twodoebs

But this one is downright pretty!



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Who says we here at twodoebs never listen to our readers!?

You've told us commenting to our posts is too difficult; we're making it easier!

We've turned off the captcha requirement (that step that makes you verify the word) to eliminate part of the process that many of you have complained about.

Furthermore, if you're having trouble logging in, you can always just post as Anonymous and write your name in at the bottom of the message--we're really not too concerned with formality around here (take THAT, Facebook!).

Of course, the trade off to reigning back these verification requirements is that we might expose ourselves to so-called "Comment Spam"--fake comments that try to sell a product or get you to click on a link. We'll take a wait-and-see attitude towards this potential problem. If it pops up and we can't delete it fast enough, though, just be aware that there's the potential that some comments you may see are not entirely legit.

As always, let us know if this improvement works and if there's anything else we can do to make your twodoebs experience more enjoyable!

Mookie - that's Libby speak for pacifier. It started with Nuk (the brand of choice in Doebtown), then nukkie, but that obviously turned into mookie. Mookie and Libby were the best of friends her first year . . .then in her second year she and mookie were limited to just bedtime, long car rides and other choice strategic uses (out at fancier dinners and church).

On the advice of our doctor we began the "weaning" process one week ago tonight. I put "weaning" in quotes because as the situation unfolded it became apparent we were going with a cold turkey approach. See, I snipped off the tip to make for less suction therefore less satisfying, presuming she'd eventually get over it. Well when she realized it was "broken", she decided to throw it away.

This of course made me think (for the next 8 mintues) that I was an excellent mother and rearing the most well adjusted two year old on the planet. When Libby realized however, that the back up nukkie which used to live on her bedside table and I had strategically tucked away that afternoon, was no longer there she became a normal two year old. She cried incessantly for an hour "Mommmmmmmmmmy, 'nother moooookie". This makes one feel like a terrible person in case you're curious.

Every time Libby went to bed or woke up from sleeping, day or night for the next week she asked about mookie. This morning, she did not. As we lay her down to sleep tonight, she once again mentioned that mookie was "boken". We just said 'yes it is' and that was that.

I suspect in the next couple days we'll stop hearing about Mookie (until her little brother or sister shows up with one and totally rocks her world). Even still, I will miss this little face. It's definitely the end of an era.

The Extra Point: I love Wimbledon: "I have always liked watching tennis, especially these big Grand Slam tournaments, but Wimbledon is special to me. For one - I've actually b..."

The Extra Point: I love Wimbledon

When I was a kid, my neighbors Joyce and Christy and Tim and my sister and I used to chase lightning bugs every evening during the summer. We'd catch 'em and store 'em in jars with holes cut in the lid and play with them all summer long.

And it seemed as if there were tons of them. When you'd drive past a field or a medow at just the right time of night, it would look as if all the flashes were going off in a staduim during kickoff of the Superbowl. It was amazing!

Last year, I remember commenting that it seemed as if there were fewer lightning bugs than there were when we were kids. But they were still there. And I know they were around last year 'cause I took this picture:

Now, granted, some of the lightning bugs in that picture were put in there with Photoshop, but there were tons of 'em!

OK, all this by way of the statement that there are no lightning bugs this year. I mean, we've seen one or two of 'em, but nothing like what I remember from my childhood or what I would expect.

Now, following blogging best-practices, I've been ending many of my posts with questions designed to get readers to comment. For the most part, though, those are just rhetorical questions.

This time, I'm really serious. Can someone please tell me what's happened to all the lightning bugs? It's really upsetting me.

I'm sure if I had just spent the time that I spent writing this post on a little Google research, I would already have my answer. But I didn't; so I don't. And now I need somebody to clue me in.

Surely, we couldn't have ripped all their lights off and made them into rights, right?

Firstly - I must apologize that I don't have a picture of this weeks' haul. I immediately called much of it into action before Doebtown could snap a picture. With the big birthday party last weekend we used quite a bit of it.

We got:
- Zucchini
- Strawberries
- Sugar Snap Peas
- Tomatoes
- Red Leaf Lettuce
- Kale
- Spring Onions

I immediately used the lettuce, onions and tomatoes in the green salad we served at the party. We chopped the strawberries in a strawberry/blueberry blend (2 of Libby's 3 favorite fruits) for her party.

I just tonight grilled a little of the zucchini and I still haven't used the sugar snaps!

Since we liked the Kale chips but weren't blown over by it, we thought we'd try another recipe - sauteed sesame and garlic Kale (you have to look half way down the page to see the recipe - it opens a PDF doc.
Let me give you two cents about this recipe - don't go heavy on the soy sauce - really just leave it at ONE teaspoon. And when the recipe says "Salt and Pepper to taste" you should reallllllly taste it before you salt it. I didn't do either of those things and it was SO salty it was inedible.

The thing about sauteed kale though is that it holds up to sauteing much better than spinach. I hate hot spinach because it gets all slimy and gross. But Kale stays pretty tough. I hope we get more kale so I can try that recipe again.

Picked up today's batch and already I'm starting to think that it's a pretty good thing we didn't get the large share. It's surprising how much this backs up!

From Last Import

She's 2 years old today! We can't believe how fast they've gone by, but they've been the best 2 year of our lives!
(Although Kati just ruined the moment by reminding me that today is the end of free flights on airplanes for Libby.)

Loyal twodoebs fans will recall the captivating video we shot during our recent trip to Hilton Head (if you haven't seen it yet, I really hope you'll check it out because we were really proud of it and couldn't be happier with the way it turned out . . . it's only 90 seconds long, it's not boring at all, and it's tons of fun!--click here to watch it).

Trouble was, since I was so busy with the video camera, I didn't take a single still picture. Shocking, I know.

Fortunately, my dad had his trusty Cannon 5D Mark II with him the whole trip. My dad's a really talented photographer (click here for a guest contributor post we did of his pictures last year), so it was probably better to have him taking pictures, anyway.

Long story short, he just posted his first online photo gallery. And we're honored that it's pictures from our trip together. Click here to check out his photos from our trip!

There is one (and only one) judge on TV court shows that is any good. And it is Marilyn Milian on The People's Court.

She's the only one who knows anything about the law. And she's the only one who cares about the law. She's funny. And she doesn't put up with stupid nonsense.

My sister was lucky enough to be in their studio audience once. And I'm very jealous.

Remember:

"Don't take the law into your own hands!--you take 'em to court!"

The Extra Point: YAWWWWWWWWWWWWN - The blog is awakened.: "Ok, it's been about 7 months - I have received no requests begging for my thoughtful quips on the wide world of sports (is that term tradema..."

The Extra Point: YAWWWWWWWWWWWWN - The blog is awakened.

Last Thursday, I picked up our second installment of the CSA share. I was tempted to write right away about our lot but figured it would make more sense to wait through the week and review our crops!

Week 2 we received:
- Strawberries
- Rhubarb
- Kale
- Lettuce
- Tomatoes
- Parsley Plant

We've used the tomatoes in some salads and as a little garnish with last night's very delicious salmon grilled on a cedar plank. (No, the salmon and cedar plank have nothing to do with the CSA -- it was just really good. I highly recommend it!)

We made a VERY simple and delicious strawberry and rhubarb crumble and with the kale we made some kale chips. One small recipe note about the kale chips -- we used cider vinegar and I increased the temp and baked for less time.

Reviews:
-The crumble was amazing - so fast and delicious.
-The kale chips were a nice addition and oddly tasted a bit like pumpkin seeds. I don't think I would go to the store and buy kale just to make kale chips again BUT if it shows up in future CSA drops, I'd be happy to make more chips - or try kale in a different way.

Things I've noticed about the CSA produce:
1. It lasts much longer. I haven't even touched the lettuce we got last week and it still looks beautiful. Same with the spring onions from week one. There's one or two floating around and they are in prime shape. I suspect the produce coming straight to us from a very local farm means a much longer shelf life.
2. This stuff tastes AMAZING. I tell ya -- the strawberries were smaller and more misshapen than what you see at the grocery store, but so much more FLAVORFUL! I don't care if they are smaller -- they are much better!!!

Today is pick up number 3!! Stay tuned for next weeks' culinary adventures!

I'm (basically) as good as a pro!

Scott Kelby--who is one of the masters of contemporary photography (those of you who can't name a photographic great other than Ansel Adams will just have to trust me on this one!)--keeps a pretty regular blog. One of his tricks for keeping his content fresh is to commonly feature guest bloggers.

His guest blogger today was a guy named Bill Fortney. I've never heard of this character before, but whatever!--he's a guest blogger for Scott Kelby, so he's gotta be somewhat good, right? Fortney--like pretty much all other guest bloggers included tons of his images in his post.

OK, so here's where I'm going with this. Look at the two images below. One of them is one of Fortney's picture. The other one is one of my pictures in my portfolio. Can you tell which is which?


Mine is the first one. Frankly, looking at the two of 'em together, I kinda prefer mine!

Regardless of your personal tastes, though, and even if some of you could sniff out subtle superiority in the pro's shot, I'm still pretty impressed at the similarity!

Perhaps Scott Kelby should start following my blog! I'm sure he'd love to see all the pictures of Libby we've posted up here!

I got this message from Facebook the other day, which I think is pretty funny:


Given all that I've been writing about in my last couple of posts, I consider this message to be something of a badge of honor--something to be worked towards and proof of my commitment.

Anybody else gotten anything along these lines from Facebook?

Truth is, I created the monster.

I was the one who put the first smartphone in Sweet Kati's hand. I was the one who encouraged her to take up my habits of mobile web surfing. And I was the one who installed all the apps on her iPhone.

And anybody who's tried to have dinner with her in the last 2 years knows the result: it's impossible to get that thing out of her hands!

Now, in fairness to my lovely wife, she is typically doing something constructive: checking in with a babysitter via text, trying to update me on the score of the hockey game, looking up a little factoid that's relevant to our conversation. All things that I should--and do--encourage.

But one of the other things she's frequently doing is playing around on Facebook. And she does it a lot.

Facebook didn't have a mobile app when they launched, nor did they have one when the details of The Social Network were playing out. But I'm pretty sure the ability to casually check in on your friends' goings-ons from your iPhone in the 2 minutes between the time you order your latte and the time it's served to you are one of the biggest contributors to the site's success.

That's why we at twodoebs are proud to roll out an entirely new mobile site that will allow you the same quick access to our content no matter where you are. We've been hard at work on this new interface and know you'll appreciate its clean, simple presentation.

To access our new site, just visit:


from any web-enabled mobile phone.

And let us know what you think! We'd love to hear your reactions to our newest improvement.

Consideration of how a blog like twodoebs can remain relevant in an era of Facebook needs to start with an understanding of why Facebook is so popular. One thing Facebook has in its favor is the ease with which it gets content to its readers. You don’t need to manually go to the site to read postings, Facebook brings the postings to you. Blogs--on the other hand--require a reader to return to the site over and over again to check what’s new, even if that process is facilitated with bookmarks. Some of y’all might have enjoyed that task back in the twodoebs glory days, but it certainly seems as if that has become more of a chore than a pleasure.

One of the ways we can match this strength of Facebook is to bring twodoebs content to you. If you know what RSS is, you probably don’t need us to be telling you how to do it. But--for those of you who are tech-inclined--the address of the feed is:

http://doebtown.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

If RSS means nothing to you, we can still help! Here’s how:

Send an e-mail to mail@twodoebs.com with the words “Subscribe twodoebs” in the subject line and nothing in the body of the message. You will be added to a list of recipients who will get an e-mail when new postings are added to twodoebs. Magic!--you'll never miss a new posting.

We know that if we can make it easier for you to find twodoebs content, our loyal readers will be more likely to participate in the blog.

What about you?--do you think that having content specially delivered to you inbox would make you more likely to read twodoebs postings or comment on them?

This summer, we here at twodoebs will be participating in a CSA. What's a CSA you ask? It stands for Community Supported Agriculture. In essence, you buy a share of a local farm and on some regular basis, you get a share of that farm's bounty. I've been meaning to do this now for a few years but finally got to it this year and I am SO excited!

For the next 22 weeks, we'll receive a small box of goods from the farm - we can even opt in to take advantage of specials the farm will offer throughout the season including meats from a local livestock farm. It certainly won't negate our need for produce at the store, but it will likely reduce it.

The other benefits, of course, are supporting local agriculture rather than corporate farming. Not to mention presumably fresher produce. Plus I imagine we'll get exposed to new produce and try new recipes along the way!

So look forward to regular posts about our progress and reviews. Today was our first installment and we got:
- two tomatoes
- a bunch of asparagus
- a basil plant
- a half dozen eggs
- a head of lettuce
- a large bunch of spring onions

We've used a whole bunch of it all already! We grilled burgers tonight and enjoyed the lettuce, tomatoes and onions on our burgers and grilled the asparagus as a side dish. So far it's all delicious! Looking forward to a salad tomorrow and more CSA fun to come this summer.