Urban Slum Monkey Groundhog

Best as I can tell that lump of fur is a groundhog, about 15 feet off the ground, turning tail to head deeper into the tree after it noticed me gaping at it as it chowed down on leaves.

Where to apply for a zoning variance

Nature in the Slums

A rare morning thunderstorm is preceded by nauseated clouds:

A deer approaches my garden, but does not eat:

The deer stands in a puddle:

Eye contact!

The deer is our friend!

Groundhog Quiche

Searching for high-quality groundhog recipes is about as frustrating as trying to find a reputable online discount pharmaceuticals distributor. Google "groundhog soup" and the first recipe that comes up disappointingly contains no groundhog. Similarly "groundhog cookies" is a bait-and-switch misnomer. Rest assured that every reference to "groundhog" in this post concerns that large rodent best known for terrorizing farms and gardens.


Above is a stolen image of your typical groundhog. Below is my garden and the groundhog that once terrorized it:


I won't go into details about how I got the groundhog from my garden into my freezer except to say that my attempts took me back several thousand years to my caveman roots and involved several high-speed dashes out my back door in which I nearly broke all my legs on those stone terraces I built to keep the soil from washing away.

Groundhog Quiche
Basic meat preparation:

1. Field dress the animal, removing the scent glands on the small of the back and near the top of the arms (I have never definitively identified these glands, but several sources say this important, so just remove anything that looks like glands or fatty tissues in these regions).
2. Soak the groundhog for a day in a heavy brine of vinegar (1/3 cup), salt (at least a tablespoon), 0live oil (1/4 cup), and enough water to cover the meat.
3. Drain the brine, and then boil the animal for about 4 hours, or until the lean, heart-healthy meat becomes soft enough to easily pull from the bone. Add spices to taste, such as salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, and curry powder.
   
4. Pull the meat from the bone. Try hard to make sure that you get all the bone out. Unlike chicken bones, groundhog bones are hard as rock and can be painful to bite down on.
   

As you might guess from the photo above, the final product is a moist, tender, dark-chicken-like meat with just a hint of rodent. The options for what to do with this top-dollar dead animal matter are endless. Groundhog pizzas, burritos, and soups are all options that have never been tried yet to my knowledge. More on these innovations later.

For groundhog quiche, you will need (approximately)

• as much of that precious groundhog meat as you can possibly obtain
• 2 large onions, chopped
  
• about 20 ounces of frozen spinach
• a 30 oz of diced tomatoes
  
• a pound of your favorite cheese
• 14 eggs
• half a cup of heavy whipping cream
  
• a dash of corn starch (a tablespoon?)
• salt
• pepper

Mix it all up in the big red bowl, but save some cheese to sprinkle on top. Then, if you like, prepare a pie crust, using your favorite crust recipe. For my crust, I just poured a heap of flour in the pie pan, added a bit of water and a swig of canola oil and a dash of salt, mixed it, and pressed it out with my paws:


Pour the slop into your baking pans and bake for about 1 hour plus some at 350-375 degrees:


You know it's done when you poke a knife in it and the knife come out with nothing more than cheese oil on it (no wet egg).



Serve hot to international students, who tend to be less aware of the social stigma surrounding groundhog and instead view eating it as some kind of cultural experience. But be sure to save a lot for yourself, because it's pretty tasty!

Soviet Propaganda

I haven't done the research to figure out if this is real, but it sure looks real: the rumor is that the USSR used atomic bombs on 5 separate occasions to kill gas leaks, and here is how it happened:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpPNQoTlacU&feature=player_embedded

Lead in Urban Gardens

Urban gardeners are at risk of lead poisoning due to lead contamination in soil. I recently had my soil tested, and the lab estimated that my soil contains lead at the rate of about about 550 ppm (parts-per-million). To make this concrete, a garden plot on my land that is just 10 feet long by 10 feet wide may contain over 3 pounds of lead. (My calculation is based on 110 lbs per cubic foot as the average density of soil, and considers only the top six inches of soil, which constitute the bulk of the soil tilled for gardening. Note also that ppm is indeed a ratio of masses.)

How much lead is too much? As long as children are not playing in the soil, various sources recommend that gardening is "safe" with lead concentrations under 300 ppm. The soil testing service that I used puts 550 ppm on the low end of its "medium" risk category, and gives some recommendations for how to garden despite the lead. The recommendations fall into three categories:

1. Reduce/dilute/mask lead in the soil, for example by maintaining a high pH above 6.5, adding clean soil, or adding organic matter. My soil pH is 6.7, and I'm adding lots of organic matter.
   
2. Avoid eating dirt. Wash veggies, peel root crops, and keep soil from blowing into your mouth by mulching and/or keeping the garden well-watered. My garden is mulched heavily.
   
3. Choose plants that uptake less lead.
   

Regarding point #3, recommendations become more nuanced: As a general rule, plants uptake so little lead that the main risk is in eating small amounts of dirt on produce that is not well-washed. This study, for example, affirms that very little lead gets into plants and that the biggest risk factors for lead uptake are having a low pH and a lack of organic matter in the soil. However, we must be careful not to over-generalize these positive results. Not all plants refuse to uptake lead. For example, sunflowers and morning glories are known to uptake so much lead that one proposed way of cleaning lead out of soil is to grow these plants in the soil and dispose of the contaminated plants in a landfill.

In conclusion, I find that most vegetables may be safely grown in my soil after taking the precautions suggested above. However, certain kinds of plants might not be safe. I would love to find a more complete analysis of the rates of lead uptake for different kinds of plants (even in the case of sunflowers, I still don't know if the lead makes it into the sunflower seeds or just stays in the roots and leaves).

A thickening matrix

The photographic detail in google maps streetview has always freakwented me out slightly, but today I noticed something I had not seen before. The streetview images capture not only physical space, but also movement through time. A good example can be seen if you search "smithfield and 6th avenue pittsburgh" on google maps, and drop down into streetview about halfway along the block to the left on 6th avenue. Aim Eastward. Start clicking your way down the street, and observe people and cars moving across the streets, moving forward with each new frame. Move in the opposite direction to see things moving backwards through time.

Flotilla

Pittsburgh's attempt at setting a world record for greatest number of boats joined together by human hands appears to have succeeded with about 1800 boats (as yet to be verified by Guinness with high-resolution photography). You can watch the whole thing here. I'm in big red canoe that veers off to the left about 2.3 seconds into the video.

Supper

Let me 'splain you how to make a good supper. First crack 5 homegrown eggs into a bowl and set your kitchen to 82 degrees fyrenhight:



Microwave a frozen 10 oz box of spinach for 3 minutes, and then fry it in a bit of oil, adding a sprinkle of hot pepper powder:



Add the eggs:


Set the pan by the window so you can keep an eye on the city while you eat. Pile on a few of your sister's old mushy pickles that she didn't want anymore (nothing wrong with 'em!), ad a heap of sour cream, and a good slope of 4 cheese spaghetti sauce.



This meal calls for a little story. Once I told my aunt that I feed eggs to my guests, and she said that's not very high class. So my mom gave me a high class recipe for eggs, something like "eggs carbonara" which is a sophisticated way of cooking eggs along with lots of pasta carbs. You could think of this as eggs carbonara but without the carbs: eggs carbonada.

Lunch

Dress a groundhog. Soak the groundhog in a heavy brine of oil, vinegar, salt, and water for a day. Drain the brine off, add some water and spices, and boil the meat for about 4 hours, until the meat starts to separate from the bone. Serve with peas and mashed potatoes. If you feel funny afterwards, eat some ice cream. To make it worthwhile, gross everyone out by telling them about it.

Breakfast