Don't Pick The Prickly Pear With The Paw...

Withering prickly pear fruit in Winter. As the cacti (Opuntia) are quite abundant on the ranch, this year I will try to make some PP jam, maybe a bitch even spicier with an added jalapeno to it.

Does anybody have a good recipe to share?

And yes I remember this form the Jungle Book

Don't pick your prickly pear with your paw
When you pick a pear use your claw

Red Soil And Sweet Gum Tree

Oh land and soil,
red soil and sweet gum tree,
So scant of grass,
so profligate of pines

Jean Toomer


Writer and poet Jean Toomer described the sweet-gum tree in his poem "Song of the Son" in his more natural environment. In the meantime the tree, also called Alligator-Wood has become an ornamental tree even outside of his habitat, largely because of it's fiery red shining leaves during automn.

The picture depicts a cluster of sweetgum tree seedpods or fruits, by now (it's January) dried out and lying around in big batches. If you're an airhead, you may actually slip on them and fall.

Sources: Wikipedia, Modern American Poetry (via english.illinois.edu), Seeds in the front yard

A Whole New World - At The India Market

Down the street a new India Market opened a couple of weeks ago, so we had to check it out.

Besides all the offerings (some obviously quite new to me) I was really impressed with the natural and artificial light-flow in the new building.

Unfortunately my ignorance is quite high when it comes to the different types of flours being offered; as a cook and baker, (visit my blog - Where In The Hell Is Carlton - for recipes) I love to make my own breads. Maybe some reader may enlighten me, what to use. Being raised in Europe where slightly different flours may go for different breads, the flours generally offered in US stores are of the "all purpose" variety.

A great plus was to actually find a store which has pastry dough (or puff pastry - mille feuille) on sale, which upto now was only available seasonally at Trader Joe's over the Holidays.