Joyful Abode

Maybe she doesn’t put in the exclamation point, but I feel like it should be there anyway… sounds more like the rick rack is pouncing onto you. BAM!

Rick Rack Attack is filled with real vintage aprons in so many styles… there’s sure to be one you will fall in love with! If I were to take one home with me, it might just be this gorgeous sky blue gingham with chicken scratch embroidery.  Love! She also hosts vintage apron giveaways every Saturday in her blog, “Confessions of an Apron Queen“. Check it out!

So I thought that the 31st of this month was a Friday, but it’s really Thursday…  but I’m going to pretend it’s Friday anyway, because that’s how I planned it!

MOD Custom Jewelry can’t stop impressing me with their handiwork! This month, it’s this handmade chain maille jewelry with “freshwater coin pearls”  interspersed throughout. I think this would be really lovely for a bride to wear at her beachy destination wedding, don’t you?

So there I was, face to face with a huge pile of eggplants. The guy requested eggplant parmesan again, but I wasn’t in the mood for breaded crispy stuff. Or the usual accompanying pasta.

So I decided to make eggplant patties and eggplant balls (which would go great as a meatball substitute in spaghetti or baked ziti or something), some of which I planned to freeze for later enjoyment.

The verdict? SO GOOD and I will definitely be making these again, possibly with variations!

We ate them as sandwiches, but they’d be great on a hamburger bun with the usual hamburger-esque toppings and condiments, too.

Eggplant Patties Recipe (or Homemade Veggie Burgers)

• About 5-6 Japanese eggplants, peeled and cubed
• 1 Tablespoon garlic
• 1-2 shredded zucchinis (optional; carrots would also be fantastic as an addition)
• 1 1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese (the stuff in the can is even fine)
• 1 1/4 cup Italian breadcrumbs
• 3/4 cup wheat germ
• 2 or 3 beaten eggs

Sautee the garlic in a couple tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil over medium heat. After about a minute, add the eggplant and 3/4 cups water. Steam, covered, over medium heat about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove the cover and stir until most of the water has evaporated.

Remove eggplant to a bowl and mash to your desired consistency. Some chunks are okay!

Squeeze the excess water out of your grated zucchinis and/or carrots by putting them into a dish towel and wringing it over the sink. This just removes some of the excess moisture so that your patties won’t be soggy. It’s an important step; I promise! Add the squeezed veggies to the eggplants.

Chill for about half an hour, just so the mixture isn’t hot anymore. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350 degrees

Add parmesan cheese, breadcrumbs, and wheat germ. Stir. Add 2 beaten eggs and combine. If it’s too dry, add another egg. If it’s too wet, you can add more breadcrumbs, cheese, and/or wheat germ.

Chill again to let the mixture get a little more firm.

Shape patties and/or balls on a cookie sheet sprayed with cooking spray. I used the two-spoon method (illustrated in the Red Lobster biscuit recipe) for balls, and a larger lump, flattened with a fork, for patties.

Bake 30 minutes, flipping over halfway through. Enjoy as you see fit!

We had ours on a sandwich. One side of the sandwich had melted mozzarella cheese. On the other side was a tomato mixture (in a bowl, mix a can of tomatoes, drained, with a drizzle of olive oil, a couple splashes of balsamic vinegar, and a few shakes of dried basil). It was amazing!

The next day for lunch, our sandwiches were similar, but instead of the tomato mixture, we spread on a dressing made of light mayonnaise mixed with balsamic vinegar. Very yum (and the dressing also worked well as a dipping sauce for some of the eggplant balls)!

I think these would be really gorgeous with some more color added… carrots, red peppers, something pretty. Also, to beef up the texture a little (excuse the pun) mushrooms or cooked brown rice would be welcome additions.  So fresh-tasting!

I really like the idea of serving up veggie burgers that aren’t pretending to be something they’re not. Veggies should never masquerade as meat in my opinion. They’re too wonderful in their own right for that!

I LOVE zucchini and I wish our little plant would make more than it is producing now! There are so many recipes I want to try, and of course I want to repeat the ones I already know I like… I know some people are overrun with them though, so hopefully this will give you a little inspiration for using your zucchini stash.

These zucchini cakes were amazing, and I’m SURE that if you wanted to, you could freeze them and then reheat them in a pan or toaster oven later on.

I read this recipe at The Pioneer Woman Cooks (which, by the way, is my food-blog idol), but didn’t print it out or anything, so my measurements may have been different, but the idea is simple.

Grate some zucchini(s), then put them in a towel and squeeze out the extra “juice” so it’s not soggy. Stir in some garlic, cheese, and breadcrumbs, then add an egg or two for moisture and emulsification. Make it into little patties and fry them up in a pan.

We ate ours with some spaghetti (whole wheat and regular, mixed) tossed with tomato pesto from a jar and some pine nuts. It was so delicious.

When they were gone, I wished there were more… alas, the zucchini plant hadn’t kicked out another ripe one yet, so we’ll just have to wait.

Even though she’s an inside dog and mostly only goes outside to pee and to go for walks (or to keep us company while we water the plants and do gardening stuff), somehow Zora picks up a “dog” smell… hmm. Maybe it’s because she’s a dog! Anyway, we’ve had her for about a month and a half now, so I went ahead and gave her her second bath.

The guy took her for a really long walk to tire her out, and then I gave her treats on the side of the tub while the water ran. I had to keep giving her treats through the whole bath to keep her occupied and happy. She only hopped out of the tub once. haha.

She really doesn’t seem to mind the lathering part… maybe it’s like a massage. But the rinsing, she doesn’t love. This time, instead of using a cup to pour water over her, I kind  of scooped water into my hands and used it to pet away the bubbles. It worked pretty well.

When we were finished, I held out her huge towel and said, “Zora, come!” and she leaped into the towel and I gave her a good rub-down.

The ear cleaning was the hardest part… she smelled the bottle and I gave her treats, but when I got it near her ear she tried to squirm away. We ended up having to do it by brute force, with the guy holding her down while I squirted her.

But 2 minutes later, she was lying in my lap letting me massage her ears (even touching inside of them a little). So weird! Maybe next time we’ll just wait until she’s in that half asleep happy state to clean her ears.

In any case, she’s clean and delicious-smelling now, and I just want to snuggle her and bury my face in her oatmeal-shampooed fur.

Does anyone know how often you’re supposed to give dogs baths? We’re not using a harsh detergent so that will probably let us bathe her more often if we’d like to, right? 

I have brushed her teeth several times since we got her, and have clipped her nails a few times too. Her grooming record so far is pretty good! I hope she gets more used to these things so she’ll get calmer about them in the future.

Also, she’s learned “high five” and “spin around” now… which is very cool. I’ve also been getting her to stand on her hind legs with her front paws in the air, which is very cute. I haven’t decided what the verbal command for that should be but I’m starting to think “person” would be good. What do you think?

I’ve seen it a few times now, on our back patio. Because of the fuzziness I’m thinking maybe some kind of moth? But it looks SO FAT to be a moth… I’m not sure. Anyone?

I don’t know much about how RSS feeds work… but evidently when I switched the blog from being at the front page (joyfulabode.com) to joyfulabode.com/blog, something got messed up and I lost a LOT of subscribers (their feeds aren’t being updated).

I run my feed through feedburner and have updated the feed source address from joyfulabode.com/feed to joyfulabode.com/blog/feed and it seems to be working through feedburner… (when I plug in either feed address, it gives me the updated feed).

But my subscribers are still missing, about 250 of them. Anyone know what might’ve happened? Or other things I could try to fix it? I like having a new front page to act as the “hub” for my site, so I don’t really want to put the blog back where it was before.

If you don’t know but you know someone who might, please pass this problem on! I’d love any help I can get.

Thanks so much!

PS If you’re subscribed and you can still see this, how did you subscribe to the feed? If you’re no longer getting RSS updates from Joyful Abode and you came to the site to see this, what method is no longer working?

Edited to add: I just realized that the livejournal syndicated account isn’t updating, and that’s nearly 150 subscribers right there. So I put in a support request to livejournal, and hopefully they’ll fix it soon! I’m still missing about 100 other subscribers… I think feedblitz might be part of the problem. I’m not sure what else though.

Edited again 7-25: I fixed the feedblitz problem, but I’m still waiting to hear from livejournal about the syndicated feed there.

Out of all of our plants, so far the eggplant has proven the most productive. If we wanted to, I’m sure we could pick 6 eggplants at any given time, though we tend to leave them on the plant for a few days after they’re ready until we want them (which doesn’t seem to affect their flavor at all).

So during the summer and warm months of Fall, I’m sure you’ll be seeing eggplant recipes alongside the Zucchini ones.

Here’s one we tried recently:

Eggplant Dipping Sticks 

• 1 large eggplant, or 4 ichiban eggplants (they’re long and skinny)
• 1/2 cup toasted wheat germ
• 1/2 cup Italian breadcrumbs
• 1/2 cup parmesan cheese
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
• 3 eggs, beaten

Preheat your broiler and wash your eggplants…

Cut them into little french-fry like wedges, and then if you want to, you can salt them with Kosher salt to draw out the bitter juices.  The way I did it this time was to put the wedges into a colander over a bowl, sprinkle liberally with kosher salt, and top with a smaller colander weighted with the Kosher salt box, so the eggplant pieces were squished.

Mix together the wheat germ, breadcrumbs, parmesan cheese, and garlic salt. I toasted the wheat germ in a pan first and then added everything else in with the pan still on low heat, stirring.

When your eggplant sticks are ready, rinse or wipe off the salt and pat dry with towels. Then dip each stick into the beaten eggs, and roll in the breadcrumb/wheat germ mixture. Place on a cookie sheet prepared with cooking spray.

Now broil for about 3 minutes, flip, and broil another 3 minutes or until they’re crispy.

If you’d like, you can serve them with warmed up tomato sauce as a dunker. We ate ours with some pasta salad leftover from a couple days before. Mmm!

Enjoy!

Again, straight from our garden…

It’s so fantastic to go out into the garden and pick dinner! I know people get tired of their zucchini plants by the end of the summer, but I don’t think I will. In fact, I’m already planning to plant TWO next year instead of just one. Haha.

Our Japanese eggplant has also been quite productive, and for this meal, I combined the two in a simple stir-fry. Just cooked in a little oil and with a sprinkle of salt. I thought of adding more seasonings, but the rice has a strong flavor and I didn’t want to overshadow the FRESH veggie taste.

Oh goodness! It’s me in the kitchen WITHOUT an apron! It’s only because this meal took like 5 minutes to cook… though usually when I do this I get something on my shirt. I didn’t this time, which was incredibly lucky. My face looks all tired and hot (we went to the gym that day, and I only changed my shorts before dinner), but I look thin and good other than that. haha.

This is the rice... it takes 20 minutes or a little less to cook, and it’s very yummy. Also quite cheap.

And… here’s dinner! Yum!

Should I keep including the recipes I make with my garden-veggies in the “gardening” category? Or should I just do food/recipes/how-to, but leave out gardening?

Zora LOVES to chew on things… luckily, she hasn’t chewed on the furniture or anything like that (she tried the first couple days she was with us, but I think we got the message across). Lately, she’s taken to plucking one Kleenex from the box, and shredding it, then trying to eat the little pieces. Usually we catch her about 20 seconds into this and take it away.

My mother recently sent her grand-doggie a package with some treats and toys in it. Zora LOVED the toys.. for about half an hour. Then they were both in the trash, because puppies ingesting polyfill and plastic probably isn’t a good plan.

This one was funny! An angry cat with a squeeker in it. Zora started off gently mouthing the cat, and carrying it around the house like a baby (I couldn’t even get her to go out to pee without taking it with us).

But less than half an hour later, the cat ran away in fear, its ear missing. I love Zora’s pose in this one, paws crossed in a lady-like fashion. “What? Who, me?”

The other toy didn’t even last long enough to get a picture…

And the other morning, when I went to go wake her up and take her out of her crate, this is the state her bedding was in. And we always give her a chew toy while she’s in her crate, so if she gets bored she can play with it.

The zipper was totally destroyed, the pillow pulled out of the middle, and stuffing pulled out of the pillow. Check out this damage:

My teeth hurt just looking at that photo. I put the bed onto the floor to get a better shot, and look who jumped right on it again, to continue her destruction!

Needless to say, she now has no bedding in her crate. I’m afraid that she’s in such a destructive phase right now that she’d shred/eat anything we put in there for her, and impacted bowels and innards would be much more uncomfortable (not to mention potentially lethal) than sleeping on the plastic crate bottom.