Quote of the Week – 6/30/10 – Maida Heatter
“A plain American pie is a work of art. Every time you make one it is a challenge and when it turns out right you have accomplished something major of which you and your family and friends should be extremely proud.”
Maida Heatter – “Maida Heatter’s Book of Great American Desserts”
Photo of the Week – June 30, 2010 – Pork Roast and Crackling
Just love that pork crackling. I confess to creating that hole in the crackling on the left side of the roast. Thanks for that tasty roast, Mom!
Leftovers Again; Women, Talk to Your Tomatoes
Nobody in this house is a big fan of leftovers. But when there’s an abundance of leftover grilled sausage, it’s too good to ignore. So with a little inspiration from my sister-in-law I converted the leftovers into a jambalaya type of rice dish, but with Italian, rather than creole seasonings. I fried up green pepper, onions, and the sausage. Cooked up a little rice and mixed in a can Italian seasoned diced tomatoes. Mixed both pots together and we had a pretty satisfying encore from that sausage. Too bad Annie didn’t love it. But you know what they say about pleasing all of the people all of the time.
In the news… Women Talk to Your Tomatoes.
Watering the tomato plants will no longer be a quiet, meditative task for me. No, according to a study completed by the Royal Horticultural Society I will have to chatter away as I water them. In this study, researchers compared taped recordings of men and women reading a passage from Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species”, Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, or John Wyndham’s “The Day of the Triffids” to see whether there was an effect on the growth rate of tomato plants (who comes up with this stuff?) All growing conditions for the plants were the same. Headphones with the recorded voices were placed on the pots. Researchers expected the plants would respond more favorably to male voices than to female voices, but they were very wrong. In fact, some male voices stunted the growth of the plants compared with a silent control group. The results were that the most successful female voice caused her plant to grow two inches taller than the best male voice. Fittingly, the most successful voice belonged to Sarah Darwin reading from her great great grandfather’s work.