fall harvest

friday, october 30th, 2009

no, I 'm talking about the local farm food harvests; rather I'm referring to specifically a terrible tomato and eggplant harvest my GC&N. gardens. Truly the worst, in 19yrs.

So, it results in me buying local veggies & fruit, locally; always the best, IMO. Over the Winter, I'll occasionally buy produce from Florida or California, but NEVER Mexico. I'm scouting out the selection of Butternut Squash in the various supermarkets, and will begin buying some 5-7lb squash this week to process.

Here's my award-winning recipe for Butternut Squash Bisque Soup:

• Cut butternut squash lengthwise, into halves. Remove stem tops, internal seeds and strings.

• Slather EVOO (extra virgin olive oil) onto inside meat and outside shell, of the squash.

• Line a baking pan with heavy-duty aluminum foil, shiny side up.

• Roast at 400 degrees, for 40 minutes. Let cool for 10-15 minutes.

• Scoop-out all roasted squash meat. Put into large sauce pan. Add either chicken broth or Half & Half®.

• Add spices: fresh-grated Nutmeg and Cinnamon Stick.

• Puree with *immersion blender* or in food processor, until smooth, adding more both or dairy product as you go.

• Serve with dollop of sour cream, and diced chives.

• Or, if you're storing the mixture (deep-freeze) for future usage, use a plastic Saran® Wrap layer to press air-out of the BSB mix, to keep ice crystals from forming, and freeze immediately. Simply thaw and reheat, and it'll still taste like you just made it the night before.

• This mixture will easily store frozen, for 2-3yrs, provided you've pressed the Saran® Wrap flat against it, and eliminated all air pockets. I have 15-20lbs, in 1/2 gallon Tupperware® tubs in my garage's 10 CuFt Frigidaire® Top-Loading Freezer.

Combine with some crusty, French bread, a salad and a glass of Cabernet, and you've got an entire meal. Enjoy.

Around The Garden Center™.

Last Friday, I closed down at 3:45pm, due to the rain, and went home. I got a call from Fishel Automotive (nay Chrysler-Jeep, anymore), that my 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee 'Laredo' was ready. Since they aren't a Jeep dealer anymore, it took from Oct 13th to Oct 23rd, just to get the parts. And a mere two days to replace 12 hydraulic lifters and a cracked piston. Meanwhile, I have *truly shitty* 2009 Ford Focus rental at $252/ week, from Enterprise RAC at Apple Ford, a mile south of Fishel.

On Saturday, I drove to Fishel Automotive, parked the rental, paid the $2,089.01 bill for my Jeep and drove back to work. Mmmmm, like having a "old friend come home, again". I think we had 2 customers on Saturday. Retail sales was miserable. The hard rains started around 1pm, and I closed-down at 3:15pm, sent everyone one, and spent the after working on Windows 7 dual-boot w/ Win XP, on my home machine. The movies for Saturday on FX-TV, AMC-TV, History Channel and Discovery Channel were all abject drech, so I avoided them, and retired early. I'd been up from 5pm until 2am watching 'Alien', 'Alien 2', 'Alien 3', 'Aliens', 'Alien Resurrection', and was well-burnt-out from all those flicks.

I slept-in Sunday until 9:30am, fed & watered the cats, and left for work at 10:15am. Although sunny and crisp outside — 54°F/ 45°F windchill — we weren't overly busy, but still had a number of 'first-time' buyers through the place. We still have 7 or 8 landscape and maintenance jobs to do, and another one came in on Saturday, but peoples' thoughts are now turning to "what's ahead for the Winter months?", in terms of home heating costs. With PA state control caps coming off both gas and electric, they're poised to go up 30-80% each. I'm also trying to figure out how to reduce both costs here at the GC&N Complex.

FX-TV had a good movie — "Van Helsing" — on Sunday evening, from 6-8pm, and I love well-made horror flicks. "The Shining" (???) , "Werewolves, The Dark Survivors" (Animal Planet), and more.

Monday was another slow retail day, but my LSCP Crew has 7-8 jobs remaining, before we 'finish-out the season'. I've never seen so many small jobs come in during October; it's quite amazing. Usually, we're winding-down the work by now, and beginning to put nursery stock away in the 6 massive quonset GHs, for storage. But this year, it seems as though far too people have waiting until "the last minute", and are wanting their work done, before Winter sets-in.

Tuesday was a cold, rainy day, but the LSCP crew finished mulching on the job they started yesterday, and then quit for the day. Dad & I packed-it-up around 3pm; no point in wasting LPG and electricity just sitting around. I did get two new LSCP estimates done and mailed, and will do the day's LSCP billing when I get back in on Thursday, since I'm taking Wednesday off. We're now closed on Sundays, but will continue the Fall 25% Off Sale through early November, or until we "lose the weather".

My friend, Jeff stopped by at 5:30pm on Tuesday, and did a thorough analysis of the Condo Unit's hardware, in order to run Win-7 optimally. Looks like I'm in for >$1,000 to make Win-7 work properly. The Office Unit is next, for analysis & hardware upgrade. (((sigh)))

I took Wednesday off, since everyone else had appointments or something, and slept-in until 1pm. I'd been up 'til 2am watching the entire "Halloween" series of 4 movies on the AMC-TV channel, on my computer's CATV-TV card. Won't be doing that again, anytime soon.

Sister Becky arrived on Thursday, and it was good to see her again; last time she was here was on the April 18th Open House. She looks great!, as she's lost 40-50lbs. Wish I could drop that much unneeded weight, and get back down to my normal 175-180lbs.

I've been saying for the past two months that "it's going to be an early Winter", and it looks as though I'll be right on that prediction. Colorado, Wyoming & parts of Utah and Nebraska got hammered with a blizzard on Wednesday; 28"+ worth of snow. I just found out that more people are calling in to get landscape work done, this late in the year. When the snows start hitting Iowa and Illinois, and begin moving eastward, we'll immediately stop landscaping and begin putting away everything in the nursery complex GHs, before we get caught in the snow/ice/cold, unprepared. A number of those "late jobs" will have to be put-off until Spring.

In less than 10 days, gas prices at the pump, have climbed 30-35¢/gal! Unleaded Regular (87oct) is now at $2.75, Unleaded Premium (89oct) is now at $2.85/gal, and Unleaded Super Premium (92oct) is at $3.05/gal, with Diesel also climbing to $2.75/gal.

Things Which Make Your Head Explode™.

www.BlackCareers.com? That sound a wee bit racist to you? Does to me. $100 says that www.WhiteCareers.com would be shut-down in a heartbeat by the "race pimps" Sharpton, Jackson, EEOC etc.

At last count, there are 32-34 "czars" of something, in the corrupt, criminal Obama thugocracy. But no "union pay czars". Why not? Simply because the unions ***own*** Obama's incompetent nigga ass.

Cher Bono's "daughter", Chastity, was a fat lesbo bull-dyke, who underwent "gender reassignment surgery", and has turned into this ugly, fat-pig creature. Just in time for Halloween. M-u-t-i-l-a-t-i-o-n, anyone?

Fonts For You™.

Many Journal entries are best viewed in the Charrington Roughened and the Orlando typefaces. You may already have Century Gothic on your Windows-XP machine, and that's almost always used for the body copy or subheads, so grab it, if you don't already have it; you're reading it now. They're free from my website. Grab 'em! Save them to your HD, and install to C:/Windows/Fonts (folder), thru your WIN XP Control Panel > Fonts > File > Install New Font. Simple stuff; just takes a few minutes.

Here are a few others, which my Journal will be written in during the coming weeks: Papyrus and Acoustic Bass, and Caesar Regular and Carleton and Charrington Strewn and Catherine. Get and install them, and see how much nicer these pages are to view and read. Plus, they add to your repertoire of available fonts in MS-Word, as WIN-XP System Fonts, so you can use them for your daily documents etc.

The Global Warming Money Pit™.

Have you seen this video: "BBC: The Great Global Warming Swindle"? It was outright-banned from leftist, hate-filled, dirtbag lowlife scumbags, Google.com's and YouTube.com's websites, by the mentally-ill liberals, left-wing, global warming idiot wackos, but I've preserved it, for posterity, aka you, me and *ours*. Watch, be informed and download it for others to see. It's on my corporate server, and will stay there, BTW.

Here's everything you need to know about Global Warming, and why it's a good thing.

The "Greenhouse Effect" is a natural and valuable phenomenon, without which, the planet would be uninhabitable. Global Warming, at least in recent times, is real. CO2 is not a significant greenhouse gas; 95% of the contribution is due to Water Vapor. Man's contribution to Greenhouse Gasses is relatively insignificant. We didn't cause the recent Global Warming and we cannot stop it. Solar Activity appears to be the principal driver for Climate Change. O2 is a useful trace gas in the atmosphere, and the planet would actually benefit by having more, not less of it, because it is not a driver for Global Warming and would enrich our vegetation, yielding better crops to feed the expanding population. CO2 is not causing global warming, in fact, CO2 is lagging temperature change in all reliable datasets. The cart is not pulling the donkey. Wake-up, folks.

Here's a listing of The Best Global Warming Videos on the Internet.

Hey, fat, shit-for-brains, bloated, liar, huckster, fraud, criminal, charlatan, scumbag, loser, disgraced ex-VP AlGoreBore (LIAR-TN), is back using $300 million of OPM (Other Peoples' Money) to promote his Global Warming Bullshit, after the worst Winter in over 100 years. Welcome back, fatso huckster asswipe, AlGoreBore!

CO2 bad? No; CO2 is good, and we need more of it, or we're in for a very cold period, very soon. Here are the facts about CO2.

Roger Revelle of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Harvard University and University of California San Diego, spits on the lying scumbag, AlGoreBore. My, my, oh my. (((snicker))) No, there's no consensus on Global-bullshit Warming, other than it's a LIE! Just ask Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT, Richard S. Lindzen; he's eminently-qualified to call AlGoreBoreAsshole, a LIAR! As I am.

There's another "ice age" coming, not the AlGoreBoreLiar 'Glo-bull warming' crap.

Larsen B Ice Shelf in Antarctica collapses in 2002 = Glo-bullshit Warming? Doubt it.

Read this Glo-bullshit Warming idiocy. Go ahead; I'll wait.

AlGoreBore's "hypocrisy"? See it right here!

You need to watch this 30 minute film; it's an eye-opener if you think that we're running out of crude oil, and that America has no reserves. We have more oil and natural gas in Alaska alone, than all the rest of the world's known reserves, COMBINED! Grab an adult beverage, and watch it.

Better get out your Winter coats, 'snuggies', wool socks and snow shovels, as it seems we've got an 80-year "Little Ice Age", on the way. Yawn; no biggie.

AlGoreBore's "Glo-bull Warming Bullshit" has spawned so-called 'cottage industries' around the world, worth hundreds of millions and probably billions of dollars, for green corporation validation, carbon credits, foundation & university climate studies, grants and a host of other BS-related crap to his lies and garbage. Global warming competes with cancer and competes with AIDS for a finite amount of money. This year's natural resurgence will surely see the global warmists, led by celebrity warmist, Gore, compete viscously for those US Taxpayers' hard-earned dollars. And I'm betting that the really important disease, cancer, loses to Glo-bullshit Warming and AIDS. Dammit.

F*ck all the "Glo-bullshit Warming Alarmists"! I say, FUCK-THEM-UP, and cleanse the planet, if they try to physically-intimidate and hurt anyone! I will; count on it! "Get in my face", assholes, and that'll be your last day on this Earth! If there are any "dissenting scientists" out there, who need protection, just get in-touch with me, and I'll guard you & yours. You can count upon that, folks!

Have you taken "The Global Warming Test"? If you have a sentient, functioning brain, and a simple knowledge of "the facts", you'll easily get a 10-of-10, as I did. Go ahead, and give it a try!

Read this article and pick-out "The WWF's Big Lie". If you chose this paragraph — "Summer sea ice is now forecasted to completely disappear in the summer months sometime between 2013 and 2040 — something which hasn't happened for over a million years." — you'd be right. There isn't, and never has been and ice on the earth dated at a million years old, and who the hell was around back then to begin recording it? The lying sacks-of-shit at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) are typical lowlife, left-wing wacko scumbags, in-bed with the "Glo-Bull Warming" Crap, of asshole AlGoreBore and his phony, money-making scam. The oldest, and not reliably-dated ice cores are >160,000 years, and those are shaky in fact, at best. So where did the lying WWF pull the million year crap from? Their asses, of course!

Shit-for-brains, mentally-ill, fat, bloated liar, AlGoreBore's (LOWLIFE-TN) "ally", in NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by AlGoreBore's chief scientific ally/"asshole-homo/butt-buddy"— Dr James "Moron-Cretin-Asshole" Hansen (DIRTBAG-NASA) — and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that "last month was the hottest October on record". Total, factual bullshit and lies. This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years. So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerized temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-skeptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running. Read this article, and find out why both lying, corrupt, criminal, subhuman liberal idiots, GoreBore & Hansen, should be stood against a wall, and shot, IMO. In fact, the pathetically-socialist, left-wing UK, has just begun to awaken to what the "Climate Change Bill" will do to destroy their nation, or what's left of it. IMO, it's probably too late now to save the UK, but at least some of the more Conservative people over there, will at least get the chance to flee to America (or elsewhere), before we also "go down the proverbial dumper", as they've already obviously done. Buh-bye, UK!

-27°F in Montana! Denver had -16°F! Hey, AlGoreBore, you ignorant, fat, bloated, mentally-ill, scamming liberal asshole: FUCK YOU, YOU LYING, TWO-BIT DIRTBAG, LOWLIFE PIECE-OF-SHITSCUMBAG!

Some People Just Need Killing™.

It's not my intention to be the judge here — that's God's "job" — but rather to "hasten the meeting" so that He can send the following subhuman filth to the "Fires of Hell", "River or Lake of Sulphur", or whatever He deems appropriate. I'd gladly/happily volunteer, at no cost to any of my Hard-Working, Fellow US Taxpayers, to gladly/gleefully/happily headshoot these murderous, lowlife dirtbags of all stripes — their skin-color doesn't matter to me, at all — and rid American Society's innocents (especially our precious children and the frail, defenseless elderly) of them, once-and-for-all. And yes, I'd rather see one innocent man convicted and executed, than 10 murderers/robbers/child rapists-murderers freed, to rob, rape and murder again. Hey; call me an "Old Fashioned Conservative"! Too harsh? Nah. Just RIGHT!

Finally, 7 years after killing all those people in the DC-Virginia-Maryland area, subhuman murderous muslim filth sniper, John Allen Muhammad, will die next week by lethal injection, in Virginia. Seven f•cking years taxpayers paid to keep this piece of pigshit alive! He should have been headshot with my .45cal Kimber 1911, immediately after conviction. For free! I wouldn't have charged for travel expenses or the bullet, dammit.

When the law doesn't work because it's corrupted, I believe vigilante justice is called for, as is happening now in Mexico. I applaud the vigilantes in their "work" to clean-up Mexico.

Walt Disney's Apartment.

Were you aware that Walt Disney had a furnished apartment on Disneyland's Main Street? I can't decide if that's perfectly reasonable or maybe a little strange. The Orange County Register presents this multimedia tour of Walt's crib hosted by Disney historian Tim O'Day. I am, however, very confident in my disapproval of the décor: lots of tassels and crushed red velvet. It looks like either a cozy, grandmotherly place or a 19th-century den of iniquity. You're invited to click on various items in the apartment to hear Mr. O'Day go into detail on objects like the Victrola and the rotary phone. I especially liked the grilled cheese maker in the kitchenette.

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