Posted on 09/01/2025 4:39:33 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
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Bacon Wrapped Italian Meat Loaf
ING: 2 lb 90% Lean Grnd beef, 2 Eggs s/p 1/2 tsp Gar/powder 1 tsp Italian seasoning 1/2 tbl Dried Parsley 2 tbl Worc 3 tbl Ketchup 3/4 c Panko, 1/3 c Milk, 1 Onion (grated) Wrap: 8-10 Bacon strips Glaze: 1/2 c Ketchup 3 tbl Br/sugar 2 tsp Apple Cider vinegar Pinch salt 1/4 tsp Bl/pepper
METHOD: Mix meat loaf ing. Place in loaf pan. Top w/ bacon strips. Glaze.
Bake 375 deg 45 min to an hour til cooked thru. Set 10 min before slicing.
Sweet Potato discussion going on over here:
https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/4340892/posts?page=2
Instances I can remember of talking to wild animals:
“You m... ...er!!” (Some predator has hold of or has gotten a chicken.) (Also works if a roo tries to attack ME, and I respond with a kick or charge him, AND for turtles chomping on fish I have on a stringer.)
“A-HA!” (The live trap has nabbed a ‘coon or ‘possum.)
” *Many Expletives Deleted* “ (The time a neighbor’s Boxer Mix dug into our chicken’s pen and killed several.) (Ok, not really a wild animal, but, still...)
“Are you recording me?” (We have these small birds with a call that sounds like “Video-video-video”. Back in the day, I called them the “MTV Birds”.)
“Got ‘im!” or “Gotcha!” (Thousands of times, fishing.)
“Missed ya’!” or “Missed ‘im!” (Even more thousands of times, fishing.)
“Owww! You little...” (Got “spined” while trying to unhook / release a small catfish.) (Also works for insect stings, etc.)
“Boop-boop-boop-boop-boop-boop!” (This can get our whole flock of chickens running up to me for a treat. Again, they are not “wild animals”, but, that scene from the Jurassic Park movie always comes to mind...)
If the vine leader out past the pumpkin fruit is healthy, it MIGHT work to dive a short section of it back into the ground, with some rooting hormone applied. I’ve had pumpkin vines some distance from the main stem root back into soil they were touching, anyway.
How quickly and if such would root effectively this time of year, I have no idea. So, it might be a little risky, but, with the main stem on the way out...
Just because I have parts of the plant (with fruits developing) 20+ feet away from the root stem, I’ve “planted” and hopefully will be rooting two such vine leaders on my surviving (and how!) Opo plant. (They dive into the ground, and then back out for several inches, initially.) I just “dove” the 2nd one today. My idea was to create moisture and nutrition sources closer to the developing fruits, and have a backup in case the main stem failed, as they often do. That said, the 2 biggest fruits must have added 4” in length and doubled in volume in the last day. So, maybe the plant doesn’t need any help!
To clarify, “They dive” refers to the vine leaders.
😁
The vine has some damage leading up to the one fruit, and their is leader in front of it that I have buried and is rooted. So hopefully the squash vines can transfer nutients and water toward the leader tip and back. It may be time to just remove the tip (about 8 or 9 feet away) so the plant can concentrate on the fruit.
Now...I just checked my sweet potatoes and found that chipmunks or mice have been digging up and devouring some of the tubers. Very disapointing! So, time to dig up anything that they have not eaten. (They were not large and I would have given them another week in ground.)
(Diving....you were a helmsman once I think on a ship that went up and down? Your viewing "port" hung on a metal bulkhead? ;)
“Now...I just checked my sweet potatoes and found that chipmunks or mice have been digging up and devouring some of the tubers.”
I feel your pain!
Back in the day at my other farm the boys and I had planted Yukon Gold potatoes...back before you could buy them EVERYWHERE. We were SO excited to harvest them! They were planted in a spot that used to be a wood pile, so that soil was really rich and lovely and we just KNEW there would be the Best. Potatoes. Ever. EVER! underneath.
Yeah, well, every CRITTER that USED TO LIVE in that woodpile that we moved to plant taters proved us right! EVERY tater that we dug up was already half eaten!
Nature always wins. :(
If I had any worries* my “Mortgage Lifters” had been mislabeled “Cherry Falls” plants from Menards, as my Golden Jubilee plants from Menards seem to be... I need not have worried. That plant now has a green & growing fruit on it that is ~3” diameter, and all the other ML’s have fruits from 2” to 2-1/2” diameter, green and growing.
*Since the 1st fruit on the “earliest” ML ripened @ 1” diameter!)
My plants from seeds from last year’s “Golden Jubilees — I think” are doing well now, and also have green and growing fruits on them up to 3” diameter.
The Romas from seed are just going nuts - we’ve never had so many Roma fruits!
Our “Abe Lincoln” tomato plants continued to do well too. Both they and the Cherry Falls* seem to ripen, if a bit slowly, ok, so long as our nights don’t get above 70°F. The AL’s are a bit smaller than I expected, but, quantity of fruits has been good, and, steady. Taste is good but not great, but still good enough to serve as a side dish or a quite good salad tomato when diced, and beat just about any store bought tomato, or, the Romas (considerably) for that matter. I find the Romas are only good for neutral taste filler in cooking.
*I still don’t know why the one Cherry Falls plant just quit, and all the others are doing pretty well. POSSIBLY it’s pot’s soil got a degree or two warmer than the others’ soil. (All the others are all in the ground - mostly transplanted late to avoid our super-soggy early summer soils.)
Wifey had a friend give her some sort of garden grown tomato fruit that is (was) about 3” diameter, average seed numbers, totally bland, but lasts a long time on the counter even tho’ fully ripe. They may make a better filler material tomato than those Romas, when quantity is needed, simply due to their size and shelf life. I should ask what they are.
Ah, I see! It “should” work, SFAIK.
I “should” whack back some of that Opo that’s up into the Mimosa tree, but that Mimosa grew fast and very spindly, so I don’t think I can safely affix a ladder to it. I “could” get out the 3-section manual pole saw my Dad gave me years ago, but, the odds of not damaging the Opo near the fruits (all under 10’ off the ground) seem low. There’s just no clear access now, for that. So... I’ll likely just “let ‘er (the Opo) go” from where it’s at now, prune anything getting into other plants, and see what happens. If a few more fruits fire up, and the fruits keep doubling in volume every day, I’ll have a lot of Opo to use shortly. I’ve seen them 5’ long, grown in tropical locations, and one year we had one 4’ long, ourselves! They aren’t so good when fully grown though - I suspect the best bet is to harvest them as soon as growth of the fruit slows, leaving one to produce seeds for next year.
That’s a bummer on your sweet potatos! On our end, I have a problem with moles — they don’t eat the plants, but they do tear them up if tunneling under them. :-(
Raining to beat the band this morning. I had to get the truck out of the barn around 5:30 & the rain was a ‘roar’ on the tin roof. We have a 2.5 hour trip this morning, including going over the mountains (S curves) & lots of country roads ... at least we will be driving into the dawn when visibility will improve. We’ll be driving into the dark coming home tonight, but the rain should have stopped by then. It’s fast approaching “Leaf Peeper” season around here so I expect more company, combining a trip to see the leaf color in the mountains with visiting us. I may need to look into a reservation system LOL.
We need this rain badly! Mowing results in dust clouds & the grass is ‘crunchy’. Hopefully, it will be enough rain to soften the ground somewhat for the next 11 holes I need to dig for planting bushes, etc. We do have company coming Monday & it would be nice to have all the planting done ... busy couple of days coming up after today.
Safe journey!
We are looking at rain for the weekend - we REALLY need it. I moved potted herbs and flowers that I wanted to keep going to the porch so I can water everything out of what is left in the rain barrel - with hopefully a refill this weekend!
On the Bright Side the grass is finally starting to slow down, so possibly only one more mow will be needed this month! Yay!
Bear camp gets busy again by tomorrow with more hunters coming up with bear tags. Beau and Leroy goofed off yesterday and hit the local Casino. I told Beau to put BIG MONEY on Red 17 and let it ride - but they had no Roulette table. ;) (I knew it was all slot machines.)
Getting Gift Baskets ready as ‘Raffle Baskets’ for a fundraising event October 11th for the Southwestern Wisconsin Coon Hunters group (Beau & I are both members). Raises money for LOCAL Breast Cancer research. There is a Bench Show (Dog Show like Westminster - but only 12 dogs, LOL!) and a’ Women Handlers Only’ raccoon hunt that night.
It is HUGE fun and I love participating while not having to shoot anything, LOL!
I am pulling together a Wine & Cheese Basket, a Arts & Crafts Basket (for kids) and a Warm & Cozy Fall Basket which should cover a wide range of tastes for the Raffle.
Drat!! I’m on my laptop, after I woke up to discover my main computer (desktop) had suffered a Windows Update, and now bluescreens on the restart. So far, the Dell repair options are not working - one way or another, the machine just cycles back to where another restart is needed, some paths a bit longer than others.
What’s really weird is that a restore point should have been created before the update was done, but, the troubleshooting software reports no restore points present at all. What the heck happened to those?
The sick machine does have 2x 8 GB RAM sticks, far more than needed just to get the machine up and operating, so, I might try pulling them one at a time, leaving the other in, just to make sure this isn’t a RAM problem. (There’s no indication from the Dell troubleshooting software of a RAM problem, but, it’s an easy thing to try.)
Luckily I’d delayed this update because I had some critical tax work to complete by yesterday (income tax / estimated tax by the 15th, and property tax by the 16th). So, at least all that got done B4 this snafu / time-waster.
(To quote “Mr. Garibaldi” of Babylon 5: I’m gettin’ too old for this crap!)
All the data files are on a separate “data disk” (SSD), so at worst I can transfer that SDD to another machine - the newer Win 11 Pro desktop I’ve been gradually setting up. The biggest “pain” may be recovering all the recent browser favorites. Then there are the Microsoft dictionary files and (probably) the settings and dictionary files in Libre Office (which is installed on the “OS” drive of the blue screening machine. That and getting all the programs (apps) reinstalled.
I’m beginning to think that in machines where I can install 3 SSD’s, one should be the OS only. These sort of catastrophic problems always seem to be associated with the OS, and usually, with updates. Probably a quick 120 or 240 GB SSD would be fine. Another SSD, 480 or 500 GB would be more than plenty for me, should be a programs (apps) and data drive, as really, a lot of the internal settings and such of the apps probably should be considered as data. Install Brave on it too, not on the OS drive. Then the 3rd drive would be a periodically cloned copy of the apps and data drive. Plus, the usual USB recovery drive.
No, I don’t want to put any “personal” info. on “The Cloud”. Call me old fashioned.
Most outdoor activities are gonna have to take a backseat, today..... :-( (times 10!)
I am one of the least computer-savvy people around, so I can be of no help. I HATE when the they do Windows updates! Takes for-ever!
Maybe Pollard can help?
I have a new computer ready to go - I’m hanging on to this one until the lack of Windows 11 support becomes a problem; supposedly ends in October?
Meatloaf Story: I won’t go into all of the ‘sordid details’ but one of the reasons Beau wanted to ‘Wife Me’ is that I’m a pretty good cook - and he likes to eat, LOL!
But, my Meatloaf was sorely lacking! We dated for 5 years before he talked me into anything more permanent, and I made COUNTLESS meatloaf recipes - I tried everything!
His response was always, ‘Nope. It doesn’t taste like Linda’s’ - his deceased wife - who I knew from age 15.
As I grew increasingly frustrated, I thought, ‘This is NOT the hill I need to die on! It’s MEATLOAF, fer Pete’s Sake!’ He has never complained about anything I’ve made other than meatloaf!
Turns out, the ‘secret recipe’ she always used was the d@mn McCormick Meatloaf spice packet from the grocery store!
And order and sanity were restored to the household...and I always have a pack or two of that spice mix on hand at all times! You never know when there’s going to be a ‘Meatloaf Emergency!’
*Rolleyes*
An update. My Early Girl plant is PRODUCING! Guess I should rename it “Better Late Than Never”. 😀 🍅. I haven’t looked inch-by-inch, but I know there are at least 3 coming to fruit. And I figure that where there are 3, there are likely more.
I gave up windows 20+ years ago for these very types of issues. I've been running Linux/Ubuntu/Kubuntu since then.
Separating concerns isn't a bad idea. Below, John folder has docs, pics, downloads etc etc but also a bunch of config files. Linux sticks all your config files with setting etc in your Home folder. File System has Linux and installed programs. I have two hard drives in this laptop so during installation of Linux, I chose to use one for my home folder, John and the other drive for File System. I could wipe the system drive, reinstall Linux and any programs and it would be like nothing had changed. Same browser tabs would open with same browsing history. All programs would be set up the same and show recent files opened etc. Same desktop theme, layout, colors.
Linux updates generally don't require a reboot. If it does, it takes maybe 10-15 seconds longer than a regular reboot. No 20 minute bs. I use windows at work but the IT guys update them when no one's working.
Turns out, the ‘secret recipe’ was the d@mn McCormick Meatloaf spice packet..... I always have a pack or two of that spice mix on hand at all times! You never know when there’s going to be a ‘Meatloaf Emergency!’
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