As my friend The DLC pointed out, I have now blogged just about everything and now pathetically spend my time posting links to my own blog, where I previously opined on whatever subject is being discussed. I constantly catch myself thinking about writing something just to discover that I wrote about it at length last year or the year before. That’s why when we came back from the apple orchard on Sunday all I had to do is search and find my last year’s post about apples and another one about the apple recipes. Even my photos looked the same – the same place, the same apples. Luckily we made a little detour or I would’ve had nothing at all.
The Main Street in the city of Ottawa, KS hasn’t changed much since the old days. As a matter of fact it looks very similar to the old photos of Neosho, MO I recently posted, they must have used some standard project for the smaller rural towns.
This is what the Main St. in Ottawa, KS looked like in 1942:
This is what it looks like now:
We got off the highway in Ottawa to wait for the apple orchard to open and promptly found ourselves in the middle of the antique car show known as Ol’Marais River Run. I don’t consider myself a giant car fan and all the talk about cubic inches, shaved hoods and custom paint jobs does nothing for me, but it’s hard not to stand in awe admiring the time when a car was a work of art. These cars may not have been the safest or the most technologically advanced but they represent the era when the car was still a wonder, an object of pride, an engineering dream trimmed with chrome.
Due to some peculiar historic and political circumstances the cars of my childhood looked almost identical to these, so strangely these shows are just as nostalgic for me as they are for someone who grew up here.
The car show had a feel of a State Fair complete with signage:
…Elvis and Marylin:
…delicious food:
…Republican Party:
…and boyscouts:
In the olden days, before the Ad Wizards took over our lives, the states had simple nicknames. Nebraska was known as a “Beef State”:
Iowa had to settle for the “Pork State”, Alabama went with the “Heart of Dixie”
Arizona called itself “The Grand Canyon State”
and Missouri was known as it is known now as “The State That Thinks It’s Better Than Other States But Is Sadly Mistaken” but is was hard to fit on the license plate.
After the show we finally made it to the orchard:
This year seems to be one of the best years for apples, trees were heavy with fruit.
I spent a few minutes on the pond:
enjoying the wildlife:
Here is what the pond sounds like:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a28tgsr3jRg
We picked 25 lbs of apples:
…paid a visit to the country store:
Took another look at the giant apple in the sky where all the worms go after they die:
…and were home in no time.
Apparently elsewhere people will pay forty bucks for a pickling class while I’ve been just giving this stuff away. I am pretty sure this kind of thinking led to the birth of the prostitution, but unlike these enterprising women (and men) I keep doing it for free for the love of the craft. And what’s not to love: pickling transforms ordinary fruits and vegetables that will probably rot in the dark corner of your refrigerator into a delicious food that goes well with everything (especially with hard liquor), keeps well and pretty effortless to make.
If you ever tried revolting, cloyingly sweet, mouth-puckering watermelon pickles you might have seen in the grocery store, you are probably not in a hurry to repeat this horrifying experience, which, if your Mom was right, would have left a permanent grimace of disgust on your face. On the other hand, Russian pickled watermelons are a delicious refreshing treat. Originally watermelons were pickled whole in wooden barrels, but I suggest you start slow before digging up a root cellar in your backyard, buying 100-gallon barrels and stocking up on watermelons.
How many times have you purchased a watermelon that was not so great – pale and not very sweet? You are too tight to throw it away, so you do the next best thing – make your kids eat it, or invite omnivorous guests. Pickling will greatly improve your reputation of an evil parent or a stingy host. For this recipe you will need a jar, a watermelon (thinner rind preferred but not required), water and salt.
By the way, don’t you hate when you buy a seedless watermelon and it’s full of seeds? I guess we differ on our definition of the word “occasional”.
Slice the watermelon in chunks sized to fit in your jar; actually any container will do, pickled watermelon loves creativity. Place in the jar.
Now dissolve 2 tablespoons of (kosher) salt per 1 liter (or quart) of water…
…and pour in the jar until the watermelon pieces are covered. If necessary, make more solution keeping the proportion of salt to water. If you don’t have kosher salt, any salt would work, but iodized salt may affect the color of the end product.
Cover loosely and leave on the counter for 2-4 days; things will start happening, maybe some bubbles, or even a white-looking film will appear on top of the brine. Don’t worry, as they say in the health-food stores: “It’s all natural”; just skim it off the top. After a few days place in the fridge.
Next time you have guests, you don’t have to feed them an unripened watermelon, instead offer them a slice of pickled watermelon with their meal. They will beg to come back again.
If you want to progress to the real thing that looks like this:
Just to think that I just gave this away for free, next time I will ask for a dinner and a movie first.
Let me preface this by saying: I despise ugly video-bloggers. If you don’t look like this but still have something important to say, please do everyone a favor and type it; your wife lied to you when she said you were handsome, you are not. That said, my charity participation gives me a temporary excuse to use any means possible to collect the money and help out the people with prostate cancer.
So far my team has almost $500 collected and even more pledged. Thanks to your generous support and your sudden unexplained interest in Google Ads on this website I collected $50 so far and another $90 was donated to me and the team as a direct result of my various forms of begging for money on Facebook, Twitter and in person. As a cheap person I feel your pain, but extend your hand and feel the pain of prostate cancer (not there…little lower…still lower…to the left…right here…ooooh) and you will understand why I defaced my own face by growing a mustache.
As the Month of Movember progressed along, my uncanny resemblance of a certain celebrity became obvious.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8W-dD-hSPgc
I am sure after seeing this you immediately recognized my mustache-double, but below is a clue for the slow ones among you.
At the top, a Soviet manager points to a map of windbreaks and hands his worker a sack of acorns to plant under the heading “We are planting life!“. At the bottom, a capitalist directs a general to a map of the military bases under the heading “They are planting death!“.
Recently I noticed several billboards on the opposite sides of the State Line with the similar “compare and contrast” message.
On the Kansas side we should be thanking the legislators for our “safer roads & 1000s of new jobs for Kansans”:
Kansas legislators make construction workers happy; the guy in the middle and his shovel are ready to build even more roads for the grateful Kansans.
But on the Missouri side the same guy is not smiling, he can’t even lift the shovel because of those fund-delaying evil legislators the gullible Missourians voted into the office. He even tucked his shirt in, that’s how sad he is.
That’s why there is nothing but the pothole-ridden rough road ahead for the Missourians and the unsuspecting visitors to the state.
Obviously, it’s not fun to be a construction worker in Missouri, no reason to smile for sure. Maybe just for the photos for billboards on the Kansas side.
*photographing billboards is not easy and it was raining today, hence the quality.
