A Borrowed Recipe for Rosemary Parmesan Chicken

You may remember my very blackened Spanish chicken from about a month ago.  It was flavorful but not very pretty. Recently, Ann, from On Sutton Place, posted a recipe for a different kind of baked chicken.  I felt a little trepidation, but hers looked scrumptious, so I felt like I should give it a try.  I'm so glad I did.  As she says, it is "truly a one-dish wonder."  Rosemary Parmesan Chicken, where have you been all my life?  Please stop by her blog and check out the recipe (and the rest of her blog, for she is one talented lady).

The recipe couldn't be simpler.  I followed it pretty much to the letter only I used fresh garlic instead of garlic powder. With rosemary from the garden, bread crumbs made from potato rolls, and paired with a salad of mixed tomatoes and basil, it was delectable.  Please click here to go to On Sutton Place for the recipe.

Good-bye Old Friend; Hello Sleek New Friend

Well, I finally did it.  I dumped an old friend.  After nearly 24 years, we'd been through a lot together, but he just wasn't holding up his end anymore.  So it was good-bye Old Electrolux.

Faithful Old Electrolux

My husband and I bought the vacuum cleaner as our mutual gift on the first Christmas after we got married.  Old Electrolux was sleek and powerful in those days.  It was a huge step up from my old round Hoover.  But things changed.  Old Electrolux just wasn't picking up like he used to.  His days were numbered.  I started scoping out hot new vacuums online.  Then Miele caught my eye.  Sleek, compact, and powerful.  I'd found my new friend.  So I put Old Electrolux in the trunk and dropped him off at Goodwill.  I felt a little sad about it.  Still, maybe he can be rehabilitated and someone else will befriend him.

Sleek New Miela Callisto

How do I like the new Miele Callisto?  It has been an adjustment, but so far so good.  It is powerful yet much quieter than my old vacuum cleaner.  I like that three of the most commonly used attachments are stored right in the canister, and I have found the suction control very useful.  I turn the suction to low and am able to vacuum cloth lampshades without worrying about damaging them.  The canister is lighter weight than the Electrolux because it is plastic.  I do wonder if it will be as durable as the old metal machine.

See the hair?

What don't I like?  I wish it had come with two wands.  I would rather snap off the whole wand to change heads rather than reach down to detach the head.  Depending how expensive it is, I may purchase a second wand.  Also, the bags seem a little small. We produce a lot of dirt around here, and I think we'll go through bags pretty quickly. (Yes, I'm looking at you, Alfie!)  My biggest gripe, though, is the plastic canister I just praised for being lightweight.  It develops a static charge or whatever, and dog hair clings to the bottom.  That means I have to frequently spend time vacuuming off my vacuum cleaner.

All in all, though, I am happy with my new friend, Miela.  Which is a good thing, because Miela is pricey.  I just hope he's worth it.

Note: This is my honest opinion.  You all know Miela, the company, doesn't know I exist and did not ask me to review their vacuum cleaner or compensate me in any way.  If anyone from Miele is reading, however, I wouldn't say no to some free vacuum cleaner bags!

Misadventures in Painting

My husband was out of town this past weekend, so I decided it would be a great opportunity to repaint his office and the attached sitting room.  This space used to be an apartment.  The second floor was expanded during the Depression to add on this space which, when you take out the bathroom (I showed its renovation last February), is a kind of funky L-shape.  The section that is now an office used to be a wee kitchen.

Right after the tenant moved out in 1996.  The door beside the sink leads to the tiny bathroom.

After the tenant moved out, we took out the kitchen, stripped some of the woodwork, changed the light fixtures, replaced the linoleum with cork flooring, and put in new (now old) carpet.  For some time, I've been wanting to replace the carpet again, but can't do that until after repainting.  Anyway, this seemed like the time.

Part of the trouble is there is way too much heavy furniture in that room -- a set of three wood lockers we use to store DVDs and tapes, three antique armchairs, two bookcases, a heavy oak desk, an oak filing cabinet, a TV, and a couple of small side tables.  Since I couldn't move all this by myself, especially through the narrow doorway into the hall, I dragged it all to the center and covered it with plastic.  That seemed like a clever idea until I found that there were areas along the perimeter that were too tight to set up a ladder, so I had to paint some parts of the ceiling perched on a ladder unsteadily propped against the wall.

Another way I was being clever was by using paint we already had.  I'm all about saving money when I can.  I had almost a gallon of ceiling paint, which I managed to eke out to cover the whole ceiling.  I thought.  Then Saturday evening as I was taping the woodwork in preparation for Sunday's wall painting, I noticed a good sized area I had missed.  So I scurried off to Lowe's to buy another gallon of the exact same Valspar ceiling paint.  I'll just touch up the missed area and some other "thin" areas, I thought.  The gosh darn ceiling paint isn't the same!  Can you see it in the picture below?  It depends on the light and the angle, but I can clearly see the areas I touched up.  Sigh.  So there is more ceiling painting to be done.

For the walls, well, I found an almost full gallon of Sherwin Williams paint in the basement clearly marked "office."  It looked a little different to me, but I figured it must dry a bit darker.  After seeing how the ceiling needed more than a gallon, I knew I'd need more paint, so on that trip to Lowe's, I also stopped at Sherwin Williams, paint in hand, to ask for another gallon of the same thing.  They no longer make the EverClean paint the young man said.  He was amazed that the paint was still good.  In fact, all three employees (it was dead in the store) came over to look at the paint and discuss the options.  I asked for a comparable paint in the same color.  No problem, and the paint was 40% off, my lucky day -- until he rang it up.  $44 dollars for one gallon of paint (at 40% off!) and an edger.  So Sunday, I cracked open my extremely valuable Dover White paint from Sherwin Williams and, after edging, realized it was the color from two paintings ago.  I'm thinking the paint was from 1996.  No wonder the guys had been amazed that it was still good; they were hardly more than toddlers when that paint was mixed.  So the paint is now not the warm, pale-butter-white I wanted, but a generic white-white.  Oh well, at least it will be clean and fresh.  If I ever get the room completed, I'll show the end result.

Like Traveling Pants, Only Not Wearable

Late last week I received a large envelope in the mail.  Inside was a notebook.  It was the Traveling Notebook from Chantal Loves Vintage.  Chantal is a wonderfully wacky Brit who, well, loves vintage and blogs about vintage goods, classic movie stars, as well as other things, like her travels to France.  A while back, Chantal got the idea for a notebook that would travel around the world being filled in by bloggers and others.  "Sign me up," I said.  And then the notebook arrived, a blank page waiting just for me.  I'm not going to lie, there was pressure to do something creative and awesome.  Not being a creative, awesome gal, I settled for doing the best I could.  What a surprise -- my page involves yarn and food.  Here's a little peek.

To read more about the Traveling Notebook, check out Chantal's blog.  I can't say for sure, but it might not be too late to get in on the fun.  As for the notebook, I put some traveling pants on that baby, and it's on its way to the east coast of the U.S.  Happy trails, little notebook!

Vintage Photos

My daughter and I were sorting through old photographs during her recent visit.  We had a drawer full of photos from my husband's family that needed to be identified and sorted.  That led our daughter to decide to "borrow" a few old family photos and scan some others to create a photo wall in her apartment.  I thought I'd share a couple of the photos that she scanned.  There's something about the utter seriousness of vintage childhood portraits.

This picture is of my grandfather with his sister and older brother.  His brother looks so intense it makes me wonder what the photographer had said to them.

The second photo is of my husband's great-grandfather and his sister.  There were two portraits made the same day. This is the "fun" photo of them with their toys.

Late Summer Rambles

This morning, Alfie and I went on one of our rambles around the prairie and the countryside.  I've written about the prairie before (here and here), but today, rather than our usual circuit, Alfie and I went to the "dog prairie."  The dog prairie is the section where dogs are allowed off leash, in contrast to the main prairie where everyone lets their dogs run illegally.  The dog prairie is a much newer section which is being restored to prairie from corn fields.  It shows.  It's basically a flat field with mown paths.

Views of the dog prairie

Still, Alfie had a good time, running and sniffing, wild and free.  And while many plants were still in bloom, like goldenrod and sunflowers, there were others beginning to go to seed.  I love the texture of the dried seed heads.

Coneflower and Black-eyed Susans (I think)

Driving home, we took a roundabout way down country roads through the fields.  Around here the main crops are corn, soybeans, and wind.  There's something great about driving down a gravel road on a cool, sunny morning, windows down, through acres of corn with huge wind turbines stretched out like a row of sentinels.

And then a gorgeous red barn before turning for home.

Can This Tree Be Saved? Yes!

One of the benefits of living in an old (and I mean old) neighborhood is the mature trees.  When we bought our house eighteen years ago, one of the reasons was the settled feel of the neighborhood with its huge trees and established (and sometimes shabby) shrubs and landscaping.  Sadly, since we've lived here, three immediate neighbors have lost large trees.  Two to storms and one to a garage addition.  We have two large trees in our front yard -- a pin oak and a hackberry.  The hackberry, while not a particularly gorgeous tree, shades the front of our house in summer and provides a visual anchor for our yard.

2012

Quite a few years back, our hackberry lost a large limb that grew toward the house.  The limb was as big around as many good sized tree trunks.  It did a little damage to the gutter around the porch, but nothing serious.  It was a bad loss, but we knew the tree could survive.  My husband was pretty militant about it in fact.  The tree must be saved. Then in 2008, another gigantic limb came off, pulling much of the bark from the side of the tree.  I figured the tree was a goner.  How could it survive with large chunks missing on two sides?

2008

The man from the tree service came, cleared the limb, and cleaned up the wound.  He said we didn't need to take the whole tree down right away.  I think he was afraid my husband would start weeping openly if he said the tree had to go. We decided to leave the tree and see what happened.  What happened?  A little regrowth around the wound and ants. Periodically my husband would drag me out there and say, "See? It's regrowing."  Yeah, okay.

The current state of the 2008 wound, with a
climbing hydrangea about to overtake it.  The
first wound is completely covered by the vine.

This summer I noticed some fungus growing at the top of the wound. This was a couple of weeks after a tree at the end of the block came down and knocked out power to the neighborhood for a whole day.  I started to worry about that darn hackberry.  I suggested calling in an arborist.  The husband resisted.  He was reluctant to hear that the tree would have to come down.  That it was a danger to passersby and the front of our house.

But one day, I went ahead and called an arborist in a nearby city.  He came by very early on a recent Saturday morning.  We prepared ourselves to hear the worst.  But lo and behold, he said he did not recommend removing the tree or even any of its branches.  Maybe a little trimming in a few years to take out some dead wood if we wanted to.  I was very surprised and also relieved.  My husband?  It was the best gift he ever received, to hear that his beloved hackberry was spared.  At least he had enough dignity not to do a happy dance right there in the front yard.

Spanish Chicken or Blackened Mess?

By accident the other day, I happened to catch a little of Nigella Lawson's TV show.  She was making a super easy oven-baked Spanish chicken.  I found the recipe online and tried it out last night.  Before baking it looked gorgeous.

After baking, not so much.

Before dinner, I told my husband I would have to blog about this chicken as a major FAIL.  He insisted that it was not a failure at all.  Turns out he likes onion and garlic blackened in olive oil.  Actually the chicken and potatoes were quite tasty, and even the chorizo was good if one could look past the heavily blackened exterior.

I'm pretty sure the finished dish is not supposed to look like this.  I'm not sure what went wrong.  I did trim some of the fat from the chicken thighs before cooking.  I also used Mexican chorizo rather than Spanish.  It was a soft chorizo with no casing.  Maybe that's why it charred.  The onions? I don't know.  I cut them in fair sized pieces.  Maybe next time -- and, yes, I think there will be a next time -- I'll lower the temperature a bit.  The only changes I made from Nigella's recipe were to reduce everything (I used four thighs rather than twelve), lightly salt the chicken, and I added a couple of grinds of black pepper over the whole thing and  three large cloves of garlic, peeled and quartered.  Click here to go to Nigella's recipe.  Don't judge her recipe by my blackened mess.

Still Working Through "200 Crochet Blocks"

Now that I finished my oversized crochet baby blanket, it's time for me to get serious about my other crochet project, the 200 Crochet Blocks for Blankets, Throws and Afghans sampler throw that I am making for our daughter.  I've completed seven more blocks since my last update.

Top row: #55 Centered Square, #47 Queen Anne's Lace, #88 Edwardian Fancy, # 173 Big Round.
Bottom row: #161 Daisy Chain, # 86 Sunray, # 17 Alternate Bobbles, #28 Christmas Rose, # 38 Dahlia.

I had the most fun making the Alternate Bobbles.  I have never been able to knit bobbles for some reason, and I was pleased to find out how easy they are to make in crochet.  Love that!  I think there may be a crochet bobble scarf in my future.

On a separate, Blogger note: I am quickly running out of free space on Picasa.  In fact, I had to go in and delete some unused photos from my web album in order to upload these pictures.  Anyone have good advice about how you dealt with this?  Do I just have to suck it up and purchase additional space?  I am super cheap, so I hope not.

Aug. 29 post script:
I am trying out Photobucket as a replacement for Picasa, so I am adding in this photo of the Dahlia square to see how it goes.  The square reminds me of commercials I used to see for Outback Steak House's blooming onion.  Photobucket allows you to store photos and then upload them with the url.  So far, this seems like a free solution.

Put away that hoe! Grilled zucchini boats

"The first zucchini I ever saw, I killed it with a hoe."  -- columnist John Gould in Monstrous Depravity: A jeremiad and a lamentation [about things to eat], 1963

Zucchini can take over a garden, and maybe some gardeners feel like taking a hoe to them on occasion.  When I was growing up, if a zucchini hid under the leaves and got too big to suit my mother (and by too big I mean anything over five or six inches long), she would pull it off and chuck it aside to let it rot in the garden.  Let's face it, zucchini are so prolific that gardeners can get pretty cavalier with them.  

We don't have enough space or sun to grow zucchini at our house, so I cherish zukes when I get good ones.  Last week I showed you the zucchini I got at the farmer's market.  Today I'll show you what I did with them.  My sister-in-law sent me this great grilled zucchini boat recipe.  If you have a zucchini-filled garden, it'll have you saying "whoa" to the hoe!  

This was cooked directly on the grill for great grill marks.

This recipe could be changed up almost any way you like.  You could make it spicy, add garlic or olives.  I've even seen similar recipes with bacon or sausage.  We liked it just like this, as a side dish.  It makes a beautiful presentation.

Grilled Zucchini Boats

2 medium zucchini (6-7 inches long), ends trimmed

3/4 cup finely shredded Parmesan cheese

2 plum or large cherry tomatoes, seeded and chopped

1/2 cup loosely packed fresh basil leaves, chopped

3-4 green onions, thinly sliced

2 tablespoons bread Italian crumbs

1/2 teaspoon (or several grinds with pepper mill) black pepper

Olive oil

2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

Heat grill to medium-high heat.  Cut zucchini in half lengthwise.  Scoop out centers to for a 1/2-inch- thick shell.

For filling:  Chop the zucchini center flesh.  Combine with 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, tomatoes, basil, onions, bread crumbs and black pepper. 

Brush cut side of zucchini lightly with olive oil.  You can salt them lightly if desired.  Place zucchini, cut side down, on grill either directly or in a grill basket.  Grill, covered, for 6-8 minutes until tender crisp.  Check occasionally to prevent burning.

Turn zucchini over and fill the wells evenly with the filling.  Sprinkle on remaining ¼ cup Parmesan cheese and parsley.  

Filled and ready to go back to the grill.

Return to grill and cook, covered, for additional 4-5 minutes or until cheese is melted and filling is heated through.   Remove from grill.  If not using a basket, remove carefully using a large spatula.

Click for Printable recipe

A blanket for my baby

Back in November, I mentioned an afghan I was crocheting from a baby blanket pattern. After a year of working on it on and off, I finally finished it!  I wanted to complete it in time for my "baby" to take it along to his new apartment.  He came home yesterday to steal a rug for his living room.  I was all "Your blanket's done!" and he was all "It looks great. Nice stripes.  I'm not taking it right now."  Did you hear the pop that was my balloon being burst? Or maybe it was just the hiss of a slow leak of the air being let out. Regardless of the letdown of not hearing, "I've been hoping you'd get it done! I can't wait to take it with me!" I am happy to have completed the afghan even if it is still here instead of warming up the college apartment.

It is quite a large afghan as you can see.  The "baby" is 6'3" and wanted the blanket to be big enough to stretch from toes to chin.  Not sure if it's quite that long, but it's a big one.  And heavy.  It weighs about six pounds.  It's nice to finish a big project, but the husband is a little envious of the blanket, so who knows?  Maybe I'll have to start another one and, if I'm industrious, get it finished before we are shipped off to the old folks home.

Summer Bounty

It's the middle of August, and I finally made it to our local farmer's market.  Corn and zucchini from just down the road to go along with peaches our daughter picked up at another farmer's market.  And that prize tomato?  It's from my very own plant!  Looks like there's some fresh and healthy eating in my future.

I'm linking to God's Growing Garden's Themed Blog and Shop Hop.

Cat Wars: It's On

"Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose." -- Garrison Keillor

Cats.  Let me preface this post by making one thing clear.  I don't hate cats.  Much.  No, no, I really don't hate cats, but sometimes I strongly dislike them.  The ones I dislike are the feral cats that populate my neighborhood.  

K.C. taken through my office window

We live in an older neighborhood where a number of the houses are rentals.  It's not that the neighborhood has recently fallen on hard times, it has been this way for more than 100 years.  We live near a university, and some of the homes in our neighborhood were built as student boarding houses or supper clubs.  Then others have been converted from single family to apartments over the years.  It's a higgledy-piggledy neighborhood where homeowners, students, renters, professional people, hippies, professors, and sometimes borderline crazy people all live cheek to jowl on tree-lined streets.

And maybe it's not the renters/students who are to blame, but we have a population of feral cats.  These are not strays.  They are wild, and will not let anyone get within five feet of them (and that's for the tamer ones).  One of the neighbors feeds them I believe.  I know they used to feed them and were trying in vain to tame some of them.  Some of the cats have lived here for years, and we know them well by sight.  There is one fluffy gray and white cat that we first saw as a kitten under my husband's car.  He tried to entice it out with food and milk, but no doing.  Still, we have a fondness for that cat and it seems to tolerate us as well.

I'm not wild about the cat poop in my lawn and flower beds, but there's something much worse than that.  Murder.  The cats that really get me are the killer cats.  I know it's a cat's nature to hunt, but there is one Killer Cat (K.C.) who sits under my office window and periodically leaps up and tries to snatch birds right off the feeder.  He has succeeded, too. It's horrible to be sitting at my desk and hear a sudden squawk and look out to see a bird being torn to shreds.  I seem to have solved that problem by laying rose canes and other thorny branches under the feeder.  The birds and squirrels don't mind them, but K.C. stays back a bit.

But now K.C. is stalking a bunny rabbit.  A sweet little bunny rabbit! We haven't had rabbits in our neighborhood for quite a few years.  (Gosh, I wonder why?)  But just this summer a little bunny has ventured back.  I've seen it twice. Yesterday evening I also saw it being stalked by K.C.  I ran outside and chased the cat away but, of course, he came right back.  So I looked online for ways to deter cats, and a beautiful solution appeared.

I dug one of the kids' old Super Soakers out of the garage and filled it up.  The next time I saw the cat, I grabbed my water gun and headed out, shooting streams of water at the fleeing feline.  Then I circled the house to see if there were other cats lurking in the bushes.  I felt like John Wayne in some war movie.  This morning K.C. was back, sitting near the feeder in what used to be a fern bed (until the drought).  I crept out and got within eight to ten feet and let fly a stream of water.  K.C. fled across the street to the safety of the neighbor's yard.

K.C. in the neighbor's yard taken with extreme magnification.  Look at him, trying to look so innocent.

I have no idea if this will really keep the cat out of our yard, but it's worth a try.  Doesn't hurt the cat and makes me feel a little like Rambo.  (If Rambo carried a yellow and green plastic water gun.)

Orange Glow: Yummy Carrot Muffins

One summer day when our daughter was about three years old, we were at the city pool where we met a little girl the same age.  Her mother, Mary, was an editor, like me, and we became fast friends.  The girls played together and trick or treated together even though we lived across town from each other.  Mary introduced me to a natural foods buying group, and we traded recipes and brainstormed ways to get the kids to eat healthy.  Sadly, Mary and I eventually lost touch after my family moved away from that little town.  But I have never lost touch with her carrot muffin recipe.  These muffins have been a hit with my family these twenty years.  They always tasted great, but sometimes turned out a little sad and droopy looking, not the tall, gorgeous muffins that look pretty in addition to tasting great.  I've tweaked the recipe in various ways over the years to reduce the fat and so on, and recently, I finally got it right.  Yessireebob, the muffins still taste wonderful, but now turn out pretty, too.

Muffins, milk, and the newspaper equals one good breakfast, topped with walnuts or plain.  Either way is tasty!

Carrot Muffins

1 1/2 cups flour (1/2 cup of this can be whole wheat flour)

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 cup brown sugar

2 eggs (beaten)

3/4 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

1 3/4 cup finely shredded carrots

In large bowl, sift together flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, and cinnamon.  Mix in brown sugar.  Add eggs.  While mixing, slowly add oil.  Beat until smooth.  Mix in nuts and carrots.  If desired, reserve some nuts to sprinkle on top of muffins.

Bake at 350 degrees F. for 20-30 minutes.

Printable recipe

The Best Fried Chicken

Fried chicken: everyone has his or her own idea of a "best" fried chicken.  I have had lots of good fried chicken -- the bone-in, skin-on fryer pieces my mother used to cook in her electric skillet, the tender parboiled and fried chicken my Aunt Irene used to make -- who can say which is really the best?  What I can say is that this is the best fried chicken that comes out of my own kitchen.  A tender, buttermilk marinated piece of chicken joy.

There is no real recipe for this dish.  I use boneless, skinless breast meat which I usually cut in half through the thickest part to make each piece thinner and a little more uniform.  Trim off all fat, pierce each piece all over with a fork, and soak, fully immersed, in a buttermilk bath for at least four hours.  If you want a little more zip, you can add a splash or two of Tabasco sauce to the buttermilk.  Dredge each piece in salt-and-pepper-seasoned flour and fry in hot vegetable oil, turning only once.  I usually dredge in the flour twice, letting the chicken rest just a couple of minutes in between.

Any time, any place, winter or summer.  Love this chicken.

Holy Toledo

Botanical Garden glass flower

When you hear "Toledo, Ohio," what do you picture?  A Rust Belt city that has seen better days?  Well, okay, there might be some truth to that.  But Toledo, the Glass City, is much more than an industrial town.  While a number of giants of the glass industry -- Owens-Illinois, Owens Corning, Libbey Glass -- originated in Toledo, art glass is just as important.  The Toledo Museum of Art, with its cool, modern Glass Pavilion, houses one of the most comprehensive glass collections in the world.  Furthermore, it was in Toledo in 1962 that American studio art glass really began.  It was a happy coincidence of a glassblowing workshop at the Toledo Museum of Art led by Harvey Littleton, a ceramics instructor at the University of Wisconsin, and a glass engineer and innovator named Dominick Labino.

We were recently in Toledo for a couple of days and stopped by the Museum of Art.  My husband grew up in Toledo, so we have been to the Museum many times, but a special treat this time was "Color Ignited: Glass 1962-2012," an interesting exhibit.  It took us a while to work our way back to the Wolfe Gallery, where the exhibit was housed.  I mean, you can't just rush past the Impressionists, Rodin statues, and the Cloister!  I don't think I was supposed to take pictures in the Wolfe Gallery since it was a special exhibit, but I did snap this one before I remembered.

"Bowl: Citron Vanishing Gladiator" by Stephen Rolfe Powell

Glass and art also play a part at the Toledo Botanical Garden, still called Crosby Gardens by the locals.  The Botanical Garden was started when George P. Crosby, a businessman and realtor, donated 20 acres for a park in 1964.  The Garden now covers more than 60 acres.  And not all of the flowers are alive!  Check out these amazing larger-than-life glass poppies outside the artist demonstration buildings and shops.

In addition to the art outside in the gardens, there is also a Lithophane Museum on the grounds.  A lithophane is a delicate artform that reveals its three-dimensional beauty when back lit.  Plaster molds are made from beeswax carvings which are then cast, usually in porcelain.  The picture below is a lithophane lamp.  The lighter areas were more deeply carved to allow more light through.  Imagine the skill the carver would need to create all the detail.

Of course, the Botanical Garden also features some living things as well.

I believe this is a carpenter bee.  It was at least an inch long!

So there's just a little taste of Toledo.  And now, this fat lady doesn't sing, she doesn't even talk, but if she could, she might tell you to check out Toledo for yourself.

"Woman with the Birds" by Joe Ann Cousino

What Says Summer to You?

What is the essence of summer?  Spending time on a lake, watching fireflies, mowing the grass . . . .  All these say "summer" but, for me, food is one of the most notable marks of summer.  Burgers on the grill, fresh sweet corn on the cob, luscious vine-ripened tomatoes, and fruit salad.

When I was a kid, my aunt and uncle often hosted family picnics.  They lived at the old "home place" (although the old home had been sold and moved and they built a new house), and we ate outside under the big oak trees near where the barn used to be.  I come from big families on both sides.  This was my mother's family.  There were eight children in her family, and many of them would come to the picnics.  Looking back, there was something comforting about the predictability of those picnics.  The hostess usually made chess pie, my childless aunt and uncle always brought a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, at least one person made potato salad, and there was almost always watermelon.

My favorite fruit salad mixture -- watermelon, strawberries, and seedless grapes.

Watermelon is my ultimate summer food.  I have loved it all my life.  I remember eating it in the yard when I was about six years old with my friend and neighbor, Tracy, whom my dad called Betty because he said she looked like a girl he used to know.  Tracy was a year younger than I was and kind of shy, so she never told my dad he couldn't call her Betty.  I think she kind of liked it anyway.

We also had occasional picnics at home -- cook-outs.  We had a spindly three-legged charcoal grill. No one we knew had a Weber in those days and, while the internet tells me the gas grill was invented in 1960, in the mid '60s, I'd never heard of such a thing.  Nope, we had a shallow pan grill -- at least until my mother burned it up by building a wood fire in it one time so all the neighborhood kids could toast marshmallows.  We ate on a fabulous redwood deck that had built-in benches all around as well as the ultimate 1960s wrought iron table and chairs.

These days, we still cook outside as much as possible during the summer, only now we use a gas grill for instant heat and easy clean-up.  Our menu has expanded as well.  We still grill burgers, hot dogs and steaks, but also chicken, bratwurst, pork loin, fish, and shish kabobs.  And when I can find flank steak, I like to make this grilled flank with spicy corn relish.  Boy, this would have knocked their socks off under the oak trees back in the day.

Full disclosure: When I took my plate outside to take the picture in sunlight, another sign of summer came along. I certainly remember these pesky guys from my childhood picnic days!

The flank steak recipe comes from Country Living.  It is super easy, just a marinade of olive oil, Worcestershire sauce, and garlic.  You can find the recipe on their website.  I changed their relish recipe slightly to make it less spicy and more colorful.  The original is here.  My version is below.

Corn Relish

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 cup minced onion

1 cup chopped colorful bell peppers

1 cup frozen corn kernels

Sprinkle of salt, to taste

Couple of grinds of pepper mill

1/2-3/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

3 tablespoons lemon juice

1 tablespoon honey

Heat oil in non-stick skillet over medium heat.  Add onion and peppers, cook about two minutes, stirring frequently.  Add corn, salt, pepper and cayenne, and cook until vegetables are slightly soft, about 4-5 minutes.  Add lemon juice and honey, stir to combine and dissolve honey.  Remove from heat.  Serve at room temperature.

Printable recipe

Linking to Mercantile Muse Get Your Party On: Gotta Have It/Gotta Blog It Link Up

Works in Progress

With this awful hot weather and lack of rain I haven't had a lot of gardening to do lately, so I've been working on some things indoors.

My big, horrible project is painting the last room in the basement.  When I say "room," don't get the idea that we have some kind of lovely finished basement.  Not at all.  We have a basement that serves strictly as a laundry room, storage, and my old darkroom (that I haven't used in years).  A basement with 100-plus-year-old stone and brick walls.  The walls need to be coated occasionally to help prevent the mortar from crumbling.  I have finally, after eighteen years in this house, gotten up the motivation to finish the final section.

The first step was decluttering.  I took apart an entire home gym, hauled it to my car, and had both the Salvation Army and the junk shop reject it.  Luckily, the metal scavengers took it from the curb.  I also emptied the husband's computer accessory closet -- 20-year-old software boxes (many empty), manuals for printers that are long gone, textbooks for software that is several generations outdated.  Then on to the fun part.  


And by fun part, I mean drudgery.  This job involves a LOT of shop vac use, wire brushing, more shop vac, filling small cracks and holes, more shop vac, painting with thick, gunky, stinky waterproofing paint - which seems to be the best thing for solidifying the mortar - and, for good measure, another round with the shop vac.  It is a slow project, partly because I work on it for a day or two and then take a couple of days off, but also because it all has to be brushed on by hand in order to cover the rough, pitted stones.  I don't have the words to describe just how yucky this job is, but I think the brand name of the paint -- UGL -- kind of sums up how I feel about it.

This is what I'm dealing with.

Coming along -- s l o w l y.

To take my mind off the horrors of DryLok, I have also been crocheting more squares from 200 Crochet Blocks for Blankets, Throws and Afghans by Jan Eaton.  The three newest squares are  Victorian Lace (#92, two hook difficulty), Kingcup (#95, three hook), and Spinner (#89, two hook).  I'm really liking the brighter colors in the last two squares.

I also began working on the shawlette I am making with the Alpandina yarn I received from the yarn swap I wrote about in June.  I still have a little ways to go before I get into the lace portion, but I like it so far.  The yarn feels fabulously soft. I am going a bit slow on this because every once in a while my center line gets off by a stitch and it has to be unworked.  I don't notice the problem for a while, so this usually involves taking out one to two complete rows. Confession:  I lack the confidence to undo my knitting mistakes if it's more than a couple of stitches, so I have to wait for my daughter to come home for a visit.  I'm sure she thinks I am incompetent, but she kindly fixes things so that I can continue.

Looks a little like a stingray.