Joyful Abode

Good: Basil is growing (from seed! Thanks Meagan, for the herb kit)
Not so good: No parsley is growing… it died (I like basil better anyway). Also, something is munching on the basil leaves a little.

Good: The eggplant is making lots of fruits and flowers. The plant is in generally good health.

Not Good: Something ate lots of little holes in all the leaves on the entire plant.

Good: Tomatoes galore, and they’re finally ripening!

Not so good: A few of the tomatoes were affected by less water while we were in Michigan, and have cracking on them.

Not so good: No zucchinis in a while… and the plant does not look happy. It got this way while we were in Michigan. Moral? Never go out of town, ever.

Not so good: Cucumber plant has lots of sad dead leaves (again, trip to MI).
Good: It has flowers and  little baby cukes.

Good: Banana pepper has a few tiny peppers forming.

Not so good: The last two banana peppers that got big at all ended up getting big brown spots and I had to get rid of them. Also, the plant is scraggly and sad looking.

Good: Our green beans look happy and there are itty bitty beans starting to grow!

Good: Zora is a very good helper. Here she is letting us know which tomatoes to pick.

…and inspecting the fruit.

So… we sprayed insecticidal soap on the ones that look like something’s been eating them. But any other ideas? Any amazing tips?

Most of all, I want our zucchini to spring back… I LOVE zucchinis, and the ones from our garden have been so good.

This is the first toy that has actually defeated my dog.

She and her Kong toys have an understanding… they’ve declared a draw.

But this one? This one kicked her butt.

Now, I know what you’re thinking… that toy is a TIRE! It is TOUGH! Of COURSE it’s going to beat that little dog. Well, yes and no.

After about 10 minutes of vigorous chewing, she had managed to shred parts of it.

So it looks like Zora’s winning here, right? Again, yes and no. It looks like this might be part of the “2 ply flossing nylon” the toy claims to be a good thing. Also notice that this is a “New Stronger Design” and that satisfaction is guaranteed. Plus, the back of the package has recommendations for which sizes to get for normal chewers and strong chewers (and the weights of the dogs). We got the size recommended for strong chewers up to 50 pounds. She’s 26 pounds.

After a few more minutes, she started ripping off chunks of the tire and trying to eat them. As with any new toy introduction, I was of course heavily supervising… which includes opening her mouth and scooping out tire pieces each time she got one ripped off.

And after a few minutes, I tired of it (pun intended) and took the toy away.

And all evening, Zora threw up everything in her stomach. Non-toxic, my butt.  I freaked out, of course, being a new puppy mama who’s never had a dog before… and I called Zora’s vet. On Saturday night.

I have to say, it is the most fantastic vet office… they have an answering service during off-hours, and they take your number and have a doctor call you back (really quickly). The doctor talked me through how to take care of Zora’s tummy (including people pepto-bismol and dramamine!) at no charge at all. So nice!

And the next morning Zora was okay again. And I’ll definitely be trying to get a hold of that toy company because I’m not satisfied (and they guaranteed my satasfaction!).

When Victoria and I got together to watch Army Wives, I brought over a veggie tray… and since I LOVE vegetables, I went a little overboard, I think.  Which is totally fine, because, seriously? Veggies rock.

So later that night, for some reason my husband wanted to eat (Didn’t I feed him yesterday??), so I made this.

• 2 cups those ruffly pasta noodles, cooked
• 1/2 each: red bell pepper, yellow bell pepper, orange bell pepper, diced (raw)
• 1 cup broccoli florets, blanched
• 1/2 cup grape tomatoes, halved

Toss everything together, and then drizzle on a little EVOO and sprinkle in some Kosher salt. Toss again. Splash in some Lemon juice until it tastes good to you. Toss more.

Just looking at these pictures is making me drool… I really want to go buy out the produce section at the commissary tomorrow!

I wanted to have some friends over to enjoy our vegetable garden’s bounty with us, so we decided to have a semi-last-minute get-together. But because lots of people were going out of town, we changed it to a few days later.

Which gave me time to figure out how to make bread.

I’ve tried to make homemade bread dough several times, mostly for pizza crust. First I had a major ERROR, then a success with the help of the bread machine, and then another bread-machine-less ERROR. It seems every time I touch yeast, bad things happen (except in the case of bread machine issues.

So I studied… my friend Catherine gave e a copy of The Joy of Cooking as a wedding gift, and it’s so helpful! I read and re-read the chapter on yeast breads, and then decided to go for it… keeping in mind that I needed PATIENCE for this.

And guess what! I did it! I made bread! NOT in the bread machine at all! I didn’t take photos of the process (maybe I was afraid that documenting it would make it not work), but here it is in the oven…

I used the Joy of Cooking white bread recipe, shaped into a thick baguette-ish shape, and brushed egg whites over top, then sprinkled with sesame seeds. I don’t have a baguette pan (though you can bet it’s on my wists now) or a pizza stone, so I inverted some cookie sheets, which worked decently well.

LOOK WHAT HAPPENED!

I FINALLY MADE BREAD!!! It took all day and a lot of patience, but it wasn’t hard at all. Yay!

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This was one of those dinners-on-a-whim. We had some zucchini and eggplant lying around (funny how that happens now that we have a vegetable garden!) and I wanted something with that and chicken. Enter, stir-fry.

Here’s how we roll:

1. Husband cuts goopy gross stuff off of the chicken breasts and slices them thinly, diagonally across the grain.
2. Meanwhile, I start cooking some white rice.
3. I also wash and cut the veggies.
4. Then, I throw the chicken in the pan with a little bit of vegetable oil and toss it around until it’s about 2/3 of the way cooked.
5. Then, I add zucchini, eggplant, and a can of baby corn (drained and rinsed).
6. In goes some oyster sauce and soy sauce, and everything gets tossed around.
7. When the vegetables are soft and the chicken is cooked all the way through, there’s “juice” in the bottom of the pan… I want to make this into more of a sauce.
8. So husband makes me a slurry of corn starch in cool water, and I drizzle it in, still stirring everything in the pan. After about a minute, the corn starch has thickened the “juice” into a nice sauce.
9. We eat.
10. Yum!

Check out those eggplants and cucumbers! The cucumbers went into a delicious cucumber salad… just de-seed, chop, and toss with some fat-free sour cream, a sprinkling of ranch dressing mix (dry), and some rice vinegar. Very tasty!

Unfortunately, the eggplants had a less happy fate. Thankfully for all of us, I tossed this recipe in the trash, so you’ll never know just how bad it was. And I can’t re-find it in the blogosphere (as I only read, oh, about 100 cooking blogs), so I’ll just have to describe my recollection of it.

It started out nicely. The recipe instructed me to slice my eggplants and cook them in a pan in some olive oil with a sprinkling of salt.

I should have stopped there. I sneaked a piece and do you want to know how good it was? It was groan-inducing.

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We were in the grocery store looking at pickles (the refrigerated ones, mmmm) when I noticed a refrigerated can of crab meat. On a whim, I threw it into the cart so I could attempt crab cakes… You see, lately, probably 90% of my restaurant experiences have included crab cakes, and I’m a fan!

I wrote down my made-up recipe as I did this, but I evidently threw it away… I can’t find it anywhere! So we’ll just have to guess.

I know there was:

• 16 oz. of crab meat
• 1 onion, chopped and sauted
• some breadcrumbs (about 3/4 cup)
• Salt
• Pepper
• Frank’s red hot sauce
• an egg or two
• a splash of lemon juice
• A bunch of melted butter

So, I mixed all of that together:

… and chilled it for a while so it wasn’t as goopy.

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I love my foodsaver vacuum sealer for many reasons. One is because we can buy meat when it’s on sale, do stuff to it (cutting goop off of chicken, which my sweet husband does), and then freeze it in a manner that will 1) take up less room in the freezer and 2) last significantly longer.

So, when we made burgers for the fourth of July (not just patties of meat, but actual delicious flavorings and stuff mixed in), we made a whole bunch and froze the ones that weren’t cooked and eaten that day, 2 to a vacuum-sealed bag.

That means that this dinner took 7 minutes to prepare!

7 minutes = cooking the burgers on the grill
6 minutes = steaming the asparagus in the microwave
5 minutes = toasting buns in the toaster oven
2 minutes = putting our desired condiments on the toasted buns

How fantastic is that?