Garden -- ain't nothing like the real thing

I walked by the snow pea vines after chasing a squirrel off the mulberry tree.
I still had the sweet taste of a perfectly ripe mulberry on my tongue when I realized.
There were snow peas large enough for picking.
So I picked half a dozen, plus a couple of leaves of mustard and chard.
That went into my fried rice for breakfast.
There is nothing like fresh veggies that were still on the plant half an hour earlier, while the sugar in them is still almost all sugar and hasn't had time to change into starch.
This is why I garden.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Fact-Checking the Torah -- Leviticus 25:17

Your assignment for this week was Leviticus 25:17, which I think wraps up financial problems that Jewish law had to deal with.

You shall not wrong your people and fear your Gd for I am the Lord your Gd.

 

The legal term for this kind of wrongdoing is onaah and it basically equates to the modern notion of fraud.  The Talmudic definition is:

Selling merchandise at one sixth more than the market price.

Paying one sixth less than the market price for merchandise.

Using as a coin worth one sixth less than its face value.

 

I think the scenario of the “market price” is this.  This comes from Proverbs 31:10-31, the praise of the valorous woman.  Remember that her activity freed her husband to sit in the gate.  Not because he was lazy.  What happened at the gates was that carts of produce came in from the fields, and the town elders could see how much there was and set prices accordingly.  Here in the town gates, the husband became known socially, legally, politically and economically, all of which could help out his family and eventually raise him to a high position.

Anyway once the produce was set out, the housewives or their servants could go out and buy the day’s needs for food or for storage.  When it was brought home, the wife or the man of the house could check whether the price seemed right and if not, she or he would go to the elders and complain about it.

At night, anybody who didn’t live in that town would set out for home so as to get to their own town before the gates closed for the night.  Once the seller left for home, the gates of the buyer’s town closed, and the buyer could no longer claim onaah.  Since this was at night, and a new day on the Jewish calendar begins at night, the day is over, and Talmud says one only has the day of purchase (before night) to claim onaah.

The person who didn’t examine purchases immediately therefore might have to live with the deal struck.  Modern law calls this “sleeping on his rights”, laches.

Of course since the elders and experts are sitting at the gates of the town, a buyer can go to them before making the purchase and get their opinion.  And of course since they are sitting out in public, they are available to witness fights, stop them, warn the batterer about the trouble he is preparing for himself, and eventually be in a position to try him for murder.

Now that I’ve defined the important terms in Jewish finance, let’s go on to a famous issue in Jewish history, pawning goods as collateral for loans.  For next time read Exodus 22:24-26, Leviticus 25:35, Deuteronomy 24:6 and Deuteronomy 24:11-13.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Bit at a time Bible Hebrew -- Genesis 1:19

Genesis 1:19

 

יט וַיְהִי־עֶרֶב וַיְהִי־בֹקֶר יוֹם רְבִיעִי:

 

Transliteration: Va-y’hi erev va-y’hi voqer yom r’vii.

Translation:    There was evening and there was morning a fourth day.

Letters in this lesson:

Vocabulary in this lesson:

רְבִיעִי

Fourth

 

Was that short or what?

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Knitting -- pullover/jumper

Now, if you started this project out the same as the Fair Isle jumper, you bought a cone of Brown Sheep Cotton Fine and you've been chugging along, but you can see you're running into a problem.
Because now you will be knitting on the flat, and at some point you will need new yarn to knit the other side of the body.
There are two ways you can handle this.
One is that when you finish knitting to the shoulders of the side you work on first, you can leave a long tail of yarn to sew the shoulder seam on one side, and cut the yarn to use for the other side of the front.
But hopefully you also bought another cone, or four skeins of yarn, in the same color.
And hopefully your vendor matched the dyelots.  Nothing worse than yarns from different dyelots.  It makes the sweater look as if you used odds and ends to make it.
Which is not always a bad thing, it can be kind of catchy.  As I'll show you in another project.
At any rate, if you only bought the one cone, you will have to cut the yarn when you reach the shoulders.
Next week I'll show you what to do if you bought individual skeins of yarn and you are at the end of one skein before finishing as far as the armholes.
You know, the thing I should have told you at the start of this project.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

DIY -- noodles and pasta

And now the real savings.
Buitoni fresh linguine might cost you $2.69 for 9 ounces. 
There are recipes all over the internet for pasta and noodle dough.
You can make 8 ounces of absolutely to die for fresh pasta for $0.80.
Noodles are cheaper because they take 1 egg per 8 ounces while linguine pasta takes 2.
The price for Chinese hand-pulled la mian will be cheaper because they use no eggs.

I use a hand-cranked pasta machine that rolls the dough and can cut linguine and spaghetti.
You would need a special cutter for ravioli (wonton) (kreplach).
So if I'm going to save $1.89 for every four servings of pasta or noodles -- oh yeah, I'm there.
Besides the fact that you can lay them out on a newspaper to dry in about 24 hours and then you have them for later.
Except for the la mian.  Why go to all that trouble and then not eat them fresh?
Which might be true for the other things as well but we're used to eating less-than-fresh noodles.

By making your own pasta you avoid soy lecithin.  If you react to normal store-bought "fresh" pasta, you might want to get tested for a soy allergy, especially if you also react to some pizza cheeses.  I knew somebody with a soy allergy who could not go to one chain of pizza shops because they used part-soy cheese, but he could go to another chain.  I won't reveal the names.  If you google "pizza chain uses part-soy cheese" you will find one of them.

Anyway once again DIY triumphs for price and quality and oh yes, avoiding those allergy provoking chemicals you didn't know were in your food.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Garden -- poison ivy

This is partly the advice from my garden guru about poison ivy, sumac, and what's the other one?  Poison oak?
Anyway, after a nice heavy rainfall, you need those black heavy duty trash bags,
and you need to be no more than 5 minutes away from cold water and harsh detergent.
Rubbing alcohol is also good.


So you wrap the trash bags around your hands and arms.
You wrap your hands around the poison ivy, trying not to come in contact with it.
Face it, if it touches your clothes, you will have to trash them.  You do NOT want to wash them because the poison will linger in your washer.
Now put your weight on that sucker and see if you can get it to come out by the roots.
If so, keeping your hands wrapped in the trash bag, fold the bag around the ivy until it is completely covered.
Put this ball into another trash bag and go after the next vine.


If you have been careful, you probably have not actually come into contact with the poison at all.
But once you do, or when you've cleared that mess out,
IN LESS THAN 10 MINUTES
Scrub your skin with COLD water and harsh detergent.
NEVER use hot water.  It will open your pores and let the poison in and then you are in a world of hurt.
For insurance, splash the affected area with rubbing alcohol.


If it turns out you waited too long or didn't wash all the affected skin,
I highly recommend Aveeno's calamine lotion with a mild topical anesthetic. 
Not because of all the oat derivatives in it, but because of the anesthetic.  It will keep you from making a bad situation worse.


DO NOT put poison ivy in your compost pile.
DO NOT put poison ivy in the yard waste that your community recycles for others to use as compost.
Put it in with your household trash -- the spoiled food and that stuff.
The only place poison ivy belongs is a landfill.
But make sure it is carefully wrapped in those heavy black trash bags so your trash haulers don't get poisoned.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

Outdoors -- the blue jay's nest

I found it!
The sparrows and robins and cardinals were upset about something.
I went out to see what.
It's illegal to let cats roam in my town but you know there are people who don't pay attention.
Also people who can't afford to take care of their pets and abandon them instead of taking them to shelters for re-adoption.
Anyway, I went out to see and I was standing under a very old Bradford pear tree and looked up.
There was a blue jay.
On its nest.
A neat little nest with a white ribbon woven into the top.
A little bit later, the blue jay was gone and I could see the head of a chick wavering above the edge of the nest.
I knew the blue jays had been courting this spring from the flute-like notes of their calls.
Nice to see that it had some result.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved