5 Riddles

I got this in an email from friend Steven.

The answers are at the bottom.

1.  A murderer is condemned to death.  He has to choose between three rooms. The first is full of raging fires, the second is full of assassins with loaded guns and the third is full of lions that haven't eaten in three years. Which room is safest for him?

2.  A woman shoots her husband. Then she holds him under water for over 5 minutes.  Finally, she hangs him. 5 minutes later they both go out and enjoy a wonderful dinner together. How can this be?

3.  What is black when you buy it, red when you use it, and gray when you throw it away?

4.  Can you name three consecutive days without using the words Wednesday, Friday or Sunday?

5.  This paragraph is an unusual paragraph. I'm curious as to just how quickly you can find out what is so unusual about it. It looks so ordinary and plain that you would think nothing was wrong with it. It is highly unusual though. Study it and think about it, but you still may not find anything odd. But if you work at it a bit, you might find out. Try to do so without any coaching. 

Answers:

1.  The third room. Lions that haven't eaten in three years are dead.

2.   The woman was a photographer. She shot a picture of her husband, developed it and hung it up to dry. 

3.  Charcoal as it is used in a barbeque.

4.  Yesterday, today and tomorrow. 

5.   The letter "e" doesn't appear in the paragraph. 

Shun Gate

If you're into Japan and its food like me, you might find this website interesting:  Shun Gate

Wholesale Unlimited Hoshi Ume

Not the healthiest snack around but one of my favorites - dried ume. 

 I don't know why it took me so long to realize this, but I think that Wholesale Unlimited has the best hoshi (dried) ume . . . comparable or maybe even better than the ones that I've brought back from Japan. It's on the mellow side and not as salty as most others. It's moist and plump and a bit sweet. 

This 7 oz. bag was $7.95.

Houston, I Have a Problem

Choke flowers on my lemon plant have bloomed! 

So to refresh our memories, I want to try and pollinate my flowers, and here is what I need to do according to Grow What You Love website: 

It’s simple enough to move the pollen from the anthers of the stamen (male part) to the stigma of the pistil (female part) with a Q-tip. 



So I go outside to my lemon plant, all ready to do my thing, and ummm . . . .


Whatda?


Where's the female stick bulb thing that's supposed to be in the middle of the flowers?  How am I supposed to dust pollen onto something if it's not there?


Not a single one of the flowers has it . . . not one.  

I found some info here and here, but I'm still not sure what exactly is going on. I know one thing for sure though . . . lacking female parts suck.

Landon's Masaman Curry

No, it's not a huge egg . . . it's a small bowl. I was running out of window light for the picture and I wasn't quite hungry yet, but I did want to taste the curry, so I made only a small portion. It was delicious . . . maybe now my favorite curry.



Lan used this. It's a tiny 4 oz can that I got at the Asian Market. It was $3.00.  Landon said that he sautéed some onions, added a cut up chicken thigh, about 5 bay leaves, a can of coconut milk, potatoes and some boiled eggs. 

Vanilla Ice Cream

The Creamsicle ice cream that I made turned out not as creamy as I wanted, so I decided that next time I would have to bite the bullet and attempt a custardy, egg-yolk variety even though it sounded humbug to make. 

Also, one weird thing about the Creamsicle . . . it left a waxy film in my mouth. After checking online, I found that I probably over churned the cream and created butter globules. 

And so after a couple of weeks of researching, I came up with a simple recipe that used a minimal amount of ingredients. I decided that I would watch the churning like a hawk so that as soon as it looked like it was ready, I would turn the machine off.

3/4 cup milk
3/4 cup whipping cream
3 egg yolks
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla paste

Heat the milk and cream to simmering point. Combine egg yolks, sugar and vanilla paste. Stir 1/4 cup of the hot milk into the egg mixture and return mixture to the saucepan. Stir over low heat until thickened. Store in 'fridge until cold. After about 4 hours it was ready to churn. The churning process took only about 11 minutes.

P.S. I forgot to mention to pour through strainer after the cooking process. I've made the ice cream twice so far, and both times tiny flecks of I don't know what (egg maybe?) were left in the strainer.



The ice cream came out perfect. Yippee!!

Yosegi

Yosegi is the Japanese art of marquetry, an ancestral technique that consists of sticking together pieces of wood to create geometric patterns.

Gantz:O

I love animated movies. I have a small DVD collection of them. I have Up, Despicable Me, Croods, Rango, How to Train Your Dragon, Kung Fu Panda, a bunch of Ghibli movies (thanks V) . . . to name a few . . . mostly all are easy viewing and cute.

With a few exceptions, I normally don't care for intense, violent movies. Gantz:O is an intense, violent animated movie. It's on Netflix right now. I hesitated a bit before selecting it but decided to give it a try because of its 5-star rating. 

The movie was good! The plot (monsters invade Tokyo and Osaka), the characters (I'm in love with the hero - Masaru Kato), and mostly the 3D computer graphic animation (VFX-Japan Award Winner) and cinematography . . . all appealed to me. 

If you get a chance to watch the movie, let me know what you think of it. Plus I need some help in understanding the ending.

Lemon Tree Pollination

My lemon plant has a few buds right now. It has had flowers before, but has yet to produce a single fruit.  We don't have any honey bees in our yard anymore, so I wonder if that's the problem. 

It seems that I might have to try to do some pollinating myself when the buds open up. No?



I found this info:

To manually pollinate lemons, you need to have a clear idea of where the flower’s sexual parts lie. Look carefully into a lemon flower. You’ll see one long filament in the center of the flower. This is termed the pistil and contains the female parts of the flower. The stigma is on the top of the pistil. When it is receptive to pollen, the stigma is sticky. The other filaments in the center of the flower are the male parts, collectively termed the stamen. You can see the yellow pollen grains in the sacks, called anthers, at the top of the filaments. To accomplish hand pollination of your lemon tree flowers, you transfer ripe pollen to the sticky stigma. You can manually pollinate lemons in this manner with a small paint brush or a bird feather. It is difficult to determine which flowers have pollen that is ripe. To easily pollinate lemon trees by hand, simply touch each flower with the tip of the paint brush or feather to gather the pollen, then brush each stigmas with it in turn.

Unfortunately, I do not have "a clear idea of where the flower's sexual parts lie", but somehow I need to get some ripe pollen onto some sticky stigma.

If anybody has any tips for me, can you let me know?

Indian Giver

A long time ago . . . maybe around 15 or more years . . . my father-in-law gave me an Omega watch. He said that he had found it on the ground somewhere. He said that Wendell and Landon didn't want it and would I like it. I actually had no interest in the watch at all, especially since it was a man's watch, but not wanting to offend my father-in-law I said okay.  I put the watch in the top drawer of my dresser next to my Shiseido skin-care products, and there it stayed.

A couple years ago Wendell received a watch display case as a Christmas present. I dug out the Omega and put it in the case. I told Wendell that his father had given it to me, but that he could have it.



Yesterday morning, I pulled the watch out of the case. I suddenly realized just how beautiful it is. Its golden face is etched slightly, giving it a somewhat matte glow. The insignia, hands and incremental demarcations have a reflective golden shine. And the most remarkable thing of all . . .  the second hand still smoothly circles its way around the face. Yes, it still works! It's an automatic watch, and is so well made that just moving the watch slightly helps to charge it.

As I stood by the window light admiring the watch, Wendell asked what I was looking at. I said, "The Omega watch."  He said, "Omega? Whose watch is that?"

I said, "Um . . . mine."