My Bit of Earth

Moe Speaks: Mom Knocked Me Silly On the Scary Stairs

Hey everybody!  It's been awhile I know, but I've been ever-so-busy exploring and supervising at the new place.  I really like it so far, except for one little thing....the tricksey, evil, scary basement stairs.

Now, I'm a very brave dog, but it took even me a few days to be brave enough to try these stairs.  They're wicked steep, and the concrete floor at the bottom?  Not soft at all.  But the really scary part is that there are sneaky dangers, like the one that got me today.

Mom didn't realize that I had followed her downstairs, so when she came back up she shut the door.  When she realized I was still down there, she went to open the door for me, but I wasn't back far enough.  The door swept me over the left edge of the stairs and I landed on my back on the concrete floor--ouch!  

I'm comfortable enough in my doghood to admit, I cried just a little--it really hurt!  Mom scooped me up real quick, and took me upstairs to Dad.  At first I felt OK, but then I got a little woozy.  (Meryl: He was doing some sort of drunken-crab-walk and his eyes were rolling back in his head--scared the bejeezus out of me!)  Mom and Dad were pretty worried, so it was into the car for a surprise visit to my doctor.

Of course, by the time we got there I was feeling better.  I'm a terrier after all, I bounce back fast!  But my doctor still looked my legs over and shined a funny light in my eyes.  The verdict? No broken bones, no neurological damage--whatever the heck that is--basically, Doc said Mom must've just knocked me silly.  She gave me some good drugs in case I was in pain later and sent us on our way.

(Meryl: And, of course, he was back on the darned stairs almost instantaneously!  Thought I might have knocked some sense into him, but no such luck....)

Barefoot Bloggers: Gazpacho

First, I must admit, I debated about how much of this story to share because it makes me look kind of like a ninny.  But...well, we're all ninnies sometimes so I'm going to embrace it here, in hopes that maybe it will help someone else or make you all laugh your asses off at me or whatever....

For this Barefoot Bloggers recipe, it was my turn to choose.  When I figured out that I was going to be up in June, I decided it had to be strawberries or tomatoes.  In the end I decided on the Contessa's Gazpacho, just because it was something I hadn't ever tried before.  I figured, if I was going to jump, why not make all 116 Barefoot Bloggers jump with me, right?

Sunday night--our first official dinner in the new house--I was happily dicing away tomatoes, onions, and peppers, when I read a little further down into the recipe, "Put each vegetable separately into a food processor fitted with a steel blade and pulse until it is coarsely chopped. Do not overprocess!"  

Shit.  

See, I sold the blender at the garage sale, knowing that we were going to just buy a food processor after the move.  But, as said food processor had not been purchased yet, I was caught with my pants down between appliances.  It quickly became clear that just me and my knife weren't even going to get close to the desired consistency for the Gazpacho, and this was my recipe, that I got to pick, so I really wanted to get it right.

After turning up zilch on borrowing a food processor from a few different friends, I decided I was just going to have to go buy one that night.  But it was after seven, so my options were quickly becoming limited as stores closed.  I had my heart set on a black Kitchen-Aid, so I was on a pretty specific mission.  Best Buy? No luck.  Sears and Penny's? Closed.  Wal-Mart? Had the white one, but not black.  Target? No Kitchen-Aid, but one that looked kind of close, so in my tired, crankiness, I just bought it.

And regretted it the whole way home. 

Now, keep in mind, I had been at home painting and dickering with home improvement projects for an entire week.  I still had the blue paint in my hair, and I was all kinds of achy and hot.  And I had to go to work the next day, so I was already stressing about my in-box there.  And, and, and....  Upshot--when I walked into the door, I burst into gulping, sobbing, messy tears.  

Poor Sweet Husband was very confused.  When he finally sussed out that the root of the problem was that I had been forced to buy a substandard food processor in order to properly complete my Gazpacho, and now was going to have to use it (thus making it impossible to return) or we wouldn't have dinner....he wisely refrained from chuckling, and did what most wise husbands would do--wrapped the chopped veggies up for later and took me out for dinner.

Thus revived, I came home and ordered a food processor from Sears, which was able to deliver it before my chopped veggies went bad.  (I returned the knock-off to Target the next day.)  A few quick pulses in my pretty new Kitchen-Aid, and voila--Gazpacho!

We're just at the beginning of real tomato season, so I was able to get a few nice, big homegrowns that were super good.  And, as the soup develops more flavor as it sits, letting everything rest for a few days in the fridge was actually probably about the best thing that could have happened to it.  The resulting soup was spicy and cool and yummy.  Perfect with a few little cocktail shrimpies and some white wine.  Maybe not quite worth all the trouble I went through to make it, but definitely worth it for the non-ninnies among you!

For the recipe, see the link above.

Two Gardens on the First Day of Summer

This morning, we had breakfast on our lovely little screened in back porch (the only place we have proper chairs just yet), after which I told Sweet Husband I was going to go out and make a quick walk through the garden, just to see if there was anything worth picking.  An hour later--with a fistful of onions, some okra, and some peas--I knocked on the backdoor and asked him to turn on the hose for me, because I was too muddy to come into the house without showering off first.

As I said before, once I got going out there I really didn't want to stop.  Not that I even put a dent in the work that actually needs to be done, but I did get the veggie beds weeded enough to give the tomatoes a little breathing room, at least.  There are squash bugs breeding (yes, I actually caught a pair doing the deed), and some sort of evil prickly thing growing, but those issues will just have to wait until another day.  One wonderful thing I did discover is that the new garden is nicely shaded until about eleven in the morning, so I predict several more nice, cool Sunday mornings of weeding will be in my future!

A shot of the new garden:

And, last but not least, a shot of the old house and garden, which I said goodbye to this afternoon.  Although I'm terribly happy that we now have wonderful things--like a level stove-top and a glorious amount of space to grow things in--I was still a little sad to leave it.  Especially today, when it's at that perfect point of flowers right on the brink of blooming....I know the new garden will be so much better once it's all fenced, and weeded, and worked over, and shined...but...but....

Outtakes

Random House Bits

1. This house has no straight lines.  That is, where the wall meets the trim, where the wall meets the wall--nothing is straight.  I'm told this is normal for a hundred year old house, but it makes painting the spots where one color meets another a nightmare for my little perfectionist soul.  I think it all has to be a metaphor that I haven't yet been able to put words to, or maybe just some sort of Zen exercise in "letting go"....

2. I love having floors that I can scrub.  A little something funny looking on the tile--no problem.  A little grimy spot in the corner of a stair that looks like its been collecting dust for fifty years--get me a bucket and a rag.  A paint-y paw print on the hardwood from where Moe has walked through paint, again--totally fixable....  

3. And while I'm speaking of them, the dogs are settling in nicely.  Moe keeps trying to steal Porter's bed in the confusion.  Porter keeps letting him know that she isn't that confused.  They really want to investigate the yard more fully, but we have to get a fence up first.  Sadly, the previous owner's stand of prairie grasses is also going to have to come out.  Sweet Husband threw Moe's tennis ball in there yesterday evening, and Moe came out covered in burrs.  I'm thinking of planting some sort of perennial milkweed or other butterfly attracting plants instead....

4. My little sister is a fabulous human being.  Truly, she is the most helpful eleven-year-old I know.  And she's really keeping me laughing at everything.  Yesterday, we were painting the stairwell ceiling, and she was holding my paint tray down below.  Just as I took the first stroke with a roller, she looked up and said, "Don't drip on me!"  Simultaneously, a big drip of paint landed right on her cheek.  We dissolved into fits of giggles....

5. Ditto for Sweet Husband.  As he is actually going to live here too, his motives are less pure than Sweet Sister's, of course, but, really, he's been great.  (Although when I caught him looking at real estate last night, and he joked that it was "just in case we want to move again", I told him I'd forward his mail to his new address.)

This is the part where....

First, this is the part where I say THANK YOU...

...to our Nice Mommies who came up and scrubbed and lifted and organized and made beds (and were patient with our impatience)...

...to Nice Brother who carried lots of heavy furniture (among other things, a washer and dryer down basement stairs that are really more like a glorified ladder)...

...to Sweet Sister who is still here helping me paint and pick out things (truly, she has better taste at 11 than I will ever have)...

...to Thoughtful Friends who painted and brought food and cold drinks (enough said)...

...to Nice New Neighbor who came over and helped us push beds up onto the roof so we could get them in through the bedroom window (hundred year old houses are not necessarily conducive to modern-sized beds, one of many things I've learned in the past few days)...

...to everyone who has been sending nice congratulatory notes and comments here and on Facebook and via email (I haven't had time to respond to much of anything, but I do so appreciate all the good juju you all are sending my way!)....

-----

Second, this is also the part where I (figuratively) sit in the middle of the floor and cry.  Because tomorrow we might finish painting, but there are still tons of boxes to haul away and little things to go get and even a few boxes to unpack still.  And I can't even think about the yard yet, because there are tomatoes starting and lettuce to be harvested and weeding to be done and once I go outside I'll never come back in.  And then eventually someone will have to go get groceries.  And curtains.  And a fence. 

Then there's the fact that I'd forgotten how that first few weeks in a new house it always feels like you're hemorrhaging money.  Not to mention that I have blue paint in my hair, even after three showers.  Not to mention that we still have our whole entire old house to clean, and I could make a sweater with the dog hair that's collected there, behind the washer and dryer alone!  (But will not, because that would be even more disgusting than the fact that the hair was is there....)

-----

But last, this is the part where I take a deep breath, trust that we'll get it all done somehow, someday, and go to sleep in my pretty little new house.  And that is the good part indeed!  Pictures soon, I promise!

Barefoot Bloggers: Curried Couscous

This month's first Barefoot Blogger's recipe is the Barefoot Contessa's Curried Couscous, chosen by Ellyn of Recipe Collector and Tester.

As a brief digression, when my little brother and I were both at home still, Nice Mom used to make up these huge bowls of pasta salad in the summertime.  It was a really basic recipe--curly pasta, tomatoes, olives, and cheese, all thoroughly soaked in Italian vinaigrette--but lordy was it good on a hot day.  We used to get in trouble, because, rather than taking time to dish out an individual portion, we would just grab a fork and eat it straight from the big batch.  "Get a bowl!" Nice Mom would exasperatedly yell at us.

While this curried couscous is a completely different animal from Nice Mom's pasta salad, it seems to create the same impulse.  (And since we're down to plastic utensils and plates, eating straight from the fridge is also more environmentally friendly, right?  Right!)  I used cilantro instead of parsley (which I pretty much always do--I don't like parsley at all), and peas instead of carrots.  And the lovely thing about couscous is that you don't even have to watch it cook--just pour over boiling water and let it hang out until it's done.  Easy-peasy and yummy!  See the link above for the recipe.

Moe Speaks: Oh. My. Goodness.

Our house is full of boxes.  And, Mom gave away my favorite chair--to a complete stranger, no less.  Just left it out on the curb, and somebody came by and put it in their car!

My humans have clearly gone insane....but they're still feeding me, so all hope is not lost.  Eggs and potatoes for Sunday breakfast, as usual.

Gentle Reminder: It's Strawberry Season (With Knitting)

As Martha would say, consider this your gentle reminder--it's time to be eating strawberries.

We went out with some friends, via scooters, to Lawson Brother's Farm last weekend to "pick-our-own".  Sweet Husband and I picked just a little over seven pounds, but I still don't think it made enough jam.  But, really, is there ever enough strawberry jam?  

Next year I think we might shoot for fourteen pounds though, or maybe somewhere between fourteen and ten or eleven.  Our seven pounds only made about twenty jars of jam, which is just not enough, especially when you want to share.  (The recipe I used is here, and it's also on the back of the pectin packet.)

In other news, I finished a knitting project.  This is kind of more amazing than it sounds, because lately I seem to be having trouble keeping my mind steadily on...well, much of anything!  However, I have no photographic proof of said project because I taped it all up in a box for shipping to its recipient before I realized I hadn't taken a picture.  As I said, scatterbrains!

Anyway, it was three cute little  baby "Bibs O'Love" from Mason-Dixon Knitting.  Super easy.  All garter stitch, so I didn't even have to keep track of rows.  Very sweet--in cream and green with little frog buttons--all rolled up and tucked into a little box.  Will make again!

Roses Need No Words