I guess it’s pepper season

Last week's vegetable box had more peppers than we could eat, and this weeks has even more. I like peppers, so we will do our best. But I could use a little pepper identification help. The one on the right is obviously a bell pepper. We got some of those last week. The one second from the left is a banana pepper, which we also got last week, and it has some good heat to it. How do I tell what the heck the other 4 are?

Time to search out some more pepper recipes. Oh well that's half the fun of the vegetable box: making new things. So far this summer, along with a variety of grilled veggies, we have made the following which were new for us:

• Kohlrabi – we liked it roasted best
• Beets & Beet greens
• Garlic Scape – lovely tossed with pasta, veggies and a light lemon sauce.
• Stuffed Cabbage

All in all, the Veggie box is fun, and good for us. We are enjoying it. Now what are those peppers?

Stegosaurus in da ‘burbs?

Yep, that's our very own Stegosaurus, stalking our front garden. I am kind of ashamed to admit that a part of our front garden is this weedy and/or bare. But well, we've been concentrating on other things this summer. We think he makes a nice addition to an otherwise bare spot, formerly inhabited by a very pokey bush that we never liked anyway.

You see in the summer these High School students come to our school for a 6-week intensive "taste of freshman year in a drama conservatory" program. They take classes, do homework, and have fun as well I hear. One of my colleagues has a project that he does in his stagecraft class where they assemble oversize dinosaur skeleton models. You've seen em before. They're usually 1-2 feet tall, made out of balsa wood. In this case they are made out of ¾" pressure-treated plywood, which has been cut out on our CNC Router. They tend to be a little taller than the balsa wood models. Anyway, it's a great project, which builds construction, collaboration, and even nascent critical path awareness. Plus we get to show off the cool CNC Router, and begin to give a feeling for what can be done with it.

This year we had several orphaned dinos at the end of the program - high school student from far away, big dinosaur, mounting airline baggage fees, you get the picture. Anyway, as we were finishing off the summer program, one of the Stegosaurs needed a home, and we were happy to oblige.

Also See Tanbi's own blog post about the Dino project: I CAN HAS DYNASAAR - 2008