Keep it in the Fairway

A view of ours truly with my ever-vigilant and trusty copilot enjoying the rather cramped cockpit of a U-Haul coming home from a recent adventure in South Central Texas.

The dynamic duo was on the way home from San Antonio after a couple of days off and a mission to help rid my Mom’s garage of excess stuff to recapture some new living space for her and my sister. And what didn’t get thrown away or donated went home with us, hence the need for the U-Haul truck.

The good news was that we were successful in our endeavors. The bad news was that after 1000 miles sitting with little seat adjustment, our rear ends were numb for the next week. But now the really hard part of our adventure- getting rid what we brought back or at least something getting rid of something else so that we don’t end up in the same situation. Stay tuned to E-Bay or Craigslist to see how we do with that.

Here it is folks. The moment that you’ve all been waiting for. We are now ready to unveil the fruits of hard labor — literally the fruit (ok vegetable). This single point in time where money, sweat and hard work have culminated into this single event. Let me have a drum roll please! I’m pleased to present to you our first tomato.

OK, OK it’s rather underwhelming I admit, but it is the Summer Sweet Grape variety, so it’s supposed to be small. That plant  just happened to produce fruit before the other two.

The good news is that from here on in we’re producing and the beauty of division starts to kick in so that we can begin to appreciate the true costs of organic gardening. But as a starting point, we’ve got roughly $100.00 invested in these things. So if you figure this tomatomidget weighs an ounce, you’ve got $100.00 divided by 1/16th of a pound or $1,600.00 per pound!! (Now I see why these plants are called “heirloom varieties.”)

Let’s hope the rest of the summer yields a bit more produce. At least the plants look like they might.

See you next time.

Happy Fourth of July everybody! Use care if you choose to use fireworks. And please don’t drink and drive this weekend.

Don’t give the hospitals or undertakers any of our business!

In the previous post, we were all set with our lovely new raised garden. All that was left was for the good Lord to shine His warm sun down and bring the gentle rain to nourish our babies and help them to grow. Heirloom tomatoes and green bell peppers would just be right around the corner. Our plan was coming together quite nicely. That is until we encountered an small unexpected setback.

It seems that humans aren’t the only ones that like home grown vegetables. Apparently rabbits have a real taste for vegetables and worse, they don’t need to have the fruit for sustenance. They like the plant all by itself. And so, we were very surprised one morning when we awoke to find a tiny, 4″ long bare stem that was once a bell pepper plant. Unbelievable, I thought. I felt like I had been violated.

So now it  was time to fight back and off I went to the big box home improvement store. I returned armed with a defense strategy to thwart the bunny menaces. “They aren’t going to eat the fruits of my labor,” I told myself. And after another hour of labor and sweat in the mid-day sun, I was pretty pleased with the result.

With the bunny preventer all set up. It’s time to do a quick financial reckoning of our project. Let’s see add another $25.00 to the our previous expenses and we’re now into our future vegetables to the tune of $95.00. These babies better taste good! I can’t wait for the squirrels to figure out there’s not a top on this thing.

I’m convinced that the U.S. economy is driven by impulsiveness– and mostly mine. Recently I was in the mood for tomatoes and as I perused the produce section of our local grocery store, I was just unimpressed with the offerings claiming to be “home grown” tomatoes. Not to even mention the fact that they have the gall to charge you $3.00 per pound for these tasteless imitators.

So then in one of those fateful moments of mine, you know those moments where you proudly say to yourself, “I can do better than that”, I was off on a new project. My mission was to raise a better home grown tomato. So far so good.

This was all fine and good, but I had one tiny little problem, we don’t have a garden. No big deal there, I’ll just create one. And I had done this before five years ago or so, and learned what not to do. So this time I was going to build a “raised” garden. The ones with all organic matter in it, and built up high above our horrible clay soil, like you see on PBS’s “Victory Garden.” By golly, I’m going to do this right.

So after my usual and alarmingly frequent visit to the local Lowe’s store, (why don’t I have stock in this place?) I was back home armed with the materials to begin the project.

That was the easy part. Now the manual labor part. And as usual, my impulsiveness also happened to coincide with one of the hottest days so far this year. Great (sarcastically). But I was determined to see this thing through and off I went to test my resistance to heat exhaustion.

Now, I could bore you with all of the preparatory things that I had to do like cut out the sod, dig out six inches or so of soil, set the landscape timbers and secure them in the ground, but that would take a lot of time and space in this blog. So suffice it to say, roughly three hours later and an internal body temperature approaching 102°F, I had the awesome raised garden that I was looking for. Sure hope the tomatoes, and also a bell pepper plant that I snuck in there, like their new home!

At this point we’re into these tomatoes for about $70.00. (Don’t do the math on that.) These tomatoes  are going to be worth it, I have convinced myself. And there is that sense of accomplishment from a job well done that you can’t put a price on. But the story doesn’t end here, so come back later and I’ll tell you the rest of the tomato story.

On most weekends, and particularly holiday weekends during the hot weather months in the St. Louis area, backyard barbecues are in full swing. Without question the favorite meat to get grilled and barbecued around these parts is the venerable, blue-collar pork steak. And if you’ve never heard of a pork steak, don’t feel bad, most of the country hasn’t either.

Pork steaks are a real St. Louis tradition and frankly they probably will not get much national acclaim any time soon. Most people outside eastern Missouri just don’t get the attraction. That’s partly due to the fact that the steaks are sliced from the pork “butt” (actually the shoulder) and partly because they’ve never had one. But that’s OK, since that just means more pork steaks for us here in St. Louis. You go and pay your $5.00+ per pound for spare ribs, we’ll take the $1.59 per pound step-cousin all day long.

The interesting thing about grilling pork steaks is that there must be at least a hundred different ways to make them. Most recipes are passed down and modified by families and they all have their own mystique. For me, I prefer the method that takes the longest. That way you have more time to enjoy St. Louis’ other favorite summer pasttime — beer drinking.

If you came here looking for a secret recipe, this is the best I can do. My method involves cooking over a charcoal fire. There’s plenty of debate in cooking over propane versus charcoal, but for me the longer it takes, the better (see above). I start by generously seasoning the steaks on both sides with a minimum of salt, pepper, onion powder and steak seasoning. Once the coals have settled down and I have a medium fire I put the meat on the hot part of the fire and sear the steaks on both sides for about 10 minutes total. After that I baste the steaks in a mixture apple cider vinegar and beer (big surprise) turning every 4 minutes or so and basting some more, until a beautiful crispy texture to the meat and fat has been achieved (about 30 minutes). Finally, I pull the steaks off the hot part of the fire and then give them a thick coating of barbecue sauce on both sides and let the steaks rest on the cool part of the grill while the sauce reduces and slightly carmelizes on the meat.

The pork steak isn’t the fanciest barbecue meat around, but for whatever reason it’s makes for a very special summer dinner to us. On this occasion, we gave the pork steaks a little soul food flair by pairing them with turnip greens, a combination of black-eyed peas and snow peas (sounded like a good idea) all accompanied by corn bread muffins.

Pretty tasty stuff! Happy Memorial Day!

If you haven’t heard yet about the 17-year old Phillies baseball fan who decided to take a quick jog on the field during last night’s Phillies vs. Cardinals baseball game, then I’m sure you will. Here is a quick YouTube video of the event.

Phillies Fan Gets Tazed

It is difficult to see from the video clearly, but a police officer used a taser to subdue the young troublemaker and bring the incident to a pretty quick close. (Tasers work pretty well don’t they?) Frankly I’m going to miss the old days of watching all the out of shape stadium security and police officers huffing and puffing there way around the field trying to catch these guys. It makes for good entertainment.

The issue that I’m sure all the major news networks are going to jump on in the coming days though will be whether or not that policeman should used unnecessary force in this case. What do you think?

But whatever your opinion is on the matter. The next guy (or girl) wanting to disrupt a major sporting event in this manner will certainly think twice about it.

Well here he is world. Possibly the cutest grandbaby boy on the planet and he’s named after me. He doesn’t look a whole lot like me, but the genes are there.

He weighed in at eight pounds, thirteen ounces and twenty-one and a quarter inches long. Papa and mama are a little tired but doing just fine and Grandpa couldn’t be prouder.

UPDATE: 4/14/10 If you’d like to see more photos of Baby Joseph, my son’s blog now has many more and the whole story.

Anita and I are so very excited to announce the arrival of the latest addition to the Renaud clan. My oldest son Josh and his lovely wife Yoli are blessed today by the birth of their new baby boy Joseph Martin Renaud. I’m very proud that they chose Baby Joseph to be my namesake and we look so very forward to seeing him in person at the hospital later.

However, after spending most of the day with them, I can assure you that his older sisters are even more excited than I am to see him. We showed them Josh’s most recent post on his blog with pictures of the new baby. They couldn’t be happier. Jump over there yourself to see baby Joseph and Mama. They both look great.

Even though this is grandchild number six, this kind of thing just doesn’t get old. It is very humbling to experience indeed.

Here’s a hearty salute to Phil Mickelson on winning the 2010 Masters tournament and getting his third green jacket. (Nice news story here.) I can’t think of anyone more deserving than him particularly after a very tough personal time last year. Anyone that saw Phil and his wife Amy embracing shortly after finishing his round and later after signing his scorecard could see the culmination of a whole lot of emotion.

Very touching moments indeed, thank you CBS.

By the way, have you ever seen anyone so fearless on the back nine in a final round at Augusta? Who hits a six iron 205 yards off pine needles and in between trees to a water-guarded pin on #13 and sticks it to three feet? (I would have missed the eagle putt too, because I’d still be shaking from the approach shot.) An incredible final round to be sure.