Photography: Old Sheldon Church, South Carolina

I would have loved to have taken more pictures of this amazing location but the only thing SC has more of than Civil War remnants is mosquitoes and they were out in force the morning I went there. It was pretty amazing and it comes as no surprise that there are lots of weddings there.

The ruins of the Old Sheldon Church in South Carolina, near Beaufort. This was built before the Revolution
and was attacked by both the British and later by Union Troops during the Civil War.

Photography: Water Pump, South Carolina

Water Pump at the Old Sheldon Church Ruins, South Carolina

Photography: Cemetery Gates, Beaufort, SC

Live Oak with Cemetery Gates, Downtown Beaufort, South Carolina

Photography: Cemetery, Beaufort, SC

Cemetery Wall, Downtown Beaufort, South Carolina

A Little Something On My Garden

Given that most of the people that follow this blog also happen to be friends of mine in life and on Facebook this may be sort of a cop out entry but it's been over a week and I needed to put something up and I really don't have time for fresh material today.  What I have to offer tonight is a combination of old artwork and an update on my garden. To start with, the update:

My garden is doing so well! My patio tomato is pumping away at fattening up my little tomatoes (4 now plus more flowers!) and all the herbs are getting thick enough to allow me to indiscriminately give Norman lots of fresh herbs every day. When I bought the Cilantro it was a sad little thing but now both plants are thick and happy little bunches.

On the downside, just as I was getting excited about the fact that my tomato plant that's going to grow the large tomatoes had suddenly started blossoming like crazy (19 flowers on a bush that's only maybe 20 inches tall!) all of a sudden I started getting holes in the leaves. Well, I phrased it well enough on Facebook so here's the play by play of how I responded. It was an extraordinarily rational response, no doubt. ;)

11:00 am

"Oh, my old nemesis Tomato Hornworm. Appearing out of the blue eating all my tomato leaves and adding insult to tomato-injury by pooping everywhere. Remember: my grandmother was the lady that cackled while she snipped the heads off your giant grasshopper friends with her garden scissors. I suggest you move along."

6:41 pm

"Dang it! 3! Three times the same hornworm? Three individual hornworms? I'm not sure but, Mr. Hornworm, you were warned and you didn't heed the warning. The next time I find you on my tomato plant I will put you in the birdfeeder. The question is will it be in one piece or two. >:("

9:10 pm

"In the continuing saga of Me vs. The Hornworm I had an ironic setback: while I had no qualms putting hornworm #4 in the birdfeeder & felt no guilt doing so, the Hornworms scored a win of sorts because he caused me to feel guilty when, in trying to dislodge him from the leaves, two of his feet stuck to the leaves and came off. I'm telling myself it was a ruse & he actually just kicked his shoes off to make me feel bad. It's a Hornworm psyche-out."

Later, in resonse to a friend laughing at me and telling me "Ha ha ha, he tried to play you for a sucker." I responded "Right? I'll take him down. I'll take him down to Chinatown."

As I said, very rational. ;) I'll be house-sitting for Chad's brother in Beaufort, SC for a week so I'm hoping Chad's mom will follow through with her promise to check the plant 2-3 times a day for the little buggers. I don't want to come home to a Swiss cheese tomato plant!

So that's that. Now, I promised you some garden based art.

About two years ago I doodled out what ended up looking like Winnie-the-Pooh meets Dr. Seuss kind of tree. I thought it was cool in a wacked out Lorax sort of way. This is it here:

Well somehow it turned into this twisted little cartoon. It's the only cartoon I've ever made so I hope you'll find it funny. It may be a one time engagement! 

My next entries will actually probably be photography of a sort. There's lots of pretty stuff around Beaufort so I can only image it'll lend itself to it.

Ok, so there you go. Hope you can get a chuckle and I hope that all your gardening is going well and none of you have to fight the dreaded hornworm. :)

Recipe: Fried Green Tomatoes

The Summer Treat That'll Make You Shout "Towanda!"

(and don't worry, in this case the secret's NOT in the sauce...)

After spending the occational on and off afternoon over the past two years watching the Neelys get uncomfortably familiar with one another on Food Network I decided it was time to try one of the few of their recipes that I've been collecting with the intent to try them at some point (believe it or not, once you get past the urge to tell them to get a room they actually have, what appears to be, some really good stuff to share). Well, it being that time of year here in Florida the answer was clear: Fried Green Tomatoes (after all these years the knee jerk response is to continue that phrase with "served hot".) 

One Summer my parents were up visiting me and Chad at our house in North Georgia. Looking for something to do we decided that we'd all go to the Apple Festival in Elijay, GA (near Blue Ridge). I'd heard a lot of hype about the fried apple pies and it was a good day for it so away we went. In a nutshell this is what we came away with: 

Panorama Farms, Elijay, GA
You want apples? They've got apples (and so much more!)
Everything from multiple apple varieties, apple butter, a
truly fantastic apple barbeque sauce and so much more... 

1. The Apple Festival is hot, crowded and surprisingly light on apples. (Chad and I later learned that if you want good stuff, apple wise, in North Georgia you want to hit Panorama Farms, also in Elijay. The have orchard tours and all kinds of apple products PLUS a fantastic candy counter with some of the best fudge you'll ever eat. I digress...) 

2. I was introduced to the Great Pyrenees dog breed and have since developed a huge love of them (there was a man there with two of those fantastic gentle giants and I got to spend lots of time with them while waiting for the school bus that would take us back to our car.) And  Finally...

3. The best fried green tomatoes in the world are currently being made by a little old couple living in the north Georgia mountains. It was the first time that Chad had ever had them and he became obsessed with their tart salty goodness.

I won't waste time rewriting a recipe that has been written perfectly well by those that have the right to claim it as their own so, instead, I'll just include the link to the recipe, show you a picture of my finished product and add a few notes and hints as help. I will, of course, put the link last so you have to read my whole blog entry. ;-) 

Here are the issues that came up for me:

• Make sure that you don't buy your tomatoes until the day you're going to make them. There's a reason you can only buy them during season. I bought 4 green tomatoes yesterday and wound up with 2 green tomatoes, one orange and green striped tomato and one tomato that will now be used on a sandwich because it was too red to ever be called a fried green tomato. If you don't want them to continue ripening on you I repeat: buy at the last possible second.
• The panko bread crumbs are great and add great crunch but watch them carefully so that they don't over brown.
• Make sure that you salt them enough. You've already opted to batter and fry a vegetable, now's not the time to be health conscious. I didn't salt mine enough and ended up needing to salt them again after. (On the other side of that, however, you don't have to worry about them being too salty if you opt to do it that way.)
• My stuff is in boxes and I refuse to re-buy things that I already have (or in this case, that I already have two of) and Chad's mom isn't crazy about spending too much time in the kitchen so I didn't have a thermometer to watch the temperature of the oil (fyi, I opted for peanut oil). I found a fantastic site with 3 options of how to know if your oil is hot enough. The bread test worked perfectly (apparently a kernel of popcorn from a microwave popcorn bag doesn't pop like a normal kernel would. Eh, live and learn!).  

I think those were the key points. I didn't make the dipping sauce that they have with the recipe but it might be worth a try too. I went simple, myself, and opted for buttermilk ranch dressing or nothing at all. All and all these fried green tomatoes would make a great addition to your 4th of July picnic or cook out. Here's your link to the recipe since you were such complete and attentive blog readers. Happy eating! :D

Artwork: Ki'rin Project Composite

This is the last stage that I have completed in the Ki'rin project: the composite. Here you'll find the background, the baby ki'rin, the mother ki'rin and the second female ki'rin that I mentioned in previous posts. The next step after this will be taking my rough lines and cleaning them up and then water coloring the image, either with actual water colors or with Painter. It will probably be awhile until I can post anything else on this project. Almost everything I own is in storage and I'm working on a 13 inch iMac so there's isn't a lot of space for this detailed of a job. I hope you've liked everything I've put up! Feel free to leave comments, critiques or compliments! ;)