Making, baking, and (un-)breaking things in Southeast Michigan.
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Today I’m working from home because my car is at the shop getting the brakes sorted out. Danielle’s dog Roxie is here, and every few minutes she arrives with a different toy, wanting to play. It’s a bit distracting, but I can’t say that I mind.
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Since Danielle joined a local CSA we’ve been getting a lot of vegetables and eggs. I wanted to use some up this morning and also have some nice food, so I (mostly) made what’s seen above.
First was small redskin potatoes, onion, garlic scapes, eggs, rosemary, and garlic fried in oil and butter with salt and pepper. Everything but the eggs were fried together until the potatoes were cooked, with occasional scraping of burt bits off the bottom of the pan for extra flavor. The eggs were scrambled, poured over the cooked potatoes and veggies, and allowed to cook. This was then topped with harissa from Zingerman’s 20th Anniversary Tasting.
I also put together some salads using last week’s lettuce and croutons that I’d made a few nights ago, and Danielle sliced some fresh fennel bulb over it. The croutons were cubed stale bread, fried up in a pan with particularly good olive oil, rosemary, oregano, salt, pepper, and crushed garlic. The dressing is Organicville Foods’ Sun Dried Tomato & Garlic Organic Vinaigrette.
As a beverage I had some Meijer-brand with-pulp orange juice mixed 50/50 with carbonated water. I love this as it’s sweet and slightly fizzy, but not as heavy as a full glass of straight juice. The carbonic acid also adds a nice bite. Per usual, Danielle ate her food with a big glass of milk.
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After cleaning the bathroom this evening I tossed the rugs in the washer to clean them up. Unfortunately, as I went to put them in the dryer I found that the wash cycle had done them in. Ah well. I guess 7.5 years (just about the amount of time since I’d moved in) is a good life for them.
This also meant that I had to remove many, many, many handfuls of shredded rubber backing and nylon thread from the bottom of the washer. There was also a bunch of rubber and nylon in the laundry tub, so I hope that the pump isn’t too clogged. As all the water had drained I’m guessing it’s okay, but it won’t hurt to pay extra attention on the next load.
Now to find a good deal on some new rugs…
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Right next to my condo is a large, empty field, most of which I believe to be owned by a local church. While walking Afie in a remote part of said field this evening I came across a rather large stand of blackberry plants with about 1/3 – 1/4 of the berries ripe.
After taking Afie home, grabbing a bowl, and getting to picking I ended up with just under half a pound of berries. These are really, really wonderful. Sitting here eating them tastes just like summer up north at my grandparents cottage / house after returning from the berry patches at the edge of the woods, just a mile or so down the road.
Oh, and the cost? Some time, ten (or so) mosquito bites, slightly scratched arms and legs, and a few berry stains on my hands. Thankfully no ticks were involved, despite the walk through tall grass and it being a warm July day.
I think I’ll eat maybe half of them now, then save the rest for breakfast tomorrow. I’ll likely leave them unwashed as well, just because.
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It appears that Target has sold me an entire box of defective zip-closure freezer bags. When I went to use them this past weekend I found that they wouldn’t close, and closer inspection showed that two halves of the zip-closure are misaligned. Thus, the blue part can’t latch into the clear part and it’s not possible to close the bags.
I intend to return them and get another box, but I suspect that the entire run of them is defective.
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It seems that today’s storm has damaged my lettuce. It is torn, perforated, and generally broken down. The storm also downed a tree at the entrance to my condo complex, and caused me to have a 1:30 drive home. Most of the time was spent within the last four miles of my house.
I was in a windowless conference room having a meeting while the storm rolled through, so I only heard the rain on the building’s roof, but I guess it was pretty bad out this way. Hail, 75 MPH winds, and lots of things falling over.
UPDATE: A portion of my basement floor was wet, and it appears as if the wind was also strong enough to either blow water in that basement window, or back water up against the window so that it could flow in. I wish I had been here to see this storm.
Leave a CommentI’ve been riding my bike a lot lately. Not particularly far, but every day since Saturday. Here’s where I’ve been:
Saturday: River Bends Park, exploring new (to me) single track.
Sunday: Addison Oaks
Monday: Orion Oaks
Tuesday: Pontiac Lake Recreation Area
Wednesday: Stony Creek
Today’s ride at Stony Creek was one of the hardest things that I’ve done in a long time. The heat really, really got to me and I just couldn’t cool down / feel better. All the other days went rather well.
Now, bed with air conditioning. I finally turned on the AC after finding the inside of the house to be 86°F with even more warm weather on the way.
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As my CD rack is now empty, Danielle and I headed out to the Detroit area (Canton) IKEA and poked around for quite a while looking at book cases for my office. After a bunch of research before and talking while in the store, we came to a conclusion on what would work well.
Unfortunately, it didn’t appear that the boxes would fit in my car, even after I went out to the parking lot and remeasured the inside of the vehicle with various seats repositioned. We first left without buying the book shelves, but decided that if Danielle were to sit in the back, and things were positioned diagonally, we just might be able to fit everything.
Well, it fit so long as Danielle sat in the back seat. That’s three of IKEA’s BILLY book cases (two narrow, one wide, both tall) and doors for them (three tall glass doors, and one short glass/wood door). It’s impressive what my car can hold, if pushed to its limits. (Here’s a rather not good photo of Danielle sitting in the back of the car along with the boxes.)
While at IKEA we also ate some lunch, which is seen above. My meal, as shown above, was a rather good pasta and garlic bread with elderflower drink. Later on, before leaving the store for the first time, we also split a cinnamon roll.
I’ll post photos of the bookshelves and stuff later. They aren’t completely done being assembled, as I still need some binding screws to hold the two side by side cabinets together. After that I’ll begin filling them.
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Last night I emptied my CD rack, and today I’ll be removing it from the wall. Boxing the CDs up felt a bit odd, because almost every single one was purchased listened to, enjoyed, and reasonably understood. With listening to music during all sorts of times, feelings, and experiences, a large, well-used CD collection is almost a story of years of one’s life.
Now that I have all the discs ripped I don’t need as ready of access to the discs, and the wall space could be better filled by a book / stuff shelf, so the CDs are being moved into storage in the basement. Still, I can’t help but feel like I’m putting aside a big part of my life and what makes me feel like me: music.
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Instead of a post talking about something in particular, I’ll talk about the last 28 hours or so of my day:
To start, as seen above, Danielle and I came across both Deluxe and Old Fashioned hot dog buns from Aunt Millie’s in VG’s. When comparing them, there was no substantial difference. Beyond the price (about $1/package difference) only a few things at the very bottom of the ingredient list, vitamin supplements mostly, varied.
This photo shows the large wrapped stack of boxes waiting on my front porch when I got home. These are CD-sized outside tuck corrugated mailers from Planned Packaging of Illinois Corp. which I will use to box my CDs and store them in closets in the basement. The CD rack in my office (see this fisheye photo) will then be removed and replaced with a bookshelf to hold both my and Danielle’s books.
After work I went for a ride around the mountain bike trails at Stony Creek. I hadn’t eaten properly today, polishing off a bag of trail mix before leaving the office, and this made it really difficult to ride. Despite this I pushed myself quite a bit, and thus I kept having cramps in my lower back. I think that lowering my handle bar will help with this, because most of the cramping came with trying to stand and pedal, but with the bar relatively high I could pull on it properly and likely overdid things.
Dinner tonight was two garlic chicken sausages from Trader Joe’s, along with salad, potato chips, a bunch of spicy cheese popcorn, and a bottle of Le Fin du Monde. I made a point of drinking the dregs from this bottle to experiment with the gastrointestinal results of ingesting a quantity of yeast. My next experiment will likely involve a teaspoon of bread machine yeast. Danielle says that I’m not allowed to do this when she is around, so it’ll probably happen next week.
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