We got patio tomatoes in early June, which I mentioned in a post on June 2, 2025. We now are getting cherry tomatoes and just recently saw a slicer tomato as well. Sena also has been growing garden oregano and parsley. Sometimes while she’s out there, red-wing blackbirds dive bomb her. It makes me wonder whether there’s a nest under the deck although it’s late in the season for those shenanigans.
oregano, cherry tomatoes, parsleygarden veggies, Duke’s mayo and Miracle WhipComparing store bought tomatoes and Sena’s garden veggiesPatio cherry tomatoes!
The other big surprise is Sena got some Miracle Whip salad dressing for me! OK, the jar is small because she also got two bars of Duke’s Mayo which obviously are the priority around here for a certain somebody.
There’s been this long running joke about Miracle Whip not tasting like it used to years ago. I call it a joke because I think the blog post I wrote about it got more comments than any other (see What Happened to Miracle Whip? Posted 9/3/2022; 16 comments!). I recently closed the comment section on it because they all say the same thing. It was an echo chamber.
They all complain that Miracle Whip is not the same and the company should go back to the original recipe. Conspiracy theorists?
Anyway, Sena made lunch using her home-grown veggies today. It was darn good!
Well, we stopped by the Wendy’s drive up a couple of days ago and tried to order that new Orange Dreamsicle (sometimes called the Creamsicle) Frosty. But they were out of it, mainly because they didn’t order enough of it. I guess it’s a hot-cold item (Har!). They encouraged us to return the next day, which we did.
They had plenty of Orange Frosty. They said it was just like those orange Push-Up Pops you got when you were a kid (what gives? I never got one). Sena said the Push-Ups tasted like orange sherbet, so she was looking forward to it.
OK, if we’d been blindfolded and didn’t know about it in the first place—we wouldn’t have been able to tell there was anything orange about it but the color.
It was a nice enough color, but it tasted so much like vanilla we wondered why they were calling it orange. We thought the same thing about the strawberry and peppermint Frosty’s. The only one that was a hit for us was the Pumpkin Spice flavor—even though some foodies said the main ingredients were milk and soy. Some said it reminded them of eggnog. I got nothing against eggnog.
So, what was in the Orange Push-Ups? I looked this up on line and they were made of cream and orange juice concentrate.
What exactly is in the Orange Dreamsicle Frosty? The dessert is aptly named, because you’re dreaming if you think you’re getting any orange in it.
It’s got milk, sugar, corn syrup, cream, and non-fat milk, plus thickeners and additives for color. There is no orange or even tangerine in it.
What do you want to bet that’s what’s in all the other flavors? When the new flavors come out, Wendy’s says they can’t give you vanilla. Funny, because that’s what most of them taste like. I’m pretty sure it’s because they use the vanilla as a base to make the new flavors.
That’s OK with me because vanilla is my favorite anyway. And chocolate is a close second. Anytime Wendy’s has a new Frosty, we’re up for it!
Sena bought a couple of new brands of mayo, or new to us anyway. They were Bama Mayonnaise and McCormick Mayonesa. Sena didn’t much care for Bama Mayonnaise. And that is just her personal opinion; don’t send any nasty letters, please!
On the other hand, we both really liked McCormick Mayonesa. It has lime and sugar in it. It reminds me of Miracle Whip, which as you know, is my favorite (no offense, out there!). Sena really prefers Hellmann’s Real Mayonnaise. But I still love her.
Here’s the thing about my sensitivity about nasty comments. I want to emphasize here that we are not rating any of these mayos we’ve tried. OK, I’ve written a few blog posts about them, but you will not find any numerical ratings about them (I’m pretty sure, though I haven’t checked). I found a web site article by Sean of the South. The title is “Mayo Wars.” He rated the mayos. Big mistake. He got a lot of flak. There are a lot of folks out there who worship their favorite mayos.
Sean tried 73 brands of mayonnaise. I didn’t know there was anywhere near that many brands of mayo! I gather Sean’s ratings made some people stride briskly to their refrigerators, pack their favorite brands lovingly, and ship them to Sean with letters expressing deep devotion to their mayos while advising Sean to watch his step or suffer the consequences.
Anyway, we’re not rating mayos. In fact, we believe that all mayos are created equal. Only, we think you should give the McCormick Mayonesa a try. We think it’s pretty good in potato salad and as a sauce for fish.
This is a follow up to the pea pod disaster I wrote about the other day. Recall they were inedible because they were tough and stringy.
We found a YouTube on the web showing how to remove the stems that sounded promising. After removing them, we tried eating them raw. We couldn’t do it. In fact, that little mound of what looks like chewed pea pod on the counter in the YouTube we made is exactly that.
We tried steaming them after removing the stems (or maybe it was boiling). I don’t think it matters. We still thought they were inedible. Maybe we’ll try the frozen variety.
I’ve been pretty serious the last few blogs. Let’s lighten up and talk about butter. Is it bad for your health?
Not necessarily, according to a WebMD article. In fact, butter has health benefits:
It’s rich in nutrients like calcium and vitamin E
It may help lower your chances of cancer
It could slow down age-related macular degeneration
If you swab it all over you it’ll make you so slippery extraterrestrials will have trouble abducting you
There are risks, of course, including the risk of heart disease because butter has a lot of calories and saturated fat.
Sena puts butter on everything. She puts butter on butter. She bought a new kind of butter called Dinner Bell Creamery Salted Butter. Sounds like something the devil made, doesn’t it?
On the contrary, you can even learn a thing or two about life from reading the labels on the sticks.
Sena is big on eating healthy, which is a good thing. On the other hand, we don’t necessarily always like the same foods. And there’s the whole issue of what people call superfoods nowadays.
Funny, when I was a kid, I used to just refer to superfoods as “yuck!” There are variant spellings.
I read the Wikipedia entry on superfoods and it essentially says there is officially no such thing.
Take beets—please!
Sena’s big on Beets and Leeks. I’m not a big fan. I’ll eat them, of course. There’s nothing wrong with them that intravenous ipecac and a stomach transplant won’t fix. The drawback is the medical bill.
I don’t think we’ve ever had kale. Does that make the superfood list? I think it’s the same thing as mustard greens, okra, and other building materials similar to shingles.
I tried okra when I was a student at Huston-Tillotson University (then Huston-Tillotson College). I was offered this slightly slimy substance as part of a dinner at the home of my Religion and Philosophy professor and his family. It’s slimy because it contains mucilage, which is (correct me if I’m wrong but I’ll naturally ignore you) also the name of the glue we used in grade school to make valentine cards.
In fact, think of any food you dislike as intensely as any medication or tonic you had to take when you were a kid. That would be classified as a superfood. I had to take a tablespoon of mineral oil a day, which is a substance very much like mucilage.
I found out that millet is marketed as a superfood. That’s funny, because it’s also used as a filling for juggling balls. When you work up an appetite juggling, you can just bust open one of the balls and snack on a handful of bird seed, which is what millet really is.
Actually, superfoods come in handy in case you’re abducted by extraterrestrials. Whenever they look like they’re getting ready to jam some kind of implant up your nose, offer them a juggling ball. Just tell them to keep chewing through the leather shell until they get to that tasty millet center. This will give you time to write down the driving directions to the nearest barbecue joint for them (Jimmy Jack’s Rib Shack in Iowa City for example).
Anytime you need any more expert advice on superfoods, just let me know. I’m not available.
Sena bought a new brand of Braunschweiger and a new mayo and we tried them yesterday. The new mayo was Blue Plate Mayo. Frick’s Braunschweiger was the new lunchmeat.
So far, we’ve tried Field’s, Jones Dairy Farm, and Frick’s Braunschweiger. We’ve sampled Kewpie’s, Duke’s, and Blue Plate mayo.
We both thought Blue Plate Mayo was not better than Miracle Whip and the Frick’s Braunschweiger was OK but a little short of earthshaking. Frick’s is a family business in Missouri, and their website looks similar to Jones Dairy Farm (which also makes Braunschweiger). They’re both solid family businesses.
Blue Plate Mayo (“born in New Orleans”) has been around since 1927 and make a decent mayo. We just like Miracle Whip better.
In fact, of all the mayos we’ve tried, we both like Miracle Whip the best although Sena, most of the time prefers Hellmann’s Mayo. But that’s just her.
Sena bought a package of Jones Dairy Farm Braunschweiger slices recently and made a great lunch of sandwiches with Miracle Whip and a side of Korean Kewpie Mayo Corn dish. She asked me first whether I wanted to try the sandwiches with cheese instead of Braunschweiger. My friend Dr. George Dawson prefers cheese instead of Braunschweiger with Miracle Whip on his sandwiches.
I had to think hard about it, but I chose the Braunschweiger slices—this time. Maybe cheese next time.
Anyhow, Braunschweiger or cheese with Miracle Whip are guaranteed preferred items on sandwiches according to the U.S. Constitution, as quoted below from Article VIII:
In order to establish the items of choice for the perfect sandwiches we do hereby recommend Braunschweiger or the cheese of your liking, preferably with Miracle Whip salad dressing as soon as it is invented, by our estimate not sooner nor later than 1933 according to the founding fathers who are from a different galaxy where time travel has been mastered and which enables them to make accurate predictions about the future—Benjamin “Bud” Franklin.
Glad I could clear that up. Braunschweiger slices, along with many other tasty foods, is made at Jones Dairy Farm in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin. It’s reachable by either via U.S. Highway 151 N or I-80 E and I-88 E.
I suggest taking U.S. Highway 151 N because it is more scenic and avoids the tolls on the other route. Madison, the capital of Wisconsin, is close by and is also worth seeing.
I sometimes wonder about etiquette. Take the sandwiches in the featured image today. Of course, you can’t actually “take” them; don’t be so literal. My wife, Sena made them for lunch yesterday, after we’d worked on clearing a lot of snow and ice from our driveway and sidewalks. We were ravenous.
Sena ate the neatly cut sandwich with her hands. I ate the messy one and you can see why it’s messier—I used a knife and fork.
I looked this up so there can’t be any dispute: it’s perfectly acceptable according to the rules of etiquette to eat a sandwich with knife and fork.
That said, there are questions about why there would be rules of etiquette about how to eat sandwiches in the first place. Without any research on it, I surmise it’s all about messiness.
Is it messier to have the condiments and contents of your sandwich smeared all over your plate or your face? You be the judge; but just so you know, since I’m writing this post, I’m the authority and I say you ought to keep your sandwich off your eyebrows and your earlobes in polite company.
This reminds me of other points of etiquette I’m often not sure about. What about coconut? I just happen to be one of the many souls who cannot stand the texture of shredded coconut. It’s like chewing pieces of paper. I just can’t bring myself to swallow it.
What do you do if you’ve discovered, too late, that you’ve just taken a mouthful of shredded coconut? What is the proper etiquette? You’ll be happy to learn that I have the answer although I didn’t do any research on the matter.
You should discreetly expectorate the papery mess on the left side of your dinner plate—without making any kind of noise as though you were hawking up a lunger. You’re welcome.
And what do you do with those beer bottles made by knuckleheads who think it’s clever to wrap paper around the neck all the way up over the cap which you can’t just twist off? You try your best to pop the top with a standard bottle opener and you can bet your bottom dollar a piece of paper will end up in your beer. It’s a small piece, just big enough to make you worry that you’ll choke on it like you would on a piece of shredded coconut.
Etiquette might say you should adroitly hold your bottle opener so that paper doesn’t end up floating in the foam. But you’ll have plenty of foam everywhere if you try to be adroit about it; trust me, I know. The bottle will slip, tip over, and smack the countertop which will lead to an eruption of suds all over the place, including you. No matter how hard I scrubbed and how much air freshener I sprayed in the kitchen, Sena called out from down the hallway in the front of the house, “Boy, sure smells like beer in here!”
You could just leave the paper in the bottle, which is the easiest. However, it’s pretty tough not to try to drink around it. Etiquette doesn’t cover that, probably because there is no way to gracefully drip beer from your chin.
Moving on to another point about etiquette although not involving food, let’s get back to shoveling snow, which we did an awful lot of yesterday.
We don’t own a snow blower, even though we live in Iowa, which gets a fair amount of snow. Yesterday morning we woke up to about 5-6 inches (not counting the driveway plug, courtesy of the city plow) of heavy snow and ice. We got out there and I was poised to plunge my ergonomic shovel in the plug when the neighbor across the street walked over and shouted over the roar of his snow blower, telling me he would be happy to let me use it. He offered more than once, pointing out that he was already finished clearing his driveway.
It was tempting. We usually spend about 2-3 hours shoveling after a heavy snow. On the other hand, I had no idea how to operate a snow blower. What would etiquette say about how to respond to repeated offers from a friendly neighbor to allow me to borrow his?
I could have just said “OK” and borrowed it. The only problem with that is I would then demonstrate my total ignorance about the machine. I would probably have the augur cranked down too low and sent spears of shattered driveway into his chest (I’m sure he would stand out there and watch me). How about rotating the chute so that the snow and ice hits me in the face? What does etiquette have to say about that? That’s probably more about first aid and the emergency room than etiquette.
On the other hand, I couldn’t let him know I didn’t know how operate a snow blower. Etiquette amongst guys is clear on that point. I would have had to turn in my man card. So, I did the only thing I could, which was to politely decline the offer, “I appreciate you so much, but I do this mainly for the exercise!”
Then I would proceed to throw my ergonomic shovel into the drifts, twist and hurl the load of snow clumps that were more like stones over my shoulder and slam the shovel into the drift in order to make an impressive show of the proper technique for removing the frozen residue from the inside of the shovel. I paid dearly for that later.
Anyway, those are some of my thoughts about etiquette. It’s time for blueberry tartlets. Etiquette clearly allows eating them with a shovel.
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