It's been a while since I made white rice and/or ongiri. I unexpectedly ran out of brown rice, so I made white rice for dinner last night, and with some that was leftover, made ongiri.
Ongiri with balsamic green beans & carrots, spinach with a hardboiled egg, tomato with basil in a vinagrette, and another ongiri with sauces, dressings, and a few sesame candies.
The carrots were a yummy addition to the balsamic green beans. The tomatoes and basil were from the garden and were really, really good. Very fresh.
My sister-in-law works in a health food store near Cleveland (I think it's this one), and she managed to get her mitts on some frozen tuno for me. I made tuno-salad with it last night, and WOW! That stuff is good! Better than the canned stuff!
Some sesame candies; balsamic green beans; radishes; wholegrain bread with celery (and a spare radish); and tuno salad.
I think the green beans are good enough to warrant writing down the recipe. They are so good I could eat all of them at once and then some!
The tuno salad is a little different than my usual (other than the tuno being frozen), because I used tomatoes from the garden in place of peppers, and I added too much mayo and mayo-type products. I miss the sweetness of the peppers, so I'll probably add some to the stuff that's still in the fridge. That should cut down on the squishy factor, too. But still good!
3 cups fresh green beans 1/4 cup white onions 1/4 cup red onions 2 cloves minced garlic 1 Tbsp olive oil 3 Tbsp white blasamic vinegar freshly-ground salt & pepper to taste
Directions
Trim green beans and cut to desired length or leave whole. Thinly slice the onion.
Heat olive oil over medium flame. Add green beans and cook for about 5 minutes.
Add in onions and garlic. Cook until green beans are cooked, but still crisp.
Add the balsamic vinegar and stir until it's all absorbed/boiled off.
I forgot my camera and a co-worker has the office camera off-site today. Pity, too, because lunch today was super-duper, really tasty.
It started with a cucumber-radish salad (this time with the dresing on the side, which worked nicely), then brown rice with green beans sauteed with onions and garlic and balsamic roasted tofu. My snack was baby dill pickles and faux pepperoni.
I've gotten used to making my lunch the night before, so when I had to do it this morning (I was reading last night and forgot), I was thrown for a bit of a loop. But I threw something together.
Carrots, jumbo raisins, roasted squash, rice with tomato from the garden, spring onion and cilantro, and frittatta.
Our tomato plants in the garden are huge. I planted three, thinking at least one wouldn't make it, but they're all happily tomato-ing. I've probably got at least fifty tomatoes in various stages of ripeness on the plants at the moment, so expect to see a fair number of tomato-based lunches. I'm probably going to have to find my tomato relish recipe, too, and prepare to get canning!
I saw a radish and cucumber salad on a blog somewhere and, since I picked up some Ohio-grown radishes at Whitehouse Fruit Farm when I went to my mom's over the weekend, I decided to make something up like it.
Stir-fry with lots of roasted tofu (brown rice hiding underneath all the veggies), radish and cucumber salad, steamed green beans, and honey whole wheat pretzels and chocolate meringues.
I added my sweet-and-sour dressing to the salad before I packed it up last night, and since I didn't salt my cucumbers beforehand, it ended up a bit watery. Tasty, but watery. I think next time I'd just add the dressing right before I eat, since the flavor didn't really soak in or anything.
It's supposed to be used for cataloging one's home library, but I'm planning on using it to generate new books for me to read. I'm inputting books I like (or sometimes, don't) into my catalog to see what comes up as related and tagged similarly and such.
So far, I haven't found any new books to read, but I've been concentrating on inputting, rather than searching out new. If you're interested in what I've been reading, have a look at my catalog. I'm trying to make sure I rate everything so you can know what I thought of it.
What books would I reccommend right now? I'm into fun summer reading at the moment, so I'd suggest:
I finally took my trip three hours northeast to my mom's.
Goodness no! She doesn't live on a farm! But that's about ten minutes from her house in the suburbs.
While I was there, I got photos of "my" cats. Wicca was given to me by a high school boyfriend, and has lived with my mom all her life. She's a little old lady and deaf as a post.
Then there's Luna and Circe, who I got in college, but who went to live with my mom when I spent a year in England. They never came back with me, since I'm not sure they could have lived without the luxuries they got at my mom's. This is Circe.
We went to a Crew game last night, so I didn't have time to put lunches together last night. Rather than try too hard this morning, I just went with stuff straight from the freezer and fridge. This should un-impress some of you, I hope. I can be way lazy, too. :)
Edamame, tomato sauce for dipping, faux meatballs, artichoke tortellini, a pumpkin steamed bun, goyza and soy sauce.
Homemade salsa (with rice and tofu hiding underneath), cukes dressed with white balsamic and fresh-ground pepper; pineapples with a few cherries I found hiding in the fridge, and roasted summer squash.
Since it was only crazy hot (not stupid hot) today, I walked over to the Pearl Alley Farmers Market after I ate my lunch today.
It's pretty small, but there's always something to buy. I'm trying to teach myself to buy my veggies twice a week: at the North Market on Saturday when I pick up my share, and here on Tuesdays (the market is on Tuesdays and Fridays).
While I didn't buy any of the sunflowers, I did buy the below organic tomatoes and cucumbers from the farmer who was selling them. The squashes I found from another farmer. The cost for all that? $5.50. Not bad.
I cut across the Capitol grounds on my way back to the office, and realized I'd never really looked at the top of the Ohio Theatre's building before. Pretty.
Strange to have so many roasted items in my lunch when it's so freaking hot out, but what can I say - I love my toaster oven.
Spinach salad with shaved asiago, cranberries and toasted pinenuts; roasted tofu and zuchini with homemade honey-mustard sauce for dipping; roasted red, white and blue potatoes from our garden; and fresh pineapple for dessert.
I was about to type that no, that's not how I spent my weekend, but looking back, that's not entirely true. Kaylee and Indy have both kicked me. Spike bit me, and Kaylee scratched me. You'll note that Cordy's the good girl. :)
In any case, I read Kicked, Bitten & Scratched by Amy Sutherland this weekend, and it's a book I'd recommend getting from the library if you're interested in animals, operant conditioning, or both. It's a fascinating look at an exotic animal training program, written by a journalist who spent a year at the school.
Since I've clicker-trained the dogs, I've been interested in animal training. We're not terribly consistant around here, but at least the dogs all sit before they go out, and Kaylee now knows three - count 'em three - commands (by contrast, Cordy probably knows upwards of twenty, and Indy knows at least ten. Kaylee can sit, down, and "circus dog," jump up and bop a hand with her nose.) And within a week, I've trained Jaques and Petrolina, the new goldfish, to come up to the top of the pond for breakfast and dinner. Little accomplishments. :)
But try out the book, even if you don't train animals. It's an interesting and fast read.
Crochet pattern: Baby Mary Janes and three flowers
I've got a crochet pattern I've finally gotten around to writing up: Mary Jane booties for your favorite baby, along with one - two - three flowers for trimming - the Mary Janes or anything else.
This is a super easy pattern to crochet - a pair takes less than two hours. The toes are a tiny bit tricky, since you have to decrease double and triple crochets, but that's the hardest part. I've also inclued three different versions of the top row (picot - pictured, shells, and a plain single crochet) so you can mix and match for your own personal look.
Please note: these patterns have not been tested, though I've made three pair of Mary Janes from the pattern. Let me know if you find any problems.
I took the bus down to the other end of downtown today to have lunch with Jeff in a beautiful tropical atrium that's attached to his office building. (No photos - it was too dark with the rainy weather to get decent photos and I couldn't find any online.) Not only was the setting lovely, it has nice to sit with Jeff and talk about the plants and such while eating identical lunches.
Spring rolls with homemade peanut sauce in one box. Spinach salad with shaved asiago, dried cranberries and pinenuts, cherries and chocolate meringues.
Damp paper towel with the spring rolls to keep them nicely moist. Spring rolls contain rice threads, carrots, red pepper, cucumber, spring onions, spinach, mint, and roasted tofu. I meant to add cilantro, but forgot to have the Jeff pick it up at the store. They weren't as wonderful as usual without it, but still very very good.
And I never knew that before we started getting our CSA share. I'm even going to grow some this fall, in addition to replanting Fiona's kale. Swiss chard can do anything: stir-fry, pasta topping, side dish ... I'm in love.
Whole wheat pasta with sauteed onions, swiss chard, broccoli and roasted tofu (with a kind of orange-lime-garlic-ginger seasoning/marinade type thing); sauteed beans and peas from our garden with balsamic vinegar; veggie chips; and cherries.
Tuno salad with wheat bread shaped to fit the container, potato salad made with potatoes from our garden (exciting!), grilled zucchini from last night with some sugar snaps and carrots, and some wonderful, wonderful cherries!
The potatoes from our garden are very tasty. These are just the white ones - we still have red and purple in the ground. We'll pull them out as we need them. Hopefully we won't be tired of potatoes too soon!
No, not more dogs or birds, but a pair of fantail goldfish, Jaques and Petrolina, for our water feature in the front garden. We'll bring them inside in the winter - provided the local raccoons leave them alone until then.
No photo, because I didn't take one before I released them, and they are now happily hiding out in under the plants.
But please welcome Jaques and Petrolina to the family! We hope they'll be happy here!
I should be in The Folly right now, driving up to Youngstown to spend some time with my family. The Folly apparently had different ideas. My ABS light keeps coming on, and I'm not driving several hours, not knowing if my brakes are working properly. It's probably not anything, but I don't like warning lights that cry wolf.
So, instead of photos of my grandfather's garden and my mom's cats, here's a picture of our water lily in our little pond out front.
This is actually our second water lily flower, however, the first one that bloomed. A raccoon tore off the previous bud and nibbled on it before throwing it away.
OK, 90% done. I still have to paint a set of wall shelves, paint a rolling cart, and paint the trim. The shelves and rolling cart I'll hopefully get started on today, but the trim will have to wait another month for the paint on the walls to fully cure.
Almost all the storage items are from various thrift stores.
That's not even half of my yarn. The rest is in big bags under the table on the opposite side of the room. I really need to either get rid of some of it, or just use it!
But I'm very happy with how it's turned out. It makes me happy and creative to be in there, which was the goal.
Got the craft room painted today. No picture, mostly because the photos I took just don't do the color of the walls justice. I ended up going one shade lighter than FussBudget (Sugarplum), and I really like it. It's a nice, light pinky-lavender. Not too obnoxious, and it'll go nicely with white when I paint the trim - probably next month.
In other news, I rolled my ankle on the way back from the fireworks last night and that just hurts. Luckily, I have another five days or so before I have to wear heels at work. Kaylee continues to be well, though Cordy got flypaper stuck to her that we had to cut off and now she needs a grooming appointment. Indy's waiting for his evening Valium (unlike me, he is not a fan of fireworks).
Now that Kaylee has decided that it's OK for me to make plans, I am able to get back to my original project for this long weekend: my craft room.
Our house has four bedooms (well, three bedrooms and a "den" - so called because it doesn't have a closet), and we really only use two and a half of them: ours, the guest bedroom (used almost exclusively by my mom), and the half: Indy's crate is in one. The other one and a half just tend to get filled up by junk.
This room, for instance:
It's worse than usual, admittedly, since right before my cousin's wedding a couple weeks ago, I couldn't find my glue stick and had to rip apart the room to find it. But that's part of the problem: I can't (obviously) find anything in here.
So, the book cases are now in Indy's room, and Jeff will be going through the junk in there, since most of it's his. The bed, one that Jeff's grandfather made and is a little on the shaky side, is going back to his parents' house. We used it once, and it's really just too big for the room.
I need to paint the walls, and I think I've picked a color (you can see the paint chips taped on the wall by the window). I don't want to paint the trim or ceiling yet (because I hate doing both), so I needed something that would go with both dark purple and white. The color I've picked is kind of a very pale pinky-purple called "Fussbudget" - I think I mostly picked it for the name. :)
I combed the thrift stores yesterday and picked up a bunch of storage containters (though I still need a few more), and we've got a table and shelving that we can move in there. White gauzy curtains (you can see them on the bed, actually) will go over the windows.
I can't wait. It really should help with keeping the house neater, having a place where all the stuff can go, rather than lots of stuff not really having a home. And if it gets messy, at least it's confined to one room and I can close the door. :)
Kaylee seems to be doing 90% better. Hopefully, that means it was just metronidazole toxicity. Funny to say "just" to something so dangerous, but it's better than liver failure! We took her off the metro, and that might neccessitate some changes in her other medications, but we'll just have to wait and see on that. We'll be watching her very closely still, but at least it seems like this particular crisis has lessened.
Thanks for all the nice comments! Kaylee would send kisses, but she's just too busy chewing on Indy's ears.
