Meet my gourd and bombilla
I’ve always wanted to try yerba mate. And Uncle B was like, why? And I’m like, shut up.
It’s not a tea, exactly. It’s a South American shrub that is a social drink, like coffee for Americans or tea for Brits. Except they pass it around, so gross.
It was first made popular in Paraguay before the white man come. It’s high in caffeine, but not otherwise psychoactive.
The truth of the matter is, I just like paraphernalia. My new gourd is purty. I’m pretty sure I’m too lazy to make some tonight, though.
May 12, 2025 — 5:50 pm
Comments: 8
This is a game changer
The first website I ever remember seeing was Find the Spam. Some internet wag has preserved it for the ages. Enjoy.
But I’m not here to discuss Find the Spam. I’m here to talk about Spam! Lumme some Spam. Popular the world over.
Wikipedia tells me “sandwich de Mezcla is a party staple in Puerto Rico containing Spam, Velveeta, and pimientos (made into a spread) between two slices of sandwich bread.” Sounds wonderful.
Hawaiians can’t get enough of the stuff, consuming 7 million cans a year. They sell it in Burger King! Guam hosts the Spam Games, where people compete to win a prize for the best original Spam recipe. The Philippines see Spam as a cultural icon.
They market it differently in China. The formula is meatier and they sell it as a premium import. Luxury Spam. Funny old world.
In the UK, they sell battered and deep fried Spam fritters. And I know this is true because they offer it at our local fish and chips shop (only in the sit-down restaurant; you can’t get it for takeaway).
Okay, it strikes out in the Middle East.
Anyway, anyway…marvelous news. YOU CAN FREEZE SPAM! It’s true! You can slice it up, bag it up and freeze it and have wonderful Spam any time you want. No more opening a can of Spam and after three or four meals – Hormel forgive me – you’ve had enough and the rest goes in the bin.
Thought I should share the glad tidings.
March 4, 2025 — 7:34 pm
Comments: 18
Scrooge is going to heaven, what’s your deal?
This one is classic Chick. The proof is in the truly awful faces.
I hope you’re settled in and ready for tomorrow. Here’s a recipe for sugarplums, in case you have a dearth of things to dance in your head tonight. That one calls for actual plums. This more complicated recipe involves prunes.
Hoo boy, did I ever tell you about the Christmas Eve I got into vodka and prune juice? I was visiting my mother and her water wasn’t safe to drink. Prune juice was all she had in the fridge. Did I ever get a big ol’ surprise Christmas morning!
December 24, 2024 — 5:00 pm
Comments: 4
Flipping redcurrants.
Of all the fruits Uncle B grows in the garden, the only one that overperforms every year is the red currant bush. One year we got twelve pounds of fruit off that thing. I mean, thanks but…what am I supposed to do with all these currants?
Anyway, I’ve been out picking redcurrants. And Albert has rallied strongly today. I got him some fresh straw and chicken vitamins and let him mope in the run for a day and he seems much stronger this evening.
No picking my chicken for the Dead Pool.
It’s been another astonishing day of watching the Democrat party rattle to pieces. Big donors think Kamala is too whackadoo for their money. BLM opposes her, for some reason. The grassroots are now foaming anti-Jew crazies whom the rest of the party seem terrified to contradict.
She’s snubbing Netanyahu. Amazing.
I’m telling you, the Democratic Convention is going to be lit. I am…uneasy.
July 24, 2024 — 7:02 pm
Comments: 7
It seemed appropriate
All week, I’ve been craving a sloppy joe. It must be subliminal.
I made one. It was awful. You can see from the pic the meat stayed in chunks and never cooked down to a smooth ‘joe’ texture.
And it was godawful sweet. Never doing that with ketchup again. I’ve lost my taste for sweet.
So I put cheese on it.
As of this writing, nobody has heard from Joe Biden since Wednesday the 17th. He stepped down from the race on Twitter yesterday (Sunday) with a posted letter not even on official letterhead. No other sign of life. No pics, no video, no short news conference. Absolutely unprecedented.
There’s a rumor he had some kind of medical emergency last week in Vegas. Naturally followed by a rumor he’s dead. They’ll have a hard time covering their tracks if that’s true.
Oh, look – a letter from his doctor has just been posted to X. Taken his tenth dose of Paxlovid today; vital signs normal; presidenting just fine, thank you.
This has got Barack’s fingerprints all over it. He never understood American history and tradition and didn’t get how wantonly screwing with them is deeply unsettling to most Americans.
July 22, 2024 — 6:38 pm
Comments: 14
Weasel’s rambling adventure
There’s a local farm shop we like to go to – it is actually attached to the farm and the meat lives there. The farmer’s wife makes the best steak and kidney pie ever, so Uncle B tells me. I don’t eat organs. She makes them on Wednesdays, but last week they all sold out before we got there.
So this week he phones up and reserves two pies. Yes, we had pie reservations.
On the way to pick them up, we got stuck in a traffic jam. A rural traffic jam means one of two things: road work or an accident. It was an accident. Trailer jacknife started it, if I had to guess. By the look of it, nobody was hurt, but it was a giant mess.
So we came back the long, long way to miss it. It was a road we haven’t been down for some years. Had we been a couple of weeks earlier, it would have been white with hawthorn and mayflower. It was still a beautiful drive.
We passed a pair of swans on the banks of a stream. Fields of potatoes and wheat. We nearly smacked into a couple of cars ourselves (what is it about twisty backroads that makes locals the world over drive like loonies?).
Last time we were down that road, we found a lamb on the verge of escaping the fence into the road, so we turned up the drive and had a chat with the farmer. This felt quite wicked and subversive, because it was lockdown and we weren’t supposed to talk to strangers. We all had a laugh about it. We weren’t even six feet apart!
Anyway, we made it home with his pies (I got a wickedly expensive piece of cheesecake, for my part). And I hadn’t taken a single picture.
So enjoy this picture from June of 2020. This great rambling thug of a rose is, can you believe it, even bigger this year. The smaller white blossom you see to the upper right is an elder tree, that has now been completely covered in roses. And that was my Wednesday.
June 19, 2024 — 7:21 pm
Comments: 5
I have no sense of scale
I bought one of these. It’s a single serve blender. I had it in my head that that glass on the top was like an eight-ounce tumbler so the machine would be a slim, compact addition to my kitchen gadgets.
It is, in fact, a counter-hogging brute.
Oh, well. It’s a smoothie thing. I think they designed it with gym bros in mind, one of which I emphatically am not. But I am kind of gullible when it comes to supplements.
I’ve taken and subsequently stopped taking scores of things after that one article I read in the Epoch Times (who, by the way, quietly renewed my subscription without me noticing when the three month trial expired).
So far, only two supplements make a measurable, undeniable difference: collagen (which makes my nails and hair stronger) and fish oil (which makes a definite difference to my achy hand joints).
My current smoothie is a spoonful of instant coffee, a cup of fancy Jersey milk, two spoons of collagen + hyaluronic acid + vitamin C, a spoonful of inulin (I don’t remember what this does, but I accidentally bought a big bag of it) and a scoop of protein powder (some sources say old people don’t get enough protein, some say they get more than enough, and some say you should chew your protein not drink it).
I buy my junk from a company that is obviously promoting itself for peak athletic performance. I have often contemplated writing them and saying they should make a separate website and packaging for that other potential customer base: wrinklies desperately clinging on to wellness.
Do you supplement? With what and how?
May 23, 2024 — 7:51 pm
Comments: 13
Trust me.
This is a lime Uncle B grew in his own greenhouse. It is – and you’ll have to take my word for it – bright yellow.
That’s perfectly normal. It takes a hit of cooler weather to make limes turn yellow and fall off, a thing they don’t get in the warm places they’re grown commercially.
I also imagine it’s easier to store and sell if lemons and limes look different. Fully matured, yellow limes are supposedly sweeter, too – although there are also varietal differences in color.
When I start poaching gardening photos from Uncle B’s Google, it’s a sure sign I have nothing to say for myself. That cold I had a few weeks back is still kicking my ass.
March 25, 2024 — 7:58 pm
Comments: 8
Physics, help me out here
This is the can we pour fat into before throwing it out. As far as I recall it’s a layer of lard followed by a layer of runoff from a roast chicken and capped with another layer of lard. Yesterday, it was level with the top of the can.
Today it looks like a big gross greasy lipstick. It’s a little warmer today. All I can think is the chicken grease expanded and pushed the lard out. I got his exact effect putting a can of refried beans over a candle once.
Yes, lard. Sadly, I no longer have a jar of bacon grease on the stove to use for cooking. British bacon doesn’t leak grease. In fact, I have to add lard to the skillet to make it cook evenly.
I don’t touch the stuff myself.
February 7, 2024 — 7:47 pm
Comments: 7
Ew.
Absolutely disgusting. We did an Aldi run this afternoon and I was looking for a lunch that was the culinary opposite of Christmas dinner. I figured pot noodles was it.
I haven’t had pot noodles in twenty years. I remember them being junk but tasty. Huh.
Back to work tomorrow and bummed about it. It looks like I will be biking into the teeth of a storm in the morning, too. Way to shake out the last of the Christmas spirit.
December 27, 2023 — 6:45 pm
Comments: 4