Potato salad et al.

Yeah, Pa put in a whole pound of butter. I remember seeing him do it with one of those uncut pounds you can buy. I wish we weren't having this conversation. I'm going to have to fry some chicken this week. Do rehabilitate your cast iron skillet; if you get it seasoned enough, you won't taste the iron (I hate that taste, so I understand what you mean).

Because most of my cooking is pretty spare, here's how I make potato salad. I use about two pounds of Yukons, and I boil them, unpeeled, with three eggs. Boiling the eggs right along with the potatoes means you never forget them. This boiling is done in a big pot of water to cover all; bring to a boil, then simmer until you can pierce a potato with a skewer (tip: best skewers are the little ones that come with a turkey trussing kit on a little card that looks like a turkey). Drain, and let the potatoes cool enough to handle (immerse the eggs in cold water). Peel the potatoes with a knife and cut them up. Peel & cube eggs. Then I add: celery, onion (preferably a sweet one), lots of mayonnaise, a squirt of yellow mustard, celery salt, celery seed, a bit of cayenne (careful), and enough salt to make it taste good.

I always make extra and give it to Mom. I announce it as a blank canvas for her to use to make her own creation.

News from here is very tame, mostly related to tomatoes and other vegetables. We now have 25 tomato packages in. This is the most labor intensive of all the freezing, but it is also, thank goodness, the last. It takes about two and a half hours (not counting picking and sorting) to make 7 or 8 bags (14 ounces, like the cans of diced tomatoes in juice you buy). But it's worth it; they're wonderful. This year I'm watching the original Forsyte Saga as I peel tomatoes. This helps.

Corn day has come and gone since last I wrote, and we now have 60 packages of corn (too many!) in the freezer. We also gave away a lot of fresh corn. We were able to freeze in the space of a morning, since Marty and Julia had somewhere else to go. We're getting more efficient.

Other tallies. 40 beans now (finished yesterday), so that's done. We'll pick a few more, but only to eat and give away. The onion crop is in and is small, but good. Garlic's beautiful. 40 jars of pickles are in the basement, looking nice with red peppers and garlic. We ended up with 47 packages of broccoli; frozen broccoli is hard to cook right, but Charlie is responsible for that (he steams it). I'm not freezing carrots this year (we still have some left from last year); the crop is looking nice. We'll harvest them when it starts to get cold. They keep well for six months in the downstairs fridge. Leeks ditto. I put the leeks in paper bags and they just get dryer and dryer but are good all year. We've eaten a lot of fennel this summer, but I don't think I'll freeze any. There are still a couple of heads of cabbage in the downstairs fridge, and we'll eat cabbage in some form about once a week until it's gone. Potato crop is smaller this year, and they are particularly good. We harvested them early to save them from the mice, but it doesn't seem to matter. Much tooth-gnashing over when to harvest the potatoes, but it all came out fine. We've eaten a lot of eggplant, but we never freeze it. Peppers have yet to be addressed. Once the tomatoes are under control, I'll pick them (anaheims and anchos), roast them on the grill, peel and freeze. We've had relleños only once, and I must do it again. They're wonderful, but make a terrible mess.

Etc., etc. Dry beans are looking o.k. and will be the last thing to harvest. We picked the edamame (turned out to be a lot!) and today I must blanch and freeze them, in the pod, thank goodness. We did cook a few last week, salted them in the pod, and squeezed them out as we ate them, pretending we were Japanese men drinking beer.

One last garden news item. It is a wonderful tomato year! Despite the hail (and indeed every tomato that was hit by a hailstone rotted), it's a bumper crop, and they have particularly wonderful flavor.

One more thing. I can't believe I've gone all summer without saying the word golf. We joined this year (the SV course is 2 minutes from our house, and a couples membership is $500 for unlimited play), since Charlie wanted to play again, and we've played at least twice a week since May. We go very early (six in midsummer) and play either nine or eighteen holes, depending on how much time we have. Nine holes gets us home a little after eight, eighteen holes take until a little after ten. There are a couple of very good things about this. I'd gotten into the habit of using a golf cart (with Ruth), but we've been walking this year (including Ruth when she plays with me or us). Golf as exercise, what a novel concept! I also think one plays better when walking, and of course it saves a ton of money. The other good thing is that my game has improved a lot from playing so much. Three times in the last week I've shot 53 (no mulligans, no foot mashies) one one half or the other of the course. I still have not put together two nines under 55 for a really nice score, but it'll happen. Maybe I'll break 100 if we keep this up for another summer or two. Anyway, it's been fun. Charlie spends a fair amount of time hitting golf balls into the pasture (it's a drag to pick them up!), but I never do. That would be practicing, and I don't do that.

Ben, Marty, and Nate were here yesterday to grab some tomatoes and other things. Ben is very proud to have his own room here, and now he can go up there by himself (though I don't leave him unsupervised for long). He was happy running up and down stairs bringing things to show his dad. He found a treasure box, too, a little metal box from a 30s-era nail kit, now full of marbles. Julia may remember it, but somehow it got down behind the little fridge in his room, and Charlie had only recently found it there and brought it out. I am reminded of the humidor (refrigerator) at Grandma's where there were always new little toys. I remember particularly little plastic airplanes (which LaLa could identify, being the spotter she was) and little umbrellas from drinks.

No paper has arrived today. Since I'm the guy who's dressed, I'll go to the gas station and get one. Monday's paper is important, since the threads for the week's comics begin.