The Empty Cabinets of my Mind

Lamb Chops from Good Chops

Bone in, 4 hours at 135° F in sous vide water bath.  I normally would have used my Neovide 100 bagless and waterless sous vide cooker for these, but I put them into the water bath that I was using to cook a couple pounds of bacon. I like to precook bacon for up to 12 hours and drain off the fat to use separately.

All of the meat I buy from Good Chops comes in sous vide ready packaging, which is very convenient.

After refrigerating the precooked lamb cops overnight I browned them for a few minutes on each side in the Crownful countertop air fryer.  Tender and tasty.

 

Update on My Quad Growing System

Necessity forced me to invent a flexible and comfortable modular system for growing flowers and vegetables in areas where standard gardening is impractical and/or prohibited.

My system is based on stacking inexpensive waste bins from the dollar store.   

 

More on my gardening blog.

Yellow Bird of Paradise Seedling

 

 

Today

Today I added 2 more "can't live without" apps to my Android phones. They work with MessagEase and the Niagara launcher.

Both are from "fosser coding." 

Panels is a sidebar launcher that can be intuitively customized, and Text Tracker automatically extracts useful information from screen grabs and sends it in a notification from which you can copy or process it in apps that support text input.  Brilliant!  

Something Ate the Mums

Probably my Nemesis 🐿️ JJ the rambunctious ground squirrel.  We call him JJ because that is the code name for the macro's icon on my MessagEase keyboard. The reason he gets a name is because this particular squirrel has a lot of attitude.  It is easy to tell him apart from all the others.

I am grateful for the telephoto lens on my phone.

 

In Growing Zone 8 These are my New Best Friends

 

I keep reading that Violas, which are cold-hardy, need to be brought indoors to overwinter.  That is backwards in my mild climate where 104°F is not unusual in the summer and we seldom get hard freezes.   

I plan to try growing them outdoors all winter, but they will need shelter from the blazing sun in July and August.  

Stackable Mason Jars are my New Fave for Sous Vide

I have been slicing pork chops into strips and cooking them in 16 oz mason jars in my Wancle Precision Cooker.  So good, and clean-up is a breeze, especially in the new stackable jars which are wide at the top and narrow at the bottom.  

 

I put spices, salsa, chopped onion, peppers, and a little vegetable stock in the bottom and cover the jar with a leak-proof plastic lid.  

 

My preferred temperature is 140°F which is conveniently the same as poached eggs. Perfect for soft breakfast tacos.  These can be made ahead and reheated 15 minutes in the same container. 

 

 

 

I Should Change the Name of this Blog

It is time for me to install roll-out drawers in yet another home, but this is not an ordinary home, it is my "Forever Home."  Modest, but it has a view and a yard and a fence all the way around to keep the neighborhood dogs at bay.

I had not yet met some of the people I love today when I started this blog.  

 

Nothing in my life is empty any more.  Some of the things that fill my life with joy today had not been invented yet when I started this blog.    

 

One such thing is the waterless and bagless sous vide cooker.  It is such a life-changing invention that I (who like to eat, but had always loathed and detested cooking) cannot help blogging about it.  

 

So I am changing the name of my gardening blog to Growing in Water and Cooking in Air.

 

 

A Wonderful Day Trip

Who would have thought It's chunk of rock could just fall off this huge monument.   If you like to travel on bumpy dirt roads, going to see Giant Rock near Landers, California makes a nice day trip.  For the less intrepid, however, the roads to the Integratron are paved.

 

 

 

This Keypad is Worth Looking Into

MessagEase is a revolutionary keyboard that I am learning to love because it helps me multitask on my smartphones and tablets.

Here is a screengrab showing me using it to compose this post.

Please note typo on screen grab is not repeated in post.  Correct spelling is MessagEase.

 

It is easier to see, easier to navigate, faster,  flexible, can use my stylus (Note8, Note9, S7+, Bamboo?) and it has MACROS.

There is a steep learning curve, but for me very much worth it, and they have a seperate app with fun learning games to get new users up to speed and guage our progress.

Nuts About Smoothie Bowl Maker

I have been using my new Ninja Smoothie Bowl Maker just about non-stop ever since Iot it.  My favorite is chocolate cherry made with frozen bing cherries, heavy cream and dark chocate, but I also blend frozen peas in it for a fresh from the garden taste.

 

Some people do not approve of eating frozen peas raw, but I eat raw peas fresh out of the garden whenever I can get some, so why not?  I never missed a day due to illness in 12 years of public school and ate raw eggs, too, ever since childhood. Lately I see more and more people stating that there is no problem with eating raw eggs although for a long time the practice was shunned.  Emma Morano, however, lived past 117 years of age and attributed her longevity to eating 3 raw eggs every day.  Interestingly, to me at least, she worked in a Jute factory for some time.  

Jute is one of my favorite plants to grow, and I blog about it on my other blog called Ann's Air Gardens.

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