Eating from your yard tip ~ Lemon balm aka Melissa crushed in your hand and left in a pitcher of water overnight in the refrigerator makes a lovely mother’s little helper tea to calm and brighten the mood of both mother and child. Chop up fresh lemon balm to add to your green or fruit …
Tuesday eating from your yard tip~Purslane has more omega 3 than any other leafy green. Look no further than the crack in your sidewalk to find purslane thriving. While many Americans view purslane as a lowly weed, purslane is eaten all over the world. It is baked in bread, pickled and added to soups, stews …
Tuesday eating from your yard tip~just step outside and odds are good you will find wood sorrel. Gladys Jeurink, an old respected gardener in my town, advised to leave it in my garden because the rabbits prefer it over other plants and will eat it and not your plants. Little did I know at the …
There are few things I love more than garlic. Garlic scapes prime our taste buds for July’s garlic harvest. The scapes are the seed head forming above the garlic plant. By cutting off the scape all the energy is directed to creating the most fabulous garlic bulb. Scapes even come with their own handle for …
I had used lavender to induce sleep, relieve headaches and for it’s anti~bacterial properties, but the first time I remember eating lavender was a lavender chocolate truffle. When I asked about how it was made she referred to lavender flower, but English is tricky and I was born blonde so I heard lavender flour. Ha! …
The elderberry bush produces lovely clusters of white flowers, which later turn into deep purple immune boosting fruit. The trick is to knock the flower heads a bit so the white flowers fall off with a whole in the center (this is the elder blow) leaving a little white part still attached to the cluster, …
Pick the strawberry and eat! Boom. Drop the mic. At our house strawberries rarely make it into the house to make anything with them. We have several kinds of strawberries in the yard ripe and ready to eat. The white alpine strawberry, which is soft and tastes pineapple-ish, is the kid’s favorite. At the top …
Thomas Ricks followed up his Fresh Air interview with some choice words about Trump in Politico: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/05/28/general-mcmaster-step-downand-let-trump-be-trump-215199 For those unfamiliar with Ricks, he has been one of the leading writers on the American military for the last two decades. His book Fiasco is the definitive work on the Iraq War, and his influence is such …
Tom Ricks was on Fresh Air this week. (The podcast may be heard below.) I’ve always enjoyed his interviews, but this portion of it, when the subject of Fox News came up, made me sit up and take notice: GROSS: You must be wondering what’s going to happen at Fox News now, especially after the …
Tuesday eating from your yard tip~Mint comes in many varieties all with different tastes to compliment our food and aid in digestion. My walking partner, Maria Baher-Olomi, serves baked slices egg plant with a yogurt and spearmint sauce~pure heaven! Mint is also an important ingredient in the cucumber yogurt sauce served with gyros and falafel. …
If you have any open dirt you most likely have lambs~quarters. Consider it a free gift to fill your tummy. The cooked leaves and soaked seeds are edible. The young leaves are tender, but like all of us get tougher with age so pick them when they are below 8 inches. Roger Welsch in his …
Onion chives are one of my top five herbs. Both the leaves and flowers are edible. The flowers especially have a subtle onion flavor making them both visually and pallet pleasing. My friend Chong Knievel said that in Korea they eat chives in the spring to clean their blood. With that in mind first thing …
Stinging nettles, when prepared properly, are a storehouse of calcium, magnesium, potassium, iron etc etc. Any dish you would make with cooked spinach can be made with stinging nettles. The leaves and stems are picked in the spring when the plants are less than 6″ tall wearing gloves to protect you from the stings. Then …
As expected, the Golden State Warriors rolled over the Portland Trail Blazers with such confidence that a concert was scheduled at Oracle Arena on the same night that a Game 5 would have taken place. The handwriting on the wall was evident after Game 1, when Portland guards Damon Lillard and CJ McCollum shot the …
Tuesday eating from your yard tip~Dandelions are a treasure trove of potassium, calcium, iron, magnesium, vitamin A,C,K and B6. The flowers, leaves and roots are edible. The green parts are bitter, but the yellow of the flower is not. I throw several young dandelion leaves in my daily salad. The bitter of the leaves stimulates …
In the months prior to America’s illegal invasion into Iraq on March 20, 2003, Americans were told by 43 that the war was necessary to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, Mr. Hussein was a threat to the U.S, and 43 implied that Mr. Hussein was responsible for the September 11, 2001, attack on America. Shortly …
Violet leaves and flowers are edible giving us vitamin C and A. I add violet leaves to my lunch salad. The flowers make a lovely edible garnish on fruit salads, soups, drinks or desserts. I freeze the flowers in ice cubes to add to drinks in the winter when I long for a taste of …
On March 13, 2017, two former administrators from Pedophilia State University pled guilty to child endangerment after years of maintaining their innocence. Tim Curley, the former athletic director, and Gary Schultz, a former vice president, apparently thought the plea deal and their testimony at the upcoming trial of their former supervisor, former PSU President Graham …
The Gray Lady, otherwise known as the New York Times, posted a photo comparison between the current Sierra Nevada snowpack and that of two years ago: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/22/us/california-measuring-snowpack.html The difference is striking. Not that California’s out of the woods yet. The state used a lot of its groundwater to make up the shortfall two years ago, …
One of the noticeable characteristics of the NBA nowadays is the constant din of music, promotions, giveaways, and dance routines during a game. Hardly a moment, even during time-outs, is allowed to go empty, possibly out of the fear that if fans’ attention is allowed to lapse for even a second, they will lose interest …
Last Sunday I visited the new arena for the Sacramento Kings, the Golden One Center, and what I found made every other NBA venue look like a D League gym. On the outside, the building resembled with its aluminum skin an alien spaceship that happened to land downtown—the roof has enough solar panels to render …
Those of you who have heard about the problems at Oroville Dam in northern California may wonder if I am among the 180,000 people that have had to be evacuated. Fortunately, I live about 50 miles north of the affected area, so I have been able to stay put. It was reported that the Tehama …
This week the awesome Canuck superband Austra released the video for “I Love You More Than You Love Yourself.” The song is haunting. The clip was filmed in Portland during this past holiday season and is based on the story of American astronaut Lisa Nowak. On Austra’s Facebook page, Katie Stepnoski describes the vid in …
On Saturday January 21 people from all over the world marched in solidarity with marchers in Washington D.C. The march was to protest the newly sworn in 45th president of the United States and his statements about and behavior toward women. It’s been no secret that Donald Trump says he divorced his first wife because …
On Friday January 20, the United States got its first fascist president. (Miriam Webster defines fascism as a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition) …
Dexter Filkins, the primary Middle East correspondent for The New Yorker, has written a genuinely terrifying story about the Mosul Dam in Iraq. The terrifying part is not that the dam was temporarily occupied by ISIS, but that it sits on a foundation of soluble rock and requires a constant flow of concrete to be …
This marks the third year in a row that I’ve photographed the New Year’s Eve fireworks off the Space Needle, but I’ve shot from three different locations each time. This time I decided to shoot at the source instead of at a distance. I parked my car downtown and caught a bus to the Seattle …
This may seem naïve, but I was actually a little surprised to hear that Chip Kelly was fired as coach of the San Francisco 49ers after their 2-14 season. No one realistically could have expected Kelly to win with the worst roster in the league, and hopefully he will get some benefit of the doubt …
The Center for Defense Information (CDI) was founded in 1971 by a group of retired military officers to analyze military matters, inform decision-makers and the public, and influence policy. CDI had three primary goals: 1) avert a nuclear war with the Soviet Union; 2) end the Vietnam War; and, 3) monitor the military-industrial complex. CDI …
On a rainy Tuesday night, two days before Thanksgiving, I ventured to the intimate basement club Barboza Lounge on Seattle’s Capitol Hill. Playing was British band Skinny Lister. This would be my third time seeing them but my first time seeing them at their own show. The last time I saw them was as an …