The Wisdom of the Gaucho

We spend a good amount of time during the summer on preparations to help us get through the winter months. Preserving, canning, and freezing the bounty of the garden not only helps utilize the sudden influx of berries that all appear at once or the dozens of tomatoes that ripen at the same time, but makes winter more tolerable down the road. When you’re in the midst of a long cold winter, like we get here in North Dakota, one thing that helps me cope is to have just the smallest taste of summer. For my money there’s nothing better than the flavor of summer raspberries and currants captured at their mid-summer peak.  It sure helps stave off those winter blues. Raspberry currant jam is simultaneously, sweet and tart and tangy, and both raspberries and currants are nutritionally dynamic foods that should be a part of a properly balanced diet. This simple jam recipe will ensure that you have the fresh picked flavor of summer berries at your fingertips all year lon...

In the decade-and-a-half since their introduction, people have come to appreciate the incredible power of the Roth Individual Retirement Account (IRA). Roth IRAs allow individuals to save money for their retirement and let it grow tax free. Yup, you heard correctly; tax free. Roth IRAs are retirement accounts that are maintained by a registered financial institution, but created and directed entirely by you, the investor. These accounts can contain any number of investments including Certificates of Deposit, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, even real estate. You can open a Roth IRA through a brokerage firm (such as Charles Schwab, E-Trade, TD Ameritrade), a Mutual Fund Company (exp. Janus, Fidelity, Vanguard), Banking Institution (Wachovia, Bank of America, or Washington Mutual) or diversified financial company (Citigroup, ING). These accounts can be opened in person, via telephone, or even online. It pays to do your research to find out each companies sp...

Like many gardeners, I used to struggle with how to support my tomatoes. My cherry tomatoes, Roma/paste, and heirloom/eating tomatoes got so large and heavy that they quickly wound up dragging on the ground and entangled in a huge mess. I used store-bought tomato cages, but quickly found that these small wire tomato cages are useless. The large "sturdy" ones are a little bit better but they still eventually collapse under the weight of all the delicious fruit by mid summer. My solution to this common gardening dilemma? Homemade tomato cages, using concrete reinforcing mesh (the stuff they use to lay on the ground to pour concrete over). At my local hardware store I bought a roll of 5' x 50' 10 gauge concrete re-mesh, some baling wire, and a medium-sized pair of bolt cutters to snip it with. Construction actually went faster than I anticipated and I got two completed in about 45 minutes. Subsequent ones went much faster. To assemble the cages, ...

One of the best parts of any vacation is experiencing new local foods and restaurants, and San Diego, California has no shortage of great eating establishments. If you want to get a truly local dining experience, there are few places you should take in next time you're in San Diego on vacation that are a bit off the traditional tourist path. Now this is working under the assumption that you're already going to eat plenty of local specialties like Mexican food and seafood, so as a 25+ year resident of San Diego, here are three great local restaurants you should visit. Filippi's Pizza Grotto Filippi’s is technically, a chain (they have several restaurants in the San Diego area) of restaurants, and I can attest to the great food at the Mira Mesa and Mission Valley locations. But you need to visit the downtown location on India Street, it is Italian food at its finest and most authentic. The ambiance at this location is fantastic; you enter thr...

With all of the recent turmoil in the United States housing market , many people are revisiting the pros and cons of renting versus buying a home. For starters, buying a home is a terrific long term investment, and while short term price appreciation may be unlikely, long term price appreciation is quite certain. There are many other factors to consider outside of potential price appreciation when deciding whether to rent or buy a home. While there are many advantages to owning your own home, not everything is a bed of roses. Like every major financial decision there are pros and cons to owning a home. First of all, some of the positive attributes of home ownership: Owning your own home does give you the discretion and flexibility to do virtually whatever you want with your property both inside and out. Paint a room neon green? Sure. Have a life size statue of Elmo made out of corn cobs in the back yard? Go right ahead. You can do just about anything you want since you...