Tino's Cold Cheese Pizza

When we lived in Cooperstown there was a little pizzaria, Tino's, on Chestnut Street. Tino had a fairly typical menu for such a restaurant and would do slices for lunch. One of his menu items was Cold Cheese Pizza and all his menus bore the phrase, "Home of the Cold Cheese." Best I could determine, he was talking about cold cheese on a pizza.

Cold cheese on a pizza? Why? I didn't get it. It sounded gross.

My friends, co-workers, husband and I, as well as most visitors we entertained, enjoyed Tino's slices for lunch and whole pizzas for dinner and other occasions. We came to be such regulars that when Tino would see our shadow cross the door, he would himself call out our order, and it would be ready by the time we got to the counter. We ate a lot of Tino's.

Then came Jason. Jason Schiellack, then Manager of Membership (now promoted to Director of Membership) at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, hails from Wisconsin. Everyone liked to rib him about being a "cheesehead" but he really is himself one cheese lovin' dude. It didn't take Jason long at all to sample that cold cheese pizza. Jason is the one who successfully introduced me to it. I must say I was hesitant to try this strange arrangement of cold cheese on a pizza, but from the "The First One is Free, Kid," Department, I was hooked from the first time I tried it.

The next time I went in, I asked Tino, "What's the story on that cold cheese pizza?"

Tino explained that when they had a pizza shop in Oneonta (a college town) they'd get these big rushes of diners, say, at lunch time or when classes or an entertainment event would let out. They'd be overrun with a shop full of hungry college age kids ordering slices! Slices! Slices! and they'd be back there slingin' pizzas as fast as they could. They'd pull those bubbling hot pizzas out of the oven and slice 'em up, but they were way too hot to eat - loosen the skin right off the roof of your mouth (Ouch!) - until someone had the ingenious idea of throwing a handful of cold shredded mozzarella cheese on top of those extraordinarily hot slices to keep from injuring thier avid, loyal, ravenous and impatient customers. Soon people began asking for slices that way. A cult of pizza was born.

When my sister, who has never been to Cooperstown or Oneonta, learned that I love cold cheese pizza, her response was same as mine had been in the beginning - "Cold cheese on a pizza? Why? I don't get it. Sounds gross!"

Unfortunately, any explanation I can offer in black words on white ground can not possibly come anywhere near doing it justice, but try to think of the most excellent thin crust cheese pizza you can imagine, piping hot - the way the crust bends down when you try to pick it up, so hot the topping almost slides off, melting - with a handful of shredded Mozzarella cheese thrown on top as it goes on the plate. Be assured, the juxtaposition of cold cheese on hot pizza is a delightful surprise. If you ever have the chance, try one. It'll change your life. Trust me.

We still get the weekly Cooperstown newspaper, The Freeman's Journal. Comes in the mail every week, right as rain. It's fun to keep up with the goings on in the village where we spent the last seven years of our lives. We always liked to say the village is so small, everyone takes turns being on the front page of The Freeman's Journal. It's real home towny. I saw in the FJ recently that someone bought Tino's.

That is happy and sad news to me. Happy if it was what Tino wanted, happy for him and his if he came out well on the sale. Sad to think Tino's won't be there any more. The new guys might even still call it Tino's if they paid him enough for such a priviledge, but it sure won't really be Tino's if Tino isn't there.

I am familiar with the other restaurant owned and operated by the people who bought Tino's. I certainly wish them the best, but I have to say, they're no Tino by a long shot. Not even close. So I guess we'll see. On the other hand I don't suppose I really need to trouble my pretty little head about it because I don't live there anymore!

Tino, wherever you're going and whatever you do, I bid you a fond farewell and wish you Health, Happiness and Prosperity. I thank you for having opened up a shop in Cooperstown, for your friendship, and for the exquisite experience of Cold Cheese Pizza. Cheers, buddy.

Garden Update and Field Pea Lore

I am sorry to say that I have slacked way off blog entries since I got Facebook, so to try to make up for it a little bit, I'm posting this entry with an updated photo of my garden, which is fairly exploding out of the ground.

We have already enjoyed a jalapeno pepper bigger than my whole thumb, a Roma tomato bigger than any I've ever seen in a grocery store (and way tastier), a few little golf-ball sized onions (because I just couldn't wait), several yellow squash, which are surprisingly sweet, and two hefty servings of green beans, yum! But wait, there's more - today I saw a bright yellow spot in one of the rows and wondered how a dandelion grew there so quickly, but it was my first Marigold blossom of the season. Good Morning Merry Sunshine!

In this photo, on the left is the tomato row; in the middle, there, is a row of Georgia Sweet onions, and that row on the right, toward the front are the yellow squash, and behind them you can see some neat trellises I made for cucumbers, cantaloupe (also known as muskmelon), and watermelon. On the crossways rows in the foreground, the little sprouts you see marching across the image from right to left are pink-eye purple-hulls, a variety of what are commonly called field peas. The Pink-eye purple-hulls are close cousins to black-eyed peas, which you may have heard of.

Black eyed peas are significantly involved in a particular southern tradition of eating black eyed peas on January first for good luck and prosperity in the coming year. Grandma Susie introduced this tradition to me many years ago. You can have 'em any way you wish - with or without greens, cornbread, any variety of pork - the black-eyed peas themselves are the thing.

This tradition evolved, as Grandma Susie explained to me, from the point that black eyed peas and all their little cousins are humble food, inexpensive and easy to prepare and, as you can see, one can even grow them in the home garden. As a bonus to all that, they're also quite tasty. It follows that if one were to start the new year with such humble fare, things could only get better. Steve and I have become almost superstitious in our observance of this tradition - January first must not pass without our having some black-eyed peas, even if we have to get them out of a can from the grocery store!

I could grow black eyed peas, and probably will, but I so love the pink-eye purple-hulls. I was introduced to pink-eye purple-hulls by a woman named Mildred Wallace, mother of my dear friend Sue Mitchell. My children and I went to visit Sue at Mildred's house in Arkansas one summer back in the eighties. Mildred was a pip! She nearly always had a "chaw of terbacky" in her cheek. Mildred grew a thick stand of pink-eye purple-hulls every summer. She ate many of them fresh and home-canned the rest, had enough to keep herself well stocked and send home with her loved ones. They weren't quite ready to harvest when we were there that summer, so we had some of the last of the home-canned from the season before - delicious. I also learned from Mildred that summer how to make biscuits. Yeah, biscuits! Tender, flaky biscuits, the kind you love with breakfast. I'll tell you about Mildred's biscuits in another post because this one is about "eye beans."

Black eyed peas are a pristine creamy white with a distinct black eye. They cook up from dried relatively quickly and are tasty. You can embellish the flavor with various seasonings, maybe a joint of ham if you're so inclined, or just enjoy them pretty much the way they come. They are definitely black and white. Once I've actually grown some, I can tell you more about their habit, their pods, and so forth.

Pink-eye purple-hulls are exactly that. One of the fun things about shelling them is that the pods will stain your fingers purple. One of the not-so-fun things about shelling them is the same thing - they will stain your fingers, and it is persistent. Doesn't wash out easily. The beans or peas, whichever one might wish to call them, are a little more pale mauvish in color, with a deeper, sort of a dusty plum colored eye. As I mentioned before, they are tasty prepared from fresh, they home-can well, or cook up from dried relatively quickly, like their black-eyed cousins. My affection for this legume interferes with any objectivity I might have, so I can't really say between black eyes and pink eyes which one has the better flavor. They're just tasty.

Time marches on and both Sue and her mother Mildred have gone on to the Big Acreage in the Sky. I have no doubt whatsoever that Mildred is in charge of a thick stand of the Heavenly equivalent of Pink-eye Purple-hulls, and that Sue is pointing out to newly arrived angels, "Well, there's a real good example of a pair of wings, right there on your shoulders." I learned a lot from those two women, individually and collectively, miss them both, and think of them often. My old friend Pappy Hines would say "They're not dead as long as we're alive to remember them," and to that I offer Cheers to Sue, Mildred and Pappy.

Y'all go grow yourselves some pink-eye purple-hulls!

Poison Ivy

I learned something new and interesting today!

Someone on one of my gardening groups posted that Poison Ivy is a sign that the soil is acid, and recommended I test and lime as needed. She also pointed out that Poison Ivy grows slowly and recommended planting something faster growing in its place to displace it, and made a couple of specific suggestions that speak directly to our need.

We have quite a bit of Poison Ivy on our place, more in the woods and under trees, but it has pretty severely encroached "our" space while we were away these seven years. I have become quite expert at recognizing it and knew you really just had to pull it out, but hadn't given much thought to planting other things in its place.

Here in Oklahoma and points south grows a grass we call Bermuda grass. It prefers long hours of sunlight and propagates readily by seed and eagerly by rhizomes. Bermuda grass is tolerant of difficult conditions and is beautiful and green, making it very popular for lawns. It is also invasive and persistent, should you ever happen to want to clear a piece of ground and plant anything else where Bermuda grass is or has been. If you run a tiller through it, any little quarter inch piece of rhizome left in or on the ground will sprout into - you guessed it - MORE Bermuda grass! Till a piece of Bermuda grass up into a hundred little pieces and you'll get a hundred new plants.

This has also been my experience with Poison Ivy.

So, yep, I put on my makeshift, hillbilly hazmat suit and layers of disposable gloves up to here, pull every strand of hair back slick and tight under a hat or in a bandanna so it won't waft about to tickle and and make me want to touch my face, and set to work, pulling up endless networks of ropes and cables of Poison Ivy vines and roots. Quite a sight, I'm sure. Fortunately it comes up fairly easily.

I do not put the evil strands in my compost, because its poison is like alien space acid in its insidious persistence and I do not want to put it back in my garden in the form of compost on food I eat or feed to my loved ones, completely aside from the chance of moving orphaned pieces of Poison Ivy to a new, more fertile environment with its propagates-from-any-little-scrap-of-root ability.

Don't burn it either, because Poison Ivy's eternal molecules of poison attach themselves to particles of smoke and ash, and Heaven Forbid you should breathe any of it. Bad, bad, bad. No, when I pull Poison Ivy I put it in trash bags, tie 'em up tight, and place them in the trash can for the City of Mustang to carry off to do whatever it is they do with the garbage they pick up from us. Thank you City of Mustang!

So - I am extremely pleased to learn this about Poison Ivy, that it's an indicator of acidity in the soil, and am also grateful for the suggestions and tips on things to plant in its place.

My Chicken House

My dear husband built me a chicken house ten years ago. It's a wood-frame building set on a concrete curb-like footer.

We got some perfectly good surplus windows for little-a-nothing, and a couple of doors the same way.

We designed sort of a vestibule/storage area just inside the exterior door, where we keep the feed and whatnot. The second, inner door lets you into the Inner Sanctum where the chickens live. We did purchase a set of nesting boxes with hinged roosts with little sliding doors on the backs so we can gather eggs without having to go into the chicken house, and he built "low" (about a foot off the floor) and "high" (about waist high) roosts out of 2x2's, along three sides of the inside of the chicken house.

It has a wood floor, covered with a linoleum-type flooring (probably vinyl or whatever they're making that stuff out of these days), which we got as a remnant. When we have chickens, we layer the floor with four to six inches of wood chips for chicken litter. We have traditionally purchased said wood chips from a local farm supply outfit. Now that Steve is doing more carpentry, he makes plenty of sawdust but I'd want to sift the fine dusty stuff out of it if we were going to try to put any of that on the hen house floor. Nobody, including my chickens, needs to be inhaling wood dust.

There is a little slider door that you can open and close with a rope on a pulley, that opens out into a fenced, covered yard area so the chickens can go outside, see the sunshine and feel the wind, and still be in a protected environment. It's like a porch except that it's bare ground out there. We call it the chicken yard.

The fence around the chicken yard has a gate-like door that we can open to let the chickens out to free-range for the day, if we wish. Unfortunate experience has taught us to let them out when we are going to be around to monitor things. We used to let them out in the morning before we went to work in the city, but there's a lot can happen when you're gone eleven, twelve hours a day. We changed to leaving them penned up if we're going to be gone and only letting them out when we're there.

On the other side of the chicken house from the little yard door, is another little door that we use for clean out. This one is just a little door on hinges that locks with a bolt-latch. We like to do a thorough clean out about twice a year - all the old, used litter goes out, sweep the floor, maybe scrub any crusty places with a stiff bristle broom. That flooring could also be mopped and disinfected if it seemed necessary. We would then put the chicken litter in the compost heap.

I posted a current pic. It looks a bit overgrown right now, but we've been away these seven years and it's surrounded with chest-high weeds and poison ivy. Someone has had a dog or dogs in there, so there is a little chew damage, some dig-out places, and a couple of the roosts are broken, but it all appears to be relatively easy to repair. We just have to get the human house habitable before we can start on the chicken house.

I'll post again when there's some progress to show.

Gardening Notes

We pull our rows up in ridges so the plantings are raised. Not a raised bed, but raised rows. Here's a picture of this year's garden so far, with a picturesque backdrop of trees.

We have an assortment of tomatoes, peppers, a row each of Georgia sweet and Texas 1015 (sweet) onions, some cukes, a watermelon, a cantaloupe, some okra, green beans, beets and carrots in the raised rows in addition to the corn circles.

We also have some garlic (not shown in this photo). I'll relate The Legend of The Garlic (with picture!) in a separate post in the near future.

By the way, in case you're interested, the trees shown include Black Walnut, Pecan, Hackberry, Elm, Honey Locust, and an olive relative I call "Sweetbush" because of the way it smells when it blooms in the spring. Downright intoxicating, the Sweetbush.

Elsewhere on the acreage live Juniper, Cottonwood, Mulberry, Willow, Cypress, Sweetgum, Oak and Pine trees. Possibly also a Redbud, the Oklahoma State tree, which I planted over ten years ago, but have not yet found.

Seven Circles of Corn

Someone on one of my gardening groups had posted a question about something called Corn Circles. I had never heard of this before and googled the term. Only found one article that mentioned the topic in a few sentances, in the middle of the article.

The article I found referred to corn circles or corn basins. The concept is that you raise a crater-like ring 18 to 36 inches across and plant the corn in the ridge of the ring.

It mentioned planting the "Three Sisters" - corn, beans and squash. The corn supports the beans, the beans feed the corn, and the squash provides ground cover to serve as a living mulch which keeps the moisture in the ground. The basin collects water when it rains or when you water.

You may know that corn needs to be planted somewhat en masse so the stalks can pollinate each other. In traditional row planting, the recommendation is usually to plant at least four rows to accomplish this. The premise with corn circles or corn basins, though, is that the circular configuration in an 18 to 36 inch circle provides the necessary proximity to achieve pollination.

So - I decided to give corn circles a try!

I created seven circles with 13 to 17 plantings each. I planted the corn with peas instead of beans and only planted one squash per circle since the squash spreads out so vigorously.

I will post updates and progress notes about this as summer progresses.

Vermiculture!

GUESS WHAT?! Today I found my old original worm bin! I can't believe it's still there!

It is a plastic under-bed type plastic storage box that I had drilled holes in the bottom for drainage and around along the sides under the rim for ventilation. I place either nylon screening or some of that garden mulch fabric against the holes to help keep my little darlings from escaping through the holes.

I'd kept it out back under some trees where it had shade during the day to help keep it cool enough to keep from baking my little wormies, and close enough to the house to make it easy to carry kitchen scraps out to the bin.

One of our cats, Cookie (aka "The Mistress of Stealth"), liked to perch on a limb, we're guessing to watch for any small critters that may have been interested in the worm bin.

Scared Steve out of ten years' growth one evening about dusk when he was out there piddling around and saw this pair of eyes about waist high. We had seen larger wild cats before, like a bobcat as big as a medium sized dog, so his first thought was what does that pair of eyes belong to and how big must it be if its head is at waist height? But it was just Cookie, perched on a tree limb, watching the worm bin.

If you're interested in or curious about keeping earthworms, check out the The Worm Bin. It's a Yahoo Group all about earthworms, castings, and wormbins.