FDA now says the mystery salmonella is in jalapeno peppers

Feedlot Peppers - click to authenticate

First the bumbling FDA blamed a recent salmonella outbreak on tomatoes. They even hinted that the sickness could be blamed on Mexico. Now they have found the exact strain of salmonella that caused the outbreak on one, single Mexican-grown-but-handled-in-Texas jalapeño pepper. Tomatoes are back on the table, but you still won't get any decent pico de gallo with hot peppers being pulled off the shelves.

I figure the FDA wouldn't know shit from shinola, whether it was in a can or on a chili. I'll be sticking to my homegrown.

What the monkey said when he slammed his tail in the door:

It won't be long now!

The old feeder will be eating ripe tomatoes over the sink. Its spitting rain at the feedlot, so I can't get very much done outdoors. The garden likes the rain, the mower chokes on the wet stuff.

I have been fooling around with the Flock browser. I heard about it from a cat whose opinion on these matters I trust, mØnkyman at Aptenobytes. Here's what he says about Flock:

This sucker is based on Firefox2, but it's more of a specialty browser. It's designed for social networking. Go now and try it. If you're a Facebook or Flickr addict, a blogger, or suffer from any of the other networking addictions, this puppy is the cat's pajamas. It's open source (mostly GPL) and uses standard bookmarks as it's Firefox 2 ancestry would suggest. Tabbed browsing works as expected.

I've now switched to Flock, although it doesn't quite feel like a Mac app, the added functionality of it for what I mostly do is enough to overcome that.

Oh, did I mention that it has a dedicated blog editor built in? that's what used to write up this post.

Flock is free, easy to set up, it neatly imported all my FireFox preferences, bookmarks, passwords, etc. So far, Flock is performing as advertised. You can get it here.
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You might think it odd that an anti-social type like myself would be interested in social networking. Not really. Some cats use Facebook, Twitter and such to supplement their normal interactions with others. I use them instead of having normal interactions with people.

Feedlot Garden Report

Summer Squash

The feedlot garden took a beating during the Big Blow we had on June 27th. I couldn't feel too badly about the damage; it was small potatoes compared to the widespread suffering and expense caused by that ill wind. The squash pictured above grew new leaves to cover up the ones riddled with hail holes. I'm eating these little yellow delicacies every day now.

Green Tomatoes

The tomatoes didn't look very good after the storm. I hadn't staked them up yet, and it looked like they might not recover. After giving them a few days to heal, I propped them up and put some wire mesh around them. All the tomato plants but one recovered nicely and have set lots of fruit. The one that didn't survive was replaced by a volunteer from last year's detritus.

The hot pepper plants are tough as nails. All of them are doing well. The jalapenos and cayennes (which I love to eat green, like a cajun) are producing enough to keep my eats as hot as I want. It looks like there will be plenty for pickling and drying. The traditional chilis and the red habaneros are always slower to mature. My banana peppers had fruit set, but the storm knocked them off. Now they are laden with fast growing replacement fruits.

I have faith that there will be a bountiful harvest.
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I could never understand why folks insist on reading Jesus' parable of the sower as if it were an allegory. It isn't, unless you believe the disciples interpretation. I've never trusted Jesus' disciples very far; one reason is their explanation of many parables as allegories.

A parable touches upon truth at one point only. The parabola in geometry is a curve drawn equidistant from a point and a straight line. Only at one single point on the parabola does it come the closest to the point and the straight line. In an allegory, each aspect of the story has a corresponding point of truth which it represents.

The disciples allegorize the parable of the sower by making the seeds be the "word", the different soils into the "hearers of the word", etc. In my understanding of the message of Jesus, this is a grotesque corruption of Jesus' message. Read as a parable, the story of the sower promises a bountiful harvest, punto final. I find this reassurance in keeping with the main "don't worry, be happy' line of Christian faith as expressed in many of the parables of Jesus.
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BTW: As these pictures I took today show, the corn is all silks and tassels here.

Busy canning

In the Garden

At the feedlot the clink of canning jar lids and rings is heard. It has been a good year for tomatoes all over the area this year. The old feeder grew a few of the popular heirloom varieties, along with the usual freakishly big hybrids. They seem more like normal tomatoes to me, and are nice and tasty.

It is hard to believe that Europeans had no tomatoes before they were imported from the Americas. Mediterranean cuisine relies so heavily on this member of the nightshade family, you might think the cooks there had been using them forever.

When first introduced to white folks they were afraid to eat them, fearing they might be poisonous. Medieval reasoning was at the same time transforming itself into a more modern, rational mode of thought. When folks saw people eat tomatoes without having visions or dropping dead, the fruit's nickname went from "Moor's Apple" (not a good name when the memories of the Crusades were still fresh) to "Love Apple".

Tomatoes didn't catch on among the Europeans settling in North America until catsup (or ketchup) came along. From that moment on, the American palate was doomed to a future of Big Macs, Whoppers and french fries.