Tomato Zucchini tart...sort of

Life in the garden is good at this time of year. We have been eating from the garden at every meal - peaches or blueberries with our breakfasts, tomatoes and salads at lunch and, of course, zucchini, tomatoes and beans at dinner.We also continue to enjoy the different flowers as they come into bloom. E made this flower arrangement for a neighbour to cheer her up. We have so much Rudbeckia right now and are really loving how long it blooms for and its different colours.And the Phlox...I am loving the Phlox.

I picked up Simply in Season from the library again because I remembered (from this post) that last year I had made a very yummy tomato/zucchini tart from it. So W made the crust and I started to put together this dinner.See how delicious it looks? Now, ask me how it looked once I remembered that I had to transfer it onto a baking sheet...and that the dough was getting very damp from the tomato juice and that was making it stick to the board...and that those tomatoes and zucchini that I had loaded it down with were heavy and making the dough stretch...and that I am not a patient person...especially when it is already 6pm and I am hungry.

**Note to self - next time roll out the dough, put it on the baking sheet and THEN add the toppings.

I think W ended up calling it a tomato, zucchini scramble instead of tart but it still tasted good and we ended our meal with E's chocolate peaches so it was all good.

Cant...stop...making...bags

Oh how I love easy-to-make and yet ever-so-useful things. I can't seem to stop making these right now, even though the sun is shining and outside is calling. Want to know what they are for? Here is an explanation.

Finished socks

Well, they took me one year, (focus Heather focus! Only one project at a time and it wouldn't take you a year for a pair of socks) but here they are. My Oregon camping socks, started last summer when we were camping in Oregon and (mostly) finished while camping in the Kootenays this summer.

Last night I found myself with some knitting time on my hands and was working on a this new pair of socks when it occurred to me that I still had not woven in the ends on my last pair of socks. A few minutes with the needle and they were finished, now I can get on with this other pair. I am trying to get into the whole start a project, work on the project, finish the project groove but that whole idea does not mesh well with my slap-dashing ways. Ah well, maybe Samantha will be a good influence on me and I will start systematically working through my stash as well.

Corn on the cob, corn salad, corn everything!!

This salad was part of our dinner tonight, it is based on a recipe that a friend gave me. ( I think it is pretty close to the original but I couldn't find the recipe -K and S I can hear your snorts of laughter at that "based on" ). My husband stopped on his way home and picked some corn and jalapenos from a friend's garden. I added two avocados, two tomatoes from the garden, and some onion to a jalapeno and about four cobs of lightly cooked corn. I made a dressing out of balsamic vinegar, olive oil, lime juice, fresh garlic, salt and pepper and then we topped it all off with a few shakes of Frank's hot sauce. Yum!!

Carpet woes.

Heather's handy home-reno tip #1. (actually my only home-reno tip)

If you are planning on ripping out the carpet in your bedroom Do Not be tempted to start it at 5 pm on a Sunday evening (especially if you have just come back from a holiday and are packing to go on another holiday, are kind of tired from yard work all weekend, and you were really just looking forward to a quiet evening with a nice dinner from the garden and a chance to catch up on some library books). Sure you might think it a simple job, just take off the baseboards and rip it out, right? But there is always the chance that underneath that manky, 34 year old carpet lurks an even mankier 34 year old underlay. That underlay might be old and tired and perfectly content to stay where it has been for the last 34 years. It might take a lot of coaxing to get it to move at all. Perhaps the adhesive that was used in underlay 34 years ago is CRAP and has broken down leaving the underlay as sad, multi-coloured foam chip bits all over your subfloor and the adhesive as disgusting gluey smears all over. (above is how the underlay should (sort of) look when it is not breaking down)

(above is how it looked over any areas of the floor that had been walked on for years)

The funny thing is that even though, because of the underlay, the job turned out to be a lot more work than I thought ( How many times have I read If You Give a Pig a Pancake? I know that is how this whole home reno thing goes and still I expect to be able to whip through a job like this in no time, will I never learn? It is never as simple as I think it will be.) we were even more thrilled that we did it once we saw how disgusting it was. I can't believe that we weren't sick from spending time sleeping in there when that was lurking under the carpet.

(scraped, swept and vacuumed and mostly ready to be finished, who knows when we will get to that)

Katherine, I have to tell you that I had planned to sit and relax last night but when I sat down to read, the book I chose was Green This! It was one that you had mentioned. Once I started reading it I didn't need any more motivation to rip the carpet out. :-) Books like that make me want to just get rid of everything in the house.

Unacceptable!

**Warning - Samantha - Close Your Eyes! - Do Not Read Any Further! - I am about to do a little venting about Mike Holmes. Nothing bad about Mike, mind you, just about the result of watching his show.
We recently got these from the libary. They are a lot of fun to watch and we all really enjoy them. However, the results of watching a whole season's worth in three weeks can be dangerous...life changing, in fact.

We are pretty big into DIY around here. We've redone a bathroom, taken off a leaky roof and put on a new roof, put in carpet, tile and laminate wood floors, done all kinds of outdoor landscaping projects. We've done plumbing, electricity, new hot water tank and too many other things to mention or even remember, but this kitchen reno is taking us a little longer than we thought. Today as I was sanding and puttying drywall (yet again), I thought to myself - Blast that Mike Holmes. ( there, I've said it...now I will cower in my kitchen while I wonder if Samantha is going to come barging into my house and "teach me " not to talk about Mike that way). The problem is that I used to be able to quite happily slap-dash my way through many a home improvement and now, it seems, I just can't do it anymore. I keep looking at my kitchen walls (where I had to take tons of old tiles off leaving me with loads of adhesive gobs and holes, and try to repair it for paint instead of tile) and thinking what would Mike say? And the answer is a resounding, "Unacceptable!"


(this is what the drywall looks like that I am trying to make nice enough to paint over)

What's a slap-dasher to do? I would gladly have Mike and his crew come to my house and fix it (duh! - and not just because of the tank top, lovely muscles and overalls thing either), but I don't see that happening. So I am left to mend my slap-dashing ways, and it is time-consuming, I can tell you. I can't tell you how pleased my perfectionist father will be to hear of this turn-around in my approach to home improvement (many a time I have seen fear in his eyes when I offer to do a job on his reno), perhaps I will get more jobs in the redoing area of my folks place instead of all the demo jobs. ;-)
At any rate, I better get back to the kitchen, it is time to sand some more and then hopefully I can apply some primer. I really want to put on my rock backsplash and just be done with it.

And here is a little peek at some future home handymen . E with a hammer that big? Be afraid!!

Prehistoric Money

After my son asked me if I had used paper dollars, I decided to go into storage and pull out some bills that I had saved years ago. I also found these other Canadian bills, more ancient then the ones I had used in my youth. I believe they were passed down to me from my grandma. Compared to the bills, I find the new coins so dull and uninteresting although I guess they are easier to save.

.

In knitting news, I'm having to take a break from the earwarmer/headband project as I am having some difficulty making the needles produce what I was envisioning and have had to frog it one too many times. So on my needles goes another pair of socks which I'm hoping come together a little more smoothly then the last.

FFO (Finally Finished Object)

Here is a project that has taken me.....oh, about 10 months to get around to completing. The funny part is once I got going on it yesterday, it went together so quickly. That is pretty typical of most things in life, I think, once you just decide to do it and get on with it, it doesn't take long at all.

When I saw the felted knitting needle holder in this book, I knew I wanted to make it. I had the perfect fabric in mind that I had found at one of our local thrift stores some time back that had been sitting on my shelf since then. Some of the yarn is thrifted and some is leftover bits from last year's felted bags that I made for gifts for all the women in my family. The sewing machine that I used ( that I finally took the time to get working yesterday) is a freebie that was given to my mom - in case she knew anyone who could use it ( which she did) - and then passed onto me. So now that I have one machine that works like a dream it makes it easier to get rid of at least 2 of the other 3 that I have languishing in the laundry room in varying states of not-workingness. Anyway, this is my favourite kind of project - taking bits and pieces of second hand stuff and making it into something useful - I use up some of my clutter and get something useful in return - even the knitting needles that will go in it are thrifted.

(pre-felting and post-felting)

I didn't quite follow the pattern ( again ladies, I can almost hear you guffawing at that). I didn't have the size needle called for and since it was to be felted I figured how much could it really matter. I also wasn't using 100% wool for part of it and I wanted to use double strands to get the mix of colour I wanted so, basically I guess I didn't follow it at all. I realized, when I was thinking about this, that I am a real "slap-dasher" - that sounds rather like an English term for someone dirty, doesn't it... a scoundrel, a blackguard, a bounder, a real slap-dasher... not quite what I was meaning...I like it though - I tend to like to follow my own ideas and I also like to get things done quickly (once I decide to do them). This can make for some....uh, interesting outcomes, but it works well for me. My friends know that I am a slap-dasher extraordinaire when it comes to cooking, I just find it soooo hard to follow a recipe. This can make it hard when someone asks me for a recipe, especially if they have some reasonable expectation of actual measurements. Don't even get me started on my gardening methods, they're enough to give my husband ( who makes a living running a landscape company ) nightmares.

So, here it is, all rolled up, with my needles stashed inside - ready for Nicola's next knitting night. Now I just need to find a ribbon to tie it closed with.

On another note, the boys and I have been enjoying listening to Terry Deary's Horrible Histories on CD. These are very funny tales presented by the BBC. W has always loved these books, and we are finding the CDs hilarious. If you love British accents and have a bit of a warped sense of humour (yes on both counts for me) then I think you would really enjoy these tales too. We got a stack from our library to listen to, we are listening to the Groovy Greeks right now. Still to come: The Terrible Tudors, The Savage Stone Age, The Vile Victorians, and The Measly Middle Ages. Hilarious!