My kid found a recipe he wanted to cook that included scallions and shallots. “What the HELL is a shallot” I thought???

Many recipes have ingredients where you need a teaspoon but you gotta buy a quart. I only needed one shallot but had to buy a bag.

At least my kid was interested in something besides technology so I entertained him, bought the damn shallots.

I peeled the oniony paper skin off and started slicing (you know where this is going, don’t you?).

As soon as the steel hit the flesh, my nostrils were filled with the most delightful fragrance. I reluctantly tossed the slices into the pan and thought how cool that plant is. I immediately went to Wikipedia to find out about this discovery. Where have shallots been my whole life???

Last night I went to stop and shop and saw shallots in bulk next to all the onions- musta been there all this time but my eyes passed over them as if they were invisible.

Im going to save these for planting- they might grow like onions do, but now onions need to move over, there’s a new boy in town.

So last night I sliced up a large shallot and put it into the spinach/lettuce/vine-ripened tomato/pesto/ Caesar salad dressing salad, and we ate every scrap. Imagine a 14 yo boy shoving a parent out of the way to get to the salad?

​I have shallots to thank, and my kid for making me buy them!

Post script in order here. I’m a blabber mouth, and have been gospelling the word of shallots to anyone who would listen. A friend of mine soaked shallot cloves in vodka this week and made a pitcher of shallot martinis for everyone last night! BEST MARTINI I EVER HAD!

​Holy crap, is there anything a shallot can’t do???

3/20/19-

We NEVER hear about this- almost never. More reason to grow your own food! Do these residual chemicals cause disease and cancer?

LINK:

​https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/20/health/dirty-dozen-pesticide-list/index.html

1. ROUNDUP- best weedkiller/timesaver ever invented. I’ve used it for 45 years.

Here is is what I know about it (FACTS):

It is a plant hormone that prevents storage of ATP by photosynthesizing plants, resulting in sprayed plants eating reserves instead- starvation results in sprayed plants.

It is only absorbed by leaves- never roots

It is “eaten” by microbes in the soil, breaking it down into inert ingredients

It does NOT leach into groundwater- sticking to organic soil particles instead, nor does it runoff into streams.

It is NOT supposed to be applied to plants that you are going to eat- why the hell would you do that?!

It is NOT supposed to be bathed in, eaten, inhaled, applied to skin in any way- STUPID!

There is NO RESIDUAL in the soil after the microbes eat it.

During droughts, roundup is excruciatingly slow to work as the target plants have gone dormant.
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Ok, so if you aren’t breathing it/bathing in it/spraying it on plants you are going to eat, then WHERE EXACTLY IS THE PROBLEM? East of the Mississippi River, homeowners can use this product all they want without problems that you hear about in the news- as George Carlin once said “ITS ALL BULLSHIT FOLKS!”

The problem is when large farmers aerial spray crops to kill them for efficient harvests, the chemical is STILL INSIDE THE PLANT when it’s harvested/processed into beer and bread. Who ever came up with the idea to spray roundup on wheat? Sounds criminal to me. I do not want to eat roundup (brings up an entirely different conversation about chemical residuals in ALL of our food- what other bad chemicals are we unknowingly eating?).

How about that worker awarded $60 million bucks for cancer he claims he got from roundup...? Bullshit verdict from an emotional jury- hope it gets overturned on appeal. Did he have an applicators license? Was he ever trained in the mixing and spraying of pesticides? What else did he ever spray? What other factors in his life could have caused his cancer? Did the guy use sunscreen everyday he worked for that school? Did he ever smoke? Did he ever breathe two cycle exhaust when working? Who can say the guy got his cancer from roundup? ANSWER- nobody can.

Course, you have a choice- bend over and weed by hand (I do a lot of that when the weeds are close to my veggies), or spray roundup. If it’s sprayed with common sense and logic according to the directions on the label, you have a great tool for your yard. Wanna weed by hand? Go ahead! Have fun! Im not doing that because the anti-roundup stuff in the news is sensationalized and hyped up WAY PAST any amount of scientific analysis, and every single assault on roundup is met with scoffing and humor by people in my industry- well-educated professionals who really know the reality of this issue.

Just thought I would add some facts to a subject that’s been in the news A LOT.

2. Chemical VS. organic fertilizers:

I never use organic fertilizers! Why you ask?

I can’t help looking closely at things in my business- totally logical for someone like me to use my education like this-

Main point-

On a MOLECULAR level, the macro nutrients are identical. Nitrogen is either ammonical/watersoluble/water insoluble/urea in both organic and chemical fertilizers.

Phosphorous- P2O5- same with both fertilizers

Potassium- K2O- same

So if, on a molecular level, the molecules are the same, then what’s the advantage of organic over chemical fertilizers? There is none.

Again, as a matter of fact, organic fertilizers need to be applied more frequently, don’t last as long, cost more, and are less concentrated (you need more).

Some of my customers actually don’t feed their garden at all- they don’t water either! That’s totally up to them.

I figure people can look at the pics I put up here to show them how I do this garden thing. I don’t get drunk and go out into the night naked and spray roundup all over Nature and toss chemical fertilizers into the wild...

I am a logical intelligent well-educated user of the tools at my disposal that I scrutinize carefully and use if they pass my sniff test. Put fertilizer into the hole when planting? You reduce the amount by 50% because the food is in the root zone readily and easily available. Weed control in my garden? Mainly grass clippings- go back into last year’s archives to see how I let the lawn grow long then harvest it.

That entire organic fertilizer thing thing is understandable but totally illogical when looked at carefully by people with some chemical education.

Its my opinion that a combination of good old fashioned methods in the garden mixed with modern technology yields the best results. If you start at the very beginning of this veggie blog, I started with basic info for perspective gardeners- hope it helps!

Any questions??? Feel free to call me!

THIS JUST IN (3/19/19)

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Yesterdays paper. But it doesn’t change anything. When used according to the label instructions, you aren’t supposed to bathe in it, breathe it, drink or eat it, not get it on your skin, or spray it on plants that you are going to eat. Did this user follow those directions? Did he ever get motor oil on his hands, breathe gasoline vapors, eat food from the grocery store that had chemical residuals? Fish with mercury? Live in the northeast where we breathe in polluted air coming our way from other parts of the country?

​I just do not see how anyone other than neutral scientists can draw connections between health issues and roundup. So far none have.

Link to article:

​https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/19/business/monsanto-roundup-cancer.html?action=click&module=Latest&pgtype=Homepage