My brother has not been to our house in about two years, by my reckoning.  Maybe more.  I invited him to dinner tonight, and I insisted on cooking it rather than have him treat us to dinner out.  I made one of the most mediocre meals I have ever made.  Seriously, if I had my way, the two side dishes would go right in the garbage.  Be that as it may ( Read more... )

Meaning, while I was working on the kitchen last year, I did next-to-no gardening.  This year I'm back at it.  Yesterday I got out and worked on the plants at the fence line between us and The Idiot.  When Sally lived there, I kept them at bay, but since she left I've neglected them.  Anyone who has experience with wisteria knows what I mean when I ( Read more... )

I'd been hankering for falafel, and we sell a good mix at the store - nice spices, but not too much salt.  However I wanted to forgo the usual falafel-balls-in-a-pita approach, and poking around on the internet, I found it.  Falafel waffles.  Hey, just the name sounds wonderful.  I took the mix and tried it at regular strength Friday night.  Okay, ( Read more... )

I got the framework of the first "wall" of my veggie enclosure assembled today.  No fencing on it yet; I'll do that once I get all the frames made.  It occurred to me at one point: I used to collect drill bits like some women collect shoes.  You can never have too many, ha ha.

Meanwhile, here are the plants inside the greenhouse:

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My laptop has issues.  Most of the time they don't bother me, in fact they motivate me to put it down, walk away and find something else to do.  That's what often happens, for instance, when it overheats and shuts down precipitously.  I just take it as a sign that I need to light a match under my ass, get off the sofa, and read, you know, something ( Read more... )

It's fairly warm.  We've got windows open for fresh air.  I blew the dust out of our living room stereo speakers by playing Earth, Wind & Fire just now, as I prepared a pseudo-crab salad for tonight's dinner.  The only problem with buying fake crabmeat for sushi is that you don't use enough in a batch of sushi, and once it's opened the contents of ( Read more... )

I had some kale to cook as part of last night's dinner.  I blanched it, then left it in a colander with ice cubes to cool.  Zoey came over to the sink, fished a piece out of the colander, and ate it.  I didn't want to begrudge her healthy eats, so periodically as I cooked, I pulled another piece out for her to nom.  Funny kitty.  I hope it won't ( Read more... )

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The barbecue is doing fabulously.  The lights over the sink are in, and they are...cyoot!  I will have to get a new curtain rod at some point, and retrain Ray to stop using it to dry plastic bags on.  The ceiling looks like shit, but we had some damage in the main part of the room, so the whole shebang needs redoing, and meanwhile ( Read more... )

I've been working on three things today, each one for a bit, then moving back or forth to another.  I'm slow-cooking pulled pork, taking down the Christmas decorations, and installing track lighting over the kitchen sink.  How's that going, you ask ( Read more... )