…well, I usually eat 3 or 4. I don’t eat them for health benefits or because they are cheap or for whatever other reason – I just like the apples. I like them fresh, cooked, in a pie, in a cake, baked, in apple sauce, with caramel or honey, sliced, peeled, unpeeled and I like most of the varieties. Every year we try to make a trip to a local apple orchard to pick some fresh fruit. I was a locavore before it became trendy and people started doing it to feel good about themselves.
We are surrounded by many apple orchards. There is Vaughn’s in Weston, we were going there for years, Schreiman’s in Waverly, it’s not u-pick but is very nice and in a beautiful historic area; and for the last couple of years we are picking apples at Pome on the Range orchard in Williamsburg, KS. Besides apples and pumpkins they also sell fruit wines some Kansas-grown produce, jams, honey and other things that are good for you.
Today they had their annual fall festival but it looks like they still have plenty of apples to pick for the next weekend or three. If you are in Kansas, especially South Johnson County, you are just 25-30 miles away. Not only you will keep the doctor away, you will be able to brag about eating local and catch envious looks of your not-so-hip friends. While you are at it, mention that you only drink Shatto milk to completely crush them with you locavorness.
For the next year I am keeping an eye on the Wagon Wheel Orchard which was picked out early this year due to being very young. They seem to have a great variety – something I am always looking for.
A recent trip to Charritos Taqueria on Independence Ave. was a success. Aside from a homeless guy trying to start a conversation with me of which I only understood the word “Oklahoma” , the food was cheap and delicious. Tacos are $1.85 and I purchased one with pork (puerco) and another one with steak slow cooked in pineapple sauce. Delicious. They have more expensive items in $4-12 range. Service is a little slow but it’s worth the wait. I also tried horchata which I always wanted to try, it’s somehow made with rice and tastes like cinnamon. It wasn’t bad, but I like cinnamon in moderation. I will move on to another agua fresca next time.
This area is not the safest part of town and gets mentioned on the news almost daily. Thankfully, concerned citizens are making contributions, albeit involuntary, to improve the safety and security of Independence Ave.
And the guy who tried to talk to me? He understood the international sign of “I don’t understand what the hell you just said” and went back to pose for the picture.
An interesting article in 1966 Popular Mechanics describes potential ways of disarming an orbiting H-Bomb. A manned spacecraft would be dispatched to the potential offending satellite and disable it by the most unimaginative of ways – cutting off its antenna.
Obviously nothing like this have ever transpired (as far as we know) but the seriousness of the article makes it a nice read.
I often wondered what causes people to become upset about a closing of a business, but be completely unmoved by other closings or downsizing. Is it the history, nostalgia or tradition? Job losses, growing unemployment, shrinking tax base? The answer most likely is the smell, which probably explains all the commotion around the closing of the Folgers plant downtown. Folgers is not the first Kansas City or Downtown company to close, but other businesses quietly drifted away into oblivion without Facebook support groups and Twitter followers. It must be the smell of coffee…
One of the downtown businesses that is still around but way past its former glory is the AT&T Long Lines building at 1425 Oak. It still serves as a long-distance hub for the Kansas City area, but there are only few people left working there, down from over 1,700 who were employed in call centers and various business departments, as well as the training facility, cafeteria and whatever else made the biggest phone company in the world ring. Every long-distance phone call made in Kansas City went through this building. Built in several stages and completed in the 70’s it was an example of a secure, earthquake- and explosion-proof architecture of the Cold War years. Inside were the technological marvels still impressive to this day; the phone company led the technological progress from the invention of the transistor, to the TV transmissions, communication satellites, and computing.
Yet when the calling centers were closing and the people were let go, no one shed a tear. The shareholders probably received a nice payout.
