Monday, May 21, 2007

A Few of my Favorite Things

Alternate title is "oohhh, Shiny!".

glassblowing pipes on bench rails and new table

My glassblowing pipes came today! I'm still trying to figure out why UPS only charges $20 to ship 33 pounds of steel and packing in a 5' box, but $14 to ship 33 ounces in a nice, not unwieldy box. (According to my spell checker, "wieldy" is not a word.) At any rate, I can now travel to various other studios and do my thing. New pipes are good. Straight! shiny! In a matte sort of way...

Also making an appearance in the photo: cabinet of glass work, BodyRev, bench and table that will eventually go on patio once I get the remaining crap out of there. Crap: The moving box was unpacked, it's just my storage for "sell on e.Bay" stuff; the bamboo shades have a problem with the mechanism such that they don't hang straight, fixing it's low on the to do list; the trash can is for cleaning up the patio. Really. Any day now. But I'll probably put it off to make a carrying case for the pipes and go test them out.

Although it occurs to me that I should clean up the patio and make it nice before FW2 gets here. We might actually want to use the patio since it will be nice and warm then.

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I also got some really tasty cherries. Finally, the cost of produce has gone down. I'm also trying to figure out why produce, like strawberries, are so expensive when they are grown about 15 miles away. My mom pays less for them in MN. It makes no sense. But cherries. On sale for $3/lb. I think I at a half pound tonight. Along with a fresh artichoke. Yum!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Last time it was doing the mail run... this year cleaning the patio... works for me :)

How do you eat an articoke? Have no idea how to cook with them.

S.

CrankyOtter said...

Artichokes can be boiled or steamed or grilled. It takes about 45 min. I prefer boiling.

Prep:
1) pull the runty leaves off the bottom edge.
2) cut the top 1/2" off (gets rid of thorny bits)
3) cut the remaining leaf tops off with shears.
4) slice the stem off flush with the base. Err on the side of leaving more.
5) the stem can have the tough skin trimmed off
6) put the lot in water. sometimes I weight them down, sometimes I partially cover the pot with a lid and make sure they turn over a couple times while cooking.

If you have a lemon, rub the cut sides of the choke with lemon, then toss half the lemon in the water with the chokes. It keeps it from browning. You can add salt, cloves, and/or bay leaves to the water but they're also optional.

Boil/Steam/Grill for 45 min or until you can stick a fork through the side.

To eat, pull off the leaves one by one and dip in sauce. My favorite sauce is
-1T Miracle Whip/mayo
-1t lemon juice
-1/2t sugar
-(opt)1/2t mustard
(essentially deviled eggs with no eggs)
or use melted butter, or salad dressing, or a pinch of salt, or nothing.

Eat the choke down to the purple/white thistle. Scrape out the thistle and the rest is the extra good heart of the choke (the lobster tail, if you will).

You can boil up a bunch at once and keep them in the fridge.

Anonymous said...

I LOVE artichokes - granted usually buried in lots of creamy cheesey sort of stuff - but I never knew how to prepare them.

Thanks, Cranky! I'll be trying this.

Chryssa