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title=http://bobaganda.blogspot.com/2011/06/its-summertime-and-livin-is-easy-and.html
href="http://bobaganda.blogspot.com/2011/06/its-summertime-and-livin-is-easy-and.html">http://bobaganda.blogspot.com/2011/06/its-summertime-and-livin-is-easy-and.html</A></DIV>
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<P style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT face="Times New Roman">For some ambience, click on
this link and put this music on (from Porgy and Bess, the iconic song --
Summertime, and the livin is easy, fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high.)
</FONT><A href="http://youtu.be/vWFJLUBwpSY"><FONT
face="Times New Roman">http://youtu.be/vWFJLUBwpSY</FONT></A></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px"> </P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT face="Times New Roman">Next, fix yourself your
favorite cool summer beverage. While regular tea is not an Oklahoma product per
se, the Coop's fine beverage producers have fine teas blended right here in
Oklahoma. Or, make a quick trip through your "tea garden" and bring in a variety
of mint leaves, some bee balm, crush them a bit and steep them in hot water.
Pour over ice and relax. Don't have a tea garden? Put that on your list of
things to do. Don't have land for a garden? That's fine, herb tea plants grow
great in containers and typically will do fine in dappled shade or on a sunny
windowsill. </FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px"> </P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT face="Times New Roman">Third. . . before we get to
FOOD, let's talk just a bit about energy conservation. Here are my two bestest
and most effective ideas for energy conservation:</FONT></P>
<UL>
<LI><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><STRONG>Cook outside!
</STRONG></FONT><FONT face="Times New Roman">Every BTU you cook with is a BTU
that your air conditioner will have to remove, so you pay TWICE for the energy
to cook inside: Once when you cook the food, and then again when your AC works
overtime to remove the heat and humidity. </FONT>
<LI><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><STRONG>Shade the outside of
your windows and doors.</STRONG></FONT><FONT face="Times New Roman"> For that
matter, shade ALL of the exterior envelope of your home, but if you can't do
that, get some shade over your windows and doors. These are typically the
worst insulated systems in your building envelope. Even an expensive double
pane/argon filled/low E coated window is still only R-3 or 4 at the most,
compared with R-19 of the typically insulated 2 x 4" frame exterior wall. (Or
compared with R-33 of my 9 inch thick walls.) If nothing else is available,
duct tape some auto sun shades together and hang over the exterior of the
windows.</FONT></LI></UL>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT face="Times New Roman">The reason for "exterior"
shading is that once the sun hits the window or the door, even if you have
curtains inside, the heat will get inside via conduction. Heat always moves to
cold, and your nicely AC'd interior is surrounded by solar BTUs that are quite
anxious to find their way inside your (hopefully) well-insulated building
envelope.</FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px"> </P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT face="Times New Roman">The less money you spend on
energy, the more money you can spend on local foods! And eating local foods is
much better than making energy corporations rich, don't you think?</FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px"> </P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT face="Times New Roman">Now for some summer
foods.</FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px"> </P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT face="Times New Roman">One of my favorite summer
salads is cucumber, tomato, and onion salad. Well, the way I am, I also add some
chopped jalapenos. Chop up the vegetables, mix equal parts oil and vinegar, add
a dash of salt, and voila, great summer salad. As to amounts. . . I typically do
two medium cucumbers (sliced as half moons), one medium onion (roughly chunked),
and 4 tomatoes (use a serrated knife, slice in half, then slice each half in
quarters. I would add 2 large jalapenos sliced in rings. For this much veggie, I
would use 1/4 cup oil and 1/4 cup vinegar and 1 teaspoon salt. It's good freshly
made, and it's really good the next day. And yes, you can use a chopped up
walking onion from your garden instead of a regular bulb onion, or a handful of
chopped fresh onion or garlic chives.</FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px"> </P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT face="Times New Roman">Since summer time is not
much of a time to heat your oven, my favorite summer breads have always been
skillet top breads. I would simply use my regular bread recipes, only instead of
forming into loaves, I would pinch of a bit of dough about the size of a golf
ball, roll it out, and then bake it on a cast iron skillet. I do this with AND
without oil, getting subtle differences in the taste and surface texture.
Sometimes I deep fry the dough to make a yeast-raised fry bread. That's "to die
for" as they say these days. And if you want cornbread, just make your favorite
cornbread batter and but cook it like a pancake batter.</FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px"> </P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT face="Times New Roman">One of the best summer foods
is the simple hamburger. Make it from ground beef, ground buffalo, ground lamb,
mix it half and half with ground pork or even sausage. You can be creative with
the seasonings. I often mix finely chopped herbs with the ground meat before
forming the burgers (sage, thyme, rosemary, crushed red pepper) and maybe add
just a dash of teriyaki sauce. Form into balls and press out with your hands, or
put a ball of ground meat on the back of a saucer and place another saucer over
it and lightly press to form a patty. </FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px"> </P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT face="Times New Roman">Put it all together and
throw it on the grill or into the skillet. For the classic "onion burger"...
after you put the patty on the skillet, cover it with thinly sliced onions. When
you flip it, the onions caramelize as they cook. Handle the meat as little as
possible. Don't "massage" or "knead" it, mix it only enough to combine whatever
you are adding to the ground meat or to mix the different kinds of ground meat.
One of the interesting things about the ground meat bought from the coop is that
it is typically very lean, so there isn't a lot of shrink during the cooking.
</FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px"> </P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT face="Times New Roman">And please, make extra!
You're getting the grill or the skillet hot, so why not cook twice the number of
burgers that you need and refrigerate or freeze the others for eating later? A
great lunch is simply a cooked hamburger patty, smeared with some mayo or
mustard, layered with onion, pickle, cheese, and wrapped in a leaf of romaine or
slid into a bun. Burgers with eggs for breakfast? WHY NOT? Burgers with eggs AND
chili AND bacon for breakfast? WHY NOT? INVITE ME! If you're worried about your
ability to eat such good food, I'll help. </FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px"> </P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT face="Times New Roman">I am really impressed with
the amount of vegetables available this month through the cooperative. It is
obvious that there has been tremendous growth in the capacity of the local food
system between this year and last. I am writing this Monday evening, and you'll
find LOTS of vegetables still available. Many vegetable producers add to their
listings as the order progresses and they become more certain about what they
will have available. </FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px"> </P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT face="Times New Roman">Right now you can find
various kinds of greens, cabbage, onions (several kinds), radishes, tomatoes,
beets, turnips, cucumbers, microgreens, leeks, celery (this is a FIRST),
carrots, garlic, fresh herbs, mushrooms, potatoes, jalapenos, zucchini and
yellow squash. Makes me hungry just to write about this. But extra, while the
buying is good, and preserve for eating later! </FONT><FONT
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><EM><STRONG>Your freezer is your friend when
it comes to eating local. </STRONG></EM>You will want some nice local veggies
this winter, won't you? Well, buy now so you can eat later.</FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px"> </P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT face="Times New Roman">And speaking of extra. . .
how is your food storage doing these days? We all know how I preach on this
subject and in fact I can hardly write any bobaganda without reminding everyone
that there are a hundred and one things that could happen tomorrow that would
interfere to the point of ruination with the orderly working of our just-in-time
food system. Troubles on that scale would likely impact the coop. If terrorists
have hit the fuel supply, we wouldn't have fuel to run our delivery days just as
the supermarkets wouldn't have for their supply trucks. So always remember this
ancient wisdom. . . "Remember the time of hunger in the day of plenty." The
world is consuming MORE GRAIN every year than it is producing, and that means
that we are slowly drawing down our world food security grain stocks. This
year's wheat harvest in Oklahoma was gravely harmed by the unstable weather we
experienced (severe cold coupled with extensive drought), and there is no
guarantee that this troubled weather cycle will not continue. </FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px"> </P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT face="Times New Roman">As an experiment. . . do an
inventory of all the food in your house, and then realistically ask yourself how
long you could feed your household with that amount of food. Would it be a
radically different diet from what you're used to? If so, that's a danger sign,
since a time of trouble is typically not a good time to start a new way of
eating. </FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px"> </P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT face="Times New Roman">Store what you eat, and eat
what you store. If you eat hamburger, then store hamburger. And make sure you
have a backup way to keep your freezer cold. I have a marine battery, an
inverter, and a small generator, spent about $300 total.</FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px"> </P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT face="Times New Roman">Summertime, the living is
easy, enjoy it while it lasts! Don't delay, the June order closes this coming
Thursday! Log in right now and get some of this good Oklahoma eatin' for your
own household. Y'all bon appetit, you hear?</FONT></P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT face="Times New Roman"></FONT> </P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT face="Times New Roman">Bob
Waldrop</FONT></P></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>