Coconut Cookie Recipe

When I need something to occupy my mind, I bake.
When I need a snack, I bake.
When I need to feel creative, I bake.

There are a lot more things I could add to that list but why preach to the choir?  You wouldn't be here if you didn't like good cookies. 

These cookies are easy to make, and quite tasty.  The texture was crispy around the edges and chewy in the center so I would guess that if you want them to be all crispy you bake them longer or flatten them out more or if you prefer, go shorter for a chewier cookie with less crispy crunch.  I thought they were perfect the first time out of the oven at 12 minutes.

Each one of those big round cookies were only 1 LEVEL Tablespoon of dough.  This recipe made 24 cookies, and they really are worth the time. 

If you're wondering if they're tough to make - no, it is an easy recipe.  Mix the dry ingredients in a big bowl with a fork, then add butter and mix a little more, then your egg that has been pre-scrambled.  Once it all is nice and even, get out your "wide" measuring Tablespoon and measure them out.

Remember that these cookies will spread widely in the oven so do not crowd, and they just slid off the baking parchment so if you can actually even reuse the paper for the second batch if you were short on paper.  Also the batter was a little loose, and didn't "ball up" when you try to roll them out.  It really is easier if  you to use the "wide" Tablespoon to measure, then use your thumb to get the batter onto the baking paper.

Calorie count is difficult for this recipe.  If you use sweetened dried coconut, you'll get an extra 400 calories per batch.  Since that was what I used for the cookies, it meant each cookie was 84 calories.  Using dried coconut without sugar, the recipe gives 24 cookies at 67 calories each. 

Ingredients:

• 1 Cup Self-Rising Flour
• 1 Cup Dried Coconut
• 1 Cup Granulated Sugar
• 1 Stick plus 1 Tablespoon Butter (125g) - Melted
• 1 Egg, Beaten

Process:

• Preheat oven to 350F, 180C.
• Line two cookie sheets with Parchment Baking Paper.
• Sift the Flour, Coconut, and Sugar together.
• Mix in the Egg and Melted Butter evenly.
• Spoon out 1 Tablespoon portions of batter widely spaced on the cookie sheets - about 12 per sheet.
• Bake for 12 minutes or until edges turn golden brown.
• Allow to cool on the cookie sheet for at least 5 minutes before moving to a cooling rack to allow proper setting.

Recipe was adapted from the Kidspot website at this link.

Goodbye Betty

These days you get news differently. 

I remember when Mom was alive, we had a hard and fast rule.  Stay off the phones after 9pm.   That was when the phone was reserved for important family business. 

When she finally went, it was years before I relaxed.  Still to this day if the phone rings after 9pm, I jump.

Now it's social media.

That's how we found out that my Aunt Betty passed away.  She was a week before her 96th birthday so I guess you could say she went because of that.  "Being 96".

What you will never know is how powerful that woman was.  She was a character.  Put the three sisters together in a room and you were due to have a tornado of strength going on.  You knew where you stood with her, my mom, and my other Aunt Millie as a result.

Do something they didn't agree with, they would tell you.  You'd eventually realize they were right, and you'd eventually tell them so.  Its pretty much the way things were.

Betty would come down to her condo in Century Village for the coldest months and having her there, in easy reach, was a blessing.  It meant that I could come up for random visits.  Of course those places were gated communities so a "drop in" was always a planned event.

We'd go out for our favorite "bad Chinese" food, run a few errands, and do other things which generally meant enjoying each other's company.  She had made the transition from Matriarch to Good and Trusted Friend decades before, and that was great with both of us.

Once in a while, we'd get to discussing things in general and one of us would get onto food.  Our family was very food centered.  Visits to any of the houses meant these large productions centered around too much food, loud conversations, and the extended families meshing in the house.

I can still picture that oven of hers in the house in Woodhaven Queens stuffed with tray after tray of foods, the counters crammed with dishes yet to be cooked or cooling, and every square inch of that little kitchen stuffed with people rubbing elbows.   There would be a card game going on in the bedlam at some point, and she taught me how to play with the best of them.

"How about a game of Continental?" would be heard and we would settle in as the oven finally cooled well after dark.

But this time the food got moved.  I had gotten to talking about the roasts we made.  The beef was prime bottom round.  We did that up "Old School" in a roasting bag with vegetables and made up a Port Wine Gravy that was so good that I would freeze the stuff up and dole it out sparingly for months.  Every bit of that roast was used with care.  Other than slices for dinners and sandwiches, the bits and scraps and other detritus that fell off the thing would be made into Cornish Pasties, Pot Pies, and other specialties for weeks.

That was when I heard Betty say "Oh that sounds goooood!".  I knew she was hooked.  She had a certain tone to her voice which turned it into an unsaid question of "You are going to make that for us aren't you?".

Of course we did.  It just took time.  Logistics.  You had to go to one of the few proper old line Butcher Shops here in Broward County and put in an order for just the right cut.  Not Choice, but Prime beef.  If we were going to do it, we were going to do it right.

We had to go to the liquor store and buy a bottle of Port.  That one, the one in the black bottle.

We got started using Port as a whim of mine.  It started with "Cheap Red Wine" as it said in the recipe, but we had run out, and the only thing remotely red was some horrible wine that was more vinegar than anything else and my cherished Port.  "Try it!" and it was good.  We never looked back.

The Port went in the roasting bag with onions, carrots, celery and potatoes.  If you never had roasted potatoes and carrots cooked in Port Wine, you are missing something truly wonderful.  The Port complements the carrots and enhances their sweetness and the potatoes are melt in your mouth good.

Can you tell we don't do this for just anyone?

Betty was looking out the window as she helped us get the roast into the oven.  We suggested a glass of Port by the pool.  She loved the idea and for every visit from that point on we gave her a generous glass of the stuff.  I broke out the bottle of the good stuff, the roast didn't need this.  This was a bottle of vintage port from a California vintner that after we got the bottle at discount learned that it was selling for over $250 a bottle.  Stock up!

Smooth as silk, it's called "The Ruby Relaxer" by butlers everywhere and this was some of the best.

She settled in on the side of the pool, breathed in the jasmine scented air, and sipped the glass of red warmth in pleasure.

"Oh Bill!  This is wonderful!  It's Bee-you-tee-ful out here!" 

Yes, she said it like that: "Bee You Tee Full!".  Her first language was Italian, and she learned English before hitting elementary school, but if you listened closely, there was the tiniest hint of it still decades later.

But she was right.  It was bee you tee full.  We sat outside under the umbrella, getting up occasionally to check in on the roast.

One point we were outside and heard a hum and a thump.  This being FPL territory and my having lived here for 9 years, I knew what happened.  There was a transformer nearby that blew.  Power was out and there was a roast sitting in the oven. 

While I prefer a rare roast, this was still a wee bit early by thermometer but not much.  Maybe 15 minutes worth.  We closed the door on the oven and gave it that time. 

Part of the preparation of this feast was that you remove the vegetables from the roasting bag, after removing the roast and let it "rest".  That allows the roast to have the internal temperatures equalize.  It's a good practice for any cut of meat when they're over an arbitrary thickness.  We placed the roast back in the oven although it was for all intents and purposes done at Medium Well instead of Well Done. 

It was this meal that got me hooked on making this dish by temperature in the future.  I don't care for Well Done as much as most.

But how to make the gravy?  We weren't going to waste all that Port Wine and Beef Drippings and the onions that sweetened it.  The next step was to pour it all into a blender, smooth it out, and then reduce it on the burners on the grill in the backyard if we had to.

Power was still out but I had a flash.  "Hey, doesn't your car have a 110V outlet in the back from an inverter?"

Yes.  This meal was going to be finished by making the gravy in the trunk of a car.

"Back your car up to the carport, pop open the back!  We will make the gravy in the car!"

Betty was still out back.  She was unaware of the drama.

The car got moved in place, and I heard the blender fire up.  After a while the gravy was brought back inside.

"Now what?"

On cue, we heard the power snap back on.  The oven had to be turned off, and we fired up all four burners under the roasting pan to quickly reduce the gravy.

True to form this was an amazing meal.  Betty enjoyed it so much that she asked to take some home with her for later.

"I'm glad you liked it.  Did you know what happened while you were out back?"

I told her the story and said "Yes, your gravy was made in the back end of a car!"

A one of a kind meal for a one of a kind woman. 

We all will definitely miss her. 

When I got the news from her daughter, Darlene, I was floored.  I was expecting it.  Our birthdays are two weeks or so apart.  I thought something was up when I didn't get a birthday card from Betty.  The last one was waylaid since it went to the Fort Lauderdale P.O and then back to Long Island.  I was hoping it was something like this but I somehow knew it wasn't.

We heard that she was in a hospital, and that she was recovering from an illness.  Things were touch and go.  If anyone could beat "this" it was Betty.

But she couldn't beat "Being 96".  She was lucid to the end, had a long life full of love, family, and friends. 

Apparently We've Got a Substantial El Nino in 2015 Going On

Going through my morning routine, I stumbled across a BBC Article that said that we've got a Substantial El Nino event happening right now.  It was originally announced in March that it was a weak El Nino but apparently it's been upgraded.

The Australians have been watching since their normally dry climate there gets drier.  The assumption there being that you'll want to watch for more brush fires.

Since I'm not a weatherman, or a meteorologist, I decided to dig in and see what I could find.  That led me onto a long search on the subject of what does that mean to me here in South Florida.

Wetter than normal, fewer hurricanes in the Atlantic than normal in the summer.

If that is the case, that means we won't have any water worries for a while here because Lake O will refill (isn't it high already?) and the aquifers will recharge.

The pages that I came across were all about general trend and so forth and a discussion of how it all comes to pass.  Something shuts down the tradewinds that normally push water across the Pacific towards Australia and Indonesia.  The resulting wave allows the water to relax and flow back towards Ecuador and Peru.  Since that water is from a hot part of the world, the Australian water will warm up Ecuador and Peru when it gets there causing droughts and less productive fisheries.

The maps are general, and usually show "trends" with blobs all over the place to indicate the broad probabilities.  This NOAA map is typical, and shows the Summer.

That is what this video shows.  A nice concise description from Climate Central of the mechanics of the El Nino effect.




There are world wide consequences, mostly focused in the middle and central latitudes in a big thick band.  Above roughly latitude 40N (Philadelphia, PA) the effects lessen.

However, if you're a ski fanatic, book your trips to the Western Resorts since the weather is expected to be, generally, wetter than normal.  They need that there, but the Southwest, West, and South will be wetter, just like here.

Wetter winters can mean more snow and some more blizzards than usual.

Perhaps too much because we'll be hearing about flooding where there were droughts earlier.

That Wet And Cool implies either ice storms or blizzards in the Interior South of the US.

Again, that probability thing.  Since the weather is such a complex system, the idea that one El Nino will be just like the rest.  Looking back at the last 60 years, and categorizing the events by strength, the stronger events had a significant amount of variance between them.

The rain patterns are not set in stone and there aren't "Rules" but trends. 

The best thing to do is to say Weather Will Happen, and Be Prepared since you can't change it.

But for me, the takeaway is fewer hurricanes in Florida.  I've been wondering about that.  I still have Hurricane Food from last year to be eaten!

Coffee By the Pool

I usually warn people when they come for a visit about this.  We have mosquitoes that will carry off a small car here. 

If I know that we're going to be outside for any length of time, I will spray instant death into the hedges nearest where we'll be.  Barring a Simpsons Style Springfield Dome over the yard, that's about the best we can do.

What we were doing for a while was when we'd be in the pool is to turn on the big noisy fan.  It would be pointed at the seats in the shallow end where you could safely sit in the breezes.  It also had a side benefit of being cooling.  While things here aren't as hot as the big Northeast Cities are in Summer, it gets hot here, and the sun being almost directly overhead at noon can be a bit intense.

For some reason, this particular morning they were conspicuously absent.

My own routine is to take Rack out back after breakfast.  Give him one last chance at the trees before it's time to get busy with things.  After that, he will spend most of the day dozing in the crate in the house until dinner. 

Or as we know it, the Evening Mooching Hour.

I walked to the backdoor, looked back at him in the crate and asked "Do you want to go out back?".
The answer "Duh" seemed to be appropriate as he trotted to the door waiting for me to leave.

I normally wander around the yard inspecting the cuttings that I have out there.  I'm growing far too many cuttings for the yard in the "irrigation chain" at any given moment.  The result is that instead of having pretty flowers, the pots all have a bit of a "He's Doing Something" air about them.  They also need tending.

The morning poking and prodding of pots.  Except it was not really needed.

That particular morning, it just didn't feel right to do that, or to go back in since it was a bit earlier than normal. 

Rack was done, and hovering at the backdoor already wanting to be in.  I was being preoccupied with the hedges and perhaps a little passive-aggressive.  "I'm not ready to go in, Boy." as I sat down at the chair by the table near the pool.

At that point, the noise level stopped.  The growl of the weedeater down the block was silenced and no train or traffic noise reached me there.  The only thing I heard were natural sounds.

The Rock Doves making their nasal "Mehhhh" sound.
A flock of parrots rushing overhead chattering on their way.
The rustle of the palm fronds on the utility easement as a scrawny squirrel walked a tightrope East into the Sun.

Still no mosquitoes.  Strange.  You get used to avoiding the girls and when they're not there, you take advantage of their absence.

It just was too nice a morning to go inside.  Rack padded over and looked up at me with big brown eyes.  We enjoyed the respite before the day got going in full swing.

Even the amaryllis that was late blooming back in April was enjoying the scene.  It was sending up a flower spike that may put out some red tipped white flowers within a week.

Now I know what my friends were telling me about that spot.  If you can use it, it's actually quite a nice place to get your own motor started and watch the day get up to speed.

One for Mother's Day

A family was having dinner on Mother's Day.

For some reason the mother was unusually quiet.

Finally the husband asked what was wrong.
"Nothing," said the woman.

Not buying it, he asked again. "Seriously, what's wrong?"

"Do you really want to know? Well, I'll tell you. I have cooked and cleaned and fed the kids for 15 years and on Mother's Day, you don't even tell me so much as "Thank you."

"Why should I?" he said. "Not once in 15 years have I gotten a Father's Day gift."

"Yes," she said, "but I'm their real mother."

Earrings

Did you ever wonder why earrings became so popular with men?

A man is at work one day when he notices that his co-worker is wearing an earring.

The man knows his co-worker to be a normally conservative fellow, and is curious about his sudden change in "fashion sense"

The man walks up to him and says, "I didn't know you were into earrings."
 "Don't make such a big deal, it's only an earring," he replies sheepishly.

His friend falls silent for a few minutes, but then his curiosity prods him to ask, "So, how long have you been wearing one?"
"Ever since my wife found it in my truck."

I had always wondered how this trend got started.

Three Ingredient Peanut Butter Cookie Recipe

Ok, no matter how good or how bad a baker you are...

You can make this recipe.

Seriously.  Three ingredients.  It falls together.   Add your ingredients to a large mixing bowl.  Mix with a dinner fork until even or smooth consistency.  Bake at 350F for about 10 minutes or until they begin to look golden.

The hardest part of this recipe will be leaving them to cool for the right amount of time - a minimum of 5 minutes.

Really.  Go sit and watch TV for five minutes longer.  Find a great song on the radio.  Let the dog out in the backyard.  I don't care.  They have got to sit and "harden" a bit.

The taste?  Classic peanut butter cookie.  If you like them, use this recipe.  It really is great.

Now the nitty gritty.

They are peanut butter cookies.  Each one is 20 grams of batter and yes I weighed them out.  Thats a bit more than a teaspoon or exactly .70 ounces.  Use a scale.  That gives you a 100 calorie cookie, without the chocolate kiss.

The peanut butter.  Common every day supermarket brand peanut butter complete with all the junk like sugar that they add to it.  In this case the good/healthy stuff you grind up yourself (you mean you don't?) will change the recipe.  I used what I had on hand from last year's hurricane supplies and it was cheap but it did not have that nasty High Fructose Corn Syrup according to the label. 

Crunchy vs Creamy Peanut Butter?  You choose.  I used crunchy because it was what I had on hand.

Why am I using a gram scale?  More precise.  I'm not going to try to measure out .70 ounces of batter, and I do want to make sure that I can have two and not blow the diet.  While I am a tall and athletic type, I remain tall and not "Big" because I do watch what I eat within reason, and portion control is your friend.

All weights are both in grams and US measures where appropriate.  The batch yields just under 2400 calories worth of cookies, so you're on your own from here...

Ingredients:

• 1 cup any kind of cheap Peanut Butter - 1517 cal - 233 g
• 1 cup sugar - 774 cal - 207 g
• 1 egg - 60 cal - 53 g
• Optional - One Chocolate Kiss per cookie.  Unwrapped, of course.

Process:

• Add all ingredients to the bowl.
• Blend all ingredients together to make a uniform batter.
• Texture will be like a soft modeling clay.
• Drop one teaspoon (roughly) or 20 grams of batter per cookie onto Parchment Paper or Foil lined cookie sheet.
• Roll each drop of dough into a ball and flatten with a large-ish dinner fork for the traditional cross hatch pattern.
• Cookies should be somewhat flat and will spread while baking. 
• Bake Cookies for 10 minutes at 350F or 180C or until just beginning to turn golden brown.
• Allow cookies to firm up for a minimum of 5 minutes before moving to cool completely.
• Enjoy with milk or coffee.

2351 cal per batch.  493 g total weight.  Divide into 24 pieces. 20.5g each

There, wasn't that easy?

Recipe was adapted from this video below.  Worth a watch for this crazy Aussie Bloke's video style too.

The Impossibly White Mailbox Becomes Impossibly Red

Have you ever done something a little different?
Perhaps a little "Out There"?

And did it simply because it pleased you?

This is one of those things.

Actually this is one of those things, version 2.0 or perhaps 3.0.

It was first the Impossibly White Mailbox.  Well actually, it was black, then it faded to charcoal, then it got cleaned and stayed charcoal.  It got painted Primer White, better known as that white nobody uses as their finishing coat except Grecian Islands like Santorini.  

"But these islands are so beautiful, why don't we paint our house white with blue trim?"

Because you have to clean that white, that's why.

I got thinking.  It can be dangerous when I start Thinking.  Capital T Thinking.

Why stick with "regular" colors.  There aren't any regulations to it.  Why not be creative.  The house is this weird Broward county color.  Peach I'd describe it but that was after years of being in the sun and bleached and coated with stripes of rust due to the ground water in the irrigation here.

I'll get around to cleaning that.  I got the rust cleaning solution a while back...

Yeah, I got it in 2007, it's in the laundry waiting.  Procrastination is a bear.

I was thinking all this when a neighbor walked by and said "You should really try something wild and bright!"  He suggested every color in the rainbow then suggested a rainbow motif.

I'm creative, but that's a lot more complex than I'd prefer. 

I smiled and took the suggestion and started banging it around.

Light colors fade quickly and will turn rust colored because the mailbox gets "watered" twice a week.  6AM Thursday and Sunday for 50 minutes I believe.

That won't work.  How about Barn Door Red? 

We set out to the paint store looking for anything rust colored.   Actually we did that as an afterthought and came home with "Real Red".  Ok, it was a styrene paint that promised a shiny and hard seal.  Think of those 1940s era nail polish.  That bright.

I painted a coat of that.  Not so good.  It looked streaky and the paint had a nasty habit of drying before it left the brush.  It also attracted bugs. 

Lots of bugs.

Luckily I got most of them out of the La Brea Tar Pit that was the gummy paint and since the box itself was textured, they hid well in the goo.

I put down a couple coats but each time the stuff dried so fast that there were some nasty brush strokes.  

Version 2.  I went out and literally peeled the paint off in sheets.  Like wallpaper.  There's bits of it still in the grass after it got mowed and hit with the weed eater.  Don't look too close.

I painted again.  More bugs since we're having an early wet season.  I painted over a mosquito in an inaccessible spot.  Nasty creatures those mosquitoes.

But the red looked good.  After a couple coats I stopped and sanded to get a good finish.

That rain thing?  Yeah, hit us with 2 inches of rain in 24 hours.  At least it's clean.

I'm waiting for a dry weekend.  We'll give it another coat.  Paint thinner was needed.   One last check before we left for the paint store again.

"Hey!  It thins with Water, we don't need to go to the shops!".

Damn, I like going to the shops.  Keeps me out of trouble.

So if you're coming by, just look for the Impossibly Red Mailbox.  Just like a candy apple or a fire engine.

Do they still eat those?

No, not the Fire Engines, Candy Apples!

The mailman likes it too.  He told us so.  Well, two out of three.  The third one was a little huffy.  "That's not traditional!"

"Neither are we, Ma'am, neither are we. But I do have one more coat to do when I get the chance."

Should look nice and garish with those gold numbers I have for the side!

The Dog and the Hedgehog

If ever I were to open a "Proper" British Pub, I think I would call it "The Dog And The Hedgehog".

There would be lots of deep dark wood on the walls, yellow brass railings polished bright, and hunter green paint elsewhere.  Bottles of Hard Cider, Dark Ales, and fine Single Malt Whiskey would be on offer.  Maisey, my buxom, brassy, and brilliant barmaid would bring you your Fish and Chips on a platter the size of a hubcap, and she'd greet you with a larger than life presence.

"Cheers, Love!  'Ere's Yer Dinner!  Tuck in!"

Of course, pictures of Elizabeth would grace the walls.

But in this case, it's simply a story of a new toy.

You see, my dog, Rack the McNab SuperDog (TM) has a fixation with his Hedgehog.  It hasn't been destroyed, completely, yet.  It has had its eyes chewed off in the grisly first few hours of it being given to him, and now is preened within an inch of its life.  He got it in a care package from a good friend of mine up in Atlanta, Craig.  The hedgehog was a bit of Swag from a computer show that he had gotten on a memorable trip to San Francisco.

When I pulled it out of the box, Rack's eyes got big and it was a match made in heaven.  It was also the first time I saw him assert himself towards a toy.

Rack reared up on his hind legs and grabbed it from the room divider, a full 3 feet off the ground.

A Meter high since we're talking about a British Pub.

Fish and Chips would be quite nice right about now, come to think about it.

Trotting off to his doggy bed, he settled down to blind the little plush toy in excitement.

Like Lettie before him with her fixation with plush Squirrels, Rack loves his plush hedgehog.

Hedgehogs aren't really common here.  They aren't native to Florida or the US, and are quite better off living under hedges in Britain, munching on grubs, and living in their native habitat.

Plush Hedgehogs are welcome though and we set off to look for a new one every time we went off to one of the handful of Thrift Stores here and there.  I always look at the plush animals, and finally we found a second and New To Us Hedgehog.

It made it home and sat out on the bar looking in at the kitchen window because you really do want to wash something like that in "superhot" water to kill anything that may have been hiding in the thing. 

Plush Hedgehog yes, bedbugs no.

Once it came out, Rack had the same reaction.  Mine.   Please, Dad, Mine?  He came over to me, and bore twin holes in my heart with two brown eyes.  I held the older hedgehog in one hand, the new one in the other.  Each time he reached for one, I moved the other out of reach.

Finally he realized what I was saying, One, Not Both, and grabbed the new one. 

Settling down with his prize, he fell asleep next to the big green chair in the corner of the little house on the Island dreaming of new toys, Hedgehog, and Maisey the Barmaid bringing me some proper Fish and Chips with a dark ale on the side.

Ok, maybe not the Fish and Chips, but you get the picture.   Kid with a new toy takes it to bed and sleeps well that night.

Now that he has two, I can actually wash the other one.  You see, these plush toys get a bit stiff after use. 

You really don't want stiff quills on the outside of a plush hedgehog.  That's for the real ones made of prickles and flesh and blood living happily under a hedge in a cool climate far away from here and a curious black and white dog.

Ginger Flowers in the Parking Lot

Walking around town at all hours of the day, I expect to see new things in random places.

I'm one of the first to notice when a neighbor does something to their property like adds new lights or has a bit of fun with landscaping.  I'll notice when a new car shows up, or a business gets ready to open before most will.

It's all a part of getting out and exploring your environment.   Get out, enjoy the world, and see what is around you.  It's a requirement when you have a dog.  If you don't take your dog for a walk, frequently, more than once a day, you'll have behavior problems, guaranteed.

Besides, you could use a little time up from the keyboard or the couch.  I know I could.

This particular morning, my body woke me up at 5AM.  Just like a Swiss Watch, I'm up at 5.  I have no explanation for it other than I started getting up early when I was competing on inline skating races in Philadelphia and the habit stuck.

Throwing on clothes, the dog's harness, and loading my pockets with bags and other needed things, I entered the predawn darkness.

We walked through the regular places in our regular routes when we came upon the Gables Wilton Park.  A rather large and well kept upscale apartment community here in Wilton Manors.  It has always looked as I would expect an apartment complex to be for what it is, and how it is marketed.  The buildings are immaculate, the plantings are interesting, and the grounds are clean. 

Pretty much like you'd expect.

They have much the same plants you see everywhere in South Florida, and set in the gardens in pretty much the same manner.  Low maintenance, and I would expect low water use plants, kept in neat rows so that maintenance workers can get to everything.

I couldn't but I'm quite a lot taller than your average landscaper.

One of the things that was planted was some ornamental ginger.  I don't know if the stuff is edible, but it is the same plant that goes into my cookies when I make ginger snaps.

I'm used to seeing them all over town.  They're a pleasant plant for ornamental use, they don't seem to spread, they don't overgrow, they're not invasive, and they're about knee high. 

What I didn't expect was the flowers.  I've never seen them bloom before.  I guess I'm still getting used to being in South Florida and the tropics, but this just struck me as being a bit novel.  Not odd, simply new.

The flowers weren't overly scented, my own weak nose didn't smell anything at all.  They weren't large, the inflorescence was about the length of your hand.

Just novel.  A nice change of pace.

I made sure that Rack didn't water them himself, and we wandered on about our business making a mental note to get a picture of the things later when the light was better.

So that's what your ginger looks like before it gets turned into snaps.  Tasty!