Saving Okra Seed At Season's End

We're at the very end of okra season.  It seemed like a short season this year.  Usually they produce longer.  I asked Tricia not to pick some of the biggest, prettiest pods on the stalk as I wanted to save them for seed.  You know, that's one of the hard parts of seed-saving - Saving rather than eating the crop.

So we allowed the okra pod to completely dry out on the stalk.  These are Beck's Big Okra, an old heirloom variety.  I had never saved any seeds from them.  My favorite are Clemson Spineless and we also plant Burgundy Okra for some color in the okra patch.  You can see the okra pod is very dry.  In fact, it has split open, and you can see the okra seeds exposed.  If these had been left any longer, some of the seeds would have popped out on the ground, perhaps producing "volunteer" okra next year.

I brought the dried okra pod inside (away from the mosquitoes) and put it on a plate.  I peeled back the okra, allowing the seeds to roll out on the plate so they wouldn't get lost.  A few fell on the floor and rolled off, causing me to search like crazy to find.  I was doing an experiment to see how many okra seeds I could get out of one pod.

Here are a few of the seeds shown close up.  These seeds are very hard.  When it is time to plant them in the late spring, I soak them in water for a day to soften them up to reduce the germination time.

So when I counted all the seeds from that pod, do you know how many I got?  119!  One hundred nineteen seeds.  I'll put those in an old vitamin container where they'll stay dry and in the dark until next year.  I'll plant maybe a quarter of those next year along with some Clemson Spineless and Burgundy okra.  I need to plant a lot more next year to ensure we have enough frozen, chopped okra for "Gumbo Season!"

Coddled Country Eggs for Breakfast

Thirty years ago when Tricia and I were married, we were given a gift of a night's stay in a Bed & Breakfast outside of Leesville, Louisiana.  It was very nice.  For breakfast we were treated to something called Coddled Eggs.  They were delicious!  It seems to be an English dish and coddlers were produced by a company called Royal Worcester since the late 1800's.  Well, when we got back from the B&B we went shopping in Houston and found a porcelain coddler.  However, it was a display model with no box and they weren't discounting it.  We didn't get it!  And we regretted it.  Tricia did find two on eBay and bought them - they were the Royal Worcester brand.  So we were in business.  We enjoy eating making coddled eggs from time to time.

Last week a friend put five egg coddlers on FB Marketplace at a good price and Tricia snagged them.  She told the boys to come for breakfast Sunday before church as she was making coddled eggs and homemade cinnamon rolls.  The egg coddlers hold one egg in each.  The coddler in the center with the peach on it was one we bought on eBay and comes as part of a set - one is a 1-egg coddler and the other holds two eggs.

You can experiment and 'fancy' them up.  Tricia added cheese to some, cilantro to others.  Some she scrambled and some she did not.

If you notice there is a stainless steel threaded ring around the top of the coddler.

There is a cap for each that screws on and each has a ring on the top so that you can lift out of the water.

The egg coddlers are placed in boiling water for about 7 - 8 minutes and then removed.  Coddled eggs are similar to a poached egg.  The white should be solid, with the yolk runny, but unbroken.

Except...  I am particular about eggs.  I don't like them runny!  Tricia does.  My coddled eggs, (I know some will think I ruined them!) were more molded eggs.  The one on the left was scrambled before putting into the coddler with cheese, cilantro and seasonings added.  The one on the right was not scrambled.

I cut into one so that you can see what mine looks like.  How about that homemade cinnamon roll, too!

A delicious little fancy breakfast.  Hard to beat.  The best part of waking up... is egg coddlers in your pot.

A New Creature

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.  2 Corinthians 5:17

I was walking outside last weekend trying to relax.  Work has been on the stressful side lately.  To add to that, the happenings in our country, on both the social front and politically front, are hard to digest.  There have always been disagreements between people from the beginning of time.  The best I can figure, we progressed at some point and got civilized.  Civilization brought with it, the ability to agree to disagree, without duels or shoot-outs.  The classic liberal quote, "I may not agree with what you have to say, but I'll fight to the death to defend your right to say it" seems to be lost on us these days.

However, there is still peace out there if you know where to look.  I go outside and look at the Creator's creation.  God can minister to you there, if you listen.  I happened to come upon a neat thing.  We call them locusts, but most other people call them cicadas.  These are big insects that come out of the ground and undergo a metamorphosis.  You can see a brilliant green winged creature emerging from an ugly brown 'shell.'

The winged creature hangs from the shell of the old body that it shed and dries his wings.

The old body it has left behind is just a shell, a temporary dwelling place for the creature that is now moving on to bigger and better things.  The empty body will eventually return to the dust of whence it came.

The winged locust sets his sights now on higher things.  It leaves the old creature behind and focuses above.  He'll fly to the top of the nearest tree and sing.  Loudly.  

What a beautiful illustration of the Christian life.  Once we come to trust Him, we are new creatures.  The old things have passed away.  We were bought with a price by the blood of Jesus.  We are no longer relegated to an old, ordinary life, but a new, extraordinary one.  We will want to serve Him and serve others.  Like the locust, we sing!  We focus on things above, on things holy and pure.  Righteous and just, true and commendable and we sing praises to His Name.  Amen.

Calling the Chickens

"Here, Chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick!"  That is the call.  It is done in a high pitched falsetto.  It must include the work 'chick' seven times.  It must be done this way at feeding time so they come.  However, I've never not done it, so they'd probably come even without the call.  I'm sure of it, actually.

Our birds roam free across three acres of pasture, eating their fill of grass, bugs, worms, leaves, spiders, and grain they scratch out of cow poop.  They are omnivores and eat frogs, lizards, mice, and will even cannibalize one another if one is attacked and killed by a predator.  They pretty much are on their own, but they'll never turn down chicken scratch.

We currently feed them chicken scratch that the lady at the feed store calls, "Six Way."  Best I can figure, she calls it that because there are six ingredients.  Here is some in a bucket:

I don't have the ingredient list handy, but I see corn, milo, sunflower seeds, a pellet of some sort, and oats.  That's only five.  Maybe the sixth is wheat that I'm confusing with oats?  Regardless, the chickens really seem to like this stuff.  In the winter, we switch to a laying pellet that has a higher protein percent as they are unable to supplement with much in the pasture as there's not much grass.

So I do the Chicken Call and they come running...  quickly.  They gather with anticipation as I throw out a handful onto the ground.

I spread it thinly over a large area.  If you tend to put it down in thick piles, the pesky goats will eat it all before the chickens can get it.  We feed them twice a day and provide them with free choice fresh water and oyster shell.  The chickens are curious creatures, fun to watch, and we definitely enjoy their fresh country eggs.  Our flock numbers between 45 - 50 birds right now.  Egg production is soon to drop off substantially as the daylight hours dwindle.  We might order a few pullets to replenish those that kicked the bucket this year, but we'll talk about it, the wife and I.  That means more chicken scratch to throw down and more chickens to call.

A Tad Obsessive? Oh I Don't Know

On the ride to work the other morning, I took out my phone and captured a momentous event in a photo.  "Ol' Blue," our Hyundai Sonata passed an impressive milestone in automotive history.  It rolled over 222,222 miles!  She's a little threadbare and has a Check Engine Light that goes off and on intermittently, but still gets the job done.  She gets from point A to point B averaging 34 miles per gallon, and in a time where gas prices are about to jump over the $3 mark, that's an important statistic.  You keep going, Ol' Blue!

The perfect symmetry of the twos on my odometer caught my eye.  Not sure if symmetry is the right word, but you know what I'm getting at.  While we are talking about gas, I wanted to come clean and admit a little "quirk" I have.  

When fueling up, I have ALWAYS clipped the gas nozzle until I come up with a numerically pure number.  I will stand there and keep pressing the nozzle until it turns over to $37.00 even.  When it is in danger of not getting to that number, I'll bounce up and down on the trunk to "make some room" and continue fueling until I get it to the perfect $38.00 or $40.00.  

This practice has a fiscal responsibility aspect to it, too.  I can look at the credit card bill quickly to see if someone else is using my card.  Uneven numbers are easy to spot.  There are occasions, however, when I'm not careful enough and it rolls to $39.01 and there is not a chance of getting to $40.00.  I have a remedy for that.  It is not quite as pleasing as a perfect number, but acceptable, nonetheless.  In those cases, I shoot for ringing up $39.39.  I've remained in the closet about this tendency, thinking that it was just strange and obsessive behavior.

However!  I saw the following meme the other day that brought me a chuckle:

I am not alone!  Come on, fess up, ya'll...  You do it to, right?  Right??

(Okay, perhaps I should seek professional help immediately.)

The Road Less Traveled

I've posted about this before.  It's something we do on Saturday afternoon.  We are very simple people and like simple things.  Our little Saturday afternoon excursion is so doggone enjoyable.  Here's what we do.  Long about 5 pm, we jump in the pickup truck, roll down the windows and being riding on country roads.  We don't have any set route or travel plans.  Like Jerry Jeff Walker sings, we just kind of let the truck "wander around."

We do have several rules.  First we listen to old time country or bluegrass music.  We both sing to the top of our lungs, especially to Montgomery Gentry's "Lucky Man" and "Amarillo Sky."  We drive very slow and try not to go over 25 or 30 miles per hour.  Oh from time to time someone will come behind us, but we pull over to the side and let them pass.  We are setting the pace here.

We try our darnedest to not drive on blacktop roads, if at all possible.  We put gravel in our travel.

We observe the sights and sounds around us that busy schedules might cause us to easily overlook.  Last trip we saw a coyote.  This trip we saw a rabbit.  I was telling Tricia about shooting the .22 rifle off the gully bridge at snakes and turtles.  We didn't have the rifle this trip, but we stopped nonetheless and saw an alligator lazily swimming in the muddy water.

Other than killing time, we have no agenda, no timetable, no deadline or due date.  Our destination, however, is Peto's.  Peto's is a gas station that sells, among other things, sausage, specialty meats, boudin, duck quesadillas, fried fish, cracklins and boudin balls.  The boudin balls are either spicy plain or stuffed with jalapenos and cheese.  We grab a couple of boudin balls for the road and eat them in the cab of the pickup.  Boudin balls are a special treat!  Now, it is not healthy - it's boudin (minus the casing) rolled into a ball, battered and deep fried.  Talk about good!

We never take the same road home.  We drive slowly by as the sun descends and see parties and crawfish boils going on at people's homes, kids riding four wheelers in the woods.  The pace of our truck as well as life in the country is slow and easy.  I mention to Tricia that you wouldn't imagine that busy I-10 is only a mile from where we are as the crow flies.  Hank Jr.'s "Family Tradition" comes on the radio and we sing along as we see an old truck in all its rusted glory parked on the side of a homeplace.

We take a turn on Dama Landry Road that we like.  The trees grow to meet one another, making a tunnel that we pass through.  One could easily be fooled into thinking we've stepped back in time.  The road dips down and we pass over flowing water.  

All in all we've made what is normally a ten minute trip last an hour and a half.  As we get ready to turn back into our driveway, the sun is dipping beneath the horizon as God paints the sky a dazzling array of colors.

As we pull into the driveway, my wife says, "What a great afternoon.  This is my favorite thing to do."  I must say I agree.  If you have a country road nearby, I highly recommend going out and letting your truck wander around on it.  There are adventures to be enjoyed by simple folk on the road less traveled.

A Sign of Fall

Living in the south as we do, it can be officially Fall but still feel very much like summer.  It is still swelteringly hot and humid, the grass is still growing, mosquitoes still biting and the leaves haven't started falling.  One harbinger of Fall is the ripening (and falling) of the persimmons from our wild persimmon tree in the yard.  The fruit falls from about twenty feet up in the tree to the ground and the soft St. Augustine grass catches it, protecting it (most times) from bursting. 

You can see how tall the tree is, although it is hard to zoom in and see the persimmons up there.

Here is one I zoomed in on.  Their bright orange color is easy to spot and you can gauge how many more will fall.  We go out with a colander every day and pick up what's fallen.  We gather a bunch.  We used to have twice as many as we had two trees, but one of them died.

Unlike normal persimmons, these wild ones are slightly smaller than a golf ball.  Each persimmon has a 'cap' that we pop off and leave on the ground.  We also pinch off a black tip at the bottom of each fruit.  We bring the day's harvest in and wash them up in the sink.

We process them prior to putting them away.  In order to process them, we run them through a full mill.  

By hand cranking the mill, the fruit is broken up and the processed fruit is squeezed through a screen at the bottom.  This leaves only the skin and the large seeds, in the mill while the processed fruit falls into a measuring bowl below.

You can see the screen at the bottom of the food mill and also get a good idea of what the processed fruit looks like.  It is very, very sweet!

We measure the processed persimmons in a big measuring cup.

The reason we meticulously measure the processed fruit is because we make delicious persimmon cakes with them.  The recipe for a persimmon cake calls for 1 1/2 cups of persimmon.  We pour exactly 1 1/2 cups of persimmon into each zip loc bag, using a canning funnel to avoid making such a big mess in the process.

We seal each bag up, label it and stack in the freezer neatly.

We can open the freezer, take inventory of how many bags we have stored up.  Each bag = 1 cake.  It may be my sweet tooth talking, but I see 14 cakes in the freezer.  Nothing like a hot persimmon cake coming out of the oven on a cool, fall day!