liked was pouring in on his biscuits and gravy. There is a scene in "To Kill a Mockingbird" when Jem's friend does exactly that at their table and she makes fun of him and Atticus frowns at her.
Jim wrote: "These are bird house gourds & were amazingly similar in shape. I guess I grew about 300 of them & only 3 were just round with another 3 that had wrinkled tops. Otherwise, they were extremely unifor..."Jim, thanks for the photo of the bird house gourds. I had never heard the name before.
Eddie makes a delicious mashed vegetable from butternut squash. I love it. He doesn't seem to mind how hard it is to cut it into pieces. It's really looks tough. Here are pictures of it: https://www.google.com/#q=butternut+s...
Jim, how do you manage handling so many gourds? It must be a job.
Jim wrote: "I think I've had sorghum before, but it was years ago. I don't recall liking it much & I classed it in with molasses, although it doesn't taste the same. I have more experience with molasses & blac..."Thanks for the link, Jim. I'm going to try to find some sorghum syrup in the supermarket. The article says: "It tends to have a thinner consistency and a slightly more sour taste than does molasses." How sour is it? I don't like a sour taste.
Gee, I don't think I've ever has molasses either. :)
Nina wrote: "Sorghum is good on pancakes or waffles or hot biscuits. My grandfather as I said earlier liked in on biscuits but what he really liked was pouring in on his biscuits and gravy. There is a scene in ..."Eddie always used to make pancakes when the grandchildren visited. They love maple syrup. I have found that maple syrup doesn't seem as sweet as the plain commercial syrup which they sell for pancakes. I've never wondered what it was made of.
I tend to favor Mrs. Butterworth's Syrup. ttp://www.mrsbutterworths.com/ --- Online it says it contains corn syrup. I'll have to check the ingredients to see if they're healthy.
Managing the gourds? If you mean growing, I just scattered the seeds along the fence & stepped back. It was a bumper year for them. All the rain sent them scurrying up & over the fence. I just mowed over the ends that kept growing out into the yard & field. Sometimes they'd grow over 10' in a week! No managing to it.;)
If you mean for drying, I have some of those trays that bread comes on & I hung them from the rafters of my shop's overhang with a rope. I put the gourds in them to dry & just turn them occasionally. We'll see how that works out. I hung a few by their stems, but one is rotting, another is dry, & 2 others are still drying. There's no real management, mostly just seeing what they decide to do.
Most store-bought fake maple syrup is just corn syrup with other sweeteners. Probably no worse for you than a candy bar. I haven't figured out anything to use the sorghum syrup on yet, so haven't tried it.
It's amazing how fast the gourds grow!ABOUT HEALTHY EATING:
I recently read the following:
==============================================
"Homemade caramel is made by melting sugar in a saucepan.
"Brown coloring in sodas and some other products is not the same thing.
"Industrial caramel coloring is made by reacting sugars with ammonia and sulfites under high pressure and temperatures. The chemical reactions create 4-methylimidazole, which in government-conducted studies caused lung, liver, or thyroid cancer or leukemia in laboratory mice or rats. This is why California recently required foods containing caramel color to be labeled as potential cancer-causing agents.
"But you won't see this warning label any time soon - manufacturers simply reduced the use of caramel color enough that the labeling requirements no longer applied.
"Caramel color varies slightly between products - when in beer, sauces or baked goods it has just ammonia and when used in soft drinks, it has both sulfites and ammonia. Neither one is a "good" option.
FROM: http://www.fooducate.com/app#!page=pr...
==============================================
Ingredients in Mrs. Butterworth’s Thick & Rich syrup: High fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, water, salt, cellulose gum, molasses, potassium sorbate (preservative), sodium hexametaphosphate, citric acid, caramel color, natural and artificial flavors.
FROM: http://www.eatingrealfood.com/article...
Is Sodium Hexametaphosphate Bad For You?
SEE: https://www.isitbadforyou.com/questio...
MAYBE I'D BETTER START USING MAPLE SYRUP!
Joy, don't be too scared by the various chemicals. Without a good knowledge of chemistry & nutrition, most of it sounds scary. All food has weird chemicals in it & many of these sites just use our own ignorance to scare us. It's like the whole thing about 'organic'. If you really look into it, the organic label itself is pretty scary in what it allows. For instance, pesticides are OK if they're 'natural', not manufactured. The thing is that many of those manufactured chemicals were derived from these plants. They're just made artificially now since there is far better quality control & it's cheaper. It's the first one we need to worry about when eating the product, but the same quality controls (testing) aren't in place for organic foods.
It's a complicated mess, but unless you really do a lot of educated research on every product you eat, you're not going to really know. I gave up years ago. About the only thing I do is make sure to avoid any of the supplements they sell at the stores. They have no FDA oversight & many are turning out not just to be bogus wastes of money, but some aren't labeled correctly & have been found to be bad.
Sorghum is not a bit sour tasting but definitely not as sweet as commercial syrup or not the taste of maple syrup. I grew up eating it. This was back when everyone in the country ate the same things. The first time we visited people in New Jersey and that was in 1960 they had never eaten chili.
You use sorghum on the same things you would use syrup on.
Jim wrote: "Joy, don't be too scared by the various chemicals. Without a good knowledge of chemistry & nutrition, most of it sounds scary. All food has weird chemicals in it & many of these sites just use our ..."Jim, thanks for the reassurance.
Nina wrote: "Sorghum is not a bit sour tasting but definitely not as sweet as commercial syrup or not the taste of maple syrup. I grew up eating it. This was back when everyone in the country ate the same thing..."Nina, I'm going to have to try sorghum syrup one of these days.
I pet Lily & noticed she had a hole in her neck probably worthy of a stitch or 2. We were on the phone to Brandon & Colin (aka grandmonster) but had take care of the Princess. Everyone pitched in & we had an impromptu surgical intervention on my bed with Erin & I operating, Josh providing lighting & support & Dr. Marg passing out drugs & more support. The patient was perfect & should be OK. We clipped, cleaned, & applied Panalog. (This probably would have made a great picture.)
Jim wrote: "I pet Lily & noticed she had a hole in her neck probably worthy of a stitch or 2. We were on the phone to Brandon & Colin (aka grandmonster) but had take care of the Princess. Everyone pitched in &..."Wow, Jim. What do you think caused the hole in Lily's neck? What did you use to do the stitching? Hope she'll be OK. ----- Yes, "add vet to your laurels" is right!
We didn't stitch Lily up, Joy. We don't have any locals nor the right thread for it, so we just shaved the area to keep the fur out, cleaned it, & put Panalog on it. It's a good antibiotic. I never get cuts stitched if they only need a couple stitches myself. It's just not worth the hassle & they'll heal up OK, just might take a couple more days.We don't know how she got cut. Probably running too close to a dead Red Cedar. They're wicked sharp when branches break & she's always streaking around the woods. We figure that's how she got her side torn open the last time. That was a bad one & required quite a few stitches.
It's one of the pictures here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?s...
She didn't whine about anything but me leaving her at the vet's office. Even then, she was a perfect lady. I pointed my finger at her & told her she was on a leash since I'd forgotten that & a collar. When I got to the vets, all I had was enough baling twine in my pocket to give her a makeshift collar. Close enough.
:)
Jim wrote: "We didn't stitch Lily up, Joy. We don't have any locals nor the right thread for it, so we just shaved the area to keep the fur out, cleaned it, & put Panalog on it. It's a good antibiotic. I never..."I see. Our Romeo needed to go to the vet to get stitches around his throat when he had a skirmish with our son's dog, Baxter. It was close and scary.
Baxter is a nice laid-back dog but sometimes Romeo growls at him and that's when the skirmishes start. So now when he visits, we keep them separated by using a Baxter's cage which they alternate using.
Here's a pic of Baxter: https://www.goodreads.com/photo/group...
Here's a pic of Romeo: https://www.goodreads.com/photo/group...
If they're used to using their cage/crate/bed as their 'den', a normal place to sleep, hide from visitors, huddle in when sick, & such, it's not good to put another dog in it. That causes hard feelings. It might be better to get a folding, temporary cage that Baxter can use when he comes over. Lily is doing fine. the hole is pretty well closed up already.
Jim wrote: "If they're used to using their cage/crate/bed as their 'den', a normal place to sleep, hide from visitors, huddle in when sick, & such, it's not good to put another dog in it. That causes hard feelings. ..."Gee, Jim, we never thought of that. However, Baxter doesn't seem to mind that Romeo goes into his cage... because when Romeo is in there, Baxter is free to roam the house. :)
However, we do have metal wire panels which form a temporary pen for a dog. We're trying to figure out where we could put it. Best place is in the middle of the living room. :) It would only be for a day or two.
Glens Falls (NY) Online Book Discussion Group
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