Garden Update 7-17-12

I realized while I was out working in the yard, that it has been a little while since I have updated you all on my garden.  It is something I am actually looking forward to checking on everyday and while we haven't eaten much, it is only a matter of time!  

These three Better Boy tomatoes plants are out of freakin' control!
I hacked about half of two of them back and they are still just taking over!
You can see the last of the peas in the lower left corner.
One of the two plants was a complete buffet for the slugs and the other is
barely hanging on. It hasn't produced more than a couple
of peas a day and I usually have them eaten before I get inside.

Some cherry tomatoes...not my favorite but Joe really likes them,
which is good because there are a lot of them.

Four baby Roma tomatoes!  I am most excited about these tomatoes because I
see homemade spaghetti sauce and stewed tomatoes for black bean chili in my future!

The pepper plants are getting squished by the Roma
tomatoes, but are holding their own with them help of me
 and my scissors which has hacked quite a few stems.

One of many Better Boys

Green beans!  I am SO excited about these!
My sister and I looked at them today and are thinking we
might actually get enough to serve with dinner tomorrow night!

These are the strawberries that we saved and they are growing like crazy.
 Technically strawberry season is over, but if you squint you
will see a few green strawberries on the bottom of the picture.

The new addition to my food growing venture!  Raspberry bushes!
Lowes had these on clearance for 75% off
which made them 2 bucks a bush...I couldn't pass it up!  

I am feeling good about things so far.  I did lose all the lettuce but still have one row of spinach that is hanging on.  The carrots that I have thinned out are actually turning orange and taste like carrots but are still pretty tiny.  

I did have the tomatoes all in cages, but the Better Boys have outgrown them. It was when I was at Lowes picking up bigger stakes for them that I stumbled onto the great clearance plants.  In addition to the raspberries, I picked up some perennials that were dirt cheap and am going to try and nurse them back to health.  I know technically they aren't the "garden" but they are outside and I like them!

I bought a white clematis for $3.00 and then a cool trellis for it...that was more than
 $3.00.  You can barely see but there is one lupine on the left and two on the right.
They were pretty beat up, but I figured for $1.25 a piece it was worth a shot.

For the rest I took a page out of my mother-in-law's book
 and just planted in pots.  I couldn't decide where I wanted to
put what and there were pots on sale.  Taelin also joined in
on the fun and picked out the pink (big surprise) petunias
and the purple flowers on the right.
They are just clustered on the deck for now!

Photo of the Day July 6-12

I spent a lot of time this week doing things I love with the people that I love in places that I love.  Except for the picture of the cat.  I don't love the cat.  It was 4 minutes to midnight and I hadn't taken my picture of the day yet and she was sitting there. Don't worry...she doesn't like me either.  

july 6, 2012
Taelin and I went to the zoo and she loves sitting on
this tractor they have in the farm animal section.
(Yes, there is a section for farm animals...it is a little weird.)
But I had to get a picture of the John Deere for my dad...they are his favorite.

july 7, 2012
The last stop of a day spent with friends at scrapbook stores, eating lunch, browsing a book store,
and at an OCD person's happiest place on Earth.

july 8, 2012
Taelin and Joe in the new pool Joe bought while
I was out having the fun described above.
  It is 14 ft in diameter and ridiculously huge.  

july 9, 2012
My dog sleeps like this everyday.  It cracks me up every time.

july 10, 2012
Taelin hiding in her favorite hiding spot.
She still believes that if she can't see you, you can't see her. 

july 11, 2012
Picking cherries at Salem Harvest.
 4 pounds of cherries for us...4 pounds of cherries to the food bank.

july 12, 2012

501 days done...500 to go!

Today marks one day over the half way point of my 1001 days.  I thought it appropriate that I check in with the list and do a status update of sorts.

As of today, I have completely 39 of my 101 items.  Of the 62 items left, I have 18 that are "in progress".   So, I do have to say that overall I am pretty satisfied with where I am on the list.

There a few things that are turning out to be more difficult than I originally, others were or are going to be  pretty easy, and still others leave me scratching my head as to why I even put them on the list.  I don't know that I will really be able to finish everything on the list but I am hopeful.

I guess the next 500 days will tell...

The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread: A Novel by Don Robertson

How great of a title is that?  And the cover?  I had little choice on whether or not this gem would make it into the basket last fall at the Border's going out of business sale.  Since then though, it had just sat on the shelf and was passed over time after time.

One day (I think it was after reading the Jacyee Duggard book) I pulled this book off the shelf and set it on my night stand.  I started to read a little before bed every night and wasn't getting very far until last week when I picked it up in the morning before Taelin got up and finished the second half really quickly.

It was first published in 1965 but had been re-released in 2008.  I gave it three out of five stars on Goodreads because I just couldn't help but LOVE the little boy in the story, Morris Bird III.


The book is mostly told from his perspective and the author does a wonderful job of making the book read just like I would think a 9 year old boy's brain would sound like.  Morris decides to take a trip across town to see a friend that had moved away and to prove something to himself.  It is set in Cleveland in 1944 which I found out was the setting for the worst industrial disasters in our country's history.  The last half of the book was heartbreaking and inspiring all at the same time as we followed little Morris through this tragedy.  I just loved this little boy and he reminded me of all those funny third graders that I had over the years.

You might have noticed, however, that I only gave it three stars.  I did like it but the writing style really started to get on my nerves.  When it was Morris that we were following the jumpy style worked because we were following a nine-year old boy, but the author could have a paragraph and actually jump around to four or five different characters within that paragraph.  It was okay at the beginning but it was hard to really keep everyone straight when you only read one sentence about them every few pages.

What it came down to is that I wanted to follow Morris.  Most of the characters did somehow come together with Morris at some point, but it was just a little too ADHD for me I guess.

Bottom line is that I am glad I read it and thought it was worth my time but I probably won't go out of my way to pick up the other two books that were written about Morris because as I read reviews about them the writing style was pretty much the same.

I did finish this a week ago and am just getting around to blogging it now mostly because once I finished I have been reading A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin every single free second I get.  In fact, I need to finish this post because I need to go to bed...and read.

crepehanger: killjoy; someone who takes a pessimistic view of things

It is Wednesday, which means that I needed to blog about my new word for the week.  While I have been reading a book that has lots of new words, I haven't been very good at all about  keeping them somewhere I can reference later.  Most of them aren't words that I would ever use (unless I found myself at a Renaissance fair which is not on my list) so I am not really paying them a whole lot of attention once I have read them.

This lead me to just browsing around the Merriam-Webster website and an article titled "Top 10 Rare and Amusing Insults, Vol. 2" caught my eye.  Not that I am really looking to beef up my list of potential ways to insult someone, but I did think it funny that someone would actually write an article about it.  But it is a website dedicated to words so, maybe not so funny after all.

Anyway,  I thought this might be a good one to have in my pocket for the next time I get a great idea that someone else doesn't think is so great!  If you want to read the entire explanation of where is came from or want to take a look at the list for yourself, go here!

Bok Choy Slaw

In our CSA box last week there was a head of bok choy.  I had NO idea what I was going to do with it.  Bok choy is the veggie that I pick out of my favorite dish at Marco Polo, an amazing restaurant here is Salem. In general cooked greens aren't our favorite and that is being fairly generous.  Spinach is a pretty example.  Love raw spinach; would go hungry if it is cooked.

So, after my failed kale chips, I realized that I probably needed to change my plan for doing a stir-fry bok choy.  Back to Pinterest I went (I realize I might have a problem!) and found a recipe for a bok choy slaw that wasn't too bad.  I used my salad spinner for the 3rd time today and made the slaw to go with BBQ pork chops and grilled potatoes.


Ingredients
1/4 cup rice vinegar
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
6 cups very thinly sliced bok choy
2 medium carrots, shredded
2 green onions, thinly sliced

Directions
1. Whisk vinegar, oil, and mustard in a large bowl.
2. Add bok choy, carrots and scallions; toss to coat with the dressing.

Overall the slaw was ok.  The sesame oil was WAY too strong.  I like the taste but there was too much.  Joe doesn't really like sesame oil at all so it was kind of a fail for being able to eat leftovers.  But, if I end up with another head of bok choy again, I think I would try making it again but use the dressing from the cabbage salad; basically switch out the sesame oil for soy sauce.


****And with this recipe I have officially finished #19 on my list of trying 50 new recipes!  I will continue to try new recipes but will probably just share the recipes that end up being ones that we really like.

Kale chips

Last week we got some kale in our CSA box.  People keep telling me I need to make kale chips, so this morning I had a few minutes and decided to give it a try.

I used this recipe from allrecipes and the only thing I changed was the cooking time and temperature after reading some of the reviews.  I baked them for 20 minutes at 250 degrees.

Verdict...I don't like kale chips.  There were several reviews that declared them as good as potato chips.  I feel like I should spend some time trying to figure out where those people live so I can either 1) send them a bag of potato chips because they obviously have never had a good bag or 2) smack them up side the head.    It is like those people that cut apples in the shape of french fries and say that it curbs their craving for french fries.  I am not one that likes to call names but those people are a bunch of freakin' liars.  Apples do not equal french fries.  Kale chips do not equal potato chips.  

I am counting this as a new recipe and the kale chips are still sitting on the counter waiting for Joe to get home, but I would put money down that he won't like them either.  I just don't think we are cooked greens kind of people.

***edited for Joe's verdict...  He said they taste exactly like potato chips...mixed with sweaty garbage.  So, yeah, I think it is safe to say that I am going to have to search for a different recipe to do with the kale that is sure to come again.

Napa Cabbage Salad

There is this local teriyaki restaurant that has the best teriyaki chicken bowl I have ever had.  It has grilled chicken with this yummy sticky teriyaki sauce and then this cabbage salad with crunchy ramen noodles...ah...it is SO good.  And I am pretty sure when I calculated the Weight Watchers points it was the better part of my points for the entire day.  Kind of sad.

I have been meaning to try and replicate at least the flavor a little bit for awhile but never get around to buying the napa cabbage because they are so stinkin' big I thought I would never use it all.  But, this last week there was a napa cabbage in our CSA box and since we are splitting it three ways I ended up with half of the cabbage which was just perfect.  I searched on Allrecipes and on Pinterest and found a lot of recipes that were highly rated...and loaded with oil.  Again, kind of sad.

Fine...they off on my own I would have to go to create something that would work.  And what I came up with is now the second best teriyaki chicken bowl I have ever had.  Here is the recipe for the cabbage salad that I came up with...

Ingredients
2 tablespoons slivered almonds
1 teaspoon olive oil
2 cups of chopped napa cabbage (chopped up 1/2 of a whole cabbage and still have 4 cups left)
1/2 cup of shredded carrot
1 sliced green onion (I only used the green part because I wanted just the hint of flavor.)
1 teaspoon of canola oil
1 1/2 teaspoons of soy sauce
1 1/2 teaspoons of rice wine vinegar

Directions
1. Toast the slivered almonds in the olive oil and set aside.  (You don't have to use oil to toast almonds but I am always looking for ways that I can get my healthy oils in without having to taste them.)
2. Combine the shredded napa cabbage, shredded carrot and green onion.
3. In an air tight container, add the canola oil, soy sauce and rice wine vinegar.  Shake container until mixed well and then pour over the salad and lightly toss.
4.  Add the almonds on top of the salad.

All of the recipes I looked at called for WAY more oil and some sugar in the dressing.  I know that the restaurant version has a ton of oil because the sticky teriyaki sauce actually slides off the cabbage.  Kind of gross when I write it out like that.

I suppose you could have this all buy itself and I probably will at some point, but I had in my refrigerator leftover grilled teriyaki chicken.  I also had Trader Joe's brown rice.  So, I sliced up the chicken and heated it up with the rice.  Tossed it together with my cabbage salad...so yummy!

I didn't have any sticky teriyaki sauce which I thought I was going to really missed but didn't.  The only teriyaki flavor came from the chicken, but the dressing on the cabbage was really good and light that I think the sticky teriyaki sauce would be way to heavy.

And with that recipe and after thoughts, I think there has been a change in the rankings.  The best teriyaki chicken bowl in town is right here!

Photo-A-Day June 29-July 5, 2012

I must have been feeling a little guilty about all of my Taelin photos last week, because aren't any of her this week.  This week's photos have a pretty good mix of what was going on in our lives as well as capturing some of the favorite parts of my home...one of my bookshelves and the laundry room doors that act as Taelin's art gallery.

june 29, 2012
Had a wonderful trip...but glad to be back in Oregon.
Only had a few more hours on the road at this point.

june 30, 2012

july 1, 2012
He had on his swimsuit and a bow tie.
Adorable.

july 2, 2012
The jungle that is my tomato plants.

july 3, 2012
Mexican chocolate

july 4, 2012 

july 5, 2012

Simplify...#3 and #4

At the beginning of the 2012, I set out to tackle a couple of ways to simplify my life.  I want to find 10 in all, but I don't think it is simplifying things much if you do a whole bunch of things at once....just saying.   If you want to read it again you can go here but the basic idea was that I had two things I was going to do.  First, I wanted to get into the routine of using a cleaning checklist so our house (and my brain isn't so cluttered) and second, I wanted to start using a home binder to keep track of all the paper that trickles in our house.

For the most part, those things have been going well, although I could be a bit better about following the checklist.  I haven't been very good the last couple of weeks, mostly because we have been gone, but for the most part it helps me realize what I can reasonably get done in one day and let's me be "finished" at some point.  The binder is working out fabulously and I can't imagine how I could ever go without it now.  I am sure that it could be more organized, but it doesn't take me long to find something because it is all in one spot!

That brings me to number 3, which I started a few months ago.  Since I did need to keep my eye out for other ways to simplify my life, I realized that a board I have on Pinterest was screaming one at me.  Wrapping paper, gift bags, tissue paper, and ribbons can take over a huge area and had taken over a couple of areas in my house.  I decided to get rid of some of the more ratty looking bags and organize them in under the bed containers.  Now I have one container with gift bags and tissue paper and another container with just wrapping paper.  Wrapping paper is a whole other problem itself. I have decided to let go of needing the exact paper for the exact occasion.  Now I have several different solid color papers and a brown craft paper that can be dressed with different colored ribbons or have a cute tag added to fit the season or occasion.  I am not going to have half used Dora the Explorer gift wrap or Nifty over Fifty gift wrap anymore.  It is going to be simple.  A nice solid color with a tag/ribbon.  Aaahhh....how freeing that is!

And number 4, which has just been decided on this morning and has resulted in a trunk full of things.  Life will be simpler without a lot of things.  So, I am going get rid of things.  Do I really need my leotard from my dance recital when I was 10?  What about those toys that I keep organizing for Taelin that she never plays with?  Those clothes that have been on the same hanger for months? Book that I have read once but won't ever again?  I am either throwing stuff out or giving it away.  I am not getting rid of all my things...don't worry everyone, no intervention needed!  Just a some thing to declutter my house...and therefore my life!

Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin

Joe and I have very different tastes when it comes to what we read.    He leans toward fantasy/science fiction kinds of books which are not my favorite.  Long ago he got me to read The Lord of the Rings series along with a few more that he was just convinced that I would like.  He, for the most part, has been right.  My major beef with most of the books in these genres are the endless characters that have really weird names are in setting that require me to suspend a lot of reality.  I am fast reader...too fast most of the time...so I have a hard time following things in fantasy/science fiction books.

When we were in college Joe signed up for a book of the month club (think Columbia House only for books) where he got a bunch of books for a penny just for signing up and then they sent him a book every month and charged him full price.  One of the books they sent him one time was A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin and I would say that it became one of his favorites instantly.  There are now 5 in the series and it has been made into a show on HBO.  (I won't even get into how giddy he got when he found that out!)

I read the first two years ago and finally decided to pick the third one up after finishing Season Two on HBO.  I do have to say that being the visual person that I am, it helped so much to have the characters from the t.v. show in my head while reading this 3rd book.  And...to Joe's credit, it was really, really good.  It is just a little over 1000 pages, so much longer than the books that I usually read.


One thing I do have to say is that I am learned a lot of words as I made my way through these books...two of them being (for last week's word and this week's word)...

craven: cowardly
and
leal: loyal; true


The next one in the series is lined up on my iPad, but I have been warned by Joe that it will not be my favorite one of the series.  So, I am finishing up the 100 pages in the other book that I am reading first and then will dive into number 4 (which is 1100 pages) so I can get to number 5 (which is over 1200 pages) which Joe has said will be worth it!

Mexican Chocolate Ice Cream....take 1

When Joe and I were in school in Missoula, there was this great little ice cream place just across the river from campus.  It was one of the places I loved going on the times did and have a lot of fond memories of times we went, just the two of us or in bigger groups.  It changed hands and became less of a college-kid friendly place (read "restaurant that was too expensive for these college kids") and at some point I think they stopped serving ice cream.

My absolute favorite flavor of ice cream that they served was Mexican Chocolate.  They didn't serve it all year round as they claimed it was a "winter flavor".  It was an amazingly creamy chocolate ice cream with a hint of cinnamon.  It was seriously the best ever.  And I have never seen that flavor served anywhere else.  Fine...I will just have to learn to make it myself.

We have an ice cream maker that we have had for about 10 years and has been used exactly 3 times, including most recently my first attempt of making Mexican chocolate ice cream.  I looked up a bunch of different recipes and really wanted to try the easiest one first.  I was really wanting to avoid recipes with tons of heavy cream and egg yolks (for obvious reasons) and found a pretty simple one at Poppytalk.  I pretty much followed the recipe, with the exception of a few things.

Ingredients
8 oz Mexican chocolate
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 cups whole milk

Directions
1. Chop the Mexican chocolate as finely as you can and dump it into a medium saucepan, along with the cinnamon, sugar and salt.
2. Pour in the milk and warm until everything is well dissolved, whisking occasionally.
3. Strain the liquid to remove any solids and let the chocolate mixture cool.
4. Place in the fridge for 4 hours or overnight.
5. Churn mixture in your ice cream maker as directed.

It was a very easy recipe and it reminded me how easy my ice cream maker is and how easy it would be for me to make healthier versions of sorbet for my dairy allergy daughter.  It tasted exactly like the ice cream from Missoula...but the texture was all wrong.  It wasn't creamy really at all...more "icy" than "creamy".  I am considering this particular item on the list checked off, because I did it but my journey to replicate this ice cream is not complete.

Joe had tasted the Mexican chocolate I used when I was chopping it and he said that the texture of the ice cream was pretty much the same as the chocolate...kind of gritty and icy.  My plan is to look for a well reviewed chocolate ice cream recipe and kick it up with adding cinnamon.   It is not something I want to keep on hand all the time, so is probably not something I am going try again really soon but it will happen again.  Maybe for my birthday in September....

Rollin' on the River!

Joe and I have had kayaks for some time and a couple of Christmas' ago, we got a tandem kayak so that all three of us could go kayaking.  We had done quite a few lake trips with and without Taelin, but I have yet to be brave enough to kayak a river...until today!

We had tentative plans to go kayaking today as long as the weather was going to cooperate.  We organized pretty quickly with some friends that came along and used our single kayaks and had the best day!  The weather could not have been more perfect; it was sunny but there was a light breeze that made it not super hot.  We pulled over and had a picnic and then Joe and Taelin did a little swimming.  We were out for about 3 hours and then came back, got cleaned up and BBQ'ed.

Here are a few pictures of our adventure!

Put in spot...I was a little nervous

Swimming

I <3 these two!
Plus, the only evidence that I was there...my toes!

Brian

Niki

Paddle...paddle...

...paddle!
Joe was a sport as he got smacked with
the paddle as she tried for the first time.

 It may have been our first river trip, but it certainly won't be our last!  

Lemon Garlic Marinade (with a kick!)

Quite some time ago, we used to get together with some friends fairly regularly.  Life and kids put some distance in between the times we are able to get together now, but it is still a lot of fun when we do.  We shared many meals over the years, but none was quite so loved as the Devil's Chicken Kabobs.  They were so spicy that I had to take a Zantac beforehand and knew I had to be within a close distance of a bathroom for all the water I ended up drinking.  It was lemon-y, garlic-y and burn your lips off good.  

It has been some time since we have had that and I saw something on Pinterest that reminded me of that dish.  I decided to try to recreate the marinade but tone down the spiciness quite a bit.  I get heartburn far more easily than I did before I had Taelin and I wanted Taelin to be able to eat it.  I didn't do the kabobs because honestly they are a lot of work and I knew I had a lot of work to do around the house and the last thing I was going to want to do was make kabobs.  

Ingredients:

2 boneless skinless chicken breasts

1 lemon, zest and juice

3 cloves of garlic, minced 

1 teaspoon of red pepper flakes, crushed

3 teaspoons of olive oil

Directions:

1. Combine in a baggie the lemon zest, lemon juice, garlic, red pepper flakes and olive oil.  Mix well.

2.  Add the chicken and roll it around in the bag until it is well covered with the garlic and lemon zest. 

3.  Leave in marinade until ready to grill! (I made this mid-morning and grilled it around 6:30 and it had great flavor.)

It wasn't nearly as spicy, but I actually preferred it that way.  Both Joe and Taelin liked it (after a minor strike of "I don't like chicken" by Taelin) and it will be a great addition to the chicken rotation! 

 

# 25 Drops & # 86 Road

I really have a lot I could write about our trip to Montana last week, but I am just barely starting to feel like I am back home.  Everything is unpacked and put away, laundry is pretty much caught up, and the fridge and freezer are full.  The house is looking fairly put together and I am starting to look towards the rest of the week knowing that there is some free time (hopefully) in my future!

I took a lot of pictures when I was in Montana and I guess they are right when they say that you just have to take picture after picture and you never know what you are going to get.  We took Taelin twice to a park that was very near where our friends live.  It has the traditional park kind of things, but it also has a great little area with water features. Sprinkles, spouts and sprayers made for a fun time and in one of the pictures I happen to get, there was a water drop hanging off her chin.  Nothing I planned...I just happened to get it because my finger was rapid fire pressing on the camera button.

#25 Drops

#86 Road

The little gem above was taken quickly as we were on the side of the road outside of Pasco, Washington.  We had switched drivers and Joe had figured out how to connect his phone to the car (some bluetooth magic the rental car had) and I quick snapped this picture with my phone remembering that "road" was one of the words on the list.  That road just kind of looks like it turns the corner and goes on forever...and in Eastern Washington it kind of feels like it.

Anyway, once things get a little more settled (and I finished the 200 pages I have left in the really good book I am reading) I will hopefully sit down share some of our adventures!