gardening efficiently – for fun and profit

I have gardened off and on for most of my life. Back in the 1980s, there was a show called “Square Foot Gardening” on PBS hosted by Mel Bartholomew. Now there is a website. When we lived in Albany, we purchased the book {{Square Foot Gardening}} (which has been updated and simplified even further by …
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replace the restaturant buzzer

Somebody needs to replace the ubiquitous restaurant buzzer with either an SMS- or smartphone-based tool: when you put your name on the waiting list, you give them your phone number. When your table is ready, they can buzz your phone. Fewer moving parts for the restaurant. Fewer chances to lose stuff. Less crap to carry …
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restaurants

I’ve been a bit lax lately on reviewing places I’ve been to eat. Since March, I’ve traveled a few times for both work and pleasure, and have gotten to enjoy several local establishments: Foundry Grille Verve Seasons Patrick O’Shea’s Bensi Roots Steakhouse The Cheese Shop Thai Kitchen Food For Thought Captain George’s Tucano’s Hopefully over …
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square foot gardening by mel bartholomew

Years ago, my mom and I would routinely try to catch episodes of {{Square Foot Gardening}} (SFG) on PBS. Hosted by {{Mel Bartholomew}}, a retired civil engineer, SFG was a program whose aim was to enable gardening by the masses in confined spaces (though, naturally, if can be implemented in larger settings as well). Mr Bartholomew’s …
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ninja service

Saturday evening I took my fiancee to Cumberland Falls Park just a little way from where she grew up outside Corbin KY. We decided to have a light dinner at the DuPont Lodge to enjoy the gorgeous view of the river on a picture-perfect spring evening. The food was good – nothing amazing, but that’s …
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chips

I like [some] Pringles potato crisps. For years I wondered why it is that when you remove the lining inside the cover it often likes to rip the inner lining of the cardboard case off with it, but it was a minor inconvenience (especially in the era [many moons ago] when I’d eat a whole …
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sriracha

How ironic. My favorite condiment at Vietnamese restaurants in the US is actually a Thai sauce. A sauce, may I add, that I have never seen in a Thai restaurant – anywhere. Sriracha is awesome – heat but not an astounding amount. And it still carries a lot of flavor, so it’s not just heat.

the one hundred ninety-nine dollar.. what?

I arrived in Singapore during the Great Singapore Sale, or GSS. It’s advertised everywhere. It’s the one time of year when [nearly] every store, restaurant, service provider, etc offers big discounts for shoppers. In Plaza Singapura, the mall next to where I work, they’ve been having different vendors taking-over the concourse area on the first …
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too hot

Today for perhaps only the third time in my adult life, I had something that was too hot. I love Thai food. Being in Singapore has showed me beyond a doubt that Thai food is one of the few ethnic foods that is done the same everywhere – it’s the same in Durham, Sunnyvale, London, …
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