Vine Starting

We had a nice trip to watch one of our grandsons play 10U AA hockey just outside Chicago over the President's Day weekend. (His team competes at the single A level, but got bumped up.) Now that I'm catching up with the mail, and specifically the Courier, I see no one took me up on writing a guest column to cover for my absence. You still could, of course...

I'm trying to think spring, but the recent nasty weather hasn't helped push me that way. There was lots of fresh snow in Fargo, but the roads had been cleared nicely before we arrived there. First thing we did upon getting back into Glasgow was go through the car wash to get all that 'road melt' white mess off our pickup and return it to the pretty red it is.

I'd seen a posting recently about how to make a plant starter contraption using a plastic water bottle (or any plastic drink container that has a tapered top). You cut off the top couple inches, below the tapering, after thoroughly washing out the container if it held anything but plain water. Make sure the edges aren't too jagged, then flip that top over and firmly insert it back into the bottom of the bottle. Fill with water (could do that before putting the pieces together) and then add your cuttings with the stem down into the water. The tapered top prevents the leaves from getting into the water and rotting. Having a clear bottle (as most water bottles are) makes it easy to see when the roots form.

I'm starting my "unknown" vine for pot fillers. I've also put in a few cuttings from my two Hoya vines, as well as some Swedish ivy and ice plants in the two bottles I made. Then I started another bottle with a cutting from my Bush on Fire Croton that got too dry while we were gone over Christmas and just wasn't recovering well. One of my succulents was also crying up from the roots, so I made cuttings from that to see if I could save it.

I'm still not ready to plow through seed catalogs. I should start dreaming soon of growing things outside again. There are multiple emails daily from those catalog companies. They're offering incentives, such as "buy two packets of seeds, get one free" to tempt me. I have a bunch of seeds saved from my flowers last summer, so I'll try to restrain myself in that section of the catalogs. Easy to say, hard to do.

So instead of picking out seeds, I'm going to re-share a quick and easy recipe I used last Friday. We got back to Glasgow early enough Thursday that I was able to buy fresh groceries. Chicken leg quarters were on sale. The quick and easy part refers to making the spice mix. The chicken takes a while in the oven at 400 degrees. Use that time to make your salad and/or other side dishes. You could throw baking potatoes into the oven before prepping the chicken.

Crispy Oven Chicken Thighs

3# thighs

2 Tbl EVOO

2 tsp salt

2 tsp garlic powder

2 tsp onion powder

2 tsp Italian seasoning

1 tsp pepper

1 tsp paprika

Oven at 400 degrees. Cover rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil. Stir together the dry ingredients. Arrange washed & patted dry thighs on top, bare side up. Drizzle with half the oil, rub it over the meat, then sprinkle liberally with the spice mix. Turn pieces over, skin side up. Repeat oil and sprinkling with spice mix. Bake 35-45 minutes.

I used the leg quarters uncut. The spice mix was enough to easily do five leg quarters, with enough left for another baking in the future. I didn't measure the oil, just drizzled it over the chicken. I'm storing the excess spice mix in a used spice container - old pill bottles would also work. I scribbled a description of the contents on masking tape and stuck that on the container.

I will tell you that Dennis, who usually slathers his favorite barbecue sauce on meats so they all taste the same (I don't understand this - I also don't understand why people slather ranch dressing on so many things), didn't feel the need to do that with this recipe. Being lazy (or perhaps busy catching up with multiple loads of laundry as well as a weeks' worth of mail), I make a package of herbed rice pilaf (Rice-a-Roni) to go with this, and opened a bag of green salad to which I added chopped walnuts and reconstituted unsweetened dried cranberries with a bottled Greek dressing.