Recent Comments

1. about 1 hour ago on 1 and Done

   That dog knows how to stay.

2. about 14 hours ago on Baby Blues

   Her mistake is being too obvious. She needs to be more subtle.

3. 1 day ago on Frazz

   This is because chickens lay flatter eggs in the latter part of the season. (I may possibly have made that up.)

4. 1 day ago on La Cucaracha

   And then have him be EXTREMELY stereotyped!

5. 1 day ago on Frazz

   Oh, and the one variety I really wish I could find as a tree (because I’ve never found it in groceries) is an old heritage variety: Northern Greening. Very good for pies, quite tart, never turns red. They’re the size of grapefruit. We had a tree in my backyard when I was a kid. If you don’t like super sweet apples, they’re awesome.

6. 1 day ago on Frazz

   “Now the only old-fashioned apples I can get are the McIntosh and Granny Smith.”

   Haralson is often to be found around my local grocers from about September through December. Hard to get outside that timeframe; I’m not sure it’s widely grown outside of Minnesota, so once our growing season is over and the stock has all sold, I don’t see it in stores anymore. That’s an older variety, and very good. Tart and reliably crispy. The trees are pretty hardy too, and tolerant of colder climates, which is why it’s found around here. They’re excellent for pies.

7. 1 day ago on Frazz

   Red delicious were invented because they reliably look nice on store shelves, which actually is the number one factor in getting people to buy them. Honeycrisp was a real game-changer in taste and texture, but they’re notoriously difficult to get a good harvest off of because of the delicate skin. However, they were such a big deal that they taught the public that apple varieties exist and suddenly grocers were motivated to carry more varieties, which in turn encouraged orchards to start planting more types of trees. Still, the red delicious remain because they’re inexpensive, the trees are still there, and people will buy them.

8. 1 day ago on Frazz

   Fun fact: Groundhog Day is actually an ancient holiday. It was not actually invented in Punxatawny, Pennsylvania. It just wasn’t always a groundhog seeing its shadow. And why was a shadow important? Well, that’s kind of interesting. You see, it’s one of the cross-quarter days: holidays that fall halfway between a solstice and an equinox, which are times of transition. In ancient Britain, it was Imbolc, and on that day, if you could see your shadow, it meant the Cailleach (the witch hag who could control the weather) had ensured sunny weather so that she would be able to gather more firewood, and if she was gathering more firewood, that meant she knew winter was going to last a lot longer. If it was gray and grim, that meant she was sleeping in because she knew she didn’t need any more firewood; winter would soon be over.

9. 1 day ago on Heart of the City

   Oh my lord, I think I might actually die if that happened. Spiders freak me out.

10. 1 day ago on La Cucaracha

    You took the words right out of my mouth!