Started in 2010, Lawn Chair USA turns out proper aluminum framed chairs with colorful webbing.  They even sell kits to reweb your chairs if you wear them out.  Their chairs surely beat the awful ones that come in a bag and seem to be the only game in too many retail towns.  I see a couple Lawn Chair USA chairs in our future.  You?

Even some of the recipes catch my eye.  I will probably give this month’s recipe for Strawberry Coconut Cream Soda a try.  I don’t give away people’s recipes without permission, but they share it here.  I wonder if the sugar gets well incorporated using their technique.  I’d consider blending half of the berries, sugar and coconut milk to get it well combined and then adding the remaining berries and soda at the end.  Either way, it sounds delicious.

Bye.

Quieter moments were spent at the community garden.  Lacey and I made a picnic breakfast to enjoy there on Saturday morning.  Highlight for me was our first use of the vintage Thermos King Steeley thermos.  Ours was made in Norwich, Connecticut.  New offerings come from China.  No photos of the spread (muffins, coffee, fruit and nuts), so this photo of Lacey playing at being a bunny will have to suffice.

The strawberries are small but delicious.  The largest and most ripe examples are all pre-nibbled by someone (maybe the baby rabbit I unintentionally sprinkled while watering a few days back).  I also picked more radishes and a few garlic scapes and thinned rows of beets and cabbage.  

A little more before I let you go–Julie Hasson’s Vegan Diner guided me through the very simple process of making my first seitan pastrami.  An amazing taste highlighted by fennel, caraway and copious amounts of black pepper.  

I didn’t weigh it, but my best guess is I have a two-pound loaf.  I’ve seen very small portions, let’s say four ounces, of seitan for sale at the co-op for six or eight bucks.  If that is the correct measure of value, I made about $50 of pastrami with ingredients costing maybe a fiver.  Magic, I tell you.

Thus concludes today’s public diary entry.  Be well.

I needed a good lunch as I pedaled a bale of  hay to the garden (then continued on to the FedEx drop box and the co-op–maybe as many as five feel-the-burn miles).  The dry bale I pedaled there earlier in the week was a breeze.  This well soaked bale, though, was another matter.  Had to be twice the weight and well over the trailer’s limit.  I pedaled even more slowly and smoothly and seem to have avoided damaging anything.  Sorry, Burley!  I’ll be better next time.  Like maybe I won’t age hay bales on the side of the house during weeks of heavy rain.  Stinky!

I am going to keep this short.  I should be outside in the sun.  Sweet, sweet sun!  Happy Friday.

The keepers?  Cat Mother and the All-Night Newsboys, Greg Copeland, Santana, Dead Boys, Sandy Denny, Joy of Cooking and NRBQ.  That’s NRBQ above in 1978!  The guy on the left is Al Anderson whom I just discovered wrote Ridin’ in my Car which I first heard in 2010 on She & Him’s Volume Two.  I would not likely have discovered this fun for me fact without listening to the original pressing of NRBQ’s At Yankee Stadium.  When the album was re-released the song was omitted.  More?  This album was recorded just south of here at Bearsville Studios.  The link is worth a read, so click on it already.

Still to review are Steve Hackett, The Churls and Lindisfarne.  I am glad I saved these records as long as I have.  Most of them are well outside of my comfort zone but today that is exactly what I want.  Too many days I listen to shuffled songs on a one-dimensional collection of music on my iPod.

I can’t sit still through all those records without doing something so I made a labor-intensive lunch of spicy chickpeas (Madhu Gadia’s The Indian Vegan Kitchen never disappoints) and grilled Lebanese flatbread (grabbed from the NYT’s site).  

The dough rises for an hour so I started there.  While the yeast was eating sugar and passing gas, I put in place all the ingredients for the chickpeas.  That dish ended with a ten minute reduction during which time I rolled out, oiled up, spice dusted and grilled the eight breads.  A one man assembly line that would have made Henry Ford proud (even if we aren’t proud of him).  One eighth of that eaten, all that remains is clean up.

Might need to walk Frida under an umbrella.  We miss only two or three walks a year and today isn’t bad enough to be one of them.  Correction–Frida thinks today does merit a pass.  We made it two blocks, stood for five minutes and then returned home.  Can’t say I mind.

Stay dry as best you can.

Enough with the confessions.  This post is about beans.  Steve’s & Ed’s Original Vegetarian Baked Beans, to be precise.

I was excited to find the can on a shelf at ShopRite.  I loved the label and assumed it had been that way since the 50s or so.  Legit.  The net thinks otherwise.  The first use of the brand was in 1992 and it the brand was trademarked in 2008.  Hardly an original.

I can only find references to the beans for sale at ShopRite.  My best guess is ShopRite creates house brands to sell on their shelves in lieu of simply adding a ShopRite label.  Caught me, anyway.  I wouldn’t often buy a house brand, but this I snatched right up.

Label said it is distributed by Master Foods in Springfield, NJ.  I read that too quickly and assumed the manufacturer was in New Jersey.  I now know I have no idea where the beans are made.  There is even a URL on the can, www.stevesandeds.com, but there is nothing at that address.

Looks like Master Foods uses the label for other products, too.  Here is a not favorable review of their “Original Hot Dog Chili Sauce.”  Incidentally, the beans I just ate were fine.  Better than I’d expect from a low cost house label.  Still, I’ll go back to Bush’s, thankyouverymuch.  That concludes my Geraldo Rivera imitation.

Over and out.

Isn’t it swell?  Love the painted accents.  Also loved putting it together.  That for me is usually the beginning of a good relationship–all the parts and hardware and high quality and go together without a fuss.

Sweeps like the dickens, too.  Get thee to Harper Brush and you, too, will have the hottest broom on your block.  

Need a bit more incentive?  How about a little background?  Harper, located in Fairfield, Iowa, had been a family owned business for 110-years, but in 2012 they placed themselves in  bankruptcy.  Cequent Consumer Products of Solon, Ohio, showed up on white horses to acquire Harper’s assets at the end of the year.  Three cheers for Cequent.

Bye!

Yesterday?

Eleanor Friedberger’s Personal Record did not disappoint.The brownie recipe from Julie Hasson’s Vegan Diner was also very good.

Frida in her 13th year is smashing expectations.

I hope your day is muy pleasant.

Success!

Take care.

I sprinkled the tops with a mixture of gingered sugar (the dregs of a jar of candied ginger) and kosher salt.  I had this mixture sitting on the counter, as I’ve been using it to dress the rims of glasses when I make margaritas.  Deep bow.

I’m not going to give all of them to my neighbor.  Couldn’t if I wanted to (I already ate one with a salad of radish greens dressed with a vinaigrette souped up with agave nectar, rhubarb bitters and salt).  Best lunch ever.

Gotta go!

The same woman from whose curb I picked up the sweeper and the outdoor path light.  How to repay?

Thinning the radishes at the community garden gave us a few to eat.  Last night we enjoyed a little volunteer cilantro on our black bean burritos, but this will be the first home grown produce of the season.

I think I heard my first brood II cicadas yesterday at Buckingham pond.  Just a couple, but they were making the ufo sounds I’ve read about.  Very different from the sounds made by the annual cicadas.  That said, according to this map, I may be hearing something else.  Not sure what impact last night’s crazy heavy rains will have on the emergence of others.  We have some awfully warm days coming up, though.  If they are down there, I’ll bet they’ll be out very soon.

Gosh.  I guess that is it.  Have a good one!