How did I allow myself to run out of my allergy pills?! How stupid! I would have sworn I went and got more some time ago, but it appears I meant to go get them and never did. Since June was so damn hot and dry, I really didn’t need them at all, so I never noticed. Well, we’ve had rain. Rain means mold spores. I need a pill, and I need it now!

Unfortunately, Lin is at a party, and by the time he gets home, I won’t feel like going to the drugstore. I guess I know where I’ll be heading first thing in the morning. Provided I can still breath enough to go anywhere.

I’m going to go rummage in the bathroom. Maybe there’s a pill or two left of one of the ones that knocked me on my butt too bad, so I stopped using them. I suspect I threw them away though. Dammit.

It’s completely stupid to allow myself to run out of a pill I sometimes need to take to breath well enough to even get out of bed! Gah!

Last night I did something interesting with the mashed potatoes. Instead of the usual milk, I added a butter, chopped fresh dill, dried and ground garlic, and Parmesan cheese. They were the best mashed potatoes I have ever eaten, and I will be repeating this recipe. Some people may crinkle their nose at the thought of dill, garlic, and dairy together, and I admit, I had my doubts as well, but the flavors melded together really well and no one flavor was at the forefront. Lin didn’t even know there was dill in them until I told him (after he’d eaten them). Though I have to wonder what he thought those little green bits in the mashed potatoes were. There usually aren’t green bits in the potatoes.

Anyway, thought I’d pass this along. Maybe it’s something common, and I’ve never heard of it.

I boiled two fist-sized potatoes and used 3 tablespoons butter, a tablespoon of the garlic, and a tablespoon of dill. I never measure the Parmesan, but I was quite liberal with it. Probably about four tablespoons or more.

It’s short. Just watch it. Explore the insanity that is the modern conservative mind.

Supposedly there’s a 40% chance of more thunderstorms today. It is a little cloudy. I wonder if we’ll get more rain? I could do with another cooler day with another long slow rain. Yesterday was wonderful. I finally got to spend some quality time outside in the garden.

I seriously need to go buy groceries and bake some bread. I am also feeling seriously tired and a little achy. I am at that point in the morning where I have to decide between downing a few cups of coffee and pressing on or going back to bed for a couple of hours. I will admit, I am leaning heavily toward getting more sleep. The cats agree. They’ve had breakfast, and all three of them have gone back to bed. I think I’ll join them for an hour or two. I love cuddling on the bed with the kitties on gray and cloudy mornings.

It’s finally been confirmed that there was E. coli in Nestlé Toll House refrigerated cookie dough. It was the chocolate cookie dough.

But wait! It gets better!

Health officials still do not know how E. coli 0157, a bacterium that lives in cattle intestines, ended up in a product that seems so unlikely to contain it. The risk usually associated with cookie dough is salmonella, a bacterium that can be found in raw eggs. None of the ingredients in the dough — eggs, milk, flour, chocolate, butter — is known to host E. coli 0157.

Federal investigators spent more than a week at the Danville plant and did not detect contamination in the equipment or among workers, Acheson said. “It raises the likelihood that it was an ingredient,” he said. “And it really means that industry has to be constantly vigilant, because foods we think of as low risk could be contaminated with a deadly pathogen.”

I would say that “eggs, milk, flour, chocolate, butter” possibly being contaminated with E. coli is disturbing. I find it especially disturbing seeing as I have to go grocery shopping tomorrow, and all those things are at the top of my grocery list. Where does Nestlé source these ingredients? How do I know the eggs, milk, flour, chocolate, and butter isn’t from the same sources? Factory food is shipped around and mixed together, and factories sell the same products under different brand names, so their is the potential there might very well be something in my local store with so little risk of killing me as to be negligible … which might actually kill me.

And now, step into my mind as I contemplate tomorrow’s shopping trip:

The eggs I buy are regional, from somewhere in Texas. I doubt they send eggs from Texas to Virginia for making raw cooking dough. I especially doubt they send free range, yard nesting chicken eggs from Texas to Virginia for any reason at all. These are special eggs, which is why I pay three times more for them per dozen. These eggs are not the sort used in mass produced refrigerator cookie dough. So, my eggs are most likely safe to buy and eat.

The milk I buy is also regionally produced. Now milk is one of those things that does get shipped around and mixed together before packaging and selling, but once again, I get special milk –free range, no added hormones, no antibiotics. This is not milk used in mass produced refrigerator cookie dough. So, my milk is safe to buy and drink.

The butter I buy is yet again regionally produced. But in this case, they were bought by a large creamery, and there’s no way to be sure they don’t also produced wholesale product as well as retail brands. I am suspicious enough of the butter to put off buying butter. We’ll make do with the two sticks I already have. Olive oil is healthier anyway.

The flour I buy comes from Vermont. It’s a better flour and a well-loved and respected flour among bakers. I would say I trust my flour supply to be safe. I hope so, because I have to buy flour, and the only other options at my store are far more suspicious. The flour they make is very nice, and I hope it’s too nice to use in mass produced refrigerator cookie dough. So, I guess I buy the flour and have faith in a brand I like.

But let’s talk about the chocolate, shall we? I know that Nestlé sources its chocolate for its refrigerated cookie dough from itself. Says so on the package. I need to get chocolate chips for cookies. I usually buy Nestlé. Nothing could compel me to buy any chocolate of any kind branded with the Nestlé name tomorrow. The added problem is that Nestlé is such a large producer of chocolate, there is no way to tell which chocolate or chocolate chips aren’t in some way connected to them without a whole lot of research I don’t want to do. Therefore, no chocolate of any kind. Not even candy. No matter the brand. It’ll suck, but getting sick would suck worse.

Does all this sound crazy and paranoid to you? I’m not overly obsessive about this stuff, but I do try to keep up with who is making the food I eat, and which big company is putting out some secondary brand without overtly mentioning they do … or who large companies sell ingredients or product to for reuse or repackaging. The pet food recall brought home loud and clear the facts that one small company can have far-ranging and devastating effects across multiples of brands at multiples of companies, and that large companies put out crappy store brand and generic products at the same plants using some of the same ingredients. These things are true for the human food supply just as they are true for the pet and animal feed supply.

It may sound crazy and paranoid to think this much about what groceries to buy, but to me, it’s modern age common sense, considering all the recalls there are every year on all manner of edibles and the disgusting crap being shipped in from elsewhere … and just how awful most of the food production process really is. Sure, it’s not The Jungle anymore, but it’s really not that much better, at least not for the animals and plants (or the consumers). I shouldn’t have to wonder what thing in the grocery store may next be recalled for making people sick. I should be able to walk into the grocery store and buy anything at all with no concern about it being safely edible.

We don’t live in that world. We live in a world where corporations are willing to cut corners, lie, cheat, and ignore problems, all in the name of that almighty dollar. That puts the burden on the consumer to stay vigilant and be knowledgeable about how their food is made and where their food comes from. I could write posts all day every day trying to convince people to eat more locally and regionally, preach about following the corporate trails to determine who is making what and who they do business with, but I am not an evangelist. It’s a decision every consumer has to make for themselves.

A few years ago, I didn’t give a damn about where my food came from. I bought whatever was on sale or brands I recognized as “big” and pressed on with the eating. Then there was one recall too many and too close together, and I decided to try something different: eating locally and regionally grown foods. Yes, we pay more for our food, and yes, sometimes eating locally also means eating seasonally and so the diet can get monotonous at times, and yes, it means I sometimes have to do some research before buying something at a grocery store, and yes, sometimes it means we don’t get to eat something we want to eat, but I’m fairly confident our food won’t make us sick. If it does, I know exactly who to go to to complain … and they don’t live in China. It seems a small price to pay –being thought of as a little crazy or paranoid– for not having to wonder if something I ate will be recalled tomorrow (or just make a few of us sick and never gets recalled at all).

So, I’m not going to tell anyone “you should eat like we do,” but I do think everyone should think about it and decide if they can make a few changes to their buying and eating habits and become more aware of the source of their food, or decide they don’t give a damn and trust luck and statistics to be on their side. I never trust luck or statistics when health and life are on the line. Do you?

Behind the cut are two photos of the latest unknown bug to be found in my garden. I’m going to post a question about them at AskMetafilter later, but maybe someone reading my blog knows what the hell they are.

I have spent hours and hours looking at photos of bugs and reading about bugs and typing every imaginable descriptor into Google and coming up with nothing. In fact, the only thing I got out of the whole process is that I itch all over from looking at and thinking about bugs too much!
Read the rest of Unknown Bug

The makers of Tylenol, Excedrin and other medications are trying to dissuade regulators from placing new restrictions on their popular painkillers, including possibly removing some of them from store shelves.

Despite years of educational campaigns and other federal actions, acetaminophen is the leading cause of liver failure in the U.S., sending 56,000 people to the emergency room annually, according to the FDA.

The agency today asked its experts to consider a range of options: adding a “black box” warning label to the products, lowering the drug dosage in some products, or pulling certain types of medications off the market.

The drugs that could be pulled off shelves are combination medications, such as Procter & Gamble’s NyQuil or Novartis’ Theraflu, which combine acetaminophen with other ingredients that treat cough and runny nose.

Oh yes, how typical. Due to some people not being capable of following the directions on OTC drugs and injuring or killing themselves, let’s just take things that work really well off the market. First they took away the only OTC allergy medications that ever worked for me, because people were using them to make other drugs, and now I am expected to live without NyQuil and Theraflu? I guess they’ll be after my current favorite sinus OTC sinus medication too, because it’s a combination medication as well, containing acetaminophen.

Screw you FDA! Sure, stupid people shouldn’t be stupid, but why do the rest of us have to suffer without properly working medications because of them?! It’s so hard for me to find drugs that work as intended without awful side effects I can’t abide, if I lose NyQuil and Theraflu, I am not going to be happy. If they take away my OTC sinus medications, well … I don’t even want to think about it. My quality of life will suffer greatly.

With snoopy cat, of course! Can’t have a photo without one!

The carrots, scallions, and dill are now chilling in vacuum-sealed bags in the freezer! Yippee!

I left the one dill plant most likely to produce a proper head of seeds unmolested, and instead of pulling up the others, I just cut them back (leaving a few leaves) to see if they will grow again. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. Doesn’t matter, as I have enough dill for a year stashed in the freezer already.

The most enjoyable aspect of this morning is the fact it started raining a few minutes after my last post, and there’s been a nice slow rain going for over an hour. I have the windows open, and it feels so good. Also the smells in the house right now are wonderful!

The weirdest thing about this morning was the appearance of hundreds, if not thousands, of mayflies. When the rain let up for a moment, they rose from our yard like a cloud. The cats went crazy trying to bust through the window screens to get to them, and the birds descended and had themselves a nice lunch … which only added to the insanity level of the cats. It was strange walking out to the garden to get the dill amidst all the bugs and birds. Strange and weird, but sort of neat!

When the rain lets up again, I’ll be going out to pull up the cucumbers. Since it’s likely to be cooler today and the beans are blooming, I’ll leave them be long enough to see if any beans set, but I better see some beans in the next two days, or away they go too. Then the only thing left in Bed One will be the marigolds and one lonely okra plant with one lonely pod on it I am allowing to dry for seed … and the dill plants.

I think while the soil is moist (wet) today, I’ll pull up the Early Girl tomato plant. I cut it back when it stopped blooming, and it hasn’t shown any plan to grow any new leaves. It gave us some pounds of tomatoes already, so I’m willing to let it go gently into that good night. I’m also debating pulling up the Better Boy as well. It has two small tomatoes on it that have been sitting there not growing or changing color for weeks and weeks. It also doesn’t seem to be blooming anymore. I think it’s time has come. Maybe I’ll leave it for the birds, since they seem to fancy the Better Boys best of all. Might make them leave the rest of my tomatoes alone!

Aaah. Rain, lower temperatures, and good work done in the garden. Today, so far, has been a very good day.

Here at Casa de Orb, there’s a whole lot of dangerous looking lightning, and about three drops of rain so far. It’s actually raining elsewhere in town. I am feeling cheated!

Though I will say that heavy lightning is a great motivator for working quickly. I got those carrots pulled and and topped in record time, so I could get back indoors.

The carrots are in the post-blanching cooling phase (sitting in ice water). After all the scrubbing and brief boiling, the whole house smells of carrots. It’s nice. It’d be nicer if I liked carrots, which I really don’t. Oh, I eat them, but only because they are good for the body. In general, I could do without carrots … except in stew. Stew has to have carrots in it.

Well, it’s getting darker and darker. I think I’ll get back to the carrots now. I want to move on to the other things. I’m finally feeling motivated. That might have something to do with the fact that it is currently under 80ºF outside, for the first time in forever. Gosh it feels so good! I guess I don’t really care if it rains or not, so long as it stays this cool for just a little longer.

I’m having my morning coffee, in preparation for going at the garden this morning. At 83ºF, it’s pleasantly cool outside. It’s also cloudy. There’s thunder rumbling just over the horizon. Might we get some rain? As much as I want to get some things done in the garden today, I would not be at all upset to have to call it off on account of rain. In fact, it would be so glorious to experience rain, I might even work on the garden out in the rain. It’d be really great to get some rain. I miss rain. Rain is good. Please let it rain!!!

Anyway, I don’t feel like processing a bunch of carrots and herbs today, but it has to be done at some point. The sooner I get it done, the sooner I can start getting the garden ready for the next round of growing things, and it would be nice to just pull a pack of frozen carrots out of the freezer for dinner, without the pulling, washing, cleaning, and cutting having to be done on the spot. The coffee is giving me the energy to do it (I’ve been so low on energy the last few days), but the willpower is still lacking somewhat. Too bad there isn’t an additive to put in coffee to give one willpower!

And there’s some cat news this morning. Overnight, my sweet and adorable baby, Tora, has become a teenager. Yes, the cat who almost never got into anything, who was always sweet and wonderful, has become a bit of a terror. Tora is developing an attitude. She’ll be a year old next month, so it isn’t like I am surprised by this change. One year old kitties are terrors of the worst sort. I’ve noticed that’s when they begin to push the boundaries of acceptable behavior just like human teenagers do. Hopefully, this is a stage she will outgrow quickly –more quickly than the other two, who are just now, at 3 years of age, beginning to clue into the fact that there are things they are never allowed to do.

The thunder is really rumbling now. The radar shows it raining to the south of us and to the north of us. With my luck, we won’t get a single drop at my house. I’m keeping my fingers crossed though, because I would really like to have some rain today. Not even for the garden, which has been recently well watered, but because it would be nice to have some kind of weather other than hot and awful. It could even hail, and I wouldn’t be too heartbroken about it. I just need some sort of weather other than the weather we have been having! Of course, if it does rain, it will only make the heat worse when the sun comes out (which it will), but still, it’d be nice while it lasted.

My coffee is done, and I think I have the willpower to get pull up the carrots and do all the things I need to do to get them into the freezer. Once I get them done, maybe I’ll feel like doing the same with the dill and scallions … and pulling up the non-producing aphid hotel cucumber plants will just be the icing on the cake. I’ve also done research on the beans, and my fears that they won’t set fruit due to it being too hot turns out to be true. I still like how easy those beans are to grow, but now I know not to bother planting a second planting during the summer. Live and learn! I am consoling myself over the waste of an entire pack of seeds with the fact that beans, even when they don’t produce anything edible, help increase the nitrogen levels of the soil they grow in.

Well … I am off to work on carrots. Maybe I’ll get rained on while doing so, and that would be just fine with me!

Is every card reader at Sonic broken? Or just every one I’ve ever tried to use? Argh!

America’s top pork producer churns out a sea of waste that has destroyed rivers, killed millions of fish and generated one of the largest fines in EPA history. Welcome to the dark side of the other white meat.

I know it’s a long article. I know it won’t be pleasant to read. Please read it, and then consider your next pork chop. Factory farming needs to be stopped … or regulated to within an inch of its life. It’s not just about the poor pigs, though there is plenty of sympathy in my heart for the life they lead until they get slaughtered. It’s also about the disgusting levels of pollution and damage to human life factory farming causes on many levels.

It’s just awful, for the pigs and any nearby humans (and in this case, nearby seems to be most of North Carolina). Please read the article and pass it on. Most people don’t think about this kind of thing, and they should. It’s an older article, so I can’t imagine the situation has gotten much better since then. The guy who runs the company only seems to care about one thing: getting rich on the backs of pigs and people.

Note: Anyone in the Austin area looking for tasty, tasty pork from pigs who live happy pig lives before becoming pork chops, may I suggest Richardson Farms? Just look at the happy pigs, cows, and chickens! That’s ranching the way it should be done.

I have unilaterally decided we will be having fast food from Sonic for dinner tonight. I’m having a craving for a disgustingly greasy and totally unhealthy extra-long cheese coney and deep fried jalapeños … and a large cherry lime slush.

Though I don’t know why, I feel the need for comfort food, and Sonic is one of my ultimate comfort foods.

Mmmmm. Sonic.