He said in central North Carolina, we should fertilize our plants twice a year.  And those times are the middle of March and the middle of November.  So here we are, with the spring fertilizing due now. 

As far as grass, I fertilize now and then, but also put a starter fertilizer down in September.  The NC State department of agriculture says not to fertilize grass in the summer.  So I don’t, even though many lawn services do.

After a long winter it will be great to get back into the yard work again.  I hope I still feel this way after a long hot summer.

But it is time for the excitement.  I didn’t join any pools this March, maybe I am still basking in the glory of winning fantasy football this past season.  Whatever the reason, I did fill out a bracket so I can see how I would have done.

My final four: Kansas, Kansas State, West Virginia, and Duke.  I don’t think Kentucky will make it, although with John Wall…they could go all the way.   I have Kansas beating Kansas State.  And, sorry Duke, I picked West Virginia to beat Duke.  Finally, Kansas seems the most talented and experienced, so Kansas to win it all.

I heard the President picked his final winner, Kansas; and he had Kansas State in the Final Four.  But he had Kentucky and Villanova, and not Duke in the Final Four.  Hmm, he was right last year.

So, let the madness begin…..

When I went to the checkout, the nice lady working, asked if I was a card member to the store.  I said no.  She said, “well if you sign up, you will get e-mail coupons. like this one,  for up to 25% off.   See, showed me a 25% off coupon that was already printed.  Now, I was interested.  I jokingly looked at the sheet and then placed it on my book and said I am ready for my discount.  I really was just joking and she said that if I signed up for the member card and bought a small piece of candy, I would be registered and then I could buy the book with her coupon.  So I did it.

I am not a comedian, but I am glad I tried to joke with her about the coupon, because the “joke” saved me some bread, which of course made me smile.

Last night after dinner, my wife had to run to the store and my daughter was studying.  So I grabbed the notebook computer to surf the web.  Since my wife and daughter were busy, I was excited because I could curl up on the couch while surfing.   See, the couch is my wife’s domain.  I have a very nice leather chair that is mine, but sometimes you just want to stretch out.

I put the computer down next to where I was going to lie down and quickly went up stairs to brush my teeth and get out my clothes for the next day.  Well lo and behold, when I came back down 10 minutes later, guess who was sitting in my spot?

Yes, he has a habit of going where he thinks someone else wants to be.  Our cat Pumpkin was all curled up where I wanted to be!

Not wanting to disturb “your highness” I moved off to the side and sat straight up to surf the web.  The psychology of a cat became my first search topic.

I am not a big car guy, but our ride was sweet.  A brand new Lexus convertible.  We all felt guilty sitting up on the back and putting our feet on the new leather seats.

The parade was great and the turnout was big.  It lived up to the 2nd largest parade in the southeast.  I did notice as we got closer to the end of the parade route at Moore’s Square more and more people drinking a pint.  It was only just lunchtime here, but hey it was 5 o’clock already in Ireland!  

Here is why, my weather computer models all run on Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).  Now, Greenwich time is 5 hours ahead of us.  After Sunday it is only 4 hours.  So, when I want to get a model run that in the winter comes out at 3:30 am standard time, it won’t come out until 4:30 am daylight saving time.  We move ahead an hour, but my maps don’t!

Looking on the positive…I might not get that model in time, but it will seem like I am leaving work an hour earlier.  (Of course it seems like I am getting up an hour earlier!)

I have used his simple recipe of only flour, water, yeast, and salt and created my best loaves of bread (if I do say so myself) ever.  He suggests cooking the bread in a cast iron pot to simulate a professional oven.  So I went out and bought one, but boy is it heavy.

The cast iron pot gets heated up in the oven and the dough cooks in the covered pot for the first 30 minutes.  This keeps the mositure in and develops the crisp crust and chewy interior. 

My loaf of bread came out great.  I had the holes in the dough and a beautiful crust.  I am going to keep trying to perfect this.  I am also going to buy Jim Lahey’s book: “My Bread”.

So what to do with the rest of the bird?  

I see folks eating turkey drumsticks at the State Fair, so I tossed the legs on the grill.  Speaking of which, I love grilled chicken wings….so I cut up the turkey wings and tossed the four pieces on the grill.  They seemed to cook well.  However, I don’t much like dark meat and neither does my family, so sorry mom, I tossed the legs.  I added some sauce to the wings and tried Buffalo Turkey wings, they were ok.  My mind expected it to taste like chicken!  Finally, I boiled the thigh meat and the scraps left on the breast bone.  I chopped it up,added the mayo etcetera, and created turkey salad.  That was pretty good, but once again, I probably would have liked an all turkey breast salad.  Oh, one more thing, I boiled the turkey liver and that was set aside for a treat for my two cats.  It must be instinctual, but boy they went crazy over that.  I wonder if they would have liked to try a drumstick!?

I defrosted the whole turkey and then attempted to cut it up and debone the breast.  When I realized that a turkey is similar to a chicken (in parts), the job got a little easier.  The turkey though is much bigger with bigger bones etc.  I deboned the breasts, I ended up with four pieces, don’t ask me how, I just did. 

I rubbed the breasts with a rub made of 2 gloves of minced garlic, about 1/3 cup of dice fresh basil, and some freshly ground pepper.  The rubbed breast meat was marinated for about 5 hours in a mixture of a 1/4 cup of olive oil, 1/4 cup of soy sauce, 2 tablespoons of lemon juice.

After that I cooked directly over the coals for about 20 minutes.  I did turn once after about 15 minutes and just finished it up on the second side.

You know what?  It worked!  The turkey was juicy and a great flavor.  I have always loved marinated pork tenderloin, but this tasted just as good or even a little better.  I didn’t mention what I did with the rest of the turkey, I’ll write about that tomorrow.

For example, this past Saturday I got out into the yard and cut my monkey grass and pruned some trees.  Hauled all the pruned branches back into the woods, and cleaned up the deck. (Dare I say, I took the last of the Christmas lights down off our deck!)  Well, I was checking livestrong.com and seeing that yard work can be good exercise and burn a lot of calories.  I figured my 1/2 hour to 45 minutes of yard work on Saturday used about 200 calories. 

So my attitude with chores has changed over the years from…ugh, I’d rather be relaxing…to hmm, this is a productive way to get my exercise in at the same time.  However, I still haven’t figured out a way to do chores while enjoying some time at the beach, I guess I’ll still have to jog in the sand!