Why cookies

Today is Crazy Mountain Christmas in Big Timber, an open house for most businesses, who are trying to get people to stay in town instead of going to the big after-Thanksgiving sales in Bozeman and Billings. I took this opportunity to walk around asking people why there are so many cookies in town this time of year . . . homemade ones at that.

The most common answer was: the Norwegians. Apparently, Norwegians love their cookies. And who wouldnt: many are fried puffs of stuff sprinkled with powdered sugar. You can eat a whole lot without really knowing youve swallowed anything. The rosettes you see here were for sale to raise money for Rad Grad, a big graduation party for high school seniors.

The seniors were also selling other types of cookies, wrapped nicely for giving as gifts, or to treat yourself as a special person.

Another thought as to why cookies are popular was: they are easy to make to serve to big crowds. Cake might be nice, but it can get messy, said my informant, who was overseeing the cookie table in Gusts department store. Space is always at a premium in Gusts, but today lucky shoppers were able to squeeze in to taste many delicious cookies made by the employees.

Across the street at Cinnabar Creek, a shop overflowing with ceramic ware, jewelry, fancy socks and gloves, and lots of books, they were a bit slow in getting cookies out. On my first visit, I stared forlornly at an empty tray. "When are the cookies coming?" I asked. "Soon," was the answer, but not the one I wanted to hear.

Later, after hearing a rumor the cookies had arrived, I checked in again. Yes! Lovely treats! "Why are cookies so popular in Big Timber?" I asked once more. "I dont know," said the barista steaming lattes. "Maybe because they go good with a cup of coffee?"

Next door, at an improvised bazaar in the Old Firehouse, Tumbleweed Teas had an enticing display of shortbread along with many tea blends to sample. Tea was the focus, and it was obvious that the cookies were an excellent accompaniment. In fact, they are used to cleanse the palate between sips.

Some businesses did not have any cookies. I remember big plates of amazing goodies at the drug store last year, but today no one there knew anything special was going on in town. They thought they might have some cookies to hand out during the lighted Christmas parade on December 11, but that is too far away for me to get excited about right now.

I was told the 3 banks in town will soon have open houses with treats, so I may get some answers there. I know these banks have employees whom I consider smart cookies indeed.

For my last visit, I returned to Gusts to make sure I had sampled the very best they had to offer. A small boy shyly took a cookie and then handed one to his brother in a stroller.

"Why do you think cookies are so popular?" I asked him.

"Because they taste good," he said.

"Because they taste good," echoed his little brother.

Well, duh. Why didnt I think of that?

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What Is and What Will Be In My Greenhouse

Beginning in April of 2011 I began to make plans to turn my existing greenhouse into an aquaponics garden.  At this point, late November of 2011 I have accomplished an initial harvest in the grow bins pictured on the lower part of the graphic above.  I am still harvesting tomatoes from the three bins pictured on the lower right and herbs including beet greens, mint, parsley and dill from the three bins pictured on the lower left.  I have yet to experience a success at growing fish.  State regulation of fish suitable for eating are a major block to stocking my pond with trout or other edible fish and since I have decided that koi will best suit, and I dont want to waste the lives of anymore fish until I have my other items in place, I have sustained my plants with occasional supplements of chelated iron and other minerals and soluble plant food. 
I am now ready to set up the next two sections of the growing area.  These include hanging tubes for vine plants along the north wall of the green house and trays for lettuces and similar plants along the center.  The growing trays are made of rain gutter with an electrical cable along the bottom to heat the water as it flows past the roots.  The lettuce will be planted in coco fiber contained in plastic cups. 

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Fishes Be Crazy

Got my fishes yesterday. 

I called Liley Fisheries earlier in the week to see if I could come pick up some trout and we decided on Thursday morning for pickup.  Originally, I thought I would get fingerlings (very small fish), but the smallest they had were 4-6 inch fish, which makes sense since the fingerlings they had earlier in the summer would have grown.  Anyway, this changed my original idea that I could pick up the fish in a big bag inside a box.  The man I spoke with (K.C.) told me I would need about a 30-gallon container and that I would need to have a way to aerate the fish during transport.  Apparently, cold-water fish are very sensitive to low oxygen levels, so even the two-hour drive would be too long for them to be without some kind of aeration.  So, I went to Walmart and bought a power inverter so I could use my aquarium air pump.

Power Inverter

I also purchased a 35-gallon trash can and drilled holes in the top so I could run the air hoses into the container.  I packed my air pump, air hoses, tie downs, and my trusty roll of duct tape and at 6:45 Thursday morning, I was on my way.  I knew driving through Denver at 7:30 wasnt a great idea, but I needed to be back by 11:00 for a meeting.  When I got to the fish farm, the guys were expecting me.  The guys at Liley Fisheries are awesome!  Very friendly and helpful - nice guys!  I was worried about having to tie down the trash can and get everything prepared for the drive home, but the guys at Liley were awesome.  They filled up the container with water, added the 40 fish, tied down the trash can and set up the air pump for me, ensuring that everything was secure.  And, of course, the duct tape came in handy.  :-)

Tied down and taped up

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Air pump and hoses running into container

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The ride home was uneventful (and much faster than the drive up).  I tried to get a few pictures of the fish, but the container was so dark, I couldnt see more than a couple of inches into the container.  Even with a polarizing filter, I couldnt see very far into the water.  Here are a few pictures.  I adjusted the brightness and contrast a little, which helped.  I used the green bucket to move the fish a few at a time from the trash can to the fish tank.

Silvery 1

Silvery 2

Silvery 3

Silvery 11, Silvery 25 and Silvery 31

I was worried that the pH of my water was going to be too high, but a few days ago, it actually lowered a little.  When I got home, I checked the pH and temperatures of the water from the fish farm and the water in my tank.  The pH of the water from the fishery turned out to be as high as mine was when I first started cycling the tank (about 7.4), so apparently the theory that the pH is more important to the plants than it is to the fish must be true.  These guys grew up in high pH water and they seem to be fine.  The temperatures happened to be almost identical.  I replaced some of the water in the trash can with my tank water a few times, but when the pH level in the trash can didnt change, I got impatient and just started moving the fish over. 

I was upstairs working from home for the rest of the day.  Within the first hour, I started hearing fish jumping.  Not good, since the water level is only a few inches from the top of the tank, so they could easily jump out.  Apparently, trout like to jump, and are especially prone to do so when theyre introduced to a new environment.  So I went downstairs and covered the tank with chicken wire.

Fishy Lockup

I was so excited to get my fish so I could watch them swim around and name them (Silvery 1, 2, 3...), but unfortunately, this tank is really dark and I cant really see anything.  I bought a submersible pond light and put it at the bottom of the tank, so now I can see a few of the fish.  They actually like to swim up to the light and look at it.  But I cant get any pictures of it.  Maybe my next purchase will have to be an underwater camera with a light.  :-)

BTW, the fish cost $1.21 each.  And I highly recommend Liley Fisheries to anyone who is in the market for trout and other game fish.  Theyre great guys!  They stock public and private ponds (and other bodies of water) and perform other types of services, such as pond aeration and consulting services.

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Fishy mis Adventures Part I The Feast

WARNING - some of this might be a little graphic for the PETA set.  Or for squeamish people (like me) who prefer to buy their meat already dead and wrapped in cellophane.
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After watching what appeared to be a few rather large fish swimming around in the tank for the past couple of months, we decided to take a few out for dinner.  The water is still too dark to see the fish very well, so we werent sure if they were really that big, or if it was a trick of the light, but what could it hurt, right?

So, on January 3, my son and I pulled a few out with a net, but they were way too small, so we put them back.  We did this a couple of times, until we finally came out with a few that were smallish eating size.  Not wanting to allow my fish to suffer by letting them die of suffocation, we put them in a bucket of water and took them upstairs.  I had done a few searches on how to "humanely" kill a fish, and the most popular way I found was using something that stabs them between the eyes, stabs their brains, and supposedly instantly kills them.  I didnt trust my skill at getting just the right spot through the skull, so I decided I would try the next best thing (IMO)...chop off the heads.  I knew killing the fish would be the least pleasant part of the entire aquaponics process, but its got to be done. 

The Six Fish We Decided to Eat

First of all, this method turned out to be very messy.  In hindsight, this should have been very obvious.  Usually, by the time a person cleans a fish, it has been dead for at least a few minutes, so the blood circulation has stopped.  Chopping the head off a live fish - blood spurts everywhere, all over my kitchen counters and all over us.  So, first lesson - dont chop the heads off of live fish.

Fish out of Water

Yuck

Ready for the Grill...or so We Thought

Next, just like the proverbial chicken running around with its head cut off, the trouts nervous systems are still active, even after they are dead.  Flopping around, gills moving.  Ricky even found a little tiny fish heart that was still beating several minutes after the fishs death.  Gross.

Thinking the drama is over, we put the beheaded and cleaned fish on a cedar plank to be grilled.  Apparently, the nervous system was still active for longer than we thought, because when my husband went out to the grill to check the fish, a couple of the headless fish had "jumped" off the plank and onto the grill.  Weird.

Well, either way, dinner was good.  Fish, rice, corn, and naan.  I was so excited to taste the fish that I almost forgot to take the picture.  So, here is the half-eaten, grill-jumping fish.  Yum. 

Trout Dinner

Stay tuned for Fishy (mis)Adventure Part II - Trout Rapture....

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Fish Apocalypse

So, apparently the fish were not doing the clean-tank happy dance in that video, they were doing the, "holy cow, what did you do to our pH???" dance.  At least thats the current theory, presented to me by both my husband and a friend who is an aquarium expert.

The day after the major water change, I went in to feed the dogs, and there was another floater.  I had planned on draining as much of the tank as I could into a clean trash can until I could see the bottom to see if there was a rotting fish carcass or something that was contaminating the water.  I did not find a rotting carcass, but instead 20 recently deceased fish lining the bottom of the tank.  It looked really weird because they were all facing the same direction, so at first I thought it was the light shining through the slats in the wood...but it was going the wrong way.  I scooped the net through the water and came up with about six dead fish in the first shot.  Some of them were pretty good sized, considering I was expecting a 1-2 year growth period for these fish (I just got them in September).

After disposing of the remains, I did a search to see if its safe to eat a dead fish.  Some people said as long as its not floating, and you think you know what killed it (and it wasnt a disease), they eat them.  My husband said, "You can eat them, but Im not."  Since he has more logic and common sense than I do, I decided to follow his lead.  But, in hindsight, part of me wishes I had separated the floaters from the sinkers and taken my chances with just one....oh, well, there are more fish in the sea.  Or, in this case, the hatchery.

The Apocalypse

I emailed the guys at Liley Fisheries, and they said they have more 4"-6" fish (which is what I started out with), so I think I will clean out and cycle my tank and head back up to Boulder for some more trout...hopefully a little wiser in my aquaculture decisions this time.  I still dont know what started the whole fishy death march.  All I can think of is it started as shock when we took some out, and that led to a chain reaction, ending in my stupid overzealous cleaning.

Oh, well, live and learn.  If at first you dont succeed....buy more fish.

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Rainbow Revival

Last night, I went down to take a look at the tank.  A single fish (which my son later named "Bob") was swimming around the top of the tank very slowly.  He bumped into the sides and didnt move much when I touched him.  Obviously, this is not healthy fishy behavior.  All of a sudden, another fish popped up to the top, head first, with slime and goo all over its head.  Then it just floated to the top.  Another dead fish.  :-(

The nitrite reading was still higher than my little kit can measure, so I decided that today would be a good day to do a partial water change, hopefully before I lost anymore fish.

I started out bright and early at 8:00am, which I realized actually was pretty early for a water change, since the water that had dripped from the hose the day before was now frozen....

I did 4 or 5 30%-50% water changes (I lost count).  The entire time, Bob was the only fish we could see.  Even with the tank 50% empty, I would shine my little pond light all around the tank, and only found evidence of one other fish.  I even moved a pole around the bottom of the tank, trying to detect any dead fish at the bottom.

BTW, Bob was not looking too good.  He has a damaged fin and sort of odd coloring for a rainbow trout.  Not very encouraging, but I figured at least if Bob lives until spring, maybe we can share a little trout pate or something.  And that seemed like a very big "IF."

By 12:30pm, I finally had the nitrite level down below 1.0.  This might actually be bad, since I might have replaced so much water that I have to cycle the tank all over again and deal with another nitrogen spike.  But, I did what I could to save Bob.  I still couldnt figure out what could have possibly happened to the other 20 or so fish...

A while later, when I walked into the room, I heard a big splash.  Was that Bob, rejoicing over his clean water?  Or trying to escape the too-clean water?  Or was it several fish???  I waited a while and walked back in slowly, making sure my shadow didnt extend over the tank, and I saw at least five big, fat trout swimming around near the top of the tank!  Its possible they were at the top because they were distressed, but anyone who has ever had a goldfish bowl can tell the difference between a sick fish and a happy-clean-bowl fish.  At least, thats what Im choosing to believe tonight.  I guess well see tomorrow morning.  At one point, I saw at least ten fish swimming around near the top, disproving my sons rapture theory. 

Here is a short video clip for your trout-viewing pleasure.  Sorry about the bright light in the tank, but it was the only way I could reduce/eliminate reflection on the water.

Quick plant update - as I mentioned, my plants are not looking too good.  Its pretty obvious that the light from the window, especially in winter, is not sufficient to sustain healthy plants.  I purchased a couple of fluorescent grow lights at Wal-Mart for $11 each.  My husband is convinced that I am now on some government list of illegal plant growers, but I think the government is too inefficient to keep track of, or follow up on, that type of thing.  Worst case, some D E A dude shows up on my doorstep, I will be happy to bore him with a tour of my aquaponics setup.  Only instead of introducing him to my fifteen cats, I can introduce him to each of my trout, and send him on his way with a sprig of basil and a head of lettuce.

As for the cost of running the lights everyday, I calculated that running the two lights for 12-14 hours/day will cost about $10 each per year, so I was able to convince my husband that its worth the $20 a year.   All I need to do is get a few good heads of organic lettuce and it will pay for itself.  At least, thats my theory.  If Im wrong, I think I have to give up a few nights of space heater privileges next winter to make up for the 20 bucks.  Stay tuned....

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There are Fish!

I tried putting 20 goldfish in my fish tank several months ago and as far as I could see at the time, there were no survivors.  Yesterday while redoing some plumbing on the fish tank I discovered two healthy gold fish.  I havent really fed them, but there is algae growing in the tank and I guess they were doing fine as cold water vegetarians.  Someone at the aquaponics association meeting told me that it might be disease and not water quality that killed the initial batch of fish.  Apparently they were right.  Go figure. 

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So much to be thankful for

This was my third Thanksgiving in Montana, and I have much to be thankful for. Today I shared dinner with good friends, generous, warm-hearted people I admire and enjoy being with.

My contribution was dessert, a pumpkin cheesecake that might have been made with some pumpkin I grew myself (I certainly have enough of it), but I had a can of organic pumpkin puree about to expire, so I opted to use that.

I woke up early to make it as fresh as possible. The sun was rising, lighting up the fields and trees and distant hills. A beautiful day for a holiday!

One minute I was pressing down a gingersnap-crumb/chopped-pecan/melted-butter crust into the pan, half looking out at my car in the parking area and at the pasture beyond. The next minute, after putting the pan in the oven and turning around to look out the window again, I was watching in amazement as a herd of about 50 sheep grazed around my car.

I forgot to close the gate last night! It is a messy contraption of barbed wire wrapped around a few posts; with the slippery ice on the ground that makes it difficult to get a solid grasp of the parts to secure them, perhaps I should say here that I didnt really want to close the gate last night.

There was no one to take a photo of me, marching out in my jacket covering an apron covering my pyjamas, but there I was. I flapped my arms, but it doesnt take much to get a herd of sheep moving. One gal stood her ground, however, and glared at me fiercely, which startled me for a moment because Ive never heard of sheep acting violently. (Now Angus cows are an entirely different story: do not get between an Angus mother and her calf!)

But then I saw two lambs who had wandered onto the lawn near my house. After I shooed them in the right direction, mother and twins left happily.

And then . . . I finished making the cheesecake. I dont know how delicious it looks in my photo, but it was good in person. That blob of orange on the side was a last-minute attempt to make something that tasted like pumpkin pie since I couldnt taste the cheesecake before I took it to dinner (I thought the others might notice a piece missing), and I wondered if it was "pumpkiny" enough.

So I whipped up a bit of cream I had in the fridge (about 2 tablespoons), then stirred in the leftover canned pumpkin (about 1/2 cup) and added brown sugar (about a tablespoon) and a big dash of homemade pumpkin spice (maybe a teaspoon of the cinnamon-nutmeg-cloves mixture). It was pretty good, too.

But best of all were the loving hands that prepared the rest of the meal, which included the traditional turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce (a canned mixture called "cowboy cranberries," but we didnt know why, and here we live in Montana), along with fruit salad, garden-grown beans and carrots, homemade rolls, and homemade apricot jam.

The local women often say they cant cook, and then they outdo anything Ive ever tasted. I love potlucks here.

I hope you are as stuffed and happy as I am tonight!

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