So little time!

Im desperately trying to organise and get ready to leave again!

I spent an hour tonight scrubbing the outdoor cushions as they are rather dirty; seems you need a cover over them. hmmmm. I only got finished with two cushions. We have eight chairs. I had hoped to finish this, and many other jobs, before Danny got back. I think its safe to say, it ain't gonna happen.

Made some bread though, so thats good. The bread is for this lovely old guy at work who brings me an entire bag of butternut squash every autumn as he knows how much I love them! Thanks John Milam! In fact, I received the bag today and already ate one for dinner, thats how much I love butternut squash! I peeled it (the wormies love butternut squash for some reason!) and cut it into small pieces, just under a centimeter, then tossed it in oil, lime juice and honey and baked it on 400F for about 40 minutes, adding chopped red onions with 20 minutes to go. Meanwhile boiling the speckled butter beans and green beans from my garden and adding in some chopped garden fresh tomatoes. Tossed it all with olive oil and brown rice; a most delicious dinner!

Im never going to do all the stuff on my list, its almost bed time and I only have two more nights to go!!! Meanwhile Danny is helicoptering to Mount St Helens to look for survey pins all day. I dont know! Not a very equal distribution of responsibility here is there! At least Im still at home!

I went to visit my good friend Megan and her 3 week old daughter, Harper. Squirmy little things, babies, but pretty cute! We shall be having lunch again together tomorrow, infact Megan, we will be eating left over dinner, if thats alright with you! Harper can have milk again, gosh, what a boring diet!

11 days 'til we leave for New Zealand!

Awesome weekend!

So much to tell you about, not enough time in the day to write!

Ha! I was going to start at saturday morning, but having just downloaded my photos, I realised I forgot a particularly important event friday night!

Friday night I checked on my wormies. The little Night Crawlers have been living in our laundry room for almost a year now.  They had started to smell lately, which usually means the balance is all out of whack. Yes, they were all out of whack! They had eaten all of their food and all of their bedding! Greedy buggers! So I now have an entire tote full of beautiful worm poo that my soon-to-be-planted tomato plants are going to absolutely love! But then there is that dilemma of how to get them out of the poo and into another tote. So at Nicole's suggestion, I made up another tote of bedding and food and placed it on top. However it was higher in the other tote because there was so much poo in there. So I then had to tape a ripped up plastic bag around it so that any escapies would be caught. It was a good job I did this because lots of little guys have lost their way and ended up down there. Im going to give them a month to move house, then I guess Ill have to pack their bags and evict them.

Getting the new home ready for inhabitance

Freddie, Larry and Lee

What an exciting Friday night!

Saturday morning I woke up good and early. In fact, the singing birds outside my bedroom window woke me at 7am. Then I felt this strong manly arm wrap around me and I thought it wouldnt be so bad to start working in a little while so that I could enjoy a snuggle. So I finally got up around 740am to start my busy day.

It began with bagel baking - always delicious warm and fresh in the mornings.

I moved on to cup cake making.  While I remember, dont make the jelly donut cupcakes in Veganomicon. They just dont work. You had to drop the jam into the batter before baking. Well it sunk, duh. So if you want to make these, bake the batter and then spoon in some jam when they are cooled.

Then, having eaten my lovely warm bagel I went to work outside... last week, Danny's aunt Karen gave me four trash bags full of day lilies from her garden. You all know how much such generosity means to me, and how desperate I have been all week to plant them! So I got to work. After the entire day outside splitting and planting day lilies, I was sun burnt but still not finished... but I had to make cookies and some more cupcakes for the gathering at my boss' house.  I apologise to every one at the gathering saturday night, I was tired and Im not used to eating at 830pm, so I was really hungry. Well obviously I went into total shut down!

Sunday was more chilled. Finished planting the day lilies in a snip. Then moved on to some long over due weeding! ugh. Actually it was nice. I just sat at various spots around the garden pulling up weeds. I chatted to a good friend and pulled away.  The only frustrating thing is the sheer volume of gum balls, and it seems that as I pick them up (as I dont want them in my leaf pile for next years mulch) more fall off the trees. But all in all, Id say I had a very theraputic day!  We popped to the farmers market and grocery store later on this afternoon, picking up a gorgeous lamb shoulder at the former. 

Dinner was masterful and so little effort! I throughly recommend the following with your choice of meat.  I cut lots of fresh rosemary and mint from the garden and placed it in the bottom of a 9x13 baking dish, along with a bulb of garlic split into cloves and some canola oil. On this I placed the lamb shoulder and rubbed it with cumin, sea salt and pepper, covered the whole thing with tin foil and baked at 325F for an hour. After an hour I lifted up the lamb and placed potatoes and rutabaga (large cubes) underneath and then carrots and parsnips around the edge, and baked for another hour. Perfect. We had this with stuffing (just because!) and a mix of steamed greens tossed in the leftover lemon vinaigrette from salad the other day. Like I said, a masterpiece!

Ill leave you with more tulip pics and the pups outside earlier on.  They are snoring right now, food comas after the lamb shoulder we just gave them to gnaw on!

Mojo

Tux

Off to bed now to read my book. What a relaxing, but productive weekend!