Sunflower Guts!

Sometimes I feel guilty talking about the hippie neighbors upstairs. I mean, they are well intentioned. Also, I told them how much fun I had toasting the sunflower seeds that they gave me an entire bowl full of sunflower seeds, already removed from the flower!

I washed the seeds and laid them out to be toasted. Then I had a thought! Since the hippies were so nice as to already remove them from the flower, why don't I remove them from their shells. This way, when they are done toasting, they will be ready to eat, sans shell. Brilliant!



5 HOURS LATER...



I had the product you see below.



Left: Hulled shells, sans seeds
Right: Seeds, sans shells...Not much of a pile.

And some rather bruised thumbs. Ow!


I persevere (despite the thumbs). I lay the freshly hulled seeds out to be toasted.

Seeds a toasting in the dim toaster oven.

I was amazed to learn that the seeds still POPPED! Despite the lack of shell. I had thought, that perhaps the shell cracking was the popping noise I heard the first time I toasted sunflower seeds. But there they were - right in plain view. Sunflower seed popcorn was jumping off the foil like mad.

A little to quickly, too. Because, after five hours of intense labor, hulling seeds for easy and more delicious consumption...

I burnt half the product in just under 10 seconds.


Burnt and unburnt toasted sunflower seeds.

The upside is the ones that survived the carnage tasted pretty dang good.

And Andy wasn't complaining because he got to eat a bunch of tiny tasty sunflower seeds, in ten seconds flat. Plus, he likes burnt things.

Sunflowers Sun on Me

It's possible I'm totally oblivious to my surroundings. I'm not saying I am. I'm saying it's possible.

I live in New York, after all. There's a lot to take in. And, after the first couple of years, you learn not to look interested in your surroundings, avoiding all eye contact and walking briskly from point A to point B.

It was somewhat startling for me to discover a bushel of sunflowers in front of my apartment in early August. I mean, right outside my front window! IN FULL BLOOM! How did they get there? Were they there all summer? Do I really not pay attention?!

Everyday after I discovered the sunflowers, I made a point to take a moment outside my door and just look at them (and look around for any stalkers, people hiding in the bushes, or the like, which clearly I had not bothered to be alert to before.)

Here's something about my hippie neighbors that's nice. And hippie. Just yesterday, we bumped into each other outside the front door. They asked if I was enjoying the sunflowers. I said, "Why, yes. Did you plant them?" They said "Yes. Every summer." I asked how long the flowers had been in bloom. They said, "About a month, maybe a little more." (Phew! Maybe I'm NOT so oblivious.)

And THEN, they gave me a lesson in botany. Stripping an over-ripe (can you call it that?) sunflower of it's petals and soft plant fur, they revealed to me the seeds. Yep, sunflower seeds. Just like you buy from the store. You can toast 'em and eat 'em, or you can replant them for next summer. The hippies handed me the head of the sunflower for my eating enjoyment, with a warning to lookout for bugs.

I've decided to give it a try. Toasting sunflower seeds, that is. And because my sister likes sunflowers (and all flowers in general) I decided I would mail her some of the end product, if it turns out edible. (This will also serve as a test to see if she is keeping up with my blog which she professed so much interest in. Heehee.)

This is a quick photo synopsis of the process:

from left to right, top to bottom: 1. Pick sunflower in bloom; 2. Shuck sunflower seeds from center of flower, dispensing of bugs, if any are present; 3. Rinse seeds thoroughly; 4. Dry seeds and weed out weak or hollow ones; 5. Spread out on flat pan, season if desired and toast; 6. package for consumption; 7. Find a test subject and enjoy!

As you can see, there are a lot of steps involved. It requires a lot of loving care. Drying off each little seed, weeding out the weak ones. What I'm saying is...preparing the sunflower seeds for consumption has taught me that, where I might be totally oblivious to my surroundings, I am not totally unaware and detached. I can focus on the little details. Maybe the fact of the matter is, I'm overly focused on the details, and I miss the big picture. Hm.

Anyway, while toasting the sunflower seeds, I noticed they started making a "popping" sound the longer they cooked. And so I concluded, Sunflower Seeds = the new, Mini Popcorn!

Mmm...Sunflower Seed Popcorn!

So, there you have it. Not all hippie neighbor happenings end in me mopping up the water from our bathroom floor. Sometimes it ends with a new popping obsession!

Raindrops keeping falling

We have hippie neighbors. They live upstairs in the split family home. It's us and them. We live downstairs. Most everything our hippie neighbors do makes some kind of hippie-sense. Like saving every plastic container ever given to them. Taking EVERYTHING to the thrift store, or hoarding it in their house where they'll sell the parts or give them away on freecycle.com. Eating everything grown in their own garden, including the flowers of the plants which they are not sure, but they THINK is a hybrid of broccoli and celery. Or was it scallions? At any rate, all of this is fairly normal in the hippie way of life.

And it makes sense. And I get it. I'm even a little envious that I am too attached to my materialistic-comforts-of-home lifestyle to eat from my own garden. (I did try the mystery flower, though. It tasted kinda like broccoli.)

It gets to be too much for me, their neighbor, to handle at this point - I'm in the bathroom on the toilet...and I feel raindrops. Oh wait. No, that's not raindrops. That's foul coffee-colored liquid dripping from my ceiling. The drips continue for weeks. We call the landlord. He regrouts their tub. The drips start again, this time accompanied by nice huge swells in the ceiling. Just threatening to pour down on me like a looming Florida storm cloud. I call the landlord. He calls the neighbors.

This is key.

While a puss-like bulge is growing in my ceiling, the neighbors are "taking a shower," they tell Matt, the landlord, "without closing the shower curtain."

What?! Who DOES that? There is a point to the shower curtain, right? I mean, who wants to take a shower and then step out into a bath? How much mold and filth must there be on their bathroom floor and walls? I'm astounded.

Automatically, I try to equate this to hippie logic. There is none. There is no reason to subject your own floor and your neighbor's ceiling to a diluge of coffee, mildew, sewage baths. The picture you see above is about 8 hours before the bubble gave out and my nice, clean bathroom was washed in rust water. Or, at least, as I tried to salvage my bathroom, I was washed in rust water.

And then Andy came back from vacation.