This post is dedicated to the return of the crazy bitch who I love so dearly, Miss Hippy Jersey Devil. As Marlin said to Nemo (it's been a long week) You think you can do these things but you just can't, Nemo. You can't walk away from your loyal followers so get your little fishy butt back in the ocean. Let's pretend that made sense and move on.
I had a request - no, really - for more recipes on the blog and I was trying to be accommodating and take pictures, but I just went through my pics and honestly they're not that good. See?
This was something called "Lentil Butter" which, confusingly, contained no butter. It was a mix of beans and lentils that were soaked overnight, then mixed with carmelized onion, tomato, red curry, fresh ground ginger and s&p. Very tasty, but not very pretty
This was the bread I made to go with it. I'm trying to get rid of as many funky materials as I can from my kitchen - plastic, teflon, etc. and use my cast iron skillets exclusively. This was a basic french bread recipe cooked in the skillet, and it was oh-my-god amazing
But again, picture is not great. And yes my oven is honestly that in need of cleaning.
I was thinking it's time to switch up my profile picture so I looked through to see if there are any decent shots of me. The problem is, the only one who takes pictures of me are the Mister, and this is what he comes up with :
Do you see me?
Now I'm all the way in the picture but unfortunately I also look pregnant.
No makeup on after staying up til midnight playing Santa
Everyone wants a picture of themself eating breakfast with no bra on, miright ladies?
Ok there was one. I have to hand it to him. I won't mention my shiny forehead.
Remember mystery vine? The one that sprouted out of our compost bin and creeped through the fence and started growing all over my neighbor's yard? Because she is the nicest lady ever she didn't get upset, and actually said she was interested to see what it turned into. When it started sprouting pumpkins I told her she should of course keep whatever pumpkins she got, but she insisted that the girls should have them. For some reason the ones that grew on our side of the fence are a weird shape, kind of butternut squash/pumpkin hybrid, but hers were perfectly formed "faerie tale" pumpkins. Mooch was so excited to get to pick them. Who needs a pumpkin patch when you've got a compost bin??
I wanted a new fall wreath for the front door, but I'm picky. We've all seen some of the fall themed ones on Pinterest, and some are cute but some are just .... not me. Let's just say if it can be described as "cute" I'm not going to dig it. I had this simple wreath frame I picked up at The Thrift Store That Shall Not Be Named
I found fake leaves and yummy smelling potpourri at the Dollar Store. Brainstorm - some of the potpourri has interesting stuff in it, seedpods and herbs and such, that are really pretty, and this variety smells fall-y without being overpowering.
Of course I ended up being totally sucked in to the fall and Halloween decorations at the Dollar Store, which happens every year even though I swear this year will be different. I turned a corner, and lo and behold ...
Is there anyone out there who DOESN'T need about a million of these? I only got 2 and I'm kicking myself. I want to cover the front of my house in them.
The Mister came in and took a look and said jokingly, "Now you just need to put a 3rd eye on them!" and then saw how excited I got and immediately said, "That was a JOKE."
"But I'm so going to do that. Best idea ever. High five, craft buddy!"
"Don't do it. People already think you're a witch"
"Too late, seed of brilliance planted."
And after a night of wine consumption and burning my fingers - again- with hot glue and catching up on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills (and the horrible realization that I think I don't hate Camille so much now) this is the beast:
I love it. I have a Halloween sign that I put up every year that says "Don't Make Me Use My Flying Monkeys" with a pair of witch's boots underneath it, but I do not want to take this down.
I'm trying to harvest herbs and preserve them now. (In all my spare time. HA) I did pull up my basil plants the other day, and made vegan basil/chive pesto that is pretty amazing. My chives never flowered this year, which I think is because they were in too much shade, but I still have lots.
Guess who won't take off her Halloween costume?
I did not measure (I don't really, ever) but here is an approximation: Vegan Basil Chive Pesto Approx. 3 c of basil leaves A good handful of chives 1/4 c macadamia nuts 2 Tb pine nuts olive oil salt & pepper 1 clove garlic, crushed Place macadamia nuts and pine nuts in food processor and process until it resembles coarse flour. Add basil and chives, pulse until incorporated. Add olive oil (about 1-2 Tb) salt & pepper to taste, and crushed garlic clove, pulse until completely combined. And in closing, if you don't follow The Blogess, your life up until this moment has been completely wasted.
Little string bean. She certainly doesn't get this skinny-ness from me. So these would be my favorite pics of the week .... Least Favorite Thing, you ask?
Getting OLD
My elbow all of a sudden is all wonky if I type for too long. My knees get all jacked up when I run. And I woke up this morning feeling like I had been beaten - back sore, neck sore - and looked kind of like this:
I'm exaggerating, obviously. I was not wearing a cool sparkly tiara and I don't wear glasses.
F-ing aging, though - kiss my ass.
Song I Can't Stop Singing:
If I Had A Gun by Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds
Love, love, love. It's giving me an Oasis fix.
I Can't Stop Eating:
Greens. I'm experimenting with collard greens currently. I'm determined to find a vegetarian preparation for them that is just as satisfying as the ham-hock version. Stay tuned ...
I've also discovered Chia seeds. They are the highest source of Omega-3's for any plant source and high in protein. You can make chia pudding by soaking them in alt. milk with fruit - it's very filling, so make less than you think you should. I also mixed the seeds in with the girls couscous the last time I made it. Mooch: Mommy, what are these little brown things? Me: Faerie sprinkles. Mooch: Cool!
True story - my kids will eat anything if I put the word "faerie" in front of it. Mooch doesn't like taco shells, so I give her baby spinach and she rolls taco meat up in them and calls them "faerie sandwiches". Raw spinach. BOOM.
What I Made This Week:
Crap. OK I didn't take a picture, but in one afternoon - nay, in about 2 freakin hours - I made an entirely new garden bed by our driveway, made entirely from plants Home Despot had thrown away. 2 rose bushes, mums, a holly (it's an Oriental holly, non-native - but it was FREE!), tarragon, and shasta daisy.
Since I don't have pics of that though, here are pics of the seashell bouquet I made for my friends' wedding
(Ignore the kids crappy outdoor play table and the stained placemat - I was taking these to send to her in a rush. The three boutonierres are in front)
She lost her son at 16 to suicide. She started finding dimes all over the place and decided it was his way of telling her he was still there. To this day, whenever she finds a dime she says they're from him ... so me and another friend attached a dime from his birth year to the bottom of the bouquet.
She had a gorgeous small wedding at their river side cottage at sunset.
Rant Of the Week :
Ignorant hate mongers who start drama. I'll leave it at that, since I'm trying to release that and move on.
What I Have To Do This Week:
I should probably fold the 2 baskets of laundry in my living room. And maybe just for fun vacuum the floor, since we could reconstruct a scale model of our 100 lb dog out of the hair on the floor.
PS - Jury's still out on mystery insect, so feel free to add guesses!
I'm going to attempt to not comment on the weather, since we all know that it is hotter than satan's taint out there. 115 heat index here today.
What I will comment on is - despite the evidence right SMACK in front of their noses (aka, the burning hot steering wheel, all vegetation burnt, food prices soaring) people are still not standing up for our Earth. If I hear one more person deny global warming while sweat drips down the front of them I may have to re examine my "harm none" policy. The Mister and I were discussing this last night and he said despite recycling containers being placed around his work, some people don't use them "on principle".
"On what FUCKING principle would that be, other than being an assmonkey?" "Calm down. *I* use them. I'm just saying that some people don't, to make a point." "To make the point that their mothers should have drown them at birth? I'm not getting this." "You know how people are, they think if they vote Republican then they should be against all that, Obama, etc." "Do you shoot them? Or maybe just Taser them. One way or another, these people need the stupid knocked out of them." "Yes, I shoot them. For not recycling." "Well it would certainly start working on overpopulation"
It's true, we solve many a world problem in our little house.
Our little house. I'm trying to do grand things there. I need to work on the interior, to get it all Mama-fabulous, so when I'm holed up in there during the winter dreaming about my garden, I can at least do it in a pretty place. Mooch will be back from vacation tomorrow and while I have missed her terribly, as has Butterbean and Daddy, the feeling is not mutual. She could barely be convinced to come to the phone to talk to us, what with being on the boat within 5 ft of dolphins, swimming at the beach, and running my parents around like crazy. (SUCKAAAAHHHSSSS!!!) And ... she is coming back to ... drum roll please .... a completely re-vamped room!
OK, maybe not completely re-vamped - but I did paint one wall purple, her favorite color, and my artistically talented friend is coming over tonight to add a little flair to it. I also got a gauzy canopy for her bed, and painted the little chair to match her vanity, and did some other cute stuff. Pics to come soon. When I envision the rest of the house, I see this -
Sigh. One day. Until then I'm re-working rooms one by one, trying to breathe a little more life into them.
The Mister has developed some sort of allergy to eggs, we think. He has gotten violently ill the last 2 times he has had them, with me and the kids having the same eggs and feeling fine. Have you ever heard of someone developing a food allergy at 40? He has a doctors appointment next week to be referred to a gastroentorologist.
Oh, and these little bastards have found my squash
The lovely squash bug. I picked a zucchini the other day and it was covered with baby squash bugs, which made me shudder and squeal and throw the poor zucchini violently to the ground. Which of course made no sense and probably let the little buggers crawl over to the next squash and keep going. I'm not good at being surprised like that. *tangent time*
I had bought a bag of mulch at Home Despot and thrown it on the lawn next to the tree I was planning to mulch around until I got the kids to bed. Got the kids down to nap, and came out to start working. Picked up the bag of mulch and something fell off the back - a BABY BLACK SNAKE. It was dead, it's little head crushed - so I must have thrown the bag right on it. Ooops. I personally am terrified of snakes but I would never intentionally hurt one. I took a shovel and flicked the snake into the street - then realized, if this was a baby, then potentially mama snake was somewhere nearby. But I had to mulch around that damn tree. I did the only logical thing you can do - I took a rake and poked it all around the base of the tree to make sure there were no more, then very tentatively started spreading the mulch and weeding, all the while ready to bolt if I saw any slithery things. I was just about to reach for a weed when something moved, which later turned out to be one of my daylily leaves - and at the same time someone down the street slammed a car door. I screamed and ran off my own lawn, into the street. SEE??? No sense.
In my defense, this post was labeled appropriately.
I have so many pictures other than this, but I stupidly loaded them onto my computer at home and deleted them off the camera. These I had to rip from my FB account. But I am so excited with how the garden, and in fact the entire yard, is developing. I know the anklebiters need a certain amount of grass to run like crazy on, but I'm starting to think that grass is dumb. Dumb, I tell you! Why would I devote my entire yard to grass when I could grow food and herbs and other amazing stuff instead? Cue to me defiantly blowing dandelion seedheads all over the place - I want dandelions. I am going to make them the must-have lawn accessory. You can eat them, and they have pretty flowers, and the seedheads can keep your children entertained. And by not spraying them with weed killer (or the dreaded Weed n' Feed - more on that here) you are saving your children from increased allergy and asthma risks. Don't be the dick who needs the greenest lawn. Anyyyyyyyway, here are a few pictures, more to come!
My in-laws came to visit a while back, and they like soda. We don't typically have it in the house, so the Mister was dispatched to get a couple of liter bottles. After they left we dumped the remainder of soda down the drain, then rinsed the bottles and put them in the recycling. I was on StumbleUpon and came across an article from a man who cuts the bottles in half, fills the bottoms with pebbles and soil, then adds seeds and water and flips the bottle closed. Instant greenhouse. I had to try it. These are cabbage seeds that sprouted within a few days! The bottle keeps the seeds moist and warm and they sprout very fast. In the other bottle I sprouted some Chocolate Beauty bell peppers. They have both been moved into the garden and the bottles are now being used to sprout valerian and angelica.
Side view of the garden. My garden! I have a kick-ass garden!!! Guess I better cross this off the to-do list. The pots on the side are my heirloom tomatoes, which I'm nervous about. They're not very big except for a few. Next year I will start them earlier and maybe use the soda bottle trick under the grow lamps. The wooden planter is mustard greens and we moved Mooch's strawberry plants, which last year got eaten by slugs, into a planter.
The hay is leftover from Samhain decorations - I had a bale outside with pumpkins and gourds sitting on it, and I had thrown it under our deck with the intention of adding it slowly to the compost bin. I came across another article (I need to start keeping track of this so I can credit people!) that touted covering your garden with hay to keep the soil moist and keep down weeds. This is a line of zucchini and yellow squash - I should mention that I did thin the line after this was taken. I can't wait for these suckers to start producing - and for fried zucchini blossoms!
Heirloom sugar snap peas on the left, radishes on the right. Yum!
This is in the back of the yard - a little bed I created in front of the compost bin. See that tree-like thing in the back? That's my first ever witch hazel! I treated myself to it at a local plant sale, and I am so excited to have this growing in our very own backyard. I look straight out at this bed from my kitchen window, so I get to see flowers and birds as I slave away over dirty dishes.
Little shady bed on the opposite side of the yard. That stick is mountain laurel, which grows all around my parent's property. I absolutely love it, and the fallen branches look like driftwood.
Our latest herb/faerie garden. Mooch added the decorations, I added the dill, thyme, oregano, and marjoram.
My kids go through berries like crazy. This is an everbearing strawberry plant, which claims to produce from now through September. We shall see.
This I'm so excited about (no, not the dog butt). This is a thornless blackberry bush. I'm starting with one but there may be others, snuck in so the Mister doesn't notice ;-)
The site of the next project, the rain garden. That pile is sod that we dug up when we put in the garden. I started to move it into a bin so we could take it to our community compost pile and dump it, and disturbed two gigantic wolf spiders that both had egg cases still attached to their abdomens. So I'll let it stay for a while, or at least move it bit by bit. If anyone has a fetish for digging really big holes, please feel free to come over and start digging.
Here it is cold and rainy and blergggghhh (that's a fancy technical weather term, don't try and understand) but spring is trying! Really!
Cherry trees on my walk into my office.
A little robin who is all like, "I migrated for this? WTF?" Speaking of birdies, my fat jar was full of leftover fat in the fridge, so I made suet the other day since the weather was turning cold and I'm trying to make my backyard the most bangin'est birdy hangout around. Start with melting leftover fat in a saucepan until it liquefies completely.
Stir in natural peanut butter, cornmeal, rolled oats, leftover nuts if you have them (but they are so daggone expensive, who can afford this?), dried fruit, and cheap birdseed. I bought some birdseed at Acme that the birds completely shunned, but they have wolfed it down if I include it in suet. Mix thoroughly, then cool and package. Package? Yes, in these - leftover berry containers
Just line them with plastic wrap or wax paper (so the suet doesn't leak out of the holes in the bottom) fill them with suet,
wrap the plastic wrap over the suet, and snap the container shut. I usually stick mine in the freezer until I'm ready to use them. This container makes them the perfect size and shape for any standard suet cage.
Remember my post about my backyard flooding issue and the rain gardens? While trying to find out more about local native plants, I stumbled across a state-sponsored website with a "Backyard Wildlife Habitat" program. They have a checklist of requirements for your backyard (native plants, no fertilizer or pesticide, rain barrel, compost bin, etc.) all of which we meet, except that they ask that you have a rain garden to manage runoff from your yard. Yes!! They will even send someone out from the Cooperative Extension to survey your backyard and discuss plantings with you. The Mister is already bemoaning the fate of this individual, who I may very well talk into a coma :-)
Seriously, Mother Nature? You and I have always been such friends. I particularly enjoy your summer thunderstorms and the hush of snow falling. But frost? After my hyacinths have bloomed? And what is that white stuff drifting across the forecast for Sunday?
Poor hyacinths. They no likey the frost.
In happier news, remember my little chickadee I scored at Goodwill, and the other birdies I was kicking myself for not picking up?
Ta-da! The pileated woodpecker and blue jay were there yesterday. When I got home I decided to look the company up and see what other birds they made - I want a cardinal, since they always remind me of my Grammom. I cannot find a listing for the company anywhere (it is called On Nature's Wing), but I did find a cardinal that was listed for $20! Mine were $3 a pop!! Here are close ups:
Here is my spring altar. I use my windowsill over my kitchen sink, as you can see the sun rises through it every morning. Also here are an antler that Zacky found in the woods, the photo cube of our family Mooch had to do for school that I love, some shells and rocks in a little basket, my mini African violet, my novena candle, and a beautiful amber colored wineglass I found at Salvation Army for 25 cents. In it is one of my first hyacinth blooms.
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