Oh certainly try it, clam chowder is one of my favorite soups. Both New England and Manhattan style are delicious, but my inner fatass prefers the New England.

I differ from the usual recipes in that I’m a sucker for really getting some good browning on the vegetables before adding the liquid. The flavor is worth the trade off of having a tan colored chowder rather than the pale cream of the traditional New England style.

I agree, soup weather is the best!

My exact thoughts! Also the dual meaning of “swatted.”

Archipiélago

Oh my god I love that

Yeah, I could also see there being variability between dialects and how much they respectively pronounce in a word. “What’s that?” could easily become “waz-at?” which is much quicker to say.

Ooh yum, what’s the sauce? I’ve got a cucumber in the fridge that needs using, and this looks tasty.

Oh dear, I just thought that they’d get leggy like basil, maybe I should pinch the flowers off…

Oh darn, no I don’t. Not to sound like I’m an actually good baker, but standard desserts like brownies, (simple) cakes, and cookies I’ve made often enough that I know the gist of the recipes. Sometimes I’ll look up a recipe or two online to confirm I’m on the right track, but usually I make them on the fly.

Like for example, my basic cookie base is a super easy 1:1:1:1 ratio. One stick of softened butter creamed with one cup of sugar, add in one egg, then one cup of flour. Depending on what I’m going for and what kind of butter, sugar and flour I used, I’ll add vanilla, salt, baking soda/powder at the right stages.

People say cooking is an art and baking is a science, but a lot of the simpler things you actually can eyeball and get away with it (especially if you’re like me and are okay with the occasional odd result 😅). So like if I use brown sugar, I know that’s got more moisture than white, so I’ll probably need an extra spoonful of flour to get the dough looking right.

I have done memories of black cherry vanilla coke zero from years back, best soda ever.

I wish his paintings had titles, or at least numbers. So hard to tell people about my favorites of his without already having a link handy.

Ahahaha, I know right? Baklava normally is an occasional treat enjoyed just a couple pieces at a time, and now I have an ENTIRE tray hanging around. I swear I can physically feel my waistline expanding.

First time ever growing radicchio, but I’m 100% keeping it in my garden from here on out, not for eating (actually was not a fan of the flavor), but because it seems to want to bloom eternally. I swear this one plant has been blooming every morning for months now, and I’ve never seen sweat bees in such numbers, they seem to especially love these blossoms.

Yeah… the thought has crossed my mind, even though tomatoes are my absolute favorite thing to grow. If I knew for sure it’d really reduce the population, I could probably convince myself, but how sad would it be to have a tomatoless year just to have the mites back in full force the next. 😕

Hard to judge, as not one of my next door neighbors is interested in gardening, despite my efforts at offering seeds/seedlings/help.

I haven’t gotten to really connect with any gardening groups in my area, but the handful of folks I have talked to also have problems with spider mites, though not sure if to quite such a severe degree.

That’s a fair point, didn’t consider that my generalists would probably also be happy snacking on my good guys. I released them along with the G. occidentalis back in May when it was much cooler, in the hopes of preempting the spider mite spread.

The N. californicus I released in mid June, and though I didn’t happen to grow any corn in the garden this year, hopefully the volume of spider mites is enough to keep them well fed.

Yep, I’ve tried various soaps and all kinds of oils, tried regularly spraying down the leaves to keep them dust free and the humidity up, tried removing plants at the first sign of infestation, all of it seemingly futile under the literal avalanche of mites I get every summer. If I miss a few days of these preventative measures, my poor tomatoes will have leaves gone from a slight sign of damage to a fully webbed death. And it’s not like my plants are water starved either, I use drip irrigation under thick mulch, so the soil stays moist even on the hottest days.

It’s been really constraining on my growing season. I’m often able to get plants in the ground around mid-February and get a good harvest in May, but June/July is spent just watching all my plants die a lingering infested death. I’m in 10a, so I should easily be able to get a second summer crop in, but new seedlings planted at the end of spring seem to fare even worse than their established brethren. Hence why I’ve finally decided to spend the $$$ on predators, really hoping that their population establishes and tames the micro menace.

Yeah, would be nice if I were in a closed environment and could keep them from running away!

I’ve tried neoseiulus californicus and galendromus occidentalis, and also zelus renardii as a generalist predator. I’ve considered stethorus punctillum, might have to give them a shot too.

Don’t know the range of those wasps, but I’m in inland southern California, and I don’t think I’ve ever spotted a worm with them. Kinda glad of that tbh, the whole idea gives me the heebie geebies.

I wish that they were the biggest problem bug for my tomatoes, but that title goes to the godforsaken spider mites. They decimate my plants every summer as soon as the weather turns hot, and I’ve tried so many things to combat them.

This year I’ve applied a couple rounds of predator mites, and in addition to some ruthless pruning of affected plants, I feel like I’m actually holding ground in the battle. Though really hoping that the predator mites will establish a population, as they’re a pricy solution.