It’s vacation time! Andy and Travis, our son, have gone trout fishin’ in Missoula, Montana. And I’m figuring out what to do with too many home-grown tomatoes.
We’ll be back on Tuesday, September 9th, with our regular (or irregular) blogs. Meanwhile, I’ve got a super-simple, super-delicious fresh tomato recipe for you to try out, as well as recommendations from past recipes, to make good use of those amazing garden tomatoes (“Champion” has won my prize as the best variety we grew this year). Enjoy them all before the cool days of September arrive.
If you’re bored now that the lazy-hazy-crazy days of summer are about over, this 1000-piece puzzle, “Gone Fishing,” is made by Doodletown and available online.
Andy won’t be bringing home any trout from Montana (it’s all catch and release), but if he did…as my dad did on his yearly fishing trips to Walden, Colorado, I’d try out Martha Rose Shulman’s recipe for Rainbow trout and fresh tomato baked in aluminum foil. And if you’re still looking for ways to make the best use of your tomatoes – other than in a salad – we especially recommend our Sopa de Lima (which is served with a corn and fresh tomato salsa), our Tomato and Basil Pasta, Diane and Grandma’s Tomato Tart, and our B&T Tacos.
It’s Andy here today. Ann is in OurLittleCorner trying to get unstressedby baking.
I just read an article about the environmental and nutritional advantages of insect-based pet treats. The insects being turned into kibble and treats include such delightful morsels as American cockroaches, flesh flies (adults and larvae), black soldier fly larvae, crickets, and meal worms. The idea of serving up maggots and cockroaches to our dog Wynn was tough to swallow (so to speak) but I thought it might be a good alternative to the meat-based treats we are using— as long as these insects were unrecognizable by the time they hit the dog dish.
But then I discovered via Wikipedia that the harvester ant was also a protein source used in pet treats. That complicated things. Even with their high protein value and being environmental correct, I couldn’t imagine feeding these amazing little guys to Wynn. It turns out that I have a personal connection to these amazing ants.
Harvester ants harvesting a seed (source: Science News)
My personal connection goes back to when I was a docent at the 500-acre Bouverie Preserve in Glen Ellen, leading groups of fourth and fifth graders on nature hikes. Of the wildlife we would see on our hikes, the harvester ant was one of my favorites. The entrances to their nests, with their tell-tale circle of discarded seed hulls, were often located on the paths in the Preserve. My young hikers always got a kick out of watching these enterprising ants carrying seeds to their nests (to feed to the queen and her brood of larvae somewhere down below) and bringing up the spent seed hulls to deposit outside of the entrance. Learning that the worker ants we were watching were all female always impressed the kids (I would discreetly omit the fact that the few males in a colony live only long enough to mate with the queen).
Bouverie hikers ready to strike out to find the harvester ants.
Since then I have learned that these denizens of the earth do much more than meets the eye; they create truly amazing subterranean architectural masterpieces. Sciencenews posted a piece about Florida State University professor emeritusWalter Tschinkel who discovered a way to “see” the complex design of these ant nests. He would pour molten metal or plaster into the underground nests and meticulously dig up the hardened casts to reveal their multilevel shapes which he described as “cookie-shaped chambers that dangle more chambers below on spiraling tendrils of tunnels.”
Professor Tschinkel admiring one of his hardened casts of a harvester ant nest. (Source: Sciencenews.org)
In his book Ant Architecture Tschinkel provides details of why the harvester ant nest is such an amazing accomplishment:
.. colonies of the Florida harvester ant with 7 thousand worker ants that together weigh less than an ounce move more than 16 lb of soil to create a nest with a volume of more than 2 gallons. By the time the ants have completed their excavation, the sum of the upward trips of sand-carrying ants is more than 400 miles, approximately the distance from New York to Cleveland.
And these nests can go down to a depth of 16 feet, which is impressive for these 1/3″ long ants. Our son, Travis, helped us put this 16 foot achievement in perspective by asking ChatGPT to compare 16′ to the depth an average height person would have to dig to be comparable. The answer came out to be a whopping 3,312 feet, which is about twice the distance to the top of One World Trade Center. See ChatGPT’s response below.
The 1776′ high One World Trade Center
By now you should understand why I would balk at the thought of purchasing dog food that contains harvester ants. Come to think of it, I would imagine that some of the other insects being ground into treats may have their own stories. For example, I’ve read that cockroaches are capable of surviving without food for a month, without water for a week, and even without their heads for a week. And mealworms can break down polystyrene (aka Styrofoam) into useful organic material. I could go on, but the bottom line is that I am highly unlikely to jump on the insect-based-pet-food band wagon.
So, if you happen to be shopping for dog treats without meat and are tempted to buy a brand that boasts about its “nutritious and environmentally correct” insect-based ingredients, think about those little harvester ants and One World Trade Center. Perhaps then you will decide to take a look in the vegan pet food section.
It’s Ann here today. Andy is in OurLittleCorner fretting about his e-bike.
Do you ever feel like someone is standing over your shoulder directing you how to do something? Someone who is actually not present…except in your mind?
I always make a lot of jam in the summer when my favorite fruits (think apricots, nectarines, peaches, and plums) are at their delicious best, and every time I make a batch of jam, my mother enters the kitchen and is with me. Mind you, my mother passed away years ago, so this is only a manifestation of my mother. As I cook the fruit, I can hear my mother telling me to be sure to skim the foam off while the jam simmers, to watch for the color of the bubbling liquid to change in appearance (I’m still trying to master that one), and finally to gather a little liquid in a stainless steel tablespoon and hold it up high over the pot and watch for two simultaneous drips to come down, indicating the jam has thickened enough and should be removed from the flame. Every single time and every single year I do this my mom is peering over my shoulder, overseeing this process.
“Manifest” was Cambridge Dictionary‘s 2024 Word of the Year, mostly because the word – used as a verb – has taken on new meaning. Celebs and others (including our daughter) are using “manifest” to mean “imagining something into reality.” Manifest as a noun meaning a “list of goods carried on a plane or ship” is so yesterday!
Before hearing our daughter talk about “manifesting” good things, my only thought about “manifest” was the phrase “manifest destiny” where “manifest” is an adjective describing something that is obvious or self-evident. History.com describes it this way: Manifest Destiny, coined sometime before 1820, is the idea that the United States is destined—by God, its advocates believed—to expand its dominion and spread democracy and capitalism across the entire North Americancontinent. (An aside: coincidentally, one of our favorite political analysts, Heather Cox Richardson, just wrote a piece on this same topic and mentions the same piece of art.)
This intriguing painting is entitled American Progress (1872); it’s by John Gast and is an “allegorical representation of the modernization of the new west” (Wikipedia). You have to read the analysis of all that’s happening in the painting. It’s fascinating – and more than a little disturbing.
In our current favorite TV series, the star of the 2015 production must have been foresightful because he uses the term “manifest” often – but as a noun, rather than a verb. His “manifests” are both good and evil people who come back from death to visit with him during various times of his life. And they are definitely not the same as ghosts, he asserts. The British crime series is River and the star is the talented Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgard. Our favorite character may be Stevie, played by Nicola Walker, whose role is…well, watch the series and you’ll find out! Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 100% rating from critics.
When I worked on today’s recipe I manifested (verb) the perfectly -flavored fresh apricots combined with a perfectly-delicious fresh pineapple in order to try to replicate my mother’s perfect Apricot Pineapple Jam. I enjoyed my mother’s presence, her manifest (noun), though I ignored her firm instructions to use canned Dole Crushed Pineapple. And my joy when I succeeded in this jam-making endeavor was manifest (adjective).
