The Empty Cabinets of my Mind

Palm Desert in the Winter

This rest area is about six miles east of the Morongo Resort Casino on HIghway 10 between Palm Springs and Banning.  For me it is always a happy site as when I see it I know I am only about 5 minutes away from an In-N-Out Burger!

If I have to miss that one, there is another just a few miles further east in Beaumont. 

Here are some shots from the other side of the mountain.

I wanted to see if the ChargePoint EV in Palm Desert really had a fast charge for free.  It was a good excuse to drive my peppy little Hyndai Kona EV over the mountain. 

It was too late to attempt going back the way I came, not on a snowy night.  The day started out sunny and bright, but storm clouds gathered here and there over my descent.  At one point on the way down the sky was completely overcast, but when I got into town it was all sunny and bright again.

There were families with young children playing in the snow up on the mountain and many of them piled snow on top of their cars where it remained packed.  This was a sight to see at lower elevations. 

 

 

The City of Palm Desert was well-named and here are some of its famous palm trees.

 

 

 

Renovating My Space: Versatile Desk from Aiz

Nuts about this desk!

I have finally gotten 99% of the ancient carpeting pulled up in a space that will one day be my art studio (combined with an ambitious indoor garden).  The floor is still unsealed and has zillions of staples and nails to pull up before I start decorating it.  At this stage everything is everywhere and my biggest challenge has been to find a place to put my tools while I am working.  

I have been tearing  apart unwanted sofas and chairs that were too big for me to lift and broken them into pieces that fit in my trash barrels. I have flowering and edible plants in all stages of development and these take up most of my time as my plant experiment took on a life of its own.

So I scoured the internet for some functional multipurpose furniture to use first for temporary storage of most often used tools and then down the road as work space for people and plants.  Aizservice163.com* sells this desk on Amazon for under $70 and it has great reviews.

I don't sit down a lot, so I had been looking for a suitable stand-up desk for a long time.  It had to be portable enough for me to wheel it around easily all by myself, narrow enough to fit anywhere, tall enough to be ergonomic, and very easy to adjust.  

 

 

 I like how smoothly the lower shelf goes from flat to tilted and back.  If I am drawing at this desk I can adjust the tilt without getting up.  It is great that I will also be able to wheel it over and use it alongside my drafting table. 

This desk was very easy to assemble, with all necessary tools, directions, and  extra screws.   It is perfect.  I would like a couple more to hold grow lights for some of my plants. 

*By way of disclaimer, I paid the regular price for this item and do not know the sellers personally.  

 

 

 

DIY Breakfast Cereal

Lately I have been making my own breakfast cereal.  It was not something that I thought about consciously, rather it just happened.  One hot dry day I accidentally left half of a home made blueberry muffin out on the counter in the mug I had baked it in.  The next day it had formed a crunchy crust, so I poured milk into the mug and ate it.

"Voila," I exclaimed, "This tastes like breakfast cereal, only better."   Much better, in fact.  So lately I have been leaving a few crumbled muffins out on purpose, only with a large strainer inverted on top to keep them clean. Today I finally got around to looking online for "DIY Cereal" and learned that other people are indeed making their own cereal, but differently.

I like my method because it is portion controlled, always fresh, nothing to store, and minimal clean-up using only 1 cup or mug and one spoon per serving.  Also, there is infinite variety using whatever ingredients are on hand.

For people who don't have time or don't like to make everything from scratch, a very simple version of this can be made using muffin mix, although I seldom use the mix straight, preferring to "healthy it up.)

Basics: Muffin batter will rise to about double, so dry ingredients would be needed to fill up to the bottom of the handle on the cup above.  Then I add some condensed milk (to take the place of an egg), cooked raisins (and/or applesauce) and 3 TBSP of liquid.  I stir it right in the cup and microwave the cup 1 1/2 minutes.

One Example:

To make the muffin pictured above, I used just a little bit of commercial blueberry muffin mix and added to it some ground oatmeal flakes, half tsp of baking soda, a TBSP of condensed milk, and 3 T liquid from my cooked raisins plus a few whole cooked raisins.  

Squash Blossom Chicken Salad Roll-ups

My first squash flowers in 2021.  Oh!  A pretty and tasty New Year's greeting from my garden.

 

 

 

 

YAY, pollen is on the way!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's a girl!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chicken with  greens, pepper, and squash blossoms, all from my winter garden.

Almond Soaks

I am eating way more almond soaks having recently figured out an efficient way to peel them!

Just lightly score with a curved paring knife.   This one is a bird's beak made by Sabatier.  It was a gift from my 99-year old friend Rex.    

It isn't really necessary to score the soaks as the skins usually pinch off from one end, but there is a learning curve to doing it that way.  Did you know that soaking the almonds may reduce tannins and other compounds that inhibit the digestion of nutrients in these nuts?  Some people believe that and others do not, but for myself, as they taste more delicious after soaking I am likely to eat more of them, which is a very good thing.  

Air Radishes are Taking Off!

 

After reading that radishes were the fastest growing vegetable, and learning that people like me who do not like going in the dirt could buy seeds for a kind of radish that grows tasty pods above ground I planted some in June and did they ever despise the hot summer. 

They got flowers, but no pods and most of the little needle-shaped things sticking out from the stems that looked like they ought to grow into pods simply fell off.   Just as I was about to pull the plants out and give up, however, a snap of cold weather came and the radishes took over.  

Although the plants are rather leggy and sprawl all over, the flowers are pretty and I like eating the pods. 

I will definitely grow these again, and more of them, but this time with the understanding that they may need about six months to get off to a good start.   

 

 

My New Cyberkitties Kitten

Meow!  Mom said I could do a guest post on her blog, so here I am.  My name is NumeroUno because I am her firstborn kitten.  She adopted my kat-mom and kat-pop on a famous website called Cyberkitties.  Pretty soon I came along!

Well, Cyberkitties is not for everyone.  In order to play you have to have a blockchain wallet holding some of a crypto currency called Ethereum which is abbreviated ETH.  Oh, and it helps if you like cats.  

How to Get Tau in Time

I should have tried "thyme" as a witness name for this one, but I chose mentha instead.

How to get Tau

So if you need an invitation to join Timestope please use my code as your witness = mentha

Here is the link again:

https://timestope.com/mentha

This app is for mining a cryptocurrency called TIME.  Early joiners get free TIME.  Who wouldn't like some of that?  You don't have to do much of anything to get on the free TIME train, just check in once a day and you get 100 TIME for signing up, and more TIME every day, but watch out on this one as if you don't check in they take your TIME away.

Mentha is a genus of plants in the mint family (lamiaceae). I grow a special variety of incredibly sweet and pungent spearmint that I grew from cuttings given to me by a Lebanese friend.  It is amazing and after two years finally bolted this summer, so I have been collecting seeds and am curious if they will prove true.

I am also curious as to whether Timestope will prove true, but it doesn't cost anything to try.

 

How to get a Piece of the Pi (Network)

Pi Network Invitation:  Tenerumi

What is tenerumi and what is the Pi Network?

Here is my referral link:

minepi.com/tenerumi

Presently the Pi Network is invitation only, so here is your invitation:

                tenerumi

This referral code will allow you to complete your sign up to begin collecting a new currency called Pi which is under development.  Currently Pi is worth exactly nothing, but I believe in the possibility that in time it will become worth a whole lot of something.  Meanwhile it is a great learning experience for people who want to get a little free crypto/education.

What does it cost?  Just a quick and easy sign up process and then donate 2 seconds of your time daily.

What will you get? FREE crypto by the second, the distinction of having gotten into something really interesting, and experience in the world of crypto currency.

Here is an excerpt from Pi Network's informative announcements page:

Like Bitcoin, mining Pi gets harder over time, rewarding members that make early contributions to the project’s success and making Pi more scarce. Be sure to make the most of the higher earnings while we have it!

There are already over a million active members of the Pi Network.  I will ADD information here, but in the meantime, please copy the code tenerumi, then download the Pi Network App to your phone and put in the code to be accepted.  Pi Network invitations are easy to get, but if you learned about Pi here, I would appreciate your using my invitation and being in my circle. Once you are in you will find easy navigation and a lot of good information. Exciting, isn't it?

Now a little about me:

Below you see small leaves and tendrils from a plant called Lagenaria siceraria.  To the right is a calabash squash best known as cucuzzi or Serpiente Siciliana. Eaten as a summer squash, this delicacy is actually a gourd.

These summer greens are tenerumi.

 

 

I love this plant and plan to grow it indoors this winter while my phone is mining Pi.  I decided to commit to an investment of 2 seconds a day while studying the growth habits of this tenerumi-producing plant.  The cucuzzi plant and Pi Network really have a lot in common. In fact, I almost threw away the opportunity to engage with them both this summer.  I will tell you the story of that in another post.

 

 

Barley Bread: A Fast Favorite

I haven't bought bread in over 3 years and I am so grateful to have a really great bread machine.  I almost always use the ferment cycle.

Until recently, I usually replaced the liquid in my go to recipe with pureed (cooked) spaghetti squash, which in addition to adding nutrients, acts as a natural dough conditioner.

However, after trying pureed fermented pearl barley water, I found that works just as well,  and gives the loaf more flavor.  I dilute the pearl barley 1:1.