A killing frost, and a close call

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It’s as though March and April got reversed this year. March was obscenely warm. April has been dangerously cold. The warmth of March teased all the plant life into venturing out, so that April’s frosts could bite. The fig trees had put out leaves, and all those leaves were killed. With luck, the fig trees’ stems didn’t freeze, and there will be new leaves.

Otherwise, we seem to have survived what probably will be the last frost of Spring 2016. The peach trees and pear trees already had bloomed and set fruit. They seem to be unharmed. The apple trees are in the late stages of blooming, but they seem to have survived just fine. Once again, I am reminded of the risks involved in exotic species (such as figs). Whereas the tried, true, and experienced local species pretty much know what they’re doing. Some people covered their lilacs. I trusted my lilac to know what it was doing, and luckily it seems fine.

The apple trees are looking great this year. The trees had their adolescent pruning two winters ago. That really reduced the number of bloom buds in the two subsequent springs. But this year the apple trees are looking nicely balanced, with lots of bloom buds. There will be fruit in the orchard this year, though the squirrels and raccoons are likely to get more of it than I do. Not until the trees produce more than the wildlife can eat is an orchard truly productive.

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Above, a young pear.

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Above, a young peach.

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As for the chickens, they don’t mind the cold. They actually seem to do better in winter than in summer. Nothing is happier than a chicken — a chicken, at least, with freedom — in the spring.

What’s next in North Carolina?

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North Carolina’s Republican governor, Pat McCrory, worked for Duke Energy for 28 years before he became governor. In 2014 alone, Duke Energy donated $3 million to the Republican Governor’s Association. Last year, McCrory had a fancy dinner at the governor’s mansion for the Duke Energy CEO and other Duke Energy executives.

So it surprised no one when political operatives at North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality overrode the recommendations of the department’s staff and cut some sweet deals with Duke Energy on coal ash cleanup, a plan that would save Duke Energy millions of dollars while leaving millions of tons of coal ash where it is.

It was six years ago that right-wing Republicans got control of North Carolina’s legislature. Two years later, McCrory was elected. All across the state, including rural, Republican-dominated places such as Stokes County, people are mobilizing to reverse this right-wing takeover. These photos were taken last week at a hearing by the Department of Environmental Quality on the plan for coal ash cleanup at Duke Energy’s Belews Creek Steam Station. Duke Energy wants to make some tweaks that would classify Belews Creek as a low-priority coal ash site.

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Low-cost microscope photography

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Those of you who aren’t retired must think that I have entirely too much time on my hands. So please pardon me for another nerd post. And do keep in mind the importance of always doing and learning new things for as long as we’re living.

My interest in microscopy is closely related to my interest in photography. It’s a new way to see things and a new way to photograph things. When my Nikon Model S microscope was made back in the 1970s, doing photography through a microscope was a pretty expensive operation. These days you can do a passably good job of it with a smart phone and a $14 bracket device that holds the smart phone’s camera lens over the microscope’s eyepiece.

And though my microscope is equipped only for viewing semi-transparent objects with light that passes up from below and through the specimen, I’ve figured out that I can get remarkably good images by aiming a light source down at the object from above. I’ll do more of this kind of photography as I have time. Tiny flowers, which are plentiful this time of year, look great under a microscope. I’ll have some photos of those in the coming weeks. The three-dimensional nature of objects such as flowers presents a bit of a problem in microscopy, because a microscope’s depth of field is very tiny. That is, only a part of a specimen can be in focus at a time. But I’m guessing that the old-fashioned pressing of flowers inside a book, protected by parchment paper, would flatten the flower, making focusing much easier while also preserving much of the color and detail of the flower.

The device that attaches the smart phone to the microscope also will work with a telescope. I have a telescope. So naturally I’ll have to see what kind of photos I can get through the telescope as well. Every photographer wants pictures of an enormous moon rising behind a landscape. To get the moon to be truly, unnaturally, dramatically huge, you need a really long lens — or a telescope. I’ll see what I can do.

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Homemade seitan

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In the 1970s, I just called it gluten globules. These days we call it by a fancier name — seitan. The fancy name makes it sound hard to make, but nothing could be easier. It’s a fantastic and versatile meat substitute.

In the 1970s, I actually isolated the gluten by washing the starch out of a dough made from unbleached flour under running water. That’s for the birds. These days, you just start with gluten flour.

You’ll find recipes for seitan all over the Internet. It’s just a dough made of gluten, cut with other ingredients that tenderize it (such as chickpea flour) and seasonings. Then you shape it and pre-cook it by simmering it in water or steaming it. Then you fry it!

Seitan made from only gluten would be very rubbery. By adding chickpea flour, soy flour, barley flour, or brewer’s yeast (or all or some of those), plus some olive oil, the seitan becomes tender. You can adjust the “bite” of the seitan by varying the proportions. You can season it as a chicken analog, a pork analog, a beef analog, a sausage analog, or no analog at all. Ingredients to consider include tomato paste to redden it, soy sauce to darken it, Worcestershire sauce, barbecue sauce, garlic powder, curry seasonings — let your imagination be your guide. I have found that seitan steams beautifully in the Cuisinart steam oven.

I’ve written here before about my deep suspicion of the anti-gluten movement. Sure, a small percentage of the population truly have a gluten problem. But speaking strictly for myself, my Celtic genetics love gluten, and you’d have to kill me to make me give it up. Seitan is one of the best high-protein, low-carb, earth-friendly proteins I know of.

I’ve been on my low-carb repentance diet for about a week now. Technically, the roasted carrots are a no-no. But I skipped breakfast to earn the carrots. Over a period of three years, I’ve let my ideal weight creep up by five pounds. It’s no carbs for me until the five pounds are gone. But I’m not going hungry. It’s really very true that, on a low-carb diet, you really don’t get very hungry.

Patrick: the ruin of Ireland

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Dingle harbor, County Kerry. The Dingle Peninsula is my favorite place in Ireland.

Today is St. Patrick’s day. I’m not celebrating. Not everyone holds the view that Patrick was the best thing that ever happened to Ireland.

A seventh-century biography of Patrick by a Christian monk, Muirchú moccu Machtheni, records a Druid prophesy about the man who will start the destruction of the native culture of Ireland:

Across the sea will come Adze-head,
crazed in the head,
his cloak with hole for the head,
his stick bent in the head.

He will chant impiety
from a table in the front of his house;
all his people will answer:
‘Amen, Amen.’

The people of Ireland did not welcome Patrick and the new religion with flowers in the streets. Mostly they disliked the new religion, but they did not yet see the danger. Their tolerance weakened their resistance.

Here are some excerpts on this period in history from Early Medieval Ireland: 400-1200 by Daibhi O Croinin, published by Routledge in 1995:

There is no reason to doubt that in Ireland, as in every other country where Christianity was introduced, zealots took to the high-roads and criss-crossed the countryside smashing the symbols of the rival religion and looting its temples. ‘There is no such thing as robbery for those who truly possess Christ’. … Much of what once existed as the outward and visible expression of pre-Christian religious beliefs in Ireland has doubtless been disfigured or completely destroyed, perhaps on occasion absorbed so successfully into the triumphant religion as to be unrecognizable to us now. …

The stark reality of the new religion, with its single god who destroyed all others, given to outbursts of divine wrath and prone to vengeance and punishment, may very well have seemed impious to a people more used to a variety of deities and to the toleration of many cults.

It may well have been [their] tolerance of the new Christian religion, rather than any inherent weakness, that brought about the destruction of the pre-Christian Irish cults. Patrick, after all, reported how the brehons allowed him to carry his Christian message wherever he wished. …

There is no evidence to suggest (and no particular reason to believe) that Christianity offered a richer spiritual experience than the native cults. … Quite the contrary, the frequency with which Christian writers condemn the druids and their ways suggests that Christianity had still to establish complete control even in the seventh century and beyond. … We have no satisfactory way of knowing when Christianity became respectable; we only know that in Patrick’s time it clearly still was not.

The Brehons, by the way, were the gatekeepers of the old Irish system of law, the Brehon law, which was so popular with the people that it persisted for hundreds of years after Patrick, into the 17th Century.

As for the open-minded tolerance of the old religions vs. the violent intolerance of Rome’s religion, this is a story that we hear over and over in the history of the old cultures. Tolerant cultures appear to be extremely vulnerable to intolerant ones.

I don’t celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. I mourn.

Frittata

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Continuing in low-carb mode, the daily question is: How do I use all these eggs that the chickens are laying and also keep carbs down. Frittatas (frittati?) quickly come up on the list.

This frittata is made with artichoke hearts, Trader Joe’s fake sausage, some grated gouda cheese, and a teensy bit of potato. It’s garnished with yard onions snipped on the way back from the chicken house with the eggs.

I think that a well-seasoned iron skillet works best for frittatas. The frittata may be done before the top browns, so be ready to throw on a little extra cheese and hit the top of the frittata with the broiler for a few minutes. Beat a little cream into the eggs to make everything nice and fluffy. Don’t even think of using milk! The frittata should rise a bit in the oven, particularly around the sides of the skillet.

Soon there will be asparagus frittati.

Repent!

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Barley, pea, and chickpea curry with raw walnuts and seared cabbage

The seasons are changing. Spring is scampering in on little rabbit’s feet. Soon the snakes will be stealing eggs again. The apple trees are blooming. The chickens are laying. The birds are singing. It’s time to repent for the sins of winter comfort foods — breads, pot pies, dumplings, and even sweets — and get the carbs down.

For now, at least, I’m going spicy. Walnuts and barley and legumes — or so I’m resolved — need to dominate for a while. Eggs are abundant. So there ought to be omelets. There ought to be eggs for breakfast — but no biscuits! A couple of days ago I had deviled eggs for breakfast, with sliced avocado. That worked.

I figure that my winter sins compel me to lose four or five pounds as penance. I’m hoping that I can do that by forsaking comfort carbs for a while.

For curries, I’ve learned to keep not only curry powder and other curry spices in the kitchen, but also pastes such as Thai red curry paste and harissa paste, which is an African pepper paste. I mix them up until I get the color I want. Spices know no national boundaries. Curries also are perfect for using your coconut oil.

And remember, anything rice can do, barley can do better. It’s amazing that such a satisfying food has such a low glycemic index — 25 or 28. Even risotto is no carb crime if you use barley. I’m not even all that fond of rice. Pearled barley — especially when mixed with good spices, healthy fats, and a legume such as chickpeas — is as meaty as hamburger. The Roman gladiators, after all, were called “barley eaters.” Plus, I suspect that rice is all too often an ecological crime. It can be efficiently grown only where there is naturally lots of water, and California is not that place.

No more carb crimes here until I’ve done my spring penance.