summer cooking begins

Thanks for the suggestions of summer food. Adam broke down and turned the AC on, he couldn't take it anymore. It had been in the 90's for weeks with really high humidity. But since then, it's climbed into the low 100's with really high humidity. I am still going to do my best to make summery foods...and I have plans on cooking outside (we dont have a grill so I'm formulating a plan) when possible. At the very least, I am really going to try not to do any baking in the house, other than bread. I still want my bread.

To start off our summer food, I made this fruity chicken salad. It had cooked chicken (I had cooked it before and frozen it), 3 kinds of lettuce, sprouts, frozen strawberries and peaches (and pecans on my portion). It was yummy and nice and cool during the heat wave.

arrow head ride

I went for a bike ride on my road bike which isn't equipped with anything to fix a flat...I got a flat after running through a giant pot hole when I was about 9 miles from home. I COULD walk that in regular shoes but that's how I envisioned the rest of my evening playing out...and I wasn't wearing regular shoes, I was wearing my stiff soled, racing, biking shoes with the metal cleat on the bottom that makes me toes point upward. In short, they're not made for walking more than a few steps. So I had to call Adam...and now I have to fix the flat tube. Good thing I have another bike, cause I don't know when I'll get around to it...

Anyway, none of these pictures are from that ride... I was going to group a few rides into this one post but Blogger was giving me grief while trying to upload pictures so I gave up and ended up with pics from just this ride.

I rode out to Freeman's Mill where the Mill still sits. It's not used anymore but was recently restored for its historic value. The dam is broken and makes a great swimming hole.


I spotted an arrow on the ground as I biked by. I stopped and parked my bike. I walked back to the arrow and was disappointed that the arrow head was no longer attached. I walked away but then turned back in search for the arrow head. I found it! So, I slipped the arrow head in my pocket and since I had no way to carry the arrow, I lashed it to the bike with blades of grass. It worked really well!


I spotted this nice little bird house on a well pump structure.


On the same land is a pond. I went to check it out and found three raised beds that someone is looking after. Seemed like a very nice place for a garden to me!


And while I passed this tree on my way in, I hadn't noticed it until I was leaving. Two trees giving each other a great big bear hug! So cool! Natural or manmade? Not sure, but either way, it's so neat!

spider web at night

I was taking some veggie scraps out to the compost bin in the woods and nearly walked right into this big spider web with a small spider sitting smack dab in the center. I marveled at the workmanship of it for a few minutes. The light from my flashlight attracted some bugs and one was unlucky enough to get caught in the web and quick as a wink, he was on top of it. He wrapped it up quickly but in the process, he made a gapping hole in the web.

2 showers

Part of my running around last week was due to two showers, a baby shower and a wedding shower.

The baby shower was for my sister in law. A friend of hers, who lives near her, was going to throw it for her. But it turned out her brother was graduating the same day and couldn't do it after all, so with just a week before the shower, it fell on Katie to do her own shower. I asked her if she wanted me to bring food, or anything at all...she said that just coming early would be everything she needed from me. So I left straight from work and got to her house 2 hours later. Without traffic, it's a one hour drive from home, about 40 minutes from my office. Oh well. Anyway, I got busy slicing fruit and arranging platters of food.

Katie invited a Herindi (I think that's how it's spelled) to do a henna tattoo on her belly to celebrate the arrival of her baby. A few other people also got henna tattoos. While it's not my thing, I think the artist did a really good job.

One of the games (who another friend took over when the first friend backed out) was that Katie had to guess which candy bar was in the diaper. They had been melted and it looked WAY TOO realistic! I mean, I'm not one to back away from chocolate but I didn't want anything to do with this stuff.

I love this picture...the expression of the girl's face (in the upper corner) is priceless! Yes, it was that bad!

There were 4 of these diapers... this one brought out the best expression from her. ;o)

She had so many guests that there wasn't enough seating, even with a few people sitting on other people's laps. She opened her gifts and got a bunch of cute clothes, and some other things she wanted for the baby. She's due on the 24th but I don't think he'll wait that long. We'll see. I left at a little after 10. It was a LONG day but fun.

The wedding shower was for the daughter of a family friend. We have a regular group of families that meet at a pizza place once a month. Her family is in that group. I don't know Annie, the woman getting married, but her Mom is so super nice and friendly so I went anyway.

This has nothing to do with the shower but I finally learned how to do a fishtail braid and did it for the first time on the drive over. I hitched a ride with Lanette so I wasn't driving. I''m pretty pleased with it. It's really easy.

One of the ladies cooked dinner for everyone. We ate and socialized before Annie started opening her presents. This shower was just for the Stevie B's group (the group of us that meet at the pizza place) so none of her friends were there, except for the daughters of the other Stevie B's people.

They played a couple of games, trying to embarrass her but she took it all rather well. Another fun night.

I was the only one to bring a camera to both showers so it's a good thing I did.

homemade drain declogger

I washed all four dogs in our bath tub...more than once. Well, it finally was clogged beyond clogged. It took three days to drain completely and it left behind a film of slime and hair. It was so nasty. The picture below doesn't show the nastiness very well...which is good because it would be very embarrassing.

If you know me, you know I dislike chemicals and avoid them whenever possible. I found a recipe online for drain cleaner. It's super simple. You pour a 1/4 cup of baking soda down the drain, then follow that (slowly) by 1/4 cup white vinegar.

It was so bad at first that the baking soda had nowhere to go! I did that a few times. It broke down the clog enough that I was able to actually get some of it out. I did the baking soda thing one more time. (Now that's a more embarrassing picture.) It foams up a lot!

Then, I followed that with a pot of boiling water. It drained immediately! I never had that good of a success with Draino! They say that if you do that once a month, you shouldn't ever get clogs again...with my long hair and the dog's fur, I really need to do that!

Five minutes after I cleared the clog, my tub was nice and clean! It's a miracle!!!

hungry mouths to feed (lots of pics)

Over the last 3 weeks (I think) I've really enjoyed watching the baby birds grow in one of our oak trees. Sadly, they are all gone. I don't think they were old enough to leave the nest, especially the youngest. Either they have moved their babies to a safer place where the giant predator (me) wasn't able to stalk them or they tried flying and out of necessity, had to find a new home, closer to the ground... Well, we hope it's one of those two options because we don't want to think that our dogs ate them when they fell out of the nest.

The babies were born a few days apart and there were three of them. I really enjoyed taking pics of them (when I wasn't getting dive bombed), and their parents. Now that they're gone, I can choose my favorites.

So the story begins:

I first noticed the nest from the bathroom window.

After I spotted a robin laying in it a couple days later, I tried harder to see if I could see any eggs (the next time no bird was in the nest) and sure enough, three little, blue eggs.

For the next week or so, all I saw were the 2 parents. They were ok with me being close at first.

The finches we had had babies so I was already prepared for how ugly they were. Baby birds are featherless, with huge closed eyes...a gross sight to behold! Here's my first glimpse of 2 of the babies.

The only shot I managed to get of the babies in the process of being fed. It was fun to watch them feeding.

Mama bird cleaning house.

The whole family. The 3rd baby had just recently hatched, a few days later than the other 2.

They started to get a smattering of wispy feathers but in this picture, one of the ears is still visible.

This stare meant Mama was unhappy with me and was ready to chase me off if I didn't back down. I felt her fury a few times.

In this one, you can see a set of teeth? inside the beak. I hadn't seen that on my tiny baby finches.

The largest of the babies started stretching his wings and I caught him in the process of flapping.

I hadn't been able to check on the babies for a couple days so when I came back to see them and they looked like this, I couldn't believe how much they had grown!

Preening

Here she goes again!

They really grew up quickly...not that they're adults yet but they have most of their feathers in and they are learning to use their wings.

Then, a couple days ago, I discovered that we were left with an empty nest. :o(

The End.

homemade cream of stuff soup

I've never liked Campbell's cream of stuff soups...even a lot of things with it in it. So, for the first 7-8 years of our marriage, I didn't make anything that had it in it. But then I found an Amish recipe for homeade cream of soup. If you know me, you know I love Amish food. I tried it and I really like it. And as a result, I now like gravy as well...which was something else I couldn't stand. But the gravy has to be made with drippings or broth, and not buillon. I just don't like buillon. I don't know the exact recipe since it's so easy to do, I never had to use it again. It's a very simple method and if you can make gravy, you can do this.

This particular soup is cream of mushroom. I start off by adding however much butter to the pot that I need...which is usually about 2 Tbsp and heat it. Then I'll add the mushrooms (or celery, potato, chicken, whatever you need for the flavor you're trying to make). Sautee that until it's tender. Then, I'll add in a touch of chicken broth to reliquify it...a Tbsp or two, not really sure. Then, slowly add in about 2-3 Tbsp flour. I like to make mine thick so it it will look thicker than gravy would at this point. Once all the flour is mixed in, I start pouring in more chicken broth, whisking the entire time. I think it ends up coming out to about a cup? I add salt and pepper and let it simmer for a few minutes to thicken up nicely. It comes out thick like the canned stuff but tastes much better to me. I used this at the beginning of the week to use in a pasta bake that was our last hot meal for a while.