blog #421 >> More Catchng Up!

Sorry, sometimes I just get too busy doing things to catalog them in my blog. Poor thing! It's been so lonely lately!
So I'm going to attempt to get mostly caught up tonight...
let's see if I can do it.

We have... in no particular order...

EGGPLANTS!!! At last I have eggplants! And they are amazingly delicious! I've been roasting them in honey butter. They might be one of my new favorite foods.

I wish the tomatoes were doing as well as the eggplants. I have yet to get a single red tomato this year. Only the yellow ones are ripening.

But the green peppers are doing pretty good.

And the sunflowers.

And the fairytale eggplant of course.

And I've got zucchini coming out of my ears! These are the monsters that grew while I was away house sitting. I've eaten zucchini nearly everyday. And if you consider soup a beverage, I have made zucchini into a breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert and a drink!



I also had a bumper crop of beets. So I tried making some pickled beets this year. I can't wait to try them!

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And this is the bathrobe I made from the chenille bedspread I pulled out of "The Bins." I LOVE how it turned out! And I promise to post more of my newly finished sewing projects soon... well eventually.




And here is a sneak peak at my newly finished blue dress. I started this when I was 13 and finally finished it! It was the ultimate in procrastination. But now I actually have the skills to fix it and finish it. (I had made it too big.) Although, I have to admit, I was pretty impressed with the straight seems and details on it. I was a pretty good little seamstress at 13.


Even though I know it's a bit early to be thinking about Halloween. I want this to be my next sewing project. It would make an adorable little party dress. I would have bought it, but it was already sold by the time I discovered it. I found it here on Wearing History's Etsy shop.


And this is the dress I did buy! Such a sweet little tea party dress!
I got it from Elegant Musings shop.


Oh, and I loved the clothes in this old Kodak 1922 Kodachrome Film Test too.



Let's see what's left in my "to post on the blog" folder...

ooooh here! These are some drip catchers I crocheted for my tea pot.


And this is an old parking lot photo I saw on Vintage Portland. I wonder if they ever lost a car?


hmmm... oh yes! And I recently rediscovered "Hark! A Vagrant" comics. I had forgotten how much I love her work! It always makes me laugh, plus it appeals to my inner history buff.

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And here is a new cookie cookbook I pulled out of "The Bins."

(Don't light the oven by yourself.)

(Official taste testers below.)


These are some cookie recipes I can't wait to try from Simply Recipes.
This one is for Butterscotch Cookies.

And this one is for Chocolate Nutella Cookies.
Photos by Simply Recipes.

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I also bought these How and Why, Wonder Books "The Science Library" at "The Bins." Because I'm a sucker for books, and I always loved these books when I was a little girl and this is the whole collection! I love the pictures in them and the early optimism of the 1960's, when we believed we'd be living on the moon in less than 50 years!

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And for a nerdy story and photo to leave off with. I recently found Bad Astronomy online and I can't believe I haven't been following it before. It's fantastic!
This is one of my favorite pictures from it. "The laser shoots up into the sky and excites atoms in the upper atmosphere, causing them to glow. That makes an artificial and very bright star in the sky! The telescope can then use that star to track the distortions in the atmosphere and compensate for them, allowing the images it makes to be incredibly clear and sharp." Read more about it here.

Alrighty, I've got to get to bed now.
Good night!
T

blog #379 >> Salt Crystals & Crystal Cave

Last time I was at the store, I accidentally bought sea salt instead of regular table salt. Not that there's anything wrong with sea salt, I have a course grained finishing sea salt that I love. However, sea salt isn't fortified with any iodine, which is one of those rare nutrients our bodies need. Now I'm not quite sure what to do with all this extra sea salt, and the only thing I could think to make with it, were salt crystals. When I was a little girl, I LOVED to make salt crystals. I must have made them at least once a week. They're kinda like Magic Rocks, but not as colorful or as tall. Also, salt crystals are very easy to make, and unlike Magic Rocks, completely non-toxic.



To make your salt crystals stir three tablespoons of salt into a cup of warm water. (Make sure your water is warm enough to dissolve the salt.) Stir for a few minutes, until the salt has completely disappeared. Next pour your salt water solution into a shallow pan. (Preferably, this is a pan you no longer need, since the salt crystals are hard to clean off. ) Set your pan in a warm spot, and wait for all the water to evaporate. The warmer the spot the faster your crystals will grow. (When I was young I'd set the pan underneath our wood stove, which brought quick results. I'd have salt crystals overnight. But this time I set them up in front of the heater, which took about four days for the crystals to finish growing.) You can also make sugar and alum crystals this same way, but if your sugar water spills while your waiting for your water to evaporate, it will make a sticky mess. For best results, I recommend the salt crystals.

My favorite book growing up and...

...the original instructions found inside.

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And the deadly but beautiful crystal cave found in the Chihuahuan Desert of Mexico… 1000+ feet below the surface. Found at Neatorama.

Found also at National Geographic:






As well as, The Daily Mail, my favorite news site:



T

blog #307 >> Hasn't been lazy...

...very lazy that is.
Well, it is summer. And I realize I've been a very lazy blogger lately. It's just that I've done a lot of other stuff instead. And I'm trying to not feed into the narcissism that blogging creates.

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Anyhow... besides the usual accordion playing, reading, and gardening, I've been very busy canning. After all, those peaches aren't going to can themselves, and I certainly can't eat them all in one day. Therefore something had to be done with the tree full of peaches.


Dave and Trina picking peaches.


There were simply too many peaches to can by myself this time, and my mom graciously let me bombard her kitchen and can them there. I don't think I could have done these ones without her help. And it was so nice being able to cook them outside on the camp stove.

The giant shelf of jars. I have a feeling someday my house will look like this.

The finished cherries, peaches, and peach jelly.

God bless those who can fresh produce.


See how happy these children are with their fresh homemade jelly?

This page makes me want to paint happy faces on all my jars.

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Besides taking care of my abundance of fuzzy fruit last week, I also spent quite a bit of time with my telescope. I feel like we need to spend more quality time together. Since I moved to the city, I hardy ever get to use it. The skies here are just pathetically bright. It's like it never really gets dark. And the last time I took it out here, the neighbors thought I was spying on them and children swarmed me and I ended up practically teaching an astronomy class instead of using it myself. Not that that's bad, but it's just not the same. I miss the cold dark nights and the clear crisp skies. Anyhow this week I tried to get out as much as I could. This week was not like the other weeks. For one thing the International Space Station was extra low and bright in the sky. I was able to catch it three times this week. And Neptune was in transit with Jupiter. But most importantly M55 was visible just on the horizon. You see I like to collect things, books, tea cups, Jell-O molds, and one of the things I collect are Messier Objects (a.k.a. annoying dim fuzzy objects which are not comets.) I've been trying to find them all for 8 years. And out of 110 I have 13 left, and those 13 are really hard to find. Most of them are extremely dim, barely visibly through my 114mm telescope. Or they are right on the horizon and only visible a short period of the year. And if it's cloudy, or a full moon during that time, I've got to wait for the next year. Unfortunately, M55 has proven to be both hard to find and right on the horizon. And it will only be very low on the horizon for a few weeks before it disappears entirely for the year. Now I'm a GOOD star hopper, but I tried for several hours and at last gave up when I was half asleep in the grass. I even tried entering the Right Ascension and Declination into the equatorial mount and I found NOTHING! I also tried just slowly moving the telescope in circles and back and forth over the area it should be (this sometimes works shockingly well) and still NOTHING. It shouldn't be that hard to find. It's like 2/3 the size of the MOON! The only thing I can think is that it must have always been just behind the trees. Oh M55, you giant fuzzy globular cluster! Someday I will find you yet.

Also, it should be noted that things don't look like this though my telescope. These are Hubble or Observatory photos. And they look nothing like this though little telescopes, even though they print these pictures on the packaging.
Here's a good example of some of the pictures you see, compared to what they really look like through a small telescope.
(left to right, top to bottom: Butterfly Cluster M6, Lagoon Nebula M8, The Andromeda Galaxy M31, The Hercules Cluster M13, The E.T. Cluster NGC 457, The Trifid Nebula M20.

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And of course since something must be done while I wait for it to get dark. I spent a lot of my week chasing the little kiddies around. And let me tell you that Power Wheels goes FAST! I can only run after that and steer for them for a half hour or so before I drop. After that I'm much too tired to play "Power Wheels" anymore. Those kids have got to learn to steer, and to stop too. I guess that's why they don't give driver's licences to three-year-olds.

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And last weekend was my summer tea party. Now I realize, that although I was the hostess, I completely forgot to take pictures. I ended up only taking three photos. A photo of the hard boiled quail eggs, a picture of Maggie playing dress-up, and a picture of Stella sucking her fingers. Well, I guess I'm a better aunt than a photographer. At least I have a five year old niece who likes to play with the camera, who became the event photographer. Now I've got a lot of random fuzzy photos of flowers, and low angle shots of people, and a couple of the photographer's dress. But really, she did a pretty good job.
Overall, it was a lovely tea party, but I should have thought out the part about carrying everything out to the garden first. It was a lot of work, and now I'm wishing I had just had it out in the courtyard. But my biggest regret was my choice of shoes. I've got the worst blisters I've had in years. I knew I was in trouble when Amy asked me, "How heavy is your kitchen table?" But it was really nice, it didn't rain and it wasn't a hundred degrees and the food everyone brought was wonderful. Mary brought some amazing scones, Amy Lynn brought some chocolate zucchini bread, Amy M. brought some mini-lemon margin tarts, chocolate pecan cookies, chocolate bisscotti, Trina brought some jelly, butter, cream, and peaches, Mom brought fruit, davendour cream, cucumber and rye bread sandwiches and I had the hot tea, raspberry peach iced tea, strawberry lemonade, regular lemonade, petticoat tails, chicken salad croissants, and egg salad sandwiches with deviled quail eggs. Let me tell you, peeling quail eggs is a LOT of work. It said to roll them in your hands, and I squished the first one as flat as a pancake. I was much more careful after that and I had to pipe the filling in with the pastry bag. But they were very good and tasted just like little mini-hard boiled eggs.
Perhaps my next party will be a "Come Celebrate the Boston Tea Party" tea party. I think that one will have to be an open house though.









Until I have time to post something again...
T