Today has had me totally consumed and I finally got around to this post.  Today is “World Sauntering Day”, that’s right folks celebrating all around the world today!  As for me, most of my sauntering was done over at the neighbors house looking for a hose bib.  I never did find one, but got to see his yard and it’s really nice.

My second most sauntering experience was at the grocery store.  I only managed to pick up a couple of beers, but the sauntering had me wrapped up pretty good for awhile.  Then I remembered I had the dog out in the hot car and not wanting to face an evil looking old lady, I headed out of the store and saved his little hide from the bake fest.  Actually, he wasn’t that hot and was napping in the back seat.

I tried to find a funny sauntering video or joke on line, but the only joke I found was a stupid one, so I chose not to share it with you.  Also the videos are not worth looking at as well, so don’t waste your time looking.  Take my word for it, I have already done the research for you.

But, that being said, there is a market for a good and funny sauntering day video!  Get to work!

Saunter on folks, I have a rose that needs to be smelled!

Bears Butt

June 18, 2012

Just a little heads up for tomorrows celebration day!  Happy Fathers day to all you fathers out there.  I found this video and thought of each and every one of you!

Enjoy!

Bears Butt

Fathers Day 2012

A great day today!  It’s National Hollerin Contest Day!  Now what does it mean?  Well, back in its day it was trying to get your neighbors attention across the “holler”.  There weren’t any telephones and there certainly was not an internet or cell phones.  So in order fer ma ta git the younguns ta come home fer eatin, she would step out onto the back step an holler!  You won’t hear that call on this first video, but you will on the next!

Now it seems they have made a National Contest of it.  But then, only in the state of North Carolina would they take such a thing so serious and actually have a hollerin contest.  This explains quite a bit about some of my North Carolina buddies.  I can see old Gattlin standing up on that stage just a yellin his heart out.

And there you have it!

Bears Butt

June 16, 2012

Only for you do I do my research into such things.

Have you ever wondered how they can charge so much for cashew nuts?  I love eating them but I rarely get to purchase a can of just cashews.  So I buy mixed nuts that have them in it.  Why the expense?

First off they are a tropical tree.  They need hot, dry areas with plenty of moisture, but not soil that retains the water.  They are native to Northern South America but have readily been planted in Portugal and India and are doing well in those countries.  Also some countries in Africa.

The cashew tree is not a tall tree and my research found them to grow about 30 ft tall at the tallest, but they spread out over quite an area.  The largest cashew tree known to grow covers an area 81,000 square feet!  That’s correct, 81,000!  That is almost as big as a football field in two directions.

Ok, back on track.  Why so expensive?  First off is the fact that they must be imported.  Cost goes up!

More about the cashew.  A single seed (not a nut)  grows on the outside of a fruit called the cashew apple!  It looks like an apple growing upside down.  The seed part grows out the lower end of the fruit.  One seed per fruit.

Cashews have to be harvested carefully as they have a coating of a substance very similar to what we know to be on poison ivy.  So in order to remove the outer shell from the seed inside the person cracking the shell must wear rubber gloves and long sleeve shirts.  The shell can not touch the seed inside either or the seed will get the sticky poison on it and make it un-usable.

The growers and crackers have learned that freezing the pod makes it easier as the poison won’t come off on their skin when dealing with frozen seeds.

So, one seed per fruit plus difficult handling equals Price goes Up!

As with most nuts, the cashews need to be roasted, salted etc to make them more better to eat.  So this too makes the price go up.

My research also said trace amounts of the toxic stuff found on the outside shell is also found inside the seed which makes them not a good thing to eat for those allergic to nuts etc.

The oils derived from the cashew seeds are used as medicine for healing the hard and cracked skin of your heel and abscessed teeth.  The seeds are dried and pulverized and made into antivenin for snake bites.  And the outer hulls are boiled and mixed into paint resins.

So the next time you are enjoying a big old cashew, just think about how it got to you and how the price was determined by someone very determined to make sure you were happy.

Oh and the cashew apple!  They make juice out of it and a lot of folks even make wine from the juice!  But there is a caution with the wine users.  The toxins are still in there and it causes your body not to absorb nutrients from other foods you may eat.  Of course you would tend to be a skinny drinker if you drank a lot of it a lot of the time.  Would it be worth it?  I doubt it.  I would like to try some one day.  Put that on my bucket list.

Bears Butt

June 15, 2012

During any outdoor day I love to have a snack of Kippers.  Little fillets of herring that have been processed and put into little aluminum cans.  Eaten on saltine or ritz type crackers is my favorite way to eat them.  I think if I had the cans and the time, I could eat 3 or 4 cans of them in one sitting.  But usually it’s just one can shared among the number of people hanging out together.

Yummy kippers!

So, to help you understand just how those little fish got put into the cans you are ripping the top off of, I, Bears Butt, has done a little research and bring to you this video I found on You Tube!  Enjoy!

After watching this video it gives me a whole lot more faith in the fact that I could put several cases of kippers in my food storage and know that they would still be good to eat, say in, oh, maybe 50 years.

Enjoy!

Bears Butt

June 15, 2012

June 14 is National Pop Goes the Weasel day!  What a fun day it will be too.  I had to look up the meaning of the rhyme and this is what I found.

It had to do with old England, (lots of stuff began in old England) and of course over time, things and their meanings change.  Today we think of Pop goes the weasel and we think of a skipping song where we all hold hands and dance around a mulberry bush and sing.  Versions of this have us falling backwards at the words, Pop goes the weasel and we all fall down.

Well, here is the real story:

Back in old England there were small towns all over the country and most of the inhabitants of the towns were, well nearly all relatives of each other.  Sort of like going camping in large groups, we look around and find that each of us tend to camp near our closest family.  Well Old England was much the same.  These villages had folks that all knew who was doing what and when and with whom.  Now introduce a stranger….OOOOOO….that person must be dealt with immediately, as they can not be up to any good.  Distrusted and evil for sure.  And so, in order not to let the stranger in on any conversations of theirs they made up words that meant other things.  One of those words was “weasel”, which meant “coat or jacket”.

I say there old bloke, fine weasel you have on!  Why Thank You my good man, what’s its pop?

What’s its pop?  That meant, what is it worth?  What will you give me for it?

As we all know about Old England, well current England for that matter, as some traditions never change!  I’ll drink to that!  There are pubs all over the place and each pub has it’s unique name.  One of the more famous pubs is called the “Eagle”.  I have not been in the place, but wish I had.  Well, folks didn’t have a whole lot of money, sort of like today, but they liked to visit the pub for a drink or two of ale with their buddies and they did it often enough to make sure the pub stayed in business.

They would work hard all day and all week and every night after work would hit the pub and spend their money.  Come Monday, the beginning of the new week, they didn’t have enough money to see themselves until the next payday on Friday, so into the pawn shop they would go and pawn their coats (thus Pop goes the Weasel).  After payday, they would stop off at the pawn shop and pick up their coat.  They had to have it to go to church on Sunday, after all it was their “sunday best” attire and they were proud of having such a fine weasel.

There are many versions of the song Pop Goes the Weasel, but one goes like this:

Up and down the streets of town, in and out of the Eagle

Pretty soon the money is gone

Pop goes the weasel!

——————

Do you get it?  Wandering up and down the streets with money in their pocket and of course their main reason for walking the street was to go to the pub, so in they went.  Well….you know.

So, over time, an American version was made up, after all no body erected a pub or bar or saloon and called it the Eagle.  But the kids still liked the tune and to dance around they had to have a song.

All around the mulberry bush

The monkey chased the weasel

The monkey stopped to tie his shoe

Pop goes the weasel!

—————-

Let’s analyze this one:  First off there is no such thing as a mulberry bush.  Mulberry tree yes, bush no.  So someone really was thinking outside the box for that one.  Secondly, how in the world did a monkey get into the mix in America?  Maybe in Africa but not here, so again someone was thinking outside the box big time.  Third, monkeys don’t wear shoes so why in the heck would it have to re-tye the shoe lace?  WAYYY outside the box.  These folks must have been drinking.  Eagle?  Eagle?   And finally fourth, did the weasel run into the back end of the monkey while it was bent over tying it’s shoe?  That’s my take on it and so Pop goes the weasel!  And the monkey is doing head over heels rolling away from the so called mulberry bush.

Well it’s all meant in fun anyway, so enjoy the day!

Bears Butt

June 14, 2012

Today is Kitchen Klutches Day in America and it reminds me of a story of when I was working for the USDA.

A lady bought some raspberries from me and was going to put them up.  (Putting them up means, cook them and put them in bottles for storage).

She had the whole kitchen to herself in the evening after supper and she was working very hard at getting it all done before bedtime.

She had a pressure cooker going and she stepped out of the kitchen for just a second to get some bottles, when KAPOWWIE!!!  The lid of the pressure cooker blew off and all of the contents in the pot flew all around the kitchen!

She was very lucky not to have been in there because she would have been badly burned and maybe even worse.

She heard the explosion and came running back into the kitchen to find it a total dripping sticky mess.  Raspberries were dripping from the ceiling, running down the walls and all over everything!  YUK!

Well, she came to work at her usual time that next morning and told me all about it and how she and her daughter cleaned and cleaned until it was time for her to get ready for work.  She got no sleep that night.

I felt really bad for her and I didn’t have any raspberries to pick to give her more.  She had gotten the last of the picking for that season.

So, I hope none of you have an experience like that.  Enjoy your kitchen klutziness today!  This day is for you!

Bears Butt

June 13, 2012

This information has just been released.  Everyone who camps needs to know these rules, I would not want any of my friends getting a citation for violating this and for sure I would not want ANYONE accidentally starting a fire.

INTERAGENCY NEWS RELEASE

Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, Utah DNR-Division of Forestry, US Forest Service, US Fish & Wildlife Service

News Release
For Immediate Release
June 12, 2012
Contacts:
Bureau of Land Management, Heather O’Hanlon, 801-367-2897
US Forest Service, Kathy Jo Pollock, 801-558-8016
State of Utah DNR/Forestry, Jason Curry, 801-703-0225
Follow us on Twitter @UtahWildfire

Salt Lake City, June 14 — Current and forecasted weather conditions coupled with extremely dry conditions and heavy loading of vegetation throughout the State of Utah have created hazardous fire conditions. As a result, all state and federal lands, and all unincorporated private lands, will be under fire restrictions beginning 12:01 a.m. on June 14th, 2012. The restrictions will be in place until the fire hazard subsides.

Fire managers from the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands, Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service came to the mutual decision on Wednesday.

Each agency has specific restriction orders that may contain different stipulations, but all the orders have in common a prohibition of the following acts:

1. Setting, building, maintaining, attending or using open fires of any kind, except campfires built within the facilities provided for them in improved campgrounds, picnic areas or permanently improved places of habitation.
2. Smoking, except within an enclosed vehicle or building, a developed recreation site or while stopped in an area at least three feet in diameter that is barren or cleared to mineral soil.
3. Discharging, or using any kind of fireworks, tracer ammunition or other pyrotechnic devices.

These restrictions do not apply to lands within incorporated towns and cities; however, each municipality may have similar or more restrictive ordinances. Questions about specific areas should be directed to local authorities.

For more information on the restrictions, please visit http://www.utahfireinfo.gov