An Old Fashioned Flower

These photos are of the old timey "Cut and Come Again" zinnias, grown for many decades in cutting gardens and farmhouse gardens and market gardens.

These were the flowers cut for the altar on Sunday or sent to a sick neighbor. The flowers that comforted farm wives.

They came from seeds ordered from catalogs or from market bulletins. They grew from seeds passed over the fence or bought at the general store.

They are not trendy, and the only thing perennial about them is that they are perennially popular with those of us who still appreciate a cheerful flower.

They never look out of place. Not even in an Oriental vase!

New Posts at "Tales of a Nashville Gardener"

I have sent "Tales" back to Wordpress, since it is a hobbyist's blog. Anyone interested in posts on Ginger lilies and Japanese Anemones and other plants for the Southern fall garden can go to "Tales of a Nashville Gardener".

An Autumn Garden in Nashville-

And proof that gardens do not have to peak in June and go downhill from there-

Eggplant Etouffee

When a recipe is complex or requires a page of ingredients, I am not above using bottled sauces. I would never attempt to conjure up a Mexican Mole sauce for example, for even if I could find the ingredients, I would lack the understanding of what to do with them-

I found this "Etouffee" sauce in the "Prepared Foods and Meal Helpers" aisle at Kroger a while back. The bottle described it as "Thick Rich Cajun Gravy". It sat in my pantry waiting for its moment( which came last week), when I bought three eggplants at the farm truck. I love Eggplant Parmesan, which I make from scratch, sauce and all,but I wanted to do something different with this week's menu.




The people who bottle this run the Dee Felice Cafe in Covington,Kentucky. They sell a line of sauces including "Jambalaya" and "Gumbo". They do have a website, though I do not see the "Etouffee" listed there.

I decided to use the sauce on fried eggplant slices, which I layered in a casserole dish. I poured 16 ounces of the sauce over the eggplant, mixed it around a bit,then put a layer of Panko bread crumbs on top. I baked this at 350 degrees for about 25-30 minutes. After I took it out of the oven, I sprinkled some crispy french fried onions on top.

As every Southern cook who has ever brought covered dishes into a potluck or "carry-in" knows, french fried onions made by Durkee are essential to the Holy Southern Holiday casserole of green beans and canned mushroom soup. Just try finding these a week before Christmas-

I did not use Durkee's. I found "Lars Own" crispy onions imported from Holland in Kroger's International aisle. I am certain Durkee's would do just as well.

If I had any of this left in the refrigerator, I would eat it right now, and for lunch and supper. It is spicy, but not overly so, and makes a great meatless meal.

I used three small(6-8) inch eggplants. I salted the slices, put them in a colander, put a salad plate on top and weighted it down. You can do this with a heavy trivet or a can of vegetables. This is an old timey way of preparing eggplant, supposedly to leach out any bitter juices.(Mario Batali does not do this, which makes me wonder why I still do!).

Or you can skip this step, brush your slices of eggplant with olive oil and bake them at 350 till browned. If you fry them, expect to use a good bit of olive oil, since eggplants soak it up quickly.

This should feed four.

Back On-Line

Thanks to the goodness of a friend and her Techno-wizard son, I am on-line again with a new refurbished computer.

My old computer was a victim of maliciousness that came in an e-mail, and that could not be eradicated.

If my friend's son had not built me a new machine, I would have been off-line until I could afford a new computer, which would have been a while, since I buy nothing unless I have the full price in cash.

The Tee-Tiny Kitchen will resume shortly, armored up with anti-malware, and anti-virus magic bullets.

I hope they are vigilant.

Cable Wars

The NSA and the FBI have nothing on Comcast, whose software and web crawlers must be programmed to report back to Central Command when Comcast and its new archrival are mentioned together anywhere on the web. I learned this this afternoon when a gentleman who works for Comcast sent me a comment about my last post "Mandatory Cable".

How Comcast found my post is intriguing, for I am in the top ten most obscure blogs on Planet Earth. If I have 35 readers a day 30 of them are Russian spambots and the loathsome "Vampire Stat" and "Zombie Stat". I have perhaps eight regular readers and two of them are a best friend and my brother.

No cable company need be concerned about anything I say for good or ill about them for my comments and opinions pass quickly into the black hole where all things written that remain unread go.

Maybe the President should have put Comcast on Edward Snowden's trail in Russia instead of the usual Federal foxhounds.

If Comcast could find my blog, they could find Snowden-

Mandatory Cable

A few years ago, after cancelling Comcast Cable and living without it for two years, I decided to bring it back, thinking television and movies might have changed and become worth watching again-

I called Comcast.

But the Comcast Lady was confused. "We have you down as deceased", she said.

Obviously. For only dead people cancel their cable.

I was thinking of getting rid of it again. Anything I want to watch is on Hulu a day later. For free.

Then the lease renewal letter came, and my rent increase was not the usual 25 dollars. My rent was going up $125.00. My landlords were now graciously providing me and everyone else with wireless Internet and U-Verse Cable.

Wireless Internet is most welcome in my house, for Comcast kept me tethered to a short leash,and there was no blogging possible on the porch or the kitchen table. I was trapped.

Now, I can roam!

I am ambivalent about the cable. U-verse provides 300 channels, including 90% of the "premiums". Unfortunately it does not have the real time Weatherscan radar channel, which I check more than any other, since I spend so many mornings in other peoples' gardens working and really need to know when thunderstorms loom-

I guess U-Verse thought I needed a little black, superfluous box more than I needed radar or the Hallmark Channel. They sent a DVR.

I do not need a DVR to record programs from 300 unwatched channels. If I want to watch "Grimm" (and I might), and if I miss it, I can watch it on the computer a day later. I told the U-Verse lady in Miami that I did not want the DVR. "But it's included in the package!" she protested, probably knowing she was dealing with another cranky old resident of Codgerville.

"You are going to love that", a friend said.

No, I am not. It is just another thing that needs to be dusted. I have just spent a month clearing out the clutter and leaving it down at the trash station for people anxious to add more clutter and do-dadery to their lives. I gave away old picnic baskets, a year's worth of food magazines, plant stands, pointless vases, baskets- Many treasures left for the lucky at that dumpster. My tiny apartment had been stuffed with stuff like a pinata. Every time I moved or turned around I bumped something or knocked something off or down.
And just as I have achieved a decor somewhere between Bohemian cozy and Scandinavian Sparse, this little, black, unwanted box moves in.


It is going to have a lonely life.