My New Love (Don't worry COG, I still love you, too)

Be Still My Beating Heart.... The Paslode Cordless Nail Gun. Even writing that musical, beloved name makes my heart beat a little faster.

I rented it, but I want to buy one now. It made possible a project I have been working hard on and which I will show you when I am done.





Here's a hint - a picture of my dining room as it was last week with all the furniture pushed to one side so I could access the walls.

The thing about power tools is they are great equalizers. I am little, weak, and old but with power tools I can do nearly the same work as someone younger, bigger, stronger. Technology is wonderful that way.

What I've Been Doing..

Among the many things I've done lately (while not blogging) is organizing my pantry. Of course, it was pretty organized to begin with, but the pasta, pulses and grains were a bit of a mess - mostly in plastic bags thrown into one of several wire baskets. As a consequence I never knew quite what I had or where it was.

A trip to Sister Rose's house inspired me. She was using quart-sized spaghetti sauce jars for her rice and nuts and it looked quite tidy. On the way home, I suddenly had an epiphany. I could use actual canning jars. So, I went to Essex Agricultural Coop (because they are the only place I knew that has canning supplies all year long) and I bought quart jars and half gallon jars. At home, I transferred all my stuff to jars and made labels. It looks so neat now and I know what I've got - more than 10 kinds of rice, for example (that would be brown and white jasmine, brown and white basmati, brown and white sushi, wild rice, arborio rice, English pudding rice, red rice from the Camargue, a couple of rice blends) 4 kinds of lentils (Brown, red, yellow and Puy) etc.

Great Blue Heron Rookery

The COG and I went for a drive to find a Great Blue Heron Rookery he had heard about. A rookery is like a nursery, where chicks are raised. It turned out to be a short walk through the woods, then a primeval looking place -a huge marsh, with lots of dead pine trees in the middle. The pine trees were like apartment buildings with nests stacked over nests and teeming with herons. It's not a great picture, but the nests are fairly obvious - they are the darker, thicker bits you see going up the tree trunks. We stayed for quite a while - it was so amazing to see so many herons at once. Usually you see one which flies off the moment you see it, but here there were a hundred or more. Often 3 or 4 to a nest, the young ones already very large and nearly fully fledged. Soon the rookery will be deserted and they will all return to their solitary ways.

The Cranky Old Geezer has posted a few better pictures he took so you can see more clearly.

Home Made Pizza

We made pizza last night. I used a no-knead bread recipe for the crust, which was fantastic. And we set the oven to 500 degrees for an hour before baking, so our baking stone could heat up properly. We used fresh tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, ricotta, olives, parmesan, red pepper flakes and finely chopped garlic to top the pizzas. We baked them, one at a time, for 3 minutes, then turned the broiler on for an additional 3 or so minutes - until they were nicely browned. I added torn purple basil when I took them out of the oven.

Excellent!

Click Here for a link to a video explaining the method.

Vinegar Miracle

I'm going to start posting regularly again. Today I just want to share something I just learned. It's so delightful that after so many years of life, there are still things to learn.

Anyway, in the summer we have a problem with mildewy smelling towels. It happens every summer. There is no visible mildew, but there's that horrible moldy smell. In the past, I have treated it with bleach in every washload and hot water. But it hasn't been very effective. They smell fine out of the dryer, but after a day or two of use they begin to leave a mildewy smell on your skin. Yecchh.

So I did a little research online and discovered that bleach doesn't actually kill mildew. It bleaches dark stains of mildew, but it doesn't kill it. To kill it, you can use white vinegar. I've heard of this before but was always skeptical. It sounded too eco-friendly to actually work. But a painter I know said that white vinegar is the best thing to treat mildewy areas of woodwork inside and outside of homes before painting and that impressed me. So I tamped down my skepticism and I tried it. It worked fantastically. No mildew smell at all since I first did it several weeks ago.

Here's what I did: I soaked the towels for 1 hour, in my washer with the hottest possible water, to which I added 1 cup of white vinegar and only enough water to barely cover the towels. After an hour, I let it finish the wash cycle and then washed again using detergent and the hottest water. Then I dried them in the dryer at the hottest setting.

Now when I wash them each week, I add 1 cup of white vinegar to the wash and use hot water.

And presto, chango! No mildew.

Father's Day

Son of is still with us, still on crutches, but getting slowly better. We were, thus, able to celebrate Father's Day with half of our children present.

The other half, Daughter of, was with us in spirit. She gave the COG a rather delightful Father's Day present - a whole lot of oysters and a fantastic French loaf. So, on Saturday night, we picked up the oyster order she had called in to a local fish market, and we had a lot of fun with the oysters. The COG shucked, that being a gender-stereotypical role in this family. I made a salad. We just sat and stood around in the kitchen, drinking wine and eating bread and oysters, a few at a time. Most of the oysters we ate raw. I say 'we' meaning mostly The COG. Son of and I are a little tentative with raw oysters. We had a few and they were fresh and sweet and tasted of the sea. Then we found two recipes for broiled oysters and did 3 at a time, using these two recipes. One recipe was simply a teaspoon of cream, a bit of freshly-grated parmesan and a little olive oil, then broil for a couple of minutes. It was very nice. But the other recipe was divine and that was the one we did over and over. It had lime juice, cilantro, siracha, melted butter and shallot. Really really really good. Quite a delicate flavor so as not to over-power the oysters, but delicious. It was a really lovely, impromptu meal and one we'd like to repeat.

Sunday night, Son of grilled fantastic aged beef steaks and I made salad and a Strawberry Sponge Cake and we celebrated again.

Back Again

I've been trying to figure out what to say after this long absence. A lot happened in a short time in April.

1) Son of broke his leg quite badly. It's nearly 8 weeks later and he still can't put any weight on his leg. He's home but he is recovering. It's only a matter of time is my mantra. He doesn't have a cast, but a huge black Darth Vader looking device he puts on when he moves around. The stitches are out and his leg has healed well, but has big scars, of course. He has gotten quite good at moving around on crutches, but it's hard when you can't put any weight at all on your foot and he gets tired. We've taken him out to do a little bird watching, but it's sad that he has mostly missed this years migration. Still.. only a matter of time. Could have been so much worse.

2) Daughter of gave birth to another beautiful little girl. What riches, to have two lovely granddaughters. I spent a couple of weeks helping out after the birth. Miss A. has a very easy-going personality. She eats well; she sleeps well; she looks around contendly in between. No newborn is easy, but she reminds me of her mom, who was a blessedly amiable baby.

3) Dog of Cog died. She had reached a good old age after a pretty eventful life. She was a good dog and I miss her. I keep looking for her around the house before I remember that she is gone. Now Cat of Cog is an Only Pet.

Meanwhile, life has been going on around here. Lots of nests around. We've Baltimore Orioles in the front yard and Orchard Orioles in the back. There's a family of swans across the street who visit our pond sometimes in the morning. There's a family of Canada Geese that visits in the afternoons. They must be nesting nearby. The air is full of birdsong all day.