Is This Really Our First Garden Post of 2009?

I do believe it is.

This year, we decided to keep our garden fairly small and just do what we could in our front patio area. We have a small dirt patch, maybe 3' by 12', where we planted 5 tomato plants, 5 eggplants, peas, and a bunch of potatoes.

If you can see around Kimberly in this picture, you can see the start of our container garden from a few weeks back:
On the concrete part of our patio, we put a bunch of stuff into containers, including an additional 5 tomatoes, 6 sweet peppers, 6 hot peppers, basil, oregano, thyme, sage, rosemary, parsley, nasturtiums, and our trusty fig trees.

If you can see around Kimberly in this picture, you can see the start of our container garden from a few weeks back:[On a side note, the guy we had out garden with last year, the Hippy Librarian, was in France this past year teaching english. While he was there, he bought a bunch of seeds from the fantastic Seed Savers. He had a garden center start the seeds for him, so when he got back he could immediately put them in the ground. He was pretty surprised to find over 800 plant starts going when he got back (something like 600 tomato plants, 100 eggplants, and 100 peppers). Needless to say, he had more plants than he could plant. We originally were only going to have the dirt patch garden, but since he had such an abundance of plants, we took pity and took some. I have to say, they look fantastic.]

The garden has been going now for about 2 months, and things are starting to get ripe. As you can see from above, we have some peas, although the delicate plants have not fared well against the violent rains that have rolled through over the last few weeks.

We also have a pepper plant that is going crazy - there has to be 40-50 of the hottest peppers I've ever eaten on it. And some of them are even starting to turn red [it should be noted that this plant is actually from last year that we wintered over in our living room; I think this is why it's already so large and fruitful]:


As always, we have a photo set started on Flickr, which we will be updating as things become ripe and ready to eat.

Things are Progressing Nicely...

...if not rapidly.

Here's the latest photo of Kimberly and the Tadpole in front of our patio garden (more coming on that in a little while).

As you can see, her belly is getting larger, and larger. She says it's not really her fault, and that the "stupid tadpole" (her words, not mine) is getting big and her short torso can't handle it. She said something about taking up smoking to slow down the growth, but I'm not sure what that's all about. Sometimes my wife says weird things., unlike me.

If you want to compare pictures of the giant-ness of her belly over the course of time, I made up a set on Flickr of all the baby pics. Feel free to check it out.

And here's another picture of Kimberly, looking lovely in her stylish maternity dress. This is from a wedding we went to this past weekend in Pella, which is a lovely little town in central Iowa.

This is Getting Ridiculous

At this point, we're basically professional photographers.

This online travel guide, Schmap, apparently loves us. This time, they're used our photo of Galleria Umberto's, pretty much the best pizza in the country. We'll have to upload all our other photos so we can get into the guides for Mexico and other parts of Italy.

Career Opportunities

While we are consumed by our academic lives, sometimes little things remind you of how easy not having a job/career/commitment can be.

We were recently approached, online of course, to allow the use of one of our pictures from our trip to Italy on an online travel guide known as Schmap. And of course we allowed it. Here's the link to the page.

I think this makes 3 photos that have been published on the internets, which is surprising. Maybe we should have gone into photography?

Is this Heaven...?

No, It's the Iowa State Fair.

It was that time of the year again...time to pack the kids into the giant pick-up truck, grow out the mullet, put on the beer stained wife beater, and head on down to the Iowa State Fair (We only did one of those things; most other people at the Fair do all those things. I kid...Kind of).

U Gotta Love It!!!

I do, in fact, love it. (Did you know that Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote a play set at the Iowa State Fair, and that it was made into a movie? Don't believe me? Well, IMDb doesn't lie. It even won an Oscar for Best Score)

If you'll recall, one of the first things the wife and I did upon arriving in Iowa last year was attend the Iowa State Fair. We were overwhelmed with the selection and quality of deep-fried food on a stick. And the heat/humidity was oppressive. This year, we had a game plan: we eat nothing that doesn't come on a stick.

Generally, the month of August here is hot and humid - people often refer to this as 'Fair Weather' - last year we experienced this, and it was dreadful. Fortunately, this year, the summer has been relatively cool and dry, so we were able to spend 7 hours at the fair, instead of getting tired out after 4 like last year.

The day got off to a great start immediately, on the bus from our parking lot to the Fairgrounds. We got on early, so had seats, but a family of Iowans (or at least Midwesterners) got on towards the end and had to stand and hold on to the straps. They all had on matching shirts and sandals with white socks. Here was their exchange (I'm paraphrasing):

Mom: I feel like I'm in New York City. Except it doesn't smell as bad.
Son: I rode the subway in New York. It was confusing and scary.
Mom: Ya, it's the same way in Boston. I don't know what it is about those subways, but they're terrible.

[Non-Fair related tangent: I was annoyed. First of all, I had on a shirt that said MASSACHUSETTS on it, meaning there's a good chance I resided close to Boston at some point in my life; you probably want to look around before besmirching other people's hometown. Second, nice sandals and white socks; that's a good combo. Third, I've rode the subways in both Boston (often) and New York (once); both were easy to ride, simple to navigate, well-lit, and not scary. Granted, there's usually little or no air-conditioning on those cars in the summer, so there's some smell, but let me tell you this: I'll take that smell over the smell of factory-farm pig stench on a stagnant, humid summer day every time. Fourth: nice matching shirts.

I find this to be one of the more amazing things about people from the middle. A lot of them complain that they are fly-over country, that everyone from the coasts, especially NYC, think they're a bunch of rubes with no culture and live in manure. And they rightly are offended by this. But to then turn around and believe/spread/create rumors about city-folk yourselves is terribly hypocritical. Cities aren't really that scary. The Middle isn't really that backwards. Sometimes, people are stupid. Check that: Most of the time, people are stupid. Back to the Fair.]

Of course, the first thing we did at the Fair was get something to eat: it was 1030 am and we had our game plan to stick to. We headed over to the Iowa Pork Producers and got a Pork Chop on a Stick. In most parts of the world, a pork chop is about 1/2 - 1" thick - a nice size to grill or broil. Here in Iowa, they have a special cut, conveniently called an Iowa Chop, which is usually 2 -3 " inches thick. The stick in this case is nothing more than the bone, but that qualifies to me.

From there, we headed to the Agriculture building to peruse the prettiest vegetable winners,

see the champion pumpkin (another State Fair record),
and of course, the Butter Cow, who this year was accompanied by a Butter Shawn Johnson (and Olympic Gold-medalist) and some other painter guy.

We then stopped for a smoked turkey leg. These things are straight out of the Flintstones. This, along with the cheese curds, pork tenderloin sandwiches, and corn dogs, are one of the staples of the Fair. We weren't impressed: the turkey tasted like ham, which is just weird, and it was really salty. We ate about 1/3 of it and threw out the rest. For us, the giant Turkey leg was 7/8ths hype, 1/8th taste.

On to the Prepared Foods building, where all the canning and cooking competitions were held. We weren't planning on eating anything, but they were giving away free ice cream bars on a stick so we had some of those - a palate cleanser if you will.

Unfortunately, we were somewhat disappointed with the canning displays. I'm not sure if the 500-year flooding event Iowa had earlier this year limited the number of entries, but we were unimpressed. Well, not unimpressed, because there was some pretty stuff, especially the white/green striped canned beans, but underwhelmed. Oh well.

We then circled around to the livestock barns, where we watched a sheep judging competition (kind of boring since they all look alike, although the one woman who was coaxing her sheep along by sticking her hand way far up its butt was pretty interesting), walked down the 'Avenue of Breeds,' where they show off all types of horses, cows, sheep, goats, rabbits, and chicken breeds, and visited with the Biggest Boar (once again, enormously large testicles) winner and his runner-up (in case the winner can't perform his duties). These Boar are so big I don't think they can stand up - two years we've seen them now, and not once has any of them even moved while we were there.

After that, some more deep fried wonderfulness. This time, we went simple and decided on fried, battered cheese curds. Honestly, these may be the best food ever invented. I could eat 10 million of them and never get bored. (Technically, the cheese curds aren't on a stick, but it doesn't matter, we made an exception. Trust me, if you ever have tried a deep fried, battered cheese curd, you understand what I'm talking about)

We then went to something new: the 'This is how a Real Farm Works' Building. In this building, they had arranged for various animals to give birth every day of the Fair. Since we went towards the end of the Fair, most stuff had already been born, like the piglets, cows, and goats (baby goats are very adorable, and pretty funny looking). There were also chickens hatching and baby ostriches, as well as ostrich eggs still incubating. And just for fun, while we were there, they were spaying a dog in front of a live audience; I thought this would be kind of gross and cool to watch, but it was terribly boring.

This building may have been our favorite part of the Fair this year. This entire building was basically saying: "Hey City /Suburban folk. The food you eat, it starts out really cute. Then we kill it and eat it. Deal with it. Its the Circle of Life." We weren't able to witness a live-birth, but we got the point.

As were leaving this awesome new building, we ran into some friends. We sat with them as they snacked on some cheese curds, a deep fried Milky Way, and deep fried pineapple; we also had deep fried pineapple, which of course comes on a stick (after re-reading that last sentence, I think we qualify as Iowans. We saw people we knew at the State Fair and shared fried food on a stick with them. Sounds like Iowa to me)

After that, the day took a bit of a turn for the weird. First, we took part in a popcorn poll, where you got a kernel of corn and put it in a jar for the Presidential candidate you were supporting. As we were going through the line, the guy behind us said '10 out of 10 terrorists support Obama.' We were pretty upset by this comment, and said something to the fine gentleman who said it. I don't really care who you vote for (well, I actually do - Barack the Vote!), but that kind of comment, based on rumor-mongering, really has no place in a real discussion on the merits of our future President. It made us sad.

We then entered the Varied Industries building. Back in the day, this was the place where farmers could check out the newest products for both the farm and home. Now, it's filled with sauna salesmen and political booths. It's pretty weird. There was an Anti-Evolution booth; I'm sure these people mean well, but to argue that humans co-existed with dinosaurs (and possibly even rode them like horses) is a pretty funny concept. I think we actually laughed out loud when we saw this booth. After passing a few anti-abortion booths, we decided it was time to go. It was starting to get hot, and we were tired.

On the way out, Kimberly stopped to get the gigantic-ist ice cream cone I've ever seen from the Iowa Dairy Association; she asked for a double scoop, but somehow ended up with 4 scoops. It was pretty insane.

I took a little detour to see the 'Super Bull,' in this case an albino looking thing, also with gigantic testicles. When I walked in, it was lying on its side. After a few seconds, it stood up with a speed that was very impressive for an animal of its size - me and the kid next to me jumped backwards as he turned towards us, despite the fact he was behind a fence. He also had a nose piercing (a bull ring, if you will), which made him look super scary.
I would not want to be the guy at Hawkeye Breeders that does this job:

And after that, another year at the Fair was over. While we ate a good amount of food, we skipped the pork tenderloin sandwich, which are supposed to be fantastic. And the Beef Sundae (like an ice cream sundae, but not at all like an ice cream sundae). And a Fried Twinkie on a Stick. And, sadly, the corn dogs. but we need to save something new to try for next year.

As for next year, we'll be even more prepared, and we're hoping to become more active participants in the Fair Experience. We're planning on entering Miles into the 'Best House Cat' competition (again, not joking); not to put too much pressure on the little feline, but I'm pretty sure he's going to win. I'm also hoping to submit some sunflower heads into the 'Largest Sunflower Head' competition; after sizing up this year's winners in person, I'm pretty sure we could compete. There's also a handful of 'Prettiest' vegetable competitions I think we could compete and place highly in, it just kind of depends on how early we can get our crops in the ground and get some fruit to ripen.

If I were you, I'd start planning my vacation for the 2009 Iowa State Fair right now. Just hope that we don't have Fair Weather.

[Check out all the pics on Flickr]

Garden Photos

our loot, originally uploaded by pmauro2001.

Kimberly and I have finally gotten around to uploading and renaming all the photos we've taken of our various garden projects.

The photo stream for our current garden, which we are now calling the Somerset Garden, starts at the original planning party and traces all the way through planting and the current state of affairs. It's fairly amazing to compare the old pictures to the current garden, especially the squash pictures - they have grown from seeds to gigantic plants bearing fruit in just over a month. I will always be amazed at how fast things grow.

The first garden we had, which was destroyed by the floods, as well as the plants in our front patio (sunflowers, potatoes, hot pepper), are documented here. Some of the post flood pictures are particularly sad. The sunflowers in the front yard are doing very well, so I'll try to take some new pictures and upload those.

El Moro and the Magic Churro

You should immediately stop what you're doing, board a plane to Mexico City, and head on down to the Churreria El Moro and get yourself a cup of Chocolate Espanyol and 4 churros con canela (basically a cup of melted chocolate and churros covered in cinnamon). You will never view dessert (or even breakfast) the same again.

Kimberly, her mom, and I were hanging out in the Historical Center of Mexico City when we were approached by some Mexican students who wanted to interview us for their english class. After some questions from them, we decided to ask them where to go eat. One of the kids (who, judging from his portly size, has eaten a churro or two in his lifetime) first asked us if we wanted Chinese food. After a laugh on our part, and a quick explanation that we were hoping for something more Mexican in nature, he told us about El Moro. I'm glad we didn't go for Chinese.

Short, middle-aged Mexican waitresses, dressed in mint-green outfits straight from the 60's, buzz around this diner-like, 24-hour a day, beehive of activity. All they serve is churros. Solo for 6 pesos. Or with chocolate, coffee, or milk for about 30-40 pesos. I think that's it.

It was packed every time we went there. And in the 10 days I was in Mexico, 5 of which were in Mexico City, I visited El Moro 4 times. Almost 5 times, but I expressed some self restraint, which is strange for me.

So what is a churro? It's fried dough, dropped from a star-shaped extruder straight into hot oil, then removed, sprinkled with sugar and/or cinnamon, and dropped directly in front of you. I preferred mine dipped into hot chocolate.

[Chocolate will be covered in more detail in a later post. I look forward to that one almost as much as this one]

I had a churro once in Portland, and I was not excited. It was cold and kind of soggy. I was not excited about going to the churreria in Mexico City. As often is the case, I was wrong.

The churros at El Moro were hot and crispy on the outside, and warm and soft on the inside. The first time we went, we had 2 each; the next 2 times, we had at least 4 each (the sugar coma I went into after the first 3 makes the experience a little hazy); the last time I think we held ourselves to only 3 each.

And if you really go all that way just for a churro, you should probably stay a little longer and check out some of the Azten and Mayan ruins. We'll cover those things in later posts, but for now we're concentrating on the important stuff: food.

Surprise, you're eating a churro!

Chapulines

Or as they're known in English, Crickets.

Kimberly ate them in tacos when she was traveling, where the true flavor could be masked by things like salsa and tortilla. I ate them solo when we were in Oaxaca, where the true flavor of the cricket could come through.

Either way, you get legs stuck in your teeth.

I was a little hesitant about eating the little critters. But really, how could I pass up eating such a different and new thing - when was the next time I would be somewhere that crickets were part of the everyday fabric of life and literally everywhere. I'm all about trying everything at least once. And sometimes twice, just to be sure.

As we were walking in one of the markets, a tiny little Mexican woman came up to me with a basket of chapulines and just dropped some in my hand. After a moment of contemplation, I threw them back. They were really salty and kind of spicy. And soggy. I was expecting them to be crispy and crunchy. She wanted to sell me 5 scoops of chapulines for 20 pesos (about $0.20), but I wasn't about to buy a whole bag full. They weren't terrible, but they weren't very good either. Maybe they're better fresh out of the fryer.

[ps after reading that wikipedia article above, specifically the parts about the nematodes and lead content, I kind of wish I had eaten them in a restaurant instead of on the street. Ce le vie!]

[pps I left the pictures really big, so if you click on them, you will get a super-up-close view of the fried little critters - especially that top photo]

A Visual History of Dead Animals...and A Possible Cause of Species Extinction

'Smile, you're at a weird museum!'

[This is the latest installment of our travel log from our summer trip to Italy. We will add new stories sporadically (like once every six months) until we have no stories left. Today's installment: the Natural History Museum at the University in Bologna. This one is a bit long, as I need to introduce us to Northern Italy and provide some back story.]

Italy is very much two very disparate regions connected only by inclusion in the same country borders, much like Civil War-era America. The south (commonly referred to as The Mezzogiorno, and generally considered the area south of Rome) is mainly agrarian; the north (north of Rome, oddly) is mainly industrial, with internationally famous brands such as Fiat and Ferrari headquartered there, and generally has the higher concentration of wealth. Due to the extreme heat in the south during the summer (and our desire to limit the amount of chaos in our lives; for an example of chaos, see this old story), we headed north for most of our trip.

We honestly didn't know much about most northern Italian cities, except Milan, where I have a cousin. I knew that Milan is a world-class city, with a famous Opera, as well as a center of world fashion and finance. I knew that the highest Italian soccer league (Serie A) is generally dominated by northern Italian teams, since these cities have a higher concentration of wealth and can therefore afford better players. And I knew there were major tourist cities, such as Venice and Florence, that brought more wealth to the region.

Other than that, most of the cities I knew of were for food or sports reasons reasons: Genoa, for its various salami; Parma for its hams (prosciutto) and cheeses (parmigiana); Bologna, for bologna (maybe?) and bolognese-style pasta sauce; Modena, for its balsamic vinegar; Turin, for Juventus, their soccer team, and home of Fiat.

Early in our trip, we made a quick list of cities we'd like to visit and did a quick read through in our travel guide to help us refine the list. One city that made the list was Bologna, which is home to the oldest continually-operating University in the world. We figured that a college town has to be pretty cool right? Well, when we would tell native Italians that our next stop was going to be Bologna, they would inevitably ask, 'Why?' (this happened at least 3 times I can distinctly remember, and probably closer to 10).

I'm not sure if it was lingering side-effects from my sickness in Lucca (where we had just come from) or the doubts planted by all the 'Why would you go to Bologna?" statements, but our first impression was not good. We had heard/read that the north is industrial, but we weren't really prepared for a capital C City. In Italy, all the tourist cities you visit are kind of quaint and quiet: Florence, Venice, Lucca, Assisi; even Rome doesn't feel like a City to some extent. But Bologna is a City: wide streets with lots of traffic, densely laid out, tall buildings, sketchy characters, alleys, trash on the streets, etc. When we walked out of the train station, I think we were shell-shocked.

After we settled in to our really-nice-but-run-by-some-kind-of-sketchy-people hotel, we started to wander around the city and found that it wasn't actually so unlike the rest of Italy as we initially feared. (Tangent: supposedly, Bruno Magli, the shoes guy, lived in the same building as our hotel and he paid some old woman to stand in the lobby and visually inspect, and yell at, everyone who came and went. If you know anything about old Italian women, you'll realize this may be the greatest form of security available). Of course, we found some excellent food, wine, and ice cream in the city, as well as the best falafel/gyro place we ate at in Italy. We were able to walk all over without any problems. We also found a cool photo exhibit on Gypsies (or Roma), watched a movie in Italian in the main square, saw some monuments to the Italian resistance during WWII, and found a phallic statue of Neptune (all of which I will hope to expand on at some other time - this intro is already too long and I haven't even gotten to the main point yet).

But the main attraction of Bologna was the University and its museums. You have to figure if an institution has been around for almost 1000 years, it has had to have seen some cool stuff, including the 'discovery' of the 'New World' and colonialism.

As we wandered around the University, we came across this place, which in retrospect, is one of my favorite places in all of Italy that we went to:

I believe this says something like:
The University of Studying
Museum of Zoology, Comparative Anatomy,
and Anthropology.
But you probably already figured that out.

The museum wasn't in our guide book, and we really had no idea what to expect. But Kimberly likes animals and nature, and I'm always up for an adventure, so we went in. Possibly the best decision we made all trip.

This place was both a museum and a department building for the University. But, it was empty - the offices, the museum, everywhere - and unlocked. I could have walked out of that place with a jar full of dead snakes,

I think that one in the front is trying to make a break for it.

a rhinoceros head (honestly, I have no idea what that is the skull of. A saber-tooth tiger? A Woolly Mammoth? Any help?),

and an elephant leg waste basket (in retrospect, I wish I had taken this, but it probably would have caused quite the stir at customs).

Loosely translated this sign reads 'Don't put trash in the Elephant leg.'
Apparently they don't teach reading at the University of Bologna, as the leg was full of trash.

When we first walked in, we just noticed some stuffed heads on the wall, kind of like a hunting lodge. Then we saw a whole wall of heads of various African game animals.

So well ordered and presented. But could someone dust them, please?

Then we started wandering, turned a corner, and found this:

This picture does no justice to how many cases of animals there actually were at this place.

Rows and rows and rows of animals, stuffed or preserved. And it looked like it hadn't been well-maintained.

Some animals looked like they were still decomposing.

Usually, the shell is attached to the turtle.

Some were actually decomposing, because their preserving fluids had evaporated.

This possum (opossum?) has definitely seen better days.
Someone might want to top off that embalming fluid.

There were extinct animals.

I originally thought this was a dodo, but looking at it again, it looks like a big eagle. I don't know.

Animals on the verge of extinction.

Kiwis,and most other small, flightless birds, are rare in the wild in New Zealand because of the introduction of possums and cats to the islands. And the Zoological Museum of Bologna.

Imaginary half-and-half animals.

I think they were trying to make a point about evolution with these guys, but still, kind of strange.

Re-enactments of the circle of life.

I wonder if they were found this way in the wild. That would be cool.

Weird interpretations of life in the wild.

I'm not a biologist, but I'm pretty sure boars and seals don't kiss/snuggle in the wild.
Nor, do I believe, they share the same habitat.

An ostrich egg.

That's big.

What appears to be a Unicorn corn.

A scientist may say narwhal horn, but I say Unicorn horn.
And some assorted stuffed heads.

Animals we ate on our travels.

Wild boar (or cinghale, in Italian, I think) is very tasty in sauces and in salami.

Bambi and his family.

The Lion King and his family.

These lions have no back halves. They end at that wall.

Hedwig.

Stupid Death Eaters

And this cabinet full of weird, random horns, stuffed heads, and other stuff.

In all, I think we took over 100 pictures in about an hour and a half (I've put most of them on Flickr, but tried to get rid of the ones that were really out of focus or otherwise not good). We were totally infatuated with this place and started referring to it as the Extinction Museum. In fact, we went back the next day because we didn't believe it really existed.And the really crazy thing: this wasn't even the weirdest place we found in Bologna (looking back, its actually not as weird as it was when we were there). But that's another story for another day.

[Photos here on Flickr, and here in slideshow format]