Sunday, January 20, 2008

Weather

It has been recently brought to my attention that some people doubt my weather forecasting ability. O.K., I was off by one day and forgot to mention that the figure included the wind chill factor.
I am a member of Forecast On Satellite, a service just for old folks. It enables old folks to wow the pants off of young whippersnappers by correctly predicting the weather. Such explanations as: my bones tell me, I can tell by the clouds, the stripe on wooly bear caterpillars, the thickness of squirrel's tails, are substituted. Remember, when it comes to the weather, almost all old folks are F.O.S..
Good news, I finally made something that tastes very good: glass pie plate, 1/2 chopped onion, chopped garlic clove, salt and pepper, 1 cup of chicken broth, four chicken thighs nestled into the mix in the plate, 350 degrees for one hour. Great over rice. Today I am going to try it with thyme and tarragon also, although dried tarragon can be really crappy on occasion. I have tried to find French tarragon plants on the Internet, it cannot be grown from seed, but there is none available. I refuse to buy fresh tarragon at the market as I don't believe a person should have to sell their car to buy fresh herbs.

2 comments:

Johanna said...

Oh, man, Dad, get a tarragon plant at Home Depot, stick it in a pot in your house- I have a bed of it here, and every year I rip a bunch of it up, mow over it, and it comes back and takes over the garden. And you'll never use all that you grow, tarragon isn't something that goes with everything, like basil. I was totally kidding about the cat, even with her I am still under the legal limit, catwise, and I will never travel from Florida to MA with a cat again, I've done it twice, and well, at least dogs can be let out of the car sometimes.(Not that this prevented Labrador accidents). I like to pretend that everyone is just dying to adopt one of my cats, because what actually happens(I think) is that people drive by and drop some off every few months. The little kitty doesn't actually have your run-of-the-mill eye crud, she seems to be recovering from cat herpes(feline specific-non-transferable to other species), and one eye is just fine now, and the other is literally popping out of her head. It's the size of a grape, and the lowest quote I've gotten for surgery is $500. Animal control will euthanize her for free, by electrocution, and one vet offered to "adopt and place" her, for $200. So I am scraping what I hope is 80 milligrams of ammoxicillin from my neighbor's 500 mg pills and putting it in her food twice a day, and holding her and scratching her chest a lot,and keeping her warm. And she's eating and drinking and purring and kneading my sweater, so I don't want to put her down yet, but I can't afford surgery for unwanted cat #7.(AJ named her Mackenzie, after his girlfriend)

Johanna said...

You know, I can't find tarragon in your area either, I wonder if it would survive if I sent you some? Mine produces seeds like crazy, but I've never tried to grow them...