My Bit of Earth

Noodling Around

Last night at about 9:30, I was thumbing through a few cookbooks I checked out from the library when I found a recipe for making fresh pasta.  It evoked two very vivid memories.

First, I had visions of Nice Grandmother each Thanksgiving--rolling out her noodles a few days before hand, cutting them to precisely the same size, and then leaving them to dry on paper sacks on her kitchen table until it was time to make her incredible chicken and noodles.  Second, I remembered the first (and only) time I tried to make fresh noodles myself.  I was 13.  I don't remember what I did wrong, but they ended up sticky and doughy as could be, even after they were cooked.  And poor Nice Dad--as horrible as they were he ate every one!

I looked at the recipe again and saw that we had all the ingredients I needed--eggs and flour--in the house.  That sealed the deal--by 9:45 I was in the kitchen mixing the dough.

How To Build A (Passable) Earthdog Practice Tunnel From One Piece of Plywood

For the past year or so, I've had to drive all the way to St. Louis (about 10 hours, round trip) for Moe to practice earthdog.  Missouri Earthdogs has a very nice set of tunnels there, and it's been a lot of fun meeting new people.  However, after the last long driving day a few weeks ago I decided it was time to build some tunnels a little closer to home.

Most earthdog tunnel plans that I've found online seem to be for people with lots of space and room to bury them.  Since I have neither, some modification was in order. 

I Love Fishes 'Cause They're So Delicious!

Tonight's dinner--sushi!  And rather than going out, we decided to try our hand at making our own.

It actually wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.  We used this book as a guide to make a few different unagi rolls, one tuna roll, and some shrimp and tuna nigiri.  Our first roll had too much rice, but the rest were very pretty. 

We (ok, I) bought way too much fish, though.  The man at the meat counter said a quarter pound of tuna would probably be good for two people, but I really wanted to try it all.  Then I tried to make miso soup and edamame as sides (neither of which turned out well).  We ended up with way too much and unfortunately had to throw some away....

Truly though, it was a lot of fun--probably one of the better "dates" we've had in a long time!  A few more pictures here.

Preemie Greens

My roses came today, so I had to pick my baby greens to make room.  They were truly more like preemie greens, but to tell you the truth I kind of prefer them that way--nice and spicy and tender.  I ate these (after a washing) with just a teeny bit of salt.

The First Homemade Dog Food Snafu . . .

. . . POO.

I could describe it in all it's glory, but you don't want me too--suffice to say, yellow, smelly, liquid.

What caused it?  I'm not sure, but I have theories.  It could be the veggies.  It could be that the dogs had different water this weekend than they're used to.  It could be that we tried chicken for the first time last weekend.  It could be something they ate that I don't even know about.  At this point, it's almost impossible to isolate the variables.  Moe is worse than Porter (whose poo is actually almost normal), but even that doesn't help because we've learned from past experience that Moe's tummy upsets are always worse than Porter's.

What are we doing about it?  Well, per Strombeck we should fast the pups for a few days, and then start them on a bland diet of rice and cottage cheese.  I'm not quite comfortable not feeding them for the three days the books suggest, but we're going to try 24 hours at least.  It seems to make sense--humans don't eat when we're sick either. 

So far we're at about hour 13 since the pups were last fed--I'll report back on how it all goes.

Wednesday Poll: Little Women

Wise, but a little vain; a scatter-brained tomboy; gentle and quiet; opinionated and refined?

For this week's poll:

Meg, Jo, Beth, or Amy--which "little woman" are you most like?  And which would you like to be more like?

Comment and discuss.

The Garden of Digging

I got kind of discouraged after the frost killed my lettuces, and, as such, haven't set foot in the Burrow garden for over a week.  So, today I drove down to survey and repair the damage.  The onions were still looking lovely, and the weeds were hardy as ever.  I had so many weeds in fact, that I just decided to dig the whole thing over again rather than pull each one individually. 

That makes three times I've dug the plot in just a little over a month.  I was (again) feeling discouraged by that, but then I thought--there's a lot of time to think when you're digging--even if all I do all summer is plant things and dig them up, it's still cheaper and more fun than a gym membership.  Being much cheered by that thought, I proceeded to plant my little garden.  (Click to make the picture bigger.)

As you can see, the plan changed a little--partly because, once I was actually shopping, I found I couldn't live with just three kinds of tomatoes, so I had to get four.  I also skipped replanting the cabbage and lettuce and radishes.  I have a little stash of lettuce growing here at the house, and I decided, for the sake of space, to table the radish and cabbage until fall.

Getting Our Veggies

Sweet Husband and I braved the breezy 20 and 30 mile per hour winds, to head up the road and pick our own asparagus and spinach at Pendleton's Country Market this morning. 

Like everything else, their crop was effected by last week's cold.  The man who drove us out to the fields (who I believe was Mr. Pendleton himself) said they had lost about 90% of their spinach, and some asparagus as well.  But even though we had to do a bit of hunting for the good leaves, we picked about a pound of spinach in less than 10 minutes, and got a few dinners worth of asparagus too.  A few more pictures here.

Tiptoe Through the Tulips

Spent part of the weekend in the little town of Wamego visiting with Nice Dad and Nice Grandma.  (Suffice to say, I won one game of Cribbage in grand style, and lost the rest just as grandly.) 

We also took a walk through the "Tulip Festival" that was being held in the city park.  Due to last week's cold weather there were actually very few tulips, but we did get a few shots by the Old Dutch Windmill.

More pictures here.

Gnudi

What you see before you is a little ball of pure cheese, spinach, and sauce.  It is so named "Gnudi", and (as most things involving cheese and spinach and sauce are) it was pretty darn good.  The recipe is here, and I found that a light browning at the end gave them a very nice texture.  (Trust me, you want to use non-stick for this!)