...6.29...Dinner and Movie...and Blogger Comments...

...to my sweet sissie Karen who blogs from her boat at McCraw Sails...Hey K...I'm so glad your trip nothbound is going well...and that it's getting cooler for you...it's really hot here...I'm sure you'll be happy to be back at your dock for a while...Love, T

...to karen from Pumpkin Sunrise...Hi Karen...your hydrangeas are so pretty and purple-y blue...I like your new socks...I think I may cast on for some mindless socks now that the Emotional Support Chicken is finished...

...to Éphée from L'éphémère quotidienneté des repas et autres trucs de magie...Hi Éphée...I love both of your tofu dishes...I often grill tofu like that too...and eat it with steak sauce...which is accidentally vegan...

...to Penny from Snap That Penny...Hi Penny...I liked seeing your rainy skies...I wish it would rain here...it so dry and so hot...you're doing so well with your decluttering...we still will have more of that to do once we get the bathroom completely finish and open up the totes that we moved...

...to Beth from BLD in MT : Living a Simple Life in This Interconnected World...Hi Beth...Happy Anniversary...what a fun time you had celebrating that...

...and on the reading front...I'm almost finished with Bleak House now...it's a really good book...

...we finally ate our (lacto-fermented) Pickled Beans...the 'traditional' southern way with cornbread...and they were so good...just like I remember...I'll definitely be starting another batch soon...

...and the movie was a new to us series...Beyond Paradise...it's a spinoff of the Death in Paradise series...it was quirky and pretty good...a few faults in the reasoning and a little bit far fetched...but we'll see how it goes...

...what have you been watching lately?...

~Have a lovely weekend!

...6.28...Friday Update...

...we've painted all of the trim...the baseboards...

...and the chairrail...are White Snow...

...we thought it was 'interesting'...not in a good way...that the underside of everything was unpainted...is that a thing professional painters leave undone...we were surprised...

...even the thin little edge under the chairrail was unpainted...so weird...

...and finally we've started cutting in with the pretty blue...

...Benjamin Moore Harbor Fog...

...it already seems so much brighter with the blue and white...

~Wishing you a lovely start to your weekend!...

...6.27...Delicious Vegan Food we ate...

...we've been eating a lot of strawberries...these are on a bowl of raw oatmeal with soymilk and flaxseeds...

...some of the meal prepped black beans from over the weekend...

...and the Man's marinara sauce...topped with vegan ricotta and vegan parm...

...what delicious food have you been eating lately?...

~Have a lovely day!

...6.26...W.I.P. Wednesday...

...I knit the final little underbelly piece of the Emotional Support Chicken...

...and got her stuffed and sewed up...

...she sits up by herself...

...and she's got some attitude...

...I'm really really happy with how she turned out...she's so CUTE!...

...what's in your workbasket this week?...

~Have a lovely day!

...6.25...Tuesdays with Julia...

...we made a much smaller version of the VEGAN JAMBON BRAISÉ MORVANDELLE...since Julia's recipe is for about 20 people....

...and all of the particulars are over at The Vegan Version...

~Have a lovely day!

...6.24...Over the Weekend...

...Saturday morning I met a friend for brunch...and then we prowled around an antique store chatting away and didn't buy a thing...and after we parted ways I was pretty close to the Trader Joe's...so I ran in there for a few groceries...and I didn't have my bags with me...arghhh...

...and I got a bunch of 'soy beverage'...they don't use the term milk...remember when there was some controversy over that...and I also got a bunch of organic fruit and veg...

...this is definitely my new favorite 'milk'...

...it has two ingredients...organic soy and water...so perfect...

...and I got one Japanese sweet potato and one regular one...I photographed my had so you could see how big they are...the Man and I will definitely be sharing these...

...and I stopped by Aldi and got the regular things...

...and I got everything stowed away...I cut up the strawberries...

...look at the size of this one...I ate it out of hand...haha...

...we're really close to harvesting our first tomato...

...and we've got a bunch on the vine too...

...it's been really really hot here...actual temperature was 102° F (39° C)...with a heat index of 108° F (42°)...so really hot...this is a steamy photo from one of my evening bike rides through one of the older (60s ranch house) neighborhoods with nice flat-ish streets with little traffic where I ride every day...and at the end of this street...there is a community garden...

...and one of the gardeners had this box of onions for sale...3 for $2...

...so I rode back home to get the $2...and put three of their huge fresh onions in my basket...

...they look so nice...

...I stowed them in my cubbie seat...

...I soaked a bag of black beans...when did the bags go from a pound to 12 oz...

...and cooked them in the Instant Pot...

...I cleaned some silver jewelry...I should have taken a before photo as the difference is pretty amazing...

...and after Church we had quite a bit of excitement as the Fish and Wildlife people showed up to free a deer that had gotten trapped in the slough behind our house...it's a completely fenced protected wetland...and although there's food and water in there...she needed to get out...so they opened the gates and used a drone to find her...and then a crew of bush beaters to herd her toward the open gate...

...and just like that she was free and went scampering up the road...she was pretty tiny too...

...and then when we were walking in the evening...we saw a peregrine falcon on a fence in the neighborhood...I remember when they were endangered...after the Silent Spring DDT catastrophe...

...and finally...our Japanese hibiscus is blooming its huge blooms...

~Wishing you a lovely start to your week!

...6.22...Dinner and no Movie...and Blogger comments...

...to my sweet sissie Karen who blogs from her boat at McCraw Sails...Hey K...How exciting about the new boat...it looks really really nice...two haulouts in a week...whew...and I loved the bright red photo of you two...that was neat...Love, T

...to karen from Pumpkin Sunrise...Hi Karen...we love visiting botanical gardens too...the ones here are pretty crowded right now as it's about the only cool place around...I like your purple-y-pink leg warmers a lot...and it's so nice to see Frodo out and about...

...to Éphée from L'éphémère quotidienneté des repas et autres trucs de magie...Hi Éphée...I love both of your tofu dishes...I often grill tofu like that too...and eat it with steak sauce...which is accidentally vegan...

...to Penny from Snap That Penny...Hi Penny...I loved seeing your solstice skies...and I have replaced a few faucets...one completely by myself...but most with the Man's help...which I also need to the loosening bit...I do wish you lots of luck and I'm excited to see the finished faucet...

...and on the reading front...just plugging away at Bleak House...just a lot of character development right now...and a lot of little side stories...

...for dinner...I wish I could show you something interesting...but we'll settle for a delicious 'bowl'...

...we were exhausted from a day of getting all of the tax/registration/tag/dmv/insurance paperwork necessary to ship Our Airman's Camaro to Alaska...it seriously took the entire day...most of it spent waiting in lines...(you can read about and see the car here)...and although it's probably not the best car to have in Alaska...he'll get to drive it a few months out of the year...and he's never actually seen or driven the car...anywhoooo...there's a lot of paperwork involved in shipping a car via the military vehicle shipping department...and there will be a trip to Charleston in the near future to drop it off for shipment...

...we almost went out to eat...but we were really just too exhausted even for that...so...in the fridge there was one serving of leftover eggplant parm...and the Man ate that...there was also a bowl of leftover rice...so I had that with some peas and julienned carrots...a drizzle of soy sauce and tahini...and it was so good...

...and you guessed it...we didn't even stay up and watch a movie...or anything else...we sat out on the upstairs porch...with the ceiling fan running full speed as it's still pretty hot here...just watching the Strawberry full moon...and listening to the frogs/crickets/cicadas...and watching the deer munching on the neighbors grass (and hoping they stay away from our plants)...

~Have a lovely weekend!

...6.21...Friday Update...

...the kitchen/dining room ceiling paint is complete...

...it's so nice and bright white now...

...I should have taken a photo of it partially painted so you could see the real difference...we seriously think that they sprayed one coat of the wall colour and the ceiling with no primer...as anytime you use tape it pulls all of the paint off of the drywall...

...the Man reinstalled all of the lights...so I'm super happy about that...cooking by lamplight was hard...

...and all of the chair rail and baseboards have been scrubbed and are ready for paint...

... the Master bath the mirror frame is complete and it makes such a difference...we thought about taking it out and replacing it with two smaller mirrors over each sink...but I'm glad we kept it...

...and our three little patio tomatoes are going gangbusters...we're going to have so many little tomatoes...

~Have a lovely day!

...6.20...Delicious Vegan Food we ate...

...I snapped a photo of breakfast and lunch...but not dinner...I made the Copycat Just Egg from VeggieFunKitchen...that I've posted about before...I mixed in some vegan bacon bits...and then added some Violife Cheddar...

...and then for lunch...I fried up some cabbage...really just water sautéed until it was slightly scorched...I got the Man's portion about before that as he doesn't like his that way...and a black bean veggie burger on a TJ bun with some guacamole...it was YUM!

...what delicious food have you been eating lately?...

~Have a lovely day!