Tonight's Sumptuous Repast

My Darling B began to bring in the bean crop about a week and a half ago, and the damned plants just won't stop producing beans.

Since it looks as though we'll be eating beans for a while yet, B's always on the lookout for new ways to prepare them, and this is what she came up with tonight: chicken, potatoes and beans in a lemon sauce.

There's no recipe, sorry. Or, rather, there were several recipes, from which B took what she needed and relied in inspiration to supply the rest. There's a little basil and garlic in there ("Not enough garlic," My Darling B mused as she ate) and I don't know what else.

And there was plenty left over for lunch!

This just in ...

My Darling B planted an eggplant plant just because she liked the way the fruit looks. When she brought this fruit in today, though, she had big plans for it.

First, she marinaded it in a honey sauce, and then she cooked it on the Weber grill while I was flipping burgers.

It turned out to be very tasty, really. Grilled eggplant. Who would've thunk it?

Dedication

She will brave swarms of mosquitoes to make sure her tomato plants are properly cared for.

This just in ...

We're coming to the end of this year's pea crop, sad to say. It's been a very good year.

B steamed this batch and we ate them on a bed of rice with spicy sauce.

This just in ...

We have a tree in our back yard that is heavy with mulberries ... which makes it a mulberry tree, I guess. I always thought mulberries came from bushes, but ours is very unequivocally a tree.

For the past two years we have let the squirrels and birds hog the mulberries all to themselves, but this year we made up our minds to harvest some of them and make a jam or jelly or wine or something, we haven't yet decided.

Tonight's pickings amounted to a little over two pounds, much more than I thought it might be. A couple more nights of this and we'll have plenty of mulberry jelly to spread on morning toast.

Lend me your ears

Someone I know once told me that just one ear of corn grows on each stalk. Well, here's a stalk on which two ears are very clearly growing, and there might even be a third at the bottom.

Hmmmm...

Tonight's Sumptuous Repast

Buffalo sirloin, new potatoes, patty-pan squash & zucchini, all fresh off the grill and chased with a pint of home-brewed beer. Does life get any better than this? I don't think so.

It's Time for Toms

Here's one more sign I'm turning into my dad: I'm looking forward to fresh tomatoes. I haven't advanced far enough into the transformation to slice them up and eat them in chunks the way he did, but I do love me some fresh tomatoes on my sandwich, and My Darling B makes tomato soup that I would sit up and beg for.

This just in ...

My Darling B tells me (and I believe everything she tells me) that carrots were not always orange. Once upon a time most of them were white and purple, until at some time in the distant past the Dutch bred them to be orange, and that's the color most have been ever since.

But she's not into conventional veggies. B loves "heritage" varieties and plants them whenever she can get them. Here is a selection of the carrots she harvested yesterday from the garden and prepared for dinner. I have to admit I was more than a little surprised when I stuck a chunk of the white one in my mouth and it tasted just like any orange carrot.

Plump, fresh pots

We had potatoes with our dinner last Thursday, and here's where we got them: The garden plot in our back yard, so lovingly tended by My Darling B.

Potatoes grow like weeds; there's one literally growing like a weed in our compost heap. But you have to tend to them by heaping dirt or, in our case, straw up around the base of the stalk if you want to eat the potatoes.

Then, when you want to bring some in to eat, all you have to do is root around in the straw at the base of the stalk until you find a couple nice, big ones, pluck them out, as B has done in the photo, and cover the plant up with straw again so the little ones can grow up to be dinner!

Tonight's Sumptuous Repast

It's Guy Night, and I wanted to fire up the grill, so we picked up some fresh fish at the co-op on the way home. When we got home, My Darling B rooted some potatoes out of her garden and I threw them in a foil packet with plenty of butter and dill, slapped it all over a hot fire and voila! Dinner.

That's a nice cut of fish

Farm-raised sockeye salmon, fresh from the Willy Street co-op. This is fish so good I don't mess with it much, just lay a couple pats of butter on the foil, lay the fish on top of it, and let it simmer for five or six minutes on a side.

I tried cooking it as slowly as I could tonight, just to see how it would turn out. After it cooked just about all the way through, I turned it, dropped a couple sprigs of dill over the top, closed the lid on the Weber and let it roast a little while longer.

When I could poke all the way through it with my fish turner I gave it just one more minute to finish up, then brought it still-sizzling to the table.

Don't be afraid to add too much butter. Yum!

... and the secret ingredient is:

The Weber kettle grill!

This is probably the best hundred-fifty bucks we've spent all summer. There's enough grill space to let me spread the food out and control the way it's cooked, and there's plenty of room underneath to let me build a roaring fire right in the middle of it, or bank the coals for slower, indirect cooking.

Plus, it's green.

Tonight's Sumptuous Repast

Pesto pasta with tomatoes and zucchini! It's quick & easy, and it goes well with a bottle of Botham's X vin white wine.

It's making you drool, isn't it?

In the steamer

There was a time, not so long ago really, that I would have brayed with laughter if you'd suggested I might enjoy a dinner made with zucchini. But that's what we were having tonight.

All the ingredients come from the weekend farmer's market, so they're no more than a few days old.

The toms were deliciously sweet.

... and the secret ingredient is:

The pasta bowl!

Purchased for only seventy-five cents at the Saint Vincent de Paul thrift shop, this is one of those prizes that makes the meal, because presentation counts.

This just in ...

One of our next door neighbors has the most amazing raspberry patch. We've looked on it with envy for years, and were delighted when a few of the plants nearest our yard migrated over the lot line and began to grow in our garden. This summer they even produced berries for the first time. B would bring them in a cup at a time, happily snacking on them.

And then last weekend our neighbor invited us to wade into her patch and pick as many as we liked. "I'm tired of picking them," she said. So tonight B hung a basket around her neck, braved the mosquitoes for the better part of an hour, and brought this bounty back to the kitchen. She's soaking them for a while to encourage the little bugs to quit the scene. Sometime, maybe next weekend, these could become raspberry jam. Or a tart.

A weekend in the garden

B's been working happily in her garden nearly every daylight hour this weekend.

Would you like to see what she hath wrought?

Not quite as high as an elephant's eye

On the right, corn in the foreground, dill in the middle and garlic in the background.

On the left, onions in the foreground, potatoes in the background. I'm not sure what's in the middle.

You say poe tah toe

B brought in a pretty impressive crop of potatoes last year, and this year her garden gives every indication of a coming potato-y abundance once again. She's trying the straw method of hilling the plants this year, partly because that's what other gardeners swear by, but mostly because there's wasn't enough dirt in these rows to properly hill the plants.

Sun glowing through the pea pods growing along the fence line. B just loves peas! She was snacking on them on her lunch hour at her office desk when a coworker came by to ask her a question. Confronted by the sight of someone snacking on whole pea pods she staggered back and asked, "Just what are you eating?" Maybe if they came in a foil bag and were deep-fried they wouldn't seem so weird.

Finally! All the same color!

Today marked an important milestone in our never-ending project to repaint our home: The north wall of the house is all one color. None of the primer paint is visible!

The glare from the afternoon sun doesn't make it very easy to see, but the color we picked out, Cottage Red, is looking very nice now that I don't have to make a frame with my hands to block out the parts of the siding that weren't painted.

It's an ice cream maker ... duh!

My Darling B bought an Oster multi-speed food-chopper-upper with a half-dozen attachments back in nineteen eighty-something and, as far as I know, she's only ever used the blender.

But last week while trolling the many and varied offering on e-bay she went for this impulse purchase, an ice cream making attachment. Pour the cream and other ingredients into the central barrel, pack it with ice and salt (does anybody know what the salt's supposed to do?) around the sides, lock the cover down on the contraption and turn the motor on.

After about ten minutes of mixing she poured the nearly-finished ice cream into single-serving bowls and stacked them in the freezer. But she sampled a bit of the mix by licking the mixing paddles clean with her tongue, making happy yummy sounds all the while. How could it be anything but delicious? It was cream and strawberries!

She could hardly wait to scoop a bit out this morning to see how it turned out. And what do you know? It was ice cream!

My Darling B's Garden

Peas marching along the fence line of My Darling B's garden.

She planted them some weeks ago and already some (not in this photo) are beginning to blossom, which makes B squeal with delight in anticipation of fresh peas for the kitchen.

A Weekend Made For Gardening

Even with the rain we've had, it's been just about the perfect weekend for gardening.

My Darling B's been out in it all day today, weeding, planting, tilling and watering, to say nothing of how much mud she's tracked into the house.

This photo unfortunately can't show you much. You'll simply have to take my word for it that there are legions of onions, tomatoes, peas, lettuce and broccoli marching across these fields. To the left, just in front of B, you can make out a small portion of this year's crop of garlic, almost as high as B's waist and growing higher every day.

First Batch

If the recipe I followed doesn't fail me, it'll be dandelion wine in six to twelve months. We have a lot of dandelions, so we figured we ought to make good use of at least some of them. We had to pick and de-petal probably five hundred dandelion blossoms to make the gallon you see here.

I pitched the yeast into this batch last night and fermentation's already begun, so it's off to a good start. Too bad we have to wait so long to see if it works out. Meantime, we're planning our next batch, so we'll have more than one gallon jug waiting to be sampled come the snows of November.

Not looking forward to plucking all those tiny little petals off again, though.

Weekend visit to the farmer's market

My Darling B hasn't even begun to plant tomatoes in her garden, but there are plenty to be had at the Dane County Farmer's Market.

Flowers around the yard

We have wood violets in our lawn. Not sure how they got there; like the Creeping Charlie and the Begonias, we inherited them when we bought the house. They only last for a week or so in the spring but they sure are pretty.

Sign of Spring: B's in the garden

My Darling B finally got some time to take her roto-tiller into the garden after work today and get almost half the plot turned over, while the dandelions looked on and trembled.

Those guys knew what they were talking about

"The violent destruction of life and property incident to war, the continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they at length become willing to run the risk of being less free."

Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #8

Our First Trip To The Market This Season

My Darling B hands over the veggies she's selected for purchase at the Dane County Farmer's Market.

The market had beautiful weather for its first day back on the square. B has been counting the days for its return since about Christmas.

Family Night with the O-Folk

Just so it's not all about plumbing and painting, here's My Darling B making Philly cheese steak sandwiches for dinner. They were awesome!

Adventures In Plumbing

My Darling B caught me seated before the kitchen plumbing as I was putting a new blade in my hacksaw.

"Oh-oh, it's time for the cursing to start!" she observed.

"Can't do it without lots of cursing," I answered, and got to work.

Adventures In Plumbing

Here's what I was finally getting around to fixing: I cobbled together this drain pipe from pieces I had on hand when I discovered that I wouldn't be able to install the sink disposal, as I thought I could when I put in the new sink back in December.

Although the drain worked fine, but My Darling B wanted her disposal once again. My task was to figure out how to give her one.

Adventures In Plumbing

And here's why I was unable to attach the disposal in the first place: The sink's drain ended up directly over the sewer pipe, which sticks out from the wall so far that the butt-end of the disposal would be in the same spot, spatially, that the sewer pipe is now occupying. So I had to cobble together the Rube Goldberg drain pipe while I mustered the motivation to do what had to be done.

Today, I finally had my motivation ready to do the job.

Adventures In Plumbing

I decided the best fix was to saw off the end of the sewer pipe, leaving about two inches still sticking out from the wall.

There's probably a good reason for leaving so much pipe sticking out. If you know anything about plumbing, you're probably wincing right now, thinking, "Don't do it!" Well, it's too late. I know nothing about plumbing and I'm not calling a plumber to fix this thing.

As you can see, I had a bit of a problem finding the room to get in there to do the job. I had to knock out a partition, then ask My Darling B to pull all the mixing bowls out of the cupboard because by this time my hands were covered in muck. Finally, I yanked a shelf out and crawled into the cupboard so I had the reach and the angle I needed to hack away at the pipe.

After working behind a desk for three years, I've gotten flabby and have no stamina for this kind of thing any more. It took me three-quarters of an hour to saw that damned pipe off. The last quarter-inch took at least fifteen minutes. If I ever have to do this again, I'm going to put in a request with the chief financial officer to buy the power tool that does this.

Adventures In Plumbing

I had planned to reuse the old disposal. It seemed to work just fine, but its butt end was so big that the base of it still crowded up against the sewer pipe even after I cut the end of the pipe short.

I would have to either cut some more off the sewer pipe, or I could drive down to the hardware store to see if they had a smaller unit. Hmmm. That's a tough one.

This unit was a little bit smaller, and it was made in the USA. All the rest were made in China. I've heard the Chinese have fallen on hard times over there, but so have we, and I'd rather keep Americans employed, or whoever it is in America that's making these things. Damn, got up on my soap box without even noticing. Sorry about that.

The butt end of this unit still crowded the sewer pipe, but there was enough flex in the rubber adapter to make room for the disposal.

Just FYI: I managed to get through this entire project without cussing, a first for me.

Pedaling Through Monona

On my morning pedal through Monona I spotted this lakeside home. With its second story and guest house on the shore it must've been considered big in its day, but it's receded down the ranks to become a quaint little cottage. Sandwiched on either side by bulked-out lakeside homes, the day when a buyer looking to build his trophy home and sees this as his teardown cannot be too far in the future.

Seth Thomas 1960 mantle clock

The nifty old Seth Thomas mantle clock I picked up this morning at St Vincent de Paul's thrift shop.

For a 40-year-old cheap electric clock it's in remarkably good condition, except that I can't get the motor to run, which has a bit of a negative impact on a clock's usefulness.

With luck I can find a replacement. I don't want to replace the movement because that would mean losing the chimes.

Seth Thomas 1960 mantle clock

This is the balky motor that keeps my nifty old clock from running. It defies all my efforts to break it down. I don't think it's made to be taken apart at all, just thrown out & replaced, but I don't know what to search for as it has no identifying marks other than the legend, "Made in Canada."

I've been promising My Darling B a new shelf for her photos ever since we moved in. She had a pair of store-bought shelves before, but they were just awful so I stuffed them into a corner of the basement where even I can't find them. Then I procrastinated for almost three years.

But I finally bought the lumber for a new set of shelves two weeks ago, cut them, sanded them and fixed the parts together. I'd been waiting for a warm weekend to stain them, so I could open the windows, but weather that's warm enough for that doesn't seem to be forthcoming, so I just went ahead and did it. The fumes weren't as bad as I thought ... or maybe they were, and I'm too brain-damaged to realize it.

Worse Than Useless

A work bench that's cluttered with junk is worse than no bench at all. I don't have places to put a lot of the little junk, though, a problem I dealth with this morning.

I got a few of these at the hardware store months ago, to try them out. They're handy because I can throw stuff in them, I can easily see what's in each one, and they clip to hangers on the wall so I can take them down to use them, or to rearrange them.

Since they worked so well, I went back to the store this morning and bought more. Didn't quite count all my fingers, though, and shorted myself one hanger and two bins.

Much better.

Now I can stain the shelves I started working on for My Darling B last week. Or the week before. It all sort of blurs together after a while.

We woke to find a fresh flocking of new-fallen snow had transformed our yard in the night.

Fresh snow highlights the milkweed pods.

Boo sneakes up onto the dinner table by taking a shortcut underneath a folded newspaper.

On the Shelf

Trying to improve the storage available in our tiny kitchen, I finally finished this shelf by staining it and installing it today.

It came together almost exactly as I imagined it would, with just two flaws easily visible: The grain of the closest bracket is vertical, while the others are horizontal, and there's a gap in the shelf under the third bracket that's wider than the one between Letterman's front teeth.

But it looks pretty good otherwise, and holds all our pitchers and a few other odds and ends. I have to admit I'm well chuffed with the results.

Lazy Sunday

"What are you going to do today?"

Hmmm. Curl up on the bed and nap sounds like a good answer. Curl up on the sofa with a book sounds almost as good.

Lap Cat

Boo doesn't eat bananas, but she just loves to snap at the peels when they do that dangly thing right in front of her.

This is her favorite spot, first thing in the morning.