My Princess

I love my wife like there is no other.  She is the light of my life.  She makes me laugh, keeps me in check and keeps me doing charitable work.  She is the real deal, but this post isn't about her.

My princess.

Five years ago I meet my future wife.  She has two dogs, one trained and one wild.  Very wild.  She barks at full steam in the house, she bites, she runs.... she is a mess.  She had mange as a puppy and was in quarantine for months as a pup after being found on the streets, but she was three wheeled.  She walked with a limp.  When I came into the picture we found a GREAT vet who understood the dog and amputated the bad toe that caused the limp.  I carried the 60lb dog.

She had never bonded with a human, but on a boondocking trip to Panamint Valley, I had to chase her miles down Remi Nadu Road.  She realized she was loved.

She is now my princess.  Scabs, bald spots and all, she is the most proud dog you'd ever see.  She will chase rabbits miles across lake beds and still come on command.  Man's best friend, indeed.

This dog has taught me more about grace than anything I could ever experience.

The Magical Fruit

I've always loved beans.

I grew up in La Puente, a gritty suburb of Los Angeles where some of the white flight from the dust bowl in Oklahoma ended up.  We were them.  My grandfather died on the farm and my dad became the man of the house.

At fourteen.

 After untold years of drought, they came west with the rest of the Okies (I can call them that, I am one) and set roots.  Most ended up in towns like La Puente, El Monte, West Covina and Baldwin Park... any place you could have a chicken or two, the roads may or may not be dirt and the rest of the town Latino.  You stuck out like sore thumb.

Our first house was on Los Angeles Avenue in Baldwin Park, just East of Main St, a quarter mile from the drive through dairy.  We would walk there on hot nights to get ice cream made from the fresh milk.  It was always the best ice cream in the world on a 90 degree night.  The neighborhood was different than us and my Hesian uncles parked bikes on our culdasac to make a point, our neighbors all spoke Spanish.  We would Spanglish a bit but the universal language of the neighborhood was, when the goat went missing, there were great tacos to be had the next night.  Oh so true.  Oh so good.

In my teenage years I always heard, "Ah, Mijo, you are too skinny..." and someone's mom would shove a homemade tortilla with butter in your hand, or a potato and chorizo burrito, menudo, or a plate of refried beans.  I loved those beans and studied method after method, all individual to each family.

Here is my version.

Saute onions, garlic and hot peppers in oil, add beans (use any beans you've canned, they all work - recipe to follow) with liquid and simmer until soft.  Salt and pepper to taste and mash with a potato masher.  Simmer until they hit the desired thickness.  You don't even need to add fat to come up with a great product, simply cook down your onions, garlic and peppers in a bit of hot water, add your beans and off you go.

It brings me back every time.  Weewee's mom used to serve the best beans, but don't tell that to Mrs. Rodriguez...

Pressure Canned Beans:

1 C Beans of choice
Water to within an inch of the top of the jar
Clove of garlic
Teaspoon of salt

Process at 10 lbs for 90 minutes.

All basic canning rules apply.

Eat, eat!!!!  You are too skinny!!!!

Little Pot, Big Flower

My mother loved Georgia O'Keeffe paintings and had prints all over her office that we shared.  I felt like I had entered into an OBGyn office; I couldn't stand it.  I wear my manhood proudly... I weld, I scratch things, I like old rusty metal, I like smoked meat, fire is good, I climb mountains, wounds are to be fixed with duct tape, Georgia O'Keeffee made me vomit.

Fast forward twenty years and a stick that my wife's grandma gave us turned into this.

Pictorial says everything.

Free Camping Freedom!

I don't like to pay for camping.  I don't think I should have to and rarely do.  I don't need a picnic table, toilets, nature centers, chubby rangers with Smokey the Bear hats and signed trails with more and more intrusive Globberment regulation.

I used to backpack, Jeep camp and now have a slide in camper for the truck.  I come equipped for six or seven days, self contained and happy.  We camp for free on public land all throughout the desert in California.  We have a love affair with the desert, the freedom and sheer loudness of complete silence.

Where we go we have no neighbors to speak of and are a few miles from the nearest paved road.  It allows time to decompress, to explore military ruins (it was part of Patton's desert base for WWII) and search for Indian villages (we've found two).  Everyday is rewarding, even if sitting in the shade of the RV reading a book or listening to Miles Davis... or doing nothing but staring off into the distance.

The nights are inky unless you have a great big moon, then the desert becomes this amazing silvery-blue that glows for miles and miles.  The coyotes howling in the distance, it makes quite a remarkable scene and soundtrack.

Go find yourself a spot, far away from others and slow down.  Make it your spot.  Build a sundial out of rocks and a stick.  Play some no-out-of-bounds bocce ball.  Listen to the breeze.  Take photos of things that seem ordinary but really are extraordinary.

Camp for free.

Be free.

The Stinking Rose

My favorite crop of all time is garlic.

That lowly thought of item for your garden, purchased in bulk at the local Von's as a California Early or Late is the easiest thing to grow in your garden and is by far the most rewarding.  Growing it opens up a world far beyond the supermarket isles with varied flavors, heat and nuance.

We've found that red hard neck garlics seemingly grow best in Southern California and are the most powerful in flavor and heat.  Heat like chili peppers when you try them raw, powerful in your Caesar salad and your breath afterwards.  Oh so good.

We are fortunate enough to have a community garden plot across town that used to be our primary source of produce for the year.  Sadly, a professional farmer from South Africa moved into the plot next to us and decided that weeds are a cash crop and grows them by the bushel, which blows seed onto our plot.  This has changed our strategy of water thirsty crops to berries, grapes and garlic.  We are heading there today to pull up the last of the tomatoes, till the soil, kill the water timer and prep for garlic.  In the ground in October and out by July, we had great luck with sexy types like Red Janice, Amore and Early Red; each with their own bouquet.  Sexy.

It is as easy as take a good sized head, break off a clove and into the ground butt side down (pointy end up).  Cover with an inch of soil and let it go for the season.  We didn't have to purchase a single head and were into the conversation each night before dinner of, "What type do you think would go well in....?"

Plant garlic, you won't be disappointed.  Filagree Garlic Farm linked at the right. ;)

How to Kill the Christmas Spirit. One Easy Step...

Volunteer.

My wife's crazy grandma who is old as dirt, slightly A type (she was the leader of the Women's Federation of the Republican Party in OC up until a few months ago), cranks out on coffee all day, works until three in the morning on hoos-a-fudge and ran for city council in Villa Park at the age of 80 to regulate where people park their motorhomes, and lost, finally realized that she might be human. She caught a bad case of poopy pants, you know, the time you ventured to Mexico for the weekend and had that last margarita on ice... and it caught up with you two days later. Well, she had some infectious disease like that and realized she isn't teflon any longer (I, however, still am and in my head I'm still 13, though my wife kicks my ass and tells me different. I digress).

Crazy Grandma, now known as as CG, has been the lynch pin of the family for years and was quite a breeder in her younger years with 8 kids and an untold number of grands. The Catholic faith was good to her. Up until now she has hosted the family Christmas of 50 or greater, working herself into a frenzy for weeks. She just can't do it anymore and I have been trying to relieve her of it for years as none of her kids will step up, let alone bring a dish to the event. So I was able to to convince her to let me do the event and she can simply enjoy it.

She agreed.

I was shocked.

After I picked myself off of the floor and guzzle the swill they serve as wine at their house, I went into planning mode. What to grow?

We've already put up enough chard to feed the starving. We are making loaf after loaf from scratch for stuffing and into the deep freeze. Cabbage from spring, check. Green beans on the vine now... got it. Sausage... need to find pork butts on sale to do a grind. Salad greens go in the ground when the weather turns. Turkey and ham on sale after Thanksgiving and then smoked on one of three smokers for the day and one turkey in the oven.

What did I get myself into?

All of the nutty aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews in my house at once. Add booze and I'm sure I will be called the devil again by that one crazy aunt... no, not that one. The other one. Hell, they are all nuts.

Take it from me, as I sit here sipping another American Pride Vodka cocktail and wondering why I make such mistakes, go to Denny's instead.

How Expensive is Air, Really?

Apples for $2/lb.  Dried apples for $4.29/lb.  Once you step into a grocery store, air becomes rather expensive. 

Here's how to not pay for air.  Get some apples - the size does not matter. So, see if there are some smaller, odd-shaped apples in the clearance section.  We are lucky enough to have an apple tree in our backyard.  When we thin the tree to enable the tree to focus its energy on the remaining apples, we weren't sure what to do with those premature apples we plucked.  Drying them is the perfect solution.



Take about a dozen apples.  I used to waste 1/2 a day coring, peeling and slicing them by hand.  Then I discovered something that had been around for centuries—an apple peeler.  Before I went to work one day, I ordered one on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Back-Basics-Apple-Potato-Peeler/dp/B0000DE2SS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343015245&sr=8-1&keywords=apple+peeler).  On my way home from work, I swung by an Orange County Womens Republican Federated (www.ocfrw.org/) annual garage sale in my grandmother's backyard.  I take two steps in and my mother walks up with an apple peeler for $2 and says, "I don't know what this is, but it looks like something you would use."  Patience is a bitch.

Back to the matter at hand.  Core, peel and slice the apples. 

Put them in a bowl of cold water with about 1/4 of a cup of lemon juice.  Let the apples sit in the bowl for at least 20 minutes.  If they're in there for less than 20 minutes, they will brown and have a higher potential of rotting.  If you leave them in there longer than 30 minutes, they will be soggy and take forever to dry.

After 20-30 minutes, take the apples out of the bowl of lemon-water.  Slice each apple so that each ring is sliced.  Place one layer of apple rings per tier of your dehydrator.  Let them dry for about 8 hours—this is what makes dried apples very expensive, the application of air.

Sunset Magazine Sucks

Okay, I admit it.  I used to read Sunset.  Alright, alright... I'll come clean.  I was a subscriber.  I know, shame on me.  I came clean.  I gave up the bad habit.  Forgive me, already.

There was a time in which I thought Sunset Mag (http://www.sunset.com/) was the best.  I would swoon over the pages of pretty day trips, forgotten beaches, quaint hide-aways, the garden greats, succulent frames and design on the cheap.

Then I realized I'd been bamboozled. 

They pulled the cashmere over my eyes.  The bastards!

I really started "reading" Sunset Ragazine during the Great Recession; you know, paying attention to the details.  $400 succulent frame, are you kidding?  $650 for a weekend away?  Designers who spend $1000 on a "garden makeover on the cheap"???  They had me reading this junk for years and I was finally onto them.  I was junkin' after all, and our pockets were nearly empty.  I couldn't afford their crap.

So a few weeks ago, while sitting idly by at physical therapy, I pick up a Sunset to skim.  I hit page 51 of the June 2012 and about spit my coffee across the waiting room.  In their Pop Up Backyard they tossed out the very chairs I had just picked up the previous weekend at a yard sale for $10 for the set, bought some crappy plastic Ikea wanna be chairs for untold riches and were set, some $500 later to have a garden party.  A $500 remodel for a garden party????  Are you kidding me??

I had picked up the exact same chairs the week prior, rattle canned them flat rust, plopped on some $0.50 red and white pillows to match the rest of the outside dining room and viola!  $15 garden party makeover.

Sunset Magazine Sucks.  Enough said.

Kathy's Potting Bench

What to give the person that has everything?


(Edit: Kathy and her son Danny who live in Huntington Beach Central Park area and have a beautiful southwestern themed backyard have since painted this bench purple with pink accents and it came out amazing!)

We created the Junkin' version of a potting bench for a friend who had everything but was in love with our basic potting bench/bar in the back yard.


We got a hot tip that Habitat For Humanity (http://www.habitat.org/) was having a warehouse sale, and upon arrival was told that everything was going to be sold or tossed.  We found some cool stuff and saw some turn of the century doors getting taken out to the dumpster.


The next morning the idea hit us... a potting bench made from an old door!


This is where our lives took a turn for a new low.  We jumped into the truck and went down to dumpster dive Habitat!  Sure enough, door secured and new project was under way.


After picking up $25 worth of lumber, we threw together a table of 2"x4" and 1"x4", secured it to the door with some lag bolts I had laying around, bolted up some rusty crap from the workbench (horseshoes, etc) and bolted some old jelly jars to the bottom of the table to put knickknacks in.  Complete with a coffee cup succulent garden and an old insulator to store string on, and we were good to go.


Delivery of this beast took two grown men, but it was worth it.  Kathy couldn't have been more pleased. 


Dumpster dive project accomplished.

86'ed

Let's first place the setting in which this blog was drafted: Music—"Give 'em enough rope" by the Clash; Cocktail—Keystone Light.  We apologize in advance. 


We've been kicked out of a lot of places—usually family is invovled or I started to karaoke to "Like a Virgin"—but this time it caught us off guard.  What is not normal with kicking a box of someone elses' belongings off to the side as I pronounce "I don't work here!" when some Napoleon-complexed estate sale worker demanded that I put her over-priced crap back?  Mother Theresa would've behaved the same way at 20% of retail prices.


It started off with our desire to put a lot of miles on a loaner car.  Miles on the "Bo."  I was in a car accident (55-years old Ms. Orange County on her cell phone) and have a Chevy Malibu as our loaner car.  Accordingly, day trip to Pasadena to do the Gamble House [www.gamblehouse.org], Pie and Burger [www.pienburger.com/], and an estate sale.


My wife is on the email list to an estate sale company.  The estate sale is under Pasadena's suicide bridge and is the former home of two professors with a multitude of hobbies.  The perfect hunt for rusty crap. 


After 40 minutes of pushing through a zoo of men in tight jean shorts, striped tank tops and mustaches and girls who could use a sandwich and a bath (that's what we get for going to LA), we end up with a box of rat-shit covered gardening supplies, Ziploc bags from the 70's and chrome polish (I'm the last to have on my truck).  My wife is especially excited about coming across the gardening supplement btk (the wonders of which she will undoubtedly blog about).


When Tabatha (aka "T.B." or more commonly known as "That Bitch") finally graced us with the privilege of being checked out from her blessed estate sale, she starts to calculate . . .1/2 a box of band aids $2.00, book on zucchini recipes $3.00, rat-covered tomato food $5.00.  I thought my wife was buying trash, but figured they would give me $10 to haul this shit away, so going along with it was a smarter move than trying to convince my wife otherwise. 


$57.  I offer a more than generous offer of $30 (a whole 15% of retail, which is generous for us).  As Tabatha tries to wipe the rat crap off of her hands, she says, "oh, no" with an insulted tone.  Not a problem.  It was junk after all.  As a courtesy, we were going to push the box off to the side, but Tabatha demands that we put every item back where we found it. 


"I don't work here."  "Excuse me?!?!"  "I don't work here."  86'ed.