Presented to you by rabbit ears on a glorious nine inch black and white TV screen.

The good old days: they were awful.

@WonderWartHog99 I am one step of modernization, I grew up with the colored ones that the screen would go bananas and the stripes of rainbow colors would show up and be bouncing on the screen. You had to smack the box or move the bunny ears around until the bouncing stripes would get situated.

Now for a word for the MIT school of advanced repair:

@Zoohome You had to smack the box . . . . .

Yep. I used to watch people try to repair their car by beating it with box wrenches. Sometimes, it works! It's part of my principal behind talking to inanimate things.

You can catch me petting the dashboard on the car and telling the car how nice it is before turning the engine on. Nice car, nice car . . . . .

Must work because Petunia never says nice things to it and she's the one who has problems with the car.

Cars are still the real killers. 30,000 per year.

@AtheistInNC I guess it depends on which data you're looking at; VMT = vehicle miles Travelled;

More details
Annual US traffic fatalities per billion vehicle miles traveled (red), miles traveled (blue), per one million people (orange), total annual deaths (light blue), VMT in 10s of billions (dark blue) and population in millions (teal), from 1921 to 2017

[upload.wikimedia.org]

It was common for children to leave at dawn, return at dusk otherwise they'd miss dinner.

@WonderWartHog99 very true! although your friends moms knew what you were up to.

@Donna_I Once armed with a bicycle, it was common for me to vanish twenty miles away, often over dirt roads and trails that needed exploring.

@WonderWartHog99 lol! sounds like you made some good memories. ever find anything interesting?

@Donna_I One thing I found was a family graveyard in a wooded lot, no houses anywhere to be found. The lot was later opened up for paintball. Found a great place to go skinny dipping. Found an abandoned stash of porno magazines. Found a bay loaded with marsh clams.

All manner of stuff.

@WonderWartHog99 wow! that is a wide range of things - lol! dicovering a family burial plot would be fascinating to me. where the clams discovered while skinny dipping?

@Donna_I >where the clams discovered while skinny dipping?

The skinny dipping was in a fresh water creek. The salt water marsh clams were found in a a salt water bayou next to a sea wall.

Once I had a car, I brought home a wash tub full of clams. I left them in water overnight to let them filter all the sand out of their bodies.

I never brought a bottle of water for those trips. The assumption was I could stay thirsty until I found something potable. Today's kids are smart enough to bring a jug of water nearly everywhere they go as well as skin lotion for sun damage.

Met my share of strangers along the way, one of whom was trying to get into turtle and tortoise ranching.

Turtles and turtle eggs are good eats. I wasn't smart enough to know I was eating an endangered tortoise species, the golfer as well. Like its name sake suggests, it burrows into soft sandy soil. It may be extinct now. I didn't eat that many but there was a local civic club that might have pushed them over the brink.

@WonderWartHog99 ok it is supper-ish time so I am focused on food. How did you fix the clams? It is sad about the tortoises. What was it about the eggs that made them good eats? Ranching should have been a good way to at least partially preserve the species as a solid breading stock would be needed.

@Donna_I

>How did you fix the clams?

With pasta and Alfredo sauce with an egotistical woman from Rhode Island on the side. She managed to ruin my dinning experience. Because I can't have dinner without thinking of her, I've stopped eating clams.

What was it about the eggs that made them good eats?

They have a rich malty flavor.

Ranching should have been a good way to at least partially preserve the species as a solid breading stock would be needed.

Ranching is a "for profit" method of meat production. Turtles reproduce slowly and that cuts out the word "profit." People raise them as pets and find out they're about as affectionate as rocks.

The turtle that ought to be endangered is the elusive alligator snapping turtle. They can grow to 100 pounds. One reference book called the most awful reptile ever because of the smell of their moss and mud covered shell and their willingness to remove bones from hunter's hands. Taste like roast beef although many clam different parts of its body have different taste.

Comic and Cajun cook Justin Wilson's shows featured a snapping turtle shell on his wall. He took it down because people confused it with the endangered leather back sea turtle.

Should I ever get seriously lost and darken your doorstep, what should I expect for dinner?

@WonderWartHog99 well less seafood here more meat and potatoes culture - so usually beef, chicken, or pork with a rice, potato, or noodle filler in various combinations. I try to work in salmon or cod at least once or twice a week. I am not brave enough to eat shellfish here but that is more due to my inexperience with fixing them. Last night supper had a slight mexican flare - sliced steak and vegetables with a spiced red sauce over some rice with black beans.

@Donna_ Currently I live far enough inland to make fresh seafood a mythological term.

I have to go fishing to get fresh fish. Otherwise anything that could swim is in the freezer.

I had wondered if you had rump of Bambi in your freezer. Here they throw venison in the crock pot and fill up the pot with in Italian salad dressing. I used to trade home grown sage with deer hunters because they used it in deer sausage. Their dogs got so used to the meat scraps tasting like sage, they ate my sage plants.

I considered you might have crayfish traps or have attempted butchering a snapping turtle.

Meat and potato culture is one of the standards for America, which often substitutes rice or pasta for the potato. Here the "standard" includes beans. I'll be stewing a pork bone in with red beans tonight. The beans will be put aside and will be used for red beans and rice. The not so secret ingredient in red beans and rice is sausage or sausage seasoning. That in turn is used for a traditional southern dish, greens, beans and corn bread. The greens (a mix of collard and mustard greens) are seasoned with bacon or fat back. The greens are seasoned additionally seasoned on the table with cabbage relish (aka chow chow), vinegar and hot sauce.

While we're plunging into the brutal heat of a Dixie summer, I'm trying to discourage Petunia from buying baking supplies. I'm made a tearful farewell to my favorite winter breakfast food, quiche.

She's been buying cake mixes and canned biscuits so the oven can fight our AC and raise our utility bills. What I should start shopping for is a solar oven that can reach temperatures of 400F (204c). In the months ahead, I'll be doing my most of my cooking in the charcoal smoker instead of the stove.

@WonderWartHog99 no venison here. My dad used to hunt when I was younger and like you mentioned we often had venison sausage. It was one of my favorite things for breakfast. There is nothing quiet like fresh herbs and they are one of the few things I grow in my small garden- sage, thyme, parsley, etc! I don't fish either. ☺ though I ate enough lake fish (grew up in Minnesota) as a girl to be slightly sick of the smell of it for a while. I need to try some again as s it has been years. We are stuck in a chilly spring currently but I imagine it won't be long before I am complaining about the heat as well. Sometimes a fresh quiche or home baked bread are worth the expense!

@Donna_I Sometimes a fresh quiche or home baked bread are worth the expense!

If the kitchen is cold, might as well use the oven. Otherwise, the heater will be kicking on to keep you comfortable. Either one raises the utility bills. I've known people in the dead of winter who spent all their time hanging out in the kitchen next to the wood burning stove.

However, here in South Carolina, summer has already arrived with the temperatures reaching into the mid-80's daily. Heating the place is not the problem.

Summer is the start of outdoor cooking. I've baked my potatoes with a charcoal smoky flavor. Leave the car windows rolled up and might as well have the oven on 200f. Catch the quick breads (i.e. biscuits) Petunia loves require 400f. I can't cook those in the car first thing in the morning.

I've been grown my own herbs for decades, once I learned how expensive fresh herbs are at the store. One time I spent $2 on a packet of basil seeds for a 40 foot row of basil. I used it to make five pounds of basil pesto. I used a pound on pasta and almost inhaled it. Later I saw basil pesto sauce in the store for $5 an ounce. If I had a food handler's license I could have sold my pesto and made a car payment.

@WonderWartHog99 that is a lot of pesto! fresh is always best.

@Donna_I What little basil I can get in the supermarket is limited to one type, the sweet globe type. There are over 30 types of basil. I'm torn between the purple ruffled basil and the Thai basil. I have to grow those.

Petunia often buys me stuff just to try it out. Lately that was pink Himalayan salt. It is better than my kosher salt but not as good as my seasoned salt. We have two pounds of table salt. As it stands we have enough salt to take us through the next century.

A few years ago, I was watching a middle east cooking show and they mentioned eatable sumac. I went to a specialty store about 50 miles out of town and picked it up. (It wasn't the only reason I left town). I rubbed the sumac on a steak and thought it was one of the best spice rubs I'd ever had.

Two years later, I discovered it grows wild next to the ditch across the street.

@WonderWartHog99 gardens are the best if you have time and space to play with unique or old plants. I have been purchasing different heirloom tomatoes for last few years which has been fun! Will have to look for unique basil plants.
Himalayan Pink salt is fun and not that I beieve all the press around it but I do like using it. It will be interesting to see what the next new thing maybe!
Sumac is an interesting plant as well. Haven't tried it on steak. Need to try that!

@Donna_I Heirloom tomatoes are juicer and more flavorful than their cardboard cousins in the supermarket, which are genetically engineered for rough harvesting, careless shipping and long shelf life. The better supermarket tomatoes (don't tell Trump) are the hand picked ones from Mexico. They don't have to survive a ten foot drop from a harvesting machine. The Mexicans find farm labor is cheaper than renting the machine.

My favorite heirloom tomato was the star of Obama's White House garden: the Cherokee purple tomato. Trump promptly plowed over Obama garden. Trump has the finest chiefs in the world at the White House and gets his meals from McDonald's.

The Cherokee purple never completely ripens. The top half of the fruit will be green while the bottom half is dark red and ready to eat. If you wait for the top half to turn green, the tomato will rot. I fry the top half for that classic dish from Dixie, fried green tomatoes.

The major catch with heirloom tomatoes is they're more likely to die on you than their hybrid cousins, which were genetically engineered against disease. I wind up losing about half of my Cherokee purple before harvest. It's why I see fewer farmers at the local organic farmer's market offering to them for sale. I love to visit that market because they often sell things I've never seen before. They were the ones who introduced me to purple tomatoes.

The thing I have to watch out for is the horned green tomato caterpillar. It blends in perfectly with the tomato making it difficult to find before it eats all the leaves off the plant. Do you have those? I've never picked enough of them off the plants to justify a fishing trip.

The thing I love to harvest is the tiny alpine strawberries. They're twice the size of a blue berry. Unlike their supermarket cousins they're are intense, almost like a concentrated syrup that screams I am strawberry. The strawberry you've never known. I raise those in a raised bed so my back doesn't go out while picking them. The back killing happens while building those raised beds. Those strawberries come back every year and spread all over the yard.

@WonderWartHog99 I haven't grown any of the purple variety. I agree home grown are best followed by farmers market. Commercially grown tomatoes are rarely good to eat.
I haven't had issues with caterpillars on my tomatoes. I usually plant marigolds around my tomatoes. I don't know if that is why but they look pretty in the garden and edible as well!
alpine strawberries sound fantastic!

@Donna_I I haven't had issues with caterpillars on my tomatoes.

Do you have any issues with birds on your tomatoes? I try not to have twitches when I've discovered the bird that won't eat a whole tomato and hits a series of tomatoes, a peck out of each one.

@WonderWartHog99 I am not sure what get into mine but they tend to take more than a peck.

Arg, when men were men, women were women and horses were hamburger helper.