[Mike Nolan]

I'm putting in two more hybridized American chestnut trees in the front yard, one of the two I put in several years ago is doing poorly and may not survive. The main leader looks dead and the side leader might not be in great shape.

The new ones are pretty small, less than a foot tall. So they've got a lot of growing to do.

[Mike Nolan]

We had more NY Strip steak for supper, with a baked potato and some strawberry ice cream with hot fudge sauce.

[Mike Nolan]

We had a horde of earwigs in our mailbox, some diatomaceous earth got them scrambling to leave in a hurry. But be careful not to inhale it.

[Mike Nolan]

I will be making several batches of oatmeal crisp chocolate chip cookies, probably over the weekend, in anticipation of our trip to visit my brothers and attend our granddaughter's HS graduation. Some will be traveling food, most will be to give to my brothers, son and granddaughter.

[Mike Nolan]

I did bake more honey wheat bread today.

[Mike Nolan]

We had tacos/taco salad tonight.

[Mike Nolan]

Our cat is an indoors-only cat since losing his left eye (someone shot him with a bb gun), but when he was allowed outdoors the foxes would bark at him until we let him back in.

[Mike Nolan]

We definitely have a full family of foxes this summer, here are what appears to be one adult and 3 kits.

Also got to watch some interesting nature footage the other day, we had one of the younger foxes and a racoon on the balcony, and they were having a bit of a standoff. Then one of the adult foxes came along and the racoon backed off to below where the camera is, pulling one of the trays of peanuts with him.

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[Mike Nolan]

Amazon has 20 pounds of Unpretentious pastry flour for around $3 a pound, free shipping on Prime. Still several times what I'd use in a year.

[Mike Nolan]

Some KABC products are available on Amazon, which, if you have Prime, usually means free shipping, but their pastry flour isn't one of them. There is a 5 pound bag of‎ Despensa Colombiana (sounds Italian but it says made in USA) pastry flour on Amazon for $15, but that's still quite a bit more than the BRM pastry flour was. I may have to try the Azure Standard one. (Getting to the $50 minimum order on things I want might take me a while.)

[Mike Nolan]

Webstaurant has 50 pounds of patent pastry flour, made from soft red wheat, for about $20, but I've ordered other flours from them before and shipping was more like $50 for a 50 pound bag. Not to mention that's more pastry flour than I'd use in 5 or more years.

Stovers in Cheswick Pennsylvania also has 50 pounds of pastry flour for about $25, but shipping might be an issue with them as well, and I don't know the flour brand's reputation.

I'll be going through Indiana next month when we go to our granddaughter's HS graduation in Pittsburgh, and am hoping to stop at Stover's at some point, but I'm not sure what route we're taking on the way back. If we use I-80 I think we're north of you, if we use I-70 (so we can stop in Columbus OH at the North Market), we'd probably be fairly south of you.

Update: I was just looking over the list of vendors at the North Market and there's been a lot of turnover there, several of the vendors I was hoping to visit are no longer there, so that probably means we'll be using I-80 on the way home, which is about an hour faster anyway.

[Mike Nolan]

Nice day today, in the 70's, so we did NY strip steak on grill, with portobello mushrooms and baked potatoes. Sunday/Monday forecasts call for lower temperature with high chances of rain.

[Mike Nolan]

We had tomato soup and fried cheese sandwiches, kind of a cool day here, high in the mid 60's and light rain.

[Mike Nolan]

We had salads with tuna fish and, yes, some tomatoes.

[Mike Nolan]

I hadn't picked the hydroponic tomato garden in a while, today's haul was pretty big, the largest of them are a little over 2 ounces.

This will likely be the last big picking, there are still a dozen or more green tomatoes, but the vines appear to have stopped flowering and I plan to shut this garden down around the end of the month, and will start new seeds for the next cycle, which should start producing tomatoes in mid to late October.

BLT's on the menu for tomorrow!

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