...10.14...Over the Weekend...

...with the arrival of the cool fall weather...temps were in the 40s this morning (about 4° C)...and we wanted to get an early start on some yardwork...so I made us some breakfast sammies...tofu, vegan bacon bits, and vegan cheese on some toasted french bread slices...

...and the Man got started digging up the little bluegrass tufts we had in front of the sea oats we've already removed...I sort of hated to see them go as we had grown them from seeds...

...but there's the little strip that will become my future square foot garden bed...

...I also dug up and potted the hibiscus Mom had given us earlier this year as it was planted there as well...our Okinawan hibiscus are perennial...but I don't think this one is...

...the Man started harvesting the purple Okinawan sweet potatoes that we had grown in pots...

...some are pretty small...but there's some good sized ones as well...

...meanwhile...I tackled the Rattlesnake beans...as I don't see any more flowers on them...I think they're done producing for the year...

...from the left hand pot...

...and from the right hand one...

...and that filled up the final recycled cereal bag of the season...I'll cook them later this week...

...I emptied their felt pots into the new garden bed...and the fence looks a little bit barren now...

...then the Man mowed the back yard...

...all neat and tidy...we'll probably only mow one or two more times this year...

...and the only other thing we did outside was to go up into the attic and get the screens for the windows...since it's finally cool enough to open them...

...and then just a normal grocery shopping this week...the only thing of note is that I picked up the bag of apples from the organic section...but I didn't look at it very carefully...so I was surprised when I got home that they are not organic...oh well...I'll soak them in baking soda before we eat them...

~Wishing you a lovely start to your week...

...10.12...Dinner and a Movie...

...starting with some Blogger comments...

...to my sweet sissie Karen who blogs from her boat at McCraw Sails...Hey K...so nice that you got to visit with Granny and Miranda...cute photo of you two...everything looks better after a wash...right?...and all of that mulch will be a job to spread out for sure...loved the photo of it steaming on the cart...so happy to finally have some cool fall weather...too bad about the tree...but I'm happy you didn't end up on Fail Army...haha...I knew with Duane cutting the tree that wouldn't happen though...Love, T

...to karen from Pumpkin Sunrise...Hi Karen...I think 'boring' weekends are just about the best kind...we finally...finally have some cool fall weather too...your fall flowers are so pretty...and your socks too...

...to Éphée from L'éphémère quotidienneté des repas et autres trucs de magie...Hi Éphée...I've never had Niter Kebbeh...it sounds very interesting...and your apple focaccia is such a good idea...

...to Penny from Snap That Penny...Hi Penny...I loved reading your October meme...the hippie costume sounds cool...I think I was twelve the last time I trick-or-treated...I wore one of my Mom's old prom dresses...and like you I was definitely not well enough clothed to be out on an October evening in the mountains...it's funny to me to remember temperatures at all as a child...because in general I think it was something we didn't think much about...as I never remember being too hot as a child...so weird...

...on the reading front...I've finished "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath...I liked it a lot...it was a pretty short and easy to read...I'm not sure what I'm going to read next though...I pulled out my anthology of Guy de Maupassant...so maybe I'll read through those...it's not a complete collection...he wrote hundreds of short stories...but I'm sure I can find them as ebooks or on Gutenberg...

...for dinner...

...vegan pizza from the little pizza shop beside the Food Lion...it's so funny when you call in the order and ask for vegan cheeze...they always ask if you want the vegan marinara as well...and it's a good thing that they do...because I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't remember to tell them that...their regular marinara has parmesan in it...

...and for the movie we just watched a couple of episodes of Trollied...it's so funny and sweet...

...what have you been watching lately?

~Have a lovely day!

...10.11...Friday Update...

...we finally got out our new Delta kitchen faucet...it's not really new anymore as we purchased it a year or so ago...and it's been in the garage waiting for us to get far enough along with the renovation to install it...neither of us like the white on white kitchen faucet that was already here...

...and I got the jack and some wood out of the garage...you may be wondering why...haha...but the pretty white sink was never properly caulked...and to fix that we need to lift up the sink...but we don't want to disconnect everything and actually take the sink out of the counter...so we're just going to jack it up enough to get underneath the rim...

...the Man removed the Corian backsplash as we'll be putting the pretty white beveled subway tile there...

...it was easier than we thought...and that hardly ever happens...

...and then we jacked the sink up a couple inches above the counter...

...and chiseled away the 20 year old caulk that was under the rim...

...you can see that they never came back and caulked around the sink...so the cast iron sink rusted a bit where it meets the countertop...but we cleaned and sanded all of that away and ran a new bead of silicone around the underside of the rim and set the sink back in place...

...and then we would have installed the pretty new faucet...BUT...I said...wait...it'll be a whole lot easier to tile the backsplash without the faucet in place...

...so we're spending a few days without the kitchen sink while I get that done...

~Have a lovely day!

...10.10...Delicious Vegan Food we ate...

...I had bought this masarepa a while ago...and bookmarked a recipe for arepas...from Jessica in the Kitchen...(you can see that section of the wall is ready for tile)...haha...

...and just fried up the arepas...little cornmeal pancakes in some vegan butter...

...we had them for breakfast with molasses...because they remind me so much of fried cornmeal mush...which I've made a couple of times...I only remember Mom making it once during my childhood...but she probably made it more often than that...Daddy liked it with molasses so that's what we tried...

...they are a little bit crispy on the outside...and very soft and creamy on the inside...a lot like fried grits too...I actually prefered them with just some more Earth Balance and salt...but I almost always prefer salty over sweet...

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

~Have a lovely day!

...10.9...W.I.P. Wednesday...

...the intricate colour-work of the yoke portion of Big Sissie's Aurora Borealis sweater is done...

...see how the strands across the back of the different colours make this top portion doubly thick and warm...

...and I wove in all of the ends left from the colour changes...so the back side is nice and neat...

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

~Have a lovely day!

...10.8...Tuesdays with Julia...

...I totally expected this recipe to fail...

...but the little cream cubes did not explode as I thought they would...but fried to a perfect golden brown...

...so delicious...crispy and creamy...

...we had them on little sticks as an appetizer with a glass of wine...

...I think this recipe would be perfect as a filling for jalapeno poppers...I'm going to try that next...

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

~Have a lovely day!

...10.7...Over the Weekend...

...it's still pretty hot and muggy here so we wanted to get out into the yard early ...so we just had a quick pot of grits and coffee for breakfast...

...and then we headed out to the front yard to trim all of the bushes...this frontmost one that encircles the sugar maple is pretty big...but we can reach the top using the small flat ladder that Mom gave us...

...but this one in front of the porch...also a loropetalum...is taller so we need the stepladder to reach the top of this one...

...and also the tea olive that runs along the side of the house and outside the fence...if you've never smelled a tea olive in bloom you're really missing out...they are heavenly...

...all nice and neat with their trim new haircuts...

...then I drug my tired self to Stuff mart only to buy a few things that we need...the Man is going to make a pot of vegetable soup...even though it's really still too hot for soup...

...I picked the green beans again...they are definitely winding down now...I only see a few new purple blooms...

...in the food prep department...I made another batch of vegan tofu feta...

...and I Griddler-ed a block of tofu and a big sweet potato to have on hand for later in the week!

...and I should have done a Friday Favorites about my new favorite little sink corner tray/rack thing-y...

...I'd been wanting a neat way to hang my dishcloth to dry...and I mean not over the faucet - which we're getting ready to replace...Nanny had one mounted to the side of her cabinet...and I think those are neat too...but I love this little corner unit because it's multipurpose...holding several little things that you need at the sink but don't want them soggy...

~Wishing you a lovely start to your week!