My tomato plants are producing red fruit at a pretty good clip now.  So well in fact that we can’t eat them all.  So of course I had to bring them in to work to share and prove I can grow fruit.

 I think the weather has been ideal for growing plants, because these tomato plants have all been healthy and free of disease.  I also believe that the red mulch caused the tomatoes to ripen faster. 

My co-workers, Donald, Sharon, and Tica decided to take their tomatoes and make me into a Tomato Man!

I am borrowing a car from my mother-in-law to “test” drive it for a week to see what kind of gas mileage it gets and to see how it feels to me.  Well last night I went to her house to pick it up and she handed me a set of keys.

I put a key on my key chain and drove the car home.  I had an uneventful drive in to work.  The ‘fun’ started when I went to get back into the car to leave and get gas and the key wouldn’t open the door!  Now I admit, I have only driven Toyota’s and Honda’s my adult life and this was my first Buick.  I always thought that one key should do it all. 

Well I don’t know if they still do it, but GM has one key that only starts the car and one key that only opens the door.  Guess which key I didn’t have?  So after bad mouthing GM vehicles for this so called added security on their cars, I realized I was stuck at work.  Now I could call my wife to drive 30 miles with the door key, but that seemed like a waste of gas and time.

I had a temporary membership card that was sent to me from AAA.  So I decided to give them a try and within an hour the tow truck was here.

  The nice man quickly got out a piece of equipment that looked like an elaborate coat hanger.  He giggled and within seconds had the door open.

It’s scary how easy it is to “break” into a car if you know what you are doing.  Well I rolled down my windows so I couldn’t accidentally lock myself back out of the car; and when I get home, I will put the other key on my key chain.  I will also seriously consider joining AAA, because they saved the day.

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After a rather indulgent meal at a local steak house on Saturday, we decided to get back to basics and grill a few burgers for our Sunday dinner. 

I have found over the years, that ground chuck is the perfect burger for grilling over a charcoal fire.

All I do is add some worchestire sauce and pepper to the ground beef and shape them into patties by pressing the meat into a biscuit cutter.  I grill them over the flame, I never time it, I just judge when they should be flipped. 

Yesterday we put the burgers on toasted English muffins for a change.  Those nooks and crannies can really grab the juices from the burger…mmmm

The third week of July is normally the hottest of the year, and this year we will head into to the week in the 90s. 

We are used to that, but the folks up in Alaska have had relatively warm sunny summers the last couple of years and have gotten used to that.

I just read however that this summer has been cool and cloudy.  Anchorage had their first 70 degree day July 2nd.  Now granted, we are not talking 90, but 70 degree days for them our like our 90 degree days.

The folks up there are grumbling, but basically they are just averaging the weather out to the 30 year averages.

Here is a link to the article.

The closer you get to an event the more accurate a forecast can be.  That only makes sense. 

The Summer Olympics are opening August 8 in China.  A big outside opening extravaganza is planned.  The weather better be nice, right?

Well don’t worry, the Chinese have been working on weather modification for the last several years.  Most of us have heard of cloud seeding to try to make it rain.  Well the Chinese are trying the opposite, drying the air to make it not rain!  That is their plan if rain is in the forecast for August 8th in Beijing.  Here is the article I read about it.

All I can say is good luck, if it’s going to rain, it’s going to rain. 

I feel like I’m twelve again, I am so excited about the all-star game tonight.  Not so much the actual game, because I will not be able to stay up and watch all of it, but of the introduction and pre-game celebration.

I grew up a Cub fan, I will die a Cub fan.  I just hope the Cubs will win a World Series in my lifetime.  At this point in time, we could probably say in anyone’s lifetime.  It has been 100 years. 

But for the first time in my life, I feel like they actually have the best team on paper.  Paper doesn’t win, but so far this summer has been fun.

I will get goose bumps when the Cubs’ all-stars are introduced tonight, as they have the most players, eight.  O.k. two of them are injured and can’t play; but that’s o.k., it’s eight.  I never remember more than two or maybe three ever playing at the all-star game.  I have watched many other teams during the years with the most players, the Braves, Yankees, and Red Sox to name a few, but never the Cubs.  This is going to be great.

Go Cubs Go.

When I think of the police, I think of the group The Police; after all, I have their entire music catalogue.  How ironic it would have been if I was listening to them this morning around 3am when a police cruiser came up behind me and turned on its lights.

Roxanne, you don’t have to turn on the red light.

Of course, my heart started racing and I started running through my brain, what did I do while the police officer was following me? 

Too much information, running through my brain.

Was I speeding?  Not really, I was going within 5 miles of the speed limit.  Did I act recklessly?  Well I did get out of my lane to avoid some road construction.  Did I make a moving violation? I made sure I came to a complete stop at the one stop sign.  It was right after I made my very cautious right hand turn that the lights went on.

The officer came to the car and asked if I knew why he pulled me over.  Mmm, I answered honestly, no.

De do do do de da da da, is all I want to say to you.

Well long story short, he told me that my license plate light was out.  I never would have guessed.  So he told me to drive safely and I assured him that I would get it fixed.  So I am off to buy the light bulb and put it in before tomorrow morning, at 3am, on a road in Durham, driving to work….I’ll be watching you, every breath you take every driving move you make…

As I wrote about back in the beginning of May, I invested $50 to buy four tomato plants and potting soil and mulch.  I used all potting soil since we were planting the plants in containers and not in a garden.

Well I knew the plants would take a while to mature, they said 70 to 90 days, so here we are at about 70 days and the plants are doing well.  We have our first tomato that is starting to turn red!

Now hopefully, it will be just a few days before it ripens.  I hope the birds aren’t eyeing this fruit.

One question I sometimes get asked by school kids…”do you ever mess up a forecast?”  Well, I tell them that even though we are right most of the time…no one is perfect.  That definitely came home to roost Friday night on the 4th of July. 

Earlier in the day, I worked and forecast a chance of storms after midnight; but I stressed that the evening should be dry.

As my family sat out on our deck enjoying our 4th of July dinner, my mother-in-law thought she felt a rain drop.  As I was downing a baby back rib, I let her know that it couldn’t be, because it was only 8:15 and it wasn’t supposed to rain until after midnight.   (I hadn’t checked any radar.)  Well after everyone went in, I saw the clouds and could tell that it must be midnight somewhere, because here comes a downpour.  Everyone and everything got inside before the rain; and I was the butt of some jokes from my family. 

But this is why I love my job, because the weather is always changing (sometimes moving much faster than predicted) and everyday is a new and exciting challenge.

For Father’s day last month, one of my gifts, was a bread cookbook.  My wife was hungry and happened to be in a book store and saw the book.  It had some very pretty color pictures of bread, the one that caught her eye was one where they were putting in chocolate bars into the bread.  That sold the book for my wife!

Well the recipe was a brioche.  I had no idea what that was except to know it was French.  I found out that they make biroche pans, I used a cupcake pan.  The bread is delicious and rich.  I will admit, it is a little weird to have bread with chocolate, but it works.  Here is the recipe.

Combine:  9 oz. of bread flour, 2 Tbl of super fine sugar (I put regular sugar into a food processor), a dash of salt, and 1 1/4 tsp of instant yeast, which mixes into the flour.

Beat: 3 eggs, then add 4 TBL of room temperature milk, and 1 TBL of luke warm water.  I combined this with the dry mixture above and kneaded for about 5 minutes.  I gradually added a stick of room temperature butter a tablespoon at a time.  When it was well mixed I wrapped it in plastic wrap and refrigerated for 1 hour.

After greasing the cupcake pan, I took the dough out and lightly kneaded it again and divided it into 12 pieces shaped into balls.  I then pressed two squares of chocolate, I used Cadbury’s Milk Chocolate, in the center of each and brought the sides of the dough up.  I then placed the brioches, seam side down in the prepared cupcake pan and let it rise in a warm place until they doubled in size, about a 1/2 hour. 

Preheat the oven to 400.  I brushed the tops of the brioches with another beaten egg to glaze.  I then baked them for 20 minutes.

I brought some to work and everyone seemed to like this type of bread with the surprise of chocolate inside.