The quest for the perfect onion ring. March 7, 2011
Posted by ourfriendben in recipes, Uncategorized, wit and wisdom.Tags: Cook's Country, Cook's Illustrated, Cooking for Engineers, homemade onion rings, onion rings
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Silence Dogood here. Maybe it was posting about comfort foods the other day. Maybe it was relaxing with the latest issue of Cook’s Country last night. Maybe it was just skipping supper (our friend Ben was away) and getting hungry. But for whatever reason, I found myself thinking about onion rings.
Actually, I think it was because the issue of Cook’s Country evaluated various brands of boxed and frozen macaroni and cheese, that other classic comfort food. (The winner was Kraft Homestyle Macaroni & Cheese Dinner, in case you’re wondering.) The tasters’ comments were a scream, ranging from “It was as if the mac and cheese was depressed” to “the flavorless, ‘rubbery, mushy mass’ of ‘hideous orange elbows’” for the less-favored brands.
Thanks to my slow cooker and my friend Delilah, I make my own delicious mac’n'cheese at home. (Check out “The ultimate mac’n'cheese” in our search bar at upper right for the recipe.) Mac’n'cheese that isn’t creamy and flavorful, with lots of custardy body and plenty of crunch, just doesn’t cut it with me. Oooey, gooey, soft, runny, orange, Velveeta-like mac’n'cheese… please.
Thinking about this reminded me that onion rings, one of the most divine, decadent foods known to man when cooked right, often suffered the same humdrum fate as mac’n'cheese, even in restaurants where it ought to fare better. The perfect onion ring needs three things: First, there must be a sweet ring of onion—none of that biting, sulfuric tang allowed—that’s cooked through, not raw, but still has plenty of body to stand up to the crust. This is an onion ring, people: the onion must shine through. Second, there must be a flavorful batter, not a deadening, smothering coating of bland gunk. And finally, the coating must be crispy-crackly, not mushy or tooth-cracking hard.
I should also mention the balance of crispy-crackly coating to onion, because this too is all-important: In the best onion rings I’ve found, you can actually see the big ring of onion through the pieces of crust. Yes, there’s plenty of crust for crunch, but not enough to suffocate the onion.
I have encountered great onion rings that meet all these criteria in restaurants across the country, both beer-battered and buttermilk-battered. But all too often, I’ve instead encountered those mushy, slimy, flavorless excuses for onion rings that were obviously shipped in from some frozen-food wholesaler: Too much batter. Where is the onion? Eeeewww, a nasty metallic tang if you do find some onion. A tough layer of onion skin?!! Shriek!!! Maybe the deep-frying has managed to give the outside a certain amount of crunch (or gone wrong and hardened the crust to tree-bark status), but the inside remains mushy and flavorless. Yuck!
That’s why I’ve never even considered buying frozen onion rings from the grocery: Stick ‘em in the oven and eeewww, please don’t tell me I’m supposed to think these are onion rings! I don’t know if there are boxed onion-ring batter mixes on the market, like boxed mac’n'cheese, and frankly, I don’t plan to find out. I’d much rather make my onion rings from scratch.
There’s just one little problem with my homemade onion-ring scheme: I hate touching grease. As a result, I refuse to deep-fry anything, no matter how much I enjoy that fried-food crunch. And I refuse to compromise and eat mushy baked pseudo-French fries or whatever while pretending that they bear any resemblance to the real thing. From a health perspective, this is a good thing, since I probably eat onion rings and French fries about once a year each. But from a culinary perspective, it’s a tragedy.
Our friend Ben and I love onions and eat them at least once a day, cooked and/or in salads. So unfried but crispy, crunchy, sweet, full-bodied onion rings seemed like a worthy challenge. After finishing my perusal of the issue of Cook’s Country, which, like its parent magazine, Cook’s Illustrated, specializes in testing and retesting recipes until they’ve developed the perfect version, I determined to think through how they would go about creating delicious unfried onion rings and try to duplicate the process myself.
My first thought was to slice a big, sweet onion like a Vidalia into rings, then briefly saute them in butter until they clarified but weren’t soft. Next, dredge (coat) them in all-purpose flour seasoned with Trocomare or salt and pepper, and maybe a little ground cumin or curry powder for kick. Finally, return them to the pan and cook briefly, flipping as needed, until the coating crisped up.
But before attempting this, I decided to go online and see what I could find by way of homemade onion-ring recipes. Hmmm. It seemed like most of the recipes divided into a dairyless beer-batter coating or a buttermilk-and-egg coating, but they all called for deep-frying. I finally found a recipe for ”oven-fried” onion rings that required only 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil, hallelujah! Not surprisingly, it had originated at Cook’s Country!
In case you’re wondering why I didn’t just head to the Cook’s Country website (http://www.cookscountry.com/) and search for onion rings, the website is subscription-only. Even folks like yours truly who subscribe to the magazine must pay for an additional web subscription to access the site. Thanks, but. I could have signed up for the “FREE 14-day trial membership” and looked for an onion-ring recipe, but it’s a matter of principle: I’m already a paying subscriber; you’d—or at least, I’d—think I could have free access to the website. To be fair, Cook’s Country and Cook’s Illustrated don’t accept advertising, the financial backbone of most magazines, and are entirely subscriber-supported so that, like Consumer Reports, they can give unbiased product reviews. Still, let’s just say they’re not the only ones on tight budgets.
But I digress. My search for the perfect unfried onion-ring recipe took me to a surprising site I’d never have conceived of, even as a parody: Cooking for Engineers (http://www.cookingforengineers.com/). As the site (mercifully, open-access) explains, it’s for people with analytical minds who like to cook. And sure enough, Michael Chu, who wrote the “Oven-Fried Onion Rings” post, provided tons of specific details and techniques, excellent color photos of the steps, and even a (to me, incomprehensible) chart at the end which seemed to graph the entire process.
Michael’s writing was excellent—colorful in the intro, precise in the instructions. And sure enough, the photos of the finished onion rings looked good: You could indeed still see the thick, yummy-looking onions through the crunchy coating. His analysis: “The rings were amazing—the best oven-fried recipe I have tried to date. The coating had just the right amount of crunchiness (although not really crispy like the deep-fried variety) and was full of flavor. Best of all, the onions had been cooked just to the peak of their sweetness.”
Jackpot, right? Well, I dunno. The recipe, which serves four, calls for a total of 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil, a very far cry from the quarts used by the typical deep-fryer. Great!!! But to get that non-crispy crunchiness, you not only need flour, buttermilk, and an egg, but also 30 Saltines and 4 cups of kettle-cooked potato chips. Seems like you’re gaining clean-up convenience but not losing calories, and at the end of it all, your onion rings still don’t really measure up.
Now, those of you for whom calories don’t count are probably wondering what the big deal is here: You’re making onion rings, for God’s sake, not health food, so who cares? But for folks like me, who have to walk an extra hour to burn off even one onion ring, every calorie has to earn its keep.
Yes, I’ll indulge in two or three perfect, luscious onion rings (or some even yummier onion “petals”) once in a blue moon (our friend Ben helpfully takes care of the rest). But no, if I order them and they’re disappointing, I won’t eat them after the first bite (fortunately OFB is less discriminating, so at least they don’t go to waste). Damned if I’m taking that kind of calorie hit for no payoff! For the same reason, you’ll never catch me eating either Saltines or potato chips: empty calories, and plenty of ‘em. So the thought of loading both of them onto onion rings gives me plenty of pause.
Geez. Maybe I’m just not cut out for this quest, and should leave the making of perfect onion rings to the pros. Might I have better luck with my other great love, sweet potato fries? Not likely. But folks, if you happen to hold the secret to great homemade onion rings (or sweet potato fries, for that matter) that aren’t fried, please share it with me. Where there’s life (and an ample supply of Vidalia onions), there’s hope.
‘Til next time,
Silence
Something new. March 6, 2011
Posted by ourfriendben in Ben Franklin, wit and wisdom.Tags: language learning, languages, learning Spanish, Spanish
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Last week, our friend Ben decided to bite the bullet and learn Spanish. It happened because of a book I found at the local library Saturday used-book sale for 25 cents called Spanish for Gringos (William C. Harvey, Barron’s, 1990). The book promised that you could “Pick up the Language without Taking a Course.” And it focused on the spoken Spanish of the Americas, which is the Spanish I’m interested in learning.
Unlike the target audience of Spanish for Gringos, our friend Ben has no aversion to learning languages by taking courses. I was a language major as an undergraduate. I love learning languages. I can speak and read French, a little Italian, Middle English, a little Old French, and a smattering of Church Latin. I even attempted to learn Greek and Hebrew so I could read the Bible in the original languages, but I can’t claim to be able to read so much as a word of either today, more shame on me. (Hey, with languages as with so many other things, use it or lose it.) But I never learned Spanish.
I’m sure there are plenty of adult-ed Spanish courses I could sign up for if I had a few hundred or thousand dollars to invest in them, but I don’t. However, I figured I could manage a bit more than my initial 25-cent investment. And what I decided I needed were some Spanish-language CDs so I could work on my pronunciation.
It’s simple enough to pick up grammar and vocabulary from a book, but pronunciation is another matter. That’s especially true for us Engliah speakers, because English is a lazy language: It doesn’t require much in the way of muscle tone to speak perfectly elegant English. Other languages give your mouth muscles a much harder workout. You really need to work up to getting those muscles into shape to roll, trill, and pop your consonants, elide your vowels, pitch your intonations correctly, and speak with simultaneous sportscar speed and clarity.
English speakers out there, here’s a simple way to see the difference between English and Spanish in terms of energetic speaking, as far as our friend Ben can tell: Say the simple word “set.” Now, hiss the s and pop (or spit) the t crisply at the end of the word: “sssseh-TTT.” It takes a lot more work to say the latter than the former, doesn’t it? Now add a touch of h at the end of the popped t, “sssseh-TTTh”—but just a touch, the tongue tip moving between the front teeth rather than actually saying English th—and you’ll see what you’re really up against. It’s a brave new world when one starts to learn another language.
Not to mention that the way letters are pronounced differs widely from language to language, even among those that share the Roman alphabet. Our friend Ben has already noticed that even seemingly innocuous letters like b, t, o, l, and s are sounded quite differently in Spanish, not to mention the more major differences with v, h, j, and r. Imagine my chagrin when I discovered that the one Spanish phrase I thought I actually knew, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s famous tagline “Hasta la vista, baby,” turned out to be more like “asta la bista.”
Ouch! Clearly our friend Ben needed some help here. So I went to the local library to check out some Spanish CDs that I could listen to in the car. After being directed to the language section, I saw to my chagrin that every language pack they offered had cassettes, not CDs. The librarian on duty shrugged fatalistically and said “We haven’t been able to update because of budget cuts.” GRRRRR. Too bad the government can’t see the vital role public libraries play in our communities, making resources available to rich and poor alike. Our hero and blog mentor, the great Benjamin Franklin, who founded the first public library in America, must be spinning in his grave. Ben, where are you when we need you?!!!
Not to be foiled by a single setback, our friend Ben next headed for the used-CD and DVD store next to the library. No dice. Then to the used-book store, which also carries a few CDs. Nada. It was time to head home and turn to my ultimate ally in this type of crisis, Amazon.
After checking out the Spanish CD offerings and rejecting those that weren’t concentrating on the Spanish of the Americas, I turned up a few that were highly recommended. I ordered “Conversational Spanish: Learn to Speak and Understand Latin American Spanish with Pimsleur Language Programs,” which features native speakers and has 16 30-minute lessons on 8 CDs (in a classy CD case) for $19. Our friend Ben was able to go through the first two lessons last night while driving a long distance to get to a dinner engagement.
I was frankly surprised at how little ground was covered in the two half-hour lessons, but they certainly drilled the language skills they were teaching very thoroughly into even our friend Ben’s admittedly porous brain. Even I can now say or ask about someone’s English and Spanish speaking and comprehension skills, inquire if they happen to be from North America, and say hello and goodbye without making an ass of myself. And true to the Pimsleur promise, I still remember how to say all that this morning. More practice is needed to get the accent, speed, and intonation right, but fortunately, I still have 14 lessons to go and am not at all averse to repeating them over and over.
Other CD courses that got very high marks on Amazon are “Behind the Wheel—Spanish 1,” $29.14, and “SPANISH in 10 minutes a day AUDIO CD,” $35.01, both intended to be listened to while commuting in one’s car. Our friend Ben would like to check them out as well.
So I’m finally giving it a go. If anyone out there has any recommendations, our friend Ben would love to hear them. Meanwhile, they say that learning a language, like learning math and music, lights up the brain. After this past deadening, snowy, icy, bitterly cold winter, I know I could benefit from turning up the wattage in mine!
Comfort foods: the good, the bad and the ugly. March 5, 2011
Posted by ourfriendben in recipes, wit and wisdom.Tags: blog humor, food writing, comfort foods, The Morning Call
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Silence Dogood here. The world of food writing, informative and entertaining as it is, is not exactly known for its bon mots. Personable, even irascible, often. Funny? Not so much. So I sat up and took notice when I read the following lead in an article about beignets by Regina Schrambling: “Deep-frying is the bacon of cooking techniques: It makes everything taste better.” Priceless!
Mind you, I’d be more inclined to agree with Gerard Depardieu’s character in the wonderful Queen Latifah movie, “Last Holiday,” Chef Didier, when he informs her that the secret to happiness is butter. Well, butter and salt. And sour cream and onions, and maybe some shredded extra-sharp white Cheddar cheese.
Which brings me to comfort foods. In the same issue of our local paper, the Allentown, PA Morning Call, that featured the beignet piece (beignets are basically doughnuts, New Orleans style), Diane Stoneback wrote the lead article on local residents’ favorite comfort foods. Let’s just say that many of the folks who submitted their favorite recipes for the article clearly agreed with me that hot, rich, starchy, cheesy, buttery, creamy, salty dishes were the essence of comfort food. (We’ll try not to think about the reader whose favorite comfort food is a grilled cheese sandwich—so far, so good, right?—dunked in hot chocolate.)
Macaroni and cheese casserole, fettucine Alfredo, Cheddar broccoli soup, baked noodle casserole, mashed potato casserole, macaroni and cheese (yes, a second recipe), and pierogi casserole were all featured. You’ll note the common themes of pasta, potatoes, and cheese, typically accompanied by a ton of butter, cream or half-and-half, cream cheese or sour cream, and bread crumbs. Thank God the article failed to give the calorie counts for these recipes, or we’d all have died just reading them. None weighed in (so to speak) at under a million calories, I swear. But hey, maybe each dish feeds eight, so you’re only taking in a few hundred thousand calories instead.
Not that I’m arguing with these folks. I love potatoes, for example. But I would not love boiled potatoes mashed with a little of their cooking water and served plain, or a plain baked potato or, God forbid, the oft-recommended “dieter’s special” of half a baked potato topped with fresh salsa.
Hey, I love fresh salsa. I love it on refried beans, huevos rancheros, black bean soup, and taco salad (minus the taco and, God forfend, ground beef). But salsa and potatoes really don’t do it for me. Give me a (whole, please) baked potato with butter, salt, and black or lemon pepper. Give me mashed potatoes with butter, milk or half-and-half, salt or Trocamare, and black or lemon pepper. If I’m making a special comfort meal for our friend Ben, scale back the butter and milk or half-and-half in those potatoes and add some cream cheese instead.
Oatmeal is another classic cold-weather comfort food for me, with a little cinnamon and milk. I figured this one was healthy enough to do double-duty on the diet angel’s list, until I saw the version in Diane’s article that one reader called comfort food, oatmeal “enriched with craisins, brown sugar, butter, banana slices, pecans and half-and-half.” Why not have a sundae and be done with it?
But the most mind-boggling comfort-food recipe in the article was for a pierogi casserole. Our friend Ben and I were not acquainted with pierogies when we first moved to Pennsylvania, and are still more than bemused by the concept of enclosing mashed potatoes in pasta. (Admittedly, we feel the same way about gnocchi, those iconic Italian potato-flour dumplings.) Could we please just have pasta or potatoes?! Of course, we feel this way about bread being served with pasta, too, so maybe we’re just weird, or un-American, or something.
Our attitude is not shared around here, however, and simply marks us as outsiders. Our friend Rob’s idea of the ultimate comfort food is pierogis, as he says, ”swimming in butter.” No doubt he’d love this casserole, which features 10-12 mashed potatoes, 1 lb. lasagna noodles, 3/4 lb. shredded white Cheddar cheese, and 2 1/2 sticks of butter. Could I just say again, 2 1/2 sticks of butter in one casserole?!!! The dish also includes 2 chopped onions and salt to taste, in case you’re wondering. I guess at least the onions are healthy.
What are my favorite comfort foods? Biscuits with fried eggs and grits (a once-yearly treat, when visiting down South), or a crusty baguette with butter and good cheese (served with grapes or apple slices or sliced radishes or cherry tomatoes or salad, and, of course, wine), rank very high on my list. So do buttered table water crackers, preferably with Brie and apple slices, or buttered, salted rice, preferably with plain yogurt and dal. So does full-fat, small-curd cottage cheese, with sliced tomatoes in season or—a regional favorite around here that I was a very long time trying but found to be delicious—with apple butter in winter. So does a club sandwich with Swiss cheese, lettuce and tomato, and mayo on whole-wheat toast with sweet potato fries. So does a Caprese salad with arugula, buffalo mozzarella, fresh basil, sliced tomatoes, capers, olive oil, salt, and pepper in hot weather. So do fabulously good vegetable spring rolls with dipping sauce and salt, or appallingliy hi-cal Chinese treats like bean curd Szechuan style and General Tso’s bean curd, with, of course, lots of rice and salt.
Our friend Ben was considerably less restrained when I asked him about his favorite comfort foods. “All of the above (except the cottage cheese and tofu dishes), plus peanut M&Ms, potato chips, Cheetos, fried chicken, bacon and tomato sandwiches, barbecued spare ribs—well, barbecue, period—corncakes, fried grits, real waffles, fresh-baked bread… And say, Silence, what about dessert?!”
Our heat-loving friend and fellow blog contributor Richard Saunders had a good deal to say about his favorite comfort foods as well. “Jalapeno poppers, super-hot salsa and tortilla chips, chiles rellenos, quesadillas, fajitas, red-hot Buffalo wings… and hot dogs.” Hot dogs?!! “Sorry, sometimes nothing says comfort like a fat, sizzling hot dog or bratwurst, split and grilled until it’s covered with black stripes, in a bun topped with relish, onions, mustard, chili, hot sauce… “
“How about a huge, hot corned beef sandwich on rye with all the trimmings?” OFB added, getting into the spirit of St. Patrick’s Day.
“Can anybody say ‘pizza’?” I decided to go for the obvious.
“PIZZA!!!!” everybody shouted. Well, alrighty then.
Okay, guys, fine. Comfort desserts, from my point of view, deserve a post all their own, from tiramisu and baklava to banana cream pie and chess pie to tapioca pudding and Dove bars. We’ll get back to you. Meanwhile, what are your favorite comfort foods? Please share them with us. And if you’d like to find the recipes for the Morning Call‘s comfort-food recipes, go to www.themorningcall.com.
‘Til next time,
Silence
Big news for stinkbug haters. March 4, 2011
Posted by ourfriendben in critters, gardening, homesteading, wit and wisdom.Tags: brown marmorated stink bugs, new controls for stinkbugs, stink bug controls, stink bugs, stinkbugs
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Silence Dogood here. Anyone who cherishes warm, fuzzy feelings for stinkbugs, please stop reading now.
As the rest of you probably know, my own personal battle against these diminutive personifications of evil has been raging for several years now. I’d say the result has been pretty much a draw: I’ve never killed a stinkbug (I catch and toss them out the door), and so far, their surprise-attack launches haven’t killed me. But there’s always a first time—having a stinkbug suddenly blast off from some hiding place and land on my tee-shirt is a definite test of my cardiac fitness—and, while there are bazillion of them, there’s only one of me.
So you can imagine my delight when our friend Ben brought in the local paper, the Allentown, PA Morning Call, this morning, and the cover story was “For Stink Bugs, the Big Sting?” The good news for folks like me who are sick of stinkbugs (technically, brown marmorated stink bugs) invading their homes—not to mention folks with stinkbug allergies and farmers and orchardists who’ve had to watch these Asian invaders decimating their crops—is that the USDA has identified an Asian wasp that is the stinkbug’s natural enemy.
The Trissolcus wasp, the size of a comma, poses a threat to the infinitely larger stinkbugs because it lays its own eggs in stinkbug eggs. The parasitic wasp larvae hatch into their own free all-you-can-eat stinkbug cafeteria, and eat their way out, killing their hosts in the process. It’s sort of like a computer virus disabling Google, or David taking out Goliath.
“Tests have shown that these wasps will destroy up to 80 percent of the stink bug population,” according to Kim Hoelmer, the scientist helming the project for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the wasps are unlikely to be approved for release until 2013. But that’s not really bad news, since it’s desperately important that the scientists verify that the wasps won’t parasitize beneficial insects as well as the stinkbugs before unleashing them in our environment. We’ve seen what happened in the past when well-intentioned [descriptor suppressed] released starlings, kudzu, multiflora roses, prickly pear cacti, and numerous other delights into our defenseless ecosystem. Better safe than sorry.
Fortunately, it turns out that the USDA is hard at work on other controls as well. The most promising, from my point of view, is a pheromone attractant. This basically lures horny stinkbugs into a trap by synthesizing their own sex attractor scents. Like roach motels and Japanese beetle traps, which use the same technique, the stinkbugs go in, they don’t come out. I just wish we had a few of those ready to hang in our own yard, now that spring is coming and the *$%#@!! stinkbugs are sure to be emerging from their winter hiding places any day.
Yes, we’re probably in for another ghastly stinkbug season this year. But stinkbugs, listen up: The Terminator is coming.
‘Til next time,
Silence
A good month for orchids. March 3, 2011
Posted by ourfriendben in gardening, wit and wisdom.Tags: AOS, Longwood Gardens, orchids, SEPOS
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Our friend Ben and Silence Dogood are rank amateurs when it comes to growing orchids, but we love their ease of care, length of bloom, and overall longevity. (As long as you water them occasionally, we’ve found them to be almost indestructible, which, considering their initial price, is a very good thing. Of course, the better care you take of them, the better they’ll do. And we do have a greenhouse, and we tend to stick with the basics—cymbidiums, paphiopedilums, oncidiums, phalaenopsis, and the like—while avoiding the heat- and moisture-loving tropicals that are happiest outdoors year-round in places like Florida and Hawai’i.)
We also appreciate the mottled foliage of some of the orchids, since it continues to provide a good show once the months of bloom are over, so when we choose plants, we look for good foliage as well as good bloom. We’d recommend growing orchids to anyone who could give them enough light. (Two that do well in lower-light conditions are phalaenopsis and pahiopedilums, but with orchids, “lower light” means a very bright south-facing windowsill, not fern conditions.)
But even if you can’t grow your own orchids, you can enjoy them this month—a staggering display of them, in fact—if you live within driving distance of Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, PA (http://www.longwoodgardens.org/). Concert-sized conservatories are filled with colorful cascades of every kind and color of orchid, dazzling the eyes and stimulating winter-deadened senses like nothing else we know of (at least, until spring bulbs begin their annual display in our yard).
We like to go to Longwood at the end of their Orchid Extravaganza (which runs from late January through March), when the Southeastern Pennsylvania Orchid Society (SEPOS) joins with Longwood to hold its own orchid show and sale, held this year the weekend of March 25-27. To quote the SEPOS site (http://sepos.org/):
“SEPOS International Orchid Show and Sale at Longwood Gardens: Our annual extravaganza! You’ll be in awe of the thousands of beautiful orchids displayed by individuals, societies and growers from several countries… You can also buy orchids of your own from 20 different growers based on two continents.”
There are also lectures all three days; check the Longwood website for show hours and a lecture schedule. Tickets to Longwood, which include the extensive grounds, gardens and greenhouses as well as the orchid show, are $18 for adults; $15 62 and over; $8 students; free 4 and under; and 25% off for the military. You can buy tickets (and get directions) on the Longwood website or at the door.
What if you’d love to see an orchid spectacular but don’t live near scenic PA? Try Orchids on Broadway, the New York Botanic Garden’s massive orchid show, with more than 5,000 blooming orchid plants, held March 5-April 25 at the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory in New York City. Check out times and ticket prices at http://www.nybg.org/.
On the West Coast, Santa Barbara is hosting an International Orchid Show the weekend of March 11-13 at the Earl Warren Showgrounds. (For details, see http://www.sborchidshow.com/.) You’ll have to wait ’til the end of April for Portland’s 2011 Oregon Orchid Show & Sale, April 30-May 1 (details at http://www.oregonorchidsociety.org/). Down South, looks like we’ve missed the Florida orchid shows, held in February, but there’s still time to make the Atlanta Orchid Show (March 11-13); see http://www.atlantaorchidsociety.org/ for details. We’re sure there are plenty of other orchid shows coming up in the U.S. and Canada, not to mention the World Orchid Conference (November 13-20), held this year in Singapore. To find a show near you, we suggest that you contact the American Orchid Society (AOS); their website is http://www.aos.org/.
We do present this post with a warning, however: If you attend an orchid show, prepare to be hooked. You may not think you even like orchids (OFB is speaking from experience here). But once you see the staggering array of plant and bloom types, you may find yourself coming home with a plant or two and the beginning of a lifetime obsession. After all, except for poinsettias*, what other plants bloom for months on end? And unlike poinsettias, your orchids will keep blooming effortlessly, year after year.
* Yes, of course we realize that the colorful part of a poinsettia is really made of bracts, specialized leaves, not the tiny globular yellow blooms hiding inside the circle of bracts. But we hope you take our point anyway.
Seek and ye shall find. March 2, 2011
Posted by ourfriendben in critters, gardening, homesteading, pets, Uncategorized, wit and wisdom.Tags: signs of spring, blog humor, winter aconites, spring bulbs
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“Ben, it’s March, have you noticed?”
“Uh… ” Our friend Ben knew what Silence Dogood was about to say next, since she says the same thing every spring. Adopting an “I-can’t-hear-you” attitude, I quickly slunk into the mudroom to get some seed for the outdoor birds.
“BEN!!!!”
“Oh, sorry, Silence. You were saying?”
“It’s time to recycle our Christmas wreath and put out the grapevine wreath instead.”
“But, Silence! That wreath still looks as fresh as the day we hung it up! And besides, there’s still snow on the ground…” Our friend Ben managed to find two tiny spots where the ice hadn’t completely melted. “Besides, didn’t you see the forecast? It’s supposed to be in the 20s every night this week. Don’t tell me it’s not still winter!”
“Ben, it’s MARCH. You’ve managed to drag Christmas out to record lengths this year, but enough’s enough. Even you have agreed to stop putting seed in our cabin feeder so the bulbs that make such a gorgeous display underneath that tree every spring won’t be trampled and buried in birdseed. Maybe instead of fighting the inevitable, you should start looking for signs of spring.”
“Oh.” Our friend Ben is nothing if not sentimental, and Christmas is such a beloved season that I hate to see it end. But I had to concede that Silence had a point. Heading to the front door with the birdseed, my eyes came to rest on our mantel. “What happened to our Valentine’s cards?!” I wailed.
“Ben. It’s. March.” At this point, Silence’s eyes were rolling back in her head. “I’ve put them away until next year. But look, there’s the wonderful photo of our black German shepherd, Shiloh, that you gave me as a Valentine’s present, still up on the mantel. We’ll leave that up all year as a reminder.” She handed me a bag for the ornaments, bow, and solar Christmas lights from our wreath, and the grapevine wreath to hang in its place, and shooed me out the door. “Look for signs of spring,” she reminded me, closing the door.
After dealing with the wreath issue, I wandered over to fill our tube feeders, stopping on the way to check for the tips of bulbs poking through the soil beneath the cabin feeder. Nothing. I filled the feeders, then continued on around the side of the house to see if any of the hellebores had started to bloom in our shade garden. The plants looked healthy and even seemed to be putting on new growth, but so far, there was nary a bloom in sight.
Making the most of the snow’s retreat, I began one of our more constant backyard chores, pick-up-sticks (we have lots of mature trees, so falling twigs and branches are an unending fact of life). At least the firepit had emerged from under its snow blanket so I had a place to deposit the sticks. It was on the way back around the side of the house that I noticed that the bed beneath our home office windows was showing signs of life. Sure enough, a telltale clump of healthy green shoots had pushed up through the groundcover. Snowdrops!
Where there were some snowdrops, there had to be others. Rushing to another bed, I saw more clumps pushing up. Rounding the other side of the house to fill the backyard feeders, I saw that our ‘Ice Follies’ daffodils were up and running. I raced to several beds in the back where we’d planted bulbs for a colorful spring show. Yes!!! There were the shoots of crocuses, mini-daffs, and even tulips pushing up. And in the bed beneath our shrub border, I saw that the delightful chrome-yellow winter aconites and snowdrops had actually started to bloom.
“Silence!!!” I rushed back in the house.
Silence, who’d been deep in composing a thoughtful essay, leapt to her feet, her face going white as chalk. “Ben! What’s happened?!!”
“The first aconites are blooming, and there are buds on some snowdrops!”
“Oh my God, Ben, I thought for sure Shiloh had escaped and run into the road!” Silence glared at me, clutching her heart. But she did let me take her outside to show her our first signs of spring. She even suggested that it was time to take our shiitake logs outside for the season, and pitched in with an armful of pick-up-sticks before returning to her essay.
“See, Ben, signs of spring! Don’t you think that it’s time to pack Christmas away and prepare to welcome the return of life to our land?” Silence may not live up to her name, but she’s a born psychiatrist. I had to agree. Spring is not just in the air, it’s in the ground. It’s time to turn our backs on winter for another year and celebrate the arrival of spring.
