Fresh Scent?!

I made a discovery this week.  A rather unwanted one, but a discovery none the less.  My discovery was of the olfactory sort.   I discovered the source of a smell that had been offending my olfactory sensors for some time.

Being an at-home dad, I have many tasks which would be foreign to many if not most away-from-home-for-most-of-the-day dads.  One of these is administrator of kitchen custodial care.  I use the term, "administrator," loosely.  I'm really a one man show, administrating no one but me.

So when the dirty dish piles reach upward to touch the bottom of the overhead cabinets, it is my responsibility to clean.  I do this with great vigor and with the assistance of numerous friends, not the least of which is my favorite: the dishwasher.

DW (as I refer to him) and I have tried many types of dishwasher soaps.  We've tried granules and we've tried liquid gels.  We've tried a variety of brands as well.  We keep coming back to one product after each careful cost/performance analysis:  Walmart's "Great Value Fresh Scent Dishwasher Powder with Grease Fighting Action".

Now let me state two things before I go any further.  I would rather spend an hour with a Kirby vacuum salesman than 10 minutes inside a Walmart.  I don't like what they are doing to America, and I don't like spending a cent in their stores.  So I have Lisa do it.

Secondly, I wholeheartedly agree that they need to come up with a better and shorter name for their dish washing detergent.

Anywho, I have used this product for a number of years.  Recently, they changed the smell that the detergent produces while cleaning the dishes.  One night as I was sitting in the kitchen sorting my music lists on my laptop and while DW was purring away cleaning a heavier than normal load of dishes, I began to notice a strange odor.  It wasn't pleasant.  It didn't strike me as "fresh."  Not believing it possible, it took me a number of minutes to sniff the entire kitchen before I confirmed with certainty that the odor was coming from DW.

I found the smell completely offensive.  It reminded me of something but I couldn't put my finger on what it was.  This continued for a number of weeks.  I even switched to a different brand to use when I knew the kitchen would be inhabited.  It got to the point that the only time that I would use Walmart's "Great Value Fresh Scent Dishwasher Powder with Grease Fighting Action," was when I started a load right before going to bed.

This week I was in Spring Green and had to stop at the truck stop there to, uh, er, well... make a pit stop.  At the bottom of the urinal was one of those pink, hockey puck-looking things that they call a "urinal cake".  I'm not making this up.  They actually call them urinal cakes.  Why, in God's name, I have no idea.

Standing there I began to notice a familiar but unpleasant odor.  "EUREKA!" I cried out loud (okay, it wasn't eureka.  It started with "Holy" and ended with something I won't post here.)  "That's it!"  Walmart's "Great Value Fresh Scent Dishwasher Powder with Grease Fighting Action," makes my kitchen smell like a truck stop urinal!

As I pondered how bizarre this was, it occurred to me that this was absolutely ironically fitting.  What a perfect depiction of what that company is doing to many a town in this country as more and more mom and pop shops disappear from main streets and vacant buildings become more and more common.

While the joy that follows the solving of a great mystery settled upon me, the frustration of its implications also settled in.  Now I'm back square one.  Now I must begin anew my search for the perfect dishwasher detergent.  The only upside to this is that Lisa will now be spending less money at Walmart and that our kitchen will no longer smell like a urinal.

Pic of the Day: Coyote

We hear coyotes on or near our property nearly every night.  Sometimes they are so loud and so close to the house that they actually wake us up.  However, spotting them in daylight or catching them with our trailcam are much more rare.

Usually the photos we see are blurry, as the coyote is most often on the move.  This one stopped near the camera to sniff around a little bit (perhaps in search for one of the many rabbits we often catch with the camera).  Consequently the picture is far sharper than most that we see.

Pic of the Day

My trail camera has been producing hundreds of photos each month and I thought that it'd be fun to post some of the best and/or more interesting ones every now and then.

This photo was taken on a very windy March day.  It's a young buck who has recently lost his antlers and almost seems to be putting that area of his head into the wind on purpose.  Does it feel good to him?  Don't have a clue as I've never seen anything quite like this before.  Thought others might have an answer or at least get a kick out of it.  And no, there wasn't another buck waiting to do battle just out of the camera's view.  But he does look a lot like our goats when they decide to smack heads.

Turkey Photos

Our little trail camera has been very busy this spring.  I pulled the memory card this past weekend to discover that over 1600 photos had been taken since the last time I checked.  Most of those were either turkey or raccoon photos.  There are others (coyote, pheasants, deer, rabbits and other furry creatures) that were fairly interesting as well.  I'll post some of the better ones at a later date.

These were some of the best and/or most interesting of the turkey photos.  They were "kissing close" at times.  Seeing these has our son, Nathan, seriously considering turkey hunting in the future.  I have to admit, these pics and the sheer number of them have me thinking about it as well.

Morels, Fiddle Heads, and Ribeye Steak... Just another day on the farm

Saturday I came upon the biggest patch of morels I've ever found and did so earlier than I've ever found them, all on the same day.  Not a bad day, I'd have to say.

This unusually warm spring has produced many a strange thing.  Some of them are bad, such as earlier than normal lawn mowing.  Some of them are great like the early spring-time arrival of the feverishly sought-after morel mushroom.  While I have a nagging feeling that we're going to pay for this unseasonable weather in the long run, it's lovely to enjoy it all at this moment.

This meal was not only tasty, it all came from our farm.  What an amazing and wonderful thing it is to be able to produce a meal with these types of delicacies from your own little piece of ground.  I think I'll stay here.

   

Two and a half pounds of morels.  Yeah, it was a pretty good day.

Cooking time:  Fiddle heads (top), morels and steak (bottom).