Author: Liz

Posted on

Friday snippets

We’ve been enjoying some not too hot, beautiful days with cool nights so good for sleeping and crisp mornings that take us outside for several hours before my work day starts.

This morning, it was 42F to start out the morning.

I had a gorgeous Copper River Red Salmon filet thawed.

Braised salmon with fresh herbs. A bit of this was breakfast for Bear, Bob and I and the rest into the frig for salmon tacos and stir fry over the weekend.

The herbs!!

They continue to flourish gangbusters…

My baby cilantro grew up.

Two weeks ago, I gardened. Really!! I braved the hot sun for an entire 10 minutes to clear a patch of soil on Beardog hill.

And then…and THEN!!! – I PLANTED SEEDS. Yes!! Cilantro seeds.

And now there is baby cilantro on Beardog Hill.

If the resident Beardog stays off this little patch, I may have a summer’s worth of cilantro and more.

This is an experiment.

Meanwhile, the aforementioned Beardog chose a softer place for naptime than yesteray’s concrete.

And so did Bob. And Bob’s ears are already improving again.

It was an excellent and productive work week which culminated in meeting a project deadline at high noon today. Hoo-rah!

A Friday pizza was in order.

Pizza on the grill.

Friday snippets.

Posted on

Hard times

It was a pleasant 78F with a cooling breeze.

There is shady grass, a soft fleecy pet bed, the cool dirt of Beardog Hill…

But both chose concrete.

Posted on

Life experience

It has been 2 1/2 weeks since our last vet visit (Bob and I re Bob’s ear infection).

We went today.

The last round of medication resulted in a slight setback.

We regrouped and will go back to the injectible but slightly risky medication.

Dr. Clark and I jointly had a case of nerves re the injectible but in hindsight we are kicking ourselves as it was kicking the bugs.

The road not taken…

While the ear infection is not life threatening, it was making Bob’s quality of life kind of “sucky” (that’s 40 something Dr. Clark’s words :)!! )

This latest setback is nothing like the worst we saw – (minimal, in fact) but no one wants to go back there so…

Dr. C and I agreed to “suck it up” and go back to the injectible med with a once a week blood test to monitor Bob’s kidney/liver stuff.

Bob has been going on about his normal routine. It is only us humans that are having anxious moments.

Have I learned nothing from past experience???

Gah!

Posted on

O, Hail!

A small thunderstorm…

with hail!

But…

…sun in the mix, also!

O, Hail!

Posted on

A berry good day

Six quarts of strawberries, just picked by my neighborhood farmer!

I roasted some with a bit of vanilla bean paste. The vanilla revs up the strawberry flavor and the result is a wonderful compote/syrup. It would take just a bit of pectin to jell this…maybe just a kiwi. Did you know kiwi has pectin and if you add it to strawberries, they jell? Well, it is true, but I wanted more of a syrup which is a good thing as I didn’t have any kiwi!

So pretty and now sitting in my refrigerator to be drizzled over yogurt and maybe a Sunday morning waffle.

And though it is not of jam or jelly consistency, that did not stop me from drizzling a bit on this morning’s toast with goat cheese.

So.

After the roasting, I still had plenty of berries. Some I froze, but some I mixed with some rhubarb and made a variation of Magda’s Rhubarb Ice Cream recipe.

I was very intrigued by the technique of making the ice cream without a machine since I don’t have an ice cream machine. Basically, I become the machine…doing the churning and air incorporating by whisking and/or blending the mix every 30 minutes until it gets to a soft serve consistency.

I think a key to this working is also to use metal bowl and utensils – all kept very cold.

That’s what I did.

Aaack!! – blurry, but you can kind of sort of see the texture coming together. This is the third “stir”.

One more and then I left it alone for 2 more hours to harden to regular ice cream consistency.

It worked! The texture is perfect.

This recipe was heavy cream (a lot of fat and not much going for it nutritionally ), fruit and sugar. I want to try the technique with a custard based recipe and see what happens.

But, no complaints about this version for an occasional treat.

For my variation, I roasted some rhubarb, strawberries and vanilla bean paste, reduced the sugar from the above linked recipe and I did not do the crumble addition.

Even Bob agrees that it was a berry good day!