Food: July 2008 Archives

Our first tomatoes are coming in. We got a couple of cherry tomatoes (not even an inch in diameter) off the plants yesterday. They tasted good. We can’t wait for more of the cherry tomatoes, plus the bigger ones that are on the vine (but very green).

On another food note, Sean continues to prove that he will eat anything edible. (Sand at the beach notwithstanding.) Kellie and I had brussels sprouts for our veggie for dinner tonight, and we offered both Sean and Daniel a few cut up pieces. (We knew better than to offer it to Will.) Daniel ate a few, but left most of his pieces, focusing on the meatballs. Sean started with the brussels sprouts and ate most of them, eventually getting around to the meatballs.

Will successfully completed his second overnight visit (on Saturday night), this time without either parent. That meant he got to spend more time with Ryan, and they had a blast together. He had so much fun that he didn’t want him to leave. He even wanted to go back on Sunday night to sleep at Gwama’s. (That wasn’t going to happen.)

Will has also started to ride his three-wheel scooter more now. We walked/rode down to the pool and back yesterday, which is much farther than he’s ever shown interest in riding it before. He’s still not ready for the two-wheel scooter that Aunt Dena and Uncle Dennis got him, but I see that day coming at some point. Now he wants to ride his scooter every day (even before dinner tonight). I think that’s a good thing for him.

And if you talk to Emily any time soon, ask her about her performance in the NYC Half-Marathon yesterday. She did very well, though I’m not sure you’ll see her in the results. (Again, you’ll just have to ask her.) Congrats on an excellent time — I think it’s a few seconds better than my fastest half-marathon time.

You’ll get that at the end of the post. But first a couple of other news items that caught my attention recently. First, let’s raise a toast to beer as the savior of civilization. George Will diverts his focus to a brief summary of the necessity of beer to allow early urbanization of humans. It brings up some interesting ideas about genetic advantages that might have resulted from urbanized humans versus those that remained in hunter-gatherer situations.

If you are thinking about traveling to Bermuda during hurricane season, some hotels there have intriguing policies on refunds if Bermuda were to get threatened or actually affected by a hurricane. It’s not for every property, but it looks like someone has thought of an interesting way to try to get people past their fears of a storm causing them to lose money on a trip.

Then there is the scourge of lawyers being necessary for any little concern, it seems. Some kids scraped together a wiffle ball field that mirrors Fenway Park, but not everyone appreciates their effort. I’m not sure this is a clear-cut situation for those who made the ball field, but I definitely don’t have much sympathy for the homeowners, especially the last one who is quoted.

And if you’ve made it this far, here is a redneck seafood dinner. Maybe this is one Will would like.

Just a couple of quick notes, as the video of stuff from the 4th of July is going to take longer than I have to post today. But to give you a taste of what you might see, please check out Sean getting down to the Chicken Dance and the Itsy-Bitsy-Spider at a party at his daycare on July 3rd.

As for post-Independence Day events, Kellie and the kids joined me and my parents (who were down for the weekend) at the 30th annual Hanover Tomato Festival. Hanover is well-known for its tomatoes (okay, at least in these parts) and celebrates the season when they are available.

My real reason for posting actually has to do with politics. One thing that you get at the Tomato Festival is various levels of politicking going on, particularly with signs sprouting along the side of the road, as well as patrons who allow campaign volunteers to get them to wear candidate-supporting stickers. Hanover County is strongly Republican-leaning (see the 2006 election results, where the George Allen took 67% of the vote, despite losing the Senate election).

What I found most interesting is that the Republican volunteers were trying to interest attendees in both John McCain and Jim Gilmore (Republican Senate candidate) stickers, but there were very few I saw that had both stickers. I saw quite a few McCain stickers, but not so many Gilmore stickers. On the Democratic side, I saw an okay number of Mark Warner (Democratic Senate candidate) stickers and just a few sporting Barack Obama stickers.

And that’s just one man’s observation in a heavily Republican county at a region-wide event.